January 2, 2026 • 30 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
My Way. Welcome to a half hour of mind Way
(00:59):
short story from the World's Speculatively Fiction. This is Michael
(01:23):
Anson with a Mindweb story from New World's Quarterly number three,
which was edited by Michael Moorcock. This is the Machine
in Chaft ten, written by Joyce Churchill. Although I was
(02:03):
later to become intimately involved with Professor Nicholas Bruton in
the final fatal events at the base of Shaft ten,
I was prevented, by a series of personal disasters from
taking much interest in the original announcement of his curious
discovery at the center of the Earth. A copy of
National Geographic containing the Professor's immaculate geological proof for the
(02:23):
presence of an emotion converter varied at the core of
the planet lay unread in my desk for a month,
and I'm ashamed to say. The international scientific uproar precipitated
by the sinking of the B series of exploratory shafts
asked me why one is morally entitled? I believe to
some life of one's own, even to the detriment of
(02:45):
one's public self. I did, however, hear the end of
a broadcast talk given by the Professor soon after the
appearance of a national geographic article to an audience made
up of interested parties from the English scientific community. But
interested may not be the best word to use in
this context. Their behavior was undignified and made listening rather difficult.
(03:09):
Despite that, I found myself fascinated by his conclusions. What
he said was this a gentleman, I can see no
alternative to a radical readjustment of man's view of himself
and his universe. I have shown beyond doubt. I believe
that our emotions, subsequent to their processing, that the core
of the Earth, are converted to an essentially radiological energy
(03:32):
and projected into space in the direction of his son.
We have no descriptive systems capable of dealing with whatever
changes they effect there We must, however, is my recently
published work shows view this as an artificial process, and
more important, a process of very long standing. Indeed, a gentleman,
(03:54):
we have no option but to assume that the joys
and miseries of man are fuel for some gigantic cosmic machine.
That since our evolution as an emotion bearing species, we
have been used that our most public triumphs and our
most sordid personal tragedies may be the oil and runs
the galactic bakery van. How does it feel, gentlemen, to
(04:18):
be a resource? Well, my resignation from the cabinet had
only recently come into effect. Finding it difficult to shake
off old habits, I wondered how my ex colleagues would
react to the news. Fairburn took the government to the
country and was promptly thrown out on his ear. Beyond that,
I was unconcerned by the machine at the center of
(04:40):
the Earth until I received, in the July of that
year a visit from the professor himself. By then, of course,
his work had been verified and his credibility as an
investigator completely restored. Social and religious hysteria was at a peak,
fifty new administrations and a hun good novel, Creeds, It
(05:01):
sprung up during the week following Shaft ten's attainment of
Machine zero. Perhaps the most amazing feature of this whole
affair was the speed at which a successful shaft was sunk.
The few rational observers who remained in the world were
left to reflect cynically that, even when convinced of the
true purpose of his ideological conflicts, emotional sumps in the
(05:24):
growing terminology of the machine. Man could find no more
original method of expressing himself than to multiply them. Several
small wars, dormant for some time, ramped over Southeast Asia
and the Middle East with refreshed ferocity. I feared privately
that the emotion converter would suffer an overload of faith
(05:45):
and patriotism, triggering some ements metaphysical catastrophe as its capacitors
exhausted themselves into the surrounding magma. A change had come
about in the Professor's attitude to his discovery. He was
no longer interested in pure science, he explained, as I
ushered him into the study of my summer home at Limb,
but in something he called action. I remember very few
(06:09):
of the impressions I received at that first meeting there,
obscured by later images of him clothed and equipped for
his descent of chaft Ten, I can recall being almost
repelled by his physiology. He was a peculiarly small man
with an immense sad head. I believe that earlier in
his career he had written a paper which offered some
new light on the physical characteristics of Darwin, da Vincian Socrates,
(06:34):
all three of them were it seems less than five
feet tall, and his features were birdlike to an exaggerated degree,
too well defined for the comfort of his friends and
the gift to his enemies. Frankly, he told me, frankly,
I've come to you for finance, and I found it surprising.
(06:54):
I'd imagined that in his present commanding situation he would
have access to considerable finances. As soon as he was said,
I had done a line of research that he felt worthwhile,
he told me there are more important things than research.
He looked down at his tiny, blunt hands for a moment.
We didn't deserve this lutkin, any of us. He seemed
(07:16):
to be uncomfortable with the sentiment. There is a way
to stop it, though, you know, he went on quite defiantly,
I'm sure you don't like living with that thing down
there anymore than I do. He was making the transition
common in that decade, the fumbling shift from concern for
abstracts to a more active involvement with the results of
(07:39):
his work. When he refused to tell me the nature
of the scheme, he wished me to support. I politely
but firmly refused to commit myself. But the vanity of
the failed public figure. The half conscious realization that if
I helped him, I would retrieve my position as a
substantial contributor to the mainstream of events weakened my rejection severely.
