December 20, 2025 • 29 mins
https://www.solgoodmedia.com - Listen to hundreds of audiobooks, thousands of short stories, and ambient sounds all ad free! "Mind Webs Daily" rekindles the charm of old time radio with a daily infusion of psychological and speculative tales. Each day offers a unique journey into the enigmatic and often eerie realms of the human mind, reminiscent of classic radio storytelling but with a contemporary flair. Perfect for daily listeners who appreciate a blend of nostalgia and modern narrative depth.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
My will.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
This is Michael Hanson The mind Web story Would a
Half Hours comes from the book erst in tranpet Science
Fiction and Contemporary Problems, the collection edited by Sheila Schwartz
and published by Dell. This is Robert Silverberg's story to
See the Invisible Man. And then they found me guilty,
(01:20):
and then they pronounced me invisible for a span of
one year, beginning on the eleventh of May, in the
year of Grace two one zero four. And they took
me to a dark room beneath the courthouse to affix
the mark to my forehead before turning me loose. Two
mean this blie paid ruffians did the job. One flung
me into a chair, and the other lifted the brand,
(01:41):
and the flabb draw days told.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Me this won't heard a bit as.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
He thrust the brand against my forehead, and there was
a moment of coolness, and that was all. And I
asked what happens now? But there was no answer, and
they turned away from me and left the room without
a word. The door remained open. I was free to
leave or to stay, and rocked as I had chose.
(02:07):
No one would speak to me or look at me
more than once long enough to see the sun on
my forehead. I was invisible. I must understand that my
visibility was strictly metaphorical. I still had corporeal solidity. People
could see me, but they would not see me. M
(02:28):
in absurd punishment perhaps, But then the crime was absurd too,
the crime of coldness, refusal to unburden himself for my
fellow man, I was a four time of Sunday. The
penalty for that was the year's invisibility. The complaint had
been duly sworn, the trial held, the brands duly affixed.
(02:51):
I was invisible. I went out out into the world warmth.
They had already had the afternoon rain. The streets of
the city were drying, and there was a smell of
gross from the hanging gardens. Men and women went about
their business. I walked among them, but they took no
notice of me. The penalty for speaking to an invisible
(03:14):
man is invisibility a month to a year, or more,
depending on the seriousness of the offense. On this the
whole concept depends. I wondered how rigidly the rule was observed.
I soon found out. I stepped into a lift shaft
and let myself be spiraled up towards the nearest of
the hanging gardens, towards eleven the cactus gardens, and those
(03:36):
narrowed bizarre shapes suited my movies. I emerged on the
landing shade and advanced toward the admissions county to buy
my cokeing a pastry faced the empty eyed woman sat
back of it count I laid down my coin something
like trid. Her eyes quickly faded, and I said one admissions.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
No answer.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
The people were killing up behind me, but it were
jostling me out of the way, not a word of apology.
I began to sense some of the meaning of my invisibility.
They were literally treating me as though they could not
see me. There are countervailing advantages. I walked around behind
the counter and helped myself to a topin without paying
(04:19):
for it. Since I was invisible, I could not be stopped.
I trust the token in the slot and entered the garden.
But the cat Ti bored me and inexpressible Malai flipped
over me, and I felt not desire to stay on
my way out. I pressed my finger against the jutting
born and drew blood. The cactus at least still recognized
(04:43):
my existence, but only to draw blood. I returned to
my apartment. My books awaited me, but I felt no
interest in them. I spoiled out on my narrow bed
and activated the energizator to combat the strange lassitude that
was afflicting me. And I thought about my invisibility. It
(05:04):
would not be such a hardshift, I told myself. I
had never depended overly on other human beings. Indeed, had
I not been sentenced in the first place for my
coldness toward my fellow creatures. So what need did I
have of them? Now? Let them ignore me? It would
be wistful. I had a year's rest, but from work.
(05:28):
After all, invisible men did not work.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
How could they? Who would go to an invisible doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
For a consultation, or who would hire an invisible lawyer
to represent him, or give a document to an invisible
clerk to file?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
No work?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Then no income, of course, either. But landlords did not
take rent from invisible men. Invisible men who went where
they previews at no cost. I had just demonstrated them
at the hanging gardens.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Invisibility would be a great joke on society.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I felt they had sentenced me to nothing more dreadful
than a year's rest. Sure, I was certain I would
enjoy it, but there were certain practical disadvantages. On the
first night of my invisibility, I went to the city's
finest restaurant. I would order their most lavish bitches, a
hundred units meal, and then conveniently vanished at the presentation
(06:27):
of the bill. So my thinking was muddy. I never
got seated. I could go into the kitchen, and I
could help myself to anything I pleased. I could disrupt
the workings of the restaurant, but I decided against that.
Society had its ways of protecting itself against invisible ones.
(06:48):
There could be no direct retaliation, of course, no intentional defense.
But well, who could say no to a chest plain
that he had seen no one in the way when
he hurled a part of floating water towards the wall.
Invisibility was invisibility a two edged sword. I left the restaurant.
