JOHNNY’S THINK-O-GRAPHS
“Yes,” Johnny whispered to himself as he thrust his hand deep into a dark
corner of his closet. “It’s still there. The thought-camera is no dream.
But will it record thoughts for me? That’s the question.”
He found himself all aquiver with excitement. He was like a very small
boy with his very first camera.
“Like to try it on myself,” he thought. Then, recalling the little
Chinaman’s test and the sadly muddled thoughts the camera had brought
out, he, for the time at least, abandoned that plan.
“There’s grandfather,” he told himself. “He sits by the hour every
evening, looking off into the night and thinking. Wonder what those
thoughts are like. I’d really like to know. That—that’s where I’ll try it
first.” He hurried downstairs.
Johnny was very fond of the stalwart old man he called grandfather. A
pioneer of his small city, he had seen much of life. At times he talked
of those days long gone by. For the most part he sat in his great chair
on the broad porch and gazed away into the darkness toward the spot
where, in the daytime, the blue began.
Slipping silently into a chair close to the old man, Johnny touched the
release to the thought-camera. There followed a low buzzing sound.
Johnny’s heart leaped. The camera was working. But was it recording
thoughts, his grandfather’s thoughts? Only time would tell.
For several moments in the night, disturbed only by the cricket’s chirp
and the distant bullfrog’s hoarse croak, the pair sat there motionless.
Then the old man stirred. “What’s that, Johnny?” he asked.
“What’s what?” Johnny’s voice trembled slightly.
“Sounds a little like a new sort of cricket,” the old man rumbled.
“Nothing I guess.” Johnny snapped off his thought-camera. The sound
ceased. “Well, guess I’ll go up,” he said in as steady a tone as he could
command. “Goodnight!”
“Goodnight, Johnny.”
The boy fairly ran up the stairs. He was obliged to drop into a chair in
his room to calm himself. Then, after shaking his fingers to loosen their
tenseness, he went about the business of the hour.
Having removed the small cartridge containing the long, thread-like film,
he set it revolving in that other magic box that was supposed to develop
and finish it. Two minutes of this and the thing was done. Or was it?
Drawing one long deep breath, Johnny placed the film in the
microscope-like affair, then started the mechanism.
For ten seconds he stood there squinting into the brass tube, spellbound.
Then he exclaimed, “Hot diggity dog!”
After that, for a full fifteen minutes his thoughts were focussed upon
the thing before him. In that quarter hour he ran the film through three
times.
“Nothing,” he murmured as at last he sank into a chair, “nothing could be
half so marvelous!”
And indeed it _was_ marvelous for there, stripped of all the backwardness
and timidity that so often hamper the speech of old men, were recorded
the golden thoughts of one grand old man as he dreamed of the glorious
pioneer days that are gone forever.
“I’ll copy it,” Johnny told himself, “then I’ll have it printed in the
_Sentinel_.
“No,” he amended, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll record his thoughts
night after night. They’ll never be the same. It will make a book. And
such a book!”
At that he sat for a long time dreaming of the marvelous things he would
do with that thought-camera.
“But it belongs to Tao Sing,” he reminded himself. “Only he knows the
secret of it. How long am I to have it? As long as I fulfill Tao Sing’s
wishes I suppose.”
At that, with a shudder he could not entirely explain, he recalled his
promise to Tao Sing. He was to carry the camera to the Chinese Chamber of
Commerce. He was to point it at his friend, the rich Chinese merchant
Wung Lu, and record his thoughts for Tao Sing.
“I wonder why?” Disturbing thought!
“Think-o-graphs,” he whispered to himself before he fell asleep that
night. “Good name for them, all right. A picture of your face is a
photograph, so, naturally a picture of your thoughts is a think-o-graph.
There now!” he chuckled to himself, “I’ve coined a brand new word. And if
this thought-camera comes to be a common possession as ordinary cameras
are, it will be a very popular word. If it does—” he repeated slowly.
He tried to think what the world would be like if anyone who wished it
might have a thought-camera and photograph other people’s thoughts. There
would not remain in the world one secret that could be kept, that was
certain. All the secrets between nations would be at an end. Spies would
lose their jobs. No criminal could escape revealing his innermost
thoughts. The whole thing made him slightly dizzy, so he gave over
thinking about it, and fell asleep.