The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
First published in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in 1909
I
THE AIR-SHIP
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.
There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing
with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk--that is all the furniture. And
in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh--a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a
fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
An electric bell rang.
The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.
"I suppose I must see who it is", she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was
worked by machinery and it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang importunately.
"Who is it?" she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She
knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.
But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:
"Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five
minutes--for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on 'Music during the
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Australian Period'."
She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting
apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.
"Be quick!" She called, her irritation returning. "Be quick, Kuno; here I am in the dark wasting my time."
But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue
light shot across it, darkening to purple, and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the
other side of the earth, and he could see her.
"Kuno, how slow you are."
He smiled gravely.
"I really believe you enjoy dawdling."
"I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say."
"What is it, dearest boy? Be quick. Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?"
"Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want--"
"Well?"
"I want you to come and see me."
Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.
"But I can see you!" she exclaimed. "What more do you want?"
"I want to see you not through the Machine," said Kuno. "I want to speak to you not through the wearisome
Machine."
"Oh, hush!" said his mother, vaguely shocked. "You mustn't say anything against the Machine."
"Why not?"
"One mustn't."
"You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are
unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything.
I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone,
but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and
talk about the hopes that are in my mind."
She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit.
"The air-ship barely takes two days to fly between me and you."
"I dislike air-ships."
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"Why?"
"I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark. I get no ideas in an
air-ship."
"I do not get them anywhere else."
"What kind of ideas can the air give you?"
He paused for an instant.
"Do you not know four big stars that form an oblong, and three stars close together in the middle of the
oblong, and hanging from these stars, three other stars?"
"No, I do not. I dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting; tell me."
"I had an idea that they were like a man."
"I do not understand."
"The four big stars are the man's shoulders and his knees.
The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once, and the three stars hanging are like a
sword."
"A sword?;"
"Men carried swords about with them, to kill animals and other men."
"It does not strike me as a very good idea, but it is certainly original. When did it come to you first?"
"In the air-ship---" He broke off, and she fancied that he looked sad. She could not be sure, for the Machine
did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people--an idea that was good enough
for all practical purposes, Vashti thought. The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to
be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of
the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something "good enough" had long since been
accepted by our race.
"The truth is," he continued, "that I want to see these stars again. They are curious stars. I want to see them not
from the air-ship, but from the surface of the earth, as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago. I want to visit
the surface of the earth."
She was shocked again.
"Mother, you must come, if only to explain to me what is the harm of visiting the surface of the earth."
"No harm," she replied, controlling herself. "But no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud,
no advantage. The surface of the earth is only dust and mud, no life remains on it, and you would need a
respirator, or the cold of the outer air would kill you. One dies immediately in the outer air."
"I know; of course I shall take all precautions."
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"And besides--"
"Well?"
She considered, and chose her words with care. Her son had a queer temper, and she wished to dissuade him
from the expedition.
"It is contrary to the spirit of the age," she asserted.
"Do you mean by that, contrary to the Machine?"
"In a sense, but--"
His image is the blue plate faded.
"Kuno!"
He had isolated himself.
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 prim¾val 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
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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!" 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.
"Kuno!"
"I will not talk to you." he answered, "until you come."
"Have you been on the surface of the earth since we spoke last?"
His image faded.
Again she consulted the book. She became very nervous and lay back in her chair palpitating. Think of her as
without teeth or hair. Presently she directed the chair to the wall, and pressed an unfamiliar button. The wall
swung apart slowly. Through the opening she saw a tunnel that curved slightly, so that its goal was not
visible. Should she go to see her son, here was the beginning of the journey.
Of course she knew all about the communication-system. There was nothing mysterious in it. She would
summon a car and it would fly with her down the tunnel until it reached the lift that communicated with the
air-ship station: the system had been in use for many, many years, long before the universal establishment of
the Machine. And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own--the
civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things,
instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of
changing the air in their rooms! And yet--she was frightened of the tunnel: she had not seen it since her last
child was born. It curved--but not quite as she remembered; it was brilliant--but not quite as brilliant as a
lecturer had suggested. Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room,
and the wall closed up again.
"Kuno," she said, "I cannot come to see you. I am not well."
Immediately an enormous apparatus fell on to her out of the ceiling, a thermometer was automatically laid
upon her heart. She lay powerless. Cool pads soothed her forehead. Kuno had telegraphed to her doctor.
5
So the human passions still blundered up and down in the Machine. Vashti drank the medicine that the doctor
projected into her mouth, and the machinery retired into the ceiling. The voice of Kuno was heard asking how
she felt.
"Better." Then with irritation: "But why do you not come to me instead?"
"Because I cannot leave this place."
"Why?"
"Because, any moment, something tremendous many happen."
"Have you been on the surface of the earth yet?"
"Not yet."
"Then what is it?"
"I will not tell you through the Machine."
She resumed her life.
