Oxygen and Aromasia

by Claës Lundin

translated by Bertil Falk

Part 1 and Part 3
appear in this issue.

Chapter 9: Under Skagerrak

part 2 of 3

The so-called Gardens of Okeanos was a place of amusement under the bed of the sea, just west of the archipelago of Pater Noster. On these skerries, there was a station for underwater trains, which were started by means of compressed air and discharged at great speed down to the bed of Skagerrak. Thanks to new inventions in diving and underwater science, it had been possible to establish a magnificent garden under the ocean bed.

The word ‘garden’ is, to be sure, an improper designation, for there were no trees of the kind we find above ground. Instead there was a magnificent place with marine plants and shells illuminated by water-suns made of the same luminescent material that were used nowadays for the illumination of places and private abodes above ground. A marvel, people may have said in a former century. A neat establishment, people said in 2378, and they found it not at all strange to go down under the sea bed after a day’s toils on a beautiful summer’s day in order to have a lazy time at the bottom or rather under the bottom of the sea.

When the office work was done, people mounted their air-bikes and steered out into the archipelago. It was not as in the past customary that “the family was living in the country” while the family man slaved in the city or that even the latter “resided in the country” and let his underpaid servants work. In the 24th century everyone who who had strength, worked, everyone above 15 years of age, and children of a lower age were occupied not only with games and school, but also with other kinds of work that was suitable for their age.

But if the weather was not too bad, people performed strong physical exercises in the open air and as high up in the air as possible every morning. At least on an air-bike. The air-cycles were ingeniously put together and served not only to convey people faster and more securely than before but also to provide excellent physical exercise.

Skilful bike-riders also threw balls in the air, fenced and performed games that could be compared to the old tournaments. Cycling races on air-bikes had since long been in fashion, and in Gothenburg that kind of race could be seen every morning, high above the Great Oceanstreet.

After a few hours’ activity in the open air, the day’s first meal was eaten and work begun. In the middle of the day in summer, people bathed in the sea and had a light meal. After the daily rounds and the principal meal of the day during the beautiful season, most of the inhabitants of Gothenburg went up to Trollhättan — it took very little time — or further up to Lake Vättern or preferably out into the archipelago.

In the suburb Marstrand was a big “sanatorium” for sea- and airbathing, but only sick people used it. The old “bathing society” and the garish “high-dress society” were only a vague memory of times long past.

The Gardens of Okeanos were dug under the ocean bed. They were, as we have noted, illuminated by the clearly radiating sea-suns, and they were quite airy. The temperature-regulating company had installed ingeniously thought out and carefully worked pipes. In the season, they brought sufficiently warm as well as cool air, which was incessantly exchanged and was as pleasant as the air above the surface of the sea. The company looked after the heating of many public and private places, especially in Stockholm, Mjölby and Gothenburg and other big cities.

What, then, could be more pleasant than a few hours under the sea bed? As people in old days walked out to Lorensberg, people now went to the Gardens of Okeanos. A crowd full of vitality thronged there every summer evening. There were places of entertainment of many kinds. On the dance floors exhilarated couples danced without Old Music, it is true, but their steps and jumps were enlivened by special dance mechanochs that replaced the music and at the same time prevented the dancers from becoming tired.

In the refreshment halls, which glittered with an illumination both sharp and beneficial to the eyes, people gathered around the tables splendidly decorated with clams and shells. Perhaps they took one or two oysters that had been reaped on the spot, but did otherwise not take in anything else but carbonated seawater or a piece of seaalgae pastry.

The species that drank Swedish arrack punsch and toddy and ate smörgåses had since long dispappeared from earth, carried off by the chronic gastric catarrh, which had appeared in the 19th century and spread like a common plague in the last quarter of that century.

There was even a playhouse at Okeanos. It performed not only lesser machine plays, but hoped to be able to develop the scenic art to the extent that even plays of greater importance could be staged with machinery not very inferior to the theatres in the city itself.

It was however difficult to compete with the big Commerce and Air Traffic Theatre, which had been built where the Town Hall and the old Exchange once stood. The spot embraced most of the old square and the area that once had been occupied by Square Street and a part of Eastern Harborstreet.

The theatre was perhaps the most distinguished in the whole Scandinavia, not to say all of northern Europe and Asia. Its machinery had ten thousand horsepower. Something of that order the playhouse of the Gardens of Okeanos was not able to equal, but then it was only a light summer theatre.

What had most enticed people to the submarine gardens in later times was a newly built palace, called the Psycheon. Most of the pleasure-seekers flocked to the palace, and there was the largest crush of people. It was like that this evening as well. While the public waited for the performance to begin, the people were occupied with the review of the day. They told what they had heard here and there in the city, talked about politics and everyday philosophy, examined their neighbor’s actions and expressed their apprehensions and hopes in general and individual questions.

They acted exactly as three hundred years ago, and five hundred years ago, and one thousand years ago and as long as human societies have existed. The human race proceeds in every respect, but the human mind and the human heart are remain the same.

Proceed to part 3...