Leopoldo Lugones - "An Inexplicable Phenomenon" (1906)

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Leopoldo Lugones was born on June 13th, 1874 and died on February 18th, 1938. He was a prolific author of short stories and poetry. Borges, while initially critical of his work, eventually referred to him as "the greatest writer of Argentina". Lugones was a supporter of the 1930 Argentine coup, instigated by General José Félix Uriburu, who was supported by the Nationalists. Frustrated with the unfolding of the political situation, Lugones committed suicide by taking a mixture of whisky and cyanide.

Lugones' 1906 short story collection "Strange Forces" contains the three stories I have translated, "An Inexplicable Phenomenon", "The Psychon" and "The Omega Force". This anthology has been translated into English twice before, once by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert in 2001, the other by Daniel Bernardo in 2020. This might appear to be a bit of a duplication of effort, but when I did these translations, I was unaware of the Bernardo and the Alter-Gilbert seemed difficult to find, so I figured it would just be easier (and more fun) to translate three of the stories relevant to the podcast.

Like with the other Latin American works we've translated so far, these three stories, as well as others from "Strange Forces", are discussed at length in Rachel Haywood Ferreira's "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction".

- Chrononauts translation office, March 4th, 2021

AN INEXPLICABLE PHENOMENON

It was eleven years ago. I was traveling through the agricultural region that divides the provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe, provided with the indispensable recommendations to avoid the horrible inns of those colonies in formation. My stomach, defeated by the invariable splashes of fennel and the fatal walnuts of dessert, demanded fundamental refills. My last pilgrimage was to take place under the worst auspices. No one knew how to point me to a hostel in the town to where I had directed myself. However, circumstances were pressing when the justice of the peace, who professed a certain sympathy for me, came to my aid.

- "I know there," he told me, "a lonely widowed Englishman. He has a house, the best of the colony, and several lands of no small value. My position enables me to provide you with a recommendation, if you would like, and if it is effective he will provide you with an excellent accommodation. I say if it is effective, because my man, despite his good qualities, is prone to mood swings on certain occasions, being, moreover, extraordinarily reserved. No one has been able to penetrate his house beyond the dormitory where he receives his very rare guests. This all means that you are going in unfavorable conditions, but it is all I can supply. Success is purely casual. All in all, if you want a letter of recommendation..." [Translators note: 'usually has his moon' literally for 'prone to mood swings', as in being under a good/bad moon, or zodiac sign]

I accepted and continued my journey, arriving at the destination hours later.

There was nothing attractive about the place. The station with its red tile roof; its crunchy charcoal platform; its traffic light to the right, its well to the left. On the double track in front, half a dozen wagons were awaiting the harvest. Beyond was the shed, blocked by bags of wheat. Following the embankment, the pampas with its yellowish color like a handkerchief of herbs; little houses without reboque scattered in the distance, each one with its own pile on its side; on the horizon the festoon of smoke from the moving train, and a silence of peaceful enormity toning the rural color of the landscape.

It was vulgarly symmetrical like all the recent foundations. Lines of measurement were noticeable in that physiognomy of an autumnal meadow. Some settlers came to the post office looking for letters. I asked one for this well-known house, immediately obtaining the address. I noticed in the manner my host was referred to, that he was looked upon as a considerable man.

He didn't live far from the station. About ten blocks further, towards the west, at the end of a dusty road that took on lilac colors in the afternoon, I made out the house with its parapet and its cornice, of a certain exotic gallantry among the surrounding dwellings; its front garden; the inner courtyard surrounded by a wall behind which peach branches protruded. The set was nice and fresh; but everything seemed uninhabited. In the silence of the afternoon, there on the deserted countryside, that little house, despite its features of an industrious chalet, had a kind of sad sweetness, something of a new tomb on the site of an old cemetery.

When I got to the gate, I noticed that there were roses in the garden, autumn roses whose perfume relieved like charity the lashing exhalation of threshing. Among the plants that I could almost touch with my hand, grass grew freely; and a rust-covered shovel lay against the wall, its end entirely tied up by the guide of a vine.

I pushed open the gate, crossed the garden, and not without a certain vague impression of fear did I go to knock on the inner door. Minutes passed. The wind began to whistle in a crack, aggravating the solitude. At a second call, I felt footsteps; and soon after the door opened with a sound of parched wood. The owner of the house appeared, greeting me.

I presented my letter. While he was reading, I was able to observe him at ease. His head was elevated and bald; the shaven face of a clergyman; generous lips, austere nose. He must be a bit mystical. His superficial protuberances balanced, with a straight expression of impulsive tendencies, the imperious disdain of his chin. Defined by his professional inclinations, this man could be the same as a military man or a missionary. I would have liked to look at his hands to complete my impression, but I could only see them from the back.[Translators note: The word "Clergyman" is in English in the original]

Acquainted with the letter, he invited me to come in, and the rest of my stay, until lunchtime, was devoted to my personal arrangements. It was at the table that I began to notice something strange.

As we ate, I noticed that despite his perfect courtesy, something was troubling my interlocutor. His gaze, invariably directed towards one corner of the room, showed a certain anguish, but since his shadow fell precisely at that point, my furtive glances could discover nothing. Otherwise, it might well not be that but a habitual distraction.

The conversation was still quite lively, animated. It was was about the cholera that was hitting the nearby towns at that time. My host was a homeopath, and he did not hide his satisfaction at having found one of the guild in me. To this end, a phrase in the dialogue changed his tenor. The action of reduced doses had just suggested to me an argument which I hastened to make.

- "The influence about Rutter's pendulum", I said concluding a sentence, "exerted in the proximity of any substance, does not depend on the quantity. A homeopathic globule determines oscillations equal to those produced by a dose five hundred or a thousand times greater."[Translators note: Henry Rutter, author of several books on weights and measurements in the 1860s, and a work detailing experiments of a similar nature as mentioned in this story, entitled "Magnetised Currents and the Magnetoscope".]

I realized immediately that he had become interested in my observations. The homeowner was looking at me now.

- "However," he replied, "Reichenbach has refuted this experiment. I assume you have read Reichenbach."[Translators note: Baron Karl Reichenbach (1788 - 1869), chemist, who made several important discoveries, but dedicated the final years of his life to an unproved field of energy combining electricity, magnetism and heat, emanating from all living things, which he called the Odic force]

- "I have read him, yes; I have listened to his criticisms, I have experimented, and my apparatus, affirming Rutter, has shown me that the error came from the learned German, not from the Englishman. The cause of such an error is very simple, so much so that it amazes me how the illustrious discoverer of paraffin and creosote did not find it."

Here, was a smile from my host; conclusive proof that we understood each other.

- "Have you used Rutter's primitive pendulum, or the one perfected by Dr. Leger?"[Translator note: Reference to Leger unknown]

- "The latter," I replied.

- "That's better; and what, according to your research, would be the cause of Reichenbach's error?"

- "This: the sensitive peoples with which he operated, influenced the apparatus, suggesting itself by the quantity of the body studied. If the oscillation caused by a scruple of magnesia, let us suppose, reached a width of four lines, the current ideas about the relationship between cause and effect required that the oscillation increase in proportion to the quantity: ten grams, for example. The Baron's sensitives were individuals not usually versed in scientific speculation; and those who practice such experiments know how powerfully such people are influenced by ideas held to be true, especially when they are logical. Here, then, is the cause of the error. The pendulum does not obey quantity, but only the nature of the body studied; but when the sensitive believes that quantity influences, the effect increases, since all belief is a volition. A pendulum, before which the subject operates without knowing the variations in quantity, confirms Rutter. The hallucination is dissipates..."

- "Oh, we have hallucination here already," said my interlocutor with obvious displeasure.

- "I'm not one of those who explains everything by way of hallucination, at least confusing it with subjectivity, as it often happens. Hallucination is for me a force rather than a state of mind, and thus considered, a good portion of phenomena are explained through it. I believe that's the true doctrine."

- "Unfortunately that's false. Look, I met Home, the medium, in London, back in 1872. Then I followed Crookes's experiments with lively interest, under radically materialistic criterion; but evidence of the phenomena of '74 was imposed on me. Hallucination is not enough to explain everything. Believe me, apparitions are autonomous..."[Translators note: William Crookes (1832 - 1919), a discoverer of cathode rays, working on these issues from 1869 - 1875.]

- "Permit me a little digression," I interrupted - finding in those memories an opportunity to verify my deductions about his personage; I wanted to ask him a question, which certainly did not require an answer, if it is indiscreet: "Have you been a military man?..."

- "For a little while; I was a second lieutenant in the Indian army."

- "Certainly, India would be a field of curious studies for you."

- "No; the war closed the road to Tibet where I wanted to go. I went to Cawnpore, nothing more. For health reasons I very soon returned to England; from England I went to Chile in 1879; and finally to this country in 1888."

- "Did you get sick in India?"

- "Yes," the former soldier answered sadly, fixing his eyes again on the corner of the room.

- "Cholera?" I insisted.

He rested his head on his left hand, and looked over me vaguely. His thumb began to move between the thinning hairs on the nape of his neck. I understood that he was going to introduce me into a confidence to which those gestures were a prologue, and I waited. Outside, a cricket chirped in the dark.

- "It was worse still," began my host. "The mystery will soon be forty years old and no one has known until now. Why talk about it? They wouldn't have understood, thinking me crazy at least. I am not sad, I am desperate. My wife passed away eight years ago, ignoring the evil that was devouring me, and fortunately I have not had children. I meet in you for the first time a man capable of understanding me."

I bowed gratefully.

- "Science is so beautiful, free science, without a chapel and without an academy! And nevertheless, you are still on the threshold. Reichenbach's odic fluids are only the prologue. The case that you are going to know will reveal to you how far it can go."

The narrator was moved. He mixed English phrases with his somewhat grammatical Spanish. The digressions acquired an imperious tendency, a strange rhythmic fullness in that foreign accent.

- "In February 1858," he continued, "was when I lost all my joy. You have heard of the yogis, those unique beggars whose life is shared between espionage and thaumaturgy. Travelers have popularized their exploits, which it would be useless to repeat. But do you know what the basis of their powers consists of?"

- "I believe that it's in the faculty of producing, when they want, autosonambulism, becoming in such a way insensitive, seers, etc."

- "Exactly. Well, I saw the yogis operate in conditions that made any trickery impossible. I even photographed the scenes, and the plate reproduced everything, just as I had seen it. Hallucination was thus, impossible, because chemical ingredients do not hallucinate... so I wanted to develop identical powers. I have always been bold, and then I was not in a position to appreciate the consequences. So I put my hands to work."

- "By what method?"

Without responding to me, he continued:

- "The results were surprising. In a short time I got to sleep. After two years I produced a conscious translation. But those practices had brought me to the height of anxiety. I felt terribly helpless, and with the assurance of an adverse thing mixed with my life like a poison. At the same time, my curiosity was devouring me. I was on the slope and could no longer stop. By a continuous tension of will I managed to save face to the world. Little by little, the power awakened in me became more rebellious. A prolonged distraction caused an unfolding. I felt my personality outside of me, my body came to be something like an affirmation of not me, I would say, expressing that state concretely. As the impressions were being fueled, producing an agonizing lucidity, I resolved one night to see my double. To see what was coming out of me, being myself, during the ecstatic dream."

- "And were you able to do it?"

- "It was one evening, almost night already. Detachment occurred with an accustomed ease. When I regained consciousness, before me, in a corner of the room, there was a shape. And this shape was a monkey, a horrible animal staring at me! Since then he has not left me. I see it constantly. I am his prey. Wherever he goes, going with me, is him. He is always there. He looks at me constantly, but I never approach him, he never moves, I never move..."

I underline the changed pronouns in the last sentence, just as I heard it. A sincere grief seized me. This man did indeed suffer from an atrocious suggestion.

- "Calm yourself" I said, feigning confidence. "Reintegration is not impossible."

- "Oh yes!" he responded bitterly. "This is already old. Imagine, I have lost the concept of unity. I know that two and two are four, as a memory; but I don't believe it anymore. The simplest arithmetic problem is meaningless to me, since I lack the conviction of the whole. And I still suffer strange things. When I take one hand with the other, for example, I feel that the former is different, as if it belonged to a person who is not me. Sometimes I see things double, because each eye proceeds unrelated to the other..."

It was, undoubtedly, a curious case of madness, which did not exclude the most perfect reasoning.

- "But anyway, that monkey?..." I asked to exhaust the matter.

- "He is black like my own shadow, and melancholic in the way of a man. This description is accurate, because I'm looking at him right now. His height is medium, his face like all monkey faces. But I feel, nevertheless, that he resembles me. I speak with complete control of myself. That animal looks like me!"

That man, indeed, was serene; and yet the idea of an simian face was in a stark contrast to his vantage point, raised skull, and straight nose that disbelief was imposed by this circumstance, even more than by the absurdity of the hallucination.

He perfectly noticed my state; he stood up as if adopting a final resolution:

- "I'm going to walk around this room so that you can see him. Observe my shadow, I beg of you."

He raised the lamplight, rolled the table to one end of the dining room, and began to pace. Then, I was seized by the greatest of surprises. The shadow of that subject did not move! Projected about the corner, from the waist up, and with the lower part on the light wooden floor, it seemed a membrane lengthening and shortening according to the greater or lesser proximity of its owner. I could not notice any displacement under the incidences of light in each moment the man had found himself.

Alarmed at supposing myself to be the victim of such madness, I resolved to be unimpressed and to see if I would do something similar with my host, by means of a decisive experiment. I asked him to let me get his silhouette by running a pencil over the shadow's profile.

With permission granted, I fixed a piece of paper with four wet breadcrumbs until I achieved the most perfect adherence possible to the wall, and so that the shadow of the face remained in the very center of the sheet. As can be seen, I wanted to prove by the identity of the profile between the face and its shadow (this was obvious, but the hallucinated person maintained the opposite) the origin of said shadow, with the intention of later explaining its immobility, ensuring an exact base.

I would be lying if I said that my fingers did not tremble a little as they settled on the dark spot, which otherwise perfectly imitated the profile of my interlocutor; but I affirm with complete certainty that my pulse did not fail me on the layout. I made the line without raising my hand, with a blue Hardtmuth pencil, and did not peel off the sheet, concluding that I had, until I was convinced by a scrupulous observation, that my line perfectly coincided with the outline of the shadow, and this with the shadow of the hallucinated face.

My host followed the experiment with immense interest. When I approached the table, I saw his hands tremble with suppressed emotion. My heart was beating, as if sensing an unfortunate outcome.

- "Don't look," I said.

- "I will look!" he answered me with such an imperious accent that, despite myself, I held the paper up to the light.

We both paled in a horrible way. There before our eyes, the pencil line traced a depressed forehead, a flat nose, a bestial snout. The monkey! The cursed thing!

And for the record, I don't know how to draw.

Leopoldo Lugones - "The Psychon" (1906)

THE PSYCHON

Dr. Paulin, advantageously known in the scientific world for the discovery of the telectroscope, the electroid and the black mirror, of which we will speak some day, arrived in this capital eight years ago, incognito, to avoid the displays that his modesty repudiated. Our doctors and scientists will correctly read the name of the character, which I hide under an assumed patronym, because I both lack authorization to publish it, and because the outcome of this story would cause controversy, which my ignorance would not know how to sustain in the scientific field.

A vulgar rheumatism, rebellious to all treatment, caused me to meet up with Dr. Paulin when he was still a stranger here. A certain friend, a member of a society for psychic studies to whom the doctor had been recommended from Australia, put us in contact. My rheumatism disappeared through an original heliotherapy treatment from the doctor; my the gratitude towards him, as well as the interest that his experiments generated in me, turned our friendly approach into what developed as a sincere affection.

A preliminary look at the aforementioned experiments will serve as an explanatory introduction, necessary for a better understanding of what follows.

Dr. Paulin was, above all, a distinguished physicist. A disciple of Wroblewski at the University of Krakow, he had devoted himself to the study of the liquefaction of gases, a problem which, imaginatively posed by Lavoisier, was later to be solved by Faraday, Cagniard-Latour and Thilorier. But this was not the only type of investigation in which the doctor excelled. His profession was the specialization in the poorly understood field of suggestive therapy, being a worthy emulator of the Charcots, the Dumontpalliers, the Landolts, the Luys; and apart from the heliotherapeutic system cited above, he earned consultations by Guimbail and Branly repeatedly, on subjects as delicate as the conductivity of neurons, whose law, recently determined by both scholars, was an exciting case in science. [Translators note: Brief biographical notes of the many scientists and engineers mentioned in this story will be provided in an appendix at the end.]

It is necessary to confess, however, that Dr. Paulin suffered from a serious defect. He was a spiritualist, having, to greater sorrows, the frankness to confess it. In this regard, I will always remember the end of a letter that he addressed in July of '98 to Professor Elmer Gates of Washington, answering the other in which he particularly communicated his experiments on the suggestion of dogs and about "dirigation", that is, the modifying action exerted by the will on certain parts of the organism.

"Well, yes," said the doctor; "you are correct in your conclusions, which I've just seen published together with the account of your experiments in the New York Medical Times. The spirit is that governs the organic tissues and the physiological functions, because it is the spirit that creates these tissues and ensures their vital faculty. You know if I am inclined to share your opinion," etc.

Thus, Dr. Paulin was looked upon distrustfully by academia. Like Crookes, like de Rochas, they accepted him with an acute suspicion. The only thing missing was the materialist stamp for him to be issued his diploma as a sage.

Why was Dr. Paulin in Buenos Aires? It seems that this was due to a scientific expedition with which he sought to finish a series of botanical studies which applied to medicine. Some plants, which he obtained through me, among others, the Jarilla whose emmenagogue properties I had described to him, gave rise to a plea to which his kindness willingly deferred. I asked him for permission to attend his experiments, and have been a witness to them ever since.

The doctor had, in alleyway X, a laboratory that was reached by a consulting room. All who knew him will perfectly remember this and other details, because our man was as wise as he was frank and did not make any mysteries about his existence. It was in that laboratory that one night, speaking with the doctor about the ritual prescriptions that affect the entire world's clergy, I obtained a singular explanation of a certain fact, which had kept me very busy.

We were discussing the tonsure, the explanation of which I could not find, when the doctor suddenly threw out this argument at me that I did not intend to dispute:

- "You know that the fluidic exhalations of man, are perceived by sensitive people in the form of a radiance, reds, those that emerge from the right side, blues, those that are emitted from the left. This law is constant, except in the left-handed whose polarity is reversed, naturally, the same is for the sensitive as is for the magnet. Shortly before becoming acquainted with this, while experimenting with this fact with Antonia, the sleepwalker who helped us to test the electroid, I found myself in the presence of a factor which extraordinarily caught my attention. This sensitive woman saw a yellow flame detach from my occiput, which undulated, lengthening up to a foot in height. The persistence with which the girl affirmed this fact filled me with astonishment. She could not even presume an involuntary suggestion, because in this kind of research the method of Dr. Luys was employed, hypnotizing only the retinas to free the rational faculty."

The doctor rose from his seat and began to pace around the room.

- "With an interest that can be explained by one in the face of such an unexpected phenomenon, the next day I tried an experiment with five paid boys. Antonia did not see the mysterious flame in any of them, although she did see ordinary halos; but what was not to my surprise, hearing her exclaim in the presence of the porter Don Francisco, you know, called by me as a last resort: 'The man does have it, clearly but less brilliant.' I pondered for two days about this phenomenon: until suddenly, due to that acquired habit in such studies of not wasting any detail, an idea occurred to me, that, slightly ridiculous at first, soon became acceptable."

He sucked vigorously on his cigar and continued:

- "I have the habit of working while wearing my homemade fez; baldness obliges me to this fault ... When Antonia saw the yellow glow over my head, it was without the hat, having taken it off because of the excessive heat. Wouldn't it have been the boys' hair that prevented an emission of the flame? According to Fugairon, the horned layer that constitutes the epidermis is a poor conductor of animal magnetism; so that hair, a horned substance also, has the same property. Furthermore, Don Francisco is bald like me, and the coincidence of this phenomenon in both of us, permitted this reasonable presumption. My subsequent research had fully confirmed it; and now you will understand the reason for the tonsure. The primitive priests, would observe over the heads of some electric generator apostles, we'll say, accepting a term of recent creation, the radiance that Antonia perceived over ours. This fact, of Moses there, is not rare in the legendary chronologies. Later, the obstacle presented by the hair would be noticed, and the habit of shaving that point of the skull where the glow arose would be established, so that this phenomenon, whose prestige is inferred, could manifest itself with all intensity. Do you find my explanation convincing?"

- "It seems to me, at least; as ingenious as Volney's, for whom the tonsure is the symbol of the sun..."

I was in the habit of contradicting him thus, indirectly, so that he would arrive at the end of his explanation.

- "You could likewise also cite, the one in Brillat-Savarin, according to which the tonsure has been prescribed to monks so that they may keep their heads fresh," replied the doctor, between being stung and smiling.

- "However, there is something else," he continued, encouraging himself. "Since a long time ago, I have been projecting a poor experiment on those fluidic emanations, on the lohé, to use the expression of Reichenbach, its discoverer: I wanted to obtain the spectrum of those flashes. I tried, making myself describe through those sensitive, in detail, all the phenomena ..." [Translators note: "Lohe", German for 'great flame', the accented "é" in Lugones' text is not present in the German word]

- "... And what was the result?" I asked excitedly.

- "The result was one green line in the indigo for the red coloration, and two black ones in the green for the blue coloration. As for the yellow one I discovered, the result is extraordinary. Antonia says she sees a violet line in the red."

- "Absurd!"

- "Believe what you like; but I have already presented her with the spectrum, and she has indicated to me the position of the line that she sees or thinks she sees in it. Based on these data, and with all possible assumptions of error, I think that line is number 5567. If so, it would be a curious identity; because the line 5567, would exactly coincide with the beautiful line number 4 of the northern lights ..."

- "But doctor, this is all pure fantasy!" I exclaimed, alarmed by these dizzying ideas.

- "No, my friend. This would simply mean that the pole is something like the crown of the planet (!)."

Shortly after the conversation I have referred to, the last sentence of which concluded with the most affable smile of Dr. Paulin, he read to me one excited afternoon, the first news about the liquefaction of hydrogen carried out by Dewar in May of that year, and about the discovery made a few days later by Travers and Ramsay, of three new elements in the air: krypton, neon and metargon, precisely applying the gas liquefaction procedure; and with regard to these facts, I still remember his phrase of work and combat.[Translators note: Metargon was a presumed noble gas that was proposed in 1898 by William Ramsay as existing in small amounts in the atmosphere.]

- "No; It is not possible that I can die without attaching my name to one of these discoveries, which are the glory of life. Tomorrow I will continue my experiments."

From the following day forward, he went to work with a feverish ardor; and although I must have been cured of astonishment at his successes, I could not help but shudder when one afternoon he said to me in a calm voice:

- "Do you believe that I have seen that line in the neon spectrum with my own eyes?"

- "Really?" I said with an obvious rudeness.

- "Really. I think that such a line has put me on the right track. But in order to satisfy your curiosity, it is necessary for me to tell you about certain inquiries that I have kept confidential."

I thanked him warmly and eagerly prepared to listen. The doctor began:

- "Although the news about the liquefaction of hydrogen was very brief, my knowledge of the matter allowed me to complete it, it was enough for me to modify the Olzewski apparatus, which I used in the preparation of liquid air. Then applying the principle of fractional distillation, like Travers and Ramsay, I obtained the spectra of krypton, neon, and metargon. Then I decided to extract these bodies, in case a new spectrum appeared in the residue, and indeed, when there was no more left, I saw the aforementioned line appear."

- "And how is the extraction performed?"

- "By making the liquid air evaporate slowly, and collecting the gas released by that evaporation in a container. If I had a Linde machine here that would supply me with sixty kilograms of liquid air per hour, it could operate on a large scale; but I must be content with a production of eight hundred cubic centimeters.

"Obtaining the gas in the container, I treat it by heated copper to remove oxygen, and by a mixture of lime with magnesium to absorb the nitrogen. Isolated, therefore, is the argon; and that's when the double green line of krypton appears, discovered by Ramsay. By liquefying the isolated argon, and subjecting it to slow evaporation, the products of the distillation in the Geissler tube supply a red-orange light, with new lines, which by the interposition of a Leyden jar increase, characterizing the spectrum of neon. If the distillation continues, a solid product of the very slow evaporation is obtained, whose spectrum is characterized by two lines, one green and the other yellow, predicting the existence of the metargon or cesium, as proposed by Berthelot. So far, that is all that is known."

- "And the violent line?"

- "We will see it in a few moments.

"In the meantime, you should know that in order to achieve the same results, I proceeded differently. I removed oxygen and nitrogen by means of the indicated substances; then argon and metargon with soda hyposulfite; krypton followed by zinc phosphide, and finally neon with potassium ferrocyanide. This method is empirical. There is still a residue comparable to frost in the container, which evaporates very slowly. The resulting gas is my discovery."

I bowed to those solemn words.

- "I have studied its physical constants, even determining some. Its density is 25.03, oxygen level being 16 as is known. I have also determined the frequency of the soundwave in that fluid, and the number found permitted me to evaluate the ratio of its specific heats, which has indicated that it is monatomic. But the surprising result is in its spectrum, characterized by a violet line in red, line 5567 coinciding with the number 4 of the Northern Lights, the same one that presented the yellow glow perceived by Antonia above my head."

Faced with such a statement, I blurted out this innocent question:

- "And what could this matter be, doctor?"

To my great surprise, the sage smirked.

- "This matter... hmm! This matter could well be volatilized thought."

I jumped in the chair, but the doctor imposed silence upon me with a gesture.

- "Why not?" he continued speaking. "The brain radiates thought in the form of mechanical force, with a high probability that it also does so in a fluidic form. The yellow flame would, in this case, be nothing more than the product of cerebral combustion, and the analogy of its spectrum with that of the substance I discovered makes me believe that they would be somewhat identical. Imagine, from the daily consumption of thought, the enormous radiation that must be produced. What would be, in fact, the useless or strange thoughts, the creations of the imaginative, the ecstasies of the mystics, the daydreams of the hysterics, the projects of the illogical, all those forces whose action does not manifest itself due to lack of immediate application? The astrologers said that thoughts live in the astral light, as latent forces capable of acting under certain conditions. Wouldn't this be an insight into the phenomenon that science is on its way to discovering? For the rest, thought as a psychic entity is immaterial: but its manifestations must be fluidic, and this is perhaps what I have come to obtain as a laboratory product."

Straddling his theory, the doctor boldly threw himself into those regions, developing a fearful logic which I tried in vain to resist.

- "I have given my matter the name of Psychon," he concluded; "you already understand why. Tomorrow we will conduct an experiment: we will liquefy thought. (The doctor added me, as it can be seen, to his experiments, and I was careful to not refuse). Then we will calculate if it is possible to make its occlusion in a metal, and we will then mint psychic medals. Medals of genius, poetry, audacity, sadness... Then we will determine its place in the atmosphere, calling the corresponding layer "psychosphere", if this expression can be permitted ... Until tomorrow at two o'clock, then, and we will see what results from all of this."

At two o'clock we were at work.

The doctor showed me his new apparatus. It consisted of three concentric spirals formed by copper tubes which communicated with each other. The gas flowed into the outer spiral, under a pressure of six hundred and forty-three atmospheres, and a temperature of -136°C obtained by the evaporation of ethylene, according to the Pictet circulatory system; traveling through the other two serpentines, it was to spread out at the lower end of the inner spiral, and successively passing through the annular compartments in which they were found, it emptied out by its starting point at the upper end of the other. The whole apparatus measures 70 cm in height, and 175 cm in diameter. The distension of the compressed fluid, caused the decrease in temperature required for its liquefaction, by the so-called cascade method, also belonging to Professor Pictet.

The experiment began, after proceedings of the matter which only interest the professionals, and have therefore been omitted.

While the doctor was operating, I prepared to write down the results he dictated to me on a form. I will now give these annotations just as I wrote them, for the sake of indispensable precision. The doctor said:

"When the distension reaches four hundred atmospheres, a temperature of -237.3º is obtained and the fluid flows into a double-walled vessel separated by an empty space of air; the inner wall is silver, to prevent heat contribution by convection or radiation".

"The product is a transparent and colorless liquid that has a certain analogy with alcohol."

"The critical constants of psychon are, then, four hundred atmospheres and -237.3°."

"A platinum wire whose resistance is 5038 ohms in the melting ice, does not present more than 0.119 in the boiling psychon. The law of variation of the resistance with temperature of this wire allows me to fix the one of the boiling of the psychon at -265°".

- "Do you know what this means?" he asked me, abruptly stopping the dictation.

I did not respond to him; the situation was too dire.

- "This means," he continued as if talking to himself, "that we would not be more than eight degrees from absolute zero."

I had gotten up, and with the anxiety that is to be expected, I was examining the liquid whose meniscus stood out clearly in the glass. The thought!... Absolute zero!... I wandered with a certain lucid intoxication in the world of impossible temperatures.

If it could be translated, I thought, what would this little bit of clear water in my eyes say? What pure child's prayer, what criminal intent, what projects will be locked in this container? Or maybe some ill-fated creation of art, some discovery lost in the darkness of illogism?...

The doctor, meanwhile, seized by an emotion that he tried in vain to suppress, measured the room with long steps. He finally approached the apparatus saying:

- "The experiment has been concluded. Now let's break the container so that this liquid can escape by evaporating. Who knows if by retaining it we do not cause the distress of some soul..."

A hole was made in the upper wall of the vessel, and the liquid began to descend, while the dull noise of a leak was distinctly perceived.

Suddenly I noticed on the doctor's face a sardonic expression entirely out of the circumstances; and almost at the same time, the idea that it would be a stupid inconvenience to jump over the table, came to my mind; but I had hardly thought about it, when the furniture passed under my legs, not without giving me time to see that the doctor threw his cat into the air like a ball, a legitimate Siamese, a true apple of his eyes. The notebook came to an halt with a great burst of laughter in the doctor's nose, causing a formidable pirouette on his part in my honor. The truth is that for an hour, we were committing the greatest extravagances, to the great astonishment of the neighbors who were attracted by the tumult and who did not know how to explain the matter. I barely remember that in the midst of laughter, ideas of crime assailed me among a dizzying enunciation of mathematical problems. The cat mingled himself with our capering with an ardor strange to his tropical apathy, and that did not cease until the spectators threw open the doors; for the pure thought that we had absorbed was surely the elixir of madness.

Dr. Paulin disappeared the next day, without leaving any time to find out his whereabouts.

Yesterday, for the first time, exact news of him reached me. He seems to have repeated his experiment, as he is now in Germany in an asylum.

APPENDIX: GLOSSARY OF MENTIONED NAMES

Berthelot, Pierre Eugène Marcellin (1827 - 1907), French chemist who synthesized organic compounds from inorganic substances

Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthelme (1755 - 1826), author of "The Physiology of Taste".

Branly, Édouard (1844 - 1940), French physicist, inventor of the coherer, and other early radio advancements

Cagniard-Latour, Charles (1777 - 1859), French physicist who performed pioneering work on acoustics

Charcot, Jean-Martin (1825 - 1893), French neurologist, known as "the founder of modern neurology"

Crookes, William (1832 - 1919), British chemist and vacuum tube pioneer

Dewar, James (1842 - 1923), Scottish chemist who worked with liquid oxygen and hydrogen

Dumontpallier, Amédée (1826 - 1899), French gynecologist who conducted research on hypnotism

Faraday, Michael (1791 - 1867), English scientist who discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction

Fugairon, Louis-Sophrone (1846 - 1922), French physician and Bishop of the French Gnostic Church, author of "Essay on the electrical phenomena of living beings including the scientific explanation of so-called spiritualist phenomena"

Gates, Elmer (1859 - 1923), American inventor, conducted research into "psychotaxis", which were frequently misinterpreted by the public

Geissler, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm (1814 - 1879), German physicist, inventory of an early gas discharge tube

Guimbail, Henri (1859-19??), French physicist, author of "Therapy with physical agents, hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, thermotherapy: frigotherapy, physiotherapy, climatotherapy, thalassotherapy"

Landolt, Hans Heinrich (1831 - 1910), Swiss chemist, discoverer of iodine clock reaction

Lavoisier, Antoine (1743 - 1794), French chemist considered "father of modern chemistry"

Linde, Carl Paul Gottfried (1842 - 1934), German chemist, invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes

Luys, Jules Bernard (1828 - 1897), French neurologist, author of the text "The brain and its functions"

Olszewski, Karol (1846 - 1915), Polish chemist, with Wróblewski, the first to liquefy oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a stable state.

Pictet, Amé (1857 - 1937), Swiss chemist, co-discoverer of Pictet-Spengler reaction

Ramsay, William (1852 - 1916), Scottish chemist, recipient of the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air"

von Reichenbach, Karl Ludwig (1788 - 1869), German chemist, dedicating his final years to the study of energy and mesmerism

de Rochas, Albert (1837 - 1914), French parapsychologist, attempted to research scientific basis for occult phenomenon

Thilorier, Adrien-Jean-Pierre (1790 - 1844), French chemist who was the first to produce dry ice

Travers, Morris (1872 - 1961), English chemist, co-discoverer of xenon, neon and krypton with William Ramsay

Volney, comte de, Constantin François de Chassebœuf (1757 - 1820), French philosopher, from his 1789 work "The Ruins": "Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his zodiac; your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs and prelates!"

Wróblewski, Zygmunt Florenty (1845 - 1888), Polish chemist who studied the effects of various gasses. With Olszewski, the first to liquefy oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a stable state. Killed in a laboratory accident.

Leopoldo Lugones - "The Omega Force" (1906)

THE OMEGA FORCE

We were but three friends. Two of us, in the confidence of the person who contacted me, who was the discoverer of the dreadful force, who, despite our secrecy, was already suspicious of other people.

This simple sage, who we were in the presence of, did not come from any academy and was quite distant from celebrity. He had spent his life in poverty, randomly tinkering with small industrial inventions, from cheap inks and coffee grinders, to machine controllers for trolley tickets.

He never wanted to patent his discoveries, some very ingenious, selling them for little less than nothing to second-rate merchants. Anticipating perhaps something of genius in himself, which he concealed with an almost dull modesty, he had the deepest disdain for those small triumphs. If he talked about them, he would accompany his words with indifference or smile with bitterness.

- "That's so I can eat" - he said simply. He had made me his friend by chance, during a certain conversation pertaining to the occult sciences; since the subject warrants an afflictive piety from the public, those whom it interests tend to disguise their predilections, not discussing it but with their peers.

This was precisely what had happened; and my disregard for what they'll say must have pleased that disdainful individual, since we have been intimate ever since. Our chats on this favorite topic were long. My friend was inspired by treating it with the silent ardor which characterized the enthusiasm which only shone through in the brightness of his eyes.

I still see him walking around his room, sturdy, almost square, with his pale and hairless face, his brown eyes with their singular gaze, his calloused hands of both a cowboy and a chemist.

- "It moves out there, over the earth's ground" - he used to say to me - "there's more than one tremendous force out there whose discovery is approaching. From those interetherial forces, the firmest concepts of science have just been transformed, and justifying the affirmations of occult wisdom depends more and more on human intellect."

"The identification of the mind, with the directed forces of the cosmos" - he concluded on occasion, philosophizing - "is increasingly clear; and the day will come when one will know how to control them without intermediary machines, which in reality are an annoyance. When one thinks that machines are nothing more than accessories with which the human being completes himself, potentially carried within himself, and as he proves when conceiving of and executing them, these devices result in substantial simple modifications, such as a rod, which extends an arm in order to reach fruit. Memory already bypasses two fundamental concepts, the most fundamental in terms of reality, and as obstacles - space and time - by instantly evoking a place which was seen ten years ago and a thousand leagues away; not to mention certain cases of telepathic bilocation, which better demonstrate the theory. If there was truth in this, humanity's efforts should strive towards the abolition of any intermediary between the mind and these peculiar forces, suppressing the material as much as possible, another axiom of occult philosophy; but, for this, it is necessary to put the body through special conditions, activate the mind, accustom it to direct communication with said forces. A case of magic. A case that only the myopic can't perceive in all its luminous simplicity. We were talking about memory. Calculation also demonstrates a direct relationship; well, if by calculation the position of an unknown star is determined at a point in space, it is because there is an agreement between the laws that govern human thought and the universe. There is more still: it is the determination of a material fact by means of an intellectual law. The star has to be there, because that is how my mathematical reason determines it, and this imperative sanction is almost equivalent to creation."

I suspect, God forgive me, that my friend did not limit himself to theorizing about the occult, and that his diet, as well as his severe continence, involved practice; but he was never frank on this point and I was discreet in my turn.

Associated with us, shortly before the events that I am about to narrate, was a young doctor who only lacked his general examinations, and who may never take them as he had devoted himself to philosophy; this was the other confidant who was to hear the revelation.

It was on the way back from a long vacation which had separated us from this discoverer. We found him somewhat more nervous, but radiant with a singular inspiration, and his first sentence was to invite us to a kind of philosophical gathering - such were his words - where he would expose us to the discovery.

In the usual laboratory, which at the same time presented a vague appearance like a machinist shop, and in whose atmosphere a trace of chlorine was floating, the conference began.

With his usual clear voice, his careless appearance, his hands extending about the table as during psychic discourses, our friend enunciated this surprising thing:

- "I've discovered the mechanical power of sound."

- "You know," he added, without much concern about the effect that his revelation had caused, "you know enough about these things to understand that it isn't part of the supernatural. It is a great find, certainly, but not superior to Hertzian waves or Roentgen rays. By the way, I have also given my force a name. And since it is the last in the vibrational synthesis whose other components are heat, light and electricity, I have called it the Omega force." [Translators note: Heinrich Hertz (1857 - 1894), discoverer of electromagnetic waves, Wilhelm Röntgen (1845 - 1923), discoverer of x-rays]

- "But isn't sound a different thing?..." - asked the doctor.

- "No, since electricity and light are now considered matter. Heat is still absent; but the analogy quickly leads us to conjecture about the identity of its nature, and I can see the day near when this postulate, evident to me, is demonstrated: that if bodies dilate when heated, or in other words, if their intermolecular space increases, it is because something has been introduced between them, and this something is heat. Otherwise, one would have to resort to vacuum, abhorred by nature and by reason.

"Sound is matter to me; but this will be more clear from the proper exposition of my discovery.

"The idea, vague but intense to the point of dazzling, came to me - a singular thing - the first time I saw the tuning of a bell. Of course, the precise note of a bell cannot be determined in advance, as casting would change the pitch. Once cast, it is necessary to cut it on the lathe, on which there are two rules; if you want to lower the tone, you have to decrease the middle line called "falsification"; if you raise it, it is necessary to cut the "leg", that is, the edge, and the tuning is practiced by ear, like that of tuning a piano. It can be lowered by one tone, but only raised by a half; because by deeply cutting into the leg, the instrument loses its sonority.

"Thinking that if it loses this, it is not because it stops vibrating, the idea came to me, the basis of this whole invention: sound vibration becomes mechanical force, and for this reason it stops being sound; but the thing was precisely formulated during your vacation, while you were away for the summer, the solitude having increased my concentration.

"I was busy modifying phonograph records and that involuntarily brought me to the subject. I had thought to build a kind of tuning fork to highlight, and therefore directly perceive the harmonics of the human voice, which is not possible except through a piano, but always with great inaccuracy; when suddenly, with such clarity, in two nights work I conceived the entire theory, producing its facts.

"When a tuning fork that is of the same pitch as another is made to vibrate, it also vibrates under an influence after a short time, which proves that the sound wave, or in other words, the agitated air, has sufficient force to set the metal. Given the relationship that exists between the weight, density and toughness of this material with that of the air, that force has to be enormous; and yet it is unable to move a blade of grass that a human's breath would blow away, being itself powerless to make the metal perceptibly vibrate. The sound wave is thus more or less powerful than the breath in our example. It depends on the circumstances; and in the case of tuning forks, the circumstance must be a molecular relationship, as if they are not in unison, the phenomenon will fail. Thus, the sonic force has to be applied to intermolecular phenomena.

"I don't think that the conception of a sonic force needs much ingenuity to understand. Everyone has felt the pulsations of the air in very low sounds, like those produced by the nasard of an organ, for example. It seems that the sixteen vibrations per second generated by a thirty-two foot tube mark the lower limit of perceptible sound, which is no longer a hum. With fewer vibrations, the movement becomes a breath of air; the puff that would move the blade of grass, but would not affect the tuning fork. Those low vibrations, a true melodious wind, are what make the stained glass windows of cathedrals tremble; but they no longer form notes, properly speaking, and only serve to reinforce the immediately higher octaves.

"The louder the sound, the further away it moves from its resemblance to the wind and the more its wavelength decreases; but if it is to be considered as an intermolecular force, it is enormous even in the loudest sounds of instruments; for the piano with the seventh C, which corresponds to a maximum of 4,200 vibrations per second, has a wave of three inches. The flute, which reaches 4,700 vibrations, still sends out a gigantic wave.

"The length of the wave therefore depends on the pitch of the sound, which is no longer musical just beyond the 4,700 vibrations mentioned. Despretz has been able to perceive a C, which would be the tenth, with 32,770 vibrations produced by the rubbing of a bow on a very small fingerboard. I still perceive sound, but without possible musical determination, in the 45,000 vibrations of the tuning fork that I have invented." [Translators note: César-Mansuète Despretz (1791 - 1863), French chemist and physicist]

- "45,000 vibrations!" - I said - "That's extraordinary!"

- "You'll see it soon" - the inventor continued - "Be patient for a moment still."

And after offering us tea, which we refused:

- "The sound vibration becomes almost straight at these very high frequencies, and it also tends to lose its curvilinear shape, becoming more of a zigzag as the sound becomes exasperated. This can be practically experienced in the screeching of a violin. So far we do not leave the known, so much the better that it's not vulgar.

"But I have already said that I had proposed to study sound as force. Here is my theory, which the experiment has confirmed:

"The lower the sound, the more superficial its effects are on bodies. After what we know, this is pretty straightforward. The penetrating force of sound therefore depends on its pitch; and as it corresponds to, as I have said, a lower undulation, it turns out that my sound wave of 45,000 vibrations per second is almost a very slightly wavy arrow. No matter how small this undulation, it is always molecularly excessive; and since my tuning forks cannot be reduced any further, it was necessary to devise another way.

"There was also another drawback. The curves of sound waves are related to their propagation, in such a way that its amplification progresses with a great speed until it is annulled as sound, at the same time making it impossible to develop it as a force; but both this inconvenience, and the one that results from the undulation itself, would disappear by multiplying the speed of translation. It depends on the wave not losing its rectitude, which like every curve, occurs at the beginning, and a scientific law had been concurred upon to achieve this purpose.

"Fourier, the famous French mathematician, has enunciated a principle applicable to simple waves - those of my problem - can be vulgarly translated as follows:[Translators note: Joseph Fourier (1768-1830). Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) had likewise conducted similar research and formulated similar acoustic laws, particularly in his 1863 landmark work "On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music"]

"Any waveform can be made up of a number of simple waves of different lengths.

"This being the case, if I could successively generate any number of waves in proportional progression, the speed of the first would be the sum of the speeds of all of them together; the proportion between the undulations of the former and its translation was advantageously broken, and thus releasing the mechanical power of sound.

"My device is going to show you that all this can be done; but I have not yet told you what I intend to do.

"I consider sound to be matter, detached into infinitesimal particles from the sonic body, and dynamized in such a way that it gives the sensation of sound, just as odoriferous particles give the sensation of smell. This matter is released in wave form, proven by science and that I propose to modify, generating a wave through the air that is recognized by us; in the same way that the undulation of an eel under water is repeated on its surface.

"When the double wave collides with a body, the aerial part is reflected against its surface; the air penetrates, producing vibration from the body and without any other consequences, since the ether of the supposed body is dynamized in harmony with that of the wave, diffused in it; and this is an explanation, given for the first time, of vibrations in unison.

"Once the relationship between the undulations and their propagation is broken, the sound ether does not diffuse into the mass of the body, but pierces it, already completely, already to a certain depth. And here comes the very explanation of the phenomena that I've developed.

"Each body has a center formed by the gravitation of molecules that constitutes its cohesion, and that represents the total weight of these molecules. I don't need to note that this center can be found anywhere in the body. The molecules here represent that of planetary masses in space.

"Of course, the slightest displacement of the center in question will instantly cause the disintegration of the body; but it is no less true that to have that effect, overcoming molecular cohesion, an enormous force would be needed, something of which current mechanics has no idea, and which I have discovered, nevertheless.

"Tyndall has said in a graphic example that the force of a handful of snow in a child's hand would be enough to blow a mountain to pieces. Calculate what it will take to overcome that force. And I can disintegrate cubic meter granite blocks..." [Translators note: John Tyndall (1820 - 1893), Irish physicist]

He said that simply, as the most natural thing, without caring about our acquiescence. We, although vaguely, were troubled by the imminence of this great revelation; but accustomed to the authoritarian tone of our friend, we did not reply. Our eyes, yes, carelessly searched the workshop for the mysterious devices. Except for a very solid axled wheel, there was nothing that was not familiar to us.

"We have come" - continued the discoverer - "to the end of the exhibition. I had said that I needed sound waves capable of being generated in proportional progression, and after many trials, which need not be described, I have found them.

"They were the do, fa, sol, do, which according to ancient tradition constituted the lyre of Orpheus and which contains the most important intervals of the declamation, that is, the musical secret of the human voice. The ratio of these waves is mathematically 1, 4/3, 3/2, 2; and plucked from nature, without an addition or deformation to alter them, they are also an original force. You can see that the logic of the facts were parallel to that of this theory.

"I then proceeded to build my apparatus; but, to get to the one you see here" - he said, taking out of his pocket a disk that was very similar to a nickel watch - "I tried various machines."

"First," continued the other, smiling at our perplexity, "I thought of complicated things, analogous to Koenig's sirens. Then I simplified according to my ideas about the deficiency of the machines, until I arrived at this, which is nothing but a temporary solution. [Translators note: Rudolph Koenig's (1832 - 1901) "double siren", described in his 1865 acoustic catalog, which in turn built upon the previous work of Helmholtz.]

"The delicateness of the device does not allow it to be opened at all times; but you must realize this" - he added, unscrewing the cap from it.

"It contains four tuning forks, slightly less fine than bristles, set at unequal intervals on a wooden diaphragm that forms the bottom of the box. A very subtle wire, extended and distended, brushing up against them, under the action of the protruding button; and the mouthpiece I spoke of earlier is a microphone horn.

"The intervals between tuning fork and fingerboard, as well as the space necessary for playing the string which brushes them, imposed this minimum size on the apparatus. When they sound, the quadruple wave, transformed into one, comes out of the microphone horn like a true ethereal projectile. The discharge is repeated as many times as I press the button, the waves being able to come out without an appreciable solution of continuity, that is, much closer together than the bullets of a machine gun, and form a true dynamic jet of ether whose power is incalculable.

"If the wave goes to the molecular center of the body, it disintegrates into impalpable particles. If not, it pierces it with an entirely imperceptible hole. As for the tangential friction, you are going to see its effects on that wheel..."

- "...What does it weigh...?" I interrupted.

- "Three hundred kilograms."

The button began to perform with an intermittent and dry noise, before our still incredulous curiosity; and since the silence was great, we had barely perceived a sharp shrillness, analogous to the buzzing of an insect.

It did not take long for the mass to set in motion, and it accelerated in such a way that the whole house soon vibrated like the force from a hurricane. The massive wheel was but a vague shadow, like the wing of a hovering hummingbird, and the air displaced by it caused a whirlwind inside the room.

The discoverer soon discontinued the effects of his apparatus, as no axis would have endured such work for long. We looked at each other in suspense, with a mixture of admiration and dread, very soon turning into excessive curiosity.

The doctor wanted to repeat the experiment; but no matter how much he pushed the box towards the wheel, he achieved nothing. I tried the same with equal misfortune.

We already believed it was a joke from our friend, when he said, becoming so serious that was almost sinister in nature:

- "It is that here is the mystery of my strength. No one but me can use it. And I myself don't know how it happens.

"I define, yes, that what passes through me, as a power analogous to marksmanship. Without seeing it, without perceiving it in any material way, I know where the center of the body is that I wish to disintegrate, in the same way that I had projected my ether against the wheel before.

"Try as much as you want. Maybe finally ..."

It was all in vain. The ethereal wave uselessly dispersed. Instead of, under the direction of its master, let's call him that, when it performed wonders.

A cobblestone that wedged the rebellious door disintegrated in sight, turning with a slight jerk into a heap of impalpable dust. Several pieces of iron suffered the same fate. And the transformation of matter was truly a magical effect, without a perceptible effort, without a noise, except for the slight stridency that any whisper drowned out.

The doctor, excited, wanted to write an article.

- "No" - said our friend-; "I hate the notoriety, although I have not been able to avoid it completely, because the neighbors have begun to find out. Furthermore, I fear the damage that this could cause..."

- "Indeed" - I said-; "as a weapon it would be frightening."

- "You haven't tried it on some animal?" - asked the doctor.

- "You know" - our friend answered with grave meekness - "that I never cause pain to any living being."

And with this the session ended.

Subsequent days elapsed between wonders; and I remember one particularly notable being the disintegration of a glass of water, which suddenly disappeared, covering the whole room with dew.

- "The glass remains" - explained the wise man - "because it does not form a block with the water, because there is no perfect adherence between it and the glass. The same would happen if it were hermetically sealed. The liquid, converted into ethereal particles, would be projected through the pores of the crystal..."

Thus we marched from astonishment to astonishment; but the secret could not be prolonged, and it is impossible to assess what was lost in the sad event which concludes this story.

The truth is - why entertain oneself with sad things - that one of those mornings we found our friend, dead, with his head resting on the back of his chair.

It is easy to imagine our consternation. The marvelous apparatus was before him and nothing abnormal was noticeable in the laboratory.

We were looking in surprise, without even remotely conjecturing the cause of this disaster, when I suddenly noticed that the wall where the dead man's head almost touched was covered with a greasy layer, a kind of butter.

Almost at the same time my companion noticed it too, and scratching his finger on that mixture, he exclaimed in surprise:

- "This is brain matter!"

The autopsy confirmed his statement, certifying a new wonder of the marvelous device. Indeed, our poor friend's head was empty, without an atom of brains, the ethereal projectile, who knows for what odd direction or for what carelessness, had disintegrated his brain, projecting it in an atomic explosion through the pores of his skull. Not a trace of the exterior indicated the catastrophe, and that phenomenon, with all its horror, was, in my belief,  the most stupendous of all that we had witnessed.

On my work table, right here, as I finish this story, the device in question shines, one would say sinisterly, at my fingertips. It works perfectly; but the formidable ether, the prodigious and murderous substance of which I have, alas, such an unfortunate proof, is lost aimlessly in space, despite all my vain attempts. At the institute Lutz and Schultz have also tried unsuccessfully.

Carlos Olivera - "Dead at a Fixed Hour (Revelations of a Doctor)" (1883)

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION

Carlos Olivera was born in 1858, died in 1910, and was an Argentine author. Beyond this, I can find virtually no biographical information. Both Rachel Haywood Ferreira's "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction" and Román Setton's "Los inicios del policial argentino y sus márgenes: Carlos Olivera (1858-1910) y Carlos Monsalve (1859-1940)" discuss only Olivera's works, and not his personal life.

The short story compilation "En la brecha" ("In the Breach") was published in 1886, which contains "Los muertos a hora fija (Revelaciones de un médico)" ("Dead at a Fixed Hour (Revelations of a Doctor)"), which Ferreira acribes an authorship date of 1883 to. Ferreira and Setton both discuss this work at length. Two other science-fiction adjacent stories, also appearing in "En la brecha", are discussed at length by Setton, "Fantasmas" ("Phantasms") and "El hombre de la levita gris" ("The Man in the Gray Coat"). As far as I know, none of his stories have previously been translated into English.

- Chrononauts translation office, March 2nd, 2021

DEAD AT A FIXED HOUR (REVELATIONS OF A DOCTOR)

- "Tell me, dear Doctor, do you think that a patient can know in advance the fixed hour at which they are going to die?"

- "In some cases... yes."

- "But how? How do you think know? ..."

- "That is to say... I don't think they can know, but I had the experience of a very extraordinary case, in which a patient died exactly at the time that he had announced the day before..."

- "That can't happen outside of fantasy! How the devil could a patient know? ... No man, no! these things are indisputable."

- "There are many things, my friend, that are indisputable! You are still young, and have more faith in science than I have myself, someone who's much older, and has been your teacher...

"There are multitudes of phenomenon in medicine, for which we still don't have a shadow of an explanation. The case I'm talking about is the following:

"Our clinical professor, the famous Dr. Mazziotti, was visiting with us one time at the Hospital for Incurables in Naples, and he stopped at the bed of a patient with stage three pulmonary tuberculosis, and while he explained to us the progression of the sickness and the maddening uselessness of the remedies, he said in a low voice:

"- 'I think you'll barely last fifteen days.'

"The sick man raised his head, smiled sadly, and murmured:

"- 'Oh.... no!'

"This movement, which broke the patient's apathetic persistence, had aroused everyone's attention to a high degree: most particularly that of our professor, who was struck by the tone of absolute confidence in the refusal.

"- 'Did you say no?' he asked. 'Did you hear what I said then? ...'

"- 'Yes, sir... and I assure you that you are wrong ... I won't last fifteen days; I'm going to die tomorrow at 12.'

"The cold tone, implacably convinced of this statement, had I do not know what supernatural element, from beyond the grave, as a romantic poet would say, that overwhelmed us.

"- 'Tomorrow at 12?...' murmured the professor, smiling and giving us a sign of intelligence. 'And how do you know that?'

"- 'Oh! .. I feel it here', he replied. And he touched his forehead.

"We ended up smiling at each other; but in his turn the professor had become serious. In short, to conclude I can tell you that, despite everything that was done to prolong the life of the subject with the most active stimulants, he died precisely and exactly at 12 o'clock."

*
* *

- "But you can't believe that this clairvoyance is possible," I told him again. "I can't suppose that in you; there are things that are in contradiction with everything we know."

- "Friend", he replied, "all I can tell you is that I don't know anything ... we are still greatly ignorant; But let me ask you in turn: why ask this question of yours? Do you have a patient like this?"

- "Yes", I told him, "it is precisely about an individual who, according to what seems to me, should still live for some time; And he has said that he will die later at eleven o'clock! ..."

- "And you, what do you say?"

- "That this can't be."

- "What's the patient got?"

- "Liver disease, final stage; And even though autophagy is severe, I think he can pull through a little longer still, taking into account his general condition."

- "Interstitial hepatitis!"

- "No more, no less."

- "Let's make a bet that he dies at 11?"

- "I accept... what are the stakes?"

- "Whatever you like... ten boxes of cigars?"

- "Let's go for the cigars; but I warn you that I am going to do the possible and the impossible to make him live..."

- "Do whatever absurd thing you want ... Are we going to see him?"

- "Let's go."

And we left immediately, nervous, excited, intrigued by this extraordinary case. We found my patient... But permit me to tell his little story.

He was a man of about 38 to 40 years old, tall, skinny, a little yellow in the face. Five months before he had come to see me in my study, and after greeting me, he said:

- "Sir, before continuing, I would like you to assure me of one thing ... you do not know me, you cannot have compassion or ill will. You do not know if I have a family that will mourn for me or not ... in light of all this, whose knowledge generally prevents doctors from telling the complete truth to the sick, I believe that you could ..."

- "Tell it to you?"

- "Exactly."

- "Very well, sir; but let's see from what you're suffering."

I examined him, asked him about minuscule circumstances and details, and gave him my opinion in this fashion: an incurable disease, whose fatal termination, in his state, would not be very far off.

The poor man began to cry bitterly. That truth, for which he had so longed, once realized, terrified him and left him disconsolate.

- "It means, then," he murmured, "that I am going to die soon, that there is no remedy! .... that medicine is impotent!"

- "But, sir," I told him, "I expected more from your courage, seeing the resolution with which you demanded the truth ... I haven't told you that you are going to die tomorrow, or the day after; you're going to die, but what the hell! we all have to die sometime;" and to console him, I added: "you can still shoot for many more years, do not grieve."

Little by little he consoled himself. The treatment I imposed on him was only symptomatic, because as I said, it was a hopeless case. So I prescribed him some digestives, and a proper regimen. The autophagism - a terrible word that really expresses the idea of ​​eating oneself - was gradually diminishing.

But when he announced the fixed hour of his death, he still had a lot to eat! ....

*
* *

We arrived with the doctor at four in the afternoon at the home of the patient. He occupied an apartment in the Hotel Frascati, where his family assiduously took care of him.

- "How's it going?" I asked him, making every trace of care disappear from my face.

- "It's on it's way, sir," he replied, "I feel that I am fading little by little ..."

- "But what is fading? ... are your follies, my friend .... discard those ideas; if you yourself are starting to become intimidated! Where did you get this prediction from? - Did you read it in a book, which contained some story in this style ..."

- "No, sir...."

- "I have come to accompany you so that you can get rid of your fright ... You are scared," I told him, smiling.

- "Oh, it's not fright," he said, very seriously; I felt that was enough.

My old teacher took his pulse.

- "Okay," he said, "his pulse is eighty." He took out a thermometer and applied it under an armpit; the result was 37°. His breathing was almost normal: 17 per minute.

He looked puzzled; yet this tantalizing phrase slipped into my ear;

- "I'd still give him a month to live; nevertheless, based on what he says, I have no problem doubling the bet."

- "I'll double it," I answered.

- "Well, I'm going to leave, eh ?; I have a lot to do, do your best not to lose your cigars."

- "Be careful."

And in effect I was left alone with the patient. I had brought various devices and drugs, in order to prepare the remedies myself. I have always had a fear of apothecaries; the doctor prescribes quinine sulfate and they send him cotton or papier mache. In every properly civilized country, apothecaries should be suppressed. They are a real calamity.

At 6:30 I began to notice a depression in my patient's pulse. Then I administered to him a glass of good mulled wine and some injections of milk with port wine, and egg yolk. The pulse rose again, and my man appeared more animated; at 7:15, however, his forces had decreased until they reached a level lower than that of the first time. He seemed to realize exactly what was happening.

- "I'm leaving, sir....." he said, "it's useless no matter how much you do."

Useless! Oh! I still had many means, and was determined to fight to the last. I was prepared by my studies to not believe in the smallest supernatural thing, and a reason for this extraordinary event had escaped me, a struggle was waged within me that irritated me directly because of my impotence against that true obstinacy of dying at a fixed hour.

Having applied Marey's sphygmograph to it, that ingenious apparatus designed to paint the movement of blood on the surface of blackened cardboard, I obtained much smaller curves than at first;.. my man began to inspire fear in me.

I immediately turned to the aniseed ammonium liqueur. With this, I said while preparing it, we will see if the rebellious nervous system of faith resolves not to enter the night of eternal darkness...

After making him drink it, I began my observations on the radial artery, a kind of tube, in which the column of life rose and fell.

It was like a thermometer, which made the artificial heat of the medicine go up or down.

The pulse rose, it became fuller, more intense, more beautiful, and at the same time the face of the patient lit up .... It was a lamp reviving itself.

