The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Trying to forget! I should have known that was as impossible as forgetting there was a sunrise, or forgetting to breathe. This second time I called she seemed overjoyed to see me, and we talked over college days for an hour before I went in to the doctor’s room.

  “Lanny,” I said as die accompanied me down the hallway, “is a little—well, changed.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She stopped abruptly, faced me with eyes that were vacant. I knew then and there that she was not happy. “Changed!” she cried. “If you only knew! Oh, Charles, what is he doing?”

  With that she hurried away. I knocked on the door to Willenborg’s study with a grim wonder. As I stepped in, I felt an immediate sense of smallness, of inferiority. Alanson was sitting at his horseshoe desk, both hands busy, but this time writing in longhand instead of working shorthand machines. Back and to the left of his head the speaker was droning out words steadily, two sets of words that sounded like a jumble to me. Then I noticed that he was reading also, from a book lying on the desk before him!

  “I knew you’d come back, Charlie,” he said gravely, a hint of mockery in his voice. “Curiosity is always stronger than pride.”

  “I—I came mainly to see Jondra,” I snapped back.

  “So!” He raised his eyes from the book for just a second. “You never married, Charlie?”

  “I’m a bachelor simply because that suits me!”

  Weak words; futile attempt to conceal the truth.

  Abruptly, he changed the subject.

  “Tell me, Charlie, what does dissection of the human brain show in relation to thinking processes?”

  “It shows an uneven distribution of convolutions, and—”

  “That’s enough,” interrupted Alanson. “In plain words, part of the brain is well used, but most of it is not. Why should not the whole brain be concentrated in activity?”

  “It would wear the brain out,” I suggested.

  “Bah!” he snorted. “Superstition. The brain is the strongest organ in the human body.”

  “Then why is there so much insanity?” I asked quickly.

  “Not, as you and the herd think, because the brain is over-used, but because it is used wrongly. A brain trained to think constructively will never go under, even though it is taxed to its full capacity.”

  “And that is what you are doing?”

  HE shook his head sharply.

  “Exactly. Two years ago I left the chair of psychology at Midwestern to carry out this plan of applied telesis. Telesis, you know, is self-improvement. I started by training myself—or my brain—to talk with Jondra and write technical articles at the same time. Then I learned to write with my left hand, and thus added the third separate operation. It was but a step to add a voice, and to train myself to understand two together. Then I developed the operation of speaking with these four other operations going. Finally, during this past week, I’ve added the ability to read, which makes a total of six operations I can concentrate on simultaneously.

  “It becomes easier to add operations, strange to say, as I go along. I expect to reach my limit in a month or so, which will probably be ten distinct activities at once!”

  I gulped.

  “Easy enough to say you are doing six distinct things,” I said, “but do you honestly understand every word of the two voices from the speaker? Are you writing two coherent themes? And do you grasp what you are reading? All this while talking to me?”

  “Certainly!”

  He stopped his writing suddenly and tore two sheets of paper off the pads to his right and left. They were long sheets of paper, and as he handed them to me, I saw they were inscribed with his fine, clear script. I glanced at the first sheet. His words were as straight to the line as though ruled. It began—

  You are wearing a navy blue suit, with a red and black striped tie, button-neck buff shirt, and brown shoes. You have a razor nick on your right cheek. This is to prove that what follows was written since you’ve been here, while we were conversing. I will list following the rules of geometry. One, a straight line is the shortest—

  The page went on, leading to the complicated propositions of spatial geometry. My eyes bulging, I read the second sheet. It, too, began with the proof that it had been post-written to my entrance, and then went on to list the planets of the Solar System—diameters, mean distances from the sun, periods of revolution.

  While I was still gaping at this, he thrust the book he had been reading into my hands, and recited the preceding page almost word for word. When he challenged me to check the phonograph monologues against his memory of them, I gave in.

  “A remarkable feat,” I tried to say casually.

  He smiled faintly and looked at me in such a way that I felt myself shrinking to the size of an ant.

