Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Calm down for blast off x minus five for three
two x minus one. Fire from the far horizons of
the unknown come transcribe tales of new dimensions in time
and space. These are stories of the future adventures in
which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand, maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction, presents.
Speaker 3: He minus minus minus.
Speaker 4: On tonight's story Child's Play by William ten.
Speaker 3: My name Sam Webber. My job an attorney, and a
pretty successful one. If I do say so myself. Maybe
you won't believe it. My best friends find it hard
to believe.
Speaker 5: But I used to be a completely different guy.
Speaker 3: Frighten, sickly, nearsighted, a real mortemer meek, no kid.
Speaker 5: That was ten years ago.
Speaker 3: The big change in me began to take place on
a cold December morning in nineteen fifty five. Just a moment, please, yes,
please Webber, Yes, Samuel, that's right, okay, Jack, step back, all.
Speaker 6: Right, fellas bringing in just a moment. You must have
the watch it, Jack sign head? Is that for me?
Webb Garden Apartments.
Speaker 3: It looks like a coffin I don't design them, Jack,
I just deliver them sign head. After much straining, I
wasn't in very good physical shape those days, I managed
to push the box under my single light bulb. There
was a card in a small envelope.
Speaker 6: Let's see to Sam from your classmates at the Interdimensional
and Cosmic Institute, Merry Christmas, twenty one fifty five, Holy
Jumping Catfish. Hey mister, Hey mister, there must be some mistake. Hey,
Holy Jumping Jack.
Speaker 3: They were gone and I didn't even know which livery.
Speaker 5: Company it was.
Speaker 3: I sat down to think, and it was just beginning
to seep into my sleepy brain that maybe this was
one of lu White's practical jokes. When I noticed there
was something funny about that box. For one thing, it
was dated twenty one fifty five, two hundred years from now.
And for another thing, it was solid gold. Pop had
been in the jewelry business long enough for me to
verify that. At that point, I decided to open it
up and see what was in it. After about a
half hour of fumbling, I gave up.
Speaker 6: All right, if you won't open, you won't open. Ah.
Speaker 3: No sooner had I said the word open than it
came apart like the skin off a banana. There inside
was something resembling a high powered kid's chemical set. Vials, jars, tubes, wires.
You never saw so much scientific looking junk in your life.
And on top of it all was a book of
instructions printed in mad green streaks. I opened the cover
and read page one, Build Aman Set number three. This
set is intended solely for the use of children between
the ages of eleven and thirteen.
Speaker 5: The equipment will enable the child to.
Speaker 3: Build and assemble complete adult humans in perfect working order.
This assembly latter is provided so the set may be
used again and again with profit. Refills and additional parts
may be acquired from the Builderman Company, nine to eight
diagonal level, Blunt City, Ohio.
Speaker 5: Remember only with Builderman, can you build a Man?
Speaker 3: When I arrived at work that morning, an hour late,
my brain was still reeling with the stuff I had
read in the instruction book. By the time I had
reached the office, I decided it's been a bad dream
and it would be over by nightfall.
Speaker 7: Somerset no Jack Attorneys at Law. Just a moment, I'll
connect you with mister Ojack. Oh, good morning, mister Webber.
Speaker 6: Good your I mean, good morning. You got to get
my mind off that book.
Speaker 5: Only with Build a Man? Can you build a Man?
Speaker 6: It must have been a dream. Probably go home tonight
and find the place empty.
Speaker 8: Well, well, well, if it isn't the poor Man's Clarence Darrow.
Speaker 4: Hi you Sam, Sam?
Speaker 6: Oh, hello, Lou.
Speaker 4: I come as bearer of sad tidings.
Speaker 6: You don't look very sad.
Speaker 4: Boss wants to see you, laughing boy, what about? Well,
how should I know?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 8: And by the way, Sam, you'll be happy to know
that I've just been promoted.
Speaker 4: I'm handling all the criminal stuff.
Speaker 5: From now on.
Speaker 6: Congratulations of Coss.
Speaker 8: You know what this means for Tina and me, don't you, Sammy? Ah,
cheer up, son, Tina's not for you anyway. Some got it,
some don't. I'm loving you nothing so long, laughing boy.
Speaker 5: That was my good friend Lou White.
Speaker 3: Lou was one of those guys who always lands with
his feet firmly.
Speaker 5: Planted in the back of somebody else's neck.
Speaker 3: In the year I had known I me'd already managed
to steal the job I wanted, and he was now
working on the girl I wanted.
Speaker 5: Her name was Tina, Tina Velvet.
Speaker 7: She was good morning, Sam.
Speaker 6: Oh, good morning Tina. My you look yes, good enough
to take to lunch.
