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Machine Stops-E. M. Forster · Short Nonfiction Collection

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of The Machine Stops. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: by Generally The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter one,
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  Speaker 1: The Airship. Imagine if you can a small room, hexagonal
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  Speaker 1: in shape, like the cell of a b It is
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  Speaker 1: lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is
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  Speaker 1: filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments.
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  Speaker 1: And yet at the moment that my meditation opens, this
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  Speaker 1: room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair 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 armchair there sits a
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  Speaker 1: 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, Cuno. 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, Cuno. 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 machine, 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
• 4:03
  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.
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  Speaker 2: A sword.
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  Speaker 1: Men carried swords about with them to kill animals and
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  Speaker 1: other men. It does not strike me as a very
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  Speaker 1: good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it
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  Speaker 1: come to you first in the airship? He broke off,
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  Speaker 1: and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not
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  Speaker 1: be sure, for the machine did not transmit nuances of expression.
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  Speaker 1: It only gave a general idea of people, an idea
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  Speaker 1: that was good enough for all practical purposes. Vashti thought,
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  Speaker 1: the imponderable bloom declared by a discredited philosophy to the
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  Speaker 1: actual essence of intercourse was rightly ignored by the machine,
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  Speaker 1: just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored
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  Speaker 1: by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something good enough had
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  Speaker 1: long since been accepted by our race. The truth is,
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  Speaker 1: he continued, that I want to see these stars again.
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  Speaker 1: They are curious stars. I want to see them not
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  Speaker 1: from the airship, but from the surface of the earth,
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  Speaker 1: as our ancestors did thousands of years ago. I want
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  Speaker 1: to visit the surface of the earth. She was shocked again. Mother,
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  Speaker 1: you must come, if only to explain to me what
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  Speaker 1: is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth.
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  Speaker 1: No harm, she replied, controlling herself. But no advantage. The
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  Speaker 1: surface of the earth is only dust and mud. No advantage.
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  Speaker 1: The surface of the earth is only dust and mud.
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  Speaker 1: No life remains on it, and you would need a respirator,
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  Speaker 1: or the cold of the outer air would kill you.
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  Speaker 1: One dies immediately in the outer air. I know, of course,
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  Speaker 1: I shall take all precautions. And besides well, she considered
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  Speaker 1: and chose her words with care. Her son had a
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  Speaker 1: queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition.
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  Speaker 1: It is contrary to the spirit of the age, she asserted,
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  Speaker 1: Do you mean by that contrary to the machine in
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  Speaker 1: a sense? But his image in the blue plate faded.
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  Speaker 1: Cono he had isolated himself. For a moment. Vashti felt lonely.
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  Speaker 1: Then 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
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  Speaker 1: room though it contained nothing was in touch with all
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  Speaker 1: that she cared for in the world. Bashie's next move
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  Speaker 1: was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The
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  Speaker 1: room 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 Vashti
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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 So 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. Bashi isolated herself. It was necessary for neither
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  Speaker 1: day nor night existed under the ground, and reviewed all
• 10:08
  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 little reading desk was a survival
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  Speaker 1: from the ages of litter one book. This was the
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  Speaker 1: Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every
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  Speaker 1: 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 thrice,
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  Speaker 1: inclined her head thrice. She felt the delirium of acquiescence
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  Speaker 1: her ritual performed. She turned to page thirteen sixty seven,
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  Speaker 1: which gave the times of the departure of the airships
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  Speaker 1: from the island in the Southern Hemisphere, under whose soil
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  Speaker 1: she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder
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  Speaker 1: lived her son. She thought, I have not the time.
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  Speaker 1: She made the room dark and slept. She awoke and
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  Speaker 1: made the room light. She ate and exchanged ideas with
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  Speaker 1: her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures. She
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  Speaker 1: made the room dark and slept above her, beneath her,
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  Speaker 1: and around her. The machine hummed eternally. She did not
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  Speaker 1: notice the noise, for she had been born with it
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  Speaker 1: in her ears. The earth carrying her hummed as it
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  Speaker 1: sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun,
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  Speaker 1: now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the
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  Speaker 1: room light. Kuno, I will not talk to you, he answered,
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  Speaker 1: until you come. Have you been on the surface of
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the earth since we spoke last? His image faded again.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: She consulted the book. She became very nervous and lay
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  Speaker 1: back in her chair, palpitating, think of her as without
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  Speaker 1: teeth or hair. Presently, she directed the chair to the
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  Speaker 1: wall and pressed an unfamiliar button. The wall swung apart slowly.
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  Speaker 1: Through the opening, she saw a tunnel that curved slightly
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  Speaker 1: so that its goal was not visible. Should she go
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  Speaker 1: to see her son? Here was the beginning of the journey.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, she knew all about the communication system. There
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  Speaker 1: was nothing mysterious in it. She would summon a car
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  Speaker 1: and it would fly with her down the tunnel until
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  Speaker 1: it reached the lift that communicated with the airship station.
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  Speaker 1: The system had been in use for many, many years,
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  Speaker 1: long before the universal establishment of the machine. And of
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  Speaker 1: course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded
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  Speaker 1: her own, the civilization that had mistaken the functions of
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  Speaker 1: the system and had used it for bringing people to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: things instead of for bringing things to people, those funny
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: old days when men went for change of air instead
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: of changing the air in their rooms. And yet she
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  Speaker 1: was frightened of the tunnel. She had not seen it
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  Speaker 1: since her last child was born. It curved, but not
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  Speaker 1: quite as she remembered. It was brilliant, but not quite
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Vashti was seized
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  Speaker 1: with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into
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  Speaker 1: the room, and the wall closed up again. Cuno, she said,
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  Speaker 1: I cannot come to see you. I am not well. Immediately,
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  Speaker 1: an enormous apparatus fell on to her. Out of the ceiling.
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  Speaker 1: A thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: powerless cool pads soothed her forehead. Cuno had telegraphed to
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  Speaker 1: her doctor, so the human passions still blundered up and
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: down on the machine. Fashtie drank the medicine that the
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: doctor projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: she felt better than with the irritation. But why do
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: you not come to me instead? Because I cannot leave
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: this place? Why because any moment something tremendous may happen.
