The Day the Machines Stopped

by Christopher Anvil

  Her face twisted. She began to sob, and clung tightly to him. “Oh, Brian, it’s Daddy.”

  Brian had met the elder Cermak, a gaunt, gray-haired man with a surprisingly direct gaze.

  “His heart?”

  She shook her head and pulled away. She opened her small blue purse, took out a handkerchief, and dried her eyes.

  “I don’t know what it is. I woke up last night and he was crying. It was the first time in my life I ever heard him do that. And then he thanked me for being a good daughter, and wished we could have had more time together—” She shut her eyes.

  Brian frowned, thinking of the several thousand dollars in his bank account. “Anne, can I help? I make fairly good pay, I’ve had little to spend it on.”

  “It isn’t—” She shook her head. “You’d have to know him. His heart is bad, and maybe that’s part of it. They say sometimes there’s a strong feeling of anxiety. But this is different. He said he’d had a dream; and he believed this dream! It was like a prophecy, and he could see into the future. He told me what would happen, and then he became so deeply depressed he wasn’t like the same man. Oh, Brian, what can I do?”

  For a moment he could think of nothing to say. Then he remembered the talk he’d had with Anne’s father one night, on the porch of the old frame house the two had rented on the outskirts of town. Remembering the straightforward conversation, Brian mused, “He seems a sensible, hard-headed man—wait, this happened at night?”

  “It was dark out. I think it must have been about four.”

  Brian thought it over. “Sometimes in the middle of the night things seem a lot worse than after the sun is up. He’s had an awful lot of hardship, hasn’t he?”

  She nodded. “But things have been better lately. This is a good job. I make enough for both of us.”

  Brian remembered Anne saying once that her mother had died when she Was very young, and her father had raised her. That must have been no easy job. The elder Cermak had been a coal miner in the mountains of West Virginia, where mechanization and the competition of gas and oil had eliminated many jobs. Without special skills, he could now find little to do. Yet Anne had told Brian that it had not been a scholarship or a loan that had put her through college; her father had done it.

  Brian frowned. Maybe the older man was feeling useless now that he was unemployed. Of course, he didn’t mope around the house. He had painted the inside, room by room, keeping himself busy during the winter between trips to the employment office. As he jokingly told Brian while showing him the living room he’d just finished painting, “I have to keep myself busy and earn my board.” He grinned at his daughter. “I don’t want to be a kept man.” There had been no resentment in the comment—and yet his inability to earn money had to rankle.

  “I can’t believe it’s anything but a bad night,” he assured her. “Possibly he’s coming down with some sickness. There’s been a lot of flu around. If you want to take the day off and stay with him, I’m sure Mr. Cardan would—” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t help. He all but threw me out of the house, shouting me down when I tried to say I’d stay with him. I got ready for work and went back in to argue with him; he took me by the arms and walked me right to the door. I couldn’t stay with him.”

  “Do you want me to drive you out this noon?” Anne usually rode back and forth, in the morning and at night, with a woman neighbor who had a job in a nearby factory.

  “No,” she said, “ho wouldn’t like that. But, Brian, could you—if I invited you to dinner tonight—?”

  “I’d like to come.” He smiled. “You ought to know that.” She said, “If I could only get him to thinking about something else. And he likes you.” She looked at Brian with a

  warm smile and started to say something, but at that moment there was a rap at the door.

  Brian remembered that Carl had asked to listen to the news with him. The news was the last thing Brian wanted to listen to at that moment, and Carl was about the last person he wanted to see. But there was nothing to do about it now.

  Anne had gathered her things together, and now said to Brian, “Thank you.” They smiled at each other for a moment.

  The knock at the door was repeated, a little louder and more insistent.

  Anne went into the left-hand cubicle to hang her things up, closing the door of the cubicle quietly behind her. Brian glanced at the lab door, and said, “Come in.” He looked at his watch. It was a few seconds before eight. Brian could scarcely believe it. He seemed to have lived several weeks since he’d pulled into the parking lot. Actually, a little over half an hour had passed.

  Then the lab door opened and a frowning Carl came in. “Anne here?”

  “She got in a few minutes ago. Sure you don’t want to listen to that news down in your lab? I don’t think anyone would hang you for it.”

  Carl shook his head. “This would be the wrong morning. The chief’s in a terrible frame of mind.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “As nearly as I can figure it out, he had a bad dream.”

  Brian blinked.

  Carl said defensively, “I know. It sounds crazy. But he’s got Donovan and Maclane tearing around like wild tigers. Come on, let’s listen to that news and then I can get back to work.”

  They went into Brian’s cubicle and turned up the volume of the radio. For a moment they were treated to an unctuous voice describing the wisdom of a local firm of stockbrokers. Then there was a news item neither of them were interested in. Brian by this time had lost interest in the news about the Afghanistan cryogenics lab, and walked out to see what he had to do today. He had a check list thumb-tacked to a small bulletin board and was glancing at it when he heard the announcer say, “Dr. Wienko said the low-temperature research into the relationship of the structure of Helium Four with its strange properties was only one aspect of the Helmand laboratory's work. Here is a portion of the interview.”

