The Shape of Things That Came

Had George Blade been a scientist like his Uncle Zeke, who invented the time-nightshirt, instead of merely a writer, he would have submitted to the College of Physicists an impersonal report on his trip fifty years into the future. And though in the year 1900 he was but twenty-three and possessed none of the literary fame he was destined to acquire, he probably would have been believed. Not because he was a writer, of course, but because he was the nephew of the late Dr. Ezekiel Herkheimer, the mere mention of whose name was enough to obtain audience with any scientist in the world.

But since he was a professional writer, strange experiences to George were material for fictional stories. It never even occurred to him he should report his trip as fact. He made it a love story about a man from 1900 and a girl from 1950.

He was rather proud of the story. As he waited in the outer office of Mr. Thomas Grayson, his editor, in response to a note from that gentleman, he anticipated nothing but friendly congratulations and a substantial check. When the secretary finally told him he could go in, he smoothed the long sideburns which added so much dash to his appearance, gave his heavy mustache a final tweak and opened the door with a smile of confidence on his face.

The smile died the moment he saw the editor’s expression.

“You didn’t like it,” George said flatly, without waiting to be told.

“Sit down, Mr. Blade,” Thomas Grayson invited.

George seated himself on the edge of a chair, leaned forward to grip the head of his stick and resigned himself to the bad news.

Thomas Grayson was a round, cherubic man who looked too kindly to be an editor. As a matter of fact he was kindly, a quality he found a handicap in his work, for it caused him to waste much valuable time explaining in detail to disappointed authors just why their manuscripts were unacceptable.

“You obviously put a lot of work into this story, Mr. Blade,” the editor said. “And you have quite a fanciful imagination. But, to put it bluntly, your background is entirely implausible.”

“Implausible!” George echoed, having expected Mr. Grayson’s criticism to center around the story’s plot, or perhaps a defective style. “But, sir, I assure you the background is authentic to the last detail.”

Mr. Grayson looked puzzled. “We must be talking about two different scripts. I refer to The Time-Nightshirt, which I have here before me.” He emphasized his statement by rapping the manuscript with his knuckles.

“And so do I, sir.”

The editor narrowed his eyes, cleared his throat and said with a touch of impatience, “If you mean that the scientific wonders you describe are theoretically possible, I won’t argue with you, for my scientific background is too limited to judge. I am concerned solely with potential reader reaction. The average reader simply won’t believe in your year 1950.”

George said, “But Mr. Grayson, I meant it literally when I said the background was authentic. I was there.”

Mr. Grayson’s head snapped up and he stared at the young author in astonishment. Realizing the strange effect of his remarkable statement, George hastened to explain.

“You see, sir, my Uncle Zeke... Dr. Ezekiel Herkheimer, the physicist, that is... died January twelfth last, and since he died intestate, I inherited his entire belongings. Among them, in one of the trunksful of laboratory equipment, I found the time-nightshirt described in my story.”

“You mean,” Mr. Grayson asked incredulously, “there actually is such a piece of equipment?”

“Exactly as described, sir. In shape it is a common enough nightshirt, the head opening having the regulation two buttons to hold it snugly against the throat and keep out the night air. But the material seems to be some kind of odd metal... a metal so soft and pliable, the garment folds into a bundle small enough to fit a coat pocket. And the two buttons are not merely buttons, but movable dials. I do not understand the pages of technical notes I found with it, explaining my late uncle’s theory of time-space travel, but the operation of the nightshirt is very simple. The top dial projects you fifty years into the future, and the bottom dial returns you again.”

For a long time Mr. Grayson examined George without saying anything. When he finally spoke, it was in the unnaturally calm voice of a man humoring a maniac. “Why fifty years, particularly?”

George shrugged. “I don’t know why. But it has only one speed forward and is entirely incapable of penetrating the past. Something to do with ‘areas of limitation’ as nearly as I can make out from my uncle’s notes. I was rather disappointed when I discovered this, for at first I had visualized, trips millions of years into the future and millions of years into the past. But even with its limits, you have to admit it’s a remarkable invention.”

