Life in a Thousand Worlds by William Shuler Harris

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After this manner spake the glib-tongued fellows and, behold, their
speeches were as oil on the troubled waters. Under their sophistries the
laborers were content and peacefully went to their tasks again after
three months of unrest.

Then did the members of the corporations consult again and spake among
themselves in this fashion:

"For our protection let us gather, from the laborers, the youthful and
the strong, have them taught in tactics of war, and make it unlawful for
any to carry deadly weapons, except these trained men, whom we will call
our Soil Defenders, and if any of the laborers should ask: 'Wherefore
are we called to do this work?' we will say to them, 'For the defense of
the soil and the defense of our families are ye called, therefore quit
yourselves nobly.'

"And it shall come to pass that when the laborers commence a foolish
struggle for their own selfish gain, we can use these trained soldiers
to keep them in peace, and thus we need not spend so much of our breath
by way of persuasion."

Behold this thing seemed reasonable and seasonable in the eyes of the
Trust. They did according to these suggestions and gathered unto
themselves, in the name of the civil law, the strongest of the youth and
trained them in all the ways of war. Thus did these workmen lose all
their liberties by slow degrees, until they were no more troublesome,
but labored like slaves to get the wherewithal to live.

As I witnessed this sad picture resulting from the inhumanity of man to
man, I was at once reminded of what I had seen on Mars, and of the
struggle now pending in my own world. Once more I breathed a silent
prayer to the Ruler of all worlds in behalf of the crushed hands and
bleeding hearts that are bruised in order that certain men may make
their thousands in a day.

I studied the social life of the refined villagers and learned, with
much interest, that the word they use for soil, is used in the same
esteemed connection in which we use the word gold or diamond.

Preachers, teachers and orators make endless references to the soil.
Finally I approached, in a visible form, a few professors who were
engaged in a special discussion.

They were alarmed at my sudden appearance, not knowing whence I came nor
what sort of an animal I might be. I quickly calmed their troubled minds
by using language they easily understood, and explained that I was
neither a ghost nor a spirit, but a mere citizen of another world,
having, for a limited period, a free excursion ticket to a thousand
worlds, and that I chose their planet as one whereon to spend a fleeting
period.

Not having been accustomed to such visitants, they were at first
skeptical and thoroughly overawed at my presence.

I purposely became as familiar as possible and cautioned them to remain
in the selfsame room and spread no notice of my presence. To this
request they reluctantly consented.

After my nonplused auditors gained their senses somewhat they ventured
to reply to my coaxing questions; these finally led to the following
interrogations on their part:

"How large is your world?" came a question from one.

"Not quite so large as this one," I replied.

"Have you much soil there?"

"A million times more than you have here."

"What a wonderfully rich world! The people must be gloriously happy
with such fabulous wealth around them."

"The bulk of my fellow-men there are not happy," I sighed. "So many
spend their lives looking for diamonds and gold, the most of whom are
doomed to disappointment."

An incredulous smile crept over the faces of my newly-made friends, and
by it I read the doubt that was arising in their hearts as to the truth
of my utterance.

"My words are sincere," I insisted. "If you could take one bushel of
your diamonds to the world where I live, you could get more soil for
them than you have on your whole globe."

"That world is heaven," exclaimed a few of my hearers at once. "A world
of such abundant soil cannot be any other place." Then I learned that
their conception of Heaven is not a place of gold-paved streets, but a
place where soil is freely distributed even on the sides of the streets.

I continued speaking, telling them how diamonds were considered in our
world. These professors were astonished beyond measure at my
description, and each one seemed to crave for the knowledge to transport
a large consignment of their diamonds to our Earth and return with acres
of soil to the Diamond World.

I spent a felicitous period with these queer-shaped scholars of the
Diamond World. They prayed and begged that I should remain and appear
before the corporations. Their spirits drooped when I told them that if
I had any more time to spend visibly on their world I would prefer to
comfort the laborers and their suffering families who had been so long
deprived of the fair treatment they deserved.

