The disintegration machine
The disintegration machine (in the original: The Disintegration Machine or The Man Who Would Wreck the World ) is a 1929 published short story by British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . At the center of the story is a mysterious disintegration machine that threatens England.
This third episode of the Challenger Stories is one of the earlier science fiction novels in English, but at the same time takes up elements of the adventure novel .
Action at a glance
Professor Challenger is suggested by his younger friend Malone, who is still a newspaper reporter, to visit the scientist Theodore Nemor, who is said to have constructed a device that allows objects to be blasted and reassembled. So they go to the house of the Nemor, White Friars Mansions in Hampstead .
Malone and Challenger are convinced of the machine's potential after Malone is blasted and reassembled shortly afterwards. Professor Challenger also undergoes the procedure, but is enraged when his enormous beard is missing during the restructuring, he threatens to strangle Nemor, who therefore quickly reconstructs his beard.
The three men then discuss the machine's potential effects and conclude that it could be used as a devastating weapon of mass destruction . Dr. Nemor reveals that he has sold the exclusive rights to the invention to a European power not mentioned by name.
However, the British government has lost its chance at the weapon and with it possibly its empire, which Nemor believes is her own fault.
After Nemor goes on to explain that the secret of the weapon is kept safe in his head and that some others only partially know the construction plans, Challenger decides to act:
He seduces Dr. Nemor to take a seat in the chair of the disintegration machine, and with the flick of the switch the doctor falls apart. Thereafter, Professor Challenger protects Malone from forgetting which switch must be operated in order to restore the body. He closes with the words:
“The law abiding citizen's first duty is to prevent murder. I did this. Enough now, Malone, enough! "