by Jules Vernes
Catching sight of one of these serialists who was snatching five minutes’ rest, Francis Bennett said:
‘Very fine, my dear fellow, very fine, that last chapter of yours! That scene where the young village girl is discussing with her admirer some of the problems of transcendental philosophy shows very keen powers of observation! These country manners have never been more clearly depicted! Go on that way, my dear Archibald, and good luck to you. Ten thousand new subscribers since yesterday, thanks to you!’
‘Mr John Last,’ he continued, turning towards another of his collaborators, ‘I’m not so satisfied with you! It hasn’t any life, your story! You’re in too much of a hurry to get to the end! Well! and what about all that documentation? You’ve got to dissect, John Last, you’ve got to dissect! It isn’t with a pen one writes nowadays, it’s with a scalpel! Every action in real life is the result of a succession of fleeting thoughts, and they’ve got to be carefully set out to create a living being! And what’s easier than to use electrical hypnotism, which redoubles its subject and separates his two-fold personality! Watch yourself living, John Last, my dear fellow! Imitate your colleague whom I’ve just been congratulating! Get yourself hypnotised... What?... You’re having it done, you say?... Not good enough yet, not good enough!’
Having given this little lesson, Francis Bennett continued his inspection and went on into the reporters’ room. His 1,500 reporters, placed before an equal number of telephones, were passing on to subscribers the news which had come in during the night from the four quarters of the earth.
The organisation of this incomparable service has often been described. In addition to his telephone, each reporter has in front of him a series of commutators, which allow him to get into communication with this or that telephotic line. Thus the subscribers have not only the story but the sight of these events. When it is a question of ‘miscellaneous facts’, which are things of the past by the time they are described, their principal phases alone are transmitted; these are obtained by intensive photography.
Francis Bennett questioned one of the ten astronomical reporters – a service which was growing because of the recent discoveries in the stellar world.
‘Well, Cash, what have you got?’
‘Phototelegrams from Mercury, Venus and Mars, sir. ‘
-Interesting, that last one?’
‘Yes! a revolution in the Central Empire, in support of the reactionary liberals against the republican conservatives. ‘
‘Just like us, then! – And Jupiter?’
‘Nothing so far! We haven’t been able to understand the signals the Jovians make. Perhaps ours haven’t reached them?... ‘
‘That’s your job, and I hold you responsible, Mr Cash!’ Francis Bennett replied; extremely dissatisfied, he went on to the scientific editorial room.
Bent over their computers, thirty savants were absorbed in equations of the ninety-fifth degree. Some indeed were revelling in the formulae of algebraical infinity and of twenty-four dimensional space, like a child in the elementary class dealing with the four rules of arithmetic.
Francis Bennett fell among them rather like a bombshell.
‘Well, gentlemen, what’s this they tell me? No reply from Jupiter?... It’s always the same! Look here, Corley, it seems to me it’s been twenty years that you’ve been pegging away at that planet... ‘
‘What do you expect, sir?’ the savant replied. ‘Our optical science still leaves something to be desired, and even with our telescopes two miles long... ‘
‘You hear that, Peer?’ broke in Francis Bennett, addressing himself to Corley’s neighbour. ‘Optical science leaves something to be desired!... That’s your speciality, that is, my dear fellow! Put on your glasses, devil take it! put on your glasses!’
Then, turning back to Corley:
‘But, failing Jupiter, aren’t you getting some result from the moon, at any rate?’
‘Not yet, Mr Bennett. ‘
‘Well, this time, you can’t blame optical science! The moon is 600 times nearer than Mars, and yet our correspondence service is in regular operation with Mars. It can’t be telescopes we’re needing... ‘
‘No, it’s the inhabitants,’ Corley replied with the thin smile of a savant stuffed with X.
‘You dare tell me that the moon is uninhabited?’
‘On the face it turns towards us, at any rate, Mr Bennett. Who knows whether on the other side?... ‘
‘Well, there’s a very simple method of finding out... ‘
‘And that is?... ‘
‘To turn the moon round!’
