Demeter

by Dr. Alan D. Hansen

  Jonas White was again their pilot, but they were not boarding Pegasus. Captain White informed them that the much smaller craft was a DS-52, better known as a hopper. Seeing the concerned looks, he quickly noted, “We don’t bounce. The hopper is used only for short flights inside the atmosphere of Demeter.” This gained a collective sigh from Ryder and his peers.

  The flight to Europe was short and boring. The ship configuration did not provide windows that would allow Ryder and his peers to see more of their new home. At one point, the hopper did start bouncing up and down, like a plane caught in a thunderstorm. Ryder almost fell out of his seat, but Cynthia grabbed his arm before he fell. The familiar doorbell sound chimed, and Captain White’s voice came over the intercom, “Nothing to worry about folks. Debbie and Becky have the controls, but I’m watching them. If things get out of hand I’ll….” His voice cut off as the hopper suddenly seemed to be making a nosedive. Apparently Debbie and Becky must have gotten things back under control, because the hopper continued to bounce back and forth, up and down. Ryder started thinking about the last rodeo he had attended, and found himself envisioning riding a Brahma bull.

  When Ryder could focus enough to look around, he saw a variety of reactions. Cynthia seemed to be enjoying the flight. She turned to Ryder and said, “Just think. We’d pay fifty dollars for access to an amusement park where we could go on rides like this.” She then squeezed his arm and pulled in tighter. Ryder decided the ride wasn’t so bad after all. Mr. Small and Miss Li didn’t seem concerned or even interested. Miss Li periodically laughed. Ryder wasn’t sure if she was laughing about the ride, the reaction of Ryder’s peers, or something Mr. Small was saying to her. Athena looked miserable. Randy and Joel seemed to be having a great time.

  The bucking ended about ten minutes before landing, and it became obvious that Captain White had regained control of the craft. The landing was smooth and without incident.

  Emerging from the hopper, Ryder again saw the now familiar sea stretching out to the horizon. He did not see any islands. The water was calm as glass. There was a long, wide beach that went off in either direction for miles with hundreds of people enjoying it. There were also dozens of cabanas where people could get refreshments. In addition there were restrooms and outside showers. He also saw a long wooden pier with what looked like several small shops along one side.

  Cynthia gasped, and Ryder turned in the direction she was facing. A huge, dark glassed tower built right into a sheer rock face rose before him. The building extended in both directions for several hundred yards and rose as far as Ryder could see. The sheer rock face emerged at both ends into what was obviously a mountain. But this mountain rose at a sharp angle upward, with numerous crags and crevices. It had a translucent glow, with a combination of sediment, ores, quartz, and gems. Even at a distance, it looked like you could cut your hand just by getting too close to any part of it. There were trees in clumps at various outcroppings. But unlike Arion, Europe was not covered in forests. Between the hopper port of entry and the massive building were acres of fields fronting the mountain. There were no foothills. Ryder estimated that the distance from the beach to the single large building might have been a mile.

  The port itself was much like the one in Arion, but significantly larger. He saw numerous hoppers coming and leaving on what appeared to be dozens of concrete pads about one hundred feet square. It looked so confusing that he wasn’t sure how the crafts avoided crashing into each other.

  Paralleling the beach and proceeding to the rock face and beyond were fields as far as the eye could see. They were cultivated growing a single crop, although in several patches or plots. It looked like some sort of grain, perhaps wheat or a near cousin. The contrast of the blue water, golden fields, translucent mountains, and massive wall of dark glass made Ryder wish he had a camera with him for a second time in two days.

  Miss Li led the group, carrying and pulling their luggage to the far side of the terminal area. They passed four landing pads before they got to a station platform. They got there just as a monorail train departed toward the beach. Mr. Small looked up at a panel at the open air station and announced, “We’ve got about five minutes.”

