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The Machine Stops - EM Forster · Classic Treasures - Must-Read Fiction Books

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The machine stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter one, The Airship.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Imagine if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: like the cell of a b It is lighted neither
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments. And
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: yet at the moment that my meditation opens, this room
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: is throbbing with melodious sounds. An arm chair is in
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the center. By its side a reading desk. That is
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: all the furniture. And in the arm chair there sits
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: a swaddled lump of flesh, a woman about five feet high,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: with a face as white as a fungus. It is
• 0:48
  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.
• 0:58
  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,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: who is it? She called? Her voice was irritable, for
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: she had been interrupted often since the music began. She
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: knew several thousand people in certain directions. Human intercourse had
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: advanced enormously. But when she listened into the receiver, her
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said, very well,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: let us talk. I will isolate myself. I do not
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: For I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I must deliver my lecture on music during the Australian period.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: She touched the isolation knob so that no one else
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and the little room was plunged into darkness. Be quick,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: she called, her irritation, returning, be quick, Kuno. Here I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: am in the dark, wasting my time. But it was
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: see the image of her son, who lived on the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: other side of the earth, and he could see her. Kuno,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: how slow you are, he smiled gravely. I really believe
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: you enjoy dawdling. I have called you before, mother, but
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you are always busy or isolated. I have something particular
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to say, what is it? Dearest boy? Be quick? Why
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: could you not send it by pneumatic post? Because I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: prefer saying such a thing. I want well, I want
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: you to come and see me. Vashti watched his face
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: in the blue plate. But I can see you, she exclaimed,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: What more do you want? I want to see you,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: not through the mache, said Kuno. I want to speak
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: to you, not through the wearisome machine. Oh hush, said
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: his mother, vaguely shocked. You mustn't say anything against the machine?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Why not? One? Mustn't you talk as if God had
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: made the machine? Cried the other. I believe that you
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Do not forget that. Great men, But men, the machine
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: is much, but it is not everything. I see something
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: like you in this plate, but I do not see you.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I hear something like you through this telephone, but I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: do not hear you. That is why I want you
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: meet face to face and talk about the hopes that
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: are in my mind. She replied that she could scarcely
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: spare the time for a visit. The airship barely takes
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: two days to fly between me and you. I dislike airships.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Why I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth and the
• 4:02
  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?
• 4:13
  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?
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  Speaker 2: I do not.
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  Speaker 1: I 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
• 4:35
  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
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: a sword. A sword. Men carried swords about with them
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  Speaker 1: to kill animals and other men. It does not strike
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  Speaker 1: me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: When did it come to you first? In the airship?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: She could not be sure, for the machine did not
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  Speaker 1: transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of people, an idea that was good enough for all
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: practical purposes. Vashti thought the imponderable bloom declared by a
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: discredited philosophy to the actual essence of intercourse was rightly
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: ignored by the machine, just as the imponderable bloom of
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Something good enough had long since been accepted by our race.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The truth is, he continued, that I want to see
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: see them not from the airship, but from the surface
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  Speaker 1: of the earth, as our ancestors did thousands of years ago.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I want to visit the surface of the earth. She
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: was shocked again. Mother, you must come, if only to
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: explain to me what is the harm of visiting the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: surface of the earth. No harm, she replied, controlling herself.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: dust and mud. No advantage. The surface of the earth
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  Speaker 1: is only dust and mud. No life remains on it,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and you would need a respirator, or the cold of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the outer air. I know, of course, I shall take
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: all precautions, and besides well, she considered and chose her
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: she wished to dissuade him from the expedition. It is
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: contrary to the spirit of the age, she asserted, Do
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you mean by that contrary to the machine in a sense?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But his image in the blue plate faded Cuono. He
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  Speaker 1: had isolated himself. For a moment. Vashti felt lonely that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: she generated the light, and the sight of her room,
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  Speaker 1: flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her.
• 7:06
  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,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: deodorized liquid. There was the cold bath button. There was
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the button that produced literature. And there were of course
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  Speaker 1: the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: she cared for in the world. Bashi's next move was
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of the last three minutes burst upon her the room
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was filled with the noise of bells and speaking tubes.
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  Speaker 1: What was the new food like? Could she recommend it?
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  Speaker 1: Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her
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  Speaker 1: one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit
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  Speaker 1: the public nurseries at an early date, say this day
• 8:00
  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
• 8:08
  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
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: of public gatherings had been long since abandoned. Neither Vashi
• 8:34
  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 armchairs hurt
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  Speaker 1: her fairly well and saw her fairly well. She opened
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  Speaker 1: with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch,
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  Speaker 1: and went on to describe the great outburst of song
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  Speaker 1: that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primeval, as were
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  Speaker 1: the methods of Isa and Soux and the Brisbane school.
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  Speaker 1: She yet felt. She said that study of them might
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: repay the musicians of to day. They had freshness, they
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  Speaker 1: 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.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: There were ideas to be got from the sea. The
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then
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  Speaker 1: she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again,
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  Speaker 1: and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking.