But oh! after half an hour, it went down again; but how far it went down! It went down in leaps, as if that life that had just animated him had been nothing more than an accumulation of what little he had left. It seemed that there had been no such increase in life, but simple excess of expenditures, and that all my efforts to prolong it beyond the fatal term, which he himself had assigned, only managed to make him waste in a half an hour what would have made him last two or three.

I no longer thought about the bet, what did I care about it? Now it was about self-respect, pride, the crazy ambition to fight hand-to-hand with the Eternal Unknown and to defeat it! ....

As I reflected, time was running out, and the implacable invisible enemy was snatching its prey from me.

In vain I asked of biological chemistry an explanation for the terrible asynergy which unbalanced his body.

I looked at my watch for the hundredth time. It was nine o'clock at night. I had expressly stopped the pendulum of the clock that was in the room, so that the patient could not realize the exact time. I wiped the sweat off my forehead. With animation, I spoke to the patient and his family, while preparing a new element of life. I smiled; I demonstrated a sureness and a confidence that was far from painting my fears.

He seemed to understand it, and had divined everything, with an implacable and heartbreaking serenity.

- "What time is it?" he asked.

- "Ten o'clock," I answered.

- "How, is it already ten o'clock?" he said strangely. And he fixed his eyes on me as if to tell me that I was lying ...

- "I still feel too strong," he added, "for it to be already ten o'clock..."

I pretended not to hear. I dissolved about three milligrams of strychnine sulfate in one gram of distilled water, and gave him a hypodermic injection.

- "Now we are going to see this nervous system jump," I said; "now we will see if the physiological action of this exciting and famous reflex is worth anything."

The effect was truly tremendous. At eight minutes the column of life rose again; the lamp again radiated splendorous rays.

Under my fingers I felt the pulsation of the most energetic radial, and all the symptoms of an active existence in that almost inert organism were renewed.

- "Well!," I asked him, "do you feel better?"

- "Yes....." he answered, "but whatever happens after this improvement is going to be much worse than before."

- "You're still obstinate!" I replied. "So, do you persist that you are going to die at 11? - What a whim! It's already a quarter to eleven, and I don't think ..."

- "Your watch must be wrong," he answered, with a terrible certainty.

As he had said, so it was. The effect of the strychnine lasted three-quarters of an hour. But what an immediate depression! The pulse gave 45 beats per minute.

I gave him another hypodermic injection, but this time, I turned to sulfuric ether. A new rise and a new depression.

But at the end of its effect, I didn't find any more than 40 beats.

It was ten-thirty. He was leaving, that obstinate one was leaving! Sweat ran from my forehead in thick drops; discouragement had almost completely won me over.

- "Now, yes ... eleven o'clock is approaching ..." the patient murmured with a barely sensitive voice.

I resolved to try a new medium; helped by his wife, we put him on his side, and I began to apply electricity to his spine.

He was reanimated still; new blood seemed to circulate through that flabby and passive body, and for about twenty minutes, I could see the increasing insensitivity with which the galvanic discharges were received.

When I saw that they were totally useless, I turned him back so as not to tire him; the terrible Hippocratic face was already visible in him.

It was agony! It was ten minutes to eleven.

Now, without any hope, I still gave him oxygen inhalations, which had been prepared in a sack of natural rubber, giving him artificial respiration as well, so that instead of ambient air, his lungs were forced to receive that powerful oxidizer 15 times per minute.

It was useless. Life faded little by little, the pulsations were becoming slower, more irregular, more imperceptible, his glassy eyes fixed in a strange way on me, and then they closed forever. It was five minutes past eleven on the dot.

Amado Nervo - "The Last War" (~1906)

TRANSLATORS INTRODUCTION

Amado Nervo was born on August 27, 1870 in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico. After attending the Colegio San Luis Gonzaga, he moved to Mexico City in 1894 where he worked for the magazine "Azul". Over the next several years he worked as a journalist for several publications and was a co-founder of the magazine "La Revista Moderna", "Azul"'s successor.

Nervo lived in Paris between 1900 and 1904, and upon returning to Mexico was appointed to a diplomatic post in Spain which he held until 1918, when he accepted a diplomatic post to Uruguay. His health rapidly declined and he died on May 24th, 1919.

Nervo was one of the most important Mexican literary figures of the late 19th and early 20th century. Many of these stories are science fiction adjacent, and despite his national importance, few have been translated into English. One exception of note to science fiction is "The Soul Giver", translated in 1999 by Michael F. Capobianco and Gloria Shaffer Melendez, which appears to be out of print and difficult to find.

"The Last War" was written somewhere between 1898 and 1906. In Rachel Haywood Ferreira's 2011 "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction", she states that Molina-Gavilán place it at 1898, but was first published in the 1906 anthology "Almas que pasan" ("Souls that pass"), and Ferreira notes she cannot locate an earlier version.

For further discussion of Nervo's works, including a full bibliography of science fiction adjacent titles, see Ferreira's excellent book.

- Chrononauts translation office, 03/01/2021

THE LAST WAR

I

Three were the great revolutions which have received so much attention: what we could call the Christian Revolution, which in such a fashion, had modified society and life throughout the entire planet; the French Revolution, which, eminently justified, came, by way of the guillotine, to equate rights with heads, and the Socialist Revolution, the most recent of them all, although it could be traced back to the year two thousand thirty of the Christian Era. It would be pointless to dwell on the horror and the unanimity of this latest revolution, which shook the earth to its foundations, and which in such a radical way reformed ideas, circumstances, customs, splitting time in two, so that from now on it could no longer be said but: Before the Social Revolution; After the Social Revolution. We will only note that even the very physiognomy of the species, thanks to this great shock, had been modified in a certain way. To speak of, in fact, the time before the Revolution there were, especially in the final years which had preceded it, certain very visible signs that physically distinguished the so-called privileged classes from the proletarians, namely: the hands of the individuals of the former, especially those of the women, had sharp, long fingers of a delicacy superior to a petal of jasmine, while the hands of the proletarians, apart from their remarkable roughness or the exaggerated thickness of their fingers, usually had six of these on the right hand, the sixth can be found (a bit rudimentary, to tell the truth, and formed rather by a semi-articulated callus) between the thumb and forefinger, generally. Many other marks betrayed, what we can call, the differences between the classes, and we would very much fear fatiguing the patience of the listener by enumerating them. We'll only say that the drivers' guilds of vehicles and locomobiles of any kind, such as aeroplanes, aeroships, aerocycles, automobiles, magnetic expresses, direct transetheralunars, etc., whose characteristic of work was a perpetual immobility of the legs, which had come to an absolute atrophy, to the extent that, when finished with their shift, they had directed themselves to their homes in special small electric cars, using them for any personal transfer. The Social Revolution came, however, to change the human condition in such a way that all these characteristics gradually disappeared over the centuries, and in the year three thousand five hundred two of the New Era (or, five thousand five hundred thirty-two of the Christian Era) there was not a trace of such painful inequality among the members of humanity.

The Social Revolution matured, there was not a single schoolchild was not aware of it, with several centuries in anticipation. In reality, the French Revolution had prepared us for it, it was the second link in the chain of progress and freedom that began with the Christian Revolution; but it wasn't until the 19th century of the old Era when the definition of the unanimous movement of men towards equality began. In the year 1950 of the Christian Era the last king died, a king from the Far East, seen as a outright curiosity by the people of that time. Europe, which, according to the prediction of a great captain (who indeed, is considered today by many historians to have been a mythical character) in the early 20th century (post JC), would become republican or converted Cossack, and in fact, in the year 1916, in the United States of Europe, a federation was created in the image and likeness of the United States of America (whose memory in the annals of humanity has been so brilliant, and in that they so exercised an all-embracing influence in the destinies of the old Continent).

II

But let's not digress: we have already used more than three phonoteleradiograph cylinders to think these reminiscences,[Author's note: The vibrations of the brain, when thinking, were communicated directly to a special recorder, which in turn transmitted them to their destination. Today this device has been completely revamped.] and we have not yet reached the main point of our narration.

As we have said at the beginning, three had been the great revolutions that have received so much attention; but after them, humanity, accustomed to peace and an immobile stability, both in the scientific fields, where, thanks to the definitiveness of the principles conquered, and in the social fields, where, thanks to the wonderful wisdom of their laws and high morality of their customs, had lost the very notion of vigilance and caution, and despite its very lengthy lessons in blood, did not suspect the terrible events that were about to take place.

The ignorance of the immense plot that had been forged everywhere is explained, like everything else, perfectly, by several reasons: in the first place, the language spoken by animals, a primitive language, but picturesque and beautiful, was known to very few men, and this fact was understood; living beings then had been divided into two unique portions: the men, the upper class, the elite as they could be called, of the planet, all equal in rights and almost, almost in intellectuality, and the animals, an inferior humanity that had been progressing very slowly, traversing through the millennia, but one that had found itself at that time, for this can be seen in the mammals, above all, in certain conditions of a very appreciable relative perfectibility. Now, very well: the elite, the man, would have judged it unbecoming of his dignity to learn any of the so-called inferior animal dialects.

In the second place, the separation between the two portions of humanity was complete, because even when each family of men had accommodated two or three animals who executed all the labor in their own habitations, even the most difficult, such as the kitchen (chemical preparation of pills and juices for injections), cleaning the house, cultivating the land, etc., it wasn't common to deal with them, except by giving them orders in the patrician language, that is, that of man, which all of them had learned.

In the third place, the sweetness of the yoke in which they were held subject, the relative slack of their recesses, had given them time to conspire quietly, especially in their meeting centers, on their days of rest, centers which were rare for any man to attend.

III

What were the determining causes of this fourth revolution, the last (I hope) of those that have bloodied the planet? In a general thesis, the same ones that had caused the social revolution, the same ones that had caused, it can be said, all revolutions: old famines, old hereditary hatreds, a tendency towards the equality of privileges and rights, and the aspiration towards greatness, latent in the soul of all beings...

