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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Dobridust | ||
| A fully automated cleaning machine; it cleans till it runs out of energy. |
| Oona pulled the strips of stick-tape from
the parcel and crumpled up the silky sheets
of preemitex. The overall length of the
thing Jick had brought her wasas about twenty
centimeters. It was a small, heavy gadget
consisting of three parts: a flattened, goldcolored tube which grew wider at one end,
a big silvery bulb perched about midway on
the tube, and a latex bag, also attached to
the tube and open at one end. Everywhere
there was room for the legend, the metal had
been stamped with the words, "Property of
U.N. Space Port." "What is it?" Oona asked. "It's a Dobridust. You remember me telling you about them, don't you? Of course I'll have to put a new coil in this one, and one or two of the connections need working on and I'll have to clean it and fix the fan. I picked it up off the trash pile. But I can fix it so it'll be as good as new. And I'll bet there isn't another woman in the country who has one of them. They haven't even got them on all the space liners yet." A Dobridust. The name sounded sort of snaky and unpleasant. Oona searched her memory. What was it Jick had said about the gadget? Oh, yes, she remembered. It was an automatic wall-cleaner, standard equipment on all the newer liners. You started it in high up on one wall, and it worked its way all around the room, cleaning as it went. It wasn't ever supposed to be shut off. As soon as it finished one room, it went on to the next, and when it had done the whole ship, it went back to the room it had been started in. Jick had compared it to painting which had been a continuous operation on the ocean vessels of a generation ago. |
| Technovelgy from The Dobridust,
by Margaret St. Clair. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948 Additional resources -
|
After the device is cleaning, and the port authorities come to investigate, while Oona is preparing for the girls to come over, and it starts zooming around the room:
Still, it wasn't any trouble to operate, and
Oona was glad she had it. The worst thing
about it was the way it bumped softly
against the door and whining, like a dog
wanting to go out, when it had finished with
one room and wanted to go on to the next.
It made Oona quite nervous until she got
used to it.
THE Dobridust, when Jick had put it in
working order, proved quite a bitmore
satisfactory than Oona had thought it would.
True, it didn't save her any work, because
it kept the walls so clean she was always
having to go over the floors and ceilings to
keep them from looking simply filthy by
comparison. And once it got started cleaning it couldn't be stopped until it ran out of
energy pellets, when it sank softly down on
the floor.
('The Dobridust' by Margaret St. Clair)
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