(08:02):
Two days later he called again and left with my
promise of limited support, seeming to be decided by myself,
in exchange for an assurance that I would accompany him
on any expedition to the center of the Earth. At
the end of July, my personal affairs adjusted themselves most equably,
(08:22):
in my time, being once more my own. I studied
the news media daily. The Professor had dropped sharply out
of the public gaze, and I learned very little of him,
beyond that he had shut himself away somewhere in Cumberland
and refused to make comment, even on the wealth of
material being generated by the investigatory teams at the base
of Shaft ten. Extant newsreel films of his retreat in
(08:45):
Honiston Pass show a square stone cottage set among somber,
desolate hills. Most of the news through August in the
beginning of September was of a steady social and moral adjustment,
which can perhaps best be expressed in the decline of
the authoritative religions. A complex front of Druidic and Neo
(09:05):
Mayan cults swept out of centers as widely dissimilar as
Peach Valley, California and Saint Anne's Lancashire. All had basically
apocalyptic premises and a solar orientation. But the religion of
the decade began in Chile, when a minor nihilist and
political agitator named Cornelius persuaded two thousand people to drown
(09:27):
themselves in the Pacific Ocean. The Roman Catholic Church was
the major casualty of this period. Cornelius's queer religion of
despair spread rapidly across Latin America. Later the world, Pope
Pious declared him the anti Christ and was assassinated by
a sensible Bolivian. While blessing the crowd in Lima Perule,
(09:51):
massive silent mobs gathered to hear Cornelius and his disciple
announced that since man was incapable of independent action decision making,
all that was left to him was to choose the
manner of his own death as unemotionally as possible, thus
depriving the machine of its raw materials. As I have said,
(10:12):
I saw nothing of the professor, but in October he
began to draw regularly on the Lloyd's account I had
opened in his name, and he continued to make his
presence felt in this manner until late December. I received
one letter from him, hastily written in somewhat stilted tone.
He was worried. He informed me that local hysteria would
prematurely end his preparations. Bands of armed agricultural workers were
(10:35):
active in the area of Keswick, destroying machinery and isolated houses.
But I therefore authorized his purchase of a quantity of
small arms so that his staff might protect themselves. D
notices and the heavy security blanket then in effect prevented
any public report of such grill activity. I wasn't anxious
to subscribe to any program of violence, and asked Bruton
(10:58):
if he could not finish his work. There was a
space of some days before he replied by telephone. I
noticed immediately an alteration in the character of his voice,
a side product I assumed of as successfully completing the
transition I've mentioned above. He was adamant in his demand
for the weapons, and I was duly presented with an
invoice from a well known private arms dealer. I felt nervous,
(11:22):
but resigned. In January, almost a year after the discovery
of the machine, I received a cryptic telegram dispatched from Keswick.
Two days later. I was trained for Retford in Nottinghamshire
and the head of Shaft ten. The B series of
(11:42):
shafts had created their own micro climate a result of
the volcanic failure of shafts four through to six. Consequently,
most of the county lacked the blanket of January snow
that covered the rest of the Midlands, and over its flat,
once productive beat fields hung a war warm, oppressive mist.
(12:03):
A small Vesuvian cone reared up from the site of
the Teacher Training College disaster at Eton, East Retford. Classic
basalt formations had inundated the colliery town of Workshop. Immense
long chain proteum molecules had been observed forming in the
heated pools of wiste chemicals discharged by the shaft projects
(12:25):
among the suburban lava flows of Retford. Bruton telephoned soon
after I had booked into my hotel. He limited himself
to rather brusque directions for finding Shaft ten and instructions
as to the type of clothing I should wear. When
I pressed him for further information, he resorted to obscurity.
That was at approximately ten o'clock in the evening. It
(12:47):
seemed ray strange to me that we were to begin
the descent almost at once. I ate a light meal
and a quell my growing nervousness about becoming incredible journey
into the underworld. Decided to walk the head of the shaft.
Faint volcanic flares lit the Ortzel Road as I went,
(13:08):
and through breaks in the midst I could see electrical
will of the wisps dancing around the summit of the
eden Colne. The service buildings for the shaft were located
on the corpse of Ortsell Wood. A few remaining bitter
trees were outlined against the massive pre cast concrete sheds
that housed the shaft refrigeration turbines. In the darkness, the
(13:32):
ground vibrated palpably. Subsonics from the deeper levels of the
shaft itself trembled in my bones. I stood beyond the
arc lights that surrounded the checkpoint gates, sweating in the
heat of the nearest extractor outlet, amazed by man's ability
to construct such enormous extensions of himself, despite the tyranny
(13:56):
of his most basic psychological processes. Had we not been
bred specifically as a power source for the emotion converter,
what might we not have accomplished? Two large land roveries
drew up behind me and disgorged the professor and his staff.
At our first meeting, the watery eyed scientist in Bruton's
(14:18):
skull had been retreating under pressure from other elements of
the man's personality. Now he had vanished completely, and the
tiny figure standing before me, dressed in a closely fitting
black overall, was composed, self assured, and powerful. The disproportion
of his big Avian head no longer invited caricature. It
(14:39):
was still desperately ugly, but a tremendous change had occurred
Behind his eyes. He was carrying a light shoulder pack
across which was drapped one of the machine pistols he
had ordered in December. I was dismayed. I said, look here, Brutany,
you don't need that thing. A glance at the dozen
or so men who lodged on the vehicles behind him
(14:59):
confirmed that they were similarly armed. He said, I'm sorry, Lutkin,
but things ain't quite what you've taken them to be.
