The Machine Stops, Chapter 1, Adapted

 

The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster

Adapted for intermediate level

Chapter I: The Air Ship

Imagine a small room. There is no window or lamp, yet it is filled with a soft light. There are no holes for air, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment the room is filled with beautiful music. A chair is in the center of the room and next to it is a desk—this is all the furniture. In the chair there sits a women of about average height with a very white face. This is her room.

A telephone rang.

The woman touched a button and the music was silent.

'I suppose I must see who it is', she thought, and moved her chair. The chair, like the music, was controlled by machine and it moved her to the other side of the room where the telephone still rang.

'Who is it?' she called. Her voice was angry, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in some ways human communication had advanced greatly.

But when she listened to the telephone, her white face began to smile, and she said: 'Very well. Let us talk. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes – for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must give my lecture on "Music during the Australian Period".'

'Be quick!' she said, her irritation returning. 'Be quick, Kuno; I have little time.'

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the tablet she held in her hands turned on. A video appeared on the screen, and she could 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 seriously.

'I really believe you enjoy wasting time.'

'I called you before, mother, but you were always busy. I have something important to say.'

'What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by message?'

'Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want----'

'Well?'

'I want you to come and see me.'

Vashti watched his face on the screen.

'But I can see you!' she cried. 'What more do you want?'

'I don’t want to see you through the Machine,' said Kuno. 'I don’t want to speak to you through the boring Machine.'

'Oh, quiet!' said his mother, somewhat shocked. 'You mustn't say anything against the Machine.'

 

'Why not?'

'One mustn't.'

'You talk as if a god made the Machine,' cried her son.

'I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is great, but it is not everything. I see something like you on this screen, 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.  Come to visit me, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.'

She replied that she hardly had the time for a visit.

'The air-ship takes less than two days to fly between me and you.'

'I dislike air-ships.'

'Why?'

'I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air-ship.'

'I do not get them anywhere else.” He said.

'What kind of ideas can the air give you?'

He thought for a moment.

'Do you know those four big stars that form a rectangle, the three stars close together in the middle of the rectangle, and the three little stars inside the middle 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 legs.

The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three little stars are like a sword.'

'A sword?'

'Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.'

'It does not seem to me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?'

'In the air-ship-----' He quickly stopped speaking, and she thought that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not teach people to focus on expressions of emotion, but only general thoughts.

 

'The truth is,' he continued, 'that I want to see these stars again. They are interesting stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, 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, 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 to breathe, or the cold of the outside air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outside air.'

'I know; of course I shall take all precautions.'

'And besides----'

'Well?'

She thought, and chose her words with care. Her son had a strange character and she wished to stop him from the journey.

'It is against the spirit of our time,' she stated.

'Do you mean by that, against the Machine?'

'In a way, but----'

He ended the video call.

'Kuno!'

For a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she turned to the buttons everywhere – buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that brought literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was connected to all that she cared for in the world.

Vashanti's next move was to turn on the public connection and the minutes came to her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking connections. 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 appointment to visit the public nurseries at an early date?

To most of these questions she replied with irritation – a growing quality in that fast-paced age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries because she was busy with other appointments. 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 turned off her other connections, for it was time to give her lecture on Australian music. The old system of public gatherings in person had been ended a long time ago; Vashti and her audience listened to the lectures from their rooms. Seated in her chair she spoke, while they in their chairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a funny story of music in the pre-Mongolian age, and went on to describe the great explosion of song that followed. Distance and ancient as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she still felt that study of them might repay the musicians of today: 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; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had used a respirator and visited it lately. Then she ate, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and called for her bed. She didn’t like the bed. It was too large, and she wanted a smaller bed.

Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same size all over the world, and to have had a different size would mean changes to the programming of the Machine. Vashti lay on her bed and reviewed all that had happened recently. Ideas? Hardly any. Events – was Kuno's invitation an event?

By her side, on the little desk, was item from past ages still used-one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible event. If she was hot or cold or sick or didn’t know what to say, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it.

Sitting up in the bed, she took it respectfully in her hands. She looked around the room as if someone might be watching her. Then, half ashamed, half joyful, she said quietly 'O Machine! O Machine!' and kissed the book three times with excitement. Her ritual performed, she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the leaving of the air-ships from the island in the southern part of the planet, under whose ground she lived, to the island in the northern part of the planet, under which lived her son.

