"MEDA: a Tale of the Future," was written during the year 1888. Some friends having seen the MS. expressed a desire to have printed copies. To gratify the wishes of these indulgent readers this little book has been printed. If a copy should by chance all into the hands of any "outside friendship's pale," the author would crave mercy at their hands.
After watching it for a long time, the mist seemed to lift, enabling me to see distinctly two men walking together. They were the very oddest looking pair of mortals I had ever seen. In stature they were very diminutive, but they had large heads out of all proportion to their bodies. They were walking away from me, and being most anxious to meet them, and to find out where I was, I hailed them loudly.
The effect of my cry astonished me, for, whether it was the clear atmosphere, or the desolation of the ruined city, my voice sounded like thunder. But if it had a curious effect on me, the effect it had on the two individuals I hailed, was marvelous. They first of all fell flat on the ground as if stunned, then they sprang up with wonderful agility, bounding several feet into the air, and turning around, looked in amazement toward me, singing out in piping childish voice some words that I could not understand. I beckoned them to come nearer to me, and speaking, as I thought, in a whisper, asked "Who are you?" They came neared, and looked at me in astonishment. ow that I could see them better, and thinking I should like to get quite close to them, I stepped off the wall in the most reckless way, never noticing that I had a leap of thirty feet to make. But somehow I came down beside my little oddities without the slightest inconvenience, save that on alighting, I rebounded into the air at least twenty feet, and had to take a dozen hops, before I could settle on the earth, and talk, or try to talk, to my new acquaintances, if such I might call them.
At last, when like a rubber ball I had expended all my elastic energy and come to rest, I carefully scrutinized this odd looking couple. They were not more than four feet high, with very large heads, and small bodies and limbs. That portion of the body which contains the principal organs of digestion seemed to be almost entirely wanting, but their chests were more than fairly well developed. For clothing they wore a wrapping of a white silky material, bound closely round the upper portions of their limbs. On their feet they had light shoes, and to each ankle was secured a circular weight of considerable size, formed of a metal which looked like newly scraped lead. Each weight was in two pieces, bound together by a silken cord let into a circular recess, near the top. On their heads there was no covered, and the little hair they had was fine in texture, and of a dark brown colour. It formed a slight fringe from the temples round the back of the head, and when viewed from the head being strongly resembled an egg in a brown edged egg-cup. Their eyes had a bright, far-seeing look, wistful and dreamy withal, pale grey in colour, and very prominent. There was a sad, thoughtful look on their faces that made me feel that nothing I could say would induce them to laugh. The features were marked, and the skin was clear almost to transparency. Judging from their limbs and the appearance of their skin, I would have guessed their age at twenty to twenty-five. In fact they were very grave, diminutive, young old men of some new type of humanity unknown to my experience.
"They are intellectually a much lower class of being compared with those, for example, you saw in the outer and inner houses. We try to elevate them, but in vain. It has been the same in all ages, and it will, I fear, be the same to the end of time. In man the Creator has decreed that all shall not have mental equality; one mind must predominate over the other." (The Recorder)
The minute he touched my arm, even through the clothing, that curious thrill, which I had previously had experienced, shot through me. It was just as pleasant as before, but not so gruesome. I asked him what it meant. "That is," he said, "a power that we of this generation possess. It is the power of storing energy, and the power of transmitting that energy to others. The greater the intellectual power of the individual is, the greater his power of storage and transmission. It is, in fact, a measure of intellect; but we must be moving."
We saw livers that the Recorder said belonged to full sized men, yet they were only about as big as a hen's. All the digestive organs were the merest toys of things, but the brains and the lungs were tremendous. Seeing my perplexity, he explained: - "You see, my Specimen, in your day, you gratified the desires of your palates, and neglected your brains. Now, in our day of advancement, we live by respiration, we live in fact on the air that is free to all, therefore our lungs must be large. The only thing we require to digest is a few drops of water daily, so we do not need the great cumbersome organs of digestion that you carry about with you."
"See the lungs moving, see the heart pumping, see the liver lying like a slugish bloated monster devoted to gormandizing and gluttony. There you are, Specimen, as true as life. Are you not ashamed at your internal construction so much given to greed, and so little given to intellect?" (- The Recorder)
"But we can so strongly illuminate the inside of any sleeping creature that when in a dark room the whole body becomes transparent, and we can then examine every nerve and every muscle through powerful magnifying glasses from the outside of the body. This is very useful for the examination of internal complains or tumurs whether in the lungs or in other parts of the body."
"No antiquated coal gas, water gas, electricity, lime, or oil lights, are required now, as in the days of the ancients. No, everything we have is self-sustaining, and lasts for scores of years. We collect our heat in the same way, storing it past until we require it, but this takes more skill and costs more trouble that the storage of light."
I was shown many other marvelous things in the Observatory. But to me, the most striking law of nature that was explained to me , was what the Recorder called the lines of force.
"These," he said, "bear some relation to what you termed magnetism and electricity in your day. These sciences you knew but little of. Your professors used to say, that electricity flowed through wires as water does through pipes. They told you that a magnetic compass, except deflected by local influences, always pointed north. But this was very preparatory teaching. We now know a great deal more about these mysterious forces, and yet we know but little. In these mysterious agents there is much that is yet to be learned by future generations. Still we have discovered that both what you call electricity and what you called magnetism can be directed, controlled, and utilized, by concentrated human will and intelligence. It is by these powers that we move our bodies through the ocean, and our boats over our lakes; it is by this power that we navigate our aerial fleets from one part of the world to the other."
"Five hundred years after your time the populations of the various countries of the earth had increased enormously. So much was this the case that the earth was then literally a crawling mass of people striving and fighting for existence. There had been many wars and famines; still the destruction of life by these scourges had not any material effect in keeping down the increase of the population. All the land that was uninhabited in your day was now peopled. What you termed the Dark Continent of Africa, as well as the great continents of South America and Australia, was over-run by humanity. For many centuries the various governments of the earth had made it a rule to do everything in their power to preserve decrepit life and allow it to multiply. What between boards of health and sanitary boards, combined with great medical skill, the most sickly children were by nursing brought to the years of maturity and allowed to marry. Many thoughtful people used to wonder what this would all come to, if decrepit and diseased life was to be taken care of and perpetuated in this way. If the sickly and diseased were to be preserved, it must, they stated, lead to sad results later on. Their prophecies turned out to be but too true." (Recorder)
"All people, both men and women, got the right conferred on them to vote for members for parliament without any educational or other qualification save their manhood. The consequence was that the more numerous or uneducated classes had all the power in their hands, while they were not intellectually endowed with sufficient judgment to enable them to select even the more educated of their own classes as their representatives, although there must have been plenty of good, honest, intelligent men amongst them that would have made much better representatives than the noisy, self-asserting, ignorant men that forced themselves on them."
"When man was created, the necessity for other food than that supplied through his lungs was essential, because at that period the atmosphere that surrounded the earth had not sufficient sustaining power of itself to maintain the human frame, and to make up for the waste entailed by the exertions of the mind and body. But the Creator never intended that the faculty of drawing sustenance from food should be abused in the way it was. The simple fruits of the earth were sufficient for all man's wants, and even these were only to be used in moderation; but after long generations he became more and more wedded to eating and drinking. He was not content with water for his drink. [...] Man, by misusing his thinking and reasoning power, apparently educated himself to gloat over food, and to devote his intelligence to the production of new foods and drinks."
"Those who termed themselves abstainers were abstainers only from intoxicants. They reviled those who took wine or spirits in any form, yet these very men would cram themselves with all conceivable kinds of food. [...] For want of some opportunity or means, some people living in lonely districts were of necessity kept out of the way of temptation, but the credit is not due to their want of inclination, but rather to a want of opportunity."
"Factories of all kinds were dotted over the earth, smoke and dirt was everywhere. The consumption of fuel was wasteful to a degree. The coal fields were exhausted, and all the oil bearing strata were pumped dry. Your engineers never thought of the people that were to come after them, they only thought of the present, leaving to providence the future supplies for unborn generations."
"We do work by the concentrated power of the sun. So we establish all factories that use heat where the sun's heat is strongest, that is in what your geographers called the tropics."
Posted by Klint Finley on December 1, 2009
Tags: Uncategorized
Comments on specific paragraphs:
Click the
icon to the right of a paragraph
Comments on the page as a whole:
Click the
icon to the right of the page title (works the same as paragraphs)