The Machine Stops | Page 2

it is certainly original.
When did it come to you first?"
"In the air-ship---" He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad.
She could not be sure, for the Machine did not transmit nuances of
expression. It only gave a general idea of people--an idea that was good
enough for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable
bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of
intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the
imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of
artificial fruit. Something "good enough" had long since been accepted
by our race.
"The truth is," he continued, "that I want to see these stars again. They
are curious stars. I want to see them not from the 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, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies
immediately in the outer air."
"I know; of course I shall take all precautions."
"And besides--"
"Well?"
She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer
temper, and she wished to dissuade him from the expedition.
"It is contrary to the spirit of the age," she asserted.
"Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?"
"In a sense, but--"
His image is the blue plate faded.
"Kuno!"
He had isolated himself.
For a moment Vashti felt lonely.
Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with
radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were
buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food for music, for
clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of
(imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm
deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the
button that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by
which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it
contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the
accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was
filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new
food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately?
Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to
visit the public nurseries at an early date?--say this day month.
To most of these questions she replied with irritation--a growing
quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible.
That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of
engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told
one--that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she
doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents,
for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.
The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned;
neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her
armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well,
and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music
in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst
of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and prim¾val as
were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she
said) 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 donned a respirator and visited it lately.
Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and
summoned her bed.
The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for
a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same
dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would
have involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated
herself--it was necessary, for neither day