Investigations of the Future

by Brian Stableford

  “Well,” I said, laughing, “I’m strongly tempted to write my own name. I’ve had every intention of marrying for a long time, but have never encountered the opportunity.”

  “At your service—the register is open to anyone, without distinction. Inscription only costs five dollars, which is non-refundable.”

  I thought that obtaining for twenty-five francs the guarantee of a legitimate wife, who loves you and whom you love, wasn’t too expensive. I wrote my name and put the five dollars into the hands of a cashier, in return for which he gave me a red file bearing the number 128,637. That was the registration number that would replace my name in all the subsequent operations.

  “Let’s go on to registration,” said my guide. “Here the candidate is required to furnish certain documents: firstly, a certificate of bachelorhood, widowhood or divorce, as the case may be; secondly, a certificate of morality; thirdly, a certificate of means of existence, profession and assets; fourthly, a birth certificate, etc.”

  “Damn it!” I exclaimed. “I’m thwarted at the first step. I never thought that Americans were so bureaucratic. Your Dr. Milner must surely have French blood in his veins. One doesn’t usually have to jump through so many hoops when one gets married—one finds a clergyman and that’s that.”

  “We don’t forge unions like that, Monsieur,” replied the master’s secretary, dryly. “You have only to take a walk in the park and you’ll meet women who, in order to marry you, would even by-pass the clergyman. For us, love is required.”

  “Is love the result of formalities and stupidities, then?” I said, rather vexed.

  “No, Monsieur, these formalities are necessary for us to obtain the guarantees that we need.”

  Not wanting to have wasted my twenty-five francs, I emptied the compartments of my wallet on to the clerk’s desk, including my passport, my press card, several other cards attesting that I was a member of literary societies or professional associations, an old stage-pass, letters from officials accrediting me with respect to famous individuals I was to interview, a rent-book, a polling card, various papers demanded by our postal administration, customs or pawn-shops, an insurance policy against accidents, and letters and a card from our consul in Denver, Monsieur Philémon. Phlegmatically, the clerk placed them all in a folder bearing the number 128,637 and gave me a receipt, on payment of a further five dollars.

  Mr. Steeg was then kind enough to explain that all the documents would be placed in the hands of the agents responsible for checking their authenticity. After a lapse of time, which was unlikely to be less than twenty-four hours, my registration number would be attached to one of the notice-boards labeled Admitted or Refused. The most minimal deception would lead to refusal.

  “Damn! In forty-eight hours I have to be more than a thousand miles away. Isn’t there any way of speeding up the checks?”

  “I’ll ask,” said the obliging Mr. Steeg.

  After a long negotiation, the chief checker agreed, in view of the fact that I was a foreigner, to simplify the operations. By way of compensation he required me to make a certain number of sworn statements, and I soon saw my number on the board of admissibles. I hurried to the clerk, who, with the same phlegm, returned them to me and handed me a red card—those given to ladies are blue. The card, bearing the number 128,637 at the top, was divided into two columns, one entitled Description, the other Request. In each column the same 175-item questionnaire was printed. That’s what I said: a hundred and seventy-five. The checking clerks had already filled in the blanks with respect to my age, date of birth, nationality, resources, and so on. The remainder would be filled in by the members of the medical committee, at a cost of ten dollars.

  My guide had warned me that the medical examination was very meticulous, the slightest error leading to the payment of damages and compensation, but I had not imagined its extent.

  After having passed through a very comfortable cloakroom I presented myself, as naked as a worm, before the medical board. They sounded my chest, palpated me and interrogated me with an indiscretion that, in any other circumstances, would have seemed to me to be revolting. When the gentlemen had established well and truly that I was not carrying any disease, that I did not manifest any physical, intellectual or moral infirmity, or any hereditary or acquired defect, they passed me on to the description service, properly speaking. That was more complete, since it was concerned with character, ideas and moral qualities, than Dr. Bertillon’s anthropometric method. My face was photographed head on, in profile, at an angle and from the back; imprints were taken of my hand and one of my kisses; I was made to write a few affectionate words addressed to an unknown woman, in order to give an idea of my character and my style. I had to speak into the recording cylinders of a phonograph. Finally, my card was handed back to me, bearing responses to the 175 questions relating to me. That cost me another ten dollars.

