The New Accelerator
The New Accelerator was published in 1901.
Certainly, if ever a man found a guinea when he was looking for a pinit is my good friend Professor Gibberne. I have heard before ofinvestigators overshooting the mark, but never quite to the extentthat he has done. He has really, this time at any rate, without anytouch of exaggeration in the phrase, found something to revolutionisehuman life. And that when he was simply seeking an all-round nervousstimulant to bring languid people up to the stresses of these pushfuldays. I have tasted the stuff now several times, and I cannot dobetter than describe the effect the thing had on me. That there areastonishing experiences in store for all in search of new sensationswill become apparent enough.Professor Gibberne, as many people know, is my neighbour in Folkestone.Unless my memory plays me a trick, his portrait at various ageshas already appeared in The Strand Magazine--I think late in 1899;but I am unable to look it up because I have lent that volume tosome one who has never sent it back. The reader may, perhaps,recall the high forehead and the singularly long black eyebrowsthat give such a Mephistophelian touch to his face. He occupies oneof those pleasant little detached houses in the mixed style thatmake the western end of the Upper Sandgate Road so interesting.His is the one with the Flemish gables and the Moorish portico,and it is in the little room with the mullioned bay window thathe works when he is down here, and in which of an evening we haveso often smoked and talked together. He is a mighty jester, but,besides, he likes to talk to me about his work; he is one of thosemen who find a help and stimulus in talking, and so I have beenable to follow the conception of the New Accelerator right up froma very early stage. Of course, the greater portion of his experimentalwork is not done in Folkestone, but in Gower Street, in the finenew laboratory next to the hospital that he has been the first to use.As every one knows, or at least as all intelligent people know,the special department in which Gibberne has gained so greatand deserved a reputation among physiologists is the action of drugsupon the nervous system. Upon soporifics, sedatives, and anaestheticshe is, I am told, unequalled. He is also a chemist of considerableeminence, and I suppose in the subtle and complex jungle of riddlesthat centres about the ganglion cell and the axis fibre there arelittle cleared places of his making, little glades of illumination,that, until he sees fit to publish his results, are still inaccessibleto every other living man. And in the last few years he has beenparticularly assiduous upon this question of nervous stimulants,and already, before the discovery of the New Accelerator, verysuccessful with them. Medical science has to thank him for at leastthree distinct and absolutely safe invigorators of unrivalled valueto practising men. In cases of exhaustion the preparation knownas Gibberne's B Syrup has, I suppose, saved more lives alreadythan any lifeboat round the coast."But none of these little things begin to satisfy me yet," he toldme nearly a year ago. "Either they increase the central energywithout affecting the nerves or they simply increase the availableenergy by lowering the nervous conductivity; and all of them areunequal and local in their operation. One wakes up the heart andviscera and leaves the brain stupefied, one gets at the brainchampagne fashion and does nothing good for the solar plexus, andwhat I want--and what, if it's an earthly possibility, I mean to have--is a stimulant that stimulates all round, that wakes you up fora time from the crown of your head to the tip of your great toe,and makes you go two--or even three--to everybody else's one. Eh?That's the thing I'm after.""It would tire a man," I said."Not a doubt of it. And you'd eat double or treble--and all that.But just think what the thing would mean. Imagine yourself witha little phial like this"--he held up a little bottle of green glassand marked his points with it--"and in this precious phial isthe power to think twice as fast, move twice as quickly, do twiceas much work in a given time as you could otherwise do.""But is such a thing possible?""I believe so. If it isn't, I've wasted my time for a year. Thesevarious preparations of the hypophosphites, for example, seemto show that something of the sort . . . Even if it was only oneand a half times as fast it would do.""It would do," I said."If you were a statesman in a corner, for example, time rushing upagainst you, something urgent to be done, eh?""He could dose his private secretary," I said."And gain--double time. And think if you, for example, wantedto finish a book.""Usually," I said, "I wish I'd never begun 'em.""Or a doctor, driven to death, wants to sit down and think outa case. Or a barrister--or a man cramming for an examination.""Worth a guinea a drop," said I, "and more to men like that.""And