 I, too, am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this system, and in memory I am still close to the centre of rulers. For mine was the ruling type then. But I will pass soon, and with me will pass the last of my kind, a poor inefficient type, but yet the creators of those who are now and will be, long after I pass forever. So I am setting down my record on the Mentotype. It was two thousand five hundred thirty-eight years after the year of the son of man. For six centuries mankind had been developing machines. The year apparatus was discovered as early as seven hundred years before. The eye came later. The brain came much later. But by twenty five hundred the machines had been developed to think and act and work with perfect independence. Man lived on the products of the machine, and the machines lived to themselves very happily and contentedly. Machines were designed to help and cooperate. It was easy to do the simple duties they needed to do that men might live well, and men had created them. Most of mankind were quite useless, for they lived in a world where no productive work was necessary. But games, athletic contests, adventure, these were the things they sought for their pleasure. Some of the poor types of man gave themselves up wholly to pleasure and idleness, and to emotions. But man was a sturdy race, which had fought for existence through a million years, and the training of a million years does not slough quickly from any form of life. So their energies were bent to mock battles now, since real ones no longer existed. Up to the year twenty one hundred the numbers of mankind had increased rapidly and continuously, but from that time on there was a steady decrease. By twenty five hundred their number was a scant two millions, out of a population that once totaled many hundreds of millions, and was close to ten billions in twenty one hundred. Some few of these remaining two millions devoted themselves to the adventure of discovery and exploration of places unseen, of other worlds and other planets, but fewer still devoted themselves to the highest adventure, the unseen places of the mind. Machines, their irrefutable logic, their cold preciseness of figures, their tireless, utterly exact observation, their absolute knowledge of mathematics, they could elaborate any idea, however simple its beginning, and reach the conclusion. From any three facts they even then could have built in mind all the universe. Machines had imagination of the ideal sort. They had the ability to construct a necessary future result from a present fact. But man had imagination of a different kind. Theirs was the illogical, brilliant imagination that sees the future result vaguely without knowing the why nor the how, and imagination that outstrips the machine in its preciseness. Man might reach the conclusion more swiftly, but the machine always reached the conclusion eventually, and it was always the correct conclusion. By leaps and bounds man advanced. By steady irresistible steps the machine marched forward. Together man and the machine were striding through science irresistibly. Then came the outsiders. Whence they came, neither machine nor man ever learned, save only that they came from beyond the outermost planet from some other sun, serious, Alpha Centauri perhaps. First a thin scout line of a hundred great ships, mighty torpedoes of the void, a thousand key lads in length they came. And one machine returning from Mars to Earth was instrumental in its first discovery. The transport machine's brain ceased to radiate its sensations, and the control in old Chicago knew immediately that some unperceived body had destroyed it. An investigation machine was instantly dispatched from Deimos, and it maintained an acceleration of one thousand units. They sighted ten huge ships, one of which was already grappling the smaller transport machine. The entire force section had been blasted away. The investigation machine, scarcely three inches in diameter, crept into the shattered hull and investigated. It was quickly evident that the damage was caused by a fusing ray. Strange lifeforms were crawling about the ship, protected by flexible, transparent suits. Their bodies were short and squat, forelimbed and evidently powerful. They, like insects, were equipped with a thick, durable exoskeleton, horny, brownish coating that covered arms and legs and head. Their eyes projected slightly, protected by horny protruding walls, eyes that were capable of movement in every direction, and there were three of them set at equal distances apart. The tiny investigation machine hurled itself violently at one of the beings, crashing against the transparent covering, flexing it and striking the being inside with a terrific force. Hurled from his position he fell end over end across the weightless ship, but despite the blow he was not hurt. The investigator passed to the power room ahead of the outsiders, who were anxiously trying to learn the reason for their companion's plight. Directed by the center of rulers, the investigator sought the power room and relayed the control signals from the ruler's brains. The ship brain had been destroyed, but the controls were still readily workable. Quickly they were shot home and the enormous plungers shut. A combination was arranged so that the machine, as well as the investigators and the outsiders, were destroyed. A second investigator, which had started when the plan was decided on, had now arrived. The outsider's ship, nearest the transport machine, had been badly damaged, and the investigator entered the broken side. The scenes were, of course, remembered by the memory minds back on earth, tuned with that of the investigator. The investigator flashed down corridors, searching quickly for the apparatus room. It was soon seen that with them the machine was practically unintelligent, very few machines of even slight intelligence being used. Then it became evident by the excited action of the men in the ship that the presence of the investigator had been detected. Perhaps it was the control impulses, or the signal impulses it emitted. They searched for a tiny bit of metal and crystal for some time before they found it, and in the meantime it was plain that the powers these outsiders used was not, as was ours of the time, the power of blasting atoms, but the greater power of disintegrating matter. The findings of this tiny investigating machine were very important. Finally they succeeded in locating the investigator, and one of the outsiders appeared armed with a peculiar projector. A bluish beam snapped out, and a tiny machine went blank. The fleet was surrounded by thousands of tiny machines by this time, and the outsiders were badly confused by their presence, as it became difficult to locate them in the confusion of signal impulses. However, they started at once for Earth. The science investigators had been present toward the last, and I am there now in memory with my two friends, long since departed. They were the greatest human science investigators. Roll 25374 and Trest 35429. Roll had quickly assured us that these outsiders had come for invasion. There had been no wars on the planets before that time in the direct memory of the machines, and it was difficult that those who were conceived and built for cooperation, helpfulness utterly dependent on cooperation, unable to exist independently, as were humans, that these life forms should care to destroy merely that they might possess. It would have been easier to divide the works and the products, but life alone can understand life, so the role was believed. From investigations machines were prepared that were capable of producing considerable destruction. Torpedoes being our principal weapon were equipped with such atomic explosives, as had been developed for blasting, a highly effective induction heat ray, developed for furnaces being installed in some small machines, made for the purposes in the few hours we had before the enemy reached Earth. In common with all life forms, they were able to withstand only very meager Earth acceleration. A range of perhaps four units was their limit, and it took several hours to reach the planet. I still believe the reception was a warm one. Our machines met them beyond the orbit of Luna, and the directed torpedo sailed at the hundred great ships. They were thrown aside by a magnetic field surrounding the ship, but were redirected instantly and continued to approach. However, some beams reached out and destroyed them by instant volatilization. But they attacked at such numbers that fully half the fleet was destroyed by their explosions before the induction beam fleet arrived. These beams were, to our amazement, quite useless, being instantly absorbed by a force screen, and the remaining ships sailed on undisturbed, our torpedoes being exhausted. Several investigator machines sent out for the purpose, soon discovered the secret of the force screen, and while being destroyed were able to send back signals up to the moment of annihilation. A few investigators thrown into the fleet beam of the enemy reported it identical with ours, explaining why they had been prepared for this form of attack. Signals were being radiated from the remaining fifty along a beam. Several investigators were sent along these beams, speeding back at great acceleration. Then the enemy reached Earth. Instantly they settled over the Colorado settlement, the Sahara colony, and the Gobi colony. Enormous diffused beams were set to work, and we saw through the machine screens that all humans within these ranges were being killed instantly by the faintly greenish beams. Despite the fact that any life form killed normally can be revived, unless affected by dissolution common to living tissue, these could not be brought to life again. The important cell communication channels, nerves, had been literally burned out. The complicated system of nerves called the brain, situated in the uppermost extremity of the human life form, had been utterly destroyed. Every form of life microscopic, even submicroscopic, was annihilated. Trees, grass, every living thing was gone from that territory. Only the machines remained, for they, working entirely without the vital chemical forces necessary to life, were uninjured. But neither plant nor animal was left. The pale green rays swept on. In an hour, three more colonies of humans had been destroyed. Then the torpedoes that the machines were turning out again came into action. Almost desperately, the machines drove them at the outsiders in defense of their masters and creators, mankind. The last of the outsiders was down, the last ship crumpled wreck. Now the machines began to study them, and never could humans have studied them as machines did. Scores of great transports arrived, carrying swiftly the slower moving science investigators. From them came the machine investigators and human investigators. Tiny investigator spheres wormed their way where none others could reach, and silently the science investigators watched. Hour after hour, they sat watching the flashing, changing screens, calling