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  Speaker 1: Have you been on the surface of the earth yet
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  Speaker 1: not yet? Then? What is it? I will not tell
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  Speaker 1: you Through the machine. She resumed her life, but she
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: thought of Cuno as a baby, his birth, his removal
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: 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
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: had assigned him a room on the other side of
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the earth. Parents come a duties of said the book
• 14:46
  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.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: But there was something special about Cuno. Indeed, there had
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: been something special about all her children. And after all,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: she must brave the journey if he desired it, and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: something tremendous might happen. What did that mean? The nonsense
• 15:08
  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.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Clasping the book, she rose, tottered onto the platform and
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: summoned the car. Her room closed behind her. The journey
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: to the Northern Hemisphere had begun. Of course, it was
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: perfectly easy. The car approached, and in it she found
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: arm chairs exactly like her own. When she signaled, it
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  Speaker 1: stopped and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: was in the lift, the first fellow creature she had
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: seen face to face for months. Few traveled in these days,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: for thanks to the advance of science, the Earth was
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: exactly alike all over, rapid intercourse from which the previous
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: What was the good of going to Peking when it
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: all unrest was concentrated in the soul. The airship service
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: was a relic from the former age. It was kept
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: up because it was easier to keep it up than
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: to stop it or to diminish it. But it now
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: would rise from the vomitories of Rye or of christ Church,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I use the antique names, would sail into the crowded
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: sky and would draw up at the wharves of the
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: south empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: of meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, resembled
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: a vast kaleidoscope, where on the same patterns periodically recurred.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: The ship on which Vaschi sailed started now at sunset,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: now at dawn, but always as it passed above Ryaz,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it would neighbor the ship that served between Helsingfors and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the Brazils, And every third time it surmounted the Alps,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind night
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and day, wind and storm tied. An earthquake impeded man
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: no longer he had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: with its praise of nature and its fear of nature
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: rang false as the prattle of a child. Yet as
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: vast she saw the vast flank of the ship stained
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: with exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: experience returned. It was not quite like the airship in
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the cinema to fote for one thing. It smelt, not
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: eyes shut she should have known that a new thing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: was close to her. Then she had to walk to
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: it from the lift, had to submit to glances from
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the other passengers. The man in front dropped his book,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: no great matter, but it disquieted them all and the rooms.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: If the book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: But the gangway to the airship was not so prepared,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and the sacred volume lay motionless. They stopped. The thing
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: was unforeseen, and the man, instead of picking up his property,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: felt the muscles of his arm to see how they
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: had failed him. Then some one actually said, with direct utterance,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: we shall be late, and they trooped on board, vashly,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: treading on the pages. As she did so. Inside her
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: anxiety increased. The arrangements were old fashioned and rough. There
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: was even a female attendant, to whom she would have
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: to announce her wants During the voyage. Of course, a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: revolving platform ran the length of the boat, but she
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: was expected to walk from it to her cabin. Some
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: cabins were better than others, and she did not get
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: spasms of rage shook her. The glass valves had closed,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: she could not go back. She saw at the end
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: of the vestibule the lift in which she had ascended,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: going quietly up and down. Empty. Beneath those corridors of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: shining tiles were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: the earth, and in each room there sat a human being,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: eating or sleeping, or producing ideas. And very deep in
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid o machine.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: She murmured and caressed her book and was comforted. Then
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: to the passages that we see in dreams. The lift vanished,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: The book that had been dropped slid to the left
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and vanished. Polished tiles rushed by like a stream of water.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: There was a slight jar, and the airship issuing from
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: its tunnel soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It was night. For a moment she saw the coast
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: of Sumatra, edged by the phosphorescence of waves, and crowned
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: by lighthouses still sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: of one sky light into another, as if the universe
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and not the airship, was careening. And as often happens
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: on clear nights, they seemed now to be in perspective,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: now on a plane, now piled tier beyond tier into
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the infinite heavens now concealing infinity, a roof limiting forever
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the visions of men. In either case, they seemed intolerable.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Are we to travel in the dark, called the passengers angrily,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and the attendant, who had been careless, generated the light
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal. When the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: airships had been built, the desire to look direct at
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: things still lingered in the world, Hence the extraordinary number
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti's cabin, One
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a few hours uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: unfamiliar glow, which was the dawn. Quick as the ship
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: had sped westwards, the Earth had rolled eastwardords quicker still,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and had dragged back Vashi in her companions towards the Sun.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Science could prolong the night, but only for little, and
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: those high hopes of neutralizing the Earth's diurnal revolution had passed,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: together with hopes that were possibly higher. To keep pace
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: with the Sun, or even to outstrip it, had been
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the aim of the civilization preceding this. Racing aeroplanes had
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: steered by the greatest intellects of the epoch, round the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: globe they went round and round, westward, westward, round and round.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Amidst humanity's applause and vain, the globe went eastward, quicker still.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Horrible accidents occurred, and the committee of the machine at
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the time, rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and punishable by homelessness. Of homelessness, more will be said later,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Doubtless the committee was right. Yet the attempt to defeat
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the Sun aroused the last common interest that our race
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: experienced about the heavenly bodies, or indeed about anything. It
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: was the last time that men were compacted by thinking
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of a power outside the world. The Sun had conquered,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: yet it was the end of his spiritual dominion. Dawn
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: mid day twilight, the zodiacal path touched neither men's lives
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: nor their hearts, and Science retreated into the ground to
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: concentrate herself upon problems that she was certain of solving.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: So when Vashti found her cabin invaded by a rosy
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: finger of light, she was annoyed and tried to adjust
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: the blind, But the blind flew up altogether, and she
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: saw through the skylight small pink clouds swaying against the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: background of blue. And as the sun crept higher, its
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall like a golden sea.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It rose and fell with the airship's motion, just as
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: waves rise and fall, But it advanced steadily as a
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: tide advances. Unless she was careful, it would strike her face.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: A spasm of horror shook her, and she rang for
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: do nothing. It was not her place to mend the blind.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: She could only suggest that the lady should change her cabin,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: which she accordingly prepared to do. People were almost exactly
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: alike all over the world. But the attendant of the airship,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a little
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: out of the common. She had often to address passengers
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: with direct speech, and this had given her a certain
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: roughness and originality of manner. When Vashtie swerved away from
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the sunbeams with a cry, she behaved barbarically. She put
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: out her hand to steady her. How dare you, exclaimed
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the passenger. You forget yourself. The woman was confused and
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: apologized for not having let her fall. People never touched
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: one another. The custom had become obsolete owing to the machine.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Where are we now, asked Vashtie haughtily. We are over Asia,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: said the attendant, anxious to be polite. Asia. You must
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: excuse my common way of speaking. I have got into
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the habit of calling places over which I passed by
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: their unmechanical names. Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols come
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: from it beneath us In the open air stood a
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: city that was once called Simla. Have you ever heard
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: of the Mongols? And of the Brisbane school. No, Brisbane
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: also stood in the open air. Those mountains to the right,
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: let me show you them. She pushed back a metal blind.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: The main chain of the himalays was revealed. They were
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: once called the roof of the world. Those mountains. You
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: must remember that before the dawn of civilization, they seemed
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars. It
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: was supposed that no one but the gods could exist
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: above their summits. How we have advanced thanks to the machine.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: How we have advanced thanks to the machine, said Vashti.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: How they have advanced thanks to the machine, echoed the passenger,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: who had dropped his book the night before, and who
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: was standing in the passage. And that white stuff in
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the cracks, what is it? I have forgotten its name?
