Leisure -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Spouses -- Fiction; Work -- Fiction
"Mine, either. But I once knew a fellow who'd tried for a job. He
seemed o.k. to me, but he sure didn't get a good one! Had a clerical
position, with business machines, and their output was geared down
to spread the work. So he didn't have enough to do ... just stacked
punched cards or something every day for eighty years!"
"Oh, you'd do better than that, dear!"
"Maybe. Point is, there _are_ jobs worse than no job at all!"
"I'm not so sure!" Janet said, suddenly determined. "Only a few minutes
ago you weren't very happy about the idle days ahead. Why not take a
chance?"
"Take a chance? What kind of language is that? Chance went out along
with disease and poverty and crime and accidents. You're way off base,
Jan!"
"But you have a chance--oh, all right!--an opportunity, then, if you
like that better, to get a _good_ job. Now, if I were a man--"
"But you're not.... Still ... maybe I'll try it...."
For the first time in a month or two, Janet kissed him warmly. And
after she'd helped him into his wings and seen him off from the
terrace, she felt a strange warm glow of anticipation. Not since she'd
married had there been need for a decision that could bring change into
her life. This was a Day!
* * * * *
It was a Day for a lot of others, too. She learned that from the noon
broadcast of the test ceremony.
"In my time," the Governor said, speaking from the Capitol's rotunda,
"in my time a hundred aspirants was considered a good turnout. Today's
applicants total a thousand! We haven't actually got a thousand jobs
lined up, but we'll get 'em! And I'm privileged to announce, now that
the list of competitors has closed, that we do have the astoundingly
large number of ten--repeat, ten--genuinely desirable appointments to
make."
Ten good jobs for a thousand applicants didn't sound to Janet
like an astoundingly large number. She'd been sprawled on a
magnetically-positioned pad half-way between floor and ceiling, but
she sat up when the Governor stopped talking, and with a twinge of
genuine and unwonted anxiety watched the long file of applicants as
they approached in turn the brain-wave analyzer, the voice-operated
sorter that would add their life-files to current test results, and the
officials who judged each man's configuration.
She wished they'd announce the test results publicly, but knew they
wouldn't. So, when Les had gone through--about twenty minutes after the
start--Janet shut off the broadcast, dissolved her dress-films, and
had herself rubbed by the massage machine. The morning's suspense was
proving too much for her, and she didn't want to have a headache when
Les came home.
But even the mechanical masseuse couldn't rub away her strange
feelings. Not since marriage had Janet felt curiosity as to the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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