  I found Mr. Steeg in the gentlemen’s hall.

  “Well,” I said to him, “to what further persecution are you going to subject me? I have to tell you that I’m beginning to find the joke a little long-winded.”

  “My dear sir, you now have forty-eight hours to inscribe in the second column of your card, headed Request, the description of the woman you desire to take as your wife, as well as your plans for the future. The forty-eight hours is obligatory.”

  “But in forty-eight hours I’ll be the two thousand miles away! Come on, Mr. Steeg, since I’m a foreigner, can’t the delay be reduced to five minutes? A long time ago I’ve had a perfectly exact idea of what I’d like in a woman, and if you’ll permit, I can fill in the 175 blanks of the request immediately.”

  “Monsieur, these delays have been calculated and fixed by Dr. James Milner himself. We have often been asked for prolongations, but never for abbreviations. The lapse of time is necessary for the candidates to be clear as to what they ought to request. We have, moreover, amphitheaters for their information, in which daily lectures are given on psychology and physiology, designed to show them the reasons and causes of affinities and repulsions, to teach them how to form and continue happy unions, of what perfect accord consists, and, in brief, to communicate to them a host of other eminently practical notions regarding the social and intimate relations between the sexes, of which your European newlyweds have no notion.”

  I replied that, like the young people of Europe, I had instructed myself by practice—which as, I agreed, detestable and dangerous, but which was nevertheless capable of advantageously replacing lectures.

  Only the intervention of the supervisor in charge of the men’s quarter was able to spare me the forty-eight-hour delay. I immediately began writing the 175 responses to the questionnaire relating to the person I desire to take as a wife. Mr. Steeg advised me not to be too demanding, not to expect perfection, for I would then risk remaining unclaimed. It was necessary to know how to be content with certain qualities and to overlook a few petty faults, thus arriving at a very satisfactory compromise. I followed his advice and handed a completed card to the supervisor himself, who was kind enough to write “urgent” on it.

  “Now,” my guide continued, “Your card will be handed on to the correspondence service. All the cards are centralized there, the red on one side, the blue on the other. They’re classified in pigeon-holes by age, and within each age-group by height, muscular strength, weight, hair- and eye-color, the size of the ears, the shape of the nose, dentition and all other intellectual, moral and social characteristics. Between the male and female racks of pigeon-holes are long tables at which the clerks work. This is what their work comprises:

  “You card, for example, is given to a clerk on the red side. He immediately searches, according to your description, for the place you ought to occupy in the pigeon-holes. One of two circumstances might then arise; either the pigeon-hole already contains one or more requests corresponding to your description, or none, If it contains one, the clerk will seek information from one of his colleagues on the blue side as to wheth
er the person who has made the request corresponds to your request. If there is no request in your pigeon-hole, or if the description differs from the one you have stipulated, the clerk simply transmits your request to the blue side. There, a search is made for the descriptions that most close match our desiderata—for it’s materially impossible to fulfill the 175 conditions you stipulate exactly. The chief of the service examines the descriptions himself, compares them with yours and chooses, as a last resort, the one that ought to be introduced. If he judges that the physical, intellectual or moral divergences are too great, the cards are replaced in their respective pigeon-holes and the client is asked to wait.”

  “Wait? You’re joking! I won’t be here! I’m expected in San Francisco; I have to go, and I think it’s in rather bad taste to have made me hand over seventy dollars”—I have forgotten to mention that my card, in order to be passed on to the correspondence service, had required a forty dollar fee—“under the pretext of furnishing me with a legitimate wife, and not even showing me one!”

