The Man Who Fell to Earth

The clerk grimaced, in some kind of old man’s annoyance. “Not when you don’t pay for developing it.”

“Oh, I see. They develop it for you. You get a mailing envelope…” He broke off. This was a stupid conversation. Somebody has invented a new film. What did he care; he wasn’t a photographer.

After a pause, the clerk said, “No.” And then, turning away, toward the door, “It develops itself.”

“It what?”

“Develops itself. Look, you want to buy the film?”

Not answering, he turned the box over in his hand. On each end was printed, boldly, the words, Self-Developing. And it struck him. Why haven’t I heard about this in the chemical journals? A new process…

“Yes,” he said, distractedly, looking at the label. There, at the bottom, was the fine print: W. E. Corp. “Yes. I’ll buy it.” He fumbled his billfold out, and gave the man six crumpled bills. “How does it work?”

“You put it back in the can.” The man picked up the money. He seemed soothed by it, less truculent.

“Back in the can?”

“The little can that it comes in. You put it back in the can when you’ve shot all your pictures. Then you press a little button on top of the can. It tells you. There’s directions inside. You press the button once, or more times — depends on what they call ‘film speed.’ That’s all there is to it.”

“Oh.” He stood up, his coffee unfinished, putting the box gingerly in his coat pocket. Leaving, he asked the clerk, “How long has this stuff been on the market?”

“The film? About two, three weeks. Works fine. We sell a lot of it.”

He walked directly home, wondering about the film. How could anything be that good, that easy? Absently, he pulled the box from his pocket, peeled it open with his thumbnail. Inside was a blue metal can, with a screw top, a red button sticking up from it. He opened it. Wrapped in a sheet of directions was an ordinary-looking cassette of 35-millimeter film. Under the canister top, beneath the button, was a small grid. He felt this with his thumbnail. It seemed to be made of porcelain.

At home, he dug an ancient Argus camera out of a drawer. Then, before loading it, he pulled about a foot of the film out of the cartridge, exposing it, and then tore it off. It felt dull to the touch, without the usual slickness of a gelatinous emulsion. Then he loaded the rest in the camera and exposed it rapidly, taking random pictures of the walls, the radiator, the pile of papers on his desk, shooting at an 800 speed in the dim light. Then, finished, he developed the film in the can, pressing the button eight times and then opening it, smelling the can as he did so. A faint bluish gas with an acrid, unrecognizable smell came out. There was no liquid in the can. Gaseous development? He took the film out hastily, pulling the strip from the cartridge, and, holding it up to the light, found a set of perfect transparencies, in fine, life-like color and detail. He whistled aloud and said, “Goddamn.” Then he took the piece of blank film, and the transparency strip, and went into the kitchen with them. He began setting up the materials for a quick analysis, arranging rows of beakers, getting out the titration equipment. He found himself working feverishly, and did not take the time to wonder what was making him so frenetically curious about the thing. Something about it was nagging at him, but he ignored it — he was too busy….

* * *

Five hours later, at six o’clock in the morning, with a gray and bird-noisy sky outside the window, he fell back wearily into a kitchen chair, holding a small piece of the film. He had not tried everything with it; but he had tried enough to know that none of the conventional chemicals of photography, none of the silver salts, were in the film. He sat, red-eyed and staring, for several minutes. Then he got up, walked with great weariness to his bedroom and fell, half-exhausted, on the unmade bed. Before he fell asleep, still dressed, with birds shouting outside his window and the sun rising, he said aloud, his voice wry and gravelly, “It’s got to be a whole new technology… somebody digging up a science in the Mayan ruins… or from some other planet….”

4

People moved up and down the sidewalks in shifting, fast-paced crowds, dressed in spring clothes. Everywhere there seemed to be young women, high heels clicking (he could hear them, even from the car), many of them brilliantly dressed, their clothes preternaturally bright in the strong morning light. Enjoying the sight of the people and the colors — even though they hurt his still over-sensitive eyes — he told his driver to go slowly down Park Avenue. It was a lovely day, one of the first truly bright days of his second spring on earth. He leaned back, smiling, against the specially-designed back cushions and the car moved downtown at a slow and steady speed. Arthur, the driver, was very good; he had been chosen for his smoothness, his ability to hold speed steadily, to avoid sudden changes in movement.