Printers -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
It was about three days after Dr. Hudson arrived, that a big job came
in from the Legal Publishing Company--a three-volume, four-thousand-page
record for the U. S. circuit court. They could not handle the
typesetting, so they farmed that part out to us.
It had to be delivered exactly one week before the deadline that had
been set by the receivers for closing the plant. I very nearly turned it
down, but Dr. Hudson's eyes glittered when he saw it. "Just what we
need," he said.
"That's almost two thousand galleys of type," I reminded him, "besides
our regular stuff." I was very dubious.
But Dr. Hudson was enthusiastic. "We'll make history," he promised.
Well, we did. Union or not, the men would have to learn to do things the
modern way. That is what I told the chairman when he protested against
having the men go back in time to set a job over. That had been my first
idea, executed by Dr. Hudson.
As I said, Dr. Hudson was an experimental physicist. He was, you might
say, a super-physicist, because he had specialized in finding ways to do
all the things which traditionally were impossible, like traveling in
time.
So when the Monotype casterman set a job in Caslon that should have been
set in Century, I turned him over to Dr. Hudson. The doctor took him
into the laboratory and sent him back two days in time and had him do
the job over--but right. The casterman didn't like it, but he didn't
know what to do about it.
There was plenty of buzzing that afternoon among the men, especially
when the job, re-set in the correct face--or rather, set in the correct
face, because this now was the first time it had been set--was put on
the dump. I gave the boys five minutes to crowd around and look at the
proof and then I broke it up. I was exultant. It didn't occur to me then
that a man could be _too_ ambitious.
That afternoon the chairman came in, and I was ready for him. "We are
not," I pointed out, "violating our union contract."
"But you made the casterman set the job twice, and he doesn't get paid
for it."
"We pay the casterman two dollars an hour for seven hours a day. When
he's here more than seven hours, he'll get time and a half," I said
triumphantly.
The chairman frowned, but I didn't relax; I was on top and I knew it.
"He set the job wrong in the first place," I pointed out, "and he got
paid for that. Is there any reason why he shouldn't correct his own
mistake, if it doesn't take any of his time?"
"It does take time," he insisted.
"No. He's only re-living that four hours and doing the job right instead
of wrong; you can't find any fault with that."
And he couldn't. I felt wonderful. I wanted to jump and shout, but I
compromised by taking Dr. Hudson down for a gleeful drink and planning
our next tactic.
We also settled a point of strategy. We decided to confuse them with a
few minor things before springing our next real item--which would be, to
put it mildly, revolutionary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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