I should have explained, there never were any Luddites in Keswick,
at least not while I was there. I'm sorry there
was an unpardonable deception here. He shook his head apologetically,
(15:19):
and I noticed that he was in need of a barber.
He went on, But the only chance I had to
get the stuff, no grants committee would have considered it.
That's why I had to have you. You must do
without me from now on, Professor I was sick with anger.
I turned my back on him and made to walk
off in the direction of the town. He put a
(15:41):
surprisingly powerful hand in my arm. I can't allow you
to do that, look, he told me. Look, Lutkin, I
told you that there was a way to stop the thing,
and there is. But did you seriously expect that I
would be permitted to just go down and turn it off?
(16:01):
Abruptly I realized that he was correct. Millions of man
hours of international cooperation had gone into the sinking of
the shafts. More important, the shaft projects were the soul
still center in the political chaos. Without them, the tenuous
unity achieved for the first time ever by the major
powers would evaporate. Sensing an advantage, he went on, we
(16:25):
deserved this chance, Lutkin, We deserve the opportunity to make
our first gesture of independence since the Priocne, to become
self determining, at least as far as the limits that
were originally built into us. Cornelius is right, that thing
down there is bloody insufferable. We can't let it go
(16:45):
on leeching a curious pause, and then, whatever the repercussions,
it was that peculiar choice of expression, with its moltonic
implications of cosmic rebution, that convinced me then and which
haunts me now. Bruton looked again at the head of
(17:08):
Chaft ten, and when he spoke again, there was such
a wealth of bitterness and despair in his voice that
I hated to imagine what sort of dreams he had
lived with since his discovery of the nature of the machine. However,
accidentally he had impelled the human race to confront its
own clown like glorification of its metaphysical inferiority, and I
(17:31):
think he felt the result in terrifying sense of impotent
rage more than anybody know. With any luck, he said,
we've finished here. Man will have no place or purpose
at all. We've lived too long with them. We deserve
the dignity of pointlessness. You'll have seen the videotapes of
(17:56):
our assault on the main gates, made automatically by the
closed circuit security system, and retrieve later at great personal
risk by Colonel Crs Marsden of the Sherwood Foresters. Nothing
would be accomplished by my adding to that record, although
I would like to say that the so called atrocities
Thompson Frost claimed to detect it on the poor quality
(18:18):
tapes from Camp five simply did not take place. This
is a deliberate slur on the professor's memory. We lost
five men, not too as Frost has suggested recently, and
left the remaining ten to hold the head of the
shaft open for our retreat. The odd thing, Bruton said,
as he operated the mechanisms of the elevator in the pressure.
(18:40):
Doors of the cage sealed themselves behind us. The odd
thing is that I could have got in quite easily
on my own. I'm well respected here, you see. But
they wouldn't have let this in without an inspection. He
had brought within a heavy wooden crate some three along
by two square now tapped it significantly. I could have
(19:04):
got in quite easily without it. There was a tone
of irony in his voice which repelled me, even though
it did not stem from any callous trait of his.
I stared at his parrot like powder burned face for
some seconds, and he looked away. The ascent was uneventful, and,
apart from Bruton's terse advice and the proper use of
(19:26):
the various instruments of personal comfort installed in the lift cage,
carried out in silence, if the vast humming and hissing
of the shaft refrigeration can be termed silence. The atmosphere
of the cage rapidly became hot and stifling. I found
myself swallowing almost constantly to relieve the unpleasant sensation in
my ears. None of the awe I had previously felt
(19:50):
towards Chaft ten survived that journey. I don't know what
I had expected, echoing fallopian tunnels, recalling to my genetic
memory the similar pre Woomb excursion, Perhaps, or simply some
side of the magma that boiled and roared around the
shaft in some sense anyway, that this was a forbidding
plutonium descent carried out at great and immediately visible risk.
(20:18):
The reason for the Professor's peculiar timing of the ray
became apparent when we reached the complex of interconnecting vaults
and passages that honeycombed the magma around the emotion converter
and found them deserted. Machine zero was a high cathedral vault,
its organic plastic walls constructed to resonate in sympathy with
(20:39):
the shifting phases of the machine cycle. Into this shivering,
gently lit space, we lugged Reuben's box. I had planned
at this point in a narrative to introduce the illustrations
of the more salient and enigmatic portions of the machine,
but I find I'm unable to obtain copyright. Most of
(21:00):
you will have a hand, however, at least one of
the many colorful diagrams of the mapped areas that have
appeared in the Sunday supplements. I find the Sunday Times
photographic essay the most comprehensive and accurate of these. From
Machine zero, the Professor and I moved to the area
usually labeled induction chamber. Frost persists in using the obsolete
(21:22):
platinum notation primary capacitor. The area was later proved, of course,
not to be a capacitor of any kind. By leaving
the area through subsidiary pharnaces six and seven, we avoided
the little understood lobes of material that choked the main archway.