(07:10):
I ate at an automated restaurant nearby. When I took
an autocab home, machines by text tie did not disciminate
against my thought. I sensed that they would make poor companions.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
For a year ago. I left poorly.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The second day of my invisibility was a day of
further testing and discovery. I went for a long walk,
careful to stay on the pedestrian paths. I had heard
all about the boys who enjoy running down those to
carry the marks of invisibility on their vohead. Again, there's
no recourse, no punishments for them. My conviction has its
little hazard. By intention, I walked the street, seeing how
(07:53):
the throngs parted for me. I cut through them like
a microchrome passing between cells. They were well trained. At
midday I saw my first fellow invisible. He was a
tall man of middle years, stocky and dignified, bearing a
market shame on a dome like water. His eyes met
mine only for a moment, when he passed on an
(08:14):
invisible man, naturally and not tree another of his kind.
It was a muse, nothing more. I was still favoring
the novelty of this way of life. No light could
hurt me.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Late in the day I came to one of those
bath houses where working girls and cleans of themselves were
a couple of small coins. I smiled wickedly and went
up the step the attendant at the door. He gave
me the flipper of a startled look. It was a
small triumph from me, but did not dare to stop me.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I went in.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
An overpowering smell of soap and sweat struck me. I
appreciated him ward. I passed cloak rooms, where long rows
of gray smocks way, and it occurred to me that
I could rifle those marks of every unit they contained.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
But I didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Fast loses meaning when it becomes too easy. Is the
clever one who devise invisibility away. I passed on into
the vast stingers themselves hundreds of women. There were newbile
girls really Wentz's old chrons, some blocks, and if he
(09:26):
smiled many things. Their backs on me, but they were
careful not to show any real reaction.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
To my presence.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Supervisorly matrons, Sid Guard and who knew, but the two
might be reported for taking under cognizance for the existence
of them invisible. So I watched them days, watched five
hundred plays as bobbing breast to watch naked bodies getting
me into display. Watched the vast massive play feminine play.
(09:57):
My reaction was a mixed one, too, wished achievement at
having penetrated the strength and sanctorum, unhaltered and then welling
up slowly within me A sensation of what was it?
So boredom with Walsh, and I was unable to analyze it,
but it felt as though a clammy hand to seize
(10:20):
my silks, till I left quickly. The smell of chirpy
water from my mastery four hours afterwards, and the sky
of pink flash hearted my dreams. That night, I ate
alone in one of the automatics. I began to see
that the novelty of this punishment was soon lost. In
(10:49):
the third week, I fell ill. It began with a
high fever and paying for the stomach vomiting and the
rest of the ugly symptomatology. By midnight I was certain
I was dying. The cramps were intolerable, and when I
dragged myself through the torlet cubercle, I caught sight of
my face in.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The mirror, distorted, greenly beaded with sweat. The marks of
invisibility stood out like a beacon in my pail forehead.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
For a long time I lay on the child's floor,
limply absorbing the coolness of it, And then I thought,
what if it's my appendix? A ridiculous, absolute obscure, prehistoric survival.
Inflamed and ready to burst, I needed a doctor. The
phone was stilled with dust. They had not bothered to
disconnect this. But I have not called anyone since my arrest,
(11:36):
and no one a day had called me. The penalty
for knowingly telephoning an invisible man is invisibility. My friends,
such as they were, I'd stayed far away. I grabbed
the phone from the panel that lit up, and the
directory robot said, lays home, do you wish to space their.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Doctor?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I gas secondly, sir, land mark mechanical words, no way
to pronounce. The robot invisible, so it was free to
talk to me. Then the screen glowed and a doctorly
voice said.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Well, what seems to be the trouble.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Stomach pains, and I think it may be appendicitis.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Well we'll have a land owner.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
He stopped. I had made the mistake of upturning my
agonized face. His eyes lit on my forehead mark. The
screen winked into blackness as rapidly as though I had
expended the upwards hands blended kids. My appendix did not rupture.
I survived so badly taken a man can survive without
(12:48):
human conversation for a year. He can travel on automated
cars and eat at automated restaurants, but there are no
automated doctors. For the first time, I felt true beyond
the pale. A convict in a prison has given a
doctor when he falls ill. My crime had not been
serious enough the merit prison, and so no doctor would
(13:10):
treat me If I suffered.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It was unpraie.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I cursed the devils who had invented my punishment. I
faced each bleak dawn alone, as alone as Crusoe on
his island, Here in the midst of a city of
twelve million souls. How can I describe my fist with
mood my many taxed Before the changing winds of the
(13:36):
passing month, there were times when invisibility was a joy,
a delight, a treasure. In those paranoid moments, I gloried
in my exemption from the rules that bound ordinary men.
I stole, I entered small stories and seized the receipts,
while requiring merchant fear to stop me. Less than crying out.
(13:58):
He makes himself liable to my visibility. If I had
known that the state reimbursed all such losses. I might
have taken less pleasure in it, but I stole. I
invaded in the bath house, and that we tempting me again.
