September 27, 2025 • 17 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Jovian Jest by Lilith Lorraine. Consternation reigned in Elsnore
village when the nameless thing was discovered in farmer Burns's
corn patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that
it was some sort of meteor from interstellar space, reporters,
scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of
prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that
(00:23):
the thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at
night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it
was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the
soft sand scarcely more than a few inches. By the
time the first group of newspaper men and scientists had
reached the farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The thing
was growing. Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had
(00:45):
already built a picket fence around his starry visitor and
was charging admission. He also flatly refused to permit the
shipping off of specimens or even the touching of the object.
His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly clung to
the theory that possession is nine points in law. It
was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day
after the fall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth.
(01:08):
His colleagues crowded around him as he pointed out this peculiarity,
and soon they discovered another factor, pulsation, larger than a
small balloon and gradually, almost imperceptibly expanding, with its vicid
transparency shot through with opalescent lights. The thing lay there
in the deepening twilight and palpably shivered. As darkness descended,
a sort of hellish radiance began to ooze from it.
(01:31):
I say hellish because there is no other word to
describe that spectral, sulfurous emanation. As the hangers on around
the pickets shudderingly shrank away from the weird light that
was streaming out to them and tinting their faces with
a ghastly greenish pallor, Farmer Burns's small boy, moved by
some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He
(01:51):
picked up a good sized stone and flung it straight
at the nameless mass. Instead of veering off and falling
to the ground as from an impact with metal, the
stone sank right through the surface of the thing as
into a pool of protoplasmic slime. When it reached the
central core of the object, a more abundant life suddenly
leaped and pulsed from center to circumference. Visible waves of
(02:13):
sentient color circled round the solid stone, stabbing swords of
light leaped forth from them, piercing the stone, crumbling it,
absorbing it. When it was gone, only a red spot,
like a bloodshot eye, throbbed eerly where it had been.
Before the now thoroughly mystified crowd had time to remark
upon this inexplicable disintegration, a more horrible manifestation occurred. The thing,
(02:36):
as though thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusual fare,
was putting forth a tentacle right from the top of
the shivering globe. It pushed sluggishly, weaving and prescient of doom. Wavering,
it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally, it
shot straight outward, swift as a rattler's strike, before the
closely packed crowd could give room for escape, and it
(02:58):
circled the neck of the nearest by stander. Bill Jones,
a cattleman and jerked him, writhing and screaming, into the
reddish core. Stupefied with soul chilling terror. With their mass
consciousness practically annihilated before a deed with which their minds
could make no association, the crowd could only gasp in
sobbing unison and await the outcome. The absorption of the
(03:19):
stone had taught them what to expect, and for a
moment it seemed that their worst anticipations were to be realized.
The sluggish currents circled through the thing, swirling the victim's
body to the center. The giant tentacle drew back into
the globe and became itself a current. The concentric circles merged, tightened,
became one gleaming cord that encircled the helpless prey. From
(03:42):
the inner circumference of this cord shot forth not the
swords of light that had powdered the stone to atoms,
but myriads of radiant tentacles that gripped and cupped the
body in a thousand places. Suddenly, the tentacles withdrew themselves,
all save the ones that grasped the head. These seemed
to tighten their pressure to swell and pulse with a
grayish substance that was flowing from the cups into the cord,
(04:04):
and from the cord into the body of the mass. Yes,
it was a grayish something, a smokelike essence, that was
being drawn from the cranial cavity. Bill Jones was no
longer screaming and gibbering, but was stiff with the rigidity
of stone. Notwithstanding, there was no visible mark upon his body.
His flesh seemed unharmed. Swiftly came the awful climax. The
(04:26):
waving tentacles withdrew themselves, the body of Bill Jones lost
its rigidity. A heaving motion from the center of the
thing propelled its cargo to the surface, and Bill Jones
stepped out. Yes, he stepped out and stood for a moment,
staring straight ahead, staring at nothing. Glassily. Every person in
the shivering, paralyzed group knew instinctively that something unthinkable had
(04:48):
happened to him, something had transpired, something hitherto possible only
in the abysmal spaces of the other side of things. Finally,
he turned and faced the nameless object, raising his arms stiffly, automatically,
as in a military salute. Then he turned and walked jerkily,
mindlessly round and round the globe, like a wooden soldier marching. Meanwhile,
(05:09):
the thing lay quiescent gorged. Professor Ralston was the first
to find his voice. In fact, Professor Ralston was always
finding his voice in the most unexpected places. But this
time it had caught a chill. It was trembling, gentlemen.
