The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  It was but a week earlier, he had read, when a black professor of the Classics stated that white men must surrender the privilege of seeing their words published and people of color should take their place. It was but a month earlier when on one of the blogs of the American Mathematical Society, a black female mathematician called on fellow mathematicians who are white men to quit their jobs, or at least get off the hiring and curriculum committees—and make sure they are replaced by women of color. Or in short, she urged white men to “get out of the way.” Martin Luther King Jr. may have dreamed that his children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. All the same, in University of Montana a firestorm broke out over an essay contest on the legacy of the Reverend because the contest winners had a white skin. It didn’t matter that no dark-skinned students submitted an entry. Those who patrol racial black boundaries sent threats, pressuring the “pasty ass” white winners to stay in their lane in the future.

  Galecki went on, “The British, who had no true mass migration for one thousand years, have been proclaimed in recent times as ‘a nation of immigrants.’ The newcomers are talked of in terms of youth, entrepreneurship, and open-mindedness. The indigenous population is discussed in terms of aging, nativism, and stagnation.” He sighed.

  David glanced at him with a lopsided smile. “Diversity is our strength,” he intoned.

  “Diversity is our strength,” intoned Galecki. He clapped David’s shoulder. “You are catching on.” He grinned. “Third-world mass migration into Western countries is ‘diversity.’ This is Leftspeak for ‘fewer white people.’ Had millions of present-day Europeans and Chinese would have been streaming unbidden into Burundi and Sri Lanka, the Left-leaning advocates would not have referred to it as ‘growing diversity’ or have lauded the demographic transformations. And for that matter, neither would have the Burundians and Sri Lankans.

  “No one protests that the National Basketball Association is too black, but the National Hockey League is denounced as ‘too white.’ South Africa isn’t too black, Singapore isn’t too Asian, but New Hampshire is ‘too white.’

  “All in the West marinate in the multiculturalism doctrine, which, as someone noted, comes to mean you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture. But foremost, multiculturalism is a euphemism for indigenous Europeans to shut up and stand down as the world their forefathers had constructed is being inundated with people from other cultures. From New Zealand to Belgium, Western lands—unlike lands of other populations—must henceforth be shared by all.” And with truly massive migration, he mused, Canada was leading the pack of lemmings. It was projected that by 2036, nearly one person in two in Canada would either be an immigrant or a second generation individual.

  He finished off, “In an elementary school in Frankfurt, a blonde, German-­native girl was savagely bullied by Muslim girls to the point of a nervous breakdown. The principal informed the mother she can provide her daughter an Islamic headgear to school and thus resolve the issue. Along with thousands of churches, monuments, and cemeteries vandalized, defaced, and torched each year throughout Europe by You-Know-Who, I see the principal’s response as the writing on the wall.”

  The two men regarded each other.

  Without worries, without danger or drama and with very little carnage, thought Galecki, recalling a line from a book he’d read, a civilization just dies of weariness, of self-disgust. Was that to be their fate?

  David felt dispirited. Yet underneath it, something was pulsing within: joy. No grooming gangs or slamming heads on pavements where he was going. “online mobs,” “race,” “multiculturalism,” “stolen lands.” For eighty-seven years he had submerged in this juvenile stew of misery, conflict, and dysfunction along with everyone else on this accursed world. It was time to shed all of this—like a pupa ready to take wings—and leave it behind. Joy.

  “I am going back inside to say goodbye.” David extended his hand. “Been a pleasure.”

  “I will stay here for a bit,” said Galecki. “Good luck to you.” They shook hands. And Galecki was left alone with his thoughts.

  He had told David about the assault in Louisville, at the Big Four Bridge area. He omitted the part about the grandma, though. And what befell her when she physically stepped in and tried to stop the beating of her husband by the hoodlums. He took out the ornate locket and opened it up, looking down at the photo of his deceased wife. Then he felt the reassuring feel of the gun. He clutched onto it until the tremors subsided.

  Back inside, David shook hands with the other guests.

  “Where are you moving to?” asked Susan.

  “Another world,” David reported proudly.

  “World?!” Brandon exclaimed. “What do you—”

  “We’ll be back within the hour,” Lee announced brightly. Aratta put an arm on the old man’s shoulder. Lee joined them. “You know where the fridge is if you need anything.” And the three of them left, the door closing behind them.

  “Where do you think they are taking him?” asked Susan quietly.

  Brandon shrugged. “An assisted living home in the area.”

  “Do you think David suffers from Alzheimer’s or something?” asked Heather.

  “Or something,” muttered Susan. Then she sighed. “Poor man.”

  Chapter 24

  Tadrart Rouge Area, Sahara Desert, Qataria

  Disoriented, David lurched under the blast of hot air and blinked away tears. He stared wide-eyed at the scenery. “Where are we?”

  Aratta’s voice came from somewhere behind him. “On the planet we’ve left behind, this would be southern Algeria on its eastern boundary with Libya—the heart of the Sahara Desert.” He joined the old man. Lee pulled a wide-brim hat out of David’s suitcase and put it on him.

