The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  I say this without hesitation: that agent is the same one to which the Earth owed is existence in the first place: heat. Heat will drink the sea; heat will eat the Earth—and this is how it will happen.

  One day, with regard to the functioning of locomotives, the illustrious Stephenson asked a great English chemist what the force was that moved such machines. The chemist replied: “It’s the Sun.”

  And, indeed, all the heat that we liberate when we burn combustible vegetable matter-wood or coal—has been stored there by the Sun; a piece of wood or coal is therefore, fundamentally, nothing but a preserve of solar radiation. The more vegetable life develops, the greater the accumulation of these preserves becomes. If a great deal is burned and a great deal created—that is to say, if cultivation and industry evolve, the storage the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth on one the hand and its liberation on the other will increase incessantly, and the Earth will become warmer in a continuous manner.

  What would happen if the animal population, and the human population in its turn, followed the same progress? What would happen if considerable transformations, born of the very development of animal life on the surface of the globe, were to modify the structure of terrains, displace the basins of the seas, and reassemble humankind on continents that are both more fertile and more permeable to solar heat?

  Now, that is exactly what will happen.

  When one compares the world with what it once was, one is immediately struck by one fact that leaps to the eyes: the worldwide evolution of organic life. From the most elevated summits of mountains to the most profound gulfs of the sea, millions of billions of animalcules, animals, cryptogams and superior plants, have been working day and night for centuries, as have the foraminifera on which half our continents are built.

  That work was going rapidly enough before the epoch when humans appeared on the Earth, but since the appearance of man it has developed with a rapidity that is accelerating every day. As long as humankind remained restricted to two or three parts of Asia, Europe and Africa, it was not noticeable, because, save for a few focal points of concentration, life in general still found it easy to pour into empty space the surplus accumulated at certain points of the civilized world; it was thus that colonization increasingly populated previously uninhabited countries innocent of all cultivation. Then commenced the first phase of the progress of life by human action: the agricultural phase.

  Things moved in this direction for about six centuries, but large deposits of oil were developed, and, almost at the same time, chemistry and steam-power. The Earth then entered its industrial phase—which is only just beginning, since that was not much more than 60 years ago. But where this movement will lead us, and with what velocity we shall arrive, it is easy to presume, given that which has already happened before our eyes.

  It is evident, for anyone with eyes to see, that for half a century, animals and people alike have tended to multiply, to proliferate, to pullulate in a truly disquieting proportion. More is eaten, more is drunk, silkworms are cultivated, poultry fed and cattle fattened. At the same time, planning is going on everywhere; ground has been cleared; fecund crop rotations and intensive cultures have been invented, which double the soil’s yields; not content with what the earth produces, salmon at five francs a side have been sown in our rivers, and oysters at 24 sous a dozen in our gulfs.

  In the meantime, enormous quantities of wine, beer and cider have been fermented; veritable rivers of eau-de-vie have been distilled, and millions of tons of oil burned—not to mention that heating equipment is improving incessantly, that more and more houses are being rendered draught-proof, and that the linen and cotton fabrics that humans employ to keep themselves warm are being fabricated more cheaply with every passing day.

  To this already-sufficiently-somber picture it is necessary to add the insane developments of public education, which one can consider as a source of light and heat, for, if it does not emit them itself, it multiplies their production by giving humans the means of improving and extending their impact on nature.

  This is where we are now; this is where a mere half-century of industrialism has brought us; obviously, there are, in all of this, manifest symptoms of an imminent exuberance, and one can conclude that within 100 years from now, the Earth will have developed a paunch.

  Then will commence the redoubtable period in which the excess of production will lead to an excess of consumption, the excess of consumption to an excess of heat, and the excess of heat to the spontaneous combustion of the Earth and all its inhabitants.

