He was dressed very much like my other companions in a short, belted tunic of shimmering golden scales. A cloak of royal purple lined with gold was fastened at one shoulder by a jeweled clasp, leaving one arm bare. Around his head was a golden circlet set with a precious stone that resembled a sardonyx. His sandals might have been fashioned of flexible gold. On the front of his tunic glittered a symbol that must have been the insignia of his office, for he was introduced to me as the mayor of Nirvania. Judged according to his youth and his general air of quiet culture coupled with enthusiasm, he might have been a college freshman.

  He greeted me as naturally as though receiving visitors from past ages was part of his daily routine. Placing his palm upward in an outstretched arm, I laid my palm on his. Smiling into my eyes, he offered me the freedom of the city in a few well-chosen words. My companions then took leave of me, somewhat reluctantly, I thought, and I was left alone with the mayor.

  With something of an Old World courtesy he motioned me to a low divan and placed himself beside me. He pressed a button and a handsome young man entered bearing a low table which contained a couple of jeweled food flakes, a sparkling beverage, and some foamy concoctions that would have temped the appetite of a Sybarite. As though it were the most natural thing in the world to introduce one’s servants to one’s guests, the mayor presented the young man to me. This charming boy, whose name was Adrian, remarked during the course of our short conversation that he was serving this year in the mayor’s home but that next year he would enter his chosen vocation—aviation. I gathered that everybody takes turns at performing essential household tasks that, by reason of the marvelous laborsaving devices, are rendered extremely light. Since it occurs that the servant in one’s household today may be the ruler of the State tomorrow, no stigma is attached to the performance of any necessary labor.

  The young gentleman seated himself familiarly on a cushion, inhaling from his own food flask and chatting with us while we ate. When we had finished, he departed, taking the serving stool with him. I must have talked two hours with the mayor, mostly answering his questions regarding my era, for he belonged to that alert, curious type of intellect that never rests until it has exhausted all possibilities of knowledge from any given subject. The room was filling with the shadows of twilight, as the whole patio was suddenly flooded with a soft radiance that seemed to be reflected from the stately mirrors and to run along walls in quivering streams of rosy, liquid light. I was about to inquire into the source of this mysterious lighting as the mayor remarked that my unusual experiences must have fatigued me greatly and all at once I realized that I was really very tired and drowsy. He rose saying that he would conduct me to my sleeping quarters. I was somewhat surprised to observe that he was leading me up a spiral glass stairway that ended on the roof.

  A Night in Nirvania

  He told me that the roof space of practically all the dwellings in tropical lands was converted into parks and gardens in which were constructed glass sleeping porches. On stepping onto the roof, I was enraptured with the woodland beauty that lay before me. Rich grass interspersed with clusters of wild flowers carpeted the entire space. Graceful trees and fernlike shrubbery half-concealed several sleeping porches whose mirrored walls threw back the beauty of the scene. Little streams of water purled through glassy channels fed by an immense swimming pool in the center of the artificial aerial forest. From the middle of this pool rose to a great height the shimmering rainbow cascade of an illuminated fountain. This, I saw, was only one of the many fountains that, ascending from neighboring housetops, lit the sky with pyrotechnic splendor.

  I gazed enchanted on the vision of Nirvania as it lay spread out below me, Nirvania the beautiful! The mayor opened the door of one of the mirrored enclosures and bid me enter ahead of him. I saw that the walls were composed of mirrors within as well as without. The monotony of glass was agreeably broken by panels containing rare paintings. The porch was roofless but the mayor showed me how by moving a lever the whole covering would slide into place. There were several airy windows but no shades or curtains. In one corner was the bed, a luxurious, low divan piled high with silken coverings. A soft carpet resembling natural grass covered the floor in the middle of which was set a commodious glass pool filled with sparkling water. A button at the right, just under a thermometer, could be pressed, the mayor told me, to bring the water to any desired temperature. Another at the left released the water and still another filled the pool with a fresh supply. An immense glass floor chest contained, he told me, towels, a night robe, and a change of clothing for the morning. A food flask and a crystal water bottle reposed on a low stool at my bedside and on another stool were placed a number of beautifully bound books. In one corner stood a magnificent cabinet whose mechanism the mayor explained to me. By pressing various buttons near the head of my bed, music could be played, the news of the day recited, views of distant places flashed upon the large wall mirrors, or thought-communication established with any person on the planet.

