by Francis Flagg
from AMAZING STORIES, November 1927
Francis Flagg was the pseudonym used by George Henry Weiss, but since all his fiction appeared under this one pen name it has usurped his given name in readers’ memories. “The Machine Man of Ardathia” marked Flagg’s debut in the science fiction field, and he arrived with a bang. Always a popular author, he was also the first to drift from Gernsback to Weird Tales, which he did with his fourth story, “The Chemical Brain”. There is every possibility that these were stories that Gernsback rejected, since their elements of bizarrerie lent themselves more to the editorial policy of Weird Tales. Whatever the reason Flagg, became a frequent contributor to Weird Tales, which in fact carried some of his best fiction, particularly “The Distortion Out of Space”, one of his last pieces, which appeared in the August 1934 issue.
Flagg ranks as one of the few authors who had their initial story illustrated on the cover of the magazine (although it was not credited visually until you peered closely at the base of the contents’ column). However, on deeper research, it is not so surprising since the rest of that particular issue of Amazing Stories was not of such quality as Flagg’s story. To begin with it was the only other new story. The second belonged to A. Hyatt Verrill, archaeologist and naturalist, and this was a mere humorous, spot-the-error story, “The Astounding Discoveries of Dr. Mentiroso”. The remainder of the issue was reprint, including H. G. Wells’s “A Story of the Stone Age”, hardly his most scientific story, and the conclusion of Garrett Smith’s praiseworthy novel, “Treasures of Tantalus”.
What is notable about Flagg is his attitude towards characters. Science fiction could be split into two spheres, the Verne school complete with gadgetry and invention, and the Wells school, with the emphasis on humanity and society. Flagg was without doubt a Wellsian, and it is this that helps keep his fiction alive today, when so much of his period is now outdated and archaic. After “The Distortion Out of Space”, Flagg virtually disappeared from the science fiction magazine scene, apart from two collaborations with Forrest J. Ackerman. He died in 1946 when he was only 48. A novel, “The Night People” was published posthumously by the Fantasy Publishing Corp. Inc., in 1947 and is now a rare collector’s item.
* * * *
I do not know what to believe. Sometimes, I am positive I dreamed it all. But, then, there is the matter of the heavy rocking-chair. That, undeniably, did disappear. Perhaps someone played a trick on me; but who would stoop to a deception so bizarre, merely for the purpose of befuddling the wits of an old man? Perhaps someone stole the rocking-chair; but why should anyone want to steal it? It was, it is true, a sturdy piece of furniture, but hardly valuable enough to excite the cupidity of a thief. Besides, it was in its place when I sat down in the easy-chair.
Of course, I may be lying. Peters, to whom I was misguided enough to tell everything on the night of its occurrence, wrote the story for his paper, and the editor says as much in his editorial when he remarks: “Mr. Matthews seems to possess an imagination equal to that of an H. G. Wells.” And, considering the nature of my story I am quite ready to forgive him for doubting my veracity.
However, the few friends who know me better think that I had dined a little too wisely or too well, and was visited with a nightmare. Hodge suggested that the Jap who cleans my rooms had, for some reason, removed the rocking chair from its place, and that I merely took its presence for granted when I sat down in the other; but the Jap strenuously denies having done so.
I must explain that I have two rooms and a bath on the third floor of a modern apartment house fronting the Lake. Since my wife’s death three years ago, I have lived thus, taking my breakfast and lunch at a restaurant, and my dinners, generally, at the club. I also have a room in a down-town office building where I spend a few hours every day working on my book, which is intended to be a critical analysis of the fallacies inherent in the Marxian theory of economics, embracing at the same time a thorough refutation of Lewis Morgan’s Ancient Society. A rather ambitious undertaking, you will admit, and one not apt to engage the interest of a person given to inventing wild yards for the purpose of amazing his friends.
