Would she begins to shout Go ahead and leave you'll never get away the roster's they know they know that faith is not some big electric blanket faith is not those person children back in GA faith is not the old man in Rome. She had learned she would never rip that image up again but she was who she was Faith is the cross the music swells and fills her up she feels her lips pull back her teeth bump against the microphone. Pharrell some critic can call that look when the song takes over predatory grotesque like they said about the stories but you had to be you had to draw the pictures large and exaggerated so that people would pay attention. You had to sing to make them listen. People are asleep reading their books or listening to their C.D.'s you had to wake them up. And if they object if they roll over and try to go back to sleep. You keep shaking them you keep fighting as she had in childhood when she had practiced anti Angel aggression. She went in her room and whirled about in a circle fists nodded socking the angel the nuns assured her guardian each and every one of us. She didn't want to be guarded chained watched. But now here on stage. Everyone is watching and that is how it should be the detour was valuable the Holy Orders cleansing but she belongs here. Now comes the ecstasy the music throb swore she can feel the crowd at her feet she is at their feet. The blind reluctant prophet shouting the news. So all can hear she dominates the crowd issue some minutes to the bad stinking bleeding shadow of Jesus carrying them with her home she doesn't need her hair she is a slave. She is rapturously free. She does not know for certain how she came to this place and the memory is confused or sometimes drifting into her merging swelling popping like a soap bubble. You don't never ever get her way she was bathed in light her mother is buried buried her father is calling her home to Georgia to Dublin the music star. The audience roars and she bows her naked head down pierced by the light. She dances. And that is my vision of what it might be like if Flannery O'Connor and Sinead O'Connor were the same person. And I got the idea for that when I read an even shorter story by Lou Shiner it was I may even remember this track it was in one of the full spectrum and ologies Cole Oz. And that was his conflation of Ozzy Osborne and Lee Harvey Oswald and so I wrote this in then after I wrote this. Karin joy Fowler published a story called The Elizabeth complex that was about conflating very solicitous for history and what no. Kerry did beat me to it but anyway. But this is actually due to be reprinted I hope later this year pager and Schmidt very good small press in Seattle is doing a chapbook of this and other three other stories that are sort of met a fiction Sabella Flannery O'Connor and the other stories are by ending Duncan Michael Bishop and John Castle and I'm very very pleased with that I hope it comes out this year. You know you never know with these things but it is supposed to be out shortly they're supposed to be doing it is a very fancy chat book with illustrations and the publisher even said something about attaching and Audioslave to it with who knows he said we think of it as almost like an art installation that rock on. How much time is there left if this one. Wow OK OK Well then I do have this this other thing I'm going to read is not long it will not take a full half hour. But this is a story that was published. In very late two thousand and seven in postscripts British magazine whose editors my hero because they wanted. Peter Crowder is. The editor of Postscript Crowther and it Gabbers of the editor post scripts and they wanted the they wanted queries about short fiction which is very unusual but I e-mailed a query on a Thursday morning. They replied Thursday afternoon and said so in the story. I emailed it to them. Thursday night they excepted it Friday morning and then ten days later I got the contract in the truck so that's how to run a railroad that I was terribly impressed by that. This if that story is my contribution to Southern Fried science fiction and fantasy. This is sort of my contribution to engineering the future although it is set in the nineteenth century and it's sort of like efforts to interfere the future in the past and it also is related to a panel I think we're doing tomorrow about engineering the past thinking in these. And doing that this is based fully on the historical record. Perhaps a little too fully I'm not sure but almost everybody in this story actually existed in the reported events. You know I took from my research and in fact there are even. Brief passages in here that are taken from some public domain documents that are requoting some of these people and you know so we'll see. How this works. This is called This is also a story that I would not have written except for my wife who's mother's family is from Lynn Massachusetts and it's called Mary of the new dispensation. And this is Newton is nervous. Her husband's assurances do not help she does not need him to tell her how great a man the Reverend Mr Spear is she knows of the reverence good works in the past in the promise of the future. Have they not