The Fly (George Langelaan)
| "The Fly" | |
|---|---|
| Author | George Langelaan |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story |
| Published in | Playboy |
| Publication date | June 1957 |
"The Fly" is a short story by George Langelaan that was published in the June 1957 issue of Playboy magazine. It was first filmed in 1958, and then again in 1986. An opera of the same name by Howard Shore premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in 2008.
The short story "The Fly" is included in Langelaan's short story collection Out of Time (1964).
The story begins late at night when François Delambre is awakened by the telephone. On the other end of the line is his sister-in-law Helene who tells him that she has just killed his brother and that he should call the police. He does and they find the mangled remains of his brother in the family factory, his head and arm crushed under a hydraulic machine press.
Helene seems surprisingly calm throughout the investigation, willing to answer all questions except one: she will not give the reason for killing him. Eventually she is sent to a mental asylum and François is given custody of his brother's young son, Henri. François goes to visit her often, but she never provides the explanation for the question that he most desperately wants to know. Then one day she inquires how long a housefly's life span is. Later that evening, he hears Henri mention something about a fly with a funny white head. Realizing that this might somehow hold a clue to the murder, François confronts her with the news that Henri spotted a strange fly, and Helene becomes extremely agitated at this news. François threatens to go to the police and give them the information about the insect if she does not tell him what he wants to know. She relents and advises him to come back the next day, at which time he will receive his explanation. The next day she gives him a handwritten manuscript, and later that night he reads it.
His brother, André Delambre, was a brilliant research scientist who had just found an amazing discovery. Using machines that he called disintegrator-reintegrators, André could instantaneously transfer matter from one location to another through space. He had two such machines in his basement, one being used as a transmitter pod, the other as a receiver. Helene's manuscript reveals that at first André encountered several flukes, including an experiment in which he transmitted an ashtray that reintegrated in the receiver pod with the words "Made in Japan" on the back written backwards. He also tried transmitting the family cat, which disintegrated perfectly but then never reappeared. Eventually, however, he ironed out the mistakes and found that the invention worked perfectly. Then one day André tried the experiment on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a tiny housefly had entered the transmitter pod with him, and when he emerged from the receiver, his head and arm had been switched with that of the insect.
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