The Supreme Progress

by Brian Stableford

  On seeing this result, which he had anticipated, but about which he had still had doubts until a demonstration had been given, Bakermann was overwhelmed by joy. There had been too much emotion in such a short time, and he lost consciousness.

  He was brought round eventually. Soon, the whole world knew about the miraculous cure of Cesar Pück. The news spread in the blink of an eye. In less than half an hour, all the Brunnwaldians knew that Bakermann had cured koussmi-koussmi with electricity. Electrical batteries and platforms modeled on Bakermann’s were set up everywhere. By noon, there were no less than 50 large positive electricity platforms actively functioning.

  The death-rate diminished very rapidly. Between 9 and 10 a.m., there were 435 deaths; that was the maximum. By 11 a.m., the figure had declined to 126; at noon it was no more than 32, at 1 p.m., eight, and finally, at 2 p.m., there was only one—that of a stubborn old physician who would not hear mention of the electrical treatment, saying that it was stupid, that in Dahomey koussmi-koussmi as cured without electricity, and that he, Meinfeld, was too old to swallow the so-called discoveries of modern science.

  There was now tranquility in Brunnwald—but what a disaster further away! The telegraph brought frightful news with every passing minute. At the very moment when, thanks to the positive electricity platform, the population of Bunnwald was entirely reassured, there had been 45,329 deaths in Berlin, 7542 in Vienna, 4673 in Munich, 54,376 deaths already in Paris, and 58,352 in London.

  In brief, there had already been a total of 684,539 deaths in Europe.

  The Americans, on hearing news of the frightful scourge, had implemented precise measures to prevent its propagation to the new world. The fleet had been placed on a war footing, and they had taken the heroic resolution to get any ship trying to force entry with cannon-fire and torpedoes loaded with tetranitrodynamite.

  Desolation reigned. Everyone was repeating that the end of the world had arrived. A large number of individuals, preferring a rapid death to the anguish of the painful and invincible malady, killed themselves in order to escape death. All business was suspended. There were no more railway trains, no more boats, no more police and no more administration. Few crimes were recorded. Some ordinarily-peaceful people went crazy, greeting tradesmen who tried to get into their homes with revolver shots. Human savagery, latent in us all, had regained the upper hand. The civilized world, so proud of its civilization, had become barbaric again, as in the early days of humankind. It was a reversion to the paleolithic era, perhaps earlier.

  The telegraph, however, was still functioning, well enough that by noon, the whole world could be acquainted with the fact that a cure for koussmi-koussmi had been found—that a celebrated professor at the university of Brunnwald had, by a stroke of genius, discovered a means of opposing the terrible disease. Bakermann! Bakermann had invented a treatment for koussmi-koussmi! It was sufficient to place oneself for a few minutes on a platform charged with positive electricity.

  The news spread with prodigious rapidity. That same evening, in all localities throughout Europe, great and small, immense electrical platforms were at work. Floods of positive electricity spread over the terrestrial globe. Everywhere, colossal machines, gigantic electrical piles, were installed in public squares; everywhere, the marvelous effects of positive electricity were manifest.

  Thus, mortality decreased as rapidly as it had increased.

  Koussmi-koussmi had met its master. The epidemic, which might have caused humankind to disappear, had proved once more that human genius finds no obstacles, and that rebellious nature is always tamed by the superior forces of human science and intelligence.

  There were a few victims, to be sure, but all administrations had been subject to such overcrowding—3000 applications for a single job—that the petty bloodshed, though certainly dolorous for a few families, was, on the whole, rather beneficent. Once the alert was over, koussmi-koussmi could hardly be considered a veritable calamity.

  In Brunnwald, Professor Hermann Bakermann bathed in full glory. Telegrams flooded his home. A few sovereigns deigned to thank him personally, for sovereigns value their health as much as, if not more than, other men, and with good reason. Bakermann therefore received great honors: the Orders of the Garter, the Bath, the Golden Fleece, the Black Eagle, the Red Eagle, the White Elephant, the Green Dragon and the Thistle. The name of Bakermann, which had not emerged until then from a small circle of initiates, became the greatest name in science in the space of half a day.

