The Invention of Morel

The narrator prefaces his next accounts by saying the events that occurred are unbelievable, and his situation is different than he thought. After the swimmers leave the polluted pool, he overhears Morel telling a young man to stay a few minutes after everyone leaves that evening. He warns that the young man shouldn’t inform the others, especially the women, as they might panic. A few moments later, Morel speaks to a stout older man and tells him that he’s recording all of his actions and words, which doesn’t bother the older man. The narrator thinks they’re talking about him and how he’s keeping a diary. Afterward, the men and some servants put out chairs for people to sit outside. Faustine, however, walks down to the rocks, so the narrator follows.

The narrator feels that this is his last chance with Faustine, so he debates his course of action. At first, he thinks he will tell her about his love for her, but he fears she will be suspicious of his motives. Then he considers watching the sunset with her, commenting about the suns, and making conversation about the island. However, Faustine leaves after the weaker of the suns sets. The narrator shouts out that he loves her, but before she can react, Morel approaches her, and the narrator hides. Morel speaks of making the most of an opportunity and warns Faustine to control her nerves. He invites her to stay longer than the others that night.

The music, “Tea for Two” and “Valencia,” plays all night. Seeking food, the narrator enters the museum, where he sees not a copy of the book by Bélidor but the exact book that he has in his pocket, down to the blurred ink. On Morel’s orders, people are setting up chairs in the room with the aquarium floor. It is after midnight when the others arrive, though there are a couple of absences. Morel refuses to start until everyone is there, so someone retrieves Jane Gray. The other missing person is a man whom Morel saw enter the room earlier. The narrator thinks he’s talking about him, but then hears that the man’s name is Haynes, who is asleep in Faustine’s room. Still, the narrator suspects a trap. Morel takes some typed, yellow papers from a bowl that also contains ads for boats.

Morel reads his speech to the assemblage. He asks forgiveness for an unpleasant incident but says that it will soon seem unimportant. Since the people are his friends, he feels they have a right to know that he has photographed them without their consent. This photography is his latest invention. He ponders whether he should have told them at the start of the week that they would live for eternity so they could stay in cheerful moods, but he feels that time spent with friends is enjoyable in any way. He mentions some friends who are not with them, including one named Charlie, whom the narrator presumes died recently. Morel states that Charlie was one of his first successful experiments and that he could show him to people. He goes on to say that his two main focuses have been his inventions and “a happy life with—” (67). The narrator either ignores the name or does not hear it—either way, it is not transcribed. Morel concedes that he thought it would be easy to make a woman fall in love with him, but now he knows his attempts have failed.

Morel then describes his inventions, comparing them to the radio and the telephone for capturing and transmitting sound, and television or film for relaying visual information. His project records and projects aspects of all the senses. He used laboratories in France and Switzerland to experiment with his concepts. In Morel’s perspective, movies and photographs make people’s voices and images eternal, but his machine broadcasts the person or thing entirely, including smell, touch, and temperature, so that they are indistinguishable from the original. The first part of the machine dials into sensory vibrations, the second part records them, and the third part projects them. He assumed that the reproduction he created would be like an object in a museum or photo album, but when he managed to get all the parts working, he realized that he created an entirely reconstituted person. This projected person exists only while the machine is working and relives the recorded moments again and again. He believes that these projections, therefore, have consciousness, even though it’s just the consciousness of the recorded moments. The caveat is that he is not creating life where there is none; the beings he reproduces must be alive to transmit their sensory vibrations.

Morel waxes philosophical about his work, wondering if, like the music on a phonograph, unborn humans exist somewhere until God orders them to be born. He believes that the projections have souls because of the side effects on the living organisms used as transmitters. In the early days, there were some defects in the machines, so the reproductions didn’t match up correctly, the results of which were “slightly monstrous” (72). The audience reacts to his speech as if they don’t believe him or they think it’s a joke. One man named Stoever, however, accuses Morel of killing Charlie with the machine. He claims that other employees in Switzerland started to die when Morel worked there. Morel storms off. The other audience members reprimand Stoever for upsetting him, but the man insists that Morel has doomed them all. They calm him and send someone to fetch Morel, but he won’t return.

The people disperse, and suddenly, the lights go out in the house. Again, the narrator fears that they are going to capture him. He pockets Morel’s yellow papers, jumps out a window, and returns to the lowlands. Morel’s invention seems so unlikely that the narrator believes the whole thing is a trap set by the police. The narrator dreams of a romantic goodbye with Faustine, which causes him to wake up depressed. Not seeing the ship, he believes she is gone and decides to die by suicide. Then he sees some of the other guests on the hillside and believes that what Morel said is true. He feels disgusted by these “artificial ghosts” (75).

In his diary, the narrator lays out the rest of Morel’s speech. It includes the reasoning behind picking that island. The tides provide power, the reefs make it less accessible to trespassers, and the light is ideal for capturing images. He invested his fortune in buying the island and constructing the buildings. He called the house a museum because, not knowing how the projections would turn out, he thought the place would house the images like an album or museum. He made projections of the machines as well, so their images will repeat for eternity.

The narrator settles into a coexistence with the images, though he is tempted to destroy the machines or the mill that powers them. His thoughts return to basic survival, such as surviving the floods and making a bed. He does, however, reread Morel’s papers. It inspires him to take another look at the machines in the basement and think about his own project concerning immortality. He thinks it’s possible that someday, Morel’s machine could be used to reassemble dead people. He regrets that Morel hid the invention on this island and that word of it has not spread, at least not that he was aware of while in Caracas.

The narrator resumes sleeping in the museum, having gotten over his initial disgust of the images, though he doesn’t like it when they accidentally touch him. He follows Faustine for 20 days, claiming his approach is like a researcher, even sleeping on a mat next to her bed.

He no longer wishes to destroy the machines, and he feels his diary is a way to save them. He fears that they will one day be destroyed by the sea or by people coming to inhabit the island. The narrator realizes that Morel was deceived by his own invention, believing that the beings were living, whereas the narrator sees the completed form and believes they are only sensations. He shows grudging respect, though, for the progress Morel made in recreating human life. He imagines a time when new machines could determine whether the recreations think or feel. Eventually, machines will have a catalog of human experiences to use as an alphabet to create images of joy in remote paradises. As a follower of Malthusian philosophy, the narrator fears they will be imperiled by overpopulation.