Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

During the war, in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to

get along without their men and women, who went to fight. It was the miracle that won the war—production with almost no manpower. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. Democracy owed its life to know-how.

Here, in the

basin of the river bend, the Mohawks had overpowered the Algonquins, the Dutch the Mohawks, the British the Dutch, the Americans the British. Now, over bones and rotten palings and cannon balls and arrowheads, there lay a triangle of steel and masonry buildings, a half-mile on each side—the Illium Works.

machines hummed

and whirred and clicked, and made parts for baby carriages and bottle caps, motorcycles and refrigerators, television sets and tricycles—the fruits of peace.

Bud’s mentality was one that had been remarked upon as being peculiarly American since the nation had been born—the restless, erratic insight and imagination of a gadgeteer. This was the climax, or close to it, of generations of Bud Calhouns, with almost all of American industry integrated

into one stupendous Rube Goldberg machine.

American know how and ingenuity .

A motor purred, gears grumbled softly, and the two front seats lay down side by side like sleepy lovers.

talked in the old days as though engineers, managers, and scientists were an elite.

there was talk of deeper, thicker shelters for the possessors of know-how, and of keeping this cream of the population out of the front-line fighting. But not many had taken the idea of an elite to heart.

now this elite business, this assurance of superiority, this sense of rightness about the hierarchy topped by managers and engineers—this

was instilled in all college graduates, and there were no bones about it.

Building 58’s north end

was the original machine shop set up by Edison in 1886, the same year in which he opened another in Schenectady, and visiting it took the edge off Paul’s periods of depression. It was a vote of confidence from the past,

Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient place in which to sweat out Judgment Day.

what seemed so clear to others—that what he was doing, had done, and would do as a manager and engineer was vital, above reproach, and had, in fact, brought on a golden age.

Of late, his job, the system, and organizational politics had left him variously annoyed, bored, or queasy.

Looking the length of Building 58, Paul had the impression of a great gymnasium, where countless squads practiced precision calisthenics—bobbing, spinning, leaping, thrusting, waving…. This much of the new era Paul

loved: the machines themselves were entertaining and delightful.

thirteen years ago, he’d been in on the making of the tape, the master from which this one had been made…. He and Finnerty and Shepherd, with the ink hardly dry on their doctorates, had been sent to one of the machine shops to make the recording.

Rudy hadn’t understood quite what the recording instruments were all about, but what he had understood, he’d liked: that he, out of thousands of machinists, had been chosen to have his motions immortalized on tape.

Now, by switching in lathes on a master panel and feeding them signals from the tape, Paul could make the essence of Rudy Hertz

produce one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand of the shafts.

At the time of the riots, right after the war, the master tapes had all been locked up in this way. Now, with the antisabotage laws as rigidly enforced as they were, the only protection the controls needed was from dust, cockroaches, and mice.

the Building 58 Suite. It was wild and Latin music, hectic rhythms, fading in and out of phase, kaleidoscopic sound. He tried to separate and identify the themes. There! The lathe groups, the tenors: “Fur-razz-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ak! ting! Furr-azz-ow-ow …” The welders, the baritones: “Vaaaaaaa-zuzip! Vaaaaaaa-zuzip!”

the punch presses, the basses: “Aw-grumph! tonka-tonka. Aw-grump! tonka-tonka …” It was exciting music, and Paul, flushed, his vague anxieties gone, gave himself over to it.

Paul laughed at the wonderful machines, and had to look away to keep from getting dizzy.

The basic parts of the automatic controls, too, and the electric eyes and other elements that did and did better what human senses had once done for industry—all were familiar enough in scientific circles even in the nineteen-twenties.

First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.” “Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, said all that way back in the nineteen-forties.

“Actually, it is kind of incredible that things were ever any other way, isn’t it? It was so ridiculous to have people stuck in one place all day, just using their senses, then a reflex, using their senses, then a reflex, and not really thinking at all.”

what hell it was to be a service manager

in those days. Hangovers, family squabbles, resentments against the boss, debts, the war—every kind of human trouble was likely to show up in a product one way or another.”

happiness, too. I can remember when we had to allow for holidays, especi...

“Do you suppose there’ll be a Third Industrial Revolution?”

I guess the third one’s been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. That would be the third revolution, I guess—machines that devaluate human thinking.

“You’re tired, darling.” “I guess.” “You need a drink. Come home early.” “All right.” “I love you, Paul.” “I love you, Anita. Goodbye.”

Anita had the mechanics of marriage down pat, even to the subtlest conventions.

she was thorough enough to turn out a creditable counterfeit of warmth. Paul could only suspect that her feelings were shallow—and perhaps that suspicion was part of wha...

Lathe group three, Building 58, had been good in its day,

becoming a misfit in the slick, streamlined setup, where there was no place for erratic behavior. “Basically, it

wasn’t built for the job it’s d...

THE SHAH OF BRATPUHR, spiritual leader of 6,000,000 members of the Kolhouri sect, wizened and wise and dark as cocoa, encrusted with gold brocade and constellations of twinkling gems, sank deep into the royal-blue cushions of the limousine—like

like a priceless brooch in its gift box.

Halyard

was able to understand, without Khashdrahr’s help, five of the Shah’s expressions. “Khabu” meant “where?” “Siki” meant “what?” “Akka sahn” meant “why?” “Brahous brahouna, houna saki” was a combination of blessing and thanks, and Sumklish was the sacred Kolhouri drink which Khashdrahr carried in a hip flask for the Shah.

“Khabu?” said the Shah again, peering out at the city.

“Ilium, New York, your highness. We are about to cross the Iroquois River, which divides the town in two. Over there on the opposite bank is the Ilium Works.”

“The Shah,” said Khashdrahr, “he would like, please, to know who owns these slaves we see all the way up from New York City.” “Not slaves,” said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. “Citizens, employed by government.

Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better.”