Brave New World: Full Text

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the mainentrance the words, CENTRAL LONDONHATCHERY AND CONDITIONINGCENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto,COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground-floor faced towards the north. Cold forall the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the roomitself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seekingsome draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, butfinding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of alaboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of theworkers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-colouredrubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellowbarrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and livingsubstance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak afterluscious streak in long recession down the work-tables.

'And this,' said the Director opening the door, 'is the FertilizingRoom.'

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, asthe Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in thescarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum orwhistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students,very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at theDirector's heels. Each of them carried a note-book, in which, wheneverthe great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse'smouth. It was a rare privilege. The D.H.C. for Central London alwaysmade a point of personally conducting his new students round the variousdepartments.

'Just to give you a general idea,' he would explain to them. For ofcourse some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to dotheir work intelligently--though as little of one, if they were to begood and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, asevery one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities areintellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers andstamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

'To-morrow,' he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacinggeniality, 'you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have timefor generalities. Meanwhile...'

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into thenote-book. 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, whenhe was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young?Thirty? fifty? fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the questiondidn't arise; in this year of stability, A.F. 632, it didn't occur toyou to ask it.

'I shall begin at the beginning,' said the D.H.C., and the more zealousstudents recorded his intention in their note-books: Begin at thebeginning. 'These,' he waved his hand, 'are the incubators.' Andopening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numberedtest-tubes. 'The week's supply of ova. Kept,' he explained, 'at bloodheat; whereas the male gametes,' and here he opened another door, 'theyhave to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heatsterilizes.' Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencilsscurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modernfertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgicalintroduction--'the operation undergone voluntarily for the good ofSociety, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting tosix months' salary'; continued with some account of the technique forpreserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on toa consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred tothe liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and,leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how thisliquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop bydrop on to the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggswhich it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted andtransferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watchthe operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouilloncontaining free-swimming spermatozoa--at a minimum concentration of onehundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after tenminutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contentsre-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was againimmersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went backto the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitelybottled; 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 studentsunderlined the words in their little note-books.

One egg, one embryo, one adult--normality. But a bokanovskified egg willbud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, andevery bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryointo a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where onlyone grew before. Progress.

'Essentially,' the D.H.C. concluded, 'bokanovskification consists of aseries 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 wasentering a large metal box, another rack-full was emerging. Machineryfaintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, hetold them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an eggcan stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided intotwo; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to theincubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, weresuddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds intheir turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death withalcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded--bud out of budout of bud were thereafter--further arrest being generally fatal--leftto develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way tobecoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos--a prodigiousimprovement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins--but not inpiddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an eggwould sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at atime.

'Scores,' the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though hewere 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 yousee? Can't you see?' He raised a hand; his expression was solemn.'Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of socialstability!'

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factorystaffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

'Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!' Thevoice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. 'You really know where youare. For the first time in history.' He quoted the planetary motto.'Community, Identity, Stability.' Grand words. 'If we could bokanovskifyindefinitely the whole problem would be solved.'

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millionsof identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied tobiology.

'But, alas,' the Director shook his head, 'we can't bokanovskifyindefinitely.'

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From thesame ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as manybatches of identical twins as possible--that was the best (sadly asecond best) that they could do. And even that was difficult.

'For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reachmaturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at thismoment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of acentury--what would be the use of that?'

Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immenselyaccelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least ahundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize andbokanovskify--in other words, multiply by seventy-two--and you get anaverage of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred andfifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.

'And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteenthousand adult individuals.'

Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passingat 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 withouthesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took anevident pleasure in quoting figures. 'Sixteen thousand and twelve; inone hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they'vedone much better,' he rattled on, 'in some of the tropical Centres.Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; andMombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then theyhave unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds topituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to working withEuropean material. Still,' he added, with a laugh (but the light ofcombat 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 wonderfulDelta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Overtwelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or inembryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet.'

'That's the spirit I like!' cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Fosteron the shoulder. 'Come along with us and give these boys the benefit ofyour 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 cameshooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement.Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches flew open; the Bottle-Liner hadonly to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and beforethe lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endlessband, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from thedepths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of thatslow interminable procession on the band.

Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The procession advanced; oneby one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the largercontainers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula droppedinto place, the saline solution poured in... and already the bottlehad passed, and it was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date offertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group--details were transferredfrom 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 Ihad to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!' He laughedgood-humouredly 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 predestinated 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 thebasement.

The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickeningtwilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn ensured the cellaragainst any possible infiltration of the day.

'Embryos are like photograph film,' said Mr. Foster waggishly, as hepushed open the second door. 'They can only stand red light.'

And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followedhim was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on asummer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tierabove tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among therubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes andall the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintlystirred the air.

'Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster,' said the Director, who was tiredof talking.

Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.

Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. Hepointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyestowards the distant ceiling.

