The Machine Stops

by E.M. Forster

I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you.

Something "good enough" had long since been accepted by our race.

The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

One other passenger was in the lift, the first fellow creature she had seen face to face for months.

Few traveled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over.

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

People never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine.

flesh of her flesh, stood close beside her at last, what profit was there in that? She was too well-bred to shake him by the hand.