Our transair landed near a small town that reminded me of a rural community back in the middle 1900s. Elgon opened the door for us and said, “We want you to go talk to the people of this village or any village you wish. We won’t go with you, so you’ll know that people aren’t lying to you just to please us.”
While I had my doubts about how free the people would be to talk with us, we quickly accepted this offer and were soon knocking on one of the first doors on the village outskirts. An elderly woman who looked to be about seventy opened the door. She said she had seen our approach on TV and was proud to be the first we visited. She invited us into a small, sparsely furnished living room and when we were seated on the hard metal chairs, invited me to ask any questions I wished.
“Tell me about your life,” I said.
She, smiled broadly, revealing ugly twisted teeth, as she said, “We live honest, decent, God‑fearing lives. Our men and women get married and stay married and have lots of children and live in a home by themselves, not in some huge evil hotel like they do on the mainland.”
“Why do you dye your skin yellow?” I asked.
“Because,” she explained, “my ancestors had yellow skin until the Macro society polluted us with interracial marriage. Now we must dye our skins to remember our glorious racial heritage. You’ll find our yellow state with its yellow religion and yellow language is the nicest state on our island.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re speaking the universal language of the Macro society, not the yellow language.”
“We learn the president’s language in our schools and on television,” she replied proudly, “but we speak only the yellow language in our homes and in our state activities.”
“But why do you want two languages?” I asked.
“People,” she replied,” can’t be proud and hold their heads up if they have abandoned the language of their ancestors. Our yellow language makes our yellow people in our yellow state with our yellow religion the most unique people in all the world”
“Tell me about your yellow religion,” I requested.
She gave me another snaggle‑toothed smile and said, “According to our yellow religion, when God created, man he used five colors to distinguish the five different kinds of people. The yellow people God created last and best; and ever since, the yellow race has been God’s chosen race to show all the other races the God‑like way to live.”
Up to now Carol had been deliberately allowing me to ask the questions, but now she said, “I recognize that you honestly believe what you are saying, and I feel that you have an intense dislike for us.”
“Only for you of the Macro society, not for this man,” she said, looking scornfully at Carol. “He has come from the great age of micro man when the yellow race had a greater population than any other race. Elgon Ten, our president, says that he hopes you of the Macro society have not yet corrupted Jon beyond saving. It is our responsibility to show him the truth.”
Leaving Carol with a look of disgust she turned to me and smiled maternally as she continued, “We remain true to the ancient virtues of religion, race, language, and the micro family with its decent and respectable moral standards.”
Now she pointed at Carol with a gnarled finger and said, “There stands the whore of ancient Babylon living only for licentious pleasure‑godless, childless, parentless, and doomed never to know the holy decency of marriage and the rearing of her own children. She and all her kind are an abomination to this earth. Soon God will destroy these wicked blasphemers.”
“Thank you for‑talking with us,” I said, “but we’d better leave now. Your president is outside and we wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”
She walked us to the door wishing happiness and truth for me and ignoring Carol. We returned to the transair and I asked to visit another state. We were soon in the air. A transparent top had been raised over the car so that we could travel at a very‑high rate of speed. On our journey to the next state it was Sela’s turn to regale us with the marvels of Micro Island.
She began by pointing out to me that every individual had the right to have children and that women were faithful to their husbands.
“Tell me, Sela Nine,” I said, “are you faithful to Elgon Ten?”
She laughed and then said, “I am not married, because the Macro society destroyed my ability to have children.”
“According to C.I., Sela Nine, you chose permanent sterilization, and you could still choose otherwise,” Carol inserted. “C.I. also said that women who can’t or won’t bear children are treated as prostitutes here on Micro Island.”
Sela gave Carol a look of revulsion and then turned back to me with a smile and said, “The Macro society developed the greatest store of lies in all history and then built a machine called C.I. to disseminate them.”
“Then you don’t have prostitutes?” I asked.
“Of course we have prostitutes,” she replied. “Micro man has always needed sexual variety. It’s the oldest profession women have ever known. We are true to the ancient micro customs which permit man to have anything he’s willing to pay for. Of course, like many other pleasures, it’s illegal to patronize a prostitute.”
“What do you mean, ‘like other pleasures’?” I asked.
“We have laws against many pleasures so that our people will appreciate them and work hard to earn enough money to afford them,” Sela answered.
“You mean you encourage crime bypassing laws that you know will be broken?” I asked incredulously.
“Of course,” she replied. “Hasn’t it always been so? It’s one of our best sources of revenue. Besides, look at the history of the world. Crime is an essential ingredient in micro life. It makes life exciting and interesting. After all, you can’t have conflict and competition if you don’t have the right kind of laws.”