in a duel, again," said Gibberne, "where it all depends onyour quickness in pulling the trigger.""Or in fencing," I echoed."You see," said Gibberne, "if I get it as an all-round thing it willreally do you no harm at all--except perhaps to an infinitesimaldegree it brings you nearer old age. You will just have lived twiceto other people's once--""I suppose," I meditated, "in a duel--it would be fair?""That's a question for the seconds," said Gibberne.I harked back further. "And you really think such a thing ISpossible?" I said."As possible," said Gibberne, and glanced at something that wentthrobbing by the window, "as a motor-bus. As a matter of fact--"He paused and smiled at me deeply, and tapped slowly on the edgeof his desk with the green phial. "I think I know the stuff. . . .Already I've got something coming." The nervous smile upon hisface betrayed the gravity of his revelation. He rarely talked ofhis actual experimental work unless things were very near the end."And it may be, it may be--I shouldn't be surprised--it may evendo the thing at a greater rate than twice.""It will be rather a big thing," I hazarded."It will be, I think, rather a big thing."But I don't think he quite knew what a big thing it was to be, forall that.I remember we had several talks about the stuff after that. "The NewAccelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confidenton each occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpectedphysiological results its use might have, and then he would geta little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary, and we debatedlong and anxiously how the preparation might be turned to commercialaccount. "It's a good thing," said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing.I know I'm giving the world something, and I think it only reasonablewe should expect the world to pay. The dignity of science is allvery well, but I think somehow I must have the monopoly of the stufffor, say, ten years. I don't see why all the fun in life should goto the dealers in ham."My own interest in the coming drug certainly did not wane in the time.I have always had a queer little twist towards metaphysics in mymind. I have always been given to paradoxes about space and time,and it seemed to me that Gibberne was really preparing no lessthan the absolute acceleration of life. Suppose a man repeatedlydosed with such a preparation: he would live an active and recordlife indeed, but he would be an adult at eleven, middle-aged attwenty-five, and by thirty well on the road to senile decay. It seemedto me that so far Gibberne was only going to do for any one whotook his drug exactly what Nature has done for the Jews and Orientals,who are men in their teens and aged by fifty, and quicker in thoughtand act than we are all the time. The marvel of drugs has alwaysbeen great to my mind; you can madden a man, calm a man, make himincredibly strong and alert or a helpless log, quicken this passionand allay that, all by means of drugs, and here was a new miracleto be added to this strange armoury of phials the doctors use!But Gibberne was far too eager upon his technical points to entervery keenly into my aspect of the question.It was the 7th or 8th of August when he told me the distillationthat would decide his failure or success for a time was going forwardas we talked, and it was on the 10th that he told me the thing wasdone and the New Accelerator a tangible reality in the world. I methim as I was going up the Sandgate Hill towards Folkestone--I thinkI was going to get my hair cut, and he came hurrying down to meetme--I suppose he was coming to my house to tell me at once of hissuccess. I remember that his eyes were unusually bright and his faceflushed, and I noted even then the swift alacrity of his step."It's done," he cried, and gripped my hand, speaking very fast;"it's more than done. Come up to my house and see.""Really?""Really!" he shouted. "Incredibly! Come up and see.""And it does--twice?"It does more, much more. It scares me. Come up and see the stuff.Taste it! Try it! It's the most amazing stuff on earth." He grippedmy arm and, walking at such a pace that he forced me into a trot,went shouting with me up the hill. A whole char-a-banc-ful of peopleturned and stared at us in unison after the manner of people inchars-a-banc. It was one of those hot, clear days that Folkestonesees so much of, every colour incredibly bright and every outlinehard. There was a breeze, of course, but not so much breeze assufficed under these conditions to keep me cool and dry. I panted formercy."I'm not walking fast, am I?" cried Gibberne, and slackened his paceto a quick march."You've been taking some of this stuff," I puffed."No," he said. "At the utmost a drop of water that stood in a beakerfrom which I had washed out the last traces of the stuff. I tooksome last night, you know. But that is ancient history, now.""And it goes twice?" I said, nearing his doorway in a