  “Not remarkable,” he shrugged, “in the light of what I’ll be able to do later!”

  I was to remember those words, which he said with an odd look in his eyes. I did not lose the ant-size feeling until I had left his home and walked around in the night air for an hour.

  IT was about a month after my first visit that I again invaded the quiet precincts of Oak Park.

  I did not meet Jondra this time; she was out motoring, the maid told me. I walked to Alanson’s room, strangely aware that I would not be interrupting him, even though unannounced. At the most, he would only be transferring his attention from one of six operations to me!

  But I was wrong—it was now eight operations!

  The seventh was a coded clicking that came steadily from a telegraph sounder on his desk. The eighth, briefly, was a photoelectric outfit, in which his swinging foot interrupted the beam in dots and dashes that were recorded on a moving tape.

  He glanced up briefly from his book as I entered, but his flying fingers did not pause a second in their manipulations of the shorthand machines at either hand. He spoke softly above the steady drone of the twin phonograph voices near his left ear.

  “You will notice that I’ve added two operations. The seventh is a discourse on radio-therapy in the international code. The eighth is my rendition, in the Morse code, of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Each operation indicates that a separate portion of my brain has come to life consciously, and has joined my wakeful mind. My brain is perhaps only two out of ten parts subconscious now.”

  “But—but which is you?” I demanded, for I had been trying to puzzle that out. “Are you the part that is talking to me, or the part that reads, or the part that is moving your leg rhythmically, or—”

  “Which part of your brain is you?” countered Alanson. “The part that dreams while you sleep, the part that builds your air castles, or the mental segment that calls itself—consciously—‘I’ ? Here I am doing eight things at once, and I am aware of doing eight things! As when you listen to a duet and hear both voices. It is astonishingly simple.”

  But watching him closely, I saw a vague look of strain on his face. And when he suddenly abandoned all his operations and left the desk, I saw the strain was still there. He looked harassed, fatigued.

  He faced me, then, for the first time as a normal person doing just one thing.

  “Sit down,” he invited. “I feel the need of a short rest, although my brain is as fresh as ever.”

  “Do you eat and sleep?” I asked wonderingly—and foolishly.

  “Of course,” he returned gravely. “In fact, I lead a model life, and have for two years, since I started this. I am on a very sensible diet. I sleep exactly eight hours each night. I swim daily in my private pool, and take frequent long walks. All the rest of my time and energy is spent on this project.”

  All the rest of his time! I reflected a bit bitterly that Jondra had been left out of his scheme entirely.

  “And much of my money,” Alanson was saying. He waved a hand. “Most of these gadgets have been quite expensive—phonograph recordings of scientific subjects, special shorthand machines, and then this new automatic telegraph instrument. But when I have added two more operations, I
’ll reach my goal—having my entire brain conscious, instead of most of it subconscious and useless, with all its inhibitions, primary superstitions, and unreasoning. I’ll have a tenfold brain, so to speak.”

  AFTER a moment he added—“I’ll have the hydra-vision!”

  “What?”

  “Hydra-vision. You remember the hydra in mythology, with its nine heads, and one that was immortal? Well—with its multiple minds, it must truly have had an expansive viewpoint of the world and the Universe. Thus hydra-vision would be contemplation of the cosmos with the collective power and scope of ten minds working as one.”

  I was puzzled.

  “It seems to me you’re off the track, Lanny. You may succeed in awakening the ten mental segments, but what good will it do? You’ll be able to think of ten different things at once, but of no one more clearly than before!”

  A ghost of a smile hovered over his lips as he answered.

  “My plans go on. After I have awakened my entire brain, I will train all ten segments to think at once, and concentrate on one thing! A genius like Newton used perhaps four segments as one. Think of having more than twice his mental power! A person so equipped might well discover whole new fields of thought and science.”

  “He would be a mastermind—a superman,” I said.

