DANGEROUS QUARRY BY JIM HARMON - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61119/pg61119-images.html

 One little village couldn't have

a monopoly on all the bad breaks
in the world. They did, though!

They say automation makes jobs, especially if "they" are trying to keep their own job of selling automation machines.

Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison."

"Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor.

"The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate claims the phony ones they try to spike us for.

The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses.

Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige.

The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck.

"I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice.

"Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as soon as I get a free moment."

"You're sure you can send it? Right away?"

"Positive. Ten cents, Professor."

The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He fingered it thoughtfully.

"I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel."

"Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing."

I looked at his old pistol that must have used old powder cartridges, instead of liquid propellants, and forked out my Smith & Wesson with two fingers, letting it plop at my feet.