But I greeched other sanctuaries. I entered hotels and walked
down the corridors, opening doors at random. Most rooms were empty,
(14:21):
some who were not godlike I observed all. I toughened
my disdain for society. The climate had earned me invisibility
in the first place. Heightened. I stood in the empty
streets during the veries of rain and railed at the
gleaming faces of the towering buildings on every side.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Who needs you, I would roar, Not I would needs you?
In the slightest I jeered and mocked and railed.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It was a kind of insanity brought on I supposed
by the loneliness. I entered sits happy load of seats
that slumping them with high chairs. Transfixed by the glowing
pride in images, I keeper down the aisle. No one
grumbled at me. The luminescence of my forehead told them
to keep their complaints to themselves, and they did. Those
(15:18):
were the mad moment, a good moment, the moments when
I probably twenty feet high and strowed among the visible clods,
would contempt oozing from every poor Those were insane moments.
I admit that freely a man who has been in
the condition of involuntary invisibility for several months is not
likely to be well balanced. Did I call them paranoid moments?
(15:41):
To manic depressive? My fumat the point the pendulum swung visily.
The days when I felt only contempt for the visible
fools all around me, They were balanced by days when
the isolation pressed intangibly on me. I would walk the
endless streaks, pass through the greaming arcades, stared down at
the highways with the freaking bullets of gay colors. Not
(16:02):
even a beggar would come up to me. Did you
know we had beggers in our shining sensory? Not till
I was pronounced invisible did I know it? For then
my long walks took me to the slums with a
shining there was one thing, and where the suffering tubble
faced old man begged for small coins, no one begged
for coins from me. Once the blind men came.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Up to me, with the love of God, he waved
buy new eyes from the eye banks.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Those were the first direct words any human being had
spoken to me in months. I started to reach into
my tunic for money, planning to give him every unit
on me in gratitude. Why not I could get more
simply by taking it. But before I could draw the
money out, a night may I said, you're hobbled on
crutches between us, and I cut the whispered words, won't
step off, And then the two of them settled away
(16:57):
like frightened clads, and I stood there stupidly holding them money,
not even the beggars devils that have invented this torment.
So I talked him again. My arrogance ebbed away. I
was lonely, and now who could accuse me of coldness?
I was spungey, sought pathetically, eager for a word, a smile,
(17:18):
clasping hand. It was the sixth month of my invisibility.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I loathed it entirely.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Now its pleasures were hollow ones, and its torment was unbearable.
I wondered how I would survive the remaining six months.
To believe me, suicide was not far from my mind
in those black eyes, And finally I committed an act
of fullest myth on one of my endless walks. I
encountered another invisible, no more than the third or the
(17:48):
fourth such creature I'd seen in my six months. As
in the previous encounters, our eyes met wearily only for
a moment, and then he dropped his to the pavement
in each side, set me, and walked down. He was
a slim young man of more than forty. He tossled
brown hair in the mettle prince's face. He had a
look of scholarship about him, and I wondered what he
(18:08):
might have done the marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
His punishment, I will see the avid.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I had to run after him and ask him him
to learn his name, and to talk to him, embrace him.
All these things are forbidden to mankind. No one shall
have any contact whatsoever will they invisible, not even a
fellow invisible, especially not a fellow invisible. There was no
wak on society's part to foster a secret bond of
(18:33):
fellowship among its pariahs.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I knew Walder.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I turned and followed him all the same for three blocks,
and moved along behind him, remaining twenty to fifty paces
to the rear. Security robots seemed to be everywhere, their
sent as quick to attack him. And fast him. I
didn't there, make my move. Then he turned down a
side street, a gray, dusty street five centuries old, and
began to stroll with the ambling going nowhere to invisible
(19:01):
and act him up behind him.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Please, I play saftly. Please, no one will see here.
We can talk.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
My name is the world on me horror in the guide.
His face was pale. He looked at me in amazement
for a moment, and he started for with his road
to go around me. I blocked him. Wait, wait, don't
be afraid. Please, but he burst past me. I put
my hand on his shoulder, and he wriggled. Flee Just
(19:32):
a word, I begged, Not even a word, not even
a horse, he uttered, leave me alone beside, stepped me
and ran down the empty foe to stepped him, and
he sent him a crowder to hi murmurs. He reached
the corner and rounded. I looked after him, feeling a
great lungliness well up in me, and then a fear.
(19:54):
He hadn't breached the rules of invisibility. But I had,
I had, I've seen him that left me the subject
to punishment, an extension of my term of invisibility. Perhaps
I looked around anxiously, but there were no security robots
I'd known at all.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I was a long.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Turning, calming myself. I continued down the street. Gradually I
regained control over myself. I thought that I had done
something unpardonably coolish. The stupidity of my action troubled me,
but even more to sentimentality of it, to reach out
in that panicky way to another invisible, to admit openly
(20:37):
my lonely met my need. No no, It meant that
society was winning, and I couldn't have one. Three eight
months passed to the ninth, the tenth. The seasonal round
had made nearly a complete turn to bring a given
(20:58):
way to a mild summary summary to its autumn, autumn
to winter with a fortnite. The snowfalls still permitted sports
esthetic reasons. The winter had ended now in the parks,
the trees spouted green buds. The weather control people stepped
up the rainfall to trist's daily My term was going
through the thing. In the final months of my visibility,
(21:20):
I'd slipped into a kind of corporal My mind foists
back on its own resources, no longer care to consider
the implications of my conditions, and I slid in their
blurred haze. From day to day, I read compulsively but
unselectively Aristotle one day, the Bible, the next, the Handbook
of Mechanics.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
The next I.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Retained nothing, as I had turned to fresh page that
predecessors slipped from my memories. I no longer bothered to
enjoy the few advantages of invisibility before uristic thrills for
my neat tub of power that comes from being able
to commit any action with only limited fear of retaliation.
