The Wreck of a World

Front matter

The Wreck

of a World

BY

Preface

PREFACE.

By Sir John Brown, C.E.

Those who did me the honour to read a short account of some strange events that occurred to me many years ago in Mexico, recently published under the name of "A Mexican Mystery," will recollect how a year after the death of my friend Pedro da Luz, I found a letter from him left in the shed where he had constructed the marvellous piece of mechanism with which that book is chiefly concerned. I did not think it necessary to mention, for it formed no part of my story, that the same case which held the letter contained a more voluminous document, which upon examination proved to be a romance of so wild a character as to confirm me in the opinion I was already inclined to form, that the poor fellow was hovering on the borders of insanity.

I put aside that work and never thought of it again until lately, when being asked by my publishers whether I had no more marvels to relate, and replying in the negative, suddenly the association of ideas brought back to my mind this story of Pedro's; which if marvels are at a premium in the literary market should surely command a sale. As to credibility—but there, I will say nothing on that head. The question of publication gave me much trouble to decide. It was not merely that the book would have to be translated, and while on the one hand I was unwilling to trust the translation to any pen but my own, on the other my Spanish had grown rusty by twenty year's disuse; though this difficulty was formidable enough. What troubled me more was the moral question,—Had I the right to give to the world, however greedy of wonders it might be, a production so calculated to pander to that morbid taste? Was it consistent with my reputation as a practical man, an engineer, a magistrate, and a churchwarden, to lend the weight of that reputation (whatever it may be worth) to a work of such a character.

The kind reception given by the public to the "Mexican Mystery" was due (I am persuaded) not merely to its marvels, but to the stamp of veracity imprinted on its every page. It is not too much to say, and I challenge any man to contradict me, that I can vouch for the precise accuracy of every line of that work. Nothing was there set down but what had come, mediately or immediately, and mostly the latter, under my own personal observation. The more was it incumbent upon me to do nothing that might impeach the character for truthfulness thereby gained, nor again to employ that character, the most valuable a man can bear, to mislead those whose confidence I had so happily won.

The result of much cogitation has been that I have determined to give this book to the world, rather, it may be for reasons of old friendship and the memory of former days, than for any which would commend themselves to my deliberate judgment. At the same time I have taken care to dissociate myself by means of these few words from any responsibility beyond that of translator and editor; which functions I have however exercised with an unsparing hand. Literally rendered Pedro's book would have seemed simply ridiculous in our mother tongue, and I have therefore, done my best to give an English or Anglo-American turn to the whole work. Into the mysteries of the great American language I have scarcely ventured to penetrate.

To the hands of the public I accordingly commit this fantastic work, only observing that if I do not brand it in so many words as a tissue of impossibilities, it is because my experience has made me slow to draw impassible lines between the possible and impossible or to say to the ocean of actual and potential fact, "So far shalt thou go, and no farther: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

That the work in spite of its extravagant character contains some suggestions of interest and value will probably be admitted. In particular I would mention the idea of "organizing invention" which appears to me fraught with great possibilities, and which I commend to the attention of the rising generation of engineers.

John Brown

London,

March 2nd, 1889.

Chapter I

THE WRECK OF A WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

In the summer of the year 1948 the English-speaking race had attained the very summit of prosperity. Within the limits of the United States were included no less than one hundred and fifty millions of souls, while the Canadian Provinces held thirty millions more. The Continent of Australia, the Islands of New Zealand, the Settlements of South Africa, and other territories held by the all-colonising Anglo-Saxon had increased in corresponding measure, while the mother-country, though less congested than in the latter part of the nineteenth century, thanks to judicious schemes of emigration, still reckoned in its islands a total of nearly thirty millions. In all it was reckoned that no less than two hundred and seventy millions of persons spoke the English tongue and flourished under English institutions.

