Metropolis | Page 9

that man."
"Because he saves four others."
"No, Freder. Because he takes delight in the work of four others. Because he throws
himself entirely into his work-throws himself as desiringly as if it were a woman."
Freder was silent. Joh Fredersen looked at his son. He looked at him carefully.
"You have had some experience?" he asked.
The eyes of the boy, beautiful and sad, slipped past him, out into space. Wild, white light
frothed against the windows, and, in going out, left the sky behind, as a black velvet cloth
over Metropolis.
"I have had no experience," said Freder, tentatively, "except that I believe for the first
time in my life to have comprehended the being of a machine ..."
"That should mean a great deal," replied the Master over Metropolis. "But you are
probably wrong, Freder. If you had really comprehended the being of a machine you
would not be so perturbed."
Slowly the son turned his eyes and the helplessness of his incomprehension to his father.
"How can one but be perturbed," he said, "if one comes to you, as I did, through the
machine-rooms. Through the glorious rooms of your glorious machines... and sees the
creatures who are fettered to them by laws of eternal watchfulness... lidless eyes..."
He paused. His lips were dry as dust.
Joh Fredersen leant back. He had not taken his gaze from his son, and still held it fast.
"Why did you come to me through the machine-rooms," he asked quietly. "It is neither
the best, nor the most convenient way."
"I wished," said the son, picking his words carefully, "Just once to look the men in the
face-whose little children are my brothers-my sisters..."
"H'm," said the other with very tight lips. The pencil which he held between his fingers
tapped gently, dryly, once, twice, upon the table's edge. Joh Fredersen's eyes wandered
from his son to the twitching flash of the seconds on the clock, then sinking back again to
him.
"And what did you find?" he asked.
Seconds, seconds, seconds of silence. Then it was as though the son, up-rooting and
tearing loose his whole ego, threw himself, with a gesture of utter self-exposure, upon his
father, yet he stood still, head a little bent, speaking softly, as though every word were
smothering between his lips.

"Father! Help the men who live at your machines!"
"I cannot help them," said the brain of Metropolis. "Nobody can help them. They are
where they must be. They are what they must be. They are not fitted for anything more or
anything different."
"I do not know for what they are fitted," said Freder, expressionlessly: his head fell upon
his breast as though almost severed from his neck. "I only know what I saw-and that it
was dreadful to look upon... I went through the machine-rooms-they were like temples.
All the great gods were living in white temples. I saw Baal and Moloch, Huitziopochtli
and Durgha; some frightfully companionable, some terribly solitary. I saw Juggernaut's
divine car and the Towers of Silence, Mahomet's curved sword, and the crosses of
Golgotha. And all machines, machines, machines, which, confined to their pedestals, like
deities to their temple thrones, from the resting places which bore them, lived their
god-Like lives: Eyeless but seeing all, earless but hearing all, without speech, yet, in
themselves, a proclaiming mouth-not man, not woman, and yet engendering, receptive,
and productive- lifeless, yet shaking the air of their temples with the never-expiring
breath of their vitality. And, near the god-machines, the slaves of the god-machines: the
men who were as though crushed between machine companionability and ma chine
solitude. They have no loads to carry: the machine carries the loads. They have not to lift
and push: the machine lifts and pushes. They have nothing else to do but eternally one
and the same thing, each in this place, each at his machine. Divided into periods of brief
seconds, always the same clutch at the same second, at the same second. They have eyes,
but they are blind but for one thing, the scale of the manometer. They have ears, but they
are deaf but for one thing, the hiss of their machine. They watch and watch, having no
thought but for one thing: should their watchfulness waver, then the machine awakens
from its feigned sleep and begins to race, racing itself to pieces. And the machine, having
neither head nor brain, with the tension of its watchfulness, sucks and sucks out the brain
from the paralysed skull of its watchman, and does not stay, and sucks, and does not stay
until a being is hanging to the sucked-out skull, no longer a man and not yet a machine,
pumped dry, hollowed out, used up. And the machine which has sucked