Machine Stops - E M Forster

"Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster presents a chilling vision of a future where humanity has retreated into isolated cells, relying entirely on a global Machine to fulfill their every need, both physical and spiritual. As people become increasingly dependent on this omnipotent entity, they forget its human origins and treat it as a deity, leading to a society that views dissenters as "unmechanical" and threatens them with the horror of "Homelessness." This poignant tale serves as a warning about the dangers of losing touch with reality and the consequences of blind faith in technology. The themes of isolation, the erosion of human experience, and the apocalyptic collapse of a civilization built on artificial dependency resonate powerfully today, reflecting our own struggles with technology and connection. Forster's imaginative foresight from 1909 remains strikingly relevant, urging listeners to reflect on the balance between convenience and genuine human interaction.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter one of The Machine Stops. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Generally The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter one,

(00:23):
The Airship. Imagine if you can a small room, hexagonal
in shape, like the cell of a b It is
lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is
filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation,
yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments.

(00:45):
And yet at the moment that my meditation opens, this
room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in
the center. By its side a reading desk, that is
all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a
swaddled lump of flesh, a woman about five feet high,
with a face as white as a fungus. It is

(01:07):
to her that the little room belongs. An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch, and the music was silent.
I suppose I must see who it is, she thought,
and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music,
was worked by machinery and it rolled her to the
other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately.

(01:31):
Who is it? She called? Her voice was irritable, for
she had been interrupted often since the music began. She
knew several thousand people in certain directions. Human intercourse had
advanced enormously. But when she listened into the receiver, her
white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said, very well,

(01:52):
let us talk. I will isolate myself. I do not
expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes,
for I can give you fully five minutes, Cuno. Then
I must deliver my lecture on music during the Australian period.
She touched the isolation knob so that no one else
could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus,

(02:13):
and the little room was plunged into darkness. Be quick,
she called, her irritation, returning, be quick, Cuno. Here I
am in the dark, wasting my time. But it was
fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held
in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light
shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could

(02:34):
see the image of her son, who lived on the
other side of the earth, and he could see her. Kuno,
how slow you are, he smiled gravely. I really believe
you enjoy dawdling. I have called you before, mother, but
you are always busy or isolated. I have something particular
to say. What is it, dearest boy? Be quick? Why

(02:56):
could you not send it by pneumatic post? Because I
prefer saying such a thing. I want well, I want
you to come and see me. Vashti watched his face
in the blue plate. But I can see you, she exclaimed.
What more do you want? I want to see you,

(03:18):
not through the machine, said Kuno. I want to speak
to you, not through the wearisome machine. Oh hush, said
his mother, vaguely shocked. You mustn't say anything against the machine?
Why not? One? Mustn't you talk as if God had
made the machine? Cried the other. I believe that you

(03:39):
pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it.
Do not forget that great men? But men, the machine
is much, but it is not everything. I see something
like you in this plate, but I do not see you.
I hear something like you through this telephone, but I
do not hear you. That is why I want you
to come. Pay me a visit so that we can

(04:01):
meet face to face and talk about the hopes that
are in my mind. She replied that she could scarcely
spare the time for a visit. The airship barely takes
two days to fly between me and you. I dislike airships.
Why I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth and the

(04:21):
sea and the stars when it is dark. I get
no ideas in an airship. I do not get them
anywhere else. What kind of ideas can the air give you?
He paused for an instant. Do you not know four
big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close
together in the middle of the oblong, and hanging from

(04:42):
these stars three other stars. No, I do not. I
dislike the stars, But did they give you an idea?
How interesting? Tell me I had an idea that they
were like a man. I do not understand. The four
big stars are the man's shoulders and his knees. The

(05:03):
three stars in the middle are like the belts that
men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like
a sword.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
A sword.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Men carried swords about with them to kill animals and
other men. It does not strike me as a very
good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it
come to you first in the airship? He broke off,
and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not
be sure, for the machine did not transmit nuances of expression.

(05:34):
It only gave a general idea of people, an idea
that was good enough for all practical purposes. Vashti thought,
the imponderable bloom declared by a discredited philosophy to the
actual essence of intercourse was rightly ignored by the machine,
just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored
by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something good enough had

(05:56):
long since been accepted by our race. The truth is,
he continued, that I want to see these stars again.
They are curious stars. I want to see them not
from the airship, but from the surface of the earth,
as our ancestors did thousands of years ago. I want
to visit the surface of the earth. She was shocked again. Mother,

(06:20):
you must come, if only to explain to me what
is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth.
No harm, she replied, controlling herself. But no advantage. The
surface of the earth is only dust and mud. No advantage.
The surface of the earth is only dust and mud.
No life remains on it, and you would need a respirator,
or the cold of the outer air would kill you.

(06:41):
One dies immediately in the outer air. I know, of course,
I shall take all precautions. And besides well, she considered
and chose her words with care. Her son had a
queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition.
It is contrary to the spirit of the age, she asserted,

(07:04):
Do you mean by that contrary to the machine in
a sense? But his image in the blue plate faded.
Cono he had isolated himself. For a moment. Vashti felt lonely.
Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room,
flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her.

(07:25):
There were buttons and switches everywhere, buttons to call for food,
for music, for clothing. There was the hot bath button,
by pressure of which a basin of imitation marble rose
out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm,
deodorized liquid. There was the cold bath button. There was
the button that produced literature. And there were of course

(07:46):
the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The
room though it contained nothing was in touch with all
that she cared for in the world. Bashie's next move
was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the
accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The
room was filled with the noise of bells and speaking tubes.

(08:07):
What was the new food like? Could she recommend it?
Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her
one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit
the public nurseries at an early date, say this day
and month. To most of these questions, she replied with irritation,
a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that

(08:27):
the new food was horrible, that she could not visit
the public nurseries through press of engagements, that she had
no ideas of her own, but had just been told
one that four stars and three in the middle were
like a man. She doubted there was much in it.
Then she switched off her correspondence, for it was time
to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system

(08:49):
of public gatherings had been long since abandoned. Neither Vashti
nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her
arm chair. She spoke while they and their arm chairs
hurt her fairly well and saw her fairly well. She
opened with a humorous account of music in the pre
Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst
of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primeval,

(09:13):
as were the methods of Isa and So and the
Brisbane school. She yet felt, She said that study of
them might repay the musicians of to day. They had freshness,
They had above all ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes,
was well received, and at its conclusion she and many
of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea.

(09:33):
There were ideas to be got from the sea. The
speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then
she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again,
and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking.
It was too large, and she had a feeling for
a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of
the same dimension all over the world, and to have

(09:56):
had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in
the machine. Bashi isolated herself. It was necessary for neither
day nor night existed under the ground, and reviewed all
that had happened since she had summoned the bed. Last
ideas scarcely any events was Kuno's invitation and event by

(10:18):
her side on the little reading desk was a survival
from the ages of litter one book. This was the
Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every
possible contingency. If she was hot or cold, or dyspeptic,
or at a loss for a word, she went to
the book and had told her which button to press.
The Central Committee published it in accordance with the growing habit.

