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Read Ebook: Abraham Lincoln: An Horatian Ode by Stoddard Richard Henry
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Ebook has 86 lines and 4681 words, and 2 pages
PROBLEM IN SOLID
BY GEORGE O. SMITH
Illustrated by Orban
Martin Hammer should have been prepared for anything. As the world's foremost producer of motion pictures, he should have taken any situation from earthquake to fatherhood without a qualm or a turned eyebrow. But Hammer had not seen everything--yet.
A noise presented itself at Hammer's office door. Not the noise of knocking or tapping, nor even the racket made by attempts to breach the portal with a heavy blunt instrument. It was more like the sound of a dentist's drill working on wood, or perhaps one of those light burring tools, or maybe even a light scroll saw.
Then, with all the assurance in the world, a man's hand came through the door, the fingers clenched about an imaginary doorknob. The hand swung an imaginary door aside and as it moved, the wood of the real door fell to the floor in a pile of finely-ground sawdust.
Once the imaginary door was thrust aside, the rest of the intruder entered, leaving the exact outline of his silhouette in the door.
He smiled affably and said, "I trust I'm not intruding!"
He was still holding the imaginary door open with his right hand. As he finished speaking, he stepped forward a step, turned, pulled the imaginary door shut a few inches, transferred it to take the inside knob in his left hand, and then stepping carefully forward, he thrust the imaginary door closed, his hand clenched around the imaginary knob. The act ended as his hand entered the real doorknob and there was the high-pitch whine of metal against metal like cutting a tin can with a bandsaw.
The intruder turned, walked across the office, and stood there in front of Martin Hammer. From a pocket he look a cigarette and a match and lit up, blowing a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air.
"I am delighted to meet you," he said.
At which point, Martin Hammer blew up.
He had been patient. He had been astounded. He had been sitting there with his chin getting lower and lower and lower as this ... this character walked through his door with all the assurance in the world. Then the bird had the affrontery to behave as though he had not invaded Hammer's office; had not ruined a fine oak door; and as though Hammer should have been glad to see him.
What added fuel to Hammer's explosion was the fact that the intruder seemed absolutely unaware of the ruination of the door.
"What the--" yelled Hammer. He leaped to his feet, ran around his desk, and faced the intruder angrily for only an instant.
Hammer launched himself at the intruder with intent to do bodily harm, mayhem, and perhaps a little bit of second-degree murder that might be juried into justifiable homicide.
He did not connect. The stranger disappeared at that instant, and Hammer's well directed blow fell upon thin air. Hammer, finding no resistance before him, fell flat on his face, which mashed the cigar into his mouth and burned a hole in his fine Persian carpet. He turned over and sat up, spitting out bits of tobacco mixed with equal parts of very bad language. Blankly he ran his hand through the spot where the stranger had been.
"Now," he said in puzzlement, "what in the name of--"
"May I apologize?" came a voice at the door. Hammer whirled and saw the intruder again, standing there with a rather dumfounded expression on his face.
Hammer grunted. At least he is now cognizant of his ruin-production, he thought. This was true. The intruder no longer had that fatuous expression that ignored the damage.
"Apologize?" exploded Hammer.
The intruder stepped through the ruined door. "I got the focus wrong," he said, "otherwise the image could have--"
"Image?" yelled Hammer.
The stranger nodded. "Image," he said. "Look, Hammer, you don't really think that I actually walked through that door, across your office floor, and then disappeared into thin air, do you?"
"Well ... and who are you?"
"My name is Tim Woodart. I'm an engineer."
"Look," said Hammer shakily, "I'd like to know what's been going on. As a producer of motion pictures, I am beginning to see the glimmerings of a fine idea. I sort of resent the destruction you've created, but it certainly carried off its point."
"I'll bring in the gear, too," said Woodart. "If you don't mind."
Hammer nodded. Whatever it was, Martin Hammer had just had his door broken in by the first of all true three-dimensional photography!
Harry Foster stood on a lonely stage and smiled at some mythical point in the mid distance. Dramatically he pointed, and as he pointed, across his face there came a change over his features. Normally handsome, Harry Foster's "bad" face was thrice as bad for the distortion into hatred. It was excellent acting.
The man beside the camera nodded. It was not only excellent acting but it was rather emotionally troublesome to be confronted by a living, breathing image of yourself. You, watching you do something that you had done previously.
Harry Foster's hand stole up alongside of the cutoff button and he thrust it down viciously.
The scene stopped instantly and disappeared.
Foster, remaining beside the camera, swore. He rereeled manually a few yards and restarted the camera. He caught a previous scene's ending: a beautiful woman smiling shyly at another man. The scene's ending was brief, to a flash-over of Harry Foster standing in the center of the stage, and going through the same motions of smiling offstage, with the features changing from smile to scowl of hate.
Again Foster's hand flipped the switch and the image of Foster disappeared as did the settings on the stage.
Foster swore again. "There must be some way--How does he do this anyway?"
Foster opened the cabinet-like side of the solid camera and looked at the circuits. They were enigma to Foster, but there was some logic to it--there must be. You create an image and then wipe it away to make place for the next image--just as in common cinema. But in normal cinema it is possible to halt the film and project a still. That's what Harry Foster wanted--
He pulled a single tube from one circuit and snapped the camera on. The stage was blank. He replaced the tube and tried another tube removed by some distance from the first. He started the camera, and the stage flashed into being once and then went blank again. There was a tiny flash from the bottom panel of the machine and Foster looked down to see the indicator of a blown fuse.
Foster nodded. Obvious. To stop the wipe-away would mean that the next frame would be placed on top of the first. A double exposure would not work in the solids. Not without repealing that law of nature that states that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
What he had to do was to stop the projector at the same time he stopped the wipe-away. Tim Woodart had fixed the machine so that the wipe-away completed the scene after stopping the works. Just a matter of safety.
Foster puzzled over the machine and restarted it again. He waited until the image of Harry Foster stared off stage and then he grabbed two tubes and jerked them out simultaneously.
The projector stopped; the scene remained. The image of Harry Foster stood there dumbly. Then it turned vaguely and looked at the camera and the man beside it.
"Hello, hero," sneered Foster.
The image blinked. "I've wondered what might happen," said the spurious Foster.
"Yes," chuckled the real Foster, "we have, haven't we?"
"I--," started the image, but he stopped and looked wildly around. "What do you want?"
"You know."
"I'll not do it! You ... we ... ah ... well, it's no go."
The real Harry Foster sat down in the director's chair. "I've had more time to plan," he said. "You're just an image--"
Foster snarled back, "Not now I'm not. I'm just as real as you are!"
"I'm the original; you came out of that camera."
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