TRANSCRIPTION OF DEVICE COVERAGE - WS PRINCIPAL OFFICE
TRANSCRIPTION OF DEVICE COVERAGE
BUILDING
PRINCIPAL OFFICE OF THE DIVISION CHIEF, WESTERN EUROPE
COVERAGE PERIOD: 11 AUGUST 1955, 1408 HOURS TO 1531 HOURS
PREPARED BY:
DISTRIBUTION: W. SEATON ONLY
SOURCE: STANDING COVERAGE PER AUTHORIZATION OF , DIVISION CHIEF, WESTERN EUROPE, DATED
The following transcription is prepared from the recording made by the device installed at the location and during the period above set forth. The transcription is prepared in accordance with the standing instruction that no copy be retained at the transcribing station and that the master recording be forwarded under separate cover to the Division Chief. Annotations of tone, inflection, and incidental sound, where audible upon the recording, are set in brackets. Passages of recording in which the speech of one or more parties is not clearly audible are indicated by ellipsis with the explanatory note.
- The device records the arrival of a visitor at the principal office. The secretary, , audible at the outer door: “Doctor, he is expecting you. Please go in.” The door opens and closes. A single set of footsteps crosses the office. SEATON: Doctor.
DR. : Mr. Seaton. Thank you for seeing me at short notice.
SEATON: Your note said the matter was urgent. Sit down.
DR. : Thank you.
SEATON: Coffee?
DR. : No, thank you.
SEATON: Well. You have brought something for me, I see.
DR. : I have. It is the revised technical note. I have been working on it since June. I should prefer that you read it now, in my presence, so that we may discuss it directly. It is not long.
SEATON: As you wish. Hand it across.
[A pause. The recording captures the sounds of paper, and of Mr. Seaton reading. The interval is approximately eleven minutes. During this period the doctor is heard to shift in his chair on two occasions and to clear his throat once. Mr. Seaton is heard to turn pages, to set the document down once at what the recording suggests is a midway point, and to draw a long breath before resuming. Otherwise the office is silent.]
SEATON: Hm.
DR. : Take your time.
[A further interval, approximately three minutes.]
SEATON: Doctor.
DR. : Yes.
SEATON: This is — well. Give me a moment.
[A pause.]
SEATON: This is extraordinary.
DR. : I am glad you find it so.
SEATON: I have read it twice. I shall read it again, but I think I have the substance. Doctor, do you know what you have given me?
DR. : I believe so.
SEATON: I am not sure that you do. Let me try it on you. The apparatus does not move things back in time. It moves them into — what did you call it — a manifold. Another space, with something in it that returns what we send. Or doesn’t. The shadow on the plate at the August trial last year — that was one of them. Yes?
DR. : That is the position I have arrived at, yes.
SEATON: And the ships in Livy. The men we lost.
DR. : Yes.
SEATON: They are not in the past. They are — where, exactly.
DR. : I do not know. They may have been placed by the agency at the coordinates we set, and observed by the Romans there. They may have been retained by the agency. The Roman record is consistent with the former but does not exclude the latter.
SEATON: Hm.
[A silence of some seconds.]
SEATON: Doctor, I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer it as a technical man and not as a — not as anything else. Forget the Division. Forget the program. Speak as a physicist.
DR. : I shall try.
SEATON: If we sent something nasty into the manifold. Something with — heat, gas, whatever you like. Could we hurt these things?
DR. : [A silence of several seconds.] What are you asking me, Mr. Seaton.
SEATON: I am asking you what I asked you. If we sent something hostile, could we hurt them.
DR. : I — that is not a question I am prepared to answer.
SEATON: You said as a physicist.
DR. : As a physicist, I do not know. We cannot say whether they have bodies in any sense we would recognize, or whether heat in our manifold is heat in theirs. The shadow at the trial was a projection. We saw a cross-section of something in their space. Whether what we send can act upon it, I cannot say.
SEATON: But it might.
DR. : Or it might do something we have not foreseen. What, exactly, are you proposing.
[A pause.]
SEATON: I am thinking out loud, Doctor.
DR. : You are not thinking out loud. You are testing a proposal on me. Tell me the proposal.
SEATON: Doctor —
DR. : Tell me the proposal, Mr. Seaton.
[A silence. The recording suggests Mr. Seaton has risen from his chair.]
SEATON: The second trial. We rig the vessel. Explosives, gas, the lot. We set it to detonate just after translation. We see what happens.
DR. : [A long silence. Approximately fifteen seconds upon the recording.]
DR. : You cannot mean it.
SEATON: I mean it.
DR. : You — Christ, Seaton. Christ.
SEATON: Doctor.
DR. : You have lost your mind. How long have you been thinking about this. While we have been working? While I have been writing the bloody note —
SEATON: Doctor, calm yourself.
