I nodded in agreement as we proceeded up the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was rewarding to see that, what had first been the Garden of Eden and the cradle of civilization, and then became a dry, barren desert in the twenty-first century, was again a land rich with fields producing food. The rivers ran full and clean.
In this part of the world, most cities were built on land that had once been desert. The structures appeared to be made of stone, yet they were too perfectly shaped to be natural. I asked Jan-3 to explain.
“When the people began recovering from the great devastation, this was one of the areas that had suffered most. The summer heat was unrelenting. Clear glass radiated the sun and made it difficult to build structures that were comfortable, so molten sand was infused into the glass, giving the blocks the appearance of sandstone. Everybody liked that look, because it was what they were used to. The blocks had most of the advantages of clear glass but not the disadvantage of radiating heat. The custom of sand-infused glass caught on and continues, even though they control the environment here, as we do at Alpha-1. Most people liked the sand color because it provided a contrast and makes the cities more interesting.”
“Jan,” I commented, not wanting to use her more formal name, “I’d like to walk along one of their avenues and experience the contrast. Would you join me?”
“I’d love to walk the corridors with you” Jan-3 said, smiling like a little girl, “and I like your use of my informal name. It seems more intimate for when we are alone, but it would be better if you use my full name in the presence of others. To use my informal name could cause confusion.”
She was so lovable; I couldn’t resist taking her in my arms and hugging her. Again she laughed like an innocent child and said, “I love our intimate moments. They make me realize that we’ve lost a lot, by making everything so formal. We’ve made everything safe and secure, but we’ve lost the feeling of adventure and the wonder of discovery. You’ve brought us more than the button!”
She had just paid me a wonderful compliment, but I didn’t know how to reply, so I just kissed her.
“Now, that’s what I mean,” she beamed, as she kissed me back.
* * * * *
Chapter 18
Roc-2 and the Council of Twelve were holding one of their regular meetings, considering complaints and suggestions. Their method of handling complaints was simple and effective. If the complaint seemed justified, they turned it over to a specialized committee. The committee would then work with the complainant until he or she was satisfied that his or her rights had been acknowledged.
An idea or suggestion, if it were deemed to be meritorious, was discussed with men and/or women who specialized in the field. They worked with the one making the suggestion, to see if they could turn the idea into a reality. If the ideas advanced, or enhanced the people’s way of life, the one who conceived the idea was acknowledged and rewarded. This system, simple though it was, motivated people to strive for better things, because they were recognized for their achievements and treated fairly.
When the Council was ready to adjourn, everyone heard a hum and felt a tingling vibration. They saw, through an outside opening of their council room, a vague blue apparition hanging over the ocean, and then they heard a voice—not with their ears, but in their minds: “Bring Gus!”
* * *
I had asked Roc-2 to contact me if the blue presence appeared, but right now was an inconvenient time. I was on a mission of discovery with Jan-3, but because I was wearing the ring Roc-2 had given me, he knew where I was.
Before Roc-2 could speak, the voice in his head said: “Thank you for telling us where Gus is. Now bring him to us.”
Roc-2 and all of the council members were astonished. They had all heard the voice in their minds.
“Who are you? And why do you want Gus?” Roc-2 asked.
Again the voice thundered in their heads: “I am Ulto, leader of the Antons. We brought Gus to you, now you must bring Gus to us. We want to negotiate with you, but we will do it only in the presence of Gus. He will act as our emissary.”
“We have an army of robots with weapons trained on you,” Roc-2 said in a commanding voice. He didn’t like the threatening tone of the silent speaker. "Should you harm Gus or anyone else, we will fire.”
“Your weapons can hurt us, but we urge you not to be so foolish. Should you fire upon us, we will destroy Earth and everything on it.”
Roc-2 was sure that was no idle threat, so he said, “Gus asked me to let him know if you showed up. He and Jan-3 are on the other side of Earth; it will take them about an hour to get here.”
“We can have them here in an instant,” the voice said. “Gus will understand the method of travel, but you must tell his companion what we are doing. We don’t want to render either Gus or his companion useless by frightening them.”
Realizing that he didn’t need to voice a reply, Roc-2 pressed the ruby on his communication ring. The ruby on my ring lit up and emitted a soft tone.
Jan-3 noticed and immediately said, “Gus! Roc-2 is calling you!”
I pressed the ruby on my ring, and said, “Yeah, Roc-2, what’s up?”
Even though the call was deadly serious, Roc-2 couldn’t suppress a smile at the quaintness of my reply when he said, “The blue presence is here, and they want you to attend a meeting right away.”
“Roc-2,” Jan-3 replied, “we’re over Istanbul. It’ll take an hour to get back.”
“The Antons are here,” Roc-2 said, “and they want Gus. They say they can have you here in an instant, but they wanted me to let you know what they are going to do, so you wouldn’t be frightened.”
“Who are the Antons?” I asked.
“They are the entities you called the blue presence,” Roc-2 replied.
“Jan,” I said, “we’ll be traveling at the speed of thought—are you willing to do this?”
