Dimension X - "Nightmare" (Old Time Radio, 1951)

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On June 10, 1951, NBC aired the 36th episode of
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Dimension X, Nightmare. At Brookmeadows Atomic Pile Project on Long Island,
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statistician Samson Gurney begins charting a pattern in a series
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of mechanical accidents, incidents his superiors regard as ordinary. As
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Gurney follows the figures from office records to the project's
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electronic computer facilities, his questions lead toward a possibility involving
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the machinery around him. John Gibson stars as Gurney, joined
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by Rita Lynn, Joseph Julian, Joe DeSantis, Edwin Jerome, Gregory Morton,
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and John McGovern. George Lefferts adapted the broadcast for radio
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from Stephen Vincent Benet's poem, The Revolt of the Machines.
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And now, our story begins.
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Adventures in time and space. Transcribed in future tense. Dimension.
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The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with Street and Smith,
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publishers of astounding science fiction... Bring you Dimension X.
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Nobody knows exactly when the nightmare began. They must have
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planned it for years, though, because looking back, you can
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find little incidents here and there. Like the concrete mixer
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in New Jersey that killed the bricklayer. and the time
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Senator Milburn was sucked into the roto press at the
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Capitol office building. Unrelated accidents, we thought.
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At the time. But they add up now.
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The day we really should have suspected was when the
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men walked off the construction job at the new Brookmeadow
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atomic pile on Long Island.
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I'll never forget that day. I was working as a
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statistical clerk in the project then.
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Operating one of those miracle computing machines developed to fill
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the requirements of Army ordnance.
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They called it ENIAC.
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Mr.
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Gurney?
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Huh?
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Oh, uh, yes, Bella? The chief wants to see you
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in his office.
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Me?
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Unless you're no longer Samson Gurney, he wants to see you.
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Oh, well, of course, uh... What do you suppose.
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I do not read minds, tea leaves, or crystal balls.
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Of course, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked.
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Don't apologize.
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I'm sorry.
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And don't wait for me.
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Mr.
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Hawk is in a hurry.
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Yes, I'll go in right away, of course.
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Her name was Bella Roscoff. She was Mr. Hawk's secretary.
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I had always thought her a very attractive woman, but
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for some reason she didn't seem to like me. Of course,
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on a clerk's salary, I couldn't exactly afford to take
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ladies to the best places. But I've often thought that
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if there weren't such a disparity in our ages, I
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might have.
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But then... Come.
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In.
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You wanted to see me, Mr. Hook?
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Gurney, I thought those electronic computations were infallible.
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They are, sir. We got a kickback from the chief physicist.
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These nuclear equations are inaccurate.
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No, they aren't, sir.
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I'm telling you what the memo says.
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Well, sir, occasionally, if there's an overload, the machine goes haywire.
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Sort of has a nervous breakdown, you might say. We
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usually rest it up for 24.
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Hours and it's okay again.
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Ha, ha, ha.
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Well, do whatever has to be done. Yes, sir. Owen Gurney. Yes, sir.
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You've been with the Bureau for over 15 years now.
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It would be a shame to have to remove you
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because you aren't keeping your mind on your work.
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Well, Mr. Hawk, I hardly think anyone.
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Excuse me.
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Hawk speaking. What? They've what? All of them? Well, have
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you tried to talk to them? Yes, of course.
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Yes.
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I'll send one of the safety engineers over.
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This place is falling apart piece by piece.
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Miss Roscoe? Yes, sir. The men in the construction gang
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at the new building have walked out on us.
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What?
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Someone slipped this morning and fell into a turbine. No.
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Get the chief safety engineer.
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Have him over there right away.
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Yes, sir.
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Oh, and contact the personnel office. Have them ask the
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union to order the men back to work. Get back
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to me.
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Yes, sir.
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I'm sorry, Gurney. I have no time to discuss anything further.
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Get on the job and stay awake or we'll have
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to make some changes. That's all, Gurney. That's all.
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Now, you probably gathered by this time that I wasn't a.
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Very important man at Brookmeadow. I hated Mr.
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Hawk with a passion because of his superior attitude. And
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because I knew that Miss Roscoe admired him as a
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man of strength and decision. I was secretly happy he
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was having trouble with his construction crews. That evening, I
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wandered over to the site of the new atomic pile
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to see where the man had fallen into the turbines.
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They had the construction area fenced off with barbed wire
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and a security guard stopped me.
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Hold it, buddy. You can't go in there. It's a
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restricted area.
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I'm Samson Gurney from the statistical section.
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Here's my identification. I'm sorry, Mr. Gurney.
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Nobody's allowed in the area.
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I see.
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We had a lot of the employees come over tonight
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to take a look, but nobody gets in.
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Orders. Tell me, was he killed instantly? Like that.
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This guy was checking a magnetic field inside the turbine, see?