He began looking down academically upon the Motley crowd, as
though doubting the aptitude of his salutation. Fellow citizens, He corrected,
(05:33):
the phenomenon we have just witnessed is to the lay
mind inexplicable to me and to my honorable colleagues, added,
as an afterthought, it is quite clear, quite clear, indeed,
we have before us a specimen, a perfect specimen, I
might say, of a of a he stammered in the
presence of the unnameable. His hesitancy caused the rapt attention
(05:55):
of the throng that was waiting breathlessly for an explanation
to flicker back to the inexplicable. In the fraction of
a second that their gaze had been diverted from the
thing to the professor. The object had shot forth another tentacle,
gripping him round the neck and choking off his sentence
with a horrid rasp that sounded like a death rattle.
Needless to say, the revolting process that had turned Bill
(06:15):
Jones from a human being into a mindless automaton was
repeated with Professor Ralston. It happened, as before, too rapidly
for intervention, too suddenly for the minds of the onlookers
to shake off the paralysis of an unprecedented nightmare. But
when the victim was thrown to the surface, when he
stepped out, drained of the grayish, smokelike essence, a tentacle
still gripped his neck, and another rested directly on top
(06:38):
of his head. This latter tentacle, instead of absorbing from him,
visibly poured into him what resembled a threadlike stream of
violet light. Facing the cowering audience, with eyes staring glassily,
still in the grip of the unknowable, Professor Ralston did
an unbelievable thing. He resumed his lecture at the exact
point of interruption. But he spoke with the tonelessness of
(07:00):
a machine, a machine that pulsed to the will of
a dictator, inhuman and inexorable. What you see before you,
the voice continued, The voice that no longer echoed the
thoughts of the professor is what you would call an amiba,
a giant amiba. It is I, this amiba, who am
addressing you, children of an alien universe. It is I who,
(07:22):
through this captured instrument of expression, whose queer language you
can understand, am explaining my presence on your planet. I
pour my thoughts into this specialized brain box, which I
have previously drained of its meager thought content. Here, the
honorable colleagues nudged each other gleefully. I have so drained
it for the purpose of analysis, and that the flow
(07:43):
of my own ideas may pass from my mind to yours,
unimpeded by any distortion that might otherwise be caused by
their conflict with the thoughts of this individual. First, I
absorbed the brain content of this being, whom you call
Bill Jones. But I found his mental instrument unavailable. It
was technical, untrained in the use of your words that
would best convey my meaning. He possesses more of what
(08:05):
you would call innate intelligence, but he has not perfected
the mechanical brain through whose operation. This innate intelligence can
be transmitted to others and applied for practical advantage. Now,
this creature that I am using is as you might say,
full of sound without meaning. His brain is a lumber
room in which he has hoarded a conglomeration of clever
(08:25):
and appropriate word forms with which to disguise the paucity
of his ideas with which to express nothing. Yet the
very abundance of the material in his store room furnishes
a discriminating mind with excellent tools for the transportation of
its ideas into other minds. Know then that I am
not here by accident. I am a space wanderer, an
(08:45):
explorer from a super universe whose evolution has proceeded without
variation along the line of your amiba. Your evolution, as
I perceive from an analysis of the brain content of
your professor, began its unfoldment in somewhat the same manner
as our own, but in your smaller system, less perfectly
adjusted than our own to the cosmic mechanism, a series
(09:05):
of cataclysms occurred. In fact, your planetary system was itself
the result of a catastrophe, or of what might have
been a catastrophe had the two great suns collided, whose
near approach caused the wrenching off of your planets. From
this colossal accident rare. Indeed, in the annals of the stars,
an endless chain of accidents was born, a chain of
(09:25):
which this specimen, this professor, and the species that he represents,
is one of the weakest links. Your infinite variety of
species is directly due to the variety of adaptations necessitated
by this train of accidents. In the super universe from
which I come, such derangements of the celestial machinery simply
do not happen. For this reason, our evolution is unfolded
(09:47):
harmoniously along one line of development, whereas yours has branched
out into diversified in grotesque expressions of the life principle.
