{"id":3903,"date":"2022-05-10T17:25:33","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T17:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2022-05-10T17:28:36","modified_gmt":"2022-05-10T17:28:36","slug":"alpha-ralpha-boulevard-by-cordwainer-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=3903","title":{"rendered":"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard<\/em><\/strong> by Cordwainer Smith (F&SF<\/em>, June 1961) is one of the author\u2019s \u201cInstrumentality of Mankind\u201d series, and takes place at a time1<\/sup> when the Instrumentality has decided to dismantle, or at least partially dismantle, the stable society it has created:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were drunk with happiness in those early years. Everybody was, especially the young people. These were the first years of the Rediscovery of Man, when the Instrumentality dug deep in the treasury, reconstructing the old cultures, the old languages and even the old troubles. The nightmare of perfection had taken our forefathers to the edge of suicide. Now under the leadership of the Lord Jestocost and the Lady Alice More, the ancient civilizations were rising like great land masses out of the sea of the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We knew that all of this was make-believe, and yet it was not. We knew that when the diseases had killed the statistically correct number of people, they would be turned off; when the accident rate rose too high, it would stop without our knowing why. We knew that over us all, the Instrumentality watched. We had confidence that the Lord Jestocost and the Lady Alice More would play with us as friends and not use us as victims of a game.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story continues with the narrator Paul pairing up with the French-speaking Virginia, who, during their conversation, reveals that she has previously visited the Abba-dingo computer located half-way up the twelve-mile-high Earthport. As Paul quizzes her about the experience, they follow a ramp down into the underground, where he is unsettled by the homunculi and hominids that work there tending their society\u2019s machines. In particular, a female d\u2019person (dog person), gives him a provocative look. Shortly afterwards, a drunken bull-man charges at them, and they are only saved when a cat person called C\u2019mell lures the bull-man away with a telepathic projection. C\u2019Mell shows the couple to a stairway that leads to the surface. Virginia tells Paul that he will see C\u2019Mell again and, when he asks how she knows this, Virginia tells him it is a good guess, but also mentions her visit to the Abba-dingo computer again.
The rest of the story sees the couple travelling to Abba-dingo, the journey beginning when they go to a caf\u00e9 and meet a man called Maximilien Macht, who \u201ccan take them to God\u201d (this offer is made after he overhears an upset Virginia protesting to Paul that she does not know how much of what she feels is genuine, and what is predestined by the Lords of the Instrumentality). Macht adds, after his offer, that the Abba-dingo said he would meet a brown-haired girl, and then Virginia says that her aunt heard also heard the couple\u2019s names from the Abba-dingo some time ago.
Macht says they can get there by using Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, a processional street in the sky which leads to Earthport. When Paul asks the point of such a journey, Virginia tells him:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t have a god, at least we have a machine. This is the only thing left on or off the world which the Instrumentality doesn\u2019t understand. Maybe it tells the future. Maybe it\u2019s an un-machine. It certainly comes from a different time. Can\u2019t you see it, darling? If it says we\u2019re us, we\u2019re us.\u201d
\u201cAnd if it doesn\u2019t?\u201d
\u201cThen we\u2019re not.\u201d Her face was sullen with grief.
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d
\u201cIf we\u2019re not us,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019re just toys, dolls, puppets that the lords have written on. You\u2019re not you and I\u2019m not me. But if the Abba-dingo, which knew the names Paul and Virginia twelve years before it happened\u2014if the Abba-dingo says that we are us, I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s a predicting machine or a god or a devil or a what. I don\u2019t care, but I\u2019ll have the truth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There are (spoiler) various incidents on Alpha Ralpha Boulevard: Macht stands on some bird eggs and Paul hears a telepathic distress message from the parent (there has been lots of telepathic communication thus far)\u2014and when Macht does not desist, Paul, prompted by the bird, strangles him till he falls unconscious. Later, the three of them get on a high-speed walkway at the side of the highway but, when they encounter a break in the bridge, Paul and Virginia make it over the gap while Macht falls onto the cables below.
They leave Macht behind and proceed to the Abba-dinga. When they get there it prints out a message for Virginia which says, \u201cYou will love Paul all your life\u201d, and then, after Paul fights off a bird man attempting to stop him using the machine, he gets one which says, \u201cYou will love Virginia twenty-one more minutes.\u201d
The pair set off back down the road as the weather deteriorates. Eventually, in the middle of a wild lightning storm, they reach the gap in the road: there, both Macht, who has been climbing up the cables, and Victoria fall to their death; Paul is saved by C\u2019Mell, the cat woman from earlier in the story.
There are a lot of fascinating scenes and ideas in this story, as well as a lot of exotic background detail about the world of the Instrumentality, but ultimately this piece does not amount to much: the questions raised earlier about free will and predestination do not appear to be addressed.
Perhaps this is best read as an exotic and bizarre piece of future myth.
**+ (Average to Good). 11,250 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The timeline of the Instrumentality of Mankind is as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alpha Ralpha Boulevard by Cordwainer Smith (F&SF, June 1961) is one of the author\u2019s \u201cInstrumentality of Mankind\u201d series, and takes place at a time1 when the Instrumentality has decided to dismantle, or at least partially dismantle, the stable society it has created: We were drunk with happiness in those early years. Everybody was, especially the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[171],"tags":[923,256,172,25,927,928,924,7,926],"class_list":["post-3903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cordwainer-smith","tag-923","tag-2-5","tag-cordwainer-smith","tag-fsf","tag-free-will","tag-instrumentality-of-mankind","tag-nostrillia","tag-novelette","tag-predestination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}