Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  An obliging traveler, who was already therein, closed the door behind them.

  The interior of the carriage, illuminated by little electric lamps, contained half a dozen people sitting on comfortable banquettes. About ten places remained free.

  Almost immediately, the whistling recommenced, and Marcel felt that they were carried away at a prodigious speed between the walls of an enormous tube.

  He began to understand. The carriage in which they were traveling had been constructed on the same model as the pneumatic apparatus that, in his day, had served for the rapid transmission of dispatches over short distances. Messages were placed inside a hollow piston; the cylindrical container was then disposed in a tube of which it had the exact dimensions. With the aid of a pump, a void was created at one end of the tube, and the pressure of the air was sufficient to impel the piston rapidly to the far extremity.

  A few minutes later, Marcel and Blas emerged from the pneumatic carriage and set foot within the grounds of the school.

  XI. A Future Sorbonne

  While Marcel and Blas took a few moments’ rest, the latter gave his friend supplementary information regarding the professariat of the thirtieth century.

  “Nowadays,” he said, “The professors occupy very enviable situations. They’re on the same footing as the administrators of the State who are responsible for the division of natural wealth, and for the wellbeing of all. They have the same rank as the artists, poets and philosophers who determine esthetic changes in the landscape, education and the interior decoration of edifices. They’re honored and respected by their fellow citizens because they work hard and have a great deal of responsibility.”

  “Can you tell me, my dear Blas, what it’s necessary to do to become a professor?”

  “It’s not only necessary to give proof, in very severe examinations, of memory and intelligence, and to show that one knows ideas and facts in an impeccable fashion, but also to be the author of an important discovery or original theory within the series of knowledge that one aspires to profess. Needless to say, nowadays, intrigue, favor and protections count for nothing. Our examiners are absolutely impartial. They don’t even know the people they’re called upon to judge.”

  “I have difficulty believing that no illicit favor ever occurs...”

  “I can assure you that that never happens. The ignorant candidate and the venal examiner who protected him would be prey to such scorn, overwhelmed by such an insulting pity, that no one would ever dare to take the risk. In any case, the knowledge demanded of the candidates is so complex that fraud would be immediately detected.” After a moment’s silence, Blas added: “Then again what interest would there be in protecting incapable candidates? Places and distinctions don’t bring, among us, any surplus of comfort or opulence. Thy only constrain people to greater endeavor; so the idle and those poorly endowed from the intellectual viewpoint are careful to avoid the redoubtable proofs of the professariat. They content themselves with rendering services to society within the measure of their faculties or their energy,”

  “How do you choose the administrators and the artists that you mentioned just now?”

  “We employ the same system as for the professors. We appoint as an administrator someone who publishes a plan for the division of wealth more equitable than those of his predecessors. It’s the same with artists. Those who find new means of simplifying or magnifying the conception of beauty are immediately admitted to give their advice to the Great Council on which the embellishment of habitations and landscapes depend.”

  “Good…but what becomes, then, of political animosities and differences of opinion?”

  “It’s a long time since we renounced those vain quarrels, Present day society is no longer anything but one vast family, paternally administered by the most intelligent and the most honest.”

  “Are professors very numerous? Given the progress you’ve made in science, their number must be considerable.”

  “On the contrary; men distinguished enough to become professors are restricted in number. All the science of the past is taught to us by phonographs. The professors speak to all the students in the world, thanks to the apparatus you saw a short while ago...

  “So, now we’ll visit the lecture rooms. You’ll hear repeated by our speaking machines the lessons that the professors proclaim from the depths of their study to the rest of the world. The only difference from what happened in olden days is that the courses you’ll hear are no longer simple exercises in memory and application. Every lecture by our masters initiates us, if not to an entirely new discovery, at least to an improvement on previously adopted theories.”

  “I can’t see very clearly,” Marcel said, “with such a system, what might become of cities once celebrated for their universities, such as Florence, Heidelberg, Oxford, Madrid and Philadelphia.”

  “All those cities only exist any longer as names and memories. It’s a long time since the development of means of communication and the rapid diffusion of ideas have entirely ruined the faulty system of centralization employed in your time. There are now only three great agglomerations of human beings: the Old Continent, America and the Oceanian Provinces. The world only forms, so to speak, a single vast city, or, if you prefer, a single country.”

  “I confess that I don’t understand that very well.”

  Blas explained: “I mean that, as you’ve been able to see by means of our stroll through Paris this morning, uncomfortable and insalubrious agglomerations have disappeared entirely…and that’s understandable. Why did the people of old build cities and seek to be as close to one another as possible? It was in order to help one another more easily, to exchange more rapidly ideas and inventions useful to the community. Now, cities have become unnecessary. The wireless telephone permits me to debate freely with my comrades in Patagonia or Australia, and the aeroscaph gives me the facility of visiting them in a matter of hours. Presently, the solitary individual lost in the steepest valley in the Alps or the Himalayas enjoys the same advantages, the same facilities of existence, and the same refinements of civilization as the opulent citizen of the richest capitals of old. Cities, in the sense that you understand them, have ceased to exist because they became unnecessary...”