  The vista was breathtaking. Standing on the edge of the mesa, the three of them took in the vast, still ocean of fiery terra-cotta sand and fine peach silt punctuated with islands of darker, rocky hills and buttes emerging from it. They could make out in the distance a single herd of camels disappearing in the shadows of a canyon formed between two bluffs.

  An incredible heat wave was drifting up from the sea of rock and sand below, meeting halfway the intense sun rays pouring from above.

  The temperature dropped perceptibly as they walked into a vegetated area and came to stand in the shade of a majestic warka tree.

  “Here she is coming,” Aratta called out. A lone veiled figure was walking briskly toward them in the distance, a robe of iridescent off-white billowing.

  Aratta had informed David that no questions wo­uld be asked about David’s origins—and he is not to volunteer any information. All the locals were to know is that he is from somewhere else. “What happens on Earth stays on Earth,” Aratta had earlier said to David with a smile. But it was obvious to David that it was more than a suggestion; he was expected keep mum about his home planet.

  They watched the veiled woman walking toward them. “There are no Jews here or Arabs, neither wars nor borders or countries,” Aratta said in a quiet voice.

  “It doesn’t have to be complicated,” David murmured to himself. He felt as if a great weight lifted, one that burdened him, one he had not been aware of.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Aratta gently kissed the top of the old man’s head. He suddenly smiled. “Your work is not done yet. It is time lehafriakh et hashmamah.”

  David burst out laughing. “It has been decades since I’ve heard anyone says that.”

  Aratta grinned back at him.

  The two men stood there looking at each other. They both knew it was a goodbye, perhaps the last one.

  Aratta asked, “Do you remember how we first met?”

  “It was in the Dead Sea, 1946,” the old man replied, re
membering. “Tell me again the story of how you came to be there,” he urged Aratta on.

  Aratta smiled. “Well, I was en route from England to India, and—”

  “What was the name of that hotel where you stayed?” asked the old man eagerly.

  “The Kalia Hotel.”

  “That’s right! The Kalia. Oh, I remember the spacious lobby with the Persian rugs.”

  “A toilet and a bath in every room,” Aratta reminded him.

  “The goblets were of crystal.”

  “Rosenthal crystal, no less.”

  “Rosenthal’s make is good, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly,” Aratta told him. “The best.”

  The old man reminisced, then his face lit up. “Remember the quartet that played on the grand balcony when the sun set?”

  “And then retiring to the smoking room.”

  David laughed out loud. “The golf course. Must have been the only one for many hundreds of kilometers.” He started to cry. “It was the first time I saw a golf course.”

  “Well, you were just a boychik back then.” Aratta opened his arms, inviting, and the old man trudged toward him.

  “It was a good life, wasn’t it?” whispered David, his face buried in the other man’s shoulder.

  “It was a good life,” affirmed Aratta.

  He held the thin, old man in his arms, and a tear trickled down his cheek. After a long time, he let go of him.

  They both stood and watched as the figure drew near. Then undid her veil to reveal a lovely face framed by silvery hair of a woman in her late sixties. “You must be David,” she stated. Bright, intelligent eyes regarded him. “I am Lea­ndra.” She beamed at him. “I am here to greet you.” She gestured about. “Welcome to your new home, David.” She bowed to him and then to Aratta and Lee, who bowed back.

  The old man stepped forward and shook her hand warmly. For the first time, he took in his immediate surroundings. They were on top of a mesa carpeted with native grasses and dotted with canopied acacia trees. A big herd of scimitar oryxes was grazing a stone’s throw away from where they stood. A few large bustards and partridges groomed themselves, scattered about.

  His lined, tanned face split into a wide grin. “We diverted the Jordan River, but you have taken things to a whole different level,” David told her, staring in disbelief at the improbable vegetation and life about him. “This is incredible, this is astounding!”

  Leandra laughed. “I’ll be happy to tell you about it.” She picked up his suitcase. “Let’s walk together, shall we?”

  Aratta and Lee hugged David for the last time. And then they stood there watching until the gay, animated voices of the two elderly people faded in the distance, and they heard nothing but the gentle sigh of wind.

  Lee sat down, resting against the massive trunk of the warka tree. Aratta slid next to her.

  “It is a good thing you did for David, bringing him to this place. I feel that he will be genuinely happy here, spending the remainder of his life in the desert among those people.” She reached over and kissed Aratta on the cheek, and he smiled at her.

  Aratta reached out and took her hand in his. “Ready?”

  “Am I a horrible person for not wanting to go back to Earth?” She was helplessly drawn to this place, to its ragged, sublime beauty.

  “You are,” he assured her.

  “Give us half an hour,” she said and laid her head down in his lap. “Then we’ll go back.”

  David looked upward at the sudden cacophony. The pastel­-blue sky was filled with the calls of migrating purple herons, working their way south.

  “There are about five hundred of us,” Leandra told him, “clustered in a hub with a handful of outlying houses. This settlement is for those who want to live on the edge. You will find life here to be harsh. And awe-inspiring.”