She thought, 'I don’t have the time.'

She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and lectures; she make the room dark and slept. Above her, under her, and around her, the Machine made a continuous low sound; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, ran 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 on the screen disappeared.

Again she checked the book. She became very nervous and sat back in her chair. Presently she directed the chair to the wall, and pressed an unfamiliar button. A door in the wall opened. Through the opening she saw tunnel so long that its end was not visible. Should she go to see her son, here was the beginning of the journey.

Of course, she knew all about the communication-system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She would call a car and it would fly with her down the tunnel until it reached the lift to the air-ship station: the system had been in use for many, many years, long before the Machine. And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately come before 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 outside for a 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. Vashti was fearful of a direct experience of life. She moved back into the room, and the wall closed again.

'Kuno,' she said, 'I cannot come to see you. I am not well.'

Immediately a huge device fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer automatically laid upon her head. She lay powerless as the sensors checked her. Kuno had sent a message to her doctor.

Vashti drank the medicine given to her by the Machine, and the devices went back into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how she felt.

'Better.' Then with irritation: 'But why do you not come to me instead?'

'Because I cannot leave this place.'

'Why?'

'Because, any moment, something wonderful may happen.'

'Have you been on the surface of the earth yet?'

'Not yet.'

'Then what is it?'

'I will not tell you through the Machine.'

She began her regular routine again.

But she thought of Kuno 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 given him a room on the other side of the earth. Duties of parents,' said the book of the Machine,' end at the moment of birth.' True, but there was something special about Kuno – indeed there had been something special about all her children – and, after all, she must be brave and go on this journey if he desired it. And 'something wonderful might happen'. What did that mean? The silliness of a young man, no doubt, but she must go. Again she pressed the unfamiliar button, again the door opened, and she saw the long tunnel. Holding the Book tightly, she rose, and walked weakly on to the platform, and called the car. Her room closed behind her: the journey to the northern part of the earth had begun.

Of course it was perfectly easy. The car came and in it she found seats exactly like her own. When she signalled, it stopped, and she walked unsteadily into the lift. One other passenger was in the lift, the first person she had seen face to face for months. Few people travelled these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid transportation, from which the previous civilization had hoped for so much, had ended by destroying itself. What was the good of going to China when it was just like Briton? Why return to Briton when it would all be like China? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

 

The air-ships were an old service from the former age. It was kept up, because it was easier to keep it up than to stop it, but most of the population no longer wanted to use it. Ship after ship would rise from the entrances of Rye or of Christchurch (I use the old names), would fly into the crowded sky, and would land at the stations of the south – empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent of the weather, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, was filled with these ships. The ship on which Vashti flew started either at sunset or at dawn. Night and day, wind and storm, ocean waves and natural disasters stopped humanity no longer. We had mastered the power of Nature. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, was like the silly words of a child.

Yet as Vashti saw the huge side of the ship, her fear of direct experience returned. It was not quite like the air-ship in the films. For one thing, it had a smell – not strong or unpleasant, but it did smell, and with her eyes closed she should have known that a new thing was close to her. Then she had to walk to it from the lift, while other passengers could look at her. The man in front dropped his Book – no great matter, but it disturbed them all. In the rooms, if the Book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically, but the way to the air-ship was not so prepared, and the sacred book lay on the ground. They stopped – not knowing what to do – and the man, instead of picking up the book, was confused, and his arms seems almost not to know how to pick up things by themselves. Then someone actually said, 'We shall be late' – and they moved on to the ship.

Inside, her nervousness increased. The arrangements were old-fashioned and rough. There was even a women flight attendant, to whom she would have to speak if she needed or wanted anything during the flight. Some cabins were better than others, and she did not get the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and her body filled with anger. The doors had closed she could not go back. She saw the lift in which she had come going quietly up and down, empty. Under those halls were rooms, level below level, going far into the earth, and in each room there sat a human eating, or sleeping, or producing ideas. And buried deep on one of these levels was her own room. Vashti was afraid. 'O Machine!' she said quietly, and held her Book, and felt better.

Then the air-ship, coming from its tunnel, flew above the waters of a tropical ocean into the sky.

