by Mary Carmen
Amanda Arrives
Our lives settled into a routine. Maude worked with her usual energy at a variety of projects at Westinghouse, continuing to gain in stature and salary. By January of 2073 she was an assistant to the president for special projects, a job that paid at about the level of a senior vice president but without supervisory responsibilities. Maude was given bonuses from time to time, and she used these to pay off the loan on my suite and to add to Kenny’s education fund.
I took a more realistic view of my job. After all, the place had asked me to take a salary cut, so they knew they could not expect the same level of effort. I had more free time for reading and traveling.
By early 2073, another baby was on the way, and I was not surprised this time. Maude and I had agreed asking Kenny to be an only child would not be fair. The timing was Maude’s decision since she was the one of us with the busy schedule.
Amanda was born in July of that year. She was a pretty child, and I loved to look at her pictures and show them to others at my office.
After a few weeks Maude returned to her work. A new nanny was hired, making the main house very crowded. The cook continued to serve my meals in my suite, and Maude sometimes joined me for dinner.
About this time I began to take an interest in our think tank’s relationship with the planet Octula. This is, of course, the thirty-first planet orbiting the star Zeta Pisces. The director of my laboratory had been contacted by entities on Octula for advice on setting up a system similar to the economic system in what was then the United States of America, and the Octulian government was willing to pay us for our help.
Just after Amanda’s birth I was assigned to work with the director in gathering information about the existing economic system on Octula and developing several options for evaluation.
We put together a questionnaire for our clients on Octula to complete, and, by 2075, we received the preliminary answers. We spent several months reviewing the answers to our questions, and then we proposed four options for evaluation. Each option had pros and cons, and we sent, via the message system that existed at that time, the results of our analysis and some additional questions.
The authorities on Octula were not satisfied. All options had too many objections, ones that could not be overcome. The political situation on Octula was very volatile, and none of our options would satisfy all the important entities.
The director, two other staffers, and I met to review this stalemate with the ambassador assigned to Octula by the United States of America’s State Department. The ambassador agreed to take the results of our work to his Secretary for an opinion.
The opinion took over two years. The Secretary had to take the entire issue to the President, who had to be extensively briefed before he could understand the ramifications of each option. By the time we received our opinion from the State Department, changes in the government in Octula had made our original options no longer valid. We started again in 2077.
God wants a variety of experiences, and our universe provides these. Are you rich? For every rich entity, God is allowed to feel the comforts and satisfactions of being well fed, well housed, and well clothes. Through these rich entities, God feels the anger of the poor.
Are you poor? For every poor entity, God feels much, much more than It feels with a rich entity. God is allowed to feel the terrors and anxieties of being hungry, cold, and wet. Through these poor entities, God feels the distain of the rich.
Adam Arrives
2077 was a memorable year for two reasons: Maude gave birth to Adam and I went to Octula.
Adam came in early February, just after we received news from Octula that the government had been overthrown by the Science Party and our work had to begin again. Adam was the most intelligent of Maude’s three children and the most vocal, and I am sorry I never had much time to spend with him.
In March my director announced a request had come from Octula that our work be carried on from their site and not from ours. Four economists were assigned to the project, and the director asked for volunteers to go to Octula for three months. I was the only volunteer.
For two months I was briefed by the State Department on the situation on Octula. Why Octula was important was a mystery to me until after that session. Octula was the source of a large portion of the fuel required to run the electricity-generation plants that powered the United States. This fuel was cheap, and Octula had the technology to deliver the fuel and pick up the foods that planet needed in return.
I was given a quick course in the only language used on Octula, and I also received a small computer that would translate Octulan instantly and accurately. I learned the gravity on Octula was somewhat less intense than on Earth, but humans on Octula had had little trouble with walking normally. The atmosphere was more oxygen-rich than Earth’s, but humans were able to breathe this atmosphere normally for about four hours at a time; masks that delivered Earth’s atmosphere at sea level were used for at least a half hour after breathing the Octulian atmosphere.
My employer and the State Department outfitted me for the three-month stay and scheduled my departure on a spacecraft that would leave in July. I told Maude about my trip and gave her an open-ended power of attorney to make decisions about my house. I also asked my employer to send half my small earnings to Maude and deposit the other half in my savings account.
By July of 2077 my remodeling work that had built my suite in my house was completely paid for. Maude had contributed to the reduction of the balance with her frequent bonuses and I had made the regular payments for nearly eight years. The house was in good repair, and I anticipated no problems during the time I would be gone.
Don’t worry about making the right decisions. God is in charge of the course of your life, and It will make sure you take the correct path.
If you happen to make the wrong choice, God will go to the necessary lengths to correct your course. Whenever you say, “All this is just so unfair,” God is making a change to your life to redirect it.
Bon Voyage
I said goodbye to the children, kissed Maude, and took a limousine to the spaceport just outside Meadville, Pennsylvania. This spaceport was essentially an old baseball diamond that had been outfitted with a small, automated control tower. The spacecraft was waiting for its passengers. I boarded and moved my luggage and equipment to my stateroom.
This stateroom did not offer the comforts of my suite at my house, but it was adequate for sleeping and reading. I had a bed that was five feet wide and eight feet long and a chair with an ottoman that could comfortably seat two persons of my girth. A small bathroom with a miniscule shower was attached, but a larger bathroom with a tub and a sauna was just down the hall. No steam room was available, but I had known I would need to make some sacrifices.
The takeoff was exciting. The craft just lifted, with very little noise and no horizontal motion, and I watched the old observatory on the Allegheny College campus fade out of sight. Within thirty minutes we were in near darkness, with only stars as pinpoints of light. The stars flew by as streaks of light, looking very much as if they had been thrown from the front of the spacecraft.
Those old craft used time travel for interplanetary journeys. During the first half of the flight, the craft went back in time to just after the Big Bang, to a time when the universe was less than a million miles in diameter. The craft then flew a short distance to place itself near its destination. Last, it advanced in time to the present. Small craft that carried data and no animal forms worked in the same way, but they moved in time much more rapidly. These small craft allowed messages to arrive from Octula in less than three days of Earth time.
Going to Octula
I spent 127 days on the spacecraft. Of course, craft today are much more comfortable and even more luxurious, but that early craft from Octula was a marvel in its day. After we had been under way for about four hours, I started to explore.
Right outside the main bathroom on my deck was a map of the craft
. The design was essentially circular. There were four main decks, with my stateroom on the second from the bottom. Each passenger deck had seven staterooms on its perimeter, some larger and some smaller than mine. The bottom deck was reserved for the crew of nine, with small individual rooms, a laundry, and a kitchenette. The top main deck contained the kitchen, the dining room, and a lounge. A fifth deck at the top contained the Captain’s quarters and the navigational and communications equipment.
In the center of the bottom three decks were the cargo areas and the mechanical workings of the craft. I never saw this part of the spaceship.
Each passenger deck had a hallway that connected the staterooms, and four windows with window seats opened onto each hallway.
During my first tour I rode the elevator to the higher decks and walked around. Some doors were open, and I was able to see how the staterooms increased in luxury as I got higher in the craft. Some rooms were three times the size of mine.
The crew was made up entirely of humans. Although the Octulians had built the craft and were managing the flights, they had trained humans to pilot and service the spacecraft. I learned later the flights to other planets were staffed by entities from those planets, not by Octulians.
The best part of the trip was the food. A very fine chef from Europe was in charge of the kitchen. She spoke German and French, so I was able to talk a bit to her. She worked one trip per year, back and forth to Octula, and was paid better than most restaurant or hotel chefs. She had two assistants in the kitchen and two waiters in the dining room.
A buffet table was set up around the clock with essentially anything a passenger could want to eat. The main meal of the day was prepared to order at any time. Each week the maid left a notice in my room telling me the menu for the main meals of the following week, and I could plan what I would eat and when.
My only difficulty with this food was that it was all so wonderful that I gained weight. There was no exercise room on the craft, so each morning I walked the circular hall on my deck twenty times before breakfast.
A typical main meal’s entrée would be salmon with a dill crust or chicken breast stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms. Breakfast items on the buffet, around the clock, always included crepes stuffed with cheese, bagels with lox, waffles made from buckwheat flour, fruits of every variety, and several kinds of coffees and teas. For lunch this same buffet offered pizzas, calzones, lettuce salads, various chicken salads, sandwiches with many different meats and spreads, and a tray of cookies. The main meals were always served with three green vegetables and a potato dish. A self-service bar offered all kinds of drinks, again around the clock. The trip to and from Octula was a favorite with the very wealthy, and the food was planned to make it almost as special as a luxury cruise.
On my trip to Octula the craft carried fifteen passengers, nine crewmembers, and a full load of cargo. Of the passengers, seven were vacationers and eight were going to Octula for work.
I spent my time looking out the window for most of the 127 days. I read some of the over one thousand books I had loaded onto my computer. I did not look at the materials my director had given me for my assignment. After nearly twelve years of working, I had a wonderful vacation.
Meeting Jonathan
The second best part of the trip was forming a friendship with Jonathan Murphy, a man about five years younger than I who was planning to join other members of his family on Octula. The Murphy family was involved in the import of European art to Octula and the export of minerals to manufacturers on Earth and other planets.
