User:Arcorann/A Tale of the Twentieth Century

A TALE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

For Advanced Thinkers

Chapter I

Years had passed...

The Inventor had died in a garret. Too proud to receive parish relief, he had eaten every article of clothing he possessed, scraped off and assimilated every scrap of the plaster on the walls of his wretched apartment, gnawed his finger-nails down the quick, and — died.

His body was found a mere mass of bones, a result of the disproportionate amount of lime in his too restricted dietary.

But though the Inventor was dead, the Thought was not.

That commercial enterprise to which this nation owes its greatness, its position in the vanguard of the armies of progress, had taken the thing up. The pawnbroker, to whom the Inventor had pledged his patent rights for thirteen shillings and sixpence, this pawnbroker, Isaac Meluish, type of sustaining capital, organised a Youarenowgoingtobe- toldwhatsodontgoagettingimpatient Company Limited, and made it a practical thing.

The idea was this:

A locomotive of a new type. The wheels rotated by electricity, generated by a dynamo-electric machine, worked by the rotation of the wheels. It will be obvious, that all that is required in such a machine is an initial velocity, to ensure an exceedingly efficient and durable motive force. This initial velocity was furnished by the agency of compressed air.

This idea Isaac Meluish developed: he took the underground railway, the idea, numerous influential persons, and a prospectus, and mixed them up judiciously, so that the influential persons became identified with the prospectus. Scrip was then issued, and the whole conception crystallised out as a definite tangible thing.

The 'Metropolitan and District' was to undergo a second birth from the Meluish brain. No longer were AS20, and S02 to undermine the health of London. Ozone was to abound exceedingly. Invalids were no longer to repair to and at the seaside: they could train on the Underground.

The tunnels were to be illuminated and decorated.

Moreover, the shares of the companies connected with the enterprise were to go up to infinity and stay there - like Elijah.

August persons took shares, and in part paid for them.

It was resolved to make the adoption of the new idea a Britannic festival. A representative cargo of passengers was to travel in the first train round the Inner Circle. The sole lessee and actor of the Lyceum Theatre was to perform all at once every one of the parts he had ever previously taken, admission gratis. There was to be a banquet to the British great ones at the Crystal Palace, and an unsectarian national thanksgiving at the Albert Hall.

19 July 1999, approached.

All was lissomness of heart.

It was 19 July 1999. The name of the Crystal Palace was brilliantly lit and gorgeously adorned. All the able, all the eloquent, all the successful, all the prosperous, were banqueting below. In the galleries, clustered unnumbered mediocrity: innumerable half-guineas had been paid to secure the privilege of watching those great men eat. There were 19 Bishops in evening dress, 4 Princes and their interpreters, 12 Dukes, A Strong-Minded Female, the PRA, 14 popular professors, 1 learned ditto, 70 Deans (assorted), the President of the Materialistic Religious Society, a popular low comedian, 1,604 eminent wholesale and retail drapers, hatters, grocers, and tea dealers, a reformed working man MP, and honorary directors of well nigh the universe, 203 stockbrokers, 1 Earl (in a prominent place), who had once said a remarkably smart thing, 9 purely Piccadilly Earls, 13 sporting Earls, 17 trading ditto, 113 bankers, a forger, 1 doctor, 12 theatrical managers, Bludsole the mammoth novelist, 1 electrician (from Paris), a multitude no man could number of electrical company directors, their sons and their sons' sons, their cousins, their nephews, their uncles, their parents, and their friends, the leading legal stars, 2 advertisement contractors, 41 patent medicine manufacturers, 'Lords, Senators, a Spirit Raiser, a Soothsayer, foreign Musicians, Officers, Captains, Guards, &c.'

A great man was speaking.

The people in the galleries could hear — 'twang, twang, TWANG, twang, twang'. Those around the great man heard 'little know whirrrrr erprise - daring energies of the race – (great applause) — wherrererrer ergree with me in this marr that (ssshf) - scale inaccessible mountains, nay - MORE. Bore them through, nullify them - (TREMENDOUS APPLAUSE) - murr rr rrr rrr — (loud and prolonged cheering) — burr, burr, burr - (F RANTIC APPLAUSE. Ssshf) - daring yet calculating; bold yet rr, burr, burr, burr—'

Thus was the great man speaking apparently, when a telegram was handed to Sir Isaac Meluish. He glanced at it, and turning a pale lavender colour, sunk beneath the table.

