BRAVE NEW WORLD
by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
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Chapter One
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four
stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND
CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto,
COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold
for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the
room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily
seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic
goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining
porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The
overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale
corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from
the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and
living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak
after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing
Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged,
as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the
scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or
whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students,
very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the
Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever
the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's
mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always
made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various
departments.
"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of
course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do
their work intelligently?though as little of one, if they were to be
good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as
every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are
intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and
stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing
geniality, "you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time
for generalities. Meanwhile ?"
Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into
the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.
Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the
room. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, just covered,
when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young?
Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question
didn't arise; in this year of stability, A. F. 632, it didn't occur to
you to ask it.
"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more
zealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at
the beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And
opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered
test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood
heat; whereas the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they
have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat
sterilizes." Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils
scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern
fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical
introduction?"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of
Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to
six months' salary"; continued with some account of the technique for
preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to
a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to
the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and,
leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this
liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by
drop onto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs
which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and
transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch
the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon
containing free-swimming spermatozoa?at a minimum concentration of one
hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten
minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents
re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again
immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back
to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely
bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again,
after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.
"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students
underlined the words in their little notebooks.
One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg
will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds,
and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo
into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only
one grew before. Progress.
"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of
a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and,
paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."
Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.
He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes
was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging.
Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go
through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much
as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible
divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned
to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two
days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the
buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death
with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded?bud out of
bud out of bud?were thereafter?further arrest being generally fatal?left
to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to
becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos? a prodigious
improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins?but not in
piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg
would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a
time.
"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he
were distributing largesse. "Scores."
But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage
lay.
"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you
see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn.
"Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social
stability!"
Major instruments of social stability.
Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small
factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!"
The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where
you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto.
"Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify
indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons.
Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last
applied to biology.
"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't
bokanovskify indefinitely."
Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From
the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many
batches of identical twins as possible?that was the best (sadly a second
best) that they could do. And even that was difficult.
"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach
maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this
moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a
century?what would be the use of that?"
Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immensely
accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a
hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and
bokanovskify?in other words, multiply by seventy-two?and you get an
average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and
fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.
"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over
fifteen thousand adult individuals."
Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be
passing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddy young man
approached. "Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?"
"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Foster replied
without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and
took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. "Sixteen thousand and
twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of
course they've done much better," he rattled on, "in some of the
tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand
five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand
mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a
negro ovary responds to pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're
used to working with European material. Still," he added, with a laugh
(but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was
challenging), "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a
wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months
old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either
decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet."
"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clapped Mr.
Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and give these boys the
benefit of your expert knowledge."
Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.
In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity.
Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came
shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement.
Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open; the bottle-liner had
only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before
the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless
band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the
depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that
slow interminable procession on the band.
Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The procession advanced;
one by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger
containers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped
into place, the saline solution poured in ? and already the bottle had
passed, and it was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date of
fertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group?details were transferred
from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identified,
the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in the wall,
slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.
"Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index," said Mr. Foster with
relish, as they entered.
"Containing all the relevant information," added the
Director.
"Brought up to date every morning."
"And co-ordinated every afternoon."
"On the basis of which they make their calculations."
"So many individuals, of such and such quality," said Mr. Foster.
"Distributed in such and such quantities."
"The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment."
"Unforeseen wastages promptly made good."
"Promptly," repeated Mr. Foster. "If you knew the amount of overtime
I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!" He laughed
goodhumouredly and shook his head.
"The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertilizers."
"Who give them the embryos they ask for."
"And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail."
"After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store."
"Where we now proceed ourselves."
And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircase into the
basement.
The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickening
twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn insured the cellar
against any possible infiltration of the day.
"Embryos are like photograph film," said Mr. Foster waggishly, as he
pushed open the second door. "They can only stand red light."
And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now
followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes
on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and
tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among
the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes
and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly
stirred the air.
"Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster," said the Director, who was
tired of talking.
Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.
Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. He
pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes
towards the distant ceiling.
Three tiers of racks: ground floor level, first gallery, second
gallery.
The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded away in all
directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busily
unloading demijohns from a moving staircase.
The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.
Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack,
though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor traveling at the rate of
thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred and
sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and
thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one
on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and
sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent
existence?so called.
"But in the interval," Mr. Foster concluded, "we've managed to do a
lot to them. Oh, a very great deal." His laugh was knowing and
triumphant.
