At that question, Mr Winningoes had set with extreme
naturalness, George had brought a hand to his mouth, showing in his eyes an
horrified gaze. Then he stood up, with the hand still on his mouth and ran out
the room. I heard his long footsteps, through up the staircases.
-«I am sorry ! I am very sorry indeed»– said the man in a resigned and sincere tone –«I have tried to gradually introduce you to the difficult matter, in order not to upset you, but it’s quietly evident that I have not succeeded it. Shall we go to see how your friend is?»– he concluded standing up.
- «May be it’s better if I go first
to talk to him on my own! We need to stay alone for a while» - I told Mr Winningoes.
-« As you like» – he said quietly, sitting again.
I followed George upstairs,
thinking at Mr Winningoes’ story. I had also accused an emotional hit to that
sorrowful question, although, to say the very truth, I had expected that point
of landing in Mr Winningoes’ discourse.
I saw George coming out from the
bath. He stared at me without saying nothing. I knew he needed to be on his
own, so I went to our room and lay down at the bed without approaching him.
I closed my eyes, trying to dominate all these
emotions. I recalled into my mind the
last accounts had led me to that house,
with that strange man.
A little time later we heard someone knocking at the door.
-«Is everything all right?»
–our guest asked. I went nearby George for asking him how he was feeling.
-«I am very well, thank you»–
he answered trying to hide from Mr Winningoes’ sight. Then in a low voice,
eluding the hearing of Mr Winningoes, who however had kept discreetly quiet
distant, he added in anxious tone: - «What are we going to do? I can’t stand
staying here anymore. Let’s jump on him and…»
-«Just excuse me for a while,
my friends »- the man said with persuasive voice, still holding politely at the
same distance–«before you turn a decision, that is up to you to be taken, I
would like to ask you only the courtesy to be able to end my own history. You
don't have to be afraid of me: if I wanted to hurt you I would have been able
to do it and I will show you that I am not lying. Follow me, please.»
So saying he started walking for
the long corridor. We followed him turning on the left; then we stopped in
front of a wooden small door, on the top of the ample staircases that led
underneath. He fumbled in the lock reassuring us with a mild look. A long snail
iron scale, introduced us in a square big room. The room was bare and badly
illuminated. Mr Winningoes directed toward the opposite wall to the entry and
after opening a big window he said:
- «Please, lean out and take a
look down there.»
We leaned out. The view gave on an ample downed square, visible over the brushes of tall and
mighty trees. I recognized the
landing airfield of which Mr Winningoes had informed us, early in the morning.
I realized that we had to find us on the central tower of the building. Then he
opened a small door wall and after fumbling in a small niche recessed in the
wall, he gently told us, winking again with
the chin besides the window:
- «Have a look now, would you!?»–
We benched outside: the open space, just a while before, plainly empty, was now occupied by another vision. I kept for an endless time watching at it, astonished, incredulous, confused, while my heart was galloping fast and the blood pressed on to my temples as if it wanted to squirt out of them.
I crossed George’s eyes: he also was astonished and interdict; then I looked again down there. With unchanged emotion I observed that scene once more. The same scene that we had seen, some days before, not far away from home, was there now, under my eyes! Everything was perfectly equal: the high enclosure of tables, the big working machines, immovable as they were sleepy animals, the long iron pylon with the writing 'Winpey', in red-dark block letters. It was with admiration and curiosity that I turned toward Mr Winningoes. I wanted to know, I had to understand what was going on!
The old man fixed me intensely with a mocking look. Fantastic and madding, diabolic and fascinating Mr Winningoes! What kind of cheat was he plotting at our expenses?
He fumbled in the niche again and invited us, with the usual accomplice air, to look down.
The scene had changed again: I immediately recognized the alley of the agency ‘Geenna Geld', with the big front door and the cardboard insignia moved by the wind as that day. This scene, never the less, didn't have anything unreal. It seemed simply and naturally to be there, after all, where our eyes were seeing it, identical to the past, but still live and present. There must surely be a trick! Of course it had to be that! But which one?
- «I
understand your wonder, my friends, but I can explain you everything».
What you see does exist indeed. Physically, however, it exists in another dimension. If you were not so convinced that only exists the reality that is shown and explained to us since our birth; if you, that day we met for the first time, had doubted of what your eyes were perceiving, and with a straight mental attitude you had verified the materiality of it, you would be aware that everything around you was just an illusion and there was not exactly the things that you were seeing; actually they were there, but in a different way from your being here now, or this house or those trees that outline the landscape over there!»
«Just a moment!»–George cried out, showing off his best grim–«if that day we had taken some pictures, would have come out those things that we perceived or they would not?»
«A camera is only a machine, without any mind, with no soul. I don't know what it would have come out if you had taken any photographs of it. Both of you would have certainly come out. Or may be only one of you would have been impressed. But don't be concerned at it. My words didn't want to make any offence to you. I have spent all my life on studies and meditations to understand these things that only appear to be inexplicable. I assure you however, that they show such appearance in the vision of our ordinary reality; in the description of the world that is provided by former and daily education, because we believe it as absolutely sure. As if our life were all in the banal obviousness of which we feed our mind. But is not this way! Oh certainly is not!»
«And the two men that we met there, on that day? Were also they an illusion?» –George burst out again in a pugnacious tone, not at all satisfied by those explanations.
«Such a question, my friends, belongs already to the following of my story. I hope you will allow me to conclude with it. I won't subtract me to your opinion and to your judge, but grant me to defend myself simply telling you ‘till the end about the suffering of a scientist, of a father and of a man. I want you to know, if this can reassure you, that I have only killed other men during the war. The war is always absurd, in some way and is pursued by manhood for greed of power, because men are sick of weakness and only in power they succeed in finding an antidote to their innate deficiency. And though after the war, the value of human life, for me was under graded, I have been preserved by the shame of killing another man and I think that it could not be otherwise, for the man predestined to lead the humanity through the path of the peace and the truth!»
These words of the man seemed to reassure George. From my point of view there was not one single reserve on that man. My adhesion to his request was totally unconditional. We silently agreed to listen to the final part of Mr Winningoes’s story. After all we didn't still know, incredibly, what that man really wanted from us. And in a way or in the other he succeeded capturing our attention again.
«Since you kindly grant me your time in order to conclude my story, we will do it sipping a good cup of tea that I want to prepare myself for you»–took back in jovial tone Mr Winningoes, squirting from his eyes a radiant and comradely satisfaction. He lead us back through the staircase down to the big room where we had our former lunch, with the table still prepared; finally we found, passed another door, in a pleasant small room, furnished in Renaissance style, with some pictures on the walls, which seem to be stupendous reproductions of work’s talent of the best pictorial school of that memorable epoch.
«I will soon be back, make yourselves at home, please»- the man said going out. We looked at each other, George and I. It had only been from the morning that we didn’t have a chance to stay alone, however I swear that it seemed to me as it was an eternity and, I was certain of it, George was feeling the same sensation too.
He spoke first . «That’s a real story of madness! »– he burst out taking a seat in one of the four wood armchairs that were around a circular table in the centre of the small room–«This man must be crazy! Let's put him off as soon as is back and let's escape from here, until we are in time»–he added while I was taking a seat in front of him.
«Just a moment, George, may be it will seem strange to you, but I don't feel afraid of this man! He inspires a sort of trust on me, despite his strangeness.»
«But do you realize what are you talking about? Have you gone out of sense too? This man must have some extraordinary powers: hasn't he hypnotized us just slightly before? Have you also heard him talk of super-races and brain's experiments or have I dreamed of it?» –George attacked me nervously.
«Be quiet, please, George» - I told him in a calm voice. «First of all, I don't believe he has hypnotized us, just before. Secondly, if he is really so powerful as you say, what could be his reaction, when we try to immobilize him? Make a point on it: when we arrived here, we were both sleepy. Therefore if he wanted to use us as guinea-pigs, two punctures were enough for him to knock us down! On the other hand I have not seen, so far, neither cats which resemble to mice, nor men with a square brain! Who can be sure that the old man is not inventing everything? It would not surprise me if this story derived from the imagination of some fantastical writer. I want to go to the end of all these circumstances. Don’t you also want to know what kind of job's proposal Mr Winningoes is going to make us?»
George gazed for a long time in to my eyes, thoughtfully. Then, without answering, he relaxed on the back of the chair, releasing the muscles and breathing deeply.
He stood with half open eyes crossing at once the feet and the hands, which put softly on the womb, with the right hand covering the palm of the left one. He seemed to me almost slept, while only the breath animated his body.
Won by all those unexpected and subsequent emotions, I also imitated him doing my best on sitting comfort on the wood ancient chair.
This was the way Mr Winningoes found us, time afterwards. His discreet touch at the door dissuaded me from my drowsy and confused thoughts.
Reopening the eyes we saw the man reentering with a tray in a hand on which there were a stumpy teapot in porcelain and three handless cups, decorated with Chinese ideograms.
«I apologize for leaving you alone for such a long time »–he happily said–«but to make tea is a very serious matter, that requires time and skill. Help yourselves please.»
I filled with a lot of attention the three cups. George, taking one on his hand, gazed its outside and the inside for a long time. He seemed particularly interested at the small yellowish petals that floated on the surface.
«They are jasmine's flowers »–Mr Winningoes prevented him–«I get this tea directly from China. It is delicious, isn't it?»–he added turning to me, while I was trying to sip it slowly, in order not to burn me.
«Yes, certain. It is very tasteful! Does the Chinese cuisine also like you? »–I returned him on my time.
«Oh, yes, indeed so much!» –he answered with a light flash on his face–«I remember when my son Adam was still alive…»
But suddenly we saw that flash of light illuminating his face transformed in a dark and sad countenance.
«My son Adam…»– he echoed bitterly himself, with a smile of self-pity on the pale lips.
We observed a respectful silence for the pain of that man who appeared, at times, as proud as a lion, full of projects for his future, to become afterward, instead, a man tired of striving, overpowered by disgraces and time.
I would have liked to master a better English to show him my solidarity and to tell him that I didn't even know he had had some children, not even he had gotten married, forming a proper family; apart, of course, his father and mother, whom he had spoken of to us for long time throughout his story.
But I didn't have the time even to collect my thoughts. Without moving from the position he had assumed, he took back with sad voice to tell his tale.
«After so many experiments and such a meditation, I definitely decided to make the big footstep. I would inject the “nouchefalon” of a man in the brain of another being of the same kind. The basic job was entirely developed.
The premises seemed to be straight very good: all the similar experiments on the other animals had been conducive to improvement.
So the dogs, since the first injections of canine “nouchefalon”, improved their smell, their strength and the whole psycho-physical complex sensitively descending from the brain. The same can be said for the cats; made object of analogous experiment, they became more agile, stronger and more cunning. And the same had still happened with the mice.
It was clear, at that point, that the cells of the “nouchefalon” were reversing: they were able, that is it, to be reduced from the normal organic state to a synthesis, through thermal process, and from this state, be brought again to the aboriginal state continuing on developing their natural function.
Of course to subtract some dogs to the amusement of selfish and insensitive masters or the cats to their miserable existence of sterilized animals and foolish by the stupidity of their masters, repulsed a great deal less than to deprive a family, a man or a woman from the affection of a beloved face.
But finally, this was what the fate wanted me, and the ideal night at long finally came, for me and for the world, resolving me to the action!
I set out toward the poor districts of the city, immediately encouraged by the full smile of the moon. There, where people mostly suffered, I would have found easier to get what I needed and consume the necessary holocaust for the ransom of the humanity.
I didn't have any idea how to manage the whole thing, but I had a great trust inside of me. I advanced in the miserable roads and wandered for a long time, without destination. After so much to wander, when I already thought about abdicating, some cries attracted my attention: two men quarreled, at the very bottom of an alley, between cans full of garbage.
I decided immediately to follow unmolested the scene. Words gave soon places to knives as in facts they appeared in their hands.
The fastest and most fortunate succeeded on splitting the stomach of the adversary.
It was enough: I run toward the two men. The hurter was just more than a boy, and now was standing, in despair, with the knife, still tightened in his fist. I could see it reddish at the light of the moon.
«Quick» - I spurred him. – «I am a physician, just help me! I have
nearby the car: we will bring him home
and try to save him.»
«I drove like a crazy man
through the desert roads. I was a physician and my duty was to try to save that
young life from death.
Though having already
appraised the gravity of his wounds, I felt inside that the hoarse man, in the
back of my car, was the victim designated by the destiny for the beginning of
the big experiment that would have transformed the world and the history of the
man.
Don't look with mercilessness's eyes at me, my friends, for these words I have told you.
The life of a man is worthless in the mysterious, spinning wheels of the Cosmos. Nobody in the world dies by random, yet hundreds and thousands of deaths a day, leave unchanged the course of the humanity.
Somehow, I have anticipated and studied for all my life, because this course was completed in the right way. And though I was ready to do anything in order to accomplish with my programs, I was exempted to committee the most atrocious of crimes: the Fate itself killed for me, through the irresponsible hand of an outcast young man.»
Mr Winningoes kept silent for a long an instant, maybe finding a confirm in our eyes to the sentiments he had expressed.
The excited and emphatic tones he had firstly used to relate the purposes of his studies, had left place to most calm tones, yet still impassioned, he sounded now measured with impartial criticism.
From my point of view, I had already forgotten some insane light that I had glimpsed in his eyes, a little before, during his story. And now reassured by those noble words, I perceived the mind of a balanced and wise old man.
It seemed to me that also George was expressing in his eyes my same feelings, so that the man, after having greedily drunk a glass of water, revolved to his narration in the same calm tone as before.
We were ready to listen to him with much of attention.
«During the
sorrowful trip homeward, the young assaulter, whose name was Adam, told me,
amid tears of desperation for his companion’s misfortune, to be a son of
illegal immigrated from Mexico, and to have quarreled with that companion just
for futile motives. As I had foreseen, every effort to save his life had to
reveal useless. When his youth heart uttered the last faint pulsation I asked
to Adam, who had assisted him with me in that night of agony, what he wanted to
do.
Adam said to be prepared to pay for his guilt gesture, but I tried to convince him the uselessness to decay in a cell for the rest of his days, or much worse, to end stupidly his life on the electric chair.
Adam said to be prepared to pay for his guilt gesture, but I tried to convince him the uselessness to decay in a cell for the rest of his days, or much worse, to end stupidly his life on the electric chair.
I told him,
without going down in any details, totally incomprehensible for him, the big
events that would have seen him protagonist in the future destinies of
humanity, and, yet with no little resistance, at lenght he accepted to undergo
trough the experiment of transmission of the “nouchefalon”, also encouraged by
the fact that perhaps his unfortunate fellow would relived in him, through the essence of life,
and much more, for the reason that I promised a strong money reward to him .
Which the young man gratefully accepted, not so much for himself, but for the family of his killed companion.
What admirable example of superiority and excellence!
In the scurvy world of money, that man, just little more than a boy, son of miserable emigrants, grown in a numerous family at the borders of the disgusting American opulence, abdicated the money that the fate offered to him for the advantage of other poor people.
Day after
day, I realized that my scientific interests were connected to another,
indefinable feeling, utterly new for me, and my heart was increasingly caring
for the life of the young Adam.
From time to time I sent a conspicuous check to his family and that of his unlucky dead friend, unintentionally offended, to make their lives less poor and miserable.
From time to time I sent a conspicuous check to his family and that of his unlucky dead friend, unintentionally offended, to make their lives less poor and miserable.
Also in the choice of the young man, the Fate had shown to be wise. And how it would have been otherwise? The founder of the new, future race; the man who would have conducted Manhood on the straight binary of material and spiritual progress , he who would have been the head of the new big tribe of the chosen people, couldn’t he have been perhaps but a sublime mind?
Without delay and with trepidation, but also with lucidity and extreme skill, I drew, with an apparatus by myself built and already tested, the liquid jewel and transfused it in the man selected by the Stars, the young Adam, attending with long live emotion the results.
In the meantime I introduced him to studies, while I was going more and more fond of him.
The young man learned with unbelievable promptness and, constantly, I saw him grow in wisdom and intelligence, unstoppable as the rise of the sun. But I would have stopped, by now, only at the peak of the most perfection.
It happened in those years, that the press, with alarm and indignation, reported of numerous news of horrid mutilations of dead bodies, that were but mere brain’s amputations; grisly but necessary holocaust to the prosecution of my experiments.
The unaware journalists didn't succeed in making sense of why the defaced dead bodies were all belonged to young people aged between 18 and 25 years, dead for accidental causes, and above all why they were been removed only by the heads.
Of course
the investigators attributed the unusual thefts to a crazy person and being
worried from a public opinion more and more alarmed and timorous (foolish are
the men, who instead of worrying about the threats to the alive people, feel panic
for bodies without more soul), predisposed some more rigorous controls so that
I was forced to interrupt my removals. When I took back with them, in order to
prevent other public alarm, I started removing only their precious brain,
sewing to perfection their craniums shortly after. What allowed me to continue
to work unmolested at my project, and the police officers to boast another, undeserved success.
The job however proceeded very slowly. It appeared to me so evident therefore that the reversibility of human “nouchefalon” was slower and more hard-working than that of other animals. But it didn't bother me for nothing.
After all, as I’ve already said, the young Adam became more and more endearing to me, and together with the scientific successes I also pursued those of father, and these last involved the accomplishment of duties, that were also means of pleasures.
Unexpectedly,
while the father seemed to overwhelm the scientist, I realized that I had
succeeded.
My student, my pupil, was flowing on the wings of the clearest and pure intelligence. The Euclidean geometry, Algebra, Galileo’s and Newton’s laws , Mendelèev’s periodic table, Maxwell, Einstein, had already become patrimony of his knowledge and his own science.
Even more he was already able to criticize its defects, to make evidence of its limits, to point out its necessary evolutionary developments. And the same happened for other branches of science: he was endued with Philosophy, Letters, Social Sciences, Biology, Medicine.
My student, my pupil, was flowing on the wings of the clearest and pure intelligence. The Euclidean geometry, Algebra, Galileo’s and Newton’s laws , Mendelèev’s periodic table, Maxwell, Einstein, had already become patrimony of his knowledge and his own science.
Even more he was already able to criticize its defects, to make evidence of its limits, to point out its necessary evolutionary developments. And the same happened for other branches of science: he was endued with Philosophy, Letters, Social Sciences, Biology, Medicine.
Any claw of the human knowledge, which he turned his own mind to, surrendered every inmost secret to him. I already found, despite of my numerous decades spent on the books, some difficulties comparing my knowledge with his. That was enough!
I decided to adopt him, so that he could take on my name and my titles, and built up on my patrimony the basis of the new world. He would have stop the violence, the wars, the sufferings of humanity. He would sum up in his hands the power of the whole world and dominate for the sake of Art and Science, leading Manhood to the discovery of the endless universe and his absolute dominion. He would become the uncontested Lord all over the world. Over daily baseness, over mediocre rivalries between mankind, over the miserable earthling power, and much more there was to be conquered!»
This new final access, almost declaimed in prophetic and delirious tone, brought me back to reality.
I found myself wandering, once more, how was that man able to embody lucidity and folly in such a natural manner.
How could cohabit so deeply in his mind those noble, human feelings with the others, diabolic and perverted? But by now my interest for his story was at the peak and, however, my mind was quiet and serene. I was ready, therefore, to keep on listening his telling.
«It was my
desire, my friends, that the ransom of the new world set off from my
motherland, the land my mother had loved so much, up to sacrifice her liberty
and even her own life.
We moved therefore to Ireland, my child and I; my mother's country at that time was still suffering split up in two parts. We moved to the free part, in a house in the centre of Dublin, since a long time ownership of the Parnells.
We moved therefore to Ireland, my child and I; my mother's country at that time was still suffering split up in two parts. We moved to the free part, in a house in the centre of Dublin, since a long time ownership of the Parnells.
From there, as I told you, the new course of the world would have set up.
I married Adam to a sweet, Gaelic, young girl, named Eva, who had to become the mother of the new world. You can easily imagine, my friends, how great was my exultation, when I knew that that girl, the Adam’s wife, had been conceived.
I could consider that all my efforts had been well repaid! I was so happy that all my past sufferings, fell in to oblivion. But alas! What a grief destiny was hanging over me! My child, my beloved Adam, in an access of folly, killed his pregnant wife before killing himself.
Only a
brief, arid message he left on justification of his insane gesture: ‘My
dear Father, we dared too much. Might God forgive us.' and nothing more than that.
