The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories

by Dr. Leo Szilard

  All arrangements having been completed in secrecy, and having named Adams, Lynch and Davenport as executors of my estate, I spent my last evening in the twentieth century at a small farewell party given to me by friends. There were about six of us, all old friends, but somehow we did not understand each other very well on this occasion. Most of them seemed to have the feeling that they were sort of attending my funeral, since they would not see me again alive; whereas to me it seemed that it was I who was attending their funeral, since none of them would be alive when I woke up.

  According to the records, it took about two hours until sleep set in, but I do not remember anything that was said after the first hour.

  The next thing I remember was the prick of a needle, and when I opened my eyes I saw a nurse with a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a microphone in the other.

  “Would you mind speaking into the microphone, please?” she said, holding it at a comfortable distance from my face.

  “We owe you an apology, as well as an explanation,” said a well-dressed young man standing near my bed and holding a microphone in his hand. “I am Mr. Rosenblatt from Adams, Lynch, Davenport, Rosenblatt and Giannini. For reasons of a legal nature we deemed it advisable to return you to life, but if you wish to complete the three hundred years, which appears to be your goal, we hope we shall be able to make the necessary arrangements within one month. At least we shall try our best to do so.

  “Now, before you say anything, let me explain to you that the gentleman sitting next to me is Mr. McClintock, the mayor of the city-a Democrat, of course. Subject to your approval, we have agreed that he may give you an interview which will be televised. The proceeds will go to the Senile Degeneration Research Fund. The broadcasting companies understand, of course, that it’s up to you to agree to this arrangement, and they have an alternate program ready which can be substituted if you should object. If you agree, however, we shall go on the air in one minute. Naturally, the broadcasting companies are anxious to catch your first responses rather than have something rehearsed put on the air. I’m certain you’ll appreciate their point of View.”

  “Before I answer this,” I said, “would you mind telling me how long I’ve been asleep?”

  “I should have told you this before,” he said. “You were out ninety years.”

  “Then,” I said after a moment’s reflection, “I have no friends left from whom to keep any secrets. I have no objection to the broadcast.”

  As soon as the announcer finished with his somewhat lengthy introduction, the mayor came in. “As chairman of the Senile Degeneration Research Fund, I wish to express my thanks to you for having graciously consented to this interview. Senile degeneration is one of our most important diseases. One in eight die of senile degeneration, and more than half of those who reach the age of a hundred and five. Given ample funds for research, we cannot fail to discover the causes of this disease, and once the cause of the disease is known it will be possible to find a cure. But I know that I should not monopolize the air; there must be many things that you would want to know about our society. Please feel free to ask anything you like.”

  “Why was I returned to life?” I asked.

  “I’m certain,” the mayor said, “that Messrs. Adams, Lynch, Davenport, Rosenblatt and Giannini will want to give you a detailed explanation of that. It was their decision, and I have no doubt that it was a wise one in the circumstances. I’m not a lawyer, but I can tell you something about the political background of their decision. Politics-that’s my field.

  “I wonder whether you realize how much trouble your process of ‘withdrawal from life’ has caused the government. For a few years only a few persons followed your example, mostly political scientists and anthropologists. But then, all of a sudden, it became quite a fad. People withdrew just to spite their wives and husbands. And I regret to say that many Catholics who could not obtain a divorce chose this method of surviving their husbands or wives, to become widowed and to remarry, until this practice was finally stopped in 2001 by the papal bull ‘Somnus Naturae Repugnans.’

  “The Church did not interfere, of course, with the legitimate uses of the process. Throughout the latter part of the century doctors encouraged patients who suffered from cancer and certain other incurable diseases to withdraw from life, in the hope that a cure would be found in the years to come and that they could then be returned to life and cured. There were legal complications,of course, particularly in the case of wealthy patients. Often their heirs raised objections on the ground that withdrawal from life was not yet an entirely safe process; and equally often the heirs demanded that they too should be permitted to withdraw from life for an equal period of time, so that the natural sequence of the generations would be left undisturbed. There are about one million cancer patients at present in statu dormiendi, and half a million of their heirs.”

  “Then cancer is still not a curable disease?” I asked.

  “No,” the mayor said, “but with all the funds which are now available it can take at the most a few years until that problem is solved. The most important, even though a some what controversial, application of your process,” he continued, “came about twenty-five years ago. That was when the present great depression started. It came as a result of seventy-five years of Republican mismanagement. Today we have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress; but this is the first Democratic President since Donovan, and the first Democratic Congress since the Hundred and Fifth. As more and more of the Southern states began to vote Republican, our party was hopelessly outvoted, until gradually its voting strength began to rise again; and today, with a Democratic majority solidly established, we have nothing to fear from coming elections.”

