Mack Reynolds - After Utopia

Tracy was disgusted. “You’re telling me that these scientists haven’t anything better to do with their time than to recreate dinosaurs so that jaded thrill-seekers can shoot them?”

“Oh, it was originally done some time ago. I doubt if anybody is working on it anymore. But the information, the know-how, is now in the data banks and if there is any call for a dinosaur they are raised, over in the Sahara, I believe, and—”

“In the Sahara! How could you raise anything in the worst desert in the world? Particularly something with as king-sized an appetite as a dinosaur would have.”

Edmonds seemed surprised that Tracy didn’t know. “Oh, the Sahara has been almost completely reforested, Tracy. With nuclear power, it became practical to desalinate ocean water and pump it into the world’s deserts. And, at the same time, the breakthroughs in forestry enable us to force-grow some new species of trees as fast as flowers.”

“Holy smokes.”

“Yes. At any rate, would you like the experience of shooting a mammoth or a dinosaur? Actually, it’s a rather boring proposition, don’t you know? They’re rather sluggish creatures and just stand there while you bang away at them with elephant guns.”

“No thanks,” Tracy said sourly. “As I told you, I never hunted except when I ate what I killed. And I’ll be damned if I want to eat a dinosaur; they’re overgrown lizards aren’t they? This is really some night on the town, all right. What comes next? What else has modern man dreamed up in the way of entertainment?”

Edmonds grinned lazily at him, even as they pulled up before a complex of four largely similar buildings. “This, I think you’ll go for.” But then he scowled. “Damn. Since I was over here last, they’ve added another building. That’s bad. It would seem, I should think, that the, uh, entertainment is continuing to catch on.”

“What entertainment?” Tracy said. Quite a few people were streaming in and out of the buildings, adults of all ages.

“These are Dream Palaces.”

Tracy looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

“Programmed dreams,” the other explained. “Although that term doesn’t quite explain it all. They aren’t really all completely programmed, unless that’s the way you want it, not using any of your own imagination. Actually—”

“What in the name of whatever is a programmed dream?”

“Well,” Edmonds answered hesitantly, “in actuality they aren’t dreams. Not in the usual sense. But, yes, I should think they are. It’s just that they’re artificially conceived, rather than haphazard, as ordinary dreams are.”

Tracy sighed deeply, “Damn it, you’re making less sense by the minute.”

Edmonds scowled as he sought words to explain. “Really, what you get is artificial memories. They are composed, taped, and then fed into your brain. It’s the most efficient of all forms of vicarious experience, often seeming more real than reality. You see, if you see a film, or tri-di show, a fictional story, you are living, vicariously, what the actors are going through. But in actuality, obviously, it isn’t happening to you and all the time you realize it. Back in the old days when the Romans went to the arenas to watch gladiators kill animals or each other, the Romans watching were vicariously doing the killing. In the days when bullfighting was at the height of its popularity in Spain and the Latin American—”

“Look, this gets wilder by the minute. What kind of dream do they have on tap?”

Edmonds grinned at him again, his lazy, insolent grin. “Just about everything. And if it’s not on tap, as you say, they’ll do it up for you. But, by this time, they’ve got just about everything available that you could desire. The adventurous type can request a dream in which he is a gunslinger out in the Old West of America… an Old West, which, I understand, never really existed. In the dream, he fights Indians, shoots badmen, robs a stagecoach, rustles cattle, or whatever. And while it’s going on it is so realistic that seemingly it is truly happening.”

“And what happens when he wakes up?”

“He retains the artificial memory as though it had truly happened.”

“What other kind of dreams, besides being Buffalo Bill, or Wild Bill Hickok?”

“You can imagine,” Edmonds smiled, somewhat condescendingly. “Who were the most beautiful movie stars, in your estimation, in your time?”

“Why, I’d say Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, possibly Ava Gardner.”

Edmonds grinned at him again, and said slyly, “How would you like to have a programmed dream in which you took all three of them to bed at once? A dream that was so vivid that it seemed really to be happening, and when you awoke it was in your memory for the rest of your life… as if it had really happened.”

“I’ll be damned,” Tracy said.

“Others go for sports,” Edmonds continued. “Climbing mountains, shooting tigers, winning boxing matches against world champions of the past, winning races in the Olympics. Others like war scenes. Shooting down enemy Fokkers in the First World War, in their Spads, or Messerschmidts in their Spitfires in the Second, becoming Ace of Aces. Others like battles in the trenches, or in the jungles of South Vietnam.”

“Not for me,” Tracy growled. “I’ve been there… and back.”

Edmonds went on. “Still others like to return in time. They take over Alexander’s command of the battle of Issus against Darius the Persian or that of Cortes in the conquest of Tenochtitlan. That, by the way, is an interesting aspect. If you wish, you can change history and have Montezuma win over the Spanish Conquistador. Almost always, of course, you are the central character and the hero. Hardly ever, though it is possible, do you fail to come out winner of all.”

Tracy said doubtfully, “You mean it’s possible for the dream to go wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Edmonds told him. “You get what you want. But occasionally someone wants an experience in which he fails.” He laughed. “I knew a chap once who, just to be perverse, wanted, in his dream, to pursue the most beautiful girl in the world and then, in the end, in bed with her, he required that he couldn’t get an erection.”

Tracy thought of something. “Back there you noticed that an extra building had been devoted to these programmed dreams and you didn’t like to see it. Why not?”

“Because programmed dreams are addictive. People get hooked on them. They return again and again. After a while, their real lives hold no interest for them. Aside from waking long enough to eat, exercise, and get a little real sleep, they spend all the time they can going through dream after dream. It’s rather frightening, the ramifications of it.”

“Have you ever done it?” Tracy said, looking at the other quizzically.

“Oh, yes. Several times. But no more, for me. I want to hang onto reality. However, I recommend it to you… just for the experience. For once or twice. Come on in and I’ll show you how it works.”

Tracy followed him into the building. It looked like an averagely swank hotel, complete to a reception desk, which didn’t, however, have a clerk behind it. On the desk sat a screen.

Edmonds approached the screen and said something into it, and it answered. Tracy didn’t catch the words.

Edmonds said, “This way, Tracy. We’re lucky to have gotten a room immediately, but I told them it was just for two hours.”

Tracy followed him down a corridor and to a room. Once again, it looked more like a hotel room than anything else. Edmonds closed the door behind them.

Tracy said, being somewhat nervous about all this, “No bad after effects, eh? No hangover?”

“No aftereffects at all, ”the other reassured him, “except for the rest of your life you’ll have the memory. What do you want to dream about for the next two hours? By the way, the same amount of time will elapse in your dream.”