(10:41):
It was richly bound. Sitting up in the bed, she
took it reverently in her hands. She glanced around the
glowing room as if someone might be watching her. Then,
half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured, oh machine, Oh Machine,
and raised the volume to her lips. Thrice. She kissed thrice,
inclined her head thrice. She felt the delirium of acquiescence

(11:05):
her ritual performed. She turned to page thirteen sixty seven,
which gave the times of the departure of the airships
from the island in the Southern Hemisphere, under whose soil
she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder
lived her son. She thought, I have not the time.
She made the room dark and slept. She awoke and

(11:27):
made the room light. She ate and exchanged ideas with
her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures. She
made the room dark and slept above her, beneath her,
and around her. The machine hummed eternally. She did not
notice the noise, for she had been born with it
in her ears. The earth carrying her hummed as it

(11:48):
sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun,
now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the
room light. Kuno, I will not talk to you, he answered,
until you come. Have you been on the surface of
the earth since we spoke last? His image faded again.
She consulted the book. She became very nervous and lay

(12:11):
back in her chair, palpitating, think of her as without
teeth or hair. Presently, she directed the chair to the
wall and pressed an unfamiliar button. The wall swung apart slowly.
Through the opening, she saw a tunnel that curved slightly
so that its goal was not visible. Should she go
to see her son? Here was the beginning of the journey.

(12:32):
Of course, she knew all about the communication system. There
was nothing mysterious in it. She would summon a car
and it would fly with her down the tunnel until
it reached the lift that communicated with the airship station.
The system had been in use for many, many years,
long before the universal establishment of the machine. And of
course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded

(12:55):
her own, the civilization that had mistaken the functions of
the system and had used it for bringing people to
things instead of for bringing things to people, those funny
old days when men went for change of air instead
of changing the air in their rooms. And yet she
was frightened of the tunnel. She had not seen it
since her last child was born. It curved, but not

(13:18):
quite as she remembered. It was brilliant, but not quite
as brilliant as a lecturer had suggested. Vashti was seized
with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into
the room, and the wall closed up again. Cuno, she said,
I cannot come to see you. I am not well. Immediately,

(13:38):
an enormous apparatus fell on to her. Out of the ceiling.
A thermometer was automatically laid upon her heart. She lay
powerless cool pads soothed her forehead. Cuno had telegraphed to
her doctor, so the human passions still blundered up and
down on the machine. Fashtie drank the medicine that the
doctor projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into

(14:01):
the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how
she felt better than with the irritation. But why do
you not come to me instead? Because I cannot leave
this place? Why because any moment something tremendous may happen.
Have you been on the surface of the earth yet

(14:23):
not yet? Then? What is it? I will not tell
you Through the machine. She resumed her life, but she
thought of Cuno as a baby, his birth, his removal
to the public nurseries, her own visit to him there,
his visits to her, visits, which stopped when the machine
had assigned him a room on the other side of

(14:43):
the earth. Parents come a duties of said the book
of the machine, cease at the moment of birth paragraph
four two two three, two seven four eight three. True.
But there was something special about Cuno. Indeed, there had
been something special about all her children. And after all,
she must brave the journey if he desired it, and

(15:04):
something tremendous might happen. What did that mean? The nonsense
of a youthful man, no doubt, But she must go again.
She pressed the unfamiliar button again. The wall swung back,
and she saw the tunnel that curves out of sight.
Clasping the book, she rose, tottered onto the platform and
summoned the car. Her room closed behind her. The journey

(15:26):
to the Northern Hemisphere had begun. Of course, it was
perfectly easy. The car approached, and in it she found
arm chairs exactly like her own. When she signaled, it
stopped and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger
was in the lift, the first fellow creature she had
seen face to face for months. Few traveled in these days,

(15:47):
for thanks to the advance of science, the Earth was
exactly alike all over, rapid intercourse from which the previous
civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself.
What was the good of going to Peking when it
was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it
would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies

(16:09):
all unrest was concentrated in the soul. The airship service
was a relic from the former age. It was kept
up because it was easier to keep it up than
to stop it or to diminish it. But it now
far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel
would rise from the vomitories of Rye or of christ Church,
I use the antique names, would sail into the crowded

(16:32):
sky and would draw up at the wharves of the
south empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent
of meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, resembled
a vast kaleidoscope, where on the same patterns periodically recurred.
The ship on which Vaschi sailed started now at sunset,
now at dawn, but always as it passed above Ryaz,

(16:54):
it would neighbor the ship that served between Helsingfors and
the Brazils, And every third time it surmounted the Alps,
the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind night
and day, wind and storm tied. An earthquake impeded man
no longer he had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature,
with its praise of nature and its fear of nature

(17:16):
rang false as the prattle of a child. Yet as
vast she saw the vast flank of the ship stained
with exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct
experience returned. It was not quite like the airship in
the cinema to fote for one thing. It smelt, not
strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her

(17:37):
eyes shut she should have known that a new thing
was close to her. Then she had to walk to
it from the lift, had to submit to glances from
the other passengers. The man in front dropped his book,
no great matter, but it disquieted them all and the rooms.
If the book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically,
But the gangway to the airship was not so prepared,

(18:00):
and the sacred volume lay motionless. They stopped. The thing
was unforeseen, and the man, instead of picking up his property,
felt the muscles of his arm to see how they
had failed him. Then some one actually said, with direct utterance,
we shall be late, and they trooped on board, vashly,
treading on the pages. As she did so. Inside her

(18:22):
anxiety increased. The arrangements were old fashioned and rough. There
was even a female attendant, to whom she would have
to announce her wants During the voyage. Of course, a
revolving platform ran the length of the boat, but she
was expected to walk from it to her cabin. Some
cabins were better than others, and she did not get
the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and

(18:45):
spasms of rage shook her. The glass valves had closed,
she could not go back. She saw at the end
of the vestibule the lift in which she had ascended,
going quietly up and down. Empty. Beneath those corridors of
shining tiles were rooms, tier below tier, reaching far into
the earth, and in each room there sat a human being,

(19:06):
eating or sleeping, or producing ideas. And very deep in
the hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid o machine.
She murmured and caressed her book and was comforted. Then
the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as
to the passages that we see in dreams. The lift vanished,

(19:26):
The book that had been dropped slid to the left
and vanished. Polished tiles rushed by like a stream of water.
There was a slight jar, and the airship issuing from
its tunnel soared above the waters of a tropical ocean.
It was night. For a moment she saw the coast
of Sumatra, edged by the phosphorescence of waves, and crowned

(19:47):
by lighthouses still sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished,
and only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless,
but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out
of one sky light into another, as if the universe
and not the airship, was careening. And as often happens
on clear nights, they seemed now to be in perspective,

