The Humanisphere

by Brian Stableford

  “One can’t buy an overcoat, a hat or boots without finding a newspaper stuck or stitched to them forcefully enough for one to be unable, in the time that it takes to detach it, to be unaware a least of the title. That name is printed on your underwear, traced with a knife on your bread, the shells of our eggs are ornamented with it, and young scamps take charge of writing it on your back in chalk; you take off your new gloves and it’s imprinted on your hand; you sit down, feel a pinprick and stand up suddenly, turn around and read the name implacably inscribed on the back of your chair, etc.

  “Finally, there’s the material composition of the newspaper and the typographical setting, which are designed to attract. The paper is beautiful, sometimes white and sometimes colored; the articles are sometimes printed in golden letters; the titles, above all, are striking, less so by the impression as the wording; headlines in enormous letters announcing the most exorbitant things can sometimes sell a hundred thousand copies of an issue; the entirety of editorial artistry consists of procuring some big news, true or false—especially false—and crowning it with an effective rubric.

  “It’s the newspaper most fertile in expedients of that sort that is the one most sought-after by lovers of publicity. But here’s an issue of Honesty. The leading article is the continuation of a polemic directed against the Minister of Finance.”

  I read:

  MURDER

  COMMITTED IN 1994

  BY THE PRESENT MINISTER OF FINANCE!!!

  The truth will always come out and it is rare for a crime to escape punishment. One often sees people deceiving their country with regard to their capability as well as their probity, fraudulently acquiring public confidence. Without intelligence, without talent and without experience of affairs, they have arrived at the summit of power by means of a long series of base actions and villainies; kneaded by vices, they are gorged with gold by the nation, in order to deliver themselves to the most crapulous debauchery. But such scandals do not last. Our Minister of Finance is no longer unaware that at the present moment, the affair of the child murdered by him in 1994 is being brought into the open. It is now known how he abducted the victim from the unfortunate mother who had committed the fault of giving herself to him. It is known where he threw the cadaver after having cut it into pieces. Justice, we cannot doubt, will therefore be done. That is all that we ask. The rumor is going round that the mother, his mistress, has also disappeared, but that rumor, although entirely consistent, does not seem to us to be sufficiently well-founded; we have let it drop. We will only be glad to see a man who has never been able to fulfill them removed from his functions, a vulgar thief dismissed from the State Treasury and condemned, as an abominable murderer deserves to be.

  “There are no longer any laws against defamation?” I said to Graymalkin.

  “No: the liberty of the press is now absolute. One can write anything about anything and anyone.”

  I cast an eye at random over the advertisements and read this one, the most extraordinary disposition of which was made to attract attention:

  TO YOUNG WOMEN

  who are loved too much

  and who fear

  THE CONSEQUENCES.

  Citizen 67, ninth street, house 14, in the course of long medical practice and a profound study of the affections of men, has observed that amour fatigues the stomach. His pastilles provide protection from that inconvenience.

  N.B. Women who are in an interesting situation ought to avoid these pastilles, which might have the effect of bring a rapid conclusion to their condition, without anyone perceiving it.22

  “And these horrors,” I said, “Are no longer prosecuted?”

  “How could they be prosecuted? Citizen 67 warns you honestly of an effect that his pastilles might produce; you avoid or seek that effect at your whim; he cannot be responsible. Everyone is responsible for their own actions. No more tutelage!”

  “That’s all right. Enough.”

  So saying, we went into one of the benches of the Slapping Box.

  Like all the Chambres of my time, it was a semicircular hall on the diameter of which the presidential chair was situated. What distinguished it from all the others I had seen thus far was the absence of any decoration, a complete nudity and a repulsive state of dirtiness. The floor, not covered by any carpet, had never been waxed, and the divans and the tables that formed the furniture were, the former all in tatters and the latter all broken and covered with a thick encrusted dust.

