A Logic Named Joe

Countdown for Blastoff. X-5, 4, 3, 2, X-1, Fire. From the far horizon of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future.

Adventures in which you'll live in a million could be years on a thousand maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith Publishers of a Stounding Science Fiction presents... Heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, heck, minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, minus, one, one, one.

Tonight's story, a logic named Joe by Murray Leinster. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] It was on the third day of August that Joe came off the assembly line. And on the fourth, Lorraine came into town. And that afternoon, I saved civilization.

Lorraine is a blonde I was crazy about once, and Joe is a new 1974 model logic that I've got stored away down in the cellar. And how do I save civilization? You're listening now to a voice from the future.

The voice of Frank Caldwell, head service man for the Logic Corporation, makers of the machine that does everything for you. Well, nearly everything anyway. The electronic logic. In the year we speak, 1974, no modern home was complete without one.

And the logic sets were working so well that life was soft indeed for a paramount Frank Caldwell. That is, until that fatal day of August the third, when suddenly the Logics began doing everything for their users and doing it too well.

On the third of August, there wasn't much doing. And I'm hanging around the boss's office, smoking up his cigars. Frank, there's a customer outside, go take care of him, William. Me? I'm a maintenance man.