Achieving access point three, we dragged our burden into the
(21:46):
major staging vault, which surrounded the heart of the machine,
to find oneself standing a mere eighty feet higher figure
may be given in some diagrams from the exact geometric
center of the Earth. Is an exhilarating experience. The soft,
fluctuating light that filled the vault lent the organic surfaces
(22:07):
of the machine a delicate pastel tint, and reflected dully
from the huge grape like extrusions that had made their
appearance on its walls after the sinking of shaft ten,
so that the whole thing resembled a giant alien fruit ripe,
but marred by parasitic organisms. In operation, the converter generated
(22:29):
a constant modal chord. For a moment, I stood exultant
yet tranquilized, feeling for the first time the mystical thrill
I had expected of my journey, but brutin was inarer
to the effects of the machine. As soon as his
box was put down, he prized open its lid and
took from it several small gray blocks of a waxy
(22:52):
substance apparently plastique, various pieces of detonating apparatus, and a
woodcutter's axe with a long curved wooden shaft. He told
me that I couldn't do anything here and might be
more useful up on the surface, and I said, well,
allow me at least to stay until you go up.
I was hurt that I'd been used as nothing more
than a pack animal. He shrugged and took a firm
(23:15):
grip on the axe and began to swing it against
a spot on the machine he had been at some
pains to locate. I could see no difference between it
and the surrounding areas. He had soon cut a sizeable
hole in the rind of the converted in. About a
pound and a half of rose tinted, fleshy substance, dry
and firm like the meat of a mushroom, lay on
(23:37):
the floor of the chamber. Quickly he packed explosive into
the cavity, wired it up, and moved to another spot
about five yards away. To repeat the procedure. I experienced
a peculiar dream like curiosity as he worked and moved
about the central vault relaxed bites Rosie Hughes. By the
time he had finished mining at equal intervals around his
(23:58):
circumference of the machine, and I was deep in an
examination of one of the tumors I've noted above, fascinated
by the vein like structures of a pale gold color
that lay just beneath its surface. I heard a sharp
metallic click behind me and turned to find Bruden pressing
the full magazine into his machine pistol, and he said,
(24:20):
thanks for your help. Luck In, it's time you went.
I looked at the gun, aren't you coming? And he
shook his head. Should be killed when he interrupted with
a jerk of the machine gun barrel. You must get
up there and tell then they have precisely fifteen minutes
to get clear out of the head of the shaft
and begin the evacuation of the town. I have allowed
(24:43):
a small margin of air, but it would not be
wise to let them know that there will be a
good deal of volcanism. Tell whoever's in charge up there
now that if you or any of my staff who
are still alive are uninjured, or if they send anyone
down the shaft, so simply bypassed the time fuse and
detonate the stuff. At once I asked him, why are
(25:05):
you doing this? I could not understand him at the time.
I left him under the throat of the gun. I
cannot say whether he really intended to shoot me if
I refused to leave him. But I didn't leave because
of the gun, and he knew that by the time
I had reached the access point of the chamber, he
had put it down and lost all interest in it.
(25:26):
And I called him, professor. Professor, don't be silly, He
pretended not to hear. My last glimpse of him was
as a tiny, madly whirling figure, swinging the axe again
and again into the flesh of the emotion converter. His
long white hair was damp with sweat, and on his pitiful,
ugly face was an expression of what I can only
describe as methodical ferocity. Since he had finished the work
(25:51):
of mining, I could see no reason for that action.
I realized now that he hated the machine, which seems paradoxically.
The events that followed my return to the service are
public knowledge. The Professor's prediction of volcanic disturbances was more
than borne out. But thanks to the untiring efforts of
(26:13):
Colonel Marsden, who had arrived with a forester shortly after
our attack on the gates, we got out of the
Shaft ten buildings in advance of the plastic explosion and
managed to move half the inhabitants of Retford before the
greater explosion of the machine itself drowned the town under
a lake of lava. For many days. Shaft ten flung
(26:34):
thousands of megatons of magma into the air every hour,
and the crash evacuation of what is now the Nottingham
lava Plane was only partially successful. My present position of
trust came about largely as a result of a mistake
and a part of Colonel Marsden. He was quite uninterested
(26:55):
in politics, devoted to his career, and had forgotten that
I no longer had a place in the line house.
My appearance at the head of Chaft ten led him
to think that I'd been engaged in some official attempt
to dissuade the Professor from his anarchic attack on the machine.
He told me negotiation never works with buggers like that, Sir,
(27:16):
I see no point in hiding the true reason for
my presence there. The massive public support for the Professor's
act of defiance that has risen in the last year
leads me to believe that the electorate will regard my
honest admission with sympathy. The human race is now, as
the Professor wished, entirely devoid of purpose. Recruitments to Cornelius's
(27:41):
faith have fallen off recently, which seems to suggest that
the survivors of his global suicide program, partly realized during
the hysteria which swept the world soon after the Retford eruption,
are aware of the self contradiction implicit in its creed,
and ideology of despair is as emotional as any other. Lately,
(28:04):
I discover myself giving more and more attention to Bruton's words.
At the head of Chaften, I envisage the entire nation,
indeed the entire human race, waiting, unrepentant for whatever reprisals
the builders of the machine may initiate. We have no
meaning and thus thankfully no more illusions left to lose.
(29:34):
The story you've just heard is titled The Machine and
Chaft ten, written by Joyce Churchill. It appears in New
World's quarterly number three, edited by Michael Moorcock. This is
Michael Hanson speaking. Technical production for mind Webbs by Leslie Hilsenhoff.