  Shortly after our entry into that hall, into which anyone could go—I mean into the hemicyle itself, no soldier or usher forbidding access—the session began to become animated.

  The estimable representatives, mostly in shirt-sleeves, without waistcoats, were sprawling on sofas and smoking enormous pipes, whose clouds obscured the atmosphere. Two or three of them were, however, sitting down. One was combing his hair before a mirror placed on his desk beside a bowl in which he did not take long to make ablutions; the other was pulling apart a roast chicken with his fingers, and throwing the bones away right and left without worrying about where they might fall. I saw one such debris arrive on the paper of a citizen député who was writing; the latter’s pen came to a sudden stop; he remained in contemplation for a moment before the object, and then looked around to see where the gift might have come from; having discovered the eater, he got up, approached him and, without saying a word, delivered a vigorous punch to the back of his neck. The other stood up, as if moved by a spring, and a fight began.

  Until then, the Chambre had been paying scant attention to the “speech” made by a drunkard who was chanting something from the floor, having rolled under a bench, but torsos suddenly straightened when they became aware of what was happening. Soon, they formed a circle around the combatants and started to lay bets.

  Suddenly I heard frightful oaths. It was the President, who was intervening; he ordered the combatants to desist.

  He was not obeyed quickly enough, it appeared, for I saw him roll up his sleeves and launch himself from his armchair, foaming at the mouth, in order to administer an energetic correction to both of the pugilists at the same time. The Chambre applauded enthusiastically, and I learned that Monsieur 5 had just exercised the principle function of the Presidency, and that he had been elected precisely because, being a boxer by profession, he was eminently qualified to fulfill the most frequent and most delicate duties. He had even been recently voted a cudgel of honor by the Assembly bearing the legend: Hard-hitter, on the occasion of an advertisement he had applied to one of his députés that had left the latter half-crippled.23

  They were discussing the proposal of a law whose objective was to have the State furnish the Hotel-Theaters numbering in their personnel the maximum number of pretty women with bonuses, by way of encouragement, distributed by means of a permanent committee of investigation. Opinions were sharply divided. The drunkard opined that the bonus ought to be awarded to the Hotel-Theaters whose wines were the best. The man with the chicken was holding out for the most solid meats.

  The citizen with the comb took the floor: “Devil’s thunder, citizens!” he cried, from his seat, recommencing his parting for the seventh time. “Devil’s thunder! I know the question better than any of you, utter asses that you are. Have you got it into your stupid heads that because you go on the spree in these places you know them? Can’t you see, you stupid oafs, that you only see what you’re shown, and don’t know the underside of the cards. Has that great simpleton who’s just been jabbering away in such a tedious fashion been, like me, a hairdresser to all the ladies? And he wants to have an opinion? Oh la la! Woe is me! Get going, you heap of bumpkins! Do what capable people like me tell you to do: the law is good, pass it. And get on with it!” And he resumed work on his parting.

  “You’re a cretin, you over there, the wig-maker. Me, I run a Hotel-Theater, and I can see that you’re talking rubbish. Necessary that we not only subsidize for the lovely girls, but for a good table, good wine, for fine spectacle
s and the lot...”

  “Get away, you old thief! You drink the sweat of the people,” said a voice from the left.

  “Yes, you bloodsucker, you pickpocket,” added another.

  “Pickpocket yourself, murderer,” replied the orator.

  “Don’t insult my friend,” said a fifth legislator, “or I’ll give you a beating.”

  “Come on, then,” said the hotelier.

  “Are you up to it, good-for-nothing?” said a Hercules. “No, you only have to look at you.”

  There was a crescendo of insults and cries, which soon expanded into a frightful racket; it was accompanied by the most menacing gestures; and as they were soon close enough to one another I thought a general brawl was going to break out at any moment. I looked at the President, wondering if he was about to leap on his colleagues again. This time, he proceeded differently. Standing on his chair, he caused a forceful cry to resound that was a perfect imitation of a cock’s crow. At the same time he waved his forearms in a movement strongly reminiscent of that of the lord of the poultry-yard flapping his wings. Immediately, all attention was fixed on the statesman, who, happy and proud of having been able to deflect a disquieting storm by means of a skillful diversion, soon received congratulations on his talent from the greater number of the members of the majority.

