millions, you understand, don’t you? I’m going to suggest to the
Good Night, Sophie
179
production committee a couple of films that will star you, Moa. There
are millions and millions of consumers who go mad for Oneirofilms in
a primitive setting. You’ll make a big hit, too, I promise you. But not
right now, it’s not the right moment . . .’
Bradley got up. He felt faint, his legs weak and tired.
‘Please, Gustafson. Also tone down the slaves’ fight episode. Too
much movement, too much violence. The waste of energy is en-
ormous . . .’
He went tottering off, surrounded by technicians.
‘Where’s Sophie?’, he asked as he got to the back of the room.
Sophie Barlow smiled at him.
‘Come in my office’, he said. ‘I have to talk to you.’
*
*
*
*
*
‘All right, I’m not saying anything new, they’re old words, stale, you
must have heard them a hundred times at school and during your
training course. But it would benefit you to give them some thought.’
Bradley was walking back and forth in the room, slowly, his fingers
laced together behind his back. Sophie Barlow was slouched in an
armchair. From time to time she stretched out a leg and stared at the
toe of her shoe.
Bradley stopped for a moment in front of her.
‘What’s the matter with you, Sophie? Are you having a crisis?’
The woman made a nervous, awkward gesture. ‘Having a crisis?
Me?’
‘Yes. That’s why I called you into the office. You know, I don’t want
to read you the riot act. I simply want to remind you of the
fundamental precepts of our system. I’m not young any more,
Sophie! You’re running after a chimera!’
Sophie Barlow squinted and then opened her eyes as wide as a
cat’s.
‘A chimera? What’s a chimera, Bradley?’
‘I told you, I can spot some things right off. You’re having a crisis,
Sophie. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the
propaganda that those pigs at the Anti-Dream League put out by the
truckload to undermine our social order.’
Sophie seemed not to pick up the insinuation. She said:
‘Was Moa’s performance really that good?’
Bradley passed a hand behind his neck. ‘Absolutely. Mohagry will
make it big, I’m convinced of it . . .’
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Lino Aldani
‘Better than mine?’
Bradley snorted. ‘That’s a meaningless question.’
‘I made myself clear. I want to know which of us you liked better,
me or Moa.’
‘And I repeat, your question is idiotic, lacks common sense, and just
goes to confirm my suspicion—in fact, my conviction—that you’re
going through a crisis. You’ll get over it, Sophie. All actresses go
through this phase sooner or later. It seems to be a necessary stage . . .’
‘I would like to know just one thing, Bradley. Something that’s
never said in the schools, something nobody ever talks about. Before.
What was there before? Was everybody really unhappy?
Bradley took up pacing around the armchair.
‘Before, there was chaos.’
‘Bradley! I want to know if they were really unhappy.’
The man stretched out his arms disconsolately.
‘I don’t know Sophie. I didn’t exist at the time, I wasn’t born yet.
One thing is sure: if the system has asserted itself, it means that
objective conditions have allowed it to do so. I would like you to be
aware of one very simple fact: technology has permitted the realiza-
tion of all our desires, even the most secret ones. Technology,
progress, the perfection of instruments and the exact knowledge of
our own minds, of our own egos . . . all of that is real, tangible. Hence even our dreams are real. Sophie, don’t forget that only in very rare
cases is the Oneirofilm an instrument of comfort or compensation.
Almost always it is an end in itself, and when just now I had you, I
enjoyed your body, your words, and your odours amid a play of
exotic emotions.’
‘Yes, but it’s always artificial . . .’
‘Okay, but I wasn’t aware of it. And then, even the meaning of
words evolves. You use the word artificial in the pejorative sense it had two centuries ago. But not today, today an artificial product is no
longer a surrogate, Sophie. A fluorescent lamp, correctly adjusted,
gives better light than the sun. This is true of the Oneirofilm as well.’
Sophie Barlow looked at her fingernails.
‘When did it begin, Bradley?’
‘What?’
‘The system.’
‘Eighty-five years it’s been now, as you should know.’
‘I do, but I mean the dreams. When did men begin to prefer them to
reality?’
Bradley squeezed his nose, as if to collect his thoughts.
Good Night, Sophie
181
‘Cinematography began to develop at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century. At first it was a question of two-dimensional images
moving on a white screen. Then, sound, the panoramic screen, colour
photography were introduced. The consumers gathered by the hun-
dreds in special projection halls to watch and listen, but they never felt the film, at most they experienced a latent participation through an
effort of fantasy. Obviously the film was a surrogate, a real and proper
artifice for titillating the erotic and adventurous taste of the public.
However, movie-making then represented a very powerful instru-
ment of psycho-social transformation. Women of that period felt the
need of imitating actresses in their gestures, vocal inflections, dress.
