Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee.It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance.There are no apertures, ventilation, yet the air is fresh.There's no musical instruments and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens,this room is throbbing with melodious sounds.An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading desk.That is all of the furniture and the armchair.There sits a swaddled lump of flesh.A woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus.It is to her that this little room belongs.An electric bell rang.The woman touched her switch and the music was silent.I suppose I must see who it is, she thought, and set her chair in motion.The chair, like the music, was worked by machineryand it rolled her to the other side of the room where the bell still rang.Who is it? she called.The voice was irritable, for she'd been interrupted often since the music began.She knew several thousand people of certain directions,whom an intercourse had advanced enormously.But when she listened into the receiver,a white face wrinkled into smiles and she said,Very well, let us talk. I will isolate myself.I do not suspect anything important will happen for the next five minutes,for I give you fully five minutes.Then I must deliver my lecture on music during the Australian period.She touched the isolation knob so that no one else could speak to her.Then she touched the lighting apparatus and the little room was plunged into darkness.Be quick, she called, her irritation returning.Be quick, here I am in the dark, wasting my time.But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hand began to glow.A faint blue light shot across it, darkening to purple,and presently she could see the image of her son,who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her.Who know how slow you are, you smiled gravely.I really believe you enjoyed dogland.I have called you before, mother, but you were always busy or isolated.I have something particular to say.What is it, dearest boy? Be quick.Why could you not send it by pneumatic post?Because I prefer saying such a thing.I want, well, I want you to come and see me.Vashti watched his face in the blue plate.But I can see you, she exclaimed.What more do you want?I want to see you, not through the machine.I want to speak to you, not through the wearisome machine.Oh, hush! You mustn't say anything against the machine.Why not? One mustn't.You talk as if God had made the machine, cried the other.I believe you pray to it when you're unhappy.Men made it, do not forget.Brave men, but men.The machine is much, but it is not everything.I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you.I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you.That is why I want you to come.Pay me a visit so that we can meet face to faceand talk about the hopes that are in my mind.She replied that she could scarcely spare time for a visit.The airship barely takes two days to fly between me and you.I dislike airships. Why?I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth and the sea and the stars when it is dark.I get no ideas in an airship.