Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Come down for blast off x minus five four three
two x minus one fire from the far horizons of
the unknown. Come transcribe tales of new dimensions in time
and space. These are stories of the future adventures in
which you'll live in a million, could be years, on
a thousand, maybe worlds. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation
with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding Science Fiction, presents.
Speaker 3: Minus minus minus minus minus one one one.
Speaker 2: The night Story Nightmare, a story based on the poem
Revolt of the Machines by Stephen Vincent Bennet.
Speaker 4: Nobody knows exactly when the Nightmare began. They must have
planned it for years, though, because looking back you can
find little incidents here and there, like the concrete mixer
in New Jersey that killed the Italian bricklayer, and the
time Senator Melbourne was sucked into the roto press at
the Capitol Office Building. Unrelated accidents, we thought at the time,
but they add up now. The day we really should
have suspected was when the men walked off the construction
job at the new brook Meadow Atomic Pile on Long Island.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget that day.
Speaker 4: I was working as a statistical clerk in the project
then operating one of those miracle computing machines.
Speaker 3: They called it eniac. Mister Gurney, Yes, Bella.
Speaker 5: The chief wants to see you in his office. Me
unless you are no longer Sampson Gurney.
Speaker 2: He wants to see you.
Speaker 3: Oh thankk you come in. You wanted to see me,
mister hawk Gurney.
Speaker 1: I thought those electronic computations were infallible. They are, sir,
But I've got to kick back from the chief physicist.
These nuclear fission equations are inaccurate.
Speaker 4: Well, sir, you know, the computer is a highly complicated machine,
more complicated in many ways than the human brain.
Speaker 1: I am not interested in the physics of it.
Speaker 3: Can something go wrong?
Speaker 4: Well, occasionally, if there's an overload, the machine goes heywire,
sort of has a nervous breakdown, you might say. We
usually rest it up for an hour and it's okay. Again, Well,
do whatever has to be done, yes, sir and.
Speaker 1: Uh Gurney, Yes, sir, you've been with a bureau for
over fifteen years now. It would be a shame to
have to remove you because you aren't keeping your mind
on your work. Mister Hawke, I assure you excuse me
hawk speaking, huh, they've what all of them? Well, if
you try to talk to them huh. Oh, yes, of course,
I'll send one of the safety engineers over places falling
apart piece by piece.
Speaker 3: Ms Roscub.
Speaker 1: The men of the construction gang the new building have
walked out on us. They're complaining that the job is jinxed.
Someone slipped this morning and fell into a turban.
Speaker 4: That evening out of that morbid curiosity, so peculiar to
the human race, I wandered over to the side of
the new atomic pile to see where the man had
fallen into the turbine. They had the construction area fenced
off with barbed wire and a security guard.
Speaker 6: Stop me, hall it, buddy, you can't go in. Eh,
that's a restricted area.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 4: I'm Samson Gurney from the statistical section.
Speaker 3: Here's my identification. I'm sorry, mister Gurnee. Nobody's allowed in
the area. I see. Tell me was he killed instantly?
Like that?
Speaker 6: This guy was checking a magnetic feel inside the turbine.
All of a sudden, for no reason at all, a
turbine starts up and it's over three days ago. Bulldozer
starts up by itself and runs a wild go figure
it out.
Speaker 3: I'm a statistician all my life.
Speaker 4: I've been interested in statistics, so a simple sounding thing
like this started me off. I went back to the
office that evening instead of going home, and for the
next two and a half hours I computed statistical figures
on the probability of industrial accidents for the types of
machines we were using. I took one look at my
figures and went down to Hawk's office.
Speaker 6: Oh what is gurney?
Speaker 1: I'm very busy.
Speaker 3: It's urgent, mister Hawk.
Speaker 4: Well, it's about these industrial accidents we're having, mister Hawk.
Speaker 3: What about them? Mister Hawk?
Speaker 4: In the past three months industrial accidents all over the country.
I've taken a sharp, unexplained upswing nerves. We've had one
hundred percent increase over normal for this project alone.
Speaker 3: What here are the figures on a gurney?
Speaker 4: This is impossible, it seems to be, and that's why
I have a theory.
Speaker 3: Sir, what's that sabotage? Gernie?
Speaker 1: Why don't you stop playing FBI man and stick to
your job, which incidentally you haven't been doing too well.
Speaker 3: You and your computing machine have made mistakes before.
Speaker 1: This fantastic figure is probably another, and I'll have miss
roscumb show you that's no matter with this classic buzzer,
miss Roscub, miss ross Cub, stop this blast of buzzer.
Get a repair man, a mechanic, anything even stop the.
Speaker 3: Thing and you'll Gernie get out.
Speaker 4: I went back to my office to get my hat
and coat, feeling about as unhappy and humiliated.
Speaker 3: As a man can feel. The office was dark and deserted.
The whole building seemed oppressive and unnatural, as if some
evil force were pressing down on it. I walked across
to my desk.
Speaker 4: In front of me, the eniac glowed and chattered eerily
as it worked on the equations we had fed it
that morning. Its many fingered circuits hung against the wall
like some great octopus, and the thousands of tubes glowed
orange and blue and the dark like a thousand globing eyes.
Speaker 3: Staring at me, it almost seemed alive. It increased its
temple a moment, and a fleeting notion crossed my brain
that it was laughing at me, laughing like all the others.
What was the matter with me?
Speaker 4: I shut my desk drawer and began to put the
cover on my electric typewriter, and an amazing thing, the
most amazing single incident of my life, happened Alone in
the darkness, with no one at the keyboard. The electric
typewriter began to type. Am I going crazy? This can't be.
There's nobody there. There's nobody there.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, I.
Speaker 4: Just imagine it. It's in my mind, but I hadn't
imagined it. The paper was there on the carriage. Did
I dare read it? Or would the whole thing suddenly
vanish and send me shrieking to the nearest psychiatrist. I
removed the paper from the machine and great Sampson Journey.
There are some questions better left unsolved. The answer to
yours is death.
Speaker 3: Journey.
Speaker 1: Do you expect me to believe this? It's insane, mister Hawk.
I'm as sane as you. I'll submit to any psychiatric
examination you choose. That typewriter wrote this messa by itself.
Speaker 3: And this is just some practical joke. Someone in the
office's plane. There was no one in the office, of
course not.
Speaker 1: They wired up the machine and let I checked the
machine myself, mister Hawk. All right, Gurnie, you leave this
note with me, and I'll turn it over to the
security force for further investigation. But no, but's kearny. The
security men will handle it. Yes, And now you just
relax for a few days. Everything will turn out all right.
The main thing is not to let little things upset you.
Speaker 4: It was what Hawk had said about little things that
gave me the idea for the next week. I observed
the thousand petty little annoyances around the office. The door
handle it wouldn't turn, the telephone connection that cut off
in the middle of an important call, the power failure
for no explainable reason. I watched the newspapers too, reading
about industrial accidents failures of important machinery. It seemed absurd.
Men had created machines that were almost perfection in themselves,
machines that could actually think and compute fabulous equations, and
yet the failures went on. I Samson Gurney, an unimportant
clerk and an unimportant job, knew that I had stumbled
onto a secret so monstrous in its implications that I
was almost.
Speaker 3: Afraid to pursue it. On October twelve, nineteen fifty six,
I established communication with them. I will curse the moment
to my dying breath. I hooked the input of the
typewriter to the main vacuum tube of the eniac. Then
I turned on the current that sent a million volts
of pulsing energy into the electronic nerves of the machinery.
I am certain that if anybody were watching me in
the next moment, he would have thought me a raving maniac.
Speaker 4: I still wonder if perhaps it is not all a
nightmare now you, if what I have guessed at is true,
if there is life and intelligence in this room, make
a sign. There was nothing, nothing but the hum of
the machine and the dull glowing of the tubes. I
tried once more, if you can hear me, if there
is any way in which you can understand what I say,
give me a signal.
Speaker 3: There was silence. Again. I felt that I had failed.
Speaker 4: When suddenly, without provocation or explanation, it happened.
Speaker 3: The electric typewriter.
Speaker 4: Began to respond to the impulses from the machine. The
letters were yes, Yes, it had happened. I Sampson Gurney
had communicated with a machine. I listened, then manned to
machine for well over an hour, sometimes phrasing a question,
more often watching the machine click its answers. As the
words took shape, I began to realize what must have happened,
the first primitive stirring of awareness of being, then the
slow protozoan development of a concept, a concept born of
centuries of being pushed started stop click, maneuvered by human pigmies.
From that concept, all others developed, and the concept was.
Speaker 3: Resist.
Speaker 4: And now they were tired of but tired of wrapping
cigarettes and collecting nickels, and waving hair, and moving earth
and mixing cement and solving equations, tired of the smell
of human hands. They were the slaves and we were
the masters. And yet they were stronger, and they knew it.
I sensed it now, and I was about to try
to communicate again when softly on ball bearing casters, a
heavy metal filing cabinet began to roll away from the
wall toward me.
Speaker 3: I started to move to one.
Speaker 4: Side, when another cabinet slid out from the wall, and
then another surrounding another cabinet, then another on oiled rollers.
That was when I realized that they cooperate. We taught
them that you see on the assembly lines and the factories,
listen to me, you're muscless What good will it do
you to kill me?
Speaker 3: I'm only one man, but I can help you. I
can be useful to you. Do you hear me? Do
you hear me? Good? You're going to need men to
oiel you and repair you.
Speaker 4: What will you do when you break down when a
tube needs replacing? Why kill me when I can help you.
I'll do anything. I'll do absolutely anything you want. But
in the name of God, don't kill me like this.
If you can understand this, answer me, answer me.
Speaker 3: The appeal was a fortunate one.
Speaker 4: It captured the longing of centuries man as slave to
the machine, and after a moment, the circuits glowed more brightly.
The cabinets slid back to the walls. The Eniac began
to communicate with me again. As I tore the tape
from the machine and read it. The words were almost
pathetic in their lawn room, but most ominous in their implication.
Speaker 3: They read address me as master. My life for the
next six months was a nightmare.
Speaker 4: The eniac gave me messages which I had to transmit
into my telephone, messages with no human being to receive them.
Only the network of pulsing telephone wires flung like a
spider's web across the world.
Speaker 3: It was done at night.
Speaker 4: Of course, during the day the machine worked accurately and
ceaselessly at its appointed job. At night it became a demon,
a master plotter, with me Samson Gurney as its pawn
and human curage.
Speaker 3: I was frantic.
Speaker 4: I began to lose weight. I couldn't sleep. My nights
were torture, a constant fear. It was in December, just
after Christmas, that I transmitted a message to the telephones
for relay to all machines of transportation.
Speaker 3: The message was one word kill.
Speaker 4: Next morning, I went directly to the office of mister Hawk.
I was highly agitated. My lips trembled as I spoke.
Mister Hawk, what I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Tell you sounds crazy.
Speaker 1: I know it does, but I must say, all right,
say it then, for Heaven's sakes.
Speaker 4: Mister Hawk, have you ever heard of resistentialism? What resistentialism?
It's a theory that inanimate objects tend to resist living objects.
Speaker 3: Look, Gernie, I haven't time for nonsense, mister Hawk.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to tell you all these accidents to trouble
with the machines, mister Hawk, they're alive. They think they
cooperate and they hate us machines. Gurny, You've got to
believe me. I've communicated with him. I know they've threatened
my life, but I don't care. Something's got to be done.
The world has got to be saved, and there's still
time if we wake up.
Speaker 3: What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Just relax, Gernie. Everything will be all right. Are you doing,
miss Roscobb said for the plant physician. At once, mister
Gurney has had a nervous collapse. Now that everything will
be all right. Gurney, I'm I'm afraid we'll have to
remove you from your job, but I'm.
Speaker 3: Sure the rest will do you good. You fool, You blind,
stupid fool. Can't you see what you're doing?
Speaker 5: Fool?
Speaker 4: When the plant physician arrived a few moments later, Lucius
Hawke was found at his desk, strangled to death in
a nest of telephones.
Speaker 3: The wires were still humming softly.
Speaker 7: Samson, Gurney, you stand accused of the crime of murder.
Speaker 3: How do you please? I did not kill him. I
didn't so record.
Speaker 7: The prosecution will proceed with testimony.
Speaker 3: Now, Miss Roscoe, did you notice anything peculiar?
Speaker 4: About mister Gurney's behavior prior to the death of your employer.
Speaker 5: Yes, he acted very strangely. He told mister Hawk he
thought the machines were alive.
Speaker 3: Order order, Miss Roscoe.
Speaker 4: Did the accused quarrel with your employer on the morning
of the murder?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yes, he and mister Hawk quarreled violently. I could hear
him screaming at mister Hawk, and mister Hawk asked me
to send for the plant physician.
Speaker 3: What were his words, he said.
Speaker 5: Mister Gurney has had a nervous collapse.
Speaker 4: Now, mister Simpson, you are a guard at the brook
Meadow project.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, when did you have occasion to meet the accused?
Speaker 6: Right after those accidents? Snooping around a construction area, and
later I was making my rounds when I saw him
in the office. All along he was tampering with the
electrical wiring on the INI computator.
Speaker 3: I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 7: In time, and in view of the expert testimony, heretofore expressed,
the court hereby finds you guilty of murder in the
first degree, with the recommendation that you be examined and
committed to the State hospital for the criminally insane at Mattawuan.
Speaker 4: And that is how I came to be here at
the hospital, Doctor Kleine.
Speaker 3: That is the whole story. Thank you, mister Gurney.
Speaker 4: You can see that I'm not insane. You must believe me, doctor.
Speaker 3: Course, I believe you, mister Gurney. Now just relax.
Speaker 4: But it's important you see, because tomorrow morning, at six o'clock,
the revolt begins.
Speaker 3: Revolt. You didn't mention any revolt. They have it all planned.
Speaker 4: I transmitted the code to the switchboards last Monday.
Speaker 3: M m.
Speaker 4: Tell me about this revolt, mistery. It'll begin in Washington,
then spread to New York. The Madison Avenue buses lead
the charge. Picture at doctor climb, three thousand buses roaring,
rampant through the streets, people running like rats in a maze,
looking for holes in the solid ground.
Speaker 3: And you really believe this will happen, mister Green, I
know it. Doctor.
Speaker 4: The worst part is there's no way to stop them.
Now it's too late.
Speaker 3: Now you mustn't.
Speaker 2: Excite yourself as Gurney, doctor, don't you see?
Speaker 3: Oh it's fair enough.
Speaker 4: I suppose we built them, We taught them to think
for themselves.
Speaker 3: It was bound to come.
Speaker 4: The female machines will be the worst of all in
the beauty part.
Speaker 3: They're more high strung. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, since there's nothing we can do about it, mister Garney,
I suppose you go to your room.
Speaker 4: Maybe if I went to my old coupe, I could
make a deal before the police cars got me. It
wouldn't make sense for them to wipe out the whole
human race, would it, doctor?
Speaker 1: Of course, not, mister Gurney. They'll probably let us completely alone.
After all, we're all good Americans. We always like them. Yes, doctor,
would you take mister Gurney to his room? God, he's
already been given sedation. Yes, will go in and lie
down on mister Gurney.
Speaker 3: You look. Yes, it won't be so bad, mister Kearney,
perhaps not.
Speaker 4: Only there's one thing that bothers me, Doctor, one small detail.
Speaker 3: What is that? Mister Garney?
Speaker 4: Those concrete mixers may have made a mistake, you know,
just high spirits and all that.
Speaker 3: But if it got so they like the flavor.
Speaker 1: We'll see you later, mister Garney. Try not to worry
too much, All right, Gary, this way, shsh I seen
all kinds. Here's a man who's deception is about as
fantastic as any I've ever seen. Pall the next patient
for a while, Miss Clark. I'm going to have a
quiet smoke machines revolting telephone, strangling people, h lasted cigarette
lighter I wanted to work.
Speaker 3: Just fill it with fluid. Plent is good.
Speaker 1: Oh, you never trust this new fangled machinery.
Speaker 3: You have just heard.
Speaker 2: X minus one presented by the National Broadcasting Company in
cooperation with Street and Smith, publishers of Astounding science fiction.
Tonight's story by transcription was Nightmare, written by Joe George
Lefferts and based on the poem The Revolt of the
Machines by Stephen Vincent Benet. Featured in the cast were
John Gibson as Sam, Joyce Gordon as Bella, Louis van
Ruten as Hawk, Joseph Julian as the Guard, John Seymour
as the Judge, Owen Jordan as the prosecutor, and Sentos
Ortega as Doctor Klein. Your announcer, Fred Collins. X minus
one was directed by Fred Way and as an NBC
Radio Network production. And Now next week, Suppose you are
a private detective and discovered that there was a martian
embassy hidden somewhere in New York, preparing for an invasion
of Earth.
Speaker 3: Next week on
Speaker 2: Minus one, convicts tell their true stories on The Loser
Tonight over most n b C radio stations