The Mysterious Fluid

by Paul Vibert

  In the meantime, I can see only one shadow over my happiness and my joy in having rendered such a great service to humankind. I mean the terrible hatred that omnibuses, ferry-boats, railways and steamships will infallibly avow against me, since I’m delivering a mortal blow to their tortoise-paced industry. The blow is all the more terrible because I can establish tariffs that will defy all competition, given that I am eliminating the time and dispensing with the fatigue of traveling, and that everyone, in future, will employ my system—for I shall have branches all over the world. All men and women will be subscribers, with their pass books, and the time is not far off when I shall be able to effect these temporary transmutations of intelligence-fluid on a massive scale, for the price of a simple ticket.

  Whatever is said, let no one fear for me. I’m brave and well-armed, and I laugh at the impotent hatred and rage of all the transport companies in the entire world!

  Interastral Telegraphy

  A new application of wireless telegraphy.

  How to communicate with all the stars.

  Decisive and conclusive experiments.

  Recently, I read a note in the majority of the scientific journals conceived very much in these terms:

  “Experiments in wireless telegraphy are being multiplied and extended. They have been carried out between the port of Cuxhaven and the island of Heligoland, Sixty-two kilometers separate these two stations, and the communications were made in perfect conditions of precision. Wireless telegraphy has ceased to be a subject of scientific curiosity; it exists, and we can be certain that it development will be rapid.

  “Already, in England, a Post Office commission that has been studying the question for several months has delivered a report in which it concludes in favor of the adoption of the Marconi system by the English postal authorities. There is no need to stress the importance of this news. Its confirmation will be neither more nor less than the commencement of a revolution in the telegraphic system of the world.”

  I beg you to believe that I bring no authorial pretension or inventorial jealousy to this matter, but when I had finished reading that item I could not help smiling in pity.

  Poor folk! They’re still at a distance of sixty-two kilometers, while it’s been a long time since I not only achieved interplanetary telegraphy by interastral telegraphy, between the thirty million worlds catalogued by Janssen94 and the eighty million other worlds that, being too distant, have not yet been revealed by photography, either because their light has not reached us yet or for some other cause.

  Since the day when, thanks to my profound knowledge of the electrical fluid I was able to enter into sustained communication with the inhabitants of the planet Mars, as I have described here, by means of fire—which is to say, visible electricity—and photography—which is to say, light or invisible electricity—the problem was mentally resolved, so far as I was concerned. All that remained was fining the material application, and with patience, tenacity and—ought I admit?—a great deal of fumbling, I finally arrived at a victorious solution to the problem.

  What was to be determined, first of all, was whether the star-worlds were inhabited, and whether it was possible to understand their languages, which were probably very varied.

  There remained that matter of entering into communication with their inhabitants by wireless telegraphy, which was mathematically possible, in my view—but how could I alert them?

  It was then that I reasoned, very simply, as follows:

  I ought to find myself facing one of three alternatives. Either the stars are too old, dead or uninhabited—one day, I shall explain how a star dies—or, according to the theory of Fontenelle, who believed, quite rightly, in the plurality of worlds, a large number of star-worlds are inhabited, but the inhabitants are in a savage state and would have no suspicion of my attempts to contact them, or, finally, the stars are inhabited by people as civilized as us. In the last-cited case, there was a good chance that, their already being in possession of electric telegraphy apparatus perhaps much more powerful than ours, my provocative dispatches would encounter their receivers and would be recorded as a result.

  Fortified by these ideas and hopes, I therefore embarked calmly on that course, naturally making use of wireless telegraphy and sending, if I might put it thus, a collective dispatch to the hundred and twenty million star-worlds immediately surrounding us, in what might be called the suburbs of Earth, within a few billion trillion quadrillion leagues.

  I waited with a combination of confidence, impatience and tranquility, and while I waited in that very particular state of mind—which is incomprehensible to anyone who has never sent dispatches that far—I made calculations and told myself that even with my electric fluid, which moved rapidly, there were definitely large numbers of stars too distant for any communication, from which I would not receive a response within seventy-five years. I was even getting ready to make my will in order to implore my notary’s successors to record the replies after my death, when I reflected that I still had time to think about it.

  Then the terrible idea occurred to me, with the nagging pan of a dagger slowly tickling my heart, that I would never be able to establish a direct service of balloons or interplanetary ten-centime tramways. And that realization caused me veritable sadness.

  Soon, however, replies began to arrive in quantity; I had not been mistaken. The problem of long-distance telegraphy, through the spaces of infinity, was resolved; millions of star-worlds were inhabited and civilized, like the Earth; and—an important and curious point—with a profound knowledge of Hebrew, I succeeded with relative ease in translating and understanding all the dispatches, written in the most various languages and with the most bizarre characters, conventional or otherwise.

