One Was Stubbron Read Free

is your business?”
    â€œYou’ve got a nerve to ask, but for your information I haven’t got any business. I retired off my farm about four years ago and I haven’t spent a happy hour since.”
    â€œAh,” he said.
    â€œDon’t sit there saying ‘Ah’ like an idiot,” I said. “Get busy and fit me with a pair of glasses.”
    â€œYou haven’t said why you needed them. You can have them of course, but to give them to you I’ll have to know just what sort of glasses you mean. What convinced you that you should have them?”
    I could see that I had scared Dr. Flerry into being polite to me, so I told him that I had seen a pair of legs without a torso and had first missed and then seen one of the Medical Center domes and how that crazy college student had run right through me.
    Well, if Dr. Flerry hadn’t stopped laughing when he did I guess we would have mixed it up right then.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” I demanded.
    â€œWhy, my dear fellow,” said Dr. Flerry, “you don’t need any glasses. If you ever paid any attention to the newspapers or the televisors or talked to anyone, you’d understand what is happening.”
    â€œAnd what,” said I, “is happening?”
    â€œWhy, my dear fellow, is it possible that you haven’t heard of the Messiah?”
    â€œHim,” I said. “What about him ?”
    â€œWould you care to come around to our meeting tonight? You might be edified.”
    â€œI don’t like meetings. I don’t believe in meetings.”
    â€œBut my dear fellow, the Messiah will—”
    â€œI don’t believe in messiahs.”
    â€œWell, however that may be, I wonder at you. You are probably the only man in the world today who is not a follower. Let me explain to you what this is all about so that—”
    â€œI don’t want to know anything about it and I wouldn’t believe it if I did.”
    â€œNevertheless, let me tell you something of this. The Messiah from Arcturus Arcton is teaching the nonexistence of matter. You see, by that he means that all matter is an idea. And it is high time that the world was relieved from the crushing load of materialism which has almost quenched the soul of man. Those are his words. And it’s true. Man is being pushed all around by machines and the age of machines has been over for a century, but the machines just keep running, and man, because he is so lazy, keeps using them. Now it may surprise you that a man such as myself, dependent upon the ills of the body as I am, should advocate the loss of the body. But I get no real interest out of my trade, for everything about the body is known except, of course, the soul and the Messiah has a good line on that. Further, in common with the rest of humanity, I am bored. I am so bored that I welcome any diversion. And I know that all this material world and this body I drag around are useless sources of annoyance.
    â€œNow the Messiah is teaching us the folly of belief. So long as we believe in this world, this Universe, in machines and ills and mankind, then mankind shall survive and the world, the Universe and machines shall survive. But as soon as we lose all belief in these things, then we shall be freed. We shall be freed, my friend, from the agony caused by machines and other men. And, being slaves to cogwheels, the only answer is to abolish the very matter from which those same cogwheels and these bodies are made. Well! Matter does not really exist, you know. It is only a figment of our imaginations. We believe in matter and so there is matter. That, my dear fellow, is the glorious message you have missed by not listening or reading.”
    â€œYou mean,” I said, “that everybody belongs to this?”
    â€œCertainly. Hasn’t the whole world been miserable ever since all further advance was unattainable? And isn’t this the one answer to our