In A Thousand Years

by Emile Calvet

  Turning their backs to the central causeway, which reigned over all the sumptuous thoroughfares, they had a fine collective view of the magnificent habitations that bordered the avenue.

  For a few moments Gédéon had been exhibiting manifest symptoms of astonishment, which did not escape the schoolmaster.

  “I believe, my young friend,” he said, “that something unusual has caught your eye.”

  “You said it, my dear Master,” the young man replied, “and this is what astonishes me. Without missing shops, and most of all shopkeepers, I must admit that I’m very surprised not to have yet seen any department stories on these magnificent highways. Perhaps we’re a long way from the commercial center.”

  “Not at all, my dear friend. From the viewpoint in question, Paris is much the same from one end to the other. Everyone buys what he needs from the warehouses, where the choice is immense and the prices of all kind of merchandise are set fairly. It’s a long time now since we parted company with the multiple devouring parasitism thanks to which raw materials and manufactured goods only reached the consumer after having passed through eight or nine unnecessary hands, each of which took a profit. That has resulted in a lowering of the prices of all items.

  “You will not even perceive any workshops on our route, because, by reason of the convenience of transportation, those establishments all function some distance away from the city, where they find all the elements desirable for installation.”

  At that moment, the carriage went past the last house in the avenue, a rapidly as a projectile, and he marvelous panorama of the river and its banks was offered to their gaze. Soon they found themselves on the bridge and could see the whole of the majestic expanse of water.

  The carriage, continuing at the same pace, launched itself into another boulevard, which formed the final branch of a triple avenue meeting at the end of the bridge. After a journey of a few minutes, it stopped in front of a lawn on the far side of which stood a kind of cyclopean construction.

  “That’s the Market, Messieurs,” said Herber, pointing at the monument.

  The immense Market formed a square extending for eight hundred meters on each side. In the center of the façade, a broad and elevated gallery traversed the monument all the way through. The fronton of the arch, raised up several meters and ornamented with mythological reliefs, was dominated by an enormous statue of Agriculture.

  Crowning the edifice, an octagonal tower of pink marble surrounded by porphyry columns supported a gigantic group representing the four parts of the world, supporting the terrestrial globe.

  The entire framework of the edifice was made of malleable cast iron, sparkling like polished steel. The cladding was established in brick and polychromatic marble.

  The visitors headed for the gallery.

  As they went under the arch, the schoolmaster proposed that they visit, in succession, the markets in fruit, fish, poultry and butchery.

  “By what means do all these provisions, which I assume to be very considerable, arrive?” Antius asked.

  “Via cylindrical subterranean tubes, which collect them two leagues from the city at the general docks,” Herber replied. “It’s there that balloons arriving from all over the world are unloaded. Scarcely has it arrived in the cellars of the market than the merchandise is raised up by electromotive machines, which distribute them to their respective places.

  “On the other hand, the suburban market-gardeners, whose proverbial cleverness is stimulated by strong competition, are served by a special electric haulage system, which reaches the market via tunnels established under the public highway. That exclusion is necessitated by the requirements of the extreme cleanliness of the city.”

  The strollers had passed through the archway and were in the midst of a bustling crowd.

  Herber drew his companions to the right; in a few steps they crossed the threshold of an immense room, in which the most magnificent, rarest and tastiest fruits were disposed in tall, dense and closely-packed pyramids. It was scarcely possible to see he merchants who were enthroned with dignity in the midst of that vegetal plethora, without harassing customers and, more especially, without engaging in the legendary debates of their equivalents of another era, more remarkable for their color than their amenity.

  The moderate level of the prices, established in advance, initially astonished the strangers.

  “Nothing is more logical,” said Herber. “The entire world is cultivated today, and aerial navigation, extending to all places in accordance with the needs and richness of the soil, maintains both the stability and cheapness of prices.”

  Exotic fruits, transported through the cool layers of the atmosphere with prodigious speed, arrived at the market with all their succulence and freshness. Many had been picked the previous day and presented the humid velvet quality of fruit on the tree.

  The stroll through the hall was an enchantment.

  Pyramids of coconuts full of delicious milk and fresh pineapples rose up several meters. Heaps of peaches, grapes, figs, pomegranates, organs and lemons, cultivated in the great plantations of Central Africa, where the precocious harvest precedes that in the temperate regions by several months, rose up on all sides, dividing the attention of the buyers with the equally abundant products of the colossal farms of the South American pampas.

  The travelers went into the fish market.

  In that new enclosure the entire ichthyological world was represented, either living and imprisoned in marble basins full of fresh water and crystal aquaria filled with sea water, or in a state of dead nature, lying on damp beds of aquatic weeds.

  Tuna from the Saharan Sea with shiny scales, extended in long lines, enormous salmon from Lapland, eels from the watercourses of Central Asia and lampreys from southern Spain, still breathing, were particularly sought-after by the purchasers.

  The most various conchyological varieties formed veritable walls, cemented by wet grass, which loomed over the customers’ heads.