Three tiers of racks: ground-floor level, first gallery, second gallery.

The spidery steelwork of gallery above gallery faded away in alldirections into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busilyunloading demi-johns from a moving staircase.

The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.

Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack, thoughyou couldn't see it, was a conveyor travelling at the rate ofthirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred andsixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred andthirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, oneon the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred andsixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independentexistence--so called.

'But in the interval,' Mr. Foster concluded, 'we've managed to do a lotto 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 walkround. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster.'

Mr. Foster duly told them.

Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Made themtaste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explained why it had tobe stimulated with placentin and thyroxin. Told them of the corpusluteum extract. Showed them the jets through which at every twelfthmetre from zero to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of thosegradually increasing doses of pituitary administered during the finalninety-six metres of their course. Described the artificial maternalcirculation installed on every bottle at metres 112; showed them thereservoir of blood-surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquidmoving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung andwaste-product filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesome tendency toanæmia, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extract and foetal foal'sliver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied.

Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during the last twometres out of every eight, all the embryos were simultaneously shakeninto 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. Toldthem of the tests for sex carried out in the neighbourhood of metre 200.Explained the system of labelling--a T for the males, a circle for thefemales and for those who were destined to become freemartins a questionmark, 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 twelvehundred--that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But wewant to have a good choice. And of course one must always leave anenormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent. ofthe female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of malesex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result:they're decanted as freemartins--structurally quite normal (except,' hehad to admit, 'that they do have just the slightest tendency to growbeards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last,'continued Mr. Foster, 'out of the realm of mere slavish imitation ofnature into the much more interesting world of human invention.'

He rubbed his hands. For, of course, they didn't content themselves withmerely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that.

'We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socializedhuman beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers orfuture...' He was going to say 'future World Controllers,' butcorrecting himself, said 'future Directors of Hatcheries' instead.

The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.

They were passing metre 320 on rack eleven. A young Beta-Minus mechanicwas busy with screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surrogate pump of apassing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of atone as he turned the nuts. Down, down... A final twist, a glance atthe revolution-counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down theline 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 atlonger intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing likeoxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.' Again he rubbed hishands.

'But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?' asked an ingenuousstudent.

'Ass!' said the Director, breaking a long silence. 'Hasn't it occurredto you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as wellas 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.' Thefirst organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventyper cent. of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy, eyelessmonsters.

'Who are no use at all,' concluded Mr. Foster.

Whereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if they coulddiscover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what atriumph, 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 yetsexually 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 humanintelligence.'

Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind was mature atten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long years ofsuperfluous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development could bespeeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormoussaving to the Community!

'Enormous!' murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm wasinfectious.

He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrineco-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinalmutation to account for it. Could the effects of this germinal mutationbe undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be made to revert, by asuitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was theproblem. And it was all but solved.

Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexuallymature 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 doeven Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either youfailed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They werestill trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty andadults of six. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook hishead.

Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to theneighbourhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9 wasenclosed and the bottles performed the remainder of their journey in akind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or threemetres wide.

'Heat conditioning,' said Mr. Foster.

Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded todiscomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decantedthe embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate tothe tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners and steel workers.Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of theirbodies. '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 ofhappiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do. All conditioningaims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.'

In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing with a longfine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. Thestudents and their guides stood watching her for a few moments insilence.

'Well, Lenina,' said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrew the syringeand straightened herself up.

The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all the lupus andthe 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 threelittle pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile forhimself.

'What are you giving them?' asked Mr. Foster, making his tone veryprofessional.

'Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness.'

'Tropical workers start being inoculated at metre 150,' Mr. Fosterexplained to the students. 'The embryos still have gills. We immunizethe fish against the future man's diseases.' Then, turning back toLenina, 'Ten to five on the roof this afternoon,' he said, 'as usual.'

'Charming,' said the Director once more, and, with a final pat, movedaway after the others.

On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trainedin the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The first of abatch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was justpassing the eleven hundredth metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanismkept their containers in constant rotation. 'To improve their sense ofbalance,' Mr. Foster explained. 'Doing repairs on the outside of arocket in mid air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation whenthey're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flowof surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associatetopsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy whenthey're standing on their heads.'

'And now,' Mr. Foster went on, 'I'd like to show you some veryinteresting conditioning for Alpha-Plus Intellectuals. We have a bigbatch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level,' he called to two boys whohad started to go down to the ground floor.

'They're round about metre 900,' he explained. 'You can't really do anyuseful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their tails.Follow me.'

But the Director had looked at his watch. 'Ten to three,' he said. 'Notime for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We must go up to theNurseries before the children have finished their afternoon sleep.'

Mr. Foster was disappointed. 'At least one glance at the DecantingRoom,' he pleaded.

'Very well, then.' The Director smiled indulgently. 'Just one glance.'