by Jules Vernes
The proposal was accepted, and as the operation was not to take place until ten that evening, Francis Bennett went to stretch himself out in an easy chair in the audition room. Then, pressing a button, he was put into communication with the Central Concert.
After so busy a day, what a charm he found in the works of our greatest masters, based, as everybody knows, on a series of delicious harmonico-algebraic formulae!
The room had been darkened, and, plunged into an ecstatic half-sleep, Francis Bennett could not even see himself. But a door opened suddenly.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked, touching a commutator placed beneath his hand.
At once, by an electric effect produced on the ether, the air became luminous.
‘Oh, it’s you, doctor?’ he asked.
‘Myself,’ replied Dr Sam, who had come to pay his daily visit (annual subscription). ‘How’s it going?’
‘Fine!’
‘All the better... Let’s see your tongue?’
He looked at it through a microscope.
‘Good... And your pulse?’
He tested it with a pulsograph, similar to the instruments which record earthquakes.
‘Splendid!... And your appetite?’
‘Ugh!’
‘Oh, your stomach!... It isn’t going too well, your stomach!... It’s getting old, your stomach is!... We’ll certainly have to get you a new one!’
‘We’ll see!’ Francis Bennett replied. ‘And meantime, doctor, you’ll dine with me. ‘
During the meal, phonotelephotic communication had been set up with Paris. Mrs Bennett was at her table this time, and the dinner, livened up by Dr Sam’s jokes, was delightful. Hardly was it over than:
‘When do you expect to get back to Centropolis, dear Edith?’ asked Francis Bennett.
‘I’m going to start this moment. ‘
‘By tube or aero-train?’
‘By tube. ‘
‘Then you’ll be here?’
‘At eleven fifty-nine this evening. ‘
‘Paris time?’
‘No, no!... Centropolis time. ‘
‘Good-bye then, and above all don’t miss the tube!’
These submarine tubes, by which one travels from Paris in 295 minutes, are certainly much preferable to the aero-trains, which only manage 600 miles an hour.
The doctor had gone, after promising to return to be present at the resurrection of his colleague Nathaniel Faithburn. Wishing to draw up his daily accounts, Francis Bennett went into his private office. An enormous operation, when it concerns an enterprise whose expenditure rises to 800,000 dollars every day! Fortunately, the development of modern mechanisation has greatly facilitated this work. Helped by the piano-electric-computer, Francis Bennett soon completed his task.
It was time. Hardly had he struck the last key of the mechanical totalisator than his presence was asked for in the experimental room. He went off to it at once, and was welcomed by a large cortège of scientists, who had been joined by Dr Sam.
Nathaniel Faithburn’s body is there, on the bier, placed on trestles in the centre of the room.
The telephoto is switched on. The whole world will be able to follow the various phases of the operation.
The coffin is opened... Nathaniel Faithburn’s body is taken out ... It is still like a mummy, yellow, hard. dry. It sounds like wood ... It is submitted to heat... electricity... No result... It’s hypnotised... It’s exposed to suggestion... Nothing can overcome that ultra-cataleptic state.
‘Well, Dr Sam?’ asks Francis Bennett.
The doctor leans over the body: he examines it very carefully... He introduces into it, by means of a hypodermic, a few drops of the famous Brown-Séquard elixir, which is once again in fashion ... The mummy is more mummified than ever.
‘Oh well,’ Dr Sam replies, ‘I think the hibernation has lasted too long... ‘
‘Oh!’
‘And Nathaniel Faithburn is dead. ‘
‘Dead?’
‘As dead as anybody could be!’
‘And how long has he been dead?’
‘How long?’... Dr Sam replies. ‘But... a hundred years – that is to say, since he had the unhappy idea of freezing himself for pure love of science!’
‘Then,’ Francis Bennett comments, ‘that’s a method which still needs to be perfected!’
‘Perfected is the word,’ replies Dr Sam, while the scientific commission on hibernation carries away its funereal bundle.
Followed by Dr Sam, Francis Bennett regained his room, and as he seemed very tired after so very lull a day, the doctor advised him to take a bath before going to bed.
‘You’re quite right, doctor... That will refresh me...‘
‘It will, Mr Bennett, and if you like I’ll order one on my way out...’
‘There’s no need for that, doctor. There’s always a bath all ready in the office, and I needn’t even have the trouble of going out of my room to take it. Look, simply by touching this button, that bath will start moving, and you’ll see it come along all by itself with the water at a temperature of sixty-five degrees!’
Francis Bennett had just touched the button. A rumbling sound began, got louder, increased... Then one of the doors opened, and the bath appeared, gliding along on its rails...
Heavens! While Dr Sam veils his face, little screams of frightened modesty arise from the bath...
Brought to the office by the transatlantic tube half an hour before, Mrs Bennett was inside it.
Next day, July 26th 2889, the director of the Earth Herald recommenced his tour of twelve miles across his office. That evening, when his totalisator had been brought into action, it was at 250,000 dollars that it calculated the profits of that day – 50,000 more than the day before.
A fine job, that of a journalist at the end of the twenty-ninth century!
An Express of the Future
‘Take care!’ cried my conductor, ‘there’s a step!’
Safely descending the step thus indicated to me, I entered a vast room, illuminated by blinding electric reflectors, the sound of our feet alone breaking the solitude and silence of the place.
Where was I? What had I come there to do? Who was my mysterious guide? Questions unanswered. A long walk in the night, iron doors opened and reclosed with a clang, stairs descending, it seemed to me, deep into the earth – that is all I could remember. I had, however, no time for thinking.
‘No doubt you are asking yourself who I am?’ said my guide: ‘Colonel Pierce, at your service. Where are you? In America, at Boston – in a station.‘
‘A station?’
‘Yes, the starting-point of the "Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic Tubes Company".’
And, with an explanatory gesture, the colonel pointed out to me two long iron cylinders, about a metre and a half in diameter, lying upon the ground a few paces off.
I looked at these two cylinders, ending on the right in a mass of masonry, and closed on the left with heavy metallic caps, from which a cluster of tubes were carried up to the roof; and suddenly I comprehended the purpose of all this.
Had I not, a short time before, read, in an American newspaper, an article describing this extraordinary project for linking Europe with the New World by means of two gigantic submarine tubes? An inventor had claimed to have accomplished the task; and that inventor, Colonel Pierce. I had before me.
In thought I realised the newspaper article.
Complaisantly the journalist entered into the details of the enterprise. He stated that more than 3,000 miles of iron tubes, weighing over 13,000. 000 tons, were required, with the number of ships necessary, for the transport of this material – 200 ships of 2,000 tons, each making thirty-three voyages. He described this Armada of science bearing the steel to two special vessels, on board of which the ends of the tubes were joined to each other, and incased in a triple netting of iron, the whole covered with a resinous preparation to preserve it from the action of the seawater.
Coming at once to
the question of working, he filled the tubes – transformed into a sort of pea-shooter of interminable length – with a series of carriages, to be carried with their travellers by powerful currents of air, in the same way that despatches are conveyed pneumatically round Paris.
A parallel with the railways closed the article, and the author enumerated with enthusiasm the advantages of the new and audacious system. According to him, there would be, in passing through these tubes, a suppression of all nervous trepidation, thanks to the interior surface being of finely polished steel; equality of temperature secured by means of currents of air, by which the heat could be modified according to the seasons; incredibly low fares, owing to the cheapness of construction and working expenses – forgetting, or waving aside, all considerations of the question of gravitation and of wear and tear.
All that now came back to my mind.
So, then, this ‘Utopia’ had become a reality, and these two cylinders of iron at my feet passed thence under the Atlantic and reached to the coast of England!
In spite of the evidence, I could not bring myself to believe in the thing having been done. That the tubes had been laid I could not doubt; but that men could travel by this route – never!
‘Was it not impossible even to obtain a current of air of that length?’ – I expressed that opinion aloud.
‘Quite easy, on the contrary!’ protested Colonel Pierce; ‘to obtain it, all that is required is a great number of steam fans similar to those used in blast furnaces. The air is driven by them with a force which is practically unlimited, propelling it at the speed of 1,800 kilometres an hour – almost that of a cannon-ball! – so that our carriages with their travellers, in the space of two hours and forty minutes, accomplish the journey between Boston and Liverpool.’
‘Eighteen hundred kilometres an hour!’ I exclaimed.
‘Not one less. And what extraordinary consequences arise from such a rate of speed! The time at Liverpool being four hours and forty minutes in advance of ours, a traveller starting from Boston at nine o’clock in the morning, arrives in England at 3.54 in the afternoon. Isn’t that a journey quickly made? In another sense, on the contrary, our trains, in this latitude, gain over the sun more than 900 kilometres an hour, beating that planet hand over hand: quitting Liverpool at noon, for example, the traveller will reach the station where we now are at thirty-four minutes past nine in the morning – that is to say, earlier than he started! Ha! ha! I don’t think one can travel quicker than that!’
I did not know what to think. Was I talking with a madman? – or must I credit these fabulous theories, in spite of the objections which rose in my mind?
‘Very well, so be it!’ I said. ‘I will admit that travellers may take this mad-brained route, and that you can obtain this incredible speed. But, when you have got this speed, how do you check it? When you come to a stop, everything must be shattered to pieces!’
‘Not at all,’ replied the colonel, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Between our tubes – one for the out, the other for the home journey – consequently worked by currents going in opposite directions – a communication exists at every joint. When a train is approaching, an electric spark advertises us of the fact; left to itself, the train would continue its course by reason of the speed it had acquired; but, simply by the turning of a handle, we are able to let in the opposing current of compressed air from the parallel tube, and, little by little, reduce to nothing the final shock of stopping. But what is the use of all these explanations? Would not a trial be a hundred times better?’
And, without waiting for an answer to his questions, the colonel pulled sharply a bright brass knob projecting from the side of one of the tubes: a panel slid smoothly in its grooves, and in the opening left by its removal I perceived a row of seats, on each of which two persons might sit comfortably side by side.
‘The carriage!’ exclaimed the colonel. ‘Come in.’
I followed him without offering any objection, and the panel immediately slid back into its place.
By the light of an electric lamp in the roof I carefully examined the carriage I was in.
Nothing could be more simple: a long cylinder, comfortably upholstered, along which some fifty armchairs, in pairs, were ranged in twenty-five parallel ranks. At either end a valve regulated the atmospheric pressure, that at the farther end allowing breathable air to enter the carriage, that in front allowing for the discharge of any excess beyond a normal pressure.
After spending a few moments on this examination, I became impatient.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘are we not going to start?’
‘Going to start?’ cried the colonel. ‘We have started!’
Started – like that – without the least jerk, was it possible? I listened attentively, trying to detect a sound of some kind that might have guided me.
If we had really started – if the colonel had not deceived me in talking of a speed of 1,800 kilometres an hour – we must already be far from any land, under the sea; above our heads the huge, foam-crested waves; even at that moment, perhaps – taking it for a monstrous sea-serpent of an unknown kind – whales were battering with their powerful tails our long, iron prison!
But I heard nothing but a dull rumble, produced, no doubt, by the passage of our carriage, and, plunged in boundless astonishment, unable to believe in the reality of all that had happened to me, I sat silently, allowing the time to pass.
At the end of about an hour, a sense of freshness upon my forehead suddenly aroused me from the torpor into which I had sunk by degrees.
I raised my hand to my brow: it was moist.
Moist! Why was that? Had the tube burst under pressure of the waters – a pressure which could not but be formidable, since it increases at the rate of ‘an atmosphere’ every ten metres of depth? Had the ocean broken in upon us?
Fear seized upon me. Terrified, I tried to call out – and – and I found myself in my garden, generously sprinkled by a driving rain, the big drops of which had awakened me. I had simply fallen asleep while reading the article devoted by an American journalist to the fantastic projects of Colonel Pierce – who, also, I much fear, has only dreamed.
The Eternal Adam
Prelude
Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr – meaning ‘Doctor, third male representative of the hundred and first generation in the Sofr Family’ – was slowly following the principal street of Basidra, the capital of the Hars-Iten-Schu – otherwise known as ‘The Empire of the Four Seas’.
Four seas, indeed: the Tubélone or northern, the Ehone or southern, the Spone or eastern, and the Mérone or western. They bounded that vast irregularly shaped country, whose most remote points – to use the means of reckoning familiar to the reader – lay respectively in longitude 14°E and 72°W, and in latitude 54°N and 55°S.[v]
As for the size of these seas, how was it to be calculated, even approximately, for they all merged together, so that a seaman leaving any one of their shores and always following a straight course was bound to reach the shore diametrically opposite? For nowhere on the surface of the globe did there exist any land other than the Hars-Iten-Schu.
Sofr walked slowly, partly because it was very warm: the torrid season was beginning, and on Basidra, situated on the edge of the Spone-Schu, or Eastern Sea, less than 20°N of the Equator, a terrible cataract of rays was falling from the sun, then almost in the zenith.
But not only lassitude and the heat but also the weight of his thoughts slowed the step of Sofr, the savant Zartog. As he wiped his forehead with a heedless hand he recalled the session held the previous evening, when so many eloquent orators, among whom he had the honour of being counted, had magnificently celebrated the hundred and ninety-fifth anniversary of their empire’s foundation.
Some had reviewed its history, which was that of all mankind. They had described the Mahart-Iten-Schu, the Land of the Four Seas, as divided at first between an immense number of savage peoples who knew nothing of one another. It was to them that the most ancie
nt traditions went back. As to what had gone before, nobody knew anything, and the natural sciences had hardly begun to throw a gleam of light into the impenetrable shadows of the past. Certainly those far-distant times evaded critical history, whose earliest vestiges consisted of vague notions regarding these age-old scattered peoples.
For more than 8,000 years, the history of the Mahart-Iten-Schu, gradually getting more complete and more exact, described only conflicts and wars, at first of individual against individual, then of family against family, then of tribe against tribe. Each living creature, each community, small or large, had throughout the course of the ages no other objective than to ensure its own supremacy over its competitors and to strive, with varying and often contradictory fortunes, to subject them to its laws.
After these 8,000 years, human memory had become somewhat more precise. At the opening of the second of the four great ages into which the annals of the Mahart-Iten-Schu were commonly divided, legend had begun appropriately to merit the name of history. None the less, history or legend, the subject-matter of the story hardly changed at all: always massacres and slaughters – no longer, admittedly, of tribe by tribe but henceforth of people by people – so much so, indeed, that on the whole this second period was not so very different from the first.
And it was still the same with the third period which, after having lasted nearly six centuries, had ended hardly 200 years ago. More atrocious still perhaps, this third period during which, grouped into countless armies, mankind, with its insatiable rage, had watered the earth with its own blood.
Somewhat less than eight centuries, indeed, before the day on which Zartog Sofr was following the principal street of Basidra, humanity had been rent by vast convulsions. Then weapons, fire, violence, having already accomplished much of their inevitable work and the weak having succumbed to the strong, the people of the Mahart-Iten-Schu had formed three distinct nations, in each of which time had lessened the differences between the conquerors and the conquered of the past.