  A delightful freshness reigned over that part of the market, and the noise of the crowd was covered by the intense noise of an infinity of gushing fountains, which alimented the reservoirs.

  The four areas that the schoolmaster had listed were separated by two wide galleries cutting through the center of the edifice at right angles. The junction was ornamented with a monumental basin covered with steaming cascades, the waters of which, fringed with foam, half-drowned a varied cortege of naiads, gods and sea-monsters, which projected thick liquid sprays in all directions. The basin was surrounded by a crown of bright green grass, round which as disposed a chain of benches with slanting backs, on which several groups of clients of the gigantic gastronomical museum were currently lounging.

  Herber and his companions crossed the alleyway separating them from the poultry hall.

  Here, the slight and tinkling sound of waterfalls was replaced by the deafening cries of several thousand birds, indigenous or exotic, transported alive and continuing to peck around in cages lined up to infinity. The farms, woods and forests of the entire world had sent their tribute to the sovereign city of the Occident. Mountains of crates of fresh quail, arriving from the high Asiatic plateaux, and flocks of partridges from the Cape, arranged in tight rows, so long that the items in the center seemed cramped for hummingbirds, particularly attracted the doctor’s attention.

  “Aerial navigation,” said Herber, “brings substances within our range every day that once only arrived at determined times. Game is as abundant here during the summer as in winter, for it comes to us directly from austral countries of the world that are under snow while we are under the most ardent blaze of summer.”

  The travelers, while walking beneath an endless ceiling of hares and woodcock were going along a wall of fattened geese originating from the farms of Patagonia, the sight of which would have delighted Gargantua’s maître d’hôtel.

  On quitting that extraordinary tunnel, Herber and his guests went into the butchery hall.

  As wel
l as the finest specimens of indigenous husbandry, they perceived hecatombs of bison, roe deer, antelopes and a host of once-wild but now domesticated animals, which ingenious methods of fattening had brought to a state of incomparable perfection.

  The visitors had been walking for an hour and a half, and had only seen a small part of the immense warehouse to which the entire city came to obtain provisions.

  The extreme facility of communications, by suppressing distance, had led progressively to these concentrations of produce, which, by putting the consumers in direct relation to the producers, had done more to ease economic problems than all the books written on the subject in six hundred years.

  Eleven o’clock was chiming when Herber took his guests back to the avenue. The four men got on to the first vehicle that came along. Twenty minutes later, all the guests were gathered around the schoolmaster’s hospitable table.

  XXV. The Necropolis

  After the meal, Herber, retained by his functions, wished his friends good day and went back to the interior buildings of the school. The travelers, having taken their leave of their charming hostess, went down to the square. They had been deliberating for some time as to which way they ought to go when Gédéon said: “I’ve got an idea.”

  “You do surprise me,” said Antius.

  “I might even have said a good idea,” the young man went on, undisconcerted. “”Of course, I fear that it might not be welcomed by my uncle with all the enthusiasm that it merits.”

  “Keep it to yourself, then,” replied the doctor, in a surly tone.

  “That would be impossible, as it’s so original.”

  “What is it?” asked the physicist, intrigued by all these oratory precautions.

  “On the other side of the plaza,” Gédéon said, “there’s a monument that you’ve already gone past without paying any heed to it, and which bears as a sign the eloquent word Necropolis.”

  “Let’s go visit it!” exclaimed the doctor, promptly setting off in the indicated direction.

  “What!” said his nephew, trotting behind him, “you have no hesitation about going to inspect a colony to whose development your exploits have made such a considerable contribution?”

  “You’re like all those who speak ill of medicine,” replied Antius, continuing in his stride. “As soon as you have a cold in the head, they gladly summon the entire Faculty.”

  The physicist, who had caught them up, smiled incredulously, but, sensing that any reflection would only add fuel to fire, he contented himself with saying: “After all, it will be interesting to know how our descendants treat the residues of their ancestors.”

  The vast square was filed with a delightful coolness, and a large number of city-dwellers were leaning back on the comfortable seats, chatting to one another or reading the newspapers. The air was full of the murmur of gushing fountains, momentarily drowned out by the joyful cries of birds hidden in the foliage.

  The travelers traversed the lawn and went back under the shady vault of the centuries-of trees that surrounded the museum plaza. Having taken a hundred strides, they saw before them a superb portico whose tall columns produced an impressive effect. As they advanced, the façade of the edifice unfurled progressively, and they were soon able to appreciate the grandiose and majestic ensemble.

  Four sets of paired Corinthian columns, arranged from the base to the summit of the edifice in order of decreasing size, decorated the monument throughout its extent. Vast arched bays, framed with artistically-carved sculptures opened between the columns, traversed by bright draperies of pink silk, which partly intercepted the light of day.

  On the fronton of the portico, the word NECROPOLIS stood out in huge golden letters against a background of black marble. The monument, isolated from the neighboring palaces, was surrounded by a thick girdle of magnificent trees, which sheltered an ocean of flowers.

