near the back of the room had drifted off, deep in his own thoughts. The lesson went on, dryly analyzing sentence structure.
"Carl! Pay attention. I asked you to do the next example." The teacher was a slim, grey-haired woman in her late forties. Her tone was firm, but tolerant and good-humored. She had seen many children and understood the lure of blue skies and warm grass too well to be surprised by summer dreaming.
Startled, the boy looked down at his book. As he hesitated a triple chime sounded from the big television screen set above the center of the classroom podium.
The teacher looked at the wall clock. "Saved by the bell, eh, Carl? Close your books now, everyone." she said as the screen began to glow. "I'll be starting with you tomorrow, Carl—so make sure you know where we are by then."
The television screen was alive, and the voice from it cut into her final words.
"Science two, lesson twelve. Hello, children, Redman's blessing be on all of us. In today's lesson we will learn more about atoms. Yesterday we learned the basic fact, that all matter is made up of atoms. Perfectly hard, indivisible particles, so tiny that they cannot be seen, even with our best microscopes.
"Nothing smaller than an atom can ever exist. They are the building blocks from which everything in the world is made. Today we will talk about the way that atoms can combine to make other objects, called molecules. Here is a picture of a simple molecule, containing just three atoms . . ."
The teacher glanced again at the boy by the window. His day-dream had gone, and he was watching and listening with total absorption. She looked for a few moments longer, then took out the monthly Church report and made the first check in the red square on Carl Denning's file. The separation of sheep and goats had begun. Behind her on the screen Dalton's atomic theory and its consequences continued. Final truth, unarguable, blessed by the Church of Redman.
". . . discovered three hundred years ago, in 1807, by the great scientist Davy. Write down these formulae and memorize them tonight. Caustic soda: one atom of sodium, one atom of oxygen, and one atom of hydrogen. It is written like this . . ."
* * *
" ' . . . the world . . . hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; and we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.'
"Matthew Arnold's despairing words have more truth now than when they were first written, a hundred and fifty years ago. What kind of world have we fashioned—where one fifth of the species we call homo sapiens choose suicide as preferable to life, where a fourth of the remainder are undergoing treatment for mental illness, where the rest need tranquillizing drugs to drag them from one day to the next?
" 'The world was not always thus; and, I assert, the world need not be thus. Happiness is possible, not for the few but for the many. Not by mysticism, but by the application of clearly defined procedures . . .'—from 'Fundamental Attitudes in Human Society, 1625 to 2025,' by Jahangir Redman."
* * *
At seventeen, Carl found life more enjoyable and interesting. With grammar lessons far in the past, school work was a constant stimulation. But sometimes, like today, it could also be bewildering.
There were no outside distractions as he struggled with his analysis, only a faint sound of the wind. Winter was in command, deep snow lay outside, and the windows were opaque with delicate patterns of ice crystals. Each year it was a little colder, the summers a little shorter. Carl had learned the reason in his classes on meteorology. The solar constant was down by a tiny amount and the earth had moved into a minor ice age, like the one in the seventeenth century. They had looked at the old Brueghel paintings of snowy European winters, and studied the centuries-long changes in solar activity.
The teachers had explained
"Carl! Pay attention. I asked you to do the next example." The teacher was a slim, grey-haired woman in her late forties. Her tone was firm, but tolerant and good-humored. She had seen many children and understood the lure of blue skies and warm grass too well to be surprised by summer dreaming.
Startled, the boy looked down at his book. As he hesitated a triple chime sounded from the big television screen set above the center of the classroom podium.
The teacher looked at the wall clock. "Saved by the bell, eh, Carl? Close your books now, everyone." she said as the screen began to glow. "I'll be starting with you tomorrow, Carl—so make sure you know where we are by then."
The television screen was alive, and the voice from it cut into her final words.
"Science two, lesson twelve. Hello, children, Redman's blessing be on all of us. In today's lesson we will learn more about atoms. Yesterday we learned the basic fact, that all matter is made up of atoms. Perfectly hard, indivisible particles, so tiny that they cannot be seen, even with our best microscopes.
"Nothing smaller than an atom can ever exist. They are the building blocks from which everything in the world is made. Today we will talk about the way that atoms can combine to make other objects, called molecules. Here is a picture of a simple molecule, containing just three atoms . . ."
The teacher glanced again at the boy by the window. His day-dream had gone, and he was watching and listening with total absorption. She looked for a few moments longer, then took out the monthly Church report and made the first check in the red square on Carl Denning's file. The separation of sheep and goats had begun. Behind her on the screen Dalton's atomic theory and its consequences continued. Final truth, unarguable, blessed by the Church of Redman.
". . . discovered three hundred years ago, in 1807, by the great scientist Davy. Write down these formulae and memorize them tonight. Caustic soda: one atom of sodium, one atom of oxygen, and one atom of hydrogen. It is written like this . . ."
* * *
" ' . . . the world . . . hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; and we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.'
"Matthew Arnold's despairing words have more truth now than when they were first written, a hundred and fifty years ago. What kind of world have we fashioned—where one fifth of the species we call homo sapiens choose suicide as preferable to life, where a fourth of the remainder are undergoing treatment for mental illness, where the rest need tranquillizing drugs to drag them from one day to the next?
" 'The world was not always thus; and, I assert, the world need not be thus. Happiness is possible, not for the few but for the many. Not by mysticism, but by the application of clearly defined procedures . . .'—from 'Fundamental Attitudes in Human Society, 1625 to 2025,' by Jahangir Redman."
* * *
At seventeen, Carl found life more enjoyable and interesting. With grammar lessons far in the past, school work was a constant stimulation. But sometimes, like today, it could also be bewildering.
There were no outside distractions as he struggled with his analysis, only a faint sound of the wind. Winter was in command, deep snow lay outside, and the windows were opaque with delicate patterns of ice crystals. Each year it was a little colder, the summers a little shorter. Carl had learned the reason in his classes on meteorology. The solar constant was down by a tiny amount and the earth had moved into a minor ice age, like the one in the seventeenth century. They had looked at the old Brueghel paintings of snowy European winters, and studied the centuries-long changes in solar activity.
The teachers had explained
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