Len was quiet for a while, gulping his beer and looking off into space. Then he turned to me. "Steve Lundy has a cute idea," he said. "He was telling me about it this afternoon. He's a bum, you see, but he's got a damned good mind and he's done a lot of reading. Among other things, he's smart enough to see that once you've got your theory of games worked out, there's at least the logical possibility of converting your Eniac into what he calls a Strategy Integrator and Computer. And he's guessed, simply from the Pentagon's hush-hush policy about it, that that's what we're working on here at IFACS. So he holds forth on the subject of Emsiac, and I listen." "What's his idea?" I asked. "He thinks Emsiac might eliminate war, too, but not in the way a Boy Scout might think. What he says is that all the industrialized nations must be working away like mad on Emsiac, just as they did on the atom bomb, so let's assume that before long all the big countries will have more or less equal MS machines. All right. A cold war gets under way between countries A and B, and pretty soon it reaches the showdown stage. Then both countries plug in their Emsiacs and let them calculate the date on which hostilities should begin. If the machines are equally efficient, they'll hit on the same date. If there's a slight discrepancy, the two countries can work out a compromise date by negotiation. "The day arrives. A's Emsiac is set up in its capital, B's is set up in _its_ capital. In each capital the citizens gather around their strategy machine, the officials turn out in high hats and cut-aways, there are speeches, pageants, choral singing, mass dancing--the ritual can be worked out in advance. Then, at an agreed time, the crowds retreat to a safe distance and a committee of the top cyberneticists appears. They climb into planes, take off and--this is beautiful--drop all their atom bombs and H-bombs on the machines. It happens simultaneously in both countries, you see. That's the neat part of it. The occasion is called International Mushroom Day. "Then the cyberneticists in both countries go back to their vacuum tubes to work on another Emsiac, and the nuclear physicists go back to their piles to build more atom bombs, and when they're ready they have another Mushroom Day. One Mushroom Day every few years, whenever the diplomatic-strategic situation calls for it, and nobody even fires a B-B gun. Scientific war. Isn't it wonderful?" * * * * * By the time Len finished this peculiar speech, I'd finally managed to get him out of the tavern and back into his car. I started to drive him back to the Institute, my ears still vibrating with the hysterical yelps of Armstrong's trumpet. I'll never for the life of me understand what Len sees in that kind of music. It seems to me such an unhealthy sort of expression.