8. THE NEW ACCELERATOR
Certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pinit is my good friend Professor Gibberne. I have heard before ofinvestigators overshooting the mark, but never quite to the extent thathe has done. He has really, this time at any rate, without any touch ofexaggeration in the phrase, found something to revolutionise human life.And that when he was simply seeking an all-round nervous stimulant tobring languid people up to the stresses of these pushful days. I havetasted the stuff now several times, and I cannot do better than describethe effect the thing had on me. That there are astonishing experiencesin store for all in search of new sensations will become apparentenough.
Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone.Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ages hasalready appeared in The Strand Magazine--I think late in 1899; but I amunable to look it up because I have lent that volume to some one who hasnever sent it back. The reader may, perhaps, recall the high foreheadand the singularly long black eyebrows that give such a Mephistopheliantouch to his face. He occupies one of those pleasant little detachedhouses in the mixed style that make the western end of the UpperSandgate Road so interesting. His is the one with the Flemish gables andthe Moorish portico, and it is in the little room with the mullioned baywindow that he works when he is down here, and in which of an eveningwe have so often smoked and talked together. He is a mighty jester, but,besides, he likes to talk to me about his work; he is one of those menwho find a help and stimulus in talking, and so I have been able tofollow the conception of the New Accelerator right up from a very earlystage. Of course, the greater portion of his experimental work is notdone in Folkestone, but in Gower Street, in the fine new laboratory nextto the hospital that he has been the first to use.
As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know, thespecial department in which Gibberne has gained so great and deserved areputation among physiologists is the action of drugs upon the nervoussystem. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaesthetics he is, I am told,unequalled. He is also a chemist of considerable eminence, and I supposein the subtle and complex jungle of riddles that centres about theganglion cell and the axis fibre there are little cleared places ofhis making, little glades of illumination, that, until he sees fit topublish his results, are still inaccessible to every other living man.And in the last few years he has been particularly assiduous upon thisquestion of nervous stimulants, and already, before the discovery of theNew Accelerator, very successful with them. Medical science has to thankhim for at least three distinct and absolutely safe invigoratorsof unrivalled value to practising men. In cases of exhaustion thepreparation known as Gibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved more livesalready than any lifeboat round the coast.
"But none of these little things begin to satisfy me yet," he told menearly a year ago. "Either they increase the central energy withoutaffecting the nerves or they simply increase the available energy bylowering the nervous conductivity; and all of them are unequal and localin their operation. One wakes up the heart and viscera and leavesthe brain stupefied, one gets at the brain champagne fashion and doesnothing good for the solar plexus, and what I want--and what, if it's anearthly possibility, I mean to have--is a stimulant that stimulates allround, that wakes you up for a time from the crown of your head to thetip of your great toe, and makes you go two--or even three--to everybodyelse's one. Eh? That's the thing I'm after."
"It would tire a man," I said.
"Not a doubt of it. And you'd eat double or treble--and all that. Butjust think what the thing would mean. Imagine yourself with a littlephial like this"--he held up a little bottle of green glass and markedhis points with it--"and in this precious phial is the power to thinktwice as fast, move twice as quickly, do twice as much work in a giventime as you could otherwise do."
"But is such a thing possible?"
"I believe so. If it isn't, I've wasted my time for a year. Thesevarious preparations of the hypophosphites, for example, seem to showthat something of the sort... Even if it was only one and a half timesas fast it would do."
"It WOULD do," I said.
"If you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing upagainst you, something urgent to be done, eh?"
"He could dose his private secretary," I said.
"And gain--double time. And think if YOU, for example, wanted to finisha book."
"Usually," I said, "I wish I'd never begun 'em."
"Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think out a case.Or a barrister--or a man cramming for an examination."
"Worth a guinea a drop," said I, "and more to men like that."
"And in a duel, again," said Gibberne, "where it all depends on yourquickness in pulling the trigger."
"Or in fencing," I echoed.
"You see," said Gibberne, "if I get it as an all-round thing it willreally do you no harm at all--except perhaps to an infinitesimal degreeit brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twice to otherpeople's once--"
"I suppose," I meditated, "in a duel--it would be fair?"
