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We sat silent for a long time. I looked about me at the crumbling buildings, the unchanging sky, and the dreary, empty street. Here, then, was the fruit of the Conquest, the elimination of work, the end of hunger and cold, the cessation of the hard struggle, the downfall of change and death—nay, the very millennium of happiness. And yet, somehow, there seemed something wrong with it all. I pondered, then I put two or three rapid questions, hardly waiting to reflect upon the answers.
我们默默地坐着，久久没有说话。我望着四周随时可能倒塌的建筑，头上永远不变的天空， 和那阴沉空荡的街道。这么说，原来这就是人类征服自然的结果，消灭了工作，结束了饥饿和寒冷，停止了一切艰苦的奋斗，消除了一切变化和死亡——不，这就是幸福的千年盛世。可是，不知为什么，总感觉这一切有点问题。我想了想，然后连着向那个穿石棉衣服的人问了几个问题，几乎都没有停下来想想他的回答。
"Is there any war now?"
“现在还有战争吗？”
"Done away with centuries ago."
“几个世纪以前就消除了。”
"Do you still have newspapers?"
“你们还有报纸吗？”
"Newspapers! What on earth would we want them for? What is in them, anyway? Only things that happen, wars and accidents and work and death. When these went, newspapers went too. Listen," continued the Man in Asbestos, "you still don't seem to understand the new life at all. How used your people to spend all the early part of their lives?"
“报纸！我们要它干什么？报上有什么可登的呢？无非是发生的一些事情，什么战争啦，事故啦，工作啦，死亡啦。那些东西没有了，报纸也就没有了。你听我说，”那个穿石棉衣服的人接着说，“您好像还是根本没懂我们的新生活。你们那个时候，在人生的前期，人们做些什么？”
"Why," I said, "our first fifteen years or so were spent in getting education."
“前15年左右，”我说，“我们一般用来上学受教育。”
"Exactly," he answered, "now notice how we've improved on all that. Education in our day is done by surgery. Strange that in your time nobody realized that education was simply a surgical operation of opening the skull and engrafting into it a piece of prepared brain. Well, then, to continue, what used to occupy your time and effort after your education?"
“不错，”他回答道，“现在请你注意我们是如何对此加以改进的。我们现在的教育是用外科 手术来完成的。奇怪的是，你们那时候，竟无人意识到，教育只需要一个外科手术，把头盖骨打开’植入一片事先准备好的脑子就行了。下面，接着说，那受完教育以后的时间又忙什么呢？”