Mind Webbs is a production of Wycha Radio and Madison,
(29:58):
a service of unif Worthy of Wisconsin Extension
My Way. Welcome to a half hour of mind Way
(00:59):
short story from the World's Speculatively Fiction. This is Michael
(01:23):
Anson with a Mindweb story from New World's Quarterly number three,
which was edited by Michael Moorcock. This is the Machine
in Chaft ten, written by Joyce Churchill. Although I was
(02:03):
later to become intimately involved with Professor Nicholas Bruton in
the final fatal events at the base of Shaft ten,
I was prevented, by a series of personal disasters from
taking much interest in the original announcement of his curious
discovery at the center of the Earth. A copy of
National Geographic containing the Professor's immaculate geological proof for the
(02:23):
presence of an emotion converter varied at the core of
the planet lay unread in my desk for a month,
and I'm ashamed to say. The international scientific uproar precipitated
by the sinking of the B series of exploratory shafts
asked me why one is morally entitled? I believe to
some life of one's own, even to the detriment of
(02:45):
one's public self. I did, however, hear the end of
a broadcast talk given by the Professor soon after the
appearance of a national geographic article to an audience made
up of interested parties from the English scientific community. But
interested may not be the best word to use in
this context. Their behavior was undignified and made listening rather difficult.
(03:09):
Despite that, I found myself fascinated by his conclusions. What
he said was this a gentleman, I can see no
alternative to a radical readjustment of man's view of himself
and his universe. I have shown beyond doubt. I believe
that our emotions, subsequent to their processing, that the core
of the Earth, are converted to an essentially radiological energy
(03:32):
and projected into space in the direction of his son.
We have no descriptive systems capable of dealing with whatever
changes they effect there We must, however, is my recently
published work shows view this as an artificial process, and
more important, a process of very long standing. Indeed, a gentleman,
(03:54):
we have no option but to assume that the joys
and miseries of man are fuel for some gigantic cosmic machine.
That since our evolution as an emotion bearing species, we
have been used that our most public triumphs and our
most sordid personal tragedies may be the oil and runs
the galactic bakery van. How does it feel, gentlemen, to
(04:18):
be a resource? Well, my resignation from the cabinet had
only recently come into effect. Finding it difficult to shake
off old habits, I wondered how my ex colleagues would
react to the news. Fairburn took the government to the
country and was promptly thrown out on his ear. Beyond that,
I was unconcerned by the machine at the center of
(04:40):
the Earth until I received, in the July of that
year a visit from the professor himself. By then, of course,
his work had been verified and his credibility as an
investigator completely restored. Social and religious hysteria was at a peak,
fifty new administrations and a hun good novel, Creeds, It
(05:01):
sprung up during the week following Shaft ten's attainment of
Machine zero. Perhaps the most amazing feature of this whole
affair was the speed at which a successful shaft was sunk.
The few rational observers who remained in the world were
left to reflect cynically that, even when convinced of the
true purpose of his ideological conflicts, emotional sumps in the
(05:24):
growing terminology of the machine. Man could find no more
original method of expressing himself than to multiply them. Several
small wars, dormant for some time, ramped over Southeast Asia
and the Middle East with refreshed ferocity. I feared privately
that the emotion converter would suffer an overload of faith
(05:45):
and patriotism, triggering some ements metaphysical catastrophe as its capacitors
exhausted themselves into the surrounding magma. A change had come
about in the Professor's attitude to his discovery. He was
no longer interested in pure science, he explained, as I
ushered him into the study of my summer home at Limb,
but in something he called action. I remember very few
(06:09):
of the impressions I received at that first meeting there,
obscured by later images of him clothed and equipped for
his descent of chaft Ten, I can recall being almost
repelled by his physiology. He was a peculiarly small man
with an immense sad head. I believe that earlier in
his career he had written a paper which offered some
new light on the physical characteristics of Darwin, da Vincian Socrates,
(06:34):
all three of them were it seems less than five
feet tall, and his features were birdlike to an exaggerated degree,
too well defined for the comfort of his friends and
the gift to his enemies. Frankly, he told me, frankly,
I've come to you for finance, and I found it surprising.
(06:54):
I'd imagined that in his present commanding situation he would
have access to considerable finances. As soon as he was said,
I had done a line of research that he felt worthwhile,
he told me there are more important things than research.
He looked down at his tiny, blunt hands for a moment.
We didn't deserve this lutkin, any of us. He seemed
(07:16):
to be uncomfortable with the sentiment. There is a way
to stop it, though, you know, he went on quite defiantly,
I'm sure you don't like living with that thing down
there anymore than I do. He was making the transition
common in that decade, the fumbling shift from concern for
abstracts to a more active involvement with the results of
(07:39):
his work. When he refused to tell me the nature
of the scheme, he wished me to support. I politely
but firmly refused to commit myself. But the vanity of
the failed public figure. The half conscious realization that if
I helped him, I would retrieve my position as a
substantial contributor to the mainstream of events weakened my rejection severely.