  It is not difficult to anticipate the series of phenomena that will lead the globe, by degrees, to that final catastrophe. Distressing as the depiction of these phenomena might be, I shall not hesitate to map them out, because the prevision of these facts, by enlightening future generations as to the dangers of the excesses of civilization, might perhaps serve to moderate the abuse of life and postpone the fatal final accounting by a few thousand years, or at least a few months.

  This, therefore, is what will happen.

  For ten centuries, everything will go progressively faster. Industry, above all, will make giant strides. To begin with, all the oil deposits will be exhausted, then all the sources of kerosene; then all the forests will be cut down; then the oxygen in the air and the hydrogen in the water will be burned directly. By that time, there will be something like a million steam-engines on the surface of the globe, averaging 1000 horse-power—the equivalent of a billion horse-power—functioning night and day.

  All physical work is done by machines or animals; humans no longer do any, except for skillful gymnastics practiced solely for hygienic reasons. But while their machines incessantly vomit out torrents of manufactured products, an ever-denser host of sheep, chickens, turkeys, pigs, ducks, cows and geese emerges from their agricultural factories, all oozing fat, bleating, lowing, gobbling, quacking, bellowing, whistling and demanding consumers with loud cries!

  Now, under the influence of ever more abundant and ever more succulent nutrition, the fecundity of the human and animal species is increasing from day to day. Houses rise up one floor at a time; first gardens are done away with, then courtyards. Cities, then villages, gradually begin to project lines of suburbs in every direction; soon, transversal lines connect these radii.

  Movement progresses; neighboring cities begin to connect with one another. Paris annexes Saint-Germain, Versailles and then Bauvais, then Châlons, then Orléans, then Tours; Marseilles annexes Toulon, Draguignan, Nice, Carpentras, Nîmes and Montpellier; Bordeaux, Lyon and Lille share out the rest, and Paris ends up annexing Marseilles, Lyon, Lille and Bordeaux. And the same thing is happening throughout Europe, and the other four continents of the world.

  But at the same time, the animal population is increasing. All useless species have disappeared; all that now remain are cattle sheep, horses and poultry. Now, to nourish all that, empty space is required for cultivation, and room is getting short.

  A few terrains are then reserved for cultivation, fertilizer is piled herein, and there, lying amid grass six feet high, unprecedented species of sheep and cattle, devoid of hair, tails, feet and bones are seen rolling around, reduced by the art of husbandry to be nothing more than monstrous steaks alimented by four insatiable stomachs.

  In the meantime, in the southern hemisphere, a formidable revolution is about to take place. What am I saying? Scarcely 50,000 years have gone by, and here it is, complete!

  The polypers have joined all the continents together, and all the islands of the Pacific Ocean and the southern seas. America, Europe and Africa have disappeared beneath the waters of the ocean; nothing remains of them but a few islands formed by the last summits of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the buttes Montmartre, the Carpathians, the Atlas Mountains and the Cordilleras.

  The human race, retreating gradually from the sea, has expanded over the incommensurable plains that the sea has abandoned, bringing its overwhelming civilization with it; already space is beginn
ing to run out on the former continents. Here it is the final entrenchments: it is here that it will battle against the invasion of animal life. Here is where it will perish!

  It is on a calcareous terrain; an enormous mass of animalized materials is incessantly converted into a chalky state; this mass, exposed to the rays of a torrid Sun, incessantly stores up new concentrations of heat, while the functioning of machines, the combustion of hearths and the development of animal heat cause the ambient temperature to rise incessantly.

  And in the meantime, animal production continues to increase; there comes a time when the equilibrium breaks down; it becomes manifest that production will outstrip consumption.

  Then, in the Earth’s crust, a sort kind of rind begins to form at first, and subsequently, an appreciable layer of irreducible detritus; the Earth is saturated with life.

  Fermentation begins.

  The thermometer rises, the barometer falls, the hygrometer marches toward zero. Flowers wither, leaves turn yellow, parchments curl up; everything dries out and becomes brittle.

