In these times we should be filling up seas and excavating successive surfaces beneath our feet.—Author, chap. i.
Our laboratories, said Black, would turn out a savoury beefsteak as readily as an acid or an alkali.—Author, ibid.
We now stood at the main entrance to Bullings' first triumph of its kind, the Great Consolidated Sub, and we had fortunately a spare moment to admire the splendid and accurate machinery of the lift, which goes self-actionally up and down night and day incessantly. We are to bear in mind that, in the descent here, there are five successive inhabited floors, and millions of human occupants beneath. The lift is entirely self-acting, and is worked as part of the general Energy contract, by which the whole consolidation is supplied with its sunlight, its general meteorologies, and all the other force or energy rcLjuisites. At a si<:nal given, all of us in waiting at the moment step into the receiving-box or apartment, which is then slid into the descending lift, and down we at once glide.
Our own destination, like that of the large group in whose company we now stood, was the third stage. We pass in rapid succession the first and second floors, where the respective passengers have been duly again slid off, while fresh passengers, waiting on each landing to go downwards, took their places; the descending and ascending machinery, meanwhile, never stopping in the endless process. A brief minute has brought us to the third stage, where we are shunted off with the usual prompt facility, giving our place to the other crowd in waiting to go further down, while those going upwards are taken in with the reversion movement on the other side.
These stages or floors are most commonly of five hundred feet interval. A sky of about that elevation is considered to give a fairly natural effect over one or two or a few square miles of subjacent dwellings. Some rather second-class subs, in the economizing of space, have brought down their sky even to two hundred and fifty feet, and rents are there, of course, much cheaper. But there is an uncomfortable and quite an artificial effect about such low quarters, which puts them quite out of fashion, although keen business men will stand anything in that way that reduces expenses in these competitive times. But, again, space is in short supply all round; and the dimensions of our apartments and homes in these days—cribbed, cabined, and confined, as we must all more or less be—are something of the narrowest. Fortunately, however, in this progressive emergency, the general sentiment is averse to a cold dreary surrounding of empty space. We should now feel utterly desolate and lost in the huge bedrooms and sittingrooms of a thousand years ago, more especially as ventilation questions are now all disposed of by our carbon-absorbents, and other self-acting maintenants of atmospheric purity.
The elegant platform of the third stage, on which we had just been landed, belongs to four separate towns or districts, each being a great square, all filled with a busy multitude, and each communicating in common, at the four conjoining angles, with the common lift. Each of these separate subs had a handsome entrance gateway, and we at once entered the one in particular to which our introductions directed us. Here a pleasant and varied landscape confronted us. Although, as I have said, natural green fields and such-like have been long banished from our earth, yet that does not necessarily prevent the most select and beautiful artificial and imitation substitutes. And so a pretty gurgling stream of pure water first saluted our eye, and ran, sparkling in the bright mid-day sunshine, and coursing and tumbling through the entire area, as though we had got back to the old Scotch Highlands. The narrow bank on either side the stream, with its pretty winding walk, had still room for the most brilliant tropical vegetation, whose great expanding leaves spread a grateful shelter, and whose fragrant perfume was already in our nostrils as we crossed the entrance gateway.
In these advanced times, let us here remark, all this resplendent scenery of apparent vegetation is rapidly and cheaply woven out of parti-coloured glass tissue, and is, in fact, everlasting. There is thus, of course, an enormous advantage over the periodical decay, and the sere and yellow leaf of mere nature. And, again, as to the fragrance question, old botanical descriptions tell us that often the most showy plants and flowers have little or no smell, or even an unpleasant odour. Why repeat such defects by exactly imitating nature! On the contrary, we impart the most delicious perfumes, and keep them exhaling, at our option, night and day, summer and winter. In the same free and excelsior spirit, we have not strictly limited ourselves to nature's exact forms. We enslaved ourselves at first by a needless fidelity of that narrow kind, searching through countless varieties of natural form, modern or fossil, for such as most took our fancy. But now we give free play to imagination in all that matter, always remembering that imagination and its cravings are a part of our nature as much as anything else, and mostly, too, by far the pleasanter part of it.
Then, again, the water, that delightful set-off to the whole landscape, may be either manufactured in each sub, according to its own wants, or may form part of the general energy contract. The water-facture interest is, of course, a great concern of these times, since the old system of seas, rivers, and natural supplies has all passed away. The fine rock-scenery that usually characterises water-factories, and is so pleasing to the eye, is simply the spare store of water, kept in the cross-electrified solid oxyhydrogen form, ready to dissolve into pure water on the application of the cross-electric. All our countless modern dwellings are now as amply, and far more regularly and methodically supplied with this indispensable article, than in the old days of nature-made water. We must here remember Science's declaration that nothing is ever lost; so that all materials, whether those of water or anything else, after coursing through countless human bodies, ever come back to the factories to be fabricated afresh for their life-supporting purposes, and to be sent coursing about as before upon their everlasting mission.
Our chief introduction was to the great man himself who contracted for this whole sub-system, and whose vast energy stores were mostly placed in this third level of the main shaft of the great system he controlled and supplied. We found our man, as we had expected, enjoying a little leisure and reflection after his early dinner. He was quietly whiffing his cigarette—not, however, of the dirty and hurtful tobacco of a thousand years ago, but of some one or other of the harmless pungencies people nowadays use instead—as though he had not at the moment one single care in the world, when, not an hour before, he was buried deep in the wants of a thousand great societies, and was presently once more to resume his duties. He had just time remaining to show us over his works. These vast energy-accumulations and capacities, consisting partly of successive rows of excess-charged Leydens, convertible instantaneously into current energy, but chiefly in form of conducting-wires from the earth's hot interior lower down, with their apparatus for energy conversion, all occupied, as we noticed, marvellously small space. We were most struck by the chief "main," through which the great electric stream was carried, to feed all the thousand suns of the system, and which emitted, with an ominous force and rapidity, the whirr so peculiar to the cross-electric current. Connected with all this machinery of wires and other apparatus, there is, of course, a vast hardware and iron business.
Presently our new friend took his business seat once more at his desk, surrounded by the representative conductors of all the different communities he catered for. These were each indicated by small knobs ranged in semicircle in front of him, the knob starting outwards, with a peculiar noise by way of signal, when anything had gone wrong or happened to be wanted, in the sub which it represented. After watching and admiring the wonders of the system for a few minutes, we bid our now busy friend adieu, and after some few other but less important calls, we again took cab for our next destination.
This was Old California, as it is still called, and our chief object was to establish an agency for timely securing, and in direct course, some share in the vast energy supplies resulting from the occasional earthquake visitations to which that country was still, as of yore, subject. But now these once terrible incidents, instead of playing havoc with helpless property, as was the case a thousand years ago, are, by timely notice, foreseeing preparation, and the prompt convertibility of force, made the source of vast wealth to the population. On such happy and welcome occasions of unusual supply, the price of energy, in the overloaded market of the place, falls so considerably just for the time, as to afford a good opportunity for laying in a large stock at a materially reduced price. But to those outside and far off, this is only to be done by means of direct local agency and instant action, and for all this, I am glad to say, my young friend satisfactorily arranged.
Having finished so satisfactorily my young companion's business, I next put in for a turn at my own; and so, upon our homeward track, we alighted at Old Cincinnati, a place which still conspicuously commanded the world's pork and ham provision trade. But on what an infinitely greater scale after ten centuries, and in what a different style from modern laboratorial resources, so much prompter and cheaper, more cleanly and convenient, than by the slow old processes of natural growth in the superseded prairie or pigsty. I made here, for my own account, some advantageous direct arrangements. It is indeed wonderful how some one place will command a permanent supremacy over all others in certain fabrications; and in nothing is this more remarkable than in our great provision trade. In the mere application, for instance, of artificial essences, in order to imitate the mellowing of time in such meat manufacture, without incurring time's heavy cost in interest of money, this place would hold the lead in the great ham trade, in spite of all expenses of carriage and agency.
Whilst we are now sailing homewards, after the satisfactory completion of our home business tour, let me say a few words on the past, present, and future of the great provision trade, that trade which has been in our honoured family for a full thousand years, and which, I flatter myself, I not only thoroughly understand, but which I have, in my day and turn, helped to advance and extend, until my worthy old ancestor of these ten centuries retrospect, who began it, could hardly by possibility recognize even one single feature of its modern aspect.
Going back, then, these ten centuries, we find the world's surface still only very partially occupied by man; so that it was not until two or three centuries nearer to our own crowded time that increasing population began really to jeopardize the usual modes of the old food-supply, by threatening to require, for mere human elbow-room, all the surface space previously required and devoted to natural food-raising. But all this time the steady progress in chemistry had been carrying us more or less into laboratorial organic production, so that certain articles, usable as food, began to stream steadily forth from the laboratory into the provision market. These articles at first were not much relished, or found to be particularly savoury, their raw new sawdusty sort of flavour keeping them from many a table, although, as I firmly believe, and looking to after experience, mere prejudice had much to say in the matter. But, however this may have been, the battle had not gone on very long, between our necessities on the one hand, and our tastes or preferences on the other, when we were overtaken by the grand discovery of the cross-electric, and thenceforward the mere food question is for all time definitively solved. We had now ascertained that whereas, by simple electricity, we have only the first organizing step, namely, crystallization, by the cross-electric we complete the molecular of the organic structure. That step of progress did not indeed enable us to impart life to this organic structure, a result involving a still higher electric intensity which, if attainable, was still unattained; but, in imitation of life-action, we can facture organic substance, giving to it all the aspect and nutritious quality of the live and nature-made article.
Thus, as I have said, the mere bodily food question was solved. But hardly were we relieved of fears on this account, ere we were being plunged into others not one whit less alarming, namely, as to the brain supply—the food for the material instruments of the mind. We were then, in fact, just entering upon the grand modern battle of the phosphate supply. The great old philosopher Oke, as far back as nearly eleven centuries, had said, and with solemn emphasis and warning, "No phosphorus, no mind." Although no longer concerned as to adequate food supply for our bodies, we are thus seriously concerned indeed as to how far the apparently rather limited phosphorus supply in the world may prove adequate for all the brains that are, in ever-increasing ratio, brought into being.
But this question has long lost much of its sharp edge of urgency, since we, in all good common sense, fell back upon the grand and perennial supply, which nature provides at our very door, namely, our own dead. What so fitting and proper as that the dead, when done with all the good things they possessed and used while in life, should render them up to the needs of the living whom they leave struggling behind them. Thus the brains and bones of our departed friends, with all their contained phosphates, form no small part of any wealth which our dead may leave us. If your friend or relative leave you no other property, yet in leaving you heir to his material self, you could still cherish his memory in the good things cleared out of the legacy.
The disposal of our dead was long previously a troublesome question, until we had adopted the enlightened and economic practice now prevalent. When the increase of people forbade any longer to poison our soil by burial of the dead, we resorted to cremation. But with still further increase the air, too, under the cremation resource, began to be injuriously overcharged. At length we found that what had heretofore seemed our most troublesome enemy was in reality our best friend. Indeed the phosphate market is not now the only one benefited by the precious dead. We shall see that the question directly touches also that of the food supply; for after we have gone far enough in chemical analysis to dehumanize the structure, why not avail of any still undissolved natural organism, the natural, as every experienced gourmet knows, having a relish hardly impartable to the mere fundamentally laboratorial product. But as to all this, what, in goodness' name, would my venerable ancestor aforesaid have thought, if he could have foreseen his far-off descendant, a thousand years on, dealing in such articles, as part of his stock in trade in the great provision line!
Necessity and, as I have said, good common sense have now settled our practice as to disposal of the dead. Public law enjoins that they be disposed of to the best advantage for the benefit of the living. We can't bury them; we can't burn them; what are we to do with them? Why simply this, that we sell them, and to the highest bidder, because he is presumably the party most likely to put them to the promptest and fullest use. The funeral, and all that is dolorous, end, in fact, at the public auction mart, where cheerful competition and business begins, and where the lot is at once cleared off. The miscellaneous buyer is ever solemnly enjoined, even in his contract note, to cut and carve with all due reverence; and a large and ready charity hopes that he always does so. If bereaved and sorrowing friends are tempted, in the first excesses of grief, to buy-in the body, they soon experience no end of inconvenience and bother with the suspicious sanitary authorities, ever on the scent at such intermeddling, lest an unwholesome nuisance should be created in the neighbourhood. Thus all find it best, with their dead, to acquiesce in the regular routine, and to have their solid consolation in the pecuniary proceeds from the public roup.
And indeed, when the mind has once quitted its temporary material abode, what more is that deserted tenement, either to its former occupant, or to other people, than any other edifice that a tenant may have occupied and quitted! If there is any one mortal thing I despise and detest more than another, it is cant about this very question; and I must admit that, with all our boasted progress, we are not yet quite free of it at times, even in such an everyday phase of our life and business. There are, however, some odd encounters on occasions. For instance, when Brown's step-grandmother died not long ago—a remarkably old and portly lady, who had accumulatively secured her own goodly share of phosphates and other valuables in the chemico-provision line—I was not by any means the only one bent upon a lot so decidedly over-average. In fact, I had had my eye, preparatorily, on the old lady for some time. Not that I—I ever—even for one moment—of course not—the thing is absurd. I had the greatest respect for her. But, really, the sad event being, of course, an ever nearing certainty, unless one's weather eye is always open in these business days of merciless competition, one inevitably goes to the wall. In short, I was resolved upon the lot, and got it, and handsomely indeed it cut up for me all round. I rather wondered at Brown's timid bidding, with all his ascertaining opportunities. But I refrained from vexing him about my profits. And, again, what an odd conjuncture for friend Brown, if he should be smacking his lips, some day, over a chop at the public luncheon bar, direct from the component atoms of the old lady!
This latter remark brings me to what is by no means the least important section of the difficulties, the responsibilities, and, I may add, the respectabilities concerned in the modern provision trade. As I have already hinted, our respected dead are more to us, whom they leave sorrowing behind, than phosphate supply only, all-important as that may be. They are, in fact, valuable masses of natural organism, ready-made and cost-free to society's hand; and the only question is, how far must chemical analysis proceed to entirely dehumanize the subject, without, at the same time, needlessly destroying and wasting natural molecular structure, and the inimitable superiority of the mellowing flavour that comes of it. We call the complete analysis the Atomic, reducing, as it does, all previous structure to the ultimate atoms. The less complete we call the Molecular; and the great question ever is, how far this needs to go. Even the most accurate and precise chemists find some debatable area; and this area is ever a trouble to the respectable and conscientious of the trade, who are perpetually tantalized by seeing, only too clearly before them, the superior profits of supermolecule, and of every step short-taken towards the ultimate atom. It is, alas, but too well known that there is a class of restaurants where the supermolecule is only too loosely guarded, and where unscrupulous gourmets stream in incessantly, paying freely the extra prices demanded, and asking no questions.