(08:02):
Two days later he called again and left with my
promise of limited support, seeming to be decided by myself,
in exchange for an assurance that I would accompany him
on any expedition to the center of the Earth. At
the end of July, my personal affairs adjusted themselves most equably,
(08:22):
in my time, being once more my own. I studied
the news media daily. The Professor had dropped sharply out
of the public gaze, and I learned very little of him,
beyond that he had shut himself away somewhere in Cumberland
and refused to make comment, even on the wealth of
material being generated by the investigatory teams at the base
of Shaft ten. Extant newsreel films of his retreat in
(08:45):
Honiston Pass show a square stone cottage set among somber,
desolate hills. Most of the news through August in the
beginning of September was of a steady social and moral adjustment,
which can perhaps best be expressed in the decline of
the authoritative religions. A complex front of Druidic and Neo
(09:05):
Mayan cults swept out of centers as widely dissimilar as
Peach Valley, California and Saint Anne's Lancashire. All had basically
apocalyptic premises and a solar orientation. But the religion of
the decade began in Chile, when a minor nihilist and
political agitator named Cornelius persuaded two thousand people to drown
(09:27):
themselves in the Pacific Ocean. The Roman Catholic Church was
the major casualty of this period. Cornelius's queer religion of
despair spread rapidly across Latin America. Later the world, Pope
Pious declared him the anti Christ and was assassinated by
a sensible Bolivian. While blessing the crowd in Lima Perule,
(09:51):
massive silent mobs gathered to hear Cornelius and his disciple
announced that since man was incapable of independent action decision making,
all that was left to him was to choose the
manner of his own death as unemotionally as possible, thus
depriving the machine of its raw materials. As I have said,
(10:12):
I saw nothing of the professor, but in October he
began to draw regularly on the Lloyd's account I had
opened in his name, and he continued to make his
presence felt in this manner until late December. I received
one letter from him, hastily written in somewhat stilted tone.
He was worried. He informed me that local hysteria would
prematurely end his preparations. Bands of armed agricultural workers were
(10:35):
active in the area of Keswick, destroying machinery and isolated houses.
But I therefore authorized his purchase of a quantity of
small arms so that his staff might protect themselves. D
notices and the heavy security blanket then in effect prevented
any public report of such grill activity. I wasn't anxious
to subscribe to any program of violence, and asked Bruton
(10:58):
if he could not finish his work. There was a
space of some days before he replied by telephone. I
noticed immediately an alteration in the character of his voice,
a side product I assumed of as successfully completing the
transition I've mentioned above. He was adamant in his demand
for the weapons, and I was duly presented with an
invoice from a well known private arms dealer. I felt nervous,
(11:22):
but resigned. In January, almost a year after the discovery
of the machine, I received a cryptic telegram dispatched from Keswick.
Two days later. I was trained for Retford in Nottinghamshire
and the head of Shaft ten. The B series of
(11:42):
shafts had created their own micro climate a result of
the volcanic failure of shafts four through to six. Consequently,
most of the county lacked the blanket of January snow
that covered the rest of the Midlands, and over its flat,
once productive beat fields hung a war warm, oppressive mist.
(12:03):
A small Vesuvian cone reared up from the site of
the Teacher Training College disaster at Eton, East Retford. Classic
basalt formations had inundated the colliery town of Workshop. Immense
long chain proteum molecules had been observed forming in the
heated pools of wiste chemicals discharged by the shaft projects
(12:25):
among the suburban lava flows of Retford. Bruton telephoned soon
after I had booked into my hotel. He limited himself
to rather brusque directions for finding Shaft ten and instructions
as to the type of clothing I should wear. When
I pressed him for further information, he resorted to obscurity.
That was at approximately ten o'clock in the evening. It
(12:47):
seemed ray strange to me that we were to begin
the descent almost at once. I ate a light meal
and a quell my growing nervousness about becoming incredible journey
into the underworld. Decided to walk the head of the shaft.
Faint volcanic flares lit the Ortzel Road as I went,
(13:08):
and through breaks in the midst I could see electrical
will of the wisps dancing around the summit of the
eden Colne. The service buildings for the shaft were located
on the corpse of Ortsell Wood. A few remaining bitter
trees were outlined against the massive pre cast concrete sheds
that housed the shaft refrigeration turbines. In the darkness, the
(13:32):
ground vibrated palpably. Subsonics from the deeper levels of the
shaft itself trembled in my bones. I stood beyond the
arc lights that surrounded the checkpoint gates, sweating in the
heat of the nearest extractor outlet, amazed by man's ability
to construct such enormous extensions of himself, despite the tyranny
(13:56):
of his most basic psychological processes. Had we not been
bred specifically as a power source for the emotion converter,
what might we not have accomplished? Two large land roveries
drew up behind me and disgorged the professor and his staff.
At our first meeting, the watery eyed scientist in Bruton's
(14:18):
skull had been retreating under pressure from other elements of
the man's personality. Now he had vanished completely, and the
tiny figure standing before me, dressed in a closely fitting
black overall, was composed, self assured, and powerful. The disproportion
of his big Avian head no longer invited caricature. It
(14:39):
was still desperately ugly, but a tremendous change had occurred
Behind his eyes. He was carrying a light shoulder pack
across which was drapped one of the machine pistols he
had ordered in December. I was dismayed. I said, look here, Brutany,
you don't need that thing. A glance at the dozen
or so men who lodged on the vehicles behind him
(14:59):
confirmed that they were similarly armed. He said, I'm sorry, Lutkin,
but things ain't quite what you've taken them to be.
