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“Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh.”

These are the opening words of a story titled The Machine Stops, written by EM Forster in 1909. It is almost unbelievable that more than a hundred years ago, Forster envisaged a life that we may be living in future, and that we are almost living now.  The story goes on to describe how everyone lived in these small, cell-like rooms. In one typical room, one of millions constructed beneath the earth, the only furniture was an armchair and reading desk. There was no music system, yet music filled the air. Everything worked by hidden machinery. In this room, lived Vashti.

When her son Kuno phoned her, she could see his image in a round plate that she held in her hands, though he lived on the other side of the earth. The machinery controlled everything, but Kuno was tired of it, he wanted to actually speak to her in person, without ‘the wearisome machine’ as he called it.  Vashti asked why, in fact she wanted to know why he even phoned her, couldn’t he have sent his message by pneumatic post, which would have reached her directly? Kuno responded that people had created the Machine, but now it had become a god.  The story tells us that in those times there was only one book, which was a survival ‘from the age of litter’ and that was the book of the Machine. Kuno had a different intelligence, but it was true that Vashti and others had almost started worshipping it, and revering the machine too, as god, forgetting that there were people behind it all, who had created this huge, complex structure. Further, Kuno told her that he wanted to visit the surface of the earth, but Vashti found this idea pointless. As she said, “The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it”, and people could no longer breathe the outer air without a special respirator.

When Kuno suddenly stopped speaking, turning off the  phone, Vashti felt lonely for a moment, but then ‘she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her’. There were buttons for everything, for food, clothing, music, hot or cold baths, and those for communication. If she wanted a hot bath, an imitation marble tub appeared, filled with a warm deodorised liquid. “She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced tremendously.” But she did not have to leave her cell to communicate with them. She could give lectures sitting in her room, which were broadcast to thousands across the world. She could communicate with everyone, anywhere, without moving. “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.”  The story continues:  “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 made the room dark and slept.” She knew about the previous civilisation, those strange times when people went for a change of air, instead of changing the air in their rooms, and when they went in search of things, instead of things being brought to them.

In this new world, some remnants of the old remained. Males and females were sent to each other for procreation, children were born in the normal way, but the duties of the parents ceased at birth. Obviously there were no romances or courtship, and no wars or open conflicts. “Men seldom moved their bodies, all unrest was concentrated in the soul.” Forster provides further descriptions of this world: “Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer.” And in addition, “Dawn, midday, twilight, the zodiacal path, touched neither men’s lives nor their hearts, and science retreated into the ground, to concentrate herself on problems she was certain of solving.”

But Kuno was one of those who had not fitted in. He insisted that Vashti must visit him, and she was unable to deny her son. Anxious about this she felt ill, and immediately an apparatus emerged that took her temperature and provided her with medicine. She hated to step out of her cell, but finally she did. As soon as she pressed a button, a door slid open, a vehicle appeared, a lift and tubular railway took her to the airship, which flew in the usual way. Hardly anyone used these airships, relics of the past.  Vashti did not want to look out, but as they flew over the Himalayas, shadow and sun could still be seen, but, “The forests had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the purpose of making newspaper pulp.” Ruined cities and diminished rivers remained, and the vomitories, the passages from the new underground world to the outer surface, dotted the land, even though few used them. To go to the surface of the earth, one not only had to summon a respirator, but get a special egression permit.

Kuno was one of those who yearned for the old days, days he had never known. When Vashti finally reached him, he told her that he had reached the outer world in his own way, and then the apparatus of the great machine pulled him back and threatened him with homelessness, exposure without a respirator, leading to certain death. Vashti was disturbed, but she could not change the way he thought, and returned home.

Time passed, and one day respirators were abolished. Things began to stagnate, there was nothing new, no challenges to the intellect. First hand ideas were now rejected, lectures were rehashes of what had already been said. “Let your ideas be second hand and if possible tenth hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element—direct observation.” Religion had disappeared, but it was reestablished, with the Machine formally recognised as god and worshipped. Who controlled the Machine? We never get to know, though there is reference to a Central Committee.

As everyone’s intellect declined, they gradually forgot how this vast Machine functioned, and how to repair it, and thus began the long and slow decline, from small malfunctions, to a total end. Finally, the Machine stopped, the lights dimmed and there was darkness. The inhabitants of the entire world came out of their cells, gasping for air, and all slowly died. Yet even as they took their last breaths, Kuno, at least, was happy that in their final moments he could meet and touch his mother, free of the Machine.

As we read this incredible story, written so long ago, we wonder, could this be our future?

(A PhD in ancient Indian History, the writer lives in Dehradun and has authored more than ten books)    

Monday, 20 July 2020 | Roshen Dalal | Dehradun

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