"That's a question for the seconds," said Gibberne.
I harked back further. "And you really think such a thing IS possible?"I said.
"As possible," said Gibberne, and glanced at something that wentthrobbing by the window, "as a motor-bus. As a matter of fact--"
He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edge of hisdesk with the green phial. "I think I know the stuff.... Already I'vegot something coming." The nervous smile upon his face betrayed thegravity of his revelation. He rarely talked of his actual experimentalwork unless things were very near the end. "And it may be, it may be--Ishouldn't be surprised--it may even do the thing at a greater rate thantwice."
"It will be rather a big thing," I hazarded.
"It will be, I think, rather a big thing."
But I don't think he quite knew what a big thing it was to be, for allthat.
I remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "The NewAccelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confident oneach occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected physiologicalresults its use might have, and then he would get a little unhappy; atothers he was frankly mercenary, and we debated long and anxiously howthe preparation might be turned to commercial account. "It's a goodthing," said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing. I know I'm giving the worldsomething, and I think it only reasonable we should expect the world topay. The dignity of science is all very well, but I think somehow I musthave the monopoly of the stuff for, say, ten years. I don't see why ALLthe fun in life should go to the dealers in ham."
My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time.I have always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in my mind. Ihave always been given to paradoxes about space and time, and it seemedto me that Gibberne was really preparing no less than the absoluteacceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedly dosed with such apreparation: he would live an active and record life indeed, but hewould be an adult at eleven, middle-aged at twenty-five, and by thirtywell on the road to senile decay. It seemed to me that so far Gibbernewas only going to do for any one who took his drug exactly what Naturehas done for the Jews and Orientals, who are men in their teens and agedby fifty, and quicker in thought and act than we are all the time. Themarvel of drugs has always been great to my mind; you can madden a man,calm a man, make him incredibly strong and alert or a helpless log,quicken this passion and allay that, all by means of drugs, and here wasa new miracle to be added to this strange armoury of phials the doctorsuse! But Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to entervery keenly into my aspect of the question.
It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillation thatwould decide his failure or success for a time was going forward as wetalked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing was done andthe New Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I met him as I wasgoing up the Sandgate Hill tow
ards Folkestone--I think I was going toget my hair cut, and he came hurrying down to meet me--I suppose he wascoming to my house to tell me at once of his success. I remember thathis eyes were unusually bright and his face flushed, and I noted eventhen the swift alacrity of his step.
"It's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast; "it'smore than done. Come up to my house and see."
"Really?"
"Really!" he shouted. "Incredibly! Come up and see."
"And it does--twice?
"It does more, much more. It scares me. Come up and see the stuff. Tasteit! Try it! It's the most amazing stuff on earth." He gripped my armand, walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot, went shoutingwith me up the hill. A whole char-a-banc-ful of people turned and staredat us in unison after the manner of people in chars-a-banc. It was oneof those hot, clear days that Folkestone sees so much of, every colourincredibly bright and every outline hard. There was a breeze, of course,but not so much breeze as sufficed under these conditions to keep mecool and dry. I panted for mercy.
"I'm not walking fast, am I?" cried Gibberne, and slackened his pace toa quick march.
"You've been taking some of this stuff," I puffed.
"No," he said. "At the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beakerfrom which I had washed out the last traces of the stuff. I took somelast night, you know. But that is ancient history, now."
"And it goes twice?" I said, nearing his doorway in a gratefulperspiration.
"It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, with adramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate.
"Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door.
"I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-key inhis hand.
"And you--"
"It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theoryof vision into a perfectly new shape!... Heaven knows how many thousandtimes. We'll try all that after--The thing is to try the stuff now."
"Try the stuff?" I said, as we went along the passage.
"Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it is inthat little green phial there! Unless you happen to be afraid?"
I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous. I WASafraid. But on the other hand there is pride.
"Well," I haggled. "You say you've tried it?"
"I've tried it," he said, "and I don't look hurt by it, do I? I don'teven look livery and I FEEL--"
I sat down. "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes to theworst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is one of themost hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take the mixture?"
"With water," said Gibberne, whacking down a carafe.