“You seem to mean that you and Elgon Ten have organized crime so that it benefits you and your followers,” I commented.
“That’s right, Jon Ten. That’s how it’s always been,” she answered with a shrug of her shoulders that set her lush bare breasts to jiggling in a way I struggled to ignore. “But it benefits everyone because our organized crime provides everyone who is willing to pay for it the most delicious pleasure of all‑rebellion and revolt‑which is what breaking a law is all about. Micro man has always thrived on it.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that the two of you could have grown up in the Macro society, attained high levels of Macro awareness, and then given it all up for this,” I remarked.
“But, Jon Ten,” Sela cried out, “we didn’t give up our awareness. We developed it further. I am now level nine; Elgon is ten. You don’t understand. What we left behind was only boredom. Here there is the delicious excitement of forbidden fruits being fought over and taken by the strong and courageous. I tell you, Jon Ten, without pride and conflict life is so deadly dull that it’s not worth living.”
“You must have forgotten,” I said, “that I came from the world of 1976 where conflict and competition were polluting and destroying this planet.”
“We haven’t forgotten,” she replied, “that as long as competition and conflict were allowed free reign there was no great danger of pollution or overpopulation because the strong survived and the weak perished or lived lives of minimum consumption and pollution.”
“But,” I said, “aren’t all your assistants with Macro powers called controllers, and aren’t you limiting and controlling conflict and competition for your own interests?”
“Of course we are,” she replied candidly, “because we are the strong, and the strong always control if they aren’t shackled by a mythology of love, equality, and unity.”
“You must recognize that no social, organization, including your micro society, can survive without cooperation,” I stated.
“Yes,” she agreed, “we cooperate so that we can better enjoy the fruits of conflict and competition.”
Our conversation was interrupted
at this point by our landing near a small town in the red state. Carol and I got out and this time walked all the way through this community of generally small unattractive houses. There were, however, a few larger homes, so we selected one of the largest and most ostentatious in the community. Before we knocked on the door Carol commented on the very few people we had seen in, the streets, which were almost deserted. Before I could knock on the door it was opened by a short middle‑aged man with a large well‑fed stomach and bright red skin. He welcomed us into a large and lavishly appointed living room saying that everyone was watching our progress on the TV, interspersed with the gladiator games from the capital city of Elgonia.
“Well,” I said as we sat down in luxuriously comfortable form‑hugging chairs, “I suppose that accounts for the absence of people outside. But tell us about the gladiator games you mentioned.”
His face lit up and he grinned broadly, revealing a beautiful set of obviously false teeth. “They’re great!” he said. “Our state gladiators represent us in the games. This gives us a chance to demonstrate our superiority.”
“You mean red gladiators fight gladiators of other colors?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, “but we have many types of competition besides the individual sword fights, fist fights, or wrestling that gladiators performed in the past. We have team conflicts that include football, baseball, and basketball as well as larger conflicts such as capture the flag.”
“Well,” I said, “I remember playing a game by that name when I was a boy. How does your version go?”
“When we practice it locally,” he explained, “we use fewer gladiators, but when it involves interstate‑competition the standard team size is 100 men who play on a standard size C.F. field of 1,000 square yards. The object of the conflict is to capture the other state’s flag. We use both sword teams and bare‑handed teams.”
“You mean that you actually kill each other in these contests?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied, “but since the gladiators can wear armor in the sword contests, not very many are killed‑only ten or twelve a week but they’re still the most exciting contests we have.”
“How often,” Carol asked, “do you watch these games?”
“Since we work six days a week, and must attend church on Sunday morning, that leaves our evenings and Sunday afternoons for watching the games,” he replied.
“My God!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you get tired of watching that much fighting?”
He laughed, then said, “There’s one thing that we red men never get tired of, and that’s fighting!”
“But isn’t that sort of brutality against your religion?” I inquired.
“The red religion holds that God created four races of men and was disappointed,” he explained. “Then he created the red race to fight for the glory of God. We are the chosen race to lead all other races by our dedication to courage and our loyalty to our race and to God.”
“Sounds strangely familiar,” Carol commented quietly to me.
“Scoff if you like, decadent woman,” he replied angrily, “but our women are proud to bear us warriors, and they are decently married to one man.”
Sensing that it might be wise to change the subject, I asked, “As a representative of the chosen red race how do you manage to accept a leader like Elgon, whose skin is certainly not red?”
“It’s true that his redness doesn’t show,” he explained, “but the soul of our president is red. He wears his skin white in sympathy for the weakness of the white race.”