Speaker 7: Oh I'm sorry, Sam, but I promised Lou.
Speaker 6: Sure.
Speaker 7: I hope you're not too disappointed.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 6: Oh no, no, some got it, some don't. I don't.
Speaker 3: Theoretically, Tina was employed by Somerset and Ojack as combination
secretary and switchboard operator Balloo and Me. I guess she
wasn't what you'd call really smart, but she always managed
to look like a pinup girl caught with.
Speaker 5: Her clothes on, if you know what I mean. Well
that was Tina.
Speaker 3: I try to steady my blood pressure as I walked
into the boss's office.
Speaker 6: You sent for me, mister Ojack.
Speaker 4: Oh, sit down with Ursadan, Thank you, mister Jack.
Speaker 9: My boy, In this business, you've got to be aggressive
if you've got to go out and create new clients.
I don't mean I'm milon chasing or anything like that,
but you've got to show some zip. Yes, sir, well
getting there in punch Webber. I want to see a
change in you the next few months. As a matter
of fact, you'd better.
Speaker 3: I went back to my office resolved to show some zip.
I bit savagely into a copy of Hackleworth's on Torts,
and I called Tina from memo.
Speaker 5: By the time she came in, my mind was wandering again.
Speaker 7: Rosenthal versus Rosenthal on August fourth, part the first part?
What comes next? Sam? What comes next?
Speaker 6: Oh? Listen, forget the memo for a while. I want
you to take a letter, all right, Sam, Today's date
usual heading to the Chamber of Commerce, Glunt City, Ohio. Gentlemen,
would you inform me if you have registered a street
or avenue known as diagonal level or avenue? I write
on behalf of a new client of mine.
Speaker 7: Oh, Sam, he was a new client. I wondered about it.
But he looked so strange and sinister.
Speaker 6: What do he look like?
Speaker 7: It was a terribly tall old man and a black overcoat.
He asked if you were in and then he tried
to get your home addressed. But he looked and acted
so strange. I didn't give it to him. He went
away positively furious.
Speaker 6: That's great. Did he leave his name?
Speaker 7: Oh, that's the funny part of it. He just said
he was the censor or the census taker or something
from the twenty fourth oblong.
Speaker 5: I left the office early and went home. Sure enough.
There it was my build.
Speaker 3: A man sat gleaming a little obscenely in the corner.
I walked over to it, gave it a kick, and
hollowed open sesame. Three minutes later I was flopped down
in bed reading chapter one making Simple living Things. An
hour later I was fooling around with such complicated items
as the Junior By calibrator, which measured everything from blood
pressure to hemoglobein content, and the Jeffy vitalizer, which was
actually supposed to put life in your creation, providing you
had followed instructions carefully. At eight o'clock I went out
to supper with the idea of getting a little drunk.
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 3: At nine forty five, I came back and made my
first simple living thing.
Speaker 6: Here boy, here, boy. Maybe you aren't a boy. Let's see.
Speaker 3: According to the book, you are a rubicular oyster hog.
Speaker 6: Not much to look at, But I made you. Me,
Sam Weber, Attorney at law, I have created life. Hey, hey,
come back, here, come back, here boy, here boy, here boy.
Speaker 4: Aye, it was no use.
Speaker 3: My rubicular oyster hog, which was a cross between a
field mouse and the oyster, had run out under the
door and into the world. Next morning in the office,
I turned to chapter two, duplicating babies and small humans.
Speaker 6: Assemble your mannequins, setting all moles to the indicated calibrations.
To disassemble a model, use the disassemblator provided with a set.
If you cannot destroy your creation, the law requires you
to call the census keeper for your oblong.
Speaker 7: Good morning, Sam. Here's that memo on Rosenthal versus Rosenthal,
also a letter for you. Shall I read it?
Speaker 6: Please?
Speaker 7: Dear mister Webber, there is no firm at Blunt City
bearing the name of Build a Man, nor do we
have any thoroughfare called Diagonal. Sincerely, yours, Thomas Plantagenet mayor.
Speaker 6: Well that's that.
Speaker 7: Oh, by the way, your client was here again this morning,
the ghoulish one.
Speaker 6: What'd you tell him?
Speaker 7: I said you'd be in later.
Speaker 6: Thanks.
Speaker 7: Will that be all?
Speaker 5: Sam? Yes?
Speaker 6: No, are you doing anything? New Year's Eve? Say?
Speaker 7: I'm disappointed in you?
Speaker 6: What did I do?
Speaker 7: You haven't even noticed the ring? Silly third finger, left hand?
What Lou gave it to me?
Speaker 6: Well, Lou has plenty of zip I'm sure you'll be
very happy zipping around with each other.