I say limited because the passage of the Invisibility Act
(22:03):
had not been accompanied by an act to appealing human nature.
Few men would not risk invisibility to protect their wives
or children from an invisible one's mosstations. No one would
coolly allow an invisible to gab out his eyes. No
one would tolerate an invisible invasion of his home. There
were ways of coping with such infringements without appearing to
(22:26):
recognize the existence of the invisible.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
As I've mentioned before, Still it was possible to get away.
Was a great deal. I declined to try Somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Dostoyevski is written, without God, all things are possible.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I can amend that for the invisible man, all things
are possible and uninteresting.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So it was the worry months past. I did not
count the minutes, to my relief. To be precise, Polly
forgot that my term was due to end. On the
day itself. I was leading in my room, morosely, turning
page after page when the enunciated timed.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It had not timed for a full year.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I had almost forgotten the meaning of the sound. But
I opened the door where they stood, the men of
the law. Wordlessly, they broke the seal that held the
mark to my forehead. The emblem dropped away and chattered.
Hello citizen, hey said to me, and I nodded gladly.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, hello there, you love it. Twenty one oh five.
Your terms up, you're restored to society.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
You paid your debt. Yeah, thank you. Uh come out
for a drinkers, huh, Yeah, it's sooner or not. Oh,
it's a tradition.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Come along.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So I went with him. My father had felt strangely
naked now and I danced in a mirrored It seemed
that there was a paid spot where the emblem had been.
They took me to a bar nearby and treated me
to synthetic whiskey. Raw powerful. The bar attended gwind at me.
Someone on the next stool clasped me on the shoulder
and asked me who I liked and tomorrow's jet races.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And I had no idea, And I said, so hey,
Y mean I'm back and tells quarter one. But he's
got terrific sports power and understanding. I said, uh, he's
been away for a while. One of the government men
said software. The ecomism was unmistakable. My neighbor glanced at
my farther and nodded at the pale off the box.
(24:37):
He offered to buy me a drink to accepted Glands,
already doing the effects of the first one. I was
a human being again.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was visible.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I did not dare another him anyway. It might have
been pursued as the clime of coldness once again, my
sister friends would have met five years of invisibility I
had and humility. Returning the visibility involved an awkward transition
of choice old friends to meet, lame conversations, the whole
(25:09):
shattered relationships to the news. I had been an exile
in my own city for a year and coming back
was not easy, but I persevered, for I was no
longer the same haughty, a.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Loose person I had been before my conviction.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I had learned humility in the hardest of schools now
and then I noticed them, invisible on the speaks. Of course,
it was impossible to avoid them, but trained as I
had been trained, I quickly glanced away, as though my
eyes had come momentarily to rest them from gambling, ustueing
the horror from another world. It was in the fourth
(25:47):
month of my return to visibility that the ultimate lesson
of my sentence struck home will I was in the
vicinity of the city Tower, having returned to my old
job in the Document's division of the municipal government. I
had left to work for the day and was walking
towards the tubes when a hand emerged from the crowd
and crossed my arm.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Three the thought more sense, Please wait a minute, don't
be afraid.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
I looked up, startled in our city. Strangers did not
a cost strangers. I saw the gleaming emblem of invisibility
and the man's ford. Then I recognized him, the swim
boy I had accosted more than half a year before,
and at the dirted street. He had grown haggard, His
(26:35):
eyes were wild, his brown hair reflect with gray. He
must have been at the beginning of return. Then now
he must have been there, and.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
He held my arm. I trembled.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It was no deserted street. This was the most crowded
top of the city. I pulled my arm away from
his grasp and started to turn away.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
No, no, don't go. Can't you pity me, you who've
been marrying your style.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I had took a settling step. Then I remembered how
I had cried out to him, how I had begged
him not to spring me. I remembered my own miserable loneliness.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I took another step away down. Coward, Coward, talk talk
to me, I Bury, you talk to me, coward.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It was too much. I would touch, setting into sund
my eyes and I turned to him.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So I got a hand to his I taught with
him with the contact tan to electrify him.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
A moment later I held him in my arms, trying
to draw some of the misery. Some was stying to man.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
The security were about.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Clothes and said under us he would pay.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
To one side. I was taken into custody.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
They will try me again, not for the crime of
coldness of this time, but for the clime of warmth
that the has been waiting circumstances and released me last night.
I do not care if they condemned me this time,
(28:23):
I would wear my invisibility at a feud of glory.
(28:58):
If there is that a piva story deceive the invisible man.
