“Between 1965 and 1998 it is estimated that ten thousand cases a year of pure cosmetic surgery were handled. Co-ordinate with this accomplishment, if you want to call it such, were further advances in traumatic hypnosurgery so that all infectious and organic disorders were brought under control. The new era of international health had arrived. They began to work on the age problem, taking the old folks and, in a series of hypnosessions, regenerating the tired tissues arid turning them into youngsters. Folks still died of old age, even as they do today, but they died at a hundred and fifty and died looking like next year’s debutantes.
“All of the world’s billions clamored for attention and the richest men were the hypnotists — and the busiest. They coined money and power and set up lobbies to restrict the number of eager young people going into the field. Amateurs killed a lot of patients in clandestine sessions. They also turned out some monsters and the regularized hypnosurgeons refused to repair the damage, leaving the mobsters to roam around loose as a warning to those who wanted to take the chance of being operated on by amateurs. It was a mess.
“In 1998, International Motors came on the market with a crude model of what we know as the autocosmeton. The hypnotists tried to block it and nearly succeeded when a bunch of people gave the machine silly suggestions to read back to them under trance and it very properly killed them. A man named Therbolt invented the controls which today keep any cosmeton from reading back a killing suggestion. The early models worked just like the ones the fools use today. You decide what you want to look like from the booklet and read the code words to the machine. Then you take the receptivity drug, sit in front of it and watch the little rotating flashing gimmick. When you go under, the suggestions, along with the standard control suggestions, come, back to you and the concentrated psychic processes do the rest. In the early days you sat in the trance for twenty-hours and when you came out of it, the new tissue was still pretty tender, but, as you know, it’s only a three-hour job now. Take your pill and wake up with a new face and a new figure to go with it.
“It led to a lot of crime at first until the individual identity disks were made standard and the death penalty was invoked for going without your disk or with the wrong one.”
Jason sighed. “That’s all very nice and a good job of research, but it misses the point. The thing I’m interested in, Karl, is the opinions of the rebels.”
“Their opinions in the early days weren’t any different from ours. And they were just as helpless. I don’t know who noticed first that there were no new inventions, no new art, no virile literature. The world gradually switched over to a status quo setup, with all industry only concerned with maintaining the products already distributed. But it was Hanley in 2026 who gave us the reasons. Hanley was the first guy to get notoriety by refusing to change himself. Ugly beast he was, too. His theory was that the best part of the. human personality is conditioned by the face we present to the world. Our actions are in part a compensation for this static impression that we give. Thus, in a world where you can have a new face tomorrow and a new figure — provided you get tired of the old one — there was no incentive to force changes on society in compensation for the static impression that you gave to all people. Also he brought in the idea that much of our great art and literature were created by people who were seriously and hopelessly ill — conscious of their illness and striving for some sort of immortality. A subsidiary facet is the idea of increased longevity lessening the consciousness of the shortness of life, which in turn, has resulted in creation.
“We are in an era where the entire ego of the common man — and woman — is built around the idea of eternal change in outward appearance. Thus we have achieved a norm in personality that is deadly. There is no sublimation of dissatisfaction into creative channels. No invention, no art, no creative thought. Just maintenance. That’s all. The Age of Maintenance.
“A hundred years ago we thought we could reach the stars. We were well on our way. Atomic drives for space rockets and all the rest. What happened? The sad little men of fifty and sixty who were sweating out the details in labs suddenly discovered that they could be twenty again. A big, lush, brawny twenty with fine muscles and a handsome face. They didn’t want to take their beauty back into the lab. So they got maintenance jobs, a few hours a day. The same way with all other fields of endeavor. Makes me sick to my stomach. Where's our tremendous destiny that mankind used to talk about? Solidified According to them, we’ve got it. The lines of our cars and boats and houses and aircraft will never change. Just our faces.
“True, war went out with progress. But not for the same reason. Who’d want to become a soldier and take a chance on getting holes in that beautiful face. The soldier could regrow arms and legs that he might lose, but if he was killed it would cut short a hundred and fifty years of wonderful pleasure and admiration of self. Jason, the thing I hate about the world more than anything else is that it’s desolately dull. I guess we two are symbols of the past. Maybe we ought to turn pretty and get out and play with the girls — stop thinking, stop brooding, stop trying to put the big silly mass of mankind back on the tracks with full steam ahead.”
Jason smiled crookedly at him. “Are you going to emulate Fenner?”
“No. I just like to talk. I am worried, though. I’ve got a hunch my heart is going bad. I’m carrying too much fat around. I might die tomorrow. The instinct of self-preservation tells me. to take a few treatments and cut the fat and repair the heart and become pretty — and probably dull like the rest of them. Should I prostitute my ideals for the sake of personal safety?”
Jason felt quick concern. “Karl... maybe you ought—”
“Nonsense. I’d rather be dead than bored. Let’s get back to the point. What can a couple of vestigial remnants of the past like the two of us do to jiggle mankind out of the rut. You’ve tried to talk to them, haven’t you?”
“Sure. The young ones are the worst. Their education has been so much skimpier. You try to get a simple idea across and they look at you blankly. Then they say, Mr. Blood, why don’t you take a change? You talk so good that you ought to have the looks to go with it.’ ”
Karl sighed and stumped heavily to the window. He said, with disdain: “Look at ’em! Strutting like a bunch of prize roosters. They all look alike. Maybe this is the age of Duplication. I’ve got to get back, Jason. I’ve talked a young girl into coming around to my place at four. She seems brighter than most and I’m going to see if I can get her interested. Maybe if I can make her mad enough, she’ll start thinking.”
“Good-by, Karl.”
After the heavy man had left, Jason Blood was once again alone with his need of Carol, his thoughts of quiet desperation. To be so alone in a world where they were all so obviously contented, so oblivious to their own plight. He sank back in the chair, a lean, spindly man of less than average height, with the thin inbred face of a dreamer. He had copied the face and figure from an old text, from. a picture of one of the world’s famous philosophers. That was four years back. He wondered what seed of discontent there was in him which made it impossible for him to conform with the rest.
Through the open window he heard their voices. They laughed. They were very gay. Jason’s thoughts were close around him, like a small cloud of gloom in a bright world. A dying world. A worlds of the status quo.