It was night. For a moment she saw the coast below, and then only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless, but moved slightly above her head, as if the universe and not the air-ship was moving. This made her feel uncomfortable. 'Are we to travel in the dark?' the passengers asked angrily, and the attendant, who had been careless, turned on the light, and pulled down the blinds. When the air-ships had been built, people still had the desire to look direct at things in the world. As a result, the extraordinary number of windows on the plane, and the discomfort to those who were civilized and cultured. Even in Vashti's cabin one star was still visible through a mistake in the blind, and after a few hours' uneasy sleep, she was disturbed by an unfamiliar glow, which was the sunrise.

As the ship quickly flew west, the earth had turned east quicker still, and had taken Vashti and her companions back towards the sun. Science could make the night longer, but only for a little, and those high hopes of stopping the earth's rotation had passed, together with hopes that were possibly higher. Airplanes had been built capable of extremely high speeds, and guided by the smartest people on the times. Around the globe they went, round and round, westward, westward, round and round, among humanity's praise. But they were not fast enough. Horrible accidents happened, and the Committee of the Machine, at the time becoming more important, stated that further attempts illegal, not best for the society, and punished by Homelessness.

 

About Homelessness more will be said later.

Without a doubt, the Committee was right. Yet the attempt to fly faster than the sun brought the last common interest that humanity experienced about the sun and planets, or indeed about anything. It was the last time that people thought of a power outside the world. The sun was still the winner, yet it was the end of his spiritual power. Sunrise, afternoon, sunset, the entire path of the sun touched neither humanity’s lives not their hearts, and science went away into the ground, to concentrate on problems that she was certain of solving.

So when Vashti found the light from morning entering her cabin, she was annoyed, and tried to put down the blind. But the blind flew up altogether, and she saw through the window small pink clouds, against a background of blue, and as the sun slowly went higher, its brightness entered direct, coming down the wall, like a golden sea. It rose and fell with the air-ship's motion, just as waves rise and fall, but it advanced steadily, as a wave advances. Unless she was careful, it would hit her face. She felt horror and she called for the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could do nothing; she was not able to fix the blind. She could only suggest that the Vashti change her cabin, which she prepared to do.

People were almost exactly alike all over the world, but the attendant of the air-ship, perhaps because of her special duties, had become somewhat different. She often had to talk to passengers with direct speech, and this had given her a certain roughness and uniqueness of manner. When Vashti moved away from the sunlight with a cry, she behaved rudely– she put out her hand to stop Vashti from falling.

'How could you!' shouted Vashti. 'That's so rude!'

The woman was confused, and apologized for not letting her fall. People never touched each other. The custom had disappeared because of the Machine.

'Where are we now?' asked Vashti in an overly proud way.

'We are over Asia,' said the attendant, nervous to be polite.

'Asia?'

'You must excuse my common way of speaking. I have got into the habit of calling places over which I fly by their  before-machine names.'

'Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols came from it.'

'Under 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 – let me show you them.' She pushed back the blind. The main part of the Himalayas was revealed. 'They were once called the Roof of the World, those mountains.'

 

'You must remember that, before the rise of civilization, they seemed to be an wall that touched the stars. It was supposed that no one but the gods could live above their tops. How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!'

'How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!' said Vashti.

'How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!' repeated the passenger who had dropped his Book the night before, and who was standing in the passage.

'Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no ideas.'

The northern part of the Himalayas was in deep shadow: on the Indian side the sun had just started to be seen. The forests had been destroyed during the era literature for the purpose of making newspapers, but the snows could be seen in their morning glory. On the plain were seen the ruins of cities, with rivers going by their walls, and by the sides of these were sometimes the structures of the entrances to the tunnels under the earth, which lead to the cities of today. Over this area air-ships rushed, rising and flying  with ease above the earth and the roof of the world.

'We have indeed advanced, thanks to the Machine,' repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind the blind.

The day went  slowly forward. The passengers each sat in their own cabins, trying not to see each other with an almost physical dislike and hope to be once again under the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten of them, mostly young men, sent from the public nurseries to live in the rooms of those who died in different parts of the earth. The man who dropped his Book was on his journey home. He had been sent to Sumatra make a baby with a women there. Only Vashti was travelling by choice.

