Equality: In the Year 2000

we have already passed; beneath us the great wave, as yet barely flecked with foam, humps its back from the sea… And ahead…? We cannot tell; we are too far out to see the unknown land. It is enough to ride the wave.

—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

When he was once again alone, Julian moved about the apartment, checking it out in more detail. So far as he could see, there was no reason in the world why he couldn’t be comfortable here. It was smaller than the apartment he had maintained in the United Nations Plaza building in New York, or even the Paris place on the Left Bank, but he wasn’t going to need servants here; Edith had explained that the apartments were entirely automated. He was going to have to check that one out. How the hell could you automate sweeping, dusting, washing windows; above all, how could you automate making a bed? Not that he couldn’t make his own bed, of course.

It was too early in the day, but he decided he could use a drink. He went back into the living room, to the small auto-bar which stood in one corner. He stared down at it. Although he had been in the Leete home for some time now, he had never used the auto-bar in their apartment; someone else had always gotten the drinks.

Well, it couldn’t be too complicated. There was a numbered dial and also a button, below a speaker. Experimentally, he pressed the button. He hadn’t the vaguest idea how to dial. Probably, somewhere around here, there was a pamphlet listing drinks, and all you had to do was dial what you wanted.

Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “I’d like a martini, with a twist of lemon peel rather than an olive.”

A slightly mechanical voice answered, “We are sorry, Mr. West, but that beverage is not on our list.”

He was genuinely surprised. “A martini not on your list?”

“No, Mr. West. However, if you will give us the formula it shall be placed in the building’s data banks.”

“All right. You take four, no make that five parts of gin and put it in a shaker with one part dry vermouth and lots of ice. You stir it briskly until it is very cold, but not too long so that too much of the ice melts. You pour it into a pre-chilled, thin-shelled cocktail glass and then twist a peel of lemon over it and drop the peel into the drink.”

“Thank you, Mr. West. The formula is now on file.”

He stood back half a step and scowled at the auto-bar. Now what?

It couldn’t have been two minutes before the top of the bar sank down to rise up again with a highly chilled, champagne-size glass. He was somewhat taken aback. He should have told them just what he meant by a part; that is, about a third of an ounce. There were at least five ounces of gin in this oversized, so-called cocktail glass. Well, he could straighten that out with them later. He took the drink and went over to the easy chair that was placed before the room’s TV screen.

He got out the screen’s directory and looked up the General News. Then he dialed it.

If he understood correctly, General News was the equivalent of the front page in the papers of his own day. Front page and possibly second and third.

The material began flashing before him, but it was Interlingua, and he was incapable of understanding more than one word out of three. He dialed for Information and asked it he could have the General News in English.

No problem, except that he couldn’t follow it even in English. It was too technical, except for a few items on entertainment and social matters. In disgust, he dialed again and, with a slight rasp in his voice, asked for the news in English for younger people—between the ages of eight and ten.

The voice said, “Of course, Mr. West.”

“What do you mean, of course?’” he snarled.

“Yes, sir,” the voice said unemotionally, as always.

How the hell did you argue with a computer? He settled back in the chair and took an irritated pull at his martini. Even the computers in this building knew that he had the educational level of a ten-year-old—maybe less.

For he found his work cut out for him trying to follow along even on that level.

The news was considerably different than it had been a third of a century ago. For one, there was no crime news. He was to find out later that this came under the heading of Medical News, and there was precious little of it. There was no financial news, either, which was one of the first items he used to look up in the Times and the Wall Street Journal.

There was a good deal of scientific and technological news, practically all of it entirely beyond him.

“Good God, this is for eight-year-olds?” he muttered, pulling at his overgrown martini again.

There was a great deal of sports; but there had been changes. There was no longer such a thing as boxing, although there was wrestling, and no karate or judo. There was seemingly no bullfighting, or auto racing, or any other sport that might involve someone getting hurt. There wasn’t even football. The remnants of the Roman arena had disappeared from the sports scene, and viewers of spectacle sports evidently no longer got their kicks from the fact that they might witness a serious injury, or even death. Nobody got hurt in the sports of this era.

There was a great deal of entertainment news. Some of it was on a new order for him. For instance, it would seem that one of the current entertainment fads involved composing poems—on your feet. That is, a contestant would be given, cold, a subject, and within only a few minutes, he was expected to deliver his poem. The judges would give him both the subject and a verse form—a sonnet, or more intricate French form such as a rondeau—and he would have to compose in that form and on that subject. There was no possible manner in which he could prepare himself beforehand. In such a contest, Julian decided, he would have considered that he’d done well if he were able to come up with anything: Cold Beer Sold Here.

It would seem that in this age, intellectual exercises were all the thing. He wondered if they still played charades. Back in the fifties, he had rather prided himself on his own abilities. If the game had become extinct, he would reintroduce charades.

He gave up on the General News and tried, in the way of an experiment, Music. In his day he had been exposed to classical music beyond the point of desire, but it was a social must. These people now seemed to live for it. A musical great was the equivalent in status of a billionaire in his own time.

Ballet followed Music. There seemed to be a ballet revival that would have given Nijinsky and Pavlova back seats. He had always liked ballet. He wondered if they ever did the old classics, such as Swan Lake.

But Scientific News was half of all news, and he was lost. Even in English on the ten-year-old level, he hadn’t the vaguest idea of what he was reading. He abruptly flicked off the set, picked up his glass and finished off his martini. He slumped back in this chair, thoroughly frustrated. He didn’t know enough in this day even to know where to begin.

He flicked the screen back on, for something had occurred to him.

He dialed information and said, “I want a resume, in English, on an eight- to ten-year level, on the outstanding scientific breakthroughs that have taken place since the year 1970 Old Calendar.”

“Yes, Mr. West. That will take two or three minutes to compile. Did you wish an extensive report or a brief?”

He suspected that an extensive report would take him the better part of the rest of the week to wade through. “Just a brief.”

Two or three minutes. It was the first time the Internationa] Data Banks hadn’t come back with something he wanted immediately. Probably it was the first time the request had ever been made. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.

While he waited, he thought back over his conversation with Edith and Sean O’Callahan. He hadn’t really told them anything about combat. Not really. It wasn’t something easy to tell about; you almost had to witness it to understand. Oh, some of the really good writers had been able to tell it true. Wasn’t that the way Hemingway had said it, tell it true ? Something like that. But the Old Man had been there, and more than once. Papa Hemingway had been one of the few men Julian West had ever met who actually seemed to like war.

Johnny Reston came back to him now. Sergeant John Reston. They had been a team for some six months down in the Mekong Delta area. They had worked out a system, based on that of pursuit pilots. Johnny acted as the equivalent of a wing man for Julian; that is, he remained to the right and a few yards behind him when they went into action. Julian was the point man and directed his fire at the enemy. Johnny spent full time covering him,