September 24, 2025 • 29 mins
A surreal sci-fi series exploring speculative concepts, dreams, and philosophical what-ifs. Each episode is a cerebral journey into the mind’s deepest questions.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Mind Welcome to a half hour of mind waits Short
stories from the worlds of speculative fiction. This is Michael
(02:08):
Hanson with a mind web story written by Lester del
Rey in nineteen thirty eight. The title is Helen o'loy.
One of the many places in which it appears is
a collection edited by Lawrence Jennifer called eighteen Greatest Science
Fiction Stories. I'm an old man now, but I can
(02:31):
still see Helen as Dave unpacked her, and still hear
him gasp as he looked her over. Man, isn't she
a beauty? She was beautiful, a dream and spun plastics
and metal, something Keats might have seen dimly when he
wrote his son. If Helen of Troy had looked like that,
the Greeks must have been pikers when they launched only
(02:52):
a thousand chips. At least that's what I told Dave.
Helena Troy eh looked at her tag. At least it
beats this thing. K two w eight eight Helen Helen
of a LOI now not much swing to that day.
Too many unstressed syllables in the middle. How about Helen Alloy?
(03:18):
Helen a loy? She is phil That's how it began.
One part duty, one part dream, one part science. Had
a stereo broadcast, stirr mechanically, and the result is chaos.
The dilered people had performed a miracle and put all
the works in a girl modeled case. Even the plastic
and rubberight face was designed for flexibility to express emotions,
(03:41):
and she was complete with tear glands and taste buds,
ready to simulate every human action, from breathing to pulling hair.
I'd performed plenty of delicate operations on living tissues, and
some of them had been tricky, but I still felt
like a pre med student as we opened the front
plate of her torso and began to sever the leads
of her nerves. Dave's mechanical glands were all prepared, complex
(04:07):
little bundles of radio tubes and wires that heterodyned on
the electrical thought impulses and distorted them as adrenaline distorted
the reaction of human minds. Instead of sleeping that night,
we poured over these schematic diagrams of her structures, tracing
the thought mazes of her wiring, severing the leaders, implanting
(04:27):
the heterones, as Dave called them, and while we worked
a mechanical tape, fed carefully prepared thoughts of consciousness and
awareness of life and feeling into an auxiliary memory coil.
Dave believed in leaving nothing the chance. It was growing light.
As we finished, exhausted and exultant, all that remained was
(04:48):
the starting of her electrical power. Like all the Dillered macks,
she was equipped with a tiny atom motor instead of batteries,
and once started, she would need no further attention. Dave
refused to turn her on. Wait until we've slept and rested,
He advised, I'm as eager to try as you are,
(05:09):
but we can't do much studying with our minds half dead.
Turn in and we'll leave Helen until later. Even though
we were both reluctant to follow it, we knew the
idea was sound. We turned in and sleep at us
before the air conditioner could cut down to sleeping temperature.
And then Dave was pounding on my shoulder. Phil Phil Hey,
(05:32):
snap out of it, I groaned, turned over and faced him. Well, huh,
what is it? Did Helen? No, it's old missus van Styler.
She advised her to say, her son has an infatuation
for a servant girl, and she wants you to come
out and give counter hormones that the summer camp in Maine,
(05:56):
rich Missus van Styler I couldn't afford. I'll let that
account down now that Helen had used at the last
of my funds. But it wasn't a job. I cared
for counter hormones that'll take two weeks full time anyway.
I'm no society doctor messing with glands to keep fools happy.
(06:16):
My job's taking care of serious trouble. And you want
to watch Helen. Dave was grinning, but he was serious too.
I told her it cost her fifty thousand huh, and
she said, okay, if you're hurried. Of course, there was
only one thing to do, though I could have rung
(06:38):
fat Missus vent Styler's neck cheerfully. It wouldn't have happened
if she'd used robots like everybody else, but she had
to be different. Consequently, while Dave was back home puttering
with Helen, I was racking my brain to trick Archie
vent Styler into getting the counter hormones and giving the
servant girl a saying, oh, I wasn't supposed to, but
(07:00):
the poor kid was crazy about Archie, Dave might have written,
I thought, but never a word did I get. It
was three weeks later instead of two when I reported
that Archie was cured and collected on the line. Without
money in my pocket, I hired a personal rocket and
was back in Messina in half an hour. I didn't
(07:21):
waste time in reaching the house. As I stepped into
the alcove, I heard a light patter of feet and
an eager voice called out, Dave. Dear. For a minute,
I couldn't answer, and the voice came again, pleading Dave.
I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect
(07:42):
Helen to meet me that way. Stopping and staring at me,
obvious disappointment on her faced, little hands fluttering up against
her breast, she cried, oh oh, I thought it was Dave.