“Then how do you know his soul is red?” I asked.
“Because when we asked him, he replied that he would never deny it,” was‑his response.
That Elgon was a sly one, I thought to myself. Then I decided to ask one more question before leaving. “Tell me,” I said, “what do you do that allows you to live in such a large home and in such luxury?”
“I was hoping that you would ask,” he said, grinning proudly. “You see, on Micro Island courage, hard work, and a good head for business are rewarded. When I was young I was the most famous gladiator on the island, and I earned a great deal of money which I invested in land and various business ventures. Today I own half the houses in our village and most of the acreage surrounding it.
“Aren’t you afraid,” Carol asked as she glanced at the valuable articles in the room, “that you might be robbed of some of your wealth?”
He laughed rather scornfully and said, “We believe in the value of personal property, so we have law and order. Every tenth person on our island is a police official and we take great pride in our ability as crime fighters. I myself was appointed personally by President Elgon Ten as one of the ten top law officers in our Red State.”
Carol couldn’t help but insert, “Micro Island is the only place in the world where police are needed, because it’s the only place in the world where crime exists. If you didn’t place so much importance on personal properties, you wouldn’t need to waste all that manpower on policing your people.”
The fat red face of our host grew even redder as he glowered at her saying, “Great personal wealth has always gone to the strong, courageous, and clever people who are willing to take risks and live exciting and rewarding lives.”
Now he sneered openly at Carol as he said, “Your Macro society has destroyed all sense of decency or pride in its members by encouraging every vice imaginable and by denying all the virtues‑‑courage, loyalty to one’s race, accumulation of personal wealth.”
Getting to his feet and waddling furiously about the room he shouted, “Never in the history of our world has such evil, wicked, godlessness been permitted to flourish. But God is not mocked forever! You and all your godless, cowardly breed will soon perish from the face of this earth”
I figured we’d better leave before our host worked himself into some sort of apoplectic stroke. I thanked him for his time and we hastily took our leave, and arrived back at the transair feeling rather depressed at what our host had revealed to us. There was no doubt in our minds that he fervently believed the things he had told us. No one had forced us to choose his home to visit.
Once we were airborne again, Elgon began questioning me about my impressions so far. When I told him quite honestly that I had been depressed by what I had seen, he seemed genuinely sad and shook his great head of long, curly black hair back and forth a number of times before he said, “I’m sorry to hear that the Macro society has already so poisoned your mind against us that you can’t see how proud and happy our people are, living free and decent lives.”
“Elgon Ten,” I asked, “do you really think that everyone‑even the poor and unhealthy‑is happy here on Micro Island?”
Elgon replied in an extremely sincere and persuasive manner saying, “What you don’t understand, Jon ‑Ten, is that the most’ important thing for man is not wealth, or health, or even fame, but personal pride‑the feeling that he is better than the others.”
He paused now to let this sink into my mind before continuing, “We here on Micro Island have provided man with many opportunities for personal pride; his own family, his own race, his own religion, his own language, his own property, and his own state. All of these the Macro society has denied man and, by so doing, reduced the life of its members to a state of such monumental boredom that they don’t care whether they live or die. They come to Micro Island and break our laws so they can have at least the satisfaction of dying in an exciting way even if they can’t live that way.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t see it that way, Elgon.”
“I don’t ask you to believe what I say,” he responded. “Just believe what your eyes and ears tell you. Talk to more of our people. Talk to the poor ones. Talk to what you call the losers in our system. Why, I tell you, the most miserable cowardly loser on our island has more self‑pride and joy in living than any person you’ll ever meet in the Macro society. But don’t take my word for it
, see and hear for yourself.”
I agreed to do as Elgon suggested and talk with some more people, so he dropped us off beside a village in the Brown State. Here Carol and I talked with a mother and father of 18 children. The mother was only 36. She had married at 12 and had her first child at 14 followed by the birth of one child each year thereafter‑18 of them lived.
This family was very poor. Their house was small and they slept seven to a bed. However they were very proud of their family and the fact that the five eldest sons were in training to be gladiators. The whole family worked as tenant farmers, which did not supply them with enough money to survive, so the two eldest daughters had been working as prostitutes for the past several years to supplement the family income. The whole family was very proud of these two girls.
Their health, by Macro society standards, was atrocious. The mother with two babies at her breasts looked a pale and sickly 50, yet she had told me proudly that she was 14 years younger than that. The father at 39 looked younger than the mother, though most of his teeth were rotten stumps and his body looked bloated with unhealthy fat. In contrast, most of the‑swarming children looked very skinny, but with complexions just as pallid as their parents.
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