by Richard Matheson
Richard Matheson burst like a bright exhalation on the evening with his first published story—a lovely, chilly midget of a yarn called Born of Man and Woman. Since then the books have poured out, The Incredible Shrinking Man made motion-picture history, the magazines have been studded with his work. Here is his latest— presenting another facet of Richard Matheson’s work, and one you will enjoy.
Selections from a
Thesis Submitted as Partial Requirement
For Master of Arts Degree
June, 2068
The phenomenon known in scientific circles as The Los Angeles Movement came to light in the year 1962 when Doctor Albert Grimsby, A.B., B.S., A.M., Ph.D., professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology made an unusual discovery. It went like this:
“I have made an unusual discovery,” said Doctor Grimsby.
“What is that?” asked Doctor Maxwell.
“Los Angeles is alive.”
Doctor Maxwell blinked.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“I can understand your incredulity,” said Doctor Grimbsy, “Nevertheless ...”
He drew Doctor Maxwell to the laboratory bench.
“Look into this microscope,” he said, “under which I have isolated a piece of Los Angeles.”
Doctor Maxwell looked. He raised his head, a look of astonishment on his face.
“It moves,” he said.
Having made this strange discovery, Doctor Grimsby— oddly enough—saw fit to promulgate it only in the smallest degree. It appeared as a one-paragraph item in the Science News Letter of June 2, 1962 under the heading:
Caltech Physicist Finds
Signs of Life in L.A.
Perhaps due to unfortunate phrasing, perhaps to normal lack of interest, the item aroused neither attention nor comment. This unfortunate negligence proved ever after a plague to the man originally responsible for it. In later years it became known as “Grimsby’s Blunder”.
Thus was introduced to a then unresponsive nation a phenomenon which was to become, in the following year, a most shocking threat to that nation’s very existence.
* * * *
Of late, researchers have discovered that knowledge concerning The Los Angeles Movement predates Doctor Grimsby’s find by years. Indeed, hints of this frightening crisis are to be found in works published as much as fifteen years prior to the ill-fated “Caltech Disclosure”.
Concerning Los Angeles, the distinguished journalist, John Gunther, wrote: “What distinguishes it is . . . it’s octopus-like growth.” [John Gunther, Inside U.S.A., p. 44]
Yet another reference to Los Angeles mentions that: “In its amoeba-like growth it has spread in all directions...” [Henry G. Alsberg (ed.) The American Guide, p. 1200]
Thus can be seen primitive approaches to the phenomenon which are as perceptive as they are unaware. Although there is no present evidence to indicate that any person during that early period actually knew of the fantastic process, there can hardly be any doubt that many sensed it, if only imperfectly.
Active speculation regarding freakish nature behavior began in July and August of 1962. During a period of approximately forty-seven days the states of Arizona and Utah, in their entirety, along with great portions of New Mexico and lower Colorado, were inundated by rains that frequently bettered the five-inch mark.
Such waterfall in previously arid sections aroused great agitation and discussion. First theories placed responsibility for this uncommon rainfall on previous southwestern atomic tests. [Symmes Chadwick, “Will We Drown The World?” Southwestern Review IV (Summer 1962) 698 ff.] Government disclaiming of this possibility seemed to increase rather than eliminate mass credulity to this later disproved supposition.
Other “precipitation postulations”—as they were then known in investigative parlance can be safely relegated to the category of “crackpotia”. [Guilliame Gaulte, “Les Theories de l’Eau de Ciel Est Cuckoo”, Jaune Journale, August, 1962] These include theories that excess commercial airflights were upsetting the natural balance of the clouds, that deranged Indian rain makers had unwittingly come upon some lethal condensation factor and were applying it beyond all sanity, that strange frost from outer space was seeding Earth’s overhead and causing this inordinate precipitation.