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  Speaker 1: It was too large, and she had a feeling for
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  Speaker 1: a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of
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  Speaker 1: the same dimension all over the world, and to have
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  Speaker 1: had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in
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  Speaker 1: the machine. Bashti isolated herself it was necessary for neither
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  Speaker 1: day nor night existed under the ground, and reviewed all
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  Speaker 1: that had happened since she had summoned the bed. Last
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  Speaker 1: ideas scarcely any events, was Kuno's invitation and event by
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: her side on the a little reading desk was a
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: survival from the ages of litter. One book, this was
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  Speaker 1: the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against
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  Speaker 1: every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold, or dyspeptic,
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  Speaker 1: or at a loss for a word, she went to
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  Speaker 1: the book, and it 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
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: glowing room, as if someone might be watching her. Then,
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  Speaker 1: half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured, oh machine, Oh machine,
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  Speaker 1: and raised the volume to her lips. Thrice. She kissed
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  Speaker 1: it thrice, inclined her head thrice. She felt the delirium
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  Speaker 1: of acquiescence, her ritual performed. She turned to page thirteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty seven, which gave the times of the departure of
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  Speaker 1: the airships from the island in the Southern Hemisphere, under
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  Speaker 1: whose soil she lived, to the island in the Northern Hemisphere,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: where on ad lived her son. She thought, I have
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: not the time. She made the room dark and slept.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: She awoke and made the room light. She ate and
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  Speaker 1: exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and
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  Speaker 1: attended lectures. She made the room dark and slept above her,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: beneath her, and around her. The machine hummed eternally. She
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: did not notice the noise, for she had been born
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: with it in her ears. The earth carrying her hummed
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  Speaker 1: as it sped through silence, turning her now to the
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: made the room light. Kuno, I will not talk to you,
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  Speaker 1: he answered, until you come. Have you been on the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: surface of the earth since we spoke last? His image
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: faded again. She consulted the book. She became very nervous
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: and lay back in her chair, palpitating. Think of her
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  Speaker 1: as without teeth or hair. Presently, she directed the chair
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  Speaker 1: to the wall and pressed in unfamiliar button. The wall
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: swung apart slowly. Through the opening, she saw a tunnel
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that curved slightly so that its goal was not visible.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Should she go to see her son? Here was the
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: beginning of the journey. Of course, she knew all about
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the communication system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She
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  Speaker 1: would summon a car and it would fly with her
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  Speaker 1: down the tunnel until it reached the lift that communicated
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  Speaker 1: with the airship station. The system had been in use
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  Speaker 1: for many, many years, long before the universal establishment of
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  Speaker 1: the machine. And of course she had studied the civilization
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: that had immediately preceded her own, the civilization that had
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: mistaken the functions of the system and had used it
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  Speaker 1: for bringing people to things instead of for bringing things
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  Speaker 1: to people, those funny old days when men went for
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And yet she was frightened of the tunnel. She had
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: not seen it since her last child was born. It curved,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: but not quite, she remembered. It was brilliant, but not
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: quite as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Bashie was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: into the room, and the wall closed up again. Cuno,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: she said, I cannot come to see you. I am
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: not well. Immediately, an enormous apparatus fell on to her
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: out of the ceiling. A thermometer was automatically laid upon
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Cuno had telegraphed to her doctor. So the human passions
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: still blundered up and down on the machine. Bashi drank
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the medicine that the doctor projected into her mouth, and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the machinery retired into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: was heard asking how she felt better than with the irritation.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: But why do you not come to me instead? Because
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: I cannot leave this place? Why because any moment something
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: tremendous may have Have you been on the surface of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the earth yet not yet? Then what is it? I
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: will not tell you Through the machine. She resumed her life,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: But she thought of Cuno as a baby, his birth,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: his removal to the public nurseries, her own visit to him, there,
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  Speaker 1: his visits to her, visits, which stopped when the machine
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: had assigned him a room on the other side of
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the earth. Parents come a duties of said the book
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: of the machine, cease at the moment of birth, paragraph
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: four two two three, two seven four eight three. True,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: but there was something special about Cuno. Indeed there had
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: been something special about all her children. And after all,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: she must brave the journey if he desired it, and
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: something tremendous might happen. What did that mean? The nonsense
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: of a youthful man, no doubt, But she must go
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: again she pressed the unfamiliar button again. The wall swung back,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and she saw the tunnel that curves out of sight.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Clasping the book, she rose, tottered onto the platform and
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: summoned the car. Her room closed behind her. The journey
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: to the Northern Hemisphere had begun, of course, it was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: perfectly easy. The car approached, and in it she found
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: arm chairs exactly like her own. When she signaled, it
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: stopped and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: was in the lift, the first fellow creature she had
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: seen face to face for months. Few traveled in these days,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: for thanks to the advance of science, the Earth was
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: exactly alike all over, rapid intercourse from which the previous
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: What was the good of going to Peking when it
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: would all be like Peking. Men seldom moved their bodies.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: All unrest was concentrated in the soul. The airship service
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: was a relic from the former age. It was kept
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: up because it was easier to keep it up than
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to stop it or to diminish it. But it now
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: would rise from the vomitories of Rye or of christ Church,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I use the antique names, would sail into the crowded
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: sky and would draw up at the wharves of the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: south empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: of meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, resembled
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a vast kaleidoscope, where on the same patterns periodically recurred.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: The ship on which Vashi sailed started now at sunset,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: now at dawn, but always as it passed above rayas
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: it would neighbor the ship that served between Helsingfors and
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the Brazils, And every third time it surmounted the Alps,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind night
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and day, wind and storm tied, an earthquake impeded man
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: no longer he had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: with its praise of nature and its fear of nature,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: rang false as the prattle of a child. Yet as
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Vasti saw the vast flank of the ship stained with
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct experience
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: returned it was not quite like the airship in the
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: cinema to fote for one thing, it smelt not strongly
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her eyes
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: shut she should have known that a new thing was
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: close to her. Then she had to walk to it
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: from the lift, had to submit to glances from the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: other passengers. The man in front dropped his book, no
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: great matter, but it disquieted them all in the rooms.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: If the book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: but the gangway to the airship was not so prepared,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and the sacred volume lay motionless. They stopped. The thing
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: was unforeseen, and the man, instead of picking up his property,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: felt the muscles of his arm to see how they
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: had failed him. Then some one actually said, with direct utterance,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: we shall be late, and they trooped on board, vashly,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: treading on the page. As she did so, Inside, her
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: anxiety increased. The arrangements were old fashioned and rough. There
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: was even a female attendant to whom she would have
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: to announce her wants during the voyage. Of course, a
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: revolving platform ran the length of the boat, but she
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was expected to walk from it to her cabin. Some
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: cabins were better than others, and she did not get
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: spasms of rage shook her. The glass valves had closed,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: she could not go back. She saw at the end
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: of the vestibule the lift in which she had ascended,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: going quietly up and down empty. Beneath those corridors of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: shining tiles were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the earth. And in each room there sat a human being,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: eating or sleeping, or producing ideas. And very deep in
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: the hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid o machine.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: She murmured and caressed her book and was comforted. Then
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: to the passages that we see in dreams. The lift vanished,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: The book that had been dropped slid to the left
