The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  I also wanted the invention to be manifested initially in a striking and incontestable manner. If I had begun by talking about it, either to the public by way of announcements or to the government by way of more or less secret communications, I would probably not have been taken seriously. I would even have run a grave risk of being taken for a madman. I could only avoid that danger by following my communication immediately with decisive demonstrations.

  But I could also see other inconveniences. If anyone knew that I was the possessor of such a secret, I would no longer be its master. I would be exposed to all sorts of pleadings to deliver it either to the government or to the public, and my hand might be forced in order to persuade me to release it in circumstances other than those that were appropriate—not from the viewpoint of my personal interest, which was the least of my preoccupations, but from the point of view of the precautions to be taken before unleashing the incalculable consequences of such a discovery upon the world.

  It was by no means impossible, in fact, that violence might be employed in my regard, to try to extract my secret from me, given that it was a source of power and fortune much more tempting than the corners of the earth upon which privateers descended, the preys that pirates and brigands pursued, and the provinces that attracted the covetousness of conquerors often unscrupulous in the choice of their means.

  I wanted, therefore, to remain master of my secret until the moment I judged opportune, after the world had appreciated its importance, after its consequences had been calculated, after the necessary measures had been taken to ensure that France would find it a source of grandeur and it that would not become a scourge for humanity.

  To that were added, in an accessory fashion, considerations relative to my personal interest. It was assuredly only just that I obtained some advantage from my invention, and especially that I did not deserve to have it stolen from me. Now, although I did not believe in the possibility of essential improvements that others might be able to discover, it might be the case that a few modifications might be made to details of the system that would take and retain, as is often seen, the name of the modifier. I did not want my name to the thus relegated to the background. I did not want there to be any possibility of it perhaps being effaced one day from popular memory, only to remain known to scholars. Do such sentiments qualify as vainglory on my part? I thought, personally, that if they concealed some pride, it was at least the most legitimate and justified pride.

  In sum, the plan on which I decided was this: to strike minds vividly by dazzling demonstrations of my discovery; to maintain the most absolute secrecy, not only regarding my methods but also regarding my identity, in such a way that no one could suspect to begin with who the aerial navigator might be whose movements seemed prodigious; to communicate nevertheless with the public to the extent that it suited me, and with the government when the time came; to debate with the latter the measures to take and the conditions under which I would surrender my discovery, which I did not intend to be used as an instrument of despotism, but which I wanted to make into an instrument of liberty; always to remain master of the situation in order to make my will prevail if any dissent arose on which no understanding could be reached; subsequently to reveal my name, but only at a time of my choice and after having organized inaccessible places of refuge in various countries in which I could withstand all pursuits, all ruses, and all violence; and finally, to wait to deliver my secret, either to the public or the government, until the necessary measures had been taken, the agreed conditions executed, and my name was engraved on my discovery in a forever-indelible fashion.

  V. The Manifestation

  As soon as dawn broke on the first of June, one could see that it was going to be a fine day. The sky was, admittedly, covered, but those high clouds were a better guarantee of the security of the weather, given the Parisian climate, than overly bright sunlight. The wind was good and fresh without being violent.

  Circulation in the Place de la Concorde had been considerable since the evening of May the thirty-first. People had come from all directions, hoping to see a few preparations, some indication of the mysterious event announced for the following day. Many people stayed there until very late. A great number of those people who live on unknown industries, offering lights to smokers and picking up cigar-butts, came, after the emergence of the theater crowds, to station themselves in the Place de la Concorde in the hope of being able to trade their place for a financial consideration.

  Between six and seven o’clock in the morning, the populace began to flood in; at eight o’clock the students arrived. By nine o’clock, the crowd in the Place de la Concorde was so compact that orders were given not to let anyone else in, but to let out anyone who wanted to leave. The contagion extended throughout society, as happens in such cases. Curiosity attracts curiosity. Those who have made the firmest promises not to disturb themselves are drawn in as if in spite of themselves, and for that reason alone the growing torrent will grow even further. Crowds accumulated in the Champs-Élysées, the Jardin des Tuileries, on the Pont de la Concorde, on the quais, in the Rue Royale, in the Rue de Rivoli, and on the boulevards.

  By ten o’clock, it was difficult to move on the Boulevard de la Madeleine. By half past ten, it was difficult to get past the Rue de la Paix. By eleven o’clock it was impossible to get as far as the Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin. More people were pressing at the windows than they were able to contain. Conversations, suppositions and gibes were in full flow. “Let’s get started! Raise the curtain! Hey, strike up the band!” cried the gamins of Paris. The authorities, said Joseph Prudhomme, ought not to permit crowds like this to accumulate, in a truly dangerous fashion, without knowing why. One joker cried “Aaaah!” pointing up into the air, and people responded with cheers, whistles and applause. There were a few brawls but no serious incidents.

  By eleven forty-five the curiosity had become more anxious. It was mingled with the vague terror produced by waiting for the unknown. The jokes ceased, no longer finding any echo. A strange silence was established. Nothing is as grave as the solemn, almost lugubrious silence of crowds; anyone who has a watch would not cease consulting it.