  Order having been somewhat restored, the debate continued.

  An amiable citizeness whom the political equality of women had brought to the Chambre—“There are no more wives and mothers,” Graymalkin had told me, proudly, “there are only citizenesses”—took the floor.

  According to her, the subsidy ought to be consecrated to helping women who had done thirty years of service in the Hotel-Theaters.

  “What is our position?” she added. “Women like me? I, who was so beautiful...”

  A voice from the right: “Have you finished?”

  Other voices: “Twenty-four years ago.”

  Another: “Just look at that head. Shut up, you old marionette-for-hire.”

  Another: “Olé, you old bat.”

  The citizeness representative: “Oh” Wretches! Rabble! Cowards! I’ll strangle you like dogs!”

  She threw herself upon one of her neighbors, and then stopped, seemingly fainting. Her friends rushed to help her, her adversaries to assure themselves that she was acting. The two camps once again found themselves in one another’s presence, with outrage in their mouths, fists clenched and legs braced; this time, the cry of the cock resounded in vain. It was necessary for the President to imitate, successively, a dog, a cat, a donkey and a calf to dominate the assembly. Only the calf prevailed, and it was still necessary for a dancer who was secretary to the Chambre to execute, at the same time, steps of fantastic animation around Hard-Hitter. The influence of the office was sensibly diminishing.

  “It’s like that every day,” said Grimalkin.

  “What are the clubs like, then?” I replied, sadly. “I shall never set foot in one of them.”

  Chapter XI

  Take the Rhine, sire! Strike Russia if she

  extends her hand toward Constantinople,

  and then give France all the liberties that

  are demanded, rightly or wrongly, and your

  dynasty will last as long as that of Hugues Capet.

  My soul was overwhelmed by lassitude, steeped in the most profound disgust. The dolorous spectacle of fallen humanity was depressing me.

  I seized Graymalkin by the arm.

  “Listen,” I said, “I no longer believe that I’m prey to a hallucination; I believe that I’ve slept for a hundred and thirty years; what I’ve seen afflicts my sight; what I’ve heard afflicts my ears; what I touch is really beneath my hand. Well, since that’s the way it is, I’ve seen and heard enough. Put me back to sleep, let me die, or I’ll kill myself!”

  “Decidedly, you don’t like liberty.”

  “You aren’t liberty! I know full well what you are. You’re the full development of what the society of the United States is. You’re the paroxysm of a frantic demagoguery, devoid of genius, devoid of principle, talent, education and intelligence. Ignorant, pedantic, pretentious, vain, haughty, arrogant; insolent, devoid of elegance, mildness, compassion and pity; hideous egotists and gross debauchees, avaricious, greedy, rapacious, devoid of delicacy, honor, dignity, modesty and probity; everything for sale in the public square—that’s your fellow citizens!

  “Degraded souls, you know nothing but success and force. For you, action is everything; ideas are dead; action is no longer the realization of thought; it’s thought that is an instrument for action, and for success by any means.

  “You have killed Art; you have killed Letters; you have killed Science, and from the death of that, and many other things, industry and commerce will die.

  “Wretch! You have killed Right; you have killed Duty; you have killed the Law; you have killed Charity; you have killed Devotion; you have killed the Fatherland; you have killed the Family; you have killed the Father; you have killed Woman; you have killed Love; you have killed Society.

  “Authority is no more; Liberty is no more; Equality is no more. You have summoned Disorganization, Barbarity and Chaos.

  “O Lord, how have you permitted so many centuries of effort, labor, suffering, the work of so much virtue and genius, so much progress and civilization accumulated over the ages, to sink into such an abyss?”