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Cover the windows, please the mountains give me no ideas.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in deep shadow
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: on the Indian slope. The sun had just prevailed. The
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: purpose of making newspaper pulp but the snows were awakening
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: to their morning glory, and clouds still hung on the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: breasts of kinchin Junga. In the plain were seen the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: ruins of cities, with the minished rivers creeping by their
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: walls and by the sides of these were sometimes the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: signs of vomitories, marking the cities of to day. Over
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the whole prospect airships rushed crossing the intercrossing with incredible
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: aplom and rising nonchalantly when they desired to escape the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: perturbations of the lower atmosphere and to traverse the room
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: roof of the world. We have indeed advanced thanks to
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: the machine, repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: a metal blind. The day dragged wearily forward. The passengers
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: sat each in his cabin, avoiding one another with an
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: almost physical repulsion, and longing to be once more under
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: of them, mostly young males, sent out from the public
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: nurseries to inhabit the rooms of those who had died
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: in various parts of the earth. The man who had
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: dropped his book was on the homeward journey. He had
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: been sent to Sumatra, for the purpose of propagating the race.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Vashti alone was traveling by her own private will. At midday,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: she took a second glance of the earth. The airship
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: was crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Owing to clouds, masses of black rock hovered below her
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and merged indistinctly into gray. Their shapes were fantastic. One
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: of them resembled a prostrate man. No idea is here,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: murmured Vashon, and hid the caucases behind a metal blind.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: In the evening, she looked again. They were crossing a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: golden sea in which lay many small islands and one peninsula.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: She repeated, no ideas here, and hid Greece behind a
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: metal blind.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: End of chapter one, Chapter two of The Machine Stops.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Erin Tavano. The Machine
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter two, The mending apparatus,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: by a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: by a platform, by a sliding door, by reversing all
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: the steps of her departure did Dushty arrived at her
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: son's room, which exactly resembled her own. She might well
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: the reading desk with the book, the temperature, the atmosphere,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: the illumination all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: flush of her flush stood close beside her at last,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: what profit was there? And that she was too well
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: bred to shake him by the hand. Averting her eyes,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: she spoke as follows. Here I am, I have had
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: the most terrible journey and greatly retarded the development of
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: not worth it. My time is too precious. The sunlight
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: almost touched me, and I have met with the rudest people.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: I can only stop a few minutes, say what you
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: want to say, and then I must return. I have
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: been threatened with homelessness, said Cuno. She looked at him. Now,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: I have been threatened with homelessness, and I could not
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: tell you such a thing through the machine. Homelessness means death.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: The victim is exposed to the air, which kills him.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: I have been outside since I spoke to you last.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: The tremendous thing has happened, and they have discovered me.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: But why shouldn't you go outside? She exclaimed. It is
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: perfectly legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit the surface of the earth.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: I have lately been to a lecture on the sea.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: There is no objection in that. One simply summons a
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: respirator and gets an aggression permit. It is not the
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: kind of thing that spiritually minded people do, and I
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: begged you not to do it, but there is no
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: legal objection to it. I did not get an aggression permit.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Then how did you get out? I found out a
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: way of my own? The phrase conveyed no meaning to her,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: and he had to repeat it. Away of your own,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: she whispered. But that would be wrong. Why the question
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: shocked her beyond measure. You are beginning to worship the machine,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: he said coldly. You think it irreligious of me to
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: have found out a way of my own. It was
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: just what the committee thought when they threatened me with homelessness.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: At this, she grew angry. I worship nothing, she cried,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I am most advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: there is no such thing as religion. Left. All the
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: by the machine. I only meant that to find out
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: a way of your own was Besides, there is no
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: new way out, so it is always supposed, except through
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: the vomitories, for which one must have an aggression permit,
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: it is impossible to get out. The book says so well,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: the book's wrong, for I have been out on my feet.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Forcuno was possessed of a certain physical strength. By these
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: were destroyed. He mean, Carrians may protest, but it would
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: have been no true kindness to let an athlete live.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: He would never have been happy in that state of
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: life to which the machine had called him. He would
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: have yearned for trees to climb, rivers, to bathe in
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: meadows and hills against which he might measure his body.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Men must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: In the dawn of our world, our weekly must be
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: exposed on Mount Tegatus in its twilight, our strong will
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: suffer euthanasia. That the machine may progress that the machine
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: may progress, that the machine may progress eternally. You know,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: we have lost the sense of space. We say space
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: is annihilated, but we have annihilated not space, but the
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: sense thereof. We have lost a part of ourselves. I
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: determined to recover it, and I began by walking up
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and down the platform of the railway outside my room,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: up and down until I was tired, and so did
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: recapture the meaning of near and far. Near is a
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: place to which I can get quickly on my feet,
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: not a place to which the train or the airship
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: will take me quickly. Far is a place to which
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: I cannot get quickly on my feet. The vomitory is far,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: though I could be there in thirty eight seconds by
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: summoning the train. Man is the measure that was my
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: first lesson. Man's feet are the measure for distance, His
