[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I wish now I'd never heard of Electro-Education! Sure, it made me amulti-millionaire. But what else did it do to me? What did it do toeverybody?
The trouble with me was that I was too ambitious. I had a nice wife andwe were planning on a family. I wasn't satisfied with just being PetePurdy, the best electric repair-man in New York. I wanted somethingbigger and better for my family. Boy, did I get it!
It began when I was called over to Gotham University to repair amotor-generator that had gone sour. It was in the laboratory of DoctorLewis Kindler, the big psycho-physiologist research man there. Ofcourse, I didn't know then who he was. To me, he was just a thin,haggard old guy who looked like a nervous wreck as he told me about thegenerator.
"It must be repaired immediately—at once!" he shrilled. "We're justcompleting an epochal research. Epochal, you hear?"
I shrugged. "I'll do the best I can. But this model's complicated.It'll take a week to rip her down and rewind the coils."
"A week?" he screeched. "Impossible! We can't wait that long!"
His colleague, a stocky, bullet-headed young scientist named JamesCarter, tried to soothe the old boy down.
"Doctor Kindler, you really must rest! You have been working too hardfor months on these experiments. You know now it's a success. Why nottry to relax?"
"Relax?" screamed the old scientist. And then, all of a sudden, he wentclean off his head.
He just collapsed, raving about rays and neurones and a lot of otherstuff. Young Carter called doctors and officials of the universityquick. They took him away, yelling at the top of his voice.
Next morning as I was working in the laboratory on the generator,Carter came in looking pretty blue.
"Doctor Kindler has had a complete mental breakdown from overwork," hetold me. "He's been removed to a sanitarium, and may remain there in aschizophrenic state for years."
"Schizophrenic? That's tough." I wondered what it meant. "I guess theold man was a pretty big shot in science, huh?"
"We had just completed the greatest discovery in the history ofpsychology," Carter said. "He was tops in the field."
I kept on working at the generator, while young James Carter walked upand down the laboratory looking pretty moody.
He kept staring at a big machine in the corner. It was nothing I couldrecognize, for I'm a good electrician but these crazy scientifichookups are way over my head. To me, it looked something like apermanent wave machine, with a metal cap like the dames put over theirheads.
Carter spoke as though he was talking to himself, gritting his teeth ashe looked at that big machine.
"A discovery that means millions, billions! If I only had enough moneyto develop and exploit it!"
I pricked up my ears at that. Scientific discoveries don't interest meso much, but millions interest anybody.
"What is the thing?" I asked. "Some new kind of rig for atomic power?"
"No, no, it's nothing like that," Carter muttered. "It deals with themind. I could revolutionize the world with this thing if I had moneyenough to develop improved apparatus."
"Won't the university put up the dough for the stuff you need?" I askedhim.
He laughed kind of sour. "Of course they would. But they would alsothen appropriate all title to it. Whereas if I could develop it myself,it would make