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 Amazing Science Fiction Stories April 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. _The little man stood in front of the monstrous machine as the synaptic drone heightened to a scream. No ... no, he whispered. Don't you understand...._ WE'RE FRIENDS, NOW By HENRY HASSE ILLUSTRATED by VARGA * * * * * Today more than other days Raoul Beardsley felt the burden, the dragging sense of inevitability. He frowned; he glanced at his watch; he leaned forward to speak to the copter pilot and then changed his mind. He settled back, and from idle habit adjusted his chair-scope to the familiar broad-spoked area of Washington just below. "I'll _not_ have it happening again today!" he told himself grimly ... and at once his thoughts quavered off into many tangles of self-reproach. "Blasted nonsense the way I've been acting. A _machine_, a damned gutless machine like that! Why do I persist in letting it get to me?" He pondered that and found no solace. "Delusion," he snorted. "Hyper synapse-disorder ... that's how Jeff Arnold would explain _me_. I wish he'd confine his diagnostics to the Mechanical Division where it belongs! He's amused, they're all amused at me--but damn it they just don't know!" Beardsley's rotund body sagged at the thought. Adjusting the chair-scope, he fixed his gaze on the broad facade of Crime-Central Building far across the city; again he felt the burgeoning embarrassment and foreboding, but he put it down with an effort before it reached the edge of fear. _Not today_, he thought fiercely. _No, by God, I just won't permit it to happen._ There. So! He felt much better already. And he had really made good time this morning. Today of _all_ days he mustn't keep ECAIAC waiting. [Illustration: Beardsley was the only one _not_ to panic when the infallible machine broke down.] Mustn't.... Something triggered in Beardsley, and he was assailed with a perverse rebellion at the thought. * * * * * Must not? But why not? Why shouldn't he just _once_ keep ECAIAC and Jeff Arnold and his clique stewing in their own tangle of tubes and electronic juice? And wouldn't _this_, he gloated, be the perfect day for it! Arnold especially--just once to shatter that young man's complacent routine....