  Animals shrink by virtue of the effects of heat and evaporation. Humans, in their turn, grow thin and desiccated; all temperaments melt into one—the bilious—and the last of the lymphatics31 offers his daughter and 100 millions in dowry to the last of the scrofulous, who has not a sou to his name, and who refuses out of pride.

  The heat increases and the wells dry up. Water-carriers are elevated to the rank of capitalists, then millionaires, to the extent that the prince’s Great Water-Carrier becomes one of the principal dignitaries of state. All the crimes and infamies that one sees committed today for a gold piece are committed for a glass of water, and Cupid himself, abandoning his quiver and arrows, replaces them with a carafe of ice-water.

  In this torrid atmosphere, a lump of ice is worth 20 times its weight in diamonds. The Emperor of Australia, in a fit of mental aberration, orders a tutti frutti that cost an entire year’s civil list. A scientist makes a colossal fortune by obtaining a hectoliter of fresh water at 45 degrees.

  Streams dry up; crayfish, jostling one another tumultuously to run after the trickles of warm water that are abandoning them, change color as they go along, turning scarlet. Fish, their hearts weakening and their swim-bladders distended, let themselves drift on the currents, bellies up and fins inert.

  And the human species begins to go visibly mad. Strange passions, unexpected angers, overwhelming infatuations and insane pleasures make life into a series of furious detonations—or, rather, one continuous explosion, which begins at birth and concludes with death. In a world cooked by an implacable combustion, everything is scorched, crackled, grilled and roasted, and after the water, which has evaporated, one senses the air diminishing as it becomes more rarefied.

  A terrible calamity! The rivers, great and small, have disappeared; the seas re beginning to warm up, then to heat up; now they are already simmering as if over a gentle fire.

  First the little fish, asphyxiated, show their bellies at the surface; then come the algae, detached from the sea-bed by the heat; finally, cooked in red wine and rendering up their fat in large stains, the sharks, whales and giant squid rise up, along with the fabulous kraken and the much-contested sea serpent; and with all this fat, vegetation and fish cooked together, the steaming ocean becomes an incommensurable bouillabaisse.

  A nauseating odor of cooking expands over the entire inhabited earth; it reigns there for barely a century; the ocean evaporates and leaves no other trace of its existence than fish-bones scattered over desert plains…

  It is the beginning of the end.

  Under the triple influence of heat, asphyxia and desiccation, the human species is gradually annihilated; humans crumble and peel, falling into pieces at the slightest shock. Nothing any longer remains, to replace vegetables, but a few metallic plants that have been made to grow by irrigating them in vitriol. To slake devouring thirst, to reanimate calcined nervous systems, and to liquefy coagulating albumin, there are no liquids left but sulphuric and nitric acids.

  Vain efforts.

  With every breath of wind that agitates the anhydrous atmosphere, thousands of human creatures are instantaneously desiccated; the rider of his horse, the advocate at the bar, the judge on his bench, the acrobat on his rope, the seamstress at her window and the king on his throne all come to a stop, mummified.

  Then comes the final day.

  They are no more than 37, wandering like tinder specters in the midst of a frightful population of mummies, which gaze at them with eyes reminiscent of Corinthian grapes.

  And they take one another by the hand, and commence a furious round-dance, and with each rotation one of the dancers stumbles and falls down dead, with a dry sound. And when the 26th cycle is over, the survivor remains alone in front of the miserable heap in which the last debris of the human race is assembled.

  He darts one last glance at the Earth; he says goodbye to it on behalf of all of us, and a tear falls from his poor scorched eyes—humankind’s last tear. He catches it in his hand, drinks it, and dies, gazing at the Heavens.

  Pouff!

  A little blue flame rises up tremulously, then two, then three, then 1000. The entire globe catches fire, burns momentarily, and goes out.

  It is all over; the Earth is dead.

  Bleak and icy. It rolls sadly through the silent deserts of space; and of so much beauty, so much glory, so much joy, so much love, nothing any longer remains but a little charred stone, wandering miserably through the luminous spheres of new worlds.