  The old man’s eyes were bright, and he blinked a few times to clear them and keep at bay the overwhelming emotions that coursed through him. It had been a long while since he felt so at peace and joyful. In fact, had he ever really?

  They walked on a narrow, winding path shaded by carob and fig trees. David noticed the understory of pistachio trees and pomegranate shrubs. Over a dozen rodent-like, squat rock-badgers milled about in a small grove of olive trees amid foraging white antelopes.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “It’s the middle of the day in the summer of one of the hottest regions of the world,” Leandra replied. “From May to September, most choose to have their sleeping hours during the day. This time of year, the community comes to life around five or six in the evening and goes on until morning.”

  “Hemp,” David said suddenly, noting a far-off field of cannabis intermixed with cowpeas and sorghum. He turned his head toward her. “How do you utilize it?”

  “The oil and seed for food, obviously,” she said absently while walking. “From the fiber, we make our shoes, paper, and most of our textile, that is, clothing and bags, towels and linen, upholstery and area rugs.”

  The old man glanced about. “Where does the water for all this come from? Surely not from the scant rainfall you get here.”

  She smiled in acknowledgment. “An engineered metallic-biological compound makes up the top layer of our roofs. During the night, it absorbs water from the air. In the morning, we roll out a sectioned, clear acrylic layer over it. The heat of the day causes the compound to release the water, and it drips down onto a smooth glazed surface underneath that is set on an angle. This is how we collect the water. We have this setup on every roof, making up close to two-hundred thousand square feet of collection area. Year-round. Water is never plentiful, but it always suffices.

  “And then there is that.” She motioned to a series of constructed wetland fields surrounding a domed building. “Our water reclamation system. We recycle everything. Water used for washing dishes, laundry, and bathing, along with the human waste, are channeled to this engineered ecosystem.”

  “Incredible,” mumbled David. He studied it avidly. “How does it work?”

  “First stop is the underground, low-oxygen tanks,” she told him. “This is where microbes feed on the nutrients in the solid waste: on the ammonia, phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium. The portions of the undigested, nutrient-rich sludge are periodically pumped out, tumbled dry, and brought together with a much larger mass of crop residue. We aerate the mixture and cure it. Four to six months later, we have a compost, which we spread on the soil. However, most of the liquid travels here,” Leandra said as the two of them worked their way through winding, narrow lanes. They crossed a gracefully-arched wooden garden bridge and then another. “These are constructed wetland beds.”

  David wiped his glasses, put them back on, and inspected the beds. The rubber liner and gravel underneath were all but hidden from view by a thicket of papyrus sedge and common reed fluttering in the warm breeze. Metallic-hued dragonflies darted to-and-fro, filling the air with a constant hum. “As the water flows, the masses of roots soak up more of the nutrients and denitrify the water further. The water moves along from one constructed wetland bed to another.”

  What beneficial technologies! he mused. If only had they been made ubiquitous on his home world.

  He crouched and examined the trickling water as they reached the last plot of reeds by the big dome. “The water looks pure at this stage.”

  “It looks the part. But in fact, it’s not. Not yet.” She opened a thick door constructed of bronze and reed, inviting him to enter the large domed structure.

  Cooler, humid air greeted David. Leandra closed the door shut behind them, and he gawked at the improbable sight as he descended the stony steps.

  Water from the wetlands outside traveled through pipes and cascaded as a waterfall into a lagoon. Sunlight streamed down from various shafts to the tropical pool, leaving the rest of the cavern dimly lit. The effect
was breathtaking.

  A few bald cypresses dominated the lagoon. Leandra motioned at the dense growth of plants. “They are suspended on metal racks,” she explained. “No soil. The roots go down into the water, creating a habitat for microorganisms, fungi, algae, snails, and mochokid catfish, which in turn convert the ammonia in the water into nitrates. From here, the water moves back outdoors through a large bed of sand. This is the last stage. The sand and microorganisms absorb and digest any remaining particulates and nitrates. The water is then treated with UV and is rerouted back into the houses.”

  He peered into a darkened circular opening spiraling downward. It reminded him of a tube slide. “What’s this?”

  “Follow me and find out.” Leandra took one of the wide, flat pillows stacked nearby. She positioned the cushion by the opening, sat on it, pushed off and disappeared. The sound of soft laughter trailed behind her.

  Chuckling, David shook his head and grabbed a pillow. He whooshed down and down and down the spiraling tunnel—and into a well-lit cavern.

  She helped him up. “Nice and cool here,” he observed.

  “It is cool year-round, courtesy of the ambient temperature deep under­ground.”

  He pointed at the ceiling. “Incredible light, too.”

  She smiled. “This is but diffused sunlight that we pipe in here.”

  “Sunlight? Down here?” He didn’t understand.

  “Simple enough, David,” Leandra said. She stripped off her veil and outer robes, not needing now their protection from the harsh rays of the sun. The old man gazed at her coppery-brown skin almost aglow against her pearly dress. Her silver hair tumbled loosely about her.

  “You are beautiful,” he said in admiration.

  Her eyes sparkled good-naturedly. “Still interested to hear the answer?”

  He laughed. “Absolutely.”