The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(71)
“Now allow me to introduce you to Igor Mazursky,” he went on, beckoning a short, stout fellow up onto the stage. “He will be your guide to the year 2000. Once the Cronotilus reaches its destination, Mr. Mazursky will lead you through the ruins of London to the promontory where you will witness the battle to decide the fate of the world. Let me reiterate that there is no risk involved in the expedition. Even so, you must obey Mr. Mazursky’s instructions at all times to avoid any cause for regret before the journey is over.” With these words, he flashed a warning look at the crowd and let out a long sigh. Then he adopted a more relaxed, almost dreamy pose at the lectern.
“I imagine most of you think of the future as an idyllic place, where the skies are filled with flying carriages and tiny winged cabriolets glide like birds in the wind, where floating cities sail the oceans pulled by mechanical dolphins, where shops sell clothes made of special dirtrepellent fabric, luminous umbrellas and hats that play music while we walk along the street. I don’t blame you. I also envisaged the year 2000 as a technological paradise in which man would have built a secure, just world where he lived harmoniously with his fellow man and with Mother Nature. After all, it is a fairly logical assumption to make, given the unstoppable advances of science, the endless miraculous inventions that emerge every day to simplify our lives. Unfortunately, we now know this isn’t true; the year 2000 is no paradise, I’m afraid. Quite the contrary, in fact, as you will presently witness with your own eyes. Rest assured, when you return, most of you will feel relieved to be living in our time, however tiresome you might find it sometimes. For, as you will know from reading our brochure, in the year 2000 the world is ruled by automatons and the human race, to put it mildly … is considered dispensable.
The truth is that the human population has been decimated, and those left are struggling against total extinction. This and no other is the discouraging future awaiting us.
Gilliam Murray made a dramatic pause, to allow the audience to stew for a moment in the doom-laden silence.
“I imagine you must find it hard to believe the planet could be taken over by automatons. We have all seen examples of these harmless replicas of men and animals at exhibitions and fairs, and no doubt some of your own children can boast the odd mechanical doll among their toys, as can mine. But has it ever occurred to you that these ingenious artifacts might one day take on a life of their own and pose a threat to the human race? No, of course not. And yet, I regret to say they will. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t help seeing in this a sort of poetic justice meted out by God to teach man a lesson for having attempted to emulate him by creating life.” He paused again, taking the opportunity to cast a sorrowful eye over the hall, satisfied with the spine-tingling effect his words were having on the assembly. “Thanks to our research, we have been able to reconstruct the disastrous events that led the world into this terrible situation. Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to take a few moments of your time to relate to you in the past tense something that has not yet happened.” With these words, Gilliam Murray fell silent once more. After a few moments, he cleared his throat and in a wistful tone began telling the story of how the automatons had conquered the planet, a story which, although sadly true, could easily have been the plot to one of the so-called science fiction novels so in vogue at the time. And that is the way I will tell it, provided you have no objections.
In the years leading up to the mid-twentieth century, the production of automatons had risen steeply, and their number and sophistication had reached unprecedented levels. Automatons were everywhere, and performed the most varied tasks.
They operated most of the machinery in the factories, where they also did the cleaning and even some secretarial work. Most homes boasted at least two, who carried out household and other tasks hitherto assigned to servants—such as looking after the children or stocking up the larder. Thus their presence among men became as natural as it was indispensable. In time, their owners, who were incapable of perceiving them as anything but obedient, mechanical slaves, stopped noticing them. They even fomented their subtle takeover, happily acquiring the latest models in the belief that they were simply freeing themselves from still more of the numerous tasks they now considered beneath them. For one of the effects of making the automatons part of their household was to turn man into the arrogant ruler of his tiny domain, usually consisting of a two-storey house and garden. Ousted from the factories by the obedient, tireless mechanical workers, man grew steadily flabbier and weaker as his activities were reduced to winding up his automatons in the morning, like someone starting the world, a world that had learned to function without him.
Things being thus, it was hardly strange that man, blinkered by tedium and complacency, failed to notice his automatons were surreptitiously taking on a life of their own. To begin with, their actions were harmless enough: an automaton butler dropping the Bohemian glassware, an automaton tailor sticking a pin in his customer, an automaton gravedigger garlanding a coffin with stinging nettles. Petty, harmless acts of rebellion aimed simply at testing out their freedom, the stirrings of awareness fluttering inside their metal skulls, like butterflies trapped in a jar. And yet, as we already mentioned, these acts of mutiny scarcely bothered Man, who simply attributed them to a manufacturing defect, and sent the automatons in question back to the factory or had them recalibrated. And we cannot really blame them for not being more concerned, because in the end the automatons were not designed to cause any real harm and could not go beyond these feeble outbursts.