Each of the vast sections of the Pan-Britannic Confederation (as it was barbarously called) enjoyed the most complete independence under its own President and Congress, but in the old country a respect for antiquity and history still supported the venerable monarchy, although the hereditary peerage was fast dying out, no new peers having been created for many years, and the heirs of the old families generally dropping their titles. Each year an assembly of the Presidents of the Confederate States, or their Representatives, was held in London, were such matters were discussed as concerned the welfare of the Confederation at large, and question of Foreign Policy determined which virtually controlled the diplomacy of all the European Courts. It will be in the recollection of all that when in the year 1930 the late Czar had collected a vast army and fleet for the subjugation of the Chinese Empire, and war was on the point of being declared, the remonstrances of the Presidents of the Pan-Britannic Confederation in London assembled, who "could not view without regret and alarm the projected attack upon a peaceable power," caused the abandonment of that vast but iniquitous scheme. The moral influence of the free elected representatives of two hundred and seventy millions of Englishmen, whose united armaments would hardly have made up 300,000 men, was sufficient to overawe the master of five millions of soldiers.

With regard to the other states of Europe vast political changes had taken place during the past century. The German-speaking peoples had become united under the House of Hohenzollern. The Hapsburg family, having abandoned the imperial title and their hereditary dominions, reigned as kings of Hungary at Buda-Pesth. Italy was united under the House of Savoy: France, that great disturber of international peace, had after two great wars been partitioned and reduced to impotence; Spain, Portugal and other minor nationalities remained in statu quo. The Grand Turk had removed his Capital to Bagdad, and the King of Bulgaria reigned at Constantinople. The despotism of the Czar, still "tempered with assassination," was otherwise supreme in his desolate dominions.

The Nineteenth Century had ended, as it had begun, in war, and since the terrible European conflict of 1897, which ended in the complete defeat of Russia and France, the overwhelming influence of the Teutonic peoples, that is to say, the Britannic Confederation and the German Empire, has succeeded in establishing a Roman peace unbroken during this Twentieth century.

The great British dependency of India was still held under the paternal despotism of England, which, after making various experiments, had found that the race-antipathies and religious animosities of the natives, together with a rooted incapacity for self-government, rendered it expedient to revert to the old methods of rule so successfully practised by her earlier satraps.

Such was the political condition of the world at the beginning of the unhappy year whose events I am about to describe. Socially the state of things was less satisfactory. The decay of religion and the cultivation of a gospel of selfishness had produced its natural results. Pauperism and misery, formerly relieved by the contributions of the benevolent, was now exclusively administered by a department of the state, and the final triumph of the social economists was won when by an act of Congress it was made a misdemean- our to give a copper or a loaf of bread to a starving beggar. That this rigorous system of state benevolence had its effect in stamping out beggary and reducing pauperism cannot be denied, but that it had likewise a hardening effect upon our citizens by answering once for all in the negative the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is I think not less undeniable.

Yet in spite of all drawbacks the period I am describing was one of unexampled prosperity, and there seems no reason in the nature of things why, but for the folly and pusillanimity of mankind, it should not have increased for ages more. Those indeed who like myself have ever maintained in a sceptical age the existence of an overruling Providence that orders all things both in Heaven and Earth cannot fail to see in the calamities that befell our race the fit punishment of the general decadence of religion and morality; while the collapse of all resistance to the unforeseen danger which menaced mankind would seem to be the natural result of that perverted philosophy which preached the duty of selfishness and discredited the ancient virtues of self-sacrifice and devotion.

Chapter II

CHAPTER II.