Jonathan and I spent time playing bridge with some of the other passengers, and we usually planned to eat dinner together. He was not well educated, but he was a pleasant person with a lively curiosity about nearly everything. He played a passable game of bridge and an excellent game of poker. Jonathan was a short, blond fellow with eyes of deep blue and upper body muscles that surely had been developed in a gymnasium.
The Murphy family was part of a sizeable American colony on Octula. Jonathan estimated at least nine thousand Americans were living there and five thousand others had expressed an interest in joining the colony.
Jonathan said he was unmarried. I also said I was unmarried because I was not willing to assume the social life of an unaccompanied married man while I was on Octula.
Arriving in Octula
After 127 days the spacecraft landed on Octula on a special platform that folded to entirely enclose the ship just after touchdown. For several hours before landing the ship circumnavigated the planet, and the Captain pointed out via the shipwide loudspeaker numerous interesting sites. These included the famous Fulcan Waterfall, the Ice Steps, and the Granite Wall. All these are pictured in the several books about Octula, but they were new to me and I thought, as I first looked onto Octula, I had never seen such beautiful sights on Earth.
The State Department’s resident ambassador met the craft and took charge of moving my luggage and equipment to my room at the ambassador’s quarters. The ambassador was a man of about sixty-five years, with a distinguished appearance and a formal way of speaking. I felt I was hearing dialogue that was well rehearsed and well used, and I somewhat resented it. “Just another damned consultant to house and feed,” the ambassador’s manner said.
We rode to the embassy in a 1982 Rolls Royce Silver Spur. The ambassador assured me the car was the most reliable of any on Octula since gasoline and oil were imported from Earth regularly. That was my first and last ride in a Rolls Royce.
We took a brief tour around New Philadelphia, the large capital city of Octula where the American colony resided. The Octulians called this city Xatjiphvop, but Americans could not pronounce that word easily and always referred to the city as New Philadelphia.
I saw various government buildings, the post office, a gasoline station, and a general store. I saw hundreds of Octulians dressed in smocks and trousers. I also saw about fifteen humans on the main street, all bundled up in parkas and gloves.
“Yes,” the ambassador recited, “the climate here is always cold. We are just a few miles north of the planet’s equator, and still we find the temperature always too low for our comfort.”
I was warm enough in the car, but I had been asked to pack my ski jacket, boots, and mask.
“Do the inhabitants of this planet live only on the equator?” I asked.
“Not as a rule,” he replied. “Almost all the forty-four million Octulians live within eleven hundred miles of the equator, but some towns are even more distant. You see, their very light complexions are a result of not getting much starlight, and they are better able than humans to endure the cold.”
We drove into the embassy’s underground garage. The chauffeur, a human, was met by several Octulians, and this crew unloaded my baggage and equipment and delivered it to a comfortable room in the embassy. These Octulians were much, much taller and stouter than humans and had extremely large heads and hands. They were very pale, paler than albino humans.
“You will stay here,” the ambassador said, “until your house is ready. I believe it will be vacated in a week or two, when the current occupant returns to Earth on the next flight.”
The ambassador’s wife, a comely woman of about sixty, was much more enthusiastic in her welcome. She showed me the bar and told me to ring at any time of the day or night for food. Regular meals for the entire household would be served at four set times and I was expected to show up at the table. She talked as though my visit were the best thing that had ever happened on Octula.
The weather in New Philadelphia was cold when I arrived. Later I learned it is cold most of the time and snow showers are the norm every day. Even at the equator of the planet, the temperature does not reach much above fifty degrees.
The streets and sidewalks of New Philadelphia are cleared electronically of snow almost immediately. On Octula electricity and other power supplies are cheap; a system of street warmers is in operation at all times, resulting in clear and warm streets and
sidewalks. It is very beautiful to see the houses and trees covered with snow and very convenient to have the streets entirely clear.
Do not worry about religion. God does not care about your beliefs. God’s only interest in your sojourn in the universe is to feel your pleasures and your pains. What does God care about your understanding of Its great plan? You are merely a pawn in the game.
Getting Settled in Octula
I stayed at the ambassador’s house for six weeks. The first two weeks were to be devoted to touring the city and the outlying regions to get an orientation and a knowledge of the locations of the governmental offices. These two weeks were also to be used for becoming accustomed to the atmosphere and for learning how to monitor my breathing so I would not faint from an improper supply of oxygen. I also learned how to shop and how to order in a restaurant.
None of the Octulians assigned to the embassy spoke English; they spoke only Octulan. I was driven by the ambassador’s major domo, an Octulian, in a two-person vehicle to see the four offices in New Philadelphia where I would meet my clients. I used my translating computer to determine what the major domo said, and I found he was pleasant and sometimes witty.