(20:09):
now on a plane, now piled tier beyond tier into
the infinite heavens now concealing infinity, a roof limiting forever
the visions of men. In either case, they seemed intolerable.
Are we to travel in the dark, called the passengers angrily,
and the attendant, who had been careless, generated the light
and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal. When the

(20:32):
airships had been built, the desire to look direct at
things still lingered in the world, Hence the extraordinary number
of skylights and windows, and the proportionate discomfort to those
who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti's cabin, One
star peeped through a flaw in the blind, and after
a few hours uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an

(20:53):
unfamiliar glow, which was the dawn. Quick as the ship
had sped westwards, the Earth had rolled eastwardords quicker still,
and had dragged back Vashi in her companions towards the Sun.
Science could prolong the night, but only for little, and
those high hopes of neutralizing the Earth's diurnal revolution had passed,

(21:13):
together with hopes that were possibly higher. To keep pace
with the Sun, or even to outstrip it, had been
the aim of the civilization preceding this. Racing aeroplanes had
been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed, and
steered by the greatest intellects of the epoch, round the
globe they went round and round, westward, westward, round and round.

(21:36):
Amidst humanity's applause and vain, the globe went eastward, quicker still.
Horrible accidents occurred, and the committee of the machine at
the time, rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical,
and punishable by homelessness. Of homelessness, more will be said later,
Doubtless the committee was right. Yet the attempt to defeat

(21:59):
the Sun aroused the last common interest that our race
experienced about the heavenly bodies, or indeed about anything. It
was the last time that men were compacted by thinking
of a power outside the world. The Sun had conquered,
yet it was the end of his spiritual dominion. Dawn
mid day twilight, the zodiacal path touched neither men's lives

(22:22):
nor their hearts, and Science retreated into the ground to
concentrate herself upon problems that she was certain of solving.
So when Vashti found her cabin invaded by a rosy
finger of light, she was annoyed and tried to adjust
the blind, But the blind flew up altogether, and she
saw through the skylight small pink clouds swaying against the

(22:42):
background of blue. And as the sun crept higher, its
radiance entered direct, brimming down the wall like a golden sea.
It rose and fell with the airship's motion, just as
waves rise and fall, But it advanced steadily as a
tide advances. Unless she was careful, it would strike her face.
A spasm of horror shook her, and she rang for

(23:04):
the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could
do nothing. It was not her place to mend the blind.
She could only suggest that the lady should change her cabin,
which she accordingly prepared to do. People were almost exactly
alike all over the world. But the attendant of the airship,
perhaps owing to her exceptional duties, had grown a little

(23:25):
out of the common. She had often to address passengers
with direct speech, and this had given her a certain
roughness and originality of manner. When Vashtie swerved away from
the sunbeams with a cry, she behaved barbarically. She put
out her hand to steady her. How dare you, exclaimed
the passenger. You forget yourself. The woman was confused and

(23:49):
apologized for not having let her fall. People never touched
one another. The custom had become obsolete owing to the machine.
Where are we now, asked Vashtie haughtily. We are over Asia,
said the attendant, anxious to be polite. Asia. You must
excuse my common way of speaking. I have got into

(24:09):
the habit of calling places over which I passed by
their unmechanical names. Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols come
from it beneath us In the open air stood a
city that was once called Simla. Have you ever heard
of the Mongols? And of the Brisbane school. No, Brisbane
also stood in the open air. Those mountains to the right,

(24:31):
let me show you them. She pushed back a metal blind.
The main chain of the himalays was revealed. They were
once called the roof of the world. Those mountains. You
must remember that before the dawn of civilization, they seemed
to be an impenetrable wall that touched the stars. It
was supposed that no one but the gods could exist
above their summits. How we have advanced thanks to the machine.

(24:56):
How we have advanced thanks to the machine, said Vashti.
How they have advanced thanks to the machine, echoed the passenger,
who had dropped his book the night before, and who
was standing in the passage. And that white stuff in
the cracks, what is it? I have forgotten its name?
Cover the windows, please the mountains give me no ideas.

(25:18):
The northern aspect of the Himalayas was in deep shadow
on the Indian slope. The sun had just prevailed. The
forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the
purpose of making newspaper pulp but the snows were awakening
to their morning glory, and clouds still hung on the
breasts of kinchin Junga. In the plain were seen the
ruins of cities, with the minished rivers creeping by their

(25:41):
walls and by the sides of these were sometimes the
signs of vomitories, marking the cities of to day. Over
the whole prospect airships rushed crossing the intercrossing with incredible
aplom and rising nonchalantly when they desired to escape the
perturbations of the lower atmosphere and to traverse the room
roof of the world. We have indeed advanced thanks to

(26:03):
the machine, repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind
a metal blind. The day dragged wearily forward. The passengers
sat each in his cabin, avoiding one another with an
almost physical repulsion, and longing to be once more under
the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten
of them, mostly young males, sent out from the public

(26:23):
nurseries to inhabit the rooms of those who had died
in various parts of the earth. The man who had
dropped his book was on the homeward journey. He had
been sent to Sumatra, for the purpose of propagating the race.
Vashti alone was traveling by her own private will. At midday,
she took a second glance of the earth. The airship
was crossing another range of mountains, but she could see little.

(26:46):
Owing to clouds, masses of black rock hovered below her
and merged indistinctly into gray. Their shapes were fantastic. One
of them resembled a prostrate man. No idea is here,
murmured Vashon, and hid the caucases behind a metal blind.
In the evening, she looked again. They were crossing a
golden sea in which lay many small islands and one peninsula.

(27:10):
She repeated, no ideas here, and hid Greece behind a
metal blind.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
End of chapter one, Chapter two of The Machine Stops.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Erin Tavano. The Machine

(27:41):
Stops by E. M. Forster, Chapter two, The mending apparatus,
by a vestibule, by a lift, by a tubular railway,
by a platform, by a sliding door, by reversing all
the steps of her departure did Dushty arrived at her
son's room, which exactly resembled her own. She might well

(28:05):
declare that the visit was superfluous. The buttons, the knobs,
the reading desk with the book, the temperature, the atmosphere,
the illumination all were exactly the same. And if Kuno himself,
flush of her flush stood close beside her at last,
what profit was there? And that she was too well
bred to shake him by the hand. Averting her eyes,

(28:28):
she spoke as follows. Here I am, I have had
the most terrible journey and greatly retarded the development of
my soul. It is not worth it, Kuno, it is
not worth it. My time is too precious. The sunlight
almost touched me, and I have met with the rudest people.
I can only stop a few minutes, say what you
want to say, and then I must return. I have

(28:51):
been threatened with homelessness, said Cuno. She looked at him. Now,
I have been threatened with homelessness, and I could not
tell you such a thing through the machine. Homelessness means death.
The victim is exposed to the air, which kills him.
I have been outside since I spoke to you last.

