____________________________
[A TRILOGY OF ABRIDGED VISIONS FROM THE FUTURE]
I. DESCENDANTS OF THE SUN
A Fantasy
He had been a tender, doleful child who loved his mother, the hand-made withy fences, the open field, and the sky above all these things. < … > No one could foresee what the boy would become. And he—he grew, and always more irrepressibly and alarmingly seethed within him stifled, repressed, shackled forces. He dreamed pure, blue, joyful dreams, and could not recall a single one in the morning—the early serene sunlight would greet him and everything inside him would grow quiet, fade from memory and subside. But he grew as he dreamed; the day held only flaming sunlight, wind, and the melancholy dust of the road.
He grew up in the great epoch of electricity and the restructuring of the globe. The thunder of labor shook the Earth, and no one had looked at the sky for a long time—every gaze was directed at the Earth, all hands were occupied. The radio’s electromagnetic waves were whispering through the atmosphere and the interstellar ether, the challenging words of Man—the builder. Ever more insistently, unbearably, thoughts and machines were penetrating unknown, unconquered, rebellious matter and molding it into Mankind’s slave.
The Principal Director of the projects reshaping the globe was the engineer Vogulov, a gray, hunched individual with flashing hate-filled eyes—it was that very same tender boy. He directed a million armies of workers who dug deep into the Earth with machines and were transforming its aspect, making it into a home for Mankind. Vogulov worked without respite, without sleep, with a burning hatred in his heart, with fury, with madness, and with a restless, unflagging genius. < … > His charge was to regulate the intensity and direction of the winds through changing the topology of the Earth’s surface, and by digging new canals in the mountains to promote air circulation and wind flow so as to divert warm or cold ocean currents into the interior of continents by means of canals.
At first one had to invent an explosive compound of such power that an army of workers twenty or thirty thousand strong might send the Himalayas into the stratosphere. < … > And Vogulov found a means of super-charging light’s electromagnetic waves—ultra-light—an energy that would explode back into the world, to its “normal” state with a strange, annihilating, incredible force that numbers alone could not express. Vogulov was content with this discovery, as there was enough of ultra-light energy to fashion the Earth into a home for Man.
They tested ultra-light in the Carpathians. Into a small tunnel they rolled a cart with a charge of ultra-light, then released the inhibitor which maintained the ultra-light in its abnormal state—and a flame howled over Europe, a hurricane swept through the nations, lightning began to rage in the atmosphere, and the Atlantic ocean began to heave sighs from its very depths, blanketing islands with millions of tons of water. Abysses of granite, spiraling, were borne up to the clouds. Heated to an incalculable temperature they were transmuted into the lightest of gases, and the gases were borne into the highest layers of the atmosphere, where whey somehow bonded with the ether and broke away from the Earth forever. Of the Carpathians there remained not a grain of sand as a souvenir. The Carpathians had resettled themselves in closer proximity to the stars. Vogulov’s idea had transformed matter into very nearly nothing.
A month later they did the same thing in Asia with several portions of the Hingan and the Sayan ranges. And a month after that, in the Siberian tundra timid flowers were already blooming and warm caressing rains were falling; airplanes flew, trains moved in, and deep into the Earth were sunk as foundations the ponderous frames of factories.
Vogulov had at his command millions of machines and hundreds of thousands of technicians. Mankind was struggling with Nature in rage and fury. Teeth of consciousness and iron had seized upon matter and were masticating it. Working frenzy overcame Mankind. Labor intensity was raised to the limit—to go further led to the destruction of the body, the rupture of muscles, and insanity. The papers hailed the projects as if transmitting sermons. Composers with their orchestras played The Symphony of the Will and Elemental Consciousness in the recreation halls at mountain and canal sites; Man was rebelling against the Universe, armed not with a dream but with Consciousness and the Machine. < … >
Yet in rare moments of forgetfulness or ecstasy Vogulov’s expanding mind would register flashes of a thought which did not belong to the present day. Only the mind and a flame of consciousness, which with time and work was growing more and more powerful, remained in Vogulov. To this point men had been dreamers, fainthearted poets in the likeness of women and sobbing children. They were incapable and unworthy of understanding the world. The horrifying clashes of matter, the whole of the monstrous, self-devouring universe, was unknown to them. What man needed was fierce intelligence, flintier and more real than matter itself, in order to comprehend the world, to descend into its very depths, fearing nothing, to traverse an entire hell of learning and labor to its end and to re-author the Universe. For this one must have hands that were more merciless and hard than the fists of that savage creator who once upon a time, in jest, had placed the stars within the vastness of space.
And Vogulov made the decision to re-create the Universe with ultra-light. < … > To accomplish this he invented a photo-electro-magnetic resonating transformer; a device which transformed light’s electro-magnetic waves into eveready electric current, good for powering motors. Vogulov simply “cooled” light rays received from space, impeded the infra-spectrum, and derived waves of the necessary length and frequency. Unconsciously and to his own surprise he had solved what historically had been the greatest energy question of mankind: how to derive the greatest quantity of power with the smallest expenditure of force. The expenditure in this case was negligible—the fabrication of the resonating transformers needed to turn light into current—while the quantity of energy derived was, strictly speaking, infinite, since the universe is made up of light. The world’s energy status, and therefore the economic status, were turned upside down: for mankind there dawned a truly Golden Age—the Universe was working for Man, nourishing him and making him happy.
Vogulov was compelling the Universe to work in his laboratories, fabricating ultra-light, in order to destroy that universe. But this was the least of it: Man was working too slowly and lazily to produce the required number of resonators—millions of them—in a short time. The tempo of work had to be increased to extremes, and Vogulov inoculated the working masses with energy microbes. He took for this purpose an element of the infra-spectrum with its horrific impulse towards maximal status—towards light—he grew cultures and colonies, trillions of these elements, and sowed them throughout the atmosphere. And man began to die in the heat of his labors, to write books celebrating pure courage, to love as Dante had loved, and to live not years but rather days. And man did not regret this.
The first year produced one hundred cubic kilometers of ultra-light. Vogulov had thought to double the production each year, so that in a little over three years the one thousand cubic kilometers of ultra-light would be ready. Humanity lived within a hurricane. A day equaled a millennium in the production of goods. The swift, whirlwind rise of generations created an completely new type of human being—possessed of furious energy and radiant genius.
The energy microbe had made eternity unnecessary—a brief instant was enough to drain the cup of Life dry and to perceive Death as the fulfillment of a joyful instinct.
* * *
And no one knew the heart or the suffering of Vogulov—the Engineer. Such a heart and such a soul should not live in a human being. At twenty-two he had fallen in love with a girl who had died a week after they met. For three years Vogulov had wandered the Earth in madness and grief, he sobbed along desert roads, prayed, cursed and howled. He was so frightening that the courts ordered his destruction. He suffered and grieved so intensely that he could not die. His whole body became one wound, and began to decay. The soul within him had destroyed itself.
And then he experienced an organic catastrophe: the power of love and the energy of his heart rushed to his brain, burst his skull and engendered a brain of heretofore unseen, incredible power.
But nothing had really changed—it was only that love had been transformed into thought and thought—full of hatred and despair—was destroying the world which made it impossible to have the one thing a human being needs—the soul of another …
Vogulov was going to shatter the universe without fear or pity, yet aching for what was irretrievably lost, what gives Man life and what he needs—not bye and bye, but now. And Vogulov wished to create this impossible thing—now.
Only one who loves understands the Impossible, and only he desires it in deadly earnest and will make it possible, no matter the path that leads him there.
1922
II. From THE LUNAR PROBE
Kreizkopf’s Plan
The Engineer Peter Kreizkopf, a miner’s son, was in his nation’s capitol for the first time. The whirlwind of automobiles and the roar of underground railways cast him into rapture. The city, it seemed, must be populated entirely by mechanics! But no factories were to be seen—Kreizkopf was sitting on a bench in the central park, while the factories stood on the marshes of the city’s outskirts, where the canal water was piped, beyond the global aerodromes. < … >
The train had arrived early, but that strange city was already awake, as it never slept. Its life consisted of steadily accelerated motion. The city had no connection with nature: it was a concrete and metal oasis, closed in on itself, completely isolated and alone in the abyss of the world.
A luxurious theater built in dark matte stone attracted Kreizkopf’s gaze. The theater was so large it could have been a hangar for airships. Grief pierced Peter Kreizkopf’s heart: his young wife Erna, once in love with him, had remained in Karbomort, the coal town Peter had left behind. He had cautioned her: “It’s not worth it to divorce, Erna. You and I have lived together for seven years. Things will get easier. I’ll go to city and work on my “lunar probe”—they’ll pay me well, for sure they will.”
But Erna had grown tired of promises, tired of the coal mine’s black fog, of Karbomort’s narrow life and the monotonously identical faces of its unchanging technical personnel. She was especially tired of Peter’s friends—narrow specialists who consciously considered themselves to be atoms of human knowledge. The witticism most frequently heard by Erna were the words of one of these co-workers, Mertz, “We live in order to know.”
