Mack Reynolds: After Utopia

She said, “But you didn’t answer my question. Do you find life considerably better in this age?”

He thought about it for a moment before saying bluntly, “No. I dislike it.”

She couldn’t disguise her astonishment, and said, “You do ? But why? Aside, of course, from the task we’ve set ourselves. Materially—”

He interrupted her, and said slowly, “A few days ago your father used as an example a man of the year 1855, before the American Civil War. Suppose you had taken him forward in time to my era, circa 1955. Would he have truly liked it, after the immediate surprises, after he had adapted a bit? I doubt it. I doubt if he would have liked the people, after the brash honesty of the American of the frontier years. I doubt if he could have stomached the relationship between the sexes. The new freedom. Women’s clothing would have shocked him. The fact that they participated in politics, had the vote, worked shoulder to shoulder with men in factories, or wherever, would all have cut across the grain. He would have been contemptuous of the food, with the TV dinners, the packaged and canned meals, as compared to his former meat and potato diet. In his day, men drank to get smashed, and usually wound up in a sight, passed out, or in jail. In my time, drinking was all but universal, among both men and women, and cocktails and other mixed drinks were usual, instead of the three fingers of red eye, straight booze, as consumed in his time. Sure, he would have been amazed by cars and airplanes, and the speed at which they traveled, but he probably would have preferred the more comfortable easygoingness of a horse and buggy. He would have been contemptuous of the fact that homosexuality was winked at, if not openly condoned. In his era they probably would have lynched a queer. Oh, he wouldn’t have been at all happy in my time.”

“And that’s how you feel about the present?” She was frowning slightly, his point of view not exactly coming through to her.

“More or less,” he said. “I just can’t adapt, and don’t particularly want to. Perhaps I’m too old. Too set in my attitudes. If I was a teenager, it might be different.”

Betty said, “But, what, for instance? You have everything now.”

He smiled grimly. “Perhaps it’s like your father said. Perhaps I don’t want everything I want.” He tried to work it out. “Take an example. This might sound picayune, but it’s just one thing out of scores. Throwing away clothes, each night, after just one day of wear. I know, you explained that less labor is involved in the long run than if you laundered them or dry cleaned them. But I was born in a working class family and often we were up against it. It’s just completely against the grain, throwing away perfectly good clothing. I know, I know, it’s recycled; but I know it intellectually but reject it inwardly.”

“What else?” she said and there was mystification in her voice.

“Oh, possibly stupid little things. For instance, the other night you dialed a dish at dinner that would have cost a good many dollars in my time. You took one look at it and changed your mind, and dumped it, and ordered something else. When I was a kid we were taught to eat everything on our plate. Hell, we didn’t have to be taught; we either did or we went hungry.”

“What else?” she said.

He drug air into his lungs. “Nobody works. I believe that everybody should work. Everybody should do something… besides playing with a piece of jade, like Jo does, or the equivalent.”

She said, a bit of indignation in her voice, “As you know, I have similar beliefs to your own on that score, and so do father and Jo.”

“Yes, but you and your father and Jo are a rather small minority,” he said unhappily. “But to go on. Your sexual mores upset me as much as that man from 1855 would be upset in 1955. I just can’t accept your complete permissiveness, your rejection of what we used to call love, the disappearance of marriage, your acceptance of group sex. The other day you told me that Jo was perfectly normal, he liked girls and men both, or group sex for that matter. Well, for me that isn’t exactly normal, and inwardly I revolt against it.”

“And what else?”

He tried to think of some of the other things, and said finally, “I don’t want to seem like a prude but your attitude toward narcotics is unacceptable to me. Above all is this new code that anything is premissable between consenting adults, even things like sadism, up to and including gladiator fights. I just can’t get the feeling of allowing anything to go, anything at all. Bull fighting, pit dog fights, bear baiting, cock fights. In my day, such things weren’t allowed. And, as far as I’m concerned, they still shouldn’t be allowed. I was of the opinion that man had arisen above such things.”

“You don’t have to attend them,” she said reasonably. “And you don’t have to take narcotics or have group sex. All these things are left up to the individual. Why should you care what the next person does?”

“I know, I know,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to make sense to you, any more than that guy from before the Civil War would have made sense to me. But that’s not all. Perhaps the big thing I miss is the companionship of my own day. You see, I spent most of my life in the company of such men as Dan Whiteley. We were caught up in the movement, the ideal of building a better world. We sacrificed. Sometimes we all but starved together. Sometimes some of those closest friends died for the cause. In my time, I have been there when one or the other of them were cut down… sometimes when attempting to protect my life.”

Betty said softly, “I’m sorry, Tracy, darling. What you say doesn’t make too much sense to me, but I can see you are unhappy in this world of ours.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tracy said. “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just that I’m a fish out of water. There is no reality for me in this world. You’ve all been kind to me… especially you, Betty.”

After a time she said, “Tracy, do you love me? I mean in the old sense of the word. What you meant in your day.”

He said, “Yes, I love you, Betty.”

She said softly, “Nobody ever said that to me before.”

It was a few days later, when Tracy had left his desk for lunch, that he brought up the question of space. Only Jo Edmonds was in the dining room; both Betty and her father had gone into town on some errand or other. If you could call it going into town. It was one of the things most difficult for Tracy to accept in this age. There were no stores, no restaurants, in view of the fact that you could order any prepared food you wished in the privacy of your own home, no governmental buildings, no gasoline stations. What was left of the old town of Tangier spread all up and down the coast and consisted of widely spaced villas strategically located to take full advantage of the marvelous view out over the straits.

Jo said, in the way of greeting, “How go the studies?”

Tracy went over to the autobar and dialed himself an aperitif before sitting down.

“I’ve gotten to the space program,” he said. “It’s rather interesting. I understand that now it’s almost completely abandoned. What would you say was the climax of the whole project?”

Jo had been dialing his lunch. He considered the question. “I should think the Russians landing four men on Mars, some decades ago.”

“I haven’t gotten to that, as yet,” Tracy said. “What did they find?”

“More or less what everybody expected them to find, I should think. Nothing. Oh, they picked up material of interest to the scientist blokes, I suppose, but there wasn’t anything really startling. It rather gave the kiss of death to the space program. Practically everybody lost whatever interest remained.”