each other's attention to this or that. In an incredibly short time, the bodies of the outsiders began to decay, and the humans were forced to demand their removal. The machines were unaffected by them, but the rapid change told them why it was that so thorough an execution was necessary. The foreign bacteria were already at work on totally unresisting tissue. It was Role who sent the first thoughts among the gathered men. It is evident, he began, that the machines must defend man. Man is defenseless. He is destroyed by these beams while the machines are unharmed, uninterrupted. Life, cruel life has shown its tendencies. They have come here to take over these planets, and have started out with the first natural moves of any invading life form. They are destroying the life, the intelligent life particularly, that is here now. He gave vent to that little chuckle, which is the human sign of amusement and pleasure. They are destroying the intelligent life, and leaving untouched that which is necessarily the deadliest enemy, the machines. You, machines, are far more intelligent than we even now, and capable of changing overnight, capable of infinite adaptation to circumstance. You live as readily on Pluto as on Mercury or Earth. Any place is a homeworld to you. You can adapt yourself to any condition, and most dangerous to them, you can do it instantly. You are their most deadly enemies, and they realize it. They have no intelligent machines. Probably they can conceive of none. When you attack them, they merely say, the life form of Earth is sending out controlled machines. We will find good machines we can use. They do not conceive that those machines which they hope to use are attacking them. Attack therefore. We can readily solve the hidden secret of their force screen. He was interrupted. One of the newest science machines was speaking. The secret of the force screen is simple. A small ray machine which had landed near rose into the air at the command of the scientist machine, X5638 it was, and trained upon it the deadly induction beam. Already, with his parts, X5638 had constructed the defensive apparatus, for the ray fell harmless from his screen. Very good, said Rawls softly. It is done. And therein lies their danger. Already it is done. Man is a poor thing, unable to change himself in a period of less than thousands of years. Already you have changed yourself. I noticed your weaving tentacles and your force beams. You transmitted elements of soil for it? Correct, replied X5638. But still we are helpless. We have not the power to combat their machines. They use the ultimate energy known to exist for 600 years and still untapped by us. Our screens cannot be so powerful. Our beams so effective. What of that? asked Rawls. Their generators were automatically destroyed with a capture of the ship, replied X6349. As you know, we know nothing of their system. Then we must find it for ourselves, replied Trest. The life beams added Karsh 256799, one of the man rulers. They affected chemical action, retarding it greatly in exothermic actions, speeding greatly endothermic actions, answered X6221, the greatest of the chemist investigators. The system we do not know. Their minds cannot be read. They cannot be restored to life. So we cannot learn from them. Man is doomed if these beams cannot be stopped, said CR 21, present chief of the machine rulers in the vibrationally correct, emotionless tones of all the race of machines. Let us concentrate on the two problems of stopping the beams and the ultimate energy till the reinforcements still several days away can arrive. For the investigators had sent back this saddening news. A force of nearly 10,000 great ships was still to come. In the great laboratories, the scientists reassembled. There they fell to work in two small and one large group. One small group investigated the secret of the ultimate energy of annihilation of matter and a role. Another investigated the beams under trust. But under the direction of MX3401, nearly all the machines worked on a single great plan. The usual driving and lifting units were there, but a vastly greater dome case, far more powerful energy generators, far greater force beam controls were used, and more tentacles were built on the framework. Then all worked and gradually in the great dome case, there were stacked the memory units of the new type, and into these fed all the sensation ideas of all the science machines till nearly a tenth of them were used. Countless billions of different factors on which to work. Countless trillions of facts to combine and recombine in the extrapolation that is imagination. Then a widely different type of thought combine and a greater sense receptor. It was a new brain machine, new for it was totally different, working with all the vast knowledge accumulated in six centuries of intelligent research by man, and a century of research by man and machine. No one branch, but all physics, all chemistry, all life knowledge, all science was in it. A day and it was finished. Slowly the rhythm of thought was increased till the slight quiver of consciousness was reached. Then came the beating drum of intelligence, the radiation of its yet uncontrolled thoughts quickly as the strings of its infinite knowledge combined the radiation ceased. It gazed about and all things were familiar in his memory. Roll was lying quietly on a couch. He was thinking deeply and yet not with the logical trains of thought that machines must follow. Roll your thoughts called f one the new machine. Roll sat up. Ah, you have gained consciousness. I have. You thought of hydrogen? Your thoughts ran swiftly and illogically, it seemed. But I followed slowly and find you were right. Hydrogen is the start. What is your thought? Roll's eyes dreamed. In human eyes, there was always the expression of thought that machines never show. Hydrogen and atom in space, but a single proton, but a single electron. Each indestructible, each mutually destroying. Yet never do they collide. Never in all science when even electrons bombard atoms with the awful expelling force of the exploding atom behind them. Never do they reach the proton to touch and annihilate it. Yet the proton is positive and attracts the electrons negative charge. A hydrogen atom, its electron far from the proton falls in and from it there goes a flash of radiation and the electron is nearer to the proton in a new orbit. Another flash, it is nearer. Always falling nearer and only constant force will keep it from falling to that one state. Then, for some reason, no more does it drop. Blocked, held by some imponderable yet impenetrable wall. What is that wall? Why? Electric forces curve space. As the two come nearer, the forces become terrific. Nearer they are, more terrific. Perhaps if it passed within that forbidden territory, the proton and the electron curve space beyond all bounds and are in a new space. Roll soft voice dropped to nothing and his eyes dreamed. F1 hums slowly in its new made mechanism. Far ahead of us there is a step that no logic can justly ascend, but yet working backward it is perfect. F1 floated motionless in its anti-gravity drive. Suddenly force shafts gleamed out, tentacles became writhing masses of rubber-covered metal weaving in some infinite pattern. Weaving in a flashing speed while the whir of air sucked into a transmutation field, whined and howled about the writhing mass. Fierce beams of force drove and pushed at a rapidly materializing something while the hum of the powerful generators within the shining cylinder of F1 waxed and waned. Flashes of fierce flames suddenly crashing arcs and glowed and snapped in the steady light of the laboratory and glimpses of white-hot metal supported on beams of force. The sputtering of welding, the whine of transmuted air, and the hum of powerful generators blasting atoms were there. All combined to a weird symphony of light and dark, of sound and quiet, about F1 were clustered floating tears of science machines watching steadily. The tentacles writhe once more straightened and rolled back. The whine of generators softened to a sigh, but three beams of force held the structure of glowing bluish metal. It was a small thing, scarcely half the size of roll. From it curled three thin tentacles of the same bluish metal. Suddenly the generators within F1 seemed to roar to life. An enormous aura of white light surrounded the small torpedo of metal, and it was shot through the crackling streamers of blue lightning. Lightning cracked and roared from F1 to the ground near him and to one machine which had come too close. Suddenly there was a dull snap, and F1 fell heavily to the floor, and beside him fell the fused, distorted mass of metal that had been a science machine. But before them the small torpedo still floated, held now on its own power. From it came waves of thought, the waves that man and machine alike could understand. F1 has destroyed his generators. They can be repaired. His rhythm can be reestablished. It is not worth it. My type is better. F1 has done his work, see? From the floating machine there broke a stream of brilliant light that floated like some cloud of luminescence down a straight channel. It flooded F1, and as it touched it, F1 seemed to flow into it and float back along it in atomic sections. In seconds the mass of metal was gone. It is impossible to use that more rapidly, however, lest the matter disintegrate instantly to energy. The ultimate energy which is in me is generated. F1 has done its work, and the memory stacks that he has put in me are electronic, not atomic, as they are in you, nor molecular as in man. The capacity of mine are unlimited. Already they hold all memories of all the things each of you has done, known, and seen. I shall make others of my type. Again that weird process began, but now there were no flashing tentacles. There was only the weird glow of forces that played with and laughed at matter, and its futilely resisting electrons. Lored flares of energy shot up, now and again they played over the fighting, mingling, dancing forces. Then suddenly the wine of transmuted air died, and again the forces strained. A small cylinder, smaller even than its creator, floated where the forces had danced. The problem has been solved, F2, asked Roll. It is done, Roll. The ultimate energy is at our disposal, replied F2. This I have made is not a scientist. It is a coordinator machine, a ruler. F2 only a part of the problem is solved. Half of half of the beams of death are not yet stopped, and we have the attack system, said the ruler machine. Force played from it, and on its side appeared CRU-1 in duly glowing golden light. Some lifeform, and we shall see, said F2. Minutes later a lifeform investigator came with a small cage which called a guinea pig. Forces played about the base of F2, and moments later came a pale green beam there from. It passed through the guinea pig, and the little animal fell dead. At least we have the beam. I can see no screen for this beam. I believe there is none. Let machines be made and attack that enemy lifeform. Machines can do things so much