The one virtue that may be said to have characterised the twentieth century and to have redeemed it from utter worthlessness was a devotion to the cause of progress. True it was material progress that was chiefly sought, but it was urged by the economic school (and not without force) that intellectual and moral progress would necessarily accompany each advance of the comforts and conveniences of life. In the United States, at all events, the one duty inculcated on every child from its earliest years was that of advancing the material welfare of the world. This was our rule of life; this our religious and moral code; this stood for honour, patriotism, duty and all those fine abstractions which really do seem to have influenced the actions of our grandfathers. Now the profession that most lends itself to triumphs over nature and shows in a practical manner the advances made by man is undoubtedly that of engineer- ing. Consequently it is not surprising that in an age when the standards of duty were such as I have described this profession should have been the resort of almost every active and eager youth in the country. All who could do so became engineers; all who could not bewailed their incapacity or misfortune. Hence with all the best intellect of the country or indeed of the world hastening in one direction an amount of progress was made which would have seemed a wild dream to the men of fifty years back. Large buildings were moved from place to place with speed and security. Bridges were constructed across chasms of enormous span in an incredibly short space of time. Tunnelling was carried through mountains and under seas with less expenditure of time and labour than had been required for the puny mouseholes of the first half of the Nineteenth century. The natural force of the tides and of waterfalls, converted into electricity and so conveyed, was applied in unlimited quantity to works which had previously demanded the employment of thousands of men and horses. It was thus that it was found possible by the aid of automatic borers, excavators, and other machinery to excavate the Darien Canal in less than nine months, whereas the earlier work at Panama had occupied eight or nine time that period, and a dozen times as many workmen. The problem of aerial navigation, though frequently assailed, seemed to defy a perfect solution, but even here an approach to success had been attained in the clever "Torpedo Flyers" attached to our ships of war, which from their power of passing through the air in short flights of 400 to 600 yards at great speed obtained the nickname of "Flying Fish," which creature indeed they much resembled.

But 'tis idle for me to recapitulate the wonders, never I fear to be repeated, of this last age of human skill. Suffice it to say that as soon as the unlimited amount and conductibility of the natural forces was realised all efforts were directed to substituting automatic machines for the less efficient and more expensive labour of man. Thus we had automatic implements of agriculture, automatic miners for our minerals, automatic builders, which would run up the walls of a house in twenty-four hours, automatic locomotives requiring neither driver nor stoker, and many more. The attempt to employ automatic letter carriers, waiters, tramcar-conductors, and the like was unsuccessful and soon abandoned, as the event proved that a small modicum of human intelligence was requisite for the proper performance even of these humble offices.

All the foregoing description of the condition of society before the great disaster of 1948 is indeed unnecessary for the information of my own generation; but as that generation is passing away and its successor will be reared under wholly different surroundings it is essential to try to convey some idea of things as they were before that date. Having completed this slight sketch I now proceed to my story proper.

Chapter III

CHAPTER III.

At the period of which I write the Yellow Creek Works, Dakota, had long enjoyed the primary rank as a School of Engineering. Founded about the year 1910, with the advantage of unlimited capital, it had been from the first the aim of the intelligent directors to organize invention. The idea was itself perhaps the most pregnant invention ever devised, and requires some slight exposition here. Up to a late period in the last century the inventive talent of the world had been content to act like the literary and scientific talent of an earlier date in a wholly desultory fashion. An ingenious artificer or mechanic engaged in a factory was content to make any improvement that might suggest itself to him in the machinery under his hands, provided he could obtain his employer's sanction to risking some expenditure, and could see his way to gaining some recompense for himself. His genius, however, was little en , and did not extend itself to matters outside his own domain. The celebrated Edison was the first to show what valuable results might be obtained by devoting that singular faculty which may be called adaptiveness to employ itself exclusively in invention. Thousands of valuable hints had been thrown out, hundreds of clever devices patented, which from one reason or another had never been brought to perfection. To examine the innate possibilities of these inventions, to bring the adaptive talent of the world to bear upon crude and incomplete designs, to combine A's ideas with B's, and adapt both to complete the valuable project bequeathed by C, and finally to concentrate the maximum of inventive ability in their own employment,—such was the grand device of the projector of the Yellow Creek Works. The result more than justified the design. Invention being reduced to a system, and the genius of one inventor no longer working in solitude, but assisting and supplying the deficiencies of every other, mechanical improvement advanced by leaps and bounds.