gratefulperspiration."It goes a thousand times, many thousand times!" cried Gibberne, witha dramatic gesture, flinging open his Early English carved oak gate."Phew!" said I, and followed him to the door."I don't know how many times it goes," he said, with his latch-keyin his hand."And you--""It throws all sorts of light on nervous physiology, it kicks the theoryof vision into a perfectly new shape! . . . Heaven knows how manythousand times. We'll try all that after--The thing is to try the stuffnow.""Try the stuff?" I said, as we went along the passage."Rather," said Gibberne, turning on me in his study. "There it isin that little green phial there! Unless you happen to be afraid?"I am a careful man by nature, and only theoretically adventurous.I was afraid. But on the other hand there is pride."Well," I haggled. "You say you've tried it?""I've tried it," he said, "and I don't look hurt by it, do I?I don't even look livery and I feel--"I sat down. "Give me the potion," I said. "If the worst comes tothe worst it will save having my hair cut, and that I think is oneof the most hateful duties of a civilised man. How do you take themixture?""With water," said Gibberne, whacking down a carafe.He stood up in front of his desk and regarded me in his easy chair;his manner was suddenly affected by a touch of the Harley Streetspecialist. "It's rum stuff, you know," he said.I made a gesture with my hand."I must warn you in the first place as soon as you've got it downto shut your eyes, and open them very cautiously in a minute or so'stime. One still sees. The sense of vision is a question of lengthof vibration, and not of multitude of impacts; but there's a kindof shock to the retina, a nasty giddy confusion just at the time,if the eyes are open. Keep 'em shut.""Shut," I said. "Good!""And the next thing is, keep still. Don't begin to whack about.You may fetch something a nasty rap if you do. Remember you willbe going several thousand times faster than you ever did before,heart, lungs, muscles, brain--everything--and you will hit hardwithout knowing it. You won't know it, you know. You'll feel justas you do now. Only everything in the world will seem to be goingever so many thousand times slower than it ever went before. That'swhat makes it so deuced queer.""Lor'," I said. "And you mean--""You'll see," said he, and took up a little measure. He glancedat the material on his desk. "Glasses," he said, "water. All here.Mustn't take too much for the first attempt."The little phial glucked out its precious contents."Don't forget what I told you," he said, turning the contents ofthe measure into a glass in the manner of an Italian waiter measuringwhisky. "Sit with the eyes tightly shut and in absolute stillnessfor two minutes," he said. "Then you will hear me speak."He added an inch or so of water to the little dose in each glass."By-the-by," he said, "don't put your glass down. Keep it in yourhand and rest your hand on your knee. Yes--so. And now--"He raised his glass."The New Accelerator," I said."The New Accelerator," he answered, and we touched glasses anddrank, and instantly I closed my eyes.You know that blank non-existence into which one drops when onehas taken "gas." For an indefinite interval it was like that. ThenI heard Gibberne telling me to wake up, and I stirred and openedmy eyes. There he stood as he had been standing, glass stillin hand. It was empty, that was all the difference."Well?" said I."Nothing out of the way?""Nothing. A slight feeling of exhilaration, perhaps. Nothing more.""Sounds?""Things are still," I said. "By Jove! yes! They are still. Except thesort of faint pat, patter, like rain falling on different things.What is it?""Analysed sounds," I think he said, but I am not sure. He glancedat the window. "Have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixedin that way before?"I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen,as it were, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze."No," said I; "that's odd.""And here," he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. NaturallyI winced, expecting the glass to smash. But so far from smashingit did not even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air--motionless."Roughly speaking," said Gibberne, "an object in these latitudesfalls 16 feet in the first second. This glass is falling 16 feet ina second now. Only, you see, it hasn't been falling yet for thehundredth part of a second. That gives you some idea of the paceof my Accelerator." And he waved his hand round and round, over andunder the slowly sinking glass. Finally, he took it by the bottom,pulled it down, and placed it very carefully on the table. "Eh?"he said to me, and laughed."That seems all right," I said, and began very gingerly to raisemyself from my chair. I felt perfectly well, very light andcomfortable, and quite confident in my mind. I was going fast allover. My heart, for example, was beating a thousand times a second,but