Walhfred Anderson accepted the rebuke without wincing. The rebuke for
all the hours he had wasted because he had been too stubborn to use a
Cyber clerk, or consult Cyber V. The old should not resist the new, nor
the new destroy the old. There was the letter of the law, and there
was the spirit, and the spirit was the dream. What was old Hammurabi's
dream? Holmes had quoted it once, "... to establish justice on the
earth ... to hold back the strong from oppressing the feeble ... to
shine like the sun-god upon the blackheaded men, and to illumine the
land...." Holmes had dreamed the dream, all right. He had dreamed it
grandly. But maybe there was room for small dreams, too, and still time
for dreams when the years were so few and lonely.
The Professor suddenly opened his eyes, and his voice took on the
twang of steel under tension.
"You are already wondering," he told the cameras accusingly, "whether I
have not disproved my own words by defeating Cyber IX.
"That is not true.
"I defeated Cyber IX because I have wasted a man's life--my own! You
all know that as a child I was a mnemonic freak, a prodigy, if you
prefer. My mind was a filing cabinet, a fire-proof cabinet neatly
filled with facts that could never kindle into dreams. All my life I
have stuffed my filing cabinet. For sixty years I have filed and filed.
"And then I dreamed one dream--my first, last and only dream.
"I dreamed that man would mis-use another gift of science, as he has
mis-used so many.... I dreamed of the Cybers replacing and enslaving
man, instead of freeing man to dream.... And I dreamed that the golden
hour would come when a man would have to prove that he could replace
a Cyber--and thereby prove that neither man nor Cybers should ever
replace each other."
Professor Neustadt turned to Judge Anderson, and his voice dropped
almost to a whisper.
"Your Honor, I move that this case be dismissed."
The worn handle of his old teakwood gavel felt warm and alive to the
Judge's fingers. He sat up straight, and banged resoundingly on the top
of his desk.
"Case dismissed."
Then, in full view of the cameras, Walhfred Anderson turned and winked
boldly at Oliver Wendell Holmes.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Cyber and Justice Holmes, by Frank Riley
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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