Read Ebook: The long question by Mason David

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Ebook has 70 lines and 6644 words, and 2 pages

The next morning he did not rise till noon. In fact, he did not even wind the alarm clock. It ran down the same day, and he tried to guess at the time when he set it.

There was a typewriter, and a stack of paper. Don began to set down his general view of the way that events would be happening in the outside world, trying to anticipate every possible question. He assumed, to begin with, that the questions would not be too obscure; but that left a large area of possibilities, anyway.

He was fairly certain about the outcome of various sports events. But when it came to science, he discovered whole worlds of which he had only heard vaguely before. There were things which he understood only with difficulty, and he began to realize, with a sense of shock, how inadequate his school "science" classes had been. But he didn't worry; he could easily predict that this class of question would have to do either with something medical or something about atomics. He found a great deal of already predicted material in both those fields; every magazine had a doctor writing about which disease would be conquered next, and how soon; and a number of articles gave details on how soon atomic power plants would be running, and what kinds of bombs would be tested next.

Don's choice of accountancy had been motivated by a liking for logic and orderliness; he began to find a fascination in the logic and orderliness of science. His picture of a scientist had been vague at best, a picture formed from newspaper photos of Einstein, with his white hair blowing, and of movie scientists, bending over strange machines and creating monsters.

At one point Don found the history and viewpoints of science drawing him into reading that could not possibly be used in the questioning. Reluctantly, and resolving to go back to that area, he moved on.

Back into politics once more, Don began to extend his guessing, as he read further.

After a while, Don had worked around to the Far East, and became more and more interested. His orderly habits led him into a pattern in which he organized the most likely events into a future history which covered, in detail, the things that would happen in the whole world, to a point that went into the next few years. In fact, he noticed abruptly, the vista ahead had grown brightly clear, and was still extending. He told himself that when he returned, he would continue to write his history of the future.

Just for fun, though, he said to himself. Nobody would be really interested in such a thing except himself, and he was no writer. But it looked as if he might have found a real hobby, Don told himself. Why, he didn't even miss television.

The thought of television reminded him of the money, and the questions. The air and an occasional swim, and the food, had all combined to give him a feeling of health and relaxation. He felt supremely confident; he knew he could cope with the questions. And the time must be growing short. The plane should be arriving any day.

Don suddenly realized that he had stopped shaving some time before, and that he had fallen into the habit of not wearing a shirt. He shaved, and discovered that he had only two clean shirts left. He also discovered that the freezer was nearly empty, but he remembered seeing a number of plants growing near the house; if the freezer should run out before the plane arrived, he could grow something, he thought.

But the freezer did not run out of supplies. Instead, the generator stopped. It was out of gas.

Draining the last of the melted ice from the box, Don suddenly became aware of a simple fact. There should have been enough gas. The tank had been quite full enough to last more than the two months. He suddenly realized that he had completely lost count of days, and that the plane might be overdue by as much as a week or two.

Feeling a slight panic, he began to check back through his daily stacks of writing. He found that he had done an average of eight pages every day, which gave him a means of counting back. But it was only a rough estimate, since there had been off days.

Still, the count came out to at least three months. The plane was very definitely overdue.

In the middle of the third year, he completed a radio receiver, made from wire stripped from the useless generator and using the crystal receiver principle. It had a pinpoint balanced on an old razor blade. There had been a description of the method of making such a receiver in a mechanics magazine, and Don had done it carefully. It took him a long time, because he did not find the job very interesting except when he was tired of reading and writing. Also, he had spent a long time extracting the blank leaves from all of the books so that he would have plenty of writing paper.

The receiver seemed to be a workable design. However, all he could hear was a steady crackle and hiss, and, during storms, the sounds made by distant lightning.

Things went well, otherwise. His garden grew with a minimum of attention; he had learned the easiest methods of fishing, and he could not have named a single thing that he did not have that he would want.

The history grew longer. It was bound, volume by volume, in covers removed from books that were then piled carefully away. Don had found a way to bleach out the pages of printed matter, but there were only a few books that he could bring himself to turn into writing paper in this manner. In his notes, he used the term "palimpsest"; he knew what it meant by now.

Thoughtfully, Don pulled at his graying beard. He was considering the plays of Gresno, and feeling, very mildly, a longing to see them. But, he reminded himself, it would be a long time before Gresno would even be born. Meanwhile, the afternoon sun was warm against his back, here on the porch, and he still had a great deal of white paper. He took up the sea-gull quill and began to write once more.

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