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01 - The Machine Stops - E M Forster · Classic Science Fiction Books

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Speaker 1: The machine stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter one, The Airship.
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Speaker 1: Imagine if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape,
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Speaker 1: like the cell of a b It is lighted neither
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Speaker 1: by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with
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Speaker 1: a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet
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Speaker 1: the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments. And
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Speaker 1: yet at the moment that my meditation opens, this room
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Speaker 1: is throbbing with melodious sounds. An arm chair is in
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Speaker 1: the center. By its side a reading desk. That is
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Speaker 1: all the furniture. And in the arm chair there sits
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Speaker 1: a swaddled lump of flesh, a woman about five feet high,
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Speaker 1: with a face as white as a fungus. It is
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Speaker 1: to her that the little room belongs. An electric bell rang.
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Speaker 1: The woman touched a switch, and the music was silent.
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Speaker 1: I suppose I must see who it is, she thought,
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Speaker 1: and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music,
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Speaker 1: was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the
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Speaker 1: other side of the room, where the bell still rang. Importunately,
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Speaker 1: who is it? She called? Her voice was irritable, for
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Speaker 1: she had been interrupted often since the music began. She
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Speaker 1: knew several thousand people in certain directions. Human intercourse had
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Speaker 1: advanced enormously. But when she listened into the receiver, her
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Speaker 1: white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said, very well,
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Speaker 1: let us talk. I will isolate myself. I do not
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Speaker 1: expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes.
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Speaker 1: For I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then
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Speaker 1: I must deliver my lecture on music during the Australian period.
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Speaker 1: She touched the isolation knob so that no one else
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Speaker 1: could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus,
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Speaker 1: and the little room was plunged into darkness. Be quick,
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Speaker 1: she called, her irritation, returning, be quick, Kuno. Here I
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Speaker 1: am in the dark, wasting my time. But it was
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Speaker 1: fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held
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Speaker 1: in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light
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Speaker 1: shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could
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Speaker 1: see the image of her son, who lived on the
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Speaker 1: other side of the earth, and he could see her. Kuno,
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Speaker 1: how slow you are, he smiled gravely. I really believe
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Speaker 1: you enjoy dawdling. I have called you before, mother, but
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Speaker 1: you are always busy or isolated. I have something particular
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Speaker 1: to say, what is it? Dearest boy? Be quick? Why
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Speaker 1: could you not send it by pneumatic post? Because I
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Speaker 1: prefer saying such a thing. I want well, I want
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Speaker 1: you to come and see me. Vashti watched his face
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Speaker 1: in the blue plate. But I can see you, she exclaimed,
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Speaker 1: What more do you want? I want to see you,
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Speaker 1: not through the mache, said Kuno. I want to speak
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Speaker 1: to you, not through the wearisome machine. Oh hush, said
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Speaker 1: his mother, vaguely shocked. You mustn't say anything against the machine?
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Speaker 1: Why not? One? Mustn't you talk as if God had
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Speaker 1: made the machine? Cried the other. I believe that you
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Speaker 1: pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it.
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Speaker 1: Do not forget that. Great men, But men, the machine
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Speaker 1: is much, but it is not everything. I see something
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Speaker 1: like you in this plate, but I do not see you.
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Speaker 1: I hear something like you through this telephone, but I
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Speaker 1: do not hear you. That is why I want you
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Speaker 1: to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can
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Speaker 1: meet face to face and talk about the hopes that
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Speaker 1: are in my mind. She replied that she could scarcely
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Speaker 1: spare the time for a visit. The airship barely takes
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Speaker 1: two days to fly between me and you. I dislike airships.
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Speaker 1: Why I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth and the
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Speaker 1: sea and the stars when it is dark. I get
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Speaker 1: no ideas in an airship. I do not get them
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Speaker 1: anywhere else. What kind of ideas can the air give you?