  Modestly, he savored his triumph. He welcomed with frank cordiality a deputation of notables and students who wished to congratulate hm.

  “My God, my friends, I had a good idea, that as all. Your gratitude is sweeter than any reward.”

  Even Krankwein came to pay him a visit. “Well, my dear colleague,” he said, sourly, “you’re a great man now! Admit, though, that you were lucky. If Frau Bakermann hadn’t received her Dahomey carpet, there wouldn’t have been any koussmi-koussmi in Brunnwald, and you wouldn’t be so proud.”

  In all the countries of Europe, a subscription was organized to erect a statue to Bakermann. Several millions were amassed in less than a day, and the committee decided that the statue in question, ten meters tall, should overlook the public square in Brunnwald.

  In spite of his glory, however, Bakermann has no vanity or mad pride. He has resumed his cherished research in his beloved laboratory, and he is working away there, doggedly. He no longer has any fear of the infernal chamber. It is open day and night, and any curiosity-seekers can go in.

  In the evenings, he returns to the tavern. Thanks to mortifulgurans, no one now prevents him from drinking tankards to his heart’s content, so he prolongs his partying with Cesar Pück and Rodolphe Müller until dawn. He certainly has the right to give himself a good time now and again, after such terrible anguish and such a service rendered to humankind.

  But there is no perfect, irreproachable happiness in this world. Professor Hermann Bakermann still has one great annoyance: he regrets the term mortifulgurans, and every time the name koussmi-koussmi is pronounced in front of him, he pulls a face—for he knows full well that koussmi-koussmi does not exist, and that a wrong has been done to the microbe made and reinforced by him. Nevertheless, he finds some consolation in trying to make a better mortifulgurans, more vigorous, more invincible than the first, whose irresistible effects no electricity, nor any medication, known or unknown, will be able to combat.

  Paul Adam: A Tale of the Future

  (1893)

  I

  Philippe sensed in his uncle’s letters a plan to marry Philomène to Commandant de Laclos. The extreme anguish that gripped his heart in consequence astonished him at first. His cousin was five years old her than he was. Besides, she had a serious turn of mind, and she was certainly unlikely to approve of the turbulent ways of a cornet in the Guides, which is what he was.

  By virtue of this reasoning, however, and as the Colonel, in his correspondence, dissipated any hope of a refusal, Philippe became accustomed to dolor. The image of the young woman watched over the torture of his amorous spirit pitilessly.

  Now, here he is, devoid of strength, sprawled on the cushions of the railway carriage. Dully, he follows the meager gestures of the Colonel, attentive to the 100 little boxes brought to the capital, which contain the wedding presents. How is it that neither the Commandant nor the Colonel perceives his despair? How did they not see him turn pale when he entered the Guides’ mess brandishing the permission obtained from the general “to attend a family wedding”?

  They do not notice anything: neither the atrocious tautness of the smile with which he replies to their joyful remarks, nor the sweat that chills his temples and the leather of his police helmet.

  The Colonel is even going peacefully to sleep.

  Through the windows, the passing countryside makes the memory of the hours of that same voyage, previously undertaken with her, more precise. His uncle had come to collect him from the École Milita
ire after the final examinations, and during that journey, she had appeared to him to be an extraordinary individual, knowledgeable in all the sciences and making unexpected judgments on the world.

  “Yes,” replies the Commandant, “unexpected judgments. She has studied everything, has she not, while isolated in that fort to which her father’s position attached him? There’s no longer a wall in her home that isn’t covered in books…”

  “This is the heart of our fatherland, Commandant, she’ll tell you…this very spot, where the ferruginous soil reveals itself by that slope suddenly surging forth in front of the flat factory buildings….”

  “The heart of our northern republic? Look how it rises up, that ground, toward the pale firmament of mists. On the horizon, it gradually covers up the smoking chimneys of distilleries and forges.”