  Ryder took the time to look at some of the other signs on the station platform. The one that attracted his attention was a multi-colored map. Centered at the top was a blue dot, identified as Europe. Going straight out from there was a dot signifying the station that showed “Here” with an arrow. There was only one more station to the beach, but then the map of the line split and ran in both directions along the beach with several stations identified in both directions. He recognized some of the names: Riviera, Miami Beach, Waikiki. But other names seemed totally foreign: Cry-jin, Amora-jin, and Onoterasu-jin. He quickly saw the pattern, with half of the names sounding very familiar and half sounding very foreign, but always ending in “jin.”

  “Mr. Small, what does jin mean?”

  “Oh, that’s Cryellian for beach,” Mr. Small responded as their train pulled slowly into the station.

  Ryder observed a large archway and a central avenue with busy people going in all directions. Miss Li led their group down a quartz colonnade toward another counter area. Running along the back wall were dozens of glass-fronted doorways that looked to be some sort of professional offices mixed with a few shops. At the front desk as they checked in, each member of the group except for Mr. Small and Miss Li was handed a packet. The package wasn’t particularly large, but was awkward to carry when combined with their other luggage.

  “We’re all on the 214th floor. I tried to get us higher, but with the fleet in port things are a bit crowded.” Miss Li seemed a bit disappointed. “The views from the floors above three hundred are wonderful. Let’s go unload the luggage, and then we’ll go up to the observation deck.”

  Ryder’s ears popped as they rose in a high speed elevator. A lengthy hallway that connected the long row or doors was on the inner face of the cliff. The entrance to the rooms was from the back of the building. He was not disappointed with his room. It was actually a suite. The suite included a sitting room with cushioned seating for six to ten people. The washroom was off the sitting room. It had the basic amenities plus a whirlpool. Further into the apartment was a narrow kitchenette, then the bedroom. The front of the suite was all darkened glass or quartz, from which he could see for miles.

  He still hadn’t started to unpack when he heard a buzzing noise. He searched the walls, dressers, and bed, but could not seem to locate the source of the sound. Finally, he realized the buzzing was coming from the packet he had received at the front desk. Opening the thick envelope and dumping the contents on the bed, he saw a small device about the size of a pebble. He picked it up and cautiously said, “Hello?”

  A tinny voice said, “Stick it in your rear.”

  “What!” he yelled back at the bug.

  “Stick it in your ear.” It sounded like Cynthia, so he complied. The earpiece had six tiny legs, reminding him of a small beetle. Putting the device in his ear made him jump. The six legs extended and attached themselves to the inner lining of his concha. Although it wasn’t painful, it certainly wasn’t what he had expected. Once the device was in his ear, the resonance stabilized and he could hear Cynthia clearly. “Are you coming?”

  “Oh, yeah! I’ll be right there.” He had forgotten they were going to meet in the foyer right after dumping their luggage. Joining the rest of the group in the hallway, they walked down the corridor about fifty yards, and then took the elevator to the observation deck.

  “Once we get to the top, we can go to any of the five floors immediately below the deck via escalators,” Mr. Small stated. “The best restaurant on Demeter is on the 445th floor.”

  Miss Li squeezed his arm hard. “Okay, the best restaurant is on the beach at Pearl Cove, but the best restaurant in Europe is on the 445th floor.” Turning to Miss Li, he added, “Happy?”

  Ryder had been to the observation deck of the Willis Tower in
Chicago, and had been to the top of the Arch in St Louis. He had been disappointed on both visits as the haze of industry or clouds or both had made the actual view much less dramatic than he had anticipated. Not so for the 448th floor of Europe. There was no haze today. Although the vista was still purplish to the view, he could see in the far distance pinpricks that he took to be islands. The still water was like a giant turquoise mirror. Looking to the left and right, he could see the farmlands that extended to the edge of his vision, ever bordered by the interior wall of huge mountains that went as high as his eye could see, curving off in the distance.

