The Knowledge Machine

By EDMOND HAMILTON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I wish now I'd never heard of Electro-Education! Sure, it made me a multi-millionaire. But what else did it do to me? What did it do to everybody?

The trouble with me was that I was too ambitious. I had a nice wife and we were planning on a family. I wasn't satisfied with just being Pete Purdy, the best electric repair-man in New York. I wanted something bigger and better for my family. Boy, did I get it!

It began when I was called over to Gotham University to repair a motor-generator that had gone sour. It was in the laboratory of Doctor Lewis Kindler, the big psycho-physiologist research man there. Of course, I didn't know then who he was. To me, he was just a thin, haggard old guy who looked like a nervous wreck as he told me about the generator.

"It must be repaired immediately—at once!" he shrilled. "We're just completing an epochal research. Epochal, you hear?"

I shrugged. "I'll do the best I can. But this model's complicated. It'll take a week to rip her down and rewind the coils."

"A week?" he screeched. "Impossible! We can't wait that long!"

His colleague, a stocky, bullet-headed young scientist named James Carter, tried to soothe the old boy down.

"Doctor Kindler, you really must rest! You have been working too hard for months on these experiments. You know now it's a success. Why not try to relax?"

"Relax?" screamed the old scientist. And then, all of a sudden, he went clean off his head.

He just collapsed, raving about rays and neurones and a lot of other stuff. Young Carter called doctors and officials of the university quick. They took him away, yelling at the top of his voice.

Next morning as I was working in the laboratory on the generator, Carter came in looking pretty blue.

"Doctor Kindler has had a complete mental breakdown from overwork," he told me. "He's been removed to a sanitarium, and may remain there in a schizophrenic state for 

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