—But what you don’t know—replied Erna—is that people don’t live in order to know …
Peter understood both Erna and his friends, but they did not really understand him. Erna, an aristocrat, the daughter of an important coal-producer, Sorbonne educated, hated Peter’s friends—the craftsmen, electricians and inventors who would sit in her living room and argue pointlessly with Peter until midnight. Kreizkopf knew that he had little in common with Erna: he, an autodidact and engineer by calling—and she, mistress of the latest “flowers of culture” which he understood not at all.
So Erna had left him and returned to her own circle.
Kreizkopf missed her, he had no idea what to do with himself, alone in a crowd of people.
* * *
The general bustle, the advertisements, the smell of exhaust and the roar of raging machinery magnified Kreizkof’s grief tenfold. He recalled past years of his life, full of labor, faith in humanity, technical creativity and devotion to his beloved wife. Now it had all been destroyed by inexplicable factors: people had deceived and betrayed him, his work seemed worthless to them, his wife had fallen in love with someone else and begun to hate him, his creativity had brought him loneliness and poverty. [He nonetheless continues with his project, procuring the necessary government funds, ed.] < … >
His “lunar probe” project envisioned a transport device capable of movement in any gaseous medium within or beyond the atmosphere. A metallic sphere, loaded with the necessary weight, was to be fixed on the disk’s periphery: the disk itself would have a horizontal, vertical or tangential orientation to the Earth’s surface—depending on where the probe was to be sent. The disk was given a rotational speed appropriate to its destination. Upon achieving the RPM necessary for its path the sphere would obediently detach itself and head off on a path tangential to the disk by centrifugal force. The disk’s safe landing was secured by the automaton in the probe itself; on approach to a hard surface current was switched off to the automaton, and a certain amount of fuel was ignited, its force directed in the same direction as the flight. The recoil resulted in a slowdown, and free fall was transformed into a smooth, safe descent. < … >
Everyone who was anyone came to the launch site. < … > There was magnificent lighting, music, drinks, kvass and ice cream were served, hovering taxis gathered—the usual accompaniments of an unusual event. Three minutes before the stroke of midnight the disk began to rotate. The motor roared, five gigantic fans blew clouds of cold air through the rumbling, heating engine—and the air that escaped was dry, hard and white-hot, like a desert whirlwind. The oil in the machinery was cooled by icy streams from the centrifugal pumps, and even so a corrosive smoke hung about the disk and the entire installation; the housings were heating up excessively, the oil was burning on the ice. In spite of its precise mounting, the disk rumbled like a cannonade or an erupting volcano: so high was its rate of rotation. Its circumference was smoking due to air friction < … > [The craft’s lift-off was successful, ed.]
Here are Kreizkopf’s bulletins from space, in the order in which they were received:
1. Nothing to report. The dials show a coal-black sky. Stars of an incredible brightness. < … >
2. Numerous blue flames have passed over the probe. I have discovered no cause for this. The temperature has not risen.
3. The flight continues. I sense no motion, of course. All controls are in good order.
4. The moon seems to be falling onto my probe. A freakish fireball shot by on a parallel course with the probe. The probe has now outdistanced it.
5. The probe is progressing with sharp jolts. Strange forces are twisting its trajectory, throwing it into pockets and causing it to seriously overheat, although we must be surrounded by the ether.
6. The jolts are intensifying. I am sensing motion. The instruments buzz from the shaking. The landscape of the Universe resembles the painting by Churlionis—“The Call of the Stars” from the Cosmic Ocean.
7. The pitching continues. Stars literally ring as they speed along their courses. Naturally their motion disturbs the electromagnetic field, and my universal receiver transforms the waves into songs. Announce that I am at the source of earthly poetry: someone on Earth guessed the existence of the Star symphonies and, inspired, wrote poems. Report that the Astral Song physically exists. Also report: this is a symphony and not a cacophony. Launch as many human beings as possible into space on interplanetary craft—it is frightening, disturbing, yet everything becomes clear. Invent receivers for this astral sound.
8. The flight is now smooth—no jarring. One half of space is taken up by violet rays that flow like mist. What this is I don’t know.
9. I have discovered an electromagnetic ocean.
10. There is no hope of returning to Earth, I am flying through a blue dawn. The dials indicate the electrical charge of the surrounding medium to be 800, 000 volts.
11. The moon is approaching. The charge is 2, 000, 000 volts. Darkness.
12. An abyss of electricity. My dials no longer function. Fantastic happenings. The Sun roars and small comets shriek as they speed by. You see and hear nothing through the mica of the atmosphere.
13. Meteor clouds. Judging by their brightness and electromagnetic attractivity meteors are metallic. Larger meteors are flickering like candles or lamps; I see nothing here that would cause it.
14. The electromagnetic waves among which I find myself have the property of arousing in me powerful, irrepressible, uncontrolled thoughts. I cannot deal with these promptings. I am no longer in control of my brain, although I resist it with all my strength, pouring with sweat. I am unable to think what I wish or about what I wish. I incessantly think about things I do not know; I constantly recall events—exploding nebulae, a bursting sun—all remembered as actual and real, but which I have never experienced. I am thinking of two distinct selves who await me on a stern knoll on which stand two rotten trunks, and on these there is frozen milk. I am invariably thirsty and steadfastly want to conserve my supplies. I eat a minnow, but want to eat a shark. I will attempt to conquer these thoughts which are engendered by electricity and which eat into my brain as lice do a sleeping body.
15. I have just returned from the perpendicular mountains where I saw the world of mummies lying in the careless grass … (The signals are incomprehensible. Academician Lesuren’s notes.) All is clear: the moon is 100 kilometers away. Its influence on the brain is terrifying—I think not my thoughts, but those induced by the Moon. The foregoing is not to be considered sane. I am lying here like a pale corpse: the Moon incessantly nourishes me with white-hot intellect. It seems to me that my craft is an entity aware of itself, and that the radio is muttering to itself.
16. The Moon is passing by at a distance of 40 kilometers: wasteland, dead mineral and platinum twilight. I am passing by slowly, at no more than 50 kilometers per hour by visual reckoning.
17. The Moon has hundreds of surface chinks. From the chinks is emanating a sparse blue or green gas … I have mastered myself and become accustomed to this.
18. From some of the lunar chinks the gas emerges in the form of a whirlwind: is this a chemical element or the thought processes of a living being? … Thought processes, certainly; the Moon is a self-contained and monstrous brain.
19. I cannot determine the cause of the gaseous emissions: I believe I will open the hatch of my probe and jump out, it will be easier for me. I will go blind in the darkness of this probe, I am weary of seeing the unfolding universe only through the eyes of my dials.
20. I am heading into the gaseous clouds of the lunar emissions. Millennia have passed since the moment I was severed from Earth. Are you alive, you to whom I signal these words, do you hear me? (19 hours have passed since the moment of Kreizkopf’s departure. Academician Lesuren’s Notes)
21. The Moon is beneath me. My probe is descending. The surface chinks are radiating gas. I no longer hear the astral progression.
22. Tell them, tell everyone, that humans are very much mistaken. The world does not correspond to their knowledge. Do you or don’t you see the catastrophe on the Milky Way: a transverse blue stream is roaring. This is not a nebula and not an asterism.
23. The probe is descending. I am opening the hatch to find myself a way out. Farewell.
(1926)
III. From the ETHER CHANNEL
[The Kirpichnikovs’ quest]
Mikhail Yeremeevich Kirpichnikov was an electrical engineer and research associate in the Department of Electron Biology, established after the death of Professor F. K. Popov and based on his achievements. Ten years had passed since the death of Popov, but before Kirpichnikov could truly devote his time to the continuation of Popov’s research, he had to deal with more immediate tasks. This time he was sent to the Nizhnekolymsky tundra—as a project supervisor on the construction of a vertical tunnel. The purpose of the installation was to capture the heat energy of the Earth’s interior.
Kirpichnikov’s family remained in Moscow, and he set out alone. The vertical thermal tunnel was an experimental project of the Yakutsk governmental council. If the results were successful, they proposed to cover the entire Arctic region of the Asian continent with a network of such tunnels; the loss of heat-energy from the tunnels would be prevented with an electrical transmission, bringing culture, productivity and a human population to the shores of the Arctic Ocean at the end of a power cord.
But the chief motive behind the tunnel works was the fact that on the plains of the tundra had been found the remains of marvelous unknown cultures and countries. The soil and subsoil of the tundra were not of continental or paleo-geological origin, but were in fact alluvial. Moreover, these alluvial deposits had covered over and entombed an entire succession of ancient human cultures. But thanks to the fact that this funereal shroud laid over the corpses of mysterious civilizations consisted of a band of permafrost, those interred and the structures they had built were preserved like provisions in a can—intact, fresh and unharmed.