But she thought of Kuno as a baby, his birth, his removal to the public nurseries, her own visit to him there,
his visits to her--visits which stopped when the Machine had assigned him a room on the other side of the
earth. "Parents, duties of," said the book of the Machine," cease at the moment of birth. P.422327483." True,
but there was something special about Kuno--indeed there had been something special about all her
children--and, after all, she must brave the journey if he desired it. And "something tremendous might
happen". What did that mean? The nonsense of a youthful man, no doubt, but she must go. Again she pressed
the unfamiliar button, again the wall swung back, and she saw the tunnel that curves out of sight. Clasping the
Book, she rose, tottered on to the platform, and summoned the car. Her room closed behind her: the journey to
the northern hemisphere had begun.
Of course it was perfectly easy. The car approached and in it she found armchairs exactly like her own. When
she signaled, it stopped, and she tottered into the lift. One other passenger was in the lift, the first fellow
creature she had seen face to face for months. Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of
science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had
hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like
Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies;
all unrest was concentrated in the soul.
The air-ship service was a relic form the former age. It was kept up, because it was easier to keep it up than to
stop it or to diminish it, but it now far exceeded the wants of the population. Vessel after vessel would rise
form the vomitories of Rye or of Christchurch (I use the antique names), would sail into the crowded sky, and
would draw up at the wharves of the south--empty, so nicely adjusted was the system, so independent of
meteorology, that the sky, whether calm or cloudy, resembled a vast kaleidoscope whereon the same patterns
periodically recurred. The ship on which Vashti sailed started now at sunset, now at dawn. But always, as it
passed above Rheas, it would neighbour the ship that served between Helsingfors and the Brazils, and, every
third time it surmounted the Alps, the fleet of Palermo would cross its track behind. Night and day, wind and
storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with
its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.
Yet as Vashti saw the vast flank of the ship, stained with exposure to the outer air, her horror of direct
6
experience returned. It was not quite like the air-ship in the cinematophote. For one thing it smelt--not
strongly or unpleasantly, but it did smell, and with her eyes shut she should have known that a new thing was
close to her. Then she had to walk to it from the lift, had to submit to glances form the other passengers. The
man in front dropped his Book--no great matter, but it disquieted them all. In the rooms, if the Book was
dropped, the floor raised it mechanically, but the gangway to the air-ship was not so prepared, and the sacred
volume lay motionless. They stopped--the thing was unforeseen--and the man, instead of picking up his
property, felt the muscles of his arm to see how they had failed him. Then some one actually said with direct
utterance: "We shall be late"--and they trooped on board, Vashti treading on the pages as she did so.
Inside, her anxiety increased. The arrangements were old-fashioned and rough. There was even a female
attendant, to whom she would have to announce her wants during the voyage. Of course a revolving platform
ran the length of the boat, but she was expected to walk from it to her cabin. Some cabins were better than
others, and she did not get the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and spasms of rage shook her.
The glass valves had closed, she could not go back. She saw, at the end of the vestibule, the lift in which she
had ascended going quietly up and down, empty. Beneath those corridors of shining tiles were rooms, tier
below tier, reaching far into the earth, and in each room there sat a human being, eating, or sleeping, or
producing ideas. And buried deep in the hive was her own room. Vashti was afraid.
"O Machine!" she murmured, and caressed her Book, and was comforted.
Then the sides of the vestibule seemed to melt together, as do the passages that we see in dreams, the lift
vanished , the Book that had been dropped slid to the left and vanished, polished tiles rushed by like a stream
of water, there was a slight jar, and the air-ship, issuing from its tunnel, soared above the waters of a tropical
ocean.
It was night. For a moment she saw the coast of Sumatra edged by the phosphorescence of waves, and
crowned by lighthouses, still sending forth their disregarded beams. These also vanished, and only the stars
distracted her. They were not motionless, but swayed to and fro above her head, thronging out of one sky-light
into another, as if the universe and not the air-ship was careening. And, as often happens on clear nights, they
seemed now to be in perspective, now on a plane; now piled tier beyond tier into the infinite heavens, now
concealing infinity, a roof limiting for ever the visions of men. In either case they seemed intolerable. "Are we
to travel in the dark?" called the passengers angrily, and the attendant, who had been careless, generated the
light, and pulled down the blinds of pliable metal. When the air-ships had been built, the desire to look direct
at things still lingered in the world. Hence the extraordinary number of skylights and windows, and the
proportionate discomfort to those who were civilized and refined. Even in Vashti's cabin one star peeped
through a flaw in the blind, and after a few hers" uneasy slumber, she was disturbed by an unfamiliar glow,
which was the dawn.
Quick as the ship had sped westwards, the earth had rolled eastwards quicker still, and had dragged back
Vashti and her companions towards the sun. Science could prolong the night, but only for a little, and those
high hopes of neutralizing the earth's diurnal revolution had passed, together with hopes that were possibly
higher. To "keep pace with the sun," or even to outstrip it, had been the aim of the civilization preceding this.
Racing aeroplanes had been built for the purpose, capable of enormous speed, and steered by the greatest
intellects of the epoch. Round the globe they went, round and round, westward, westward, round and round,
amidst humanity's applause. In vain. The globe went eastward quicker still, horrible accidents occurred, and
the Committee of the Machine, at the time rising into prominence, declared the pursuit illegal, unmechanical,
and punishable by Homelessness.
Of Homelessness more will be said later.
Doubtless the Committee was right. Yet the attempt to "def
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