Audibly Audiobooks

The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness:  TIME SAFARI, INC. SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST. YOU NAME THE ANIMAL. WE TAKE YOU THERE. YOU SHOOT IT.  Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels’ throat; he swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air, and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk.  “Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?”

Multivac has problems. It does not respond to commands, and isn’t following its built-in program to self-diagnose the cause. As the global economy depends on Mulitvac, this could result in panic across the world. Teams of technicians have been trying to identify what is wrong for three days. Finally, a scientist discovers the “key item” needed to fix the problem. It is a simple thing that we are all taught to use as children.  Jack Weaver came out of the vitals of Multivac looking utterly worn and disgusted.  From the stool, where the other maintained his own stolid watch, Todd Nemerson said, “Nothing?”  “Nothing,” said Weaver. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. No one can find anything wrong with it.”  “Except that it won’t work, you mean.”  “You’re no help sitting there!”  “I’m thinking.”  “Thinking!” Weaver showed a canine at one side of his mouth.  Nemerson stirred impatiently on his stool. “Why not? There are six teams of computer technologist roaming around in the corridors of Mulitvac. They haven’t come up with anything in three days. Can’t you spare one person to think?”  “It’s not a matter of thinking. We’ve got to look. Somewhere a relay is stuck.”  “It’s not that simple, Jack!”  “Who says it’s simple? You know how many million relays we have there?”  “That doesn’t matter. If it were just a relay, Multivac would have alternate circuits, devices for locating the flaw, and facilities to repair or replace the ailing part. The trouble is, Mulitvac won’t only not answer the original question, it won’t tell us what’s wrong with it… And meanwhile, there’ll be panic in every city if we don’t do something. The world’s economy depends on Mulitvac, and everyone knows that.”  “I know it, too. But what’s there to do?”  “I told you, think. There must be something we’re missing completely. Look, Jack, there isn’t a computer bigwig in a hundred years who hasn’t devoted himself to making Mulitvac more complicated. It can do so much now — it can even talk and listen. It’s practically as complex as the human brain. We can’t understand the human brain, so why should we understand Mulitvac?”  “Aw, come on. Next you’ll be saying Multivac is human.”

The celebration had a long way to go and even in the silent depths of Multivac’s underground chambers, it hung in the air.

If nothing else, there was the mere fact of isolation and silence. For the first time in a decade, technicians were not scurrying about the vitals of the giant computer, the soft lights did not wink out their erratic patterns, the flow of information in and out had halted.

It would not be halted long, of course, for the needs of peace would be pressing. Yet now, for a day, perhaps for a week, even Multivac might celebrate the great time, and rest.

Lamar Swift took off the military cap he was wearing and looked down the long and empty main corridor of the enormous computer. He sat down rather wearily in one of the technician’s swing-stools, and his uniform, in which he had never been comfortable, took on a heavy and wrinkled appearance.

He said, “I’ll miss it all after a grisly fashion. It’s hard to remember when we weren’t at war with Deneb, and it seems against nature now to be at peace and to look at the stars without anxiety.”

The two men with the Executive Director of the Solar Federation were both younger than Swift. Neither was as gray. Neither looked quite as tired.

John Henderson, thin-lipped and finding it hard to control the relief he felt in the midst of triumph, said, “They’re destroyed! They’re destroyed! It’s what I keep saying to myself over and over and I still can’t believe it. We all talked so much, over so many years, about the menace hanging over Earth and all its worlds, over every human being, and all the time it was true, every word of it. And now we’re alive and it’s the Denebians who are shattered and destroyed. They’ll be no menace now, ever again.”

“Thanks to Multivac,” said Swift, with a quiet glance at the imperturbable Jablonsky, who through all the war had been Chief Interpreter of science’s oracle. “Right, Max?”

Jablonsky shrugged. Automatically, he reached for a cigarette and decided against it. He alone, of all the thousands who had lived in the tunnels within Multivac, had been allowed to smoke, but toward the end he had made definite efforts to avoid making use of the privilege.

He said, “Well, that’s what they say.” His broad thumb moved in the direction of his right shoulder, aiming upward.

“Jealous, Max?”