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: hands are the measure for ownership. His body is the
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Then I went further, and it was then that I
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: called to you for the first time, and you would
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: not come. This city, as you know, is built deep
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: beneath the surface of the earth, with only the vomitories protruding.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Having paced the platform outside my own room, I took
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: the lift to the next platform and paced that also,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: and so with each in turn, until I came to
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: the topmost above, which begins the earth. All the platforms
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: were exactly alike, and all that I gained by visiting
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: them was to develop my sense of space and my muscles.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: I think I should have been content with this. It
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: is not a little thing. But as I walked and brooded,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: it occurred to me that our cities had been built
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: in the days when men still breathed the outer air,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: and that there had been ventilation shafts for the workmen.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I could think of nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: they been destroyed by all the food tubes and medicine
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: tubes and music tubes that the machine has evolved lately,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: or did traces of them remain? One thing was certain.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: If I came upon them anywhere, it would be in
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: the railway tunnels of the topmost story. Everywhere else all
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: space was accounted for. I am telling my story quickly,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: But don't think that I was not a coward, or
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: that your answers never depressed me. It is not the
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: proper thing it is not mechanical. It is not decent
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: to walk along a railway tunnel. I did not fear
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I feared something far more intangible, doing what was not
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: contemplated by the machine. Then I said to myself, man
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: is the measure. And I went, and after many visits
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: I found an opening. The tunnels, of course, were lighted.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Everything is light artificial light. Darkness is the exception. So
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: when I saw a black gap in the tiles, I
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: knew it was an exception, and rejoiced. I put in
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: my arm I could put in no more at first,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: and waved it round and round. In ecstasy. I loosened
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: another tile and put in my head and shouted into
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: the darkness, I am coming. I shall do it yet,
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: And my voice reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: hear the spirits of those dead workmen who had returned
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: each evening to the starlight into their wives, and all
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the generations who had lived in the open air. Called
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: back to me. You will do it, yet, you are coming,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: He paused, and absurd as he was, his last words
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: moved her. For Cuno had lately asked to be a father,
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: and his request had been refused by the committee. His
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: was not a type that the machine desired to hand on.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Then train passed it, brushed by me, but I thrust
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: my head and arms into the hole. I had done
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: enough for one day, so I crawled back to the platform,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: went down in a lift and summoned my bed. Ah,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: what dreams? And again I called you, and again you refused.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: She shook her head and said, don't don't talk of
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: these terrible things. You make me miserable. You are throwing
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: civilization away. But I had got back the sense of space,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: and a man cannot rest. Then I determined to get
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: in at the hole and climb the shaft, and so
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I exercised my arms day after day. I went through
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: ridiculous movements until my flesh ached and I could hang
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: by my hands and hold the pillow of my bed
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator and started.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: It was easy at first, for the mortar had somehow rotted,
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: and I soon pushed some more tiles in and clambered
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: after them into the darkness, and the spirits of the
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: dead comfort me. I don't know what I mean by that,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I just say what I felt. I felt for the
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: first time that a protest had been lodged against corruption,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: and that even as the den were comforting me, so
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: explain this? It was naked. Humanity seemed naked. And all
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: been strong, I would have torn off every garment I
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: had and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: my dietetic tabloids. Better thus than not at all. There
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: was a ladder made of some primeval metal. The light
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: from the railway fell upon its lowest wrongs, and I
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: saw that it straight upwards out of the rubble at
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran up
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: and down it a dozen times daily in their building.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: As I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: so that my hands bled. The light helped me for
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: a while, and then came darkness and worse still, silence,
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: which pierced my ears like a sword. The machine hums.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Did you know that its hum penetrates our blood? It
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: may even guide our thoughts? Who knows I was getting
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: beyond its power? Then I thought, this silence means that
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I am doing wrong. But I heard voices in the silence,
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: and again they strengthened me. He laughed, I had need
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: of them. The next moment I cracked my head against something.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: She sighed. I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: that defend us from the outer air. You may have
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: noticed them on the air ship. Pitched dark, my feet
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: on the wrongs of an invisible ladder, my hands cut.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: I cannot explain how I lived through this part, but
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: the voices still comforted me, and I felt for fastenings.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: The stopper, I suppose, was about eight feet across. I
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: passed my hand over it as far as I could reach.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: It was perfectly smooth. I felt it almost to the center,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: not quite to the center, for my arm was too short.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: Then the voice said, jump, it is worth it. There
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: may be a handle in the center, and you may
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: catch hold of it, and so come to us your
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: own way. And if there is no handle, so that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: you may fall and are dashed to pieces, it is
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: still worth it. You will still come to us your
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: own way. So I jumped. There was a handle, and
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: he paused. Tears gathered in his mother's eyes. She knew
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: that he was faded. If he did not die to day,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: he would die tomorrow. There was not room for such
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: she was ashamed at having borne such a son, she
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: who had always been so respectable and so full of ideas.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Was he really the little boy to whom she had
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: whom she had given his first lessons in the book?