Your so called highest manifestation of this principle, namely, your
own species, is characterized by a great number of specialized organs.
Through this very specialization of functions, however, you have forfeited
(10:08):
your individual immortality, and it has come about that only
your life stream is immortal. The primal cell is inherently immortal,
but death follows in the wake of specialization. We the
beings of this Amiba universe are individually immortal. We have
no highly specialized organs to break down under the stress
of environment. When we want an organ, we create it.
(10:31):
When it has served its purpose, we withdraw it into ourselves.
We reach out our tentacles and draw to ourselves whatsoever
we desire. Should a tentacle be destroyed, we can put
forth another. Our universe is beautiful beyond the dreams of
your most inspired poets. Whereas your landscapes, though lovely, are stationary,
unchangeable except through herculean efforts, ours are protean, eternally changing
(10:56):
with our own substance. We build our minarets of light,
piercing the aura of infinity. At the bidding of our wills.
We create, preserve, destroy, only to build again more gloriously.
We draw our sustenance from the primates, as do your plants,
and we constantly replace the electronic base of these primates
with our own emanations, in much the same manner as
(11:18):
your nitrogenous plants revitalize your soil. While we create and
withdraw organs at will, we have nothing to correspond to
your five senses. We derive knowledge through one sense only,
or shall I say a supersense We see and hear,
and touch and taste and smell and feel and know,
not through any one organ, but through our whole structure.
(11:41):
The homogeneous force of our omnous substance subjects a plural
world to the processing of a powerful unity. We can
dissolve our bodies at will, retaining only the permanent atom
of our being, the seed of life dropped on the
soil of our planet by infinite intelligence. We can propel
this indestructible seed on them light rays through the depths
(12:01):
of space. We can visit the farthest universe with the
velocity of light, since light is our conveyance in reaching
your little world I have consumed. A million years from
my world is a million light years distant. Yet to
my race, a million years is one of your days.
On arrival at any given destination, we can build our
(12:21):
bodies from the elements of the foreign planet. We attain
our knowledge of conditions on any given planet by absorbing
the thought content of the brains of a few representative
members of its dominant race. Every well balanced mind contains
the experience of the race, the essence of the wisdom
that the race soul has gained during its residence in matter.
(12:41):
We make this knowledge a part of our own thought content,
and thus the universe lies like an open book before us.
At the end of a given experiment in thought absorption,
we return the borrowed mind stuff to the brain of
its possessor. We reward our subject for his momentary discomfiture
by pouring into his body our splendid vitality. This lengthens
(13:02):
his life expectancy immeasurably by literally burning from his system
the germs of actual or incipient ills that contaminate the
blood stream. This, I believe, will conclude my explanation, an
explanation to which you, as a race in whom intelligence
is beginning to dawn, are entitled. But you have a
long road to travel. Yet your thought channels are pitifully
(13:23):
blocked and criss crossed with nonsensical and inhibitory complexes that
stand in the way of true progress. But you will
work this out, for the divine spark that pulses through
us of the larger universe pulses also through you. That spark,
once lighted, can never be extinguished, can never be swallowed
up again in the primeval slime. There is nothing more
(13:45):
that I can learn from you. Nothing that I can
teach you at this stage of your evolution. I have
but one message to give you, one thought to leave
with you. For John, you are on the path. The
stars are over you. Their light is flashing into your
soul's thess the slogan of the Federated Suns, beyond the
frontiers of your little warring worlds. For John, the voice
(14:07):
died out like the chiming of a great bell, receding
into immeasurable distance. The superciliest tones of the Professor had
yielded to the sweetness and the light of the greater mind,
whose instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at
the last with a golden resonance that seemed to echo
down vast, spaceless corridors beyond the furthermost outposts of time.
(14:29):
As the voice faded out into a sacramental silence, the
strangely assorted throng, moved by a common impulse, lowered their
heads as though in prayer. The great globe pulsed and
shimmered throughout its sentient depths like a sea of liquid jewels.
Then the tentacle that grasped the Professor drew him back
toward the scintillating nucleus. Simultaneously, another arm reached out and
(14:51):
grasped Bill Jones, who during the strange lecture, had ceased
his wooden soldier marching and had stood stiffly at attention.
