And the machine which has sucked out and gulped down the spinal marrow and brain of the man and has wiped out the hollows in his skull with the soft, long tongue of its soft, long hissing, the machine gleams in its silver-velvet radiance, anointed with oil, beautiful, infallible—Baal and Moloch, Huitzilopochtli and Durgha. And you, father, you press your fingers upon the little blue metal plate near your right hand, and your great glorious, dreadful city of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up....” His voice failed him. He struck his fists violently together, and looked at his father. “... and they are all human beings!” “Unfortunately. Yes.” The father’s voice sounded to the son’s ear as though he were speaking from behind seven closed doors. “That men are used up so rapidly at the machines, Freder, is no proof of the greed of the machine, but of the deficiency of the human material. Man is the product of change, Freder. A once-and-for-all being. If he is miscast he cannot be sent back to the melting-furnace. One is obliged to use him as he is. Whereby it has been statistically proved that the powers of performance of the non-intellectual worker lessen from month to month.” Freder laughed. The laugh came so dry, so parched, from his lips that Joh Fredersen jerked up his head, looking at his son from out narrowed eye-lids. Slowly his eyebrows rose. “Are you not afraid, father (supposing that the statistics are correct and the consumption of man is progressing increasingly, rapidly) that one fine day there will be no more food there for the man-eating god-machines, and that the Moloch of glass, rubber and steel, the Durgha of aluminium with platinum veins, will have to starve miserably?” “The case is conceivable,” said the brain of Metropolis. “And then?” “Then,” said the brain of Metropolis, “by then a substitute for man will have to have been found.” “The improved man, you mean—? The machine-man—?” “Perhaps,” said the brain of Metropolis. Freder brushed the damp hair from his brow. He bent forward, his breath touching his father.