The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  At that question, the six people addressed nodded their heads affirmatively. The permanent secretary, slightly pale, rose to his feet.

  Saint-Denis stopped him with a gesture and, turning toward the six grave and silent scientists, said: “Now, Messieurs, I ask you, are you conscious of being separated from Paris by distances that vary between five kilometers and twelve thousand leagues? In sum, are you conscious of only witnessing this session in the state of projected images, and in consequence of a hallucinatory phenomenon of which we are both the subject and the object?”

  Slowly and simultaneously, the six apparitions nodded their heads again, replying thus, in the midst of an impressive silence, to the question posed.

  A sigh of emotion ran round the room, from the Académie benches to those of the public, where a few people had come to sit down, for the rumor of the extraordinary adventure was already beginning to spread through the surroundings.

  Saint-Denis had turned round to face the presidential table. He looked at the permanent secretary, whose lower lip was trembling slightly as he asked: “What explanation can you give us for this, Monsieur Saint-Denis?”

  The professor looked at the president, who, with a weary and tremulous gesture, invited him to continue.

  Then, taking from his pocket the manuscript that we had prepared the day before, my old master deposited it on a table placed in the center of the room, facing the top table. The table in question was covered with brown moleskin of shabby appearance but designed, I suppose, to protect the surface from possible stains occasioned by the often unpleasant or corrosive products subjected to examination by those messieurs.

  “The elements of this work were furnished by one of my most distinguished pupils, Dr. Forbe, who is present at this session and whose name and intelligent observations I am calling to your recognition.”

  As he pronounced these words he turned toward me, thus drawing me to everyone’s attention. My emotion was so keen that I felt myself blushing and could not support the gazes directed at me from all directions. To put on a brave face I looked toward the back of the room, in the direction of the table at which Hughes Mitchell and his colleagues were sitting. Was it an illusion, had my clairvoyance become sharper, or had belated Academicians arrived recently? I seemed to be seeing many more audience members in that corner than those of which my master had just made a sort of roll call and named. When I dared to parade my gaze around the hall, now attentive and avidly interested in the philosopher’s communication, I was surprised that it was filled by a crowd of tightly packed listeners, in a stifling mass.

  Meanwhile, Saint-Denis spoke.

  “The name telepathy has been given to an ensemble of perceptions at a distance, examples of which, perspicacious in acuity, have already been cited, but have encountered considerable incredulity. Some of us have had rudimentary experiences of that faculty of impression at a distance. How many normally nervous individuals, for instance, have seen in a dream a person from whom a letter, most often unexpected, arrives the following day? And what can be said about presentiments? Singular examples are cited, but until now, none of us has consented to add credence to them. The facts of which I shall read to you in a detailed and strictly documented account are merely excessive developments of a sensorial faculty that, for several days, had tended, under and influence that we ought to strive to understand, to become generalized among us. Here they are….”

  Entering then into the core of his subject, the professor listed, one after another, the facts whose exposure constituted the beginning of this story.

  Eventually, he concluded: “To sum up, it is possible that a current of some sort can be established between us and a few distant regions; under its influence, human sensibility seems no longer to know any limits, and thus, the individual is distanced from himself; he perceives and is perceived far beyond the frontiers that seem normal. It still remains for us to delimit the extent of that zone of telepathic phenomena; those of our colleagues who are miraculously present at this session will already be able to send us their most rapid observations; as for those who are absent….”

  Here, he stopped, took a deep breath, embraced the entirety of that glorious assembly of scientists with his enthusiastic gaze, and exclaimed: “In truth, Messieurs, it is now a case of saying that science has no frontiers and that it brings all nationalities together in a universal communion, for I perceive in this hall our most distant correspondents—and how could some of them have found themselves here without the projection of thought that links them to our work without having become, at this moment, omnipotent?”

  As Saint-Denis spoke, the audience, attached to his words, turned round. A unique spectacle gripped the admiration of those men, who looked at one another. The hall, usually too vast, had become too small for the crowd that was packing it, and there was no need to repeat the majestic experiment of a few minutes before to comprehend that the greater number were only present in the imaginary and yet quite real fashion of Messieurs Hughes Mitchell, Helms and Rockstritt. How, otherwise, could the presence be explained of the savant Dr. Okuma, who at a time when it was night in Japan, since he was not asleep, must be working in his study in Tokyo, or that, more surprising still, of the chemist Monestier, almost a centenarian, who lives, alone and infirm, in a little house in Bois-de-Colombes, which he has not left for fifteen years?

  Gradually, under the effort of their will, of their simple desire, multiplied tenfold by the mysterious fluidic power, all of them had realized that unprecedented communion. Doubtless for the first time since its origin, with the exception of Dr. Hoch, who had sadly disappeared at the beginning, the Académie des Sciences, with all its sections united, was complete.

