The Man in Asbestos
鈥淭he Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future,鈥?chapter ten of Nonsense Novels by Stephen Leacock (1911). The text is in the public domain.
To begin with let me admit that I did it on purpose. Perhaps it was partly from jealousy.
It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head-first into a distant future and be a witness of its marvels.
I wanted to do that too.
I always had been, I still am, a passionate student of social problems. The world of to-day with its roaring machinery, the unceasing toil of its working classes, its strife, its poverty, its war, its cruelty, appals me as I look at it. I love to think of the time that must come some day when man will have conquered nature, and the toil-worn human race enter upon an era of peace.
I loved to think of it, and I longed to see it.
So I set about the thing deliberately.
What I wanted to do was to fall asleep after the customary fashion, for two or three hundred years at least, and wake and find myself in the marvel world of the future.
I made my preparations for the sleep.
I bought all the comic papers that I could find, even the illustrated ones. I carried them up to my room in my hotel: with them I brought up a pork pie and dozens and dozens of doughnuts. I ate the pie and the doughnuts, then sat back in the bed and read the comic papers one after the other. Finally, as I felt the awful lethargy stealing upon me, I reached out my hand for the London Weekly Times, and held up the editorial page before my eye.
It was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it.
I could feel my senses leaving me. In the room across the hall there was a man singing. His voice, that had been loud, came fainter and fainter through the transom. I fell into a sleep, the deep immeasurable sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was hushed. Dimly I could feel the days go past, then the years, and then the long passage of the centuries.
Then, not as it were gradually, but quite suddenly, I woke up, sat up, and looked about me.
Where was I?
Well might I ask myself.
I found myself lying, or rather sitting up, on a broad couch. I was in a great room, dim, gloomy, and dilapidated in its general appearance, and apparently, from its glass cases and the stuffed figures that they contained, some kind of museum.
Beside me sat a man. His face was hairless, but neither old nor young. He wore clothes that looked like the grey ashes of paper that had burned and kept its shape. He was looking at me quietly, but with no particular surprise or interest.
鈥淨uick,鈥?I said, eager to begin; 鈥渨here am I? Who are you? What year is this; is it the year 3000, or what is it?鈥?br>
He drew in his breath with a look of annoyance on his face.
鈥淲hat a queer, excited way you have of speaking,鈥?he said.
鈥淭ell me,鈥?I said again, 鈥渋s this the year 3000?鈥?br>
鈥淚 think I know what you mean,鈥?he said; 鈥渂ut really I haven鈥檛 the faintest idea. I should think it must be at least that, within a hundred years or so; but nobody has kept track of them for so long, it鈥檚 hard to say.鈥?br>
鈥淒on鈥檛 you keep track of them any more?鈥?I gasped.
鈥淲e used to,鈥?said the man. 鈥淚 myself can remember that a century or two ago there were still a number of people who used to try to keep track of the year, but it died out along with so many other faddish things of that kind. Why,鈥?he continued, showing for the first time a sort of animation in his talk, 鈥渨hat was the use of it? You see, after we eliminated death鈥斺€斺€?br>
鈥淓liminated death!鈥?I cried, sitting upright. 鈥淕ood God!鈥?br>
鈥淲hat was that expression you used?鈥?queried the man.
鈥淕ood God!鈥?I repeated.
鈥淎h,鈥?he said, 鈥渘ever heard it before. But I was saying that after we had eliminated Death, and Food, and Change, we had practically got rid of Events, and鈥斺€斺€?br>
鈥淪top!鈥?I said, my brain reeling. 鈥淭ell me one thing at a time.鈥?br>
鈥淗umph!鈥?he ejaculated. 鈥淚 see, you must have been asleep a long time. Go on then and ask questions. Only, if you don鈥檛 mind, just as few as possible, and please don鈥檛 get interested or excited.鈥?br>
Oddly enough the first question that sprang to my lips was鈥?br>
鈥淲hat are those clothes made of?鈥?br>
鈥淎sbestos,鈥?answered the man. 鈥淭hey last hundreds of years. We have one suit each, and there are billions of them piled up, if anybody wants a new one.鈥?br>
鈥淭hank you,鈥?I answered. 鈥淣ow tell me where I am?鈥?br>
鈥淵ou are in a museum. The figures in the cases are specimens like yourself. But here,鈥?he said, 鈥渋f you want really to find out about what is evidently a new epoch to you, get off your platform and come out on Broadway and sit on a bench.鈥?br>
I got down.
As we passed through the dim and dust-covered buildings I looked curiously at the figures in the cases.
鈥淏y Jove!鈥欌€?I said looking at one figure in blue clothes with a belt and baton, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 a policeman!鈥?br>
鈥淩eally,鈥?said my new acquaintance, 鈥渋s that what a policeman was? I鈥檝e often wondered. What used they to be used for?鈥?br>
鈥淯sed for?鈥?I repeated in perplexity. 鈥淲hy, they stood at the corner of the street.鈥?br>
鈥淎h, yes, I see,鈥?he said, 鈥渟o as to shoot at the people. You must excuse my ignorance,鈥?he continued, 鈥渁s to some of your social customs in the past. When I took my education I was operated upon for social history, but the stuff they used was very inferior.鈥?br>
I didn鈥檛 in the least understand what the man meant, but had no time to question him, for at that moment we came out upon the street, and I stood riveted in astonishment.
Broadway! Was it possible? The change was absolutely appalling! In place of the roaring thoroughfare that I had known, this silent, moss-grown desolation. Great buildings fallen into ruin through the sheer stress of centuries of wind and weather, the sides of them coated over with a growth of fungus and moss! The place was soundless. Not a vehicle moved. There were no wires overhead鈥攏o sound of life or movement except, here and there, there passed slowly to and fro human figures dressed in the same asbestos clothes as my acquaintance, with the same hairless faces, and the same look of infinite age upon them.
Good heavens! And was this the era of the Conquest that I had hoped to see! I had always taken for granted, I do not know why, that humanity was destined to move forward. This picture of what seemed desolation on the ruins of our civilisation rendered me almost speechless.
There were little benches placed here and there on the street. We sat down.
鈥淚mproved, isn鈥檛 it,鈥?said the man in asbestos, 鈥渟ince the days when you remember it?鈥?br>
He seemed to speak quite proudly.
I gasped out a question.
鈥淲here are the street cars and the motors?鈥?br>
鈥淥h, done away with long ago,鈥?he said; 鈥渉ow awful they must have been. The noise of them!鈥?and his asbestos clothes rustled with a shudder.
鈥淏ut how do you get about?鈥?br>
鈥淲e don鈥檛,鈥?he answered. 鈥淲hy should we? It鈥檚 just the same being here as being anywhere else.鈥?He looked at me with an infinity of dreariness in his face.
A thousand questions surged into my mind at once. I asked one of the simplest.
鈥淏ut how do you get back and forwards to your work?鈥?br>
鈥淲ork!鈥?he said. 鈥淭here isn鈥檛 any work. It鈥檚 finished. The last of it was all done centuries ago.鈥?br>
I looked at him a moment open-mouthed. Then I turned and looked again at the grey desolation of the street with the asbestos figures moving here and there.
I tried to pull my senses together. I realised that if I was to unravel this new and undreamed-of future, I must go at it systematically and step by step.
鈥淚 see,鈥?I said after a pause, 鈥渢hat momentous things have happened since my time. I wish you would let me ask you about it all systematically, and would explain it to me bit by bit. First, what do you mean by saying that there is no work?鈥?br>
鈥淲hy,鈥?answered my strange acquaintance, 鈥渋t died out of itself. Machinery killed it. If I remember rightly, you had a certain amount of machinery even in your time. You had done very well with steam, made a good beginning with electricity, though I think radial energy had hardly as yet been put to use.鈥?br>
I nodded assent.
鈥淏ut you found it did you no good. The better your machines, the harder you worked. The more things you had the more you wanted. The pace of life grew swifter and swifter. You cried out, but it would not stop. You were all caught in the cogs of your own machine. None of you could see the end.鈥?br>
鈥淭hat is quite true,鈥?I said. 鈥淗ow do you know it all?鈥?br>
鈥淥h,鈥?answered the Man in Asbestos, 鈥渢hat part of my education was very well operated鈥擨 see you do not know what I mean. Never mind, I can tell you that later. Well, then, there came, probably almost two hundred years after your time, the Era of the Great Conquest of Nature, the final victory of Man and Machinery.鈥?br>
鈥淭hey did conquer it?鈥?I asked quickly, with a thrill of the old hope in my veins again.