At noon she looked again at the earth. The air-ship was crossing another group of mountains, but she could see little, because of clouds. Big black rock were seen below her, and came together into grey. Their shapes were fantastic; one of them looked like  a man lying on the ground.

'No ideas here,' Vashti quietly said to herself, and covered the Caucasus mountains with the blind. In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in which lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated, 'No ideas here,' and covered Greece behind the blind.

 

Rang:  past tense of to ring; the sound a bell makes.

 Button: a switch press to controla piece of equipment:

To suppose: something that you should do.

Interrupted: to stop someone while they are talking or doing something, by saying or doing something yourself.

Advanced: having developed or progressed to a late stage.

appeared:  to start to be seen.

Pray: to speak to a god in order to show your feelings or to ask for something.

Air-ship: A type of airplane that the people in the story use for transportation.

Sword: a weapon with a long, metal blade and a handle, used especially in the past.

Ancestors: a relative who lived a long time ago.

Surface

advantage

remains

respirator

immediately

The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster

Adapted for intermediate level

Chapter I: The Air Ship

Imagine a small room. There is no window or lamp, yet it is filled with a soft light. There are no holes for air, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment the room is filled with beautiful music. A chair is in the center of the room and next to it is a desk—this is all the furniture. In the chair there sits a women of about average height with a very white face. This is her room.

A telephone rang.

The woman touched a button and the music was silent.

'I suppose I must see who it is', she thought, and moved her chair. The chair, like the music, was controlled by machine and it moved her to the other side of the room where the telephone still rang.

'Who is it?' she called. Her voice was angry, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in some ways human communication had advanced greatly.

But when she listened to the telephone, her white face began to smile, and she said: 'Very well. Let us talk. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes – for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must give my lecture on "Music during the Australian Period".'

'Be quick!' she said, her irritation returning. 'Be quick, Kuno; I have little time.'

But it was fully fifteen seconds before the tablet she held in her hands turned on. A video appeared on the screen, and she could 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 seriously.

'I really believe you enjoy wasting time.'

'I called you before, mother, but you were always busy. I have something important to say.'

'What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by message?'

'Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want----'

'Well?'

'I want you to come and see me.'

Vashti watched his face on the screen.

'But I can see you!' she cried. 'What more do you want?'

'I don’t want to see you through the Machine,' said Kuno. 'I don’t want to speak to you through the boring Machine.'

'Oh, quiet!' said his mother, somewhat shocked. 'You mustn't say anything against the Machine.'

 

'Why not?'

'One mustn't.'

'You talk as if a god made the Machine,' cried her son.

'I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is great, but it is not everything. I see something like you on this screen, 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.  Come to visit me, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.'

She replied that she hardly had the time for a visit.

'The air-ship takes less than two days to fly between me and you.'

'I dislike air-ships.'

'Why?'

'I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an air-ship.'

'I do not get them anywhere else.” He said.

'What kind of ideas can the air give you?'

He thought for a moment.

'Do you know those four big stars that form a rectangle, the three stars close together in the middle of the rectangle, and the three little stars inside the middle 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 legs.

The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three little stars are like a sword.'

'A sword?'

'Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men.'

'It does not seem to me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?'

'In the air-ship-----' He quickly stopped speaking, and she thought that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine did not teach people to focus on expressions of emotion, but only general thoughts.

 

'The truth is,' he continued, 'that I want to see these stars again. They are interesting stars. I want to see them not from the air-ship, 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, 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 to breathe, or the cold of the outside air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outside air.'

'I know; of course I shall take all precautions.'

'And besides----'

'Well?'

She thought, and chose her words with care. Her son had a strange character and she wished to stop him from the journey.

'It is against the spirit of our time,' she stated.

'Do you mean by that, against the Machine?'

'In a way, but----'

He ended the video call.

'Kuno!'

For a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she turned to the buttons everywhere – buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that brought literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was connected to all that she cared for in the world.

Vashanti's next move was to turn on the public connection and the minutes came to her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking connections. 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 appointment to visit the public nurseries at an early date?