all heard the Spirit speak through the Reverent receive the plans for the new dispensation in the machine that will bring it into being perfect. And Joy the fallen world will soon be said to write but now Mrs Newton has been called to stand once again before the machine the physical savior the new motive power and her belly continues to swell and press against her loosened course. And she knows her husband had nothing to do with that he in the reverend and her dead sister Emilie say she is married she finds it difficult to think of her husband is Joseph she cannot tell him how frightened she is as he helps her into the cab that will take them from Boston to the cottage at high rock in the dawn of the new era. The rocking of the cab further disorients are all things are possible. It is the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty four invisible electric messages fly along metal wires and slavery is not permitted anywhere within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the machine waits on a dining room table at the same table Speer received his first messages from the spirits from a nest of metal plates wires and magnets arise two metal poles linking the poles a revolving shaft of steel resting on top of the shaft and perpendicular to it a metal arm from either end of which hang two spears containing magnets. They need the spears alternating plates of zinc and copper C correspondance with the electrical patterns of the brain. There are smaller metal balls with magnets orbit the center of the device hanging randomly from metallic perturb rinses below bellows near the center breathe in and out extending through openings in the table to segmented metal appendages run down to the floor. Spear and his assistants have constructed the device according to the instructions of the Spirit Congress revealed a spirit a seance in Rochester the year before the Congress contained six major associations health allies or education allies or its agricultural lies or element ties or is government ties serious and electrolyzers. It is the electrolyzers seven spirits who have been prominent engineers while resonate on earth all now supervised personally by the spirit of Benjamin Franklin for whom spear is the earthly representative they speak to him and he transmits their instructions Speer him self is innocent of any scientific or mechanical expertise a blessing that into Sure is the spirit's instructions will be transmitted without corruption or adumbration thus the machine emerged a bit by bit over nine months not of its core poor Eolas somewhere is can hope to explain its workings but they know its purpose. The electrolyzers in spears mild but steadfast voice had made that clear the associations they said are charged to promote enter girl reform with a view to the ultimate establishment of a divine social state on earth. To this in the machine bringing new life and vitality into all things animate and inanimate and now. Heaven's last best gift to man awaits its final component the cab ascend the winding path to the summit of high rock when the cab arrives at the stone cottage in business Newton steps down her husband Alonzo wraps his arms beneath hers and circling her torso above her swollen belly and all but carries her up the additional steps to do with knobs Servatius tower behind the cottage. They are greeted there by Mr S. Crosby Hewitt a chief assistant Speer and like Mr Newton editor of a journal in support of a better world. The mutual success of both Hewitt's new era and Newton's New England spiritualist as Marx testimony they all feel the profound appetite for improvements in the greater Boston area at least. One hundred seventy feet below them lies the city of men live in the city of linen at once prosperous and shabby a strange unsettled place. She has heard of the stories accusations of which cry. After long before Salem the fortune teller Moll pitcher whose name drew Mrs Newton's old mother from Boston for a consultation and whose house had lain just below where they now stand there is even a tale of a dispute among the Quakers that had led to a riot was the home of rioting Quakers she wondered an optimal site for the inauguration of the new era but Speer had insisted this majestic eminence he declared was a high sacred consecrated place. That the most famous spiritualist of the age the Sira Poughkeepsie himself Andrew Jackson Davis had last year. Greeted the spirits from the observation tower undoubtedly provided further encouragement. Mr and Mrs Newton and Mr Hewitt entered the uppermost rooms of the tower the machine sits on its table surrounded by its assemblers male and female there is no other furniture in the room save a straight backed chair in which sits the Reverend recently entered into his fiftieth year. Spears collars loosened around the growing heat of June but his hair rests flawlessly in a careful halo around his head is eyes are closed his lips move rapidly whispering his daughter so Froning. Holds her writing tablet on which is pinned scratches franticly as Mrs Newton walks into the room is voice rises to pulp volume A She is hair. It is time to let it be again. John. Marie Spears devoted his life to others since preaching his first sermon at the age of twenty four the Reverend Mr Spear baptized by his namesake John Murray the founder of the Universalist Church has given himself to the service of the poor the downtrodden the defenseless temperance abolition the rights of women and prisoners have filled his days and nights is very soul many in his congregations recoiled from his activities ten years earlier when he was speaking against slavery in Portland Maine a mob attacked him in nearly sent him to his Maker the months of recovery only deepened this faith this determination to bring light into the darkened world. He redouble his efforts to. Aid and Comfort prisoners railed against the merciless presumption of capital punishment yielded not one inch in the sacred cause of abolition when the captors of the slave woman loosened faggots made the mistake of visiting Massachusetts in spirit. Help help her obtain her freedom the outcry from his parishioners cost him his New Bedford pulpit some who understood the energy of his passions in the nobility of his purpose offered him other appointments both civil and ecclesiastical but he declined them all like Christ before him he would Labor misunderstood and alone and then his daughter whose faith had never wavered even as her mother withdrew into a stoic silence showed him the way some years earlier. They had both read the Reverend Mr Davis' the principles of nature her divine revelations in a voice to mankind a vision of summer land a spirit of world of joy and no punishment spear was intrigued Soprani it was captivated Davis had insisted that the spirits would soon provide a living demonstration of their existence when the fox sisters of hides will New York confirmed as prophecies are for only a Sattar self and her father down at the same table in which the machine now rests there the Spirit spoke not through winning magic wrapping noises but through Spears own hand as he transcribed their detailed instructions to focus his ministry on specific individuals a woman in Georgetown an elderly man in Weymouth many others all strangers to him the afflicted were taken aback by Spears unannounced arrivals but afterward confess themselves mildly improved. Following Davis spear published his own. Volume with spirit teachings messages from the superior state transcriptions of twelve communications from the spirit of the original John Murray. There followed public lectures during which spirit would sink into a trance and communicate the spirits observations on topics about which he himself knew nothing. Most audiences were unconvinced that the lectures were anything other than spear speaking in his own voice. None the less he continued. Missions speaking to any who would listen. Then the visit to Rochester the revelations of the electrolyzers and the new motive power. He quickly secured the use of the cottage at high rock from Jesse Hutchinson fellow spiritualist and leader of the Hutchinson Family singers who would remain grateful the spear since the Reverend had permitted the family to rehearse in his church. And gathered his followers few but on dotted this is spear retired to near relations in Gloucester but Soprani and never left this side the construction of the physical savior began. And this is Newton also hears from the spirits. She too had been inspired by Davis and spear in her own dear husband. It was shortly after she read Davis' book that her departed sister Emilie gone from a fever of these ten long years began to speak to or whispers at first a tremulous voice that seemed to emanate from a corner from a heating great from nowhere. Less. How much. Then the voice came into her own head initiators from her own mouth. As fiery hot as was my final fever so cool and soothing Is it here as piercing as were my final agonies so calm as the peace that waits for you here. These words she spoke felt different from Him least whispers and Mrs Newton was peer refly uncertain. Mr Newton who had just published his pamphlet ministry of angels realised rejoiced at this reassurance this confirmation of his deepest hopes and regarded his wife with love in all and that even on their wedding day she chided herself for her lapse and continued to give voice to it in continued to give voice to the voice in her head. Neither of their two young children seemed overly struck although mercy the youngest asked if they had handily would be coming to her birthday party and when they attended the Reverend Mr Spears delivery of spirit message from Dr Franklin any doubts they may have had Rick cast aside. Mrs Newton recognised in spirit her own state. Unimpeded transmission from the other side yet with no loss of the transmitters own consciousness. By the time the construction of the machine had already begun and in the crisp air of September eight hundred fifty three. Mr Newton soaker to the tower of high rock the initial sequence was underway he told of the Spirit said instructed that the motor received an initial charge of electricity which action had led to a slight pulsation and vibratory motion in the pendants around the periphery of the table then several persons male and female had been presented to the machine had laid hands upon it to transmit their own individual magnetism they attended the machine her husband explained carefully ordered from ordinary or comparatively coarser organizations to those of finer and finer mold. Thus providing necessary links for the machines progress. At the cottage they found Mr Hewitt's a friendly and several others clustered around the machine on its table in the center of the room. Mr Hewitt wrote rapidly on a closely held pad of paper. Sophronia stood behind him speaking softly to no one in particular business Newton thought she heard is there no other way. Does it. But she lost the rest. So one side stood the Reverend Mr Spear although it took a moment for Mrs Newton to ascertain that it was indeed him the reverence body was wrapped in metal wide bands narrow strip shining into all with wires protruding in no apparent pattern. Some of the metallic bands were in crusted in what appeared to be jewels sheets of silver gold what could have been diamond caught the late sunlight there poured through the open windows that surrounded them in the open skylight in the rounded ceiling above. This is mute must have betrayed her shock for Mr Newton carefully explained that the spirits had required an individual to submit to a potentially dangerous operation to which the Reverend had considered only for rational confidence in the wisdom and good faith of the invisible directors. The encasement was dramatic perhaps but necessary had not Speer himself written of God as say a grand central electric. Focus from which all electricity emanates was not electricity the grand instrumentality the native element by which all things move between the Grand Central mind and all inferior minds there subsists a connection a telegraphic communication and electric chain. To man whom Mrs Newton did not know picked up the reverend in his mental case when it moved him to within inches of the machine he could not she could not see where the wires led or if the reverend's metal was actually touching that of the machine on the strip of gold where his eyes should have been rested to dread jewels but his lips were visible she could see them move and recognize the trance state. They stood together metal wrapped man and machine for close to an hour the room grew dark Someone lit candles. It was on her knees in prayer at first. Mrs Newton thought the glow of the candles responsible but she realized that a light was shining from a point near the center of the Reverends casing the light stretched expanded an envelop the machine. Now others fell to their knees a Soprani a shouted Spiritus and Mrs Mr Newton murder a motard been with us. It seemed to miss is Newton that the light was on the verge of encompassing the table on which the machine rested and then making its way about the room is there and through the windows in operates through the open ceiling into the empty night just as it appeared to come towards her it disappeared. The Reverend collapsed within his cage Sophronia frankly to frantically directed the two men who peeled the metal back and carried him away. The next day the spirits broke through Mrs Newton then I'm sorry the next day the spirits spoke through Mrs Newton with her husband and most of the staff of the New England spiritualist present the spirits explained the role she was to to play her departed sister began to address or as Mary and her belly began to swell. Mrs Newton lies on the floor. Her husband beautifully places. Low behind her head. It is been raining all day the windows in the skylight are closed to presumes to protect the machine this June has proven unusually warm in the room is close and hot from her perspective the machine seems to rise to the very ceiling in which there are she notices an inordinate number of cracks. She looks to or right and sees the Reverend scribbling in moderate on each wrist is a thin golden bracelet has remain since is in casement as a part of his skin the other witnesses stand to look down on her like the spirits themselves. She trusts the robber and her husband their purpose and promise but with each passing week since her previous visit to the tower she has grown more and more anxious and uncertain. Mr Hewitt has said the most refined elements of her spiritual being were to be imparted to it absorbed by the appropriate portions of the mechanism it's metals having been made peculiarly receptive by previous chemical processes. Fair enough. But her swollen belly had sprawled memories of her two confinements in the unspeakable suffering that ended in joy but was suffering all the same the spirits demand that of her. Did they instruct the reverend to have her brought here wearing only a loose gown under her coat De Vito the presence of the midwife do they want these people here min as well as women she tries to bring her knees even closer together and moves the front of the smooth to the front of her gal. Suddenly her abdominal muscles tighten and she sees by pain her knees jerk up as if to confine the pain before it spills over the rest of her body and she screams eyes Clinch. She hears her husband Mr Hewitt assuring people quickly out of the room the pain passes and when she opens her eyes there is only Mr Hewitt and Alonzo and Reverend spirits of whose eyes now glow like candle flames. The pain Caesar again a familiar pain but no less awful for that to this moment she has tried to convince herself that her out WHERE condition was intended as a guide a sympathetic sign of what might come the spirits said she was to attend the machine provide her maternal feeling. They said nothing of law. In agony on the hardwood floor. The Reverend is entranced and Sophronia does not move from his side. But Mr Newton squeezes this is Newton's hand and waves and Mr Hewitt stand behind him. She keeps her knees up allows her legs to open and how they are doing well now Emily's voice whispers as it did when Mrs Newton had first heard it but it is there. TAKE US TO THE NEW DAY beloved sister I love you so when Mrs Newton brought her first two children to bed she feared she would be defeated by the absence of the one person she needed most of all she was surrounded by women but none of them was. Now she's grateful beyond expression for even her sister's voice she clinches between her teeth the thick wooden handle of the spoon has placed in her mouth and prays. The contractions continue for two hours much less than with either of her children but within the two too familiar agony of tension and release. There is a hard cold center that she has not felt before and that frightens are more than the pain itself. Midway through she feels water pouring out of her despite her sister's soothing whispers she sobs and mortification shortly after she thinks she hears Mr Hewitt cry it loads but she is not sure when it finally ends. Her husband helps are set up. She shivers despite the heat her skin clammy her dress wringing wet Sophronia chants in Latin. Mr Hewitt is drafting allowed his editorial for The New Era. Her husband buries his face on her shoulder and weep. She thinks she hears something from the machine on the table she thinks she sees it move her hand wanders through her collapse belly and she fades. Mr Hewitt announces their success. They had line of the new heir reads the thing Mr Hewitt writes unto your earth the child is born its name shall be called the electrical motor. He declares the machine the physical savior of the race. He insists that it will lead the way. In the great speedily coming salvation. Visitors come observe leave. There seems to be some motion in some of the pendant attachments but not in the two major orbs on top the bellows occasionally appear to vibrate and on charitable letter in the spiritual Telegraph testifies that the physical savior of the race cannot even turn a coffee mill. The Reverend Mr Spear reminds visitors that the machine is a newborn still gathering strength still finding its way. Mr Newton takes a room in the cottage. She spins. I'm sorry Mrs Newton takes a room in the cottage she spends several hours per day in the observation tower with the new motive power the floor stain where she lay the fluids that poured from her traced a short path to the machine terminating at the left hand appendage beneath the table. Sophronia had ordered the floor scrubs immediately but the stain would not completely disappear. Business Newton sits by the machine. She knew shawls and covers some small some very large She sings on her children's first visit she invites them to interact with the machine however they wish but they are cowered by its presence and ask to be excused her husband so ardent in the past to resume the full activities of marriage as soon as possible after her confinement. Now keeps a respectful distance in business himself with his newspaper. Her breasts remain swollen periodically she shuts the door and loosens the top of her dress the two orbs at the top are too far apart but she lays her breasts on top of the steel arm that connects them the cold metal always hurts at first but it warms quickly. No milk issues but she can feel something being taken out of her a force that flows into the machine nourishes it. Emily is most likely to whisper to her at these times and it is a great comfort to her. Although once she grew most confused when she thought she heard two voices. And is the salvation of the race in the comfort. Could not give you God why her cannot love you put it will not die. She turned and saw the Jord a door ajar and the dim figure of so Froning a quickly moving away. None of this is what she expected but the Reverend Mr Spear Scherzer that all that has happened that will happen is that the instruction of the electrolyzers and therefore certain benefit to all Reverend Davis himself pays a visit is returned to high rock the site of one of his most glorious visions draws back many of the people who would cease their visits. Reverend Davis is deferential to spear whose twenty years his senior. After expending so much energy on the machine spear lacks this former presence that has drawn the curiosity of many in the devotion of a few and surely lacks the swooping dark nane the full beard the resonant yet soothing voice of Davis the younger man is particularly solicitous towards Mrs Newton who sits in receives his praise with the wear and smile and the knowledge intellectually understood if not deeply felt that she