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and vanished. Polished tiles rushed by like a stream of water.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: There was a slight jar, and the airship, issuing from
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: its tunnel, soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It was night. For a moment she saw the coast
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: of Sumatra, edged by the phosphorescence of waves and crowned
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: by lighthouses, still sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: and only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of one skylight into another, as if the universe and
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: not the airship, was careening. And as often happens on
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: clear nights, they seemed now to be in perspective, now
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: on a plain, now piled tier beyond tier into the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: infinite heavens now concealing infinity, a roof limiting forever the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: visions of men. In either case, they seemed intolerable. Are
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: we to travel in the dark? Called the passengers angrily,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: and the attendant, who had been careless, generated the light
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal. When the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: airships had been built, the desire to look direct at
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: things still lingered in the world, hence the extraordinary number
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti's cabin, one
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: a few hours uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: unfamiliar glow, which was the dawn. Quick as the ship
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: had sped westwards, the Earth had rolled eastwards quicker still,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and had dragged back Vashi in her companions towards the Sun.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Science could prolong the night, but only for a little,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and those high hopes of neutralizing the Earth's diurnal revolution
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: had passed, together with hopes that were possibly higher. To
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: keep pace with the Sun, or even to outstrip it,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: had been the aim of the civilization preceding this. Racing
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: aeroplanes had been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: and steered by the greatest intellects of the epoch, round
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: the globe they went round and round, westward, westward, round
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and round. Amidst humanity's applause in vain, the globe went eastward,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: quicker still. Horrible accidents occurred, and the Committee of the Machine,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: at the time, rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and punishable by homelessness. Of homelessness more will be said later.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Doubtless the committee was right. Yet the attempt to defeat
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the Sun aroused the last common interest that our race
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: experienced about the heavenly bodies, or indeed about anything. It
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: was the last time that men were compacted by thinking
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: of a power outside the world. The Sun had conquered,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: yet it was the end of his spiritual dominion. Dawn
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: mid day twilight, the zodiacal path touched neither men's lives
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: nor their hearts, and Science retreated into the ground to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: concentrate herself upon problems that she was certain of solving.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: So when Vashi found her cabin invaded by a rosy
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: finger of light, she was annoyed and tried to adjust
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the blind, But the blind flew up altogether, and she
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: saw through the skylight small pink clouds swaying against the
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: background of blue. And as the sun crept higher, its
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall like a golden sea.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: It rose and fell with the airship's motion, just as
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: waves rise and fall. But it advanced steadily as a
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: tide advances. Unless she was careful, it would strike her face.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: A spasm of horror shook her, and she rang for
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the attendant. The attendant, too was horrified, but she could
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: do nothing. It was not her place to mend the blind.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: She could only suggest that the lady should change her cabin,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: which she accordingly prepared to do. People were almost exactly
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: alike all over the world. But the attendant of the airship,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a little
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: out of the common. She had often to address passengers
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: with direct speech, and this had given her a certain
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: roughness and originality of manner. When Vashtie swerved away from
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the sunbeams with a cry, she behaved barbarically. She put
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: out her hand to steady her. How dare you, exclaimed
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the passenger. You forget yourself. The woman was confused and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: apologized for not having let her fall. People never touched
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: one another. The custom had become obsolete owing to the machine.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Where are we now, asked Vashtie, haughtily. We are over Asia,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: said the attendant, anxious to be polite. Asia. You must
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: excuse my common way of speaking. I had got into
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the habit of calling places over which I passed by
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: their unmechanical names. Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols come
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: from it. Beneath us, in the open air stood a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: city that was once called Simla. Have you ever heard
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of the Mongols? And of the Brisbane School? No Brisbane
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: also stood in the open air. Those mountains to the right.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Let me show you them. She pushed back a metal blind.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: The main chain of the himalays was revealed. They were
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: once called the roof of the world. Those mountains. You
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: must remember that before the dawn of civilization, they seemed
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars. It
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: was supposed that no one but the gods could exist
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: above their summits. How we have advanced thanks to the machine.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: How we have advanced thanks to the machine, said Vashi.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: How we have advanced thanks to the machine, echoed the passenger,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: who had dropped his book the night before, and who
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: was standing in the passage. And that white stuff in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the cracks, what is it? I have forgotten its name?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Cover the windows, please, the mountains give me no ideas.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in deep shadow
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: on the Indian slope. The sun had just prevailed. The
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: purpose of making newspaper pulp. But the snows were awakening
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: to their morning glory, and clouds still hung on the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: breasts of kinchin Junga. In the plain were seen the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: ruins of cities with diminished rivers creeping by their walls,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and by the sides of these were sometimes the signs
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: of vomitories, marking the cities of today. Over the whole prospect,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: airships rushed crossing the intercrossing with incredible aplom and rising
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: nonchalantly when they desired to escape the perturbations of the
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: lower atmosphere and to traverse the roof of the world.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: We have indeed advanced thanks to the machine, repeated the attendant,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and hid the Himalayas behind a metal blind. The day
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: dragged wearily forward. The passengers sat each in his cabin,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: avoiding one another with an almost physical repulsion, and longing
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: to be once more under the surface of the earth.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: There were eight or ten of them, mostly young males,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: sent out from the public nurseries to inhabit the rooms
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of those who had died in various parts of the earth.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: The man who had dropped his book was on the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: homeward journey. He had been sent to Sumatra for the
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: purpose of propagating the race. Vashtie alone was traveling by
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: her own private will. At midday, she took a second
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: glance of the earth. The airship was crossing another range
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: of mountains, but she could see little owing to clouds.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Masses of black rock hovered below her and merged indistinctly
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: into gray. Their shapes were fantastic. One of them resembled
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: a prostrate man. No ideas here, murmured Vashti, and hid
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the Caucasus behind a metal blind. In the evening she
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: looked again. They were crossing a golden sea in which
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated, no
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: ideas here, and hid Greece behind a metal blind. End
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of chapter one.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Chapter two, the mending apparatus, by a vestibule, by a lift,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: by a tubular railway, by a platform, by a sliding door.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: By reversing all the steps of her departure, did Vashti
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: arrive at her son's room, which exactly resembled her own.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: She might well declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the knobs, the reading desk with the book, the temperature,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere, the illumination all were exactly the same. And
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: if Kuno himself, flush of her flush, stood close beside
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: her at last, what profit was there? And that she
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: was too well bred to shake him by the hand.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Averting her eyes, she spoke as follows, here I am.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I have had the most terrible journey and greatly retarded
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: the development of my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: it is not worth it. My time is too pressed.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: The sunlight almost touched me, and I have met with
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: the rudest people. I can only stop a few minutes,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: say what you want to say, and then I must return.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: I have been threatened with homelessness, said Kuno. She looked
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: at him. Now, I have been threatened with homelessness, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: I could not tell you such a thing through the machine.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Homelessness means death. The victim is exposed to the air,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: which kills him. I have been outside since I spoke
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: to you last. The tremendous thing has happened, and they
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: have discovered me. But why shouldn't you go outside? She exclaimed.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: It is perfectly legal, perfectly mechanical to visit the surface
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: of the earth. I have lately been to a lecture
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: on the sea. There is no objection in that. One
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: simply summons a respirator and gets an aggression permit. It
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: is not the kind of thing that spiritually minded people do,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: and I begged you not to do it, but there
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: is no legal objection to it. I did not get
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: an aggression permit. Then how did you get out? I
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: found out a way of my own. The phrase conveyed
