THE THOUGHT CAMERA
“I now proceed to take a picture of your mind.” The queer little Chinaman
who called himself Tao Sing twisted his face into a smile and in doing so
added a hundred wrinkles to the thousand that already made up his rather
comical face.
Four o’clock on the Monday following the ball game had found Johnny at
the door of Whong Lee’s little shop asking for Tao Sing. Tao Sing had
said he would show him a picture of his thoughts. Johnny did not believe
he could do that. However, one of Johnny’s rules for living was, “Never
pass anything up.” So here he was.
“Take a picture of my mind?” he laughed. “You can’t do that. I still have
my head on. You can’t take a picture through my skull.”
“No. This I cannot do,” the little man said soberly. “But I can make a
picture of what you think.”
“What I think,” Johnny whispered to himself. “That’s what he said the
other night. Of course it’s nonsense. But he did tell me what I had
thought about the pep meet. He did tell me what none of our team knew
about the ball game. I’m going to find out how he did that if I can.”
“You mean you can read my mind?” he said to the little Chinaman.
“No, I cannot read your mind. No! No! Not that.” The little man’s brow
puckered in a comical manner. “I can make a picture of your thoughts. You
shall see.
“Wait!” Tao Sing twisted a knob on some small instrument before him on a
table. He punched a button that made a loud click.
“What’s he up to?” Johnny asked himself. He had met this man only twice.
Knew nothing of him really. Now in a stuffy little room in the back of
Whong Lee’s shop where all manner of Oriental roots and seeds were sold,
he was listening to strange talk. There was a druggy smell about the
place that made him slightly dizzy. He wished in a vague sort of way that
he was not there, but being there, decided to stay.
“Now!” The little yellow man heaved a heavy sigh. “Now you think. Ah yes,
to think is easy. We always think, except when we sleep. Then we dream.
You do not believe? Then you try not to think at all. Ah! This you cannot
do.
“But to remember what you thought—” the little man rattled on, “ah, that
is more difficult. But now you must remember. For very soon I shall show
you what you have thought. It shall be all put down, right in here.” He
tapped his instrument. “Where I can see it, read it when I choose.
Tomorrow? Yes, in ten years? Yes. In a hundred years? Yes, yes, always.”
“Why, you—you couldn’t do that!” Johnny stammered.
“Ah, you shall see!” The little man’s wrinkled smile appeared again.
“Now! Get ready—think! I record your thoughts.” A second button clicked,
sounding loud in the silent, drug-scented room.
“He won’t record much,” the boy told himself stoutly. “But of course it’s
all nonsense.”
He put his mind to the task of running over a song:
“I’m riding to the last round-up,
I’ll saddle Old Paint, and ri—ide—”
What utter nonsense! This little man was a fake. He could not keep his
mind on the words of that song. A fly caught in a spider’s web buzzed
loudly in one corner. He heard the rustle of rice paper—Whong Lee
wrapping up some Ginsing roots perhaps.
With a wrench he brought his mind back to the song:
“The last round-up, the la—ast round-up.”
He felt all sort of stuffed up. Even in the daytime this place was spooky
enough. What if this little man _could_ read people’s minds? How terrible
to have someone about, who could tell everything you thought! You’d just
have to stop thinking, and that was impossible. Again he was back at the
song:
“I’m riding to the last round-up—”
“Now you may stop thinking,” the little man broke in. “Only—” he smiled
again. “You will never stop, not for one moment, except when you are
asleep.
“Now,” he said briskly, “we take this out.” He held up a round metal box
a little larger than a silver dollar. “We fit it in here. We turn this
handle, so—very slowly, for two minutes.”
Taking out his watch, he proceeded to time himself while the tiny handle
went round and round noiselessly.
“This little Chinaman is a fake,” the boy thought to himself once more.
“He must be. How could anyone make a picture of your thoughts?”
And yet—he found himself trying to think what that would mean. If you
were able to photograph the thoughts of your mother on the night before
Christmas, or your teacher when you thought she had caught you in some
prank, or the person who sits next to you in a street car, or the new
girl next door, or a person suspected of some terrible crime. Johnny’s
head fairly whirled with the possibilities of the thing. In the end he
thought, “Huh! It can’t be done!”
Beginning to feel that he had dwelt upon this long enough, he switched
his thoughts to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Johnny could visit that
fascinating place any time he pleased because he was a friend of the
great Wung Lu, who spent much time there.
At times Johnny had lived near great forests. These he had explored with
interest. He had followed mysterious rivers and searched hidden places in
wild mountain ranges. Here he explored Chinatown.
And such a fascinating place this Chinatown was—especially the Chamber of
Commerce to which, from all over the world, rich Chinamen came that they
might trade silk and tea, quaint Chinese toys, teak wood boxes and a
thousand other articles of trade, for wheat and typewriters, teaspoons
and automobiles.
There were strange and fascinating things in the great hall of the
Chinese Chamber of Commerce—a lamp made of three thousand pieces of
porcelain, banners old as the hills from which they came, and brass
dragons that seemed much older.
Johnny was deep in his contemplation of these things when the little man
who called himself Tao Sing said, “Now then, you shall see!” He heaved a
sigh. He snapped his old-fashioned watch shut. “Now we take it out of
here. It is done. Your thoughts, how shall we say—they are pickled. They
will keep a long, long time.