  “Don’t get annoyed, 128,637—thanks to the supervisor’s note, they’ll hasten the correspondence, although the work generally takes at least twenty-four hours. You might be lucky enough to find a request in your pigeon-hole, with a description corresponding to the one you desire. Just be patient.”

  “Be patient! With you it’s always necessary to be patient!”

  “Knowing how to be patient, my dear sir, is the secret of happiness.”

  I was beginning to reflect bitterly on the naivety with which I had allowed 350 francs to be extorted from me when an electric bell rang in the waiting-room and I saw my registration number light up on the blackboard!”

  “What does that mean?” I asked Mr. Steeg.

  “Hurrah!” he exclaimed. “It means that the correspondence service is in possession of a card satisfying your request.”

  “Really?” I said, nonplussed. “What now?”

  “Now, we go as quickly as possible to the communication hall, where you’ll be given the card in question, while yours is handed to the designated lady in the other communication hall—if, that is, you’re fortunate enough that the person is in the institute a present.”

  We went into a hall adjacent to the central building and, for twenty dollars, I was handed a blue card bearing the number 203,005. I would be lying if I said that, at that moment, I did not feel a small shock in the heart, followed by a slight tremor. I studied that card with an insurmountable emotion, all the more so because, on the other side of the central building, in a similar room to the one in which I was standing, I knew that a young woman was holding in her hands, perhaps with a similar tremor, my own red card.

  I read the description. The requisite social conditions were almost fulfilled. The physical part responded quite well to what I had requested, but from the viewpoint of character, there was some divergence. The qualities seemed less accentuated and the ideas less absolute. I noticed, too, that Mademoiselle 203,005, in the almost exact portrait she had drawn of me without knowing me, had noted preponderant virtues that only existed in me in an embryonic state. Mr. Steeg assured me that it was always thus, one had to think oneself lucky to obtain an almost exact match. Love would do the rest!

  I reflected that, in sum, the honorability and morality of the young woman were guaranteed, that there was no deceptions in the social and pecuniary situation, that a committee of female physicians had certified that she had no infirmity or defect, hereditary or acquired, that the anthropometric service had indicated her physical and moral state to me exactly and impartially, and I could see, moreover, that her description was very close to the ideal woman of whom I had dreamed. Who, in the ancient world, could flatter themselves that they were going into a marriage with such assurances? And when I thought that the young woman, for her part, was probably of the same mental disposition with regard to me, a mad desire overtook me to make her acquaintance.

  “Ask to see the photograph and documents first,” Mr. Steeg advised me. “They’re usually handed over twenty-four hours after the card, but for you...”

  On seeing the photograph, I started. I recognized her! I definitely recognized her; I recognized that Mademoiselle 203,005, whom I had never seen! I understood that I was rediscovering in that unknown woman the original beauty that my dream caressed. I looked at the full face, the angled shot, the profile and the rear view; they were exactly what I had requested, if I were not the victim of a suggestion that made me see my own dream where there was thing—but no, the photograph was quite real.

  The hand had left a firm and frank imprint on the paper; the imprint of the kiss was soft; the writing was unpretentious, the style simple and quite natural. The voice on the phonograph seemed to be a trifle nasal, but the clerk assured me that it was due to the instrument, and I was not dismayed hear her say, with the tender and strong inflections that give such a powerful relief to the English language, the sentence: “Sir, I’ve never seen you, but since you respond to my ideal, I’ve known you for a long time. I hope that you can say as much about me.”

  “Yes, yes!” I exclaimed. “That’s absolutely what I think about you.”

  Meanwhile, the phonograph continued: “If so, it will be very pleasant to meet you, and to unite my destiny with yours.”

  “Where is she?” I said, hurling myself toward Mr. Steeg. “Where is she? I want to see her, immediately—immediately, do you hear?” My voice became threatening. “I want to; I demand it! And don’t tell me that I have to wait twenty-four or forty-eight hours, according to Dr, Milner’s calculations—I couldn’t care less.”