  “Which are just synonyms for genius. Genius is less remarkable than the fact that mankind in general is so backward! Various philosophers and Utopians have sensed that, especially Alexis Carrel, who in his book, ‘Man the Unknown,’ suggests that if civilization did as much for the mind as it has done so far for the body, mankind would become a race of supermen. Yet not supermen, but the men they should be! In other words, the mind of man has been left undeveloped all out of proportion in comparison to all our other ambitions. Instead, we make frantic attempts to climb Everest, conquer the stratosphere, and dig oil for machines that take us everywhere, but nowhere.”

  After a moment he added, introspectively—“The follies of mankind!”

  I came to my feet as the door opened and Jondra entered. From the surprise on her face I knew that she did not often see Alanson away from his horseshoe desk. For an instant their eyes met, locked. In Jondra’s eyes I saw anguish; in Alanson’s, indifference. Deeper in their eyes I saw on the one hand blind devotion, on the other, a certain veiled pity.

  Then Alanson excused himself and went to his desk. Jondra and I walked out of the room as the cacaphonous chorus of clickings and multiple phonograph voices began once again.

  MY new post in a Chicago hospital kept me away from the Willenborg home for ten days. In that time Alanson had succeeded in mastering his last two operations. Jondra told me about it before I went in to see-him. It seemed he had simply added two more phonograph voices.

  “Yesterday,” she concluded, “he had me come in there and ask him questions. He answered them without hesitation. And now—”

  She choked as she went on—“and now I feel he’s lost to me altogether! Not even that tenth part of him that can talk to me is mine, because he might just as well be talking to a dictaphone—oh—”

  Well, I couldn’t do anything other than comfort her, and for a little while she clung to me, sobbing fitfully. I don’t remember clearly, but I must have whispered some mad thing. She broke away, drawing in a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she said, her voice very low. “You see, I still love him!”

  I went in to see Alanson in a tight-lipped sort of way, but whatever I had wanted to say to him faded out of my mind when he turned his eyes on me. A powerful flame seemed to radiate from them, as though the brain behind emanated fire.

  He was not at his desk, and had apparently been pacing the room.

  “Charlie!” he cried huskily. “Charlie, I’ve made it! I can carry out ten operations at once—work my brain up to the last cell! And the mental power at my disposal amazes even me. Mathematics? At the snap of your fingers I can solve a calculus equation. Hypnotism? You, Charlie—take a bill out of your wallet and rip it in half!”

  I had not been able to tear away from his terrible eyes, and now a vital force seemed to come out of them and make me reach for my inside pocket. A moment later I stared down, forlornly, at two torn halves of a ten-dollar bill on the floor.

  “Thoughts are words to me,” went on this amazing Alanson. “I can read your mind—like a book! In your brain I see—I see—”

  Suddenly he stopped and some of the fire died in his eyes. I gulped, for my racing thoughts just a moment before had been pitying Jondra for being married to such a mental monster. I waited for his explosion, but instead he dropped into a chair.

  He raised a face on which I saw again that suggestion of strain I had noticed last time, but stronger now.

  “Charlie,” he said. “Jondra is living in hell. I offered her a divorce a few months ago, but the poor little fool refused—said she loved me!”

  “She does,” I seconded. “She chose you once, and she’d do it again.”

  A moment of silence, then: “Something will have to be done about that. However, later. Let me tell you why I’m so—well, enthusiastic right now. Yesterday I brought my whole brain into the conscious state—eliminated the subconscious entirely. It was like crossing a brink, or reaching a goal. Something seemed to click in my mind, and I knew that from then on I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping all the mental segments conscious. They are conscious to stay! Why that should be is a mystery.”

  EVEN to him . . . a curious thought. . . .

  “Anyway, the mental capacity I now have is limitless! Instantaneous mathematical integration—hypnotic power—telepathy—yes, but more! What would be the next step of the super-mind?”

  “Mind over matter?” I asked, ominously aware that he had put the thought in my mind.

