The Stilled Patter

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George Washington was the father of his country.

I am not George Washington. My name is Andrew Jones, and it is because of me there will be no more Joneses in the world. There will be, in fact, no more anybody.

This is the end of the world.

It did not come through fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper, from solar catastrophe or man's suicidal mis-use of atomic power or any of the other fearful possibilities with which the Sunday-supplement writers once terrified us. It came through the exposure of an age-old conspiracy.

I did it. My excuse is the eternal excuse of the scientist: I sought the truth. How it was used was not my concern.

But that it should have led to the depopulation of the Earth concerns me, as it must concern every man, and I have an unshakable feeling of guilt.

Perhaps I write this now in the hope that I may somehow purge myself. I know that it will never be read.

The linen wick gutters in the saucer of melted tallow. It casts strange shadows on the cellar wall. Sometimes I think that they are the ghosts of children come to haunt me, the ghosts of all the little children who will never be born.

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