Science and technology seem to advance in wild leaps. Something tremendous is discovered, then there is a breathing space. War accelerates the process of discovery. Primitive man discovered the wheel, the lever, fire and language. After the Dark Ages there was a great upsurge of scientific discovery. Amazing new knowledge was added almost daily. Today progress is faster than ever. The Twentieth Century is the Age of the Machine. Men use machines. Tomorrow, machines may use men. Imagine a world where everything is dependent on automatic machinery. Imagine a world where men have forgotten how to service the machines that serve them. Imagine the chaos, the horror and the conflicts when the machines begin to fail. Are flesh and blood superior to metal and plastic?
Release date:
December 30, 2013
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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YOUNG JERRY MALONE lay on his back in an extremely comfortable, upholstered bunk. Gentle, subdued light from a score of skilfully concealed sources illuminated his compartment. Within easy reach of his hand, as he lay on the bunk, were the controls which operated his feeding mechanism. Immediately above them, and requiring but little extra effort to be manipulated, lay the entertainment controls. On the colour screen directly above his head he knew that one touch of his finger would bring any kind of entertainment that he chose. He could have a dramatic production, he could have music; he could have a whirling cadenza of pure sound and colour.
And yet the knowledge that he could have all these things did not bring him any particular happiness or contentment. He lay back staring pensively at the empty screen. He had no idea what it was that gave him this feeling of ‘wrongness’, he just knew somehow instinctively, deep down within himself, that things were not as they ought to be. He looked up at the screen.
“What are you here for?”
The plastic stared back at him blankly. He repeated his question, this time with a savage, angry, bitter edge to his voice.
“What are you here for?” His shout echoed round and round the compartment. He sat up startled at the angry sound of his own voice. The sudden movement had made his heart flutter rapidly; he sat perfectly still breathing deeply but unnaturally quickly. The blank screen, close above his head now that he was sitting up, continued to stare down at him as though in some strange way it disapproved of the noise that he had made. He felt bored—bored to hell … and yet he knew that the touch of a switch would bring the entertainments that would end his boredom. Maybe he didn’t want to end it? Perhaps that was what had accounted for the strange feeling of wrongness. He picked up his machine manual, well-read, well-thumbed. He knew it inside out, back-to-front, cover-to-cover. He felt a certain kind of reverence for that book.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden buzzing of a communication panel, somebody wished to have words with him. He laid the book down with a rather guilty start and stared once more at the disapproving blank screen above his bed. Moving slowly and carefully he swung his feet on to the floor, for sudden movement, he knew, was not desirable, it had a deleterious effect upon the system, particularly upon the circulatory and respiratory systems, which were unable to keep up with the unexpected demands of sudden movement. They functioned perfectly as long as he remained prone, supine or sedentary. They did not like physical action.
He focused the communication panel; a face appeared; he knew it well, it was the face of Jorgenson; Jorgenson was the engineer. Young Jerry Malone studied the face carefully, it was very leonine in character; there was about it nobility and strength. It was deeply lined with age and with great concern. It was etched with responsibility. The eyes were two jet black glowing orbs sunk deep in wrinkled wells of dark, shadowy flesh. Jorgenson was not only old, he was sick, he was very, very sick … With a startled shock young Jerry Malone realised that Jorgenson was dying. The fire in the eyes was still there but it was burning low. The black glow was the glow of an ember rather than the glow of vivid, burning black flame that it had once been.
Jerry Malone suddenly felt sick with terror, his whole world, his compartment, his place in the great machine scheme was collapsing beneath him. Jorgenson could not die! Jorgenson was the engineer!
“Oh machine, Oh machine!” he thought out loud, his mouth twitching, “Jorgenson is the last engineer! Oh God, machine! Jorgenson is the last engineer! He cannot die! He must not die!”
It was not until Jorgenson spoke that he realised that he himself had been speaking out loud, and that his words had reached Jorgenson at the other end of the communication equipment.
“All men must die, Jerry Malone. Even I, Jorgenson, the last engineer, even I must die. I, upon whom you all depend! We are none of us immortal; I have forced this aged frame to fight the Battle of Life for long outside my allotted span, but now even I can fight no longer, I have nothing left with which to fight.
“There is much that I would say to you, Jerry Malone, for I shall not have time to tell all our people; you must tell them for me. I could not stand the strain of communicating this to them over the usual channels.”
How odd, thought young Malone to hear the familiar phrases coming so strangely from a man who will soon use them no more.
The grey-fringed, leonine old head was nodding into the communication panel.
“Jerry, my boy, I want you to do something you have never done before. I want you to do it for me now, at once.”
“Anything, great Engineer!” Jerry was aware as he spoke that there were tears in his eyes, “Anything,” he repeated. “For you I would even,” he hesitated, “I would even leave my compartment!”
“That is good,” said the Engineer, “for that is precisely what I want you to do!”
Jerry gave a startled gasp.
“Really? You really want me to leave the compartment?”
“I want you to leave the compartment,” repeated old Jorgenson, “Now! When you open the door turn to your right, count three doors, pass them all, and open the fourth. All the doors will be on your right. Pass three, open the fourth; is that clear?”
“Do I count my own door as one of them?” asked Jerry.
“If you count your own door, count it as one, pass three and then open the fifth. If you do not count your own door, open the fourth. Do not be afraid. There is nothing in the corridor that will hurt you or give you cause to fear. I have much to say to you, and I do not wish to say it through the communication channel.”
“Your voice is weak, great Engineer!”
“My voice is weak, as I am myself,” replied Jorgenson. “Hurry lad, hurry! If you do not hear these things it will be the worse for all of my people.”
JERRY MALONE could scarcely believe the words that he had just heard. In all his twenty years of life he had never left the compartment. As soon as he had been able to leave his mother he had been brought there. The machine had supplied his every want, his food, his air his warmth—everything. The compartment was a shell, a cocoon in which he lived; he felt unbelievably naked as he left the shelter of its walls. The well-thumbed manual which he knew by heart contained the necessary instructions for working the emergency catch on the exit door, yet, well as he knew them in theory, in practice it was a very different matter! The very effort of standing erect upon his feet was a strange new sensation. There was scarcely enough strength in his thin lower limbs to support the weight of his flabby body. Staggering like a drunken man, moving with the uncertain gait of a very young toddler, he made his way grotesquely out into the corridor.
He left the door of his compartment deliberately open so that he would have no difficulty in getting back. It seemed strangely cold, bare and empty in the corridor. He had never seen anything in his life before, so far as he could consciously remember, except the inside of his own compartment.
The corridor was long, rectangular in section, and illuminated at infrequent intervals by cold, unfriendly ceiling lights; it was a forbidding, frightening place, and Jerry Malone wished that the Engineer, Jorgenson, had not called him out into this bare and unfriendly passage. Slowly and uncertainly, leaning on the wall for support as he staggered along, Malone counted the doors. He made his own one, then he had to count two, three, four, and … this must be it … There was an outside handle, it seemed to project from the metal panelling like a challenge. He was trembling in every limb, his breath was coming in short, jerky gasps, he felt utterly and absolutely exhausted, although he had scarcely taken more than three score paces. He need both hands to operate the handle of the door, then he had to lean on it so that the full weight of his flabby, unhealthy looking body could bring sufficient pressure on the handle to release the catch. There was a loud, sharp ‘click’, the sound startled him, for the machine dwellers were not used to sudden, sharp sounds. He gave a little gasp of te. . .
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