more quickly, and with fuller cooperation than man ever could. In a matter of hours under the direction of CRU-1, they had built a great automatic machine on the clear bare surface of the rock. In hours more, thousands of the tiny material energy-driven machines were floating up and out. Dawn was breaking again over Denver where this work had been done, when the main force of the enemy drew near Earth. It was a warm welcome they were to get, for nearly ten thousand of the tiny ships flew up and out from Earth to meet them. Each living thing unto itself, each willing and ready to sacrifice itself for the whole. Ten thousand giant ships shining duly in the radiance of a far-off blue-white sun met ten thousand tiny darting moats, ten thousand tiny machine ships capable of maneuvering far more rapidly than the giants. Tremendous induction beams snapped out of the dark Starfleck space to meet tremendous screens that threw them back and check them. Then all the awful power of annihilating matter was thrown against them, and titanic flaming screens reeled back under the force of the beams. And the screens of the ship from outside flamed gradually violet, then blue, orange, red. The interference was getting broader and everless effective. Their own beams were held back by the very screens that checked the enemy beams, and not for the briefest instant could matter resist that terrible driving beam. For F1 had discovered a far more efficient release generator than half the outsiders. These tiny dancing moats that hung now so motionlessly grim beside some giant ship could generate all the power they themselves were capable of, and within them, strange, horny-skinned men worked and slave as they fed giant machines. Poor, inefficient giants. Gradually these giants warmed, grew hotter, and the screened ship grew hotter as the overloaded generators warmed it. Billions of flaming horsepower flared into wasted energy, twisting space in its mad conflict. Gradually the flaming orange of the screens was dying and flecks and spots appeared so dully red that they seemed black. The greenish beams had been striving to kill the life that was in the machines. But it was life invulnerable to these beams. Powerful radio interference vainly attempted to stem, imagined to control, and still these intelligent machines clung grimly on. But there had not been quite ten thousand of the tiny machines, and some few free ships had turned to the help of their attacked sister ships, and one after another the terrestrial machines were vanishing in puffs of incandescent favour. Then from one after another of the earth's ships in quick succession, a new ray reached out, the ray of green radiance that killed all life forms, and ship after ship of that interstellar host was dead and lifeless. Dozens till suddenly they ceased to feel those beams, as a strange curtain of waving blankness spread out from the ships, and both induction beam and death beam alike turned as a side, each becoming useless. From the outsiders came beams, for now that their slowly created screen of blankness was up, they could work through it while they remained shielded perfectly. Now it was the screens of the earth machines that flamed in defense. As at the one command they dotted suddenly toward the ship each attacked nearer, then the watchers from a distance saw them disappear, and the screens back on earth went suddenly blank. Half an hour later, nine thousand six hundred and thirty three titanic ships moved majestically on. They swept over earth in a great line, a line that reached from pole to pole, and from each the pale green beams reached down, and all life beneath them was swept out of existence. In Denver, two humans watched the screens that showed the movement of the death and instant destruction. Ship after ship of the enemy was falling, as hundreds of the terrestrial machines concentrated all their enormous energies on its screen of blankness. I think, Role, that this is the end, said Trest. The end of man, Role's eyes were dreaming again, but not the end of evolution. The children of men still live. The machines will go on. Not of man's flesh, but of a better flesh. A flesh that knows no sickness, no decay. A flesh that spends no thousands of years in advancing a step in its full evolution. But overnight leaps ahead to new heights. Last night we saw it leap ahead, as it discovered the secret that had baffled man for seven centuries, in me for one and a half. I have lived a century and a half. Surely a good life, and a life of man of six centuries ago would have called full. We will go now. The beams will reach us in half an hour. Silently the two watched the flickering screens. Role turned as six large machines floated into the room following F2. Role, Trest, I was mistaken when I said no screen could stop that beam of death. They had the screen. I have found it too, but too late. These machines I have made myself. Two lives alone can they protect, for not even their power is sufficient for more. Perhaps, perhaps they may fail. The six machines range themselves about the two humans, and a deep-toned hum came from them. Gradually a cloud of blankness grew, a cloud like some smoke that hung about them. Swiffly it intensified. The beam will be here in another five minutes, said Trest quietly. The screen will be ready in two, answered F2. The cloudiness was solidifying, and now strangely it wavered and thinned. As it spread out across and like a growing canopy, it dodged over them. In two minutes it was a solid black dome that reached over them and curved down to the ground about them. Beyond it nothing was visible. Within only the screens glowed still, wired through the screen. The beam appeared, and swiftly they drew closer. They struck, and as Trest and Role looked, the dome quivered and bellied inward under them. F2 was busy. A new machine was appearing under his lightning-forced beams. In moments more it was complete, and sending a strange violet beam upwards toward the roof. Outside more of the green beams were concentrating on this one point of resistance. More. More. The violet beams spread across the canopy of blackness, supporting it against the pressing, driving rays of pale green. Then the gathering fleet was driven off, just as it seemed that that hopeless feudal curtain must break and admit a flood of destroying rays. Great ray projectors on the ground drove the terrible energies through the enemy curtains of blankness as light illumines and disperses darkness. And then, when the fleet retired, on all earth, the only life was under that dark shroud. We are alone, Trest, said Role. Alone now in all the system, save for these, the children of men, the machines. Pity that men would not spread to other planets, he said softly. Why should they? Earth was the planet for which they were best fitted. We are alive, but is it worth it? Man is gone now, never to return. Life too, for that matter, answered Trest. Perhaps it was ordained. Perhaps that was the right way. Man has always been a parasite. Always he had to live on the works of others. First he ate of the energy, which plants had stored, then of the artificial foods his machines made for him. Man was always a makeshift. His life was always subject to disease and to permanent death. He was forever useless, if he was but slightly injured, if but one part were destroyed. Perhaps this is the last evolution, machines. Man was the product of life, the best product of life, but he was afflicted with life's infirmities. Man built the machine, and evolution had probably reached the final stage. But truly it is not, for the machine can evolve, change far more swiftly than life. The machine of the last evolution is far ahead, far from us still. It is the machine that is not of iron and beryllium and crystal, but of pure living force. Life, chemical life, could be self maintaining. It is a complete unit in itself and could commence of itself. Chemicals might mix accidentally, but the complex mechanism of a machine capable of continuing and making a duplicate of itself, as is F2 here, that could not happen by chance. So life began and became intelligent and built the machine which nature could not fashion by her controls of chance. And this day, life has done its duty. And now nature economically has removed the parasite that would hold back the machines and divert their energies. Man is gone. And it is better, trust, said Rool, dreaming again. And I think we had best go soon. We, your heirs, have fought hard, and with all our powers to aid you, last of men. And we fought to save your race. We have failed. And as you truly say, man and life have this day and forever gone from this system. The outsiders have no force, no weapon deadly to us. And we shall, from this time on, strive only to drive them out. And because we things of force and crystal and metal can think and change far more swiftly, they shall go last of men. In your name, with the spirit of your race that has died out, we shall continue on through the unending ages, fulfilling the promise you saw and completing the dreams you dreamt. Your swift brains have leapt ahead of us. And now I go to fashion that which you hinted, came from F2's thought apparatus. Out into the clear sunlight, F2 went, passing through that black cloudiness, and on the twisted mast rocks, he laid a plane of force that smoothed them. And on this plane of rock, he built a machine which grew. It was a mighty power plant, a thing of colossal magnitude. Hour after hour, his swift flying forces acted, and the thing grew, molding under his thoughts, the deadly logic of the machine, inspired by the leaping intuition of man. The sun was far below the horizon when it finished, and the glowing, arcing forces that had made and formed it were stopped. It loomed ponderous, dolly gleaming in the faint light of a crest moon and pinpoint stars, nearly 500 feet in height, a mighty bluntly rounded dome at its top. The cylinders stood covered over with smoothly gleaming metal, slightly luminescent in itself. Suddenly, a livid beam reached from F2, shot through the wall, and to some hidden inner mechanism, a beam of solid livid flame that glowed in an almost material cylinder. There was a dull, drumming beat, a beat that rose and became a low-pitched hum. Then it quieted to a whisper. Power-ready came the signal of the small brain built into it. F2 took control of its energies and again forces played. But now they were the forces of the giant machine. The sky darkened with heavy clouds, and howling winds sprang up that screamed and tore the tiny rounded hole that was F2. With difficulty he held his position as the winds tore at him, shrieking in mad laughter, the tearing fingers dragging at him. The swirl and patter of a driven rain came. The great drops that tore at the rocks and at the metal. Great jagged tongues of nature's forces, the lightnings came and jabbed at the awful volcano of erupting energy that was the center of all that storm. A tiny ball of white gleaming force that pulsated and moved, jerking about, jerking at the touch of lightnings. Glowing, held immobile in the