  “I am glad,” proclaimed Saint-Denis, with an oratory flourish whose enthusiasm was not at all habitual, “to salute them, among us in their entirety for the first time, and to affirm that, thanks to the marvelous discovery that we have made in common on this day, the memory of which is henceforth immortal, human thought has crossed its frontiers and, like the serpent of ancient myth, is enlacing the civilized world in a ring of fraternal intelligence.”

  At these words a long acclamation, the noise of which was, in truth, only slightly proportional to the violence of the gestures exhibited, in that assembly in which it was so difficult to distinguish the appearances from the tangible realities. The clapping hands of many of those images transposed through space were not all equal in force in affirm the enthusiasm of the wills that animated them. Dr. Okuma only sent from Tokyo an applause whose sound was very feeble, just as the emotive violence of the moment must have been too much for the antiquity of the centenarian Monestier, since his image suddenly ceased to be visible at the height of the enthusiasm.

  In any case, the sum of energy expended did not only exceed the strength of the elderly; by degrees, the fatigue produced by such nervous losses affected the entire audience. One by one, the apparent images of the worldwide elite paled and ended up fading away and disappearing. All that remained in the hall were fifty palpable and present appearances, prostrate with fatigue in their chairs.

  “Exhausted…worn out….” murmured President Duvernier.

  There was a unanimous desire that the session should be terminated.

  “Certainly,” said Saint-Denis, supportively, a trifle dazed, “I’m more fatigued by this meeting than the spectacle of the firework display yesterday morning.”

  “My dear colleagues,” the permanent secretary concluded, getting to his feet with difficulty, “human life is going to require more energy that ever—all the more so as it does not depend on us, judging by what we have just seen, to excite or to avoid these correspondences.

  Radiant with delight, I was then pulled in all directions, as journalists arrived in a crowd to interview me, and Saint-Denis introduced me, between two doors, to the most flattering felicitations of his colleagues. Nevertheless, the prophetic words of the permanent secretary reached my ears, and since that day I have often
admired his sage perspicacity.

  It was high time that an authorized intervention occurred, for it was soon recognized that the facts were becoming generalized and that a new direction had just been acquired by an entire section of the human race.

  VI

  One can recall, and, if necessary, one can imagine the work that superstition and terror were to do in the wake of repeated manifestations of the new force. Cities appeared to be far more prone to it than rural areas, and certain villages were cited in which it was impossible to observe the slightest phenomenon of perception at a distance. On that subject, however, there were reservations to make regarding the value and perspicacity if the investigators as well as the passive unconsciousness of subjects; some might have lived familiarly with the projected image of an absent family member for months without having become aware of the exceptional nature of the contact—whether the person was imaginary or real, the result was the same, save for a few discrepancies of arrival and departure to which the untroubled and incurious minds of country-dwellers paid scant attention.

  In the enthusiasm of the early days—for, once enlightened as to the causes, the masses were reassured and soon enthused—people wanted to believe that it was the abolition of distance over the entire surface of the globe.

  The plenary session of the Académie des Sciences suffices to prove that all latitudes are henceforth in communication, and since Dr. Okuma was visible in Tokyo, we can look forward to the day when the inhabitants of Baluchistan and Tierra de Fuego will appear in Paris.

  Thus prophesied an article in the Revue Mondiale when taking account of the experiment publicly made by Saint-Denis in the presence of the most authorized of French scholarly bodies.

  It was a vain prophecy. To begin with, a telegraphic check permitted it to be established that many of the presences observed at the Institut on 11 May 190 , while remaining probable as regards to persons, ceased to be symptomatic with regard to place of origin, with many of the correspondents being found to have been traveling at that moment either in Germany or in France if they were not in Paris. That was, notably, the case with Dr. Okuma, who sent a telegram from Bordeaux, where he had just disembarked on arriving from Brazil in the course of a scholarly voyage around the world.

  On the insistence of Saint-Denis, I had the great honor of being appointed as a member of the Committee set up by the Ministry of Education to investigate the extent and origin of the phenomena, and I recall the disappointment that the restrictive certainty initially caused us: a sentiment that was a trifle childish, all things considered, but which did not last long in the presence of the conclusions of the enquiry—for it was not difficult and did not take long to determine the zone of influence beyond which the telepathic manifestations ceased.

  That zone, contained between the 80th degree of west longitude and the 13th degree of east longitude and limited on the American side between the 37th and 48th degrees of north latitude, traversed the ocean following a course that remained unknown pending further experimentation, and to reach France between the 50th and the 43rd parallels; there it seemed to incline slightly northwards, going around the central plateau and passing above Switzerland to complete its course a little way short of the 48th—with the consequence that it formed an irregular five-sided figure whose points of reference were Richmond, Bordeaux, Munich, Berlin, Cherbourg and the north of the mouth of the St. Lawrence, slightly behind and above Quebec.

  Traced on the map, that zone of influence was limited fairly regularly in two curved movements whose clarity convinced us generally to admit that we were in the presence of an unknown fluidic current, of a wave whose intensity of radiation seemed to increase in proportion to the abnormal warmth that signaled the spring of that year. Under the action of that current, the facts most contested until that day in the order of telepathy were renewed with a frequency that did not take long to render the observation banal and superfluous. That which, in the beginning, had surprised and terrified us had to be admitted as one of the normal conditions of existence.