“If you say it’s all right, then, yes, of course I’m willing, but I’m disappointed. I was enjoying seeing the world through your eyes. You’ve given the word, life, a new meaning for me. . . . Can we complete our exploring another time?”
“I hope so, but we’d better see what Roc-2 has for us to do first.”
Jan-3’s brow furrowed when she asked, “Do we have a choice?”
Shaking my head slowly, I said, “I doubt it.”
“Then let’s go!” she said.
Pleased by her courage, I said to Roc-2, “Tell the Antons to let’er rip. We’re ready.”
* * *
Jan-3 and I were next aware of standing in the chamber with Roc-2 and the Council. We acknowledged each other’s presence with a nod and, not knowing what to expect, I called out, “I’m Gus, and I’m here as you requested. Who are you, and what do you want from me?”
The voice in my head immediately reminded me of the voice I had heard in my motel room telling me to take the shortcut through the desert. I thought I had been selected for a specific reason, and I was right. I was right also when I thought that I was being guided in the use of the button. Almost as though I was thinking it, rather than hearing it, the voice said:
“We are the Antons from planet Duos in Galaxy 3. We placed the petrified wood beside the device you call the “button” when we first contacted you to give you a sense of time. We come from far seeking your help. We once lived on planet Ergo in Galaxy 7. Planet Ergo was much like planet Earth. It had oceans, jungles, deserts, and plains. Life formed there, much as it did on Earth. We evolved on Ergo, similar to the way you did on Earth until—due to religious ignorance and economic greed—we destroyed our planet. A few survived, and we accidentally stumbled upon a method of time travel. The method was crude, but it was good enough to allow us to find a new planet in a small galaxy we named “Galaxy-3.” We named it Galaxy-3 because it had only 330 billion solar systems. We named the new planet “Duos,” because it had two moons.
“Before the Great War, two races of people lived on planet Ergo. We called ourselv
es “Antons,” and the others called themselves “Ergons.” A great war occurred. We were fighting for our right to exist, but we were losing, so we used atomic weapons. After the war, even though the planet was contaminated with atomic radiation, the Ergons adapted to the radiation by mutating and decided to remain on planet Ergo. We Antons fought against the mutation and tried to remain human. To escape the radiation, we searched for, and found, planet Duos. We Antons and Ergons had always been in conflict, so we were not disappointed when the Ergons said that they would not be going with us to planet Duos.
“After moving to planet Duos, we Antons developed technologically, and since we didn’t have the Ergons for labor, we manufactured robots. We developed mentally, but we failed to eliminate our greed, and we were again in danger of destroying our planet.
“You, the people of Earth, also had a Great War, and for the same reason, but you overcame your problems by ridding the earth of radiation and then, by creating a simple law, you vastly improved human behavior. By adopting a system of cooperation, you built not only a paradise on earth, but you overcame your health problems. You now have perfect bodies that allow you to enjoy the paradise you built.
“We made the mistake of going the other way. It took us too long to find a new planet, so our bodies mutated until they were no longer useful. But as long as we were in those bodies we had bodily needs and desires that caused us to be competitive and aggressive. New conflicts developed, and to prevent destroying ourselves again, we eliminated the desire for pleasure by doing away with the ability to feel pleasure. Eventually, we discarded our bodies altogether.
“Now we are a society of minds. We have knowledge beyond your measuring, and we have the entire universe to explore and enjoy mentally, but we cannot feel bodily pleasure. If we could find a way to retain our near-perfect minds, while acquiring your near-perfect bodies, we will be within reach of what our religious leaders have been telling us for millions of years. They have told us that we can have life eternal in a perfect place.
“We mean you no harm. We need your help. If you help us, we will help you. If you fail to help us, we will take by force that which you deny and completely destroy Earth to prevent you from destroying us some day.”
Roc-2, asked, “Will you allow us to question you with the help of our robots?”
Ulto, leader of the Antons, replied: “You may examine us, anyway you wish, but if you harm even one of us, we will take from you what we need and then destroy you.”
“Before we can agree to your terms,” Roc-2 said, “the Council must meet in private.”
“Council all you want,” Ulto voiced, “but because we read your thoughts, we cannot grant you privacy. When you talk among yourselves, speak in voices, so that your listeners can understand, but to communicate with us, all you have to do is to think. We will know what you are thinking.”
“Then how can we know in advance, what you might consider harmful?” Roc-2 asked vocally so that the people around him could understand also.
Ulto silently asked: “Is there one among you who will serve as a hostage?”
Knowing what hung in the balance, I stepped forward without hesitation.
“No!” Jan-3 cried out. “We can’t lose Gus! Without him we can’t advance to time travel.”
“I agree with Jan-3,” Roc-2 exclaimed. “If we lose Gus, we lose too much.”
“Gus is not a satisfactory hostage for us, either,” Ulto’s voice radiated. “We need him also, and we wouldn’t want to eliminate him if you fail to meet our terms.”
“Those are the very reasons that I must be the hostage,” I insisted. “Because of my uniqueness, I am the only one who can serve both sides.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ulto said: “He is right! We accept him as a hostage, and if he is lost, we both lose. We will know in advance what you plan to do and will let you know if it is unacceptable.”
