Amelia Reynolds Long

“ Summer lasts but a few weeks, and then its heat is scorching. What in early time was known as the Atlantic Coastal Plain has long ago sunken into the sea. High dykes must be used to keep the water from covering the island of Manhattan, where the world's government is located. A great war has just concluded. There are many dead to bury."
"You speak of interplanetary communication," said Mortimer. "Is the world, then, in communication with the planets?"
"In the year 2,952," came the answer, "the earth succeeded in getting into communication with Mars. ”

“ With hands that trembled visibly, he adjusted the earphones, and we went back to the laboratory.
"Williams," Mortimer called into his transmitter, "do you hear me?"
"I hear you," replied the odiously familiar voice.
"You are now living in the fourth day. What do you see?"
"I see reptiles; great lizards that walk upon their hind legs, and birds with tiny heads and bats' wings, that build nests in the ruins of the deserted cities. ”

“ Great lightnings play about the earth, but there is no thunder. The silence all around is plummetless. I keep speaking aloud and striking one object against another to relieve the strain on my eardrums. ”

“ This seems strange to me."
"That," said Mortimer to me, "is because his body is here in the twentieth century, where there is plenty of air. The air at the stage of the earth's career where his mind is would be too rare to support organic life. Even now the mental influence is so strong that he believes the density of the atmosphere to be decreasing."
"Recently," Williams' voice went on, "the star Vega has taken Polaris' place as centre of the universe. Many of the old stars have disappeared, while new ones have taken their places. ”

“ The world is festering with dead things. Let me be dead with them."
"Mortimer," I interrupted, "this is awful! Hasn't your experiment gone far enough?"
He pushed back his chair and rose. "Yes," he said, a bit shakily, I thought. "For the present, at least. Come; I will awaken Williams."
I followed him down the hall, and was close upon his heels, when he flung open the door of the lead-lined room, and stepped inside. Our cries of surprised alarm were simultaneous.
In the chair where we had left him sat Williams; but physically he was a different man. ”

“ Mortimer covered the transmitter with his hand. "That," he said to me, "can mean only that intelligent life upon Mars had become extinct. The earth, then, can have but a few thousand years yet to go."
For nearly an hour longer he quizzed Williams upon conditions of the year 46,812. All the answers showed that while scientific knowledge had reached an almost incredulous stage of advancement, the race of mankind was in its twilight. ”

“ They are swaying! They are leaning toward each other! They are crumbling, disintegrating; and the crumbs are flying outward instead of falling! Tiny particles are being thrown off by everything around me. ”

“ Mental time, as I remarked a while ago, is an infinite circle with materiality a line running tangent to it. The point of tangency interprets it to the physical senses, and so creates what we call physical time. Since a line can be tangent to a circle at only one point, our physical existence is single. ”

“ Thus a minute of mental time may, by the standards devised by man, be three hours deep, because we have lived it intensely; while an eon of mental time may embrace but half a day physically for reverse reasons. ”

“ This determined statement did not particularly impress me at the time, nor, for that matter, did the time-theory itself. Both were recalled to me a week or so later, when, in answer to his summons, I again visited Mortimer at the laboratory, and he thrust a newspaper into my hands, pointing to an item among the want ads.
"Wanted—" I read, "A subject for hypnotic experiment. $5,000 for the right man. Apply Pro. Alex Mortimer, Mortimer Laboratories, City." ”

“ I gasped. "What has happened?"
"It is an extreme case of mental influence upon matter," answered Mortimer, bending over the hypnotized man. "You remember how young Bennet's features took on the characteristics of a Hun? A similar thing, but in a much intenser degree, has happened to Williams. He has become a man of the future physically as well as mentally." ”

“ Inosofar as all men are mortal and foredoomed to death, and as far back as history and myth can pierce we are impressed with the similar mortality of cities and peoples and kingdoms, it is quite natural that the death of the world is a subject that would engage the thoughts of the imaginative. ”

“ I want the subject to be as free as possible from outside thought influences, so that when he talks with me over that telephonic device, which is connected with my laboratory, there can be no danger of his telling me any but his own experiences. ”

“ Even the plant life has turned yellow and withered. The volcanoes are in terrific action. The mountains are becoming level, and soon all will be one vast plain. A thick, green slime is gathering upon the face of the water ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1978, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 44 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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