An SF story from 1909. On an Earth where everyone lives underground in little cells and has a Book, people no longer travel much because everywhere's the same. The Machine looks after everything. Kuno video-calls his mother, Vashti, asking her to visit. She gave him away at birth, like she did her other children, but she goes all the same, in an old air-ship. He tells her that he'd redeveloped his sense of space as preparation for visiting the surface. He was brought back by a machine but not before he saw other humans in the barren, poisonous wilderness. He's been threatened with Homelessness. Vashti returns home. Then the Machine encourages Religion. Before long things stop being maintained. Pain, which used to be unknown (thanks to domestic auto-doctors and euthanasia) returns.
Too long, but advanced for its time - I didn't know about it.
Many typos.
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