The speciality of the Yellow Creek Works, in which they were without rivals, was the invention and perfecting of automatic machines. The public had been considerably startled by the first proposal to run railway trains without driver or stoker on the locomotive, but the proposition was generally regarded as a mere piece of clever advertising until actually carried out in the summer of '40, when a train of six passenger cars was run with speed and safety on the automatic principle from Detroit to Chicago. By an ingenious, yet simple mechanism, the signals were connected with electric contact makers, which acting on the engine levers stopped and started the train with perfect precision. Astonished indeed was the world to find that automatism could act as well as the trained intelligence of skilled drivers, nay better, for all chance of accident arising from carelessness, colour-blindness, or fog, was at once eliminated. This successful result gave a vast impetus to the credit and energy of the Yellow Creek Works; and the demand for self-acting machinery was increased tenfold. To make their engines self-feeding, self-supplying, even self-repairing, was now the object of every engineer in the company's service. Such was the eager competition in the work that many a warning of the impending catastrophe passed unheeded by the eyes and ears of those who were recklessly preparing it.

Who, indeed, could have foreseen the issue? Looking back upon events our blindness appears as insane as that of the man who should rear on his farm a litter of tigers. Yet history teaches that in all ages men have been sadly deficient in the prophetic instinct, and blind to all signs of the calamities they are bringing on themselves. When the bolt has fallen from the (to them) clear sky, then indeed all is plain enough.

The warnings to which I allude were of the following nature. On one occasion—and then on another and another in quick succession—-it happened that a machine of some description, while fulfilling admirably the functions designed by its inventor, displayed powers or performed operations which that individual had certainly not contemplated. Thus, the newest class of locomotives were arranged to stop automatically whenever the signals were against them. But no provision has been made for a similar stoppage in presence of accidental obstructions. When therefore a railway train travelling at thirty-five miles in the hour, suddenly pulled up a few yards short of a fallen tree which blocked the line, it might reasonably have been supposed that some very singular development had taken place, quite transcending the confines of scientific engineering. Will it be believed, however, that though at first startled, yet after a few instances of a similar prescience on the part of their machines, the engineers were pleased to regard them as evidence of superior workmanship, and by shallow untenable arguments silence, though not convince, their own easily-satisfied minds and the credulous questionings of the public? But there are some subjects concerning which the truth is so disagreeable, nay, so terrible, that the world prefers to ignore or explain it away rather than face the reality, and this was a remarkable instance. So the inventing and perfecting of automatic machines went on as steadily if not as merrily as ever.

The deputy manager, Cornelius J. Hanap, who had the entire charge of the "loco" department, was a shrewd, hard-headed, middle-aged New Englander of the old Puritan stock, with all the valuable Puritan qualities except the Puritan creed. A hard worker himself, he suffered no idleness among his subordinates. To his admirable qualities as a business man he added that of an expert mechanician. Not an inventor on the grand scale, he was constantly able to point out the one detail needful to convert a crude and costly notion into a remunerative speculation. In temper he was neither amiable nor agreeable, but no one could have suggested a more admirable occupant of the post he held.

One morning,—it was on the 6th of April, 1948,—a young assistant fitter, lately joined, entered locomoshed No. 7 on some trifling errand, when he was horrified to find this hard-headed Yankee, this sober Puritan,—Mr. Hanap, in fact,—foaming at the mouth and raving with every symptom of acute mania or rabies. But it was not this sight, painful as it was, that caused the young man to drop his tools and rush shrieking from the building. What was the spectacle of terror that could in a moment deprive one strong man of his reason, and expel all the manhood from another? In this shed—No. 7—was contained the chef d'œuvre of the Yellow Creek Works. With the view of rendering its automatism complete the agency of steam had in this engine been supplemented by hydraulic pneumatic and electric appliances of every description. I am not engineer enough to explain, nor would my children care to hear, how these wonderful appliances performed their respective functions; how the supplies of water, coal, and oil were conveyed to the several parts of the machine at the precise time and quantity required, by what ingenious mechanism defective bolts were replaced, loose nuts tightened, choked tubes cleared, and furred boilers cleansed; all I can say is that all this apparatus and much more was there. After all this particular engine was but little superior to many in the sheds, though doubtless it did possess a completer equipment of subsidiary appliances than any previously designed.

