Read Manalone for Free Online Page B

windmills, remember that the MIPS have the power to arrest and hold you for any period without trial. Cry “stinking fish” and you wouldn’t get past the first corner.’
    ‘I wasn’t aware of being Quixotic.’
    ‘No, but I know you, Manalone. You can’t bear to let ideas lie idle. You use concepts the same way other people use tools – and you always make something with them. Just remember that these ideas are explosive. Don’t get hurt.’
    ‘I thought I was supposed to be the thinker, and you the doer,’ said Manalone mischievously.
    ‘So did I, until it hit me that it was you who virtually built Automated Mills. Then I began to realize that your thoughts were more constructive than my deeds.’
    Raper signalled for their glasses to be refilled and tended his ComCredit card, whilst Manalone fell into a consideration of their problem.
    ‘If weassume for the moment that somebody has a reason for wanting to re-draw history, Paul, is there any further evidence to suggest that they’re actually attempting it?’
    ‘I think there is. Have you been to a museum lately?’
    ‘No, not for years.’
    ‘It might surprise you to know that there aren’t many of them still open, and those which are left are changing.’
    ‘Changing? How do you mean?’
    ‘I mean these days the exhibits are nearly all contemporary. There’s nothing Roman, nothing medieval, nothing of the renaissance. There’s models, yes, but no authentic artefacts even of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. As with archaeology, there’s a barrier being thrown up over the past, particularly the more recent past.’
    ‘But surely that would have raised an outcry?’ protested Manalone.
    ‘Perhaps it did – but probably the more serious objectors were dealt with under security wraps. Anyway, the trend of modern education has been deliberately orientated in favour of looking forwards rather than back, so that interest in historical subjects has been calculatedly minimal.’
    ‘Point taken, Paul. Anything else similar?’
    ‘Similar but different, and a bit more in your line. I met a man in Coventry who had an unusual theory. You know of the proposal to go from decimal standards to duodecimal –well he pointed out that this swing was coming round for the second time. Apparently they were partly duodecimal in the twentieth century, and then went metric.’
    ‘That’s true,’ said Manalone. ‘It was a rationalization programme to tie in with Europe which had already adopted the decimal system. As soon as the standards were common throughout Eurasia, the whole system swung back to the vastly more convenient duodecimal system.’
    ‘And then swung again metric?’ asked Raper.
    ‘True, but that was explained as an interim measure whilst the rest of the world got into the universal system.’
    ‘Was it? Was it really that, Manalone?’
    ‘I’m not convinced by the reasoning, but since it occurred before I was born I’ve never questioned it. As a confirmed duodecimalist myself, I’m happy that we’re now going back to the only rational system.’
    ‘Perhaps!’ saidRaper. ‘Anyway, this fellow in Coventry had a different explanation. He reckoned that the continual shift of standards was purely to break people’s subjective reference points. He was suggesting that a deliberate break was being inserted into people’s subjective ideas of size, weight and value by the repeated change of units. Could it have that effect, Manalone?’
    ‘It could have that effect, but surely you’re not suggesting that this mystery had its origins way back in the twentieth century?’
    ‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely pointing out a few facts which might be relevant.’
    ‘I don’t see how this one ties in with the rest.’
    ‘Perhaps it doesn’t. But I think it’s important. Shortly after that conversation, my contact was murdered – with a Service laser rifle. I’d lay odds of a hundred to one that he was a victim of the