He hardly comes home to eat now, but I've had
supper waiting hours. She dropped her hands and managed to smile.
(08:06):
You were Phil, aren't you. Dave told me about you
when at first I'm so glad to see you home. Phil,
I'm glad to see you doing so well, Helen. Now,
what does one say for light conversation with a robot?
You said something about supper. Oh yes, yes, I guess
(08:32):
Dave ate downtown again, so we might as well go in.
It'd be nice having someone to talk to around the house. Phil,
you don't mind if I call you Phil? Do you?
You know you're sort of a godfather to me? We ate.
I hadn't counted on such behavior, but apparently she considered
(08:53):
eating as normal as walking. She didn't do much eating
at that Most of the time she spent stare at
the front door. Dave came in as we were finishing,
a frown a yard wide on his face. Helen started
to rise, but he ducked toward the stairs, throwing words
over his shoulder. I Phil, see you later. There was
(09:16):
something radically wrong with him. For a moment, I thought
his eyes were haunted, and as I turned to Helen,
hers were filling with tears. She gulped, choked them back,
and fell to viciously on her food. What's the matter
with him and with you? I asked. He's sick of me.
(09:41):
She pushed her plate away and got up hastily. You'd
better see him while I clean up. And there's nothing
wrong with me, and it's not my fault anyway. She
grabbed the dishes and ducked into the kitchen. I could
have sworn she was crying. Maybe all thought is a
(10:02):
series of conditioned reflexes, but she certainly had picked up
a lot of conditioning while I was gone. I went
up to see if Dave could make any sense out
of the hodgepodge. He was squirting soda into a large
glass of apple brandy, and I saw that the bottle
was nearly empty. Join me, he asked. It seemed like
(10:24):
a good idea. The roaring, blasted and iron rocket overhead
was the only familiar thing left in the house. From
the look around Dave's eyes. It wasn't the first bottle
even emptied while I was gone, and there were more left.
He dug out a new bottle for his own drink.
A curse. It's none of my business day, But that
(10:46):
stuff won't steady your nerves any what's gotten into you?
And Helen? You've been seeing ghosts? Helen was wrong. He
hadn't been eating down town nor anywhere else. His muscles
collapsed into a chain in a way that spoke of
fatigue and nerves, but mostly of hunger. You noticed it,
(11:09):
huh noticed it? The two of you jammed it down
my throat. Hm. He spatted at an unexistent fly and
slumped farther down in a pneumatic I guess maybe I
should have waited with Helen until you got back. But
if that stereocast hadn't changed anyway, did Phil? And those
(11:34):
mushy books of yours finished the job? Thanks? That makes
it all clear, you know, Phil. I've got a place
up in the country, fruit ranch. My dad left it
to me. I think I'll look it over. And that's
the way it went. But finally, by much liquor more perspiration,
(11:56):
I got some of the story out of him before
I gave him an amatole and put him to bed.
Then I hunted up Helen and dug the rest of
the story from her until it made sense. Apparently, as
soon as I was gone, Dave had turned her on
and made preliminary tests, which were entirely satisfactory. Helen had
(12:17):
reacted beautifully, so well that he decided to leave her
and go down to work as usual. Naturally, with her
untried emotions, she was filled with curiosity and wanted him
to stay. Then he had an inspiration. After showing her
what her duties about the house would be He set
her down in front of the stereo visor, tuned in
(12:39):
a travelog, and left her to occupy her time with that.
The travelog held her attention until it was finished, and
the station switched over to a current serial with Larry Ainsley,
the same cute of motor who had given us all
the trouble with the twins. Incidentally, Ainsley looked something like Dave.
Helen took to the serial like a seal of water.
(13:02):
His play acting was a perfect outlet for her newly
excited emotions. When that particular episode finished, she found a
love story on another station and added still more to
her education. The afternoon programs were mostly news and music,
but by then she'd found my books and I do
have rather adolescent taste in literature. Dave came home in
(13:25):
the best of spirits. The front alcove was neatly swept.
There was the odor of food in the air that
he'd missed around the house for weeks. He had visions
of Helen as the super efficient housekeeper, so it was
a shock to him to feel two strong arms around
his neck from behind and hear a voice all a
quiver coop in his ears. Oh, Dave Darling I've missed
(13:49):
you so and I'm so thrilled that you're back. Helen's
technique may have lacked polish, but it had enthusiasm, as
he found when he to if I had to stop
her from kissing him. She had learned fast and furiously. Also,
Helen was powered by an Adam motor. Now, Dave wasn't
(14:10):
a prude, but he remembered that she was only a robot.
After all, the fact that she felt, acted, and looked
like a young goddess in his arms didn't mean much.
With some effort, he untangled her and dragged her off
to supper, where he made her eat with him to
divert her attention. After her evening work, he called her
(14:32):
into the study and gave her a thorough lecture on
the folly of her ways. It must have been good,
for it lasted three solid hours and covered her station
in life, the idiocy of stereos, and various other miscellanies.
When he had finished, Helen looked up with dewy eyes
and said, wistfully, I know, Dave, but I still love you.
(14:56):
That's when Dave started drinking. It grew worse each day.
If he stayed downtown, she was crying when he came home.
If he returned on time, she fussed over him and
threw herself at him. In his room with the door locked,
he could hear her downstairs, spacing up and down and muttering,
and when he went down, she stared at him reproachfully
(15:18):
until he had to go back up. I sent Helen
out on a fake errand in the morning and got
Dave up with her gun. I made him eat a
decent breakfast and gave him a tonic for his nerves.
He was still listless and moody. Look here, Dave, I
broke in on his brooding. Helen isn't human after all.
(15:43):
Now why not cut off her power and change a
few memory coils? Then we can't convince her that she
never was in love and couldn't get that way. Now
you try it, Phil, I had that idea, but she
put up a wail. It would wake Homer. She says,
it would be murder. And the hell of it is
that I can't help feeling the same way about it.
Maybe she isn't human, but you wouldn't guess it when
(16:05):
she puts on that martyred look and tells you to
go ahead and kill her. We never put in substitutes
were some of the secretions present in Man during the
love period. I don't know what we put in. Maybe
the heaterones back fired or something. Anyway, she's made this
idea so much a part of her thoughts that we'd
(16:26):
have to put in a whole new set of coils. Well,
why not go ahead? You're the surgeon of this family.
I'm not used to fussing with emotions. A matter of fact,
since she's been acting this way, I'm beginning to hate
work on any robot. Business is going to blazes. He
(16:47):
saw Helen coming up the walk and ducked out the
back door for the Mono Rail Express. I'd intended to
put him back in bed, but let him go. Maybe
he'd be better off at his shop than at home.
Dave's gone, Helen did have that martyred look? Now? Yeah? Yeah,
(17:10):
I got him to eat and he's gone to work.
I'm glad he ate she slumped down in the chairs.
If she were worn out, though, HOWI mech could be tired?
Beat me? Phil? Yeah? What is it? Phil? Do you
(17:31):
think I'm bad for him? I mean, do you think
he'd be happier if I weren't here. You go crazy
if you keep acting this way around him, She winced.
Those little hands were twisting about pleadingly, and I felt
like an inhuman brute. But I'd started, and I went ahead.
(17:55):
Even if I cut out your power and changed your coils, Helen,
he'd probably still be haunted by you, I know, but
I can't help it. And I'd make him a good wife,
really I would, phil I gulped, this was going a
little too far, and give him strapping sons to boot.
(18:17):
I suppose a man wants flesh and blood, not rubber
and metal. Don't please, I can't think of myself that way.
To me, I'm a woman, and you know how perfectly
I'm made to imitate a real woman in all ways.
I couldn't give him sons, but in every other way
(18:39):
I'd try so hard. I know i'd make him a
good wife. I gave up. Dave didn't come home that
night nor the next day. Helen was fussing and fuming,
wanting me to call the hospitals and the police, but
I knew nothing had happened to him. He always carried
a donification. Still, when he didn't come home on the
(19:02):
third day, I began to worry, and when Helen started
out for his shop, I agreed to go with her.
Dave was there with another man I didn't know. I
parked Helen where he couldn't see her, but where she
could hear, and went in. As soon as the other
fellow left. Dave looked a little better and seem glad
to see me. Hi, Phil just closing up. Let's go eat.
(19:29):
Helen couldn't hold back any longer, but came trooping in.
Come on home, Dave. I've got roast duck with spice stuffing,
and you know you love that scat, said Dave. She
shrank back and turned to go all right, stay, you
(19:52):
might as well hear it too. I've sold the shop.
The fellow you saw just now bought it, and I'm
going up the old fruit ranch I told you about Phil.
I can't stand the max anymore. You'll starve to death
at that, I told him. No, there's a growing demand
(20:15):
for old fashioned fruit raised out of doors. People are
tired of this water culture stuff. Dad always made a
living out of it. I'm leaving as soon as I
can get home and pack. Helen clung to her idea,
I'll pack, Dave while you eat. I've got apple cobbler
for dessert. The world was toppling under her feet, but
(20:38):
she still remembered how crazy he was for apple cobbler.
Helen was a good cook. In fact, she was a
genius with all the good points of a woman and
mech combined. Dave eight well enough after he got started.
