Latest / Astounding Sci-Fi Story Collection / As Long as You Wish

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As Long as You Wish · Astounding Sci-Fi Story Collection

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: As long as you wish. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: by Shawn O'Hara. As Long as You Wish by John
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: O'Keefe began reading. The patient sat stiffly in the leather
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: chair on the other side of the desk. Nervously, he
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: pressed a coin into the palm of one hand. Just
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: start anywhere, I said, and tell me about it as before.
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  Speaker 1: Without waiting for an answer, he continued, the coin clutched
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  Speaker 1: tightly in one hand. I am Charles J. Fisher, Professor
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  Speaker 1: philosophy at Riser College. He looked at me quickly, or
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  Speaker 1: at least I was until recently. For a second, his
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  Speaker 1: face was boyish professor philosophy. That is. I smiled and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: found that I was staring at the coin in his hand.
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  Speaker 1: He gave it to me. On one side. I read
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  Speaker 1: the words the statement on the other side of this
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  Speaker 1: coin is false. The patient watched me with an expressionless face.
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  Speaker 1: I turned over. The coin was engraved with the words
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  Speaker 1: the statement on the other side of this coin is false.
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  Speaker 1: That's not the problem. He said, not my problem. I
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  Speaker 1: had the coin made when I was an undergraduate. I
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed reading one side, turning it over, reading the other side,
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  Speaker 1: and so on, a Phoenish enjoyment, like boys planning where
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  Speaker 1: to put the tipped over outhouse. I looked at the patient.
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  Speaker 1: He was thirty eight, single, medium build and had an
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  Speaker 1: MA and pH d from an eastern university. I knew
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  Speaker 1: this and more from the folder on my desk eight
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  Speaker 1: months ago, he continued. I read about the sphere found
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  Speaker 1: in Peney Island. He stopped, looking at me questioningly. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I know, I said. I opened my desk drawer, took
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: out a clipping from the newspaper and handed it to him.
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  Speaker 1: That's it, I read the clipping before putting it back
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  Speaker 1: in the drawer. Manila, September twenty fourth, I and US
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  Speaker 1: archaeologists from the University of California have discovered an earth
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  Speaker 1: fault of recent quake, a sphere of two feet in
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  Speaker 1: diameter of an unidentify viable material. Doctor Carl Schwartz, head
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  Speaker 1: of the group, said sphere was returned to the university
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  Speaker 1: for study. He declined to answer questions on cultural origin
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  Speaker 1: of the sphere. There wasn't any more in the newspaper
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  Speaker 1: about it. He said, I have a friend in California
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  Speaker 1: who got me the photographs. He looked at me intently.
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  Speaker 1: You won't believe any of this. He pressed a coin
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  Speaker 1: into the palm of his hand. You won't be able
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  Speaker 1: to the photographs, he continued, as if lecturing, were of
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  Speaker 1: characters projected by the sphere. When placed before focused light,
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  Speaker 1: the sphere was transparent, you see, embedded with dark microscopic specks.
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  Speaker 1: By moving the sphere a certain distance each time, there
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  Speaker 1: was a total projection of three hundred and sixty different
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  Speaker 1: characters and eighteen different orderings, or nineteen different orderings if
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  Speaker 1: you count one. That was a list of all the characters.
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  Speaker 1: I made a mental note of the numbers. I felt
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  Speaker 1: they were significant, As I said, he continued, I obtained
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  Speaker 1: photographs of characters, very strange shapes, totally unlike the characters
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  Speaker 1: of Oriental languages. But yet that was the closest way
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  Speaker 1: to describe them forward in his chair, except, of course,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: ostensibly later, I said, I want to get through the
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  Speaker 1: preliminaries first. There would be time later to see the
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  Speaker 1: photographs the characters projected by the sphere he said, weren't
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  Speaker 1: like the characters of any known language. He paused dramatically,
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  Speaker 1: there was reason to believe they had origin in an
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  Speaker 1: unknown culture, a culture more scientifically advanced than our own.
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  Speaker 1: And the reason for the supposition, I asked, the material?
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  Speaker 1: The material of the sphere. It could only be roughly
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  Speaker 1: classified as ferroplastic, totally unknown, amazing in perviousness, a synthetic material,
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  Speaker 1: hardily the product of a former culture. For mars, I said, smiling.
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  Speaker 1: There were all kinds of conjectures, but of course the
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  Speaker 1: important thing was to see if the projections of characters
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  Speaker 1: was a message. The message, if any, would mean more
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  Speaker 1: than any conjecture you translated it. He polished coin on
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  Speaker 1: his jacket. You won't dare believe it, he said, sharply.
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  Speaker 1: He cleared his throat and stiffened it into a more
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  Speaker 1: rigid posture. It wasn't exactly translation, you see. To us,
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  Speaker 1: none of the characters had designation. They were just characters.