No; I emphatically deny having invented the story. However, the future will speak for itself. I will merely proceed to put the details of my strange experience on paper—justice to myself demands that I should do so, so many garbled accounts have appeared in the press—and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
Contrary to my usual custom, I had dined that evening with Hodge at the Hotel Oaks. Let me emphatically state that, while it is well-known among his intimates that Hodge has a decided taste for liquor, I had absolutely nothing of an intoxicating nature to drink, and Hodge will verify this. About eight-thirty, I refused an invitation to attend the theatre with him, and went to my rooms. There I changed into smoking-jacket and slippers, and lit a mild Havana.
The rocking-chair was occupying its accustomed place near the centre of the sitting-room floor. I remember that clearly because, as usual, I had either to push it aside or step around it, wondering for the thousandth time, as I did so, why that idiotic Jap persisted in placing it in such an inconvenient spot, and resolving, also for the thousandth time to speak to him about it. With a note-book and pencil placed on the stand beside me, and a copy of Frederick Engek’ Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State, I turned on the light in my green-shaded reading lamp, switched off all the others, and sank with a sigh of relief into the easy-chair.
It was my intention to make a few notes from Engels’ work relative to plural marriages, showing that he contradicted certain conclusions of Morgan’s, but after a few minutes’ work, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. I did not doze; I am positive of that. My mind was actively engaged in trying to piece together a sentence that would clearly express my thoughts.
* * * *
I can best describe what happened, then, by saying there was an explosion. It wasn’t that, exactly; but, at the time, it seemed to me there must have been an explosion. A blinding flash of light registered with appalling vividness, through the closed lids, on the retina of my eyes. My first thought was that someone had dynamited the building; my second, that the electric fuses had blown out. It was some time before I could see clearly. When I could:
“Good Lord!” I whispered weakly. “What’s that?”
Occupying the space where the rocking-chair had stood (though I did not notice its absence at the time) was a cylinder of what appeared to be glass, standing, I should judge, above five feet high. Encased in this cylinder was what seemed to be a caricature of a man—or a child. I say caricature because, while the cylinder was all of five feet in height, the being inside of it was hardly three; and you can imagine my amazement while I stared at this apparition. After a while, I got up and switched on all the lights, to better observe it.
You may wonder why I did not try to call someone in, but that never occurred to me. In spite of my age—I am sixty—my nerves are steady, and I am not easily frightened. I walked very carefully around the cylinder, and viewed the creature inside from all angles. It was sustained in the centre, midway between top and bottom, by what appeared to be an intricate arrangement of glass and metal tubes. These tubes seemed to run at places into the body; and I noticed some sort of dark fluid circulating through the glass tubes.
The head was very large and hairless; it had bulging brows, and no ears. The eyes were large and winkless, the nose well defined; but the lower part of the face and mouth ran into the small, round body with no sign of a chin. Its legs hung down, skinny, flabby; and the arms were more like short tentacles reaching down from where the head and body joined. The thing was, of course, naked.
I drew the easy-chair up to the cylinder, and sat down facing it Several times I stretched out my hand in an effort to touch its surface, but some force prevented my fingers from making contact, which was very curious. Also, I could detect no movement of the body or limbs of the weird thing inside the glass.
“What I would like to know,” I muttered, “is what you are and where you come from; are you alive, and am I dreaming or am I awake?”
Suddenly, the creature came to life. One of its tentacle-like hands, holding a metal tube, darted to its mouth. From the tube shot a white streak, which fastened itself to the cylinder.
“Ah!” came a clear, metallic voice. “English, Primitive; probably of the twentieth century.” The words were uttered with an indescribable intonation, much as if a foreigner were speaking our language. Yet, more than that, as if he were speaking a language long dead. I don’t know why that thought should have occurred to me, then. Perhaps ...
“So you can talk!” I exclaimed.
The creature gave a metallic chuckle. “As you say, I can talk.”
“Then tell me what you are.”
“I am an Ardathian—a Machine-Man of Ardathia. And you... ? Tell me, is that really hair on your head?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“And those coverings you wear on your body, are they clothes?’
I answered in the affirmative.
“How odd! Then you really are a Primitive; a Prehistoric Man,” The eyes behind the glass shield regarded me intently.