  One shivers in thinking what might have happened had the event been produced a few hundred years earlier, in an epoch when the scientific method was still reduced to empiricism, when the electric telegraph and the telephone had not yet familiarized the masses with the knowledge of the invisible forces of nature. Or rather, one begins to wonder whether this manifestation is really the first, and whether it might be necessary to look in that direction for the explanation of so many seemingly miraculous events that have frightened ignorant humankind throughout history.

  At any rate, modern life is intuitive and rapid; in three weeks, the great news had become old hat, and people were already living in peace with the new sense that summarized all the others and increased them, inasmuch as it was perception at a distance, like all the other senses; its acuity remained variable, and not all people found themselves able to exercise it with equal power.

  Then again, if telepathic relations were established with a sufficiently rapid facility between relatives or acquaintances, they became more unequal and more awkward between strangers; there again the extraordinary novelty of the faculty suddenly devolved upon humankind and attenuated its surprising character by an appearance of logic, in conformity with all the scientific laws thus far admitted.

  People differed in their evaluation of that restriction of influence; fervent adherents of the idea of Providence were satisfied, in sum, by the fact that the zone of phenomena of appearance at a distance was limited for the time being to a few parts of the United States, France and Germany, because they wanted to understand it as the wisdom of a divine intervention measuring out to humankind this new sense, whose abrupt diffusion would have caused an upheaval in the life of the world.

  “In time,” they said, “the current will be extended, and then the entire globe will enter without any shock into relations of universal fraternity.”

  “Providence or not,” others concluded, “the progression is still a limitation of which it will be as well to take advantage.”

  What is incredible, however, is the national self-esteem that came to be mixed up in the affair, and the particular pride that the French and Germans felt in seeing themselves the object of a choice that they wanted to see as premeditated.

  “Has not France always been, since the Revolution,” said some, “the experimental field of all humankind?”

  The Germans responded: France was simply geographically fortunate, but that the German fatherland was the target marked by the miraculous current.

  In any case, the verdict was rendered by American public opinion. On the far side of the Atlantic, the editors of all the Worlds and Tribunes found themselves in agreement in offering the explanation of the facts.

  What is this fluid, they said, and what is its origin? By virtue of functioning in an intensive state, American hyperactivity is radiating, in the form of an influential force, all the way to the old world, where it has galvanized the will debilitated by the centuries: there is an overflow of energy therein, of which only a new people like ourselves are capable…etc...etc…

  Above these paltry squabbles, the scientists, when their investigation was complete, kept silent. All that they had been able to do was to make simple observations; the new force did not lend itself any more to explanation, for the moment, than electricity, with which it seemed that it was impossible to assimilate it.

  I will not describe in detail here all the laboratory experiments that were carried out in this regard, and which can be found, along with many individual observations, in specialist journals and the records of the sessions of the Committee of Investigation. I am only attempting here a simple account of the events in which it was given to me to be directly involved in the course of this exceptional adventure and practical history, so to speak, of one human being in contact with the manifestations of a temporarily exasperated sensibility. I am citing in my case what it had in common with many others that might remain unknown; those who will read
me in the future will perhaps be able to sense in this story, better than a somewhat abstract and colorless formal document, the emotions of the excessive minutes that we lived in those days.

  Until that day, they had all appeared in a fairly favorable light, and certainly, none of us suspected as yet the tragic horror of the imminent future. The reaction, as I have said, was one of enthusiasm, and as enthusiasm desires celebrations and official pomp, it was decided to organize them.

  Since the new world, by virtue of the intervention of the thought-wave, found itself linked to the old continent, it seemed logical to the scientific committees set up in France and the United States to adopt a kind of official position on the new line of telepathic communication. To that effect, an experimental festival was decided, in which the two Heads of State would meet, simultaneously or successively, according to availability. In Paris, the image of Mr. Roosevelt was expected, and it was hoped that the face of Monsieur Fallières28 would be projected all the way to the White House in Washington.

  Important preparations were made to ensure the success of the trail, which was arranged for 10 June.

  The major state bodies, by delegation, and the Committee of Investigation, in its entirety, met at the Élysée Palace at three o’clock in the afternoon, the time chosen for the meeting coinciding with the moment when the sun marked ten ‘clock in the morning in Washington.

  At first, the idea had been put forward of organizing the ceremony in the open air, the gardens of the Élysée permitting a more numerous audience, but the fear of rain and the concern to avoid anything that might compromise the success of the experiment had ended up persuading the organizers to content themselves with the reception rooms of the palace.

  At four o’clock, when Monsieur Fallières, in ceremonial dress, his breast striped with the great sash of the Légion d’honneur, took his place in front of the fireplace of the Salon des Ambassadeurs, and our president, surrounded by his household, began to anticipate the visit, an entirely new and very sharp emotion gripped everyone around him.