(29:12):
The tremendous thing has happened, and they have discovered me.
But why shouldn't you go outside? She exclaimed. It is
perfectly legal, perfectly mechanical, to visit the surface of the earth.
I have lately been to a lecture on the sea.
There is no objection in that. One simply summons a
respirator and gets an aggression permit. It is not the
kind of thing that spiritually minded people do, and I

(29:34):
begged you not to do it, but there is no
legal objection to it. I did not get an aggression permit.
Then how did you get out? I found out a
way of my own? The phrase conveyed no meaning to her,
and he had to repeat it. Away of your own,
she whispered. But that would be wrong. Why the question

(30:00):
shocked her beyond measure. You are beginning to worship the machine,
he said coldly. You think it irreligious of me to
have found out a way of my own. It was
just what the committee thought when they threatened me with homelessness.
At this, she grew angry. I worship nothing, she cried,
I am most advanced. I don't think you irreligious, for
there is no such thing as religion. Left. All the

(30:22):
fear and the superstition that existed once have been destroyed
by the machine. I only meant that to find out
a way of your own was Besides, there is no
new way out, so it is always supposed, except through
the vomitories, for which one must have an aggression permit,
it is impossible to get out. The book says so well,

(30:43):
the book's wrong, for I have been out on my feet.
Forcuno was possessed of a certain physical strength. By these
days it was a demerit to be muscular. Each infant
was examined at birth, and all who promised undue strength
were destroyed. He mean, Carrians may protest, but it would
have been no true kindness to let an athlete live.

(31:04):
He would never have been happy in that state of
life to which the machine had called him. He would
have yearned for trees to climb, rivers, to bathe in
meadows and hills against which he might measure his body.
Men must be adapted to his surroundings, must he not.
In the dawn of our world, our weekly must be
exposed on Mount Tegatus in its twilight, our strong will

(31:25):
suffer euthanasia. That the machine may progress that the machine
may progress, that the machine may progress eternally. You know,
we have lost the sense of space. We say space
is annihilated, but we have annihilated not space, but the
sense thereof. We have lost a part of ourselves. I
determined to recover it, and I began by walking up

(31:46):
and down the platform of the railway outside my room,
up and down until I was tired, and so did
recapture the meaning of near and far. Near is a
place to which I can get quickly on my feet,
not a place to which the train or the airship
will take me quickly. Far is a place to which
I cannot get quickly on my feet. The vomitory is far,

(32:08):
though I could be there in thirty eight seconds by
summoning the train. Man is the measure that was my
first lesson. Man's feet are the measure for distance, His
hands are the measure for ownership. His body is the
measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.
Then I went further, and it was then that I
called to you for the first time, and you would
not come. This city, as you know, is built deep

(32:32):
beneath the surface of the earth, with only the vomitories protruding.
Having paced the platform outside my own room, I took
the lift to the next platform and paced that also,
and so with each in turn, until I came to
the topmost above, which begins the earth. All the platforms
were exactly alike, and all that I gained by visiting
them was to develop my sense of space and my muscles.

(32:56):
I think I should have been content with this. It
is not a little thing. But as I walked and brooded,
it occurred to me that our cities had been built
in the days when men still breathed the outer air,
and that there had been ventilation shafts for the workmen.
I could think of nothing but these ventilation shafts. Had
they been destroyed by all the food tubes and medicine
tubes and music tubes that the machine has evolved lately,

(33:19):
or did traces of them remain? One thing was certain.
If I came upon them anywhere, it would be in
the railway tunnels of the topmost story. Everywhere else all
space was accounted for. I am telling my story quickly,
But don't think that I was not a coward, or
that your answers never depressed me. It is not the
proper thing it is not mechanical. It is not decent

(33:41):
to walk along a railway tunnel. I did not fear
that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed.
I feared something far more intangible, doing what was not
contemplated by the machine. Then I said to myself, man
is the measure. And I went, and after many visits
I found an opening. The tunnels, of course, were lighted.

(34:06):
Everything is light artificial light. Darkness is the exception. So
when I saw a black gap in the tiles, I
knew it was an exception, and rejoiced. I put in
my arm I could put in no more at first,
and waved it round and round. In ecstasy. I loosened
another tile and put in my head and shouted into
the darkness, I am coming. I shall do it yet,

(34:28):
And my voice reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to
hear the spirits of those dead workmen who had returned
each evening to the starlight into their wives, and all
the generations who had lived in the open air. Called
back to me. You will do it, yet, you are coming,
He paused, and absurd as he was, his last words
moved her. For Cuno had lately asked to be a father,

(34:51):
and his request had been refused by the committee. His
was not a type that the machine desired to hand on.
Then train passed it, brushed by me, but I thrust
my head and arms into the hole. I had done
enough for one day, so I crawled back to the platform,
went down in a lift and summoned my bed. Ah,

(35:12):
what dreams? And again I called you, and again you refused.
She shook her head and said, don't don't talk of
these terrible things. You make me miserable. You are throwing
civilization away. But I had got back the sense of space,
and a man cannot rest. Then I determined to get

(35:32):
in at the hole and climb the shaft, and so
I exercised my arms day after day. I went through
ridiculous movements until my flesh ached and I could hang
by my hands and hold the pillow of my bed
outstretched for many minutes. Then I summoned a respirator and started.
It was easy at first, for the mortar had somehow rotted,

(35:54):
and I soon pushed some more tiles in and clambered
after them into the darkness, and the spirits of the
dead comfort me. I don't know what I mean by that,
I just say what I felt. I felt for the
first time that a protest had been lodged against corruption,
and that even as the den were comforting me, so
I was comforting the unborn. I felt that humanity existed,

(36:16):
and that it existed without clothes. How can I possibly
explain this? It was naked. Humanity seemed naked. And all
these tubes and buttons and machineries neither came into the
world with us, nor will they follow us out, nor
do they matter supremely while we are here. Had I
been strong, I would have torn off every garment I
had and gone out into the outer air unswaddled. But

(36:40):
this is not for me, nor perhaps for my generation.
I climbed with my respirator and my hygienic clothes and
my dietetic tabloids. Better thus than not at all. There
was a ladder made of some primeval metal. The light
from the railway fell upon its lowest wrongs, and I
saw that it straight upwards out of the rubble at

(37:01):
the bottom of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestors ran up
and down it a dozen times daily in their building.
As I climbed, the rough edges cut through my gloves
so that my hands bled. The light helped me for
a while, and then came darkness and worse still, silence,
which pierced my ears like a sword. The machine hums.
Did you know that its hum penetrates our blood? It

(37:25):
may even guide our thoughts? Who knows I was getting
beyond its power? Then I thought, this silence means that
I am doing wrong. But I heard voices in the silence,
and again they strengthened me. He laughed, I had need
of them. The next moment I cracked my head against something.
She sighed. I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers

(37:48):
that defend us from the outer air. You may have
noticed them on the air ship. Pitched dark, my feet
on the wrongs of an invisible ladder, my hands cut.
I cannot explain how I lived through this part, but
the voices still comforted me, and I felt for fastenings.
The stopper, I suppose, was about eight feet across. I
passed my hand over it as far as I could reach.