that caused me no discomfort at all. I looked out of the window.An immovable cyclist, head down and with a frozen puff of dustbehind his driving-wheel, scorched to overtake a galloping char-a-bancthat did not stir. I gaped in amazement at this incredible spectacle."Gibberne," I cried, "how long will this confounded stuff last?""Heaven knows!" he answered. "Last time I took it I went to bedand slept it off. I tell you, I was frightened. It must have lastedsome minutes, I think--it seemed like hours. But after a bit itslows down rather suddenly, I believe."I was proud to observe that I did not feel frightened--I supposebecause there were two of us. "Why shouldn't we go out?" I asked."Why not?""They'll see us.""Not they. Goodness, no! Why, we shall be going a thousand timesfaster than the quickest conjuring trick that was ever done. Comealong! Which way shall we go? Window, or door?"And out by the window we went.Assuredly of all the strange experiences that I have ever had,or imagined, or read of other people having or imagining, that littleraid I made with Gibberne on the Folkestone Leas, under the influenceof the New Accelerator, was the strangest and maddest of all.We went out by his gate into the road, and there we made a minuteexamination of the statuesque passing traffic. The tops of the wheelsand some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the endof the whip-lash and the lower jaw of the conductor--who was justbeginning to yawn--were perceptibly in motion, but all the restof the lumbering conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless exceptfor a faint rattling that came from one man's throat! And as partsof this frozen edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor,and eleven people! The effect as we walked about the thing beganby being madly queer, and ended by being disagreeable. There theywere, people like ourselves and yet not like ourselves, frozenin careless attitudes, caught in mid-gesture. A girl and a mansmiled at one another, a leering smile that threatened to lastfor evermore; a woman in a floppy capelline rested her arm onthe rail and stared at Gibberne's house with the unwinking stareof eternity; a man stroked his moustache like a figure of wax,and another stretched a tiresome stiff hand with extended fingerstowards his loosened hat. We stared at them, we laughed at them,we made faces at them, and then a sort of disgust of them came uponus, and we turned away and walked round in front of the cyclisttowards the Leas."Goodness!" cried Gibberne, suddenly; "look there!"He pointed, and there at the tip of his finger and sliding down theair with wings flapping slowly and at the speed of an exceptionallylanguid snail--was a bee.And so we came out upon the Leas. There the thing seemed madderthan ever. The band was playing in the upper stand, though allthe sound it made for us was a low-pitched, wheezy rattle, a sort ofprolonged last sigh that passed at times into a sound like the slow,muffled ticking of some monstrous clock. Frozen people stood erect,strange, silent, self-conscious-looking dummies hung unstably inmid-stride, promenading upon the grass. I passed close to a littlepoodle dog suspended in the act of leaping, and watched the slowmovement of his legs as he sank to earth. "Lord, look here!" criedGibberne, and we halted for a moment before a magnificent personin white faint-striped flannels, white shoes, and a Panama hat,who turned back to wink at two gaily dressed ladies he had passed.A wink, studied with such leisurely deliberation as we could afford,is an unattractive thing. It loses any quality of alert gaiety,and one remarks that the winking eye does not completely close,that under its drooping lid appears the lower edge of an eyeballand a little line of white. "Heaven give me memory," said I,"and I will never wink again.""Or smile," said Gibberne, with his eye on the lady's answering teeth."It's infernally hot, somehow," said I. "Let's go slower.""Oh, come along!" said Gibberne.We picked our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many ofthe people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in theirpassive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was nota restful thing to see. A purple-faced little gentleman was frozenin the midst of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper againstthe wind; there were many evidences that all these people in theirsluggish way were exposed to a considerable breeze, a breeze thathad no existence so far as our sensations went. We came out andwalked a little way from the crowd, and turned and regarded it.To see all that multitude changed, to a picture, smitten rigid,as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was impossiblywonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with an irrational,an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonder of it!All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had begunto