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: no meaning to her, and he had to repeat it.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: A way of your own, she whispered. But that would
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: be wrong. Why the question shocked her beyond measure. You
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: are beginning to worship the machine, he said coldly. You
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: think it irreligious of me to have found out a
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: way of my own. It was just what the committee
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: thought when they threatened me with homelessness. At this, she
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: grew angry. I worship nothing, she cried, I am most advanced.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I don't think you irreligious, for there is no such
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: thing as religion left. All the fear and the superstition
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: that existed once had been destroyed by the machine. I
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: only meant that to find out a way of your
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: own was Besides, there is no new way out, so
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: it is always supposed, except through the vomitories, for which
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: one must have an aggression permit, it is impossible to
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: get out. The book says, so well, the book's wrong,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: for I have been out on my feet. Forrcuno was
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: possessed of a certain physical strength. By these days, it
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant was examined
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: at birth, and all who promised undue strength were destroyed.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Humanitarians may protest, but it would have been no true
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: kindness to let an athlete live. He would never have
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: been happy in that state of life to which the
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: machine had called him. He would have yearned for trees
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: to climb, rivers, to bathe in meadows, and hills against
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: which he might measure his body. Men must be adapted
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: to his surroundings, must he not In the dawn of
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: our world, Our weekly must be exposed on Mount Tegatus
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: in its twilight. Our strong will suffer euthanasia, that the
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: machine may progress, that the machine may progress, that the
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: machine may progress eternally. You know we have lost the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: sense of space. We say space is annihilated, But we
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: have annihilated not space, but the sense thereof. We have
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: lost a part of ourselves. I determined to recover it,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and I began by walking up and down the platform
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: of the railway outside my room, up and down until
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: I was tired, and so did recapture the meaning of
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: near and far. Near is a place to which I
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: can get quickly on my feet, not a place to
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: which the train or the airship will take me quickly.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Far is a place to which I cannot get quickly
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: on my feet. The vomitory is far, though I could
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: be there in thirty eight seconds by summoning the train.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Man is the measure that was my first lesson. Man's
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: measure for ownership. His body is the measure for all
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: that is lovable and desirable and strong. Then I went further,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: and it was then that I called to you for
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the first time, and you would not come. This city,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: as you know, is built deep beneath the surface of
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: the earth, with only the vomitories protruding. Having paced the
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: platform outside my own room, I took the lift to
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: the next platform, and paste that also, and so with
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: each in turn, until I came to the topmost above
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: which begins the earth. All the platforms were exactly alike,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: and all that I gained by visiting them was to
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: develop my sense of space and my muscles. I think
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I should have been content with this, it is not
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a little thing. But as I walked and brooded, it
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: occurred to me that our cities had been built in
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: the days when men still breathed the outer air, and
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: that there had been ventilation shafts for the workmen. I
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: could think of nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had they
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: been destroyed by all the food tubes and medicine tubes
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and music tubes that the machine has evolved lately, or
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: did traces of them remain? One thing was certain. If
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I came upon them anywhere, it would be in the
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: railway tunnels of the topmost story. Everywhere else all space
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: was accounted for. I am telling my story quickly. But
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: don't think that I was not a coward, or that
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: your answers never depressed me. It is not the proper thing.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: It is not mechanical. It is not decent to walk
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: along a railway tunnel. I did not fear that I
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: feared something far more intangible, doing what was not contemplated
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: by the machine. Then I said to myself, man is
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: the measure. And I went, and after many visits, I
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: found an opening. The tunnels, of course, were lighted. Everything
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: is light artificial light. Darkness is the exception. So when
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: I saw a black gap in the tiles, I knew
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: it was an exception, and rejoiced. I put in my
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: arm I could put in no more at first, and
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: waved it round and round. In ecstasy. I loosened another
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: tile and put in my head and shouted into the darkness,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: I am coming. I shall do it yet, and my
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: voice reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to hear the
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: spirits of those dead workmen who had returned each evening
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: to the starlight into their wives, and all the generations
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: who had lived in the open air called back to me.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: You will do it yet, you are coming, he paused,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: and absurd as he was, his last words moved her,
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: for Kuno had lately asked to be a father, and
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: his request had been refused by the committee. His was
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: not a type that the machine desired to hand on.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Then a train passed, it brushed by me, but I
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: thrust my head and arms into the hole. I had
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: done enough for one day, so I crawled back to
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: the platform, went down in a lift, and summoned my bed. Ah,
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: what dreams? And again I called you, and again you refused.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: She shook her head and said, don't don't talk of
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: these terrible things you make me miserable. You are throwing
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: civilization away. But I had got back the sense of space,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: and a man cannot rest. Then I determined to get
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: in at the hole and climb the shaft, and so
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I exercised my arms day after day. I went through
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: ridiculous movements until my flush ached and I could hang
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: by my hands and hold the pillow of my bed
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator and started.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: It was easy at first, and the mortar had somehow rotted,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: and I soon pushed some more tiles in and clambered
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: after them into the darkness, and the spirits of the
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: dead comforted me. I don't know what I mean by that.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: I just say what I felt. I felt for the
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: first time that a protest had been lodged against corruption,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: and that even as the dead were comforting me, so
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: explain this? It was naked, Humanity seemed naked. And all
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: been strong, I would have torn off every garment I
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: had and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: my dietetic tabloids, better thus than not at all. There
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: was a ladder made of some primeval metal. The light
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: from the railway fell upon its lowest wrongs, and I
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: saw that it led straight upwards out of the rubble
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: at the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: up and down it a dozen times daily in their building.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: As I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: so that my hands bled. The light helped me for
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: a while, and then came darkness, and worse still, silence,
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: which pierced my ears like a sword. The machine hums.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Did you know that its hum penetrates our blood? It
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: may even guide our thoughts? Who knows I was getting
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: beyond its power? Then I thought, this silence means that
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I am doing wrong. But I heard voices in the silence,
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: and again they strengthened me. He laughed. I had need
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: of them the next moment, I cracked my head against something.
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: She sighed, I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: that defend us from the outer air. You may have
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: noticed them on the air ship. Pitch dark. My feet
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: on the wrongs of an invisible ladder, my hands cut.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I cannot explain how I lived through this part, but
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the voices still comforted me, and I felt for fastenings.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: The stopper, I suppose, was about eight feet across. I
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: passed my hand over it as far as I could reach.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: It was perfectly smooth. I felt it almost to the center,
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: not quite to the center, for my arm was too short.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Then the voice said, jump, It is worth it. There
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: may be a handle in the center, and you may
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: catch hold of it, and so come to us your
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: own way. And if there is no handle, so that
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: you may fall and are dashed to pieces, it is
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: still worth it. You will still come to us your
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: own way. So I jumped. There was a handle, and
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: he paused. Gathered in his mother's eyes, she knew that
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: he was faded. If he did not die to day,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: he would die tomorrow. There was not room for such
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: a person in the world. And with her pity, disgust mingled.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: She was ashamed at having borne such a son, she
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: who had always been so respectable and so full of ideas.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Was he really the little boy to whom she had
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: whom she had given his first lessons in the book?