By the time supper was over, he'd thought out enough
to admit the like the duck and the cobbler, and
(21:00):
to thank her for packing. In fact, even let her
kiss him good bye, though he firmly refused to let
her go to the rocket field with him. Helen was
trying to be brave when I got back, and we
carried on a stumbling conversation about Missus van Styler's servants
for a while, but the talk began to lull, and
she sat staring out of the window at nothing. Most
(21:21):
of the time. Even the stereo comedy lacked interest for her,
and I was glad enough to have her go off
to her room. She could cut her power down to
simulate sleep when she chose. As the days slipped by,
I began to realize why she couldn't believe herself a robot.
I got to thinking of her as a girl and
(21:41):
companion myself. Except for odd intervals when she went off
by herself to brood, or when she kept going to
the telescope for a letter that never came, she was
as good a companion as a man could ask. As
I took Helen on a shopping trip to Hudson, and
she giggled and purred over the wisps of silk and
glass sheen that were the f tried on endless hats,
(22:02):
and conducted herself as any normal girl might. We went
trout fishing for a day, where she proved to be
as good a sport and as sensibly silent as a man.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself and thought she was forgetting Dave.
That was before I came home unexpectedly and found her
doubled up on the couch, threshing her legs up and
down and crying to the high heavens. It was then
(22:25):
I called Dave. They seemed to have trouble in reaching him,
and Helen came over beside me while I waited. She
was tense and fridgety as an old maid, trying to propose.
But finally they located Dave. What's up, Phil, he asked,
as his face came on the viewplate. I was just
(22:47):
getting my things together too, I broke him off. Things
can't go on the way they are, Dave. I've made
up my mind. I'm yanking Helen's coils tonight. It won't
be worse than what she's going through now. Helen reached
up and touched my shoulder. Maybe that's best, Phil, I
(23:10):
don't blame you. Dave's voice cut in, Phil, you don't
know what you're doing. Of course I do. It'll be
all over by the time you can get here. As
you heard she's agreeing, there was a black cloud sweeping
(23:31):
over Dave's face. I won't have it, Phil, She's half
mine and I forbid it. Of all, the go ahead,
call me anything you want. I've changed my mind. I
was packing to come home when you called. Helen jerked
(23:54):
around me, her eyes glued to the panel. Dave, do
you are you? I'm just waking up to what a
fool I've been, Helen. Phil, I'll be home in a
couple hours, so if there's anything, He didn't have to
chase me out. But I heard Helen cooling something about
(24:16):
loving to be a rancher's wife before I could shut
the door. Well, I wasn't as surprised as they thought.
I think I knew when I called Dave what would happen.
No man acts the way Dave had been acting because
he hates a girl, only because he thinks he does
and thinks wrong. No woman ever made a lovelier bride
(24:40):
or a sweeter wife. Helen never lost her flare for
cooking and making a home. With her gone, the old
house seemed empty, and I began to drop out of
the ranch once or twice a week. Oh. I suppose
they had trouble at times, but I never saw it,
and I know the neighbors never suspected they were anything
but normal man and wife. Dave grew older and Helen didn't,
(25:06):
of course, but between us we put lines in her
face and grayed her hair without letting Dave know that
she wasn't growing old with him. He'd forgotten that she
wasn't human. I guess I practically forgot myself. It wasn't
until a letter came from Helen this morning that I
woke up to reality. There in her beautiful script, just
(25:28):
a trifle shaking in places was the inevitable that neither
Dave nor I had seen. Dear Phil. As you know,
Dave has had heart trouble for several years now, we
expected him to live on just the same, but it
seems that wasn't to be. He died in my arms
(25:49):
just before sunrise. He sent you his greetings and farewell.
I've one last favor to ask of you, Phil. There's
only one thing for me to do. When this is finished.
Acid will burn out metal as well as flesh, and
I'll be dead with Dave. Please see that we are
buried together and that the morticians do not find my secret.
(26:12):
Dave wanted it that way too. Poor Dear Phil, I
know you love Dave as a brother and how you
felt about me. Please don't grieve too much for us,
for we have had a happy life together and both
feel that we should cross this last bridge side by
side with love and thanks from Helen. It had to
(26:39):
come sooner or later, I suppose, and the first shock
is worn off now. I'll be leaving in a few
minutes to carry out Helen's last instructions. Dave was a
lucky man and the best friend I ever had, and
Helen well, as I said, I'm an old man now
(27:00):
and can view things more sanely. I should have married
and raised a family, I suppose, But there was only
one Helen o'loy. You've heard the story Helen o'loy by
(27:44):
Lester del Rey, written in nineteen thirty eight. One of
its recent appearances was in eighteen Greatest Science Fiction Stories,
edited by Lawrence Jennifer. This is Michael Hanson speaking. Technical
production for minewebs by Leslie Hilson. Mind Webs is a
production of w h A Radio Madison, a service of
(28:06):
University of Wisconsin Extension
Mind Welcome to a half hour of mind waits Short
stories from the worlds of speculative fiction. This is Michael
(02:08):
Hanson with a mind web story written by Lester del
Rey in nineteen thirty eight. The title is Helen o'loy.