work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so faras the world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye. "TheNew Accelerator--" I began, but Gibberne interrupted me."There's that infernal old woman!" he said."What old woman?""Lives next door to me," said Gibberne. "Has a lapdog that yaps.Gods! The temptation is strong!"There is something very boyish and impulsive about Gibberne at times.Before I could expostulate with him he had dashed forward, snatchedthe unfortunate animal out of visible existence, and was runningviolently with it towards the cliff of the Leas. It was mostextraordinary. The little brute, you know, didn't bark or wriggle ormake the slightest sign of vitality. It kept quite stiffly in anattitude of somnolent repose, and Gibberne held it by the neck. Itwas like running about with a dog of wood. "Gibberne," I cried, "putit down!" Then I said something else. "If you run like that,Gibberne," I cried, "you'll set your clothes on fire. Your linentrousers are going brown as it is!"He clapped his hand on his thigh and stood hesitating on the verge."Gibberne," I cried, coming up, "put it down. This heat is too much!It's our running so! Two or three miles a second! Friction of the air!""What?" he said, glancing at the dog."Friction of the air," I shouted. "Friction of the air. Going toofast. Like meteorites and things. Too hot. And, Gibberne! Gibberne!I'm all over pricking and a sort of perspiration. You can see peoplestirring slightly. I believe the stuff's working off! Put that dogdown.""Eh?" he said."It's working off," I repeated. "We're too hot and the stuff'sworking off! I'm wet through."He stared at me. Then at the band, the wheezy rattle of whoseperformance was certainly going faster. Then with a tremendous sweepof the arm he hurled the dog away from him and it went spinningupward, still inanimate, and hung at last over the grouped parasolsof a knot of chattering people. Gibberne was gripping my elbow."By Jove!" he cried. "I believe--it is! A sort of hot prickingand--yes. That man's moving his pocket-handkerchief! Perceptibly.We must get out of this sharp."But we could not get out of it sharply enough. Luckily, perhaps!For we might have run, and if we had run we should, I believe,have burst into flames. Almost certainly we should have burst intoflames! You know we had neither of us thought of that. . . . Butbefore we could even begin to run the action of the drug had ceased.It was the business of a minute fraction of a second. The effect ofthe New Accelerator passed like the drawing of a curtain, vanished inthe movement of a hand. I heard Gibberne's voice in infinite alarm."Sit down," he said, and flop, down upon the turf at the edge of theLeas I sat--scorching as I sat. There is a patch of burnt grassthere still where I sat down. The whole stagnation seemed to wakeup as I did so, the disarticulated vibration of the band rushedtogether into a blast of music, the promenaders put their feet downand walked their ways, the papers and flags began flapping, smilespassed into words, the winker finished his wink and went on hisway complacently, and all the seated people moved and spoke.The whole world had come alive again, was going as fast as we were,or rather we were going no faster than the rest of the world. It waslike slowing down as one comes into a railway station. Everythingseemed to spin round for a second or two, I had the most transientfeeling of nausea, and that was all. And the little dog which hadseemed to hang for a moment when the force of Gibberne's arm wasexpended fell with a swift acceleration clean through a lady's parasol!That was the saving of us. Unless it was for one corpulent oldgentleman in a bath-chair, who certainly did start at the sight ofus and afterwards regarded us at intervals with a darkly suspiciouseye, and, finally, I believe, said something to his nurse about us,I doubt if a solitary person remarked our sudden appearance amongthem. Plop! We must have appeared abruptly. We ceased to smoulderalmost at once, though the turf beneath me was uncomfortably hot. Theattention of every one--including even the Amusements' Associationband, which on this occasion, for the only time in its history,got out of tune--was arrested by the amazing fact, and the stillmore amazing yapping and uproar caused by the fact that a respectable,over-fed lap-dog sleeping quietly to the east of the bandstandshould suddenly fall through the parasol of a lady on the west--ina slightly singed condition due to the extreme velocity of itsmovements through the air. In these absurd days, too, when we areall trying to be as psychic, and silly, and superstitious as possible!People got up and trod on other people, chairs were overturned,the Leas policeman ran. How the matter settled itself I do notknow--we were much too anxious to disentangle ourselves fromthe affair and get out of range of the eye of the old gentlemanin the bath-chair to make minute