The Clockwork Man by E. V. Odle

Author:E. V. Odle [Odle, E. V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: science fiction; sci fi; sf; proto-sci fi; feminism; feminist; android; cyborg; classics; radium age; humorous; England
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Now the Curate, apart from a tendency to lose his head on occasion, was a perfectly normal individual. There was nothing myopic about him. The human mind is so constituted that it can only receive certain impressions of abnormal phenomena slowly and through the proper channels. All sorts of fantastic ideas, intuitions, apprehensions and vague suspicions had been dancing upon the floor of the Curate’s brain as he noticed certain peculiarities about his companion. But he would probably not have given them another thought if it had not been for what now happened.

It would require a mathematical diagram to describe the incident with absolute accuracy. The Curate, of course, had heard nothing about the Clockwork man’s other performances; he had scarcely heeded the hints thrown out about the possibility of movement in other dimensions. It seemed to him, in the uncertain light of their surroundings, that the Clockwork man’s right arm gradually disappeared into space. There was no arm there at all. Afterwards, he remembered a brief moment when the arm had begun to grow vague and transparent; it was moving very rapidly, in some direction, neither up nor down, nor this way or that, but along some shadowy plane. Then it went into nothing, evaporated from view. And just as suddenly, it swung back into the plane of the Curate’s vision, and the hand at the end of it grasped a silk hat.

The Curate’s heart thumped slowly. “But how did you do it?” he gasped. “And your arm, you know—it wasn’t there!”

So far as the Clockwork man’s features were capable of change, there passed across them a faint expression of triumph and satisfaction. “I perceive,” he remarked, “that I have indeed lapsed into a world of curiously insufficient and inefficient beings. I have fallen amongst the Unclocked. They cannot perceive Nowhere. They do not understand Nowhen. They lack senses and move about on a single plane. Henceforth, I shall act with greater confidence.”

He threw the hat into infinity and produced a parrot cage with parrot.

“Stop it!” the Curate gasped. “My heart, you know—I have been warned—sudden shocks.” He staggered to the wall and groped blindly for an emergency exit, which he knew to be there somewhere. He found it, forced the door open and fell limply upon the pavement outside.

The Clockwork man turned slowly and surveyed the prostrate figure. “A rudimentary race,” he soliloquised, with his finger nosewards, “half blind, and painfully restricted in their movements. Evidently they have only a few senses—five at the most.” He passed out into the street, carefully avoiding the body. “They have a certain freedom,” he continued, still nursing his nose, “within narrow limits. But they soon grow limp. And when they fall down, or lose balance, they have no choice but to embrace the earth.”

He waddled along, with his head stuck jauntily to one side. “I have nothing to fear,” he added, “from such a rudimentary race of beings.”

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