One of the many places in which it appears is
a collection edited by Lawrence Jennifer called eighteen Greatest Science
Fiction Stories. I'm an old man now, but I can
(02:31):
still see Helen as Dave unpacked her, and still hear
him gasp as he looked her over. Man, isn't she
a beauty? She was beautiful, a dream and spun plastics
and metal, something Keats might have seen dimly when he
wrote his son. If Helen of Troy had looked like that,
the Greeks must have been pikers when they launched only
(02:52):
a thousand chips. At least that's what I told Dave.
Helena Troy eh looked at her tag. At least it
beats this thing. K two w eight eight Helen Helen
of a LOI now not much swing to that day.
Too many unstressed syllables in the middle. How about Helen Alloy?
(03:18):
Helen a loy? She is phil That's how it began.
One part duty, one part dream, one part science. Had
a stereo broadcast, stirr mechanically, and the result is chaos.
The dilered people had performed a miracle and put all
the works in a girl modeled case. Even the plastic
and rubberight face was designed for flexibility to express emotions,
(03:41):
and she was complete with tear glands and taste buds,
ready to simulate every human action, from breathing to pulling hair.
I'd performed plenty of delicate operations on living tissues, and
some of them had been tricky, but I still felt
like a pre med student as we opened the front
plate of her torso and began to sever the leads
of her nerves. Dave's mechanical glands were all prepared, complex
(04:07):
little bundles of radio tubes and wires that heterodyned on
the electrical thought impulses and distorted them as adrenaline distorted
the reaction of human minds. Instead of sleeping that night,
we poured over these schematic diagrams of her structures, tracing
the thought mazes of her wiring, severing the leaders, implanting
(04:27):
the heterones, as Dave called them, and while we worked
a mechanical tape, fed carefully prepared thoughts of consciousness and
awareness of life and feeling into an auxiliary memory coil.
Dave believed in leaving nothing the chance. It was growing light.
As we finished, exhausted and exultant, all that remained was
(04:48):
the starting of her electrical power. Like all the Dillered macks,
she was equipped with a tiny atom motor instead of batteries,
and once started, she would need no further attention. Dave
refused to turn her on. Wait until we've slept and rested,
He advised, I'm as eager to try as you are,
(05:09):
but we can't do much studying with our minds half dead.
Turn in and we'll leave Helen until later. Even though
we were both reluctant to follow it, we knew the
idea was sound. We turned in and sleep at us
before the air conditioner could cut down to sleeping temperature.
And then Dave was pounding on my shoulder. Phil Phil Hey,
(05:32):
snap out of it, I groaned, turned over and faced him. Well, huh,
what is it? Did Helen? No, it's old missus van Styler.
She advised her to say, her son has an infatuation
for a servant girl, and she wants you to come
out and give counter hormones that the summer camp in Maine,
(05:56):
rich Missus van Styler I couldn't afford. I'll let that
account down now that Helen had used at the last
of my funds. But it wasn't a job. I cared
for counter hormones that'll take two weeks full time anyway.
I'm no society doctor messing with glands to keep fools happy.
(06:16):
My job's taking care of serious trouble. And you want
to watch Helen. Dave was grinning, but he was serious too.
I told her it cost her fifty thousand huh, and
she said, okay, if you're hurried. Of course, there was
only one thing to do, though I could have rung
(06:38):
fat Missus vent Styler's neck cheerfully. It wouldn't have happened
if she'd used robots like everybody else, but she had
to be different. Consequently, while Dave was back home puttering
with Helen, I was racking my brain to trick Archie
vent Styler into getting the counter hormones and giving the
servant girl a saying, oh, I wasn't supposed to, but
(07:00):
the poor kid was crazy about Archie, Dave might have written,
I thought, but never a word did I get. It
was three weeks later instead of two when I reported
that Archie was cured and collected on the line. Without
money in my pocket, I hired a personal rocket and
was back in Messina in half an hour. I didn't
(07:21):
waste time in reaching the house. As I stepped into
the alcove, I heard a light patter of feet and
an eager voice called out, Dave. Dear. For a minute,
I couldn't answer, and the voice came again, pleading Dave.
I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect
(07:42):
Helen to meet me that way. Stopping and staring at me,
obvious disappointment on her faced, little hands fluttering up against
her breast, she cried, oh oh, I thought it was Dave.
He hardly comes home to eat now, but I've had
supper waiting hours. She dropped her hands and managed to smile.