Even the little that had been discovered by chance in spots where the surface of the tundra had collapsed presented material of unprecedented significance and timeless value. The corpses of four men and two women had been found there. The women’s rosy cheeks and the light fragrance of their long hygienic garments had been preserved. One of the men had a book in his pocket—it was small, embellished with an elegant script; its contents were assumed to be an outline of the principles of individual immortality in a precise scientific light. The book described experiments in preventing the death of some sort of small creature with a life-span of four days. This creature’s biosphere (its own food, air, body, etc.) had been subjected to the sustained influence of electromagnetic waves; moreover, each type of wave had been calibrated to destroy a particular kind of harmful microbe in the creature’s body. Maintaining the experimental creature in an electromagnetically sterilized field, it was thus possible to achieve a hundred-fold increase in its life-span.
Somewhat later they uncovered a pyramidal column of an unidentifiable stone. The perfection of its form was reminiscent of a lathe-turned artifact, but the column was forty meters high with a circumference of ten meters at the base.
The human corpses had swarthy complexions, rosy lips, low but broad foreheads. They were of small stature and barrel-chested, and each face bore a calm, peaceful, almost smiling grimace. Clearly either death had come upon them suddenly or, which was more likely, death for them was a sensation and a happening completely different from what we normally experience.
These discoveries inflamed the scientific passions of the entire world, and popular opinion demanded the cultivation of the tundra, with the goal of fully restoring the ancient world that lay beneath the soil of the frozen wasteland and perhaps extended out onto the floor of the Arctic Ocean.
The passion for knowledge became a new organic sense for man, just as demanding, incisive, and rich as the faculty of sight, or love. This sense sometimes superseded the immutable laws of economics and aspirations to the material well-being of society.
Here was the real reason for the installation of the first vertical thermal tunnel in the tundra.
A system of such tunnels was to lay the foundation of the tundra’s culture and economy, and thereafter serve as the key to open subterranean gates leading to an unknown but harmonious land, the discovery of which would be more significant than the invention of the first machine or Montblanc’s discovery of radium.
Many scholars thus saw within the bowels of the tundra the model anticipating the scientific, cultural and industrial growth for the next one or two hundred years in an already perfected form. All that remained was to remove the layer of permafrost, and history would leap a century or two into the future, and then resume its own tempo. Imagine the savings in labor and time which would result from this free gift of two centuries! No philanthropy in the history of mankind could compare with it! It was well worth digging a two-kilometer hole in the Earth for the sake of this accomplishment.
Kirpichnikov set out for the tundra, his fists clenched in joyful anticipation, feeling the goal that had been set for him would be a global victory, a marriage of the ancient world and the present.
It was certainly not simple to construct such a fabulous shaft and sink it into the tundra—a man tortures himself and others, errs and causes others to err, perishes and is reborn—all this on account of the fact that he is scaling the wall of History and of Nature. Yet, the tunnel was built; [it followed Kirpichnikov’s new design, which involved electromagnetic wave energy, and within eighteen months the inner-core heat of the Earth began to seep into the soil of tundra, melting tundra’s ice …]. < … >
* * *
[On the heels of the successful completion of his tundra project (ed.)] one thing continued to challenge Kirpichnikov and propel him into agitated searches everywhere—in books, among people, and others’ scientific studies—a thirst to complete the late Popov’s work on artificial multiplication of electron microbes and to find the technological implementation for his ether channel idea, so that one could provide ethereal feed to the microbe’s maw and accelerate thereby its life to a frenzied pace.
“The solution is simple—an electromagnetic channel …” Kirpichnikov muttered the last words of Popov’s unfinished work from time to time, and sought in vain that phenomenon or someone else’s idea which would enable him to solve the “ether channel” riddle. Kirpichnikov knew what such a channel could offer people: using ether, any natural body could be grown to any size. For example, one could take a one cubic centimeter bit of iron, hook it up to the channel, and lo and behold, this bit would grow before one’s eyes to the size of Mount Ararat, as the electrons within the iron would multiply.
Despite his diligence and his attachment to this one accursed idea for years, its solution continued to escape Kirpichnikov. While working on a thermal tunnel out in the tundra, he thought of nothing else all through the long, restless, troubling polar night. One other unsolved riddle in Popov’s works confused him: what made up the positive charge in the atom nucleus of the matter?
If microbes or all living bodies consist of pure negative electrons, what then is the material, and moreover positively charged, which is at the core of the tiny nucleus in the atom?
No one knew the answer. There were vague pointers to the answer and hundreds of hypotheses in scientific studies, but none of these satisfied Kirpichnikov. He was looking for a practical solution, the objective truth, and not the subjective satisfaction of the first, perhaps even brilliant, conjecture that came to hand—but one that did not fully accord with the structure of nature.
[One person possibly able to help him in his quest was Isaac Mathiessen, a friend and an engineer like himself, whom he hasn’t seen since their student days. Mathiessen lives in the village of Kochubary, fortuitously close to Voloshino in the Voronezh region, his wife’s beloved former place of residence and early work as a teacher. Having a good excuse for a leave after his eighteen-months absence from family in the tundra, Kirpichnikov decides to take his wife, Maria Alexandrovna, and their children to Voloshino, intending also to arrange a meeting with Mathiessen (ed.)] < … >
They reached Voloshino in just five days. The house where the Kirpichnikovs stayed had a cherry orchard, already bursting with buds, but not yet clothed in its white, indescribably touching attire. It continued warm. The days glowed so peacefully and happily, as if they were the morning of mankind’s millennial felicity.
The next day Kirpichnikov drove to see Mathiessen. Isaac was not at all surprised to see him arrive. Understanding his puzzlement over the indifferent reception, Mathiessen explained, “I observe far newer and more original phenomena every day.”
An hour later Mathiessen softened:
“Married, hell! You’ve gotten used to sentimentality. As for me, brother, work is a more lasting legacy than children! …” And Mathiessen burst out laughing, but so violently that wrinkles appeared across his bald skull. Clearly, his laughter was just as frequent as a solar eclipse.
“So, show and tell, how are you making a living, what are you doing, who are you in love with!” smiled Kirpichnikov.
“Aha, you’re curious! I approve and I salute you! … But listen, I’ll show you only the main work I’m doing, because I believe it’s completed. I won’t talk about the other studies—and don’t ask! …”
“Listen, Isaac!” said Kirpichnikov, “your work on machineless technology would interest me, remember? Or have you already forgotten the problem and gotten disenchanted with it?”
Mathiessen screwed up his eyes; he wanted to needle and surprise his friend, but forgetting all this, he sighed in futility, wrinkled his face, which was accustomed to immobility, and simply answered:
“I’ll show you right away, colleague Kirpichnikov!”
They crossed plantations, came out into the narrow valley of a small river, and stopped. Mathiessen straightened up, lifted his face to the horizon, as if surveying a million listeners on the slope of the hill, and declared to Kirpichnikov:
“I will tell you briefly, but you will understand: you’re an electrical engineer, and this is right up your alley! Only don’t interrupt: we’re both in a hurry—you to your wife (Mathiessen gave his laugh again—his bald spot was roiled with wrinkles and his jaws stood open—the rest of his face did not move), and I—to the soil.”
Kirpichnikov held his peace, and asked his question:
“But, Mathiessen, where is your equipment? You know I’m not here to listen to a lecture—I want to see your experiments!”
“You’ll have both, Kirpichnikov, both! And all the equipment is right here. If you don’t see it, it means you won’t hear and you won’t understand!”
“I am listening, Mathiessen!” Kirpichnikov hurried him on curtly.
“So, you’re listening. Then I’m talking.” Mathiessen picked up a little stone, flung it forcefully over the river, and began: “It is visible even to the naked eye that every body emits electromagnetic energy if that body is subjected to convulsive movement or to alteration. That’s right, isn’t it? And the radiation of a bundle of electromagnetic waves of such and such wavelength and such and such period corresponds—precisely, uniquely, individually—to each alteration. In a word, the radiation depends on the degree of alteration, of reorganization of the experimental body. Going on … Thought, being a process that reorganizes the brain, forces the brain to emit electromagnetic waves into space. But thought depends on what a person has concretely in mind—the nature and the degree of change in the structure of the brain also depends on that. The waves themselves depend in turn on the alteration of the brain structure. The thinking, disintegrating brain creates electromagnetic waves, and creates them distinctly in each case: depending on what thought has reorganized the brain. Everything clear, Kirpichnikov?”
“Certainly,” confirmed Kirpichnikov. “Go on!”
Mathiessen sat down on a hillock, rubbed his tired eyes, and continued:
“I have found experimentally that one strictly determinate thought corresponds to each kind of wave. Of course, I’m generalizing and schematizing somewhat to facilitate your understanding. In fact it’s all much more complicated. In this way. I have built a universal receiver—a resonator that picks up and records waves of any length and any period. But I will tell you that even a single, extremely insignificant and brief thought elicits an entire extremely complex system of waves.