“Yes, it is that,” the editor said nervously. “But now if you will excuse me, Mr. Blade...”

It suddenly registered on George that the man did not believe him.

Nettled, he said coldly, “I assure you I am in full possession of my faculties, Mr. Grayson. Nor am I trying to play a practical joke. I actually have the time-nightshirt, and I actually leaped from the year 1900 to the year 1950. I was gone nearly two weeks.”

“I’m sure you were,” the editor said hastily.

George eyed him with suspicion. In a belligerent tone he said, “It was the most amazing two weeks I ever spent.” He added with less belligerence and more reflectiveness, “And the most embarrassing, in a sense.”

“Embarrassing?” Mr. Grayson asked cautiously.

“Embarrassing,” George repeated. “In the first place, Uncle Zeke’s notes, contained no provisions for taking along anything but myself and the nightshirt. Consequently I arrived in the year 1950 a pauper and suitably attired only for bed.”

Mr. Grayson emitted a strained laugh.

“Fortunately I was able to remedy this situation almost immediately. But my embarrassment persisted during my entire stay for a different reason.”

“What was that?” Mr. Grayson asked, apparently deciding George was a harmless lunatic, and beginning to become interested.

George said, “I have what is supposed to be an excellent education, and always imagined that if I got up against it, I could make a living in any number of genteel ways. But in the year 1950 I was fitted to perform only the most menial tasks. In order to live I had to work, and the only work I could find which I was capable of performing was as a common laborer digging a sewer line.”

This time Mr. Grayson’s laugh, while still unbelieving, was not even strained. “How did you manage to clothe yourself on arrival?” he asked.

“I’m afraid I stooped to theft,” George admitted. “You see, I live in a suite at the Chelsea, and since it is a relatively new building, I assumed it would still be standing in fifty years. I therefore made the time leap in my own bedroom, picking midnight as the best hour to arrive in 1950. Fortunately the tenant occupying the suite which had been mine fifty years before was out when I materialized. Finding his clothing an approximate fit, I shamelessly appropriated what I required. Probably the man is still puzzled, for I returned the clothing two weeks later, when I transmitted myself back to 1900. Incidentally, my second impression of the year 1950 was amazement that aside from boots, trouser widths and cravats, men’s styles had remained unchanged for fifty years.”

“Your second impression?” Mr. Grayson said. “What was your first?”

“Also a feeling of amazement. The room was dark when I arrived, and I automatically felt for the gas mantle near the door. Instead my hand encountered a flat metal plate from which a tiny switch handle protruded. Experimentally I pushed it, and light sprang into the room.”

The editor looked at him blankly.

“They had perfected the incandescent lamp,” George explained.

The lamp over Mr. Grayson’s desk began to sputter at that moment, distracting the attention of both men until the flow of gas again became even.

“How did you manage to live until you obtained your sewer-digging job?” Mr. Grayson asked finally.

“For the first day I was on charity... under false pretenses, I am afraid. After stealing the clothing, I sallied right out into the street. Or rather I ‘sallied’ as far as the front door of the Hotel Chelsea, after which my mode of progress is perhaps better described as a stagger. The impact of New York City in 1950 was so tremendous on a mind conditioned to 1900 that I could later recall nothing that happened from midnight, when I passed through the hotel’s front door, until two A.M., when I stumbled into a Salvation Army Hotel in a state of shock and was shown to bed by a kindly captain who apparently mistook my condition for alcoholism.”

A series of small explosions from the street outside interrupted George’s story. At the same moment the door flew open and the secretary excitedly burst into the room. She beat the two men to the window.

