“Professor Vogel’s Reading Machine” by Bethalynne Bajema.

“Professor Vogel’s original idea was simply to create a reading machine that would allow his blind daughter to benefit from the books in his library even when there was no one there to read to her. Given the lose of her mother and the professor’s own near obsession with the act of study and creation, this was sadly a common problem for the girl.

“The good professor set about the task of creating his reading machine with the same zeal and manic frenzy he offered all of his projects. The end result was a clunky but well working machine that could indeed be placed over a page and read the words there and transfer them into something that could be heard through a sound funnel. There was just one problem. Like all of Vogel’s creations the machine went above and beyond its original purpose. Some say the devil is in the details and in Vogel’s case the devil seems to be firmly rooted into the cogs and fine tuning. Not only did his reading machine read the words on a page, it had this eerie and somewhat preternatural ability to read things that weren’t there. We all say read between the lines and this machine took that suggestion to heart…”

- Etta Diem