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01 - The Machine Stops - E M Forster · Daily Sci-Fi Books

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