  “Up about another mile are the forests and orchards,” Mr. Small said, “and beyond that the rivers and some of the spectacular falls. Although even Yara,” he winked at Miss Li, “will agree that the best falls are at the other end of Demeter.”

  Ryder and his friends had arrived near the end of the day, and within half an hour the twilight changed to darkness. Artificial lights now peppered the beaches and, to a lesser extent, came from some structure or other in the farmlands. The more interesting lights to Ryder were beacons on the water itself. He envisioned sailing vessels taking him to distant ports of call. Then he realized that sailing would be problematic most of the time on the waters and wondered how the ships got around without wind.

  After dinner Ryder decided to see what else was in the packet he had received at the front desk and began sorting through the papers and smaller packages that were now spread over the top of his bed. He glanced at the instructions that showed how the beetle/phone worked. It picked up the vibrations from speaking and transmitted through the sending device, so a headset was not necessary. The instructions further explained how to contact others in the system by speaking their names. It gave him a speech routine to follow that could be completed in two or three minutes so that the beetle would understand the names of those he was trying to contact. In addition, the instructions boasted the ability to translate the known languages in the Orion Spur, the Sagittarian, and the Per-Sian arms of the galaxy. “Boy, if I’d had this on Earth, I wouldn’t have needed to learn Spanish.” He became excited as he considered the possibilities when he returned to Earth. That is, if they let me keep it, he thought.

  Ryder tried to call Debbie to make sure she was all right, but the connection didn’t seem to work. He then tried Cynthia, and she answered almost immediately.

  “So, you finally figured out how to use the bug?” she inquired. Ryder could feel her smiling. “And I’m the first person you tried to reach?”

  “Well, not exactly. I tried to reach Debbie, and this thing wouldn’t work. Do you know where she is?”

  “She’s right here. She was telling me about how you got yourself hung upside down in a tree last summer.” Cynthia laughed. “What name did you try when you called her?”

  “Debbie Ryder”

  “There’s your problem. It starts with formal names, so you should have said, ‘Deborah Ryder.’ You can program it for nicknames. The instructions are on page thirteen.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Ryder paused, giving the bug a chance to disconnect, then said, “Deborah Ryder.” Almost immediately Debbie responded. “Hey, knock off with telling stories about me and the tree!” he fumed.

  “How about the story of me teaching you how to ride a skateboard?” Debbie laughed.

  “No! Not that either. If you’re going to tell stories about me, tell her about some of the good things, not the stupid things.”

  “Like what?”

  “How about the time I carried you home piggyback when you were too tired to finish the hike?”

  “Did you really do that?” he heard another voice chime in.

  “Who’s that?” Ryder asked, sinking as he already knew.

  “Oh, that’s Cynthia. You never really hung up on her. You just added me to the call.” Debbie giggled.

  “I think I’m done for one evening. Good-bye.” He heard the system disconnect.

  Reviewing the instructions more carefully, he noted that he could say, “Good-bye, bye, over and out,” or anything else he wanted to program into the system to end a conversation. He could have as many as ten people on the line at a time, and that was only because this was the civilian, personal model. The business model was capable of carrying fifty people at one time, while the military model could carry over two hundred. However, the instructions warned, “It is strongly recommended that if you intend to conduct a large conference call, have people mute their lines when not speaking. Static and feedback can become a problem with more than three or four people on the call.”

  Ryder discovered a sealed cube with another set of instructions. The object was about the size of a small die from a board game. Ryder read that it could be held under one’s tongue while it dissolved. A small computer chip would latch on under the tongue and could be used to electronically transfer funds. The instructions suggested this as “the wallet of choice.” The sensors identified the person’s saliva, and the device could not be transferred or stolen once implanted. It could be dissolved with a simple seltzer rinse without any serious side effects. If he preferred, he could get a skin implant in any of several parts of his body. He decided to put the cube under his tongue. It dissolved in less than a minute. He could feel something under his tongue, and he had an urge to pick at it, but the sensation soon passed. Looking at the instructions again, he said, “Balance please.”

