Free A Century of Progress by Fred Saberhagen

room fifty years in the future.
    It was a job, and the thing to do was get on with it and finish it. Looking up and down the quiet elm-arched street, Norlund could see no roaring black sedans, no men staggering with the burden of wounded comrades. Well, most of war was always dull. If Ginny hadn’t issued him a gun she must have figured that he wasn’t likely to need one. He was an important man—at least until he finished his job for her.
    His next step was to pick out someone suitable and hire him as temporary helper. The choice could not be very long delayed. Fanning himself with his hat, Norlund again looked up and down the street, but saw no one at the moment who looked like a likely prospect. But after all this was nineteen thirty-three. He didn’t think for a moment that he’d have a hard time finding someone to take a job.
    Jerry Rosen, trudging eastward through the weeds lining the highway slab, thought he could feel at least two blisters starting to develop, one on his right foot, one on his left. He was heading back for the big city, slowly making his way home. With every step, another drop of sweat trickled down from under his cap. What a day for hiking. Still, he kept trying not to think about the heat and the blisters. It was Jerry’s firm conviction that if your willpower was great enough you could do anything. Well, almost anything. Maybe anything at all except find a job. Each time he heard another eastbound car approaching, overtaking him from behind, Jerry paused, smiled and turned, sticking out his thumb. So far he was striking out every time. Each car’s passage hit him with a blast of hot air, momentarily cooling, as he faced east again and prepared to trudge some more. If no one gave him a ride, eventually he would walk all the way to the western edge of Chicago, where the streetcar lines started, and there he would spend seven cents and be able to ride most of the rest of the way home. Maybe he’d spend a whole dime and get a transfer. Hell, he knew he would, if he had to walk that far.
    What a goddamned waste of a day, not to mention the carfare coming and going. Not that Jerry really had anything better to do with his days than waste them, and it had got him out of the house, at least. Maybe Judy and her mother could sit there in the heat listening to the baby crying, and the radio, all the goddam day when they weren’t doing housework, but he couldn’t. And then in the evening when Judy’s dad came home from the factory . . .
    Jerry could and did feel guilty about wanting to get out and away from his own wife and kid, sometimes telling them he’d been looking for work when he’d just been going through the motions, or just sitting somewhere doing nothing. But what else could a guy do? And today he really had been looking. He’d packed a sandwich, and had eaten it for lunch in an opportunely discovered suburban park, washing it down with water from a drinking fountain there. He could tell old man Monahan that he’d really tried hard today, and look him right in the eye when he said it. And old Mike would believe him; he nearly always did. He pretty well had to. Everyone knew that there were no jobs.
    If Jerry couldn’t really believe in the possibility of finding work any more, after a year and a half of trying, well, he couldn’t really stop believing in it either. Some guys, like Judy’s dad, were working. If one out of four workers were unemployed, like they said, well, that meant that there were still jobs for three of four. And once in a while one of those jobs just had to open up.
    Even this morning Jerry had felt real hope when a friend had suggested to him that chances in the suburbs might be a little better than in the city. His friend had been able to get a couple of days’ work landscaping, that kind of thing, at a cemetery out in Westchester. It was certainly worth a try, Jerry had thought this morning, and even worth the investment of a couple of dimes in carfare. Even