Part 2 - The Machine Stops - E.M. Forster

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Chapter two, the mending apparatus,by a vestibule, by a lift,
by a tubular railway, by aplatform, by a sliding door. By
reversing all the steps of her departure, did Vashti arrive at her son's room,
which exactly resembled her own. Shemight well declare that the visit was

(00:22):
superfluous. The buttons, the knobs, the reading desk with the book,
the temperature, the atmosphere, theillumination all were exactly the same. And
if Kuno himself, flush of herflush, stood close beside her at last,
what profit was there? And thatshe was too well bred to shake
him by the hand. Averting hereyes, she spoke as follows. Here,

(00:46):
I am, I have had themost terrible journey and greatly retarded the
development of my soul. It isnot worth it, Kuno, It is
not worth it. My time istoo precious. The sunlight almost touched me,
and I have met with the rudestpeople. I can only stop a
few minutes, say what you wantto say, and then I must return.

(01:07):
I have been threatened with homelessness,said Kuno. She looked at him.
Now, I have been threatened withhomelessness, and I could not tell
you such a thing through the machine. Homelessness means death. The victim is
exposed to the air, which killshim. I have been outside since I
spoke to you last. The tremendousthing has happened, and they have discovered

(01:30):
me. But why shouldn't you gooutside? She exclaimed. It is perfectly
legal, perfectly mechanical to visit thesurface of the earth. I have lately
been to a lecture on the sea. There is no objection, and that
one simply summons a respirator and getsan aggression permit. It is not the
kind of thing that spiritually minded peopledo, and I begged you not to

(01:51):
do it, but there is nolegal objection to it. I did not
get an aggression permit. Then howdid you get out? I found out
a way of my own. Thephrase conveyed no meaning to her, and
he had to repeat it. Away of your own, she whispered.
But that would be wrong. Whythe question shocked her beyond measure. You

(02:17):
are beginning to worship the machine,he said coldly. You think it irreligious
of me to have found out away of my own. It was just
what the committee thought when they threatenedme with homelessness. At this she grew
angry. I worship nothing, shecried, I am most advanced. I
don't think you irreligious, for thereis no such thing as religion left.

(02:37):
All the fear and the superstition thatexisted once have been destroyed by the machine.
I only meant that to find outa way of your own was.
Besides, there is no new wayout, so it is always supposed,
except through the vomitories, for whichone must have an aggression permit. It
is impossible to get out. Thebook says, so well, the book's

(02:59):
wrong. I have been out onmy feet. For Kuno was possessed of
a certain physical strength. By thesedays it was a demerit to be muscular.
Each infant was examined at birth,and all who promised undue strength were
destroyed. Humanitarians may protest, butit would have been no true kindness to
let an athlete live. He wouldnever have been happy in that state of

(03:22):
life to which the machine had calledhim. He would have yearned for trees
to climb, rivers, to bathein meadows and hills against which he might
measure his body. Men must beadapted to his surroundings, must he not
in the dawn of our world.Our weekly must be exposed on Mount Tagetus
in its twilight. Our strong willsuffer euthanasia. That the machine may progress,

(03:43):
that the machine may progress, thatthe machine may progress eternally. You
know we have lost the sense ofspace. We say space is annihilated,
But we have annihilated not space,but the sense thereof. We have lost
a part of ourselves. I determinedto cover it, and I began by
walking up and down the platform ofthe railway outside my room, up and

(04:04):
down until I was tired, andso did recapture the meaning of near and
far. Near is a place towhich I can get quickly on my feet,
not a place to which the trainor the airship will take me quickly.
Far is a place to which Icannot get quickly on my feet.
The vomitory is far, though Icould be there in thirty eight seconds by

(04:26):
summoning the train. Man is themeasure that was my first lesson man's feet,
or the measure for distance. Hishands are the measure for ownership.
His body is the measure for allthat is lovable and desirable and strong.
Then I went further, and itwas then that I called to you for
the first time, and you wouldnot come. This city, as you

(04:46):
know, is built deep beneath thesurface of the earth, with only the
vomitories protruding. Having paced the platformoutside my own room, I took the
lift to the next platform and pacedthat also, and so with each in
turn, until I came to thetopmost above, which begins the earth.
All the platforms were exactly alike,and all that I gained by visiting them

(05:08):
was to develop my sense of spaceand my muscles. I think I should
have been content with this, Itis not a little thing. But as
I walked and brooded, it occurredto me that our cities had been built
in the days when men still breathethe 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 byall the food tubes and medicine tubes and

(05:31):
music tubes that the machine has evolvedlately, or did traces of them remain?
One thing was certain. If Icame upon them anywhere, it would
be in the railway tunnels of thetopmost story. Everywhere else all space was
accounted for I am telling my storyquickly. But don't think that I was
not a coward, or that youranswers never depressed me. It is not

(05:54):
the proper thing. It is notmechanical. It is not decent to walk
along a railway tunnel. I didnot fear that I might tread upon a
live rail and be killed. Ifeared 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.