  “. . . Would you say, then, Doctor, that the researches are a danger to the world at large?”

  “Not a danger to the world, no. But to civilization as we know it, yes.”

  “This isn’t a question of a great explosion, a great deal of destruction?”

  “You don’t need a great explosion to create a great deal of destruction. Take modern industry and break the wires that bring electricity to the factories. That is all you need to do. If you can keep the wires broken, the industry is as useless as if you blew it up with a hydrogen explosion. No, this is not a question of an explosion. It is an entirely different kind of thing.”

  “How is it different?”

  “Well, past research has discovered for us laws of nature. Then we have built on these laws of nature.”

  “And this is different from that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But all science can do, Doctor, is to discover facts, deduce theories, find out which theories are true laws of nature. Isn’t that so? How can there be anything different?”

  “Because science is not standing still. As we work down closer to the core of things, we discover that our first conclusions were naive. We did not know as much as we thought we knew. We assumed that when we found a law of 'nature, it was invariable. That was ignorance on our part.”

  “Do you mean that a law of nature is—that it can be changed?”

  “That is right. We have here the key to pursuade nature to do things differently, in a limited region of space. But this is dangerous. It is like undermining the ground on which you have your house.”

  “Might this be a key to antigravity, as it’s called?”

  “It might, but that is a comparatively constructive use. What I speak of are certain processes in nature that are more vulnerable to interference than we realized. On some of these processes, we have built our present civilization. And as we have built, we have cast aside what went before. Consider the position of electricity at present. If electricity should fail, what would happen to our civilization?”

  “And you
believe that these experiments could cause electrical trouble?”

  “I have no doubt of it. It has happened before. On one occasion, we had already a temporary failure of electrical power in an approximately circular region with a radius of more than nine kilometers.”

  “Did you object at that time to the experiments?”

  “Not at all. The experiments are very necessary.”

  “Then why do you object now?”

  “We have made improvements and refinements in the apparatus. The vacuum is harder, the temperatures lower, the materials purer. My colleagues feel that this wilt make a noticeable but not large change. My studies convince me that, on the contrary, there will be a marked and decisive change. The radius of the surface area affected will be on the order of one thousand times as great. Possibly the effect will show new characteristics when it occurs on so large a scale. In any event, the result will be the destruction of civilization as we know it. Modern industrial civilization is in great danger at this moment.”

  The voice cut off, and the announcer said, “That report came from Pakistan, where a Soviet scientist has just defected to the West. There was fresh trouble in the Middle East last night—”

  Brian turned off the radio.

  Carl said, “He claims that their experiment is likely to cause widespread power failure? Is that right?”

  “As nearly as I could tell, he claims it will cause widespread irreparable power failure.”

  “Then I guess we wasted time listening to it,” Carl countered. “There is no irreparable power failure.”

  Carl looked around, obviously wondering where Anne was.

  A pounding of heavy heels going past in the hall outside attracted their attention.

  “Oh-oh,” said Carl. “It sounds like something is going on out there. I’d better get back in circulation.”

  The minute he’d harried out, Anne opened the door of her little office. Her face was very pale.

  Brian, alarmed, said, “What is it, Anne?”

  For a moment she seemed unable to speak, then she said, “Brian, that’s what Daddy’s dream was about.”

  It took Brian a few moments to realize what she meant. “Listen,” he said, “does your father have a radio in his room?”

  “Yes, he has a little portable I got him last Christmas.” “Could he have left it on last night?”

  “I suppose so. Why?”

  “Suppose he were lying there, slightly feverish, and the radio wasn’t turned all the way off. Then, Suppose this report came on and he heard it just as he fell asleep. He could very well have imagined he dreamed it.”

  She said, “That could be it. He might have turned the volume control way down without remembering to actually turn the switch.” She sounded relieved. “That could have happened.”

  Brian said, “I don’t claim to know much about electronics, but according to Carl there is no way to permanently cut off electrical power.”

  Anne smiled. “That’s a relief to me. I’m sorry I made such a fuss.”

  Brian smiled. “Is my dinner invitation still good?” “You know it is.”

  “Well, let’s see what we have to do today.” He crossed the room to study his check list. Anne came over to stand beside him. Brian felt the sense of deep contentment that rarely comes to a man, and seldom lasts long even then. He had a job that he enjoyed, in a company that he wanted to work for, and Anne, he realized with a wonderful certainty, liked him—just as he liked her. For a moment, everything seemed perfect.

  And then, overhead, the lights went out.

  Anne’s hand gripped his arm. Brian frowned, opened the door, and glanced out in the hall. The hall lights were out.

  Anne said, “Oh, Brian. I’m afraid.”

  “It may be just a local power failure. Let’s see if there’s anything about it on the radio.”

  He snapped on the portable radio. Nothing happened. He turned the volume control high and swung the tuning knob from one end of the dial to the other.

  There was no sound.

  He clicked the radio off, then on again. Still no sound. He picked up the phone that sat on his desk. There was no hum, buzz, or sound of any kind.