To most of these questions she replied with irritation – a growing quality in that fast-paced age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries because she was busy with other appointments. 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 turned off her other connections, for it was time to give her lecture on Australian music. The old system of public gatherings in person had been ended a long time ago; Vashti and her audience listened to the lectures from their rooms. Seated in her chair she spoke, while they in their chairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a funny story of music in the pre-Mongolian age, and went on to describe the great explosion of song that followed. Distance and ancient as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she still felt that study of them might repay the musicians of today: 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; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had used a respirator and visited it lately. Then she ate, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and called for her bed. She didn’t like the bed. It was too large, and she wanted a smaller bed.

Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same size all over the world, and to have had a different size would mean changes to the programming of the Machine. Vashti lay on her bed and reviewed all that had happened recently. Ideas? Hardly any. Events – was Kuno's invitation an event?

By her side, on the little desk, was item from past ages still used-one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible event. If she was hot or cold or sick or didn’t know what to say, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it.

Sitting up in the bed, she took it respectfully in her hands. She looked around the room as if someone might be watching her. Then, half ashamed, half joyful, she said quietly 'O Machine! O Machine!' and kissed the book three times with excitement. Her ritual performed, she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the leaving of the air-ships from the island in the southern part of the planet, under whose ground she lived, to the island in the northern part of the planet, under which lived her son.

She thought, 'I don’t have the time.'

She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and lectures; she make the room dark and slept. Above her, under her, and around her, the Machine made a continuous low sound; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, ran 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 on the screen disappeared.

Again she checked the book. She became very nervous and sat back in her chair. Presently she directed the chair to the wall, and pressed an unfamiliar button. A door in the wall opened. Through the opening she saw tunnel so long that its end was not visible. Should she go to see her son, here was the beginning of the journey.

Of course, she knew all about the communication-system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She would call a car and it would fly with her down the tunnel until it reached the lift to the air-ship station: the system had been in use for many, many years, long before the Machine. And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately come before 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 outside for a 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. Vashti was fearful of a direct experience of life. She moved back into the room, and the wall closed again.

'Kuno,' she said, 'I cannot come to see you. I am not well.'

Immediately a huge device fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer automatically laid upon her head. She lay powerless as the sensors checked her. Kuno had sent a message to her doctor.

Vashti drank the medicine given to her by the Machine, and the devices went back into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how she felt.

'Better.' Then with irritation: 'But why do you not come to me instead?'

'Because I cannot leave this place.'

'Why?'

'Because, any moment, something wonderful may happen.'

'Have you been on the surface of the earth yet?'

'Not yet.'

'Then what is it?'

'I will not tell you through the Machine.'

She began her regular routine again.

But she thought of Kuno 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 given him a room on the other side of the earth. Duties of parents,' said the book of the Machine,' end at the moment of birth.' True, but there was something special about Kuno – indeed there had been something special about all her children – and, after all, she must be brave and go on this journey if he desired it. And 'something wonderful might happen'. What did that mean? The silliness of a young man, no doubt, but she must go. Again she pressed the unfamiliar button, again the door opened, and she saw the long tunnel. Holding the Book tightly, she rose, and walked weakly on to the platform, and called the car. Her room closed behind her: the journey to the northern part of the earth had begun.

Of course it was perfectly easy. The car came and in it she found seats exactly like her own. When she signalled, it stopped, and she walked unsteadily into the lift. One other passenger was in the lift, the first person she had seen face to face for months. Few people travelled these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid transportation, from which the previous civilization had hoped for so much, had ended by destroying itself. What was the good of going to China when it was just like Briton? Why return to Briton when it would all be like China? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

 

The air-ships were an old service from the former age. It was kept up, because it was easier to keep it up than to stop it, but most of the population no longer wanted to use it. Ship after ship would rise from the entrances of Rye or of Christchurch (I use the old names), would fly into the crowded sky, and would land at the stations of the south – empty. So nicely adjusted was the system, so independent of the weather, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, was filled with these ships. The ship on which Vashti flew started either at sunset or at dawn. Night and day, wind and storm, ocean waves and natural disasters stopped humanity no longer. We had mastered the power of Nature. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, was like the silly words of a child.

Yet as Vashti saw the huge side of the ship, her fear of direct experience returned. It was not quite like the air-ship in the films. For one thing, it had a smell – not strong or unpleasant, but it did smell, and with her eyes closed she should have known that a new thing was close to her. Then she had to walk to it from the lift, while other passengers could look at her. The man in front dropped his Book – no great matter, but it disturbed them all. In the rooms, if the Book was dropped, the floor raised it mechanically, but the way to the air-ship was not so prepared, and the sacred book lay on the ground. They stopped – not knowing what to do – and the man, instead of picking up the book, was confused, and his arms seems almost not to know how to pick up things by themselves. Then someone actually said, 'We shall be late' – and they moved on to the ship.