DR. : Do not tell me to calm myself.
SEATON: Calm yourself or leave the office.
DR. : You will hear me out. I have given you the most considered piece of work I have done in this country, perhaps in my life, and your first thought is how to attack something you do not understand. It may not even know we are there. Or it may be tolerating us. We do not know, Seaton. You read my note and what you take from it is a target list. Christ.
SEATON: Doctor —
DR. : Don’t “Doctor” me. Don’t.
SEATON: You forget where you are.
DR. : I know exactly where I am. In the office of a man who wishes to bomb something that returned our men to a Roman book, and may, for all we know, be the reason there is a Roman book. You propose to send TNT into a manifold whose geometry we have not characterized, against an inhabitant whose extension we cannot render. And you expect to hurt them? You may destroy the apparatus, the men operating it, the city it stands in. We do not know where the payload goes after it leaves us. That is the whole bloody point of the note —
SEATON: Lower your voice.
DR. : I will not.
SEATON: Lower your voice, Doctor, there are people in the building who do not have clearance for this conversation.
DR. : Then perhaps they should hear it. Perhaps someone in this building should hear it.
SEATON: [A pause.] Now listen carefully. Your note is a fine piece of work. But this is not a lecture hall, Doctor. This Division has made commitments to persons you know nothing of. They expect results from this program. I am not going to tell them we have changed our minds because the technical officer has had a — a fit of conscience.
DR. : A fit of —
SEATON: I will speak. The trial will go forward in the form the Division determines. I should prefer to have your participation, on terms we may agree. I shall be sorry to lose you, but your note will not stop the trial.
DR. : A fit of conscience.
SEATON: A —
DR. : You called it a fit of conscience.
SEATON: I withdraw the phrase.
DR. : You meant it. In this Division, conscience is something a man has a fit of. Christ alive.
SEATON: Doctor, I will say this once. You are an employee of a Government agency under contract. You came to this country under arrangements which obtain at the pleasure of this Government. You are not in a position to —
DR. : [The recording captures a sharp sound, possibly the doctor striking the desk.] Don’t.
SEATON: Don’t what.
DR. : Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare, Seaton.
SEATON: Doctor.
DR. : Finish that sentence and we are done. I will walk out of this building, and what I know goes with me. You can explain to your persons of whom I am not aware why the principal technical officer has gone home and is not answering his telephone. So. Do you wish to finish it.
[A silence. The recording suggests neither man is moving.]
SEATON: I withdraw it. It was said in anger.
DR. : Then it stays withdrawn, Seaton. You do not get to put it back.
SEATON: It stays withdrawn.
DR. : Good.
[A pause. The recording captures Mr. Seaton seating himself. The doctor remains standing.]
SEATON: Sit down, Doctor.
DR. : I prefer to stand.
SEATON: Sit down. Please.
DR. : I will stand. Another quarter of an hour here and one of us will say something that cannot be withdrawn. Before I go, hear this. I will neither retract the note nor soften it. Forward it to OSI without your endorsement if you wish. Bury it, and the burial will become its own document in time. I will not participate in the second trial, or any trial designed on those terms. If you persist, I shall have to consider what my position permits me to do. I would prefer you did not force that question.
SEATON: Doctor —
DR. : Let me finish. You have a fortnight. Then I shall return, and you will tell me what disposition has been made of the note. Whether I continue depends upon your answer. That is all I have to say.
SEATON: That is — Doctor, that is not how this works.
DR. : It is how it works today. Good afternoon.
[The doctor is heard crossing the office. The door opens.]
SEATON: Doctor. One more thing.
DR. : [At the door.] Yes.
SEATON: During the fortnight, consider the position in which a precipitate action on your part would place certain persons. I shall say no more.
DR. : [A silence of some seconds.] I will think about it. I will think about it carefully. Good afternoon.
The door closes. Footsteps depart along the outer corridor.
- Mr. Seaton alone in the principal office. The recording captures a sound consistent with a chair being struck or kicked, and a single word uttered by Mr. Seaton which the transcribing officer declines to render. Footsteps cross the office twice. The recording captures Mr. Seaton at his desk, breathing audibly, for an interval of approximately four minutes.
- Mr. Seaton lifts the telephone and speaks. The conversation is conducted in tones not clearly audible upon the recording, the device being situated at a distance from the telephone unfavorable to the recording of the called party’s voice and Mr. Seaton’s own speech being conducted at lowered volume. The transcribing officer is not in a position to render the conversation. The call concludes at 1517. 1517 to 1531. Mr. Seaton seated at the desk. The recording captures no further conversation. At 1521 Mr. Seaton is heard to say, aloud and to himself, three words which the transcribing officer renders with reservation as: “He will not.” The words are repeated twice.
The transcription is closed at 1531.
Transcription Officer