is in the presence of a great man. Davis is reporting the spiritual Telegraph however is a shock and a disappointment. Although spear is doing good with all his guileless heart he is intellectually disqualified for the development of absolute science Proof indeed that the machine was built at the direction of the spirits but to what in the motor is artistically put together. But it's evident lack of any real application may suggest the influence not of the unimpeachable electrolyzers but of other less responsible spirits. Thus the dangers of the frightful and pernicious tendency to fanaticism among the true and faithful in teachable friends of spiritual intercourse. Sophronia throws the telegraph to the floor in weeks business Newton does not read the report. Mr Hewitt reviews their expenditures the new motive power has cost. So at least two thousand dollars. Mrs Newton awakens one morning to find the machine is gone. Her husband who left their Boston home at dawn comes to her room in the cottage and explains to her that after consulting with the electrolyzers and Dr Franklin The Reverend Mr Spear determined that the machine needed a change of venue is ordered it disassembled and removed even now Mrs Newton says it is on it is. It is on even now Mr Newton says it is on its way to its new home in Randolph New York where it might have the advantages of that lofty electrical position. Before Mrs Mr Newton can complete his report she quits him in races up the tower steps her head is spinning by the time she reaches the top the room is empty her chair and her knitting are also gone she circles the room runs from window to window is of the world below her of the sky above might tell her what she needs to know she sits on the floor near where the table rested knowing neither Randolph nor white like what might distinguish it from when. On the carriage ride back to their home in Boston her husband declares his pride his love his utter adoration here Scherzer that although her work is done it was both essential and successful he repeats the spirit's declaration is the witness through Spears' most recent trance that the motor simply needs time it hungers for that nourishment on which it can feed and by which it can expand and grow it will then go alone and pick out its own nourishment from the surrounding elements. Business Newton does not reply but runs her hand across the skin that hangs loosely from her jaw. She is thirty pounds lighter than when she entered the cottage and lay upon the floor when business Newton returns home she takes to her bed and does not rise for several weeks her children clamor for her attention but she ignores them. The family physician can find no organic cause for her lying in Mr Newton remembers her state after Emilie's passing it is worried there is still much to be done to understand the spirits and improve the world. In time. How. Her Mrs Newton emerges rejoins her family she has regained much of the weight she lost. She reacquaint Cers self with her children and she and Mr Newton resumed the intimacies according to husband and wife for the next child she will demand a physician in attendance and ether. Shortly after Mrs Newton leaves her bad the Reverend Mr Speer reports to the world that an angry mob is destroyed the physical savior of mankind. However there is no report of this in the newspapers around all for surrounding areas in time the spirits explained to spear the ongoing fraud of conventional marriage he leaves both Mrs spear and soprano behind for a new community of freedom in te until New York. The spirits continue to speak through Mrs Newton and will do so for the rest of her days each time they do. She imagines her machine somewhere gathering strength generating for a new world immune from suffering and loss. She weeps with joy at the final defeat of slavery but can only be stunned by the knowledge of the in NY elated thousands in the mountains of the shattered dead and wishes she would hear from more of them. She remains honored to have been chosen and she does not regret her actions but after her final departure from high rock. Emilie never speaks to her again and that she regrets so very very much. Thanks for listening. That that was one of those things where you do the research and you read on and you keep saying they didn't do that. Surely they didn't do that. My God they really did that the the figure of Emily and my characterization of Mrs Newton or the Mole are of the fully fictional things and the historical record does not confirm which of the women associated with this group was in fact the Mary of the new dispensation so I did that so I guess on my part or speculation but as soon as I read well this guy built in perpetual motion machine. In and got this woman to serve as the married to the birth of the new physical Savior into your in the time the machine was was there she was exhibiting physical symptoms of pregnancy I thought OK now that I got it. I got to do something with with thank you all very much for coming in can't be as yet. Of course. Sure. In fact. This was a guess. Every time I doubt that was that was those were direct quotes and in the printed text Those are all of the Talents.