Along the cobblestoned street rolled an astonishing vehicle. Open-carriaged and high-seated, it was piloted by a creature so begoggled and so encased in a dust-wrapper that its sex was indeterminate. At ten miles an hour it roared past the building, the noise of its exhaust drowning all other sound in the area except the voice of a watching pedestrian who yelled, “Get a horse!”

Long after it had disappeared from sight, the secretary continued to lean out the window and peer after it. Finally she withdrew her head with reluctance.

“That’s the third one I’ve seen,” she said in an awed voice.

Shooing her from his office, Mr. Grayson resumed his chair and waved George back to his.

“Frankly, Mr. Blade,” he said, “I find your story of visiting 1950 as implausible as the script which you based on it. But I have to admit I find it interesting. What caused the state of shock you were describing when we were interrupted?”

“The same thing that excited your secretary, Mr. Grayson. Suppose when we rushed to the window a moment ago, instead of a single horseless Vehicle, we had seen thousands travelling at five times the speed. Wouldn’t your eyes bug out?”

“They probably would,” Mr. Grayson admitted.

“I have a vague recollection of thousands of glittering metal and glass vehicles roaring along streets on which I was accustomed to seeing only sedately trotting horses; of strident voices, clanging bells, screaming horns, and mingled with all these noises a strange overtone which I can only describe as the drone of a million cogs moving in the complicated machinery of a mechanical city.”

“You used that same description in your story,” Mr. Grayson remarked.

George said, “After the initial shock, I gradually became sufficiently acclimated to exist in this strange environment, but for the full two weeks of my visit I remained in a constant state of amazement. Some of the mechanical wonders I saw are described in my story, but not nearly all. There seemed to be no end to them. In 1950 nothing was done by people anymore... except the digging of sewers... even the theater having substituted for actors a huge screen upon which by some kind of electrical lighting effect the illusion of real performers was produced, complete with color and sound. But the progress in transportation was the most astounding. I rode great trains through tunnels under the earth, and travelled in horseless carriages at incredible speeds. I even took a ride in one of the streamlined flying machines described in my story.”

Mr. Grayson, still obviously unbelieving, brought the conversation back to its original subject.

“This is all very entertaining, Mr. Blade. But even if I conceded your background is based on authentic observation, that is hardly enough to satisfy the reader. Your story has to sound plausible. But what have you given us? An incredibly advanced civilization where nearly everything is done by machine. A civilization which travels between continents in spaceships at hundreds of miles an hour, and has warships which move at nearly the speed of sound. The homes of your hyper-civilization are a mass of implausible gadgets run by buttons. Buttons are pushed to bring light, clean rugs, wash clothes, and even to squeeze juice from fruit. Every home has built-in entertainment which picks music, talk and pictures from the air. Heat comes from the walls instead of from stoves, and water, both hot and cold, comes in unlimited amounts from spigots which merely have; to have their handles twisted instead of being pumped. And the warfare you describe! A single bomb disintegrates an entire city! Don’t you see how implausible it all sounds?”

“But it actually was that way,” George said sullenly.

The editor smiled indulgently. “Perhaps life will be as you describe it in one million A.D. But no reader would accept such tremendous scientific advance in a mere fifty years. What you seem to have overlooked, Mr. Blade, is that the children of today will be the leaders of your fantastic future world. You yourself may quite likely still be alive. The whole world has fresh in its mind Andree’s balloon attempt, yet you expect your readers to believe such enormous air progress as you describe will take place during their own lifetimes! And your war weapons! Warfare has advanced tremendously in the past few decades — the revolver, the automatic rifle, the ironclad warship — but a Napoleonic marshal could almost instantly master these modern developments. Are we to expect that in fifty years war should take on a shape that Napoleon himself could not comprehend?”

Mr. Grayson’s smile became more gentle. “But your worst error in plausibility is related to the first I mentioned. Your leaders of 1950 are living now. Yet in your story they are adjusted to their incredibly mechanized life as though it had always existed. They are not even surprised at civilization’s progress. It simply isn’t plausible that people would take such a life for granted.”