And, as seems an inevitable comcomitant to all alien deportment in nature, hypotheses were propounded that this heavy rainfall presaged Deluge II. It is clearly recorded that several minor religious groups began hasty construction of “Salvation Arks”. One of these arks can still be seen on the outskirts of the small town of Dry Rot, New Mexico, built on a small hill, “still waiting for the flood.” [Harry L. Schuler, “Not Long for This world”, South Orange Literary Review, XL (Sept. 1962) p. 214]
Then came that memorable day when the name of farmer Cyrus Mills became a household word.
“Tarnation!” said farmer Mills.
He gaped in rustic amazement at the object he had come across in his cornfield. He approached it cautiously. He prodded it with a sausage finger.
“Nation,” he repeated, less volubly.
Jason Gullwhistle of The United States Experimented Farm Station No. 3, Nebraska, drove his station wagon out to farmer Mills’ farm in answer to an urgent phone call. Farmer Mills took Mr. Gullwhistle out to the object.
“That’s odd,” said Jason Gullwhistle. “It looks like an orange tree.”
Close investigation revealed the truth of this remark. It was, indeed, an orange tree.
“Incredible,” said Jason Gullwhistle. “An orange tree in the middle of a Nebraska cornfield. I never.”
Later they returned to the house for a lemonade and there found Mrs. Mills in halter and shorts, wearing sunglasses and an old chewed-up fur jacket she had exhumed from her crumbling hope chest.
“Think I’ll drive into Hollywood,” said Mrs. Mills, sixty-five if she was a day.
By nightfall every wire service had embraced the item, and every paper of any prominence whatever had featured it as a humorous insertion on page one.
Within a week, however, the humor had vanished.
Reports came pouring in from every corner of the state of Nebraska, as well as portions of Iowa, Kansas and Colorado—reports of citrus trees discovered in corn and wheat fields, as well as more alarming reports relative to eccentric behavior in the rural populace.
Addiction to the wearing of scanty apparel became noticeable, an inexplicable rise in the sales of frozen orange juice manifested itself and oddly similar letters were received by dozens of chambers of commerce—letters which heatedly demanded the immediate construction of motor speedways, tennis courts, drive-in theatres and drive-in restaurants. And letters which complained of smog.
But it was not until a marked increase in daily temperatures and an equally marked increase of unfathomable citrus tree growth began to imperil the corn and wheat crop that serious action was taken. Local farm groups organized spraying operations but to little or no avail. Orange, lemon and grapefruit trees continued to flourish in geometric proliferation.
And a nation, at long last, became alarmed.
* * * *
A seminar of the country’s top scientists met in Ragweed, Nebraska, the geographical center of this multiplying plague, to discuss possibilities.
“Dynamic tremors in the alluvial sub-strata,” said Doctor Kenneth Loam of the University of Denver.
“Mass chemical disorder in soil composition,” said Spencer Smith of the duPont Laboratories.
“Momentous gene mutation in the seed corn,” said Professor Jeremy Brass of Kansas College.
“Violent contraction of the atmospheric dome,” said Professor Lawson Hinkson of M.I.T.
“Displacement of orbit,” said Roger Cosmos of the Hayden Planetarium.
“I’m scared,” said a little man from Purdue.
Such positive results as may have emerged from this body of speculative genius are yet to be appraised.
History records that a closer labeling of the cause of this unusual behavior in nature and man occurred in early October of 1962, when Associate Professor David Silver, young research physicist at the University of Missouri, published in The Scientific American an article entitled, “The Collecting of Evidences.”
In this brilliant essay, Professor Silver first voiced the opinion that all the apparently disconnected occurrences were, in actuality, superficial revelations of one underlying phenomenon. To the moment of this article, scant attention had been paid to the erratic behavior of people in the affected areas. Mr. Silver attributed this behavior to the same cause which had effected the alien growth of citrus trees.
The final deductive link was forged, oddly enough, in a Sunday supplement of the now-defunct Hearst newspaper syndicate. [H. Braham, “Is Los Angeles Alive?”, Los Angeles Sunday Examiner, October 29, 1962 ] The author of this piece, a professional article writer, in doing research for an article, stumbled across the paragraph recounting Doctor Grimsby’s discovery. Seeing in this a most salable feature, he wrote an article combining the theses of Doctor Grimsby and Professor Silver and emerging with his own amateur concept which, strange to say, was absolutely correct. (This fact was later obscured in the severe litigation that arose when Professors Grimsby and Silver brought suit against the author for not consulting them before writing the article.)