The bo bodies of both men within the nucleus were
encircled once more by the single current. From it again
put forth the tentacles, cupping their heads, But the smokelike
essence flowed back to them this time, and with it
(15:12):
flowed a tiny threadlike stream of violet light. Then came
the heaving motion, when the shimmering currents caught the two
men and tossed them forth, unharmed, but visibly dowured with
a radiance of more abundant life. Their faces were positively glowing,
and their eyes were illuminated by a light that was
surely not of Earth. Then, before the very eyes of
the marveling people, the great globe began to dwindle. The
(15:35):
jeweled lights intensified, concentrated, merged, until at last remained only
a single spot, no larger than a pin head, but
whose radiance was notwithstanding searing excruciating. Then the spot leaped
up up into the heavens, whirling, dipping and circling as
in a gesture of farewell, and finally soaring into invisibility
(15:56):
with the blinding speed of light. The whole wild, allly
improbable occurrence might have been dismissed as a queer case
of mass delusion for such cases or not unknown to history,
had it not been followed by convincing aftermath. The culmination
of a series of startling coincidences, both ridiculous and tragic,
at last brought men face to face with an incontestable fact,
(16:18):
namely that Bill Jones had emerged from his fiery baptism
endowed with the thought expressing facilities of Professor Ralston, while
the professor was forced to struggle along with the meager
educational appliances of Bill Jones. In this ironic manner, the
space wanderer had left unquestionable proof of his visit by
rendering a tribute to innate intelligence and playing a Jovian
(16:40):
jest upon an educated fool, a neat transposition. A columbus
from a vaster, kindlier universe had paused for a moment
to learn the story of our pigmy system. He had
brought us a message from the outermost citadels of life,
and had flashed out again on his eonic voyage from
everlasting unto everlasting End of the Jovian Jest by Lilith
(17:03):
Lorraine
The Jovian Jest by Lilith Lorraine. Consternation reigned in Elsnore
village when the nameless thing was discovered in farmer Burns's
corn patch. When the rumor began to gain credence that
it was some sort of meteor from interstellar space, reporters,
scientists and college professors flocked to the scene, desirous of
prying off particles for analysis. But they soon discovered that
(00:23):
the thing was no ordinary meteor, for it glowed at
night with a peculiar luminescence. They also observed that it
was practically weightless, since it had embedded itself in the
soft sand scarcely more than a few inches. By the
time the first group of newspaper men and scientists had
reached the farm, another phenomenon was plainly observable. The thing
was growing. Farmer Burns, with an eye to profit, had
(00:45):
already built a picket fence around his starry visitor and
was charging admission. He also flatly refused to permit the
shipping off of specimens or even the touching of the object.
His attitude was severely criticized, but he stubbornly clung to
the theory that possession is nine points in law. It
was Professor Ralston of Princewell who, on the third day
after the fall of the meteor, remarked upon its growth.
(01:08):
His colleagues crowded around him as he pointed out this peculiarity,
and soon they discovered another factor, pulsation, larger than a
small balloon and gradually, almost imperceptibly expanding, with its vicid
transparency shot through with opalescent lights. The thing lay there
in the deepening twilight and palpably shivered. As darkness descended,
a sort of hellish radiance began to ooze from it.
(01:31):
I say hellish because there is no other word to
describe that spectral, sulfurous emanation. As the hangers on around
the pickets shudderingly shrank away from the weird light that
was streaming out to them and tinting their faces with
a ghastly greenish pallor, Farmer Burns's small boy, moved by
some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He
(01:51):
picked up a good sized stone and flung it straight
at the nameless mass. Instead of veering off and falling
to the ground as from an impact with metal, the
stone sank right through the surface of the thing as
into a pool of protoplasmic slime. When it reached the
central core of the object, a more abundant life suddenly
leaped and pulsed from center to circumference. Visible waves of
(02:13):
sentient color circled round the solid stone, stabbing swords of
light leaped forth from them, piercing the stone, crumbling it,
absorbing it. When it was gone, only a red spot,
like a bloodshot eye, throbbed eerly where it had been.
