Mind Webs - The Sound Machine

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Welcome to half hour of mindways.

Short stories from the world's expected situation.

This is Michael Hanson. The mind web story this evening comes from the volume of someone like you,

a collection of stories by Roll Dal, published by Alfred A. Kanoff. This is the sound machine.

It was a warm summer evening and the cross-nare walked quickly through the front gate and

around the side of the house into the garden at the back. You went on down the garden until

he came to a wooden shed and locked the door, went inside and closed the door behind him.

The interior of the shed was an unpainted room against one wall on the left. There was a long

wooden workbench and on it, among the littering of wires and batteries and small sharp tools,

there stood a black box about three feet long, the shape of a child's coffin.

The cross-nare moved across the room to the box. The top of the box was open and he

bent down and began to poke and peer inside it among a mass of different colored wires and

silver tubes. You picked up a piece of paper that lay beside the box, studied it carefully,

put it down, peered inside the box and started running his fingers along the wires,

tugging gently at them to test the connections, glancing back at the paper and then into the box

and at the paper again checking each wire. He did this for perhaps an hour. Then he put a hand

around to the front of the box where there were three dials and he began to twittle them,

watching at the same time the movement of the mechanism inside the box. All the while he kept

speaking softly to himself, nodding his head, smiling sometimes his hands always moving,

the fingers moving swiftly and definitely inside the box. His mouth twisting into curious

shapes when a thing was delicate or difficult to do. His concentration was intense, his movements

were quick, there was an air of urgency about the way he worked, of breathlessness of strong,

suppressed excitement. Suddenly he heard footsteps on the gravel path outside and he straightened

and turned swiftly as the door opened and the tall man came in. It was Scott. It was only Scott,

the doctor. Well, well, well, the doctor said, so this is where you hide yourself in the evenings.

Hello Scott, Closner said. I happened to be passing, so I had dropped in to see how you were.

There was no one in the house, so I came on down here. How's that throat of yours been doing?

Hey, it's alright, it's fine now. The doctor came up closer and bent down to look into the box.

Well, what's this, you're making a radio? No, I'm just pulling around.

She got rather complicated looking innards. Well, what is it? It's rather frightening looking

saying, don't you think? Yeah, it's just an idea. It has to do with sound, that's all.

No good heavens, man. Don't you got enough of that sort of thing all day in your work?

I like sound. I don't know what it seems. The doctor went to the door, turned and said,

well, I won't disturb you. Glad your throat's not bothering you anymore,

but he kept standing there looking at the box and intrigued by the remarkable complexity of

its inside. Curious to know what the strange patient of his was up to. What is it really for?

You've made me inquisitive. Well, all right, I'll tell you if you're interested.

It's like this. The theory is very simple, really. The human ear, you know that it can't hear

everything. There are sounds that are so low pitched or so high pitched that it can't hear them.

Well, speaking very roughly, any note so high that it has more than 15,000 vibrations a second,

we can't hear it. Dogs have better ears than we do. You know, you can buy a whistle whose note is

so high pitched that you can't hear it at all, but a dog can. Yes, I've seen them. Of course,

and up the scale higher than the note of that whistle. There's another note, a vibration, if you

like, but I prefer to think of it as a note. You can't hear that one either, and above that there's

another, and another, and another, rising right up the scale forever and ever and ever, an endless

succession of notes and infinity of notes. There is a note if only our ears could hear it.

It's so high, it vibrates a million times a second, and another a million times as high as that

and so on, so on, higher and higher, as far as numbers go, which is infinity, eternity, beyond the

stars. Costner was becoming more animated. He was a small, frail man, nervous and twitchy, with

always moving hands, his large head and climb towards his left shoulders, though his neck

were not quite strong enough to support it rigidly. His face was smooth and pale, almost white,

and the pale grey eyes that blanked and peered from behind a pair of steel spectacles were bewildered,

unfocused, remote. He was a frail, nervous, twitchy little man, a moth of a man dreamy,

distracted, suddenly fluttering and animated, and now the doctor, looking at that strange

pale face and those pale grey eyes, felt that somehow other was about this little person, a quality

of distance, of immense, immeasurable distance, as though the mind were far away from where the body was.

The doctor waited for him to go on. Costner's side clasped his hands tightly together.

I believe, I believe that there's a whole world of sound about us all the time that we cannot hear.

It's possible that up there in those high-pitched, inaudible regions, there's a new,

exciting music being made with subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so powerful

that it would drive us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound of it. There may be

anything for all we know there may. Yes, but it's not very probable. Well, some time ago I made

a simple instrument that proved to me the existence of many odd, inaudible sounds. Often I've sat

and watched the needle of my instrument recording the presence of sound vibrations in the air when

I myself could hear nothing. And those are the sounds I want to listen to. I want to know where

they come from and who or what is making them. And that machine on the table there is that going

to allow you to hear those noises. It may. No, no. So far, I've had no luck. But I've made some

changes in it and tonight I'm ready for another trial. And this machine is designed to pick up sound

vibrations that are too high-pitched for reception by the human ear and to convert them to a scale of

audible tones. I tune it in almost like a radio. And say, I wish to listen to the squeak of a bat.

That's a faintly high-pitched sounding sound about 30,000 vibrations a second.

Now, the average human ear can't quite hear it. If there were a bat flying around in this room and

I tuned in to 30,000 on my machine here, I would hear the squeaking of that bat very clearly.

I would even hear the correct note, F sharp or B flat or whatever it might be, but merely at a much

lower pitch. And you're going to try the machine tonight? Yes. Well, I wish you luck.

Well, my goodness, I have to leave. Well, thank you for telling me. I must call again some time and

find out what happened. The doctor went out and closed the door behind me. Hello, it is Ryan and we

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This is Mike Boilow of lexicon valley. And I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who

sometimes uses words? Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language?

Hey, us too. So join us on lexicon valley to true over the history, culture and many mysteries of

English plus some life cracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.

For a while longer, a closenary fussed about with the wires in the black box,

then he straightened up and carried the box to the door, found that he couldn't open the door

without putting the box down. He carried it back, put it on the bench, opened the door, and then

carried it with some difficulty into the garden. He placed the box carefully on a small wooden

table, it stood on the lawn. He returned to the shed and fetched a pair of earphones.

He poked the wire connections from the earphones into the machine and put the earphones over his

ears. The movements of his hands were quick and precise. He was excited and breathed,

loudly and quickly through his mouth. He kept on talking to himself with little words of comfort

and encouragement, so he were afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what

might happen if it did. He stood there in the garden beside the wooden table, so pale,

small and thin, that he looked like an ancient, consumptive, bespectacle child.

The sun had gone down, there was no wind, no sound at all. From where he stood, he could see

over a low fence into the next garden. There was a woman walking down the garden with a flower

basket on her arm. He watched her for a while without thinking about her at all. Then he turned

to the box on the table and pressed to switch on its front. He put his left hand on the volume

control, his right on the knob that moved the needle across the large central dial, like the

wavelength dial of the radio. The dial was marked with many numbers, a series of bands starting

at 15,000 and going up to a million. His right hand was beginning to turn the knob. The needle was

traveling slowly across the dial. So slowly he could hardly see it move, and in the earphones he could

hear faint spasmotic crackling. Behind this crackling sound he could hear a distant humming tone,

which was the noise of the machine itself, but that was all. As he listened, he became conscious

of a curious sensation. A feeling that his ears were stretching out away from his head that each

ear was connected to his head by a thin stiff wire, like a tentacle, and that the wires were

lengthening, that the ears were going up and up toward a secret and forbidden territory. A dangerous

ultrasonic region where ears had never been before and had no right to be. A little needle

slowly across the dial and suddenly he heard a shriek, a frightful piercing shriek, and he jumped

and dropped his hands, catching hold of the edge of the table. He stared around in as if expecting

to see the person on a shriek. There was no one inside except the woman in the garden,

and it was certainly not she. She was bending down, cutting yellow roses and putting them in her

basket. Again it came, a throatless, inhuman, shriek sharp and short, very clear and cold.

The note itself possessed a minor metallic quality that he had never heard before.

Closner looked around in searching instinctively for the source of the noise. The woman next door

was the only living thing in sight. He saw her reach down, take a rose stem in the fingers of

one hand and snip the stem with a pair of scissors. Again he heard the scream. It came at the exact

moment when the rose stem was cut. At this point the woman straightened up, put the scissors in

the basket with the roses and turned to walk away. Mrs. Saunders! Mrs. Saunders! Looking around,

the woman saw her neighbor standing on his lawn, a fantastic arm waving little person with a pair

of earphones on his head, calling to her in a voice so high and so loud that she became alarmed.

Cut another one, please. Please cut another one. Why, Mr. Closner, what's the matter?

Now please do as I ask, but just cut one more rose. And Mrs. Saunders had always believed her neighbor

to be a rather peculiar person. Now it seemed that he had gone completely crazy. She wanted whether she

should run into the house and fetch her husband. No, she thought. No, he's harmless. I'll just

humor him. Certainly, Mr. Closner, if you like. And she took her scissors from the basket,

bent down and snipped another rose. Again, Closner heard that frightful,

ruthless creep in the earphones. Again it came at the exact moment the rose stem was cut.

He took off the earphones and ran to the fence that separated the two gardens.

All right, all right, that's enough. No more, please. No more.

The woman stood there, a yellow rose in one hand, clippers in the other, looking at him.

I'm going to tell you something, Mrs. Saunders, something that you won't believe. You have this

evening cut a basket full of roses. You have with a sharp pair of scissors cut through the stems

of living things in each rose that you cut screened in the most horrible, terrible way. Did you

know that, Mrs. Saunders? I know. I certainly didn't know that. Well, it happens to be true.

I heard them shrieking. Each time you cut one, I heard the cry of pain. A very high pitch sound,

approximately 132,000 vibrations a second. You couldn't possibly have heard it yourself, but

I heard it. Oh, did you really, Mr. Clausner? She decided she would make a dash for the house in

about five seconds. You might say that a rose bush has no nervous system to feel with, no

throat to cry with. You'd be right. It hasn't, not like ours anyway, but how do you know, Mrs. Saunders?

How do you know that a rose bush doesn't feel as much pain when someone cuts its stem and

too as you would feel if someone cut your wrist off with a garden sheers? How do you know that?

It's alive, isn't it? Oh, yes, yes, Mr. Clausner. Oh, yes. And good night.

Quickly, she turned and ran up the garden to her house. Clausner went back to the table. He put on

the earphones and stood for a while listening. He could still hear the faint crackling sound and the

humming noise of the machine, but nothing more. He bent down and took hold of a small white

daisy growing on the lawn. He took it between thumb and forefinger and solely pulled it upward

in sideways until the stem broke. From the moment that he started pulling to the moment when the

stem broke, he heard. He distinctly heard in the earphones a faint high-pitched cry curiously

inanimate. He took another daisy and did it again. Once more he heard the cry. He wasn't so sure

now that it expressed pain. No, it wasn't pain. It was surprise. Or was it? It didn't really express

any of the feelings or emotions known to a human being. It was just cry, a neutral, stony cry,

a single, emotionless note expressing nothing. It had been the same with the roses.

He had been wrong in calling that a cry of pain. A flower probably did not feel pain.

It felt something else, which we didn't know about, something called toin or

spural or planknuckment or anything you like. He stood up and removed the earphones. It was

getting dark and he could see pricks of light shining in the windows of the houses all around him.

Carefully, he picked up the black box from the table, carried it into the shed and put it on the

workbench. Then he went out, locked the door behind him and walked up to the house.

The next morning, Clausenair was up as soon as it was light. He dressed and went straight to the

shed. He picked up the machine, carried it outside, clasping it to his chest with both hands,

walking unsteadily under its weight. He went past the house out the front gate and across the road

to the park. There he paused and looked around him and went on until he came to a large tree,

a beach tree, and he placed the machine on the ground close to the trunk of the tree.

Then he went back to the house and got an axe from the cold cellar and brought it across the road

into the park. He put on the earphones and switched on the machine and he listened for a moment

to the faint familiar humming. Then he picked up the axe, took a stance with his legs wide apart

and swung the axe as hard as he could at the base of the tree trunk. The blade cut deep into the

wooden stuck there and at the instant of impact, he heard a most extraordinary noise in the earphones.

It was a new noise. Unlike any he had heard before, the harsh, noteless, enormous noise, a

growling, low pitch, screaming sound, not quick and short like the noise of the roses, but drawn

out like a sob, lasting for fully a minute, loudest at the moment when the axe struck, fading gradually,

fainter and fainter until it was gone. Clasner stared in horror at the place with a blade of the

acid sunk into the wood flesh of the tree. Then gently he took the axe handle, worked the blade

loose and threw the thing on the ground. But his fingers he touched the gash that the

axe had made in the wood, touching the edges of the gash, trying to press them together,

closed the wound and he kept saying, tree, oh tree I am sorry, I am so sorry, but it will heal,

it will heal fine. For a while he stood there with his hands upon the trunk of the great tree,

then suddenly turned away and hurried off out of the park across the road through the gate and

back into his house. He went to the telephone, consulted the book, dialed a number, and waited.

He heard the telephone buzzing at the other end and then the click of a lifted receiver.

Dr. Scott, you must come at once quickly please. Clasner here, remember what I told you last night

about my experience with sound and how I hoped I know I am not ill, but please come, Dr. come quickly,

I want someone to hear it, it is driving me mad, I can't believe it, come now, at once please.

Clasner sat down, he sounded telephone and waited. He tried to remember what the shriek of the tree

it sounded like, but he couldn't. He could remember only that it had been enormous and frightful,

and that it had made him feel sick with horror. He tried to imagine what sort of noise a human would

make if he had to stand anchored to the ground while someone deliberately swung a small sharp

thing at his legs so that the blade cut in deep and wedged itself in the cut. Same sort of noise,

perhaps? No, quite different. The noise of the tree was worse than any known human noise because of

that frightening, toneless, throatless quality. He began to wonder about other living things,

and he thought immediately of a field of wheat, a field of wheat standing up straight in yellow

and alive with a mower going through it, cutting the stems, five hundred stems of seconds,

every second. Oh my god, what would that noise be like? Five hundred wheat plants screaming

together, and every second another five hundred being cut and screaming, and no he thought,

no I do not want to go to a wheat field with my machine, I would never eat bread after that.

But what about potatoes and cabbages and carrots and onions? And what about apples? I know apples

are all right, they fall off naturally when they're ripe. Apples are right if you let them fall off

instead of tearing them from the tree branch, but not vegetables, not a potato, for example,

the potato would surely shriek so that carrots and an onion and a cabbage.

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It's emotionally unstable. Lunatic in the newsroom. Listen today.

Beach tree at the foot of which stood the long black coffin box of the machine and the axe.

Why did you bring it out here? I wanted a tree. There aren't any big trees in the garden.

Why the axe? You'll see in a moment. Now please put out these earphones and listen. Listen carefully

and tell me afterwards precisely what you hear. I want to make quite sure

the doctor smiled and took the earphones and put them over his ears, caution her bent down

and flicked the switch on the panel of the machine. Then he picked up the axe and took his stance

with his legs apart, ready to swing. For a moment he paused. Then he lifted the axe and swung it

at the tree and as he swung he thought he felt he could swear he felt a movement of the ground

on which he stood. He felt a slight shifting of the earth beneath his feet as though the roots of

the tree were moving underneath the soil. But it was too late to check the blow in the axe blade

struck the tree and wedged deep into the wood. At that moment high overhead there was the crackling

sound of wood spruttering and the swishing sound of leaves brushing against other leaves and they both

looked up and the doctor cried. Watch out! Run man! Quickly run! The doctor had ripped off the earphones

and was running away fast but cautionary stood spellbound staring up at the great branch. 60 feet

long at least it was bending slowly downward breaking and crackling and spruttering at its thickest

point where it joined the main crunch of the tree. The branch came crashing down and

Clausner left aside just in time. It fell upon the machine and smashed it into pieces.

Great heavens! That was a near one I thought it had got you!

Clausner was staring at the tree. His large head was leaning to one side and upon his smooth white face

that was a tense horrified expression. Slowly he walked up to the tree and gently he pried the blade

loose from the trunk. Did you hear it? In the earphones did you hear anything when the axe struck?

Well it's a matter of fact no no I'm not sure I couldn't be sure I don't suppose I had the earphones

on more than a second after that the axe struck. Yes yes but did you hear? I don't know I don't know

what I heard probably the noise of that branch breaking. What did it sound like exactly what did

it sound like oh hell I I really don't know Clausner I was more interested in getting out of the way

let's leave it doctor Scott what did it sound like for god's sake man how could I tell what

with half the tree falling on me and having to run for my life well come on now let's be getting back

look look you'll stitch this up Clausner pointed to the last gash that the axe had made in the tree

trunk doctor you stitch this up quickly oh Clausner don't be silly you do as I say stitch it up

Clausner was gripping the axe handle and he spoke in a curious almost threatening tone

don't be silly I can't stitch through wood come on let's get back to the house

so you can't stitch through wood no of course not well have you got any iodine in your bag

what if I have then paint the cut with iodine it'll sting but that can't be helped

now now look let's not be ridiculous let's get back to the house and then we'll paint the cut with

iodine the doctor hesitated he saw Clausner's hands tightening on the handle of the axe he decided

that his only alternative was to run away fast and he certainly wasn't going to do that

oh all right they're all painted with iodine he got his black bag which was lying on the grass

about ten yards away opened it and took out a bottle of iodine and some cotton wool

he went up to the tree trunk uncorked the bottle tipped some of the iodine onto the cotton wool

bent down and began to dab it into the cut the doctor he kept one eye on Clausner who was standing

motionless with the axe in his hands watching him make make sure you get it right

oh yes of course now do the other one the one just above it the doctor did as he was told

well here you are it's done he straightened up and surveyed his work in a very serious manner

that should that should do it nicely Clausner came closer and gravely examined the two wounds

yes yes that will do nicely he stepped back at pace you'll come and look at them again tomorrow

oh yes of course and put some more iodine on if necessary yes thank you doctor

said Clausner and he knotted his head again and dropped the axe and all at once he smiled

a wild excited smile and quickly the doctor went over to him and gently he took him by the arm

and he said come on we must go now and suddenly they were walking away the two of them walking

silently rather hurriedly across the park over the road back to the house

you have heard the sounds machine a story by roald doll that appears in this book someone like you

published in 1954 by Alfred Hayes Knopf this is Michael Hanson technical operation for this

broadcast by Rich Grote mind webs is a production of WHA radio and Madison the service of

the University of Wisconsin extension

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Hey, I'm Josh Speagle, host of the podcast, Lunatic in the newsroom.

If you enjoy journalism that drifts into mild panic, wild overthinking, and a guaranteed

nervous breakdown, Lunatic in the newsroom is for you.

It's news like you've never heard before.

The only newsroom with a panic button, you're left, you'll cry, and gasp and horror

as the show spirals completely out of control.

It's not just news, it's emotionally unstable.

Lunatic in the newsroom, listen today.