“But nevertheless, an already known, experimentally established system of waves corresponds to an idea, for instance the “accursed power” (do you remember this pre revolutionary term?). This system will differ little from person to person.
“And so I connected my resonator-receiver with a system of relays (which open the circuit to a strong current, but which are themselves turned on by a weak current) and expediting apparatuses and mechanisms, technically complex but simple and unitary in design. But this system needs further fine-tuning and improvement. Eventually it should be distributed throughout the world for universal use. So far I’ve been working on a small area and for a specific range of thoughts.
“Now take a look! See, I’ve planted a cabbage bed over there on the other bank. You can see it’s already dried up from the lack of rain. Now watch: I’m thinking clearly and even talking out loud, though talking isn’t obligatory: i-r-r-i-g-a-t-e! Look at the other bank, chief! …”
Kirpichnikov looked at the opposite bank of the little river and immediately noticed a small irrigation pump, half-hidden by a bush, and some sort of compact instrument. Probably the resonator-receiver, Kirpichnikov guessed.
After Mathiessen had spoken the word “irrigate,” the pumping unit began to operate, the pump began to draw water from the river, and small fountains, spraying tiny droplets, began to strike the entire cabbage patch from nozzle-tipped sprinklers. The sun’s rainbow played in the little fountains and the entire patch began to make sounds and came alive: the pump buzzed, the moisture fizzed, the soil became saturated, and the young plants freshened.
Mathiessen and Kirpichnikov stood quietly some twenty meters from this strange independent world and observed.
“Do you see what human thought has become? The impact of intelligent will! Isn’t that true?”
Mathiessen smiled dolefully with his lifeless face.
Kirpichnikov felt a hot burning current in his heart and in his brain—the same as had struck him the moment he met his future wife. And yet Kirpichnikov also was aware in himself of some kind of secret shame and silent timidity—feelings that inhere in every murderer when murder has been committed in the interests of the whole world. In Kirpichnikov’s eyes, Mathiessen had clearly violated nature. And the crime was that neither Mathiessen himself nor all mankind had yet to make of themselves gems more precious than nature. To the contrary, nature was still more profound, greater, wiser, and more variegated than any human being.
Mathiessen explained:
“The whole thing is extremely simple! A human being, in this case I, is in the domain of actuating mechanisms, and his thought (for example, “irrigate”) has the potential of actuating machines: this is how they are constructed. the thought—irrigate—is received by the resonator. A strictly unique system of waves corresponds to this thought. It is precisely only waves of such and such wavelength and such and such period, such as are equivalent to the thought, “irrigate,” that close the circuit of those relays in the actuating mechanisms that control irrigation. That is, the circuit is directly opened there to the current and the electrical motor-pump begins to operate. Therefore, water glistens under the cabbage roots the very instant after the person’s thought—irrigate.
“The purpose of high technology is to free man from working with his muscles. It will suffice to think out what would be needed for a star to change its course … But I want to reach the point of managing without actuating mechanisms and without any intermediaries, of acting on nature directly and without mediation—by sheer perturbation of the brain. I am sure of the success of machineless technology. I know that mere contact between man and nature—thoughts—is sufficient to control the entire substance of the world! You’ve understood! … I will explain. You see, there is a place, a core, in each body, such that if it is clicked, the entire body is yours: do whatever you like with it! And if you prick the body where necessary and when necessary, it will do what you compel it to do by itself! That’s why I believe that the electromagnetic force emitted by the human brain in the course of any thinking is entirely sufficient to so prick nature that it will be ours! …”
Kirpichnikov shook Mathiessen’s hand as he said good-bye, then embraced him and said with warmth and complete sincerity:
“Thanks, Isaac! Thanks, my friend! You know, there is just one other problem equal to yours! But it is still not solved, and yours is almost there … Good-bye! Thanks again! Everyone should work the way you do—with keen intelligence and a cool heart! So long!”
“Good-bye,” answered Mathiessen, and, without taking his shoes off, started to wade to the other side of his little shallow river.
* * *
While Kirpichnikov was on vacation in Voloshino, a sensation shook the world. In the Bol’sheozersky tundra Professor Gomonov’s expedition had unearthed two mummies: a man and a woman lay together in an embrace upon a well-preserved carpet. The carpet was light blue in color and unfigured, covered over with the soft pelt of an unknown animal. The couple lay clothed in thick, seamlessly woven fabric of dark hues, closely embroidered with depictions of a tall, elegant plant topped by a double-petaled blossom. The man was elderly, the woman young. It was likely that they were father and daughter. Their faces and bodies were like those found in the Nizhnekolymsky tundra. There was the same expression on their calm faces—a slight smile, a suggestion of pity or pensiveness—as if a warrior had conquered an impregnable marble city, but, amid the statuary, edifices, and unfamiliar structures had fallen and died from exhaustion and amazement.
The man was holding the woman close, as if to defend her peace and chastity in death. Under the carpet on which these long-dead inhabitants of the ancient tundra reposed were found two books—one was printed in the same script as the book found on the Nizhnekolymsky tundra, the other bore different characters. These characters were not letters, but a sort of ideograph system, in which each ideograph had a precise correspondence to a particular concept. There were an extraordinary number of ideographs, and in consequence five years were spent deciphering them. The book was then translated and published under the supervision of the Academy of Philological Studies. A portion of the text in the unearthed volume remained unintelligible since some sort of chemical compound, doubtless found in the carpet, had irremediably damaged the precious pages—they had blackened, and no reagent could clarify the ideographic signs they bore.
The content of the discovered works was abstract philosophy and, to a certain extent, historical sociology. Nevertheless the compositions were so profoundly interesting, both for their thematics and their brilliant style, that in the course of two months the book went through eleven editions.
Kirpichnikov ordered a copy. He was leaving no stone unturned in his single-minded search—for assistance in solving the ether channel enigma.
Returning home from his visit with Matthiesen, he had felt that something was coming together in his mind. This made him very happy, but once again it all dispersed—and Kirpichnikov saw that Matthiesen’s research had only the most distant connection with his own tormenting problem.
When the book arrived Kirpichnilov plunged into it, hounded by an single idea, searching between the lines for a cryptic hint pointing to the solution of his own problem. Despite the wild improbability, the madness, of looking for help with the discovery of the ether channel in the Lakes culture, Kirpichnikov read through the works of the long-dead philosopher with bated breath.
The composition did not have the name of its author, it was called “The Songs of Aiuna.” Having read it, Kirpichnikov was not struck—the composition contained nothing remarkable: “How boring,” he observed. “Even out on the tundra they couldn’t think sensibly! It’s all love, creativity, and the soul. But where’s the bread,—and where’s the iron?”
* * *
Kirpichnikov got seriously depressed, as all humans inevitably do. He was already past thirty. His ether channel generators stood silent, underscoring his confusion. He ceaselessly pondered Popov’s words: “Simple solution—an electromagnetic track …” but the result was always another conundrum. An ether feed-line into the electron eluded him. [He felt he could not go on living just for the sake of the bliss offered by marriage. Spending nights working on a solution to the Ether tract idea, he felt uneasy with the directionless comfort offered at home. Remembering another conversation with Popov, during which the latter likened Earth to a giant spaceship created for true seekers rather than home-dwellers, he simply decided to leave his sleeping family one night without saying a good by. His search for a solution to Popov’s problem lead him eventually to America, where he hoped to find the secret of the composition of rose-oil, which he believed to be a substitute for the elixir of life. After some agonizing months of search he was no closer to it. Then he read by chance an ad in a Chicago daily, placed there by his wife, who begged him to come home. As he decided to go, he could not know that Mathiessen continued his research during his absence and that these dangerous experiments would soon begin to have global consequence and affect his own fate] < … >
* * *
The Hamburg-American Line steamship carried him at an average speed of sixty kilometers an hour. Kirpichnikov knew his wife, and was sure she would be dead unless he made it home in time. He did not grant the possibility of suicide, but what else could it be? He had heard that in ancient times people died of love. Nowadays this was merely worthy of a smile. Was it possible that his tough, daring Maria, thrilled by every triviality of life, was capable of dying of love? People don’t perish from an ancient tradition—so why then would she die?
Pondering and in agony, Kirpichnikov wandered about the deck. He noticed the searchlight of a far-off ship coming toward them, and stopped.
Suddenly it got cold on the deck—a frightening northerly wind began to beat; and then a watery mass came down over the ship, and in an instant knocked people, objects, and the vessel’s paraphernalia off the deck. The ship listed 45° toward the mirrored surface of the ocean. Kirpichnikov was saved by chance, when his leg got stuck in a hatch.
The air and the water thundered and howled, shifting densely about, breaking apart the ship, the atmosphere, and the ocean.
