Título e autor da curta história do SF
Eu acredito que você está procurando por R. A história curta de A. Lafferty "Assim frustramos Carlos Magno" , como sugerido em um Comentário de Eike Pierstorff . A história, que também foi a resposta para esta velha pergunta , foi publicado pela primeira vez em Galaxy Magazine , fevereiro de 1967 , que é disponível no Internet Archive (clique em aqui para opções de download). Ele corresponde perfeitamente à sua descrição.
sobre uma máquina de 'melhoria' aparentemente quebrada
This was Epiktistes the Ktistec machine? Who'd have believed it? The main bulk of Epikt was five floors below them, but he had run an extension of himself up to this little penthouse lounge. All it took was a cable, no more than a yard in diameter, and a functional head set on the end of it.
Acho que o ponto principal do experimento é ver se eles podem mudar alguma coisa:
"We have perfect test conditions," the machine Epikt said as though calling them to order. "We set out basic texts, and we take careful note of the world as it is. If the world changes, then the texts should change here before our eyes. For the test plot, we have taken that portion of our own middle-sized city that can be viewed from this fine vantage point. If the world in its past-present continuity is changed by our meddling, then the face of our city will also change instantly as we watch it.
Mas eles estão esperando melhorias:
"We are going to tamper with one small detail in past history and note its effect," Gregory said. "This has never been done before openly. We go back to an era that has been called 'A patch of light in the vast gloom,' the time of Charlemagne. We consider why that light went out and did not kindle others. The world lost four hundred years by that flame expiring when the tinder was apparently ready for it. We go back to that false dawn of Europe and consider where it failed. The year was 778, and the region was Spain.
Um pequeno comitê senta em volta de uma mesa e invoca a máquina.
Existem nove deles para começar, contando a máquina:
"We have assembled here the finest minds and judgments in the world: eight humans and one Ktistec machine, myself. Remember that there are nine of us. It might be important."
O leitor entende que mudou toda a linha do tempo:
Também um dos personagens da história,
Willy McGilly, a man of unusual parts (the seeing third finger on his left hand he had picked up on one of the planets of Kapteyn's star) and no false modesty
talvez saiba o que está acontecendo; pelo menos, ele está ciente de mudanças anteriores na linha do tempo:
"I hope the Avatar isn't expensive," Willy McGilly said. "When I was a boy we got by with a dart whittled out of slippery elm wood."
"This is no place for humor," Glasser protested. "Who did you, as a boy, ever kill in time, Willy?"
"Lots of them. King Wu of the Manchu, Pope Adrian VII, President Hardy of our own country, King Marcel of Auvergne, the philosopher Gabriel Toeplitz. It's a good thing we got them. They were a bad lot."
"But I never heard of any of them, Willy," Glasser insisted.
"Of course not. We killed them when they were kids."
O número de pessoas na mesa é diferente e as pessoas que ainda estão na mesa mudaram as memórias. Ainda assim, essas pessoas não reconhecem a mudança
Eles começaram com nove (contando a máquina), então:
The thirteen of them, the ten humans and the Ktistec, Chresmoeidec, and Proaisthematic machines, turned to the evidence and with mounting disappointment.
E o tempo depois disso:
"Did it work, Epikt? Is it done?" Aloysius asked.
"Let's look at the evidence," said Gregory.
The four of them, the three humans and the ghost Epikt who was a kachenko mask with a speaking tube, turned to the evidence with mounting disappointment.
"There is still the stick and the five notches in it," said Gregory. "It was our test stick. Nothing in the world has changed."
"The arts remain as they were," said Aloysius. "Our picture here on the stone on which we have worked for so many seasons is the same as it was. We have painted the bears black, the buffalos red, and the people blue. When we find a way to make another color, we can represent birds also. I had hoped that our experiments might give us that other color. I had even dreamed that birds might appear in the picture on the rock before our very eyes."
e pressione o botão
Eu acho que é um botão metafórico:
"When we, as it were, push the button (give the nod to Epiktistes), this will be changed," Gregory said. "Epikt, by a complex of devices he has assembled, will send an Avatar (partly of mechanical and portly of ghostly construction), and something will have happened to the traitor Gano along about sundown one night on the road to Roncevalles."
[. . . .]
"Push the button, Epikt!" Gregory Smirnov ordered.
From his depths, Epiktistes the Ktistec machine sent out an Avatar, partly of mechanical and partly of ghostly construction. Along about sundown on the road from Pamplona to Roncevalles, on August 14 of the year 778, the traitor Gano was taken up from the road and hanged on a carob tree, the only one in those groves of oak and beech. And all things thereafter were changed.
de novo e de novo, cada vez mudando a linha do tempo, às vezes para melhor, às vezes para o pior ...
Eles "apertam o botão" três vezes na história:
"We will not call the experiment a failure since we have covered only a third of it," said Gregory. "Tomorrow we will make our second attempt on the past. And, if there is a present left to us after that, we will make a third attempt the following day."
Eu li a história nos anos 80, mas ela pode ter origem nos anos 50.
Como mencionado acima, a história foi publicada pela primeira vez em 1967, mas foi reimpressa muitas vezes (qualquer um de estas capas parecem familiares?). Na década de 1980, você pode ter lido na edição Ace de 1982 da coleção de Lafferty Novecentas Avós .