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  Speaker 1: So it was a problem of decoding, I asked. As
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  Speaker 1: it turned out, no, decoding is dependent on knowledge of
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  Speaker 1: language characteristics, characteristics of known languages. Decoding was tried, but
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  Speaker 1: without success. Now what we had to find was a
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  Speaker 1: key to the language, you mean, like the room stones
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  Speaker 1: more or less. In principle, we needed a picture of
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  Speaker 1: a cow and a sign of meaning indicating one of
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  Speaker 1: the characters. For me, there is no possibility of finding
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  Speaker 1: similarities between the characters and characters of other languages. That
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  Speaker 1: would require tremendous linguistic knowledge and library facilities. Nor could
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  Speaker 1: I use a decoding approach that would require special knowledge
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  Speaker 1: of techniques and access to electronic computers and other mechanical aids. No,
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  Speaker 1: I had to work on the assumption that the key
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  Speaker 1: to the sphere was implicit. In the sphere, you hope
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  Speaker 1: to find a key to the language in the language itself, exactly,
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  Speaker 1: you know. Of course, some languages do do you have
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  Speaker 1: an implicit key, For example hieroglyphics or picture language. The
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  Speaker 1: word for cow is a picture of a cow. He
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  Speaker 1: looked at the toes of his shoes. You won't be
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  Speaker 1: able to believe it. It's impossible to believe. I used the
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  Speaker 1: word impossible in its logical sense in most languages, He continued,
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  Speaker 1: looking up from the shoes. The sound of some words
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  Speaker 1: themselves indicate the meaning of the word automonic p at
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  Speaker 1: words like bow wow, buzz and the key to the
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  Speaker 1: unknown language. I asked, how did you find it? I
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  Speaker 1: watched him push the coin against the back of his arm,
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  Speaker 1: then lifted and read backwards letter pressed into his skin.
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  Speaker 1: He looked up at me and smiled. I built models
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  Speaker 1: of the characters, big material ones, exactly proportionate of the
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  Speaker 1: ones projected. Then, quite by accident, I viewed one of
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  Speaker 1: them through a glass globe size of the original sphere.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think I saw? What I notice? He
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  Speaker 1: had a boyish look. Again, a distortion of the model.
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  Speaker 1: But that's not what's important. The distortions on study gave
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  Speaker 1: specific visual entities, like when looking at one of those
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  Speaker 1: strict pictures and suddenly seeing the line in the grass.
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  Speaker 1: The lines outlining the line are there all the time,
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  Speaker 1: only the observer has to view them as the outline
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  Speaker 1: of a line. It was the same with models of
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  Speaker 1: the characters, except the shapes that appeared were not lines
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  Speaker 1: and other recognizable things, but they did suggest. He pressed
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  Speaker 1: a coin against his forehead, closed his eyes, and appeared
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  Speaker 1: to be thinking deeply. Yes, impossible to believe. No one
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  Speaker 1: can believe it. In addition to the visual response, the
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  Speaker 1: distortions gave me definite feelings, not mixtures of feelings, but
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  Speaker 1: one definite emotional experience. How do you mean one character,
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  Speaker 1: when viewed through the globe, gave me a visual image
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  Speaker 1: and at the same time a strong feeling of light hilarity.
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  Speaker 1: I take it, then, that these distortions seemed to cunnote
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  Speaker 1: meanings rather than denote them. You might say that their
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  Speaker 1: meaning was conveyed through a gestalled experience on the part
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  Speaker 1: of the observer. Yes, each character gave a definite gestalt,
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  Speaker 1: but the gestal was the same for each observer, or
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  Speaker 1: at least for thirty five observers. There is an eighty
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  Speaker 1: percent correlation. I whistled softly, and the translation doctor, What
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: would you say if I told you the translation was unbelievable,
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  Speaker 1: that it couldn't be seriously entertained by any man? What
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  Speaker 1: if I said that it would take the sanity of
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  Speaker 1: any man who believed it, I would say it might
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  Speaker 1: well be incorrect. He took some papers from his pocket
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  Speaker 1: and laughed excitedly, slumping down in the chair. This is
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  Speaker 1: the complete translation in idiomatic English. I'm going to let
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  Speaker 1: you read it, but first I want you to consider
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  Speaker 1: a few things. He hid the papers behind the back
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  Speaker 1: of his chair. His face became even more boyish, almost
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  Speaker 1: as if he were deciding where to put the tipped
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  Speaker 1: over outhouse. Consider first, doctor, that there were a total
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  Speaker 1: projection of three hundred and sixty different characters, the same
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  Speaker 1: number as a number of degrees in a circle. Consider
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  Speaker 1: also that there are eighteen different orderings of the characters,
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  Speaker 1: or nineteen counting the alphabetical list. The square root of
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  Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty would lie between eighteen and nineteen. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: I said, I remember there is something significant about the numbers,
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  Speaker 1: but I wasn't sure that it was this. Consider also,
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  Speaker 1: he continued, that the communication was through the medium of
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  Speaker 1: a sphere. Moreover, keep in mind that physics accepts the
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  Speaker 1: path of a beam of light as its definition of
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  Speaker 1: a straight line. Yet the path is a curve. If
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  Speaker 1: extended sufficiently, it would be a circle the section of
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  Speaker 1: a sphere. All right, I said. By now, the patient
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  Speaker 1: was pounding the coin against the sole of one shoe,
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  Speaker 1: and he said, keep in mind that in some sense
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  Speaker 1: time can be thought of as another dimension. He suddenly
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  Speaker 1: thrust papers at me and sat back in the chair.
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  Speaker 1: I picked up the translation and began reading. The patient
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  Speaker 1: sat stiffly in the leather chair on the other side
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of the desk. Nervously, he pressed a coin into the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: palm of one hand. Just start anywhere, I said, and
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: tell me about it as before. Without waiting for an answer,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: he continued, the coin clutched tightly in one hand. I'm
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  Speaker 1: try Earls J. Fisher, professor of philosophy at Riser College.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: He looked at me quickly, or at least I was
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  Speaker 1: until recently. For a second, his face was boyish professor philosophy.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: That is, I smiled and found that I was staring
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: at the coin in his hand. He gave it to me.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: On one side. I read the words the statement on
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  Speaker 1: the other side of this coin is false. The patient
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  Speaker 1: watched me with an expressionless face. End of As Long
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  Speaker 1: as You Wish by John O'Keefe