And that very day, the scientists of the Bennett factory started working out some mechanical means of turning our satellite right round.
On the whole Francis Bennett had reason to be satisfied. One of the Earth Herald’s astronomers had just determined the elements of the new planet Gandini. It is at a distance of 12, 841, 348, 284, 623 metres and 7 decimetres that this planet describes its orbit round the sun in 572 years, 194 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9. 8 seconds.
Francis Bennett was delighted with such precision.
‘Good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hurry up and tell the reportage service about it. You know what a passion the public has for these astronomical questions. I’m anxious for the news to appear in today’s issue!’
Before leaving the reporters’ room he took up another matter with a special group of interviewers, addressing the one who dealt with celebrities: ‘You’ve interviewed President Wilcox?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Mr Bennett, and I’m publishing the information that he’s certainly suffering from a dilatation of the stomach, and that he’s most conscientiously undergoing a course of tubular irrigations. ‘
‘Splendid. And that business of Chapmann the assassin?... Have you interviewed the jurymen who are to sit at the Assizes?’
‘Yes, and they all agree that he’s guilty, so that the case won’t even have to be submitted to them. The accused will be executed before he’s sentenced.‘
‘Splendid! Splendid!’
The next room, a broad gallery about a quarter of a mile long, was devoted to publicity, and it well may be imagined what the publicity for such a journal as the Earth Herald had to be. It brought in a daily average of three million dollars. Very ingeniously, indeed, some of the publicity obtained took an absolutely novel form, the result of a patent bought at an outlay of three dollars from a poor devil who had since died of hunger. They are gigantic signs reflected on the clouds, so large that they can be seen all over a whole country. From that gallery a thousand projectors were unceasingly employed in sending to the clouds, on which they were reproduced in colour, these inordinate advertisements.
But that day when Francis Bennett entered the publicity room he found the technicians with their arms folded beside their idle projectors. He asked them about it... The only reply he got was that somebody pointed to the blue sky.
‘Yes!... A fine day,’ he muttered, ‘so we can’t get any aerial publicity! What’s to be done about that? If there isn’t any rain, we can produce it! But it isn’t rain, it’s clouds that we need!’
‘Yes, some fine snow-white clouds!’ replied the chief technician.
‘Well, Mr Simon Mark, you’d better get in touch with the scientific editors, meteorological service. You can tell them from me that they can get busy on the problem of artificial clouds. We really can’t be at the mercy of the fine weather. ‘
After finishing his inspection of the different sections of the paper, Francis Bennett went to his reception hall, where he found awaiting him the ambassadors and plenipotentiary ministers accredited to the American government: these gentlemen had come to ask advice from the all-powerful director. As he entered the room they were carrying on rather a lively discussion.
‘Pardon me, your Excellency,’ the French Ambassador addressed the Ambassador from Russia. ‘But I can’t see anything that needs changing in the map of Europe. The north to the Slavs, agreed! But the south to the Latin
s! Our common frontier along the Rhine seems quite satisfactory. Understand me clearly, that our government will certainly resist any attempt which may be made against our Prefectures of Rome, Madrid, and Vienna!’
‘Well said!’ Francis Bennett intervened in the discussion. ‘What, Mr Russian Ambassador, you’re not satisfied with your great empire, which extends from the banks of the Rhine as far as the frontiers of China? An empire whose immense coast is bathed by the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the Indian Ocean?’
‘And besides, what’s the use of threats? Is war with our modern weapons possible? These asphyxiating shells which can be sent a distance of a hundred miles, these electric flashes, sixty miles long, which can annihilate a whole army corps at a single blow, these projectiles loaded with the microbes of plague, cholera, and yellow fever, and which can destroy a whole nation in a few hours?’