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Right down inside it. It's all over.
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But if it wasn't hooked up... Look, Mr.
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Gurney, they got smarter guys than me trying to figure
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these things out.
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Yesterday it was a concrete mold.
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Wham!
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Two guys get sucked right into the mixer.
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My, my.
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Three days ago, a bulldozer starts up by itself and
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runs wild.
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One killed.
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Two almost.
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Go figure it out. You know what I think? Sabotage. Uh-uh.
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We got more guards and FBI men in here than
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we got workers. Flea couldn't get through without proving he
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didn't come off a Russian wolfhound.
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Now, I'm a statistician. All my life, I've been interested
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in statistics. So a simple-sounding thing like this started me off.
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I went back to the office that evening instead of
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going home... And for the next two.
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And a half hours, I computed figures on the probability
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of industrial accidents for the types of machines we were using.
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I took one look at my figures and went down
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to Hawk's office, just as I figured he was staying
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late working on a settlement with the construction workers.
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Yes?
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Oh, good evening. Um, I saw the light.
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Mr. Gurney, what are you doing here?
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Is Mr. Hawk working late?
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Yes, I am too.
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Oh. I wonder if I could see him a moment.
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We're busy right now. Could you make it tomorrow?
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It's very urgent. I'll wait, if you don't mind. Suit yourself.
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Miss Roscoe, I wonder if perhaps you would consider having
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dinner with me this evening after you're through.
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I have a date, Mr.
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Gurney.
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I was thinking we might go to Raymond's.
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They have very good spaghetti. Mr.
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Hawk has already asked me to have dinner with him
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at the Golden Shish Kebab.
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Oh, well, of course, that's out of my class. Yes. Yes. Mr. Hawk, Mr.
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Gurney would like to see you a moment. He says
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it's very urgent.
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Urgent?
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All right, I'll give him a minute.
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Okay.
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Thank you, Miss Roscoe. Mr.
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Hawk, in the past three months, industrial accidents all over
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the country have taken a sharp, unexplained upswing. Why don't
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you stop playing FBI man and stick to your job?
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Which, incidentally, you haven't been doing too well.
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You and our computing machines have made mistakes before.
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Now, this is probably another. I'll have Miss Ross come so.
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What's the matter with this blasted buzzer? Miss Roscoff!
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Miss Roscoff!
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Yes, sir!
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Stop this blasted buzzer!
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Get a repairman, a mechanic! Anything but stop the thing!
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And you, Gurney, get out! I went back to my
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office to get my hat and coat, feeling about as
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unhappy and humiliated as a man can feel. He had
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thrown me out in front of her. The office was
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dark and deserted.
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The whole building seemed oppressive and unnatural. I walked across
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to my desk. In front of me, the ENIAC glowed
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and chattered eerily... as it worked on the equations we
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had fed it that morning. Its many-fingered circuits hung against
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the wall like some great octopus... and the thousands of
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tubes glowed orange and blue. in the dark like a
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thousand eyes staring at me. It almost seemed a lie.
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Then it increased its tempo a moment. And a fleeting.
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Notion crossed my brain that it was laughing at me.
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Laughing like all the others. What was the matter with me?
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What?
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And I shut my desk drawer... and began to put
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the cover on my ENIAC typewriter.
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when an amazing thing happened.
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The most amazing single incident of my life. Alone in
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the darkness.
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with no one at the keyboard... The ENIAC typewriter began
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to type.
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Am I going crazy?
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This can't be. There's nobody here. There's nobody here. Oh, no, no, no.
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I'm just imagining. It's in my mind.
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But I hadn't imagined it.
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The paper was there in the carriage... Did I dare
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read it? Or would the whole thing suddenly vanish and
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send me shrieking to the nearest psychiatrist? Samson Gurney, there
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are some equations better left unsolved. The answer to yours
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is death. Death. It was not until I turned to
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go that I was suddenly aware of the utter and
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complete silence of the room.
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Then it dawned on me. The ENIAC had stopped working. Gurney,
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do you expect me to believe this?
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It's insane.
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Mr.
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Hawk, I'm a saint. Take it easy, Gurney.
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Now, this is just some practical joke someone in the
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office is playing.
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There was no one in the office. Of course not.
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They wired up the machine and left. I checked the
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machine myself, Mr. Hawk. All right, Gurney.
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You leave this note with me, and I'll turn it
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over to the security force for further investigation.
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No buts, Gurney. The security men will handle it. Yes, sir.
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Maybe you've been working too hard lately. You've got to
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relax more. Now, now, here, let me light that cigarette
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for you. I watched him trying to make the lighter work.
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I don't understand this. I just put fluid in it.
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There's a brand new flame. It seems ridiculous.
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A little piece of mechanism like a cigarette lighter frustrating
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the big important executive.
