The home of Acquilla was on a monumental scale designed in the form of
a Greek cross with wings two stories high, capped with a long slanting
roof, the façade brilliantly colored in rich purple tints, relieved
by black and white marble pilasters. The doors opened at a wave of
her hand and we entered a corridor fully thirty feet in height. A
brilliantly colored machinot, shaped like a beetle rose from its seat,
received our coats and disappeared. We went about forty feet forward
and found ourselves in a great colonnaded circular room, rising some
ninety feet to a tinted glass roof. An elevator concealed in the wall
took us lightly to the next floor which was given over to the sleeping
apartments. My own room was on the scale of an Italian palace of the
middle ages, with transparent walls of glass bricks, so that in the
daytime the effect was similar to living in the open sunlight. Outside
the arrival of the rain had obscured the sky and brought on a sudden
darkness, but as we arrived, the whole house, by some invisible
process was gradually flooded with artificial daylight. Acquilla,
noticing my curiosity, said:
“The lights are regulated automatically by a simple contrivance that
keeps a fixed glow. The principle of the ancient thermostat.”
“But there are no lamps. And though, of course, the principle of
indirect lighting,” I continued, glancing up at the cornices, “was
used in my day, it was, of course, simply the reflection from bulbs
concealed behind the walls.”
The word bulbs puzzled her. I explained at length our system of wiring
which excited her curiosity and astonishment.
“How strangely archaic, but then of course you ignored the true
relation of electricity, gravity, and heat. Though later, Zugg and
Plumpf must have suspected the truth. Of course today there are not
many secrets in the physical world. Light is generated like heat and
radiated through the house. The floors and walls are porous, that is
the whole secret. But there is too much to tell you to begin tonight.
A half an hour’s bath before dinner is what you need to relax and
stimulate you.”
We descended and traversing the theatre which was the main axis of
the house, entered a further wing, after passing through a series of
doors which opened at a peculiar wave of her hand and closed behind
us automatically. I stopped with an exclamation of delight. We were in
a thermal bath such as Rome in all its days of aesthetic splendor had
never produced. Instead of marble the walls, the floors, the pool were
made of the same brilliant glass colored in opalescent tones. The water
itself was amethyst shot through with quivering rays of red and violet
streamers. The air was delicately perfumed with a scent resembling
heliotrope, while the sides of the pool were carpeted with thick rugs
of a yielding softness.
A female attendant, who for a moment I took for an automaton, rose and
bowed at our entrance. Acquilla slipped from the Grecian robe which was
her only garment and advanced to the edge of the pool. I hesitated a
moment with that sense of modesty which is inherent in the male, but
perceiving the complete naturalness of her gesture, I realized quickly
that a false show of prudery would render me ridiculous. I gave my toga
to Mag, who smiled at me entranced, and followed Acquilla.
I now noticed with interest certain physical changes that the
scientific evolution had made in the female figure. From the flat waist
upward it was the torso of a man, powerfully muscled, broad over the
shoulders and flat breasted, due to the fact, as I learned later, that
for over two centuries no woman had nursed her own child. For the rest,
though she overtopped me by a clear foot, it was the graceful, lithe
figure of the young Mercury one sees in medieval art. But my feeling
of aesthetic admiration was rudely dispelled. Turning to Mag, who was
staring at me with fascinated eyes, Acquilla lifted the lovely golden
curls from her head and stood before me absolutely bald. I could not
repress an exclamation of dismay.
“That is the price women have to pay for the supremacy of their
intelligence,” said Acquilla.
“What! Science that has worked such miracles has not been able to
prevent baldness?”
“Those of the Histrionic caste keep theirs much longer,” Acquilla
replied, “but we of the Philosophers and Scientists lose ours at fifty.”
“For heaven’s sake, how old are you?” I exclaimed bewildered.
“Oh, not so old,” Acquilla replied with a touch of asperity. “How old
are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Really, if it weren’t for your teeth and hair I should have said a
hundred.”
I glanced at the perfect lustre of her teeth and shuddered. Was
that possible too? But I mastered my fears and replied according to
etiquette:
“And you look twenty-four.”
“I am hardly seventy-six at that.” She extended her hand, took mine and
led me into the perfumed pool.
Before I could digest the import of her last remark, the colored
water closed over us and I immediately rose to the surface with the
resiliency of a rubber ball. Indeed I presently found, such was the
density of the water, that I remained floating on the surface without
the slightest effort. At the same time, due no doubt to the electric
charges, I was conscious of a feeling of extraordinary physical
stimulation, like the caresses of a myriad of miniscule fingertips
running over my body.
“Relax and don’t talk, dear man,” said Acquilla, “and you will see how
refreshed your mind will be.”
At the same moment, above us, a panorama of shifting hues passed as the
clouds pass on a clear autumn day, while the air was filled with the
slumberous, subdued notes of a great orchestra; strains that vaguely
pleasantly reminded me of the “Après-midi d’un Faun.”
“The color organ was known in my day,” I said drowsily.
“This is an entirely different principle,” said Acquilla. “Each chord
has a color value so that as you listen to music, your eye at the same
time receives an identical impression. It is an aesthetic emotion
extremely restful and stimulating for the brain. But don’t talk. Relax
completely for ten minutes.”
I obeyed and experienced a sensation of being transported into a fairy
world of morphine enchantment. I seemed to be drowsily gazing up at
the rich deep green of velvety woodland recesses, which gradually
became alive with the golden hues of autumn leaves. This dissolved
into the deep crystalline blue of the open sky with lazy white clouds
piling up in harmonious languor. All the shock and strain of the day
on my perplexed brain passed away. I felt calm and unvexed. Then with
the changing rhythms, the fleecy skies took on the brilliant red and
purples of such a sunset as one remembers over the tourmaline waters
of the Bay of Naples. The effect on me was one of a complete mental
invigoration and a new eagerness to explore my incredible adventure.
The voice of Acquilla recalled me.
“Enough for the first time, Bogardus.”
She rose from the pool, the water falling from her lovely glistening
sides, like the petals of drifting cherry blossoms. We passed into
a warmer room where my body dried immediately under the contact of
pleasant vapors. Then resuming our robes we passed into another wing.
“How do you feel?”
“As though I had found the fountain of youth.”
“That astonished you,” said Acquilla putting on a wig of silvery blue
which became her immensely. “But of course in your time you bathed in
porcelain boxes! And yet two thousand years before you the Romans had
opened the way to the aesthetic life. Are you hungry?”
“After two hundred and fifty years?” I exclaimed laughing, “ravenous!”
“Yes, that is a long while,” replied Acquilla without a trace of a
smile. As a matter of fact my laugh seemed to excite her curiosity, for
she gave me a quick look in which I detected a touch of anxiety.
The dining room which was of the proportions of a banquet hall, was in
a luminous emerald green with black marble columns and ivory trims.
I was not surprised to find a low table scarcely two feet in height
surrounded by couches resembling Recamier sofas.
“So we have returned to the classics?”
“You should never have departed from them.” Acquilla waved me to a
couch and disposed herself on one opposite. “It is quite a masculine
repast I have ordered tonight, in consideration of your long fasting. I
myself eat sparingly.”
A curious thing happened. The two dogs immediately came and crouched
adoringly at my feet.
“How odd,” said Acquilla. “I’ve never seen them pay the slightest
attention to any male before.”
I confess this allusion to her past struck me disagreeably, for already
romance was stirring in my imagination.
She touched a signal and the centre of the table sunk on some mechanism
under the floor.
“And now, Bogardus, while we are waiting, you can imagine how curious I
am to hear your first question.”
“You will never guess what it will be,” I said smiling. “It is in fact
very mundane, but in a sense it was the great question of my time.”
“Political?”
“No, social.”
“Marriage?”
“More important than that.”
“The competitive system?”
“I’ll tell you. How have you solved the servant problem?”
“Oh.” Acquilla regarded me with a look of disappointment. “But that is
no problem at all. I run this place on a dozen machinots, a gardener
and Mag, my housekeeper.”
“But even if you have one servant, my dear Acquilla, you have the
servant problem, haven’t you?”
“Problem? There is no problem,” she replied, thinking over what I had
said.
“Then you have discovered how to produce perfect servants.”
“Certainly, we have absolute control over our servants.”
“How so?”
“Why, very simple. We put them under hypnotic control, of course.”
My face expressed such blank amazement that she continued immediately:
“But how else can you handle servants? I simply hypnotize them and
suggest to them each morning what they shall do during the day. That
eliminates all possibility of error or misunderstanding.”
“Wonderful! And to think no one ever thought of it in my day. Perfect,
and so simple!” The idea appealed to my sense of humor. I flung myself
back among the cushions and laughed until I cried. All at once I felt
Acquilla’s hand on my shoulder and saw her bending anxiously over me.
“Bogardus, dear, you are in pain!”
I sat up wiping my eyes.
“Pain?! Don’t you see I am laughing?”
“Laughing? What is that?”
My jaw dropped.
“What, you have never heard of laughter?” A sudden revelation came
to me at her blank seriousness. “Good heavens, women have abolished
laughter!”
“Laughter--laughter? I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking
about.”
I remembered swiftly that I had never seen Acquilla laugh. It was true.
Acquilla had never laughed. No one laughed now in this era of pure
reason! I shrank back staring at her and a sudden suspicion came to me.
Acquilla was not human, Acquilla too was an automaton.
“Why do you stare so, Bogardus?”
“Give me your hand,” I blurted out, shuddering.
I felt the warm flesh under mine. I examined the clear texture
minutely. The veins were there, red and finely blue. Acquilla _was_
human. Then softly I passed my fingers caressingly over the molded
forearm.
“That is strangely pleasant, Bogardus,” she said at once. “But now your
face is contorted again. Is that laughter?”
“I was afraid you were an automaton.”
She shook her head gravely.
“What a strange idea! But here is dinner.”
She resumed her seat. The centre of the table rose, charged with
curious silver and ivory dishes, which to my whetted appetite appeared
alarmingly inadequate. But the presence of certain promising flagons
reassured me. I sat up hungrily for my first meal after two hundred and
fifty years with this amazing young Amazon of seventy-six, who was bald
as Socrates, strong as Achilles and totally devoid of a sense of humor.
“My dear Acquilla,” I said beaming. “You will teach me many things but
I shall teach you how to laugh.”