The noise of destruction and the pitiful squeal of despair before death went up. Women grabbed the legs of men and prayed for help. The men beat them about the head with their fists and saved themselves.
The catastrophe struck in an instant, and despite the great discipline and manliness of the crew, it was impossible to anything of substance to save the people and the ship.
Kirpichnikov was struck at once not by the storm itself and the blank wall of water, but by the instantaneous suddenness with which they descended. The ocean was calm and all horizons were open half a minute before their arrival. The steamship blasted all its horns, the radio gave off sparks of alarm, the rescue of passengers washed overboard began. But the storm suddenly subsided, and the ship rocked peacefully, groping about for equilibrium.
The horizon opened up; a kilometer away a European steamship was coming, shining its searchlights and speeding to the rescue.
The wet Kirpichnikov busied himself in a boat, fixing a motor that was refusing to work. He wasn’t fully aware how he had ended up in the boat. But the boat had to be lowered quickly: hundreds of people were choking in the water. In a minute the motor was up and running: Kirpichnikov had cleaned off its oxidized contacts, which had caused the problem.
Kirpichnikov crawled into the boat’s cabin and shouted: cast off!
At that moment an impenetrable acrid gas covered the entire ship, and Kirpichnikov could not see his hands. And just then he saw the sinking, wild, unbearably shining Sun, and through a fissure of his shearing brain he heard for an instant a Song—unclear as the pealing of the Milky Way—and regretted its brevity.
A government report placed in the New York Times was transmitted abroad by the Telegraphic Agency of the USSR:
“At 11:25 AM on 24/IX of this year, at 35°11’ north lat. and 62°4 east longitude, the American passenger ship California (8,485 persons, including crew), and the German ship Klara (6,841, with crew), going to the aid of the former, sank. The precise reasons have not been determined. Both governments are conducting a detailed investigation. No one was rescued and there are no witnesses to the catastrophe. However, the chief cause of the wreck of both ships was deemed unequivocally established: a meteor of gigantic dimensions struck the California vertically. This meteor dragged the ship to the ocean floor; the funnel created by this sucked the Klara under as well.
* * *
[Mathiessen’s experiment]
Mathiessen finally got dressed and went into the other room. It held a flat low table, 4 by 3 meters. Equipment had been placed on the table. Mathiessen approached the smallest device. He switched on the current and lay down on the floor. He lost lucid consciousness at once, and murderous nightmares of almost fatal power began to torment him, nearly physically destroying his brain. His blood overflowed with toxins and blackened his vessels; every ounce of Mathiessen’s health, all the latent forces of his body, all his means of self-defense were mobilized and fought against the poisons carried by the blood circulating in his brain. But the brain itself lay nearly defenseless under the blows of the electromagnetic waves beating against it from the equipment on the table.
These waves aroused peculiar thoughts in Mathiessen’s brain, and the thoughts were shot into the cosmos by spherical electromagnetic charges. They landed somewhere, maybe in the hinterlands of the Milky Way, in the heart of the planets, and disordered their pulse, —and the planets swerved from their orbits and died, falling and passing into oblivion, like drunken vagrants.
Mathiessen’s brain was a secret machine that newly assembled the abysses of the cosmos, and the device on the table actuated this brain. A human being’s everyday thoughts, the usual movements of the brain, were powerless to affect the world; this required vortices of cerebral particles,—then the storm would shake the world’s substance.
Mathiessen did not know when he had begun the experiment, or what was happening on the Earth or in the heavens as a result of his new storm. He had not yet learned to control the marvelous and unreproducible structure of the electromagnetic wave which his brain had launched. The entire secret of its power resided in the unique structure of the wave; it was precisely that which hammered the world’s substance in its most tender place; the pain caused it to give way. And the human brain alone could produce such complex waves only with the cooperation of the lifeless equipment.
After an hour a special clock was supposed to interrupt the current feeding the brain-exciting apparatus, and the experiment would end. But the clock had stopped: Mathiessen forgot to start it before the experiment began. The current fed the apparatus indefatigably, and the apparatus quietly hummed along in its work.
Two hours passed. Mathiessen’s body melted, in proportion to the square of the time elapsed. The blood from his brain advanced like a solid lava of red corpuscle cadavers. The equilibrium within his body was disrupted. Destruction gained the upper hand over repair. The last incredible nightmare penetrated the still-living tissue of Mathiessen’s brain, and the merciful blood extinguished the final image and the final suffering. Black blood burst into the brain like a storm through a ruptured vein and curbed the pulsating fighting heart. But Mathiessen’s last image was full of humanity; his living, tormented mother rose before him; blood poured from her eyes, and she complained to her son of her torment.
At nine in the morning Mathiessen lay dead—with white eyes open, his nails dug into the floor in a fighting frenzy. The apparatus hummed assiduously and ceased only towards evening when the energy in the battery ran low. < … >
* * *
Two days later, Izvestia printed a notice from the Main Astronomical Observatory in the “From Around the World” section:
“The Alpha star in the constellation, Canes Venatici, the Greyhounds, has not been seen in a clear sky for two days. An empty space, a breach, has formed in the Milky Way at the 4th distance (9th sector). It’s Earth angle = 4°71’. The constellation Hercules is displaced somewhat, as a result of which the entire solar system must change the direction of its flight. Such strange phenomena, violating the eternal structure of the heavens, point to the relative brittleness and flimsiness of the cosmos itself. Stepped-up observations to uncover the causes of these anomalies are being carried out by the observatory.”
In addition to this, a discussion with Academician Vetman was promised for an upcoming issue. With the exception of a brevier bulletin from Kamchatka, it did not appear from other telegrams from a quarter of the globe (the size of the USSR at that time), that Earth had suffered anything substantial from the stellar catastrophes. The bulletin noted:
“A small celestial body, about 10 kilometers in cross-section, has landed on the mountains. Its structure is unknown. It is spheroidal in form. The body flew in at considerable speed and came smoothly to Earth on the mountaintops. Massive crystals are visible on its surface through binoculars. An expedition has been outfitted by the local Society of Amateur Naturalists for a preliminary study of the descended body. But the expedition is unable to provide quick answers: the mountains are nearly inaccessible. Planes have been ordered from Vladivostok. A small squadron of Japanese planes was observed today flying in the direction of the celestial body.”
This note became a sensation the next day, and a three hundred line article was devoted to the strange event by Academician Vetman.
On the same day Bednota [Poverty] reported the death of agronomist engineer Mathiessen, a worker well-known in specialist circles in the field of optimal soil moisture conditions.
And the startling thought of a connection between the three notes only occurred to assistant agronomist Petropavlushkin in Kochubarov, who subscribed to both Izvestiya and Bednota: Mathiessen had died—a little planet had landed on the Kamchatka mountains—a star had gone missing and the Milky Way had burst. But who would believe such rural delirium?
Mathiessen was buried with solemnity. Nearly the entire Kochubarov agricultural commune followed his body. The tiller of the soil always loves religious pilgrims and eccentrics. The taciturn loner Mathiessen was one of these—everyone clearly sensed this in him. The last thin rim of hair on Mathiessen’s bald pate fell out when clumsy hands roughly shoved his coffin. This surprised all the peasants, and they were filled with even greater pity and respect for the dead man.
Mathiessen’s funeral coincided with the end of the work of the underwater expedition sent by the American and German governments to look for the sunken California and Klara, [the sinking of which his previous experiments caused] < … >
* * *
[The Aiuna]
Maria Alexandrovna did not entirely understand her husband: the goal of his sudden departure from their home was incomprehensible to her. She did not believe that a living man would trade warm, genuine happiness for the desert cold of an abstract, lonely idea. She thought that man seeks only man, and did not know that the path to man might lie through the severe frost of wild open spaces. Maria Alexandrovna assumed that just a few steps separated people.
But Mikhail left, and then died on a far-off voyage, seeking the precious jewel of his secret idea. Maria Alexandrovna knew, of course, what her husband was looking for. She understood the idea of the matter-multiplying invention. And in that field she had wanted to help her husband. She had bought him ten copies of a large opus—the translation of symbols of a book just found in the tundra, under the title “The Ultimate Discourse.” Reading had probably been highly developed in Aiuna: this had been fostered by the darkness of the eight-month night and the isolation of the Aiunites’ life.
During the construction of the second thermal tunnel, when Kirpichnikov had already disappeared, the builders discovered four granite slabs containing symbols carved in deep relief. The symbols were of the same pattern as those in the previously discovered book, “The Songs of Aiuna.” For that reason they yielded themselves readily to translation into a modern language.
The slab-writings were probably the monument and testament of an Aiunite philosopher, but they contained ideas about the concealed substance of nature. Maria Alexandrovna, reading the entire book, found clear hints of what her husband had been seeking throughout the vacant world. A far-off dead man was helping her husband, scholar and wanderer, was aiding the happiness of the woman and mother.
