"Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas;

magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;

Iam nova progenies, caelo demittitur alto.

Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum

desinet, ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,

casta fave Lucina; tuus iam regnat Apollo."

I will set this in the strange English language which I learned to speak during my time in the future, before the Immortals and the Sibyl drew me back here, my work there at that time done:

"At last the Final Time announced by the Sibyl will arrive:

The procession of ages turns to its origin.

The Virgin returns and Saturn reigns as before;

A new race from heaven on high descends.

Goddess of Birth, smile on the new-born baby,

In whose time the Iron Prison will fall to ruin

And a golden race arises everywhere.

Apollo, the rightful king, is restored!"

Alas, you my dear Roman friends will not live to see this. But far along the corridors of time, in the United States (I use here words foreign to you) evil will fall, and this little prophecy of Virgil, which the Sibyl inspired in him, will come true. The Springtime is reborn!

The Day Mr. Computer Fell out of its Tree

He awoke, and sensed at once that something dreadful was wrong. Oh God, he thought as he realized that Mr. Bed had deposited him in a muddled heap against the wall. It's beginning again, he realized. And the Directorate West promised us infinite perfection. This is what we get, he realized, for believing in what mere humans say.

As best he could he struggled out of his bedclothes, got shakily to his feet and made his way across the room to Mr. Closet.

"I'd like a natty sharkskin gray double-breasted suit," he informed it, speaking crisply into the microphone on Mr. Closet's door. "A red shirt, blue socks, and -" But it was no use. Already the slot was vibrating as a huge pair of women's silk bloomers came sliding out.

"You get what you see," Mr. Closet's metallic voice came to him, echoing hollowly.

Glumly, Joe Contemptible put on the bloomers. At least it was better than nothing – like the day in Dreadful August when the vast polyencephalic computer in Queens had served up everyone in Greater America nothing but a handkerchief to wear.

Going to the bathroom, Joe Contemptible washed his face – and found the liquid which he was splashing on himself to be warm root beer. Christ, he thought. Mr. Computer is even zanier this time than ever before. It's been reading old Phil Dick science fiction stories, he decided. That's what we get for providing Mr. Computer with every kind of archaic trash in the world to read and store in its memory banks.

He finished combing his hair – without making use of the root beer – and then, having dried himself, entered the kitchen to see if Mr. Coffeepot was at least a sane fragment in a reality deteriorating all around him.

No luck. Mr. Coffeepot obligingly presented him with a dixie cup of soap. Well, so much for that.

The real problem, however, came when he tried to open Mr. Door. Mr. Door would not open; instead it complained tinnily: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

"Meaning what?" Joe demanded, angry, now. This weird business was no longer fun. Not that it had ever been the times before – except, perhaps, when Mr. Computer had served him with roast pheasant for breakfast.

"Meaning," Mr. Door said, "that you're wasting your time, fucker. You're not getting to the office today nohow."

This proved to be true. The door would not open; despite his efforts the mechanism, controlled miles away from the polyencephalic master matrix, refused to budge.

Breakfast, then? Joe Contemptible punched buttons on the control module of Mr. Food – and found himself staring at a plate of fertilizer.

He thereupon picked up the phone and savagely attacked the numbers which would put him in touch with the local police.

"Loony Tunes Incorporated," the face on the vidscreen said. "An animated cartoon version of your sexual practices produced in one week, including GLORIOUS SOUND EFFECTS!"

Fuck it, Joe Contemptible said to himself and rang off.

It had been a bad idea from the start, back in 1982, to operate every mechanism from a central source. Of course, the basic idea had sounded good: with the ozone layer burned off, too many people were behaving irrationally, and it had become necessary to solve the problem by some electronic means immune from the mind-slushing ultra violet radiation now flooding earth. Mr. Computer had, at the time, seemed to be the answer. But, sad to say, Mr. Computer had absorbed too much freaked-out input from its human builders and therefore, like them, Mr. Computer had its own psychotic episodes.

There was of course an answer. It had hurriedly been slapped together – pasted into place, as it were, once the difficulty was discovered. The head of World Mental Health, a formidable old battleax named Joan Simpson, had been granted a form of immortality so as to be always available to treat Mr. Computer during its crazy periods. Ms. Simpson was stored at the center of the earth in a special lead-lined chamber, safe from the harmful radiation at the surface, in a quasi-suspended animation called Dismal Pak, in which Ms. Simpson (it was said) lay aslumber while being entertained by an endless procession of priceless 1940 radio soap operas, fed to her on a closed loop. Ms. Simpson, it was said, was the only truly sane person on – or rather in – earth; this, plus her superb skill, as well as infinite training in the art of healing psychotic constructs, was earth's sole hope for survival.

Realizing this, Joe Contemptible felt a little better, but not a lot – for he had just picked up Mr. Newspaper where it lay on the floor beside the slot of his front door. The headline read:

ADOLF HITLER CROWNED POPE. CROWDS CHEER IN RECORD NUMBERS.

So much for Mr. Newspaper, Joe realized glumly, and tossed it into Mr. Garbage-slot. The mechanism churned, and then, instead of ingesting or cubing the newspaper, spat it back out again. Joe glanced briefly at the headline again, saw a photo of a human skeleton – complete with Nazi uniform and mustache, wearing the great crown of the pope – and seated himself on the couch in his living room to wait for the moment (sure to come soon) when Ms. Simpson was startled out of Dismal Pak to minister to Mr. Computer, and, in so doing, restore the world to sanity.

Half to himself, Fred Doubledome said, "It's psychotic, all right. I asked it if it knew where it was and it said it was floating on a raft in the Mississippi. Now get a confirm for me; ask it who it is."

Dr. Pacemaker touched command-request buttons on the console of the vast computer, asking it: WHO ARE YOU?

The answer appeared on the vidscreen at once.

TOM SAWYER

"You see?" Doubledome said. "It is totally out of touch with the reality situation. Has reactivation of Ms. Simpson begun?"

"That's affirmative, Doubledome," Pacemaker said. And, as if proving him correct, doors slid aside to reveal the lead-lined container in which Ms. Simpson slept, listening to her favorite daytime soap opera, Ma Perkins.

"Ms. Simpson," Pacemaker said, bending over her. "We are having a problem with Mr. Computer again. It has totally spaced out. An hour ago it routed all the whipples in New York across the same intersection. Loss of life was heavy. And instead of responding to the disaster with fire and police rescue teams it dispatched a circus troop of clowns."

"I see," Ms. Simpson's voice came through the transduction and boosting system by which they communicated with her. "But first, I must attend to a fire at Ma's lumber yard. You see, her friend Shuffle -"