鈥淐onquered it,鈥?he said, 鈥渂eat it out! Fought it to a standstill! Things came one by one, then faster and faster, in a hundred years it was all done. In fact, just as soon as mankind turned its energy to decreasing its needs instead of increasing its desires, the whole thing was easy. Chemical Food came first. Heavens! the simplicity of it. And in your time thousands of millions of people tilled and grubbed at the soil from morning till night. I鈥檝e seen specimens of them鈥攆armers, they called them. There鈥檚 one in the museum. After the invention of Chemical Food we piled up enough in the emporiums in a year to last for centuries. Agriculture went overboard. Eating and all that goes with it, domestic labour, housework鈥攁ll ended. Nowadays one takes a concentrated pill every year or so, that鈥檚 all. The whole digestive apparatus, as you knew it, was a clumsy thing that had been bloated up like a set of bagpipes through the evolution of its use!鈥?br>
I could not forbear to interrupt. 鈥淗ave you and these people,鈥?I said, 鈥渘o stomachs鈥攏o apparatus?鈥?br>
鈥淥f course we have,鈥?he answered, 鈥渂ut we use it to some purpose. Mine is largely filled with my education鈥攂ut there! I am anticipating again. Better let me go on as I was. Chemical Food came first: that cut off almost one-third of the work, and then came Asbestos Clothes. That was wonderful! In one year humanity made enough suits to last for ever and ever. That, of course, could never have been if it hadn鈥檛 been connected with the revolt of women and the fall of Fashion.鈥?br>
鈥淗ave the Fashions gone,鈥?I asked, 鈥渢hat insane, extravagant idea of鈥斺€斺€?I was about to launch into one of my old-time harangues about the sheer vanity of decorative dress, when my eye rested on the moving figures in asbestos, and I stopped.
鈥淎ll gone,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos. 鈥淭hen next to that we killed, or practically killed, the changes of climate. I don鈥檛 think that in your day you properly understood how much of your work was due to the shifts of what you called the weather. It meant the need of all kinds of special clothes and houses and shelters, a wilderness of work. How dreadful it must have been in your day鈥攚ind and storms, great wet masses鈥攚hat did you call them?鈥攃louds鈥攆lying through the air, the ocean full of salt, was it not?鈥攖ossed and torn by the wind, snow thrown all over everything, hail, rain鈥攈ow awful!鈥?br>
鈥淪ometimes,鈥?I said, 鈥渋t was very beautiful. But how did you alter it?鈥?br>
鈥淜illed the weather!鈥?answered the Man in Asbestos. 鈥淪imple as anything鈥攖urned its forces loose one against the other, altered the composition of the sea so that the top became all more or less gelatinous. I really can鈥檛 explain it, as it is an operation that I never took at school, but it made the sky grey, as you see it, and the sea gum-coloured, the weather all the same. It cut out fuel and houses and an infinity of work with them!鈥?br>
He paused a moment. I began to realise something of the course of evolution that had happened.
鈥淪o,鈥?I said, 鈥渢he conquest of nature meant that presently there was no more work to do?鈥?br>
鈥淓xactly,鈥?he said, 鈥渘othing left.鈥?br>
鈥淔ood enough for all?鈥?br>
鈥淭oo much,鈥?he answered.
鈥淗ouses and clothes?鈥?br>
鈥淎ll you like,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos, waving his hand. 鈥淭here they are. Go out and take them. Of course, they鈥檙e falling down鈥?slowly, very slowly. But they鈥檒l last for centuries yet, nobody need bother.鈥?br>
Then I realised, I think for the first time, just what work had meant in the old life, and how much of the texture of life itself had been bound up in the keen effort of it.
Presently my eyes looked upward: dangling at the top of a moss-grown building I saw what seemed to be the remains of telephone wires.
鈥淲hat became of all that,鈥?I said, 鈥渢he telegraph and the telephone and all the system of communication?鈥?br>
鈥淎h,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos, 鈥渢hat was what a telephone meant, was it? I knew that it had been suppressed centuries ago. Just what was it for?鈥?br>
鈥淲hy,鈥?I said with enthusiasm, 鈥渂y means of the telephone we could talk to anybody, call up anybody, and talk at any distance.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd anybody could call you up at any time and talk?鈥?said the Man in Asbestos, with something like horror. 鈥淗ow awful! What a dreadful age yours was, to be sure. No, the telephone and all the rest of it, all the transportation and intercommunication was cut out and forbidden. There was no sense in it. You see,鈥?he added, 鈥渨hat you don鈥檛 realise is that people after your day became gradually more and more reasonable. Take the railroad, what good was that? It brought into every town a lot of people from every other town. Who wanted them? Nobody. When work stopped and commerce ended, and food was needless, and the weather killed, it was foolish to move about. So it was all terminated. Anyway,鈥?he said, with a quick look of apprehension and a change in his voice, 鈥渋t was dangerous!鈥?br>
鈥淪o!鈥?I said. 鈥淒angerous! You still have danger?鈥?br>
鈥淲hy, yes,鈥?he said, 鈥渢here鈥檚 always the danger of getting broken.鈥?br>
鈥淲hat do you mean,鈥?I asked.
鈥淲hy,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos, 鈥淚 suppose it鈥檚 what you would call being dead. Of course, in one sense there鈥檚 been no death for centuries past; we cut that out. Disease and death were simply a matter of germs. We found them one by one. I think that even in your day you had found one or two of the easier, the bigger ones?鈥?br>
I nodded.
鈥淵es, you had found diphtheria and typhoid and, if I am right, there were some outstanding, like scarlet fever and smallpox, that you called ultra-microscopic, and which you were still hunting for, and others that you didn鈥檛 even suspect. Well, we hunted them down one by one and destroyed them. Strange that it never occurred to any of you that Old Age was only a germ! It turned out to be quite a simple one, but it was so distributed in its action that you never even thought of it.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd you mean to say,鈥?I ejaculated in amazement, looking at the Man in Asbestos, 鈥渢hat nowadays you live for ever?鈥?br>
鈥淚 wish,鈥?he said, 鈥渢hat you hadn鈥檛 that peculiar, excitable way of talking; you speak as if everything mattered so tremendously. Yes,鈥?he continued, 鈥渨e live for ever, unless, of course, we get broken. That happens sometimes. I mean that we may fall over a high place or bump on something, and snap ourselves. You see, we鈥檙e just a little brittle still鈥攕ome remnant, I suppose, of the Old Age germ鈥攁nd we have to be careful. In fact,鈥?he continued, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 mind saying that accidents of this sort were the most distressing feature of our civilisation till we took steps to cut out all accidents. We forbid all street cars, street traffic, aeroplanes, and so on. The risks of your time,鈥?he said, with a shiver of his asbestos clothes, 鈥渕ust have been awful.鈥?br>
鈥淭hey were,鈥?I answered, with a new kind of pride in my generation that I had never felt before, 鈥渂ut we thought it part of the duty of brave people to鈥斺€斺€?br>
鈥淵es, yes,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos impatiently, 鈥減lease don鈥檛 get excited. I know what you mean. It was quite irrational.鈥?br>
We sat silent for a long time. I looked about me at the crumbling buildings, the monotone, unchanging sky, and the dreary, empty street. Here, then, was the fruit of the Conquest, here was the elimination of work, the end of hunger and of cold, the cessation of the hard struggle, the downfall of change and death鈥攏ay, the very millennium of happiness. And yet, somehow, there seemed something wrong with it all. I pondered, then I put two or three rapid questions, hardly waiting to reflect upon the answers.
鈥淚s there any war now?鈥?br>
鈥淒one with centuries ago. They took to settling international disputes with a slot machine. After that all foreign dealings were given up. Why have them? Everybody thinks foreigners awful.鈥?br>
鈥淎re there any newspapers now?鈥?br>
鈥淣ewspapers! What on earth would we want them for? If we should need them at any time there are thousands of old ones piled up. But what is in them, anyway; only things that happen, wars and accidents and work and death. When these went newspapers went too. Listen,鈥?continued the Man in Asbestos, 鈥測ou seem to have been something of a social reformer, and yet you don鈥檛 understand the new life at all. You don鈥檛 understand how completely all our burdens have disappeared. Look at it this way. How used your people to spend all the early part of their lives?鈥?br>
鈥淲hy,鈥?I said, 鈥渙ur first fifteen years or so were spent in getting education.鈥?br>
鈥淓xactly,鈥?he answered; 鈥渘ow notice how we improved on all that. Education in our day is done by surgery. Strange that in your time nobody realised that education was simply a surgical operation. You hadn鈥檛 the sense to see that what you really did was to slowly remodel, curve and convolute the inside of the brain by a long and painful mental operation. Everything learned was reproduced in a physical difference to the brain. You knew that, but you didn鈥檛 see the full consequences. Then came the invention of surgical education鈥攖he simple system of opening the side of the skull and engrafting into it a piece of prepared brain. At first, of course, they had to use, I suppose, the brains of dead people, and that was ghastly鈥濃€攈ere the Man in Asbestos shuddered like a leaf鈥斺€渂ut very soon they found how to make moulds that did just as well. After that it was a mere nothing; an operation of a few minutes would suffice to let in poetry or foreign languages or history or anything else that one cared to have. Here, for instance,鈥?he added, pushing back the hair at the side of his head and showing a scar beneath it, 鈥渋s the mark where I had my spherical trigonometry let in. That was, I admit, rather painful, but other things, such as English poetry or history, can be inserted absolutely without the least suffering. When I think of your painful, barbarous methods of education through the ear, I shudder at it. Oddly enough, we have found lately that for a great many things there is no need to use the head. We lodge them鈥攖hings like philosophy and metaphysics, and so on鈥攊n what used to be the digestive apparatus. They fill it admirably.鈥?br>
He paused a moment. Then went on:
鈥淲ell, then, to continue, what used to occupy your time and effort after your education?鈥?br>
鈥淲hy,鈥?I said, 鈥渙ne had, of course, to work, and then, to tell the truth, a great part of one鈥檚 time and feeling was devoted toward the other sex, towards falling in love and finding some woman to share one鈥檚 life.鈥?br>
鈥淎h,鈥?said the Man in Asbestos, with real interest. 鈥淚鈥檝e heard about your arrangements with the women, but never quite understood them. Tell me; you say you selected some woman?鈥?br>
鈥淵es.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd she became what you called your wife?鈥?br>
鈥淵es, of course.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd you worked for her?鈥?asked the Man in Asbestos in astonishment.
鈥淵es.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd she did not work?鈥?br>
鈥淣o,鈥?I answered, 鈥渙f course not.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd half of what you had was hers?鈥?br>
鈥淵es.鈥?br>
鈥淎nd she had the right to live in your house and use your things?鈥?br>
鈥淥f course,鈥?I answered.
鈥淗ow dreadful!鈥?said the Man in Asbestos. 鈥淚 hadn鈥檛 realised the horrors of your age till now.鈥?br>
He sat shivering slightly, with the same timid look in his face as before.
Then it suddenly struck me that of the figures on the street, all had looked alike.
鈥淭ell me,鈥?I said, 鈥渁re there no women now? Are they gone too?鈥?br>
鈥淥h, no,鈥?answered the Man in Asbestos, 鈥渢hey鈥檙e here just the same. Some of those are women. Only, you see, everything has been changed now. It all came as part of their great revolt, their desire to be like the men. Had that begun in your time?鈥?br>
鈥淥nly a little.鈥?I answered; 鈥渢hey were beginning to ask for votes and equality.鈥?br>
鈥淭hat鈥檚 it,鈥?said my acquaintance, 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 think of the word. Your women, I believe, were something awful, were they not? Covered with feathers and skins and dazzling colours made of dead things all over them? And they laughed, did they not, and had foolish teeth, and at any moment they could inveigle you into one of those contracts! Ugh!鈥?br>
He shuddered.
鈥淎sbestos,鈥?I said (I knew no other name to call him), as I turned on him in wrath, 鈥淎sbestos, do you think that those jelly-bag Equalities out on the street there, with their ash-barrel suits, can be compared for one moment with our unredeemed, unreformed, heaven-created, hobble-skirted women of the twentieth century?鈥?br>
Then, suddenly, another thought flashed into my mind鈥?br>
鈥淭he children,鈥?I said, 鈥渨here are the children? Are there any?鈥?br>
鈥淐hildren,鈥?he said, 鈥渘o! I have never heard of there being any such things for at least a century. Horrible little hobgoblins they must have been! Great big faces, and cried constantly! And grew, did they not? Like funguses! I believe they were longer each year than they had been the last, and鈥斺€斺€?br>
I rose.
鈥淎sbestos!鈥?I said, 鈥渢his, then, is your coming Civilisation, your millennium. This dull, dead thing, with the work and the burden gone out of life, and with them all the joy and sweetness of it. For the old struggle鈥攎ere stagnation, and in place of danger and death, the dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay! Give me back,鈥?I cried, and I flung wide my arms to the dull air, 鈥渢he old life of danger and stress, with its hard toil and its bitter chances, and its heartbreaks. I see its value! I know its worth! Give me no rest,鈥?I cried aloud鈥斺€?br>
* * * * *
鈥淵es, but give a rest to the rest of the corridor!鈥?cried an angered voice that broke in upon my exultation.
Suddenly my sleep had gone.
I was back again in the room of my hotel, with the hum of the wicked, busy old world all about me, and loud in my ears the voice of the indignant man across the corridor.
鈥淨uit your blatting, you infernal blatherskite,鈥?he was calling. 鈥淐ome down to earth.鈥?br>
I came. There was this long *** story some person on YA thought we would bother reading instead of just telling the poster to do their own homework, the end. |
