Eye in the Sky (1957) by Philip K. Dick Page B

with admira tion.
    “A
neat piece of equipment,” Laws admitted. “A love ly job of
designing and construction. Fine utilization of the miracle principle.”
    “But
utilization on a small scale,” Hamilton pointed out. “For
candy, soft drinks and cigarettes. Nothing important”
    “That’s
where we come in.” Gingerly, Laws pushed a bit of tin foil into the empty stage beside a model Her shey bar.
The tin foil met no resistance. “Nothing there, all right. If I take out the model bar and put something else in
its place …”
    Hamilton
removed the model Hershey bar and placed a bottle cap in the display
rack. When the lever was pulled, a duplicate bottle cap rustled down the chute
and out the exit slot.
    That
proves it” Laws agreed. “It duplicates anything tangent to it. We
could duplicate anything.” He got out some silver coins. “Let’s get down to business.”
    “How
does this sound?” Hamilton said. “An old elec tronic principle: regeneration. We feed part of the out put
back to the original model stage. So the supply con tinues to build—the
more it turns out the more is fed back and
duplicated.”
    “A
liquid would be best,” Laws reflected. “Where can we get some glass
tubing to pipe it back?”
    Hamilton tore down a neon display
from the wall, while Laws trotted to the bar to order a drink. As Hamilton was
installing the tubing, Laws reappeared, carrying a tiny glass of amber liquid.
    “Brandy,”
Laws explained. “Genuine French cognac —the best they have.”
    Hamilton pushed the glass onto the
model stage where the Hershey bar had been. The tubing, emptied of its neon
gas, led from the tangent duplication area and divided. One nozzle led back to
the original glass; the other led to the output slot.
    “The ratio is four to
one,” Hamilton commented. “Four parts go out the slot as product. One
part is fed back to the original source.
Theoretically, we should get an
ever-accelerating output. With infinite volume as a limit.”
    With
a deft motion, Laws wedged open the lever that tripped the mechanism into action. After a pause, cognac began dripping from the slot, onto the floor in
front of the machine. Getting to his feet Laws grabbed up the detached back of the machine; the two men fitted
it into place and turned the lock. Quietly, continuously, the candy dispenser drizzled a growing torrent of
top-quality brandy.
    “That’s
it,” Hamilton said, pleased. “Free drinks—every body line up.”
    A few bar patrons shambled over,
interested. Very shortly there was a crowd.
    “We’ve
utilized the machinery,” Laws said slowly, as the two of them stood watching the growing line
that had formed in front of the
ex-candy dispenser. “But we haven’t
worked out the basic principle. We know what it does and mechanistically how. But not why.”
    “Maybe,”
Hamilton conjectured, “there isn’t any prin ciple. Isn’t that what ‘miracle’ means? No operating law —just a
capricious event without regularity or cause. It simply happens; you can’t
predict or trace back a source.”
    “But
there’s regularity here,” Laws insisted, indicating the candy machine. “When the dime is put in
a candy bar comes out, not a baseball or a toad. And that’s all natural
law is, simply a description of what happens. An
account of regularity. There’s no causality involved— we merely say that if A and B are added we get C,
and not D.”
    “Will
we always get C?” Hamilton asked. “Maybe
and maybe not So far we’ve got C; we’ve got candy bars. And now it’s turning
out brandy, not insect spray. We have our regularity, our pattern. All
we have to do is find out what elements are
necessary to make up the
pattern.”
    Excitedly,
Hamilton said, “If we can find out what has to be present to cause duplication of the model object—”
    “Right. Something sets
the process into motion. We don’t care how
it does it—all we have to do is know what does it. We don’t need to know how