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Speaker 1: He paused for an instant. Do you not know four
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Speaker 1: big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close
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Speaker 1: together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from
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Speaker 1: these stars three other stars? No? I do not. I
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Speaker 1: dislike the stars, But did they give you an idea?
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Speaker 1: How interesting? Tell me I had an idea that they
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Speaker 1: were like a man. I do not understand. The four
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Speaker 1: big stars are the man's shoulders and his knees. The
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Speaker 1: three stars in the middle are like the belts that
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Speaker 1: men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like
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Speaker 1: a sword. A sword. Men carried swords about with them
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Speaker 1: to kill animals and other men. It does not strike
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Speaker 1: me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original.
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Speaker 1: When did it come to you first? In the airship?
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Speaker 1: He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad.
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Speaker 1: She could not be sure, for the machine did not
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Speaker 1: transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea
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Speaker 1: of people, an idea that was good enough for all
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Speaker 1: practical purposes. Vashti thought the imponderable bloom declared by a
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Speaker 1: discredited philosophy to the actual essence of intercourse was rightly
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Speaker 1: ignored by the machine, just as the imponderable bloom of
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Speaker 1: the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit.
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Speaker 1: Something good enough had long since been accepted by our race.
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Speaker 1: The truth is, he continued, that I want to see
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Speaker 1: these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to
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Speaker 1: see them not from the airship, but from the surface
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Speaker 1: of the earth, as our ancestors did thousands of years ago.
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Speaker 1: I want to visit the surface of the earth. She
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Speaker 1: was shocked again. Mother, you must come, if only to
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Speaker 1: explain to me what is the harm of visiting the
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Speaker 1: surface of the earth. No harm, she replied, controlling herself.
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Speaker 1: But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only
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Speaker 1: dust and mud. No advantage. The surface of the earth
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Speaker 1: is only dust and mud. No life remains on it,
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Speaker 1: and you would need a respirator, or the cold of
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Speaker 1: the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in
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Speaker 1: the outer air. I know, of course, I shall take
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Speaker 1: all precautions, and besides well, she considered and chose her
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Speaker 1: words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and
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Speaker 1: she wished to dissuade him from the expedition. It is
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Speaker 1: contrary to the spirit of the age, she asserted, Do
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Speaker 1: you mean by that contrary to the machine in a sense?
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Speaker 1: But his image in the blue plate faded Cuono. He
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Speaker 1: had isolated himself. For a moment. Vashti felt lonely that
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Speaker 1: she generated the light, and the sight of her room,
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Speaker 1: flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her.
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Speaker 1: There were buttons and switches everywhere, buttons to call for food,
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Speaker 1: for music, for clothing. There was the hot bath button,
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Speaker 1: by pressure of which a basin of imitation marble rose
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Speaker 1: out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm,
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Speaker 1: deodorized liquid. There was the cold bath button. There was
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Speaker 1: the button that produced literature. And there were of course
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Speaker 1: the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room,
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Speaker 1: though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that
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Speaker 1: she cared for in the world. Bashi's next move was
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Speaker 1: to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations
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Speaker 1: of the last three minutes burst upon her the room
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Speaker 1: was filled with the noise of bells and speaking tubes.
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Speaker 1: What was the new food like? Could she recommend it?
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Speaker 1: Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her
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Speaker 1: one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit
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Speaker 1: the public nurseries at an early date, say this day
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Speaker 1: and month. To most of these questions, she replied with irritation,
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Speaker 1: a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that
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Speaker 1: the new food was horrible, that she could not visit
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Speaker 1: the public nurseries through press of engagements, that she had
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Speaker 1: no ideas of her own, but had just been told
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Speaker 1: one that four stars and three in the middle were
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Speaker 1: like a man. She doubted there was much in it.