(06:18):
The tunnels, of course, werelighted. Everything is light artificial light.
Darkness is the exception. So whenI saw a black gap in the
tiles, I knew it was anexception and rejoiced. I put in my
arm I could put in no moreat first, and waved it round and
round. In ecstasy. I loosenedanother tile and put in my head and

(06:40):
shouted into the darkness, I amcoming. I shall do it yet,
and my voice reverberated down endless passages. I seemed to hear the spirit of
those dead workmen who had returned eachevening to the starlight into their wives,
and all the generations who had livedin the open air, called back to
me. You will do it,Yet you are coming, He paused,

(07:00):
and absurd as he was. Hislast words moved her. For Kuno had
lately asked to be a father,and his request had been refused by the
committee. His was not a typethat the machine desired to hand on.
Then a train passed, it brushedby me. But I thrust my head
and arms into the hole. Ihad done enough for one day, so

(07:23):
I crawled back to the platform,went down in the lift and summoned my
bed. Ah, what dreams?And again I called you, and again
you refused. She shook her headand said, don't don't talk of these
terrible things. You make me miserable. You are throwing civilization away. But

(07:43):
I had got back the sense ofspace, and a man cannot rest.
Then I determined to get in atthe hole and climbed the shaft. And
so I exercised my arms day afterday. I went through ridiculous movements until
my flesh ached and I could hangby my hands and hold the pillow of
my bed outstretched for many minutes.Then I summoned a respirator and started.

(08:05):
It was easy at first, andthe mortar had somehow rotted, and I
soon pushed some more tiles in andclambered after them into the darkness, and
the spirits of the dead comforted me. I don't know what I mean by
that. I just say what Ifelt. I felt for the first time
that a protest had been lodged againstcorruption, and that even as the dead

(08:26):
were comforting me, so I wascomforting the unborn. I felt that humanity
existed, and that it existed withoutclothes. How can I possibly explain this?
It was naked, humidity seemed naked. And all these tubes and buttons
and machineries neither came into the worldwith us, nor will they follow us
out, nor do they matter supremelywhile we are here. Had I been

(08:48):
strong, I would have torn offevery garment I had and gone out into
the outer air unswaddled. But thisis not for me, nor perhaps for
my generation. I climbed with myrespirator and my hygienic clothes and my dietetic
tabloids. Better thus than not atall. There was a ladder made of

(09:09):
some primeval metal. The light fromthe railway fell upon its lowest wrongs,
and I saw that it led straightupwards out of the rubble at the bottom
of the shaft. Perhaps our ancestorsran up and down it a dozen times
daily in their building. As Iclimbed, the rough edges cut through my
gloves so that my hands bled.The light helped me for a while,

(09:30):
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 may even guide ourthoughts? 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.

(09:54):
He laughed, I had need ofthem. The next moment I cracked my
head against something. She sighed,I had reached one of those pneumatic stoppers
that defend us from the outer air. You may have noticed them on the
airship. Pitch dark, my feeton the wrongs of an invisible ladder,
my hands cut. I cannot explainhow I lived through this part, but

(10:15):
the voices still comforted me, andI felt for fastenings. The stopper,
I suppose, was about eight feetacross. I passed my hand over it
as far as I could reach.It was perfectly smooth. I felt it
almost to the center, not quiteto the center, for my arm was
too short. Then the voice said, jump, It is worth it.
There may be a handle in thecenter, and you may catch hold of

(10:39):
it, and so come to usyour own way. And if there is
no handle, so that you mayfall and are dashed to pieces, it
is still worth it. You willstill come to us your own way.
So I jumped. There was ahandle, and he paused. Tears gathered
in his mother's eyes. She knewthat he was faded. If he did

