CHAPTER II
I suppose it was partly my fault that the Adam-Two business very nearly got out of hand during the next few days. In the first place, I was at a loss to know what to do about him, and in the second place I was sweating day and night over the blankety-blanked Annual Report for the Council of Uncles, who were due to arrive the following week. I hated paper work, with the result that I usually got caught short and had to compress a whole year's work into the space of a few days.
The Council of Uncles, of course, wasn't really any such thing. The title was just a nickname for the benefit of the Kids. Officially, they were the Inter-Galactic Inspection Council of the Solar Committee for Sociological Research. The purpose of the Committee was to find out what people need to be happy, and the purpose of the Inspection Council was to check around and see who was happy and who wasn't.
Some two hundred years ago, society had reached a kind of static condition in the realm of scientific development. For the first time in seven thousand years of civilization, Man was faced with almost total leisure. And to his great surprise, he found himself no nearer happiness than when he started. And so a crusade had begun; Man decided at last to turn his knack for research and development inward upon himself. Scientists began to ponder and experiment with the questions that had plagued philosophers for ages.
The coming of Automation had relieved men from the burden of working for a living, and left them with a choice between cultural pursuits and pure recreation. Which should it be? A good deal of rivalry, some friendly and some otherwise, existed between the proponents of the two major schools of thought. The intellectuals were dubbed "Highbrows," the pleasure-boys were known as "Happy Hooligans."
Mankind, the Highbrows contended, was still undergoing a kind of evolution—a gradual transition from a purely physical or animal existence to a purely mental or intellectual state. The machines had released him from physical bondage—as they had been intended to do—so that he might rise at last above his animal beginnings. Man could now rise to undreamed-of cultural heights, or he could sink into the depths of sensual degradation. The choice was up to him, but if he chose the latter Nature might very well not permit him to survive.
Fiddle-de-dee, said the Hooligans. The trouble with Man was that he has always insisted on pretending to be something he isn't, always seeking some deep meaning and significance in life instead of relaxing and enjoying it. Excessive doses of education and culture merely serve to compound this felony, magnify his inferiority complex, and make him thoroughly unhappy. Teach people how to enjoy themselves instead of how to be miserable, they cried.
Fairyland was a sort of sociological laboratory for the Happy Hooligans—a colossal, costly experiment that had been going on for some forty-five years. It was designed to test the theory that most of the misery in the world stems from the fact that kids are allowed to grow up, to abandon their childhood dreams, to quit having fun. They learn that there really isn't any Santa Claus, and they never quite recover from the shock.
So far, the experiment appeared to be a successful one. Fairyland Kids were happy kids, and they all believe in Santa Claus.