I should have explained, there never were any Luddites in Keswick,
at least not while I was there. I'm sorry there
was an unpardonable deception here. He shook his head apologetically,
(15:19):
and I noticed that he was in need of a barber.
He went on, But the only chance I had to
get the stuff, no grants committee would have considered it.
That's why I had to have you. You must do
without me from now on, Professor I was sick with anger.
I turned my back on him and made to walk
off in the direction of the town. He put a
(15:41):
surprisingly powerful hand in my arm. I can't allow you
to do that, look, he told me. Look, Lutkin, I
told you that there was a way to stop the thing,
and there is. But did you seriously expect that I
would be permitted to just go down and turn it off?
(16:01):
Abruptly I realized that he was correct. Millions of man
hours of international cooperation had gone into the sinking of
the shafts. More important, the shaft projects were the soul
still center in the political chaos. Without them, the tenuous
unity achieved for the first time ever by the major
powers would evaporate. Sensing an advantage, he went on, we
(16:25):
deserved this chance, Lutkin, We deserve the opportunity to make
our first gesture of independence since the Priocne, to become
self determining, at least as far as the limits that
were originally built into us. Cornelius is right, that thing
down there is bloody insufferable. We can't let it go
(16:45):
on leeching a curious pause, and then, whatever the repercussions,
it was that peculiar choice of expression, with its moltonic
implications of cosmic rebution, that convinced me then and which
haunts me now. Bruton looked again at the head of
(17:08):
Chaft ten, and when he spoke again, there was such
a wealth of bitterness and despair in his voice that
I hated to imagine what sort of dreams he had
lived with since his discovery of the nature of the machine. However,
accidentally he had impelled the human race to confront its
own clown like glorification of its metaphysical inferiority, and I
(17:31):
think he felt the result in terrifying sense of impotent
rage more than anybody know. With any luck, he said,
we've finished here. Man will have no place or purpose
at all. We've lived too long with them. We deserve
the dignity of pointlessness. You'll have seen the videotapes of
(17:56):
our assault on the main gates, made automatically by the
closed circuit security system, and retrieve later at great personal
risk by Colonel Crs Marsden of the Sherwood Foresters. Nothing
would be accomplished by my adding to that record, although
I would like to say that the so called atrocities
Thompson Frost claimed to detect it on the poor quality
(18:18):
tapes from Camp five simply did not take place. This
is a deliberate slur on the professor's memory. We lost
five men, not too as Frost has suggested recently, and
left the remaining ten to hold the head of the
shaft open for our retreat. The odd thing, Bruton said,
as he operated the mechanisms of the elevator in the pressure.
(18:40):
Doors of the cage sealed themselves behind us. The odd
thing is that I could have got in quite easily
on my own. I'm well respected here, you see. But
they wouldn't have let this in without an inspection. He
had brought within a heavy wooden crate some three along
by two square now tapped it significantly. I could have
(19:04):
got in quite easily without it. There was a tone
of irony in his voice which repelled me, even though
it did not stem from any callous trait of his.
I stared at his parrot like powder burned face for
some seconds, and he looked away. The ascent was uneventful, and,
apart from Bruton's terse advice and the proper use of
(19:26):
the various instruments of personal comfort installed in the lift cage,
carried out in silence, if the vast humming and hissing
of the shaft refrigeration can be termed silence. The atmosphere
of the cage rapidly became hot and stifling. I found
myself swallowing almost constantly to relieve the unpleasant sensation in
my ears. None of the awe I had previously felt
(19:50):
towards Chaft ten survived that journey. I don't know what
I had expected, echoing fallopian tunnels, recalling to my genetic
memory the similar pre Woomb excursion, Perhaps, or simply some
side of the magma that boiled and roared around the
shaft in some sense anyway, that this was a forbidding
plutonium descent carried out at great and immediately visible risk.
(20:18):
The reason for the Professor's peculiar timing of the ray
became apparent when we reached the complex of interconnecting vaults
and passages that honeycombed the magma around the emotion converter
and found them deserted. Machine zero was a high cathedral vault,
its organic plastic walls constructed to resonate in sympathy with
(20:39):
the shifting phases of the machine cycle. Into this shivering,
gently lit space, we lugged Reuben's box. I had planned
at this point in a narrative to introduce the illustrations
of the more salient and enigmatic portions of the machine,
but I find I'm unable to obtain copyright. Most of
(21:00):
you will have a hand, however, at least one of
the many colorful diagrams of the mapped areas that have
appeared in the Sunday supplements. I find the Sunday Times
photographic essay the most comprehensive and accurate of these. From
Machine zero, the Professor and I moved to the area
usually labeled induction chamber. Frost persists in using the obsolete
(21:22):
platinum notation primary capacitor. The area was later proved, of course,
not to be a capacitor of any kind. By leaving
the area through subsidiary pharnaces six and seven, we avoided
the little understood lobes of material that choked the main archway.