Thus did it finally become known that Los Angeles, like some gigantic fungus, was overgrowing the land.
* * * *
A period of gestation followed during which various publications in the country slowly built up the import of the Los Angeles Movement, until it became a national byword.
It was during this period that a fertile-minded columnist dubbed Los Angeles “Ellie, the Meandering Metropolis,” a title later reduced merely to “Ellie”—a term which became as common to the American mind as “ham and eggs” or “World War II.”
Now began a cycle of data collection and an attempt by various of the prominent sciences to analyze the Los Angeles movement, with a regard to arresting its strange pilgrimage—which had now spread into parts of South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, and as far as the sovereign state of Texas. (Of the mass convulsion this caused in the Lone Star State a separate paper might be devoted.)
REPUBLICANS DEMAND
FULL INVESTIGATION
L.A. Movement Labeled
Subversive Camouflage
After a hasty dispatch of agents to all points in the infected area, the American Medical Association promulgated throughout the nation a list of symptoms by which all inhabitants might be forewarned of the approaching terror:
Symptoms of “Ellieitis”
[”Ellieitis: Its Symptoms,” A.M.A. pamphlet, Fall 1962]
1. An unnatural craving for any of the citrus fruits, whether in solid or liquid form.
2. Partial or complete loss of geographical distinction. (I.e., a person in Kansas City might speak of driving down to San Diego for the weekend.)
3. An unnatural desire to possess a motor vehicle.
4. An unnatural appetite for motion pictures and motion picture previews. (Including a subsidiary symptom, not all-inclusive but never-the-less a distinct menace. This is the insatiable hunger of young girls to become movie stars.)
5. A taste for weird dress apparel. (Including fur jackets, shorts, halters, slacks, sandals, blue jeans and bathing suits—all, usually, of excessive color.)
This list, unfortunately, proved most inadequate for its avowed purpose.
It did not mention, for one thing, the adverse effect of excess sunlight on residents of the northern states. With the expected approach to winter being forestalled indefinitely, numerous unfortunates, unable to adjust to this alteration, became neurotic and, often, lost their senses completely.
The story of Matchbox, North Dakota, a small town in the northernmost part of that state is typical of accounts which flourished throughout the late fall and winter of 1962.
The citizens of this ill-fated town went berserk to a man waiting for the snow and, eventually running amuck, burned their village to the ground.
The pamphlet also failed to mention the psychoological phenomenon known later as “Beach Seeking”, [Fritz Felix Derkatt, “Das Beachen Seeken”, Einzweidrei, Nov. 1962] a delusion under which masses of people, wearing bathing suits and carrying towels and blankets, wandered helplessly across the plains and prairies searching for the Pacific Ocean.
* * * *
In October, the Los Angeles Movement (the process was given this more staid title in late September by Professor Augustus Wrench in a paper sent to the National Council of American Scientists) picked up momentum. In a space of ten days it engulfed Arkansas, Missouri and Minnesota, and was creeping rapidly into the borderlands of Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Smog drifted across the nation.
Up to this point, citizens on the east coast had been interested in the phenomenon but not overly perturbed, since distance from the diseased territory had lent detachment. Now however, as the Los Angeles city limits stalked closer and closer to them, the coastal region became alarmed.
Legislative activity in Washington was virtually terminated as Congressmen were inundated with letters of protest and demand. A special committee, heretofore burdened by general public apathy in the east, now became enlarged by the added membership of several distinguished Congressmen. A costly probe into the problem ensued.
It was this committee that, during the course of its televised hearings, unearthed a secret group known as the L.A. Firsters.
This insidious organization seemed to have sprung almost spontaneously from the general chaos of the Los Angeles envelopment. General credence was given for a short time to the idea that it was another symptom of “Ellieitis”. Intense interrogation, however, revealed the existence of L.A. Firster cells in east-coast cities that could not possibly have been subject to the dread virus at that point.