  It was five minutes to noon and nothing had appeared in the Place de la Concorde. People began once again to fear a hoax. A dull discontentment infected all minds, ready to change into rage. The calmest individuals felt furious, the mildest ferocious, at the idea of being so outrageously duped.

  The sun had pierced the clouds, which had scattered, and was resplendent at the zenith in a vast area of blue sky. Suddenly, a few cries were heard: “Look!” The keenest eyes had perceived a black dot in the air, at the limit of vision. That black dot was visibly growing. In a matter of seconds it was possible to distinguish a human form, descending vertically above the obelisk.

  A formidable cheer burst forth, ripping through the silence like lightning through a cloud. It was still resounding when a man was seen, his face partly masked, standing on the summit of the obelisk. A new clamor went up, mingled with applause and bravos. The man, coiffed in a small round hat, took it off, and, turning successively to the four cardinal points of the compass, bowed to the crowd. Then he took out his watch and pointed at it with his finger. Everyone else looked at their own. It was one minute to noon. The applause and the cries redoubled. The man put his watch away and everyone began to look at him intently.

  He was dressed in black. A kind of frock coat or overcoat, buttoned up, enveloped him from the neck to the knees. The flaps of that garment were attached to his trousers in such a fashion as not to flutter in the wind. The legs of the trousers were enclosed in large soft boots, whose feet were large enough to permit the deduction of an undershoe. The collar of the overcoat was turned up to the chin and surrounded by a large cravat in white cashmere. The neck seemed thick and a trifle impeded, as were the tops of the shoulders. Blond hair, abundant but not very long, hid the nape and the ears. A full beard, of the brightest blond, covered the cheeks, lips and c
hin. The upper part of the face was covered by a slender mask, like those worn at Opéra balls. The small round hat, black like everything else, was fitted with a chinstrap. The hands were gloved with thick gloves that appeared to be fur-lined. It was evident that, in spite of the season, the man had equipped himself to withstand cold. The left hand was inserted into the overcoat, from which he had only withdrawn it momentarily to point at his watch, and had immediately replaced it, in a stance analogous to the one often attributed to Napoléon I and certain orators.

  He made a gesture, and at noon precisely, rose vertically into the air with the rapidity of an arrow. Having attained a sufficiently great height, he stopped and floated above the crowd, slowly moving in a circle that expanded in a spiral. He seemed to be almost upright, leaning slightly backwards with his legs slightly bent. His left hand remained inside the garment. Then the circle gradually shrank, and at the same time, the rapidity of the aerial navigator—or, rather, the aerial swimmer—increased progressively and he came down again. Having arrived a short distance above the tip of the obelisk, he lapped a few tight circles around it, with astonishing rapidity, replaced himself on it, upright, in his original position, and bowed once again to the crowd in all four directions.

  To describe the bravos, the applause, the acclamations, the shouting, the stamping of feet and the hats thrown into the air would be an impossible enterprise.

  Some people seemed mad with enthusiasm; the most impressionable were wiping their eyes, surprised to have felt tears springing forth. The news had circulated with an electric rapidity all the way to the most distant ranks of the crowds that had accumulated there in Paris.

  “It’s a flying man!” everyone said to his neighbor.

  It would not have taken much for the pressure toward the Place de la Concorde to have produced a general asphyxiation. In vain, people of sound common sense cried out that he was going to come, like he had promised, and that people would be able to see him from where they were. That curiosity was delirious, and people did not listen.

  The sergents de ville and the Gardes de Paris began to give way under the pressure of the multitude, even though they had been reinforced by infantry troops when the crowd had been seen to grow to its present proportions. The first result of the prodigious discovery was about to be an immense hecatomb of people choked, crushed and trampled underfoot.

  Fortunately, the man did not remain perched on the obelisk for long. He resumed his flight, at about the height of a third floor window, and passed into the Rue Royale, and from there to the boulevards. He advanced at a moderate speed, very nearly that of a thoroughbred racehorse at the gallop. It was, therefore, possible to consider him at leisure without being able to attempt to follow him, which would have produced a frightful reverse serge in the crowd.

  He followed the boulevards in that fashion as far as the Place de la Bastille, went down along the Seine as far as the Pont d’Iéna, reached the Arc de Triomphe via the Étoile, and came back via the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Place de la Concorde, went along the Rue de Rivoli as far as the Hôtel-de-Ville, reached the quais via the Pont-de-Change, which he traversed, as well as the Cité, followed the Boulevard Saint-Michel as far as the Jardin du Luxembourg, where he performed a few circles, went along the exterior boulevards as far as Les Invalides, went back up the Seine to the Pont de Solférino, and came to hover above the clumps of chestnuts in the Jardin des Tuileries.

  That was sufficient to calm the excessive and overly keen aspect of public curiosity. It was understood that it would be impossible to follow such evolutions, that everyone would have much more chance of seeing him again by remaining in place, and that, after all, everyone had already seen him. The crowd was further augmented, because there was soon not a single able-bodied person indoors, except for those at the windows of the main streets, but it was more widely disseminated and less dense. No one missed anything, and everyone could see, quite comfortably, some aspect of the unexpected spectacle.