Roc-2’s expression showed his concern when he asked me, “Are you aware of what you propose? If the negotiations fail, you will be gone forever.”
“If the negotiations fail, Earth will be gone forever,” I replied. “For the people of Earth, this is the culmination of all that has gone before. If we fail, we will be taken over and ultimately destroyed. The people of planet Duos will not get what they want unless these negotiations succeed. Therefore, because there is so much to lose on both sides, I will serve as hostage.”
“Then, reluctantly, I agree,” Roc-2 said.
Ulto read Roc-2’s thoughts and said: “Bring on your thought-reading robots.”
Because the Antons had so little of what the robots were programmed to use to determine truthfulness, the questioning had to cover a lot.
The third man of the Council of Twelve asked, “Ulto, are you the blue presence that appeared to Gus in the desert?”
“Yes, we made the decision to use Gus for our purpose, so we set him up to receive the time-travel button. Then we helped him learn to use it. We are a collective of pure thought. We have developed, what to you, would be far into the future. We can travel anywhere in the universe. We have no bodies, so atmospheric conditions are not a factor. And since we move at the speed of thought, time is not a factor.”
“Why did you choose Gus as your emissary?” another Council member asked.
“Gus was selected because he was physically strong and has above-average intelligence. He is mature, his body is healthy, and his genes function properly, so he has normal sex drives and his motivations for achieving are normal. He grew up on a farm where he learned about plants and animals, and he learned to work with his hands. He was innovative when it came to doing for himself that tools and machines could not do for him. He was trained to build, and he was able to understand how humans’ bodies and minds were being taken over and diminished by machines. He is single, and has no deeply established emotional ties.”
“Why did you need him?” Tena, a female Council member, asked.
“Our machines did everything for us. We had no reason to use our bodies—so they slowly diminished until they served no function. Since they served no function, we discarded them. Without bodies, we had no vocal cords, so we learned to read thoughts. Also, we did not hunger for anything, and we felt no pain. Then, too late, we realized that we needed our bodies in order to experience physical pleasure—we lost the ability to love and care. We can’t even reproduce ourselves.
“There are billions of planets in the universe that are habitable, and life exists on most of them that are capable of sustaining life, but most of them have nothing that even resembles humans. You, the Earth people, have the most perfectly developed bodies of any we have seen. We had hoped to use Gus as an intermediary, to get your help in retrieving our bodies.
“We will travel back to a time when we had bodies, then bring our bodies to you and, if you will help us, we will develop perfect bodies of our own. We would then have both perfect bodies and perfect minds. We mean you no harm. We need your help, but we cannot allow you to harm us.”
Roc-2 thought, “Why don’t you read our minds and develop your bodies?”
The voice in their minds spoke: “We know what you are thinking.”
Confused and a bit exasperated, Roc-2 asked, “So, why don’t you do as I thought?”
“We tried!” the voice replied. “We can read your thoughts, but we cannot obtain your DNA without your help. To read your minds, we must be in your presence. You wouldn’t trust us long enough to allow us to get close. You always knew when we approached, and we were afraid you would fire upon us with your weapons.”
“Why didn’t you use the people in the twenty-first century?” I asked.
“You were too violent, too self-consumed, and you were already destroying your bodies. Your children were fat and lazy. Machines were doing most of the labor. Your children played games with machines that required no exercise, or they played childish games with balls of different sizes and shapes that didn’t really challenge their minds. The children wer
e bored, so they ate too much, and used drugs to induce excitement.”
“Then why did you choose Gus?” Jan-3 asked.
“We told you why,” the voice said a little impatiently. “We chose him because he had a curious mind, and he was open to new ideas. He had no preconceived religious convictions. He proved that we were right in choosing him when he volunteered to help us. That is why we gave him the button and instructed him in how to use it.”
“We trust Gus, but we’re still uncertain about your intentions,” Roc-2 said.
“We have placed the knowledge of how the travel device works in Gus’s mind. He can tell you how to build it, and you can build your own. You know that Gus doesn’t have the facilities or the materials to develop the button on his own. He needs your help. That should show you that we have peaceful intentions.”
Roc-2 turned to me. I nodded my head, indicating that I had received the knowledge to build the travel device. He looked at the robots, each of whom nodded slowly to confirm that Ulto was telling the truth. Roc-2 then turned to his Council, and each member nodded their approval. Then he asked Ulto, “How can we help?”
“Now, we’re getting somewhere. Our bodies are badly deformed, so we need DNA from you to restore them.”
“If you use our DNA, you will become duplications of us. You would have to conform to our rules to prevent confusion.”
“We would conform to your methods, and we would appreciate it if you would help us develop a society that will enable us to live in harmony.”
“Then we must agree on how to proceed,” Roc-2 said. “If your bodies are diseased and deformed as you say, we wouldn’t want them brought to planet Earth. We’ve worked for centuries to eliminate diseases, and we wouldn’t want to introduce new diseases into our atmosphere. We could purify your bodies with our machines, but we would have to take our machines to where your bodies are. Could you transport our purification chambers to planet Ergo?”
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