  The three men were mute with admiration.

  The physicist broke the silence. “What strikes me even more than the magnificence of this gigantic tomb,” he said, “is the absence of any characteristic that could awaken funereal ideas in the imagination of the living.”

  “In truth,” said Gédéon, “it makes death seem an attractive proposition.”

  “Let’s go in,” said Antius.

  “First we need to know whether that’s permitted,” Terrier objected.

  At that moment, joyful cries and youthful bursts of childish laughter resounded from the depths of the portico.

  “Oh!” exclaimed the young man, taking a step back. “Have today’s inventors found a way of cheering up the dead?”

  “Poltroon!” replied the doctor. “Can’t you guess that it’s children playing games inside the mausoleum?” And he went toward the door at a deliberate pace.

  The three men went into a vast vestibule decorated with unusual richness. The joyful racket was reaching a crescendo.

  “It’s truly an inverted world,” said Gédéon. “This is the only place in the city that’s a little noisy.”

  A few paces further on, the doctor, who was in the lead, suddenly stopped. “Look!” he said, extending his hand.

  The professor and the young man came forward. A curious spectacle met their eyes.

  In a vast interior courtyard, covered with a thick carpet of green grass, twenty children were capering around before the attentive eyes of a few young women. The latter were chatting gaily, sitting around an admirable blue marble fountain, which occasionally disappeared in a compact mist.

  The travelers went into the courtyard without their presence appearing to provoke the slightest attention among its joyful inhabitants.

  “Our descendants have given death a different image from their ancestors,” said the doctor. “Notice how cheerful the admirable architecture of this interior courtyard is, down to the smallest detail. This abode is veritably enchanting, at least externally. We can now visit the galleries, which are the most interesting aspect for us.”

  They went back into the vestibule. A large stairway of unpolished marble with a gentle slope led up to the first floor. They went up and soon found themselves on an immense landing filed with paintings and works of art. The window that illuminated it opened on to a balcony, the balustrade of which was supported by a long row of white stone colonnettes.

  Opposite the stairway, a high arched doorway bore on its fronton, engraved in golden letters, the dates 2700-2800.

  “What does that signify?” asked the young man.

  “It’s doubtless the gallery reserved for the dead of the 28th century,” Antius replied, heading for the entrance.

  His two companions followed him.

  The doctor opened the door with a confident hand, and the three men went into a room measuring at least two hundred meters in length and thirty broad. The ceiling, slightly vaulted and painted as a luminous sky, presented an appearance of infinite depth.

  The four walls disappeared entirely beneath a layer of golden urns about a foot tall. On the floor, a triple row of pyramids with multiple faces were laden from base to summit with similar vessels. Each funerary vase bore a blue enamel plate in its central part, on which the name of the deceased was inscribed, the dates of his birth and death, his profession, the services he had been able to render to society by his works, and the actions by which he had distinguished himself.

  “You can appreciate,” said the doctor, suddenly, “what immense progress cremation has represented, from the triple viewpoint of public health, piety toward the dead and historical verity. This immense palace, which exceeds in extent and magnificence all the marvels that we have admired, can sumptuously lodge the remains of five million individuals. Enclosed in precious vases, incorruptible in their essence, these remains might last for centuries. Anyone can come to bow down here before his ancestors and follow with his gaze the ascending scale of his own genealogy. The historian surely finds material proofs for his works, and the living are no longer threatened at every moment by the pestilential vapors that ceme
teries saturated with cadavers exhale without interruption.

  “Of all the arguments put forward by the adversaries of incineration, the most singular, indubitably, is the one based on the impossibility of being able to carry out ulterior research is cases of poisoning. That idea was as absurd from the scientific viewpoint as the social. In the first place, the condition of the residues of combustion is, in the great majority of cases, eminently favorable to chemical analysis, and, in the second place, one cannot admit that cases of violent death are sufficiently frequent to justify endangering public health.”

  The travelers, who had been standing still thus far, advanced, grave and contemplative, and arrived at the far end of the gallery. To their left another room opened, equally vast and populous as the first. It bore the same dates.

  “A lot of people died in the 28th century, then?” Gédéon queried.

  “These two galleries,” said Antius, “can only contain a quarter of the remains bequeathed by a century. “In our epoch, at least fourteen thousand people died in Paris every year, which is four million per century. We haven’t yet seen a million funerary urns.”

  The travelers continued walking and went through three further halls as crowded as the first. They had covered three wings of the building and found themselves back at their departure point. The funeral procession of the previous century was entirely exhausted. The gallery they had just quit had even been invaded by the dead of the early years of the 29th century.

  Slightly fatigued, the two scientists sank down on a divan backed up against the banisters.

  “While you rest,” said the young man, “I’ll cast an eye over the upper parts of the edifice. I want to know whether all the floors are inhabited.”

  A few minutes later he came down again like an avalanche.