It might indeed have been imagined that a country bred child, or a savage, upon seeing for the first time this monster of stell and brass in active operation would have been scared into supposing it to be the incarnation of the Evil One, or at best some deadly ogre or fury. But these men were neither children nor savages; the engine was their own handiwork, their pride; moreover, it was not even in motion. Whence then this panic terror that subdued both?

The deputy manager had been seen to unlock and enter the shed in his usual calm and business-like manner. Inside he saw the nearly finished engine, steaming gently (for her fires had been burning for the last nine months, and she had been subjected daily to tests of every sort, until perfect) and glorious in her paint and polish. Nothing alarming so far. But by her side was—yes, solid and palpable, though small—another engine never made by the hand of man!

He stood awhile gazing stupidly at the prodigy. For a time he seemed to be in a trance or nightmare. The thing was too monstrous to be real. But when the conviction of its reality had forced itself upon his brain, and the full meaning of that tremendous spectacle broke upon him, his horror-stricken reason gave way, and he was found as described, a raving madman.

The young mechanic who discovered him in this plight bore his incoherent story to the workshops, whence the men and boys streamed in twos and threes to be sickened by the sight so justly awful to all human instincts. Awful, for it portended a war between the marshalled forces of nature, the entrance of the Inorganic world into unnatural rivalry with the Organic, in which war or rivalry a vast advantage was to be on the side of the former, owing to the absence of affections and a nervous system. They argued not thus, these poor artizans, but they felt in their hearts an instinctive horror and apprehension founded in the deepest principles of their common humanity. At length the manager, who had been summoned to the spot, had poor Mr. Hanap removed, and double-locked the doors of the shed, and slowly the throng dispersed to their work. Little enough work was done during the remainder of that day, and the next morning when names were called some half-dozen defaulters were found, a thing never known in the Works since the great strike of 1928. For a week the Works went on, outwardly, much as usual, though without the zeal and enthusiasm which had hitherto animated every employé, until on the 13th it was whispered that another of the engines had been found with a little one at its side, and later in the day the same tale was told of a third. The general un- easiness now became a panic: the men marched in a body to the manager's office to ask for their wages and announce their departure, only to find that the manager and all his staff had already fled. By the evening there was not a soul left within five miles of the Yellow Creek Works, which that morning had boasted 1500 hands. Only the steaming fiery engines with their monstrous brood lent a ghastly animation to that desolate scene.

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV.

Misfortunes, says the proverb, never come singly. There is a philosophy underlying these simple expressions of the quaint wisdom of our ancestors, and in this instance the esoteric meaning doubtless is that the combination of circumstances that make matters ripe for the birth of one event also prepares for that of others of a similar kind. How often does it happen—or has it happened, as I must now say—that after centuries of preparation two inventors, whether in the field of theory or practice, have hit upon the same idea at almost precisely the same moment!

To moralise is the privilege of age, but I must not abuse it or tax your patience too far. The efforts of ages had prepared the blow, the hour was ripe, and now it fell; not here or there, but in every quarter at once, with a suddenness which paralysed the efforts of those who might have been expected to venture something in defence of their country, their families, nay, of themselves.

Not only from the banks of the Yellow Creek, but from North and South, from factory after factory, came, as the days and weeks flew by, the same awful tale. The mischief, which determination and courage might have nipped in the bud, was allowed to grow without restraint. Superstition came to the aid of Terror to make it more terrified yet. The machines which by some obscure process of development had at last become capable of reproducing their kind were popularly supposed to be possessed by demons. Who can wonder?