Speaker 7: Oh, Sam, I don't know. I'm so confused.
Speaker 4: Hey, listen, what's going on in here.
Speaker 6: Tina just told me the good news about your engagement.
She's crying with happiness.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right, honey?
Speaker 8: Well, no hard feeling, Sam, It's just that the best
man got the girl.
Speaker 4: You understand how it is.
Speaker 8: Oh, by the way, we're having a little celebration at
sgalle tonight.
Speaker 4: Crop around and we'll live it up a little hot.
Speaker 3: I went home feeling like a man who had been
stuffed into a washing machine with the dials set at
rintse dry. I was a failure, My job was a bust.
My girl was going to marry a football player. I've
been playing god with a chemistry set from some crazy
futuristic world, and the bill collectors were hot on my heels.
Speaker 6: Why not think.
Speaker 3: A Sam Webber without all the psychological problems. You've got
a dynamic, uninhibited Sam who could win a girl like
Tina by sheer magnetism. Then when it was all over,
we just take the old disassemblator and pressed.
Speaker 6: And I can do it too. Chromosome content check, Well,
here goes. It's moving.
Speaker 5: Oo.
Speaker 6: Holy, it's alive. It's sitting up. Hey, I feel great.
Take it easy. Do you know who you are?
Speaker 3: Don't give me that take it easy routine. Of course,
I know who I am. I have all the thoughts
you ever had up until the point I was vitalized.
My brain is an exact duplicate of yours, except that
I'm not all blocked up psychologically. Oh, by the way,
since we both have the same name, it'll simp five things.
Speaker 5: If I call you Weber, I'll be Sam.
Speaker 3: Look here, I'll make the decision. How would you like
a good punch in the nose?
Speaker 6: Is that any way to talk to your own parent?
I did create you, you know.
Speaker 3: And don't think I don't appreciated Weber, old man. But
let's get one thing straight. I live my life and
you live yours. Got that who pays the rent?
Speaker 5: You do for a while.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I haven't decided whether or not I want to
stay in the law business, a law business. It'd be
a shame to waste all that good training. Though we
went to Harvard, didn't we. On the other hand, I
want to spread out a little. Tina is the kind
of girl to whom money is very important.
Speaker 6: Tina, what do you expect?
Speaker 5: We're not quite the same you and I.
Speaker 4: I've got zip don't use that word.
Speaker 5: Sorry. Now, how about some dinner.
Speaker 6: I'm starved. We'll have to go out.
Speaker 5: I'll need some clothes.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I only have this one suit. Fine, you can
lend it to me, But what about me. I'll bring
you a sandwich after I come back from Cigali's. You
haven't forgotten, have you, Webber. We're invited to the celebration
Tina and lou White. Only it wouldn't look quite right
if we both showed up, so I'll tell you all
about it.
Speaker 5: Now, come on, off with a suit and no nonsense.
Speaker 7: Slipping it up both here.
Speaker 4: I have another great mister Ojack. Come on, thank you?
Speaker 5: Lou?
Speaker 4: Hey ever rare body? How fair? Oh Tina, honey? You
having yourself a little old time?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 3: Well, well the happy couples, good evening cats.
Speaker 5: Everybody's lit up like a Christmas tree.
Speaker 6: Well, I'll be sham.
Speaker 4: Are you in the bag?
Speaker 5: Never touched the stuff? Lou my boy? Never touch it?
Speaker 7: Hey?
Speaker 4: What's gotten into you?
Speaker 7: Whatever?
Speaker 4: You seem different somehow?
Speaker 5: Well, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: Ever since I had that talk with mister Ojack about myself.
Speaker 5: Oh you remember, don't you, miss o Jack Whiles You
made me.
Speaker 3: Realize, mister Ojack, that I had a whole reservoir of
untapped zip and that's all it took.
Speaker 5: Just like that.
Speaker 4: I'm a changed man.
Speaker 5: I don't believe it.
Speaker 4: It's an act.
Speaker 8: Why you're nothing but a cream puffin you always will.
Speaker 5: Mister o Jack. I think he owes me an apology
for that.
Speaker 3: I should think so, all right, all American boy, make
with the apologies.
Speaker 4: Apologize wife for two cents a post.
Speaker 3: Folks, would you excuse mister White myself for a few
minutes coming mister.
Speaker 1: White, I'll be right back, honey.
Speaker 3: Okay, big boy, you've taken enough punishment. Oh, oh dear,
he'll be all right in a little wild baby.
Speaker 7: Did you? I mean?
Speaker 5: Oh, sad, Sina.
Speaker 7: We really shouldn't be I mean kissing like this.
