As the professor reviews his experiments with mixed feelings, a new volunteer arrives. Herr Otto Franzmueller, an escapee of the Nazi death camps, he pleads with Candella to allow him to enter the Wish Machine.
It was Saturday. I expected no visitors. The Wish Machine was visible in the far corner of my laboratory, its permanent blue glow letting me know it was alive and ready to do mischief. For a device I thought could only transport the mind, I was discovering that the Wish Machine had other potential. I felt pretty good.
Maybe I was a little too satisfied with myself. I had made Bubbles LaBounce happy. When Mrs. Collyburn returned from her trip the animation in her face had transformed her. I could not help but think of Mrs. Collyburn, not as a weary old lady, but as the beautiful showgirl she had once been.
Nelton Frigby felt better and happier for the chance I gave him to choose other options in his life. When he left my office Nelton stood a little taller. Their decisions had given both, Harry Hamm and Nelton Frigby, peace. They had learned from their experience in the Wish Machine what most of us learn too late; what we make of life is mostly up to us.
I felt better for having stood up to Thurman Butts. All in all I was satisfied. However, like an errant ghost ever peering over my shoulder, I still had my devil to confront.
The rap on my door became more insistent. Few students roamed the halls. Charley Tinsdale sometimes worked on weekends. He often came by to gossip but I had seen him drive off the parking lot an hour ago as I walked across the campus to lunch at Molly’s Coffee Shop. No one should have called on me today.
Since Harry Hamm’s session I had few calls about the ad. My visitor might be a volunteer.
“Come in,” I called.
The door opened. He walked into my office with the greatest of difficulty and a phantasm greeted me. One leg was permanently bent at an odd angle and he limped so badly I thought he would fall at each step. His face was horribly disfigured; a human jigsaw puzzle from scars that had frozen his features into a perpetual grimace of horror and pain. Only his eyes were alive.
A dozen feet away from where I sat waiting, he spoke. The words that issued from his ruined mouth came in a voice that was as hoarse as a rusty saw. His heavy German accent was barely understandable. It was hard to tell what he was saying; his jaw was so badly damaged.
“I haf come about your offer in zee newspaper advertisement, Herr doctor.”
“Please sit down,” I said.
He was a pitiful sight. I wondered if he could make it to the chair. I thought that he must sit quickly or fall. Moving the last few feet across the floor, ponderously and with great effort, my visitor fell into the chair like a sack of wet cement, continuing to gasp for air. The exertion had been too much for the fellow. He was wheezing like a steam engine. After a minute or two he caught his breath.
“Mine name is Franzmueller; Otto Franzmueller. A friend uf mine, Doctor Aukenschmidt, vun of your fellow professors here at the university, told me that you haf made a remarkable device. Dr. Aukenschmidt sent me to speak to an employee of the university. She works in the cafeteria. I spoke at length with Frau Collyburn. She described the powers uf your machine.”
Mr. Franzmueller reached into a pocket of his coat. He drew out a scrap of paper. It was my ad.
“Dr. Aukenschmidt gave me this.”
I was annoyed. I had made a point of asking my subjects not to discuss their experience. I wished it to be kept a secret until I had proven its worth and I had published my paper in the Journal of American Psychology. Everybody in the university seemed to know about my Wish Machine.
True, I had mentioned the machine, once or twice, to Doctor Aukenschmidt. I did not think he was very much interested. I hardly expected that he would speak of it to others. I also wanted to keep the Wish Machine a secret for a while longer until I had finished all of my tests.
Those few persons that did know about the Wish Machine believed that I had a strange contrivance in my laboratory that worked on the mind; some sort of hypnotic dreaming device. Its true capabilities were still my secret. If word got out to the wrong people before I had time to publish proof of alternate realities and my experiments it could mean my reputation as well as my job. Most people thought the whole idea of other worlds and alternate realities was ridiculous.
“So much for secrecy,” I thought sourly.
My visitor leaned forward and fixed me with those piercing tortured eyes of his. They were pleading for my agreement.
“I deeply wish to use your machine, Doctor Candella. For me it is a matter of life und death.”
Next episode: Candella agrees — but he is troubled when told the subject wishes to kill a man.
Gene Paleno is an author and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
