I drove crazy but automatic. It was kinda ironic, if you think of it. I was goin’ hoopla over a strictly personal problem, while civilization was crackin’ up all around me because other people were havin’ their personal problems solved as fast as they could state ’em. It is a matter of record that part of the Mid-Western Electric research guys had been workin’ on cold electron-emission for thirty years, to make vacuum tubes that wouldn’t need a power source to heat the filament. And one of those fellas was intrigued by the “Ask your logic” flash. He asked how to get cold emission of electrons. And the logic integrates a few squintillion facts on the physics data plates and tells him. Just as casual as it told somebody over in the Fourth Ward how to serve left-over soup in a new attractive way, and somebody else on Mason Street how to dispose of a torso that somebody had left careless in his cellar after ceasing to use same.

Laurine wouldn’t never have found me if it hadn’t been for this new logics service. But now that it was started—Zowie! She’d shot one husband and got acquitted. Suppose she got impatient because I was still married an’ asked logics service how to get me free an’ in a spot where I’d have to marry her by 8:30 p.m.? It woulda told her! Just like it told that woman out in the suburbs how to make sure her husband wouldn’t run around no more. Br-r-r-r! An’ like it told that kid how to find some buried treasure. Remember? He was happy totin’ home the gold reserve of the Hanoverian Bank and Trust Company when they caught on to it. The logic had told him how to make some kinda machine that nobody has been able to figure how it works even yet, only they guess it dodges around a couple extra dimensions. If Laurine was to start askin’ questions with a technical aspect to them, that would be logics’ service meat! And fella, I was scared! If you think a he-man oughtn’t to be scared of just one blonde—you ain’t met Laurine!



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