Speaker 5: It's what you've always wanted, isn't it? Well, isn't it?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 4: Same?
Speaker 3: By this time, he's probably kissing her, and there's nothing
you can do about it, weber, old man.
Speaker 6: Nothing. Hey wait a minute, where's that book of Instructions
to disassemble a build a Man model? Merely focus the
ray of the disassemblator device and press lever X THIRTEENA
myot seen. So you're finally home. I'm starry boy.
Speaker 3: You are looking at a man who, in one fell
swoop has got himself a raise of promotion and a wife.
Speaker 5: At least you'll be my wife tomorrow.
Speaker 6: Who teen?
Speaker 3: Of course? Who have we wanted so desperately all these years?
Speaker 6: I don't believe it.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 3: I had to put on quite a show, but all
around it was a real success. Mister Ojak was so
impressed he called me aside and said he was going
to give me a crack at some criminal cases. And
if I made the grade, who knows, I may even
accept a partnership.
Speaker 6: And what happens to me?
Speaker 3: I suppose I sit in this room with no clothes
for the rest of my life.
Speaker 5: Oh, you'll be well taken care of, Weber.
Speaker 6: You've got it all figured out, haven't chats about it?
Only you neglected to consider one thing.
Speaker 5: Oh what's that this? Oh?
Speaker 3: Come on, put that down. I'm going to melt you
down like a Welsh rabbit.
Speaker 5: Weber, you can't do that.
Speaker 6: It's murder.
Speaker 5: It's like killing your own son.
Speaker 3: Take off my suit you for you won't be needing
it again. You're going through with it, eh, I am
all right? Here's your jacket?
Speaker 4: Oh, my arm.
Speaker 5: No, you give me that thing.
Speaker 6: Give it to me.
Speaker 5: Oh that's better.
Speaker 3: Now we'll fix this little item so it can't do
any damage.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 3: You see whether you don't have the guts to stand
up against the man you might have been. What's that
sounds coming up the stairs?
Speaker 5: Listen, take a peek through the keyhole.
Speaker 6: Weather, Holy jumpy. It's him whom he's burning it. He's
burning a hole right through the door.
Speaker 10: Good evening, gentlemen.
Speaker 6: Who are you?
Speaker 10: I'm the census keeper for the twenty fourth oblong. You see,
your builder Man set was intended for one of the
but children who's on a field trip in this oblong
two hundred years from now because of an unfortunate time,
or the set was delivered here accidentally.
Speaker 3: You mean this set came here from two hundred years
from now?
Speaker 4: Precisely? Time is with all things is relative.
Speaker 10: We shall have to recover the set of cost and
adjust any discrepancies that has caused. Meanwhile, the problem is,
which of you, gentlemen, is the original Samweber?
Speaker 6: I am, listen, liar. Difficulties difficulties?
Speaker 10: Why can't I ever have a simple case like the
double cond duplication?
Speaker 5: Now look here, mister census keeper, the duplicate.
Speaker 3: Will obviously be less stable and more emotionally unbalanced. Certainly,
a man of your qualifications can decide which of us
is the more valid member of society, which of us
will conform more readily to the standard. Naturally, I observe
that one of you is naked. That of course, Wait
a minute, and you seem to be trembling, whereas this
gentleman seems quite cap hold it.
Speaker 6: You're making a mistake.
Speaker 10: I hardly think so. Away from you, not struggle, please, please,
please your Yes, it would be better if you didn't watch.
Of course, you understand. It's not the gift of the builder.
Man said, we're afraid of letting you have. It's the
principle involved you. People just aren't ready to play god,
you understand, of course.
Speaker 5: Perfectly. Well that's my story.
Speaker 3: Within ten seconds, the old Sam Webber had been completely
dismantled and packed into the box. Tina and I were married,
as you know, and I went on to become a
full partner in the firm of O Jack, Somerset and Weber.
Oh and by the way, Tina and I have been
doing quite successfully what the old Sam Weber and his
Builderman said, made such a mess up. We have one, two,
three little carnuplications, Sam Junior age four, Sameta age three,
and Semina age two months.
Speaker 6: Good Night.
Speaker 11: You have just heard X minus one, presented by the
National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers
of Astounding science fiction. Tonight by transcription, X minus one
has brought you Child's play by William Ten, adapted for
radio by George Leffards. Featured in the cast were Bill
Zuckerd as the truck driver, John Gibson as Sam, Grant
Richards as his alter ego. Peggy Lobbin was Tina, ted
Osbourne played mister O. Jack Bob Hastings played Lou, and
Guy Repp was the man from the Census Bureau.
Speaker 4: You're announcer Fred Collins.
Speaker 2: X minus one was an NBC Radio Network production.