  “Has she told you about her love for the poor?”

  “She has an extraordinary love for the poor.”

  “Here, she said, at this height, the pasturage is better because the mass of the land muffles the sound of industrial bells, the appeal to the quotidian suffering of the herds of workmen…”

  “She’s one of the elect, Philippe, one of the elect. Shall I be able to make her happy enough?”

  They examine one another; they listen to their silence.

  “The plateau!” says the Commandant.

  There, the ground seems to have leapt up all of a sudden from the plain browned by labor, and in its leap to have drawn up chalk cliffs, inaccessible crags, clumps of pines and birches, patches of meadow, and entire beech-wood, and even a few villages huddled in cavities full of ferns and holm-oaks.

  “Did you know her mother?”

  “No, Commandant, I didn’t know her mother. She died so young!”

  “Philomène resembles her, spiritually. Her mother was always contemplating her idea of God; she contemplates the world’s pain as well…”

  “Christ—the same Christ in two forms…”

  “Mystics! Look, here’s the plateau displayed above the land…the earth is red with iron ores…”

  “Oh! Doesn’t iron flow like blood, all red…”

  “You don’t say! The earth is so red that the people, by dint of working it, have taken on the same color…”

  “Oh, I get it…she told you that too—that the little children hereabouts already bear on their red bodies the blazon of the metal that provides their livelihood.”

  “Why that bitterness in your voice, Philippe?”

  “No reason, Commandant…no reason. We’ve reached the region of Blast Furnaces, with its pit-villages full of people and flamboyant keeps.”

  “Look—it forms a great circle extended within a fixed perimeter.”

  “Beneath the cannons of the octagonal city, whose ramparts are there, at ground level.”

  “Prudence is necessary, Philippe, with these poor people, for they sometimes get exasperated.”

  “Are we getting out? We’re going past the claustrophobic little houses where the families of magistrates, tax-collectors civil servants, and whatever live.”

  “Wake up, Colonel! A 40-minute stop, for the customs. We’re going to stretch our legs…”

  “Eh? What?” says the Colonel. “Are we at the frontier?”

  “Very nearly. You know the place well—it’s the last station before the Fort.”

  “Damn! Look—to the left, the red brick house…where you can see the primroses in the little flower-bed, eh? That’s the executioner’s house.”

  “Ah! The executioner’s house. There are many murderers, because there’s no enough food.”

  “Then again, the people lack distractions…”

  In fact, Philippe thinks, if the features of my face do not change at all, nor reveal my pain to their eyes, it’s because I’m exaggerating my suffering. It’s necessary to believe that misfortune won’t crush me. Even so, it’s as if there were stones in my breast when it rises to take in air…

  They go for a walk.

  At the pinnacle of the rococo cathedral, the divine symbol of torture, the iron cross, imposes its significance upon the narrow, hard streets through which the life of the city is circulating. They lead from the belfry, rigid within its stony lace, to the barracks and the brothels, to a theater modeled on Greek architecture, to a Louis XV courthouse, to a hospital in the Empire style, a vast and simple prison solely ornamented with a few nasturtiums kept in a window-box by the wife of the concierge. Closer to the citadel, they encounter military depots and storehouses, and young beardless soldiers who, in their long tightly-belted greatcoats, resemble servant-women in skirts, and officers with spurs and moustaches, as round as eggs or as slender as ears of corn, with short riding-crops under their arms.

  Broad, well-swept and lit by electric bulbs, the boulevard cuts through the city between sumptuous department-stores, which alternate with the headquarters of insurance companies, metallurgical companies and banks. Gentlemen are strolling there, evidently proud of their cares, and women eager to love, for the benefit of their purses or their hearts. Workmen laden with bales, and slightly drunk, are running back and forth. The fabric of dresses is neatly arranged in the carriages.