And that was when Maria Alexandrovna placed the announcements in five American newspapers.
Fearful of losing the books somehow, and of not rejoining Mikhail with what would be the greatest happiness for him, she memorized the needed portions of “The Ultimate Discourse.”
“Only what is living is comprehended by the living,” wrote the Aiunite, “that which is dead is incomprehensible. The incredible cannot be measured by the indubitable. For that reason precisely we clearly comprehend such a remote thing as aens (corresponds to electrons. Translators’ and explicators’ note.) and such a nearby thing as mamarva (corresponds to matter. Translators’ and explicators’ note.) remains so little known to us. For that reason the former lives, as you live, while the latter is dead, like Muiia (unknown image. Trans. and explic. note.). When the aens stirred in the proiia (corresponds to atom. Trans. and explic. note.), we saw in this at first a mechanical force, and then with joy life was discovered in the aens. But the center of the proiia, full of mamarva, was a riddle for ages, until my son reliably demonstrated that the center of the proiia consists of those same aens, only dead ones. And the dead ones serve as food for the living. It was for my son to extract the core from the proiia, as all living aens had died of hunger. Thus it turned out that the center of the proiia is the fodder barn for living aens grazing around this repository of the corpses of their ancestors, to devour them. Thus simply and lambently veritably was discovered the nature of all mamarva. To the eternal memory of my son. May his name be eternally mourned! Eternal honor to his weary visage!”
Maria Alexandrovna knew this by heart, just as her son could recite some of his nursery rhymes.
The rest of the “The Ultimate Discourse” contained the teaching on the history of the Aiunites—about its beginning and its imminent end, when the Aiunites would find their zenith, and when all three forces—the Aiunite people, Time, and Nature—would come into harmonious consonance, and their three-fold being would begin to resound as a symphony.
This interested Maria Alexandrovna little. She was seeking the equipoise of her personal happiness and did not fully master the discoveries of the unknown Aiunite,
And only the last pages of the book made her shudder and forget herself in amazed attention.
The same thing has become possible today as existed in the infancy of my native land. At that time the abyss of the Maternal Ocean (the Arctic Ocean. ed.) was perturbed, and the ocean began to spill severe, freezing water mixed with clumps of ice on our land. The water departed and the ice remained. For a long time it crept over the hills of our capacious land until it wore them away, and our land became a barren plain. The best fertile soils on the hills were cut away by the ice, and the people were left on a bare field. But calamity is the best mentor, and the people’s catastrophe—its organizer, if its blood is not yet made barren by long life on the Earth. So it was then: the ice destroyed the fruit-bearing land, deprived our ancestors of food and procreation, and destruction came down over the people’s head. The hot ocean current which had inundated the country, began to move off to the north, and intense cold began to howl over the land where dusky argan trees had bloomed. In the north the chaos of dead ice guarded us, in the south, the forest, crammed with a dark swarm of powerful beasts, filled with the hiss of dark serpents and crossed by whole rivers of the poison, zundra (excrements of gigantic serpents. ed.). The Aiuna people, a people of bravery and respect for their fate, began to kill itself off, burying their books—the highest gift of the Aiuna—in the Earth, binding them with gold, impregnating the pages with a compound of veniia, that they might survive eternity and not rot away.
When half the people were subdued by death and lay as corpses, Eiia—the custodian of the books—appeared and went off to wander among the emptied roads and silent dwellings. He said: “The fertility of the soil has been taken from us, the warmth of the air is dying out, the ice is grinding down our native land and sorrow stifles the wisdom of the mind and bravery. All we have left is the sunlight. I have made an apparatus—behold it! Suffering has taught me patience, and I have known how to make fruitful use of the savage years of the people’s despair. Light is the force of mamarva torn to pieces (mutating matter. ed.), light is the element of the aens; the power of the aens is crushing. My apparatus converts streams of solar aens into heat. And I can convert the light, not merely of the Sun, but of the Moon and the Stars into heat as well. I can obtain an enormous quantity of heat, by which it is possible to melt mountains. Now we do not need the warm ocean current to heat our land!”
Thus Eiia became the leader of Life and the source of the new history of the Aiuna. His device, which consists of complex mirrors transforming the heavens’ light into heat and into the vital force of metal (probably electricity, ed.), even now provides the source for our life and prosperity.
The plains of our homeland burst into bloom, and new children were born. An en (a long period of time, ed.) had passed.
The vitality of the human organism was exhausted. Even a young man could not bring forth seed; even the most forceful intellect ceased to generate thought. The valleys of the homeland were covered by the twilight of ultimate despair—Man had come to his limit within himself—Aiuna, the Sun of our heart, was vanishing forever. The crushing power of ice was nothing in comparison—nor of the cold, or the death. Man was nourished only by self-contempt. He could neither love, nor think, nor even suffer. The sources of life had run dry in the depths of the body, because they had been drunk dry. We had mountains of food, courts of comfort, and crystalline book depositories. But there was no longer life, vitality and heat within the body, and hopes had darkened. Man was a mine, but all the ore had been worked out; only empty shafts remained.
It is fine to die on a strong boat in the wild ocean, but not to choke to death on one’s food.
It was thus for a long time. A whole generation did not experience youth.
Then my son Riigo found a way out. What nature could not give, art had provided. He had kept remnants of a vital brain within himself, and told us that our destiny was ending, but one could still open a door to it—toward a new, bright tomorrow. The solution was simple: an electromagnetic channel. (verbatim: a tube for the vital force of metal. ed.). Riigo had laid a gullet to the aens of our dark body from space and passed streams of dead aens (corresponds to ether. ed.) along this gullet, and our body’s aens, having received an excess of food, revived. That is how our brain, our heart, our love for woman, and our Aiuna were resurrected. But more than that: our children grew twice as fast and life pulsed in them, like a very powerful machine. All the rest—consciousness, feeling, and love—grew into fearsome poetry and frightened the fathers. History ceased to walk and began to race. And the wind of destiny beat against our unprotected face with great news of thoughts and deeds.
My son’s invention, like every remarkable thing, has a prosaic face. Riigo took two proiia centers filled with the corpses of aens and placed them into one proiia. The living aens of the proiia then began to multiply rapidly, and the entire proiia grew five-fold in ten days. The reason was evident and unimpressive: the aens began to eat more because their store of food had doubled.
Thus my son Riigo developed whole colonies of satiated, fast-growing aens, multiplying unbelievably. Then he took an ordinary body—a piece of iron—and past it, just touching the iron, begin to emit a stream of satiated aens, reared in colonies, in the direction of the stars. The satiated aens did not tap the corpses of their ancestors (that is, ether.—ed.) for food, and they freely flowed toward the piece of iron, where the hungry aens awaited them. And the iron began to grow under peoples’ eyes, like plants from the Earth.
Thus my son Riigo’s art revived man and began to cultivate matter.
But triumph always prepares defeat.
The artificially fattened aens, having a stronger body, began to attack living, but natural aens and devour them. And since in any transformation of matter there are inevitable losses, the devoured small aen did not enlarge the body of the larger to the size it had itself when it was living. Such matter, here, there, and everywhere the artificially fattened aens (electrons—the current term will be used hereafter. ed.) penetrated, began to diminish. Riigo’s art could not make a gullet for the entire Earth, and the matter melted. Only where the channel for the stream of electron corpses was laid (ether tract. ed.) did matter grow. People, the soil, and the substances of greatest importance for our life were fitted with ether tracts. The dimensions of everything else diminished; matter burnt up; we were living at the cost of the destruction of the planet.
Riigo disappeared from home. The water began to vanish from the Continental Ocean. Riigo knew the cause of the disappearance of the moisture and went out to meet the antagonist. One day a tribe of electrons, fattened and reared by him had, by the working of time and natural selection, reached the point where each electron, in terms of body volume, was the size of a cloud.
In raging fury swarms of electrons came out of the depths of the Continental Ocean, heaving like mountains in an earthquake, breathing like powerful winds. They will drink Aiuna dry, as if it were water! Riigo fell. It was impossible to bear the glance of an electron. Death from terror will be hideous, but Aiuna is beyond rescue. Riigo fell into obscurity long ago, like a stone into a well. These cosmic beasts move too slowly. But their path from proiia particle to living mountain advanced too quickly. I believe that they will sink into the Earth like curds, because their body is heavier than lead. Certainly Riigo did not fall to no purpose, but having resolved to conquer the unknown elementary bodies, and with the means to do so. The power of the electron is in rapid growth and the furious action of natural selection. And this is their weakness, because it clearly points to the extreme simplicity of their psyche and physiological organization, and perhaps reveals an unprotected point of vulnerability. Riigo understood this clearly, but was slain by the electron’s paw, heavy as a slab of platinum …
Maria Alexandrovna drooped over the book. Little Egor slept, the clock struck midnight—the most fearful hour of loneliness, when all happy people are asleep.