  While talking, Marcel and Blas arrived opposite a majestic row of porticos that gave access to the lecture rooms. They went silently into an amphitheater already full of attentive students, in which each one had a stall of white porcelain and a tablet furnished with a phonograph destined to replace the rudimentary notebooks of olden times.

  The hall, with entirely bare walls, was only decorated with a few paintings on porcelain.

  “This is where the courses in history are taught,” said Blas, in a low voice. “You’ll notice that the frescos that ornament this hall never represent individual actions. They are all consecrated to collective manifestations of human will. There, for example, is the combat of the Spartans in the pass of Thermopylae...Christians precipitating en masse to the tortures of the circus…the French nobility generously renouncing their feudal privileges on the celebrated night of the fourth of August…the Peace Congress of the year 2400 decreeing the definitive suppression of permanent armies.”

  To Marcel’s great surprise, the course in history was silent. No voice of any professor could be heard. On the screen disposed at the back of the room, however, facing the hemicycle, cinematographic images were succeeding one another slowly, dressed with the appearances and colors of life.

  Marcel thought that he was witnessing a veritable battle. In front of him, a circle of hills extended, occupied by the two belligerent armies. In the foreground, under the direction of engineers and officers, artillerymen were installing a battery. The cannons and the ammunition trucks were arriving at top speed, arranging themselves in a line. In the meantime, soldiers, with pick-axes and spades in hand, were constructing earthworks in all haste, which they fortified with faggots of wood and felled trees.

  Soon, the battery was in
place, and commenced firing. A fine white mist rose over the battlefield, and companies and regiments were seen dissolving under the artillery fire. The fugitives gained the shelter of a wood or a village, and then re-formed slowly, Cavaliers, swords in hand, arrived in a whirlwind of dust and came to break themselves against the massive square of the infantry, presenting the sharp points of bayonets everywhere. Soldiers were seen slipping from their saddles, and horses collapsing, dying, under their riders. The dull rumble of canons dominated the incessant whistle of bullets.

  The battery in the foreground was assailed by projectiles. Minute by minute, an artilleryman or an officer fell, the mud reddened by bloody foam. A shell hit one of the ammunition trucks, which exploded; the majority of its servants were killed; of eight artillery pieces only two continued firing, at long intervals. The strident voices of clarions were heard. A company tried to storm the position with bayonets.

  The last artillerymen were devastated by repetitive fire, and infantrymen with ferocious eyes, uttering howls of victory, took up positions in the ruins of the battery, amid the groups of powder-blackened and bloodstained cadavers...

  Marcel followed the spectacle, his throat taut with emotion. “It’s frightful,” he murmured, in a low voice.

  “That, however,” Blas replied, “is how people made war in your epoch. Arbitration ended up replacing wars until, by the force of events, it became unnecessary itself...”

  Meanwhile, the picture had changed.

  Scrupulous statistics now offered a synoptic list, in capital letters, of the number of wounded and dead in the battle that they had just witnessed. Then, by way of conclusion, the voice of a phonograph explained the real causes of the war, and enunciated and commented on the text of commercial treaties imposed by the victorious nation on the defeated nation. But Marcel was no longer paying attention to the figures; he had been too profoundly moved by the spectacle of the battle. The cries and gasps of the wounded were still ringing in his ears.

  “Let’s go out, I beg you,” he said to Blas. “I can see that you understand the study of history in a far superior fashion.”

  “Let’s go to the literature course, then,” Blas proposed. “The cadence of beautiful verses and the harmony of noble thoughts will exercise a benevolent influence on you. That will make you feel better.”

  Marcel took great pleasure in the literature course. During the short time that he stayed there, he noticed that the pupils of the year 3000 were not content to study masterpieces in Greek, Latin and French, but that they also paid considerable attention to the philosophy and poetry of the Hindus, the Chinese, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Incas. He heard a fragment of one of the heroic epics of Valmiki and a harmonious song by Li Tai-Po.

  From the course in literature they passed on to that in mathematics, and then to philosophy. In the former Marcel admired the astonishing calculating machines that, while sparing the minds of the pupils any unnecessary complication, permitted them to make rapid progress and to deploy their ingenuity without fatigue. In the latter he saw a “machine for logical thinking” much more perfect than those at the disposal of the pupils in the study halls.

  “The simplicity of the manipulation of this kind of apparatus,” said Blas, “will astonish you, but at present, the explanation might perhaps be a little too arduous for you. We’ll pass on to the course in geography, which might interest you more.”

  The geography hall had almost the same disposition as that of history. The professor’s lectern was replaced by a screen facing a hemicycle, on the steps of which the students were seated.

  “At the moment,” Blas murmured, “They’re following a course in historic geography, Look...”

  Marcel perceived in front of him the somber vaults of a tropical forest where negroes and wild animals were wandering. Gradually, the forest brightened. Vast clearances allowed the perception of flourishing plantations of rice, tea, cacao and rubber. The plantations gave way themselves to a city of whitewashed houses, where two railways came to terminate. The negroes were replaced by soldiers and colonists in pith helmets and twill garments.