(38:09):
It was perfectly smooth. I felt it almost to the center,
not quite to the center, for my arm was too short.
Then the voice said, jump, it is worth it. There
may be a handle in the center, and you may
catch hold of it, and so come to us your
own way. And if there is no handle, so that
you may fall and are dashed to pieces, it is
still worth it. You will still come to us your

(38:32):
own way. So I jumped. There was a handle, and
he paused. Tears gathered in his mother's eyes. She knew
that he was faded. If he did not die to day,
he would die tomorrow. There was not room for such
a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled,

(38:53):
she was ashamed at having borne such a son, she
who had always been so respectable and so full of ideas.
Was he really the little boy to whom she had
taught the use of his stops and buttons, and to
whom she had given his first lessons in the book?
The very hair that disfigured his lips showed that he
was reverting to some savage type on ativism. The machine
can have no mercy. There was a handle, and I

(39:17):
did catch it. I hung tranced over the darkness, and
heard the hum of these workings as the last whisper
in a dying dream. All these things I had cared about,
and all the people I had spoken to through tubes
appeared infinitely little. Meanwhile, the handle revolved. My weight had
set something in motion, and I spanned slowly. And then

(39:40):
I cannot describe it. I was lying with my face
to the sunshine, blood poured from my nose and ears,
and I heard a tremendous roaring. The stopper, with me
clinging to it, had simply been blown out of the earth,
and the air that we make down here was escaping
through the vent into the air above. It burst up
like a fountain. I crawled back to it for the

(40:02):
upper air hurts, and as it were, I took great
SIPs from the edge. My respirator had flown goodness knows where,
and my clothes were torn. I just lay with my
lips close to the hole, and I sipped until the
bleeding stopped. You can imagine nothing so curious this hollow
in the grass. I will speak of it in a minute.

(40:22):
The sun shining into it, not brilliantly, but through marble clouds,
the peace, the nonchalance, the sense of space, and brushing
my cheek, the roaring fountain of our artificial air. Soon
I spied my respirator bobbing up and down in the current.
High above my head, and higher still were the many airships.
But no one ever looks out of airships, and in

(40:44):
my case they could not have picked me up. There
I was stranded. The sun shone a little way down
the shaft and revealed the topmost wrong of the ladder,
but it was hopeless trying to reach it. I should
either have been tossed up again by the escape, or
else have fallen in and died. I could only lie
on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to

(41:05):
time glancing around me. I knew that I was in Wessex,
for I had taken care to go to a lecture
on the subject before starting. Wessex lies above the room
in which we are talking now. It was once an
important state. Its kings held all the southern coast from
the Andred's Wall to Cornwall, while Wansdyke protected them on
the north, running over the high ground. The lecturer was

(41:27):
only concerned with the rise of Wessex, so I do
not know how long it remained in international power, nor
would the knowledge have assisted me to tell the truth.
I could do nothing but laugh. During this part. There
was I with a pneumatic stopper by my side, and
a respirator bobbing above my head. Imprisoned all three of
us in a grass grown hollow that was edged with fern.

(41:49):
Then he grew grave again. Lucky for me that it
was a hollow, for the air began to fall back
into it, and to fill it as water fills a bowl.
I could crawl about. Presently I stood, I breathed a
mixture in which the air that hurts predominated whenever I
tried to climb the sides. This was not so bad.
I had not lost my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful.

(42:12):
And as for the machine, I forgot about it altogether.
My one aim now was to get to the top
where the ferns were, and to view whatever objects lay beyond.
I rushed the slope. The new air was still too
bitter for me, and I came rolling back after a
momentary vision of something gray. The sun grew very feeble,
and I remembered that he was in scorpio. I had

(42:34):
been to a lecture on that too. If the sun
is in Scorpio and you are in Wessex, it means
that you must be as quick as you can, or
it will get too dark. This is the first bit
of useful information I have ever got from a lecture,
and I expect it will be the last. It made
me try frantically to breathe the new air and to
advance as far as I dared out of my pond.

(42:54):
The hollow filled so slowly at times I thought that
the fountain played with less vigor. My respirators seemed to
dance nearer the earth. The roar was decreasing. He broke off.
I don't think this is interesting to you. The rest
will interest you even less. There are no ideas in it,
and I wish I had not troubled you to come.
We are too different. Mother, She told him to continue.

(43:18):
It was evening before I climbed the bank. The sun
had very nearly slipped out of the sky by this time,
and I could not get a good view. You, who
have just crossed the roof of the world will not
want to hear an account of the little hills that
I saw, low, colorless hills. But to me they were living,
and the turf that covered them was a skin under
which their muscles rippled. And I felt that those hills

(43:39):
had called with incalculable force to men in the past,
and that the men had loved them. Now they sleep,
perhaps forever, they commune with humanity and dreams. Happy the man, happy,
the woman who awakes the hills of Wessex, For though
they sleep, they will never die. His voice rose passionately.

(43:59):
Can can not you see, cannot all your lectures see
that it is we who are dying, and that down
here the only thing that really lives is the machine.
We created the machine to do our will, but we
cannot make it do our will. Now it has robbed
us of the sense of space and of the sense
of touch. It has blurred every human relation and narrowed

(44:19):
down love to a carnal act. It has paralyzed our
bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to
worship it. The machine develops, but not on our lines.
The machine proceeds, but not to our goal. We only
exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries.
And if it could work without us, it would let
us die. Oh, I have no remedy, or at least

(44:42):
only one to tell men again and again that I
have seen the hills of Wessex as Alfred saw them
when he overthrew the Danes, so the sun set. I
forgot to mention that a belt of mist lay between
my hill and other hills, and that it was the
color of pearl. He broke off for the second time.

(45:02):
Go On, said his mother wearily. He shook his head.
Go On, nothing that you say can distress me. Now
I am hardened. I had meant to tell you the rest,
but I cannot. I know that I cannot. Good Bye.
Vashti stood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling with his blasphemies.
But she was also inquisitive. This is unfair, she complained.

(45:25):
You have called me across the world to hear your story,
and hear it. I will tell me as briefly as possible,
for this is a disastrous waste of time. Tell me
how you return to civilization, Oh that, he said, starting
you would like to hear about civilization? Certainly? Had I
got to where my respirator fell down? No, but I

(45:45):
understand everything. Now. You put on your respirator and managed
to walk along the surface of the earth to a vomitory,
and there your conduct was reported to the Central Committee
by no means. He passed his hand over his forehead,
as if to spelling some strong impression. Then, resuming his narrative,
he warmed to it again. My respirator fell about sunset.