Before the now thoroughly mystified crowd had time to remark
upon this inexplicable disintegration, a more horrible manifestation occurred. The thing,
(02:36):
as though thoroughly awakened and vitalized by its unusual fare,
was putting forth a tentacle right from the top of
the shivering globe. It pushed sluggishly, weaving and prescient of doom. Wavering,
it hung for a moment, turning, twisting, groping. Finally, it
shot straight outward, swift as a rattler's strike, before the
closely packed crowd could give room for escape, and it
(02:58):
circled the neck of the nearest by stander. Bill Jones,
a cattleman and jerked him, writhing and screaming, into the
reddish core. Stupefied with soul chilling terror. With their mass
consciousness practically annihilated before a deed with which their minds
could make no association, the crowd could only gasp in
sobbing unison and await the outcome. The absorption of the
(03:19):
stone had taught them what to expect, and for a
moment it seemed that their worst anticipations were to be realized.
The sluggish currents circled through the thing, swirling the victim's
body to the center. The giant tentacle drew back into
the globe and became itself a current. The concentric circles merged, tightened,
became one gleaming cord that encircled the helpless prey. From
(03:42):
the inner circumference of this cord shot forth not the
swords of light that had powdered the stone to atoms,
but myriads of radiant tentacles that gripped and cupped the
body in a thousand places. Suddenly, the tentacles withdrew themselves,
all save the ones that grasped the head. These seemed
to tighten their pressure to swell and pulse with a
grayish substance that was flowing from the cups into the cord,
(04:04):
and from the cord into the body of the mass. Yes,
it was a grayish something, a smokelike essence, that was
being drawn from the cranial cavity. Bill Jones was no
longer screaming and gibbering, but was stiff with the rigidity
of stone. Notwithstanding, there was no visible mark upon his body.
His flesh seemed unharmed. Swiftly came the awful climax. The
(04:26):
waving tentacles withdrew themselves, the body of Bill Jones lost
its rigidity. A heaving motion from the center of the
thing propelled its cargo to the surface, and Bill Jones
stepped out. Yes, he stepped out and stood for a moment,
staring straight ahead, staring at nothing. Glassily. Every person in
the shivering, paralyzed group knew instinctively that something unthinkable had
(04:48):
happened to him, something had transpired, something hitherto possible only
in the abysmal spaces of the other side of things. Finally,
he turned and faced the nameless object, raising his arms stiffly, automatically,
as in a military salute. Then he turned and walked jerkily,
mindlessly round and round the globe, like a wooden soldier marching. Meanwhile,
(05:09):
the thing lay quiescent gorged. Professor Ralston was the first
to find his voice. In fact, Professor Ralston was always
finding his voice in the most unexpected places. But this
time it had caught a chill. It was trembling, gentlemen.
He began looking down academically upon the Motley crowd, as
though doubting the aptitude of his salutation. Fellow citizens, He corrected,
(05:33):
the phenomenon we have just witnessed is to the lay
mind inexplicable to me and to my honorable colleagues, added,
as an afterthought, it is quite clear, quite clear, indeed,
we have before us a specimen, a perfect specimen, I
might say, of a of a he stammered in the
presence of the unnameable. His hesitancy caused the rapt attention
(05:55):
of the throng that was waiting breathlessly for an explanation
to flicker back to the inexplicable. In the fraction of
a second that their gaze had been diverted from the
thing to the professor. The object had shot forth another tentacle,
gripping him round the neck and choking off his sentence
with a horrid rasp that sounded like a death rattle.