"That's the spirit I like," said the Director once more. "Let's walk
around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster."
Mr. Foster duly told them.
Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Made them
taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explained why it had to
be stimulated with placentin and thyroxin. Told them of the corpus
luteum extract. Showed them the jets through which at every twelfth
metre from zero to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of those
gradually increasing doses of pituitary administered during the final
ninety-six metres of their course. Described the artificial maternal
circulation installed in every bottle at Metre 112; showed them the
reservoir of blood-surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquid
moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and
waste product filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesome tendency to
anę©a, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extract and foetal foal's
liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied.
Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during the last
two metres out of every eight, all the embryos were simultaneously
shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted at the gravity of the
so-called "trauma of decanting," and enumerated the precautions taken to
minimize, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous
shock. Told them of the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood of
Metre 200. Explained the system of labelling?a T for the males, a circle
for the females and for those who were destined to become freemartins a
question mark, black on a white ground.
"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases,
fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred?that
would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a
good choice. And of course one must always have an enormous margin of
safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent of the female embryos to
develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every
twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted
as freemartins?structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit,
"that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile.
Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continued Mr. Foster, "out
of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more
interesting world of human invention."
He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn't content themselves
with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that.
"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as
socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers
or future ?" He was going to say "future World controllers," but
correcting himself, said "future Directors of Hatcheries," instead.
The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.
They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-Minus mechanic
was busy with screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surrogate pump of a
passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a
tone as he turned the nuts. Down, down ? A final twist, a glance at the
revolution counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down the line
and began the same process on the next pump.
"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Foster
explained. "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through
the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen.
Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par." Again he
rubbed his hands.
"But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?" asked an
ingenuous student.
"Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn't it
occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment
as well as an Epsilon heredity?"
It evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered with confusion.
"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen."
The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At
seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy
eyeless monsters.
"Who are no use at all," concluded Mr. Foster.
Whereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if they could
discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what a
triumph, what a benefaction to Society!
"Consider the horse."
They considered it.
Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not
yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown at twenty. Hence, of course,
that fruit of delayed development, the human intelligence.
"But in Epsilons," said Mr. Foster very justly, "we don't need human
intelligence."
Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind was
mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long
years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development
could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an
enormous saving to the Community!
"Enormous!" murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm was
infectious.
He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrine
co-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinal
mutation to account for it. Could the effects of this germinal mutation
be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be made a revert, by a
suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was the
problem. And it was all but solved.
Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually
mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph.
But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do
even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you
failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were
still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and
adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his
head.
Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to
the neighborhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9
was enclosed and the bottle performed the remainder of their journey in
a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three
metres wide.
"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.
Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to
discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted
the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to
the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinners and steel workers.
Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their
bodies. "We condition them to thrive on heat," concluded Mr. Foster.
"Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it."
"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret
of happiness and virtue?liking what you've got to do. All conditioning
aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny."
In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing with a
long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. The
students and their guides stood watching her for a few moments in
silence.
"Well, Lenina," said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrew the
syringe and straightened herself up.
The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all the lupus
and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.
"Henry!" Her smile flashed redly at him?a row of coral teeth.
"Charming, charming," murmured the Director and, giving her two or
three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile for
himself.
"What are you giving them?" asked Mr. Foster, making his tone very
professional.
"Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness."
"Tropical workers start being inoculated at Metre 150," Mr. Foster
explained to the students. "The embryos still have gills. We immunize
the fish against the future man's diseases." Then, turning back to
Lenina, "Ten to five on the roof this afternoon," he said, "as usual."
"Charming," said the Director once more, and, with a final pat,
moved away after the others.
On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being
trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The
first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane
engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metre mark on Rack 3. A
special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. "To
improve their sense of balance," Mr. Foster explained. "Doing repairs on
the outside of a rocket in mid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the
circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and
double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to
associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly
happy when they're standing on their heads.
"And now," Mr. Foster went on, "I'd like to show you some very
interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have a big
batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level," he called to two boys who
had started to go down to the ground floor.
"They're round about Metre 900," he explained. "You can't really do
any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their
tails. Follow me."
But the Director had looked at his watch. "Ten to three," he said.
"No time for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We must go up to the
Nurseries before the children have finished their afternoon sleep."
Mr. Foster was disappointed. "At least one glance at the Decanting
Room," he pleaded.
"Very well then." The Director
smiled indulgently. "Just one glance."
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