  In the Jardin des Tuileries, for example, the aerial man, approaching a chestnut-tree, caused two pigeons to fly away, and immediately pursued them. He was evidently traveling faster than they were, but did not appear to be able to turn as easily in order to follow the changes of direction they made abruptly in their fear. It was also noticed that he only tried to catch them with his right hand, the left always remaining inside his coat. The public took an infinite pleasure on following the twists and turns of that new kind of hunting. Soon, one pigeon was caught, and then the other. The applause and the acclamations can be imagined.

  The victorious hunter came to sit on the horizontal arm of the statue of Alexander in Battle near the fountain and in front of the château, took out his left hand, took off his gloves, took a piece of string out of his pocket, and tied the four legs of the two birds together. Then he put his gloves on again, replaced his left hand in its usual position, resumed his flight and came to hover a meter over the head of an elegant lady, at whose feet he gallantly let his fluttering prey fall.

  He resumed his journey over the Seine, the promenades, the boulevards and the main streets, but this time, not maintaining a uniform and regular pace. He rose up and swooped down, made detours to the right and the left, swerved into ascending and descending spirals, sometimes hovering almost motionless, sometimes launching himself in a straight line with an incredible velocity. He amused himself near the Château-d’Eau by catching a swallow in flight, and caught another in the Place du Panthéon.

  At the Jardin des Plantes he alighted casually in the reserved flowerbeds and picked a large bouquet of flowers before the wardens, hesitating as to what to do, had time to try and prevent him from so doing. A few moments later, he offered it to a group of young women manning an observation post in a mansard in the Boulevard de Sebastopol. The most brazen of them, more prompt to reach out for it than any of her companions, thanked him with her frankest burst of laughter and a kiss blown into the air from her fingertips.

  At the Café du Grand-Balcon on the Boulevard des Italiens, customers had been crammed in, placed in the foremost booths in order to see. He suddenly swooped down on the balcony, took possession of a glass of beer full to the brim, drew away a meter or two, drank it in a single draught, came back to the place from which he had taken it, threw a louis on to the table, bowed, and flew away.

  In the Place du Palais-Royal, he spotted a smoker at a third-floor window. He stopped, hovered momentarily, took a cigar out of his pocket, approached the smoker, whose cigar he politely borrowed, returning it to him after having lit his own, bowed and resumed his flight while smoking. He came to sit down and finish his cigar on the lightning conductor of the southern tower of Notre-Dame, which caused jokers to say that he must not be very comfortable there. Serious people replied that no one knew how he was armored underneath and that besides, having the faculty of sustaining himself in the air, he ought not to weigh upon the point. Some also claimed to have seen him place an object that they could not make out on the point in question, doubtless so that it would not pierce his clothing.

  What seemed prodigious was that, after all these comings and goings, it was not yet four o’clock. The evening papers were about to appear. People understood that they could not possibly talk about anything other than the event that was holding Paris in thrall. They had bravely made their decision, standing up against fortune with a stout heart and trying to safeguard themselves, by means of editorial skill, against the disconcerting awareness of their previous incredulity.

  Only the Universel had the right to cry victory. The editorial staff, gathered in the offices in its entirety, delightedly proclaimed the triumph of its editor-in-chief. The latter usually worked in a rather elegant office, albeit a trifle small, preceded by a library and the Editorial Suite, where there as a huge table around which various reporters sat. The apartment, situated on the second floor, overlooked two broad streets of which the building formed the corner. Once the paper was put to bed, people chatted everywhere
. That day, a little before four o’clock, the editor-in-chief was sitting in his office chatting to two or three people therein and, through the open door, with his colleagues gathered in the library and the Editorial Suite. Suddenly, a cry went up: “There he is! There he is!”

  Everyone rushed to the windows and saw the aerial man descending in a spiral. He was holding an envelope in his right hand. He approached the window, put the package in the hand that the editor-in-chief held out to him, bowed, climbed vertically into the air again and flew away.

  He was seen continuing his evolutions until five o’clock. He came back to stand upright on the obelisk, took out his watch and indicated it with his finger to the compact crowd gathered in the square. People observed that it was five to five. He sat on the summit of the obelisk, seemingly waiting. A few seconds before five o’clock he stood up again, bowed to the four cardinal points, launched himself vertically upwards at exactly five o’clock and disappeared into space with a dizzying rapidity.

  The manifestation was concluded. It was generally agreed that it had lived up to its billing, and had gone beyond what anyone could have supposed.

  VI. At the Universel

  The editor-in-chief hastened to open the packet that had been handed to him and which bore the address: To the Editor-in-Chief of the Universel. He found two manuscripts inside. First there was a letter, the text of which was as follows:

  Monsieur Editor-in-Chief,

  Alone in the press, the Universel has given proof of clear-sightedness and sagacity. Please accept my congratulations and my sincere thanks for that.

  You will find it natural that I am addressing myself to you, in preference to all your colleagues, in order to propose an exchange of services.