(08:06):
You were Phil, aren't you. Dave told me about you
when at first I'm so glad to see you home. Phil,
I'm glad to see you doing so well, Helen. Now,
what does one say for light conversation with a robot?
You said something about supper. Oh yes, yes, I guess
(08:32):
Dave ate downtown again, so we might as well go in.
It'd be nice having someone to talk to around the house. Phil,
you don't mind if I call you Phil? Do you?
You know you're sort of a godfather to me? We ate.
I hadn't counted on such behavior, but apparently she considered
(08:53):
eating as normal as walking. She didn't do much eating
at that Most of the time she spent stare at
the front door. Dave came in as we were finishing,
a frown a yard wide on his face. Helen started
to rise, but he ducked toward the stairs, throwing words
over his shoulder. I Phil, see you later. There was
(09:16):
something radically wrong with him. For a moment, I thought
his eyes were haunted, and as I turned to Helen,
hers were filling with tears. She gulped, choked them back,
and fell to viciously on her food. What's the matter
with him and with you? I asked. He's sick of me.
(09:41):
She pushed her plate away and got up hastily. You'd
better see him while I clean up. And there's nothing
wrong with me, and it's not my fault anyway. She
grabbed the dishes and ducked into the kitchen. I could
have sworn she was crying. Maybe all thought is a
(10:02):
series of conditioned reflexes, but she certainly had picked up
a lot of conditioning while I was gone. I went
up to see if Dave could make any sense out
of the hodgepodge. He was squirting soda into a large
glass of apple brandy, and I saw that the bottle
was nearly empty. Join me, he asked. It seemed like
(10:24):
a good idea. The roaring, blasted and iron rocket overhead
was the only familiar thing left in the house. From
the look around Dave's eyes. It wasn't the first bottle
even emptied while I was gone, and there were more left.
He dug out a new bottle for his own drink.
A curse. It's none of my business day, But that
(10:46):
stuff won't steady your nerves any what's gotten into you?
And Helen? You've been seeing ghosts? Helen was wrong. He
hadn't been eating down town nor anywhere else. His muscles
collapsed into a chain in a way that spoke of
fatigue and nerves, but mostly of hunger. You noticed it,
(11:09):
huh noticed it? The two of you jammed it down
my throat. Hm. He spatted at an unexistent fly and
slumped farther down in a pneumatic I guess maybe I
should have waited with Helen until you got back. But
if that stereocast hadn't changed anyway, did Phil? And those
(11:34):
mushy books of yours finished the job? Thanks? That makes
it all clear, you know, Phil. I've got a place
up in the country, fruit ranch. My dad left it
to me. I think I'll look it over. And that's
the way it went. But finally, by much liquor more perspiration,
(11:56):
I got some of the story out of him before
I gave him an amatole and put him to bed.
Then I hunted up Helen and dug the rest of
the story from her until it made sense. Apparently, as
soon as I was gone, Dave had turned her on
and made preliminary tests, which were entirely satisfactory. Helen had
(12:17):
reacted beautifully, so well that he decided to leave her
and go down to work as usual. Naturally, with her
untried emotions, she was filled with curiosity and wanted him
to stay. Then he had an inspiration. After showing her
what her duties about the house would be He set
her down in front of the stereo visor, tuned in
(12:39):
a travelog, and left her to occupy her time with that.
The travelog held her attention until it was finished, and
the station switched over to a current serial with Larry Ainsley,
the same cute of motor who had given us all
the trouble with the twins. Incidentally, Ainsley looked something like Dave.
Helen took to the serial like a seal of water.
(13:02):
His play acting was a perfect outlet for her newly
excited emotions. When that particular episode finished, she found a
love story on another station and added still more to
her education. The afternoon programs were mostly news and music,
but by then she'd found my books and I do
have rather adolescent taste in literature. Dave came home in
(13:25):
the best of spirits. The front alcove was neatly swept.
There was the odor of food in the air that
he'd missed around the house for weeks. He had visions
of Helen as the super efficient housekeeper, so it was
a shock to him to feel two strong arms around
his neck from behind and hear a voice all a
quiver coop in his ears. Oh, Dave Darling I've missed
(13:49):
you so and I'm so thrilled that you're back. Helen's
technique may have lacked polish, but it had enthusiasm, as
he found when he to if I had to stop
her from kissing him. She had learned fast and furiously. Also,
Helen was powered by an Adam motor. Now, Dave wasn't
(14:10):
a prude, but he remembered that she was only a robot.
After all, the fact that she felt, acted, and looked
like a young goddess in his arms didn't mean much.