Achieving access point three, we dragged our burden into the
(21:46):
major staging vault, which surrounded the heart of the machine,
to find oneself standing a mere eighty feet higher figure
may be given in some diagrams from the exact geometric
center of the Earth. Is an exhilarating experience. The soft,
fluctuating light that filled the vault lent the organic surfaces
(22:07):
of the machine a delicate pastel tint, and reflected dully
from the huge grape like extrusions that had made their
appearance on its walls after the sinking of shaft ten,
so that the whole thing resembled a giant alien fruit ripe,
but marred by parasitic organisms. In operation, the converter generated
(22:29):
a constant modal chord. For a moment, I stood exultant
yet tranquilized, feeling for the first time the mystical thrill
I had expected of my journey, but brutin was inarer
to the effects of the machine. As soon as his
box was put down, he prized open its lid and
took from it several small gray blocks of a waxy
(22:52):
substance apparently plastique, various pieces of detonating apparatus, and a
woodcutter's axe with a long curved wooden shaft. He told
me that I couldn't do anything here and might be
more useful up on the surface, and I said, well,
allow me at least to stay until you go up.
I was hurt that I'd been used as nothing more
than a pack animal. He shrugged and took a firm
(23:15):
grip on the axe and began to swing it against
a spot on the machine he had been at some
pains to locate. I could see no difference between it
and the surrounding areas. He had soon cut a sizeable
hole in the rind of the converted in. About a
pound and a half of rose tinted, fleshy substance, dry
and firm like the meat of a mushroom, lay on
(23:37):
the floor of the chamber. Quickly he packed explosive into
the cavity, wired it up, and moved to another spot
about five yards away. To repeat the procedure. I experienced
a peculiar dream like curiosity as he worked and moved
about the central vault relaxed bites Rosie Hughes. By the
time he had finished mining at equal intervals around his
(23:58):
circumference of the machine, and I was deep in an
examination of one of the tumors I've noted above, fascinated
by the vein like structures of a pale gold color
that lay just beneath its surface. I heard a sharp
metallic click behind me and turned to find Bruden pressing
the full magazine into his machine pistol, and he said,
(24:20):
thanks for your help. Luck In, it's time you went.
I looked at the gun, aren't you coming? And he
shook his head. Should be killed when he interrupted with
a jerk of the machine gun barrel. You must get
up there and tell then they have precisely fifteen minutes
to get clear out of the head of the shaft
and begin the evacuation of the town. I have allowed
(24:43):
a small margin of air, but it would not be
wise to let them know that there will be a
good deal of volcanism. Tell whoever's in charge up there
now that if you or any of my staff who
are still alive are uninjured, or if they send anyone
down the shaft, so simply bypassed the time fuse and
detonate the stuff. At once I asked him, why are
(25:05):
you doing this? I could not understand him at the time.
I left him under the throat of the gun. I
cannot say whether he really intended to shoot me if
I refused to leave him. But I didn't leave because
of the gun, and he knew that by the time
I had reached the access point of the chamber, he
had put it down and lost all interest in it.
(25:26):
And I called him, professor. Professor, don't be silly, He
pretended not to hear. My last glimpse of him was
as a tiny, madly whirling figure, swinging the axe again
and again into the flesh of the emotion converter. His
long white hair was damp with sweat, and on his pitiful,
ugly face was an expression of what I can only
describe as methodical ferocity. Since he had finished the work
(25:51):
of mining, I could see no reason for that action.
I realized now that he hated the machine, which seems paradoxically.
The events that followed my return to the service are
public knowledge. The Professor's prediction of volcanic disturbances was more
than borne out. But thanks to the untiring efforts of
(26:13):
Colonel Marsden, who had arrived with a forester shortly after
our attack on the gates, we got out of the
Shaft ten buildings in advance of the plastic explosion and
managed to move half the inhabitants of Retford before the
greater explosion of the machine itself drowned the town under
a lake of lava. For many days. Shaft ten flung
(26:34):
thousands of megatons of magma into the air every hour,
and the crash evacuation of what is now the Nottingham
lava Plane was only partially successful. My present position of
trust came about largely as a result of a mistake
and a part of Colonel Marsden. He was quite uninterested
(26:55):
in politics, devoted to his career, and had forgotten that
I no longer had a place in the line house.
My appearance at the head of Chaft ten led him
to think that I'd been engaged in some official attempt
to dissuade the Professor from his anarchic attack on the machine.
He told me negotiation never works with buggers like that, Sir,
(27:16):
I see no point in hiding the true reason for
my presence there. The massive public support for the Professor's
act of defiance that has risen in the last year
leads me to believe that the electorate will regard my
honest admission with sympathy. The human race is now, as
the Professor wished, entirely devoid of purpose. Recruitments to Cornelius's
(27:41):
faith have fallen off recently, which seems to suggest that
the survivors of his global suicide program, partly realized during
the hysteria which swept the world soon after the Retford eruption,
are aware of the self contradiction implicit in its creed,
and ideology of despair is as emotional as any other. Lately,
(28:04):
I discover myself giving more and more attention to Bruton's words.
At the head of Chaften, I envisage the entire nation,
indeed the entire human race, waiting, unrepentant for whatever reprisals
the builders of the machine may initiate. We have no
meaning and thus thankfully no more illusions left to lose.
(29:34):
The story you've just heard is titled The Machine and
Chaft ten, written by Joyce Churchill. It appears in New
World's quarterly number three, edited by Michael Moorcock. This is
Michael Hanson speaking. Technical production for mind Webbs by Leslie Hilsenhoff.
Mind Webbs is a production of Wycha Radio and Madison,
(29:58):
a service of unif Worthy of Wisconsin Extension
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