My hearers became ashen with fear, now feeling doubly assured that I was
a forerunner of some terrible curse that was about to fall upon the
Trusts and corporations whom those professors were serving so
assiduously, without ever speaking a word of protest in favor of the
human slaves around them.

Once more I related my station. But I spoke in most convincing terms of
the eternal curse with which the Infinite would visit the guilty of all
worlds.

As I left them I saw that my last words brought no relief to their
faces and, after a long silence, they nervously discussed the whole
affair, not being able to account for the exceptional experience through
which they had just passed.

I visited, in a form invisible, the mansions of the rich and found that
the most choice ornaments on their parlor shelves consisted of vials of
soil or dirt, and in the homes of the most wealthy only I saw flowering
plants.

It chanced that I visited this world at the graduating period of the
greater schools. This gave me privilege to hear an oration on "The Soil
and the Diamond," a synopsis of which I will translate as correctly as I
can. It will be remembered that I must use terms and style suitable to
our language.

"O beautiful soil! Thou art but a type of thy maker invisible. Thou dost
give birth to countless forms and nursest them all from thy own bosom.
From the atom thou bringest the oak, and all its children fall back into
thy arms for succor. From thy own heart spring the infinite types of
vegetable beauty, all painted and frescoed by thy own exquisite
touches.

"O mysterious soil! Wrapped in thy bosom lie a thousand secrets which,
if I could but read, I might interpret and thus learn anew of my
Creator. Thou holdest the ashes of the millions slain, and the dust of
all our forefathers.

"O silent soil! How thou workest without the flying shuttle, or the hum
of the busy bees. Thou doest thy greatest deeds without the sounding of
a trumpet. Silently thy atoms take their places to serve in higher
forms. O teach me thy mute language that I may live and sacrifice for
others without my crying and my sighing.

"O humble soil! Thy elements, when formed into man, or fruit, or any
kind of food, return again without complaint when touched by death. May
I, like thee, take all my condescension in the spirit of humility.

"O modest soil! Thou are not gaudy like the diamond, sparkling and
dazzling in a brilliant show and living for nothing higher than display.
But thou dost lay aside thy feathery tips, leaving the sun of heaven do
the shining. Thou permittest water crystals to give the rainbow hues,
whilst thou in thy own modest way, continuest to yield sustenance for
man and bird and beast.

"O instructive soil! Wilt thou not, in thy own wise way, speak to the
thoughtless man who feels content to grovel with the miserable diamond,
who takes his lessons from the dead, dead rock, and feeds his soul upon
such flinty food. Open his ears to hear thy words of life and light, and
may he see in thee the brighter mirror reflecting the God of all."

This one oration condensed is a fair sample of the others. I listened to
the whole program and then proceeded once more to view the diamond
splendors before I left this world where I was well paid for my
tarrying.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Triumphant Feat of Orion.

As I continued ranging among the planets of the constellation of Orion,
I felt an indescribable desire to pause at a very small orb which
revolves around Saiph, a star of the third magnitude.

Here I found, to my surprise, a gem of a world which I will call Holen.
It is five hundred miles in diameter, and inhabited by a refined race of
human beings, radically different from us in physical contour, but
remarkably similar to us in their mental aspirations.

As a race they greatly excel us in mechanical engineering. Many
evidences of their skill might be given, but we will be content to give
a description of their monumental engineering feat.

Long ages ago Holen had cooled to the center, and it became the ruling
passion of her most intelligent inhabitants to communicate from one
side of the globe to the other through an opening of five hundred miles
almost directly through the center of their earth, or more accurately
speaking, through the center of gravity.

After forty-five hundred years of experimenting the marvelous feat was
accomplished.

Of all the worlds in the constellation of Orion, large or small, Holen
is the only one that has succeeded in this astounding feat, although it
has been and is being tried on more than a dozen worlds.

This wonderful opening through Holen's center of gravity is lined with
sections of ribbed metal which cost the governments fabulous sums. This
vast tube was finished thirteen hundred years ago according to our time.