  “But,” admonished the mayor, “this must be taught you, and tonight I would suggest that after your bath you press this button and turn on the sleep-producing music. This music we have so perfected that by means of its vibrations sleep is immediately induced.”

  He now bade me a cordial good night and left me. Determined to heed his advice and get a good rest so that I might be fresh for the marvels that lay before me on the morrow, I disrobed and plunged into a warm, refreshing bath. Deliciously rejuvenated, I gave myself a vigorous rubbing with an immense bath towel that I found in the glass chest and dressed myself in the silken night robe that had been provided for me. I sought my kingly divan and tried to sleep but the mental exhilaration of the day had been too much for me. Doubting seriously that any music could quiet the mad havoc of my raving thoughts, I pressed the music button. Immediately a seductive, languorous strain floated from the instrument into my throbbing brain, lulling its wild pulsations and steeping my entire being in a sea of slumber. Waves of peace flowed through and over me. My eyes closed but my spirit floated ecstatically through Nirvanian spaces exploring dim cool caves of sleep and shadowy star pavilions tapestried with dreams. But through it all the face of Iris smiled—the hand of Iris beckoned.

  CHAPTER 6

  Morning Sport

  When I awoke it was radiant dawn. The bright sunshine was streaming in through the windows and the melodious warbling of a thousand birds floated in from the trees outside. It was fully five minutes before I could orient myself, before I could realize that the events of the last twenty-four hours were not a fantastic dream. The door opened and Adrian entered the room, bidding me a pleasant good morning. He had come in without the formality of knocking and, I must also add, without the formality of clothes. He seemed utterly unconscious of any oversight, remarking that he was glad that I had not yet bathed because he felt sure that I should enjoy a plunge in the swimming pool with the rest. He added, with a significant smile, that Iris—who, he informed me, was the mayor’s sister—had sent him for me.

  At this welcome news I scrambled out of bed and began a hurried toilet while Adrian waited. “You can just grab up your garments and take them along,” he suggested. Not relishing the prospect of traversing the roof garden clad only in the glittering sunlight, I politely ignored this suggestion by ransacking the chest. There I found a glittering tunic of cloth of gold with a gorgeous purple cape that fastened at the shoulder with the usual jeweled clasp. I found also golden sandals with jeweled buckles and a golden circlet for my head. The single undergarment was of closely woven silk of a marvelous texture. I was glad indeed that I should no longer be compelled to offend the public taste with my old uncomfortable garb of 1932. With Adrian’s help I soon arrayed myself in regal splendor, discovering that my garments, for all their richness and beauty, were designed with the utmost simplicity. My toilet completed, I surveyed myself before a mirror.

  I was proud indeed of my reflection, and Adrian’s frank smile of approval convinced me that, after all, there was not so much difference between my appearance and that of the other young people of this paradise. With the exception of my short hair, which a month’s growth would remedy, I could almost say there was no difference at all. Without being vain, I can truthfully say that I had always been considered a good-looking chap. A passion for athletics and my four years in the navy had so developed my body that my figure was nothing to be ashamed of. Add to this my luxuriously simple and revealing costume and the picture was all that could be desired. My companion now led me to the magnificent pool from which rose the rainbow fountain that I had so admired the night before. Many heaps of silken clothing lay scattered on the grassy banks or spread carelessly on the shrubbery.