  Graymalkin smiled disdainfully.

  “There exists within the confines of the seventh city,” he said, “an old madman with whom you might reach an understanding. I’ll take you to his home.”

  After an hour in a smashall, we arrived at an isolated house, one of the last in the city. The elevator stopped in front of a door that gave us access to a room whose walls were lined with shelves laden with books. At a table covered with maps and papers, an old man was writing, absorbed by his work; the noise we made as we came in did not make him turn round.

  Graymalkin put a hand on his arm. He turned round slowly and looked at us, vaguely at first, and then with slight surprise. He was a tall old man with a bald forehead; long white hair hung down over his shoulders, and a long beard fell to the middle of his chest. He must have been handsome in his youth and the prime of life, but the regular features of his face had acquired from the purity of his life and the elevation of the work that he had done a particular beauty and nobility. His gaze, full of fire, was soft and penetrating at the same time. On examining him, I thought that Plato might have looked like that.

  He invited us with a sign to sit down, and appeared to be waiting for us to inform him of the object of our visit.

  Graymalkin told him that we had arrived from the other world, and how; that I could give him the most exact and precise information about the society of the nineteenth century; and that in return, it would be valuable for me to know how the present society had become what I saw.

  “Monsieur,” said the old man, after collecting himself momentarily. “I live more in the past than the present; at least, my career has consisted of refastening the chain of time; I am what was once called a historian; today, my work having absolutely nothing about it that is utilitarian, as they put it, I am taken, at best, for an eccentric, perhaps even a madman—at any rate, for a parasite on society; I do not ask, however, for anything whatsoever, and if I have been able to continue working in these last fifty years, it’s thanks to the spontaneous aid of a few elevated and disinterested minds who would have regretted seeing the last annalist that the world possesses pass away.”

  After a pause, he added: “You lived under Napoléon III?”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “I had that honor.”

  “He not only had a great intelligence...”

  “He also had a great heart.”

  “That is how I imagine him. That tender soul, that good, generous man, was an indefatigable thinker, ardent in the research, pursuit and invention of whatever could develop the
wellbeing of individuals, the prosperity of people and civilization. All of his history and politics are there; his profound love of humanity dominated his entire life and determined all his actions.”

  Me: “Yes, and all the other politics of his time gravitated, sooner or later, whether they liked it or not, around his. He opened a new era. He gave it impulsion and direction. He caused the world to advance rapidly on the path of justice and progress.”

  The old man: “He founded a new human right. He it was who enabled the right of people to choose their government to triumph, and the right of nations to independence.”

  Me: “He emancipated the worker; he brought him to life and made him a citizen; he founded democracy.”

  The old man: “He rid Economics of its wound, Politics. He propagated, in favor of order and calm of mind, the sane doctrines of the one; he reduced the other to his appropriate relative insignificance. He suppressed socialism. He informed the usage of liberty. He did more; he created liberty, which, before him, had never existed anywhere; for ephemeral, troubled and deadly liberties like those with which France was invested under Louis-Philippe and the Republic are not liberty, for there is no liberty without equality and universal suffrage, and neither in antiquity, in Athens or Rome, nor since, in Belgium. Italy, England and the United States, had equality ever existed. Everywhere, in the Emperor’s time, aristocracies, there white men, here qualified property-owners, oppressed the helots. But when the tree was shaken, the United States was forced to abolish slavery, England was obliged to draw back the limitations on electoral right, and Russia liberated its serfs.

  “He made the peace of the world, for he brought nations closer together by means of the relationships he instituted with the most distant countries; by the piercing of the isthmus of Suez, which, without his firm will would never have been accomplished;24 by the Exposition Universelle of 1867, of which preceding ones had only been the sketch, and which was the last; by the commercial treaties that reawakened dormant human activity and permitted people, for the first time, freely too enjoy the wealth that nature heaped up for them...