Needless to say, the revolting process that had turned Bill
(06:15):
Jones from a human being into a mindless automaton was
repeated with Professor Ralston. It happened, as before, too rapidly
for intervention, too suddenly for the minds of the onlookers
to shake off the paralysis of an unprecedented nightmare. But
when the victim was thrown to the surface, when he
stepped out, drained of the grayish, smokelike essence, a tentacle
still gripped his neck, and another rested directly on top
(06:38):
of his head. This latter tentacle, instead of absorbing from him,
visibly poured into him what resembled a threadlike stream of
violet light. Facing the cowering audience, with eyes staring glassily,
still in the grip of the unknowable, Professor Ralston did
an unbelievable thing. He resumed his lecture at the exact
point of interruption. But he spoke with the tonelessness of
(07:00):
a machine, a machine that pulsed to the will of
a dictator, inhuman and inexorable. What you see before you,
the voice continued, The voice that no longer echoed the
thoughts of the professor is what you would call an amiba,
a giant amiba. It is I, this amiba, who am
addressing you, children of an alien universe. It is I who,
(07:22):
through this captured instrument of expression, whose queer language you
can understand, am explaining my presence on your planet. I
pour my thoughts into this specialized brain box, which I
have previously drained of its meager thought content. Here, the
honorable colleagues nudged each other gleefully. I have so drained
it for the purpose of analysis, and that the flow
(07:43):
of my own ideas may pass from my mind to yours,
unimpeded by any distortion that might otherwise be caused by
their conflict with the thoughts of this individual. First, I
absorbed the brain content of this being, whom you call
Bill Jones. But I found his mental instrument unavailable. It
was technical, untrained in the use of your words that
would best convey my meaning. He possesses more of what
(08:05):
you would call innate intelligence, but he has not perfected
the mechanical brain through whose operation. This innate intelligence can
be transmitted to others and applied for practical advantage. Now,
this creature that I am using is as you might say,
full of sound without meaning. His brain is a lumber
room in which he has hoarded a conglomeration of clever
(08:25):
and appropriate word forms with which to disguise the paucity
of his ideas with which to express nothing. Yet the
very abundance of the material in his store room furnishes
a discriminating mind with excellent tools for the transportation of
its ideas into other minds. Know then that I am
not here by accident. I am a space wanderer, an
(08:45):
explorer from a super universe whose evolution has proceeded without
variation along the line of your amiba. Your evolution, as
I perceive from an analysis of the brain content of
your professor, began its unfoldment in somewhat the same manner
as our own, but in your smaller system, less perfectly
adjusted than our own to the cosmic mechanism, a series
(09:05):
of cataclysms occurred. In fact, your planetary system was itself
the result of a catastrophe, or of what might have
been a catastrophe had the two great suns collided, whose
near approach caused the wrenching off of your planets. From
this colossal accident rare. Indeed, in the annals of the stars,
an endless chain of accidents was born, a chain of
(09:25):
which this specimen, this professor, and the species that he represents,
is one of the weakest links. Your infinite variety of
species is directly due to the variety of adaptations necessitated
by this train of accidents. In the super universe from
which I come, such derangements of the celestial machinery simply
do not happen. For this reason, our evolution is unfolded
(09:47):
harmoniously along one line of development, whereas yours has branched
out into diversified in grotesque expressions of the life principle.
Your so called highest manifestation of this principle, namely, your
own species, is characterized by a great number of specialized organs.
Through this very specialization of functions, however, you have forfeited
(10:08):
your individual immortality, and it has come about that only
your life stream is immortal. The primal cell is inherently immortal,
but death follows in the wake of specialization. We the
beings of this Amiba universe are individually immortal. We have
no highly specialized organs to break down under the stress
of environment. When we want an organ, we create it.
(10:31):
When it has served its purpose, we withdraw it into ourselves.
We reach out our tentacles and draw to ourselves whatsoever
we desire. Should a tentacle be destroyed, we can put
forth another. Our universe is beautiful beyond the dreams of
your most inspired poets. Whereas your landscapes, though lovely, are stationary,
unchangeable except through herculean efforts, ours are protean, eternally changing
(10:56):
with our own substance. We build our minarets of light,
piercing the aura of infinity. At the bidding of our wills.
We create, preserve, destroy, only to build again more gloriously.
We draw our sustenance from the primates, as do your plants,
and we constantly replace the electronic base of these primates
with our own emanations, in much the same manner as
(11:18):
your nitrogenous plants revitalize your soil. While we create and
withdraw organs at will, we have nothing to correspond to
your five senses. We derive knowledge through one sense only,
or shall I say a supersense We see and hear,
and touch and taste and smell and feel and know,
not through any one organ, but through our whole structure.
(11:41):
The homogeneous force of our omnous substance subjects a plural
world to the processing of a powerful unity. We can
dissolve our bodies at will, retaining only the permanent atom
of our being, the seed of life dropped on the
soil of our planet by infinite intelligence. We can propel
this indestructible seed on them light rays through the depths
(12:01):
of space. We can visit the farthest universe with the
velocity of light, since light is our conveyance in reaching
your little world I have consumed. A million years from
my world is a million light years distant. Yet to
my race, a million years is one of your days.
