The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D.

by David H. Keller

  The sky always had its planes; the higher levels for the inter-city express service, the lower for individual suburban traffic—the roads, all of reinforced concrete, were often one-way roads, exacted by the number of machines in order to avoid continual collisions. While part of the world had taken readily to the skies, the vast proportion had been forced, by insufficient development of the semi-circular canals, to remain on earth.

  The automobile had developed as legs had atrophied. No longer content to use it constantly outdoors, the Successors of Ford had perfected the smaller individual machine for use indoors, all steps being replaced by curving ascending passages. Men thus came to live within metal bodies, which they left only for sleep. Gradually, partly through necessity and partly through inclination, the automobile was used in sport as well as in play. Special types were developed for golf; children seated in autocars rolled hoops through shady parks; lazily, prostrate on one, a maiden drifted through the tropical waters of a Florida resort. Mankind had ceased to use their lower limbs.

  With disuse came atrophy: with atrophy came progressive and definite changes in the shapes of mankind: with these changes came new conceptions of beauty-feminine. All this happened not in one generation, nor in ten, but gradually in the course of centuries.

  Customs changed so laws changed. No longer were laws for everyone’s good but only for the benefit of the automobilist. The roads, formerly for the benefit of all, were finally restricted to those in machines. At first it was merely dangerous to walk on the highways; later it became a crime. Like all changes, this came slowly. First came a law restricting certain roads to automobilists; then came a law prohibiting pedestrians from the use of roads; then a law giving them no legal recourse if injured while walking on a public highway; later it became a felony to do so.

  Then came the final law providing for the legal murder of all pedestrians on the highway, wherever or whenever they could be hit by an auto.

  No one was content to go slowly—all the world was crazed by a desire for speed. There was also a desire, no matter where an automobilist was, to go to some other city. Thus Sundays and holidays were distinguished by thousands and millions of automobilists going “somewhere” none being content to spend the hours of leisure quietly where they were. Rural landscapes consisted of long lines of machines passing between walls of advertisements at the rate of 60 miles an hour, pausing now and then at gasoline filling stations, at road houses or to strip an occasional tree of its blooms. The air was filled with vapors from the exhausts of machinery and the raucous noise of countless horns of all description. No one saw anything: no one wanted to see anything: the desire of each driver was to drive faster than the car ahead of his. It was called in the vernacular of the day—‘A quiet Sunday in the country’

  There were no pedestrians; that is, almost none. Even in the rural districts mankind was on wheels mechanically propelled. Such farming as was done was done by machinery. Here and there, clinging like mountain sheep to inaccessible mountainsides, remained a few pedestrians who, partly from choice, but mainly from necessity, had retained the desire to use their legs. These people were always poor. At first the laws had no terror for them. Every state had some families who had never ceased to be pedestrians. On these the automobilists looked first with amusement and then with alarm. No one realized the tremendous depth of the chasm between the two groups of the Genus Homo till the national law was passed forbidding the use of all highways to pedestrians. At once, all over the United States, the revolt of the Walkers began. Although Bunker Hill was hundreds of years away, the spirit of Bunker Hill survived, and the prohibition of walking on the roads only increased the desire to do so. More pedestrians than ever were accidentally killed. Their families retaliated by using every effort to make automobiling unpleasant and dangerous—nails, tacks, glass, logs, barbed wire, huge rocks were used as weapons. In the Ozarks, backwoodsmen took delight in breaking windshields and puncturing tires with well-directed rifle shots. Others walked the roads and defied the automobilists. Had the odds been equal, a condition of anarchy would have resulted, being unequal, the pedestrians were simply a nuisance. Class-consciousness reached its acme when Senator Glass of New York rose in the Senate Chambers and said in part:

  “A race that ceases to develop must die out. For centuries mankind has been on wheels, and thus has advanced towards a state of mechanical perfection. The pedestrian, careless of his inherent right to ride, has persisted not only in walking, but even has gone so far as to claim equal rights with the higher type of automobilists. Patience has ceased to be a virtue. Nothing more can be done for these miserable degenerates of our race. The kindest thing to do now is to inaugurate a process of extermination. Only thus can we prevent a continuation of the disorders which have marked the otherwise uniform peaceful history of our fair land. There is, therefore, nothing for me to do save to urge the passage of the “Pedestrian Extermination Act”. This as you know provides for the instant death of all pedestrians wherever and whenever they are found by the Constabulary of each State. The last census shows there are only about ten thousand left and these are mostly in a few of the mid-western states. I am proud to state that my own constituency, which up to yesterday had only one pedestrian, an old man over 90 years of age, has now a clear record. A telegram just received states that fortunately he tottered on a public road in a senile effort to visit his wife’s grave and was instantly killed by an automobilist. But though New York has at present none of these vile degenerates, we are anxious to aid our less fortunate states.”

  The law was instantly passed, being opposed only by the Senators from Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. To promote interest, a bounty was placed on each pedestrian killed. A silver star was given to each county reporting complete success. A gold star to each state containing only autoists. The pedestrian, like the carrier pigeon, was doomed.