  The boulevard leads out of the city to the railway station. After that, it becomes a highway following a route almost parallel to the railway. Trains go through the Blast Furnace region quite rapidly, passing between human beehives made of burnt bricks, red tiles and cement….

  The Colonel resumes his nap in the right-hand corner.

  “There, Commandant, look at that,” says Philippe. “The children swarming over the earth—one might think they were a swarm of flies crawling over dung.”

  “Oh, Philippe, why talk about children like that?”

  “The linen that hideous old women is washing in the tub…oh!...it’s tearing. What a heart-broken expression! In truth, that linen has torn all the way to my heart.”

  “Why are you talking like this?”

  “You have to laugh, though, at that exceedingly busy mother…all at the same time she’s breast-feeding, wiping a nose with one hand, delivering a slap with the other, scolding with her mouth and rocking a cradle with her foot, making eyes at the porter who’s passing by. Those little girls whimpering as they pick vegetables, or fetch water from the well—laugh at their ugliness! And the adolescent girl knotting dirty ribbons in their thin hair…”

  “Philippe, why are you looking at the world through black glass?”

  “There are no old people to be seen, Commandant, in this city of the poor…”

  “No, that’s true…there are none to be seen…”

  “But there are little square cemeteries everywhere…one, two, three…”

  “The adults are not to be seen, either, Philippe.”

  “Apparently, they all live within the enchanted flame that roars among the screams of the metal, beneath the domes of the factories…”

  “The bars also seem to be full of pipe-smoke…”

  “Pain is numbed by brutalization…”

  “She told you that too, Philippe—Philomène told you that…and now you’re reflecting her soul almost as much as her little sister Francine…”

  The cornet turns round. He looks out of the carriage window. The plateau becomes a hump-backed strip of rocks. Giant ferns are growing there. Gradually, the terrain becomes greener. Trees cluster. Iron trellises keep pheasants in the hunting-grounds. Along their length, in order to prevent the birds from getting out, little boys are whistling. The chilly air turns their hollow cheeks purple. A guard is keeping an eye on them.

  The forest is about to begin. It is already overflowing the hills on the horizon. Meanwhile, the screams of the metal pursue the train’s flight. When they die away, the train is already going through a region bordered with birches and ash-trees, punctuated by clearings in which herds of deer are lingering.

  Abruptly, the train emerges from the branches. The forest stops dead. The express glides over the crest of a rock that plun
ges steeply into a profound valley full of villages whitening the edges of woodlands. From nearby into the far distance, a river curves, its waters cramped by the frequent arches of bridges.

  The rock forms the spur of a long narrow plateau, which has become the defensive point of the fatherland overlooking the frontier river. In addition, rounded mounds cover the strategic earthworks of the Fort. Steel cupolas are mounted on the rock. Brickwork blocks the caverns. Electric wires run from tree to tree. Soldiers emerge from subterranean tunnels through posterns. Ravines are the location of barracks in which artillerymen are quarrelling, their gibes raising echoes upon echoes.

  At the tip of the rock there is a garden in front of a white house, and an iridescent jet of water above a shallow bowl, where the Colonel-Governor’s daughters, clad in polka-dot dresses, are counting the primroses newly emerged on the lawn that morning.

  “Hello, Philippe,” she says, and adds in a whisper: “We sensed your sadness as it approached…”

  II

  The soldiers are attaching lamps to masts along the patrol-routes. Flags replete with the names of victories are hoisted. Veterans are teasing the monkeys brought from Asia by Commandant de Chaclos’ troops, who are celebrating their success in the Oriental lands this evening. The fort is host to 1000 singular animals: hairless dogs, domesticated ibexes, loquacious parrots skilled in the recitation of barbaric poems. Trophies have been constructed out of strange weaponry, reminiscent of jagged scythes, curved sabers covered with damascene-work, breastplates of iron and lacquer-work. Captured standards bearing crescent moons and magical dragons float over triumphant arches made of fir-branches. Patriotic songs ring out in canteens full of people, and painted paper lanterns dance in the wind.