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An Express of the Future
JULES VERNE
 An Express of the Future



Table of Contents
An Express of the Future...................................................................................................................................1
JULES VERNE ........................................................................................................................................1




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 An Express of the Future
JULES VERNE
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"TAKE care!" cried my conductor, "there's a step!"

Safely descending the step thus indicated to me, I entered a vast room,illuminated by blinding electric
reflectors, the sound of our feet alone breaking the solitude and silence of the place. Where was I? What had I
come there to do? Who was my mysterious guide? Questions unanswered. A long walk in the night, iron
doors opened and reclosed with a clang, stairs descending, it seemed to me, deep into the earththat is all I
could remember. I had, however, no time for thinking.

"No doubt you are asking yourself who I am?" said my guide: "Colonel Pierce, at your service. Where are
you? In America, at Bostonin a station."

"A station?"

"Yes, the startingтИТpoint of the `Boston to Liverpool Pneumatic Tubes Company.'"

And, with an explanatory gesture, the Colonel pointed out to me two long iron cylinders, about a metre and a
half in diameter, lying upon the ground a few paces off.

I looked at these two cylinders, ending on the right in a mass of masonry, and closed on the left with heavy
metallic caps, from which a cluster of tubes were carried up to the roof; and suddenly I comprehended the
purpose of all this.

Had I not, a short time before, read, in an American newspaper, an article describing this extraordinary
project for linking Europe with the New World by means of two gigantic submarines tubes? An inventor had
claimed to have accomplished the task; and that inventor, Colonel Pierce, I had before me.

In thought I realized the newspaper article.

Complaisantly the journalist entered into the details of the enterprise. He stated that more than 3,000 miles of