Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 110: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

WISHFUL THINKING how the victim must have felt and suffered. Had he been speaking of a stranger it would have been bad enough, but he was talking of a friend. John did the only thing he could do. He broke. _ “Stopit!’ heshouted. “Stop it I tell you!” “Do you admit you killed Mayhew ?”” “T didn’t kill him. No one killed him. We hid the body, yes, but that was all.” “Suicide?” Stanley shrugged as if now he had heard everything. ““Yes.”’ John was desperate for belief. “He didn’t kill himself deliberately, but he died just the same. He was testing the machine and we found him in the chair. It was horrible! Horrible! ”’ “Steady!” Sam knew that it was time for him to take over. He pressed John back into his chair. ‘““What Evans says is the truth. We were working on a new discovery and Carl insisted on testing it alone. It killed him.” “How?” “Tl have to put it in lay- man’s language, but perhaps you can understand. We de- veloped a machine to increase the dream-world. We call it that for want of a better name. What it does is simple. It amplifies the subconscious and overrides the external stimuli so that thought be- comes apparent reality. If you think you see a tree then you actually see a tree. A temple, the same; an army, the same; imagination has no limits. “The He went on with the ex- planation, trying to put into simple words the technical jargon of his profession. He stressed the affinity between body and mind, the psycho- somatic effects of concen- trated thinking, drew poor analogies and stated unprov- able cases. And returned always to the one point he had to drive home. “The machine is fatal with its attraction. You forget the passage of time, the external world, everything. The sub- 109 comiclsooks.com