“Because they’re shouting for Multivac? Because Multivac is the big hero of mankind in this war?” Jablonsky’s craggy face took on an air of suitable contempt. “What’s that to me? Let Multivac be the machine that won the war, if it pleases them.”

Henderson looked at the other two out of the corners of his eyes. In this short interlude that the three had instinctively sought out in the one peaceful corner of a metropolis gone mad; in this entr’acte between the dangers of war and the difficulties of peace; when, for one moment, they might all find surcease; he was conscious only of his weight of guilt.

Suddenly, it was as though that weight were too great to be borne longer. It had to be thrown off, along with the war; now! Henderson said, “Multivac had nothing to do with victory. It’s just a machine.”

Of all the pupils at the knight school Gawaine le Coeur-Hardy was among the least promising. ‘He was tall and sturdy, but his instructors soon discovered that he lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when the jousting class was called, although his companions and members of the faculty sought to appeal to his better nature by shouting to him to come out and break his neck like a man. Even when they told him that the lances were padded, the horses no more than ponies, and the field unusually soft for late autumn, Gawaine refused to grow enthusiastic. The Headmaster and Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce were discussing the case one spring afternoon, and the Assistant Professor could see no remedy but expulsion.

“No,” said the Headmaster, as he looked out at the purple hills which ringed the school, “I think I’ll train him to slay dragons.”

“He might be killed,” objected the Assistant Professor.

“So he might,” replied the Headmaster, brightly; but he added, more soberly, “we must consider the greater good. We are responsible for the formation of this lad’s character.”

“Are the dragons particularly bad this year?” interrupted the Assistant Professor. This was characteristic. He always seemed restive when the head of the school began to talk ethics and the ideals of the institution.

“I’ve never known them worse,” replied the Headmaster. “Up in the hills to the south last week they killed a number of peasants, two cows, and a prize pig. And if this dry spell holds there’s no telling when they may start a forest fire simply by breathing around indiscriminately.”

“Would any refund on the tuition fee be necessary in case of an accident to young Coeur-Hardy?”

Alan Austen, as nervous as a kitten, went up certain dark and creaky stairs in the neighborhood of Pell Street, and peered about for a long time on the dim landing before he found the name he wanted written obscurely on one of the doors.

He pushed open this door, as he had been told to do, and found himself in a tiny room, which contained no furniture but a plain kitchen table, a rocking-chair, and an ordinary chair. On one of the dirty buff-coloured walls were a couple of shelves, containing in all perhaps a dozen bottles and jars. An old man sat in the rocking-chair, reading a newspaper. Alan, without a word, handed him the card he had been given.

“Sit down, Mr. Austen,” said the old man very politely.

“I am glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Is it true,” asked Alan, “that you have a certain mixture that has-er-quite extraordinary effects?”

“My dear sir,” replied the old man, “my stock in trade is not very large-I don’t deal in laxatives and teething mixtures-but such as it is, it is varied. I think nothing I sell has effects which could be precisely described as ordinary.”

As his second term came to a close four years later, Washington prepared a revision of the original letter with the help of Hamilton to write a new farewell address to announce his intention to decline a third term in office. He reflects on the emerging issues of the American political landscape in 1796, expresses his support for the government eight years after the adoption of the Constitution, defends his administration's record and gives valedictory advice to the American people.

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered by English teachers and scholars as a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

The story is about the birth of a baby boy in a 19th-century gold prospecting camp. The boy's mother, Cherokee Sal, dies in childbirth, so the men of Roaring Camp must raise it themselves. Believing the child to be a good luck charm, the miners christen the boy Thomas Luck. Afterwards, they decide to refine their behavior and refrain from gambling and fighting.  Roaring Camp was a real place. It was a goldmining settlement on the Mokelumne River in Amador County, California. It was home to forty-niners seeking gold in and around the river.

The Antique Ring is a fanciful story-within-a-story, a legend about the ring composed by an aspiring author/lawyer as a prize for his fiancé. It was published in Hawthorne's collection, The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1876).

lost during a walk along the coast of Wales and sought shelter in what looked like a ruined tower, thanks to the hospitality of its housekeeper. He is surprised at the comfortable furnishings within the tower, and is intrigued by a painting of a lovely young woman hung above the fireplace, entitled The Invisible Girl.