Page:Futura Fantasia v01n01 (Summer 1939).djvu/10

 Paleontologists had found, and articulated, and catalogued every fossil. The ancestor of the Eohippus, the little four-toed Dawn Horse, was discovered; the direct line between man and ape established in skeletal remains; the seat of itself definitely proved Holarctica. And great bio-chemists, skilled in the science of vital processes, had created synthetic tissues and muscles and flesh, built upon the frames that had been recovered bodies with skillful modeling...even supplied them with blood and given them the spark of LIFE.......so that Paleobotonists recreated the flora of a prehistoric era. Again the ponderous amphibious brontosaur pushed through marshes. Fish emerged upon the land, and the first bird archaeopteryx tried his imperfect wings for flight. In the regulated climates of long dead ages, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals lived again for the edification of those interested in the very ancient--or who were amused with queer animals.

But that was only paleontologically speaking. There were the heavens to be considered. They had been: the stars and planets weighed and measured, their composition noted, courses plotted with super-accuracy. Every feature had been mapped--every climactic condition recorded. Life had been named and numbered..then photographed. And these were but first considerations. Actually, what wasn't known about the Solar System had not occurred as yet. But that would probably be remedied by a machine to view the future.

There was physics, biology, anthropology, zoology, geology, bacteriology, botany--and 'ologies' and 'otonies' and 'onomies' such as ran into figures which only machines could calculate.

A book could indeed have been written of the accomplishments of super race. But this is of the WAR itself, and how it came about, and how it all ended.

Stated simply, in 2150 the point of DIMINISHING UTILITY had been reached. To the hungry man, the first course of dinner is wonderfully delicious, the second good, the third satisfying. Through the ages people have hungered after luxury and leisure--but when he finds his food, a lot of it, MAN finds suddenly that it no longer appeals to him. In fact, too much is bound to make him sick and often disagreeable. He looks around for something else. So did the people of the 22nd Century. They had all of the pleasurable amusements they wanted, but it was all so intellectual. Everything was culture. They had surfeited with it. And suddenly they wanted to forget it. All play and no work made MAN a discontented citizen. A reaction set in. Man was not completely civilized as yet- THE WAR!

Twenty-one years the war raged. And scarcely a million survived. Bit by bit this million was whittled down by the weapons of destruction to ragged handfuls of things that once had been cultured. Finally only one hundred humans remained alive--and they kept fighting blindly, none of them realizing how close to oblivion they were crowding themselves and the future of humanity--and they went on killing, killing, killing!

It is doubtless but what the entire human race would have vanished, leaving the world to the more competent, though half-ignorant, hands of the beasts, who fought and killed one another for self-preservation and for food--not because of madness...and who did not have books and talk and have. The human race would have gone, had it not been for the record.

The fighters of WAR'S END, leaving their machines and countries to congregate for personal combat, were engaging in hand-to-hand attacks in the ruins of what once had been a tall and powerful city in the Twentieth Century, but now lay crumbling, its proud buildings falling to the ground, sticking out iron-rusted skeletons to the sky--and the city was LOS ANGELES!