This was no less true of men. Life was lived according to the movies.
First the economy was conditioned by it: the enormous demand for
consumer goods—clothes, cars, comfortable housing—was of course
due to real exigencies of nature, but also and above all to the ruthless, indefatigable advertising that harassed and seduced the consumer
every minute of the day. Even then, men longed for the dream, were
obsessed by it, day and night, but they were far from achieving it.’
‘They were unhappy, right?’
‘I repeat, I don’t know. I’m only trying to illustrate for you the
stages of the process. Toward the middle of the twentieth century the
standard woman, the standard situation was already in existence. It’s
true that there were directors and producers in those days that tried to
produce cultural films, ideological movies, to communicate ideas and
elevate the masses. But the phenomenon lasted only a short time. In
1956 scientists discovered the pleasure centres of the brain, and
through experimentation revealed that electric stimulation of a
certain part of the cortex produces an intense, voluptuous reaction
in the subject. It was twenty years before the benefits of this discovery were made available to the public. The projection of the first three-dimensional movie with partial spectator participation signalled the
death of the intellectual film. Now the public could experience odours
and emoti
ons; they could already partly identify with what was
happening on the screen. The entire economy underwent an un-
precedented transformation. The human race was starved of pleasure,
luxury and power, and only asked to be satisfied at the cost of a few
pennies.’
‘And the Oneirofilm?’
‘The Oneirofilm came out, fully perfected, only a few years later.
There’s no reality that surpasses dreams, and the public became
convinced of this very quickly. When participation is total, any
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Lino Aldani
competition from nature is ridiculous, any rebellion useless. If the
product is perfect, the consumer is happy and the society is stable.
That’s the system, Sophie. And certainly your temporary crises are not
likely to change it, not even the melodramatic chatter of the Naturists,
unscrupulous people who go around collecting funds for the triumph
of an idea that is unbalanced to start with, but for their own personal
profit. If you want a good laugh—last week Herman Wolfried, one of
the leaders of the Anti-Dream League, appeared in the offices of the
Norfolk Company. And do you want to know why? He wanted a
private Oneirofilm, five famous actresses in a mind-blowing orgy.
Norfolk has accepted the commission and Wolfried is paying for it
through the nose, so much the worse for him.’
Sophie Barlow jumped up.
‘You’re lying, Bradley! You’re lying on purpose, shamelessly.’
‘I have proof, Sophie. The Anti-Dream League is an organization
out to dupe simpletons, incurable hypochondriacs and passeísts.
Perhaps there is some remnant of religious sentiment behind it, but
at the centre of it is only greed.’
Sophie was on the verge of tears. Bradley moved toward her
solicitously and put his hands on her shoulders in a tender, protective
gesture.
‘Don’t think about it any more, Sophie.’
He guided her over to the desk, opened the safe, and got out a
small, flat, rectangular box.
‘Here’, said Bradley.
‘What is it?’
‘A present.’
‘For me?’
‘Yes, actually it was to give you this that I called you into the office.
You’ve made twenty Oneirofilms for our production company, an
inspiring goal, as it were. The firm is honouring you with a small
recognition of your worth . . .’
Sophie started to unwrap the present.
‘Leave it’, Bradley said. ‘You can open it at home. Run along now, I
have a lot to do.’
There was a line of helitaxis just outside the building. Sophie got
into the first one, took a magazine from the side pocket of the vehicle,
lit a cigarette and, flattered, contemplated her own face on the front
cover. The helitaxi rose softly, steering for the centre of the city.
Her lips were half-open in an attitude of offering, the colour, the
Good Night, Sophie
183
contrast between light and shadow, the expression ambiguous . . .
Each detail seemed knowingly graded.
Sophie looked at herself as if in a mirror. At one time the job of
acting had presented various negative aspects. When she made a love
scene, there was a flesh and blood ’partner’, and she had to embrace
him, tolerate the physical contact, kisses, words breathed straight into
her face. The camera photographed the scene which the spectators
then later saw on the screen. Now it was different. There was ‘Adam’,
the mannequin packed with electronic devices having two minute
cameras conveniently placed in his eyes. ‘Adam’ was a wonder of
receptivity: if the actress caressed him, the receptivity valve registered the sensation of the caress and fixed it, together with the visual image, on the reel of Oneirofilm. Thus the consumer who would later use
that reel would perceive the caress in all its sensory fidelity. The
spectator was no longer passive but the protagonist.
Naturally, there were Oneirofilms for men and Oneirofilms for
women. And they were not interchangeable: if a male consumer,
plagued by morbid curiosity, inserted in his reception helmet a reel
meant for female consumption, he would get an atrocious headache,
and also risk short-circuiting the delicate wiring of the apparatus.
