I bought all the comic papers that I could find, even the illustrated
ones. I carried them up to my room in my hotel: with them I brought up
a pork pie and dozens and dozens of doughnuts. I ate the pie and the
doughnuts, then sat back in the bed and read the comic papers one after
the other. Finally, as I felt the awful lethargy stealing upon me, I
reached out my hand for the _London Weekly Times_, and held up the
editorial page before my eye.
It was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it.
I could feel my senses leaving me. In the room across the hall there
was a man singing. His voice, that had been loud, came fainter and
fainter through the transom. I fell into a sleep, the deep immeasurable
sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was hushed. Dimly
I could feel the days go past, then the years, and then the long
passage of the centuries.
Then, not as it were gradually, but quite suddenly, I woke up, sat up,
and looked about me.
Where was I?
Well might I ask myself.
I found myself lying, or rather sitting up, on a broad couch. I was in
a great room, dim, gloomy, and dilapidated in its general appearance,
and apparently, from its glass cases and the stuffed figures that they
contained, some kind of museum.
Beside me sat a man. His face was hairless, but neither old nor young.
He wore clothes that looked like the grey ashes of paper that had
burned and kept its shape. He was looking at me quietly, but with no
particular surprise or interest.
“Quick,” I said, eager to begin; “where am I? Who are you? What year is
this; is it the year 3000, or what is it?”
He drew in his breath with a look of annoyance on his face.
“What a queer, excited way you have of speaking,” he said.
“Tell me,” I said again, “is this the year 3000?”
“I think I know what you mean,” he said; “but really I haven’t the
faintest idea. I should think it must be at least that, within a
hundred years or so; but nobody has kept track of them for so long,
it’s hard to say.”
“Don’t you keep track of them any more?” I gasped.
“We used to,” said the man. “I myself can remember that a century or
two ago there were still a number of people who used to try to keep
track of the year, but it died out along with so many other faddish
things of that kind. Why,” he continued, showing for the first time a
sort of animation in his talk, “what was the use of it? You see, after
we eliminated death—”
“Eliminated death!” I cried, sitting upright. “Good God!”
“What was that expression you used?” queried the man.
“Good God!” I repeated.
“Ah,” he said, “never heard it before. But I was saying that after we
had eliminated Death, and Food, and Change, we had practically got rid
of Events, and—”
“Stop!” I said, my brain reeling. “Tell me one thing at a time.”
“Humph!” he ejaculated. “I see, you must have been asleep a long time.
Go on then and ask questions. Only, if you don’t mind, just as few as
possible, and please don’t get interested or excited.”