Let us leave him there.

Chapter 2

This had happened. The representative passengers had assembled. There were an August Person, his keeper, the Premier, two Bishops, several popular actresses, four generals (home department), various exotics, a person apparently connected with the navy, the Education Minister, 124 public service parasites, an idiot, the President of the Board of Trade, a suit of clothes, bankers, another idiot, shopkeepers, forgers, scene painters, still another idiot, directors, &c. (as per previous sample). The representative passengers had entrained. By means of the compressed air, a high velocity had been attained. The scientific manager had smilingly remarked to the august person, 'We will, an' it please you, first run round the Inner Circle and see the decorations.' All had gone as merry as a muffin bell.

Never had the conscientious desire of the august person to take an interest in everything been more conspicuous. He insisted — really insisted — on the scientifc manager taking him on to the motor, and explaining it in detail.

'All that I have been showing you,' said the scientific manager (a small and voluble mechanism), concluding the display, 'is of English manufacture. You know the great firm of Schulz and Brown of Pekin (they removed there in 1920 in order to obtain cheap labour) - and it is consequently sound and strong in every particular. I must now explain the stopping action. I may mention here that the original inventor designed an engine carrying a considerable store of compressed air. I have improved on this. The rotary action not only works the dynamo, but also compresses air for the next start. Actually there is no force put into this thing from without, from this moment until it breaks, it costs us nothing in working. Talking of breaks, I must now show you them.' And the scientific manager, smiling with the approving consciousness of a joke, looked round him. Apparently he did not see what he wanted, his searching eye became more eager. He flushed somewhat. 'Baddelay,' said he, 'how are the brakes worked?'

'I dun' no,' said Baddelay; 'these here 'andils, wot I took for brakes broke orf, bein' touched; bein', apparently, plaster o Paris deckera- shuns.'

Thereupon the hues of the scientific manager's face hurried through the spectrum at a tremendous rate, from strontium red to thallium green. And he said to the august personage, 'The brakes are broke'; and he added, his voice assuming the while, that low, clear tone only heard from men struggling against overwhelming emotion, 'Look at that manometer.'

'I think,' said the august person, 'I won't see anything else, thank you; I would prefer not. I should like to get out now if you can manage it. The high velocity is unpleasant.'

'Sire,' said the scientific manager, 'we can not stop. And, moreover, that manometer warns me that before us is a choice of two things: to double our speed or to be blown to fragments by the ever-increasing tension of the compressed air.'

'In this sudden and unexpected emergency,' said the great one, with a vague recollection of Parliamentary first nights, 'it is perhaps advisable to increase the speed as suddenly as possible.'

The Crystal Palace meeting broke up in confusion, and the banquet became a battle for hats. Boanerges at the Albert Hall, uttering unsectarian platitudes on the heaven-sent prosperity of this land, received a telegram and preached thereafter on the text, 'Vanitas vanitatum'. The dismay slowly spreading from these foci, flashed over the entire land with the evening papers.

Chapter 3

What was to be done?

What could be done?

The matter might have been raised in the Senate, had not the unexpected absence of the Speaker (he was in the train) prevented the meeting of the governing body. A popular meeting in Trafalgar Square to consider the matter was automatically suppressed by a new method.

Meanwhile the fated train whirled round the circle with ever-increasing velocity. Early on the 20th the end came.

Between Victoria and Sloane Square the train left the lines, dashing violently through the walls of the track and throttling itself among a subterranean network of waterpipes, gaspipes, and drains. There was an awful pause, broken only by the falling in of the houses on either side of the scene of the catastrophe. Then a terrific explosion rent the air.

Most of the passengers were utterly destroyed. The august person, however, came down all right in Germany. The commercial speculators descended in foreign regions in the form of blight.