Equality: In the Year 2000

Chapter One The Year 2 New Calendar

When Edith Leete entered the sanctum of the Leete apartment in the high-rise building in the Julian West University City that morning, Julian was sitting at the desk before the auto-teacher. The expression on his face was one of sour despair.

He was a man in his mid-thirties. Youthfully fresh of complexion, handsome in the British aristocrat tradition, hair dark and thick, touches of premature gray at the temples and a small amount in his mustache, flat of stomach, square of shoulders, medium tall. There was a certain vulnerable quality about his eyes and mouth which women had always found attractive, though he had never known that.

She said, “Bon maten, Jule.”

“Bon maten,” he muttered, not quite graciously.

“How goes the study of Interlingua?” she asked in English.

“Jupli mi legas gin. Des malpli mi komrenas gin.”

“Pri kio vi paroles? What are you saying? The more you study it the less you understand it?”

“I wish to hell you people had stuck to English, instead of dreaming up this new international language.”

She sank down in a seat and let her hands flop limply over the chair arms. “Nonsense, Jule. Interlingua is a scientific language. It works. Take spelling and pronunciation. They are absolutely phonetic and there are only five vowel sounds, where most of the old languages have twenty or more. Each letter has one sound only, and a sound is always indicated by the same letter. English was a bastard language—goodness knows how anyone ever learned it, including me. Take the word can. It means a container; it can also be a verb meaning to can something in a container; it also means you can, or are able to, do something; and it also means, spelled C-a-n-n-e-s, a town in southern France. In American idiom it could mean to dismiss or fire someone, and in British idiom it meant a tankard.

“Or take this sentence: ‘There are three ways of spelling to.’ Now how would you go about spelling that, t-o,’t-o-o, or t-w-o?”

Julian had to laugh. “I admit we had some lulus.”

Edith continued, “And take grammar and syntax. Interlingua is so ingeniously devised that in place of the usual maze of rules occupying a sizable volume on grammar, we have only sixteen short rules, which may be written comfortably on a single sheet of notepaper.”

“The vocabulary is so damned extensive…”

“That’s due to the many new words that have come into the language, but in actuality the rules are such that we cover several times the wordage you do in a given area. For example, we carry the principle of affixes through to its logical conclusion. In English you often form the feminine of a noun by adding e-s-s: author-authoress, lion-lioness. Often, but by no means always. You are not allowed to say bull-bulless or hero-heroess. In Interlingua, the feminine ending may be added to any noun, and so throughout the language there is no exception to any rule and no limit to its applicability.”

“As you say, as you say…” Julian sighed. “At any rate, I’m plodding away. At this late date in life, it’s a little difficult to get back into studying.”

She frowned at his notepad and stylo. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Taking notes as I go along. I’ve always been a great note-taker when I study.”

“So am I, but the days when Abe Lincoln made his notes on a wooden shovel with a piece of charcoal have passed.”

He looked at her, not failing to note all over again the blue eyes, the classical nose, the well-formed mouth, the golden hair cut boy-fashion. It was a healthy face, bright and open—projecting honesty, sincerity. She had told him that she had never worn any sort of cosmetic; it hadn’t hurt her complexion any. He refused to let his eyes drop to her figure. He had long since been brought to the belief that her body was the most sexually attractive that he had ever seen, and he didn’t wish to tantalize himself further. When he had mentioned marriage, she had pointed out, without cruelty, how impossible a permanent relationship between them would be: she, and her father and mother, had been selected to deal with this man from a third of a century past; to be brutally frank, they had learned to speak in what amounted to baby talk in order to communicate with him.

Now he asked, “What do you mean? This stylo isn’t exactly a piece of charcoal. So far as I understand, it’s sort of a combination pencil and pen, except you don’t use either lead or ink, and it evidently lasts forever.”

“The equivalent of lead or ink is in the paper,’ Edith explained patiently. “The advantage with this type of paper is that if you’ve mislaid your stylo, you can still write with anything pointed—even with a finger nail, if necessary. But what I meant was that your method of taking notes is antiquated.”

He kept his eyes on her, wearily waiting for more. An hour didn’t go by in the company of any of the Leetes but that they came up with something that floored him.

She said, “There, next to you, is the voco-typer. I thought father explained it to you.”

“Briefly. You talk into it and it types up what you say.”