  “Savings or debit?”

  “Savings?”

  “There is a balance of one hundred credits. This will be increased by one hundred credits every ten days.” A somewhat tinny voice responded.

  “Debit?”

  “You have an opening balance of one thousand credits, which will be increased by one thousand credits every ten days.”

  “What can one thousand credits buy?” Ryder asked.

  “I’m sorry. I cannot answer that question. You may want to review the catalog and menu of your computer.”

  After several tries he was able to get a menu to activate. At the cafeteria, he could buy a meal for three or four credits. At the restaurant with the linen table cloths, prices were ten times that amount. “No wonder Miss Li didn’t want to take us there,” he said with a laugh.

  Ryder started rummaging through more materials on his bed. The tinny voice returned, making him jump. “Is there anything else we can do to serve you?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Ryder replied in an irritated voice.

  Among the papers and items that he perused on the bed, he came across a flat card about the size of his student ID card at home. The instructions that came with the card identified it as his new computer. “Boy, that’s smaller than a smart phone,” he said. But he soon discovered that he could expand or contract the screen to any size he wanted by sweeping or brushing his fingers across the surface. According to the instructions, the system could stretch to a wall-sized unit, although the pixilation would become somewhat distorted once the screen size exceeded fifty-six inches. He decided to see just how wide he could stretch the unit, and soon had it covering all of the open space on his floor. The instructions were right. The picture really began to distort after fifty-six inches. He was just looking over more of the instructions when the tinny voice from his bank chip returned.

  “Is there anything else we can do to serve you?”

  This was getting irritating. “No, I’m fine.” He thought a moment and then tentatively asked, “Good-bye?”

  “Good-bye, William Ryder. Feel free to call anytime.”

  Returning to the technical guide for his new computer, Ryder was surprised at how easy it was to follow the instructions. He learned that he also had a compact unit that operated remotely off the operating system. It could be inserted into his eye like a contact lens. He had no interest in sticking something in his eye, so he set the compact aside. Finally, about two hours before rising, he dozed off on the bed amongst his newfound treasures.

  Chapter 11:
The SPC

  Ryder awoke to the pestering sound of his sister’s voice in his ear. “Ryder, wake up. You’re late.” Then a little louder. “Ryder!” He jumped.

  “Dweeb, leave me alone.”

  “Oh good, you’re up. Hey, we’re having breakfast. You are supposed to be to your assignment in about thirty minutes. I’m off. I’ll see you this evening.”

  “Huh? What do you mean ‘assignment’? And where do you think you’re going?”

  “Becky and I are apprenticed to Joshua for the next few weeks. We need to be down to the terminal in a few minutes, and I’m on my way now. Didn’t you read your assignment last night?”

  Ryder realized as his head was starting to clear that he had not finished going through the contents of his package. He started rifling through more papers and materials, and finally found one entitled “Service assignment.” Scanning through the one page, official-looking document, he read that he was to report to the SPC on the 442nd floor. The paper gave a map of how to get there, going to the observation deck, then back into the mountain through the door that read “Authorized Personnel Only,” then to an elevator that would take him down to the 442nd floor. He was to report to Perthola Steerman, Director of SPC, at 0800 sharp. “That’s in twenty-five minutes,” he said, inhaling sharply.

  Ryder was still in his clothes from the previous day. He grabbed a clean shirt, raced into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and ran his fingers through his now wet hair. Guess that will do it, he thought. He grabbed two energy bars from the kitchenette, realizing this was starting to become a bad habit, especially as they didn’t taste that great, and raced out the door. He actually reached the entryway to the 442nd floor with one minute to spare. “Made it.” He sighed.

  The plaque next to the front door read “Strategic Planning Center.” He took a deep breath and walked in. Inside was a reception area with a young man no older than himself sitting at the desk.