Page 109 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 109

“But why do they laugh?” asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment.
“Why?” The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face. “Why?
But because it’s so extraordinarily funny.”
In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the past,
even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in his
new importance, he put his arm around the Head Mistress’s waist. It yielded,
willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch,
when the shutters clicked open again.
“Perhaps we had better go on,” said Miss Keate, and moved towards the door.

“And this,” said the Provost a moment later, “is Hypnopædic Control Room.”
Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in
shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the
paper sound-track rolls on which the various hypnopædic lessons were printed.
“You slip the roll in here,” explained Bernard, initerrupting Dr. Gaffney, “press
down this switch .”
“No, that one,” corrected the Provost, annoyed.
“That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light im-
pulses into sound waves, and .”
“And there you are,” Dr. Gaffney concluded.
“Do they read Shakespeare?” asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to
the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.
“Certainly not,” said the Head Mistress, blushing.
“Our library,” said Dr. Gaffney, “contains only books of reference. If our young
people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don’t encourage them
to indulge in any solitary amusements.”

Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past
them over the vitrified highway.
“Just returned,” explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an
appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, “from the Slough
Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends
two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept
there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as
a matter of course.”
“Like any other physiological process,” put in the Head Mistress professionally.
Eight o’clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.

http://www.idph.net