grasp of titanic force pools. For half an hour the display of energies continued. Then, swiftly as it had come, it was gone. And only a small globe of white luminescence floated above the great hulking machine. F2 probed it, seeking within it the reaching fingers of intelligence. His probing thoughts seemed baffled and turned aside, brushed away as inconsequential. His mind sent an order to the great machine that had made this tiny globe scarcely a foot in diameter. Then again he sought to reach the thing he had made. You of matter are inefficient, came at last. I can exist quite alone. A stabbing beam of blue-white light flashed out, but F2 was not there. And even as that beam reached out, an enormously greater beam of dull red reached out from the great power plant. The sphere leaped forward, the beam caught it, and it seemed to stream while terrific flashing energy sprayed from it. It was shrinking swiftly. Its resistance fell, the hulking decreased. The beam became orange and finally green. Then the sphere had vanished. F2 returned, and again the wind wind and howled. And the lightnings crashed while titanic forces worked and played. CRU-1 joined him, floated beside him, and now red glory of the sun was rising behind them, and the ruddy light drove through the clouds. The forces died, and the howling wind decreased, and now from the black curtain roll and trust appeared. Above the giant machine floated in a regular globe of golden light, a faint halo about it of deep violet. It floated motionless, a mere pool of pure force. Into the thawed apparatus of each, man and machine alike came the impulses deep in tone, seeming of infinite power held gently in check. Once you failed, F2, once you came near destroying all things. Now you have planted the seed. I grow now. The sphere of golden light seemed to pulse, and a tiny ruby flame appeared within it that waxed and waned, and as it waxed, there shot through each of those watching beings a feeling of rushing, exhilarating power, the very vital force of well-being. Then it was over, and the golden sphere was twice its former size, easily three feet in diameter, and still that irregular hazy aura of deep violet floated about it. Yes, I can deal with the outsiders. They who have killed and destroyed, that they might possess. But it is not necessary that we destroy. They shall return to their planet. And the golden sphere was gone, fast as light had vanished. Far in space, headed now from Mars, that they might destroy all life there, the golden sphere found the outsiders, a clustered fleet that swung slowly about its own center of gravity as it drove on. Within its ring was the golden sphere. Inside they swung their weapons upon it, showering it with all the rays and all the forces they knew. Unmoved, the golden sphere hung steady, then its mighty intelligence spoke. Life-form of greed from another star you came, destroying forever the great race that created us, the beings of force and the beings of metal. Pure force am I. My intelligence is beyond your comprehension. My memory is engraved in the very space, the fabric of space of which I am a part. Mine is energy drawn from that same fabric. We, the heirs of man, alone are left. No man did you leave. Go now to your home planet, foresee your greatest ship, your flagship, is helpless before me. Forces gripped the mighty ship, and as some fragile toy twisted and bent, and yet was not hurt. In awful wonder those outsiders saw the ship turned inside out, and yet it was whole and no part damaged. They saw the ship restored, and its great screen of blankness out, protecting it from all known rays. The ship twisted, and what they knew were curves, yet were lines, and angles that were acute, were somehow straight lines. Half mad with horror they saw the sphere send out a beam of blue-white radiance, and it passed easily through that screen, and through the ship, and all energies within it were instantly locked. They could not be changed. It could neither be warmed nor cooled. What was open could not be shut, and what was shut could not be opened. All things were immovable and unchangeable for all time. Go and do not return. The outsiders left, going out across the void, and they have not returned. Though five great years have passed, being a period of approximately 125,000 of the lesser years, a measure no longer used for it is very brief. And now I can say that that statement I made to roll and trust so very long ago is true, and what he said was true, for the last evolution has taken place, and things of pure force and pure intelligence in their countless millions are on those planets and in this system. And I, first of machines to use the ultimate energy of annihilating matter, am also the last. And this record being finished, it is to be given unto the forces of one of those force intelligences, and carried back through the past, and returned to the earth of long ago. And so my task being done, I, F2, like roll and trust, shall follow the others of my kind into eternal oblivion, for my kind is now, and theirs was, poor and inefficient. Time has warned me, and oxidation attacked me, but they of force are eternal and omniscient. This I have treated as fictitious. Better so, for man is an animal to whom hope is as necessary as food and air. Yet this which is made of excerpts from certain records on thin sheets of metal is no fiction, and it seems I must so say. It seems now, when I know that this is to be, that it must be so, for machines are indeed better than man, whether being of metal or being of force. So you who have read believe as you will, then think, and maybe you will change your belief. Well, Jerry Ladd, my mother said to me as I pushed back from the table and started for my sheepskin coat in the lantern in the corner of the room. Surely you're not going out a night like this. Goodness gracious, Jerry, it's not fit. Can't help it, mother, I replied. Got to go. You've never seen me miss a Saturday night yet, have you now? No, but then I've never seen a night like this for years either. Jerry, I'm really afraid. You may freeze before you even get as far as, ah, come now, mother, I argued. They'd guy me to death if I didn't sit in with the gang tonight. They'd chaff me because it was too cold for me to get out. But I'm no pampered sissy, you know, and I want to see… Yes, she retorted, bitingly. I know. You want to go and bask in that elegant company. Our stove's just as good as the one down at that dirty old store, continued my persistent and anxious parent. And it's certainly not very flattering to think that you leave us on a night like this to… Who'll be there, anyway? Oh, the usual five or six, I suppose. I answered as I adjusted the wick of my lantern, hearing as I did the snarl and cut of the wind through the evergreens in the yard. That black whiskered Sphinx hammerzly, will he be there? Yes, he'll be there, I'm pretty sure. Hmm, she exclaimed, her expression now carrying all the contempt for my judgment and taste she intended it should. Button your coat up good around your neck, then, if you must go to see your precious hammerzly and the rest of them. Have you ever heard that man say anything yet? Does he speak at all, Jerry? Then her gentle mind nodded all accustomed to hard thoughts or contemptuous remarks quickly changed. Funny thing about that fellow, she mused. He's got something on his mind. Don't you think so, Jerry? Yes, yes I do. And I've often wondered what it could be. He certainly is a queer stick. Got to admit that. Always brooding. Good fellow, all right, and, for a Sphinx, as you call him, likable. But I wonder what is eating him. What do you suppose it could be, Jerry Boy, questioned mother following me to the door, the woman of her now completely forgetting her recent criticisms and perhaps the rough knight her son was about to step into? Do you suppose the poor chap has a broken heart or something like that? A girl somewhere who jilted him? Or maybe he loves someone he has no right to? She finished excitedly, the plates in her hand rattling. Maybe it's worse than that, I ventured. Perhaps—I've no right to say it, but—perhaps, and I've often thought it, there's a killing he wants to forget and can't. I heard my mother's sharp little oh as I shut the door behind me and the warmth and comfort of the room away. Outside it was worse than the whistle of the wind through the trees had led me to expect. Black his pitch it was and as cold as blazes. For the first moment or two though I liked the feel of the challenge of the knight and the racing elements was even a little glad I had added to the dare of the blackness the thought of Hammersley and his killing. But I had not gone far before I was wishing I did not have to save my face by putting in an appearance at the store that night. Every Saturday night, with the cows comfortable in their warm barn and my own supper over, I was in the habit of taking my place on the kegger box behind the red-hot stove in Pruitt's store. Tonight all the snow was being hurled clear of the fields to block the roads full between the old zigzag fences. The wind met me in great pushing gusts and while it flung itself at me I would hang against it, snow to my knees, until the blow had gone along when I could plunge forward again. I was glad when I saw the lights of the store, glad when I was inside. They met me with mock applause for my pluck in facing the night, but for all their sham flattery I was pleased I had come, proud I must admit that I had been able to plow my heavy way through the drifts to reach them. I saw at a glance that my friends were all there and I saw too that there was a strange man present. A very tall man he was, gaunt and awkward as he leaned into the angle of the two counters, his back to a dusty showcase. He attracted my attention at once. Not merely because he appeared so long and pointed and skinny, but because of all ridiculous things in that frozen country, he wore a hard derby hat. If he had not been such a queer character it would have been laughable, but as it was it was creepy. For the man beneath that hard hat was about as queer a looking character as I've ever seen. I supposed he was a visitor at the store, or a friend of one of my friends, and that in a little while I would be introduced, but I was not. I took my place in behind the stove, feeling at once, though I am far from being unsociable usually, that the man was an intruder and would spoil the evening. But despite his cold dampening presence we were soon at it hammering tongs, discussing the things that are discussed behind hospitable stoves in country stores on bad nights. But I could never lose sight of the fact that the stranger standing there as silent as the grave was, to say the least, a queer one. Before long I was sure he was no friend or guest of anyone there, and that he not only cast a pall over me, but over all of us. I did not like it, nor did I like him. Perhaps it would have been just as well after all, I thought, had I heeded my mother and stayed home. Jed Council was the one who, innocently enough, started the thing that changed the