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: The very hair that disfigured his lip showed that he
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: was reverting to some savage type on ativism. The machine
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: can have no mercy. There was a handle, and I
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: did catch it. I hung entranced over the darkness, and
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: in a dying dream. All these things I had cared about,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: and all the people I had spoken to through tubes
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile, the handle revolved. My weight had
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: set something in motion, and I spanned slowly. And then
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: to the sunshine blood poured from my nose and ears,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: and I heard a tremendous roaring. The stopper, with me
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the earth,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: and the air that we make down here was escaping
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: through the vent into the air above it burst up
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: like a fountain. I crawled back to it for the
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: upper air hurts, and as it were, I took great
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: SIPs from the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows where,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: and my clothes were torn. I just lay with my
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: lips close to the hole, and I sipped until the
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious this hollow
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: in the grass. I will speak of it in a minute.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: The sun shining into it, not brilliantly, but through marble clouds,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: the peace, the nonchalance, the sense of space, and brushing
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: my cheek, the roaring fountain of our artificial air. Soon
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I spied my respirator bobbing up and down in the current.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: High above my head and higher st were the many airships,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: But no one ever looks out of airships, and in
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: my case, they could not have picked me up. There
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I was stranded. The sun shone a little way down
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: the shaft and revealed the topmost wrong of the ladder,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: but it was hopeless trying to reach it. I should
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: either have been tossed up again by the escape, or
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: else have fallen in and died. I could only lie
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: time glancing around me. I knew that I was in Wessex,
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: for I had taken care to go to a lecture
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: on the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: in which we are talking now. It was once an
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: important state. Its kings held all the southern coast from
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: the Andred's Wall to Cornwall, while Wansdyke protected them on
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: the north, running over the high ground. The lecturer was
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: not know how long it remained in international power, nor
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: would the knowledge have assisted me to tell the truth.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: I could do nothing but laugh during this part. There
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: was I with the pneumatic stopper my side, and a
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: respirator bobbing above my head. Imprisoned all three of us
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: in a grass grown hollow that was edged with fern.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Then he grew grave again. Lucky for me that it
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: was a hollow, for the air began to fall back
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: into it and to fill it as water fills a bowl.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I could crawl about. Presently I stood, I breathed a
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: mixture in which the air that hurts predominated. Whenever I
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: I had not lost my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: And as for the machine, I forgot about it altogether.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: My one aim now was to get to the top
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: where the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: I rushed the slope. The new air was still too
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: bitter for me, and I came rolling back after a
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: momentary vision of something gray. The sun grew very feeble,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: and I remembered that he was in Scorpio. I had
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: been to a lecture on that too. If the sun
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: is in Scorpio and you are in Wessex, it means
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: that you must be as quick as you can or
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: it will get too dark. This is the first bit
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: of useful information I have ever got from a lecture,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: and I expect it will be the last. It made
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: me try frantically to breathe the new air and to
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: advance as far as I dared out of my pond.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: The hollow filled so slowly at times I thought that
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the fountain played with less vigor. My respirators seemed to
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: dance nearer the earth. The roar was decreasing. He broke off.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: I don't think this is interesting to you. The rest
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: will interest you even less. There are no ideas in it.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: And I wish I had not troubled you to come.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: We are too different. Mother, She told him to continue.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: had very nearly slipped out of the sky by this time,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: and I could not get a good view. You, who
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: have just crossed the roof of the world will not
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: want to hear an account of the little hills that
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I saw, low, colorless hills. But to me they were living,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: and the turf that covered them was a skin under
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: which their muscles rippled. And I felt that those hills
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: had called with ink calculable force to men in the past,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: and that the men had loved them. Now they sleep,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: perhaps forever, they commune with humanity in dreams. Happy the man,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Happy the woman who awakes the hills of Wessex, For
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: though they sleep, they will never die. His voice rose passionately.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Cannot you see, cannot all your lectures see that it
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: is we who are dying, and that down here the
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: only thing that really lives is the machine. We created
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: the machine to do our will, but we cannot make
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: it do our will. Now It has robbed us of
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: the sense of space and of the sense of touch.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: It has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: to a carnal act. It has paralyzed our bodies and
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: The machine develops, but not on our lines. The machine proceeds,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: but not to our goal. We only exist as the
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: blood corpuscles that course through its arteries. And if it
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: could work without us, it would let us die. Oh,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: I have no or at least only one to tell men,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: again and again that I have seen the hills of
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: Wessex as Alfred saw them when he overthrew the Danes.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: So the sun set. I forgot to mention that a
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: belt of mist lay between my hill and other hills,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and that it was the color of pearl. He broke
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: off for the second time. Go On, said his mother wearily.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: He shook his head. Go on, Nothing that you say
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: can distress me. Now I am hardened. I had meant
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: to tell you the rest, but I cannot. I know
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: that I cannot. Goodbye. Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: were tingling with his blasphemies, but she was also inquisitive.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: This is unfair, she complained. You have called me across
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: the world to hear your story, and hear it. I
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: will tell me as briefly as possible, for this is
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: a disastrous waste of time. Tell me how you return
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: to civilization. Oh that, he said, starting you would like
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: to hear about civilization? Certainly? Had I got to where
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: my respirator fell down? No, but I understand everything now.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: You put on your respirator and managed to walk along
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: the surface of the earth to a vomitory, and there
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: your conduct was reported to the Central Committee by no means.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: He passed his hand over his forehead, as if dispelling
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: some strong impression. Then resuming his narrative, he warmed to
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: it again, My respirator fell about sunset. I had mentioned
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: that the fountain seemed feebler. Had I not yes about sunset?