  It is not to be expected that the extermination was immediate or complete. There was some unexpected resistance. It had been in effect one year when the pedestrian child swore vengeance on the mechanical means of destroying humanity.

  Sunday afternoon a hundred years later, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia was filled with the usual throng of pleasure seekers, each in his own auto-car. Noiselessly, on rubber-tired wheels, they journeyed down the long aisles, pausing now and then before this exhibit or that which attracted their individual attention. A father was taking his little boy through and each was greatly interested: the boy in the new world of wonders, the father in the boy’s intelligent questions and observations. Finally the boy stopped his auto-car in front of a glass case.

  “What is that, Father? They look as we do, only what peculiar shapes.”

  “That, my son, is a family of pedestrians. It was long ago it all happened and I know of it only because my mother told me about them. This family was shot in the Ozark Mountains. It is believed they were the last in the world.”

  “I am sorry,” said the boy, slowly. “If there were more, I would like you to get a little one for me to play with.”

  “There are no more,” said the father. “They are all dead.”

  The man thought he was telling the truth to his son. In fact, he prided himself on always being truthful to children. Yet he was wrong. For a few pedestrians remained, and their leader, in fact, their very brains, was the great-grandson of the little boy who had stood up on the hill with hatred in his heart long before.

  Irrespective of climatic conditions, environment and all varieties of enemies, man has always been able to exist. With the race of Pedestrians it was in very truth the survival of the fittest. Only the most agile, intelligent and sturdy were able to survive the systematic attempt made to exterminate them. Though reduced in numbers they survived; though deprived of all the so-called benefits of modern civilization, they existed. Forced to defend not only their individual existence, but also the very life of their race, they gained the cunning of their backwoodsmen ancestors and kept alive. They lived, hu
nted, loved, and died and for two generations the civilized world was unaware of their very existence. They had their political organization, their courts of law. Justice, based on Blackstone and the Constitution, ruled. Always a Miller ruled: first the little boy with hatred in his heart, grown to manhood; then his son, trained from childhood to the sole task of hatred of all things mechanical; then the grandson, wise, cunning, a dream-builder; and finally the great-grandson, Abraham Miller, prepared by three generations for the ultimate revenge.

  Abraham Miller was the hereditary president of the Colony of Pedestrians hidden in the Ozark Mountains. They were isolated, but not ignorant; few in number but adaptive. The first fugitives had many brilliant men: inventors, college professors, patriots and even a learned jurist. These men kept their knowledge and transmitted it. They dug in the fields, hunted in the woods, fished in the streams, and built in their laboratories. They even had automobiles, and now and then, with limbs tied close to their bodies, would travel as spies into the land of the enemy. Certain of the children were trained from childhood to act in this capacity. There is even evidence that for some years one of these spies lived in St. Louis.

  It was a colony with a single ambition—a union of individuals for one purpose only; the children lisped it, the school children spoke it daily; the young folks whispered it to each other in the moonlight; in the laboratories it was carved on every wall; the senile gathered their children around and swore them to it; every action of the colony was bent toward one end—

  “We will go back.”

  They were paranoiac in their hatred. Without exception, all of their ancestors had been hunted like wild beasts, exterminated without mercy—like vermin. It was not revenge they desired, but liberty—the right to live as they wished, to go and come as they pleased.

  For three generations the colony had preserved the secret of their existence. Year by year as a unit they had lived, worked and died for a single ambition. Now the time had come for the execution of their plans, the fulfillment of their desires. Meanwhile the world of automobilists lived on, materialistic, mechanical, selfish. Socialism had provided comfort for the masses but had singularly failed to provide happiness. All lived, everyone had an income, no one but was provided with a home, food and clothes. But the homes were of concrete; they were uniform, poured out by the million; the furniture was concrete, poured with the houses. The clothing was paper, water-proofed: it was all in one design and was furnished—four suits a year to each person. The food was sold in bricks, each brick containing all the elements necessary for the continuation of life; on every brick was stamped the number of calories. For centuries, inventors had invented till finally life became uniform and work a matter of push buttons. Yet the world of the autoists was an unhappy one, for no one worked with muscles. In summer time it was, of course, necessary to perspire, but for generations no one had sweated. The words “toil,” “labor,” “work” were marked obsolete in the dictionaries.

  Yet no one was happy because it was found to be a mechanical impossibility to invent an automobile that would travel over one hundred and twenty miles an hour and stay on the ordinary country road. The automobilists could not go as fast as they wanted to. Space could not be annihilated; time could not be destroyed.