Many lives were sacrificed in the hazardous work of tunneling. Were it
not for the ribbed metal which afforded protection with its shelving
flanges, the tube could never have been finished.

At the present time the tube is used for commercial purposes and for
passenger traffic. Air tight cars of special design are used, and only
one car is allowed in the tube at one time.

[Illustration: The Gravity-Car of Holen.]

You cannot imagine the frightful velocity of the ride, but the passenger
is not as conscious of this as you might think. The first fifty miles of
the descent is controlled by the exterior or surface engines. The speed
is gradually increased until it reaches that of the falling body. Then
the motorman releases the wizard car and the speed is steady and
terrible until the car dashes past the center of gravity, after which
the speed slackens at a regular rate. The car of its own momentum forces
its way far toward the opposite surface of their earth.

Just as the carriage comes to a stop, the engineer or motorman, as we
would call him, pulls his lever, thereby fastening the car to the ribbed
side of the tube. At once a signal is given and the long, thin but
strong rope descends to draw the carriage to the surface.

A perfect system of communication is established from one end of the
ponderous tube to the other. It frequently happens when an attempt is
made to fasten the car that the clamps fail to work and consequently the
carriage commences its second journey toward the center. Another effort
is made to hold the carriage when it again comes to a stop; but if this
is not successful, then comes the most peculiar experience of all. The
carriage of its own momentum continues dashing backward and forward
until it comes to rest at the center of gravity. Then the engineer, by
communicating with the surface, gets the longest stretch of rope and is
drawn two hundred and fifty miles to the surface.

This world has no atmosphere and life is not sustained by breathing,
neither by the process found on the Moon.

The inhabitants get their sustenance from the soil with which they must
be connected, directly or indirectly over one-half the time, or they
will suffer in a manner similar to us when we are suffocating.

From this faint glimpse of their life, it can be seen that the people of
Holen in their habits are totally incongruous to all our conceptions,
and if one of them were to make a visit to our world, everything he
would here see would appear just as ridiculous and unthinkable to him as
the things on their globe did to me.

As I surveyed this world, everything evidenced the fact that these
people are born engineers. Our Eiffel Tower and Ferris Wheel would be
mere playthings compared with the sky-scraping structures that adorn the
various parts of this little world. It appears that the international
mind runs in this one direction more than in any other, and while they
surpass us in this respect, they are inferior to us in the limitless
field of science and philosophy as well as in the variety of
manufacturing plants.

In their religion, the Holenites have developed to a high degree. They
have no sacred book akin to our Bible. Their whole authority comes from
the lips of the Divine Family, as we would term it. This family serves
for religion the same purpose as the Royal Family does for the civil
realm in some countries of our world. The Divine Family are genuinely
descended from their sacred ancestors who were, by a visible show of
omnipotent power, appointed and consecrated to the sacred work of
dispensing truth and officiating in all sacraments. The ordination of
all the ministers of Holen must be held by a member of this Divine
Family. By reason of this one source of authority, there is, therefore,
no confliction of creeds. The great battle of the Church is with the
several infidel organizations that give no heed to the genuine religion.

This Sacred Family received a code of laws which they have held from the
beginning and, strange to say, no one is allowed to copy these laws in
written or printed form. To do so is a type of blasphemy for which a
severe penalty is imposed. Some of the infidel organizations find
delight to print all or a part of these laws and scatter them secretly
among the people. Such documents fall with as much pain on the premises
of a believer as oaths do in our world on the ear of a delicately
trained soul.

If an infidel wishes to insult a godly pilgrim, he can do it no more
effectively than by secretly fastening to the believer's residence a
piece of material on which is inscribed one or more of these sacred
laws.

Every believer is required to commit to memory this code of laws by
hearing them from the lips of the minister. It is therefore necessary to
keep in constant touch with the church service so as to be a continual
hearer of these laws, a part of which is repeated every worship day.

The minister does not preach in the same sense that we understand
preaching. His work comes nearer filling the office of a priest under
the old Jewish church. There is much more form and ceremony than is
found in our system under the Mediator, Jesus Christ.