Sophie told the pilot to stop. The helitaxi had gone barely a dozen
blocks, but Sophie decided to proceed on foot.
Grey and blue overalls were running along the street. Grey and
blue, no other colours. There were no stores, no agencies, there
wasn’t a single soda-fountain, or a window full of toys, or even a
perfume store. Once in a while, on the fronts covered with soot,
encrusted with rubbish and moss, the revolving door of a shop
opened. Inside, on the smooth glass counters, there was the dream,
happiness for everybody, for all pocketbooks, and it was Sophie
herself, nude, for anybody who wanted to have her.
They marched on. And Sophie Barlow marched along with them,
an army of hallucinated people, people who worked three hours a
day, prey to the spasms that the silence of their own shells yearned
for: a room, an Amplex and a helmet. And reel after reel of
Oneirofilms, millions of dreams of love, power and fame.
In the middle of the square, on a large platform draped in green, the
fat man was gesticulating emphatically.
‘Citizens!’
His voice raised itself as loud and clear as a dream speech, when the
dreamer has the whole world singing hosannas at his feet.
‘Citizens! An ancient philosopher once said that virtue is a habit. I
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Lino Aldani
am not here to ask the impossible of you. I would be a fool if I
expected to renounce it immediately and completely. For years we
have been slaves and succubuses, prisoners in the labyrinth of
dreams, for years we have been groping in the dense darkness of
uncommunicativeness and isolation. Citizens, I invite you to be free.
Freedom is virtue, and virtue is a habit. We have cheated nature too
long, we must rush to make amends, before we arrive at a total and
definite death of the soul . . .’
How many times had she listened to speeches like that? The
propaganda of the Anti-Dream League was sickening, it had always
produced in her a profound sense of irritation. Lately, however, she
had surprised and bewildered herself. Perhaps because she was an
actress, when the orators in the squares spoke of sin, perdition, when
they incited the crowds of consumers to abandon the ‘dream’, she
took the accusation as if it had been personally aimed at her; she felt a responsibility for the whole system. Perhaps behind the orators’
emphatic tone there actually was some truth. Perhaps they hadn’t
told her everything at school. Maybe Bradley was wrong.
On the platform the fat man ranted and raved, pounding his fist on
the wood of the lectern, red in the face, congested. Not a soul was
listening to him.
When the veiled girl came out of a small side door, there were some
in the crowd who stopped for a second. From the loudspeakers issued
the sound of
ancient oriental music. The girl began to take off her
veils, dancing. She was pretty, very young, and made syncopated,
light, eurhythmic gestures.
‘An amateur’, Sophie said to herself. ‘A would-be actress . . .’
When she was standing naked in the centre of the platform, even
the few men who had stopped to wait moved on. One or two of them
laughed, and shook their heads, disappointed.
The Anti-Dream League girls stopped the passers-by, they ap-
proached the men, thrusting out their breasts in an absurd, pathetic
offer.
Sophie lengthened her stride. But someone stopped her, grabbing
her arm. It was a tall, dark young man, who stared at her with steady
black eyes.
‘What do you want?’
‘To make you a proposition.’
‘Speak up.’
‘Come with me, tonight.’
Sophie burst out laughing.
Good Night, Sophie
185
‘With you! What for? What would I get out of it?’
The young man smiled faintly, patiently, a smile tinged with
security and superiority. Clearly he was accustomed to this sort of
refusal.
‘Nothing’, he admitted unperturbed. ‘But our duty is to—’
‘Cut it out. We’d spend the night insulting each other, in a pitiful
attempt to achieve ‘‘natural harmony’’ . . . Dear boy, your friend up
there on the platform is spewing forth a pile of nonsense.’
‘It’s not nonsense’, the young man retorted. ‘Virtue is a habit. I
could—’
‘No, you couldn’t. You couldn’t because you don’t want me, and
you don’t want me because I’m real, true, living, human, because I
would be a surrogate, a substitute for a reel of Oneirofilm which you
could buy for a few pennies. And you? What could you offer me? Silly
presumptuous young ass!’
‘Wait! Listen to me, I beg of you—’
‘Goodbye’, Sophie cut him short. And continued her walk.
The words she aimed at the young man had been too harsh. It had
been a uselessly hostile reaction; she might have rejected his proposi-
tion neither more nor less vehemently than the other passers-by did,
with some grace, or better, with a self-sufficient smile. In the last
analysis, what right did she have to insult him, perhaps to hurt his
feelings? He was acting in good faith. But what about the leaders?
Bradley has assured her a number of times that the directors of the
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 30