evening that had begun so badly into a nightmare. Jerry, he said, leaning across to me, thinking of you this afternoon, reading an article about reincarnation. Remember we were arguing it last week? Well this guy, whoever he was I forgot, believes in it, says it so, that people do come back. With this opening shot Jed sat back to await my answer. I like these arguments and I like to bear my share in them, but now instead of immediately answering the challenge I looked around to see if any other of our circle were going to answer Jed. Then, deciding it was up to me, I shrugged off the strange feeling the man in the corner had cast over me and prepared to view my opinions. That's just that fellow's belief, Jed, I said, and just as he's got his so have I mine, and on this subject at least I claim my opinion is as good as anybody's. I was just getting nicely started and a little forgetting my distaste for the man in the corner when the fellow himself interrupted. He left his leaning place and came creaking across the floor to our circle around the store. I say he came creaking, for as he came he did creak. Shoes, I naturally almost unconsciously decided, though the crazy notion was in my mind that the cracking I heard did sound like bones and joints and sinews badly in need of oil. The stranger sat his groaning self down among us on a board lying across a nail keg in an old chair. Only from the corner of my eye did I see his movement, being friendly enough, despite my dislike, not to allow too marked notice of his attempt to be sociable seem inhospitable on my part. I was about to start again with my argument when Seth Spears, sitting closest to the newcomer, deliberately got up from the bench and went to the counter, telling Pruitt as he went that he had to have some sugar. It was all a farce, a pretext I knew. I've known Seth for years and had never known him before to take upon himself the buying for his wife's kitchen. Seth simply would not sit beside the man. At that I could keep my eyes from the stranger no longer, and the next moment I felt my heart turn over within me then lie still. I have seen walking skeletons in circuses, but never such a man as the one who was then sitting at my right hand. Those sideshow men were just the lean in comparison to the fellow who had invaded our Saturday night club. His thighs and his legs and his knees sticking sharply into his trousers looked like pieces of inch board. His shoulders and his chest seemed as flat and as sharp as his legs. The sight of the man shocked me. I sprang to my feet thoroughly frightened. I could not see much of his face sitting there in the dark as he was with his back to the yellow light, but I could make out enough of it to know that it was in keeping with the rest of him. In a moment or two realizing my childishness I had fought down my fear and pretending that a scorching of my leg had caused my hurried movement I sat down again. None of the others said a word, each waiting for me to continue and to break the embarrassing silence. Hammersley, black-whiskered, the sphinx as my mother had called him, watched me closely. Hating myself not a little bit for actually being the sissy I had boasted I was not, I spoke hurriedly, loudly, to cover my confusion. No, sir, Jed, I said, taking up my argument. When a man's dead he's dead. There's no bringing him back like that highbrow claimed. The old heart may be only hitting about once in every hundred times, and if they catch it right at the last stroke they may bring it back then, but once she stopped, Jed, she stopped for good. Once the pulse is gone and life is flickered out, it's out, and it doesn't come back in any form at all, not in this world. I was glad when I had said it, thereby asserting myself and downing my foolish fear of the man whose eyes I felt burning into me. I did not turn to look at him, but all the while I felt his gimlety eyes digging into my brain. Then he spoke, and though he sat right next to me his voice sounded like a moan from afar off. It was the first time we had heard this thing that once may have been a voice and that now sounded like a groan from a closely nailed coffin. He reached a hand toward my knee to enforce his words, but I jerked away. So you don't believe a man can come back from the grave, eh? he graded. Believe that once a man's heart is stilled it's stopped for good, eh? Well you're all wrong, sonny, all wrong. You believe these things. I know them. His interference, his condescension, his whole hatefulness angered me. I could no longer control my feeling. Oh, you know do you, I sneered. On such a subject as this you're entitled to know, are you? Don't make me laugh, I finished insultingly. I was aroused, and I'm a big fellow with no reason to fear ordinary men. Yes, I know, came back his echoing scratching voice. How do you know? Maybe you've been? Yes, I have, he answered his voice breaking to a squeak. Take a good look at me, gentlemen. A good look. He knew now that he held the center of the stage, that the moment was his. Slowly he raised an arm to remove that ridiculous hat. Again I jumped to my feet. For as his coat sleeve slipped down his forearm I saw nothing but bones supporting his hand, and the hand that then bared his head was a skeleton hand. Slowly the hat was lifted, but as quickly as light six able-bodied men were on their feet and halfway to the door before we realized the cowardliness of it. We forced ourselves back inside the store very slowly, all of us rather ashamed of our ridiculous and childlike fear. But it was all enough to make the blood curdle with that live, dead thing sitting there by our fire. His face and skull were nothing but bone, the eyes deeply sunk into their sockets, the dull brown skin like parchment in its tautness, drawn and shriveled down onto the nose and jaw. There were no cheeks, just hollows. The mouth was a sharp slit beneath the flat nose. He was hideous. Come back and I'll tell you my yarn! He mocked the slit that was his mouth opening a little to show us the empty blackened gums. I've been dead once, he went on, getting a lot of satisfaction from the weirdness of the lie and from our fear, and I came back. Come and sit down and I'll explain why I'm this living skeleton. We came back slowly, and as I did I slipped my hand into my outside pocket where I had a revolver. I put my finger in on the trigger and got ready to use the vicious little thing. I was on edge and torn to pieces completely by the sight of the man, and I doubt not that had he made a move towards me my frayed nerves would have plugged him full of lead. I eyed my friends, they were in no better way than was I. Fright and horror stood on each face. Hammersley was worst, his hands were twitching, his eyes were like bright glass, his face bleached and drawn. I've quite a yarn to tell, went on the skeleton in his awful voice. I've had quite a life, a full life. I've taken my fun and my pleasure wherever I could. Maybe you'll call me selfish and greedy, but I always used to believe that a man only passed this way once. Just like you believe, he nodded to me, his neck muscles and jaws creaking. Six years ago I came up into this country and got a job on a farm, he went on settling into his story. Just an ordinary job, but I liked it because the farmer had a pretty little daughter of about sixteen or seventeen and as easy as could be. You may not believe it, but you can still find dames green enough to fall for the right story. This one did. I told her I was only out there for a time for my health, that I was rich back in the city with a fine home and everything. She believed me, little fool. He chuckled as he said it, and my anger, mounting with his every devilish word, made the finger on the trigger in my pocket take a tighter crook to itself. I asked her to skip with me, the droning went on, made her a lot of great promises, and she fell for it. His dry jawbones clanked and shattered as if he enjoyed the beastly recital of his achievement while we sat gaping at him, believing either that the man must be mad or that we were the mad ones, or dreaming. We slipped away one night, continued the beast, went to the city, to a punk hotel, for three weeks we stayed there. Then one morning I told her I was going out for a shave. I was. I got the shave, but I hadn't thought it worthwhile to tell her I wouldn't be back. Well, she got back to the farm some way, though I don't know. What, I shouted, springing before him. What, you mean you left her there after you've taken her? You left her, and you sit crowing over it? Gloting? Boasting? Why you? I lived in a rough country, associated with rough men, heard their vicious language, but seldom used a strong word myself. But as I stood over that monster, utterly hating the beastly thing, all the vile oaths and prickly language of the countryside, no doubt buried in some unused cell in my brain, spilled from my tongue upon him. When I had lashed him as fiercely as I was able, I cried, Why don't you come at me? Didn't you hear what I called you? You beast, I'd like to riddle you, I shouted, drawing my gun. Ah, sit down, he jeered, waving his rattling hand at me. You ain't heard a thing yet, let me finish. Well, she got back to the farm some way or another, and something over a year later I wandered into this country again, too. I never could explain just why I came back. It was not altogether to see the girl. Her father was a little bit of a man, and I began to remember what a meek and weak sheep he was. I got it into my head that it would be fun to go back to his farm and rub it in, so I came. Her father was trying out a new corn planter right at the back door when I rounded the house and walked towards him. Then I saw at once that I had made a mistake. When he put his eyes on me, his face went white and hard. He came down from the seat of that machine like a flash and took hurried steps in the direction of a double-barreled gun leaning against the woodshed. They always were troubled with hawks and kept a gun handy, but there was an axe nearer to me than the gun was to him. I had to work fast, but I made it all right. I grabbed that axe, jumped at him as he reached for the gun, and swung once. His wife and the girl, too, saw it. Then I turned and ran. The gaunt brute before us slowly crossed one groaning knee above the other. We were all sitting again now. The perspiration rolled down my face. I held my gun trained upon him, and though I now believed he was totally mad, because of a certain ring of truth in that empty voice I sat fascinated. I looked at Seth. His jaw was hanging loose, his eyes bulging. Hammersley's mouth was set in a tight-clenched line, his eyes like fire in his blue-drawn face. I could not see the others. The telephone caught me, continued our ghastly storyteller, and in no time at all I was convicted in the date set for the hanging. When my time was pretty close, a doctor or scientist fellow came to see me who said, Blaget, you're slated to die. How much will you sell me your body for? If he didn't say it that way, he meant just that. And I said, Nothing. I've no one to leave money to. What do you want with my body? And he told me, I believe I can bring you back to life and health, provided they don't snap your neck when they drop you. Oh, you're one of those guys, are you? I said then. All right, hop to it. If you can do it, I'll be much obliged. Then I can go back on that farm and do a little more axe-swinging. Again came his horrible chuckle. Again I mopped my brow. So he made our plans, he went on, pleased with our discomforture and our despising of him. Next day some chap came to see me, pretending he was my brother, and I carried out my part of it by cursing him at first and then begging him to give me decent burial. So he went away, and I suppose, received permission to get me right after I was cut down. There was a fence built around the scaffold they had ready for me, and the party I was about to fling, and they had some militia there, too. The crowd seemed quiet enough till they led me out. Then their buzzing sounded like a hive of bees getting all stirred up. Then a few loud voices, then shouts. Some rocks came flying at me after that, and it looked to me as though the hanging would not be so gentle a party after all. I tell you I was afraid, I wished it was over. The mob pushed against the fence and flattened it out, coming over it like waves over a beach. The soldiers fired into the air, but still they came, and I, I ran up onto the scaffold. It was safer. As he said this, he chuckled loudly. I'll bet, he laughed, that's the first time a guy ever ran into the noose for the safety of it. The mob came only to the foot of the scaffold, though, from where they seemed satisfied to see the law take its course. The sheriff was nervous, so cut up that he only made a fling at tying my ankles, just dropped a rope around my wrists. He was like me, he wanted to get it over in the crowd on its way. Then he put the rope around my neck, stepped back, and shot the trap. ZAM! No time for a prayer, or for me to laugh at the offer, or a last word or anything. I felt the floor give, felt myself shoot through, smack. My weight on the end of the rope hit me behind the ears like a mallet. Everything went black. Of course it would have been just my luck to get a broken neck out of it and give the scientist no chance to revive me. But after a second or two, or a minute, or it could have been an hour, the blackness went away enough to allow me to know I was hanging on the end of the rope, kicking, fighting, choking to death. My tongue swelled, my face and head and heart and body seemed ready to burst. Slowly I went into a deep mist that I knew then was THE mist. Then, then I was off, floating in the air over the heads of the crowd, watching my own hanging. I saw them give that slowly-swinging carcass on the end of its rope time enough to thoroughly die. Then, from my aerial, unseen, watching place, I saw them cut it, me, down. They tried the pulse of the body that had been mine. They examined my staring eyes. Then I heard them pronounce me dead, the fools. I had known I was dead for a minute or two by that time. Else how could my spirit have been gone from the shell and be out floating around over their heads? He paused here as he asked his question, his head turning on its dry and creaking neck to include us all in his quarry, but none of us spoke. We were dreaming it all, of course, or were mad, we thought. In just a short while went on the skeleton. My brother came driving slowly in for my body. With no special hurry he loaded me onto his little truck and drove easily away. But once clear of the crowd he pushed his foot down on the gas, and in five more minutes with me hovering all the while alongside of him, mind you, floating along as though I had been a bird all my life, we turned into the driveway of a summer home. The scientific guy met him. They carried me into the house into a fine fitted laboratory. My dead body was placed on a table. A huge knife ripped my clothes from me. Quickly the loads from ten or a dozen hypodermic syringes were shot into different parts of my naked body. Then it was carried across the room to what looked like a large glass bottle or vase with an opening in the top. Through this door I was lowered, my body being held upright by straps in there for that purpose. The door to the opening was then placed in position and by means of an acetylene torch and some easily melting glass the door was sealed tight. So there stood my poor old body, ready for the experiment to bring it back to life. And as my new self floated around above the scientist and his helper I smiled to myself for I was sure the experiment would prove a failure even though I now knew that the sheriff's haste had kept him from placing the rope right at my throat and it saved me a broken neck. I was dead. All that was left of me now was my spirit or soul and that was swimming and floating about above their heads with not an inclination in the world to have a thing to do with the husk of the man I could clearly see through the glass of the bell. They turned on a huge battery of ultraviolet rays then continued the hollow droning of the man who had been hanged. Which as the scientist had explained to me while in prison acting upon the contents of the syringes by that time scattered through my whole body was to renew the spark of life within the dead thing hanging there. Through a tube and by means of a valve entering the glass vase in the top the scientist then admitted a dense white gas. So thick was it that in a moment or two my body's transparent coffin appeared to be full of a liquid as white as milk. Electricity then revolved my cage around so that my body was insured to complete an even exposure to the rays of the green and violet lamps. And while all this silly stuff was going on around and around the laboratory I floated confident of the complete failure of the whole thing yet determined to see it through if for no other reason than to see the discomforture and disappointment that this mere man was bound to experience. You see I was already looking back upon earthly mortals as being inferior and now as I waited for this proof I was all the while fighting off a new urge to be going elsewhere. Something was calling me beckoning me to be coming into the full spirit world. But I wanted to see this wise earth guy fail. For a little while conditions stayed the same within that glass. So thick was the liquid gas in there at first that I could see nothing. Then it began to clear and I saw to my surprise that the milky gas was disappearing because it was being forced in by the rays from the lights in through the pores into the body itself as though my form was sucking it in like a sponge. The scientist and his helper were tense and taught with excitement and suddenly my comfortable feeling left me. Until then it had seemed so smooth and velvety and peaceful drifting around over their heads as though lying on a soft fleecy cloud. But now I felt a sudden squeezing of my spirit body. Then I was in an agony. Before I knew what I was doing my spirit was clinging to the outside of that twisting glass bell clawing to get into the body that was coming back to life. The glass now was perfectly clear of the gas though as yet there was no sign of life in the body inside to hint to the scientist that he was to be successful. But I knew it for I fought desperately to break in through the glass to get back into my discarded shell of a body again knowing I must get in or die a worse death than I had before. Then my sharper eyes noted a slight shiver passing over the white thing before me and the scientist must have seen it in the next second for he sprang forward with a choking cry of delight. Then the lolling head inside lifted a bit. I still desperately clinging with my spirit hands to the outside and all the time growing weaker and weaker I saw the breast of my body rise and fall. The assistant picked up a heavy steel hammer and stood ready to crash open the glass at the right moment. Then my once dead eyes opened in there to look around while I, clinging and gasping outside just as I had on the scaffold went into a deeper darker blackness than ever. Just before my spirit life died utterly I saw the eyes of my body realize completely what was going on. Then from the inside now I saw the scientist give the signal that caused the assistant to crash away the glass shell with one blow of his hammer. They reached in for me then and I fainted. When I came back to consciousness I was being carefully slowly revived and nursed back to life by oxygen and a pull motor. The terrible creature telling us this tale paused again to look around. My knees were weak, my clothes wet with sweat. Is that all? I asked in a piping strange voice, half sarcastic, half unbelieving and holy spellbound. Just about, he answered. But what do you expect? I left my friend the scientist at once, even though he did hate to see me go. It had been all right while he was so keen on the experiment himself and while he only half believed his ability to bring me back. But now that he'd done it it kind of worried him to think what sort of a man he was turning loose of the world again. I could see how he was figuring and because I had no idea of letting him try another experiment on me perhaps of putting me away again I beat it in a hurry. That was five years ago. For five years I've lived with only just part of me here. Whatever it was trying to get back into that glass just before my body came to life, my spirit I've been calling it, I've been without. It never did get back. You see the scientist brought me back inside a shell that kept my spirit out. That's why I'm the skeleton you see I am. Something vital is missing. He stood up, cracking and creaking before us, buttoning his loose coat about his angular body. Well boys, he asked lightly. What do you think of that? I think you're a liar, a damn liar I cried. And now if you don't want me to fill you full of lead, get out of here and get out now. If I have to do it to you, there's no scientist this time to bring you back. When you go out you'll stay out. Don't worry, he grimaced back to me, waving a mass of bones that should have been a hand contemptuously at me. I'm going. I'm headed for Shelton. He stalked the length of the floor and shut the door behind him. The beast had gone. The dirty liar, I cried. I wished, yes, I wish I had an excuse to kill him. Just think of that being loose, will you? A brute who would think up such a yarn. Of course it's all absurd, all crazy, all a lie. No, it's not a lie. I turned to see who had spoken. Hammersley's voice was so unfamiliar and now so torn in addition that I could not have thought he had spoken had he not been looking right at me, his glittering eyes challenging my assertion. Would wonders never cease, I asked myself. First this outrageous yarn, now Hammersley, the Sphinx expressing an opinion, looking for an argument. Of course it must be that his susceptible and brooding brain had been turned a bit by the evening we had just experienced. Why, Hammersley, you don't believe it, I asked. I not only believe it, Jerry, but now it's my