A passenger, sterilized in body and mind (lest he bring into our great land either Asian flu or Asian ideas), pumped full of vitamins and videotapes, will be able to move from city to city, from continent to continent, from planet to planet––with ever-increasing speed and security. And the vision of all this phenomenally efficient, solicitous machinery is supposed to take our breath away, so that we never get around to asking what exactly is gained by these lightening-fast peregrinations. Such speeds used to be too much for our old, animal body; travel from hemisphere to hemisphere, when too sudden, would disrupt its circadian rythmn. But, fortunately, a drug has been found to nullify that disruption. True, the drug sometimes causes depression, but there are other drugs to raise your spirits. They do cause heart disease. But, then, one can insert polyethylene tubes into the coronary arteries to prevent them from clogging.
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5 comments:
beautiful.
You can also make the argument that medicating the symptoms causes te traveller to lose more time than that saved due to potential liver failure due to repeated travel and mediction. Not to mention the air-sickness, indigestion, and other conditions that might warrant mre medication and tons of liver damage.
Is this a book? I read your post on the hunchback, and with this too I think I really want to read it if it is.
Yes, It's a book called His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem, it's very much worth reading.
you're such a prophet
Thanks. Hamilton. Getting my copy of it in a few minutes :D
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