Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity." " "But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. "Soma may make you lose a few years in time," the doctor went on. "But in another we're actually lengthening it." The young man stared, uncomprehending. "But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?" "Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda was most conveniently out of the way), John raised objections. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. "One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. "Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctor confided to Bernard. She took as much as twenty grammes a day. Shaw at first demurred then let her have what she wanted. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. "So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre."" ""By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, 'even as a little infant,'" (here the Director made the sign of the T), "he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again." "As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Popé used to bring it."" What I had to suffer - and not a gramme of soma to be had. "A gramme is better than a damn," said Lenina mechanically from behind her hands. "Too awful," she kept repeating, and all Bernard's consolations were in vain. Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided." We ought not to have come here." She felt in her pocket for her soma - only to discover that, by some unprecedented oversight, she had left the bottle down at the rest-house. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep." "Bernard also laughed after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. "When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention." And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. Least of all," she continued in another tone "why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. "I don't understand anything," she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted." Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. "By this time the soma had begun to work. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, "I drink to my annihilation," twelve times quaffed." The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. "Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds." How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! " "the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three." "you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma." The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. ".there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon." "All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol none of their defects." Soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) Soma in Aldous Huxley's
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