“But wait!” He held up a finger. “You shall see these so wonderful
thoughts.
“See.” He took a small instrument from a shelf on the wall. “I put it in
here. I wind this so.” A clicking sound followed. “I press this so. Now.
Now! You look.” His tone rose as he pointed to the top of the instrument
resembling a high power microscope. “You look! You see!”
Johnny did look, and what he saw struck him dumb. There, passing slowly
before his eyes were words, faintly illuminated words. Strangest of all,
he realized as he read that these words represented his thoughts of a few
moments before.
The words passed slowly. There was ample time for reading every one. Yet,
so astonished was he that for a time he did not read. When at last he got
a grip on himself he realized that here recorded, apparently for all
time, just as a moving picture is recorded, were his least and most
trifling thoughts of a few moments before. The buzzing fly was there, and
Whong Lee’s wrapping of a package. And, sadly jumbled with the rest, was
his thinking through of that song.
There came a click louder than the rest. The space beneath his eyes went
blank. The show was over.
“You see!” cried the little man. “I have your thoughts. They are
recorded. They will keep a long, long time.”
To say that Johnny was astonished is to express his feelings not at all.
He looked up at Tao Sing for all the world as if he had never seen him
before.
“Say! You are wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Can you do that again?”
“You want to see again?” The little man grinned.
“Yes. Oh yes.”
“All right. You see.”
The little man fingered the microscope affair for a moment. “All right.”
He stepped back. “You look see.”
Johnny did “look see,” and the thoughts that passed through his mind as
he looked were strange indeed.
“It can’t be true,” he told himself. “And yet it is. A wonderful new
invention, like the telegraph, radio, television. Like all the wonderful
things of our marvelous age.”
The words that fell from Tao Sing’s lips as the spot before Johnny’s eyes
once more went blank, left him staring.
“You want to try?” said Tao Sing.
“T—try?” Johnny stammered at last. “Try to take pictures of people’s
thoughts?”
“Yes, yes.”
Once again Johnny stared. “Nothing,” he thought, “could be more
interesting. And yet—
“Oh bother!” he whispered at last.
Then to the Chinaman, “Yes, I sure would!”
“All right.” The Chinaman’s eyes narrowed. “You do for me, I do for you.”
“Do what?” Johnny asked.
“Not very much.” Tao Sing’s eyes became mere slits of light. “You know
Wung Lu?”
Johnny nodded.
“Wung Lu very rich, very wise.” The little man’s eyes opened suddenly
very wide. “You see Wung Lu sit and think long time, eyes half shut.
Think long time. Very wise thoughts. You take picture of these thoughts.
Tao Sing read thoughts. By and by Tao Sing very wise. You take picture
Wung Lu’s thoughts. You give ’em to Tao Sing. What? You take ’em pictures
your friends. All right. You keep ’em. What?” He looked at the boy very
hard.
Johnny stared. Here indeed was a strange offer. He was to sit in the
Chinese Chamber of Commerce, as he had often sat before, admiring the
ancient, green-eyed dragon, while Wung Lu, the rich and wise one, sat in
his corner contemplating a large portly Buddha. He was to take pictures
of the wise one’s thoughts.
“Wung Lu thinks much.” Tao Sing spoke slowly. “He talks little.”
Johnny knew this to be true. Wung Lu smiled often. He seldom spoke.
“No great thought should be allowed to perish.” The little man was
quoting some Chinese proverb.
“I’ll do it,” said Johnny quite suddenly.
“All right. Here, I will show you.” Soon Johnny was lost to the world in
his study of the invention he believed to be the most marvelous in
existence.
A half hour later, as he marched home with a mysterious package under his
arm, his mind was overflowing with the strangest, weirdest plans. How
many things there were that he truly wished to know! Now he would get
them from the minds of others without asking questions. There were
secrets too that required no end of scheming to uncover. Now it would be
no trouble at all.
“And those stories I have been planning to write for the _Sentinel_!”
(The _Sentinel_ was the little city’s weekly newspaper.) He was fairly
bubbling over with enthusiasm. “Never have to write them at all now; just
prop that old thought-camera up against the books on my table, get all
set to look right at it, start it going, think the story through. And
there you have it. All that’s left is to copy it down from the thought
picture. How simple! How grand! How—”
He broke short off. Arrived at his own door, he had all but tumbled into
Meggy Strawn who had been waiting for him there.
“Meg!” he muttered. “I—I beg your pardon.”
“You better!” Meg exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting half an hour. Doug Danby
wants you to go over to the laboratories with him right away. Important
business. He—
“But Johnny!” Her tone changed. “How queer you look! You must have been
seeing a ghost.”
“Per-perhaps I have,” Johnny said slowly. “A ghost of—well, never mind of
what.”
“Johnny, tell me.” There was a teasing look in Meg’s eyes.
“Not now. Perhaps never.” Johnny was through the door and into the house
like a flash.
After hiding the newly acquired thought-camera in his closet, he tiptoed
down the back stairs, then sped away through the garden and the back gate
toward Doug Danby’s house.
“Can’t face those teasing eyes,” he told himself. “Not just yet. I might
tell, and that would be betraying a dark secret, Tao Sing’s and mine.”