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: It let the respirator fall, as I said, I had
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: entirely forgotten about the machine, and I paid no great
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: attention at the time, being occupied with other things. I
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: had my pool of air into which I could dip
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: when the outer keenness became intolerable, and which would possibly
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: remain for days, provided that no wind sprang up to
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: disperse it. Not until it was too late did I
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: realize what the stoppage of the escape implied. You see,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: the gap in the tunnel had been mended the mending apparatus.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: The mending apparatus was after me. One other warning I had,
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: but I neglected it. The sky at night was clearer
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: than it had been in the day, and the moon,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: which was about half the sky behind the sun, shone
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: into the dell at moments quite brightly. I was in
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: my usual place on the boundary between the two atmospheres
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: when I thought I saw something dark move across the
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: bottom of the dell and vanish into the shaft. In
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: my folly, I ran down. I bent over and listened,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: and I thought I heard a faint scraping noise in
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: the depths at this, but it was too late. I
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: took alarm. I determined to put on my respirator and
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: to walk right out of the dell. But my respirator
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: had gone. I knew exactly where it had fallen, between
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: the stopper and the aperture, and I could even feel
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: the mark that it had made in the turf. It
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: had gone, and I realized that something evil was at work,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: and I had better escape to the outer air. And
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: if I must die, die running towards the cloud that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: had been the color of a pearl. I never started
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: out of the shaft. It is too horrible. A worm,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: a long white worm, had crawled out of the shaft
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: and was gliding over the moonlit grass. I screamed. I
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: did everything that I should not have done. I stamped
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: upon the creature instead of flying from it, and it
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: at once curled around my ankle. Then we fought the worm.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Let me run all over the dell, but edged up
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: my leg as I ran. Help, I cried, that part
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: is too awful. It belongs to the part that you
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: will never know. Help, I cried, Why cannot we suffer
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: in silence?
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Help?
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: I cried? Then my feet were wound together. I fell.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: I was dragged away from the dear ferns in the
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: living hills and passed the great metal stopper. I can
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: tell you this part, and I thought it might save
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: me again if I caught hold of the handle. It
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: also was enwrapped. It also, Oh, the whole dell was
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: full of the things. They were searching it in all directions.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: They were denuding it and the white snouts of others
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: peeped out of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: could be moved. They brought brushwood, bundles of fern, everything,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: and down we all went, intertwined into hell. The last
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: things that I saw ere the stopper closed after us
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: were certain stars, and I felt that a man of
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: my sort lived in the sky. For I did fight.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: I fought till the very end, and it was only
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: my head hitting against the latter that quieted me. I
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: woke up in this room. The worms had vanished. I
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: was surrounded by artificial light, artificial air, artificial peace, and
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: my friends were calling to me down speaking tubes, to
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: know whether I had come across any new ideas lately.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Here his story ended, discussion of it was impossible, and
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Vashti turned to go it will end in homelessness, she
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: said quietly. I wish it would, retorted Cuno, the machine
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: has been most merciful. I prefer the mercy of God.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: By that superstitious phrase, do you mean that you could
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: live in the outer air? Yes? Have you seen round
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the vomitories the bones of those who were extruded after
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: the Great Rebellion? Yes, they were left where they perished
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: for our edification. A few crawled away, but they perished too,
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Who can doubt it? And so with the homeless of
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: our own day. The surface of the earth supports life
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: no longer. Indeed, ferns and a little grass may survive,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: but all higher life forms have perished. Has any airship
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: detected them? No, has any lecturer dealt with them? No?
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: Then why this obstinacy? Because I have seen them, he exploded.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Seen what?
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Because I have seen her in the twilight, Because she
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: came to my help when I called, Because she too
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: was entangled by the worms, and luckier than I, was
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: killed by one of them, piercing her throat. He was mad.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Vashti departed, nor in the troubles had followed, did she
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: ever see his face again? End of Chapter two two
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: Chapter three, The Homeless. During the years that followed Kuno's escapade,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: two important developments took place in the machine. On the surface,
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: they were revolutionary, but in either case men's minds had
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: been prepared beforehand, and they did but express tendencies that
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: were latent already. The first of these was the abolition
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: of respirators. Advanced thinkers like Vashti had always held it
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: foolish to visit the surface of the Earth. Airships might
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: be necessary, but what was the good of going out
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: for mere curiosity and crawling along for a mile or
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: two in a terrestrial motor. The habit was vulgar and
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: perhaps faintly improper. It was unproductive of ideas, and had
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: no connection with the habits that really mattered. So respirators
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: were abolished, and with them, of course, the terrestrial motors,
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: And except for a few lecturers who complained that they
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: were debarred access to their subject matter, the development was
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: accepted quietly. Those who still wanted to know what the
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Earth was like had, after all, only to listen to
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: some gramophone or to look into some cinematophote. And even
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: the sea was nonetheless stimulating when compiled out of other
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: lectures that had already been delivered on the same subject.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Beware of first hand ideas, exclaimed one of the most
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: advanced of them. First Hand ideas do not really exist.
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: And on this gross foundation, who could erect a philosophy?
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Let your ideas be second hand, and if possible, tenth hand,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: for then they will be far removed from that disturbing
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: element direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: of mine, the French Revolution. Learn instead, would I think
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: that en Chermond thought, Urizen thought, Gutsch thought, Ho Young thought,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Chibo Singh thought, Lafcadio Hearn thought, Carlyle thought. Mirabeau said
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: about the French Revolution. Through the medium of these eight
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: to an idea which you may employ most profitably in
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: your daily lives. But be sure that the intermediates are
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: many and varied. For in history, one authority exists to
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: counteract another. Urazen must counteract the skepticism of how Young
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: and entremon I must myself counteract the impetuosity of Gutsch.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: You who listen to me are in a better position
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: descendants will be even in a better position than you,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: for they will learn what you think I think. And
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: yet another intermediate will be added to the chain, and
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: in time his voice rose there will come a generation
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colorless,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: a generation seraphically free from taint of personality, which will
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: see the French Revolution, not as it happened, nor as
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: they would like it to have happened, but as it
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: would have happened had it taken place in the days
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: of the machine. Tremendous applause greeted this lecture, which did
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: but voice of feeling already latent in the minds of men,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: a feeling that terrestrial facts must be ignored, and that
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: the abolition of respirators was a positive gain. It was
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: even suggested that airships should be abolished too. This was
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: not done because airships had somehow worked themselves into the
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: machine system, but year by year they were used less
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and mentioned less by thoughtful men. The second great development
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: was the re establishment of religion. This too, had been
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: voiced in the celebrated lecture. No one could mistake their
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: reverent tone in which the peroration had concluded, and it
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: awakened a responsive echo in the heart of each Those
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: who had long worshiped silently now began to talk. They
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: described the strange feeling of peace that came over them