‘We realise that, Mr Bennett,’ the Russian Ambassador replied. ‘But are we free to do what we like?... Thrust back ourselves by the Chinese on our eastern frontier, we must, at all costs, attempt something towards the west... ‘
‘Is that all it is, sir?’ Francis Bennett replied in reassuring tones – ‘Well! as the proliferation of the Chinese is getting to be a danger to the world, we’ll bring pressure to bear on the Son of Heaven. He’ll simply have to impose a maximum birth-rate on his subjects, not to be exceeded on pain of death! A child too many?... A father less! That will keep things balanced.
‘And you, sir,’ the director of the Earth Herald continued, addressing the English consul, ‘what can I do to be of service to you?’
‘A great deal, Mr Bennett,’ that personage replied. ‘It would be enough for your journal to open a campaign on our behalf...‘
‘And with what purpose?’
‘Merely to protest against the annexation of Great Britain by the United States... ‘
‘Merely that!’ Francis Bennett exclaimed. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘An annexation that’s 150 years old already! But won’t you English gentry ever resign yourselves to the fact that by a just compensation of events here below, your country has become an American colony? That’s pure madness! How could your government ever have believed that I should ever open so antipatriotic a campaign... ‘
‘Mr Bennett, you know that the Monroe doctrine is all America for the Americans, and nothing more than America, and not... ‘
‘But England is only one of our colonies, one of the finest. Don’t count upon our ever consenting to give her up!’
‘You refuse?’...
‘I refuse, and if you insist, we shall make it a casus belli, based on nothing more than an interview with one of our reporters. ‘
‘So that’s the end.’ The consul was overwhelmed. ‘The United Kingdom, Canada, and New Britain belong to the Americans, India to the Russians, and Australia and New Zealand to themselves! Of all that once was England, what’s left?... Nothing!’
‘Nothing, sir?’ retorted Francis Bennett. ‘Well, what about Gibraltar?’
At that moment the clock struck twelve. The director of the Earth Herald, ending the audience with a gesture, left the hall, and sat down in a rolling armchair. In a few minutes he had reached his dining room, half a mile away, at the far end of the office.
The table was laid, and he took his place at it. Within reach of his hand was placed a series of taps, and before him was the curved surface of a phonotelephote, on which appeared the dining room of his home in Paris. Mr and Mrs Bennett had arranged to have lunch at the same time – nothing could be more pleasant than to be face to face in spite of the distance, to see one another and talk by means of the phonotelephotic apparatus.
But the room in Paris was still empty.
‘Edith is late,’ Francis Bennett said to himself. ‘Oh, women’s punctuality! Everything makes progress, except that. ‘
And after this too just reflection, he turned on one of the taps.
Like everybody else in easy circumstances nowadays, Francis Bennett, having abandoned domestic cooking, is one of the subscribers to the Society for Supplying Food to the Home, which distributes dishes of a thousand types through a network of pneumatic tubes. This system is expensive, no doubt, but the cooking is better, and it has the advantage that it has suppressed that hair-raising race, the cooks of both sexes.
So, not without some regret, Francis Bennett was lunching in solitude. He was finishing his coffee when Mrs Bennett, having got back home, appeared in the telephoto screen.
‘Where have you been, Edith dear?’ Francis Bennett inquired.
‘What?’ Mrs Bennett replied. ‘You’ve finished?... I must be late, then?... Where have I been? Of course, I’ve been with my modiste... This year’s hats are so bewitching! They’re not hats at all... they’re domes, they’re cupolas! I rather lost count of time!’
‘Rather, my dear? You lost it so much that here’s my lunch finished. ‘
‘Well, run along then, my dear... run along to your work,’ Mrs Bennett replied. ‘I’ve still got a visit to make, to my modeleur-couturier. ‘
And this couturier was no other than the famous Wormspire, the very man who so judiciously remarked, ‘Woman is only a question of shape!’
Francis Bennett kissed Mrs Bennett’s cheek on the telephote screen and went across to the window, where his aerocar was waiting.
‘Where are we going, sir?’ asked the aero-coachman.
‘Let’s see. I’ve got time...’ Francis Bennett replied. ‘Take me to my accumulator works at Niagara.‘
The aero-car, an apparatus splendidly based on the principle of ‘heavier than air’, shot across space at a speed of about 400 miles an hour. Below him were spread out the towns with their moving pavements which carry the wayfarers along the streets, and the countryside, covered, as though by an immense spider’s web, by the network of electric wires.
Within half an hour, Francis Bennett had reached his works at Niagara, where, after using the force of the cataracts to produce energy, he sold or hired it out to the consumers. Then, his visit over, he returned, by way of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, to Centropolis, where his aero-car put him down about five o’clock.
The waiting room of the Earth Herald was crowded. A careful lookout was being kept for Francis Bennett to return for the daily audience he gave to his petitioners. They included the capital’s acquisitive inventors, company promoters with enterprises to suggest – all splendid, to listen to them. Among these different proposals he had to make a choice, reject the bad ones, look into the doubtful ones, give a welcome to the good ones. He soon got rid of those who had only got useless or impracticable schemes. One of them – didn’t he claim to revive painting, an art which had fallen into such desuetude that Millet’s Angelus had just been sold for fifteen francs – thanks to the progress of colour photography invented at the end of the twentieth century by the Japanese, whose name was on everybody’s lips –Aruziswa-Riochi-Nichome-Sanjukamboz-Kio-Baski-Kû? Another, hadn’t he discovered the biogene bacillus which, after being introduced into the human organism, would make man immortal? This one, a chemist, hadn’t he discovered a new substance. Nihilium, of which a gram would cost only three million dollars? That one, a most daring physician, wasn’t he claiming that he’d found a remedy for a cold in the head?
All these dreamers were at once shown out.
A few of the others received a better welcome, and foremost among them was a young man whose broad brow indicated a high degree of intelligence.
‘Sir,’ he began, ‘though the number of elements used to be estimated at seventy-five, it has now been reduced to three, as no doubt you are aware?"
‘Perfectly,’ Francis Bennett replied.
‘Well, sir, I’m on the point of reducing the three to one. If I don’t run out of money I’ll have succeeded in three weeks. ‘
‘And then?’
‘Then, sir, I shall really have discovered the absolute. ‘
‘And the results of that d
iscovery?’
‘It will be to make the creation of all forms of matter easy – stone, wood, metal, fibrin... ‘
‘Are you saying you’re going to be able to construct a human being?’
‘Completely... The only thing missing will be the soul!’
‘Only that!’ was the ironical reply of Francis Bennett, who however assigned the young fellow to the scientific editorial department of his journal.
A second inventor, using as a basis some old experiments that dated from the nineteenth century and had often been repeated since, had the idea of moving a whole city in a single block. He suggested, as a demonstration, the town of Saaf, situated fifteen miles from the sea: after conveying it on rails down to the shore, he would transform it into a seaside resort. That would add an enormous value to the ground already built on and to be built over.
Francis Bennett, attracted by this project, agreed to take a half share in it.
‘You know, sir,’ said a third applicant, ‘that, thanks to our solar and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we’ve been able to equalise the seasons. I suggest doing even better. By converting into heat part of the energy we have at our disposal and transmitting the heat to the polar regions we can melt the ice... ‘
‘Leave your plans with me,’ Francis Bennett replied, ‘and come back in a week. ‘
Finally, a fourth savant brought the news that one of the questions which had excited the whole world was about to be solved that very evening.
As is well known, a century ago a daring experiment made by Dr Nathaniel Faithburn had attracted public attention. A convinced supporter of the idea of human hibernation – the possibility of arresting the vital functions and then re-awakening them after a certain time – he had decided to test the value of the method on himself. After, by a holograph will, describing the operations necessary to restore him to life a hundred years later to the day, he had exposed himself to a cold of 172° Centigrade (278° Fahrenheit) below zero; thus reduced to a mummified state, he had been shut up in a tomb for the stated period.
Now it was exactly on that very day, July 25th 2889, that the period expired, and Francis Bennett had just received an offer to proceed in one of the rooms of the Earth Herald office with the resurrection so impatiently waited for. The public could then be kept in touch with it second by second.