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Oh, blast this lighter. Here's a match. It was such
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a small thing. And yet as I watched him, a
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thought began to take shape in my mind. Nebulous at first,
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incredible perhaps. But it grew.
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You just relax for a few days. Everything will turn
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out all right. The main thing is not to let
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little things upset you.
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It was the cigarette lighter that gave me the idea.
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And what Hawk had said about little things. For the
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next week, I observed the thousand petty little annoyances around
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the office. The door handle that wouldn't turn.
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The telephone connection that cut off in the middle of
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an important call. The power failure for no explainable reason.
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Suddenly, these things began to fall into a pattern. I.
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Samson Gurney.
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knew that I had stumbled onto a secret so monstrous
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in its implications that I was almost afraid to pursue.
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It.
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On October 12, 1956, I established communication with them. I
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will curse the moment to my dying breath. Who's there?
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Night security, guys. Oh, hello, Henry. Oh, hello, Mr.
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Gurney.
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What are you doing here so late?
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I'm just doing a little repair work on my ENIAC computator.
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Sure is some mess of wires and tubes. Yes, yes,
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it is.
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Well, I got to finish my rounds. Don't forget to
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turn off.
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The light, will you, Mr. Gurney? No, Henry, no, I
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won't forget. Night. Good night. When you were a child,
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did you ever try to imagine that you were all-powerful?
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I felt like that when I finished hooking the input
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of the typewriter to the main vacuum tube of the ENIAC.
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Then I turned on the current that sent a million
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volts of pulsing energy into the electronic nerves of the machine.
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I am certain that if anybody were watching me in
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the next moment, he would have thought me a raving maniac.
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I still wonder if perhaps it is not all a nightmare.
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Now, you!
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If what I have guessed at is true, if there's
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life and intelligence in this room, make a sign!
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There was nothing. Nothing but the hum of the machine
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and the dull blowing of the tubes. Then, suddenly.
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Without provocation or explanation, it happened.
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The ENIAC typewriter began to respond to the impulses from
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the machine.
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The letters were Y-E-S.
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Yes.
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It had happened. I, Samson Gurney, had communicated... with a machine.
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I was about to try to communicate again when suddenly,
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on ball-bearing casters, a heavy metal filing cabinet began to
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roll away from the wall toward me.
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I started to move to.
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One side when another cabinet slipped out from the wall
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and then another surrounding me. That was when I realized
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that they cooperated. We taught them that, you see, on
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the assembly lines and in the factories.
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There was no way out.
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How could a mere man reason with dumb machines? Still,
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they needed us. They needed us to oil them and
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repair them and build them. They hadn't gotten to the
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point yet where they could exist without man. I had
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to make them understand that before they killed me.
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Listen to me. You must listen. What good will it
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do you if you kill me? I'm only one man.
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But I can help you. I can be useful to you.
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Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Good. You're
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going to need men to oil you and repair you.
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I'll do anything.
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I'll do absolutely anything you want.
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But in the name of God.
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Don't kill me. If you can understand this, answer me.
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Answer me.
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The appeal captured the longing of centuries. Man as slave
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to the machine. And after a moment, the circuits glowed
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more brightly.
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The cabinet slid back to the walls.
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As I tore the tape from the machine and read it,
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the words were almost pathetic in their longing, but most
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ominous in their implication.
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They read.
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Address me as Master. My life for the next six
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months was a nightmare.
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The ENIAC gave me messages which I had to transmit
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into my telephone.
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I was frantic. I began to lose weight.
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I couldn't sleep. My nights were torture, a constant fear.
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It was in December, just after Christmas. I was sitting
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in my room, listening to a broadcast. Ladies and gentlemen,
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a special bulletin.
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Already 24 hours before the peak of the New Year's traffic,
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over 1,000 deaths have been reported.
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This is an unprecedented figure. Again, if you... That very afternoon...
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I had transmitted a message to the telephones for relay
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to all machines of transportation. The message was one word. Kill.
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Next morning, I avoided my office. Instead, I went directly
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to the office of Mr.
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Hawke. I was highly agitated. My lips trembled as I spoke.
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Well, Gurney? Mr.
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Hawke? What I'm going to tell you sounds crazy. I
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know it does, but I must say it. All right,
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say it then, for heaven's sake. Mr. Hawk, have you
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ever heard of resistentialism? Resist what? Resistentialism. You're not making sense, Gurney. Mr. Hawk,
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I'm trying to tell you. All these accidents, the trouble
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with the machines.
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Mr.
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Hawk, they're alive.
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They think they cooperate and they hate us.
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Who?
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The machines. Gurney! You've got to believe me. I've communicated
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with him. I know... What are you doing? Now, just relax, Gurney.
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Everything will be all right. What are you doing? Miss Roskob,
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send for the plant physician at once. Mr.