  “So finally there’s a truly progressive party in the United States?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the mayor said, “we regard ourselves as progressives. We have the support of the Catholic Church, and eighty per cent of the voters are Catholics.”

  “What brought about such mass conversions?” I asked.

  “There were no mass conversions,” the mayor said, “and we wouldn’t want any. Families of Polish, Irish and Italian stock, having a stronger belief in the American way of life than some of the older immigrant stocks, have always given birth to more children; and so today we have a solid Catholic majority.

  “Now that the Democratic Party is established in office, we’re going to fight the depression by the proper economic methods. As I said before, there was a Republican Administration in office when the depression hit us twenty-five years ago. In the first year of that depression unemployment rose to ten million. Things looked pretty bad. There was no public-works program or unemployment relief, but Congress passed a law, the Withdrawal Act of 2025, authorizing the use of Federal funds to enable any unemployed who so desired to withdraw from life for the duration of the depression. Those unemployed who availed themselves of this offer had to authorize the government to return them to life when the government deemed that the labor market required such a measure.

  “Seven out of ten million unemployed availed themselves of this offer by the end of the first year, in spite of the opposition of the Church. The next year unemployment was up another seven million, out of which five million were withdrawn from life. This went on and on, and by the time our party got into office, two years ago, there were twenty-five million withdrawn from life, with Federal support.

  “Our first act in office was to make withdrawals from life unlawful; and the second was to institute a public-works program.”

  “What does your public-works program consist of?” I asked.

  “Housing,” the mayor said.

  “Is there a housing shortage?” I asked “No,” the mayor said. “With twenty-five million unemployed in statu dormiendi there is, of course, no housing shortage.”

  “And will you now return these twenty-five million unemployed to life?” I asked. “Only very gradually,” the mayor replied. “The majority of the sleepers ar
e non-Catholics and it would upset the political balance if they were returned to life all at once. Besides, Operating the refrigerator plants of the public dormitories for twenty-five million sleepers is part of our public works program.

  “Incidentally,” he added, “Whether you yourself come under the Anti-withdrawal Act of 2048 is a controversial question. Your lawyers felt that you would not want to violate the law of the land, and they tried to get a court ruling in order to clear you; but the court refused to take the case, because you weren’t legally alive; finally your lawyers decided to return you to life so that you may ask the court for a declaratory judgment. Even though there is little doubt that the court will rule in your favor, I personally hope that you’ll find our society so pleasant, and so much more advanced than you would have expected, that you’ll decide to stay with us in the twenty-first century.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor,” the announcer said. “This was beautiful timing. We’re off the air,” he said to me, thinking I needed more explanation.

  The mayor turned to me. “If you feel well enough, I would like to take you home for dinner. It’s a small party, four or five guests, my wife and my daughter, Betty. The poor girl is brokenhearted. She has just called off her engagement, and I’m doing what I can to cheer her up. She’s very much in love with the fellow.”

  “If she loves him so much, why did she break with him?” I asked.

  “All her friends teased her about him because he wears teeth,” the mayor said. “Of course, there’s no law against it, it’s just not done, that’s all.”

  Something began to dawn upon me at this moment. The nurse, a pretty young girl, had no teeth, Mr. Rosenblatt had no teeth, and the mayor had no teeth. Teeth seemed to be out of fashion.

  “I have teeth,” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” the mayor replied, “and you wear them with dignity. But if you should decide to stay with us you’ll want to get rid of them. They’re not hygienic.”

  “But how would I Chew my food, how do you chew your food?” I asked.

  “Well,” the mayor said, “we don’t eat with our hands. We eat from plates-chewing plates. They plug into sockets in the table and chew your food for you. We eat with Spoons.”

  “Steaks, too?” I asked.

  “Yes, everything,” the mayor said. “But have no fear, we shall have knife and fork for you tonight, and flat plates such as you are accustomed to. My daughter kept them for her fiancé.”

  “I’m sorry that my second daughter will not be with us tonight,” the mayor said as he was starting his car. “She’s in the hospital. In college she’s taking mathematics and chemistry. She could have talked to you in your own language.”

  “Nothing seriously wrong, I hope,” I said.

  “Oh, no!” the mayor said. “Just plastic surgery. She’ll be out in a day or two.”

  “With a new nose?” I asked.

  “Nothing wrong with her nose,” the mayor said. “As a matter of fact, she has Mark Cable’s nose. No, it’s one of these newfangled Operations. My wife and I don’t approve of it, but this girl, she runs with the smart set. ‘Esophagus bypass,’ they call it. No longer necessary to watch your diet, you know. Eat as much as you please and switch it to the bypass-goes into a rubber container, of course. I tried to talk her out of it, but that girl has an answer for everything.‘Father,’ she said, isn’t there a food surplus in the world? If everybody ate twice as much, would that not solve the problem?”

  “Maybe she’s right,” I said, remembering with an effort that I always used to side with youth.