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: The very hair that disfigured his lips showed that he
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: was reverting to some savage type on ativism. The machine
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: can have no mercy. There was a handle, and I
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: did catch it. I hung tranced over the darkness, and
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: in a dying dream. All these things I had cared about,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and all the people I had spoken to through tubes
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile, the handle revolved. My weight had
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: set something in motion, and I spanned slowly. And then
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: to the sunshine, blood poured from my nose and ears,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: and I heard a tremendous roaring. The stopper, with me
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the earth,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: and the air that we make down here was escaping
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: through the vent into the air above. It burst up
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: like a fountain. I crawled back to it for the
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: upper air hurts, and as it were, I took great
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: SIPs from the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows where,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: and my clothes were torn. I just lay with my
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: lips close to the hole, and I sipped until the
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious this hollow
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: in the grass. I will speak of it in a minute.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: The sun shining into it, not brilliantly, but through marble clouds,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: the peace, the nonchalance, the sense of space, and brushing
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: my cheek, the roaring fountain of our artificial air. Soon
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: I spied my respirator bobbing up and down in the current.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: High above my head, and higher still were the many airships.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: But no one ever looks out of airships, and in
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: my case they could not have picked me up. There
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: I was stranded. The sun shone a little way down
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: the shaft and revealed the topmost wrong of the ladder,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: but it was hopeless trying to reach it. I should
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: either have been tossed up again by the escape, or
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: else have fallen in and died. I could only lie
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: time glancing around me. I knew that I was in Wessex,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: for I had taken care to go to a lecture
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: on the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: in which we are talking now. It was once an
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: important state. Its kings held all the southern coast from
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: the Andred's Wall to Cornwall, while Wansdyke protected them on
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: the north, running over the high ground. The lecturer was
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: not know how long it remained in international power, nor
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: would the knowledge have assisted me to tell the truth.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: I could do nothing but laugh. During this part. There
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: was I with a pneumatic stopper by my side, and
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: a respirator bobbing above my head. Imprisoned all three of
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: us in a grass grown hollow that was edged with fern.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Then he grew grave again. Lucky for me that it
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: was a hollow, for the air began to fall back
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: into it, and to fill it as water fills a bowl.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: I could crawl about. Presently I stood, I breathed a
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: mixture in which the air that hurts predominated whenever I
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: I had not lost my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And as for the machine, I forgot about it altogether.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: My one aim now was to get to the top
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: where the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: I rushed the slope. The new air was still too
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: bitter for me, and I came rolling back after a
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: momentary vision of something gray. The sun grew very feeble,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: and I remembered that he was in scorpio. I had
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: been to a lecture on that too. If the sun
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: is in Scorpio and you are in Wessex, it means
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: that you must be as quick as you can, or
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: it will get too dark. This is the first bit
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: of useful information I have ever got from a lecture,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: and I expect it will be the last. It made
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: me try frantically to breathe the new air and to
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: advance as far as I dared out of my pond.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: The hollow filled so slowly at times I thought that
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: the fountain played with less vigor. My respirators seemed to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: dance nearer the earth. The roar was decreasing. He broke off.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: I don't think this is interesting to you. The rest
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: will interest you even less. There are no ideas in it,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: and I wish I had not troubled you to come.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: We are too different. Mother, She told him to continue.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: had very nearly slipped out of the sky by this time,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: and I could not get a good view. You, who
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: have just crossed the roof of the world will not
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: want to hear an account of the little hills that
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: I saw, low, colorless hills. But to me they were living,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: and the turf that covered them was a skin under
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: which their muscles rippled. And I felt that those hills
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: had called with incalculable force to men in the past,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: and that the men had loved them. Now they sleep,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: perhaps forever, they commune with humanity and dreams. Happy the man, happy,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the woman who awakes the hills of Wessex, For though
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: they sleep, they will never die. His voice rose passionately.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Can can not you see, cannot all your lectures see
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: that it is we who are dying, and that down
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: here the only thing that really lives is the machine.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: We created the machine to do our will, but we
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: cannot make it do our will. Now it has robbed
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: us of the sense of space and of the sense
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: of touch. It has blurred every human relation and narrowed
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: down love to a carnal act. It has paralyzed our
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: worship it. The machine develops, but not on our lines.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: The machine proceeds, but not to our goal. We only
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And if it could work without us, it would let
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: us die. Oh, I have no remedy, or at least
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: only one to tell men again and again that I
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: have seen the hills of Wessex as Alfred saw them
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: when he overthrew the Danes, so the sun set. I
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: forgot to mention that a belt of mist lay between
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: my hill and other hills, and that it was the
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: color of pearl. He broke off for the second time.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Go On, said his mother wearily. He shook his head.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Go On, nothing that you say can distress me. Now
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: I am hardened. I had meant to tell you the rest,
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: but I cannot. I know that I cannot. Good Bye.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling with his blasphemies.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: But she was also inquisitive. This is unfair, she complained.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: You have called me across the world to hear your story,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: and hear it. I will tell me as briefly as possible,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: for this is a disastrous waste of time. Tell me
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: how you return to civilization, Oh that, he said, starting
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: you would like to hear about civilization? Certainly? Had I
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: got to where my respirator fell down? No, but I
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: understand everything. Now. You put on your respirator and managed
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: to walk along the surface of the earth to a vomitory,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: and there your conduct was reported to the Central Committee
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: by no means. He passed his hand over his forehead,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: as if to spelling some strong impression. Then, resuming his narrative,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: he warmed to it again. My respirator fell about sunset.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: I had mentioned that the fountain seemed feebler. Had I
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: not yes about sunset? It let the respirator fall. As
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I said, I had entirely forgotten about the machine, and
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I paid no great attention at the time, being occupied
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: with other things. I had my pool of air into
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: which I could dip when the outer keenness became intolerable,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: and which would possibly remain for days, provided that no
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: wind sprang up to disperse it. Not until it was
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: too late did I realize what the stoppage of the
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: escape implied. You see, the gap in the tunnel had
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: been mended the mending apparatus. The mending apparatus was after me.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: One other warning I had, but I neglected it. The
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: sky at night was clearer than it had been in
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: the day, and the moon, which was about half the
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: sky behind the sun, shone into the dell at moments
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: quite brightly. I was in my usual place on the
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: boundary between the two atmospheres when I thought I saw
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: something dark move across the bottom of the dell and
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: vanish into the shaft in my folly. I ran down.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: I bent over and listened, and I thought I heard
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: a faint scraping noise in the depths at this, but
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: it was too late. I took alarm. I determined to
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: put on my respirator and to walk right out of
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: the dell. But my respirator had gone. I knew exactly
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: where it had fallen, between the stopper and the aperture,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: and I could even feel the mark that it had
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: made in the turf. It had gone, and I realized
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: that something evil was at work, and I had better
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: escape to the outer air. And if I must die,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: die running towards the cloud that had been the color
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: of a pearl. I never started out of the shaft.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: It is too horrible. A worm, a long white worm,
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: had crawled out of the shaft and was gliding over
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the moonlit grass. I screamed. I did everything that I
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: should not have done. I stamped upon the creature instead
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: of flying from it, and it at once curled around
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: my ankle. Then we fought. The worm let me run
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: all over the dell, but edged up my leg. As
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: I ran help, I cried, that part is too awful.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: It belongs to the part that you will never know. Help,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: I cried, Why cannot we suffer in silence?