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Gurney has had a nervous collapse.
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But, Mr.
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Hawkins.
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Everything will be all right, Gurney. We'll give you a
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nice long rest.
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You fool!
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You blind, stupid fool!
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Can't you see what you're doing?
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Fool, fool, fool!
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When the plant physician arrived a few moments later, Lucius
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Hawk was found at his desk, strangled to death in.
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A nest of telephones. The wires were still humming softly.
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00:21:05.750 --> 00:21:08.210
Ramson Gurney, you stand.
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Accused of the crime of murder.
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How do you plead? I did not kill him. I didn't.
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So record.
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Prosecution will proceed with judgment.
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Now, Miss Raskob, did the accused quarrel.
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With your employer on the morning of the murder? Oh, yes.
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00:21:25.789 --> 00:21:28.910
He and Mr. Hawk quarreled violently. I could hear Mr.
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Gurney screaming at him, and Mr.
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00:21:31.049 --> 00:21:32.369
Hawk asked me to send for.
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The plant physician. What were his words?
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00:21:34.650 --> 00:21:38.109
He said, Mr. Gurney has had a nervous collapse.
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00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:43.539
Now, Mr.
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Simpson, you are a guard at the Brook Meadow Project?
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Yes, sir. When did you have occasion to meet the accused?
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Right after those accidents. He was snooping around the construction area.
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Yes!
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Samson Gurney, thought hereby finds you guilty of murder in
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the first degree. Recommendation that you be examined, committed to
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the state hospital for the criminally insane at Matawan.
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And that's how I came to be here at the hospital, Dr. Klein.
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That's the whole story.
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Thank you, Mr. Gurney.
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You can see that I'm not insane. You must believe me, Doc.
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Of course I believe you, Mr. Gurney.
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Now tell me about this revolt.
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It will begin in Washington, then spread to New York. Yes?
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The Madison Avenue buses lead the charge. Picture it, Dr. Klein, 3,000
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buses roaring rampant through the streets, people running like rats
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in a maze looking for manholes in the pavement.
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And you really believe this will happen, Mr. Gooding?
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I know it, doctor. The worst part of it is
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there's no way to stop them now.
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It's too late. Now, you mustn't excite yourself, Mr.
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Gooding. But, doctor, don't you see? It's fair enough, I suppose.
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We built them. We taught them to think for themselves.
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It was bound to come.
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I guess the female machines will be worst of all
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in the beauty parlors. They're more high-strung, you know.
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Well, since there's nothing we can do about it, Mr.
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Gurney, suppose you go to your room and.
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Maybe if I went to my old Plymouth, I could
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make a deal before the police cars got me.
392
00:23:37.660 --> 00:23:38.160
Yes, doctor?
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00:23:38.359 --> 00:23:40.980
Would you take Mr. Gurney to his room guard? He's
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already been given sedation.
395
00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:42.819
Yes, sir.
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00:23:43.460 --> 00:23:46.599
Those concrete mixers may have made a mistake, you know.
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00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:51.380
Just high spirits and all that. But if they got
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so they liked the flavor... We'll see.
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You later, Mr.
400
00:23:54.359 --> 00:23:54.700
Kearney.
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00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:56.359
Now try not to worry too much.
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All right, guard. This way, sir.
403
00:24:01.099 --> 00:24:03.920
Oh, machines revolting.
404
00:24:04.380 --> 00:24:06.329
Telephones strangling people.
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00:24:06.900 --> 00:24:13.049
Oh, blasted cigarette lighter. Why won't it work?
406
00:24:13.720 --> 00:24:14.369
I just filled it.
407
00:24:15.339 --> 00:24:16.019
Flint is good.
408
00:24:18.200 --> 00:24:22.640
Oh, well, you can never trust this newfangled machinery.
409
00:24:39.250 --> 00:24:42.349
Next week, Dimension X will present a story of the future...
410
00:24:42.829 --> 00:24:46.930
A story of an insignificant pebble in the sky called Earth,
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and of a man from a distant star who grew
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to love this unimportant planet. Dimension X is transcribed each
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week by the National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with Street
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00:25:03.630 --> 00:25:05.230
and Smith, publishers.
415
00:25:04.730 --> 00:25:06.910
Of the magazine Astounding Science Fiction.
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Nightmare was written by George Lefferts and based on a poem,
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The Revolt of the Machines, by Stephen Vincent Benet. Featured
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players in the cast were John Gibson as Mr. Gurney
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and Rita Lynn as Bella Roscom. Norman Rose is your host.
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Music by Albert Berman. Engineer, Bill Chambers. Dimension X is
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00:25:33.869 --> 00:25:37.170
produced by William Welch and directed by Edward King.
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Our presentation of Dimension X Nightmare now comes to a close.
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Follow Dimension X for more classic science fiction broadcasts.