(46:08):
I had mentioned that the fountain seemed feebler. Had I
not yes about sunset? It let the respirator fall. As
I said, I had entirely forgotten about the machine, and
I paid no great attention at the time, being occupied
with other things. I had my pool of air into
which I could dip when the outer keenness became intolerable,

(46:29):
and which would possibly remain for days, provided that no
wind sprang up to disperse it. Not until it was
too late did I realize what the stoppage of the
escape implied. You see, the gap in the tunnel had
been mended the mending apparatus. The mending apparatus was after me.
One other warning I had, but I neglected it. The
sky at night was clearer than it had been in

(46:50):
the day, and the moon, which was about half the
sky behind the sun, shone into the dell at moments
quite brightly. I was in my usual place on the
boundary between the two atmospheres when I thought I saw
something dark move across the bottom of the dell and
vanish into the shaft in my folly. I ran down.
I bent over and listened, and I thought I heard

(47:11):
a faint scraping noise in the depths at this, but
it was too late. I took alarm. I determined to
put on my respirator and to walk right out of
the dell. But my respirator had gone. I knew exactly
where it had fallen, between the stopper and the aperture,
and I could even feel the mark that it had
made in the turf. It had gone, and I realized

(47:32):
that something evil was at work, and I had better
escape to the outer air. And if I must die,
die running towards the cloud that had been the color
of a pearl. I never started out of the shaft.
It is too horrible. A worm, a long white worm,
had crawled out of the shaft and was gliding over
the moonlit grass. I screamed. I did everything that I

(47:52):
should not have done. I stamped upon the creature instead
of flying from it, and it at once curled around
my ankle. Then we fought. The worm let me run
all over the dell, but edged up my leg. As
I ran help, I cried, that part is too awful.
It belongs to the part that you will never know. Help,
I cried, Why cannot we suffer in silence?

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Help?

Speaker 2 (48:15):
I cried? Then my feet were wound together. I fell.
I was dragged away from the dear ferns in the
living hills and passed the great metal stopper. I can
tell you this part, and I thought it might save
me again if I caught hold of the handle. It
also was enwrapped. It also, Oh, the whole dell was
full of the things. They were searching it in all directions.

(48:35):
They were denuding it, and the white snouts of others
peeped out of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that
could be moved. They brought brushwood, bundles of fern, everything,
and down we all went, intertwined into hell. The last
things that I saw ere the stopper closed after us
were certain stars, and I felt that a man of
my sort lived in the sky. For I did fight.

(48:58):
I fought till the very end, and it was only
my head hitting against the latter that quieted me. I
woke up in this room. The worms had vanished. I
was surrounded by artificial light, artificial air, artificial peace, and
my friends were calling to me down, speaking tubes to
know whether I had come across any new ideas lately.
Here his story ended, discussion of it was impossible, and

(49:20):
Vashti turned to go it will end in homelessness, She
said quietly. I wish it would, retorted Cuno, the machine
has been most merciful. I prefer the mercy of God.
By that superstitious phrase, do you mean that you could
live in the outer air? Yes? Have you ever seen

(49:41):
round the vomitories the bones of those who were extruded
after the Great Rebellion? Yes, they were left where they
perished for our edification. A few crawled away, but they
perished too. Who can doubt it? And so with the
homeless of our own day. The surface of the earth
supports life no longer. Indeed, ferns and a little grass

(50:02):
may survive, but all higher life forms have perished. Has
any airship detected them? No? Has any lecturer dealt with them? No?
Then why this obstinacy? Because I have seen them, he exploded,
Seen what? Because I have seen her in the twilight,
because she came to my help when I called, Because

(50:24):
she too was entangled by the worms, and luckier than I,
was killed by one of them. Piercing her throat. He
was mad. Vashti departed, nor in the troubles that followed,
did she ever see his face again. End of chapter two.
Recording by Erin Tivano, Los Angeles, California. Chapter three of

(50:49):
The Machine Stops. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Erin, Tivano,
Los Angeles, California. The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster,

(51:11):
Chapter three, The Homeless. During the years that followed Kuno's escapade,
two important developments took place in the Machine. On the surface,
they were revolutionary, but in either case men's minds had
been prepared beforehand, and they did but express tendencies that
were latent already. The first of these was the abolition

(51:34):
of respirators. Advanced thinkers like Vashti had always held it
foolish to visit the surface of the Earth. Airships might
be necessary, but what was the good of going out
for mere curiosity and crawling along for a mile or
two in a terrestrial motor. The habit was vulgar, and
perhaps faintly improper. It was unproductive of ideas and had

(51:55):
no connection with the habits that really mattered. So respirators
were abolished, and with them, of course, the terrestrial motors.
And except for a few lecturers who complained that they
were debarred access to their subject matter, the development was
accepted quietly. Those who still wanted to know what the
Earth was like had, after all, only to listen to
some gramophone or to look into some cinematophote. And even

(52:18):
the lecturers acquiesced when they found that a lecture on
the sea was none the less stimulating when compiled out
of other lectures that had already been delivered on the
same subject. Beware of first hand ideas, exclaimed one of
the most advanced of them. First Hand ideas do not
really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by
love and fear. And on this gross foundation, who could

(52:39):
erect a philosophy. Let your ideas be second hand, and,
if possible, tenth hand, for then they will be far
removed from that disturbing element direct observation. Do not learn
anything about this subject of mine? The French Revolution learn instead,
Would I think that en Chermond thought, Urizend thought Gutsch, thought,
ho Young thought, chibos S thought, Lafcadio Hearn thought. Carlyle thought.

(53:02):
Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of
these eight great minds, the blood that was shed at
Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will
be clarified to an idea which you may employ most
profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the
intermediates are many and varied, For in history, one authority
exists to counteract another. Urazen must counteract the skepticism of

(53:26):
how young and enchremon. I must myself counteract the impetuosity
of Gutsch. You who listen to me are in a
better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am.
Your descendants will be even in a better position than you,
for they will learn what you think I think. And
yet another intermediate will be added to the chain, and
in time his voice rose. There will come a generation

(53:48):
that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colorless,
a generation seraphically free from taint of personality, which will
see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as
they would like it to have happened, but as it
would have happened had it taken place in the days
of the machine. Tremendous applause greeted this lecture, which did

(54:10):
but voice a feeling already latent in the minds of men,
a feeling that terrestrial facts must be ignored, and that
the abolition of respirators was a positive gain. It was
even suggested that airships should be abolished too. This was
not done because airships had somehow worked themselves into the
machine system, but year by year they were used less
and mentioned less by thoughtful men. The second great development

(54:35):
was the re establishment of religion. This too had been
voiced in the celebrated lecture. No one could mistake their
reverent tone in which the peroration had concluded, and it
awakened a responsive echo in the heart of each Those
who had long worshiped silently now began to talk. They
described the strange feeling of peace that came over them

(54:55):
when they handled the book of the machine, the pleasure
that it was to repeat certain nes numerals out of it,
however little meeting those numerals, conveyed to the outward ear.
The ecstasy of touching a button, however unimportant or ringing
an electric bell. However, superfluously, the machine, they exclaimed, feeds
us and clothes us and houses us. Through it, we