  Besides, everyone was toxic. The air was filled with the dangerous vapors generated by the combustion of millions of gallons of gasoline and its substitutes, even though many machines were electrified. The greatest factor contributing to this toxemia, however, was the greatly reduced excretion of toxins through the skin and the almost negative production of energy through muscular contraction. The automobilists had ceased to work, using the term in its purely archaic form, and having ceased to work, they had ceased to sweat. A few hours a day on a chair in a factory or at a desk was sufficient to earn the necessaries of life. The automobilist never being tired, nature demanded a lesser number of hours spent in sleep. The remaining hours were spent in automobiles, going somewhere; it mattered not where they went so long as they went fast. Babies were raised in machines; in fact, all life was lived in them. The American Home had disappeared—it was replaced by the automobile.

  The automobilists were going somewhere but were not sure where. The pedestrians were confident of where they were going.

  Society in its modern sense was socialistic. This implied that all classes were comfortable. Crime, as such, had ceased to exist some generations previous, following the putting into force of Bryant’s theory that all crime was due to 2 percent of the population and that if these were segregated and sterilized, crime would cease in one generation. When Bryant first promulgated his thesis, it was received with some skepticism, but its practical application was hailed with delight by everyone who was not directly affected.

  Yet even in this apparently perfect society there were defects. Though everyone had all the necessities of life, it was not true of luxuries. In other words, there were still rich men and poor men, and the wealthy still dominated the government and made the laws.

  Among the rich there were none more exclusive, aristocratic and dominant than the Heislers. Their estate on the Hudson was enclosed by thirty miles of twelve-foot iron fence. Few could boast of having visited there, of having week-ended in the stone palace surrounded by a forest of pine, beach and hemlock. They were so powerful that none of the family had ever held a public office. They made Presidents, but never cared to have one in the family. Their enemies said that their wealth came from fortunate marriages with the Ford and Rockefeller families but, no doubt, this was a falsehood based on jealousy. The Heislers had banks and real estate; they owned factories and office buildings. It was definitely stated that they owned the President of the United States and the Judges of the Supreme Court. One of their possessions was rarely spoken of, or mentioned in the newspapers. The only child of the ruling branch of the family walked.

  William Henry Heisler was an unusual millionaire. When told that his wife had presented him with a daughter he promised his Gods (though he was not certain who they were) that he would spend at least an hour a day with this child supervising her care.

  For some months nothing unusual was noticed about this little girl baby, though at once all the nurses commented on her ugly legs. Her father simply considered that probably all baby legs were ugly.

  At the age of one year, the baby tried to stand and take a step. Even this was passed over, as the pediatricians were united in the opinion that all children tried to use their legs for a few months, but it was a bad habit usually easily broken up like thumb-sucking. They gave the usual advice to the nurses which would have been followed had it not been for her father who merely stated, “Every child has a personality. Let her alone, see what she will do.” And in order to insure obedience, he selected one of his private secretaries, who was to be in constant attendance and make daily written reports.

  The child grew. There came the time when she was no longer called “baby” but dignified by the name of “Margaretta.” As she grew, her legs grew. The more she walked, the stronger they became. There was no one to help her, for none of the adults had ever walked, nor had they seen anyone walk. She not only walked but she objected in her own baby way to mechanical locomotion. She screamed like a baby wild cat at her first introduction to an automobile and never could become reconciled even to the auto cars for house use.

  When it was too late, her father consulted everyone who could possibly know anything about the situation and its remedy. Heisler wanted his child to develop her own personality, but he did not want her to be odd. He therefore gathered in consultation, neurologists, anatomists, educators, psychologists, students of child behavior and obtained no satisfaction from them. All agreed that it was a pitiful case of atavism, a throwback. As for a cure, there were a thousand suggestions from psychoanalysis to the brutal splinting and bandaging of the little girl’s lower extremities. Finally, in disgust, Heisler paid them all for their trouble and bribed them all for their silence and told them sharp
ly to go to Hell. He had no idea where this place was, or just what he meant, but found some relief in saying it.

  They all left promptly except one who, in addition to his other vocations, followed genealogy as an avocation. He was an old man and they made an interesting contrast as they sat facing each other in their autocars. Heisler was middle aged, vigorous, real leader of men, gigantic save for his shrunken legs. The other man was old, gray haired, withered, a dreamer. They were alone in the room, save for the child who played happily in the sunshine of the large bay windows.

  “I thought I told you to go to Hell with the rest,” growled the leader of men.

  “How can I?” was the mild reply. “Those others did not obey you. They simply autoed out of your home. I am waiting for you to tell me how to go there. Where is this Hell you order us to? Our submarines have explored the ocean bed five miles below sea level. Our airplanes have gone some miles toward the stars. Mount Everest has been conquered. I read all these journeyings, but nowhere do I read of a Hell. Some centuries ago theologians said it was a place that sinners went to when they died, but there has been no sin since Bryant’s two percent were identified and sterilized. You with your millions and limitless power are as near Hell as you will ever be, when you look at your abnormal child.”

  “But she is bright mentally, Professor,” protested Heisler; “only seven years old but tested ten years by the Simon Binet Scale. If only she would stop this damned walking. Oh! I am proud of her but I want her to be like other girls. Who will want to marry her? It’s positively indecent. Look at her. What is she doing?”