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Speaker 1: Then she switched off her correspondence, for it was time
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Speaker 1: to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system
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Speaker 1: of public gatherings had been long since abandoned. Neither Vashi
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Speaker 1: nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her
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Speaker 1: arm chair, she spoke while they and their arm chairs
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Speaker 1: hurt her fairly well and saw her fairly well. She
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Speaker 1: opened with a humorous account of music in the pre
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Speaker 1: Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst
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Speaker 1: of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primeval,
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Speaker 1: as were the methods of Isa and Soux and the
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Speaker 1: Brisbane school. She yet felt. She said that study of
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Speaker 1: them might repay the musicians of to day. They had freshness,
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Speaker 1: they had above all ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes,
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Speaker 1: was well received, and at its conclusion she and many
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Speaker 1: of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea.
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Speaker 1: There were ideas to be got from the sea. The
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Speaker 1: speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then
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Speaker 1: she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again,
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Speaker 1: and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking.
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Speaker 1: It was too large, and she had a feeling for
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Speaker 1: a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of
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Speaker 1: the same dimension all over the world, and to have
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Speaker 1: had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in
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Speaker 1: the machine. Bashti isolated herself it was necessary for neither
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Speaker 1: day nor night existed under the ground, and reviewed all
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Speaker 1: that had happened since she had summoned the bed. Last
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Speaker 1: ideas scarcely any events, was Kuno's invitation and event by
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Speaker 1: her side on the a little reading desk was a
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Speaker 1: survival from the ages of litter. One book, this was
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Speaker 1: the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against
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Speaker 1: every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold, or dyspeptic,
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Speaker 1: or at a loss for a word, she went to
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Speaker 1: the book and had told her which button to press.
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Speaker 1: The Central Committee published it in accordance with the growing habit.
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Speaker 1: It was richly bound. Sitting up in the bed, she
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Speaker 1: took it reverently in her hands. She glanced around the
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Speaker 1: glowing room, as if someone might be watching her. Then,
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Speaker 1: half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured, oh machine, Oh machine,
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Speaker 1: and raised the volume to her lips thrice. She kissed
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Speaker 1: it thrice, inclined her head thrice. She felt the delirium
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Speaker 1: of acquiescence, her ritual performed. She turned to page thirteen
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Speaker 1: sixty seven, which gave the times of the departure of
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Speaker 1: the airships from the island in the Southern Hemisphere, under
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Speaker 1: whose soil she lived, to the island in the Northern Hemisphere,
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Speaker 1: where on ad lived her son. She thought, I have
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Speaker 1: not the time. She made the room dark and slept.
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Speaker 1: She awoke and made the room light. She ate and
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Speaker 1: exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and
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Speaker 1: attended lectures. She made the room dark and slept above her,
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Speaker 1: beneath her, and around her. The machine hummed eternally. She
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Speaker 1: did not notice the noise, for she had been born
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Speaker 1: with it in her ears. The earth carrying her hummed
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Speaker 1: as it sped through silence, turning her now to the
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Speaker 1: invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and
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Speaker 1: made the room light. Kuno, I will not talk to you,
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Speaker 1: he answered, until you come. Have you been on the
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Speaker 1: surface of the earth since we spoke last? His image
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Speaker 1: faded again. She consulted the book. She became very nervous
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Speaker 1: and lay back in her chair, palpitating. Think of her
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Speaker 1: as without teeth or hair. Presently, she directed the chair
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Speaker 1: to the wall and pressed in unfamiliar button. The wall
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Speaker 1: swung apart slowly. Through the opening, she saw a tunnel
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Speaker 1: that curved slightly so that its goal was not visible.
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Speaker 1: Should she go to see her son? Here was the
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Speaker 1: beginning of the journey. Of course, she knew all about
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Speaker 1: the communication system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She
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Speaker 1: would summon a car and it would fly with her
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Speaker 1: down the tunnel until it reached the lift that communicated
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Speaker 1: with the airship station. The system had been in use
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Speaker 1: for many, many years, long before the universal establishment of
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Speaker 1: the machine. And of course she had studied the civilization
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Speaker 1: that had immediately preceded her own, the civilization that had
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Speaker 1: mistaken the functions of the system and had used it
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Speaker 1: for bringing people to things instead of for bringing things
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Speaker 1: to people, those funny old days when men went for
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Speaker 1: change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms.