Inside, her nervousness increased. The arrangements were old-fashioned and rough. There was even a women flight attendant, to whom she would have to speak if she needed or wanted anything during the flight. Some cabins were better than others, and she did not get the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and her body filled with anger. The doors had closed she could not go back. She saw the lift in which she had come going quietly up and down, empty. Under those halls were rooms, level below level, going far into the earth, and in each room there sat a human eating, or sleeping, or producing ideas. And buried deep on one of these levels was her own room. Vashti was afraid. 'O Machine!' she said quietly, and held her Book, and felt better.

Then the air-ship, coming from its tunnel, flew above the waters of a tropical ocean into the sky.

It was night. For a moment she saw the coast below, and then only the stars distracted her. They were not motionless, but moved slightly above her head, as if the universe and not the air-ship was moving. This made her feel uncomfortable. 'Are we to travel in the dark?' the passengers asked angrily, and the attendant, who had been careless, turned on the light, and pulled down the blinds. When the air-ships had been built, people still had the desire to look direct at things in the world. As a result, the extraordinary number of windows on the plane, and the discomfort to those who were civilized and cultured. Even in Vashti's cabin one star was still visible through a mistake in the blind, and after a few hours' uneasy sleep, she was disturbed by an unfamiliar glow, which was the sunrise.

As the ship quickly flew west, the earth had turned east quicker still, and had taken Vashti and her companions back towards the sun. Science could make the night longer, but only for a little, and those high hopes of stopping the earth's rotation had passed, together with hopes that were possibly higher. Airplanes had been built capable of extremely high speeds, and guided by the smartest people on the times. Around the globe they went, round and round, westward, westward, round and round, among humanity's praise. But they were not fast enough. Horrible accidents happened, and the Committee of the Machine, at the time becoming more important, stated that further attempts illegal, not best for the society, and punished by Homelessness.

 

About Homelessness more will be said later.

Without a doubt, the Committee was right. Yet the attempt to fly faster than the sun brought the last common interest that humanity experienced about the sun and planets, or indeed about anything. It was the last time that people thought of a power outside the world. The sun was still the winner, yet it was the end of his spiritual power. Sunrise, afternoon, sunset, the entire path of the sun touched neither humanity’s lives not their hearts, and science went away into the ground, to concentrate on problems that she was certain of solving.

So when Vashti found the light from morning entering her cabin, she was annoyed, and tried to put down the blind. But the blind flew up altogether, and she saw through the window small pink clouds, against a background of blue, and as the sun slowly went higher, its brightness entered direct, coming down the wall, like a golden sea. It rose and fell with the air-ship's motion, just as waves rise and fall, but it advanced steadily, as a wave advances. Unless she was careful, it would hit her face. She felt horror and she called for the attendant. The attendant too was horrified, but she could do nothing; she was not able to fix the blind. She could only suggest that the Vashti change her cabin, which she prepared to do.

People were almost exactly alike all over the world, but the attendant of the air-ship, perhaps because of her special duties, had become somewhat different. She often had to talk to passengers with direct speech, and this had given her a certain roughness and uniqueness of manner. When Vashti moved away from the sunlight with a cry, she behaved rudely– she put out her hand to stop Vashti from falling.

'How could you!' shouted Vashti. 'That's so rude!'

The woman was confused, and apologized for not letting her fall. People never touched each other. The custom had disappeared because of the Machine.

'Where are we now?' asked Vashti in an overly proud way.

'We are over Asia,' said the attendant, nervous to be polite.

'Asia?'

'You must excuse my common way of speaking. I have got into the habit of calling places over which I fly by their  before-machine names.'

'Oh, I remember Asia. The Mongols came from it.'

'Under 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 – let me show you them.' She pushed back the blind. The main part of the Himalayas was revealed. 'They were once called the Roof of the World, those mountains.'

 

'You must remember that, before the rise of civilization, they seemed to be an wall that touched the stars. It was supposed that no one but the gods could live above their tops. How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!'

