Julian looked at her. “Such as?”
“Take something like clothing. In your day, there were thousands of clothing manufacturers in this country alone. They would design, say, a woman’s dress, keeping their fingers crossed that the potential customer would go for the lower hem or higher hem, the lower waist or the higher waist, or this, that, or the other thing in the way of style. The shopper had tens of thousands of stores to choose from, ranging from tiny one-room affairs to department stores covering acres of land. There were mail-order houses which put out catalogues as large as the phone book of a considerable city. No woman could begin to examine all the varieties of dresses manufactured to part her from her dollars.”
Julian took in the coverall-type garment she wore, which was almost identical to that he and the doctor were garbed in.
He said, an edge of sarcasm to his voice, “In my day, people, and women in particular, dressed for attractiveness. Now everybody wears the same thing. I’m not so sure I don’t prefer the old days.”
The doctor laughed, but let his daughter carry the ball.
She smiled, looking down at her outfit. “These aren’t the only clothes we wear. They just happen to be the uniform, more or less, of the university. They’re practical, comfortable, suitable for anything from laboratory work to most sports. But I wouldn’t expect to go to a party, or dancing, or skiing…” she grinned at him “…or swimming in these dungarees.”
“Okay,” Julian acknowledged. “But then what’s the difference between 1970 and the Year 2, New Calendar?”
“To get back to our woman buying a dress. She could choose among tens of thousands of dresses and so forth. So big was the choice that if she went shopping, she couldn’t possibly check out everything. Besides that, she had a choice of quality, superior and inferior textiles, cheaper and more expensive designs. In our system there is still a choice, but there are only a few hundred different designs. And all textiles are the best possible; there are no inferior materials.”
“But isn’t it monotonous?” Julian argued.
Edith laughed. “A few hundred basic dresses is no small matter. Three hundred different types of skirts, three hundred different types of blouses, three hundred sweaters, three hundred belts, three hundred shoes and sandals. Work that out mathematically and you can see that you have literally hundreds of thousands of potential costumes. But if you are still unhappy, you can buy material and design your own clothing. A good many women do, and more men are drifting into it too. Textile design and making your own clothing are growing hobbies these days. The big thing is that we don’t produce and then destroy literally millions of articles of clothing each year simply because they have gone out of fashion. For all practical purposes, styles and fashions as such have disappeared. Our clothing is made for comfort, to be warm or cool as the season dictates, and to be attractive without being garish or ridiculous. We wouldn’t dream of wearing anything as silly as a girdle, nor a tie on a man.”
“As you say,” Julian sighed. “I’ll admit we had some far-out fads in our day. You should have seen some of the hats.”
Doctor Leete had been silent while his daughter sounded off on the subject of style. He said, “It seems to me that when I was a boy in my teens, one of the greatest wastes was the lack of planning of production. Under capitalism, capital flowed to where profit was greatest. Suppose, for instance, artichokes became a food fad. Prices would go up. Thousands of farmers would immediately put in crops of artichokes. They would overflow the market. Prices would break. Then tons upon tons of artichokes would become surplus and rot in the fields since it wouldn’t be worth harvesting them.
“Or take something like toys. Do you remember the Davy Crockett fad? I barely do. Suddenly Davy Crockett coonskins hats, Davy Crockett frontiersman shirts, Davy Crockett moccasins were a must for every child. Hundreds of manufacturers leaped in to profit in the market. Then, overnight, the youngsters tired of Davy Crockett and found a new fad, leaving literally millions of coonskin hats and moccasins to mold in warehouses or be destroyed. As far as a reasonable socioeconomic system was concerned, it was anarchy.”
Edith yawned mightily and said, “I’m getting bored with all this talk. If poor Julian hasn’t already become convinced that the socioeconomic system under which he lived was a madhouse compared to today, he never will. Jule, how would you like to take a drive out to our home? I have some things I have to pick up.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Your home? Isn’t this your home?”
“Oh, good heavens, Jule. This is a university city. We’re just in residence here while Father continues his research on your case and while I study various projects of mine. Mother is taking a few courses too.”
“Let’s go,” Julian said.
Chapter Eight
The Year 2, New Calendar
Animal’s lives utterly depend upon green plants. Plants alone give us our food; they alone renew and refresh the air, they alone recycle organic wastes, and they alone store sunlight for our use. Plants must have ground space on which to grow. Buildings and roads are using it up at ever-faster speed… Therefore, those of us who build and pave are helping to plunge the planet into disaster. Obviously, then, since we can’t change the facts of life, we’ve got to change the way we pave and build. Buildings and roads below the living green surface of the land can restore ground space to life again.
Edith and Julian took the elevator to the car pool in the basement of the high-rise apartment building in which they lived.
He said, “This pyramid project you’re interested in simply floors me. I just don’t get the why of it.”
She looked amused. “When Father told you that only two percent of the population was needed in industry to produce an abundance for all, did you come to the conclusion that the remaining ninety-eight percent spent their time sitting before the Tri-Di television, guzzling beer and pushing pleasure buttons?”
“Pleasure buttons?”
She laughed. “It’s a branch of medical science that was experimented with for a time and then definitely dropped. I believe the experiments started with rats and monkeys back before you went into stasis. It was possible, electronically, to stimulate the areas of the brain relating to pleasure. By activating a button, the animal would experience the height of pleasure momentarily. Push the button again and the pleasure returned again, and over and over. Nothing else made any difference to them. Food, drink, even sex meant nothing. They would remain, pressing the button until they fell over from exhaustion, starvation, or dehydration.”
“Good God!” Julian exclaimed. “You mean that brain specialists can do that to humans as well?”
She nodded. “Can, but don’t. Not all the roads opened up by science are followed, Julian. So far as pleasure is concerned, we like to find it ourselves—normally. One of the ways is to create beauty. Much of the beauty in the world, created in the past, has been lost to us. We are attempting to recreate that which we can. For instance, did you know that of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only the ruins of the Pyramid of Cheops is still in existence? All of the others we are attempting to rebuild: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Artemision at Ephesus, the Olympian Zeus statue originally by Phidias, the Pharos lighthouse.”