There is an exception editive diet of its intensive published
by Day.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
This is Martha Mens.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Technical operations for this program by silk Boy Mind Weathers
is a production of w a h A Radio in Madison,
the University of Wisconsin Extension
My will.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
This is Michael Hanson The mind Web story Would a
Half Hours comes from the book erst in tranpet Science
Fiction and Contemporary Problems, the collection edited by Sheila Schwartz
and published by Dell. This is Robert Silverberg's story to
See the Invisible Man. And then they found me guilty,
(01:20):
and then they pronounced me invisible for a span of
one year, beginning on the eleventh of May, in the
year of Grace two one zero four. And they took
me to a dark room beneath the courthouse to affix
the mark to my forehead before turning me loose. Two
mean this blie paid ruffians did the job. One flung
me into a chair, and the other lifted the brand,
(01:41):
and the flabb draw days told.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Me this won't heard a bit as.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
He thrust the brand against my forehead, and there was
a moment of coolness, and that was all. And I
asked what happens now? But there was no answer, and
they turned away from me and left the room without
a word. The door remained open. I was free to
leave or to stay, and rocked as I had chose.
(02:07):
No one would speak to me or look at me
more than once long enough to see the sun on
my forehead. I was invisible. I must understand that my
visibility was strictly metaphorical. I still had corporeal solidity. People
could see me, but they would not see me. M
(02:28):
in absurd punishment perhaps, But then the crime was absurd too,
the crime of coldness, refusal to unburden himself for my
fellow man, I was a four time of Sunday. The
penalty for that was the year's invisibility. The complaint had
been duly sworn, the trial held, the brands duly affixed.
(02:51):
I was invisible. I went out out into the world warmth.
They had already had the afternoon rain. The streets of
the city were drying, and there was a smell of
gross from the hanging gardens. Men and women went about
their business. I walked among them, but they took no
notice of me. The penalty for speaking to an invisible
(03:14):
man is invisibility a month to a year, or more,
depending on the seriousness of the offense. On this the
whole concept depends. I wondered how rigidly the rule was observed.
I soon found out. I stepped into a lift shaft
and let myself be spiraled up towards the nearest of
the hanging gardens, towards eleven the cactus gardens, and those
(03:36):
narrowed bizarre shapes suited my movies. I emerged on the
landing shade and advanced toward the admissions county to buy
my cokeing a pastry faced the empty eyed woman sat
back of it count I laid down my coin something
like trid. Her eyes quickly faded, and I said one admissions.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
No answer.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
The people were killing up behind me, but it were
jostling me out of the way, not a word of apology.
I began to sense some of the meaning of my invisibility.
They were literally treating me as though they could not
see me. There are countervailing advantages. I walked around behind
the counter and helped myself to a topin without paying
(04:19):
for it. Since I was invisible, I could not be stopped.
I trust the token in the slot and entered the garden.
But the cat Ti bored me and inexpressible Malai flipped
over me, and I felt not desire to stay on
my way out. I pressed my finger against the jutting
born and drew blood. The cactus at least still recognized
(04:43):
my existence, but only to draw blood. I returned to
my apartment. My books awaited me, but I felt no
interest in them. I spoiled out on my narrow bed
and activated the energizator to combat the strange lassitude that
was afflicting me. And I thought about my invisibility. It
(05:04):
would not be such a hardshift, I told myself. I
had never depended overly on other human beings. Indeed, had
I not been sentenced in the first place for my
coldness toward my fellow creatures. So what need did I
have of them? Now? Let them ignore me? It would
be wistful. I had a year's rest, but from work.
(05:28):
After all, invisible men did not work.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
How could they? Who would go to an invisible doctor.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
For a consultation, or who would hire an invisible lawyer
to represent him, or give a document to an invisible
clerk to file?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
No work?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Then no income, of course, either. But landlords did not
take rent from invisible men. Invisible men who went where
they previews at no cost. I had just demonstrated them
at the hanging gardens.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Invisibility would be a great joke on society.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I felt they had sentenced me to nothing more dreadful
than a year's rest. Sure, I was certain I would
enjoy it, but there were certain practical disadvantages. On the
first night of my invisibility, I went to the city's
finest restaurant. I would order their most lavish bitches, a
hundred units meal, and then conveniently vanished at the presentation
(06:27):
of the bill. So my thinking was muddy. I never
got seated. I could go into the kitchen, and I
could help myself to anything I pleased. I could disrupt
the workings of the restaurant, but I decided against that.
Society had its ways of protecting itself against invisible ones.
(06:48):
There could be no direct retaliation, of course, no intentional defense.
But well, who could say no to a chest plain
that he had seen no one in the way when
he hurled a part of floating water towards the wall.
Invisibility was invisibility a two edged sword. I left the restaurant.
