Dreamtown, U.S.A.

Here is another look at the America of tomorrow--by a Wilkes College sophomore, winner of the 3rd prize in IF's College Science Fiction Contest.... An America in which there is no more school, no more art, no more enterprise, no more intellectual pursuit--a nation of hedonists. And in such a land, how could there be malcontents?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The girl's body was small, slender, and perfectly proportioned. Her hair had been dyed platinum and was drawn back from her face by a mesh net which sparkled with red jewels. She stood in the middle of the room, head tilted back, eyes closed, moving in time to the music coming from an invisible transmitter. Her hands glided sinuously up and down either side of her body. She seemed oblivious to the people circling the room enjoying Gil Patton's party. It was only when she heard Brant's voice that she opened her eyes.

"Lisa, you go for that stuff, I see," Brant called to her, referring to the music being piped into the room from one of Dreamtown's many Sensory Communications Centers.

"It's really out of this world, Brant, way out, all out!" Lisa replied. She came over and sat on the arm of the chair in which Brant sprawled.

"You can feel it way down here," she said, and placed her hand on the pit of her stomach.

"Wonder how we ever got kicks out of that old stuff that you couldn't feel?" Brant asked as he placed his arm about Lisa's waist. "Just hearing music doesn't give you any glow."

Brant slid farther down in the chair and stretched his legs out before him. The bluish light in the room glinted from the highly polished surface of his knee length boots. He wore loose-fitting yellow trousers and a black suede shirt split open almost to the waist, revealing his chest.

"Have you tried one of Gil's new pebbles?" he asked Lisa.

"No, what's new about them?" she asked. She wriggled into Brant's lap and rubbed her cheek against his chest.

"They're slaughter. Instead of just getting a deeper feeling from real experiences, you can sit back and imagine something--anything--and you can feel the sensations of your fantasy. You can feel all that way down here, too," he said, touching, in repetition of Lisa's gesture, the pit of her stomach.

"Get me one, Brant. Let's see what goes."

Brant lifted Lisa to her feet and rose from the chair. His boots clicked against the green metal floor as he pushed his way through the crowd of merry makers toward a transparent glass bubble which was suspended from the ceiling by a silver chain. He pushed back the dispenser on the bubble and a cylindrical pill rolled out onto his hand. He carried it back to where Lisa sat swaying to the music which continued to fill the room.

"Here child. This will really give you a dream," he said as he handed her the pill.

Brant watched Lisa sink into the half coma that the sensation pills produced. He leaned over and kissed her shoulder. Then he straightened and moved across the room to where Gil Patton stood in front of a glass wall which afforded a panoramic view of the entire city.

"Good party, Gil," Brant said to his host.

"I hoped it wouldn't be sad. Anything clicking?"

Brant pointed to Lisa. "She is. Been trying your new pebbles."

"How's the Assistant Director of Sensory Communications doing these days?" Gil asked as they walked across the room to a plastic table on which rested bowls of red, green, and yellow liquors.

"Right and light. We've got a new show scheduled to go on the Distributor Cable in about another month. Runs twenty minutes two times a day. Morning and night. A serial about the Council."

Gil turned to Brant with a drink in his hand. "Thought nobody knew anything about the Council except that they run Dreamtown."

"No one does know very much about them. No one's ever seen them actually. But we've heard rumors that the Rebels have been influencing some of our citizens and word has come down to build this show for morale purposes."

"Why, that's crazy. Who'd want to go back to the way it was before? Those Rebels are out of their heads!"

Brant smiled. "Right man. But there are still some of them operating in the less populated areas. The Watchers brought in seven men and a woman last week from somewhere south of here. They found books in their hideout and even some paintings that one of the Rebels claimed to have done by hand."

Gil whistled through his teeth. "You'd think they'd get with it and come back here. What are they getting out of this rebellion?"

Brant reached over and touched Gil's arm.

"Just between us, friend. Before they psychwashed these Rebels they found out that they had been plotting with other Rebel groups to overthrow Dreamtown. The Council has every available Watcher on their trail."

"Couldn't ever happen, Brant. They don't have anything to fight with. Books. Pictures. They'll wise up and come over to us. Wait and see."

Brant shrugged. "They forget we're living in 2054 and the Big War's been over for nearly seventy years. They still think the old way was pretty good. But Gil, boy, we're getting serious. Let's stack it! The Watchers will get them. It's not our problem."