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Help?
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: I cried? Then my feet were wound together. I fell.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: I was dragged away from the dear ferns in the
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: living hills and passed the great metal stopper. I can
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: tell you this part, and I thought it might save
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: me again if I caught hold of the handle. It
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: also was enwrapped. It also, Oh, the whole dell was
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: full of the things. They were searching it in all directions.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: They were denuding it, and the white snouts of others
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: peeped out of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: could be moved. They brought brushwood, bundles of fern, everything,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: and down we all went, intertwined into hell. The last
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: things that I saw ere the stopper closed after us
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: were certain stars, and I felt that a man of
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: my sort lived in the sky. For I did fight.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: I fought till the very end, and it was only
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: my head hitting against the latter that quieted me. I
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: woke up in this room. The worms had vanished. I
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: was surrounded by artificial light, artificial air, artificial peace, and
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: my friends were calling to me down, speaking tubes to
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: know whether I had come across any new ideas lately.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Here his story ended, discussion of it was impossible, and
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Vashti turned to go it will end in homelessness, She
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: said quietly. I wish it would, retorted Cuno, the machine
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: has been most merciful. I prefer the mercy of God.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: By that superstitious phrase, do you mean that you could
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: live in the outer air? Yes? Have you ever seen
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: round the vomitories the bones of those who were extruded
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: after the Great Rebellion? Yes, they were left where they
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: perished for our edification. A few crawled away, but they
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: perished too. Who can doubt it? And so with the
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: homeless of our own day. The surface of the earth
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: supports life no longer. Indeed, ferns and a little grass
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: may survive, but all higher life forms have perished. Has
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: any airship detected them? No? Has any lecturer dealt with them? No?
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Then why this obstinacy? Because I have seen them, he exploded,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: Seen what? Because I have seen her in the twilight,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: because she came to my help when I called, Because
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: she too was entangled by the worms, and luckier than I,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: was killed by one of them. Piercing her throat. He
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: was mad. Vashti departed, nor in the troubles that followed,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: did she ever see his face again. End of chapter two.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Recording by Erin Tivano, Los Angeles, California. Chapter three of
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: The Machine Stops. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Erin, Tivano,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, California. The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster,
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Chapter three, The Homeless. During the years that followed Kuno's escapade,
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: two important developments took place in the Machine. On the surface,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: they were revolutionary, but in either case men's minds had
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: been prepared beforehand, and they did but express tendencies that
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: were latent already. The first of these was the abolition
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: of respirators. Advanced thinkers like Vashti had always held it
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: foolish to visit the surface of the Earth. Airships might
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: be necessary, but what was the good of going out
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: for mere curiosity and crawling along for a mile or
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: two in a terrestrial motor. The habit was vulgar, and
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: perhaps faintly improper. It was unproductive of ideas and had
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: no connection with the habits that really mattered. So respirators
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: were abolished, and with them, of course, the terrestrial motors.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: And except for a few lecturers who complained that they
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: were debarred access to their subject matter, the development was
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: accepted quietly. Those who still wanted to know what the
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: Earth was like had, after all, only to listen to
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: some gramophone or to look into some cinematophote. And even
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: of other lectures that had already been delivered on the
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: same subject. Beware of first hand ideas, exclaimed one of
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: the most advanced of them. First Hand ideas do not
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: love and fear. And on this gross foundation, who could
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: erect a philosophy. Let your ideas be second hand, and,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: if possible, tenth hand, for then they will be far
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: removed from that disturbing element direct observation. Do not learn
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: anything about this subject of mine? The French Revolution learn instead,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Would I think that en Chermond thought, Urizend thought Gutsch, thought,
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: ho Young thought, chibos S thought, Lafcadio Hearn thought. Carlyle thought.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: these eight great minds, the blood that was shed at
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: be clarified to an idea which you may employ most
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: intermediates are many and varied, For in history, one authority
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: exists to counteract another. Urazen must counteract the skepticism of
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: how young and enchremon. I must myself counteract the impetuosity
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: of Gutsch. You who listen to me are in a
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: Your descendants will be even in a better position than you,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: for they will learn what you think I think. And
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: yet another intermediate will be added to the chain, and
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: in time his voice rose. There will come a generation
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colorless,
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: a generation seraphically free from taint of personality, which will
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: they would like it to have happened, but as it
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: would have happened had it taken place in the days
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: of the machine. Tremendous applause greeted this lecture, which did
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: but voice a feeling already latent in the minds of men,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: a feeling that terrestrial facts must be ignored, and that
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the abolition of respirators was a positive gain. It was
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: even suggested that airships should be abolished too. This was
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: not done because airships had somehow worked themselves into the
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: machine system, but year by year they were used less
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: and mentioned less by thoughtful men. The second great development
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: was the re establishment of religion. This too had been
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: voiced in the celebrated lecture. No one could mistake their
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: reverent tone in which the peroration had concluded, and it
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: awakened a responsive echo in the heart of each Those
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: who had long worshiped silently now began to talk. They
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: described the strange feeling of peace that came over them
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: when they handled the book of the machine, the pleasure
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: that it was to repeat certain nes numerals out of it,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: however little meeting those numerals, conveyed to the outward ear.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: The ecstasy of touching a button, however unimportant or ringing
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: an electric bell. However, superfluously, the machine, they exclaimed, feeds
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: us and clothes us and houses us. Through it, we
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: speak to one another. Through it, we see one another.
