In A Thousand Years Read online

  He stood up and, moving his legs apart in order to preserve his balance, encountered an object that caused him to stumble. He bent down, reaching out his arm, and grabbed the toe of a slipper.

  “How is it that so many citizens took it into their heads to sleep in the open last night?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

  He rubbed his eyes vigorously, and, after ten minutes of effort, was gradually able to distinguish his surroundings.

  “Great God!” he cried. “Uncle! Monsieur Terrier! How can they be here? Here’s an adventure, damn it! Let’s wake them up—perhaps they’ll have the key to the mystery. Oho! If serious men are spending the night away from home...”

  As he spoke he shook the two sleepers, gently at first and then with increasing vigor. Eventually, they opened their eyes. Profound amazement was painted on the faces of the two scientists. They were making vain efforts to collect their ideas and appeared to be struggling against the influence of a nightmare.

  For a few moments, questions overlapped volubly, but their situation was becoming increasingly inexplicable when Antius summarized it. “We’re in an admirable park,” he said, “which seems to be maintained with infinite artistry. The region is certainly inhabited, for nature doesn’t take as much trouble as that.”

  A few steps away, a little stream was rippling its crystal waves over a bed of silvery sand.

  “That watercourse must go somewhere,” said Gédéon. “Let’s follow it. At least we’ll have something to drink.”

  This proposal was accepted. The three travelers started walking along the bank.

  After a hundred paces, the young man stopped dead, and exclaimed: “Look, a woman!”

  “A woman?”

  “Don’t worry—she’s made of stone.”

  “My word, he’s right,” said Terrier.

  “Let’s go interrogate her,” said Gédéon.

  “Don’t laugh—she might give us the key to the enigma.”

  They advanced rapidly into an open space framed by a circle of majestic trees. A superb white marble statue mounted on a brand new pedestal stood in the center of the circumference.

  “What does that beautiful creature represent?” asked Antius.

  “In truth, I can’t see any name—only a date. The sculptor isn’t very good at chronology, mind—read it for yourself.”

  The doctor came forward and read, engraved in golden letters in the middle of the pedestal, the inscription: MMDCCCLXXX.

  “Two thousand eight hundred and eighty!” he exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “My friends, we’re all a thousand years older. The enchanted beverage has suspended our existence for ten centuries, and we’ve woken up today.”

  “Well, I’m not sorry,” said the professor. “I’m eager to know whether physics has kept all its promises.”

  “Great God, I’m a thousand and twenty-four years old!” exclaimed Gédéon, running to the stream.

  “Are you going to drown yourself for that?” asked Terrier.

  “No, I’m going to examine my wrinkles and count my hairs, if I still have any.”

  After five minutes he came back, wearing an expression of evident satisfaction. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got away with it nicely. It even seems to me that I look younger.” He suddenly burst out laughing. “That’s funny, though!”

  “What is?” asked Terrier, anxiously, seeing that he was being examined from top to toe.

  “My dear Professor—for I can now address you in familiar terms, since we’re both old men—your boots are very elegant, but your top hat is coming apart; my uncle is wearing his Greek skullcap, but only has slippers on his feet. As for myself, I confess that I’m dressed rather extravagantly.” The young man added: “I believe, in consequence, that we’re going to cut a fine figure in society—but are we really still on the same planet?”

  “Yes, of course,” the professor replied.

  “You’ve decided very quickly.”

  “Look at the sun. Doesn’t it have the same apparent diameter?”

  “Yes. What does that prove?”

  “Age must have put a little lead in your head,” said the doctor. “If we weren’t on Earth we’d be nearer or more distant from the sun, which would appear larger or smaller. Suppose that we were on one of the two plants nearest to the Earth. From Mars, the sun would seem twice as small; from Venus, twice as large—not to mention that in the former case we’d be frozen, and in the latter roasted.”

  “Good. But if we’re on Earth, where are we?”

  “We’ll soon find out, for, at the far end of that avenue of old elms, I can see a palace,” said Terrier, whose gaze had been searching in all directions for a few moments.

  “Let’s go,” said the doctor.

  They set off.

  A long and broad grassy avenue bordered by gigantic trees extended before them; they went along it.

  After twenty paces, Gédéon suddenly stopped. “Look!” he exclaimed, seizing his uncle’s arm and extending the other toward the sky.

  The two scientists looked up and saw, to their amazement, a long dark object cutting through the air at the speed of a bullet.

  “The canon that fired that projectile must be at least as big as a cathedral,” said Gédéon.

  “Is it really a projectile?” murmured Terrier.

  The travelers continued on their way, variously preoccupied.

  II. Reciprocal Astonishment

  A few minutes later, Antius suddenly halted. “Through the foliage,” he said, “a hundred paces away, I can see someone walking in parallel to us, in the opposite direction.”

  “Let’s go toward him.”

  “By following that pathway, which is perpendicular to our direction, we can catch up with him in two minutes,” said the doctor.

  They raced forward, and soon found themselves on the same path, a hundred paces behind the early-morning stroller.

  The latter was singularly dressed. He wore a sort of burnoose of extremely light white cloth over his shoulders; his broad trousers, fabricated with a vegetable fiber of remarkable delicacy, partly disappeared into pale brown leather boots, the legs of which were dotted with holes that facilitated the circulation of air. His head was coiffed with a hemispherical white leather hat, the summit and base of which presented numerous orifices.

  “There’s an indigene who, whether or not he knows the scientific theory of the radiation of heat, is applying it intelligently,” said the professor.

  At the sound of the three men’s hurried steps, the walker turned round and came to a sudden stop.

  They advanced toward him.

  “Monsieur,” said the doctor, taking off his hat, “we’re travelers who have strayed into this place. Would you be good enough to tell us where we are?”

  “Messieurs,” the walker replied, “you’re in the Luxembourg Park.”

  “What—we’re so close to home!” said Gédéon. “I hope the Rue de Fleurus still exists.”

  “I don’t know of any street of that name in Paris.”

  “What! But it touches the Luxembourg.”

  “You’ve been misinformed, Monsieur. There are only avenues around the Park, which extends as far as the old port.”

  “As far as the old port?”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “Paris is a sea-port then?”

  “It has been one, but isn’t any longer—not for four hundred and fifty years. The port no longer had any industrial or commercial value once science had conquered the prodigious means of transport that we have at our disposal today. It’s the same with the lake, where several thousand vessels could maneuver with ease, but is no longer anything more than an ornament of the city.”

  “Monsieur,” said the physicist, “we would be very glad to know what we ought to think about the opaque, elongated, almost cylindrical body that we saw passing over our heads with extreme rapidity.”

  “Just now?”

  “Twenty minutes ago,”

  “That’s th
e American mail; it arrives at the same time every day.”

  “People travel through the air now?” exclaimed Antius.

  “Yes, of course, Monsieur—for a long time now we haven’t employed any other means of transport. Once, aerial transport was reserved for a few rare scientific experiments, but that invention, lost in the night of time, has made such progress and has become so practical, that thousands of machines traverse the seas and continents every day carrying prodigious loads.” Having observed the amazement that his replies had provoked in the three men, the stroller continued. “May I, Messieurs, ask for a clarification in my turn, if you would be so kind?”

  “Gladly,” said the professor.

  “To begin with, you’re strangers, and have doubtless come a long way.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Many indications—first of all, your astonishment at things one sees every day.”

  “That’s fair. But on the other hand, our language indicates that we’re French.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything, Messieurs, for all peoples speak the French language as correctly as we do.”

  “My word—I’m amazed!” said Gédéon, dazedly.

  “In addition, Monsieur,” the individual said, addressing Terrier, “there’s something about your costume that intrigues me greatly.”

  “What?”

  “That black tub you’re wearing on your head.”

  “It’s the habitual coiffure of my compatriots.”

  “Really?”

  “I assure you.”

  “Well, we see the inhabitants of all the countries in the world every day, and it’s the first time I’ve found myself in the presence of such an extraordinary head-dress. My attention had also been struck by an object whose purpose I can’t deduce.”

  “What?”

  “That metal chain you’re wearing over your stomach.”

  “The chain is only an accessory, Monsieur,” said the physicist, taking a magnificent chronometer out of his fob-pocket. “This is the object it maintains.”

  “A watch! It’s a long time since I’ve seen one of those. That one is very beautiful and very old; you’d get a good price for it at the Museum of Antiques.”

  “Thank you for the information—if necessary, I’ll part with it, as well as the chain, which is equally valuable.”

  “The chain, Monsieur, has only a feeble value by comparison. It’s gold, I believe?”

  “Rolled gold, Monsieur.”

  “Well, gold is modestly priced here.”

  “Too bad,” said Terrier. “But how do you know what time it is?”

  “Every house in the city—indeed, every room in every house—has a clock whose hands are moved by a universal electric current, regulated by the Central Observatory.”

  “Many thanks, Monsieur.”

  “If you follow the broad avenue that you left just now, you’ll reach the lateral avenue of the Museum within ten minutes.”

  The professor and his companions bowed to the stroller, who returned the gesture and resumed his interrupted walk, murmuring: “Where can those three singular men have come from? And more importantly, how did they get here?”

  “So,” said the doctor, abruptly, “We’re in the Luxembourg, probably at the same place where we went to sleep a thousand years ago! Oh, my friends, what prodigious astonishments are in store for us! Into what sort of world, what sort of society, have we been suddenly hurled? We’ve crossed the abysm of time. We’re going to be, with regard to our descendants, what a Polynesian savage abruptly thrown into the most brilliant center of civilization would previously have been to us.”

  “No,” said the professor, gravely, “for reason and verity are one and indestructible. Between the cannibal and the scientist of the 19th century, there would have been no possible standard of comparison. Between us and our descendants, no matter what their state of scientific perfection, there will only be differences. In the already-ancient epoch in which we devoted ourselves to our endeavors and research, more than twenty centuries separated us from Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. We were already drawing precious crops from the field in which those three giants of ancient science had traced the first furrows. Suppose that, in all the blaze of their genius, they had suddenly been resuscitated in the century of steam and electricity. Their astonishment would certainly have been immense, but, by following the chain of abstract speculations of which they had forged the first links, they would not have taken long to familiarize themselves with the whole of the materials amassed by science in two thousand years. Undoubtedly, marvelous conquests will strike our eyes, but, by means of patient and methodical study, we shall have no difficulty connecting them to the applications of our old epoch, which many people considered to be the Pillars of Hercules of progress.”

  “If you like,” said the young man, “unsupported as I am, like you, by transcendent philosophy, and only guided by gross common sense, I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think that in talking to us about a lake in the middle of Paris and air mail from America, that Parisian was telling us bare-faced tall tales, such as I’ve never heard. Furthermore, on examining your watch-chain, whose title you’ve so proudly guaranteed and from which we hope, if necessary, to obtain a considerable advantage, our man said: gold is modestly priced here. What do you think of him now?”

  “It isn’t about him that the statement makes me think,” said the physicist, “but about us. I admit that the observation frightened me. Perhaps gold really has very little value, and banknotes probably have none at all.”

  “Yes,” Antius added. “I was struck, as you were, by the stroller’s opinion. Fortunately, Terrier, you have your chronometer, which might, according to the observations of the obliging city-dweller, get us out of difficulty for a little while. Gédéon also has his watch...”

  “Alas,” the latter replied, slapping his forehead, “I only have the chain. A month before the famous supper, I took it somewhere.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” said the doctor.

  “All the more unfortunate that it was to hang it in the nail.”

  “The nail?”

  “Yes—at the Mont de pieté,6 if it’s necessary to dot the is. I was advanced a hundred francs, and I had to redeem it within a year, at ten per cent interest, under penalty of losing that family treasure forever.”

  “Well, I don’t advise you to go and get it back,” said Antius.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d have ten thousand francs to pay, in simple interest.”

  “And if you’d borrowed at compound interest,” added Terrier, slowly, “it would be necessary to part with a sum compared with which the Earth’s weight in solid gold would only be an insignificant fraction.”

  “Oh!” said Antius, raising his head. The choice of that formidable quantity as a measure of comparison had appeared to him to be a complete perversion of his companion’s mathematical faculties. “Has the geometrical regularity of your habitual language giving way to the audacities of hyperbole now?”

  “I haven’t yet fallen into second childhood, thank God,” the professor replied, “although my age must be, in a sense, immeasurable. I can demonstrate the exactitude of my affirmation, in spite of its prodigious character.

  “The sum of a hundred francs, deposited at ten per cent compound interest for a thousand years, doubles the hundred twenty-seven times, and produces a capital surpassing seventeen tridecillion francs. Now, a thousand francs occupies a volume of sixteen cubic centimeters. The volume of the specified sum would therefore be at least two hundred and seventy two duodecillion cubic centimeters, or two hundred and seventy-two sextillion cubic myriameters. On the other hand, the volume of the Earth is one billion eighty million and seven hundred and fifty-nine thousand cubic myriameters. The mass of gold in question is, therefore, at least two hundred and fifty thousand billion times greater than our planet.” With the tone of a judge at the ass
izes pronouncing a sentence, the professor declared: “In consequence, Gédéon owes the Mont de pieté a sum far superior to the one we have calculated.”

  “I won’t pay, then,” cried the young man, astounded as much by the skill of his former teacher as by the size of the debt.

  “For the moment,” said the doctor, “it’s a matter of doing what we can to get us out of difficulty.”

  They retraced their steps and, having reached the central avenue again, followed it in the direction of the monument that Terrier had initially taken for a palace. The closer they came to it, the appearance of the construction, initially indecisive because of the distance, became gradually clearer, and the qualification of which the professor had made use seemed increasingly merited.

  It really was a marvel of architecture. The various stories were set back upon one another and opened on to vast terraces laden with small trees, flowers and verdure. Groups of coupled Corinthian columns, of decreasing thickness, rose up to the next level, framing monumental windows. The effect was simultaneously charming, rich and grandiose.

  III. Official Dispatches in 2880

  The travelers reached the end of the avenue, which widened out abruptly into a vast semicircle of verdure, framed by giant trees whose dense crowns formed somber clouds against the dazzling sky. Several gushing fountains in white marble were projecting dense liquid sprays, disappearing at times in a compact mist, which expanded a delightful freshness.

  The terrace of the park, which extended as far as the eye could see, overlooked a causeway a hundred meters wide, which, on the side opposite the hemicycle was bordered by magnificent buildings along its immense extent.

  The three men moved forward, gripped by admiration, and their gazes were able to embrace a magical spectacle.

  A quadruple row of trees of precious species, different in appearance but grouped with infinite artistry, divided the avenue into three shady paths. The middle one was covered with clumps of dazzling flowers, jets of water and statues.