“Is the nurturing of man really so difficult?” Maria Alexandrovna said loudly. “Is triumph really always the harbinger of defeat?”
Moscow was quiet. The last trams hurried to the depot, their contacts shooting sparks.
“Then what triumph does my husband’s dismal death repay? What soul will replace for me his gloomy lost love?”
And she burned with a fervent grief and wept tears that kill the body more quickly than lost blood. Her mind tossed about in a nightmare: the hum of living murky electrons had ripped apart the wise, defenseless Aiuna, rivers of the green poison, zundra, flowed over the flowering tundra, and in the green fluid, sinking and choking, swam Mikhail Kirpichnikov—her only friend—lost forever.
* * *
In the Silver Forest, near the crematorium, stood a building in a delicate architectural style. It had been done as a spheroid in the image of a cosmic body held up by five powerful columns, without touching the ground. A telescopic column rose into the sky from the topmost point of the spheroid, as a sign and a threat to the dark natural world that takes away those who are alive, those who are loved and those who love—in the hope that the dead will be borne away into the universe by the power of ascending science, resurrected, and returned to the living.
This was the House of Remembrance, containing the urns with the ashes of perished men.
A woman, gray and splendid with age, entered the House with a young man. They went quietly through to the far end of the enormous hall, illuminated by the dark-blue light of memory and longing. The urns stood in a row, like candles with light snuffed-out, lighting a formerly unknown path.
Memorial plaques were attached to the urns:
Andrey Volugov, Engineer.
Perished in the underwater expedition exploring Atlantis.
There are no ashes in the urn—there is a handkerchief, soaked with his blood when he was wounded while working at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The handkerchief was delivered by a woman traveling with him.
Peter Kreizkopf. Builder of the first Lunar craft.
He flew to the Moon in his probe and did not return. There are no ashes in the urn. His baby clothes have been preserved. Honor to the great engineer and his brave will!
The gray-haired woman, her face surprisingly aglow, went on further with the young man. They stopped at the furthest urn.
Mikhail Kirpichnikov.
Investigator of the method for multiplying matter.
Colleague of the physicist Doctor F. K. Popov, engineer. Died on the California after collision with a fallen meteor. There are no ashes in the urn. His work on the feeding and cultivation of electrons and a lock of hair are preserved.
A small second plaque hung below:
He lost his wife and the soul of his friend in his search for electrons’ nutrition. The son of the deceased will accomplish his father’s work and return to his mother the heartfelt love squandered by the father. In memory of, and love for, the great seeker.
Age is like youth: expecting salvation in a miraculous later life. Maria Alexandrovna Kirpichnikova had expended her youth in vain; her love for her husband had become transformed into a passionate maternal feeling for her elder son, Egor, who was already twenty-five years old. The younger son, Lev, a student, was sociable, very handsome, but did not arouse the sharp feeling of tenderness, protectiveness, and hope that Egor did. Egor’s face resembled his father’s—lackluster, ordinary, but unusually attractive in its hidden formidability and unconscious power.
Maria Alexandrovna took Egor by the hand, like a little boy, and went toward the exit. A square gold plaque with gray platinum letters hung in the vestibule of the House of Remembrance:
Death is present where sufficient knowledge is lacking of the physiological elements acting in the body, and destroying it.
There was an arch above the entrance to the House with the words:
Remember with tenderness, but without suffering: Science will resurrect the dead and comfort your heart.
The woman and the young man went out into the open air. The summer Sun rejoiced above the full-blooded Earth, and the new Moscow stood before the eyes of the two—a miraculous city of powerful culture, unrelenting labor, and sensible happiness. The Sun hastened to do its work, people grinned from the surplus of their energy—they were eager in work and vigorous in love.
The Sun above their heads supplied them with everything—the same Sun that once lit the path to Mikhail Kirpichnikov in the citrus district of Riverside—the old Sun, which shines with alarming passionate joy, like a world catastrophe and the engendering of the Universe.
* * *
[Egor Kirpichnikov]
The Intellectual Toiler published the following note on January 4:
THE CENTRAL ELECTRICAL POWER STATION OF LIFE.
A young engineer, Egor Kirpichnikov, has performed some interesting experiments over a number of months on artificial ether production in Prof. Marand’s ether laboratory. The idea behind engineer Kirpichnikov’s work is that a high-frequency electromagnetic field kills living electrons in matter; as we know, dead electrons constitute the substance of the ether. The height of engineer Kirpichnikov’s technical art can be understood from the fact that a field oscillating at no fewer than 1012 periods per second is required to kill electrons.
Kirpichnikov’s high-frequency machine is the sun itself, whose light is decomposed by a complex system of interfering surfaces into its constituent energy elements: the mechanical energy of pressure, chemical energy, electrical energy, etc.
Kirpichnikov only needs electrical energy, which he concentrates in a very confined space by means of special prisms and deflectors to achieve the necessary frequency.
In essence, an electromagnetic field is a colony of electrons. By forcing this field to pulsate rapidly, Kirpichnikov has succeeded in causing the electrons making up what is called the field to die; this causes the electromagnetic field to be converted to ether—the mechanical mass of the bodies of dead electrons.
Obtaining a number of ether spaces, Kirpichnikov lowered common objects (for example, a Waterman fountain pen) into them; the volume of these bodies increased two-fold in three days.
The following process had taken place in the fountain pen: the living electrons in the substance of the fountain pen received fortified nourishment from the surrounding electron corpses and rapidly multiplied, thus increasing in volume as well. This brought about the growth of the entire substance of the fountain pen. As the living electrons continued to consume the ether, their growth and multiplication ceased.
On the basis of his studies, Kirpichnikov has established that only living electrons are generated within the sun’s enormous mass; but their concentration in gigantic numbers in a relatively packed space leads to such a horrendous struggle among them for sources of nourishment that nearly all the electrons are totally destroyed. The struggle for food is responsible for the great pulsation of the sun. The physical energy of the sun has, so to speak, a social cause—the mutual competition of the electrons. The electrons in the solar mass live only several millionths of a second, as they are destroyed by more powerful opponents which, in their turn, die under the onslaught of still more powerful competitors, etc. Having scarcely managed to gobble up its enemy’s corpse, the electron is now destroyed—and the next victor eats it along with the undigested clumps of the body of the previously killed electron.
The movements of the electrons in the sun are so precipitous that a vast number are forced out beyond the limits of the sun and fly into space at a speed of three hundred thousand kilometers per second, creating the effect of a beam of light. But there is such an awesome and devastating struggle taking place on the sun that all the electrons leaving the sun are dead, and are flying either according to the inertia of their motion when they were alive or to their opponent’s impact.
However, Kirpichnikov is convinced that there are extremely rare exceptions—once per time zone—when an electron may be torn away from the sun alive. Then, having ether—an abundant nutritive medium—around it, it becomes the father of a new planet. Eng. Kirpichnikov proposes later on to produce large quantities of ether, primarily from the upper layers of the atmosphere bounded by the ether. The electrons are less active there, and their destruction requires less energy.
Kirpichnikov is completing his new method of artificial production of ether; the new means involves an electromagnetic channel in which a high frequency acts to kill off electrons. The electromagnetic high-frequency channel is directed from the ground to the sun, and a stream of dead electrons is formed in the channel, as in a pipe, driven by the pressure of sunlight toward the terrestrial surface.
The ether is collected at the Earth’s surface, accumulated in special vessels, and then used for the nourishment of those substances whose volume one wishes to increase.
Eng. Kirpichnikov has also performed the reverse experiments. By exposing an object to the action of a high-frequency field, he has achieved, as it were, the extinction of the object and its complete disappearance. Kirpichnikov has destroyed the innermost essence of a substance, since only a living electron is a particle of matter; a dead electron, on the other hand, belongs to the ether. Kirpichnikov has changed several objects completely into ether by this means, including the Waterman pen which he had initially “fattened.”
The aggregate of all of Kirpichnikov’s studies reveals the titanic force of creation and destruction mankind has received from his invention.
In Kirpichnikov’s opinion, by constantly supplying the terrestrial globe with ether flowing from the sun, the Earth itself will steadily increase in size and in the specific gravity of its matter. This guarantees mankind’s progress and undergirds historical optimism with a physical basis.
Kirpichnikov says that he has fully copied the action of the sun in relation to the Earth in his invention, and has merely accelerated its work.
These astonishing discoveries automatically recall to memory the name of F. K. Popov, who bequeathed us his astounding work, and finally, the father of the inventor, the engineer Mikhail Kirpichnikov who died tragically and peculiarly. < … >
* * *
The days were not so long nor the nights so short for the dawn to break at one in the morning on the twentieth of March. That had never happened; even old men cannot remember such a thing.
But one day it did happen. Muscovites had gone home—some from the theater, some from the night shift at the factory, some simply from a long talk with a friend.