(11:01):
not die to day, he woulddie to morrow. There was not room
for such a person in the world. And with her pity disgust mingled.
She was ashamed at having borne sucha 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 ofhis stops and buttons, and to whom
she had given his first lessons inthe book? The very hair that disfigured

(11:24):
his lip showed that he was revertingto some savage type on atavism. The
machine can have no mercy. Therewas a handle, and I did catch
it. I hung tranced over thedarkness, and heard the hum of these
workings as the last whisper in adying dream. All these things I had
cared about, and all the peopleI had spoken to through tubes appeared infinitely

(11:46):
little. Meanwhile, the handle revolved, My weight had set something in motion,
and I spanned slowly. And thenI cannot describe it. I was
lying with my face to the sunshine, blood poured from my nose and
ears, and I heard a tremendousroaring. The stopper, with me clinging
to it, had simply been blownout of the earth, and the air

(12:09):
that we make down here was escapingthrough the vent into the air above.
It burst up like a fountain.I curled back to it for the 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 closeto the hole, and I sipped until

(12:30):
the bleeding stopped. You can imaginenothing so curious this hollow in the grass.
I will speak of it in aminute. The sun shining into it,
not brilliantly, but through marble clouds, the peace, the nonchalance,
the sense of space, and brushingmy cheek the roaring fountain of our artificial
air. Soon I spied my respiratorbobbing up and down in the current.

(12:54):
High above my head, and higherstill were the many airships. But no
one ever looks out of airship,and in my case they could not have
picked me up. There I wasstranded. The sun shone a little way
down the shaft and revealed the topmostwrong of the ladder, but it was
hopeless trying to reach it. Ishould either have been tossed up again by
the escape, or else have fallenin and died. I could only lie

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on the grass, sipping and sipping, and from time to time glancing around
me. I knew that I wasin Wessex, for I had taken care
to go to a lecture on thesubject 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 coastfrom the Andred's Wall to Cornwall, while
wanes Dyke protected them on the north, running over the high ground. The

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lecturer was only concerned with the riseof 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 coulddo nothing but laugh during this part.
There was I with a pneumatic stopperby my side and a respirator bobbing above
my head. Imprisoned three of usin a grass grown hollow that was edged

(14:01):
with fern. Then he grew graveagain. Lucky for me that it was
a hollow, for the air beganto 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 theair that hurts predominated whenever I tried
to climb the sides. This wasnot so bad. I had not lost

(14:24):
my tabloids and remained ridiculously cheerful.And as for the machine, I forgot
about it altogether. My one aimnow was to get to the top,
where the ferns were, and toview whatever objects lay beyond. I rushed
the slope. The new air wasstill too bitter for me, and I
came rolling back after a momentary visionof something gray. The sun grew very

(14:46):
feeble, and I remembered that hewas in scorpio. I had been to
a lecture on that too. Ifthe sun is in scorpio and you are
in Wessex, it means that youmust be as quick as you can or
it will get too dark. Thisis 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 breathethe new air and to advance as

(15:07):
far as I dared out of mypond. The hollow filled so slowly at
times I thought that the fountain playedwith less vigor. My respirator seemed to
dance nearer the earth. The roarerwas 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 wished I had not troubled

(15:28):
you to come. We are toodifferent, mother. She told him to
continue. It was evening before Iclimbed the bank. The sun had very
nearly slipped out of the sky bythis time, and I could not get
a good view. You, whohave just cost the roof of the world
will not want to hear an accountof the little hills that I saw,
low colorless hills, But to me, they were a living and the turf

(15:50):
that covered them was a skin underwhich their muscles rippled. And I felt
that those hills had called with incalculableforce to men in the past, and
that the men had loved them.Now they sleep, perhaps forever, they
commune with humanity in dreams. Happythe man, Happy the woman who awakes
the hills of Wessex, For thoughthey sleep, they will never die.

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His voice rose passionately. Cannot yousee, 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. Wecreated the machine to do our will,
but we cannot make it do ourwill. Now it has robbed us of
the sense of space and of thesense of touch. It has blurred every

(16:33):
human relation and narrowed down love toa carnal act. It has paralyzed our
bodies and our wills, and nowit compels us to worship it. The
machine develops, but not on ourlines. The machine proceeds, but not
to our goal. We only existas the blood corpuscles that course through its
arteries. And if it could workwithout us, it would let us die.