What did it happen? What did determine on him the insane decision? Perhaps a disease? A sudden raptus? A premonition? Or perhaps I had unconsciously transfused him some sick geniuses of craziness??? How much I would have preferred that my experiments had failed! I would have easily given up my life of studies and searches, and also the success that I got to, yet in the ignorance of the academicians and the official science, for having still with me my Adam, my dear, beloved family. How I would then prefer, even to be died.
This time I didn't have any doubt about it. There were really tears, some plain, true tears sparkling in those intelligent and tired eyes. But also this time the man, with a sudden gesture of the hand, got off any trace of them by his napkin. I thought embarrassed how much force owed to possess the mind of that strange old man. George seemed embarrassed too. He lit a cigarette, before passing his packet to me. We were prepared to follow the story of Mr Winningoes which was going to end.
«I lived innumerable days of sadness and deep sufferings, always thinking to finish my useless and empty existence. And I would have certainly done it if one day the destiny had not driven my tired footsteps toward a new dawn.
I was sitting in a solitary bench in O'Connol street, in the centre of Dublin, looking at the intense traffic of the city, considering inside of me how much the human provision is vain, when a sudden gust of wind threw me a sheet of an old newspaper. I picked it up and, when I was about to roll it up, a capital block title attracted my attention.
The article brought the news that two American biologists, Watsons and Crick, had succeeded in the admirable and revolutionary enterprise to isolate the DNA, the nucleic acid responsible of the transmission of the geniuses in all the animal species.
The news struck me as a light, giving me back the energy and a new desire for life that I had considered forever lost. If every man had a genetic code and if this genetic code was transmitted with the acid nucleic DNA, it would have been possible, then, through the new discovery, to isolate the genetic patrimony of the cleverest individuals and to transmit it to other human beings, in order to form the new super-race, the new dominant class, the elite of the new universal order! For Adam, for me, for my maternal ancestors and for the whole humanity, I felt to be my duty to take back my studies. That new spark had re lighted on me the sacred fire of Science. My mission on the earth had to be taken back ‘till conclusion!»
While narrating these last events, Mr Winningoes had transformed again. From the sad and resigned man who had just cried the death of his family and the end of his same own life, he was returned a pugnacious and strong man, lifting up the head and squirting a new and powerful energy from his green little eyes. I imagined him in the same metamorphosis, in that solitary bench in the centre of Dublin while he was reawakening from the compassionate numbness of the anguish, rising to new battles and new aims.
«The rest of the story, my friends, makes a sole contest with now day's circumstances, even if it is made of a long and twisted thread. I left soon after Ireland, where nothing more held me back, and I returned again to my studies, once more in the United States of America, eager to undertake my studies again.
At the beginning I didn't have a precise plan. I threw myself in the direction which had been showed to me by the two American researchers who had succeeded isolating the DNA, subject in which I was already however enough advanced, connecting such new events to my former studies on ‘nouchefalon ', always maintaining them to a level of theoretical study.
In those same years, another big frontier of knowledge was opening to human science: the Artificial Intelligence! At first vaguely, then with increasing insistence and precision, the creation of mechanical machines, prognosticated able to think, such intelligent to replace men in the most complexes and difficult duties advanced in the programs of science and industry.
In that field my theoretical studies would have been aimed in order to find practice application. For my mind, even if tired and exploited, it was not difficult to acquire that new ulterior branches on science. It was even easier for me than for other researchers, because my study didn't know neither distractions, nor conditionings of any kind.
It was a new radiant youth which drove me in that marvelous meander, to the discovery of unexpected, admirable horizons. I can't certainly explain to you, here, in a few words, all the passages of my complex program, that foresaw new tests and new studies. You must know however that I had conceived to build a machine, intelligent and perfect, able not only to analyze, to deduce, to synthesize; what would have set it, however, higher than the most actual and advanced generations of computers, but also able to reproduce living beings to itself alike. I prompted a technique of laboratory able to allow the endless duplication of the DNA.
Then, admitting and developing these duplicates of cell, I would have been possible to procreate and to produce the perfect, infallible, invincible masters of the future world, destined to put an end to every war and every violence in our sick planet.
And when in this I had succeeded, I would have into my hands the opening key of the door that conducts to a New History of Manhood on Earth!»