There was a concert that night at the Great Hall of the Philharmonic, performed by the famous Vienna-born pianist, Schachtmeier. His profound undersea music, filled with a strange feeling that could not be called either anguish or ecstasy, had shaken his audience. People silently went their ways from the Philharmonic, awed and rejoicing in new and unknown depths and heights of life, which Schachtmeier had expressed in the elemental language of music.
At twelve-thirty in the morning, Maks Valir, who had returned from halfway to the moon, had finished his report at the Polytechnic Museum. An error had been found in the rocket he had designed; moreover, the medium between the Earth and moon turned out to be completely different from what had been hypothesized from the Earth; so Valir had come back. The audience had been extremely excited by Valir’s report; charged up by the strength of will and enthusiasm of the great attempt, it flowed with a fearful noise like lava out across Moscow. In this respect, the audiences of Valir and Schachtmeier were in sharp contrast to one another.
At that moment a dark-blue point began to shine high above Sverdlov Square. In a second it had increased in size ten-fold, and then began to emit a dark-blue spiral, silently rotating, and seemingly unwinding the coil of a blue viscous flux. One beam was slowly drawn to Earth, and its shuddering movement was visible, as if it had encountered stubbornly resisting forces and, in penetrating them, braked its progress. Finally, the column of dark-blue, lusterless, dead fire came to rest between Earth and infinity, and the blue dawn enveloped the entire sky. Instantly everyone was terrified, because all shadows had disappeared: all objects on the surface of the Earth were plunged into some mute but ever more penetrating dampness—and nothing had a shadow.
Moscow fell silent for the first time since it had been built: whoever was speaking broke off in mid-utterance; whoever had been silent made no exclamation. All movement ceased; anyone who was driving forgot to go on; anyone standing still could not recall the purpose that had been drawing him on.
Silence and the strange dark-blue glow stood alone above the Earth, embracing one another.
It was so silent that it seemed that the strange dawn sounded—in a monotone, and tenderly, as the crickets sang in our childhood.
Every voice was ringing and youthful in the spring air—a feminine voice cried out piercingly and astonishing under the columns of the Bolshoi Theater: someone’s soul could not bear the strain and made an abrupt movement to conceal itself from this enchantment.
And at once all nocturnal Moscow went into motion: drivers pushed their starter buttons; pedestrians took their first step; those who had been speaking started to yell; sleepers awoke and rushed into the street; all eyes turned upward toward the sky; each brain began to throb from the excitement.
But the dark-blue dawn began to fade. Darkness inundated the horizons; the spiral curled up, stealing away into the depths of the Milky Way; it then became a brilliant rotating star, but that too melted away in the eyes of the living—and it all disappeared, like a forgotten dream. But every eye that had looked up into the sky long continued seeing the spinning dark-blue star up there.
For some reason everyone was exhauter by this event, although hardly anyone knew why.
* * *
Next morning the Izvestia published the following interview with engineer Kirpichnikov:
EXPLANATION OF THE NIGHT-TIME DAWN ABOVE THE WORLD.
Our correspondent got into the Prof. Marand Microbiological Laboratory after a great deal of effort. This took place at 4 AM, right after the optical phenomenon in the ether. In the laboratory the correspondent found G. M. Kirpichnikov—the well-known designer of the equipment for the multiplication of material, discoverer of the so-called “ether channel”—asleep. The correspondent did not have the temerity to awaken the tired inventor; however, the arrangement of the laboratory made it possible to see all the results of the nocturnal experiment.
Besides the equipment for the production of the ether channel and the accumulation of dead electrons, an old yellow manuscript lay on the table. The following was written on the open page: “The technicians’ job is to rear iron, gold, or coal as livestock breeders rear pigs.” The correspondent has not yet established to whom these words belong.
A glittering body occupied half of the experimental chamber. It appeared on inspection to be iron. The form of the ferrous body was a nearly regular cube measuring 10 x 10 x 10 meters. How such a body could have gotten into the chamber was unclear, since its windows and doors could have admitted one only half the size. One hypothesis is left—that the iron was not brought into the chamber from anywhere, but had been grown in the chamber itself. This was confirmed by the log of experiments which lay on the same table as the manuscript. The dimensions of the experimental body were written there in the hand of G. M. Kirpichnikov: “Soft iron measuring 10 x 10 x 10 centimeters, 1 h 25 min., optimal voltage.” There are no further notes in the log. Thus the iron had increased in volume 100-fold in 2-3 hours. That is the power of feeding ether to electrons.
There was an even and steady noise in the chamber, which our correspondent at first ignored. After turning on the lights, our colleague discovered some sort of monster sitting on the floor near the iron mass. Intricate parts of a broken device, apparently burnt out by an electric arc, were lying alongside the unknown being. The animal was emitting a monotonous moan. The correspondent photographed it (cf. below). The animal’s maximum height was one meter. Its greatest width, about half a meter. The color of its body was reddish-yellow. Its overall shape was oval. Visual and auditory organs were not seen. A huge maw with black teeth was wide open; each tooth was 3-4 centimeters in length. There are four short (1/4 meter) powerful paws with bulging muscles; the span of the paw is no less than half a meter; it ends in a single powerful finger in the shape of an elastic, gleaming prong. The animal sits on a stout powerful tail; its tip moves about, glittering with three spikes. The teeth in the open maw are notched and rotate in their sockets. This strange and fearsome being has a very solid build and gives the impression of being a living chunk of metal.
The hum of this repulsive creature was producing the noise in the laboratory: the animal was probably hungry. This, beyond doubt, was an electron artificially fattened and cultivated by Kirpichnikov.
In conclusion, the editorial board congratulates readers and the nation on the new conquest of scientific genius, and is delighted that this victory falls to the credit of a young Soviet engineer.
The artificially cultivated iron and the multiplication of matter in general will give the Soviet Union such economic and military advantages over the other, capitalist, part of the world that if capitalism had a sense of the epoch and historical intelligence, it would surrender to socialism at once, and unconditionally. But, unfortunately, imperialism has never had these valuable qualities. < …>
All Moscow—the new Paris of the Socialist world—was ecstatic over this note. The entire vibrant, passionate, gregarious city appeared on the streets, in the clubs, at lectures—everywhere where there was even a whiff of new information about the works of G. M. Kirpichnikov.
The day dawned sunny; the snow melted a bit; and unbelievable hope was growing in the human breast. As the sun moved toward the midday zenith, the future shone ever clearer in the brain of man, like a rainbow, like the conquest of the universe, and like the dark-blue chasm of the great soul that had embraced the chaos of the world as its bride. < … >
* * *
In August Maria Alexandrovna received a letter from Egor in Tokyo.
Mama. I am happy—and I’ve understood something. The end of my work is approaching. Only by wandering the Earth, under different rays of the sun and over different soils am I able to think. I have now understood Papa. We need outside forces to stimulate our thoughts. These forces are scattered along the world’s roadways, they must be sought, and one must place one’s head and body beneath them, as under a downpour. You know what I am doing and what I seek—the root of the world, the soil of the universe, from which it grew. From ancient philosophical dreams, this has become the scientific challenge of the day. But someone is needed to do this, and I have taken it up. < …> I need the challenge, or else I would become weary and kill myself. Father also had this feeling; maybe it’s an illness, maybe it’s bad heredity from our ancestors—vagabonds and Kievan pilgrims. Don’t hunt for me and don’t feel sad—I’ll do what I’ve planned to do—and then I’ll return. I think about you, but my restless feet and my anxious head drive me forward. Maybe, probably, life is a perverse fact, and each breathing creature is a miracle and an exception. And then I marvel, and it’s good for me to think of my dear mother and my unavenged father. Egor”
News of the death of Egor Kirpichnikov in prison in Buenos Aires was received in Moscow on the thirty-first of December. He was arrested along with bandits who had been robbing express trains. He fell ill with tropical malaria in prison. The whole gang was sentenced to be hanged. Since Kirpichnikov was unable to walk to the gallows, as he was sinking into a delirium before death, they gave him poison, and no longer recalling anything of life, he died.
His body, along with the hanged bandits, was thrown into the muddy Amazon and washed out into the Pacific Ocean. The gallows that stood on the very banks of the Amazon were also thrown into the river after the execution: there they floated, dragging the corpses in their deadly nooses.
In response to inquiries by the Soviet government regarding the punishment of a man who could not have been a criminal, yet who had ended up in a gang by an unknown chance, the Brazilian government replied that it had not known that Kirpichnikov was in its hands; when arrested he refused to give his name, and then he became ill, and did not ever regain consciousness during the investigation.
Maria Alexandrovna erected a new urn in the House of Remembrances at the Silver Forest, next to the urn of her husband. On it was inscribed:
“Egor Kirpichnikov. Died age 29. Inventor of the Ether Channel—disciple of F. K. Popov and his father. Eternal glory, and sorrowful memory, to the Architect of a new Nature.”
(1922-1928)
Translated by Elliott Urday, A. L. and M. K.