Mack Reynolds - After Utopia

“What would you say the present social system was?” Tracy said. “From what I’ve seen and heard so far it’s certainly not communism, socialism, or even technocracy.”

“It’s anarchism,” Edmonds said bluntly.

Tracy thought about that for a minute or two before speaking again. When he did, it was to change the subject.

He said, “These Pleasure Centers, what else do you do in them besides shooting dinosaurs, taking narcotics, having group sex and dreaming away your lives?”

Edmonds answered, “Well, for instance, see that building we’re passing over? It’s a gourmet restaurant, and kind of a club at the same time.”

“Restaurant? I thought your cooking was all automated and that you could have sent to your own home any dish ever devised by man.”

“Umm,” Edmonds responded. “Largely, but not quite. This is a gourmet restaurant with a difference, old chap. They specialize in exotic dishes of a type most persons wouldn’t be interested in and the ingredients of which are sometimes difficult to acquire.”

“Such as what?” Tracy was intrigued. He had always been a good trencherman himself… when he could afford it, which wasn’t too very often.

“Why, I ate there exactly once. Once was enough. Among other dishes they had a certain type of small dog, a very fat little dog originally raised by the Aztecs of Mexico for food. Then they had live shrimp.”

“Live shrimp?” Tracy couldn’t see where that was particularly exotic. “You mean fresh shrimp, alive before they cooked them?”

“No, I mean shrimp that were alive when they ate them. It’s evidently an old Japanese delicacy. You take very small live shrimp and put them in soy sauce and another ingredient or two and they are served under a bowl on top of a dish. The trick is to reach in and get one before he can hop out, bite off his head, and skin the meat out through the shell. It’s a bit tricky getting hold of them since they flip-flop all over the place.”

“Jesus. How do raw shrimp taste?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Edmonds admitted. “They also have various types of snakes, including rattlesnakes and cobras which the members can look at in their cages before ordering them to be cooked up. But the piece de resistance, the night I was there, was live monkey brains.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“No,” Edmonds said. “It’s an old Chinese delicacy. The diners sit at a circular table which has a hole cut in the center. The host comes out leading a monkey, or ape… it was chimpanzee on this occasion. He circles the table with it, so that the guests can see it. And it is then clamped under the table in such a manner that the top of its head projects through the hole there. The top of the skull is then sawed off and the diners take their spoons and dip into the brains and eat them.”

“I won’t repeat that you have to be kidding,” Tracy said, nauseated. “You sound too convincing. But I thought you people didn’t eat real meat any more, that it was all factory raised, in overgrown test tubes, or whatever.”

“These gourments like to eat living things,” Edmonds said grimly. “They like to see the things they are are going to eat, still alive. I think they get some sort of a thrill from that. I believe some of them like to do the killing, an atavistic thrill.”

“Okay. What other kind of entertainment do you have in these Pleasure Centers?”

“Oh, various, don’t you know. Just about any pleasure that has come down through history. During the daylight hours there are bullfights, cock fights, bull baiting, pit dog fights, bear baiting.”

“Bear baiting?” Tracy said. “I thought that went out in the Middle Ages.”

“It’s been brought back,” the other told him. “They turn a bear loose in a pit and send in fighting dogs, mastiffs, bulldogs and so forth, to pull it down. Evidently, quite a few people enjoy seeing pain and death inflicted.”

“But bullfighting,” Tracy protested. “I’ve seen a bullfight or two, in Spain and Mexico, in my time. And I can understand a matador of my era going through with it in view of the large pay, if he hit the jackpot. But who would be silly enough to be a matador today, when he doesn’t have to be?”

Edmonds shrugged again. “People who get a thrill out of it. Or people who get a thrill appearing before a cheering audience. Largely exhibitionists, I should think. The same as with the gladiators.”

“What gladiators?” Tracy said, looking over at the other in complete surprise.

Edmonds said, “Most Pleasure Centers have arenas patterned after the old Roman ones. In them they duplicate the games of the Romans at the time of the republic and empire. By the way, that’s a fallacy that has come down through history. When the Christians took over in Rome, the games didn’t end for quite a time. The only difference was that instead of the pagans throwing the Christians to the lions, the Christians threw the pagans. It wasn’t until 399 a.d. that the last gladiator schools were closed, although the first Christian emperor, Constantine, had come to power almost a hundred years earlier. In 404 a monk named Telemachus jumped into an arena in Rome and berated the spectators, who were so infuriated that they stoned him to death. The emperor Honorius in turn became so furious over the lynching that he closed the arenas.”

Tracy said, “But gladiators in this day and age. That’s ridiculous. Who’d be silly enough—”

“Oh, they seldom, if ever, fight to the death. They’re probably, as with matadors, sadists, maso-chists, and exhibitionists. They’re consenting adults. If one of them gets hurt, he was asking for it. I’m sure it’s not as all-out as it was in the Roman times. Except, of course, the animals they kill with everything from spears to bows and arrows.”

“All right. What else?”

“Oh, the less far-out entertainments. Bars, nightclubs, dancing places, that sort of thing. And sports, certainly. Just about all fun and games are represented in a Pleasure Center.”

They were coming up on Gibraltar now. The lights on the rock flickered ahead of them.

Tracy said, “What’s Gib nowadays? In my time it was a British naval base.”

“It’s another Pleasure Center. We went on up to Torremolinos because it’s a larger one. Gibraltar is too limited in space. There’s another one in Rabat, one in Cadiz, one in Seville.”

“In short, they’re all over the place, eh?”

“Yes,” Edmonds nodded. “They’re all over the place and more are being built all the time. More and larger ones. Especially the Dream Palaces.”

Tracy said, “That brings something to mind. Back there you said that nothing in my programmed dream was reality. It was all in my head. But that can’t be right. For instance, I know nothing at all of the architecture of Persia in Omar Khayyam’s time, but I saw it there. I also know nothing about the musical instruments and the music of the time, but I saw and heard them. You also said I could go back and be Alexander at Issus, but I know nothing about the battle of Issus. I don’t even know Greek, so I couldn’t have ordered the troops around.”

Edmonds replied, “I gave you a wrong impression. When you’re having a programmed dream, you’re tied in with the data banks, which, of course, have all the information known to man in them, including the architecture, music and everything else of old Persia. They also have all information known about the Battle of Issus, including the types of weapons used on both sides, and including the types of chariots utilized and even including the breeds of horses current at the time. So far as speaking Greek is concerned, the data bank computer translators can translate any known language into any other immediately. Or, for that matter, they could change history around a bit and have both the Greeks and Persians speaking Interlingua or English.