The Revolt of the Machines

by Brian Stableford

  On the first day, the administrator only received eighty thousand francs; on the second it was ninety thousand and the progression never ceased to increase until the last. When the subscription was closed, a sum total of 65,308,800 francs, paid out by 54,484 applicants, was deposited in the treasury designated by the government with a good enough grace.

  That good grace did not exactly result from a blind sympathy on the government’s part for the invention and its unknown inventor without any hint of a hidden agenda. Its members had not yet taken account of all the consequences that the discovery might conceal. They would surely have liked to render themselves masters of the event, but did not know how to take possession of it. A more or less disguised hostility would have been the worst policy. The inventor had only to disappear, taking himself and his invention abroad, perhaps to make use of it to foment revolutionary movements, perhaps even—for no one knew of what he might be capable—to organize some band of aerial pirates or mercenaries and hold in check any force that social organization could oppose to him. It was therefore necessary not to treat him as an enemy too hastily, before finding out who he was.

  Knowing his identity was the crucial point, but how could it be discovered? They immediately thought of resuming the investigation commenced on the subject of the nocturnal distribution. A new charge could be added to the existing ones in order to justify it—the possession of weapons and munitions of war, manifested by the artillery fire with which the circumnavigations of the aerial ship had been accompanied. It would also have been possible to take possession of the articles signed by “Le Navigateur Aérien” that the Universel had published and prosecute them for contravention of the law requiring a signature. But the resumption of the criminal investigation would be an evident act of hostility, likely to be taken very badly. The first interrogation of the editor-in-chief of the Universel might make the aerial navigator into a declared enemy.

  Furthermore, it seemed probable that the investigation would yield no result, for precautions appeared to have been carefully taken, and everything suggested that the men at the Universel were sincere when they declared that they did not know anything about the identity of their mysterious correspondent. To seek to take possession of his person by means of an ambush when he came by night to pick up or deposit his correspondence at the top of a chimney was materially almost impossible and morally odious. The one course that seemed practicable was to order a top-secret investigation by the finest police sleuths. In the meantime, they decided to put a brave face on things until further notice.

  The aerial navigator appeared to be following a carefully meditated plan. The little that he had said about his intention to make France, above all, profit from his discovery, and the sentiment of deference that he had shown in reserving places for the government and scholarly bodies did not testify to a hostile attitude, although the ministers felt offended that he had not directly solicited the collaboration and benevolence of the government, effectively by-passing it. They arrived definitively at the resolution to wait until new circumstances gave some indication of the best course to take. Perhaps the announced voyage would furnish some beam of light; it was an opportunity from which it was necessary to attempt to profit.

  Once this resolution was adopted, they lent themselves to events, if not without a hidden agenda, at least with apparent good will. They had the gallantry to put at the disposal of the scholarly bodies the price of the places reserved for them. With all the ministers having volunteered for the voyage, the one designated was the Minister of Public Works, along with the Minister of War, in his capacity as a Maréchal de France, and the Minister of Marines, in his capacity as an admiral. A small military band of twelve musicians was organized, the best and loudest possible, and it was tasked with rehearsing pieces of the most triumphant character.

  These dispositions were made known through a note published in the Moniteur. The same note announced that the government would pay the expenses, everywhere that the municipalities did not assume the responsibility, of providing all the voyagers with dinner on arrival at each town indicated as a stopover, for their lodging overnight and their breakfast the following morning.

  They were not simple dinners, however, that the municipalities organized; they were veritable feasts: banquets offered to the aerial navigator, his traveling companions and the principal notabilities of each town, followed by balls, illuminations, fireworks and splendid hospitality for the travelers. Nothing was lacking in the programs.

  The Universel published an article in which the aerial navigator declined, with many thanks, the honors that were offered to him. He believed that it would be extremely impolite to appear masked at banquets and fêtes, but it was important to his freedom of action, the future of his discovery and of his homeland, which he wanted to profit in advance of all others, that he maintained a strict anonymity until he had planned important measures in accord with the government. He believed, however, that he was not exposing himself to the disapproval of his traveling companions by accepting on their behalf, and he would much prefer it if any toasts that might have been offered to him personally were drunk to the future of his invention, the prosperity of France, and this new source of wealth and grandeur.

  In the same article, published on the eighth of September, he apologized for not admitting women on this occasion, for, to their great chagrin, their money had been returned to them. While rendering homage to the intrepidity with which they had offered themselves for an experiment involving, if not danger, unknown elements that one could not confront without bravery, he did not want to expose them to the emotions of such a rapid voyage accomplished for the first time through the air. He wanted everyone to be informed first by the account of eyewitnesses of what such a journey was like. Later, he would be pleased to admit ladies who would have the honor of presenting themselves, as soon as the next voyage, which would not take place for six or eight months—the time necessary for the construction of a ship able to contain five hundred passengers. That would be a voyage abroad, and probably around the world.

  On the tenth of September, at nine o’clock precisely, the aerial ship carrying all its passengers rose up slowly through the open roof of its resting place. The captain, mounted on the small ship that served the large one as a crown, had only arrived in order to be attached to it ten minutes earlier.

  When it had reached an altitude of fifty meters above the highest roofs, six detonations rang out in succession. Then the ship navigated above Paris with a majestic slowness, sounding a fanfare to which the cheers of the crowd replied. The passengers contemplated with admiration the splendid spectacle deployed beneath their feet and extended to the magnified horizon. Few among them had accomplished ascents in aerostats.

  They proceeded slowly. The velocity only increased when the ship steered toward various points in the environs of Paris. However rapid the speed became, such movement remained almost imperceptible to the voyagers. When they looked upwards, they could have believed themselves to be motionless, in the breath of a strong wind. If they looked down, objects seemed to be moving slowly unless, exceptionally, they descended to a low altitude.

  The aerial navigator seemed, in any case, to be trying to vary his speed as much as possible to favor all observations. He only quit his post once to fly in isolation, of which he was thought to be privately fond, with the most intrepid feeling more reassured when he was there. It was known that neither the conductor nor his servicemen knew his secret.

  When they set out for Strasbourg, the ship rose to a high altitude. People felt a keen impression of cold, and it seemed that the wind became furious, but that they were no longer moving forward. The imperceptible sway caused to the ship by its mode of suspension from the upper part only resembled very distantly the movement of a suspended carriage, the pitching and rolling of a ship at sea or the trepidation of railway carriages on rails. It was almost the immobility of an armchair in an apartment. No one could comprehend, when they arrived in Strasb
ourg, that they had been traveling at more than two kilometers a minute.

  It was exactly six o’clock. The six cannons were fired. The band played a few marches while they circled over the city, overflowing with people and decked with flags. They alighted in the garden of the Prefecture. As soon as they touched down, the two servicemen threw themselves on to the rope ladders and detached the little superior ship, which rose rapidly into the air, carrying the captain away. No one knew what arrangements he had made for his dinner and lodging, and he was not seen again until the following day, ten minutes before embarkation.

  The Fêtes were brilliant everywhere, and enthusiasm was at its peak. People crowded around the travelers, delighted when they could collect a few details of their observations from their own lips.

  In Strasbourg, after the banquet, the Ministers of War and Marines took coffee with the Prefect at the center of a group. “My dear Admiral,” said the former to the second, we can congratulate ourselves that this didn’t happen twenty years earlier. Neither you nor I would have had the baton.”

  “Perhaps not me,” the admiral replied, “for it’s certain that our nutshells would only be good for firewood and the canvas of our sails for wrapping bales, but even if the navy is dead, the artillery will live forever.”

  “Bah! Who can tell?” the Maréchal replied. “Anyway, I’m not in the artillery, myself, but the engineers. Fortify places of war, in that case, against fellows that address their gunfire to you as a cloud sends down hail. I defy Vauban in person to make a demonstration now of the ideal place.4 What do you think, Monsieur Chief Engineer?”

  The interpellation was addressed to one of the passengers, the director of a railway company. “I think,” he replied, “that our shareholders are ruined.”

  “And the directors of railway companies are only good for putting in the same basket as long-haul captains?”

  “Oh, that doesn’t worry me much. Someone will always be needed to manufacture and operate these machines, as they are for manufacturing locomotives and manning ships. Do you know who the people are who will really have nothing more to do?”

  “Gendarmes,” replied the Prefect,

  “Unless,” observed the Academician, “they’re sent into the air to pursue malefactors, as Géronte wanted justice to put to sea.”

  “Voleurs voleront,5 and gendarmes, too,” hazarded a Bohemian student who had won his ticket by lot after having put five francs into a pool.

  “There will be people far more redundant than gendarmes,” said the Chief Engineer.

  “Who, then?” asked the Prefect.

  “Ask the question of one of our guests: a customs inspector, who is, I believe in the next room.”

  “Oh well,” said the Economist, “Hurrah for free trade!”

  Between Nantes and Bordeaux, at about five o’clock, a frightful storm burst. They were not very confident, especially after an observation by a physicist, a member of the Institut, regarding the material employed for the construction of the ship, almost all of it metal. There was a strong risk of being struck by lightning in the midst of the thunderclouds they were traversing, like thick fog. The conductor asked the passengers to gather around the loud-hailer, as the captain had an explanation to give them.

  The explanation consisted of telling them that they had nothing to fear from the storm, the apparatus having received a kind of magnetization of which he had the secret, by virtue of which the metal would energetically repel the electricity that iron might normally attract. That secret would be revealed later, at the same time as the methods of locomotion. People scarcely understood, and in spite of the faith they were inclined to have in a man who had proved his abilities in such a striking fashion, they were not sorry to find themselves, an hour later, in the shelter of a hotel in Bordeaux.

  The observations that each of them collected carefully could not furnish any conjecture regarding either the methods of locomotion or the identity of the inventor. They were, however, able to calculate the average velocity accurately; it was thirty-five leagues an hour, a little more than half the speed attained by the aerial navigator during his first tour of France, about double the speed of express trains. It was still enormous, and it was not certain that it was the maximum possible.

  The Universel, whose editor-in-chief and administrator had been gratified with two places, which were their due, published a series of articles giving a complete and detailed account of the voyage, which could be considered a decisive experiment. The proof had been made in the most irrefutable fashion possible. It remained to consider the probable consequences of the discovery. The paper announced that it would, on its own account, undertake that study independently of the aerial navigator.

  The editor solicited the government, scientific organizations and every passenger urgently to publish their observations, and all journalists to analyze the question in depth during the six to eight months that would elapse before the advertised great voyage. The inventor was waiting, before putting the public in a position to profit from his discovery, on the one hand for enlightenment, for himself and others, as to the consequences that might follow, and on the other hand, for the government to make him party to the measures that it might take to prevent a great good being transformed into a great evil, and for France to obtain from the invention a new source of superiority over rival nations.

  To facilitate these studies, the Universel provided some items of information transmitted by the inventor.

  The organs of locomotion of which he made use to travel through the air in isolation had cost him 5,000 francs, but he estimated that it might be possible to manufacture them for between 1,000 and 2,000 francs. Their efficacy ought to last for a hundred years, without maintenance costs.

  The aerial ship had cost him 42,000 francs, and the organs of locomotion 20,000 francs. That was a total expense of 62,000 francs, which would be lowered to about 40,000 when the manufacture was perfected and became routine. The duration of the apparatus could be considered as indefinite, without involving any other expense than running costs. The price would increase with the dimensions of the ship, but in a lesser proportion.

  The locomotion, strictly speaking, would cost literally nothing, the system acting by virtue of its own efficacy.

  The speed might surpass considerably those that had been seen. It might be considered as having no other limit than the exigencies of the human organism, which would be unable to tolerate movement through the atmosphere beyond a certain velocity. It was for experimentation and medicine to calculate that tolerance exactly.

  Assuming that an aerial ship constructed for five hundred passengers might cost 100,000 francs, there would be no difficulty for it to travel 1,200 kilometers per day, not counting the nights. Even if people only paid one centime per passenger per kilometer, that was already a gross receipt of 6,000 francs per day, or 2,190,000 francs per year. Even paying the personnel in a most generous manner, with veritable prodigality—attributing, for example, 40,000 francs to the captain, 20,000 to the conductor and 50,000 francs to five servicemen—and setting aside 80,000 francs for running costs, accounting, boarding facilities and interest payments on the capital, there still remained a net profit of two million a year. The owner of ten similar ships would earn twenty million a year, and the passengers would be paying eight or ten times less than on the railway, in order to travel twice, three times or four times as rapidly, with no danger of derailments, shipwrecks or another accidents at all.

  Finally, the method could be applied, as a motor, to all possible machines, activating them without any other expense than that of installation. That would result in an industrial revolution, which would increase general wellbeing by reducing the cost of manufacture of everything, not to mention the hundreds of millions in profits that it might procure its inventor.

  X. Polemic

  People had not waited for the solicitations of the Universel to publish many reflections on the unexpected discovery. Since the first manifestation, c
ommentaries had abounded; they had been resumed more ardently with each new experiment. Poetry was mixed in with them. The Luxor obelisk, a monument henceforth unique in the world, symbolizing both the most distant past and the most magnificent future prospects, became a classic theme of odes and cantatas. A kind of agitation was organized to demand that its pedestal be replaced by another, on which would be an engraving of the memorable event accomplished on the henceforth immortal date of June the first. On the subject in vogue, a few remarkable works were published, as were a multitude of inept lucubrations. Pamphlets and newspapers generally reflected the enthusiasm and admiration of the public. Nevertheless, a sort of muted opposition mingled with those sentiments, growing with reflection, fomented clandestinely by powerful interests that felt compromised.

  Thus, the ruination of the railways was considered as an accomplished fact. The billions thrown into those gigantic enterprises vanished as a complete loss, ruining the shareholders, deriving armies of employees of their wages and obliterating the positions of the senior functionaries, reducing their immense materiel to bric-à-brac and enveloping a hundred accessory industries in the catastrophe.

  It was the same with the merchant marines and all the industries attached to it. There was no ship-owner or ship-builder who did not sense ruination. All transport enterprises, by land and by sea, experienced similar dread. The navy was also about to be abruptly rendered redundant, its officers and sailors with no reason for being, their careers wrecked. They would have no other resource but to hurl themselves into aerial navigation, which would apparently only require a restricted personnel, or to receive wages from the State akin to alms, with any hope of advancement henceforth impossible.

  No more roads or bridges would be built, pathways and footbridges sufficing for pedestrians; no more canals, except for irrigation; no more seaports, shipping no longer existing. In consequence, there would be no more engineers and constructors of roads and bridges, road surveyors, road menders or ditch diggers. Coal would only be used for domestic heating, and the mining industry would largely disappear. The threat would extend all the way to wheelwrights, carriage makers, horse dealers and horse breeders.