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: when they handled the book of the machine, the pleasure
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: that it was to repeat certain numerals out of it,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: however little meeting those numerals conveyed to the outward ear
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: the ecstasy of touching a button, however unimportant, or ringing
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: an electric bell, however superfat. The machine, they exclaimed, feeds
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: us and clothes us and houses us. Through it, we
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: speak to one another. Through it, we see one another.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: In it, we have our being. The machine is the
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition. The machine
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: is omnipotent, eternal, blessed is the machine. And before long
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: this allocution was printed on the first page of the book,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: and in subsequent editions the rituals swelled into a complicated
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: system of praise and prayer. The word religion was sedulously avoided,
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: and in theory the machine was still the creation and
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: the implement of man. But in practice all save a
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: few retrogrades worshiped it as divine, nor was it worshiped
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: in unity. One believer would be chiefly impressed by the
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: blue optic plates through which he saw other believers, others
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: by the mending apparatus which sinful Kudo had compared to worms,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: another by the liths, another by the book, and each
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: would pray to this or to that, and ask it
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: to intercede for him with the machine. As a whole
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: persecution that was also present. It did not break out,
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: for reasons that will be set forward shortly, but it
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: was latent. In all who did not accept the minimum
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: known as undenominational mechanism lived in danger of homelessness, which
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: means death, as we know. To attribute these two great
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: developments to the Central Committee is to take a very
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: it is true, but they were no more the cause
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: the cause of war. Rather, did they yield to some
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: invincible pressure, which came no one knew whither, and which,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: To such a state of affairs, it is convenient to
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: give the name of progress. No one confessed the machine
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: was out of hand. Year by year it was served
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: the duties of his neighbor, and in all the world
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: there was not one who understood the monster as a whole.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions,
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: it is true, and their successors had, each of them
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: mastered a portion of those directions. But humanity, in its
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: riches of nature too far, quietly and complacently. It was
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: progress of the machine. As for Vashti, her life went
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: peacefully forward until the final disaster. She made her room
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: dark and slept. She awoke and made the room light.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: She lectured and attended lectures. She exchanged ideas with her
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: innumerable friends, and believed she was growing more spiritual. At times,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: a friend was granted euthanasia and left his or her
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: room for the homelessness that is beyond all human conception.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Vashi did not much mind. After an unsuccessful lecture, she
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: would sometimes ask for euthanasia herself, but the death rate
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: was not permitted to exceed the birth rate, and the
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: machine had hitherto refused it to her. The troubles began quietly,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: long before she was conscious, of them. One day, she
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: was astonished at receiving a message from her son. They
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: never communicated, having nothing in common, and she had only
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: heard indirectly that he was still alive and had been
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: transferred from the northern hemisphere, where he had behaved so mischievously,
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: to the southern, indeed, to a room not far from
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: her own. Does he want me to visit him? She thought?
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Never again, never, and I have not the time. No,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: it was madness of another kind. He refused to visualize
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: his face upon the blue plate, and, speaking out of
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: the darkness with solemnity, said, the machine stops. What do
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: you say? The machine is stopping. I know it, I
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: know the signs. She burst into a peal of laughter.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: He heard her and was angry, and they spoke no more.
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine anything more absurd? She cried to a friend,
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: A man who was my son, believes that the machine
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: is stopping. It would be impious if it was not mad.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: The machine is stopping. Her friend replied, what does that mean?
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: The phrase conveys nothing to me, nor to me he
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: does not refer I suppose to the trouble there has
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: been lately with the music. Oh no, of course, not
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: let us talk about music. Have you complained to the authorities, Yes,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: and they say it wants mending, and referred me to
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: the Committee of the mending Apparatus. I complained of those
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: curious gasping sighs that disfigure the symphonies of the Brisbane School.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: They sound like someone in pain. The Committee of the
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: mending apparatus say that it shall be remedied shortly, obscurely Worried,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: she resumed her life. For one thing, the defect in
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: the music irritated her. For another thing, she could not
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: forget Kuno's speech. If he had known that the music
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: was out of repair, he could not know it, for
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: he detested music. If he had known that it was wrong,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: the machine stops was exactly the venomous sort of remark
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: he would have made. Of course, he had made it
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: at a venture. But the coincidence annoyed her, and she
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: spoke with some petulance to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: They replied, as before, that the defect would be set
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: right shortly, shortly, at once. She retorted, why should I
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: be worried by imperfect music? Things are always put right
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: at once If you do not mend it at once.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I shall complain to the Central Committee. No personal complaints
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: are received by the Central Committee. The Committee of the
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: Mending Apparatus replied, through whom am I to make my complaint?
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Then through us I complain. Then your complaint shall be
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: forwarded in its turn. Have others complained? This question was unmechanical,
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: and the Committee of the Mending Apparatus refused to answer it.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: It is too bad, she exclaimed to another of her friends.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: There never was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: can never be sure of my music. Now it gets
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: worse and worse each time I summon it. I too
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: have my troubles, the friend replied. Sometimes my ideas are
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: interrupted by a slight jarring noise. What is it? I
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: do not know whether it is inside my head or
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: inside the wall. Complaint. In either case, I have complained,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: and my complaint will be forwarded in its turn to
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: the Central Committee. Time passed, and they resented the defects
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the machine.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: The sigh of the crisis of the Brisbane Symphony no
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: longer irritated Vashti. She accepted it as part of the melody.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: was no longer resented by her friend. And so with
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: the moldy artificial fruit, and so with the bath water
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: that began to stink, and so with the defective rhymes
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: that the poetry machine had taken to emit all were
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Things went from bad to worse unchallenged. It was otherwise
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: with the failure of the sleeping Eye sparatus that was
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: a more serious stoppage. There came a day when, over
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: the whole world, in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: cities of Courland and Brazil, the bends, when summoned by
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: their tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: ludicrous matter, but from it we may date the collapse
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: of humanity. The committee responsible for the failure was assailed
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: by complainants, whom it referred, as usual to the Committee
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: of the Mending Apparatus, who, in its turn assured them
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: that their complaints would be forwarded to the central Committee.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: But the discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: adaptable to do without sleeping. Someone is meddling with the machine,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: they began. Someone is trying to make himself king. To
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: reintroduce the personal element. Punish that man with homelessness. To
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: the rescue, Avenge the machine, Avenge the machine, war kill
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: the man. But the Committee of the Mending Apparatus now
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: came forward and allayed the panic with well chosen words.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: It confessed that the mending Apparatus was its indeed of repair.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: The effect of this frank confession was admirable, of course,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: said a famous lecturer, he of the French Revolution, who
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: gilded each new decay with splendor. Of course, we shall
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: not press our complaints now. The Mending Apparatus has treated
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: us so well in the past that we all sympathize
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: with it, and will wait patiently for its recovery. In