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Speaker 1: And yet she was frightened of the tunnel. She had
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Speaker 1: not seen it since her last child was born. It curved,
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Speaker 1: but not quite, she remembered. It was brilliant, but not
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Speaker 1: quite as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Bashie was
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Speaker 1: seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back
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Speaker 1: into the room, and the wall closed up again. Cuno,
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Speaker 1: she said, I cannot come to see you. I am
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Speaker 1: not well. Immediately, an enormous apparatus fell on to her
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Speaker 1: out of the ceiling. A thermometer was automatically laid upon
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Speaker 1: her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead.
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Speaker 1: Cuno had telegraphed to her doctor. So the human passions
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Speaker 1: still blundered up and down on the machine. Bashi drank
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Speaker 1: the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and
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Speaker 1: the machinery retired into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno
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Speaker 1: was heard asking how she felt better than with the irritation.
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Speaker 1: But why do you not come to me instead? Because
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Speaker 1: I cannot leave this place? Why because any moment, something
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Speaker 1: tremendous may happen. Have you been on the surface of
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Speaker 1: the earth yet not yet? Then what is it? I
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Speaker 1: will not tell you Through the machine. She resumed her life,
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Speaker 1: But she thought of Cuno as a baby, his birth,
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Speaker 1: his removal to the public nurseries, her own visit to him, there,
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Speaker 1: his visits to her, visits, which stopped when the machine
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Speaker 1: had assigned him a room on the other side of
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Speaker 1: the earth. Parents come a duties of said the book
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Speaker 1: of the Machine, cease at the moment of birth, paragraph
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Speaker 1: four two two three, two seven four eight three. True,
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Speaker 1: but there was something special about Cuno. Indeed there had
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Speaker 1: been something special about all her children. And after all,
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Speaker 1: she must brave the journey if he desired it, and
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Speaker 1: something tremendous might happen. What did that mean? The nonsense
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Speaker 1: of a youthful man, no doubt, But she must go again.
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Speaker 1: She pressed the unfamiliar button again. The wall swung back,
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Speaker 1: and she saw the tunnel that curves out of sight.
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Speaker 1: Clasping the book, she rose, tottered onto the platform and
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Speaker 1: summoned the car. Her room closed behind her. The journey
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Speaker 1: to the northern Hemisphere had begun, of course, it was
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Speaker 1: perfectly easy. The car approached, and in it she found
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Speaker 1: arm chairs exactly like her own. When she signaled, it stopped,
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Speaker 1: and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger was
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Speaker 1: in the lift, the first fellow creature she had seen
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Speaker 1: face to face for months. Few traveled in these days,
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Speaker 1: for thanks to the advance of science, the Earth was
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Speaker 1: exactly alike all over, rapid intercourse from which the previous
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Speaker 1: civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.
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Speaker 1: What was the good of going to Peking when it
15:43
Speaker 1: was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it
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Speaker 1: would all be like Peking. Men seldom moved their bodies.
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Speaker 1: All unrest was concentrated in the soul. The airship service
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Speaker 1: was a relic from the former age. It was kept
15:58
Speaker 1: up because it was easier to keep it up than
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Speaker 1: to stop it or to diminish it, but it now
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Speaker 1: far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel
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Speaker 1: would rise from the vomitories of Rye or of christ Church,
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Speaker 1: I use the antique names, would sail into the crowded
16:13
Speaker 1: sky and would draw up at the wharves of the
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Speaker 1: south empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent
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Speaker 1: of meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, resembled
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Speaker 1: a vast kaleidoscope, where on the same patterns periodically recurred.