(55:16):
speak to one another. Through it, we see one another.
In it, we have our being. The machine is the
friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition. The machine
is omnipotent, eternal. Blessed is the machine. And before long
this elocution was printed on the first page of the book,
and in subsequent editions the rituals swelled into a complicated

(55:36):
system of praise and prayer. The word religion was sedulously avoided,
and in theory the machine was still the creation and
the implement of man. But in practice all save a
few retrogrades worshiped it as divine, nor was it worshiped
in unity. One believer would be chiefly impressed by the
blue optic plates through which he saw other believers, others

(55:59):
by the mending uparact, this which sinful Kudo had compared
to worms, another by the liths, another by the book,
and each would pray to this or to that, and
ask it to intercede for him with the machine as
a whole. Persecution that was also present. It did not
break out for reasons that will be set forward shortly.
But it was latent, and all who did not accept

(56:19):
the minimum known as undenominational mechanism lived in danger of homelessness,
which means death, as we know. To attribute these two
great developments to the Central Committee is to take a
very narrow view of civilization. The Central Committee announced the developments,
it is true, but they were no more the cause
of them than were the kings of the imperialistic period

(56:41):
the cause of war. Rather, did they yield to some
invincible pressure which came no one knew whither, and which,
when gratified, was succeeded by some new pressure equally invincible.
To such a state of affairs, it is convenient to
give the name of progress. No one confessed the machine
was out of hand. By year, it was served with
increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew

(57:05):
his own duties upon it, the less he understood the
duties of his neighbor. And in all the world there
was not one who understood the monster as a whole.
Those master brains had perished, They had left full directions,
it is true, and their successors had each of them
mastered a portion of those directions. But humanity, in its
desire for comfort, had overreached itself. It had exploited the

(57:26):
riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was
sinking into decadence, and progress had come to me in
the progress of the machine. As for Vashti, her life
went peacefully forward until the final disaster. She made her
room dark and slept. She awoke and made the room light.
She lectured and attended lectures. She exchanged ideas with her

(57:48):
innumerable friends, and believed she was growing more spiritual. At times,
a friend was granted euthanasia and left his or her
room for the homelessness that is beyond all human conception.
Vashi did not much mind. After an unsuccessful lecture. She
would sometimes ask for euthanasia herself, but the death rate
was not permitted to exceed the birth rate, and the

(58:08):
machine had hitherto refused it to her. The troubles began quietly,
long before she was conscious of them. One day, she
was astonished at receiving a message from her son. They
never communicated, having nothing in common, and she had only
heard indirectly that he was still alive and had been
transferred from the Northern hemisphere, where he had behaved so

(58:29):
mischievously to the southern, indeed, to a room not far
from her own. Does he want me to visit him?
She thought, Never again, never, and I have not the time. No,
it was madness of another kind. He refused to visualize
his face upon the blue plate, and, speaking out of
the darkness with solemnity, said, the machine stops. What do

(58:54):
you say, the machine is stopping. I know it, I
know the signs. She burst into a peal of laughter.
He hurt her and was angry, and they spoke no more.
Can you imagine anything more absurd? She cried to a friend,
A man who was my son, believes that the machine
is stopping. It would be impious if it was not mad.

(59:15):
The machine is stopping. Her friend replied, what does that mean?
The phrase conveys nothing to me, nor to me he
does not refer, I suppose to the trouble there has
been lately with the music. Oh no, of course not.
Let us talk about music. Have you complained to the authorities, Yes,
and they say it wants mending, and referred me to

(59:37):
the committee of the mending apparatus. I complained of those curious,
gasping sighs that disfigure the symphonies of the Brisbane School.
They sound like some one in pain. The Committee of
the Mending Apparatus say that it shall be remedied shortly, obscurely. Worried,
she resumed her life. For one thing, the defect in
the music irritated her. For another thing, she could not

(59:58):
forget Kuno's speech. If he had known that the music
was out of repair, he could not know it, for
he detested music. If he had known that it was wrong,
the machine stops was exactly the venomous sort of remark
he would have made. Of course, he had made it
at a venture. But the coincidence annoyed her, and she
spoke with some petulance to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus.

(01:00:20):
They replied, as before, that the defects would be set
right shortly, shortly, at once. She retorted, why should I
be worried by imperfect music? Things are always put right
at once. If you do not mend it at once,
I shall complain to the Central Committee. No personal complaints
are received by the Central Committee. The Committee of the
Mending Apparatus replied, through whom am I to make my complaint?

(01:00:42):
Then through us I complain, then your complaints shall be
forwarded in its turn. Have others complained? This question was unmechanical,
and the committee of the mending apparatus refused to answer it.
It is too bad, she exclaimed to another of her friends.
Never was such an unfortunate woman as myself. I can

(01:01:02):
never be sure of my music. Now it gets worse
and worse each time I summon it. I too have
my troubles, the friend replied. Sometimes my ideas are interrupted
by a slight jarring noise. What is it? I do
not know whether it is inside my head or inside
the wall. Complaint. In either case, I have complained, and

(01:01:22):
my complaint will be forwarded in its turn to the
central Committee. Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer.
The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues
in that latter day had become so subservient that they
readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the machine. The
sigh of the crisis of the Brisbane Symphony no longer
irritated Vashti. She accepted it as part of the melody.

(01:01:46):
The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall,
was no longer resented by her friend. And so with
the moldy artificial fruit, and so with the bath water
that began to stink, and so with the defective rhymes
that the poetry machine had taken to him. All were
bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten.
Things went from bad to worse unchallenged. It was otherwise

(01:02:09):
with the failure of the sleeping apparatus that was a
more serious stoppage. There came a day when, over the
whole world, in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities
of Corland and Brazil, the bends, when summoned by their
tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a ludicrous matter,
but from it we may date the collapse of humanity.

(01:02:30):
The committee responsible for the failure was assailed by complainants,
whom it referred as usual to the Committee of the
Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them that their
complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the
discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to
do without sleeping. Someone is meddling with the machine they began.

(01:02:51):
Someone is trying to make himself king, to reintroduce the
personal element, punish that man with homelessness, to the rescue,
avenge the machine. Avenge the machine war kill the man.
But the committee of the Mending Apparatus now came forward
and allayed the panic with well chosen words. It confessed
that the mending Apparatus was itself in need of repair.