On arrival at any given destination, we can build our
(12:21):
bodies from the elements of the foreign planet. We attain
our knowledge of conditions on any given planet by absorbing
the thought content of the brains of a few representative
members of its dominant race. Every well balanced mind contains
the experience of the race, the essence of the wisdom
that the race soul has gained during its residence in matter.
(12:41):
We make this knowledge a part of our own thought content,
and thus the universe lies like an open book before us.
At the end of a given experiment in thought absorption,
we return the borrowed mind stuff to the brain of
its possessor. We reward our subject for his momentary discomfiture
by pouring into his body our splendid vitality. This lengthens
(13:02):
his life expectancy immeasurably by literally burning from his system
the germs of actual or incipient ills that contaminate the
blood stream. This, I believe, will conclude my explanation, an
explanation to which you, as a race in whom intelligence
is beginning to dawn, are entitled. But you have a
long road to travel. Yet your thought channels are pitifully
(13:23):
blocked and criss crossed with nonsensical and inhibitory complexes that
stand in the way of true progress. But you will
work this out, for the divine spark that pulses through
us of the larger universe pulses also through you. That spark,
once lighted, can never be extinguished, can never be swallowed
up again in the primeval slime. There is nothing more
(13:45):
that I can learn from you. Nothing that I can
teach you at this stage of your evolution. I have
but one message to give you, one thought to leave
with you. For John, you are on the path. The
stars are over you. Their light is flashing into your
soul's thess the slogan of the Federated Suns, beyond the
frontiers of your little warring worlds. For John, the voice
(14:07):
died out like the chiming of a great bell, receding
into immeasurable distance. The superciliest tones of the Professor had
yielded to the sweetness and the light of the greater mind,
whose instrument he had momentarily become. It was charged at
the last with a golden resonance that seemed to echo
down vast, spaceless corridors beyond the furthermost outposts of time.
(14:29):
As the voice faded out into a sacramental silence, the
strangely assorted throng, moved by a common impulse, lowered their
heads as though in prayer. The great globe pulsed and
shimmered throughout its sentient depths like a sea of liquid jewels.
Then the tentacle that grasped the Professor drew him back
toward the scintillating nucleus. Simultaneously, another arm reached out and
(14:51):
grasped Bill Jones, who during the strange lecture, had ceased
his wooden soldier marching and had stood stiffly at attention.
The bo bodies of both men within the nucleus were
encircled once more by the single current. From it again
put forth the tentacles, cupping their heads, But the smokelike
essence flowed back to them this time, and with it
(15:12):
flowed a tiny threadlike stream of violet light. Then came
the heaving motion, when the shimmering currents caught the two
men and tossed them forth, unharmed, but visibly dowured with
a radiance of more abundant life. Their faces were positively glowing,
and their eyes were illuminated by a light that was
surely not of Earth. Then, before the very eyes of
the marveling people, the great globe began to dwindle. The
(15:35):
jeweled lights intensified, concentrated, merged, until at last remained only
a single spot, no larger than a pin head, but
whose radiance was notwithstanding searing excruciating. Then the spot leaped
up up into the heavens, whirling, dipping and circling as
in a gesture of farewell, and finally soaring into invisibility
(15:56):
with the blinding speed of light. The whole wild, allly
improbable occurrence might have been dismissed as a queer case
of mass delusion for such cases or not unknown to history,
had it not been followed by convincing aftermath. The culmination
of a series of startling coincidences, both ridiculous and tragic,
at last brought men face to face with an incontestable fact,
(16:18):
namely that Bill Jones had emerged from his fiery baptism
endowed with the thought expressing facilities of Professor Ralston, while
the professor was forced to struggle along with the meager
educational appliances of Bill Jones. In this ironic manner, the
space wanderer had left unquestionable proof of his visit by
rendering a tribute to innate intelligence and playing a Jovian
(16:40):
jest upon an educated fool, a neat transposition. A columbus
from a vaster, kindlier universe had paused for a moment
to learn the story of our pigmy system. He had
brought us a message from the outermost citadels of life,
and had flashed out again on his eonic voyage from
everlasting unto everlasting End of the Jovian Jest by Lilith
(17:03):
Lorraine
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