  Goodbye, Earth! Goodbye, touching memories of our history, of our genius, of our pains and our loves! Goodbye, Nature, whose gentle and serene majesty consoled us so effectively in our suffering! Goodbye, cool and somber woods, where, during the beautiful nights of summer, by the silvery light of the Moon, the song of the nightingale was heard. Goodbye, terrible and charming creatures that guided the world with a tear or a smile, whom we called by such sweet names! Ah, since nothing more remains of you, all is truly finished: THE EARTH IS DEAD.

  Charles Cros: An Interastral Drama

  (1872)

  La Esperanza, August 24, 2872

  Ordinance CXVII of the 32nd Grand-Master of Terrestrial Astronomy has provoked whining from the entire Satirist party. Let us say right away that this party, although it denies it vehemently, is strongly reminiscent of that of the Freethinkers of a few centuries ago. It is so strongly reminiscent that one might fear seeing it go to the same negative extremes, which would consequently necessitate the same repressions.

  The Satirists have been talking about a return to the onions of Egypt,32 to the darkness of the 19th and 20th century; they have proclaimed it a restoration of the clergies of yesteryear, a superstitious measure, a mythological fantasy introduced into that which is most essential to the smooth progress of modern human society.

  It will be easy for me to nullify these vain claims. Firstly, it is necessary to observe that the ordinance establishes nothing that has not been actual practice for many years. It does nothing but formalize what already exists in the particular regulations of all terrestrial observatories, and also the results of numerous decisions of the Supreme Court.

  Indeed, it requires an ignorance of the most elementary study of administrative law to be unfamiliar with the formalities demanded by all the Observatory councils for admission into the Grand Cupola and the Correspondence Terrace. It is necessary not to have read any of the astronomical publications of this century not to know that the term “Mysteries of the Cupola and the Terrace,” so critical in the ordinance at issue, is in common usage, and that certain official documents, already ancient, employ it explicitly. It is part and parcel of the special regime, of the obligatory celibacy of astronomers who desire to surpass the fourth grade, of the oath demanded of them and the particular penalties to which they are subject—penalties that become more severe as the grade of the offender becomes more elevated.

  It has been the case for a long time that in request
s for admission to superior grades, aspirants mention first and foremost their celibate status and the austerity of their morals, with supporting evidence. Now, these things have been compulsory in reality for a long time, and ordinance CXVII is simply a regularization of a custom recognized as necessary from a moral and political point of view. In this respect, the action of the ordinance, rather than further restricting the custom, has rendered it more equitable and broader in scope, by anticipating the abuse of certain excessively severe restrictions that were beginning to be introduced into several courses in Astronomy.

  I know, however, that the Satirists will not be satisfied by these explanations. Custom it may be, they will say, but an unjust and evil custom: an abuse of power, and so on.

  With respect to this objection—which, moreover, immediately proves the ignorance and thoughtlessness of those who raise it—I do not want to enter into a debate in the strict sense of the term. I shall limit myself to telling a story that will demonstrate, even to the simplest minds, the necessity of strong regulation of the sort that has naturally prevailed, and which has now been defined by ordinance CXVII.

  Perhaps you will recall the sudden and unexplained retirement of a director of the Observatory of the Southern Andes, and the rumors surrounding that retirement. There as mention of culpable negligence and the violation of the Mysteries of the Cupola. The word mysteries can even be found in the newspapers of the period. The government wisely hushed up the affair, and the director, although missed by virtue of his remarkable work—especially his work on the equatorial flora of Venus—took early retirement on health grounds. He has now been dead for a long time, as are the majority of those involved. Here, therefore, are the facts as they happened. I shall not give any names.

  The director in question—exceptionally, even in that era, as I have said—was married. To be strictly accurate, he was a widower at the time of his appointment—but he had a son of 22 or 23.