inquiries. As soon as we weresufficiently cool and sufficiently recovered from our giddinessand nausea and confusion of mind to do so we stood up and, skirtingthe crowd, directed our steps back along the road below the Metropoletowards Gibberne's house. But amidst the din I heard very distinctlythe gentleman who had been sitting beside the lady of the rupturedsunshade using quite unjustifiable threats and language to one ofthose chair-attendants who have "Inspector" written on their caps."If you didn't throw the dog," he said, "who did?"The sudden return of movement and familiar noises, and our naturalanxiety about ourselves (our clothe's were still dreadfully hot,and the fronts of the thighs of Gibberne's white trousers werescorched a drabbish brown), prevented the minute observationsI should have liked to make on all these things. Indeed, I reallymade no observations of any scientific value on that return. The bee,of course, had gone. I looked for that cyclist, but he was alreadyout of sight as we came into the Upper Sandgate Road or hiddenfrom us by traffic; the char-a-banc, however, with its people nowall alive and stirring, was clattering along at a spanking pacealmost abreast of the nearer church.We noted, however, that the window-sill on which we had steppedin getting out of the house was slightly singed, and that theimpressions of our feet on the gravel of the path were unusually deep.So it was I had my first experience of the New Accelerator. Practicallywe had been running about and saying and doing all sorts of thingsin the space of a second or so of time. We had lived half an hourwhile the band had played, perhaps, two bars. But the effect ithad upon us was that the whole world had stopped for our convenientinspection. Considering all things, and particularly considering ourrashness in venturing out of the house, the experience might certainlyhave been much more disagreeable than it was. It showed, no doubt,that Gibberne has still much to learn before his preparation isa manageable convenience, but its practicability it certainlydemonstrated beyond all cavil.Since that adventure he has been steadily bringing its use undercontrol, and I have several times, and without the slightest badresult, taken measured doses under his direction; though I mustconfess I have not yet ventured abroad again while under its influence.I may mention, for example, that this story has been written at onesitting and without interruption, except for the nibbling of somechocolate, by its means. I began at 6.25, and my watch is now verynearly at the minute past the half-hour. The convenience of securinga long, uninterrupted spell of work in the midst of a day fullof engagements cannot be exaggerated. Gibberne is now workingat the quantitative handling of his preparation, with especial referenceto its distinctive effects upon different types of constitution.He then hopes to find a Retarder with which to dilute its presentrather excessive potency. The Retarder will, of course, have thereverse effect to the Accelerator; used alone it should enablethe patient to spread a few seconds over many hours of ordinarytime,--and so to maintain an apathetic inaction, a glacier-likeabsence of alacrity, amidst the most animated or irritatingsurroundings. The two things together must necessarily work an entirerevolution in civilised existence. It is the beginning of our escapefrom that Time Garment of which Carlyle speaks. While this Acceleratorwill enable us to concentrate ourselves with tremendous impactupon any moment or occasion that demands our utmost sense and vigour,the Retarder will enable us to pass in passive tranquillity throughinfinite hardship and tedium. Perhaps I am a little optimisticabout the Retarder, which has indeed still to be discovered, butabout the Accelerator there is no possible sort of doubt whatever.Its appearance upon the market in a convenient, controllable,and assimilable form is a matter of the next few months. It will beobtainable of all chemists and druggists, in small green bottles,at a high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by no meansexcessive price. Gibberne's Nervous Accelerator it will be called,and he hopes to be able to supply it in three strengths: one in 200,one in 900, and one in 2000, distinguished by yellow, pink, andwhite labels respectively.No doubt its use renders a great number of very extraordinary thingspossible; for, of course, the most remarkable and, possibly, evencriminal proceedings may be effected with impunity by thus dodging,as it were, into the interstices of time. Like all potent preparationsit will be liable to abuse. We have, however, discussed this aspectof the question very thoroughly, and we have decided that thisis purely a matter of medical jurisprudence and altogether outsideour province. We shall manufacture and sell the Accelerator, and,as for the consequences--we shall see.
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