“A prehistoric man!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are one of that race of early men whose skeletons we have dug up, here and there, and reconstructed for our Schools of Biology. Marvellous how our scientists have copied you from some fragments of bone! The small head covered with hair, the beast-like jaw, the abnormally large body and legs, the artificial coverings made of cloth . . . even your language!”
* * * *
For the first time, I began to suspect that I was the victim of a hoax. I got up again and walked carefully around the cylinder, but could detect no outside agency controlling the contraption. Besides, it was absurd to think that anyone would go to the trouble of constructing such a complicated apparatus as this appeared to be, merely for the sake of a practical joke. Nevertheless, I looked out on the landing. Seeing nobody, I came back and resumed my seat in front of the cylinder.
“Pardon me,” I said, “but you referred to me as belonging to a period much more remote than yours.”
“That is correct. If I am not mistaken in my calculations, you are thirty thousand years in the past. What date is this?”
“June 5th, 1939,” I replied, feebly. The creature went through some contortions, sorted a few metal tubes with its hands, and then announced in its metallic voice:
“Computed in terms of your method of reckoning, I have travelled back through time exactly twenty-eight thousand years, nine months, three weeks, two days, seven hours, and a certain number of minutes and seconds which it is useless for me to enumerate exactly.”
It was at this point that I endeavoured to make sure I was wide awake and in full possession of my faculties. I got up, selected a fresh cigar from the humidor, struck a light, and began puffing away. After a few puffs, I laid it beside the one I had been smoking earlier in the evening. I found it there, later. Incontestable proof.....
I said that I am a man of steady nerves. Once more I sat down in front of the cylinder, determined this time to find out what I could about the incredible creature within.
“You say you have travelled back through time thousands of years. How is that possible?” I demanded.
“By verifying time as a fourth dimension, and perfecting devices for travelling in it.”
“In what manner?”
“I do not know whether I can explain it exactly, in your language, and you are too primitive and unevolved to understand mine. However, I shall try. Know, then, that space is as much a relative thing as time. In itself, aside from its relation to matter, it has no existence. You can neither see nor touch it, yet you move freely in space. Is that clear?”
“It sounds like Einstein’s theory.”
“Einstein?”
“One of our great scientists and mathematicians,” I explained.
“So you have scientists and mathematicians? Wonderful! That bears out what Hoomi says. I must! remember to tell. . . However, to resume my explanation. Time is apprehended in the same manner as is space—that is, in its relation to matter. When you measure space, you do so by letting your measuring rod leap from point to point of matter; or, in the case of spanning the void, let us say, from the Earth to Venus, you start and end with matter, remarking that between lies so many miles of space.
“But it is clear that you see and touch no space, merely spanning the distance between two points of matter with the vision or the measuring rod. You do the same when you compute time with the Sun, or by means of the clock which I see hanging on the wall there, Time, then, is no more of an abstraction than is space. If it is possible for man to move freely in space, it is possible for him to move freely in time, and we Ardathians are beginning to do so.”
“But how?”
“I am afraid your limited intelligence could not grasp that. You must realise that compared with us, you are hardly as much as human. When I look at you, I perceive that your body is enormously larger than your head. This means that you are dominated by animal passions, and that your mental capacity is not very high.”
That this weirdly humorous thing inside a glass cylinder should come to such a conclusion regarding me, made me smile.
“If any of my fellow citizens should see you,” I replied, “they would consider you—well, absurd.”
“That is because they would judge me by the only standard they know—themselves. In Ardathia, you would be regarded as bestial; in fact, that is exactly how your reconstructed skeletons are regarded. Tell me, is it true that you nourish your bodies by taking food through your mouths into your stomachs?”
“Yes.”
“And are still at that stage of bodily evolution when you eliminate the waste products through the alimentary canal?”
I lowered my head.
“How revolting.”
* * * *
The unwinking eyes regarded me intently. Then something happened which startled me greatly. The creature raised a glass tube to its face, and from the end of the tube leaped a purple ray which came through the glass casing and played over the room.
“There is no need to be alarmed,” said the metallic voice. “I was merely viewing your habitat, and making some deductions. Correct me if I am wrong, please. You are an English-speaking man of the twentieth century. You and your kind live in cities and houses. You eat, digest, and reproduce your young, much as do the animals from which you have sprung. You use crude machines, and have an elementary understanding of physics and chemistry. Correct me if I am wrong, please.”
“You are right, to a certain extent,” I replied. “But I am not interested in having you tell me what I am; I know that. I wish to know what you are. You claim to have come from thirty thousand years in the future, but you advance no evidence to support the claim. How do I know you are not a trick, a fake, an hallucination of mine? You say you can move freely in time. Then how is it you have never come this way before? Tell me something about yourself; I am curious.”
“Your questions are well put,” replied the voice, “and I shall seek to answer them. It is true that we Machine-Men of Ardathia are beginning to move in time as well as in space, but note that I say beginning. Our Time Machines are very crude, as yet, and I am the first Ardathian to penetrate the past beyond a period of six thousand years. You must realise that a time traveller runs certain hazards. At any place on the road, he may materialise inside of a solid of some sort. In that case, he is almost certain to be destroyed.
“Such was the constant danger until I perfected my enveloping ray. I cannot name or describe it in your tongue, but if you approach me too closely, you will feel its resistance. This ray has the effect of disintegrating and dispersing any body of matter inside which a time traveller may materialise. Perhaps you were aware of a great light when I appeared in your room? I probably took shape within a body of matter, and the ray destroyed it.”
“The rocking-chair!” I exclaimed. “It was standing on the spot you now occupy.”
“Then it has been reduced to its original atoms. This is a wonderful moment for me! My ray has proved an unqualified success, for the second time. It not only removes any hindering matter from about the time-traveller, but also creates a void within which he is perfectly safe from harm. But to resume ...
“It is hard to believe that we Ardathians evolved from such creatures as you. Our written history does not go back to a time when men nourished themselves by taking food into their stomachs through their mouths, or reproduced their young in the animal-like fashion in which you do. The earliest men of whom we have any records were the Bi-Chanics. They lived about fifteen thousand years before our era, and were already well along the road of mechanical evolution when their civilisation fell.
“The Bi-Chanics vaporised their food substances and breathed them through the nostril, excreting the waste products of the body through the pores of the skin. Their children were brought to the point of birth in ecto-genetic incubators. There is enough authentic evidence to prove that the Bi-Chanics had perfected the use of mechanical hearts, and were crudely able to make...
“I cannot find the words to explain what they made, but it does not matter. The point is that, while they had only partly subordinated machinery to their use, they are the earliest race of human beings of whom we possess any real knowledge, and it was their period of time that I was seeking when I inadvertently came too far and landed in yours.”
The metallic voice ceased for a moment, and I took advantage of the pause to speak. “I do not know a thing about the Bi-Chanics, or whatever it is you call them,” I remarked, “but they were certainly not the first to make mechanical hearts. I remember reading about a Russian scientist who kept a dog alive four hours by means of a motor which pumped the blood through the dog’s body.”
“You mean the motor was used as a heart?”
“Exactly.”
The Ardathian made a quick motion with one of its hands.
“I have made a note of your information; it is very interesting.”
“Furthermore,” I pursued, “I recall reading of how, some years ago, one of our surgeons was hatching out rabbits and guinea pigs in ecto-genetic incubators.”
The Ardathian made another quick gesture with its hand. I could see that my remarks excited it.
“Perhaps,” I said, not without a feeling of satisfaction (for the casual allusion to myself as hardly human had irked my pride), “perhaps you will find it as interesting to visit the people of five hundred years from now, let us say, as you would to visit the Bi-Chanics.”
“I assure you,” replied the metallic voice, “that if I succeed in returning to my native Ardathia, those periods will be thoroughly explored. I can only express surprise at your having advanced as far as you have, and wonder why it is you have made no practical use of your knowledge.”
“Sometimes I wonder myself,” I returned. “But I am very much interested in learning more about yourself and your times. If you would resume your story ... ?”
“With pleasure,” replied the Ardathian. “In Ardathia, we do not live in houses or in cities; neither do we nourish ourselves as do you, or as did the Bi-Chanics. The chemical fluid you see circulating through these tubes which ran into and through my body, has taken the place of blood. The fluid is produced by the action of a light-ray on certain life-giving elements in the air. It is constantly being produced in those tubes under my feet, and driven through my body be a mechanism too intricate for me to describe.
“The same fluid circulates through my body only once, nourishing it and gathering all impurities as it goes. Having completed its revolution, it is dissipated by means of another ray which carries it back into the surrounding air. Have you noticed the transparent substance enclosing me?”
“The cylinder of glass, you mean?”
“Glass! What do you mean by glass?”
“Why, that there,” I said, pointing to the window. The Ardathian directed a metal tube at the spot indicated. A purple streak flashed out, hovered a moment on a pane, and then withdrew.
“No,” came the metallic voice; “not that. The cylinder, as you call it, is made of a transparent substance, very strong and practically unbreakable. Nothing can penetrate it but the rays which you see, and the two whose action I have just described, which are invisible.
“We Ardathians, you must understand, are not delivered of the flesh; nor are we introduced into incubators as ova taken from female bodies, as were the Bi-Chanics. Among the Ardathians, there are no males or females. The cell from which we are to develop is created synthetically. It is fertilised by means of a ray, and then put into a cylinder such as you observe surrounding me. As the embryo develops, the various tubes and mechanical devices are introduced into the body by our mechanics, and become an integral part of it.
“When the young Ardathian is born, he does not leave the case in which he has developed. That case—or cylinder, as you call it—protects him from the action of a hostile environment If it were to break and expose him to the elements, he would perish miserably. Do you follow me?”
* * * *
Not quite,” I confessed. “You say that you have evolved from men like us, and then go on to state that you are synthetically conceived and machine made. I do not see how this evolution was possible.”
“And you may never understand! Nevertheless, I shall try to explain. Did you not tell me you had wise ones among you who experiment with mechanical hearts and ecto-genetic incubators? Tell me, have you not others engaged in tests tending to show that it is the action of environment, and not the passing of time, which accounts for the ageing of organisms?”
“Well,” I said, hesitatingly, “I have heard tell of chicken’s hearts being kept alive in special containers which protect them from their normal environment.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the metallic voice. “But Hoomi will be astounded when he learns that such experiments were carried on by prehistoric men fifteen thousand years before the Bi-Chanics! Listen closely, for what you have told me provides a starting-point from which you may be able to follow my explanation of man’s evolution from your time to mine.
“Of the thousands of years separating your day from that of the Bi-Chanics, I have no authentic knowledge. My exact knowledge begins with the Bi-Chanics. They were the first to realise that man’s bodily advancement lay in, and through, the machine. They perceived that man only became human when he fashioned tools; that the tools increased the length of his arms, the grip of his hands, the strength of his muscles. They observed that, with the aid of the machine, man could circle the Earth, speak to the planets, gaze intimately at the stars. We will increase our span of life on Earth, said the Bi-Chanics, by throwing the protection of the machine, the thing that the machine produces, around and into our bodies.
“This they did, to the best of their ability, and increased their longevity to an average of about two hundred years. Then came the Tri-Namics. More advanced than the Bi-Chanics, they reasoned that old age was caused, not by the passage of time, but by the action of environment on the matter of which men were composed. It is this reasoning which causes the men of your time to experiment with chicken’s hearts. The Tri-Namics sought to perfect devices for safeguarding the flesh against the wear and tear of its environment They made envelopes— cylinders—in which they attempted to bring embryos to birth, and to rear children; but they met with only partial success.”
“You speak of the Bi-Chanics and of the Tri-Namics,” I said, “as if they were two distinct races of people. Yet you imply that the latter evolved from the former. If the Bi-Chanics’ civilisation fell, did any period of time elapse between that fall and the rise of the Tri-Namics? And how did the latter inherit from their predecessors ?”
“It is because of your language, which I find very crude and inadequate, that I have not already made that clear,” answered the Ardathian. “The Tri-Namics were really a more progressive part of the Bi-Chanics. When I said the civilisation of the latter fell, I did not mean what that implies in your language.