(07:10):
I ate at an automated restaurant nearby. When I took
an autocab home, machines by text tie did not disciminate
against my thought. I sensed that they would make poor companions.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
For a year ago. I left poorly.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
The second day of my invisibility was a day of
further testing and discovery. I went for a long walk,
careful to stay on the pedestrian paths. I had heard
all about the boys who enjoy running down those to
carry the marks of invisibility on their vohead. Again, there's
no recourse, no punishments for them. My conviction has its
little hazard. By intention, I walked the street, seeing how
(07:53):
the throngs parted for me. I cut through them like
a microchrome passing between cells. They were well trained. At
midday I saw my first fellow invisible. He was a
tall man of middle years, stocky and dignified, bearing a
market shame on a dome like water. His eyes met
mine only for a moment, when he passed on an
(08:14):
invisible man, naturally and not tree another of his kind.
It was a muse, nothing more. I was still favoring
the novelty of this way of life. No light could
hurt me.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Not yet.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Late in the day I came to one of those
bath houses where working girls and cleans of themselves were
a couple of small coins. I smiled wickedly and went
up the step the attendant at the door. He gave
me the flipper of a startled look. It was a
small triumph from me, but did not dare to stop me.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I went in.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
An overpowering smell of soap and sweat struck me. I
appreciated him ward. I passed cloak rooms, where long rows
of gray smocks way, and it occurred to me that
I could rifle those marks of every unit they contained.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
But I didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Fast loses meaning when it becomes too easy. Is the
clever one who devise invisibility away. I passed on into
the vast stingers themselves hundreds of women. There were newbile
girls really Wentz's old chrons, some blocks, and if he
(09:26):
smiled many things. Their backs on me, but they were
careful not to show any real reaction.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
To my presence.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Supervisorly matrons, Sid Guard and who knew, but the two
might be reported for taking under cognizance for the existence
of them invisible. So I watched them days, watched five
hundred plays as bobbing breast to watch naked bodies getting
me into display. Watched the vast massive play feminine play.
(09:57):
My reaction was a mixed one, too, wished achievement at
having penetrated the strength and sanctorum, unhaltered and then welling
up slowly within me A sensation of what was it?
So boredom with Walsh, and I was unable to analyze it,
but it felt as though a clammy hand to seize
(10:20):
my silks, till I left quickly. The smell of chirpy
water from my mastery four hours afterwards, and the sky
of pink flash hearted my dreams. That night, I ate
alone in one of the automatics. I began to see
that the novelty of this punishment was soon lost. In
(10:49):
the third week, I fell ill. It began with a
high fever and paying for the stomach vomiting and the
rest of the ugly symptomatology. By midnight I was certain
I was dying. The cramps were intolerable, and when I
dragged myself through the torlet cubercle, I caught sight of
my face in.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
The mirror, distorted, greenly beaded with sweat. The marks of
invisibility stood out like a beacon in my pail forehead.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
For a long time I lay on the child's floor,
limply absorbing the coolness of it, And then I thought,
what if it's my appendix? A ridiculous, absolute obscure, prehistoric survival.
Inflamed and ready to burst, I needed a doctor. The
phone was stilled with dust. They had not bothered to
disconnect this. But I have not called anyone since my arrest,
(11:36):
and no one a day had called me. The penalty
for knowingly telephoning an invisible man is invisibility. My friends,
such as they were, I'd stayed far away. I grabbed
the phone from the panel that lit up, and the
directory robot said, lays home, do you wish to space their.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Doctor?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I gas secondly, sir, land mark mechanical words, no way
to pronounce. The robot invisible, so it was free to
talk to me. Then the screen glowed and a doctorly
voice said.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Well, what seems to be the trouble.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Stomach pains, and I think it may be appendicitis.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Well we'll have a land owner.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
He stopped. I had made the mistake of upturning my
agonized face. His eyes lit on my forehead mark. The
screen winked into blackness as rapidly as though I had
expended the upwards hands blended kids. My appendix did not rupture.
I survived so badly taken a man can survive without
(12:48):
human conversation for a year. He can travel on automated
cars and eat at automated restaurants, but there are no
automated doctors. For the first time, I felt true beyond
the pale. A convict in a prison has given a
doctor when he falls ill. My crime had not been
serious enough the merit prison, and so no doctor would
(13:10):
treat me If I suffered.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
It was unpraie.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I cursed the devils who had invented my punishment. I
faced each bleak dawn alone, as alone as Crusoe on
his island, Here in the midst of a city of
twelve million souls. How can I describe my fist with
mood my many taxed Before the changing winds of the
(13:36):
passing month, there were times when invisibility was a joy,
a delight, a treasure. In those paranoid moments, I gloried
in my exemption from the rules that bound ordinary men.
I stole, I entered small stories and seized the receipts,
while requiring merchant fear to stop me. Less than crying out.
(13:58):
He makes himself liable to my visibility. If I had
known that the state reimbursed all such losses. I might
have taken less pleasure in it, but I stole. I
invaded in the bath house, and that we tempting me again.
But I greeched other sanctuaries. I entered hotels and walked
down the corridors, opening doors at random. Most rooms were empty,
(14:21):
some who were not godlike I observed all. I toughened
my disdain for society. The climate had earned me invisibility
in the first place. Heightened. I stood in the empty
streets during the veries of rain and railed at the
gleaming faces of the towering buildings on every side.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Who needs you, I would roar, Not I would needs you?