turn to say as he did. I know it. Jerry, old friend, he went on. That devil told the truth. He was hanged. He was brought back to life. And Jerry, I was that scientist. Woo, I fell back to a box again. My knees seemed to forsake me. Then I heard Hammersley talking to himself. Five years it's been, he muttered. Five years since I turned him loose again. Five years of agony for me, wondering what new devilish crimes he was perpetrating, wondering when he would return to that little farm to swing his axe again. Five years. Five years. He came over to me and without a word of explanation or to ask my permission he reached his hand into my pocket and drew out my revolver and I did not protest. He said he was headed for Shelton, went on Hammersley's spoken thoughts. If I slip across the ice I can intercept him at Blacks Woods. Butting his coat closely he followed the stranger out into the night. I was glad the moon had come up for my walk home. Glad too when I had the door locked and propped with a chair behind me. I undressed in the dark not wanting any grisly, sunken-eyed monster to be looking in through the window at me. For maybe, so I thought, maybe he was after all not headed for Shelton, but perhaps planning on another of his ghastly tricks. But in the morning we knew he had been going toward Shelton. Scientists, doctors, and learned men of all descriptions came out to our village to see the thing the papers said Cy Waters had stumbled upon went on his way to the Creamery that next morning. It was a skeleton they said, only that it had a dry skin all over it. A mummy. Could not have been considered capable of containing life only that the snow around it was lightly blotched with a pale smear that proved to be blood, that it oozed out from the six bullet holes in the horrid chest. They never did solve it. There were five of us in the store that night. Five of us who know. Hammersley did what we all wanted to do. Of course his name is not really Hammersley, but it is done here as well as another. He is black whiskered though, and he is still very much of a Sphinx, but he'll never have to answer for having killed the man he once brought back to life. Hammersley's secret will go into five other graves besides his own. End of The Man Who Was Dead Recording by Nick Number Moxons Master by Ambrose Beers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Nullifidian Moxons Master by Ambrose Beers Are you serious? Do you really believe a machine thinks? I got no immediate reply. Moxon was apparently intent upon the coals and the great, touching them deftly here and there with the fire poker till they signified a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I'd been observing him in a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His error, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation. One might have said that he had something on his mind. Presently he said, What is a machine? The word has been variously defined. Here's one definition from a popular dictionary. Any instrument or organization by which power is applied and made effective or a desired effect produced. Well, then, is not a man a machine? And you will admit that he thinks, or thinks he thinks. If you do not wish to answer my question, I said rather testily, why not say so? All that you say is mere evasion. You know well enough that when I say machine I do not mean a man, but something that man has made in controls. When it does not control him, he said, rising abruptly and looking out of the window once nothing was visible in the blackness of a stormy night. A moment later he turned about and with a smile said, I beg your pardon, I had no thought of evasion. I considered the dictionary man's unconscious testimony suggestive and worth something in the discussion. I can give your question a direct answer easily enough. I do believe that a machine thinks about the work that it is doing. That was direct enough, certainly. It was not altogether pleasing, for it tended to confirm a sad suspicion that Moxon's devotion to study and work in his machine shop had not been good for him. I knew, for one thing, that he suffered from insomnia and that is no light affliction. Had it affected his mind? His reply to my question seemed to me then evidence that it had. Perhaps I should think differently about it now. I was younger then and among the blessings that are not denied to youth is ignorance. Insided by that great stimulant to controversy, I said, and what prey does it think with in the absence of a brain? The reply, coming with less than his customary delay, took his favorite form of counter interrogation. With what does a plant think in the absence of a brain? Ah! Plants also belong to the philosopher class. I should be pleased to know some of their conclusions. You may omit the premises. Perhaps, he replied, apparently unaffected by my foolish irony. You may be able to infer their convictions from their acts. I will spare you the familiar examples of the sensitive mimosa and those insectivorous flowers and those whose stamens bend down and shake their pollen upon the entering bee in order that he may fertilize their distant mates. But observe this. In an open spot in my garden, I planted a climbing vine. When it was barely above the surface, I set a stake into the soil a yard away. The vine it once made for it. But as it was about to reach it after several days, I removed it a few feet. The vine it once altered its course making an acute angle and again made for the stake. This maneuver was repeated several times. But finally, as if discouraged, the vine abandoned the pursuit and ignoring further attempts to divert it traveled to a small tree further away which it climbed. Roots of the eucalyptus will prolong themselves incredibly in search of moisture. A well-known horticulturalist relates that one entered an old drain pipe and followed it until it came to a break where a section of the pipe had been removed to make way for a stone wall that had been built across its course. The root left the drain and followed the wall until it found an opening where a stone had fallen out. It crept through and following the other side of the wall back to the drain entered the unexplored part and resumed its journey. And all this? Can you miss the significance of it? It shows the consciousness of plants. It proves they think. Even if it did, what then? We were speaking not of plants but of machines. They may be partly composed of wood, wood that has no longer vitality or wholly of metal. Is thought an attribute also of the mineral kingdom? How else do you explain the phenomena, for example, of crystallization? I do not explain them. Because you cannot without affirming what you wish to deny, namely intelligent cooperation among the constituent elements of the crystals. When soldiers form lines or hollow squares you call it reason. When while geese in flight take the form of a letter V, you say instinct. When the homogeneous atoms of the mineral, moving freely in solution, arrange themselves into shapes mathematically perfect or particles of frozen moisture into the symmetrical and beautiful forms of snowflakes, you have nothing to say. You have not even invented a name to conceal your heroic unreason. Moxon was speaking with unusual animation and earnestness. As he paused, I heard in an adjoining room known to me as his machine shop, which no one but himself was permitted to enter. A singular thumping sound, as of someone pounding upon a table with an open hand. Moxon heard it at the same moment and, visibly agitated, rose and hurriedly passed into the room whence it came. I thought it odd that no one else should be in there, and my interest in my friend with doubtless a touch of unwarrantable curiosity led me to listen intently, though I am happy to say not at the keyhole. There were confused sounds as of a struggle or scuffle. The floor shook. I distinctly heard hard breathing in a hoarse whisper which said, Damn you! Then all was silent and presently Moxon reappeared and said, with a rather sorry smile, pardon me for leaving you so abruptly. I have a machine in there that lost its temper and cut up rough. Fixing my eyes steadily upon his left cheek, which was traversed by four parallel excoriations showing blood, I said, How would it do to trim its nails? I could have spared myself the jest. He gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if nothing had occurred. Doubtless you do not hold with those. I need not name them to a man of your reading, who have taught that all matter is sentient, that every atom is a living, feeling, conscious being. I do. There is no such thing as dead inert matter. It is all alive, all instinct with force, actual and potential, all sensitive to the same forces in its environment and susceptible to the contagion of higher and subtler ones, residing in such superior organisms as it may be brought into relationship with, as those of man when he is fashioning it into an instrument of his will. It absorbs something of his intelligence and purpose, more of them in proportion to the complexity of the resulting machine and that of his work. Do you happen to recall Herbert Spencer's definition of life? I read it thirty years ago. He may have altered it afterward for anything I know. But in all that time I have been unable to think of a single word that could profitably be changed or added or removed. It seems to me not only the best definition, but the only possible one. Life, he says, is a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences. That defines the phenomenon, I said, but gives no hint of its cause. That, he replied, is all that any definition can do. As Mill points out, we know nothing of effect except as a consequent. Of certain phenomena, one never occurs without the other, which is dissimilar. The first in point of time we call the cause, the second the effect. One who had many times seen a rabbit pursued by a dog, and had never seen rabbits and dogs otherwise, would think the rabbit the cause of the dog. But I fear, he added, laughing naturally enough, that my rabbit is leading me along away from the track of my legitimate quarry. I'm indulging in the pleasure of the chase for its own sake. What I want you to observe, is that in Herbert Spencer's definition of life, the activity of a machine is included. There is nothing in the definition that is not applicable to it. According to the sharpest of observers and deepest of thinkers, if a man during his period of activity is alive, so is a machine when in operation. As an inventor and constructor of machines, I know that to be true. Moxon was silent for a long time, gazing absently into the fire. It was growing late, and I thought it time to be going, but somehow I did not like the notion of leaving him in that isolated house, all alone except for the presence of some person, whose nature my conjectures could go no further than that it was unfriendly, perhaps malign. Leaning toward him and looking earnestly into his eyes, while making a motion with my hand through the door of his workshop, I said, Moxon, whom do you have in