  In the crystal pool itself twenty or thirty joyous bathers of both sexes were plunging and swimming through the sparkling water. I observed with embarrassment that not a single garment concealed the shining perfection of their glorious forms. Shamefacedly, with all the false modesty of my age, though I had once thought that we had cast it all aside, I asked Adrian if it were customary to “go in” without a bathing suit.

  “What is a bathing suit?” he questioned so wonderingly that I realized that so innocent and frank were these people that they had forgotten that such superfluities had ever been worn.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” I assured him hastily. “I won’t need one.”

  I quickly stripped off my clothing and we plunged in together. Several young girls, among them Iris, swam gracefully toward me and challenged me to a game of water ball. I soon forgot my prudishness and entered boyishly into the spirit of the fun.

  Finally I came out of the pool refreshed, glowing, and feeling as though I had bathed in the fountain of youth.

  Iris came up to me on the bank, swinging her garments in one hand and shaking the shining water drops from her glorious hair. Her unveiled beauty made me gasp with wonder and her utter innocence caused my soul to kneel in reverence before her white virginity.

  “Oh, you are beautiful!” I gasped, unable to restrain my admiration. “Beautiful as a sea goddess!”

  Frankly her eyes met mine. “Why—yes, I am beautiful,” she agreed with disarming veracity. “All of us are so. You, too, are very handsome and—a poet as well. Tell me—” she queried with a touch of feminine coquetry as old as Eden, “do you like the color of my hair?”

  I raised my eyes to her shimmering ringlets, green as the ocean on an Indian summer’s day and throwing back the light like emeralds.

  “It is beautiful,” I murmured, “and utterly in keeping with one who, to me, will always symbolize the glamor and the agelessness of the eternal sea. The sea, you must know, has always been my ladylove—till now.”

  Afraid of my own daring, I abruptly changed the subject. “How did your people discover this wonderful hair coloring? I see that your hair is entirely unharmed by the process.”

  “We treat the pigment cells themselves and thus attain permanently any shade we desire. You see, we grew tired of the same old colors and decided to improve on nature.”

  “By the way,” she continued, deftly slipping into her garments, “my brother, the mayor, wants us to have breakfast with him. After breakfast he desires me to show you around the city, or rather,” she confessed frankly, “I asked him to let me be your guide. He was born in New York, you see, and he doesn’t really see the charm of Nirvania. But I love it and I want you to see it as I see it.”

  “You won’t have any trouble impressing me with the beauties of Nirvania. You see, it was my city too. At least we have that bond of kinship between us—you and I—though you are eight centuries beyond me in evolution.”

  An Inspection Tour

  “You think that?” she asked incredulously. “What a mistake you are making. Why, even the scientists of your day had to admit that the brain-stuff of the human race, the human mind’s innate potentiality, alters but little through the centuries. The mental capacity of the Egyptian Pharaohs was as high as that of the sages and financiers of your day. We have no more capacity to learn than you—we have simply unfolded more of the powers that have always been latent in man. You can do likewise—in time.”

  “You mean, then, that the gulf between us is not so impassable after all, that I may someday become like your people? Oh, I promise you,” I told her eagerly, humbly, “that I shall strive, study, labor unceasingly if only I may hope that someday I may dare to tell you what is in my heart.”

  She laughed and from the delicate blush that suffused her features, I knew that she was not unaffected by my evident devotion. “You are overestimating your handicaps,” she told me, “and underestimating yourself. With our educational methods that have speeded up the process of acquiring and using knowledge beyond the dreams of your educators, a few months will witness the unfoldment of your unused capacities. Besides,” her voice grew more intense—“do you not realize that had there not been in you that something that responded to our ideas you would never have been captured in the thought-net that we spread out yonder in the sea?”

  “You mean that even Therius’s wonderful invention could not have drawn me into this dimension had I not, in some degree, belonged here?”

  “I mean just that. The keynote of the whole invention is attunement. Unless the rate of vibration of the thought projected is attuned to the rate of vibration of the thought it contacts, there can never be that union of energies that would produce sufficient force to draw one from one age, from one dimension, into another.”