“You must realise that, fifteen thousand years in your future, the race of man was, scientifically speaking, making rapid strides. But it was not always possible for backward or conservative minds to adjust themselves to new discoveries. Minority groups, composed mostly of the young, forged ahead, proposed radical changes, entertained new ideas, and finally culminated in what I have alluded to as the Tri-Namics. Inevitably, in the course of time, the Bi-Chanics died off, and conservative methods with them. That is what I meant when I said their civilisation fell.
“In the same fashion did we follow the Tri-Namics. When the latter succeeded in raising children inside the cylinder, they destroyed themselves. Soon, all children were born in this manner; and in time, the fate of the Bi-Chanics became that of the Tri-Namics leaving behind them the Machine-Men of Ardathia, who differed radically from them in bodily structure, yet were none the less their direct descendants.”
* * * *
At last, I began to get an inkling of what the Ardathian meant when it alluded to itself as a Machine-Man. The appalling story of man’s final evolution into a controlling centre that directed a mechanical body, awoke something akin to fear in my heart If it were true, what of the soul, the spirit. . . ? The metallic voice went on.
“You must not imagine that the early Ardathians possessed a cylinder as invulnerable as the one which protects me. The first envelopes of this nature were made of a pliable substance, which wore out within three centuries. But the substance composing the envelope has gradually been improved, perfected, until now it is immune for fifteen hundred years to anything save a powerful explosion or some other major catastrophe.”
“Fifteen hundred years!” I exclaimed.
“Barring accident, that is the length of time an Ardathian lives. But to us, fifteen hundred years is no longer than a hundred would be to you. Remember, please, that time is relative: twelve hours of your time is a second of ours, and a year... But suffice it to say that very few Ardathians live out their allotted span. Since we are constantly engaged in hazardous experiments and dangerous expeditions, accidents are many. Thousands of our brave explorers have plunged into the past and never returned. They probably materialised inside solids, and were annihilated; but I believe I have finally overcome this danger with my disintegrating ray.”
“And how old are you?”
“As you count time, five hundred and seventy years. You must understand that there has been no change in my body since birth. If the cylinder were everlasting, or proof against accident, I should live for ever. It is the wearing out, or breaking up, of the envelope, which exposes us to the dangerous forces of nature and causes death. Some of our scientists are trying to perfect means for building up the cylinder as fast as the wear and tear of environment breaks it down; others are seeking to rear embryos to birth with nothing but rays for covering—rays incapable of harming the organism, yet immune to dissipation by environment and incapable of destruction by explosion. So far, they have been unsuccessful; but I have every confidence in their ultimate triumph. Then we shall be as immortal as the planet on which we live.”
I stared at the cylinder, at the creature inside the cylinder, at the ceiling, the four walls of the room, and then back again at the cylinder, I pinched the soft flesh of my thigh with my fingers. I was awake, all right; there could be no doubt about that.
“Are there any questions you would like to ask?” came the metallic voice.
“Yes,” I said at last, half-fearfully. “What joy can there be in existence for you? You have no sex; you cannot mate. It seems to me—” I hesitated. “It seems to me that no hell could be worse than centuries of being caged alive inside that thing you call an envelope. Now, I have full command of my limbs and can go where I please. I can—”
I came to a breathless stop, awed by the lurid light which suddenly gleamed in the winkless eyes.
“Poor prehistoric mammal,” came the answer, “how could you, groping in the dawn of human existence, comprehend what is beyond your lowly environment! Compared to you, we are as gods. No longer are our loves and hates the reactions of viscera. Our thoughts, out thinking, our emotions, are conditioned, moulded to the extent that we control our immediate environment. There is no such thing as—
“But it is impossible to continue. Your mentality—it is not the word I like to use but, as I have repeatedly said, your language is woefully inadequate—has a restricted range of but a few thousand words: therefore, I cannot explain further. Only the same lack—in a different fashion, of course, and with objects instead of words—hinders the free movement of your limbs. You have command of them, you say. Poor primitive, do you realise how shackled you are with nothing but your hands and feet? You augment them, of course, with a few machines, but they are crude and cumbersome. It is you who are caged alive, and not I. I have broken through the walls of your cage, have shaken off its shackles—have gone free. Behold the command I have of my limbs!”