  “Ah—”

  “Lanny!” I exclaimed, with a sudden fear icing along my spine. “It—it isn’t right! Maybe it’s meant to be the way it is—conscious and subconscious mind. Conscience—that comes from the subconscious, like a little voice deeply buried—guides us—keeps us from—” Have you ever known someone, grave by nature, who seldom laughed, rarely smiled, and then seen that person burst out in Pagliacci cackling?

  Alanson’s laughter clipped off in midnote, but I saw that something inside him kept on, hysterically amused.

  He jumped to his feet.

  “Leave me now, Charlie. I have to think these new things—out!”

  Well, I went—straight to Jondra and advised her, for reasons I couldn’t explain, to leave the house for a few days, move to a hotel. I couldn’t tell her something had crossed over from his mind to mine, as well as from mine to his, when he had read my thoughts. Something vague—terrible. . . .

  But of course, Jondra refused.

  That night I had a haunting dream in which I saw Alanson suddenly grow ten heads, each demon-eyed. I ran till breathless, then whirled, and the monster’s tenth head, human and sad-faced, spoke hollowly—“I have the vision of the hydra! Yes, I have that—the vision of the hydra—”

  I awoke, sweat-chilled, to find myself muttering that mumbo-jumbo.

  TWO evenings later I was there again. He had phoned for me. First I saw Jondra, her face deeply sad. Then I glanced at Alanson and saw that the strain in his face had grown deeply. His face was flushed, dark shadows were under his eyes.

  Jondra came over to me and deliberately put her arm around my shoulder.

  “That’s your answer?” queried Alanson. Jondra nodded and he looked at me. “There you are, Charlie. But you know that you can have her only at my will! If at any time I want to take her away—it would be simple. Even if you were at the ends of the earth—or the Universe! All I would have to do would be to concentrate—”

  Jondra and I looked at each other helplessly. Alanson smiled, and for a moment the cloud over his somber face lifted. Then he told Jondra to go.

  Alone with him, I faced Alanson with the feeling a mouse must have under the eyes of a cat. Those
fiery flames in his eyes were brighter and more awesome.

  “Charlie”—how strange the nickname sounded from his thin lips!—“hold a piece of paper between your thumb and index finger—here.”

  I took the sheet of paper, let it hang at arm’s length. I wondered, and yet knew inwardly, what would happen. Suddenly, though there was not a breath of air in the room, the sheet vibrated rapidly. I dropped it with an exclamation and heard Alanson chuckle. “Telekinesis—mind over matter,” he said. “You wonder how it is done. Well, think of a key that unlocks the door to an arsenal. The bearer of the key, however, does not light a match and blow the place, and himself, sky-high. He takes part of the gunpowder out for his use. Analogously, my tenfold psychic force is the key to the arsenal of power within the atoms of matter. I release just enough to perform kinetic movement. Look—the vase!”

  A vase of artificial flowers on a lowboy in the corner slid to the edge and landed on the floor with a crash. There was a distance of twenty feet between it and Alanson.

  “Lanny!” I cried. “You’re a humanitarian! You’re not letting this strange power warp your judgment! You’re going to write a book—teach others to use their full minds. You yourself are going to become a great scientist, doing good—”

  I was trying to talk away that gleam of lurking menace in his eyes. He stopped me with a gesture.

  “What, Charlie, is the next step!”

  A whirl of thoughts churned my mind to formless chaos, but I didn’t dare answer.

  “What?—Rule the world?” He had read my mind apparently. “No,” he went on, his voice strangely quiet. “No, not that. You misjudged me there. No—the next step is something far grander—astral projection of the mind! Projection of my mind out into space—to the moon, to Mars—to past and future even, for they are out there—to the hiding place of all the Universe’s mysteries!”

  “Impossible!” I gasped.

  “Impossible is an expletive, not an adjective,” returned Alanson. “Mentality is only one part of a brain’s psychic forces. The power I have to release measured energies in the atoms, can be applied directly to projection of what we name mentality. Call it telementality—thinking from a distance, from any distance!”