The editor looked at him blankly.
“They had perfected the incandescent lamp,” George explained.
The lamp over Mr. Grayson’s desk began to sputter at that moment, distracting the attention of both men until the flow of gas again became even.
“How did you manage to live until you obtained your sewer-digging job?” Mr. Grayson asked finally.
“For the first day I was on charity... under false pretenses, I am afraid. After stealing the clothing, I sallied right out into the street. Or rather I ‘sallied’ as far as the front door of the Hotel Chelsea, after which my mode of progress is perhaps better described as a stagger. The impact of New York City in 1950 was so tremendous on a mind conditioned to 1900 that I could later recall nothing that happened from midnight, when I passed through the hotel’s front door, until two A.M., when I stumbled into a Salvation Army Hotel in a state of shock and was shown to bed by a kindly captain who apparently mistook my condition for alcoholism.”
A series of small explosions from the street outside interrupted George’s story. At the same moment the door flew open and the secretary excitedly burst into the room. She beat the two men to the window.
Along the cobblestoned street rolled an astonishing vehicle. Open-carriaged and high-seated, it was piloted by a creature so begoggled and so encased in a dust-wrapper that its sex was indeterminate. At ten miles an hour it roared past the building, the noise of its exhaust drowning all other sound in the area except the voice of a watching pedestrian who yelled, “Get a horse!”
Long after it had disappeared from sight, the secretary continued to lean out the window and peer after it. Finally she withdrew her head with reluctance.
“That’s the third one I’ve seen,” she said in an awed voice.
Shooing her from his office, Mr. Grayson resumed his chair and waved George back to his.
“Frankly, Mr. Blade,” he said, “I find your story of visiting 1950 as implausible as the script which you based on it. But I have to admit I find it interesting. What caused the state of shock you were describing when we were interrupted?”
“The same thing that excited your secretary, Mr. Grayson. Suppose when we rushed to the window a moment ago, instead of a single horseless Vehicle, we had seen thousands travelling at five times the speed. Wouldn’t your eyes bug out?”
“They probably would,” Mr. Grayson admitted.
“I have a vague recollection of thousands of glittering metal and glass vehicles roaring along streets on which I was accustomed to seeing only sedately trotting horses; of strident voices, clanging bells, screaming horns, and mingled with all these noises a strange overtone which I can only describe as the drone of a million cogs moving in the complicated machinery of a mechanical city.”
“You used that same description in your story,” Mr. Grayson remarked.
George said, “After the initial shock, I gradually became sufficiently acclimated to exist in this strange environment, but for the full two weeks of my visit I remained in a constant state of amazement. Some of the mechanical wonders I saw are described in my story, but not nearly all. There seemed to be no end to them. In 1950 nothing was done by people anymore... except the digging of sewers... even the theater having substituted for actors a huge screen upon which by some kind of electrical lighting effect the illusion of real performers was produced, complete with color and sound. But the progress in transportation was the most astounding. I rode great trains through tunnels under the earth, and travelled in horseless carriages at incredible speeds. I even took a ride in one of the streamlined flying machines described in my story.”
Mr. Grayson, still obviously unbelieving, brought the conversation back to its original subject.
“This is all very entertaining, Mr. Blade. But even if I conceded your background is based on authentic observation, that is hardly enough to satisfy the reader. Your story has to sound plausible. But what have you given us? An incredibly advanced civilization where nearly everything is done by machine. A civilization which travels between continents in spaceships at hundreds of miles an hour, and has warships which move at nearly the speed of sound. The homes of your hyper-civilization are a mass of implausible gadgets run by buttons. Buttons are pushed to bring light, clean rugs, wash clothes, and even to squeeze juice from fruit. Every home has built-in entertainment which picks music, talk and pictures from the air. Heat comes from the walls instead of from stoves, and water, both hot and cold, comes in unlimited amounts from spigots which merely have; to have their handles twisted instead of being pumped. And the warfare you describe! A single bomb disintegrates an entire city! Don’t you see how implausible it all sounds?”
“But it actually was that way,” George said sullenly.
The editor smiled indulgently. “Perhaps life will be as you describe it in one million A.D. But no reader would accept such tremendous scientific advance in a mere fifty years. What you seem to have overlooked, Mr. Blade, is that the children of today will be the leaders of your fantastic future world. You yourself may quite likely still be alive. The whole world has fresh in its mind Andree’s balloon attempt, yet you expect your readers to believe such enormous air progress as you describe will take place during their own lifetimes! And your war weapons! Warfare has advanced tremendously in the past few decades — the revolver, the automatic rifle, the ironclad warship — but a Napoleonic marshal could almost instantly master these modern developments. Are we to expect that in fifty years war should take on a shape that Napoleon himself could not comprehend?”
Mr. Grayson’s smile became more gentle. “But your worst error in plausibility is related to the first I mentioned. Your leaders of 1950 are living now. Yet in your story they are adjusted to their incredibly mechanized life as though it had always existed. They are not even surprised at civilization’s progress. It simply isn’t plausible that people would take such a life for granted.”