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: In it, we have our being. The machine is the
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition. The machine
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: is omnipotent, eternal. Blessed is the machine. And before long
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: this elocution was printed on the first page of the book,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: and in subsequent editions the rituals swelled into a complicated
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: system of praise and prayer. The word religion was sedulously avoided,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: and in theory the machine was still the creation and
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: the implement of man. But in practice all save a
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: few retrogrades worshiped it as divine, nor was it worshiped
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: in unity. One believer would be chiefly impressed by the
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: blue optic plates through which he saw other believers, others
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: by the mending uparact, this which sinful Kudo had compared
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: to worms, another by the liths, another by the book,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: and each would pray to this or to that, and
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: ask it to intercede for him with the machine as
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: a whole. Persecution that was also present. It did not
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: break out for reasons that will be set forward shortly.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: But it was latent, and all who did not accept
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: the minimum known as undenominational mechanism lived in danger of homelessness,
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: which means death, as we know. To attribute these two
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: great developments to the Central Committee is to take a
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: it is true, but they were no more the cause
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the cause of war. Rather, did they yield to some
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: invincible pressure which came no one knew whither, and which,
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: To such a state of affairs, it is convenient to
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: give the name of progress. No one confessed the machine
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: was out of hand. By year, it was served with
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: his own duties upon it, the less he understood the
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: duties of his neighbor. And in all the world there
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: was not one who understood the monster as a whole.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: Those master brains had perished, They had left full directions,
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: it is true, and their successors had each of them
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: mastered a portion of those directions. But humanity, in its
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: sinking into decadence, and progress had come to me in
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: the progress of the machine. As for Vashti, her life
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: went peacefully forward until the final disaster. She made her
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: room dark and slept. She awoke and made the room light.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: She lectured and attended lectures. She exchanged ideas with her
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: innumerable friends, and believed she was growing more spiritual. At times,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: a friend was granted euthanasia and left his or her
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: room for the homelessness that is beyond all human conception.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: Vashi did not much mind. After an unsuccessful lecture. She
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: would sometimes ask for euthanasia herself, but the death rate
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: was not permitted to exceed the birth rate, and the
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: machine had hitherto refused it to her. The troubles began quietly,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: long before she was conscious of them. One day, she
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: was astonished at receiving a message from her son. They
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: never communicated, having nothing in common, and she had only
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: heard indirectly that he was still alive and had been
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: transferred from the Northern hemisphere, where he had behaved so
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: mischievously to the southern, indeed, to a room not far
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: from her own. Does he want me to visit him?
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: She thought, Never again, never, and I have not the time. No,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: it was madness of another kind. He refused to visualize
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: his face upon the blue plate, and, speaking out of
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: the darkness with solemnity, said, the machine stops. What do
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: you say, the machine is stopping. I know it, I
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: know the signs. She burst into a peal of laughter.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: He hurt her and was angry, and they spoke no more.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine anything more absurd? She cried to a friend,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: A man who was my son, believes that the machine
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: is stopping. It would be impious if it was not mad.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: The machine is stopping. Her friend replied, what does that mean?
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: The phrase conveys nothing to me, nor to me he
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: does not refer, I suppose to the trouble there has
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: been lately with the music. Oh no, of course not.
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: Let us talk about music. Have you complained to the authorities, Yes,
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: and they say it wants mending, and referred me to
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: the committee of the mending apparatus. I complained of those curious,
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: gasping sighs that disfigure the symphonies of the Brisbane School.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: They sound like some one in pain. The Committee of
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: the Mending Apparatus say that it shall be remedied shortly, obscurely. Worried,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: she resumed her life. For one thing, the defect in
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: the music irritated her. For another thing, she could not
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: forget Kuno's speech. If he had known that the music
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: was out of repair, he could not know it, for
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: he detested music. If he had known that it was wrong,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: the machine stops was exactly the venomous sort of remark
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: he would have made. Of course, he had made it
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: at a venture. But the coincidence annoyed her, and she
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: spoke with some petulance to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: They replied, as before, that the defects would be set
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: right shortly, shortly, at once. She retorted, why should I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: be worried by imperfect music? Things are always put right
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: at once. If you do not mend it at once,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: I shall complain to the Central Committee. No personal complaints
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: are received by the Central Committee. The Committee of the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Mending Apparatus replied, through whom am I to make my complaint?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Then through us I complain, then your complaints shall be
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: forwarded in its turn. Have others complained? This question was unmechanical,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: and the committee of the mending apparatus refused to answer it.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: It is too bad, she exclaimed to another of her friends.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Never was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I can
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: never be sure of my music. Now it gets worse
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: and worse each time I summon it. I too have
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: my troubles, the friend replied. Sometimes my ideas are interrupted
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: by a slight jarring noise. What is it? I do
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: not know whether it is inside my head or inside
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: the wall. Complaint. In either case, I have complained, and
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: my complaint will be forwarded in its turn to the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: central Committee. Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: in that latter day had become so subservient that they
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the machine. The
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: sigh of the crisis of the Brisbane Symphony no longer
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: irritated Vashti. She accepted it as part of the melody.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: was no longer resented by her friend. And so with
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: the moldy artificial fruit, and so with the bath water
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: that began to stink, and so with the defective rhymes
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: that the poetry machine had taken to him. All were
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Things went from bad to worse unchallenged. It was otherwise
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: with the failure of the sleeping apparatus that was a
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: more serious stoppage. There came a day when, over the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: whole world, in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: of Corland and Brazil, the bends, when summoned by their
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a ludicrous matter,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: but from it we may date the collapse of humanity.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: The committee responsible for the failure was assailed by complainants,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: whom it referred as usual to the Committee of the
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them that their
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: do without sleeping. Someone is meddling with the machine they began.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: Someone is trying to make himself king, to reintroduce the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: personal element, punish that man with homelessness, to the rescue,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: avenge the machine. Avenge the machine war kill the man.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: But the committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: and allayed the panic with well chosen words. It confessed
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: that the mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: The effect of this frank confession was admirable, of course,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: said a famous lecturer, he of the French Revolution, who
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: gilded each new decay with splendor. Of course, we shall
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: not press our complaints now. The mending Apparatus has treated
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: us so well in the past that we all sympathize
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: with it, and will wait patiently for its recovery. In
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: its own good time, it will resume its duties. Meanwhile,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: let us do without our beds, our tabloids, our little wants,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: such I feel sure would be the wish of the machine.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: Thousands of miles away. His audience applauded. The machine still
