The Machine Stops

by E.M. Forster

There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

To most of these questions she replied with irritation — a growing quality in that accelerated age.

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

What was the good of going to Pekin when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Pekin? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

Some cabins were better than others, and she did not get the best. She thought the attendant had been unfair, and spasms of rage shook her.

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship

The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbor, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself.