Mack Reynolds - After Utopia

“Jesus Christ,” Tracy said meaninglessly.

Betty came to her feet decisively. “All well and good, but we could sit here for the rest of the week and never answer all the questions Tracy could ask. I suggest that he and I go into the study, and he can get at his Interlingua. No matter what he finally decides about helping our group, he’s going to have to learn the language even to cope with everyday problems.”

Tracy said, “But there are a lot of things—”

“They can wait,” Betty said. “Even if you are anxious to get off and away, away from us, it’s going to take you a week of study… and probably that much to completely regain your strength.”

“Yes,” her father said. “You are in no condition to leave my supervision, Tracy Cogswell. I am surprised that you have been able to go through the emotional strain you have been under this morning.”

“I’ve been through emotional strain before,” Tracy growled, but he came to his feet and looked at the girl to lead the way.

They left the breakfast nook, and Tracy followed her to his room and beyond it to another chamber which he hadn’t been in before. It was well supplied with windows that looked out over the straits so that it was well lit. It had a double shelf of books along one wall and was furnished with a large desk and two chairs, one a swivel chair behind the desk, the other a comfortable looking overstuffed affair.

“This will be your study,” Betty said. “We readied it for you long before father ever brought you out of hibernation.”

He wanted to say something to the effect that they’d been awfully sure of themselves, but he realized that what she had said earlier was quite valid. Until he at least got to know the language, there was no place for him to go to that would make sense.

She went over to the desk and pointed out two screens which to him looked like nothing so much as ordinary medium-sized television screens.

Betty Stein began giving him directions about the equipment. “This is your autoteacher,” she told him. “This is how you activate it, with this switch. It’s connected to the Universal Data Banks and—”

“What are the Universal Data Banks?”

She said, “The world library, the world archives, world statistics. All the knowledge that the world has accumulated down through the centuries.”

He looked at her as though she was putting him on.

But she shook her head and said patiently, “Tracy you were already in hibernation when Watershed Week came along. It happened in a week of July 1969. All the computer people in the world knew it was coming and were waiting for it. Some of them held sort of reverse celebrations, since the implications were somewhat frightening.”

“What in the devil was Watershed Week?”

She said, “That was the week in which for the first time the information-handling capacity of all the computers in the world exceeded the information-handling capacity of all the human brains in the world. In short, the computers were able to receive and store more information than the three and a half billion human brains that there were on Earth at that time. By Old Calendar the computers had more than fifty times the capacity of humanity.”

Tracy Cogswell couldn’t quite comprehend. He said, “What does that have to do with having all the information in the world in this one big overgrown library?”

She said patiently, “I suppose it must have started as far back as your time… possibly a little later. They began by putting statistics into the computer data banks, at first dealing with income tax and such things. It quickly became so practical that other information was filed away. I believe it was some town in California which first hit upon the idea of so recording all pertinent information on all of its citizens. Not long after, the FBI put all its criminal records into its data banks. This was so practical that local and state police cooperated and submitted their files on criminals.”

“Talk about Big Brother,” Tracy muttered.

She went on, saying, “A more popular step was when all medical records went into what were now the National Data Banks of the United States, which was far in advance of all other countries in the booming computer revolution. About this time, some genius of forethought came up with the idea of storing in the data banks all of the books in the Library of Congress. And shortly afterwards all the books in all of the libraries, including those of the universities. When practical computer translators were finally developed, this was extended first to the British Museum library, then that of the Sorbonne in Paris, and to the Vatican Library in Rome. By the time world government came along, the now International Data Banks were thrown open to all libraries in all languages. Filed away in the banks were every book ever written, every newspaper published… for that matter, every bit of music, every painting.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Tracy protested. “How could you ever find anything?”

“It’s all cross-indexed a score of ways,” she smiled wryly. “It’s pretty well worked out by now. I’ll tell you more about it some other time, but for now shall we get about our business?”

She sat down at the desk behind the screens, opened a desk drawer, and brought forth a book that reminded Tracy of a telephone book of a large city of his own time.

She said, “Now here are our categories. First we dial for Education. Under that we dial Language. And, under that, Interlingua. Under that we dial Elementary Interlingua. And under that, Volume One, Chapter One. Here. You sit here behind the screen.”

She came to her feet to make room for him and moved to one side and reached down into the desk drawer again, as he seated himself unhappily.

“What happens now?” he said. A book had manifested itself on the screen before him: Elementary Interlingua, Volume I.

She came up with a small bottle, unscrewed the top and shook a pill into her hand. “Now you take your stimmy,” she told him.

“What’s a stimmy?”

“A mental stimulant. It effects both your IQ and your retentive abilities.”

There was a carafe of water and a glass on the desk. She poured him a drink and handed over glass and pill.

He shrugged and took it and washed it down. “How long does it take to work?” he said. “And how long will it continue to be effective?”

“A few minutes to work and it will last about an hour,” she told him. “If you want to continue to study after that time, you simply take another one.”

“Why doesn’t everybody take them all of the time?”

“You’ll see,” she said wryly. “Now this button here flips the pages for you. This one here will reverse pages if there is any reason for you to go back and check something. See how I press this to bring you to Page One, Chapter One?”

Tracy said grudgingly, “With gismos like this, I can see why you no longer have schools. I’d think that just about everybody would be cramming themselves with scores of subjects.”

She said lowly, “It’s as Jo said. Most people don’t give a damn. All they’re interested in is hedonism… having a good time.”

Something suddenly happened. He speed-read the first page and realized that he understood it completely. Then, for a moment he gaped. He darted a look at Betty Stein. Very very slowly, as though in a movie slow motion, she was walking toward the armchair. She slowly, slowly turned and seemingly took a full minute to seat herself.

She smiled and said, very very slowly, “If… you… have… finished… that… first… page… press… the… button.”

Now he could see why everybody didn’t take stimmies all of the time. The world, save for him, had slowed down, or he had sped up… or both. It would be no way to go through life. He pressed the page-flipping button and went back to work.