In the slightest I jeered and mocked and railed.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It was a kind of insanity brought on I supposed
by the loneliness. I entered sits happy load of seats
that slumping them with high chairs. Transfixed by the glowing
pride in images, I keeper down the aisle. No one
grumbled at me. The luminescence of my forehead told them
to keep their complaints to themselves, and they did. Those
(15:18):
were the mad moment, a good moment, the moments when
I probably twenty feet high and strowed among the visible clods,
would contempt oozing from every poor Those were insane moments.
I admit that freely a man who has been in
the condition of involuntary invisibility for several months is not
likely to be well balanced. Did I call them paranoid moments?
(15:41):
To manic depressive? My fumat the point the pendulum swung visily.
The days when I felt only contempt for the visible
fools all around me, They were balanced by days when
the isolation pressed intangibly on me. I would walk the
endless streaks, pass through the greaming arcades, stared down at
the highways with the freaking bullets of gay colors. Not
(16:02):
even a beggar would come up to me. Did you
know we had beggers in our shining sensory? Not till
I was pronounced invisible did I know it? For then
my long walks took me to the slums with a
shining there was one thing, and where the suffering tubble
faced old man begged for small coins, no one begged
for coins from me. Once the blind men came.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Up to me, with the love of God, he waved
buy new eyes from the eye banks.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Those were the first direct words any human being had
spoken to me in months. I started to reach into
my tunic for money, planning to give him every unit
on me in gratitude. Why not I could get more
simply by taking it. But before I could draw the
money out, a night may I said, you're hobbled on
crutches between us, and I cut the whispered words, won't
step off, And then the two of them settled away
(16:57):
like frightened clads, and I stood there stupidly holding them money,
not even the beggars devils that have invented this torment.
So I talked him again. My arrogance ebbed away. I
was lonely, and now who could accuse me of coldness?
I was spungey, sought pathetically, eager for a word, a smile,
(17:18):
clasping hand. It was the sixth month of my invisibility.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I loathed it entirely.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Now its pleasures were hollow ones, and its torment was unbearable.
I wondered how I would survive the remaining six months.
To believe me, suicide was not far from my mind
in those black eyes, And finally I committed an act
of fullest myth on one of my endless walks. I
encountered another invisible, no more than the third or the
(17:48):
fourth such creature I'd seen in my six months. As
in the previous encounters, our eyes met wearily only for
a moment, and then he dropped his to the pavement
in each side, set me, and walked down. He was
a slim young man of more than forty. He tossled
brown hair in the mettle prince's face. He had a
look of scholarship about him, and I wondered what he
(18:08):
might have done the marriage.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
His punishment, I will see the avid.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I had to run after him and ask him him
to learn his name, and to talk to him, embrace him.
All these things are forbidden to mankind. No one shall
have any contact whatsoever will they invisible, not even a
fellow invisible, especially not a fellow invisible. There was no
wak on society's part to foster a secret bond of
(18:33):
fellowship among its pariahs.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I knew Walder.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
I turned and followed him all the same for three blocks,
and moved along behind him, remaining twenty to fifty paces
to the rear. Security robots seemed to be everywhere, their
sent as quick to attack him. And fast him. I
didn't there, make my move. Then he turned down a
side street, a gray, dusty street five centuries old, and
began to stroll with the ambling going nowhere to invisible
(19:01):
and act him up behind him.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Please, I play saftly. Please, no one will see here.
We can talk.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
My name is the world on me horror in the guide.
His face was pale. He looked at me in amazement
for a moment, and he started for with his road
to go around me. I blocked him. Wait, wait, don't
be afraid. Please, but he burst past me. I put
my hand on his shoulder, and he wriggled. Flee Just
(19:32):
a word, I begged, Not even a word, not even
a horse, he uttered, leave me alone beside, stepped me
and ran down the empty foe to stepped him, and
he sent him a crowder to hi murmurs. He reached
the corner and rounded. I looked after him, feeling a
great lungliness well up in me, and then a fear.
(19:54):
He hadn't breached the rules of invisibility. But I had,
I had, I've seen him that left me the subject
to punishment, an extension of my term of invisibility. Perhaps
I looked around anxiously, but there were no security robots
I'd known at all.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I was a long.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Turning, calming myself. I continued down the street. Gradually I
regained control over myself. I thought that I had done
something unpardonably coolish. The stupidity of my action troubled me,
but even more to sentimentality of it, to reach out
in that panicky way to another invisible, to admit openly
(20:37):
my lonely met my need. No no, It meant that
society was winning, and I couldn't have one. Three eight
months passed to the ninth, the tenth. The seasonal round
had made nearly a complete turn to bring a given
(20:58):
way to a mild summary summary to its autumn, autumn
to winter with a fortnite. The snowfalls still permitted sports
esthetic reasons. The winter had ended now in the parks,
the trees spouted green buds. The weather control people stepped
up the rainfall to trist's daily My term was going
through the thing. In the final months of my visibility,
(21:20):
I'd slipped into a kind of corporal My mind foists
back on its own resources, no longer care to consider
the implications of my conditions, and I slid in their
blurred haze. From day to day, I read compulsively but
unselectively Aristotle one day, the Bible, the next, the Handbook
of Mechanics.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
The next I.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Retained nothing, as I had turned to fresh page that
predecessors slipped from my memories. I no longer bothered to
enjoy the few advantages of invisibility before uristic thrills for
my neat tub of power that comes from being able
to commit any action with only limited fear of retaliation.