“There’s more to it. I’m continually surprised, Jule, at your lack of knowledge of what was developing back in the 1960s and ’70s, right under your nose. Most of what we have now in technological developments go back to your era, though I acknowledge it takes time—less so now than before—to bring a new breakthrough into widespread use. For instance, the basic facts of nuclear fission were known at least a decade before Einstein wrote President Roosevelt that an atomic bomb was possible:”

“What in the dickens has this to do with my taking notes with my stylo?” Julian asked.

“I was leading up to the fact that even in your day, the voco-typer, the computer data banks, and the computer translators were already in embryo.”

“Go on.”

She indicated the voco-typer that sat to one side of him on the desk. “They’ve all been amalgamated. You speak your notes into the voco-typer. It is connected to the data banks; your notes are recorded and you can check back on them any time you wish. And, if you desired, you could record your notes in English now, and, after your Interlingua becomes more fluent, have your notes played back to you in that language—or any other language, for that matter.”

“You mean that anyone at all can put anything he wants into the International Data Banks?”

“Of course. No problem. You see, all you could possibly write in your whole lifetime can be recorded on a disk no larger than your little fingernail, and about as thick.”

“Well, how long do they keep the record?”

“Forever. Fifty years from now, you might have some reason to check back on some of the notes you take today. They’ll be on file. Then there are other aspects. Suppose, a century or two from now, some biographer wishes to check back on your notes in order to do your life. There they are. Can you imagine how some historian in your time would have loved to have the notes of, say, Thomas Jefferson—made while he was composing the Declaration of Independence? I suggest that you have Information send you its material on filing and cross references. Speeds things up so that you’ll be able to check back more easily.”

Julian said indignantly, “Just one minute. Suppose there’s something in my notes I don’t want some goddamned biographer to see?”

“Don’t be silly. Anything of yours in the data banks can be wiped any time you wish. Your notes don’t have to remain if you don’t want them there. Or you can simply make a requirement that they are available to no one but you until such and such a date—or never.”

“Suppose I’m out somewhere without a voco-typer handy?”

“Then simply record your material by voice into your transceiver, ordering that it be put into the data banks in print.”

He shook his head. “Every day, I realize all over again how much there is for me to learn. Why, it’ll take me the better part of my life to reach the point you’re at now. How about a drink, Edie?”

“I’ll get it,” she offered, rising. She headed to the auto-bar. “Scotch for you, I suppose?”

There was a distressed look in her eyes when she handed him his whisky. “I don’t know what to say, Jule. I heard father tell you about the so-called knowledge explosion the other day, but I wonder if you completely followed through on the ramifications.”

“You mean that quote from Dr. Robert Oppenheimer that human knowledge is doubling every eight years?”

She nodded. “You see, he made that statement about 1955. So let’s take the year 1940 as the takeoff point. In the following eight years, various major breakthroughs were made, including nuclear fission, the first space ship, the German V-2, the first practical radar, and, in medicine, penicillin and the sulfas. Between 1948 and 1956 came additional breakthroughs: the conquest of polio, the modern computer, the first Sputnik in space, transistors. By this time, doubling each eight years, human knowledge was four times what it had been in 1940. Between 1956 and 1964, organ transplants; man went into space, following his history-long companion, the dog. Lasers and masers made their appearance, the supersonic aircraft, and nuclear fision, and human knowledge was eight times what it was in 1940. By 1972 it was sixteen times, we were on the moon, constructing space platforms, and relaying communications from scores of artificial satellites. Among other achievements, for the first time a living man—you—was put into artificial hibernation, to be awakened thirty-three years in the future.”

She took a sip of her wine and regarded him thoughtfully. “And while you slept, the knowledge explosion went on. In 1980 knowledge was thirty-two times that of 1940; by 1988 it was sixty-four; by 1996 it was one-hundred twenty-eight times greater than in 1940. And shortly, in 2004, or the year 4 New Calendar, the multiple will be two-hundred fifty-six.”

Julian shook his head wearily.

Edith continued, “Suppose we put it another way. Let us say a child was born in the year 1940 and that, given modern medicine, he lives to be ninety-six years of age, dying in an accident. That would mean in the year 2036, using the old calendar. By that time, Jule, human knowledge will be 4096 times as much as when he was born. Believe me, it even shakes us up. Way back in your day, a Julius Horwitz of the New York Department of Welfare, put it bluntly. The aged in a big city have no economic status; they have no status in the household, they have no vocational skills to pass on to the younger generation. Their special problem is survival in a society which finds their minds and bodies superfluous.”