(16:55):
Oh, I have no remedy,or at least only one to tell
men again and again that I haveseen 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 laybetween my hill and other hills, and
that it was the color of pearl. He broke off for the second time.

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Go On, said his mother wearily. He shook his head. Go
On, nothing that you say candistress me. Now I am hardened.
I had meant to tell you therest, but I cannot. I know
that I cannot. Goodbye. Vashtistood irresolute. All her nerves were tingling
with his blasphemies. But she wasalso inquisitive. This is unfair, she

(17:40):
complained. You have called me acrossthe world to hear your story, and
hear it. I will tell meas briefly as possible, for this is
a disastrous waste of time. Tellme how you return to civilization, oh
that, he said, starting youwould like to hear about civilization? Certainly,
had I got to where my respiratorfell down? No, but I

(18:00):
understand everything. Now. You puton your respirator and managed to walk along
the surface of the earth to avomitory, and there your conduct was reported
to the Central Committee by no means. He passed his hand over his forehead,
as if dispelling some strong impression.Then resuming his narrative, he warmed
to it again. My respirator fellabout sunset. I had mentioned that the

(18:25):
fountain seemed feebler. Had I notyes about sunset? It let the respirator
fall. As I said, Ihad entirely forgotten about the machine, and
I paid no great attention at thetime, being occupied with other things.
I had my pool of air intowhich I could dip when the outer keenness
became intolerable, and which would possiblyremain for days, provided that no winds

(18:48):
sprang up to disperse it. Notuntil 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, butI neglected it. The sky at night
was clearer than it had been inthe day, and the moon, which
was about half the sky behind thesun, shone into the dell at moments

(19:11):
quite brightly. I was in myusual place on the boundary between the two
atmospheres, when I thought I sawsomething dark move across the bottom of the
dell and vanish into the shaft.In my folly, I ran down.
I bent over and listened, andI thought I heard a faint scrapping noise
in the depths at this, butit was too late. I took alarm.

(19:33):
I determined to put on my respiratorand 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 market
that it had made in the turf. It had gone, and I realized
that something evil was at work,and I had better escaped to the outer
air. And if I must die, die running towards the cloud that had

(19:53):
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 wasgliding over the moonlit grass. I screamed.
I did everything that I should nothave done. I stamped upon the
creature instead of flying from it,and it at once curled around my ankle.

(20:15):
Then we fought the worm let merun all over the dell, but
edged up my leg as I ran. Help, I cried, that part
is too awful. It belongs tothe part that you will never know.
Help, I cried, Why cannotwe suffer in silence? Help? I
cried? Then my feet were woundtogether. I fell. I was dragged
away from the dear ferns in theliving hills and passed the great metal stopper.

(20:38):
I can tell you this part,and I thought it might save me
again if I caught hold of thehandle. It also was enwrapped. It
also. Oh, the whole dellwas full of the things. They were
searching it in all directions. Theywere denuding it, and the white snouts
of others peeped out of the hole, ready if needed. Everything that could
be moved they brought brushwood, bundlesof fern, everything, and down we

(21:02):
all went, intertwined into hell.The last things that I saw ere the
stopper closed after us, were certainstars, and I felt that a man
of my sort lived in the sky. For I did fight. I fought
till the very end, and itwas only my head hitting against the latter
that quieted me. I woke upin this room. The worms had vanished.

(21:22):
I was surrounded by artificial light,artificial air, artificial peace, and
my friends were calling to me downspeaking tubes to know whether I had come
across any new ideas lately. Herehis story ended, discussion of it was
impossible, and Vashti turned to goIt will end in homelessness, she said
quietly. I wish it would,retorted Kuno, the machine has been most

(21:45):
merciful. I prefer the mercy ofGod. By that superstitious phrase, do
you mean that you could live inthe outer air? Yes? Have you
ever seen round the vomitories the bonesof those who were extrude after the Great
Rebellion? Yes, they were leftwhere they perished for our edification. A

(22:06):
few crawled away, but they perishedtoo. Who can doubt it? And
so with the homeless of our ownday. The surface of the earth supports
life no longer. Indeed, fernsand a little grass 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

(22:30):
I have seen them? He exploded, seen What? Because I have seen
her in the twilight, because shecame to my help when I called,
Because she too was entangled by theworms, and luckier than I, was
killed by one of them, piercingher throat. He was mad Vashti departed,
nor in the troubles had followed,did she ever see his face again.

(22:55):
End of chapter two,