Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 53 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WITHOUT LOVE “Man-hour product?” ‘What product?” Harty looked at me. I thought for a moment. When you have to be ar- bitrary you might as well go for broke. I was a record- fiend. I said: “A standard 18 record.” “Why not?” “All right, then, break it down.” I retired into a high- ball. And they went to work on the problem as only a Team can. For a while the air was thick with medians, log x’s and y’s, averages, and poten- tials, but after barely ten minutes they informed me that one hour of standard semi-skilled mechanical work should equal four standard 18 records, with a tolerance of 1/16 record plus or minus. When I got back to my financiers they were in an uproar; somebody had intro- duced the problem of the Swiss franc. I told them to shut up and listen. I played them a recording of my conversation with the Statistics Team. (These re- cordings were made of all such conferences on the pocket *corders which we Teamsters carried for just that purpose.) Then I said: “Your basic unit is the ‘valt,’ representing four standard 18 records per hour. The ‘valt’ will be divided into 100 ‘penko.’? Adjust your currencies accordingly and get through by the end of the week. S’long.”’ With that, I left them. The rest of their work was purely routine, for I had gotten them over the hump by eliminating all possibilities for comprom- ise. Why had I chosen ‘“‘valt”’ and “penko’’? Because they were arbitrary symbols for arbitrary values. They had no national or traditional asso- ciations and so nobody would feel slighted. ‘‘Valt’? and “‘nenko”” would be standard world currency from now on. Such was the power of the Teams in the days before the New Men. But to get back to the music store and the third comicloooks.con