This revelation struck terror into the heart of a nation.
The presence of such calculated subversion in this moment of trial almost unnerved the national will. For it was not merely an organization loosely joined by emotional binds. This faction possessed a carefully wrought hierarchy of men and women, plotting the overthrow of the national government. Nationwide distribution of literature had begun almost with the advent of the Los Angeles Movement. This literature, with the cunning of insurgent casuistry, painted a roseate picture of the future of—the United States of Los Angeles!
PEOPLE ARISE!
[The Los Angeles Manifesto, L. A. Firster Press, Winter 1962]
People arise! Cast off the shackles of reaction! What sense is there in opposing the march of PROGRESS! It is inevitable! And you, the people of this glorious land—a land dearly bought with your blood and your tears—should realize that Nature herself! supports the L.A. FIRSTERS!
How?—you ask. How does Nature support this glorious adventure?
The question is simple enough to answer.
NATURE HAS SUPPORTED THE L.A. FTRSTTER MOVEMENT FOR THE BETTERMENT OF YOU!
Here are a few facts. In those states that have been blessed:
1. Rheumatism has dropped 52%,
2. Pneumonia has dropped 61%,
3. Frostbite has vanished,
4. Incidence of the COMMON COLD has dropped 73%!
Is this bad news? Are these the changes brought about by anti-PROGRESS?
NO ! !!
Wherever Los Angeles has gone, the deserts have fled, adding millions of new fertile acres to our beloved land. Where once there was only sand and catcus and bleached bones are now plants and trees and FLOWERS!
This pamphlet closes with a couplet which aroused a nation to fury:
Sing out O land, with flag unfurled!
Los Angeles! Tomorrow’s World!
* * * *
The exposure of the L.A. Firsters caused a tide of reaction to sweep the city.
Rage became the keynote of this counter-revolution; rage at the subtlety with which the L.A. Firsters had distorted truth in their literature; rage at their arrogant assumption that the country would inevitably fall to Los Angeles.
Slogans of “Down with the L.A. Lovers!” and “Send Them Back Where They Came from!” rang throughout the land. A measure was forced through Congress and got the presidential signature, outlawing the group and making membership in it the offense of treason. Rabid groups attached a rider to this measure which would have enforced the outlawry, seizure and destruction of all tennis and beach-supply manufacturing. Here, however, the N.A.M. stepped into the scene and, through the judicious use of various pressure means, defeated the attempt.
Despite this quick retaliation, the L.A. Firsters continued underground, and at least one fatality of its persistent agitation was the state of Missouri.
In some manner, as yet undisclosed, the L.A. Firsters gained control of the state legislature and jockeyed through an amendment to the constitution of Missouri which was hastily ratified and made the Show-Me state the first area in the country to legally make itself a part of Los Angeles County.
Utter McKinley Opens
Five New Parlors
In The Southwest
In the succeeding months there emerged a notable upsurge in the production of automobiles, particularly convertibles. In those states affected by the Los Angeles Movement every citizen, apparently, had acquired that symptom of “Ellieitis” known as automania. The car industry entered accordingly upon a period of peak production, its factories turning out automobiles twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
In conjunction with this increase in automotive fabrication there began a near-maniacal splurge in the building of drive-in restaurants and theatres. These sprang up with mushroomlike celerity through western and mid-western United States, their planning going beyond all feasibility. Typical of these thoughtless projects was the endeavor to hollow out a mountain and convert it into a drive-in theatre. [L. Savage, “A Report on The Grand Teton Drive-In”, Fortune, January, 1963]
As the month of December approached, the Los Angeles Movement engulfed Illinois, Wisconsin, Mississippi, half of Tennessee and was lapping at the shores of Indiana, Kentucky and Alabama. (No mention will be made of the profound effect this movement had on racial segregation in the South, this subject demanding a complete investigation in itself.)
It was about this time that a wave of religious passion obsessed the nation.
