Owen Oliver

“ She was very calm now. “Go on.”
“It must be a soul that will give itself up to the task; remove its own thoughts and feelings and will—or submit to have them removed.”
“A clean soul with no stains that will not come out. You are that, Myra.”
“Go on,”
“A soul that I can control. There might be others, but ... The final object of the machine is to put my desires—my best and worthiest desires, please God!—into the world, and make it better. The diaphragm to do that must be a soul that is not only all the things that I have said, but completely in sympathy with mine. There is only you, Myra. ”

“ The unknown power that we call the soul no doubt is like the rest.”
A spectacled student noted the statements neatly:
A tall girl in black glanced impatiently at her watch. A bored youth dropped ink on his pad, and watched the blots spread. A dumpty girl drew the professor as a windmill with whirling arms. A bronzed man skirmished under the desk for a red-haired girl’s hand.
The girl in the front row shivered. She felt that she was being drawn to the edge of the abysmal unknown.
“One by one we discover the secrets of the vibrations; and so we catch the powers, and make them our servants. ”

“ The diaphragm takes down the vibrations of the soul and exhibits them in a kind of spectrum—bands of colour with little breaks between. Certain colours stand for certain affections of the mind. Anger widens the red. Disappointment darkens the green. Intense mental exertion makes the yellow wide and faint. Pain brings out certain dark bands; and so on. In that way we might tell from the spectrum with practice that a soul was, let us say, angry and disappointed ”

“ The girl in the front row looked at the professor with eyes like lamps.
“And then”—the professor leaned forward, and his eyes seemed to seize her—“we shall tame the wild force that we have trapped. The soul is the hardest of the powers to catch, but it will be the easiest to subdue to service. It is its very nature to realise in action what is presented to it as the thing to be done. The controller of the soul machine will only have to turn the machine backwards to impress his own will on other souls. The rule of the world will be in the hands of the man who invents the soul-machine.” ”

“ You will merely lose consciousness of identity—entirely while you act as the receiver and reproducer of the soul machine, to a lesser extent at other times. You will eat and drink and sleep and feel, but I fear that you will not think very much, or remember very well, or do things of your own accord. ”

“ I should die anyhow now you know how I feel about you. Oh, yes, I should. You think one doesn’t die of shame, but there’s such a thing as tormenting the life out of yourself! I'd rather die quickly, and—and please you. ”

“ Will you remember that it was once rather a nice girl? You thought so this afternoon.”
“Oh, Myra——”
“Hush! It has to be. It is fixed in your mind beyond altering. Don’t salve your conscience by pretending to be overruled by me! It is fixed in my mind, too. Do it quickly. I am ready. ... Hush! Don’t talk!”
The professor moved the diaphragm from its slab, and set a library chair there. He heaped it with cushions.
“Sit there, Myra,” he said. “You will not feel any pain. When the machine starts you will know no more—as yourself—until it stops. Then I shall take you home.” ”

“ When we have invented this machine the first part of our task will be done. We shall have caught the soul, and its secrets will be secrets no more.”
He paused. The spectacled student made more notes, and the blotter more blots. The tall girl once more consulted her watch. The dumpty girl touched up the “soul” so that it made faces at the windmill. The bronzed man tried to catch the red-haired girl in a primitive form of soul machine—the pressure of two big hands upon a small one. ”

“ I stand here because it is the one place where I can both reach the operating levers and see the diaphragm and the dials. That is all. ... Now!”
He pulled a lever. The electric machinery buzzed and crackled, and long bluish sparks sprang from one place to another. The little electric lights above shone out in a wonderful spangle of colours, some vivid, some bright, some pale, some barely visible, some apparently not lit at all; defects in his character, perhaps, the girl fancied. ... She did not like the powerful black globe. ”

“ We shall begin by connecting the vibrating contrivance with some mechanism to register the vibrations, just as the ‘record’ of a phonograph registers speech in the form of minute indentations or lines. The next step—and this is the difficult one—will be to turn this inexpressive record back into the thoughts which it represents, as a phonograph turns the lines and indentations back into speech. ”

“ The lower course of the receivers ran in a kind of tank sunk beneath the floor. A number of nozzles projected slantwise on one side. These, the professor said, emitted a powerful chemical spray upon the discs. The object of this was twofold. The impact of the spray caused the discs to rotate upon their axes in addition to their elliptical motion—much as the planets revolve in their orbits—which was essential to their function. Secondly, the spray wiped out the impression of one moment and left them free for that of the next. ”

“ The laboratory consisted of two rooms, one entered through the other. The outer room was filled with ordinary scientific apparatus, and lit by two windows that looked out upon a field of housetops. The inner room, when he opened the door, was quite dark.
“Some of the things are affected by sunlight,” he explained. “I will turn on the light as soon as we are inside. ”