  “Calm down, 128,637, calm down! First, we’ll see whether 203,005 consents to the introduction.” And he went to telephone the introduction service.

  In truth, I no longer recognized myself—me, normally so patient, who had come to the Institute as a skeptic and had written my name down as a joke—now that I was taking things terribly seriously. I became irritated, carried away; a strange fever gripped me while I waited for 203,005’s response. Finally, an electric bell sounded; the demoiselle agreed to the introduction.

  “All you need now is Professor Milner’s authorization,” added the terrible Mr. Steeg. “We’ll send him the two cards; he’ll study them and make the final decision.”

  “To the Devil with your Dr. Milner. So much fuss to get married! It’s worse than the idiotic formalities of the Old World.”

  “I will simply point out to you, Monsieur,” said my guide, with a pinched expression, “that it’s scarcely four hours since you came into the Institute, and that in an entire lifetime, a man of the Old World does get to know his wife as well as you already know yours.”

  “Without having seen her!”

  “You’re going to see her; I can hear the doctor’s bell authorizing the introduction. Come this way.”

  Stupidly, I imagined that my companion was going to introduce me into the grand hall, where I would hear loud music, and that, at concert, a performance or a ball, I would be introduced to the demoiselle as it is done among us. What an error! The garden that was underneath the hall, with its sports pitches and its multiple amusements, was reserved for fiancés and their families; they stayed there until they were married. All around there were conversation or reading rooms, meeting rooms, restaurants and bars.

  Mr. Steeg invited me to have a cold drink, which I did not refuse, as I was beginning to be inconvenienced by the surges of heat that were rising to my face.

  “Come on,” he said to me, smiling, “be brave. You’ve now arrived at the final test, with a rapidity that constitutes a veritable record; it usually takes at least a week. Ten dollars to the service electrician, and you can go into the introduction room. Moreover, they’re the last ten dollars you’ll have to spend; they complete the hundred dollars we demand of you, and from now on, all remuneration is at your discretion.”

  “Who cares!” I exclaimed. “If it costs me another hundred dollars, I want to see her.”

 
; “Go in!”

  Picture a large rectangular room, separated into two by a metal sheet, hidden on both sides by blinds. Each of the two subjects is introduced to one side. There is complete darkness; the blinds are raised, and then, thanks to cleverly contrived lighting, one or other appears, in turn, brightly lit, while the other, remaining in darkness, can study them without the agreeable or disagreeable impression they feel being perceptible. If both are satisfied with that first glimpse—that’s the right word—they’re authorized to speak, but in darkness, aloud, and through the metal sheet. The operator reminds them that they must not reveal either their name or their address, nor say anything whatsoever contrary to morality or good manners. He starts the conversation, which can last as long as the clients wish.

  How can I translate the excitement and delight I experienced when I saw, in the darkness that enveloped me, the radiant and quasi-unreal apparition of 203,005? She was exactly as I had imagined. Elegant, without sacrificing anything to American bad taste, sitting in a rocking-chair, she was swaying, smiling in the light that inundated her. Her slender and supple grace, her vivid dark-eyed blonde beauty, realized so completely the conception I had of the desirable spouse that I seriously believed that I was the victim of a hallucination.

  I rubbed my eyes; the apparition vanished—and I was inundated with light in my turn. Surprise and joy must have given my wonderstruck person a slightly bewildered expression. When I was allowed to see the woman to whom my arms were reaching out reappear, she was standing much closer to the metal sheet and seemed anxious, troubled and emotional. Yes, she was emotional—but certainly not as much as me. What would I not have given to be outside that cage, far from the Institute, and to be able to say to her at close range the thousands of affectionate things kept in reserve for such a long time in the depths of my heart, while thinking of the moment when my dream would be realized. But was it not a dream?—that precipitate succession of scarcely events, providentially bringing together two beings born for one another.