He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy chair; hismanner was suddenly affected by a touch of the Harley Street specialist."It's rum stuff, you know," he said.
I made a gesture with my hand.
"I must warn you in the first place as soon as you've got it down toshut your eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so'stime. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of length ofvibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kind of shockto the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time, if the eyes areopen. Keep 'em shut."
"Shut," I said. "Good!"
"And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to whack about. Youmay fetch something a nasty rap if you do. Remember you will be goingseveral thousand times faster than you ever did before, heart, lungs,muscles, brain--everything--and you will hit hard without knowingit. You won't know it, you know. You'll feel just as you do now. Onlyeverything in the world will seem to be going ever so many thousandtimes slower than it ever went before. That's what makes it so deucedqueer."
"Lor'," I said. "And you mean--"
"You'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. He glanced at thematerial on his desk. "Glasses," he said, "water. All here. Mustn't taketoo much for the first attempt."
The little phial glucked out its precious contents.
"Don't forget what I told you," he said, turning the contents of themeasure into a glass in the manner of an Italian waiter measuringwhisky. "Sit with the eyes tightly shut and in absolute stillness fortwo minutes," he said. "Then you will hear me speak."
He added an inch or so of water to the little dose in each glass.
"By-the-by," he said, "don't put your glass down. Keep it in your handand rest your hand on your knee. Yes--so. And now--"
He raised his glass.
"The New Accelerator," I said.
"The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses and drank,and instantly I closed my eyes.
You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when one hastaken "gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. Then I heardGibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and opened my eyes. Therehe stood as he had been standing, glass still in hand. It was empty,that was all the difference.
"Well?" said I.
"Nothing out of the way?"
"Nothing. A slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps. Nothing more."
"Sounds?"
"Things are still," I said. "By Jove! yes! They ARE still. Except thesort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling on different things. Whatis it?"
"Analysed sounds," I think he said, but I am not sure. He glanced at thewindow. "Have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixed in that waybefore?"
I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as itwere, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze.
"No," said I; "that's odd."
"And here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. NaturallyI winced, expecting the glass to smash. But so far from smashing it didnot even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air--motionless.
"Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudes falls16 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16 feet in a secondnow. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part ofa second. That gives you some idea of the pace of my Accelerator." Andhe waved his hand round and round, over and under the slowly sinkingglass. Finally, he took it by the bottom, pulled it down, and placed itvery carefully on the table. "Eh?" he said to me, and laughed.
"That seems all right," I said, and began very gingerly to raise myselffrom my chair. I felt perfectly well, very light and comfortable, andquite confident in my mind. I was going fast all over. My heart, forexample, was beating a thousand times a second, but that caused me nodiscomfort at all. I looked out of the window. An immovable cyclist,head down and with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel,scorched to overtake a galloping char-a-banc that did not stir. I gapedin amazement at this incredible spectacle. "Gibberne," I cried, "howlong will this confounded stuff last?"
"Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bed andslept it off. I tell you, I was frightened. It must have lasted someminutes, I think--it seemed like hours. But after a bit it slows downrather suddenly, I believe."
I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened--I suppose becausethere were two of us. "Why shouldn't we go out?" I asked.
"Why not?"
"They'll see us."
"Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand times fasterthan the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Come along! Whichway shall we go? Window, or door?"
And out by the window we went.
Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had, orimagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that little raidI made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influence of theNew Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all. We went out byhis gate into the road, and there we made a minute examination of thestatuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheels and some of the legsof the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the whip-lash and thelower jaw of the conductor--who was just beginning to yawn--wereperceptibly in motion, but all the rest
of the lumbering conveyanceseemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rattling that camefrom one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen edifice there were adriver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven people! The effect as wewalked about the thing began by being madly queer, and ended by beingdisagreeable. There they were, people like ourselves and yet not likeourselves, frozen in careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girland a man smiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to lastfor evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm on the railand stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stare of eternity; aman stroked his moustache like a figure of wax, and another stretched atiresome stiff hand with extended fingers towards his loosened hat. Westared at them, we laughed at them, we made faces at them, and thena sort of disgust of them came upon us, and we turned away and walkedround in front of the cyclist towards the Leas.
"Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!"
He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down the airwith wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionally languidsnail--was a bee.
And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madder thanever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though all the sound itmade for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort of prolonged lastsigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow, muffled tickingof some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect, strange, silent,self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably in mid-stride, promenadingupon the grass. I passed close to a little poodle dog suspended in theact of leaping, and watched the slow movement of his legs as he sankto earth. "Lord, look here!" cried Gibberne, and we halted for a momentbefore a magnificent person in white faint-striped flannels, whiteshoes, and a Panama hat, who turned back to wink at two gaily dressedladies he had passed. A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberationas we could afford, is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality ofalert gaiety, and one remarks that the winking eye does not completelyclose, that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeballand a little line of white. "Heaven give me memory," said I, "and I willnever wink again."
"Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth.
"It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower."
"Oh, come along!" said Gibberne.
We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the peoplesitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, butthe contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see.A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violentstruggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were manyevidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed toa considerable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as oursensations went. We came out and walked a little way from the crowd, andturned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed, to a picture,smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, wasimpossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with anirrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonderof it! All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff hadbegun to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, sofar as the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "The NewAccelerator--" I began, but Gibberne interrupted me.
"There's that infernal old woman!" he said.
"What old woman?"
"Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps. Gods!The temptation is strong!"
There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times.Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatched theunfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was running violentlywith it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was most extraordinary. Thelittle brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle or make the slightestsign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in an attitude of somnolentrepose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. It was like running about witha dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "put it down!" Then I said somethingelse. "If you run like that, Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set yourclothes on fire. Your linen trousers are going brown as it is!"
He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge."Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it down. This heat is too much!It's our running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!"
"What?" he said, glancing at the dog.
"Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going too fast.Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne! I'm allover pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see people stirringslightly. I believe the stuff's working off! Put that dog down."
"Eh?" he said.
"It's working off," I repeated. "We're too hot and the stuff's workingoff! I'm wet through."
He stared at me. Then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whoseperformance was certainly going faster. Then with a tremendous sweepof the arm he hurled the dog away from him and it went spinning upward,still inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasols of a knot ofchattering people. Gibberne was gripping my elbow. "By Jove!" he cried."I believe--it is! A sort of hot pricking and--yes. That man's movinghis pocket-handkerchief! Perceptibly. We must get out of this sharp."
But we could not get out of it sharply enough. Luckily, perhaps! For wemight have run, and if we had run we should, I believe, have burst intoflames. Almost certainly we should have burst into flames! You know wehad neither of us thought of that.... But before we could even begin torun the action of the drug had ceased. It was the business of a minutefraction of a second. The effect of the New Accelerator passed likethe drawing of a curtain, vanished in the movement of a hand. I heardGibberne's voice in infinite alarm. "Sit down," he said, and flop, downupon the turf at the edge of the Leas I sat--scorching as I sat. Thereis a patch of burnt grass there still where I sat down. The wholestagnation seemed to wake up as I did so, the disarticulated vibrationof the band rushed together into a blast of music, the promenadersput their feet down and walked their ways, the papers and flags beganflapping, smiles passed into words, the winker finished his wink andwent on his way complacently, and all the seated people moved and spoke.
The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were, orrather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. It was likeslowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everything seemedto spin round for a second or two, I had the most transient feeling ofnausea, and that was all. And the little dog which had seemed to hangfor a moment when the force of Gibberne's arm was expended fell with aswift acceleration clean through a lady's parasol!
