Dr. Zamenhof and His Machine
Dr. Zamenhof moved into an abandoned factory in the outskirts of Dresden. There he could be left in solitude to work on his inventions. The end of the war a decade earlier followed by the recent market crash left a lot of property owners eager to get rid of their long shuttered factories.
Zamenhof’s work started simply. With the precise precision afforded in solitude, he built a wristwatch that tracked the phases of the moon, the temperature, and altitude. It was not long before his creations became significantly more advanced. His incredible self-balancing bicycle was soon topped by a radio receiver that could actively translate foreign broadcasts into German.
He located his workshop in a moderately-sized room with three large windows on the south side of the massive factory. Its high ceilings and large windows provided ample light for working during daylight hours. The floors were concrete. What pale blue paint remained on the walls was chipping off. Every breath brought in a lungful of stale air. Beyond the few short hallways and side offices, the open floors of the old building seemed to stretch on endlessly. When, as occasionally happened, the doctor dropped a tool the clanging sound it made would recede into the vast distance, never echoing back.
At night the doctor slept on a yellowed mat on the dusty floor of his workshop. He had never experienced such absolute silence and darkness. The empty factory was a black hole that absorbed all light and sound and Zamenhof lived on the event horizon. He never before enjoyed such deep sleeps.
Although he was a tireless worker, the inventor also used his evenings to tend his roof-top garden and work through his latest theories. For the first time in his life he could work at his own pace, creating space for rare self-reflection.
When he needed spare parts, Zamenhof simply had to wander the expansive floors of the building, manoeuvring through room after room of discarded pieces of assorted industrial equipment. The mechanical remnants were large, small, and every size in-between. The building had become something of a dumping ground for old machinery and other odds and ends after its original owners vacated. Gears of all sizes, motors, discarded vacuum tubes, industrial sewing machines, old counting machines abound. It was a tinkerer’s paradise. Zamenhof could spend weeks roaming each floor in search of parts.
Soon Zamenhof conceived of a device to make his task of gathering parts easier: a small self-driving dolly. When he needed to scavenge for parts, the doctor climbed on top of the small flat cart and the small vehicle would steer itself through the floors. He simply had to press a button to stop and place whatever equipment or piece of scrap he needed onto the cart where he had been sitting. The dolly would then return itself to his workshop lugging the heavy materials. Although this device made his work easier, the doctor still found the chore of searching for each individual odd and end far too time consuming and distracting.
Late one night Zamenhof was struck by the idea that would forever change his life, as well as that of the world outside. After carefully reviewing his notes and contemplating possibilities he set to work. Zamenhof worked feverishly for three weeks in his workshop. He left the workshop only occasionally to search for critical parts for his new creation and he slept even less. He worked himself into near starvation, taking no time to tend the roof garden or eat.
Shortly after dusk some weeks later, fatigued and nearly ill, Zamenhof set the self-perpetuating gear box into motion. Not even his colleague in Prague, Dr. Rossum, would believe what he had created...
Be sure to return to these pages next month for the thrilling continuation of this gripping tale!