With some effort, he untangled her and dragged her off
to supper, where he made her eat with him to
divert her attention. After her evening work, he called her
(14:32):
into the study and gave her a thorough lecture on
the folly of her ways. It must have been good,
for it lasted three solid hours and covered her station
in life, the idiocy of stereos, and various other miscellanies.
When he had finished, Helen looked up with dewy eyes
and said, wistfully, I know, Dave, but I still love you.
(14:56):
That's when Dave started drinking. It grew worse each day.
If he stayed downtown, she was crying when he came home.
If he returned on time, she fussed over him and
threw herself at him. In his room with the door locked,
he could hear her downstairs, spacing up and down and muttering,
and when he went down, she stared at him reproachfully
(15:18):
until he had to go back up. I sent Helen
out on a fake errand in the morning and got
Dave up with her gun. I made him eat a
decent breakfast and gave him a tonic for his nerves.
He was still listless and moody. Look here, Dave, I
broke in on his brooding. Helen isn't human after all.
(15:43):
Now why not cut off her power and change a
few memory coils? Then we can't convince her that she
never was in love and couldn't get that way. Now
you try it, Phil, I had that idea, but she
put up a wail. It would wake Homer. She says,
it would be murder. And the hell of it is
that I can't help feeling the same way about it.
Maybe she isn't human, but you wouldn't guess it when
(16:05):
she puts on that martyred look and tells you to
go ahead and kill her. We never put in substitutes
were some of the secretions present in Man during the
love period. I don't know what we put in. Maybe
the heaterones back fired or something. Anyway, she's made this
idea so much a part of her thoughts that we'd
(16:26):
have to put in a whole new set of coils. Well,
why not go ahead? You're the surgeon of this family.
I'm not used to fussing with emotions. A matter of fact,
since she's been acting this way, I'm beginning to hate
work on any robot. Business is going to blazes. He
(16:47):
saw Helen coming up the walk and ducked out the
back door for the Mono Rail Express. I'd intended to
put him back in bed, but let him go. Maybe
he'd be better off at his shop than at home.
Dave's gone, Helen did have that martyred look? Now? Yeah? Yeah,
(17:10):
I got him to eat and he's gone to work.
I'm glad he ate she slumped down in the chairs.
If she were worn out, though, HOWI mech could be tired?
Beat me? Phil? Yeah? What is it? Phil? Do you
(17:31):
think I'm bad for him? I mean, do you think
he'd be happier if I weren't here. You go crazy
if you keep acting this way around him, She winced.
Those little hands were twisting about pleadingly, and I felt
like an inhuman brute. But I'd started, and I went ahead.
(17:55):
Even if I cut out your power and changed your coils, Helen,
he'd probably still be haunted by you, I know, but
I can't help it. And I'd make him a good wife,
really I would, phil I gulped, this was going a
little too far, and give him strapping sons to boot.
(18:17):
I suppose a man wants flesh and blood, not rubber
and metal. Don't please, I can't think of myself that way.
To me, I'm a woman, and you know how perfectly
I'm made to imitate a real woman in all ways.
I couldn't give him sons, but in every other way
(18:39):
I'd try so hard. I know i'd make him a
good wife. I gave up. Dave didn't come home that
night nor the next day. Helen was fussing and fuming,
wanting me to call the hospitals and the police, but
I knew nothing had happened to him. He always carried
a donification. Still, when he didn't come home on the
(19:02):
third day, I began to worry, and when Helen started
out for his shop, I agreed to go with her.
Dave was there with another man I didn't know. I
parked Helen where he couldn't see her, but where she
could hear, and went in. As soon as the other
fellow left. Dave looked a little better and seem glad
to see me. Hi, Phil just closing up. Let's go eat.
(19:29):
Helen couldn't hold back any longer, but came trooping in.
Come on home, Dave. I've got roast duck with spice stuffing,
and you know you love that scat, said Dave. She
shrank back and turned to go all right, stay, you
(19:52):
might as well hear it too. I've sold the shop.
The fellow you saw just now bought it, and I'm
going up the old fruit ranch I told you about Phil.
I can't stand the max anymore. You'll starve to death
at that, I told him. No, there's a growing demand
(20:15):
for old fashioned fruit raised out of doors. People are
tired of this water culture stuff. Dad always made a
living out of it. I'm leaving as soon as I
can get home and pack. Helen clung to her idea,
I'll pack, Dave while you eat. I've got apple cobbler
for dessert. The world was toppling under her feet, but
(20:38):
she still remembered how crazy he was for apple cobbler.
Helen was a good cook. In fact, she was a
genius with all the good points of a woman and
mech combined. Dave eight well enough after he got started.