That was the saving of us. Unless it was for one corpulent old gentlemanin a bath-chair, who certainly did start at the sight of us andafterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspicious eye, and,finally, I believe, said something to his nurse about us, I doubt if asolitary person remarked our sudden appearance among them. Plop! We musthave appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulder almost at once, thoughthe turf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. The attention of everyone--including even the Amusements' Association band, which on thisoccasion, for the only time in its history, got out of tune--wasarrested by the amazing fact, and the still more amazing yapping anduproar caused by the fact that a respectable, over-fed lap-dog sleepingquietly to the east of the bandstand should suddenly fall through theparasol of a lady on the west--in a slightly singed condition due to theextreme velocity of its movements through the air. In these absurddays, too, when we are all trying to be as psychic, and silly, andsuperstitious as possible! People got up and trod on other people,chairs were overturned, the Leas policeman ran. How the matter settleditself I do not know--we were much too anxious to disentangle ourselvesfrom the affair and get out of range of the eye of the old gentleman inthe bath-chair to make minute inquiries. As soon as we were sufficientlycool and sufficiently recovered from our giddiness and nausea andconfusion of mind to do so we stood up and, skirting the crowd, directedour steps back along the road below the Metropole towards Gibbe
rne'shouse. But amidst the din I heard very distinctly the gentleman whohad been sitting beside the lady of the ruptured sunshade using quiteunjustifiable threats and language to one of those chair-attendants whohave "Inspector" written on their caps. "If you didn't throw the dog,"he said, "who DID?"
The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our naturalanxiety about ourselves (our clothe's were still dreadfully hot, andthe fronts of the thighs of Gibberne's white trousers were scorched adrabbish brown), prevented the minute observations I should have likedto make on all these things. Indeed, I really made no observations ofany scientific value on that return. The bee, of course, had gone. Ilooked for that cyclist, but he was already out of sight as we came intothe Upper Sandgate Road or hidden from us by traffic; the char-a-banc,however, with its people now all alive and stirring, was clatteringalong at a spanking pace almost abreast of the nearer church.
We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had stepped ingetting out of the house was slightly singed, and that the impressionsof our feet on the gravel of the path were unusually deep.
So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practicallywe had been running about and saying and doing all sorts of things inthe space of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hour while theband had played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect it had upon uswas that the whole world had stopped for our convenient inspection.Considering all things, and particularly considering our rashness inventuring out of the house, the experience might certainly have beenmuch more disagreeable than it was. It showed, no doubt, that Gibbernehas still much to learn before his preparation is a manageableconvenience, but its practicability it certainly demonstrated beyond allcavil.
Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use undercontrol, and I have several times, and without the slightest bad result,taken measured doses under his direction; though I must confess I havenot yet ventured abroad again while under its influence. I may mention,for example, that this story has been written at one sitting and withoutinterruption, except for the nibbling of some chocolate, by its means.I began at 6.25, and my watch is now very nearly at the minute past thehalf-hour. The convenience of securing a long, uninterrupted spell ofwork in the midst of a day full of engagements cannot be exaggerated.Gibberne is now working at the quantitative handling of his preparation,with especial reference to its distinctive effects upon different typesof constitution. He then hopes to find a Retarder with which to diluteits present rather excessive potency. The Retarder will, of course, havethe reverse effect to the Accelerator; used alone it should enable thepatient to spread a few seconds over many hours of ordinary time,--andso to maintain an apathetic inaction, a glacier-like absence ofalacrity, amidst the most animated or irritating surroundings. The twothings together must necessarily work an entire revolution in civilisedexistence. It is the beginning of our escape from that Time Garmentof which Carlyle speaks. While this Accelerator will enable us toconcentrate ourselves with tremendous impact upon any moment or occasionthat demands our utmost sense and vigour, the Retarder will enable usto pass in passive tranquillity through infinite hardship and tedium.Perhaps I am a little optimistic about the Retarder, which has indeedstill to be discovered, but about the Accelerator there is no possiblesort of doubt whatever. Its appearance upon the market in a convenient,controllable, and assimilable form is a matter of the next few months.It will be obtainable of all chemists and druggists, in small greenbottles, at a high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by nomeans excessive price. Gibberne's Nervous Accelerator it will be called,and he hopes to be able to supply it in three strengths: one in 200, onein 900, and one in 2000, distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labelsrespectively.
No doubt its use renders a great number of very extraordinary thingspossible; for, of course, the most remarkable and, possibly, evencriminal proceedings may be effected with impunity by thus dodging, asit were, into the interstices of time. Like all potent preparations itwill be liable to abuse. We have, however, discussed this aspect ofthe question very thoroughly, and we have decided that this is purely amatter of medical jurisprudence and altogether outside our province.We shall manufacture and sell the Accelerator, and, as for theconsequences--we shall see.