The Illustrated Man - 1976
 

A 46 minute Collins Caedmon audio

The Veldt and Marionettes 1976 
 

By: Robert Bradford
Directed by: Ward Botsford
Engineered by: Daniel L. Wolfert
Read by: Leonard Nimoy

The Illustrated Man is a 1951 book of eighteen science fiction short stories by Ray Bradbury. It is called The Illustrated Man because an “illustrated man” is sitting at a campfire telling a young man all the stories which are behind his tattoos which are spread all over his body: Though he felt unsure about the tattoos, he even tried to avoid them, he could not help it, again and again he agreed that a women applies more and more tattoos on him. He adores the woman he had gone to in order to get one tattoo. Even about this first one his obvious uncertainty is clearly felt from the beginning. After getting a rose tattooed into his palm, she tells him about the lion. That lion will become the second tattoo on his body:

The Veldt

The parents are visiting the nursery of the children. It has cost them $30.000 to install it into their home. The nursery, a big room, which sings to them, cares for them and entertains the children. Now, the mother gets worried. She feels that he nursery has changed.

George Headley had said: “Nothing is too good for our children.” The two-dimensional walls are switched on and they find themselves in the middle of an African desert. They smell the animals: lions. “It is too real”, George says. “What are they eating?” his wife wonders. She has heard a scream. Both are always awed by the miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly low price. It is the work of geniuses who created such reality concerning visual and audio effects. They even smell the grass.
Lydia feels worried that the children have spent so much time in this one scene, instead of experiencing other countries or themes.

They realize that the children live for that nursery. Peter, the son, had reacted extremely after his father had punished him once by locking the nursery for a few hours.
Lydia senses that the fully self-sufficient self-cleaning house makes them feel not needed any more.

Again they feel threatened by the nursery as they see the wall shake as if something heavy had bounced against it. George goes back into the nursery and hears the lions roar and a scream. Often George had found Alice in Wonderland, Pegasus, red fireworks, but now, this yellow, hot Africa. Wendy and Peter have spent weeks on this scene only now. He tells the approaching lions to go away. Nothing happens though the nursery is designed to adapt to new thoughts. “Let’s have Aladdin and his lamp”, George says.  Nothing happens.
He leaves and tells Lydia that the nursery does not respond. “Or it cannot respond”, Lydia speculates, “Peter might have gotten into the machinery and fixed it like that.” 

The children come back from a party and a helicopter trip. George tells them about their trip in the nursery. “There is no Africa in the nursery”, Peter simply states. “Do you know about any Africa in the nursery?” Peter asks Wendy. She denies. The children leave to check the nursery ignoring their parent’s order to stay. When the parents reach the room, a green forest fills the room. George finds an object in the corner where they lions have been before: An old wallet of his. The small of lions and grass was on it. It had been chewed. He closed the nursery door and locked it tight.

At night the parents can’t find sleep. “We have given the children everything they wanted.  …  They come and go as they like.”  Lydia remembers that Peter has turned away from them after he was not allowed to go with a rocket. “They are too young for this”, George repeats as he had explained to the children before. Now they hear the screams again. They hear screams from downstairs and lions roar. “Wendy and Peter are not in their rooms”, said his wife. “No,” he said, “they have broken into the nursery. “Those screams, they sound familiar.”, Lydia says.

“Father”, said Peter. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his other. “You are going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?” “We are considering leaving the house for a month”, George answers. “Don’t consider that any more, father!” “I won’t have any threats from my son.” “Very well.”

David McClain, a psychologist and friend comes by. George wants him to have a look at the nursery. “For how long does this go on?” “For a little more than a month.” David advises George to bring the children in for treatment and have the room torn down. “That bad?”, George wonders. David shares with him that the room has become a channel towards destructive thoughts instead of a release away from them.

David also learns that George had not allowed the children to go to New York and that he had taken out some machinery from the house. “This room is their mother and father”, David explains. “Far more important than their real parents.  .. Turn everything off and start anew.”  

The lions approach the two men. “Can they become real?”, George wonders. “Some flow in the machinery… “, David speculates. “ … no”.
Suddenly the lights in the house have turned off. “Nothing likes to die, not even a room”, David says. George has taken a scarf out of the room. “It belongs to Lydia”, he says. The scarf is torn and full of blood.
Now George switches off the house and the children go hysteric. Lydia tries to persuade her husband to give the children just a few minutes. “The more I see in what we have gotten ourselves in, the more it sickens me.”, George is sure. “Oh, I hate you!”, Peter yells. George switches off the shoelacer, the massage chairs and other machines. In half an hour the family expects David to come back and to move into a house without machines. Now the children beg to use the nursery for just a few minutes.
“Okay, okay”, George says and switches it on again. “I’ll be glad when we get away for a month”, Lydia says. “In five minutes we’ll be gone for Iowa.”

