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
I went on through Euston Road to Tottenham Court Road, puzzled, and a
little frightened, and scarcely noticed the unusual way I was taking,
for commonly I used to cut through the intervening network of back
streets. I turned into University Street, to discover that I had
forgotten my number. Only by a strong effort did I recall 11A, and
even then it seemed to me that it was a thing some forgotten person
had told me. I tried to steady my mind by recalling the incidents of
the dinner, and for the life of me I could conjure up no picture of
my host's face; I saw him only as a shadowy outline, as one might see
oneself reflected in a window through which one was looking. In his
place, however, I had a curious exterior vision of myself sitting at a
table, flushed, bright-eyed, and talkative.
"I must take this other powder," said I. "This is getting impossible."
I tried the wrong side of the hall for my candle and the matches, and
had a doubt of which landing my room might be on. "I'm drunk," I said,
"that's certain," and blundered needlessly on the staircase to sustain
the proposition.
At the first glance my room seemed unfamiliar. "What rot!" I said, and
stared about me. I seemed to bring myself back by the effort, and the
odd phantasmal quality passed into the concrete familiar. There was the
old glass still, with my notes on the albumens stuck in the corner of
the frame, my old everyday suit of clothes pitched about the floor. And
yet it was not so real after all. I felt an idiotic persuasion trying
to creep into my mind, as it were, that I was in a railway carriage in
a train just stopping, that I was peering out of the window at some
unknown station. I gripped the bed-rail firmly to reassure myself.
"It's clairvoyance, perhaps," I said. "I must write to the Psychical
Research Society."
I put the rouleau on my dressing-table, sat on my bed and began to
take off my boots. It was as if the picture of my present sensations
was painted over some other picture that was trying to show through.
"Curse it!" said I; "my wits are going, or am I in two places at once?"
Half-undressed, I tossed the powder into a glass and drank it off. It
effervesced, and became a fluorescent amber colour. Before I was in bed
my mind was already tranquillised. I felt the pillow at my cheek, and
thereupon I must have fallen asleep.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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