  “Oh, I am glad—glad—to know this!” I told her eagerly. “Now I can hope!”

  She dropped her eyes before the eager passion of my own and with girlish abandon caught my hand and raced with me across the garden and down the glass stairway to the mayor’s breakfast room. After a delicious breakfast interspersed with joyous conversation, the mayor excused himself, wishing us much adventure on our tour of inspection through the city. He added jocosely that since life was eternal it would be just as well if I didn’t try to see everything at once. He also remarked that after I had browsed around the city for a few days and rested and adjusted myself, the people would like to hear me tell them all about my age and time. This pleasing task I gratefully promised to undertake, and hand in hand with Iris the adorable, I started off with a light heart on my expedition into Paradise. Had I only known that journey’s end! Had I only foreseen what would happen through my own damnable curiosity.

  I saw so much in my short journey that ended so disastrously that it is impossible to give anything like a connected account of it. It would take years to acquire a technical knowledge of the marvelous inventions that surrounded me on every hand. Yet a single simple process was common to all: the application of the power of thought to the powers of nature. Iris informed me that only the experts bothered about the technicalities of their own trade. Each individual, after acquiring a liberal education in the arts and sciences, specializes in his chosen field. An architect, for instance, studies for his profession much as an architect would do in our day, except that he need not take into account actual construction. He learns to draw his model and then, by intense concentration with the picture of his model ever before him, he transfers every detail of the picture to the marvelous crystal that reflects it back to him. Then when the image in the crystal is perfect, he removes the crystal from its tripod and resets it in the projection machine. Again with the aid of thought he releases from his brain an energy that literally assists the mental image toward its materialization. It is clothed in substance by appropriating the eternal creative energies that forever surround us, by attracting the free electrons that are continually seeking a positive nucleus around which to revolve.

  “It is not really creation,” Iris explained. “The very word ‘creation’ implies making something out of nothing—an obvious absurdity. That would contradict the first law of physics that nothing in the universe is ever created or destroyed by the action of forces that we know nothing about. Our inventions simply utilize a process as old as nature, the transformation of energy into matter. Someday, when there is building going on, I shall show you this marvelous process in operation.”

  “This accounts, then, for the absence of factories and complicated machinery?”

  “Oh yes,” she answered inclusively, “it accounts for everything.”

  The Strange Tower

  Everywhere we wandered was beauty, dignity, simplicity. Everywhere the happy, laughing people walked in the sunshine, soared through the air like birds of paradise, or sped along the glassy highways in their graceful vessels. I noted that some of these vehicles were shaped like giant swans, others liked winged horses, and still others like fairy vessels of the sea. Everywhere beauty and utility were harmonized into one synthetic whole. The thing that impressed me most was the frequency of laughter: low, musical, heart-free laughter that filled the air like the melody of birds. The Happy, Laughing People—I shall always call them that. I recalled that the wild young generation of my day was also a happy, laughing folk, though heaven knows they had little to laugh about. Oh, could they only have foreseen the sublime vindication of laughter that endures through tears—through heartbreak—through misunderstanding.

  Having wandered more or less aimlessly through all these marvels for the greater part of the day, Iris and I came about sundown to a high hill crowned with what seemed to be a fortress of the Middle Ages. There was something vaguely familiar about it to me and something that filled me with a strange foreboding. Gloomy and ominous, it loomed over us like the shadow of ancient evil. Sardonically and irresistibly it beckoned us, and humanlike we came.

  “That’s one of the old landmarks,” said Iris. “We have preserved a few of them because of their picturesqueness. We call this place the Hill of the Mad Inventor. Why, he lived in your own time, I believe. He was immensely wealthy and he built this castle in the style of a medieval stronghold. It is said that its very stones were brought from abroad, recovered from the demolition of an ancient castle of which this is the exact replica. The older castle was itself the outpost, they say, of a Black Magician, who of course was probably nothing more than a scientist too advanced for his time.