Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“This is like the Indians’ massacre of Custer and his men,” said Lasher reflectively. “The Little Bighorn. One isolated victory against an irresistable tide. More and more whites where Custer came from; more and more machines where these came from.

The speaker stood up and stretched, and smiled contentedly, and Paul recognized him: the tall, middle-aged, ruddy-faced man who’d fixed Paul’s car with the sweatband of his hat long ago. The man had been desperately unhappy then. Now he was proud and smiling because his hands were busy doing what they liked to do best, Paul supposed—replacing men like himself with machines.

And that left Paul. “To a better world,” he started to say, but he cut the toast short, thinking of the people of Ilium, already eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged. “To the record,” he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.