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: linked them under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: where in the wires through which they saw and heard
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick remained ungrateful,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: for it was rumored that euthanasia, too was out of order,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: and that pain had reappeared among men. It became difficult
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: to read. A blight entered the atmosphere and dulled its luminosity.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: At times Vashti could scarcely see across her room. The
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: air too was foul loud, were the complaints impotent in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: the remedies heroic The tone of the lecturer as he cried, courage, courage,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: what matter? So long as the machine goes on to it,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: the darkness and the light are won. And though things
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: improved again after a time, the old brilliancy was never recaptured,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: and humanity never recovered from its entrance into twilight. There
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: was an hysterical talk of measures of provisional dictatorship, and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: the inhabitants of Sumatra were asked to familiarize themselves with
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: the workings of the central power station, the said power
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: station being situated in France. But for the most part
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: panic reigned, and men spent their strength praying to their
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: books tangible proofs of the machine's omnipotence. There were gradiations
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: of terror. At time came rumors of hope. The mending
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: apparatus was almost mended. The enemies of the machine had
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: been got under. New nerve centers were evolving, which would
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: do the work even more magnificently than before. But there
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: all over the world, and the world as they understood
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: it ended. Vashti was lecturing at the time, and her
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: earlier remarks had been punctuated with applause. As she proceeded,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: the audience became silent, and at the conclusion there was
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: no sound. Somewhat displeased, she called to a friend who
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: was a specialist in sympathy. No sound, doubtless, the friend
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: was sleeping, and so with an ex friend whom she
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: tried to summon, and so with the next, until she
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: remembered Kuno's cryptic remark, the machine stops. The phrase still
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: conveyed nothing. If eternity was stopping, it would of course
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: be set going shortly. For example, there was still a
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: little light and air the atmosphere had improved a few
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: hours previously. There was still the book, and while there
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: was the book, there was security. Then she broke down,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: for with the cessation of activity came in unexpected terror. Silence.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: She had never known silence, and the coming of it
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: nearly killed her. It did kill many thousands of people outright.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: Ever since her birth, she had been surrounded by the
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: steady hume. It was to the ear what artificial air
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: and scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: pressed the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: of her cell. Now the door of the cell worked
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: on a simple hinge of its own. It was not
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: connected with the central power station dying far away in France.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: It opened, rousing immoderate hopes in Vashti, for she thought
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: that the machine had been mended. It opened, and she
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: saw the dim tunnel that curved far away towards freedom.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: One look, and then she shrank back, for the tunnel
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: was full of people. She was almost the last in
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: that city to have taken alarm. People at any time
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: repelled her, and these were nightmares from her worst dreams.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: People were crawling about. People were screaming, whimpering, gasping for breath,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: touching each other, vanishing in the dark, and ever and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: anon being pushed off the platform onto the live rail.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: Some were fighting round the electric bells, trying to summon
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: trains which could not be summoned. Others were yelling for euthanasia,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: or for respirators, or blespheming the machine. Others stood at
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: the doors of their cells, fearing, like herself, either to
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: stop in them or to leave them. And behind all
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: the uproar was silence, the silence which is the voice
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: of the earth and of the generations who have gone No.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: It was worse than solitude. She closed the door again
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: and sat down to wait for the end. The disintegration
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: went on, accompanied by horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: that restrained the medical apparatus must have weakened, for it
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: ruptured and hung hideously from the ceiling. The floor heaved
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: and fell and flung her from her chair, a tube
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: ooze towards her serpent fashion, And at last the final
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: horror approached. Light began to ebb, and she knew that
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: civilization's long day was closing. She whirled round, praying to
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: be saved from this at any rate, kissing the book,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: pressing button after button. The uproar outside was increasing, and
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: even penetrated the wall. Slowly, the brilliancy of her cell
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: was dimmed. The reflections faded from her metal switches. Now
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: she could not see the reading stand, now, not the book,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: though she held it in her hand. Light followed the
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: flight of sound. Air was following light, and the original
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: void returned to the cavern from which it had been
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: so long excluded. Fashti continued to whirl like the devotees
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: of an earlier religion, screaming, praying, striking at the buttons
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: with bleeding hands. It was thus that she opened her
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: prison and escaped, escaped in the spirit, at least, so
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: it seems to me. Ere My meditation closes that she
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: escapes in the body. I cannot perceive that she struck
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: by chance the switch that released the door, and the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: rush of foul air on her skin. The loud, throbbing
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: whispers in her ears told her that she was facing
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: the tunnel again, and that tremendous platform on which he
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: had seen men fighting. They were not fighting now, only
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: the whispers remained, and the little whimpering groans they were
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: dying by the hundreds out in the dark. She burst
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: into tears. Tears answered her. They wept for humanity, those two,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: not for themselves. They could not bear that this should
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: be the end. Ear's silence was completed. Their hearts were opened,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures, visible,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: man who had once made God in his image, and
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: had mirrored his strength on the constellations. Beautiful naked man
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: colors of culture, sown with the threads self denial and
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: and no more so long as man could shed it
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: at will and live by the essence that is his soul,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: and the essence equally divine, that is his body. The
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: sin against the body. It was for that that they
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: wept in chief, the centuries of wrong, against the muscles
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: and the nerves, Those five portals by which we can
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: alone apprehend glausing it over with talk of evolution, until
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: the body was white, pap the home of ideas as colorless, less,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: Where are you, she sobbed, his voice in the darkness,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: said here is there any hope? Cuno? None for us?
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: Where are you? She crawled towards him over the bodies
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: of the dead. His blood spurted over her hands. Quicker,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: he gasped, I am dying, but we touch, we talk,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: not through the machine. He kissed her. We have come
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: back to our own We die, but we have recaptured
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: life as it was in Wessex when Alfred overthrew the Danes.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: We know what they know outside, those who dwelt in
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: a cloud that is the color of a pearl. But Cuno,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: is it true? Are there still man on the surface
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: of the earth? Is this, this tunnel, this poisoned darkness,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: really not the end? He replied. I have seen them,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: spoken to them, Love them. They are hiding in the
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: mist and the ferns until our civilization stops. Today they
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: are the homeless. Tomorrow, oh tomorrow, some fool will start
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: the machine again tomorrow, never said Cuno. Never, humanity has
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: learnt its lesson. As he spoke, the whole city was
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: broken like a honeycomb. An airship had sailed in through
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed downwards, exploding
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: the dead, and before they joined them scraps of the
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: untainted sky. End of Chapter three, End of The Machine
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: Stops by E. M. Forster