  Until then, Marcel had not felt out of his depth; he had understood that he was watching the evolution of a colony; he had seen the “before, during and after.” But the picture did not take long to become unfamiliar to him.

  The air filled up with aeroscaphs and balloons. Locomotives without wheels, gliding along a single rail, replaced those he knew, and gradually, the city itself disappeared, giving way to a landscape of efflorescences, beautiful trees and porcelain edifices very similar to those he had seen since his arrival in the world of the thirtieth century.

  In the meantime, the sonorous voice of the phonograph explained succinctly the geological riches of the soil in that part of the world, its vegetal productions, and the various human races that had succeeded one another there.

  “You see,” said Blas, “that we have been able to render geography as interesting as all the rest. It’s no longer, as in your time, an indigestible mass of incomprehensible words, proper names and dates. The pupil who had once studied a region by our cinematographic method never forgets what he has learned.”

  “I can see,” Marcel said, “that the cinematograph plays a large role in that kind of study.”

  “We don’t only make use of cinematography for historical geography. We also employ the telephoto, which is for vision what the telephone is for hearing. Thus, look, I can read on the schedule attached beside the screen that the pupils are shortly going to study the city of Artika. You’ll see it as clearly, and in more detail, without moving from the spot, than during the very brief excursion we made there yesterday.”

  A few moments later, in fact, Marcel saw emerging, as if from a fog, the metallic spires and domes of the somber polar city.

  He left the geography course absolutely wonderstruck.

  “I’m showing you all this,” said Blas, “somewhat at the gallop. It’s necessary, to begin with, that you have a general idea of our system of education, in order to delve more deeply afterwards. Here’s the amphitheater of anatomy and physiology...”

  “You still devote yourselves to dissection?”

  “Not at all. The repulsive need for dissection was abandoned a long time ago. Thanks to the ancient Roentgen rays, we know the organs of the human body far better than our predecessors, without being obliged to undertake the macabre labor of the ancient physiologists. Look, in any case. You’ll be able to study the skeleton of one of our comrades.”

  Marcel raised his eyes. An obliging student had placed himself in front of a Roentgen ray apparatus, and his skeleton, considerably enlarged, was projected on a dark plate. Marcel noticed that not only was the bone structure designed with all its reliefs, but also with its veritable colors. The bones appeared pink under the blue-tinted periosteum, with the nacreous ligaments of the articulations.

  “I see,” he said to Blas, “that you’ve improved the Roentgen rays considerably. In my time they only gave the relief, sometimes only the silhouette, and that was still found utterly astonishing.”

  “What do you expect,” replied Blas. “You understand that in a thousand years, progress has marched on. Thanks to the apparatus you see, not only is dissection no longer in usage, but physicians have no more need to feel the pulse of patients, ask them to stick out their tongue and question them about their appetite. They content themselves with examining each of the organs attentively; then they write their prescriptions in the full knowledge of the cause and without fear of error. I’ll also mention that maladies have become extremely rare in the human race, and that the number of physicians is diminishing every year. Everyone looks after himself. One could count the specialists who still devote themselves to medicine. Hygiene has killed malady, and medicine itself.”

  From physiology, Marcel and Blas passed on to chemistry.

  Marcel was astonished. “But I don’t see any retorts, round flasks, Bunsen burners, test tubes, or any of the objects
that were seen in laboratories in my time...”

  Blas could not repress a smile. “Excuse me,” he said, “and pardon my stupidity. I forgot that in your epoch, people still admitted a hundred simple substances.”

  “And now?”

  “We’ve reduced them to one alone, and we transform one substance into another without the slightest difficulty.”

  “What! You’ve actually realized the dream of the alchemists?”

  “You could have perceived that already. I’ve already told you, I think, that we employ gold and precious stones for the most common usages, and only value them for their splendor and their inalterability. Matter, multiple in its transformations, is one in its essence.”

  Before the eyes of the fearful Marcel, a block of iron, submitted in certain conditions to the influence of an electric current, became, successively, a block of copper, a block of gold, a lump of carbon, and finally a bubble of hydrogen, which the demonstrator allowed to evaporate.

  Marcel left the course in unitary chemistry to go to the hall of interplanetary communications, which Blas had saved, as they say for a final treat. That hall was situated at the top of a tower and equipped with telephotic and telephonic mirrors of infinite power.

  “What news is there?” he asked a student who was coming out of the hall. “Is the communication from Mars legible this morning?”

  “Quite legible. The inhabitants of Mars are now responding to fourteen of our luminous signals. Within a month, perhaps we’ll be in possession of a common alphabet.”

  “You can see from here,” Blas said to Marcel, “the results of that interplanetary understanding. The inhabitants of the two worlds will exchange their inventions, their masterpieces, their progress of every kind. Our power and our wellbeing might be multiplied tenfold...”

  “There’s already question,” added the student that Blas had questioned, “of setting up a committee of Interastral Relations.”