Note: First published in Nesvadba's second coll "Einsteinův mozek" (1960). It is also the title story of a 1964 mass-market retrospective selection of 16 stories from all three previous collection.

Synopsis: Engineer at a research institute invents 'automatons' that can control all manufacturing machines without human intervention. He hopes to be rich, famous and powerful, but he ushers in an age of plenty (i. e. real communism) where such things don't matter anymore.