The invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares [40]
First I turned on the portable receivers and projectors, the ones for special showings. I focused on flowers, leaves, flies, frogs. I had the thrill of seeing them reproduced in their exact likeness.
Then I committed the imprudence.
I put my left hand in front of the receiver,- I turned on the projector and my hand appeared, just my hand, making the lazy movements it made when I photographed it.
Now it is like any other object in the museum.
I am keeping the projector on so that the hand will not disappear. The sight of it is not unpleasant, but rather unusual.
In a story, that hand would be a terrible threat for the protagonist. In reality—what harm can it do?
The vegetable transmitters—leaves, flowers—died after five or six hours; the frogs, after fifteen.
The copies survive,- they are incorruptible.
I do not know which flies are real and which ones are artificial.
Perhaps the leaves and flowers died because they needed water. I did not give any food to the frogs,- and they must have suffered from the unfamiliar surroundings, too.
I suspect that the effects on my hand are the result of my fear of the machine, not of the machine itself. I have a steady, faint burning sensation. Some of my skin has fallen off. Last night I slept fitfully. I imagined horrible changes in my hand. I dreamed that I scratched it, that I broke it into pieces easily. That must have been how I hurt it.
Another day will be intolerable.
First I was curious about a paragraph from Morel's speech. Then I was quite amused, thinking I had made a discovery. I am not sure how that discovery led to this other one, which is judicious, ominous.
I shall not kill myself immediately. When I am most lucid, I tend to postpone my death for one more day, to remain as proof of an amazing combination of ineptitude and enthusiasm (or despair). Perhaps writing down my idea will make it lose its force.
Here is the part of Morel's speech that I found unusual:
"You must forgive me for this rather tedious, unpleasant incident."
Why unpleasant? Because they were going to be told that they had been photographed in a new way, without having been warned beforehand. And naturally the knowledge that a week of one's life, with every detail, had been recorded forever—when that knowledge was imparted after the fact— would be quite a shock!
I also thought: One of these persons must have a dreadful
secret; Morel is either trying to find it out or planning to reveal it.
And then I happened to remember that some people are afraid of having their images reproduced because they believe that their souls will be transferred to the images and they will die.
The thought that Morel had experienced misgivings because he had photographed his friends without their consent amused me; apparently that ancient fear still survived in the mind of my learned contemporary.
I read the sentence again:
"You must forgive me for this rather tedious, unpleasant incident. We shall try to forget it."
What did he mean? That they would soon overlook it, or that they would no longer be able to remember it?
The argument with Stoever was terrible. Stoever's suspicions are the same as mine. I do not know how I could have been so slow to understand.
Another thing: the theory that the images have souls seems to demand, as a basic condition, that the transmitters lose theirs when they are photographed by the machines. As Morel himself says, "The theory that the images have souls seems to be confirmed by the effects of my machine on persons, animals, and vegetables used as transmitters."
A person who would make this statement to his victims must have a very overbearing and audacious conscience, which could be confused with a lack of conscience; but such a monstrosity seems to be in keeping with the man who, following his own idea, organizes a collective death and determines, of his