“Well, we cherish our older people these days, as we do our children; nevertheless, the generation gap is present with a vengeance. In fact, the gap begins no more than halfway through a generation: the thirteen-year-olds show impatience with the twenty-five-year-olds.”

“What are you leading up to, Edie?” he asked.

She eyed him compassionately. “Jule, when you went into stasis, human knowledge was sixteen times what it had been in 1940. Do you remember 1940?”

“Vaguely; I was a young child.”

“When you went into stasis, to what degree were you up on the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs?”

He snorted in self-depreciation. “I had already been left far behind. Half the time I couldn’t even follow the science, medical, and space articles in Time and Newsweek, though they were written for the layman. I never did figure out what lasers were, and the workings of computers simply floored me; I recall reading about one fellow programming a computer to play chess and it beat a chess buff. Space travel was all very interesting to watch on TV but when I tried to read a bit about it, I was at sea instead of in space. The simplest articles on the subject were too technical for me. The data banks, which were just beginning to start up in earnest… I read of a new storage device which would allow for every book in the Library of Congress to be stored in an area a couple of square feet in size. Things like that simply boggled my mind. I gave up trying to keep up. But what’s the point, Edie?”

“Your studying, Jule. Oh, I admire your spirit—trying to catch up, at least to the point where you can conduct your daily life rationally in this world of the twenty-first century, as it would have been called under the old calendar. Most important, of course, is learning Interlingua, and there is no reason you can’t do that. But the magnitude of the rest of your problem is appalling.”

It was unreasonable, he knew, but nevertheless he was irritated. “Why? I’m only a bit more than a generation behind you. There is no difference between my brain and yours. I’m not stupid. I can take the same classes your young people take. I can catch up.”

She sighed. “Jule—Jule… You are going to have to start from absolute scratch. The education you had, a bachelor’s degree, is now meaningless. By the time you are through the equivalent of what you used to call grammar school, human knowledge will have doubled again. It will be 512 times what it was when you were a child in 1940.”

“I don’t want or expect to develop into a nuclear scientist. If the kids can pick up an ordinary layman’s education, I can too,” he said stubbornly. “We’ve been over this before.”

She shook her head in despair. “Even that, Jule. Today’s children take chemical and electronic stimulants—temporarily, while they are studying—to increase their intelligence quotients and receptivity.”

“Well, why can’t I take them too?”

“Because you are in your middle thirties. Actually, of course, you are pushing seventy, but physically and mentally you are a man in his thirties. You see, Jule, a person continues to grow, both mentally and physically, until he is approximately twenty-five years of age. From then on, he begins to deteriorate. We can slow down the process, but we cannot eliminate it entirely. The stimulants we utilize to increase intelligence and learning aptitude work best on youth. After the age of twenty-five, they slack off in effectiveness. Indeed, at the age of fifty or so, they are meaningless. Perhaps this will be overcome in the future, as new advances are made in the field, but for the present the use of such stimulants would not do you very much good.”

“Jesus!” Julian protested. “So even the eight-year-olds have a head start on me.”

“In more ways than one,” she agreed unhappily. “This is their world: they were born into it; they are perfectly at home in it. For you, it is as though you had landed on an alien planet. Everything is new to you; they have been assimilating their surroundings ever since they were in the cradle.”

He gazed at her for one more frustrated moment, then turned back to the auto-teacher and flicked it on. “Nevertheless,” he muttered, “I’ll stick to it at least to the point where I can order a hamburger in a restaurant.”

She frowned at his back, even as she finished her drink. “What is a hamburger?”

“I’ll never tell,” he smirked at her over his shoulder. “That’s one thing I know about that you don’t.” But then he relented. “People used to eat them, for some reason or other not quite clear to me now that I’m acquainted with present-day cuisine.”

Edith stood and went over to toss her glass into the auto-bar’s disposal chute.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your studies and go to my room to do my own.”

He blinked at her. “Your own? I thought you were out of school.”

She had to laugh, albeit somewhat ruefully. “Just to keep up with developments, I spend two hours a day at concentrated study, Jule. So does everybody else who doesn’t wish to fall by the wayside with what’s happening in the world. I’ll see you at breakfast with Mother and Father.”

He looked at her blankly. “Do they continue to study too?”

“Father puts in four hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, he is still doing medical research, and attempts to keep up with the latest.”