Suddenly the children are calling: “Daddy, mommy, come quick!” They run down the hall. Nowhere can they find the children. They hurry to the nursery. The door slammes. It is locked from the outside. Both beat at the door. “Now, don’t be ridiculous, children, it is time to go. Mr. McClain will be here in a minute and ...” and then they hear the sounds. The lions on three sides of them, roaring in their throats. Both scream and suddenly realize why those other screams have sounded familiar.

“Well, here I am”, said David McClain in the nursery doorway. He stares at the children having a little picnic lunch in the open desert. Above them: the hot African sun. “Where are your father and mother?” The children look up and smile: “Oh, they’ll be here, directly”. In the distance McClain sees the lions clawing and feeding in silence under the shady trees.

“A cup of tea?” Wendy asks in the silence.
                                                                 ...................................

The illustrated man finds a picture of a ion on his chest. He does not feel well about another tattoo, but is persuaded to stay and listens to another story.
His body quite covered with tattoos, he still does not manage to leave and experiences another story, knowing he'll get a tattoo of that one, too.

Marionettes

Two friends walk the street. One, Smith, wonders why the other, Braling, comes along for a drink with him. It hasn’t been possible since he was married. Now, his friend produces a ticket to Rio out of his pocket. He’s going to go there the next morning. Smith wonders even more.
Braling is nervous, Smith notices and wishes to go with him to Rio.
They go out to Braling’s house and stare up through the dark air.
In the window above them, on the second floor, a shade raises. A man about thirty-five years old, with a touch of gray at either temple, sad gray eyes, and a small thin mustache looks down at them.
“Why, That’s You!” cries Smith.
“Sh-h-h, not so loud!” Braling waves upward. The man in the window gestures significantly and vanished.
“I must be insane”, said Smith. “Is this your twin brother?” As the man comes, Braling lets him listen to his chest. “Tick,tick,tick…” He touches the man’s warm hands and cannot believe that there is no other difference detectable. His friend tells the other Braling to give Smith a card: “Marionettes. inc.” it says. Now Braling explains to his friend that a robot replaces him while he goes around and enjoys life for six months. He is built to do everything: eat, sleep, perspire, … natural as natural is.
“You are taking good care of my wife?” Braling asks the robot. The robot tells him that he even has grown to be fond of his wife.

Wanting such a robot for himself, Smith asks for the card and gets it.
Reading the cards he learns that it will take two months until a robot will be done. At home he looks at his savings book and finds out that $10.000 are missing. What has Natty done with it? Did she buy the house at the Hudson? He rushes to the bed Natty is sleeping in trying to ask her about the missing money. There was something about her. … His heart throbbed violently, his tongue dried, he shivered, his knees suddenly turned to water, he collapsed. “Natty!” And then the horror thought and then the terror and the loneliness engulfed him.
Without desiring to do so, he bend foreword until his ear rested on her bosom. “Natty!” he cried. “Ticktick ticktick…”

Braling and Braling II go back into the house. “Well, it’s the cellar box for you, BII” “That’s what I want to talk to you about”, says Braling II: “The cellar. I don’t like the tool box.”  “I’ll try to fix up something more comfortable.”  “I am perfectly alive and I have feelings.”  “They didn’t tell me at the Marionettes shop that I am getting a difficult specimen.”
 “There is a lot you don’t know about us.” said Braling II. “We are pretty new and we are sensitive.  .. and another thing: Your wife, I have grown fond of her, I think I am in love with her. And I have been thinking about Rio. How nice it is there and that I never get there. And I thought about your wife. And I think we could be very happy.”
Braling strolled as casually as he could to the cellar door. “You don’t mind waiting a moment? I have to make a phone call.”
“To whom?” Braling II asks.
“No one important.”
“To Marionettes inc. to come and get me?”
“No, no! Nothing like that.”
A metal firm grip holds his arm.
”Is it my wife? Did you two talk about this? She must have ..”
A hand closes his mouth. “You will never know”, Braling II smiled.
Mrs. Braling touches her shin. Someone has just kissed it. She looks up. “Why? You haven’t done this in about years.”
“Let’s see what we can do about that”, someone said.
 

(ticktick ticktick ticktick …)

                    ...........................

The young man listens to more. He feels along with each story and sees the pictures evolve from each tattoo.
Before the last story he sees a heart on the illustrated man's back. Inside there is the only space apart from the man's head, which is not covered with tattoos. Looking at it he sees how the illustrated man strangles him. To avoid that he takes a stone and tries to kill him. Shocked by his deed, he flees, but the illustrated man is not dead...