Animals could not complain, certainly: man was paternal to them, much more paternal than the proletariat were to the great gentlemen after the French Revolution. They were forced to perform relatively rough tasks, it is true; and because of it, due to the excellence of their nature, they preferred to dedicate themselves to contemplation; but a noble exchange, and magnanimous even, rewarded this work with relative comforts and pleasures. However, on the one hand, the atavistic hatred of which we speak had accumulated in so many centuries of poor treatment, and on the other, the longing, perhaps just now, for repose and rule, determined that this struggle was to become an epoch in the annals of the world.

So that those who hear this story can give an account more accurate and more graphic, if that word can be valued, of the events that preceded the revolution, the rebellion, we should say, of animals against man, we'll have you all attend one of those secret assemblies which had been convened to define the mission of the tremendous struggle, an assembly held in Mexico, one of these great directing focal points, and which, fulfilling the prophecy of an wise old man from the nineteenth century named Eliseo Reclus, had been converted, due to its geographical position in the middle of America and between the two great oceans, to the center of the world.  [Translator's note: Eliseo Reclus (1830-1905), French geographer, an anarchist member of the First International, creator of Social Geography.]

In the skirt of the Ajusco, where you arrive at the most remote city districts, there was a gymnasium for mammals in which they met on holidays, and almost next-door to the gymnasium, was a large concert hall, very much frequented by the same. In this hall, with perfect acoustic conditions and considerable amplitude, the assembly in question was held on Sunday, August 3, 5532 (New Era).[Translator's note: Ajusco, a volcano located south of Mexico City]

Equs Robertis presided, a very beautiful horse, certainly; and the first designated speaker was a celebrated propagandist at the time, Can Canis, a dog of remarkable intelligence, though highly impassioned. I should note that in all parts of the world were reverberating, as it were, with the speech in question, thanks to the special emitters which recorded all of the vibrations and had transmitted them to only those who had corresponding receivers, which used certain magnetic currents; these devices have already fallen into disuse now for their impracticality.

When Can Canis stood up to address the audience, the noise of approval was heard everywhere.

IV

"My dear brothers" - began Can Canis:

"The hour of our definitive liberation is near. At our signal, hundreds of thousands of our brothers will rise as a single mass and fall upon the men, upon the tyrants, with flashing speed. Man will disappear from the face of the planet and even his footprint will vanish with him. Then we will be the masters of the earth, or so we will be again, it would be better to say, because first of all we were like no other, at the dawn of the millennia, before the anthropoid appeared in the virgin forests and their howls of terror reverberated in the ancient caves. Ah! we all carry the organic memory in the globules of our blood, if the phrase permits me, of those blessed times when we were the kings of the world. Then, the sun, still matted with flames to the naked eye, enormous and parching, warmed the earth with love in all its surface, from the forests, to the seas, the ravines, and the hills, a mist had been exhaled, thick and warm which invited laziness and bliss. The Divine Sea was still forging and destroying its inconsistent archipelagos, woven of seaweed and madrepores; the distant mountain range was smoking from the thousand mouths of its volcanoes, and at night a fiery region of a vibrant red, lent it a strange and fearful glory. The moon, still young and lush, shaken by the continuous bombardment of its craters, appeared enormous and red in space, and in its mysterious light, the lion saepelius rose formidably from its cavern; the auroch raised its powerful head among the bushes, and the mastodon contemplated the profile of the mountains, which, according to the expression of an Arab poet, deceived him as being the silhouette of a gigantic grandfather. The flying saurians of the early ages, the iguanodonts with short heads and colossal bodies, the slow and clumsy megateriums, felt not their repose disturbed except by the sonorous murmur of the genesis sea, which forged the future of the world in its entrails.

"How happy our parents were in their warm and pious nest in the land of that time, enveloped in the soft emerald hair of its immense vegetation, like a virgin coming out of the bath...! How happy...! To their roars, to their inarticulate cries, only the echoes of the mountains responded... But one day with curiosity they saw the appearance of, among the thousand varieties of quadrumanes that populated the forests and filled them with their unpleasant cries, a species of blond monkeys that, more frequently than the others, straightened themselves out and maintained a vertical position, whose hair was less coarse, whose jaws were less rough, whose movements were smoother, more rhythmic, more undulating, and in whose large, curly eyes burned a strange and enigmatic spark that our parents hadn't seen in any other eyes on earth. Those monkeys were weak and miserable... How easy it would have been for our gigantic grandparents to have exterminated them forever...! And indeed, how many times when the horde slept in the middle of the night, protected by the flickering light of their bonfires, a herd of mastodons, frightened by some cataclysm, broke through a weak fence of fire and passed by, crushing bones and smashing lives; or a mob of felines who stalked the bonfires' extinction, and once their firey guardian had disappeared, had entered the camp and were offered a feast of memorable succulence...! Despite such catastrophes, those quadrumanes, those fragile little beasts, with mysterious eyes, who knew how to light the fire, multiplied; and one day, a disastrous day for us, it occurred to a male of the horde, to defend himself, to lay hold of a tree branch, as the gorillas did, and sharpen it with a stone, as the gorillas never dreamed of doing. From that day our destiny was fixed in existence: man had invented the machine, and that pointed stake was his scepter, the king's scepter that had been given to him by nature... Why remember our long millennia of slavery, pain and death...? Man, not content with making the roughest of tasks our destiny, rewarded with us poor treatment, and made many of us his habitual delicacy, condemned us to vivisection and analogous martyrdoms, and hecatombs followed hecatombs without any protest, without any movement of mercy... Nature, however, reserved higher destinies for us than to be eaten in perpetuity by our tyrants. Progress, which is the condition of everything that it animates, did not exempt us from its law; and through the centuries, something divine was in our rudimentary spirits, a luminous germ of intellectuality, of a future humanity, that sometimes glowed sweetly in the eyes of my grandfather the dog, whom a wise man called in the eighteenth century (post J.C.) a candidate for humanity; in the pupils of the horse, elephant or monkey, it had been developing in the most intimate breasts of our being, until, centuries and centuries past, it flourished in unspeakable manifestations of cerebral life... The language emerged monosyllabic, rude, timid, imperfect, from our lips; thought opened up like a celestial flower in our heads, and one day it could be said that the new gods were already on earth; for the second time in the course of history, the Creator uttered a fiat, et homo factus fuit.[Translator's note: "and man was created"]

"They did not look upon this gradual emergence of humanity with benevolent eyes; but they had to accept the fait accompli, and not being able to extinguish it, they chose to make use of it... Our slavery continued, then, and has continued in another form: we are no longer eaten, we are treated with apparent kindness and respect, we are sheltered, we are accommodated, we are called to participate, in a word, in all the advantages of social life; but man continues to be our guardian, he scrupulously measures our rights... and he leaves the roughest and most painful parts of all life's labors for us. We are not free, we are not masters, and we want to be masters and free... This is why we've met here a long time ago, that is why we've pondered and planned our emancipation many centuries ago, and that is why very soon, the last revolution on the planet, the cry of rebellion of animals against man, will explode, filling the universe with dread and defining the equality of all mammals that populate the earth..."

Thus spoke Can Canis, and this was, in all probability, the last speech delivered before the dreadful conflagration which we have related.

V

The world, I have said, has already forgotten its history of pain and death; its armaments were rusting away in museums, it had found itself in the bright age of serenity and peace; but that war that lasted ten years like the siege of Troy, that war which had had neither similarity nor parallel because of its frightfulness, that war in which terrible machines were used, which when compared with electric projectiles, gas-filled grenades, radium's frightening effects used in a thousand ways to kill, formidable currents from the air, microbe-injecting darts, telepathic shocks... all the factors of combat, in short, that humanity had used in ancient times, were laughable children's games; this war, we say, constituted an unexpected, new, unspeakable lesson in blood...

The men, despite their cunning, had been caught by surprise throughout all the regions of the world, and the movement of the aggressors was so unanimous, so accurate, so skillful, so formidable, that in no one's spirit was even the possibility of preventing it...

The animals operated machines of all kinds which prepared for the needs of the chosen; chemistry was eminently familiar to them, since they used its secrets on a daily basis: they also owned and guarded all the supply warehouses, they directed and used all the vehicles... imagine, therefore, what that struggle must have been like, which was fought on land, in the sea and in the air... Humanity was on the verge of perishing completely; it was believed its absolute end was certain (we certainly still believe it is)... and at the time that I, one of the few men left in the world, am thinking these lines before the phonoteleradiograph, which I don't know if I will conclude, this incoherent story that perhaps tomorrow will constitute a very useful piece of history... for the humanized of the future, scarcely a few hundred survivors live on the face of the planet, slaves of our destiny, already dispossessed of all that was our prestige, our strength and our glory, and despite the incalculable power of our spirit, our small numbers are incapable of regaining our lost scepter, and are full of a hidden instinct which strongly affirmed the cautious and enigmatic behavior of our victors, that we are all called upon to die, to the last, in a mysterious way, because they feared that proper arbitration of our sovereign mental resources would lead us once again, despite our small number, to the throne from which we have been usurped... It was written thus... The natives of Europe disappeared before the Latin vigor; Latin vigor disappeared before the Saxon vigor, which had ruled the world... and the Saxon vigor disappeared before the Slavic invasion; this, before the yellow invasion, which in turn was overwhelmed by the black invasion, and thus, from race to race, from hegemony to hegemony, from pre-eminence to pre-eminence, from domination to domination, man arrived perfectly and stately in the bounds of history... their mission was to disappear, since they were no longer susceptible, through the absolute of their perfection, to be perfected any further... Who could replace them in the empire of the world? What new and vigorous race could replace them in it? The first humanized animals, whose turn it was on the stage of time... Come, then, congratulations; to us, for having reached the divine serenity of complete and definitive spirit, we have nothing left but to die sweetly. They are human and will be pious in order to kill us. Later, in their turn, perfected and serene, they will die to leave their place to new races that today ferment in the dark bosom of an even lower animality, in the mystery of an active and impenetrable genesis... All this until the old flame of the sun is gently extinguished, until its enormous globe, already dark, revolving around a star in the constellation of Hercules, is fertilized for the first time in space, and new humanities emerge from its immense bosom... so that everything begins again!