The Machine Stops

I en underjordisk värld lever människor isolerade i sina celler. Förmågan att leva på jordens yta har gått förlorad men människan har skapat Maskinen som tillgodoser alla behov. Vad du än kan vilja ha finns det en knapptryckning bort. Att träffas är inte längre önskvärt. Ingen vet längre hur man umgås och ingen har heller något behov av det. Maskinen ger ju möjlighet att se och höra vem som helst, var som helst, närsomhelst, inte riktigt som i verkligheten men gott nog. I sin cell har varje människa sin egna lilla fullt tillräckliga värld med artificiellt ljus och artificiell luft. I Maskinboken som varje människa tilldelas finns instruktioner om hur Maskinen hanteras så att den kan tillfredsställa alla behov, från doktorsanordningen som fälls ner från taket i händelse av sjukdom till sängen som fälls ut ur väggen när det artificiella ljuset tonas ned. Sin tid spenderar människorna med att genom maskinens kommunikationsrör studera och diskutera ideer med varandra. Att genomföra något är inte intressant, det behövs ju trots allt inte när Maskinen finns, utan ideerna i sig är det viktiga. Att resa med dom gamla luftskeppen är fortfarande tillåtet men sällsynt, Maskinen ger ju resandets alla fördelar men utan att behöva besväras med resandets nackdelar som att fysiskt träffa andra människor och att ta risken att lämna livet i den trygga cellen. Följ bara instruktionerna i Maskinboken så blir livet bekvämt och lekande lätt, utan faror, risker och obehag. För den som inte flitigt läser Maskinboken och uttrycker tvivel om Maskinens fullständighet kan Hemlöshet vänta. Tanken på Hemlöshet utanför Maskinen är skrämmande så människorna läser Maskinboken och lever i sina celler och klagomål till Maskinministeriet är sällsynta. Alla lever likadant med samma förutsättningar så att klaga är dessutom meningslöst.

Vashti lever som alla andra i Maskinen i sin cell och spenderar som alla andra sin tid med att diskutera ideer via Maskinens kommunikationsrör. En dag kontaktas hon av sin son via rören. Han förklarar att han har något att berätta men vägrar att göra det genom Maskinen. Han vill träffa henne i egen hög person vilket betyder att Vashti måste lämna sin cell och resa med luftskepp.

For a moment Vashti felt lonely. Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month. To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and prim�val as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed. The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for a small bed. Complaint was useless, for beds were of the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated herself-it was necessary, for neither day nor night existed under the ground-and reviewed all that had happened since she had summoned the bed last. Ideas? Scarcely any. Events - was Kuno's invitation an event? By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter - one book. This was the Book of the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee published it. In accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound.
Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced round the glowing room as if some one might be watching her. Then, half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured 'O Machine! O Machine!' and raised the volume to her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual performed, she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the air-ships from the island in the southern hemisphere, under whose soil she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder lived her son. She thought, 'I have not the time.' She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept.Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room light. 


Läs den korta berättelsen av E.M. Forster (1909) här.