Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

Your hostess takes the selected items from shelves or the freezer. All are

prepared; some are pre-cooked. Those still to be cooked she puts into her-well, her

“processing equipment,” though she calls it a “stove.” Part of it traces its

ancestry to diathermy equipment; another feature is derived from metal enameling

processes. She sets up cycles, punches buttons, and must wait two or three minutes

for the meal to cook. She spends the time checking her ration accounts.

Despite her complicated kitchen, she doesn’t eat as well as her great

grandmother did-too many people and too few acres.

Never mind; the tray she carries out to the patio is well laden and

beautiful. You are both willing to nap again when it is empty. You wake to find that

she has burned the dishes and is recovering from her “exertion” in her refresher.

Feeling hot and sweaty from your nap you decide to use it when she comes out. There

is a wide choice offered by the ‘fresher, but you limit yourself to a warm shower

growing gradually cooler, followed by warm air drying, a short massage, spraying

with scent, and dusting with powder. Such a simple routine is an insult to a

talented machine.

Your host arrives home as you come out; he has taken a holiday from his

engineering job and has had the two boys down at the beach. He kisses his wife,

shouts, “Hi, Duchess!” at you, and turns to the video, setting it to hunt and sample

the newscasts it has stored that day. His wife sends the boys in to ‘fresh

themselves then says, “Have a nice day, dear?”

He answers, “The traffic was terrible. Had to make the last hundred miles on

automatic. Anything on the phone for me?”

“Weren’t you on relay?”

“Didn’t set it. Didn’t want to be bothered.” He steps to the house phone,

plays back his calls, finds nothing he cares to bother with-but the machine goes

ahead and prints one message; he pulls it out and tears it off.

“What is it?” his wife asks.

“Telestat from Luna City-from Aunt Jane.”

“What does she say?”

“Nothing much. According to her, the Moon is a great place and she wants us

to come visit her.”

“Not likely!” his wife answers. “Imagine being shut up in an air-conditioned

cave.”

“When you are Aunt Jane’s age, my honey lamb, and as frail as she is, with a

bad heart thrown in, you’ll go to the Moon and like it. Low gravity is not to be

sneezed at-Auntie will probably live to be a hundred and twenty, heart trouble and

all.”

“Would you go to the Moon?” she asks.

“If I needed to and could afford it.” He turns to you. “Right?”

You consider your answer. Life still looks good to you-and stairways are

beginning to be difficult. Low gravity is attractive even though it means living out

your days at the Geriatrics Foundation on the Moon. “It might be fun to visit,” you

answer. “One wouldn’t have to stay.”

Hospitals for old people on the Moon? Let’s not be silly- Or is it silly?

Might it not be a logical and necessary outcome of our world today?

Space travel we will have, not fifty years from now, but much sooner. It’s

breathing down our necks. As for geriatrics on the Moon, for most of us no price is

too high and no amount of trouble is too great to extend the years of our lives. It

is possible that low gravity (one sixth, on the Moon) may not lengthen lives;

nevertheless it may-we don’t know yet-and it will most certainly add greatly to

comfort on reaching that inevitable age when the burden of dragging around

one’s body is almost too much, or when we would otherwise resort to an oxygen tent

to lessen the work of a worn-out heart.

By the rules of prophecy, such a prediction is probable, rather than

impossible.

But the items and gadgets suggested above are examples of timid prophecy.

What are the rules of prophecy, if any?

Look at the graph shown here. The solid curve is what has been going on this

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past century. It represents many things-use of power, speed of transport, numbers of