"He gave us life."
"He gave us life."
I listened to this monstrous prayer, peeping through the glass-panel door of a class-room.
Inert and flabby, with eyes half-closed, the men repeated the nightmarish maxims in expressionless voices. The electric generator hardly ten paces away pumped submission into their minds robbed of resistance. Something inhuman, vile to the extreme, bestial and at the same time exquisitely cruel was being done to them. Boggled for comparison at the sight of that herd of miserable creatures with no will of their own, my mind could only suggest dipsomania or drug-addiction at their worst.
The thanksgiving over, the twelve passed into a spacious hall with rows of desks. Suspended over each desk was a round plate of aluminium forming part of a mammoth condenser. A second plate was apparently sunk in the floor.
This hall reminded me somehow of an open-air cafe with shaded tables. But the idyllic impression was swept away as soon as I looked at the men under the plates.
A sheet of paper setting out the problem awaited each one of them. At first the calculators looked at these in dumb incomprehension, still under the influence of the will-destroying frequency. Presently the frequency of ninety-three cycles was switched on and a crisp order to begin work relayed.
And all the twelve, snapping up pad and pencil, pitched into feverish scribbling. This could not be called work. It was frenzy, a kind of mathematical epilepsy. The men writhed and squirmed over their pads, their hands shuttled to and fro till they blurred; their faces turned deep purple with the strain; their eyes started out of their sockets.
This lasted for the best part of an hour. Then, when their hands started moving jerkily, heads lowered almost to the table-tops and livid veins swelled rope-like in their extended necks, the generator was switched to eight cycles. All the twelve at once dropped asleep.
Kraftstudt saw to it that his slaves got some rest!
Then it all began afresh.
One day, while watching this horrible scene of mass mathematical frenzy I saw one of the calculators break down. Suddenly he stopped writing, crazily turned to one of his furiously writing neighbours and stared at him blankly for a while as if at great pains to remember something.
Then he gave a terrible guttural cry and began tearing his clothes. He bit himself, gnawed at his fingers, tore skin off his chest, battered his head on the table. Finally he passed out and slumped down on the floor.
The rest paid not the slightest attention, their pencils still working feverishly.
I was so enraged that I started pounding on the locked door. I wanted to call out to the poor devils, tell them to have done with it, to break out and fall on their tormentors…
"Don't get so worked up, Herr Rauch," I heard a calm voice beside me. It was Boltz.
"You are criminals! Look what you're doing to people. What right have you to torture them?"
He smiled his bland intellectual smile and said:
"Do you remember the myth about Ulysses? The gods offered him the choice between a long but quiet life and a short but turbulent one. He chose the latter. So did those men."
"But they were not offered any choice. It's you who aided by your pulse generator chose to stampede them toward self-annihilation for the sake of dividends!"
Boltz laughed.
"Haven't you heard them say they are happy? And so they are. Look at the way they're working in happy abandon. Does not bliss lie in creative labour?"
"I find your arguments revolting. There is a normal tempo in human life and it is criminal to try to accelerate it."
Boltz laughed again.
"You're not exactly logical, Professor. There was a time when people travelled on foot or horseback. Nowadays they fly by jet. News used to spread from mouth to mouth, taking years to snail-pace round the globe; now radio brings events right into your home even as they happen. Present-day civilisation accelerates the tempo of life artificially and you don't think it's a crime. And the host of all sorts of artificial amusements and delights, aren't they too accelerating life's tempo? So why should you consider artificial acceleration of the functions of a living organism a crime? I'm certain that these people, were they to live a natural life, would not be able to do a millionth part of what they can do now. And the meaning of life, as you know, is creative activity. You will fully appreciate that when you become one of them. Soon you will know what joy and happiness are! In fact, in two days' time. A separate room is being set up for you. You will be working.there alone, because, you will excuse my saying so, you are somewhat different from normal people."
Boltz slapped me amiably on the shoulder and left me alone to ponder his inhuman philosophy.
In accordance with my "spectre" they started my obedience training at a frequency which gave me enough will-power to achieve a feat of defiance. My first feat was easy: again I shammed loss of will-power. Kneeling down and staring ahead as vacuum-eyed as I possibly could, I repeated dully the now familiar thanksgiving balderdash. In addition a few truths about neuro-cybernetics were inculcated in me as a novice.
They boiled down to remembering which frequencies stood for what human emotions. Out of these, two were particularly important for my plans: the one stimulating mathematical thinking and another, which, luckily, was not far from the ninety-three cycles.
My training lasted for a week, after which time I was deemed obedient enough.to be put to work. The first problem I was given was analysing the possibility of intercepting an IGBM.
It took me two hours to do. The result was not cheerful for the Ministry: it couldn't be done under.the conditions indicated.
The second problem, also of a military nature, was calculating a neutron beam powerful enough to set off an enemy's nuclear war-heads. The answer was again cheerless. A neutron cannon as calculated would have to weigh several thousand tons.
It was indeed a delight for me to solve those problems and I must have looked as possessed as the other calculators, with the difference, however, that the generator, instead of making me an obedient tool, was infusing me with confidence and enthusiasm. A joyous feeling of being on top of the world did not leave me even during the sleep breaks. I pretended to sleep but in reality I was working out my plans of condign punishment.
When I was through with the Defence Ministry problems I began to solve in my mind (so that nobody would know) the problem most important for me, how to blow Kraftstudt and Co. sky-high.
I meant the phrase metaphorically, of course, having no dynamite and no chance of obtaining any in that prison-like madhouse. Anyway blasting was no part of my plan.
Since the pulse generator could stimulate any human emotion, why not try to use it, I reasoned, to rouse human dignity in its victims and make them rebel against the ex-Nazi criminals? If this were possible they would require no outside help to smash this scientifically-minded gang. But was there a way to do it? Was there a way, that is, to change the frequency stimulating mathematical thinking for one that unleashed anger and hatred in man?
The generator was operated by its aged creator, Dr. Pfaff, an able engineer but apparently with a strong sadistic streak. As he obviously delighted in the perverse way his creation was used, I could not count on any help from him. Dr. Pfaff was absolutely out. The generator had to work on the frequency I required without his help or knowledge.
Now if a pulse generator is overloaded, that is, if more power is taken off than its design allows, the frequency drops. That means that by adding an extra load in the form of a resister, a generator can be made to operate on a frequency lower than shown on the dial.