* * * *
From an extended tube shot a streak of white, like a funnel, whose radius was great enough to encircle my seated body. I was conscious of being scooped up, and drawn forward, with inconceivable speed. For one breathless moment, I hung suspended against the cylinder itself, the winkless eyes not an inch from my own. In that moment, I had the sensation of being probed, handled. Several times I was revolved, as a man might twirl a stick. Then I was back in the easy-chair again, white and shaken.
“It is true that I never leave the envelope in which I am encased,” continued the metallic voice, “but I have at my command rays which can bring me anything I desire. In Ardathia are machines—it would be useless for me to describe them to you—with which I can walk, fly, move mountains, delve in the earth, investigate the stars, and loose forces of which you have no conception. Those machines are mechanical parts of my body, extensions of my limbs. I take them off and put them on at will. With their help, I can view one continent while busily employed in another, I can make time machines, harness rays, and plunge for thirty thousand years into the past. Let me again illustrate.”
The tentacle-like hand of the Ardathian waved a tube. The five-foot cylinder glowed with an intense light, spun like a top, and so spinning, dissolved into space. Even as I gaped, like one petrified, the cylinder reappeared with the same rapidity. The metallic voice announced:
“I have just been five years into your future.”
“My future!” I exclaimed. “How can that be when I have not lived it yet?”
“But of course you have lived it!”
I stared, bewildered. j
“Could I visit my past if you had not lived your future ?” the creature persisted.
“I do not understand,” I said, feebly. “It doesn’t seem possible that while I am here, actually in this room, you should be able to travel ahead in time and find cut what I shall be doing in a future I haven’t reached yet.”
“That is because you are unable to grasp intelligently what time is. Think of it as a dimension—a fourth dimension—which stretches like a road ahead and behind you.”
“But even then,” I protested, “I could only be at one place at a given time, on that road, and not where I am and somewhere else in the same second.”
“You are never anywhere at any time,” replied the metallic voice, “save always in the past or the future. But it is useless trying to acquaint you with a simple truth, thirty thousand years ahead of your ability to understand it. As I said, I travelled five years into your future. Men were wrecking this building.”
“Tearing down this place? Nonsense! It was only erected two years ago.”
“Nevertheless, they were tearing it down. I sent forth my visual-ray to locate you. You were in a great room with numerous other men. They were all doing a variety of odd things. There was—”
At that moment came a heavy knock on the door of my room.
“What’s the matter, Matthews?” called a loud voice. “What are you talking about, all this time? Are you sick?”
I uttered an exclamation of annoyance, because I recognised the voice of John Peters, a newspaperman who occupied the apartment next to mine. My first impulse was to tell him I was busy, but the next moment I had a better idea. Here was someone to whom I could show the cylinder, and the creature inside it; someone to bear witness to having seen it, besides myself! I hurried to the door and threw it open.
“Quick!” I said, grasping Peters by the arm and hauling him into the room. “What do you think of that?”
“Think of what?” he demanded.
“Why of that, there,” I began, pointing with my finger, and then stopping short with my mouth wide open; for on the spot where, a few seconds before, the cylinder had stood, there was nothing. The envelope and the Ardathian had disappeared.
* * * *
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The material for this manuscript came into my hands in an odd fashion. About a year after the Press had ceased to print garbled versions of Matthews’ experience, I made the acquaintance of his friend, Hodge, with whom he had dined on that evening. I asked him about Matthews, He said:
“Did you know they’ve put him in an asylum? You didn’t? Well, they have. He’s crazy enough now, poor devil; though he was always a little queer, I thought I went to visit him the other day, and it gave me quite a shock to see him in a ward with a lot of other men, all doing something queer.
“By the way, Peters told me the other day that the apartment house where Matthews lived is to be torn down. They are going to demolish several houses along the Lake Shore, to widen the boulevard; but he says they won’t wreck them for three or four years yet. Funny, eh ? Would you like to see what Matthews wrote about the affair himself?”