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"Science fiction is what scientists would do if they could - if they had enough grant money, enough time, and enough brains to do the wonderful things they would like to do."
- Greg Bear
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| Dream Palace (Sleep Palace) | ||
| A vast building full of wired-in sleepers! |
| But by now they were approaching the portals of the dream-palace and in awed silence Winters viewed its unearthly beauty. The entrance hall occupied half the entire ground floor and was: set all about with elaborate counters. But one attendant only was visible...
His three young friends conducted him directly to a bank of automatic elevators and after a few minutes in one they filed forth upon a huge floor space broken occasionally by low Gothic columns. It must have been several acres in extent and in every direction were set thousands of stone tables, and upon each table rested a curious mound of strange texture and shape. Winters’ gasp of surprise at the sight was delayed a few moments, for it was not at once apparent that these still motionless mounds were human beings. Over each, like a silver webbing, was a shroud of fine wires—so minute as to be almost invisible singly. In awe and horror he approached the nearest sleeper and observed that the chest slowly rose and fell—though slightly—and that the wires grew from the face like hairs in a beard. Over the eyes was set a bright cover and the table was pierced in several places to take the bundles of fine wires and lead them out of sight. But most startling of all was the terribly emaciated and wasted appearance of the bodies. The arms were mere skin and bone and the chest was ribbed like a hungry dog’s. The faces—what could be seen of them—reminded him of the mummies in the Egyptian room at the Museum... if I remember his record rightly, he imagines himself a young man of twenty having one grand debauch after another. Strange taste for a reputable scientist! I’m really not supposed to tell you, though: Such information is strictly private...” "...Once a sleeper, always a sleeper, as we say. In fact, the operation unfits a person for any other form of life. The eyes are destroyed and mechanical substitutes are not satisfactory for the waking life.” “And how are they kept alive? Do you feed them?” “Of course not! A current of negative electricity passes through their bodies and provides all the energy they need—the tissues thus never become acid to the point of fatigue.” Winters had a sudden thought: "How long will they live here?” "About as long as if they were awake," replied Antar. nd now the four waking ones inspected floor after floor of sleeping figures—rising toward the very top of the dream palace—and after several hours of climbing and inspecting Winters found himself on the top of the same tower that Eric and Jalna had stood on the day before. |
| Technovelgy from The Man Who Awoke - The City of Sleep,
by Laurence Manning. Published by Wonder Stories in 1933 Additional resources -
|
The narrative continues:
Tell me, Eric, how does it happen that the world ever came to adopt such a custom?”
The young man pushed back his chair and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “It was natural enough. Human nature has always been wishful for ease and comfort and afraid of change and the unpredictable hammer blows of fate. In the sleep palace each man and woman seems actually to be doing the things he or she most desires. Life there is a regulated thing — if one wishes for it there can be arranged desperate situations and seeming dangers, but always the denouement is happy. If your wish in life be to enjoy it to the utmost, then there is no comparison between sleeping and waking. And this is really the wish of most people—was it not so in your day?"
“True,” replied Winters thoughtfully. "But tell me how the process ever came into being.”
“It began with the blind. A famous surgeon invented artificial eyes and then a clever playwright found a way to present dramas to the blind upon a sort of recording device. So perfect did the sense of reality about these dramas become that a few people actually had their healthy eyes removed in order to enjoy them. That was the beginning.”
“And then?”
“Then the sense of sound followed that of sight. To this was added the senses of smell and taste and finally feeling. So enthusiastic were the disabled over their dream dramas that a group of surgeons and mechanics set up a great theater and offered a dream life to the general public. From time to time a dreamer was operated upon and brought back partially to waking life; but all such were so enthusiastic over the dream life and so eager to be returned to it that the desire was awakened among all peoples on the earth to experience its joys. All this required hundreds of years, but about a thousand years ago the great movement got fully under way. Enormous dream palaces were built in every city and millions of applicants filled their offices and surgeons operated night and day. Since then . . . you have seen,” and Eric was silent...
Winters realized to the full how lifelike the dreams of the sleepers in the Palace must be. He wondered no more that they should give up the waking life for their mechanically-contrived Paradise.
“How could human beings ever have got started in such a suicidal course?” he asked. “Who knows the history of the sleep-palace?"
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'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
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'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
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