  There is, I think, no need to insist on the importance of my discovery. At the present moment, I have not yet opened all my replies, with the aid of my seventy-one secretaries, to whom I have given a key to decipher them; I can say, however, that I already have correspondents in seventeen million, eight hundred and twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and seven planets, stars or worlds as unfamiliar to date as the telegraph service.

  I really did say 17,829,407 worlds, and I believe that, on that account, without flattering myself, I have outdone Mougeot,95 who has not yet succeeded in corresponding with anyone beyond the Earth except St. Anthony of Padua, and Swedenborg himself is conclusively buried all the way to the hilt.

  Now, in order to undertake further studies and pay my secretaries, I have opened a telegraph office for anyone who wants to send interastral dispatches, in the hope of re-establishing contact with their mother-in-law or someone they love.

  I have a list of stars and correspondents and, until further notice, I have established a uniform tariff. It’s a thousand francs a letter; when there’s an acute or grave accent, or a period, it’s twelve francs a letter; a diacresis or circumflex accent costs thirteen francs with the letter; finally, a cedilla is valued at fifteen francs, given the difficulty of certain interastral punctuations and accentuations.

  I don’t know if the clientele will flood in, but, in spite of the relatively high process—which is hardly anything, if one takes account of the distances, and which our general expenses prevent me from lowering for the moment—either I’m much mistaken or it seems to me that I’m finally on the verge of making a fortune, while having accomplished it by means of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the beginning of the 20th century.

  What’s the Point?

  The death of the Sun.

  The impossibility of communication between the stars.

  The negligibility of glory before time and space.

  The uselessness of writing.

  I recently found myself at the banquet of a literary society, infiltrated by a number of funeral directors, at which a writer made the following very judicious speech over dessert, which I made an effort to learn by heart, and which I am reproducing here with almost total fidelity:

  �
�Ladies and dear colleagues.

  “It is with tears in my voice that I come to say my farewells to you, so permit me modestly to propose a toast: put out the torches! But I perceive that there’s nothing here but electricity, so I shall call: put out the bulbs.

  “Don’t worry, I’m always brief; you won’t have time to put earplugs in.

  “As we’re all old friends here and I’ve been taking part in your fraternal love-feasts for twenty years, I owe you an explanation of the reasons for this retirement, as premature as it is unexpected. It will be brief, simple and clear.

  “All today’s scientists agree in affirming that that the sun will soon die. Some say in three hundred million years, others affirm that it will only happen in three hundred billion years, but that slight difference of opinion is of no importance. The brutal fact remains; the sun is going to die tomorrow—for three hundred billion years is tomorrow, by comparison with eternity.

  “On the other hand, our excellent and illustrious friend Janssen has already catalogued, labeled and baptized—the dear chap—more than thirty million stars, and by his own admission, there are still more than a hundred and twenty million that are still hanging around, waiting in the vertiginous plains of infinity for an opportunity to pass before an astronomer’s objective lens.

  “Apart from the suns and a few worlds perhaps reverted to infancy because they are too old, it is evident that all these worlds are inhabited, and yet, in the present state of science, we have not yet found a means of communicating with them. Thus far, as I have recounted here myself, I have scarcely been able to exchange a few brief sentences with the inhabitants of Mars and photograph a young Martian woman.

  “From these two observations, it follows clearly that it is utterly useless to write, since we have the certainty that our works cannot endure either in time or in space, and the only thing that could incite me to continue writing is the possibility of telegraphing my works to all the worlds—but in a broader sense that the one attached to that banal phrase on the Earth.96

  “As this is not the case, however, what is three hundred billion years? Scarcely a token gesture sketched in time.

  “What are a hundred and twenty million stars—or five hundred billion, if you wish? A few grains of dust, almost invisible in the dark void, the impalpable waves of the boundless infinity of space.

  “Given that, at least until further notice, my thought cannot endure either in time or in space, what point is there in continuing to accumulate an immense quotidian labor, as I have been doing for thirty years?

  “Charron said: what do I know?—and that was also the opinion of his friend Montaigne.97 For myself, more modestly, I say: What’s the point?

  “And that is why, from now on, my resolution is irrevocable. I shall retire from the field—to Courcelles!

  “With the mind thus freed of any sickening preoccupation, abrupt or creeping, however, before retiring forever to the wilderness out there beyond the Place Monceau, I want to tell you that I shall still remain in your midst, a dependable, active, virile and devoted member, for as long as possible.

  “And now, ladies and dear colleagues, my dear friends, I raise my glass and drink to the old French gaiety, to joie de vivre, to all that is good on the earth: to liberty, love, justice and friendship!”

  Indeed, the colleague who, while still relatively young, declares in such a casual manner that he is renouncing the ephemeral glory of a day, the notoriety, the celebrity and the posterity, because, in his thirst for the ideal and the absolute, he feels, he sees that eternity is escaping him, appears to me to be a profound philosopher.