'How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!' said Vashti.

'How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine!' repeated the passenger who had dropped his Book the night before, and who was standing in the passage.

'Cover the window, please. These mountains give me no ideas.'

The northern part of the Himalayas was in deep shadow: on the Indian side the sun had just started to be seen. The forests had been destroyed during the era literature for the purpose of making newspapers, but the snows could be seen in their morning glory. On the plain were seen the ruins of cities, with rivers going by their walls, and by the sides of these were sometimes the structures of the entrances to the tunnels under the earth, which lead to the cities of today. Over this area air-ships rushed, rising and flying  with ease above the earth and the roof of the world.

'We have indeed advanced, thanks to the Machine,' repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind the blind.

The day went  slowly forward. The passengers each sat in their own cabins, trying not to see each other with an almost physical dislike and hope to be once again under the surface of the earth. There were eight or ten of them, mostly young men, sent from the public nurseries to live in the rooms of those who died in different parts of the earth. The man who dropped his Book was on his journey home. He had been sent to Sumatra make a baby with a women there. Only Vashti was travelling by choice.

At noon she looked again at the earth. The air-ship was crossing another group of mountains, but she could see little, because of clouds. Big black rock were seen below her, and came together into grey. Their shapes were fantastic; one of them looked like  a man lying on the ground.

'No ideas here,' Vashti quietly said to herself, and covered the Caucasus mountains with the blind. In the evening she looked again. They were crossing a golden sea, in which lay many small islands and one peninsula. She repeated, 'No ideas here,' and covered Greece behind the blind.

 

Vocabulary 

Rang:  past tense of to ring; the sound a bell makes.

Button: a switch to press to control a piece of equipment.

To suppose: something that you should do.

Interrupted: to stop someone while they are talking or doing something, by saying or doing something yourself.

Advanced: having developed or progressed to a late stage.

Appeared:  to start to be seen.

Pray: to speak to a god in order to show your feelings or to ask for something.

Air-ship: A type of airplane that the people in the story use for transportation.

Sword: a weapon with a long, metal blade and a handle, used especially in the past.

Ancestors: a relative who lived a long time ago.

Surface: the outside or top layer of something.

Advantage: a quality of something that makes it better or more useful.

To remain:  to still be present after the other parts have been removed, used, etc.; to continue to exist.

Respirator: a piece of equipment that makes it possible for somebody to breathe over a long period when they are unable to do so naturally.

Immediately: at once; without delay; instantly.

Precautions: Actions taken to prevent something unpleasant or dangerous from happening.

Nurseries: Places where young plants, flowers, or trees are grown and cared for.

Fast-paced: Happening quickly or at a high speed.

In person: Meeting or communicating directly with someone face-to-face.

Ancient: Very old, often referring to things from a long time ago.

Complaint: A statement expressing dissatisfaction or unhappiness about something.

Ashamed: Feeling guilty or embarrassed about one's actions.

Direct experience: Personal involvement or participation in a situation without any intermediary.

Duties: Tasks or responsibilities that someone is required to do.

Unsteadily: In an unstable or shaky manner.

Praise: Expressing approval or admiration for someone's achievements or qualities.

 Disturbed: Feeling upset, troubled, or bothered.

Scared: Feeling afraid or frightened.

To pick up: To lift or take something from a surface.

Arrangements: Plans or preparations made for a particular purpose.

Old-fashioned: Outdated or not in style anymore.

Flight attendant: A person who works on an airplane, helping passengers and ensuring their safety.

Buried: Covered or hidden beneath something.

Blinds: Window coverings that can be adjusted to control the amount of light entering a room.

Homelessness: The state of being without a permanent home.

Indeed: Used to emphasize the truth of a statement or to agree with something said.

Background: The information, environment, or circumstances that precede an event or situation.

Alike: Similar or having resemblances.

Manner: The way in which something is done or happens.

Confused: Feeling uncertain or bewildered, lacking clarity.

Custom: A traditional way of behaving or doing something that is specific to a particular society or group.

Himalayas: A mountain range in Asia, known for its high peaks.

Glory: Great honor, praise, or distinction.

Plain: Simple or not elaborate, without decorations.

Ruins: The remains of something that has been destroyed or severely damaged.