(01:03:12):
The effect of this frank confession was admirable, of course,
said a famous lecturer, he of the French Revolution, who
gilded each new decay with splendor. Of course, we shall
not press our complaints now. The mending Apparatus has treated
us so well in the past that we all sympathize
with it, and will wait patiently for its recovery. In
its own good time, it will resume its duties. Meanwhile,

(01:03:34):
let us do without our beds, our tabloids, our little wants,
such I feel sure would be the wish of the machine.
Thousands of miles away. His audience applauded. The machine still
linked them under the seas, beneath the roots of the mountains,
where in the wires through which they saw and heard
the enormous eyes and ears that were their heritage, and
the hum of many workings clothed their thoughts in one

(01:03:56):
garment of subserviency. Only the old and the sick remained ungrateful,
for it was rumored that euthanasia, too was out of order,
and that pain had reappeared among men. It became difficult
to read. A blight entered the atmosphere and dulled its luminosity.
At times Vashti could scarcely see across her room. The
air too was foul loud, were the complaints impotent in

(01:04:19):
the remedies heroic The tone of the lecturer as he cried, courage, courage,
what matter? So long as the machine goes on to it,
the darkness and the light are won. And though things
improved again after a time, the old brilliancy was never recaptured,
and humanity never recovered from its entrance into twilight. There
was an hysterical talk of measures of provisional dictatorship, and

(01:04:43):
the inhabitants of Sumatra were asked to familiarize themselves with
the workings of the central power station, the said power
station being situated in France. But for the most part
panic reigned, and men spent their strength praying to their
books tangible proofs of the machine's omnipotence. There were gradiations
of terror. At time came rumors of hope. The mending

(01:05:03):
apparatus was almost mended. The enemies of the machine had
been got under. New nerve centers were evolving, which would
do the work even more magnificently than before. But there
came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any
previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication system broke down
all over the world, and the world as they understood

(01:05:24):
it ended. Vashti was lecturing at the time, and her
earlier remarks had been punctuated with applause. As she proceeded,
the audience became silent, and at the conclusion there was
no sound. Somewhat displeased, she called to a friend who
was a specialist in sympathy. No sound, doubtless, the friend
was sleeping, and so with an ex friend whom she

(01:05:46):
tried to summon, and so with the next, until she
remembered Kuno's cryptic remark, the machine stops. The phrase still
conveyed nothing. If eternity was stopping, it would of course
be set going shortly. For example, there was still a
little light and air the atmosphere had improved a few
hours previously. There was still the book, and while there

(01:06:07):
was the book, there was security. Then she broke down,
for with the cessation of activity came in unexpected terror. Silence.
She had never known silence, and the coming of it
nearly killed her. It did kill many thousands of people outright.
Ever since her birth, she had been surrounded by the
steady hume. It was to the ear what artificial air
was to the lungs, and agonizing pains shot across her head,

(01:06:30):
and scarcely knowing what she did, she stumbled forward and
pressed the unfamiliar button, the one that opened the door
of her cell. Now the door of the cell worked
on a simple hinge of its own. It was not
connected with the central power station dying far away in France.
It opened, rousing immoderate hopes in Vashti, for she thought
that the machine had been mended. It opened, and she

(01:06:52):
saw the dim tunnel that curved far away towards freedom.
One look, and then she shrank back, for the tunnel
was full of people. She was almost the last in
that city to have taken alarm. People at any time
repelled her, and these were nightmares from her worst dreams.
People were crawling about. People were screaming, whimpering, gasping for breath,

(01:07:13):
touching each other, vanishing in the dark, and ever and
anon being pushed off the platform onto the live rail.
Some were fighting round the electric bells, trying to summon
trains which could not be summoned. Others were yelling for euthanasia,
or for respirators, or blespheming the machine. Others stood at
the doors of their cells, fearing, like herself, either to
stop in them or to leave them. And behind all

(01:07:35):
the uproar was silence, the silence which is the voice
of the earth and of the generations who have gone No.
It was worse than solitude. She closed the door again
and sat down to wait for the end. The disintegration
went on, accompanied by horrible cracks and rumbling. The valves
that restrained the medical apparatus must have weakened, for it

(01:07:56):
ruptured and hung hideously from the ceiling. The floor heaved
and fell and flung her from her chair, a tube
ooze towards her serpent fashion, And at last the final
horror approached. Light began to ebb, and she knew that
civilization's long day was closing. She whirled round, praying to
be saved from this at any rate, kissing the book,

(01:08:16):
pressing button after button. The uproar outside was increasing, and
even penetrated the wall. Slowly, the brilliancy of her cell
was dimmed. The reflections faded from her metal switches. Now
she could not see the reading stand, now, not the book,
though she held it in her hand. Light followed the
flight of sound. Air was following light, and the original

(01:08:37):
void returned to the cavern from which it had been
so long excluded. Fashti continued to whirl like the devotees
of an earlier religion, screaming, praying, striking at the buttons
with bleeding hands. It was thus that she opened her
prison and escaped, escaped in the spirit, at least, so
it seems to me. Ere My meditation closes that she

(01:08:57):
escapes in the body. I cannot perceive that she struck
by chance the switch that released the door, and the
rush of foul air on her skin. The loud, throbbing
whispers in her ears told her that she was facing
the tunnel again, and that tremendous platform on which he
had seen men fighting. They were not fighting now, only
the whispers remained, and the little whimpering groans they were

(01:09:19):
dying by the hundreds out in the dark. She burst
into tears. Tears answered her. They wept for humanity, those two,
not for themselves. They could not bear that this should
be the end. Ear's silence was completed. Their hearts were opened,
and they knew what had been important on the earth. Man,
the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures, visible,

(01:09:41):
man who had once made God in his image, and
had mirrored his strength on the constellations. Beautiful naked man
was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven.
Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly,
the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with the
colors of culture, sown with the threads self denial and
heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment,

(01:10:03):
and no more so long as man could shed it
at will and live by the essence that is his soul,
and the essence equally divine, that is his body. The
sin against the body. It was for that that they
wept in chief, the centuries of wrong, against the muscles
and the nerves, Those five portals by which we can
alone apprehend glausing it over with talk of evolution, until

(01:10:25):
the body was white, pap the home of ideas as colorless, less,
sloshy stirrings of a spirit that had grasped the stars.
Where are you, she sobbed, his voice in the darkness,
said here is there any hope? Cuno? None for us?

(01:10:47):
Where are you? She crawled towards him over the bodies
of the dead. His blood spurted over her hands. Quicker,
he gasped, I am dying, but we touch, we talk,
not through the machine. He kissed her. We have come
back to our own We die, but we have recaptured

(01:11:08):
life as it was in Wessex when Alfred overthrew the Danes.
We know what they know outside, those who dwelt in
a cloud that is the color of a pearl. But Cuno,
is it true? Are there still man on the surface
of the earth? Is this, this tunnel, this poisoned darkness,
really not the end? He replied. I have seen them,

(01:11:29):
spoken to them, Love them. They are hiding in the
mist and the ferns until our civilization stops. Today they
are the homeless. Tomorrow, oh tomorrow, some fool will start
the machine again tomorrow, never said Cuno. Never, humanity has
learnt its lesson. As he spoke, the whole city was

(01:11:49):
broken like a honeycomb. An airship had sailed in through
the vomitory into a ruined wharf. It crashed downwards, exploding
as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings
of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of
the dead, and before they joined them scraps of the
untainted sky. End of Chapter three, End of The Machine

(01:12:11):
Stops by E. M. Forster