As is the nature of the human mind suffering catastrophe, millions turned to religion. Various cults had, in this calamity, grist for their metaphysical mills.
Typical of these were The San Bernadino Vine Worshipers, who claimed Los Angeles to be the reincarnation of their deity Ochsalia—The Vine Divine. The San Diego Sons of the Weed claimed, in turn, that Los Angeles was a sister embodiment to their deity which they claimed had been creeping for three decades prior to the Los Angeles Movement.
Unfortunately for all concerned, a small fascistic clique began to usurp control of many of these otherwise harmless cults, emphasizing dominance through “power and energy.”
As a result, these religious bodies too often degenerated into mere fronts for political cells that plotted the overthrow of the government for purposes of self-aggrandizement. (Secret documents discovered in later years revealed the intention of one perfidious brotherhood of converting the Pentagon Building into an indoor race track.)
During a period beginning in September and extending for years, there also ensued a studied expansion of the motion-picture industry. Various of the major producers opened branch studios throughout the country. For example, M-G-M built one in Terre Haute, R.K.O. Radio in Cincinnati and Twentieth Century-Fox in Tulsa. The Screen Writer’s Guild initiated branch offices in every large city, and the term “Hollywood” became even more of a misnomer than it had previously been.
Motion-picture output more than quadrupled, as theaters of all description were hastily erected everywhere west of the Mississippi, sometimes wall-to-wall for blocks. [Gulls Creek Gets Its Forty Eighth Theatre”, The Arkansas Post-Journal, March 12,1963] These buildings were rarely well constructed, and often collapsed within weeks of their “grand openings.”
Yet, in spite of the incredible number of theaters, motion pictures exceeded them in quantity (if not quality). It was in compensation for this economically dangerous situation that the studios inaugurated the expedient practice of burning films in order to maintain the stability of the price floor. This aroused great antipathy among the smaller studios who did not produce enough films to burn any.
Another liability involved in the production of motion pictures was the geometric increase in difficulties raised by small but voluble pressure groups.
One typical coterie was The Anti-Horse League of Dallas, which put up strenuous opposition to the utilization of horses in films.
This, plus the increasing incidence of car-owning which had made horse breeding unprofitable, made the production of Western films (as they had been known) an impossible chore. Thus was it that the so-called “Western” gravitated rapidly toward the “drawing-room” drama.
Section of a Typical Screenplay
[Maxwell Brande, “Altercation at Deadwood Spa”, Epigram Studios, April, 1963]
Tex D’Urberville comes riding into Doomtown on the Colorado, his Jaguar raising a cloud of dust in the sleepy western town. He parks in front of the Golden Sovereign Saloon and steps out. He is a tall, rangy cowhand impeccably attired in waistcoat and fawnskin trousers with a ten-gallon hat, boots and pearl-gray spats. A heavy six-gun is belted at his waist. He carries a gold-topped malacca cane.
He enters the saloon. Every man there scatters from the room, leaving only Tex and a scowling hulk of a man at the other end of the bar. This is Dirty Ned Updyke, local ruffian and gunman.
TEX: (Removing his white gloves and, pretending he does not see
Dirty Ned, addressing the bartender) Pour me a whiskey and seltzer, will you, Roger, there’s a good fellow.
ROGER: Yes, sir.
Dirty Ned scowls over his aperitif but does not dare to reach for the Webley Automatic pistol which is concealed in a holster beneath his tweed jacket.
Now Tex D’Urberville allows his icy blue eyes to move slowly about the room until they rest on the craven features of Dirty Ned.
TEX: So . . . you’re the beastly cad who shot my brother.
Instantly they draw their cane swords and, approaching, salute each other grimly.
* * * *
An additional result not to be overlooked was the effect of increased film production on politics. The need for high salaried workers such as writers, actors, directors and plumbers was intense. This mass of nouveau riche, having come upon good times so relatively abruptly, acquired a definite guilt neurosis which resulted in their intensive participation in the so-called “liberal” and “progressive” groups. This swelling of radical activity did much to alter the course of American political history. (This subject being another which requires separate inquiry for a proper evaluation of its many and varied ramifications.)