The civil law has absolutely nothing to say on the marriage question.
All this is held in the domain of the Church. In truth, the Divine
Family has always regulated this question. If the legality of a marriage
is called in question, all that the civil authorities try to determine
is whether the marriage ceremony was performed in accordance with the
laws of the Divine Family. If this point can be established, the
marriage is declared legal; if not, it is declared to be null and void.
This one subject of matrimony has caused more friction between the
Church and the infidels than all other issues combined. The infidels are
bitterly opposed to take their marriage vows before the minister, yet
this must be done to make their marriage legal. Divorce laws are
unknown, although, in rare cases, papers of separation are granted by
authority and under seal of the Divine Family.

The religious devotees of Holen look forward to a happier existence when
their mortal life is ended. Their ideas of this future life are quite
similar to our cherished ideas of Heaven.

In their moral life they have reached a higher plane than we. This is
due to the fact that the Divine Family wield an influence in the civil
realm that cannot be broken.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Mute World.

I proceeded on my journey until I had reached Alcyone in the famous
constellation of Taurus. On one of the planets revolving around Alcyone,
I found a distinctive class of human beings faintly resembling creatures
that I had seen in several other constellations, but of which I have, as
yet, made no special mention.

Among these people no audible language is used as a means of
communication. One might think that high civilization would be
impossible without such a vehicle of thought. But on this Mute world
humanity has pushed far along in the great interstellar race for
supremacy.

A description of the physical features of these Muteites would not only
seem absurd, but would be distorting. Can you imagine a beautiful person
without ears and void of vocal sound, having a head totally out of
shape compared with ours, and with a bodily framework ridiculously new
to us? Such would be a brief word sketch of these far-away mortals of
unusual intelligence.

These people hold all their conversation by pure thought transmission.
The sense-perception is almost infinitely keen, and gestures play no
part in emphasizing thought. It is amazing to see with what facility
these beings express their ideas one to another.

In our life one may conceal his thoughts from the most searching human
eye, but this cannot be done on Mute. As a consequence each one can read
the character of his comrades, and the normal citizen well knows what
necessary allowance to make for the impure thoughts that flit through
the mind of his neighbor.

I studied, with absorbing interest, the many phases of this mental
telepathy, or mind talking, between two or more persons even though
widely separated. Imagine how glorious it must be to have real
fellowship with a friend whose face you cannot see and whose hand you
cannot touch.

There are limitations to this delightsome way of talking. A person can
hold conversation with only one absent friend at a time and then only
when each one concentrates his thoughts on the other. What wireless
telegraphy is to our world, this mental conversation is to the world of
Mute, and it is possible that we may reach a higher degree of
proficiency in this direction after we become still better acquainted
with the laws of the human mind.

When I think of the many unaccountable heart-thrills that send their
emotions of joy and hatred into our passing life, I am somewhat
persuaded that we speak this tongueless language more than we imagine.
Some day we may learn the secrets that are now so heavily veiled and
thereby put to naught the glory of our present modes of communication.
Until then we will plod along with the telegraph, telephone, wireless
telegraphy and our ever-changing knowledge of telepathic intercourse.

I will give the philosophy of this perfect means of expressing thought
as clearly as I can.

As sound waves are created in our atmosphere by actual vibration, so
are thought waves created on Mute by mental activity focused in any one
point of the brain. Our way of expressing thought by audible words is
not conceivable to these people. If one of their inhabitants were to
visit our Earth, he would be at a loss to account for our movements of
mouth and gestures of body when we are in the act of conversation.

The social life of Mute is marked with many peculiarities. Males and
females seldom ever associate together, and social purity sends its
sweet influences over the whole planet.

A science which is similar to Phrenology plays an important part in all
the social customs of this sphere. It decides the marital destiny of
each person, and no two are recommended to join in wedlock until they
have been pronounced physical and mental mates by the official
psychologists.

On this interesting world I found the most summary punishment for
adulterers and fornicators. When these crimes are clearly proven, the
guilty parties are put to death after a lingering sentence. This is a
most terrible punishment, but it has proven that, although a few must
suffer this penalty, the general good of the whole population is thereby
much increased.