  When we sat down at table I looked forward to the steak; I was pretty hungry by that time. But when it was served, after a few fruitless attempts with knife and fork I had to ask for a chewing plate.

  “The choice cuts are always especially tough,” my hostess explained.

  “Tell me,” I said, “when did people begin to discard their teeth, and why?”

  “Well,” the mayor said, “it started thirty years ago. Ford’s chewing plates have been advertised over television for at least thirty-five years. Once people have chewing plates, what use do they have for teeth? If you think of all the time people used to spend at the dentist’s, and for no good purpose, at that, you’ll have to admit we have made progress.”

  “What became of all the dentists?” I asked.

  “Many of them have been absorbed by the chewing-plate industry,” the mayor explained, “Henry Ford VI gave them preference over all categories of skilled workers. Others turned to other occupations. Take Mr. Mark Cable, for instance,” the mayor said, pointing to a man sitting at my right, a man about fifty, and of great personal charm. “He had studied dentistry; today he is one of the most popular donors, and the richest man in the United States.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What is his business?”

  “Over one million boys and girls,” the mayor said “are his offspring in the United States, and the demand is still increasing.”

  “That must keep you pretty busy, Mr. Gable,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say.

  Apparently I had put my foot in it. Mrs. Gable blushed, and the mayor laughed.

  “Mr. Gable is happily married,” the mayor said. “He donated the seed when he was twenty-four years old. The stock should last indefinitely, although the demand may not. The Surgeon General has ruled that no seed donated by anyone above twenty-five may be marketed in the United States.”

  “Has there been legislation about this, giving the Surgeon General such authority?” I asked.

  “No,” the mayor said. “Legislation was blocked by filibuster in the Senate. But the Surgeon General takes action under the Pure Food and Drug Act.”

  “How can he do that?” I asked.

  “There was a decision by the Supreme Court thirty years ago,” the mayor said, “that all ponder-able substance which is destined to enter through any orifice of the human body comes properly under that act. There was no legislation in this whole field whatsoever. Any woman who wishes to bear a child of her own husband is perfectly free to do so. Over fifteen per cent of the children are born in this manner; but most wives prefer to select a donor.”

  “How do they make a choice?” I asked.

  “Oh,” the mayor said, “the magazines are full of their pictures. You can see them on the screen at home and in the movies. There are fashions, of course. Today over seventy per cent of the ‘donated’ children are the offspring of the thirty-five most popular donors. Naturally, they’re expensive. Today a seed of Mr. Gable’s will bring a thousand dollars; but you can get seed from very good stock for a hundred. Fashions are bound to change, but long after Mr. Gable passes away his estate will still go on selling his seed to connoisseurs. It’s estimated that for several decades his estate will still take in more than thirty million dollars a year.”

  “I have earned a very large sum of money,” said Mr. Gable, turning to me, “with very little work. And now I’m thinking of setting up a trust fund. I want to do something that will really contribute to the happiness of mankind; but it’s very difficult to know what to do with money. When Mr. Rosenblatt told me that you’d be here tonight I asked the mayor to invite me. I certainly would value your advice.”

  “Would you intend to do anything for the advancement of science?” I asked.

  “No,” Mark Gable said. “I believe scientific progress is too fast as it is.”

  “I share your feeling about this point,” I said with the fervor of conviction, “but then why not do something about the retardation of scientific progress?”

  “That I would very much like to do,” Mark Gable said, “but how do I go about it?”

  “Well,” I said, “I think that shouldn’t be very difficult. As a matter of fact, I think it would be quite easy. You could set up a foundation, with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make out a convincing case. Have ten committees, each compose
d of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. And the very best men in the field should be appointed as chairmen at salaries of fifty thousand dollars each. Also have about twenty prizes of one hundred thousand dollars each for the best scientific papers of the year. This is just about all you would have to do. Your lawyers could easily prepare a charter for the foundation. As a matter of fact, any of the National Science Foundation bills which were introduced in the Seventy-ninth and Eightieth Congresses could perfectly well serve as a model.”

  “I think you had better explain to Mr. Gable why this foundation would in fact retard the progress of science,” said a bespectacled young man sitting at the far end of the table, whose name I didn’t get at the time of introduction. It should be obvious,” I said. “First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly, the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. For a few years there might be a great increase in scientific output; but by going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. Some things would be considered interesting, others not. There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashion would get grants. Those who wouldn’t would not, and pretty soon they would learn to follow the fashion, too.”

  “Will you stay here with us?” Mark Gable said, turning to me, “and help me to set up such a foundation?”

  “That I will gladly do, Mr. Gable,” I said. “We should be able to see within a few years whether the scheme works, and I’m certain that it will work. For a few years I could afford to stay here, and I could then still complete the three hundred years which were my original goal.”