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Speaker 1: The ship on which Vashi sailed started now at sunset,
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Speaker 1: now at dawn, but always as it passed above rayas
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Speaker 1: it would neighbor the ship that served between Helsingfors and
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Speaker 1: the Brazils, And every third time it surmounted the Alps,
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Speaker 1: the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind night
16:46
Speaker 1: and day, wind and storm tied, an earthquake impeded man
16:50
Speaker 1: no longer he had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature,
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Speaker 1: with its praise of nature and its fear of nature,
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Speaker 1: rang false as the prattle of a child. Yet as
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Speaker 1: Vasti saw the vast flank of the ship stained with
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Speaker 1: exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct experience returned.
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Speaker 1: It was not quite like the airship in the cinema
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Speaker 1: to fote. For one thing, it smelt, not strongly or unpleasantly,
17:16
Speaker 1: but it did smell, and with her eyes shut she
17:19
Speaker 1: should have known that a new thing was close to her.
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Speaker 1: Then she had to walk to it from the lift,
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Speaker 1: had to submit to glances from the other passengers. The
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Speaker 1: man in front dropped his book, no great matter, but
17:31
Speaker 1: it disquieted them all in the rooms. If the book
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Speaker 1: was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically, but the gangway
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Speaker 1: to the airship was not so prepared, and the sacred
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Speaker 1: volume lay motionless. They stopped. The thing was unforeseen, and
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Speaker 1: the man, instead of picking up his property, felt the
17:49
Speaker 1: muscles of his arm to see how they had failed him.
17:53
Speaker 1: Then some one actually said, with direct utterance, we shall
17:56
Speaker 1: be late, and they trooped on board, vashly, treading on
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Speaker 1: the page. As she did so. Inside, her anxiety increased.
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Speaker 1: The arrangements were old fashioned and rough. There was even
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Speaker 1: a female attendant to whom she would have to announce
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Speaker 1: her wants during the voyage. Of course, a revolving platform
18:15
Speaker 1: ran the length of the boat, but she was expected
18:17
Speaker 1: to walk from it to her cabin. Some cabins were
18:20
Speaker 1: better than others, and she did not get the best.
18:23
Speaker 1: She thought the attendant had been unfair, and spasms of
18:26
Speaker 1: rage shook her. The glass valves had closed, she could
18:30
Speaker 1: not go back. She saw at the end of the
18:33
Speaker 1: vestibule the lift in which she had ascended, going quietly
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Speaker 1: up and down empty. Beneath those corridors of shining tiles
18:40
Speaker 1: were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into the earth.
18:44
Speaker 1: And in each room there sat a human being, eating
18:48
Speaker 1: or sleeping, or producing ideas. And very deep in the
18:51
Speaker 1: hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid o machine.
18:56
Speaker 1: She murmured and caressed her book and was comforted. Then
19:01
Speaker 1: the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as
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Speaker 1: to the passages that we see in dreams. The lift vanished,
19:07
Speaker 1: The book that had been dropped slid to the left
19:09
Speaker 1: and vanished. Polished tiles rushed by like a stream of water.
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Speaker 1: There was a slight jar, and the airship, issuing from
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Speaker 1: its tunnel, soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.
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Speaker 1: It was night. For a moment she saw the coast
19:24
Speaker 1: of Sumatra edged by the phosphorescence of waves, and crowned
19:28
Speaker 1: by lighthouses, still sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished,
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Speaker 1: and only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless,
19:37
Speaker 1: but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out
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Speaker 1: of one skylight into another, as if the universe and
19:43
Speaker 1: not the airship, was careening. And as often happens on
19:47
Speaker 1: clear nights, they seemed now to be in perspective, now
19:50
Speaker 1: on a plain, now piled tier beyond tier into the
19:53
Speaker 1: infinite heavens now concealing infinity, a roof limiting forever the
19:58
Speaker 1: visions of men. In either case, they seemed intolerable. Are
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Speaker 1: we to travel in the dark? Called the passengers angrily,
20:06
Speaker 1: and the attendant, who had been careless, generated the light
20:09
Speaker 1: and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal. When the
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Speaker 1: airships had been built, the desire to look direct at
20:16
Speaker 1: things still lingered in the world, hence the extraordinary number
20:20
Speaker 1: of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those
20:23
Speaker 1: who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti's cabin, one
20:28
Speaker 1: star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after
20:30
Speaker 1: a few hours uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an
20:34
Speaker 1: unfamiliar glow which was the dawn. Quick as the ship
20:38
Speaker 1: had sped westwards, the Earth had rolled eastwards, quicker still,
20:42
Speaker 1: and had dragged back Vashi in her companions towards the Sun.