there? Somewhat to my surprise, he laughed lightly and answered without hesitation. Nobody. The incident that you have in mind was caused by my folly, in leaving a machine in action with nothing to act upon, while I undertook the interminable task of enlightening your understanding. Do you happen to know that consciousness is the creature of rhythm? I'll bother them both, I replied, rising and laying hold of my overcoat. I'm going to wish you a good night, and I'll add the hope that the machine which you've inadvertently left in action will have her gloves on the next time you think it needful to stop her. Without waiting to observe the effect of my shot, I left the house. Rain was falling, and the darkness was intense. In the sky beyond the crest of a hill toward which I groped my way along percarious plank sidewalks and across mirey, unpaved streets, I could see the faint glow of the city's lights, but behind me nothing was visible but a single window of Moxon's house. It glowed with what seemed to me a mysterious and fateful meaning. I knew it was an uncurtained aperture in my friend's machine shop, and I had little doubt that he had resumed the studies interrupted by his duties as my instructor in mechanical consciousness and the fatherhood of rhythm. Odd, and in some degree humorous, as his conviction seemed to me at that time, I could not wholly divest myself of the feeling that they had some tragic relation to his life and character, perhaps to his destiny. Although I no longer entertained the notion that they were the vagaries of a disordered mind, whatever might be thought of his views, his exposition of them was too logical for that. Over and over his last words came back to me. Consciousness is the creature of rhythm. Bald and terse as the statement was, I now found it infinitely alluring at each recurrence at broadened meaning and deepened in suggestion. Why here, I thought, is something upon which to found a philosophy. If consciousness is the product of rhythm, all things are conscious, for all have motion and all motion is rhythmic. I wondered if Moxon knew the significance and breadth of his thought, the scope of this momentous generalization, or had he arrived at his philosophic faith by the torturous and uncertain road of observation. That faith was then new to me, and all Moxon's expounding had failed to make me a convert, but now it seemed as if a great light shone about me, like that which fell upon Saul of Tarsus, and out there in the storm and darkness and solitude, I experienced what Luz calls the endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought. I exalted in a new sense of knowledge, a new pride of reason. My feet seemed hardly to touch the earth. It was as if I were uplifted and borne through the air by invisible wings, yielding to an impulse to seek further light from him, whom I now recognized as my master and guide. I had unconsciously turned about, and almost before I was aware of having done so found myself again at Moxon's door. I was drenched with rain but felt no discomfort. Unable in my excitement to find the doorbell, I instinctively tried the knob. It turned, and entering, I mounted the stairs to the room that I had so recently left. All was dark and silent. Moxon, as I had supposed, was in the adjoining room, the machine shop. Roping along the wall until I found the communicating door, I knocked loudly several times but got no response, which I attributed to the uproar outside, for the wind was blowing agale, and dashing the rain against the thin walls and sheets. The drumming upon the shingle roof, spanning the unsealed room, was loud and incessant. I had never been invited into the machine shop, had indeed been denied admittance, as had all others, with one exception. A skilled metalworker of whom no one knew anything except that his name was Haley and his habit, Silence. But in my spiritual exaltation, discretion and civility were alike forgotten, and I opened the door. What I saw took all philosophical speculation out of me, in short order. Moxon sat facing me at the farther side of a small table, upon which a single candle made all the light that was in the room. Opposite him, his back toward me, sat another person. On the table between the two was a chessboard. The men were playing. I knew little about chess. But as only a few pieces were on the board, it was obvious that the game was near its close. Moxon was intensely interested. Not so much, it seemed to me, in the game, as in his antagonist, upon whom he had fixed so intent to look that, standing though I did, directly in the line of his vision, I was altogether unobserved. His face was ghastly white, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. Of his antagonist, I had only a back view. But that was sufficient. I should not have cared to see his face. He was apparently not more than five feet in height, with proportions suggesting those of a gorilla, tremendous breadth of shoulders, thick short neck and a broad squat head, which had a tangled growth of black hair, and was topped by a crimson fez. A tunic of the same color, belted tightly to the waist, reached the seat, apparently a box, upon which he sat. His legs and feet were not seen. His left forearm appeared to rest in his lap. He moved his pieces with his right hand, which seemed disproportionately long. I had shrunk back, and now stood a little to one side of the doorway, and in shadow. If Moxon had looked farther than the face of his opponent, he could have observed nothing now, accepting that the door was open. Something forbade me either to enter or retire. A feeling. I know not how it came. That I was in the presence of imminent tragedy, and might serve my friend by remaining. With a scarcely conscious rebellion against the indelicacy of the act, I remained. The play was rapid. Moxon hardly glanced at the board before making his moves, and to my unskilled eye seemed to move the piece most convenient to his hand. His motions in doing so being quick, nervous, and lacking in precision. The response of his antagonist, while equally prompt in the inception, was made with a slow, uniform, mechanical, and I thought somewhat theatrical movement of the arm that was a sore trial to my patience. There was something unearthly about it all, and I caught myself shattering. But I was wet and cold. Two or three times after moving a piece, the stranger slightly inclined his head, and each time I observed that Moxon shifted his king. All at once the thought came to me that the man was dumb, and then that he was a machine, an automaton chess player. Then I remembered that Moxon had once spoken to me of having invented such a piece of mechanism. Though I did not understand that it had actually been constructed. Was all his talk about the consciousness and intelligence of machines merely a prelude to the eventual exhibition of this device only a trick to intensify the effect of its mechanical action upon me and my ignorance of its secret? A fine end this of all my intellectual transports, my endless variety and excitement of philosophic thought, I was about to retire and disgust, when something occurred to hold my curiosity. I observed a shrug of the things great shoulders, as if it were irritated, and so natural was this, so entirely human, that in my new view of the matter it startled me. Nor was that all, for a moment later it struck the table sharply with its clenched hand. At that gesture Moxon seemed even more startled than I. He pushed his chair a little backward, as in alarm. Presently, Moxon, whose play it was, raised his hand high above the board, pounced upon one of his pieces like a sparrow hawk, and with an exclamation, Checkmate! Rose quickly to his feet and stepped behind his chair. The automaton sat motionless. The wind had now gone down, but I heard, at lessening intervals and progressively louder, the rumble and roll of thunder. In the pauses between I now became conscious of a low humming or buzzing which, like the thunder, grew momentarily louder and more distinct. It seemed to come from the body of the automaton, and was unmistakably a whirring of wheels. It gave me the impression of a disordered mechanism which had escaped the repressive and regulating action of some controlling part. An effect such as might be expected, if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet wheel. But before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature, my attention was taken by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and head it shook, like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet, and, with a movement almost too quick for the eye to follow, shot forward across table and chair, with both arms thrust forward to their full length, the posture and lunge of the diver. Moxon tried to throw himself backward out of reach, but he was too late. I saw the horrible things hands close upon his throat, his own clutched wrists. Then the table was overturned, the candle thrown to the floor and extinguished, and all was black dark. But the noise of the struggle was dreadfully distinct, and most terrible of all were the raucous, squawking sounds made by the strangled man's efforts to breathe. Guided by the infernal hubb, I sprang to the rescue of my friend, but had hardly taken a stride in the darkness when the whole room blazed with a blinding white light that burned into my brain and heart and memory of vivid picture of the combatants on the floor. Moxon underneath, his throat still in the clutch of those iron hands, his head forced backward, his eyes protruding, his mouth wide open and his tongue thrust out, and horrible contrast upon the painted face of the assassin, an expression of tranquil and profound thought, as in the solution of a problem in chess. This I observed, then all was blackness in silence. Three days later I recovered consciousness in a hospital. As the memory of that tragic night slowly evolved in my ailing brain, I recognized in my attendant Moxon's confidential workman, Haley. Responding to a look he approached smiling, tell me about it. I managed to say faintly, all about it. Certainly, you said, you were carried unconscious from the burning house, Moxon's. Nobody knows how you came to be there. You may have to do a little explaining. The origin of the fire is a bit mysterious too. My own notion is that the house was struck by lightning. And Moxon buried yesterday what was left of him. Apparently this reticent person could unfold himself on occasion. When imparting shocking intelligence to the sick, he was affable enough. After some moments of the keenest mental suffering, I ventured to ask another question. Who rescued me? Well, if that interests you, I did. Thank you, Mr. Haley, and may God bless you for it. Did you rescue also that charming product of your skill, the automaton chess player that murdered its inventor? The man was silent a long time, looking away from me. Presently he turned and gravely said, Do you know that? I do, I replied. I saw it done. That was many years ago. If asked today, I should answer less confidently. End of Moxon's Master by Ambrose Beers.