A Classic Reprint from AMAZING STORIES, August, 1932
I am the last of my type existingtoday in all the Solar System.I, too, am the last existingwho, in memory, sees the strugglefor this System, and in memoryI am still close to the Centerof Rulers, for mine was the rulingtype then. But I will passsoon, and with me will pass thelast of my kind, a poor inefficienttype, but yet the creators ofthose who are now, and will be,long after I pass forever.
So I am setting down my recordon the mentatype.
It was 2538 years After theYear of the Son of Man. For sixcenturies mankind had been developingmachines. The Ear-apparatuswas discovered as earlyas seven hundred years before.The Eye came later, the Braincame much later. But by 2500,the machines had been developedto think, and act and work withperfect independence. Man livedon the products of the machine,and the machines lived to themselvesvery happily, and contentedly.Machines are designedto help and cooperate. It waseasy to do the simple duties theyneeded to do that men might livewell. And men had created them.Most of mankind were quite useless,for they lived in a worldwhere no productive work wasnecessary. But games, athleticcontests, adventure—these werethe things they sought for theirpleasure. Some of the poorertypes of man gave themselves upwholly to pleasure and idleness—andto emotions. But man wasa sturdy race, which had foughtfor existence through a millionyears, and the training of a millionyears does not slough quicklyfrom any form of life, so theirenergies were bent to mock battlesnow, since real ones no longerexisted.
Up to the year 2100, the numbersof mankind had increasedrapidly and continuously, butfrom that time on, there was asteady decrease. By 2500, theirnumber was a scant two millions,out of a population that oncetotaled many hundreds of millions,and was close to ten billionsin 2100.
Some few of these remainingtwo millions devoted themselvesto the adventure of discovery andexploration of places unseen, ofother worlds and other planets.But fewer still devoted themselvesto the highest adventure,the unseen places of the mind.Machines—with their irrefutablelogic, their cold preciseness offigures, their tireless, utterly exactobservation, their absoluteknowledge of mathematics—theycould elaborate any idea,however simple its beginning,and reach the conclusion. Fromany three facts they even thencould have built in mind all theUniverse. Machines had imaginationof the ideal sort. They hadthe ability to construct a necessaryfuture result from a presentfact. But Man had imaginationof a different kind, theirs wasthe illogical, brilliant imaginationthat sees the future resultvaguely, without knowing thewhy, nor the how, and imaginationthat outstrips the machinein its preciseness. Man mightreach the conclusion more swiftly,but the machine alwaysreached the conclusion eventually,and it was always the correctconclusion. By leaps and boundsman advanced. By steady, irresistiblesteps the machinemarched forward.
Together, man and the machinewere striding through scienceirresistibly.
Then came the Outsiders.Whence they came, neither machinenor man ever learned, saveonly that they came from beyondthe outermost planet, from someother sun. Sirius—Alpha Centauri—perhaps!First a thinscoutline of a hundred greatships, mighty torpedoes of thevoid a thousand kilads[1] inlength, they came.
And one machine returningfrom Mars to Earth was instru