I was much amazed at the construction and possibilities of the human
mind when I observed the manner in which certain suspected criminals
were examined in order to prove or disprove the crime of which they were
charged. The doors of the soul were unlocked and the past
thought-images, with their mental impressions, were thrown open to view.
How can a Muteite deny the crime which is photographed on the sensitive
living plates of his own mind! This reproducing can be effected only by
a very special process and is never done against a person's will unless
ordered by civil authority.

When I saw, on this world of Mute, the possibility of uncovering the
past records of the mind, it at once suggested to me the possible nature
of the final Judgment of our world when each one will stand face to face
with the record of his own deeds, brought before him vividly under the
light of eternity. In such an event who would think of showing a bold
front to deny the accuracy of such a direct reproduction of himself in
the flesh!

Possibly the human mind may be likened to a phonograph into which we can
speak while the cylinder of thought revolves; at any time afterward
every syllable may be reproduced accurately.

Another striking feature of these mortals is their lack of hypocrisy.
Only a small degree of it is found among all the inhabitants of this
peculiar planet. No doubt hypocrisy would be greatly lessened in our own
social life if we could no longer hide our real thoughts. In Mute it is
very unsafe to practice deception, for as soon as the deceived one
appears personally he can readily conjecture, by the mental state of the
deceiver, the nature of the thought that had transpired.

Can you realize what a refreshing moral atmosphere exists in a world
where conventional lying is almost unknown? In our life the daily sin of
the millions is the white, or the blue lie. Think of how many we tell in
our regular routine of life! We generally give false excuses instead of
the real ones. We very seldom blame ourselves for errors, but rather
think diligently to study out a way to shift responsibility. Nearly the
whole brood of our apologies is hatched from the serpent's egg, and then
we ignorantly or hypocritically manifest surprise that our own offspring
should develop an inclination to deceive or misrepresent!

Here I saw, in wide contrast to our own social order, the results
springing from sincerity that has thrived through a long line of
generations. Such blessings are as a breath of Heaven, rare and
beautiful.

One might think, when considering this strange manner of conversation,
that it would be difficult for the people to express their ideas
clearly. It is just the opposite from this, for it is almost impossible
for them to express themselves vaguely. They talk from the headquarters
of one mind directly to the headquarters of another, instead of through
a medium of cumbersome words which in our life are so often
misunderstood. Thus we must admit that we have a ten-fold greater
struggle than they to be perspicuous in language.

I was charmed at this most superior mode of conversation and saw in it
a higher glimpse of the Heaven language than in any other type that had
yet met my observation in all the worlds of space.

The Muteites are rapid thinkers, and although they have no sense of
hearing, yet they are ultra-sensitive to substantial emissions of
vibrating bodies. According to all I could see, these people were not
hampered by this lack of senses. They live as conveniently in their
flesh life as we do, and in their mind or spirit life they are much more
refined than we are.

Their earth is so different from ours in chemical combinations that the
soil is almost transparent and in general has the appearance of glass.
Their homes are built mostly under surface, owing to the terrific
cyclonic storms that follow one another in very uncertain succession.

The average length of life is two hundred of our years. They reach their
maximum energy of mind at about one hundred years, and among the
brighter of the inhabitants can be found a glorious order of intellect.
Some of these mental celebrities outshine the brightest creatures of
all the solar systems of that region of the heavens.

After some hesitancy, I yielded to a desire to appear in a visible form
before an assembled company of Muteite philosophers who were gathered in
one of the under-surface halls of architectural beauty for consultation.

As I entered the vast hall in my natural manner I attracted unusual
attention. It was amusing to see how all eyes were fastened upon me as I
calmly walked toward the front of the audience. Here I had one of the
hardest tasks of all my journey, to converse in a soundless language. I
lacked faith at first to make the attempt, but this delay was but for a
moment, for I first fixed my mind upon what I wished to communicate, and
instantly a dozen or more Muteites signified that they were in sensitive
touch with my thought.

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