I say limited because the passage of the Invisibility Act
(22:03):
had not been accompanied by an act to appealing human nature.
Few men would not risk invisibility to protect their wives
or children from an invisible one's mosstations. No one would
coolly allow an invisible to gab out his eyes. No
one would tolerate an invisible invasion of his home. There
were ways of coping with such infringements without appearing to
(22:26):
recognize the existence of the invisible.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
As I've mentioned before, Still it was possible to get away.
Was a great deal. I declined to try Somewhere.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Dostoyevski is written, without God, all things are possible.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
I can amend that for the invisible man, all things
are possible and uninteresting.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
So it was the worry months past. I did not
count the minutes, to my relief. To be precise, Polly
forgot that my term was due to end. On the
day itself. I was leading in my room, morosely, turning
page after page when the enunciated timed.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It had not timed for a full year.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I had almost forgotten the meaning of the sound. But
I opened the door where they stood, the men of
the law. Wordlessly, they broke the seal that held the
mark to my forehead. The emblem dropped away and chattered.
Hello citizen, hey said to me, and I nodded gladly.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, hello there, you love it. Twenty one oh five.
Your terms up, you're restored to society.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
You paid your debt. Yeah, thank you. Uh come out
for a drinkers, huh, Yeah, it's sooner or not. Oh,
it's a tradition.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Come along.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
So I went with him. My father had felt strangely
naked now and I danced in a mirrored It seemed
that there was a paid spot where the emblem had been.
They took me to a bar nearby and treated me
to synthetic whiskey. Raw powerful. The bar attended gwind at me.
Someone on the next stool clasped me on the shoulder
and asked me who I liked and tomorrow's jet races.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And I had no idea, And I said, so hey,
Y mean I'm back and tells quarter one. But he's
got terrific sports power and understanding. I said, uh, he's
been away for a while. One of the government men
said software. The ecomism was unmistakable. My neighbor glanced at
my farther and nodded at the pale off the box.
(24:37):
He offered to buy me a drink to accepted Glands,
already doing the effects of the first one. I was
a human being again.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was visible.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
I did not dare another him anyway. It might have
been pursued as the clime of coldness once again, my
sister friends would have met five years of invisibility I
had and humility. Returning the visibility involved an awkward transition
of choice old friends to meet, lame conversations, the whole
(25:09):
shattered relationships to the news. I had been an exile
in my own city for a year and coming back
was not easy, but I persevered, for I was no
longer the same haughty, a.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Loose person I had been before my conviction.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I had learned humility in the hardest of schools now
and then I noticed them, invisible on the speaks. Of course,
it was impossible to avoid them, but trained as I
had been trained, I quickly glanced away, as though my
eyes had come momentarily to rest them from gambling, ustueing
the horror from another world. It was in the fourth
(25:47):
month of my return to visibility that the ultimate lesson
of my sentence struck home will I was in the
vicinity of the city Tower, having returned to my old
job in the Document's division of the municipal government. I
had left to work for the day and was walking
towards the tubes when a hand emerged from the crowd
and crossed my arm.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Three the thought more sense, Please wait a minute, don't
be afraid.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
I looked up, startled in our city. Strangers did not
a cost strangers. I saw the gleaming emblem of invisibility
and the man's ford. Then I recognized him, the swim
boy I had accosted more than half a year before,
and at the dirted street. He had grown haggard, His
(26:35):
eyes were wild, his brown hair reflect with gray. He
must have been at the beginning of return. Then now
he must have been there, and.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
He held my arm. I trembled.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It was no deserted street. This was the most crowded
top of the city. I pulled my arm away from
his grasp and started to turn away.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
No, no, don't go. Can't you pity me, you who've
been marrying your style.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
I had took a settling step. Then I remembered how
I had cried out to him, how I had begged
him not to spring me. I remembered my own miserable loneliness.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
I took another step away down. Coward, Coward, talk talk
to me, I Bury, you talk to me, coward.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It was too much. I would touch, setting into sund
my eyes and I turned to him.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So I got a hand to his I taught with
him with the contact tan to electrify him.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
A moment later I held him in my arms, trying
to draw some of the misery. Some was stying to man.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
The security were about.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Clothes and said under us he would pay.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
To one side. I was taken into custody.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
They will try me again, not for the crime of
coldness of this time, but for the clime of warmth
that the has been waiting circumstances and released me last night.
I do not care if they condemned me this time,
(28:23):
I would wear my invisibility at a feud of glory.
(28:58):
If there is that a piva story deceive the invisible man.
There is an exception editive diet of its intensive published
by Day.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
This is Martha Mens.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Technical operations for this program by silk Boy Mind Weathers
is a production of w a h A Radio in Madison,
the University of Wisconsin Extension
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