  He dialed the operator. Nothing. He realized that his heart was hammering, and that he was on the edge of panic.

  With an effort, he compelled himself to breathe slowly and steadily, calmly, and to sit down and methodically think things over.

  Anne was watching him tensely.

  Merely looking at her was such a pleasure to Brian that abruptly his sense of tension snapped, and he could think clearly. He said, “Don’t you have a little flashlight you carry in your purse?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Would you get it? And I should have a big one here in this desk, somewhere.”

  Brian was thinking that lights could be cut off by a power failure, and so could a number of broadcasting stations, if the failure were widespread enough, but flashlights carried their own power with them.

  He slid open the drawers of his desk, looking for his flashlight.

  Anne came back from her cubicle, a stricken look on her face. She was holding a little pocket flashlight. “It doesn’t work. The light doesn’t work any more.”

  Brian suddenly realized that the anguish in her voice was not for the bulb that didn’t light. She was undoubtedly thinking of her father’s dream.

  Brian found his flashlight, tipped it so he could see the bulb, and pressed the switch forward. The bulb remained dark.

  Brian took the batteries out. He remembered putting them in, fresh, not long before. He hadn’t used the light enough for the batteries to grow weak, and so far as he could tell from looking at them,, there was nothing wrong. He tried the flashlight using an extra bulb; it still didn’t work. He was putting it back in the desk drawer when he realized that, for some reason, the flashlight felt strange.

  Puzzled, Brian took it out and looked at it. The finish looked somewhat dull and lusterless, but then, though the batteries and bulb were new, he’d had the flashlight itself for several years. He felt the smooth surface of the metal, couldn’t pin down what was wrong, and impatiently put the flashlight back in the drawer.

  Anne still stood in the doorway, holding the little pocket flashlight. Her face showed concern.

  Before Brian could say anything, the lab door opened.

  Carl, his face tense, said, “Brian, Anne, the chief wants you.”

  Cardan, a powerfully built man who looked to be in his middle forties, was seated at his desk, a smoldering stub of cigar clenched in one corner of his mouth. On the desk were a couple of dry cells, cut open; a flashlight, taken apart; and a glass jar with two metal strips immersed in a clear solution, a wire running from each of the metal strips to connect with a meter lying on the desk.

  Donovan, a tall blond-haired man, was leaning across the desk, examining the connections. A slender, sharp-featured man named Maclane, standing beside Donovan, said to Cardan, “You dreamed this would happen?”

  Cardan put the smoldering stub of his cigar in the ash tray, and, scowling, pulled open a desk drawer and selected a fresh cigar. He lit it from the stub, sat for a moment blowing out a cloud of smoke, then shook his head.

  “What I dreamt was this nightmare, all right. Electricity vanished from the face of the earth—” He seemed bewildered. “We’ve .got to find out what’s going on.” He glanced up, nodded to Brian and Anne, then glanced back at Maclane.

  “Mac, suppose you get some men started checking every

  form of electricity. Try every electrical power source— battery, generator, magneto—whatever you can think of. If that doesn’t work, try generating static electricity. Go at it from every angle conceivable.”

  “I’ll get right to it,” Maclane said on his way out. Cardan glanced at Donovan. “Don, suppose you circulate around and find out about other energy sources. You might start by checking our experimental cars down in the lot. That lightweight gas turbine and the new stea
m engine ought to be down there. See how they work.”

  “Okay, Chief.”

  Carl, Anne and Brian came in as Donovan went out. Cardan glanced at Anne, his expression softening slightly. “Can you run a series of standard chemical reactions to see if, from a chemist’s viewpoint, everything is apparently normal and as it should be?”

  Anne nodded

  Cardan said, “Good. Go to it.”

  Anne hurried out of the room. Cardan eyed Brian and Carl for a moment. “You two feel tough?”

  Carl grinned. “Hard as nails, Chief.”

  Brian noticed the glint in Cardan’s eyes. There was something about the way Cardan sat there, speculatively watching them, the smoking cigar in his raised hand, that was a challenge.

  “What,” said Brian, “did you have in mind?”

  Cardan drew on the cigar, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “The news this morning told of a Russian lab in Afghanistan, and of one of their men who quit, claiming what they were doing in the lab might knock out electricity a long distance away. Not too long after that, our lights, phone, and radio went off, and we haven’t been able to raise so much as a dull glow in any piece of electrical apparatus since. It’s natural to put two and two together and conclude the Russian lab is responsible. But Afghanistan is a long distance from here. Before we jump to conclusions, we want to know what it’s like outside. We need to know if the electricity has been knocked out all over the city. If it is, what things will be like out there after this goes on for a while is hard to say. I want a pair of men to go out there and see what’s going on. Are you willing?”

  “I’m willing,” Brian agreed.

  Carl said, “Sure.”

  “Okay,” said Cardan. “Look around and see if you can get some idea just how far this lack of electricity extends. There are bound to be effects we wouldn’t think of offhand. Find out all you can. See how people are reacting. Then get back and let us know.”

  Brian and Carl nodded their agreement at the same time, and turned toward the door.

  Cardan called, “Wait a minute.”

  They turned around.