Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction July 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. NEW APPLES IN THE GARDEN Some problems are perfectly predictable--yet not in the sense that allows a preprogrammed machine to handle them-- BY KRIS NEVILLE Illustrated by George Schelling * * * * * Eddie Hibbs reported for work and was almost immediately called out on an emergency. It was the third morning in succession for emergencies. This time a section of distribution cable had blown in West Los Angeles. Blown cable was routine, but each instance merited the attention of an assistant underground supervisor. Eddie climbed down the manhole with the foreman of the maintenance crew. There were deep pull marks on the lead sheath above where the cable had blown. "Where'd they get it?" he asked. "It came in from a job on the East Side." "Sloppy work," Eddie said. "Water got in the splice?" "These new guys...." the foreman said. Eddie fingered the pull marks. "I think she's about shot anyway. How much is like this?" "A couple of hundred feet." "All this bad?" "Yep." Eddie whistled. "About fifteen thousand dollars worth. Well. Cut her back to here and make splices. Stand over them while they do it." "I'll need two men for a week." "I'll try to find them for you. Send through the paper." "I can probably find maybe another thousand miles or so that's about this bad." "Don't bother," Eddie said. That was Eddie's productive work during the morning. With traffic and two sections of street torn up by the water people, he did not get back to his office until just before lunch. He listened to the Stock Market reports while he drove. He learned that spiraling costs had retarded the modernization program of General Electronics and much of their present equipment was obsolete in terms of current price factors. He was also told to anticipate that declining sales would lead to declining production, thereby perpetuating an unfortunate cycle. And finally he was warned that General Electronics was an example of the pitfalls involved in investing in the so-called High Growth stocks. Eddie turned off the radio in the parking lot as the closing Dow-Jones' report was starting. During lunch, he succeeded in reading two articles in a six-week-old issue of _Electrical World_, the only one of the dozen technical journals he found time for now.