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: its own good time, it will resume its duties. Meanwhile,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: let us do without our beds, our tabloids, our little wants,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: such I feel sure would be the wish of the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: machine thousands of miles away. His audience applauded. The machines
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: still linked them under the seas, beneath the roots of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: the mountains, where in the wires through which they saw
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: and heard the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: and the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: one garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: remained ungrateful, For it was rumored that euthanasia, too was
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: out of order, and that pain had reappeared among men.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: It became difficult to read. A blight entered the atmosphere
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: and dulled its luminosity. At times Vashti could scarcely see
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: across her room. The air too was foul, loud, were
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: the complaints impotent in the remedies heroic? The tone of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: the lecturer as he cried, courage, courage, What matter? So
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: long as the machine goes on to it, the darkness
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: and the light are won. And though things improved again
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: after a time, the old brilliancy was never recaptured, and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: humanity never recovered from its entrance into twilight. There was
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: an hysterical talk of measures of provisional dictatorship, and the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: inhabitants of Sumatra were asked to familiarize themselves with the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: workings of the central power station, the said power station
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: being situated in France. But for the most part, panic reigned,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: and men spent their strength praying to their books tangible
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: proofs of the machine's omnipotence. There were gradations of terror.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: At time came rumors of hope. The mending apparatus was
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: almost mended. The enemies of the machine had been got under.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: New nerve centers were evolving, which wh would do the
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: work even more magnificently than before. But there came a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down all over
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: the world, and the world as they understood it ended.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: Vashi was lecturing at the time, and her earlier remarks
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: had been punctuated with applause. As she proceeded, the audience
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: became silent, and at the conclusion there was no sound.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: Somewhat Displeased, she called to a friend who was a
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: specialist in sympathy. No sound, doubtless, the friend was sleeping,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: and so with an next friend, whom she tried to summon,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: and so with the next until she remembered Kuno's cryptic remark,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: the machine stops. The phrase still conveyed nothing. If eternity
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: was stopping, it would of course be set going shortly.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: For example, there was still a little light and air.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: The atmosphere had improved a few hours previously. There was
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: still the book, and while there was the book, there
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: was security. Then she broke down, for with the cessation
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: of activity came in unexpected terror. Silence. She had never
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: known silence, and the coming of it nearly killed her.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: It did kill many thousands of people outright. Ever since
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: her birth, she had been surrounded by the steady hum.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: It was to the ear what artificial air was to
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head, And
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and pressed
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: her cell. Now the door of the cell worked on
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: a simple hinge of its own. It was not connected
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: with the central power station dying far away in France.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: It opened, rousing immoderate hopes in Vashti, for she thought
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: that the machine had been mended. It opened, and she
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: saw the dim tunnel that curved far away towards freedom.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: One look, and then she shrank back, for the tunnel
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: was full of people. She was almost the last in
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: that city to have taken alarm. People at any time
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: repelled her. And these were nightmares from her worst dreams.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: People were crawling about. People were screaming, whimpering, gasping for breath,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: touching each other, vanishing in the dark, and ever and
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: anon being pushed off the platform onto the live rail.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: Some were fighting round the electric bells, trying to summon
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: trains which could not be summoned. Others were yelling for euthanasia,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: or for respirators, or blespheming the machine. Others stood at
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: the doors of their cells, fearing, like herself, either to
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: stop in them or to leave them. And behind all
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: the uproar was silence, the silence which is the voice
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: of the earth and of the generations who have gone No.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: It was worse than solitude. She closed the door again
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: and sat down to wait for the end. The disintegration
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: went on, accompanied by horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: that restrained the medical apparatus must have weakened, for it
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: ruptured and hung hideously from the ceiling. The floor heaved
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: and fell and flung her from her chair. A tube
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: oozed towards her serpent fashion, and at last the final
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: horror approached. Light began to ebb, and she knew that
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: civilizations life day was closing. She whirled round, praying to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: be saved from this at any rate, kissing the book,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: pressing button after button. The uproar outside was increasing and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: even penetrated the wall. Slowly, the brilliancy of her cell
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: was dimmed, the reflections faded from her metal switches. Now
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: she could not see the reading stand, now, not the book,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: though she held it in her hand. Light followed the
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: flight of sound. Air was following light, and the original
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: void returned to the cavern from which it had been
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: so long excluded. Fashti continued to whirl like the devotees
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: of an earlier religion, screaming, praying, striking at the buttons
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: with bleeding hands. It was thus that she opened her
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: prison and escaped. Escaped in the spirit, at least so
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: it seems to me. Ere My meditation closes that she
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: escapes in the body. I cannot perceive that she struck
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: by chance the switch that released the door, and the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: rush of foul air on her skin. The loud, throbbing
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: whispers in her ears told her that she was facing
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: the tunnel again, and that tremendous platform on which he
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: had seen men fighting. They were not fighting now. Only
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: the whispers remained, and the little whimpering groans. They were
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: dying by the hundreds out in the dark. She burst
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: into tears. Tears answered her. They wept for humanity, those two,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: not for themselves. They could not bear that this should
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: be the end. Ere silence was completed. Their hearts were opened,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: visible man who had once made God in his image,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: and had mirrored his strength on the constellations. Beautiful naked
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: colors of culture, sown with the threads of self denial,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: and heavenly it had been so long as it was
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: a garment, and no more so long as man could
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: shed it at will and live by the essence that
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: is his soul and the essence equally, that is his body.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: The sin against the body. It was for that that
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: they wept in chief. The centuries are wrong, against the
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: muscles and the nerves, those five portals by which we
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: can alone apprehend glausing it over with talk of evolution,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: until the body was white pap the home of ideas
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: as colorless, less, sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: grasped the stars. Where are you, she sobbed, his voice
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: in the darkness, said here is there any hope? Kuno
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: none for us? Where are you? She crawled towards him
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: over the bodies of the dead. His blood spurted over
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: her hands. Quicker, he gasped, I am dying, but we touch,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: we talk, not through the machine. He kissed her. We
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: have come back to our own We die, but we
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: have recaptured life as it was in Wessex when Alfred
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: over through the Danes. We know what they know outside,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: those who dwelt in a cloud that is the color
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: of a pearl. But Cuno, is it true? Are there
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: still man on the surface of the earth? Is this,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: this tunnel, this poisoned darkness, really not the end? He replied,
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: I have seen them, spoken to them, love them. They
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: are hiding in the mist and the ferns until our
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: civilization stops. Today they are the homeless. Tomorrow, Oh, tomorrow,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: some fool will start the machine again. Tomorrow, never said Cuno.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Never humanity has learnt its lesson. As he spoke, the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: whole city was broken like a honeycomb. An airship had
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: sailed in through the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: crashed downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: with its wings of steel. For a moment they saw
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: the nations of the dead, and before they joined them
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: scraps of the untainted sky. End of Chapter three, End
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: of The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster