BBC The Machine Stops / North East accent
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
the machine stops by E. M. Foster. That one the airship. Imagine if you can. A small room hexagonal in shape like the cell of a B. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments. And yet at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the center by its side a reading desk, that is all the furniture, and in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh, a woman About five ft high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that this little room belongs. An electric bell rang. The woman touched a switch, and the music was silent. I suppose I must see who it is, she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair like the music was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importune. It lee! Who is it she called. Her voice was irritable before she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several 1000 people in certain directions. Human intercourse had advanced enormously, but when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said very well, Let us talk. I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes, for I can give you fully five minutes Kuno! Then I must deliver my lecture on music during the Australian period. She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she quickly touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness. Be quick! She called her irritation returning. Be quick, Kuno! Here I am in the dark, wasting my time. But it was fully 15 seconds before the round played that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple. And presently she could see the image of her son. He lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her. You know how slow you are! He smiled gravely. I really believe you enjoyed, darling! I've called you before, mother. But you're always busy or isolated. I have something particular to say. What is it nearest boy? Or be quick? Why could you not send it by pneumatic post? Because I prefer saying such a thing. I want. Well, I want you to come and see me. Vashti watched his face in the blue plate. But I can see you! She exclaimed. What more do you want? I want to see you Not through the machine, said Kuno. I want to speak to you. Not through this wearisome machine Awash! Said his mother, vaguely shocked. You mustn't say anything about the machine. Why not? One mustn't you talk as if God had made the machine? Grant the other. I believe that you pray to it when you were unhappy men made it. Do not forget that great men, but men. The machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come hear me a visit so that we can meet face to face and talk about the hopes that are in my mind. She replied that she could scarcely spare the time for a visit. The airship barely takes two days to fly between me and you. I dislike airships. Why? I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth and the sea and the stars when it's dark. I get no ideas in an airship. I did not get them anywhere else. What kind of ideas can the I give you? He paused for an instant. Do you know that the four big stars that form an oblong and three stars close together in the middle of the oblong and hanging from these stars? Three other stars? I do not dislike the stars. But did they give you an idea? How interesting? Tell me I had no idea that they were like a man. I do not understand The four big stars. The man's shoulders and his knees. The three stars in the middle are like the belts that men wore once And the three stars hanging like a sword. A sword. Men carried swords about with them to kill animals, to kill other men.