20:46
Speaker 1: Science could prolong the night, but only for a little,
20:49
Speaker 1: and those high hopes of neutralizing the Earth's diurnal revolution
20:53
Speaker 1: had passed, together with hopes that were possibly higher. To
20:57
Speaker 1: keep pace with the Sun, or even to outstrip it,
21:00
Speaker 1: had been the aim of the civilization preceding this. Racing
21:04
Speaker 1: aeroplanes had been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed,
21:08
Speaker 1: and steered by the greatest intellects of the epoch, round
21:11
Speaker 1: the globe they went round and round, westward, westward, round
21:16
Speaker 1: and round. Amidst humanity's applause in vain, the globe went eastward,
21:21
Speaker 1: quicker still. Horrible accidents occurred, and the Committee of the Machine,
21:25
Speaker 1: at the time, rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical,
21:30
Speaker 1: and punishable by homelessness. Of homelessness more will be said later.
21:37
Speaker 1: Doubtless the committee was right. Yet the attempt to defeat
21:40
Speaker 1: the Sun aroused the last common interest that our race
21:44
Speaker 1: experienced about the heavenly bodies, or indeed about anything. It
21:49
Speaker 1: was the last time that men were compacted by thinking
21:51
Speaker 1: of a power outside the world. The Sun had conquered,
21:55
Speaker 1: yet it was the end of his spiritual dominion. Dawn
21:58
Speaker 1: mid day twilight, the zodiacal path touched neither men's lives
22:03
Speaker 1: nor their hearts, and Science retreated into the ground to
22:06
Speaker 1: concentrate herself upon problems that she was certain of solving.
22:11
Speaker 1: So when Vashi found her cabin invaded by a rosy
22:13
Speaker 1: finger of light, she was annoyed and tried to adjust
22:16
Speaker 1: the blind, But the blind flew up altogether, and she
22:20
Speaker 1: saw through the skylight small pink clouds swaying against the
22:23
Speaker 1: background of blue. And as the sun crept higher, its
22:26
Speaker 1: radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall like a golden sea.
22:31
Speaker 1: It rose and fell with the airship's motion, just as
22:34
Speaker 1: waves rise and fall. But it advanced steadily as a
22:37
Speaker 1: tide advances. Unless she was careful, it would strike her face.
22:42
Speaker 1: A spasm of horror shook her, and she rang for
22:45
Speaker 1: the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could
22:48
Speaker 1: do nothing. It was not her place to mend the blind.
22:52
Speaker 1: She could only suggest that the lady should change her cabin,
22:55
Speaker 1: which she accordingly prepared to do. People were almost exactly
23:00
Speaker 1: alike all over the world. But the attendant of the airship,
23:03
Speaker 1: perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a little
23:06
Speaker 1: out of the common. She had often to address passengers
23:10
Speaker 1: with direct speech, and this had given her a certain
23:13
Speaker 1: roughness and originality of manner. When Vashtie swerved away from
23:17
Speaker 1: the sunbeams with a cry, she behaved barbarically. She put
23:21
Speaker 1: out her hand to steady her. How dare you, exclaimed
23:25
Speaker 1: the passenger. You forget yourself. The woman was confused and
23:30
Speaker 1: apologized for not having let her fall. People never touched
23:33
Speaker 1: one another. The custom had become obsolete owing to the machine,
23:38
Speaker 1: Where are we now, asked Vashtie haughtily. We are over Asia,
23:42
Speaker 1: said the attendant, anxious to be polite. Asia. You must
23:48
Speaker 1: excuse my common way of speaking. I had got into
23:50
Speaker 1: the habit of calling places over which I passed by
23:53
Speaker 1: their unmechanical names. Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols come
23:57
Speaker 1: from it. Beneath us, in the open air stood a
24:01
Speaker 1: city that was once called Simla. Have you ever heard
24:04
Speaker 1: of the Mongols? And of the Brisbane School? No Brisbane
24:09
Speaker 1: also stood in the open air. Those mountains to the
24:12
Speaker 1: right let me show you them. She pushed back a
24:15
Speaker 1: metal blind. The main chain of the himalays was revealed.
24:19
Speaker 1: They were once called the roof of the world. Those mountains.
24:23
Speaker 1: You must remember that before the dawn of civilization, they
24:26
Speaker 1: seemed to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars.
24:29
Speaker 1: It was supposed that no one but the gods could
24:31
Speaker 1: exist above their summits. How we have advanced thanks to
24:35
Speaker 1: the machine. How we have advanced thanks to the machine,
24:39
Speaker 1: said Vashti. How we have advanced thanks to the machine,
24:43
Speaker 1: echoed the passenger, who had dropped his book the night before,
24:46
Speaker 1: and who was standing in the passage. And that white
24:49
Speaker 1: stuff in the cracks, what is it? I have forgotten
24:53
Speaker 1: its name? Cover the windows, please, the mountains give me
24:57
Speaker 1: no ideas. The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in
25:02
Speaker 1: deep shadow on the Indian slope. The sun had just prevailed.
25:06
Speaker 1: The forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for
25:09
Speaker 1: the purpose of making newspaper pulp. But the snows were
25:12
Speaker 1: awakening to their morning glory, and clouds still hung on
25:16
Speaker 1: the breasts of kinchin Junga. In the plain were seen
25:19
Speaker 1: the ruins of cities with diminished rivers, creeping by their
25:22
Speaker 1: walls and by the sides of these were sometimes the
25:25
Speaker 1: signs of vomitories marking the cities of today. Over the
25:29
Speaker 1: whole prospect airships rushed crossing the intercrossing with incredible aplom
25:35
Speaker 1: and rising nonchalantly when they desired to escape the perturbations
25:38
Speaker 1: of the lower atmosphere and to traverse the roof of
25:41
Speaker 1: the world. We have indeed advanced thanks to the machine,
25:45
Speaker 1: repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind a metal blind.
25:49
Speaker 1: The day dragged wearily forward. The passengers sat each in
25:53
Speaker 1: his cabin, avoiding one another with an almost physical repulsion,
25:57
Speaker 1: and longing to be once more under the surface of
25:59
Speaker 1: the earth. There were eight or ten of them, mostly
26:02
Speaker 1: young males, sent out from the public nurseries to inhabit
26:05
Speaker 1: the rooms of those who had died in various parts
26:08
Speaker 1: of the earth. The man who had dropped his book
26:11
Speaker 1: was on the homeward journey. He had been sent to
26:13
Speaker 1: Sumatra for the purpose of propagating the race. Vashtie alone
26:18
Speaker 1: was traveling by her own private will. At midday she
26:22
Speaker 1: took a second glance of the earth. The airship was
26:24
Speaker 1: crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little.
26:27
Speaker 1: Owing to clouds, masses of black rock hovered below her
26:32
Speaker 1: and merged indistinctly into gray. Their shapes were fantastic. One
26:36
Speaker 1: of them resembled a prostrate man. No ideas here, murmured Vashti,
26:41
Speaker 1: and hid the Caucasus behind a metal blind. In the evening,
26:45
Speaker 1: she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea in
26:48
Speaker 1: which lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated,
26:52
Speaker 1: no ideas here, and hid Greece behind a metal blind.
27:00
Speaker 1: End of chapter one