Needless to say trade was at a standstill, and the violence of starving mobs was added to other terrors. The railways were deserted, neither passengers nor drivers being forthcoming. Steamships ceased to ply to and fro between our once busy ports. Those whom business or affection compelled to travel were content to jog along the weary roads in wagons, or beat up against contrary winds in ancient unseaworthy sailing ships. What might be happening in those once busy haunts of human skill, the workshops, none dared enquire.

But much was happening there, for each day the forces of the enemy increased and multiplied. Not only so, but each new-born machine was of a higher and more powerful type than its progenitors, as we afterwards learnt to our cost. Not only in structural features was this the case, but in the intelligent powers, if I may so call them, there was a progressive development. Our man-made Engines had a certain power of self-preservation: they could stop themselves in the presence of danger; but the new generation of nature-made, or demon-made machines, possessed powers of attack. They could pursue their foes, and when overtaken employ all their complex rescources in conflict. Nay more, they showed themselves capable of combination—of acting in concert—which is more than can be accomplished by the humbler members of the animal world.

It was about a year after the events recorded in the last chapter that the storm burst. I was then living, a widower of eighteen months standing, alone with my daughter Aurelia, at Jefferson City, Missouri, where I had some practice as a consulting physician: though in truth I regarded the pursuit of my legitimate profession as little more than a distraction, my serious occupations being drilling the Militia Battalion of which I was senior major, and writing my History of the Confederate Rebellion of the last century. The general uneasiness which had pervaded society for the past twelvemonth had not failed to make itself felt among us; but the fearful and panic-stricken had long since migrated from the inland towns to the principal seaports, ready on the first alarm to cast themselves on board ship and save their precious skins, without a thought for the welfare of their country, or of the friends and kinsmen left behind. The result of this was that our city, though with diminished numbers, still maintained the semblance of industry activity and commerce.

Gradually, however, the uneasiness of all classes assumed graver proportions. Day by day there dribbled in small parties of country folk, bringing with them disquieting rumours, which if in many cases demonstrably absurd, were sufficiently akin to the acknowledged realities to cause new and widespread alarm. And indeed what rumours, however wild, could be worse than the facts?

Nothing authentic had, however come to our ears, until on the 6th of June, 1949, an hour before sunrise, there galloped into the market-place a man mounted on a panting and foam-flecked roan, evidently in the last stage of terror and exhaustion. When this wild figure dismounted, or rather fell into the arms of the bystanders, it was some time before any coherent meaning could be extracted from his disjointed words. Soon, however, a whisper passed from mouth to mouth of the gathering crowd—"The Engines,"—"the Engines!" The messenger was eventually taken in to the Town Council, which was sitting, the writer among them, self-summoned at the general alarm, to whom, with pale face and gestures of madness, he told his tale. The night before he had retired to rest about ten o'clock in his lonely farm-house of Bellow's Gully, when he was aroused after a short sleep, and as he supposed about midnight, by sounds of a kind he could not describe. His first thought was that he had been visited by a party of Indians, or white rascals out on a cattle lifting expedition, but as the sounds grew more defined and more peculiar he softly stole from his bed and proceeded towards the stable. All appeared to be safe, though the sounds continued with rather increased than diminished volume, and the cattle and the good roan displayed much uneasiness. Leaving the farm buildings he proceeded into the road, where an unusual glow in the sky towards the North-East attracted his attention. The confused sound that came from the same quarter was broken by shrieks, whistles, and hisses of a weird and unaccountable character. Following the road a furlong, he came to a rising ground, whence he could obtain a wide view over the rolling prairie land. Here he stopped, and gazing intently through the darkness discerned a long row of twinkling lights that seemed to extend for miles across the wide plain. As he looked, the line seemed to lengthen and widen, the lights grew brighter and more defined, till at length like a lightning flash there broke upon his mind the meaning of what he saw. It was no mortal foe, but the dreaded host of machines, of which half-credited reports had reached his distant ranche, come out in their thousands against the race of man.