Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/51

Rh RO-MECH is a device which augments thought so strongly that anyone who hears it obeys it and does as it dictates. These Sathanas records should reproduce in actual occurrence those same events which led him to power on earth."

"But you are not Sathanas! The record will make no one but an actual Sathanas master. Who, then would be the master, and the other characters on the records—how could they respond? These people are not counterparts of those characters."

"The ro-mech doesn't worry about such details. It reproduces in actual life as nearly as possible the same events which take place on the records. You will see."

"And if it doesn't all work out as you plan? Suppose you want to change the course of events? You will be powerless—in the grip of those terrible old records of inhuman oppression and slavery. You, yourself, may become one of those pitiful victims such as Sathanas gloried in tormenting—yourself may become one of those mutilated, mindless zombies who served in his stronghold. How avoid such a result?"

"I have 'tagged' the records with an imposed identification projection from my own mind augments—fixed them so they indicate exactly whom I wish to indicate and no other."

So it was that we found ourselves unwilling participants—actors—in a play that was as pre-determined as the hours on a clock face. The ancient ro-mech, one of the wonderful entertainment machines with which the Elder race had amused themselves, augmented a thought record till everyone within a mile radius had to do exactly as did the characters in the recorded action.

On the great crystal throne, shimmering with mysterious color glowing and changing in the depths of the carven crystal, sat young Zigor—but my mind knew him now as "Sathanas," the terrible, and my master—glowering, gloomy and conscious of his terrible power; sat and an intense activity was springing into life about him—with this Zigor as the center of it all.

Before him postured and writhed Chlio, her clothing nothing but a golden circlet, clasping about her swaying hips a wisp of flame-colored sheerness, and about her high breasts a similar scanty wisp of material. She was clad precisely as a certain dancer of Sathanas' possession had been clad in one of the early records of his rule in the caverns, and it was a strange and outre sensation to be reenacting the whole ancient scene again—a sensation of living over something one had not lived, but knew of. That sensation one has sometimes unexplainedly—looking upon some strange scene, one realizes one has seen it before, but in truth one has not. It was like that, only infinitely more so.

One seemed to be another person entirely, living another life; but one was completely conscious of self, a self without will, a self borne upon the wave of tremendous command from the "ro-mech"; and knowing that what was to happen would happen and nothing one could do or say, but go on. There is no more terrible sensation than to be thus caught up in the compulsion of the "ro-mech" and not any way to use one's will or wits, but only to feel one's body and mind answering and obeying some outer command, steadily, awfully going through another life as another person.

YDIA stood before Sathanas-Zigor, who she was and what she was going to be and do, I could not remember, but only fear that it was the usual fate of those who stood before Sathanas as supplicants. She lifted her blind eyes to that lean, merciless, proud and somehow idiotic face, a terrible trying was on her face—her will was struggling with the compulsion of the machine uselessly—her hands lifted to Sathanas and the chains about her wrists clinked mournfully, and within me from the ancient record rose a sensation of glee—another poor mortal was going to meet death, was chained already for the show to come, and was pleading for her life—how pleasant was that fact.

And even as these devilish, sadistic joys arose in anticipation of coming torture for Nydia, my own inner self, bound by weakness to be ruled by the powerful synthetic thought of the ro-mech records augmentation, writhed and shuddered with self-condemnation. How could I get joy from poor Nydia's plight? Yet joy was mine—I was evil now!

At the side sat the father of Mephisto, taking no part, evidently the record had no place for his participation, no "character" was assigned to him upon its surface,