  It is necessary to see things from on high to reason with that freedom of mind, that amiable grace, to be moved in that manner, without having vertigo, in the very ambience of the redoubtable problems that will always pose themselves to the interrogative and curious mind of every thinking being in time and space!

  In addition, here is a spiritual lesson in transcendental philosophy, which ought not to be entirely lost on the funeral directors who heard it.

  Similis similibus curantor.

  Unless you prefer: contraria contrariis.98

  Personally, it’s all the same to me—and that, quite simply, is my conclusion.

  Assured Survival

  I. The soul-ticket. Means of conserving the will.

  A psychological colombarium.

  A new branch of the science of electricity.

  I have already explained here, in detail and peremptorily, that what we call the soul is nothing, in essence, but a fluid akin to electricity, and how it will be possible to do away with traveling in the future, when one will be able to hire the body of an individual for a day or two and install one’s own soul—which is to say, one’s own individuality—by cable in a foreign carcass, in exchange for a modest remuneration.

  Those are givens, and I shall not return to them. Having perfected my system, however, and thus being able to perceive what will happen in future, I think I can be sure that I have finally resolved the problem of survival, which is so irritating and, at the same time, so flattering—especially for those who have lots of money and are annoyed at having to quit so soon what is only a vale of tears for those who haven’t a sou.

  All spiritualists and all spiritual people admit that the soul, that imponderable fluid, is immortal and survives our bodies, just like the electrical fluid, which is the very agent of the universe.

  Now, this is what I have imagined in order to give pleasure to rich people and the curious, and, fundamentally, what I shall be able to realize scientifically. In the dreams of their profligate imagination, our forefathers desired it before me, for, all things considered, it’s nothing more than a new and tangible form of the legend of Faust. As a clientele, I’m certain to have that of all the rich people who are afraid of dying, and all curious individuals who would like to know what will happen on earth in a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years or more—for the soul-fluid is something that can be conserved, and does not decompose in bottles.

  So, a great nobleman says to me: “I’d like to come back to the earth in a hundred and fifty-one years”—the exact figure doesn’t matter.

  I reply: “This is the tariff: a thousand francs a year. First give me a hundred and fifty-one thousand francs.”

  Then, by an entirely new scientific procedure that I shall leave in my will to the Académie des Sciences, but which I shall be permitted to keep secret for the time being, in order not to deprive me of my means of existence, I shall commence by removing, very gently, without any danger, a portion of his soul-fluid—which will, in any case, renew itself very quickly—and I shall store it, condense it and conserve it, if I might put it thus, in an ad hoc flask.

  I shall conserve souls thus, as life, voices and movements are literally conserved today by cinematographs, phonographs and thaumatropes.99

  Needless to say, all this will be done seriously and appropriately, and when a joint stock company has been set up to construct a palatial building, I shall arrange all the souls in a psychological colombarium.100

  When that is done, I shall give my client a receipt—a futuristic birth-certificate, if you wish—which I shall call a soul-ticket; which, in order that it will not be lost, will be deposited in the office of a notary who will have a special section in his minutes for this kind of operation.

  Now it remains for me to explain the purely material side of the operation. It’s quite simple.

  I shall return to the example of my client, who has deposited his soul-fluid in my psychological columbarium and has given me a hundred and fifty-one thousand francs.

  First I keep half for myself and the expenses of the upkeep and supervision of the columbarium. Of the other half, half of that—which is to say, a quarter—will be given to the notary for the conservation of the soul-ticket in his archives. The other quarter is deposited in the Banque de France, with the natural compounding of interest—which will be a tidy sum in a hundred and fifty-one yea
rs. On that day, the titular notary then in charge will easily be able to find parents who will surrender the body of their child for that tidy sum, for they will be enriched in their turn by the procedure, of which I alone know the secret, but which I shall bequeath to the Académie des Sciences. My client’s soul-fluid will be decanted into the body of the young child, and my client will return to the world, with his soul and his personality, after a hundred and fifty-one years.

  Note that, if he wishes, he will be able to stipulate a preference for being the tenant of a man fifteen, twenty or thirty years of age, in which case the contract will be made directly, the notary offering the sum.

  The problem of survival is, therefore, victorious resolved, in a very simple fashion, very easy to carry out. Understandably, however, it will always be expensive, and only within the range of very rich people, for it will be necessary for my client—still following the same example—to deposit a sum of money in the Banque de France on his own account, at compound interest, which he will be able to access after a hundred and fifty-one years, when he returns to the earth. Someone who only wants to return after a hundred and fifty-one years, though, given the compounding of interest, will not have to lay out a very considerable sum.

  I’m aware of the objections. Firstly, of course, it will require new legislation to permit the Banque de France and notaries to engage in operations of this kind; secondly, who can tell whether there might not be upheavals during such a long lapse of time, and whether banks and notaries will still exist? Obviously, that’s only human, but with all those ifs and buts one would never achieve anything great, and would always remained encrusted in routine.