By the time supper was over, he'd thought out enough
to admit the like the duck and the cobbler, and
(21:00):
to thank her for packing. In fact, even let her
kiss him good bye, though he firmly refused to let
her go to the rocket field with him. Helen was
trying to be brave when I got back, and we
carried on a stumbling conversation about Missus van Styler's servants
for a while, but the talk began to lull, and
she sat staring out of the window at nothing. Most
(21:21):
of the time. Even the stereo comedy lacked interest for her,
and I was glad enough to have her go off
to her room. She could cut her power down to
simulate sleep when she chose. As the days slipped by,
I began to realize why she couldn't believe herself a robot.
I got to thinking of her as a girl and
(21:41):
companion myself. Except for odd intervals when she went off
by herself to brood, or when she kept going to
the telescope for a letter that never came, she was
as good a companion as a man could ask. As
I took Helen on a shopping trip to Hudson, and
she giggled and purred over the wisps of silk and
glass sheen that were the f tried on endless hats,
(22:02):
and conducted herself as any normal girl might. We went
trout fishing for a day, where she proved to be
as good a sport and as sensibly silent as a man.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself and thought she was forgetting Dave.
That was before I came home unexpectedly and found her
doubled up on the couch, threshing her legs up and
down and crying to the high heavens. It was then
(22:25):
I called Dave. They seemed to have trouble in reaching him,
and Helen came over beside me while I waited. She
was tense and fridgety as an old maid, trying to propose.
But finally they located Dave. What's up, Phil, he asked,
as his face came on the viewplate. I was just
(22:47):
getting my things together too, I broke him off. Things
can't go on the way they are, Dave. I've made
up my mind. I'm yanking Helen's coils tonight. It won't
be worse than what she's going through now. Helen reached
up and touched my shoulder. Maybe that's best, Phil, I
(23:10):
don't blame you. Dave's voice cut in, Phil, you don't
know what you're doing. Of course I do. It'll be
all over by the time you can get here. As
you heard she's agreeing, there was a black cloud sweeping
(23:31):
over Dave's face. I won't have it, Phil, She's half
mine and I forbid it. Of all, the go ahead,
call me anything you want. I've changed my mind. I
was packing to come home when you called. Helen jerked
(23:54):
around me, her eyes glued to the panel. Dave, do
you are you? I'm just waking up to what a
fool I've been, Helen. Phil, I'll be home in a
couple hours, so if there's anything, He didn't have to
chase me out. But I heard Helen cooling something about
(24:16):
loving to be a rancher's wife before I could shut
the door. Well, I wasn't as surprised as they thought.
I think I knew when I called Dave what would happen.
No man acts the way Dave had been acting because
he hates a girl, only because he thinks he does
and thinks wrong. No woman ever made a lovelier bride
(24:40):
or a sweeter wife. Helen never lost her flare for
cooking and making a home. With her gone, the old
house seemed empty, and I began to drop out of
the ranch once or twice a week. Oh. I suppose
they had trouble at times, but I never saw it,
and I know the neighbors never suspected they were anything
but normal man and wife. Dave grew older and Helen didn't,
(25:06):
of course, but between us we put lines in her
face and grayed her hair without letting Dave know that
she wasn't growing old with him. He'd forgotten that she
wasn't human. I guess I practically forgot myself. It wasn't
until a letter came from Helen this morning that I
woke up to reality. There in her beautiful script, just
(25:28):
a trifle shaking in places was the inevitable that neither
Dave nor I had seen. Dear Phil. As you know,
Dave has had heart trouble for several years now, we
expected him to live on just the same, but it
seems that wasn't to be. He died in my arms
(25:49):
just before sunrise. He sent you his greetings and farewell.
I've one last favor to ask of you, Phil. There's
only one thing for me to do. When this is finished.
Acid will burn out metal as well as flesh, and
I'll be dead with Dave. Please see that we are
buried together and that the morticians do not find my secret.
(26:12):
Dave wanted it that way too. Poor Dear Phil, I
know you love Dave as a brother and how you
felt about me. Please don't grieve too much for us,
for we have had a happy life together and both
feel that we should cross this last bridge side by
side with love and thanks from Helen. It had to
(26:39):
come sooner or later, I suppose, and the first shock
is worn off now. I'll be leaving in a few
minutes to carry out Helen's last instructions. Dave was a
lucky man and the best friend I ever had, and
Helen well, as I said, I'm an old man now
(27:00):
and can view things more sanely. I should have married
and raised a family, I suppose, But there was only
one Helen o'loy. You've heard the story Helen o'loy by
(27:44):
Lester del Rey, written in nineteen thirty eight. One of
its recent appearances was in eighteen Greatest Science Fiction Stories,
edited by Lawrence Jennifer. This is Michael Hanson speaking. Technical
production for minewebs by Leslie Hilson. Mind Webs is a
production of w h A Radio Madison, a service of
(28:06):
University of Wisconsin Extension
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!