* * * *
Two other factors of this period which may be mentioned briefly are the increase in divorce due to the relaxation of divorce laws in every state affected by the Los Angeles Movement and the slow but eventually complete bans placed upon tennis and beach supplies by a rabid but powerful group within the N.A.M. This ban led, inexorably, to a brief span of time which paralleled the so-called “Prohibition” period of the 1920’s. During this infamous period, thrill seekers attended the many bootleg tennis courts throughout the country, which sprang up wherever perverse public demand made them profitable ventures for unscrupulous men.
In the first days of January, 1963, the Los Angeles Movement reached almost to the Atlantic shoreline.
Panic spread through New England and the southern coastal region. The country and, ultimately, Washington reverberated with cries of “Stop Los Angeles!” All processes of government ground to a virtual halt in the ensuing chaos.
Law enforcement atrophied, crime waves spilled across the nation and conditions became so grave that even the outlawed L.A. Firsters held revival meetings in the streets.
[Column by Eastbrook Pulley, New York Daily Mirror, January 7, 1963]
Just got in from a little town in Pennsylvania called Dutch Corners where I talked to a member of the outlawed L.A. Firsters. Here are some of the things that were said:
Q. You think L.A. will cover the country?
A. Sure will, brother! It’ll cover the Earth!
Q. What about the destruction of the grain crop by citrus trees?
A. So we’ll eat oranges, brother! Oranges are good for you.
Q. But what about bread?
A. Let ‘em eat cake, brother, let ‘em eat cake!
Q. So you think it’s a good thing.
A. Sure, it’s a good thing. Why, on a clear day you can see Catalina!
* * * *
On February 11, 1963, the Los Angeles Movement forded the Hudson River and invaded Manhattan Island.
Flame-throwing tanks proved futile against the invincible flux. Within a week the subways were closed and car purchases had trebled. Within two years New York had joined The Federation of Los Angeles, and had become obliged to saw off all its skyscrapers in order to adhere to the Los Angeles building code, which prescribed heights of no more than 150 feet. (The trimmings were given to Brooklyn.)
By March, 1963, the only unaltered states in the union were Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This was later explained by the lethargic adaptation of the fungi to the rocky New England soil and inclement weather.
These northern states, cornered and helpless, resorted to extraordinary measures in a hopeless bid to ward off the awful incrustation. Several of them legalized the mercy killing of any person discovered to have acquired the taint of “Ellieitis.” Newspaper reports of shootings, stabbings, poisonings and strangulations became so common in those days of “The Last-Ditch Defense” that newspapers inaugurated a daily section of its contents to such reports.
Boston, Mass. April 13, AP—Last rites were held today for Mr. Abner Scrounge who was shot after being found in his garage, attempting to remove the top of his Rolls Royce with a can opener.
The history of the gallant battle of Boston to retain its essential dignity would, alone, make up a large work. The story of how the intrepid citizens of this venerable city refused to surrender their rights, choosing mass suicide rather than submission is a tale of enduring courage and majestic struggle against insurmountable odds.
What happened after the movement was contained within the boundaries of the United States (a name soon discarded) is data for another paper.
A brief mention, however, may be made of the immense social endeavor which became known as the “Bacon and Waffles” movement, which sought to guarantee $250 per month for every person in Los Angeles over forty years of age.
With this incentive before the people, state legislatures were helpless before an avalanche of public demand. Within three years, the entire nation was a part of Los Angeles. The government seat was in Beverly Hills and ambassadors had been hastened to all foreign countries within a short period of time.
Ten years later the North American continent fell, and Los Angeles was creeping rapidly down the Isthmus of Panama. Then came that ill-fated day in 1974.
On the island of Pingo Pongo, Maona, daughter of Chief Luana approached her father.
“Omu la golu si mongo?” she said.
(Anyone for tennis?)
Whereupon her father, having read the papers, speared her on the spot and ran screaming from the hut.