The Plattner Story, and OthersWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
The Plattner Story, and Others
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories, English
He describes himself as making a strenuous effort to attract attention.
He shouted to Lidgett, and tried to seize the boys as they went to
and fro. He only desisted from these attempts when Mrs. Lidgett, whom
he (as an Assistant Master) naturally disliked, entered the room. He
says the sensation of being in the world, and yet not a part of it,
was an extraordinarily disagreeable one. He compared his feelings,
not inaptly, to those of a cat watching a mouse through a window.
Whenever he made a motion to communicate with the dim, familiar world
about him, he found an invisible, incomprehensible barrier preventing
intercourse.
He then turned his attention to his solid environment. He found the
medicine bottle still unbroken in his hand, with the remainder of the
green powder therein. He put this in his pocket, and began to feel
about him. Apparently, he was sitting on a boulder of rock covered with
a velvety moss. The dark country about him he was unable to see, the
faint, misty picture of the schoolroom blotting it out, but he had a
feeling (due perhaps to a cold wind) that he was near the crest of a
hill, and that a steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green
glow along the edge of the sky seemed to be growing in extent and
intensity. He stood up, rubbing his eyes.
It would seem that he made a few steps, going steeply down hill, and
then stumbled, nearly fell, and sat down again upon a jagged mass of
rock to watch the dawn. He became aware that the world about him was
absolutely silent. It was as still as it was dark, and though there was
a cold wind blowing up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing
of the boughs that should have accompanied it, were absent. He could
hear, therefore, if he could not see, that the hillside upon which he
stood was rocky and desolate. The green grew brighter every moment, and
as it did so a faint, transparent blood-red mingled with, but did not
mitigate, the blackness of the sky overhead and the rocky desolations
about him. Having regard to what follows, I am inclined to think that
that redness may have been an optical effect due to contrast. Something
black fluttered momentarily against the livid yellow-green of the
lower sky, and then the thin and penetrating voice of a bell rose out
of the black gulf below him. An oppressive expectation grew with the
growing light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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