We had eggs Benedict and Canadian bacon for breakfast along with fresh ground Sumatran coffee, topped off with a big plate of biscuits and milk gravy. Any of them, with the possible exception of the coffee, would have been dangerous in the condition I was in since my retirement. The biscuits and gravy would have given my doctor a heart attack if I told him I ate them.
“So, this is all reconfigured energy and microscopic particles? It could be the stuff that was in my mouth, what I got rid of in the toilet, the water from the pool or my jockstrap?
“Any of those or some thoughts you sent out when you were dreaming, some cosmic dust that has been drifting for billions of years, some remains of a solar system that went nova, some dust that was kicked up when a meteor crashed a thousand parsecs from here. If you break things down enough and make them small enough, each particle is the same as every other particle. The cows defecated on the ground, it broke down and was absorbed by the earth and it fertilized the corn that another generation of cows ate. That milk in your cereal may have been a big dump taken by a mastodon a million years ago but it doesn’t matter. It’s milk, no matter what its origins.”
“I guess you could teach Earth a couple of things about recycling,” I said.
Gem snorted. “What you called recycling is what most societies would call graft and busywork. A way to keep a lot of people occupied producing nothing of any value while a few at the top got rich.”
“There are a lot of things on Earth that are like that.”
“I suppose you could look at the whole vid industry the same way. It’s just a little different game. Of course, if it wasn’t enjoyable, no one would play it and nobody would get rich. And you would be buried somewhere, having died of a heart attack alone in your living room a little over two weeks ago. So it does have some value.”
“I’m not going to complain. I’ve always believed that you only get out of life what you put into it.”
“A very admirable and rare philosophy and one of the reasons you’re here.”
“You mentioned that you have been observing me since I got my first VP appointment. How did that work? Did you go to Earth somehow?”
“No, nothing like that. We implanted a vid chip in you and you were transmitting just like you are now. Only, instead of billions of recipients, there were two.”
“Two?”
“There’s always a recording of any transmission, even if it is unlikely that it will ever be used. It’s a record that can be researched, used to convince the board of the potential I see. The other feed was to me.”
“So you kept tabs on me, huh?”
“It was a little more than tabs. I had a constant feed from the point you were made junior vice president until you retired, then probably 50-60% of the time until we got the dittos to pick you up. That was before the heart attack you were recovering from before the one that would have killed you hit.”
“So why the change when you got the dittos?”
“At that point it was considered unethical for me to get a feed from you because I was going to be your handler. I also needed the mental capacity I was devoting to observing you for researching what you should be trained in to make your stay on your new planet as entertaining as possible.”
“Entertaining?”
“Pretty much. What could we teach you so that the maximum number of subscriptions would occur? We decided that you needed to be better at surviving than most who are already on the planet and would need to be acceptable to the males and attractive to the females.”
“An alpha male.”
“Exactly. That’s what we’re going for. Bringing out some of your personality traits will take care of the acceptance by both sexes but there are things you need to know in order to survive on the planet and in the society and some things that you need to do so well that what you do will be looked upon as FM by the majority of the people.”
“I see. What’s the name of this planet?”
“The people who live on it have no concept of naming planets. They don’t believe they’re the only intelligent life and they don’t think anyone from elsewhere is a god but they don’t put much energy into thinking about other places. They call their whole planet Home. They do not speak Standard and their language is one of the thousands that you are conversant in.”
“What do you call the planet?”
“We gave up on naming planets eons ago. We have a unique series of numbers and letters for its star and it is that name followed by -5, since it’s the fifth body around that star. There’s no way that knowing the designation would be of any value but I can research what this particular one is, if you really want to know.”
“No, Home is just fine. Or ‘the planet I’m going to’. How many others have you observed like me?”
“Like you meaning beings who are similar to Jeffrey Thomas Henderson as a subject or the manner in which I observed you? Never mind, the answer to both is none. I started looking for potential subjects about 15 years before I discovered you. I probably sampled a couple of dozen but only three showed real potential as far as I was concerned. Two of those did fairly well; the third was a failure. He’s almost done with his contract but I don’t see him being renewed. I’ve observed several on and off since I heard about you but once I observed you for a few months, I knew I was never going to find a better subject.”
“You say you heard about me. Where? How?”
“One of the potentials I was observing was talking to a district supervisor from your company about an up and comer who was definitely going be heard from in the future. The way that man was talking, I could tell there was something special about you and I found out there was for sure when I started to observe you. I fell in love with you within the first three months and have been falling more and more in love ever since.”
“I don’t know what to say to you about that. I like you and I enjoy being with you but I don’t know you well enough to say I’m in love with you.”
“Jeff, I spent three months with you inside my head the majority of my waking hours before I came to that conclusion. It took some of that time for me to realize there was more to my feelings than being interested in a potential subject and the full three months for me to convince myself that what I was feeling was real. You’ve got to understand, we don’t fall in love. It’s been bred out of us. Oh, not scientifically by genetic manipulation or something similar, but our society has evolved into something where the concept of love is regarded as something primitives indulge in, like worshiping a group of gods that represent nature or going to battle over property. We hardly ever see each other in person, our procreation is accomplished by robots that select which egg should go with which sperm sample, based on a combination of genetics and what some committee feels is desirable in our population.”
“I think a couple of my ex-wives would have been happy to have their eggs harvested so they wouldn’t have to put up with being pregnant and raising children. Which reminds me, you said I had the traits to be attractive to women. I never had that much luck with them and those who were attracted to me, like my wives, caused so much heartache I would have been better off without them.”
“Jeff, I had you inside my head for the last two years of wife number two and all four of number three. I know for a fact that women were drawn to you and you ignored them because you were married. Any of the women you come in contact with in your new home will be anxious to get pregnant by you and carry and raise as many children as they can get you to provide. They will be women, too, not some hybrid man-woman that will snarl at you if you show it common courtesy and feels it should compete with you in all areas of life. These women will want to be taken care of and they’ll want to take care of you.”
“That sounds good. I’ve done plenty of the first but have gotten very little of the second.”
“I know. It’s amazing how one bitter woman who couldn’t attract a man if her life depended on it can ruin a society. Women’s liberation caused as much
strife as any other disgruntled minority member.”
“Things did get pretty bad there, at the end. I was afraid to talk to a female at work for fear of being sued.”
“That is not something you’re going to have to worry about in your new home.”
*********
Chapter Five
Time passed and before I knew it, three weeks had gone by. I woke up and Gem and I made love with an intensity that surprised me. She programmed a cleaning field and got us both cleaning wands for our mouths.
“Ready for breakfast?” I asked.
“No breakfast today. You’ve learned everything you need to know, Jeff, in weeks instead of the months that were planned. Your subs are consistently high and you’re ready to start your new life. Just enjoy yourself; don’t let anything deter you from what you know is right and you’ll do OK. And if you’re OK, your ratings will follow.”
“I guess this is it, then. I suppose I’m going to experience your immediate travel now.”
“Yes. The coordinates are already entered and all I need to do is press one key on the keypad. But first, I need you to kiss me goodbye.”
Our kiss was very emotional and I could feel Gem’s sadness. I kissed a tear away when we were finished.
“We’ll be able to get in touch with each other, won’t we?”
“I’ll be your number one full time subscriber; I have to be as your producer, so I’ll know it if you want to communicate with me. If I need to contact you, I will. I’m going to miss you, Jeffrey.”
I hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m going to miss you, too, Gem. God, I’ve learned so much from you.”
“Not as much as I have from you. You’ve given me back my humanity.”
Gem didn’t give me a chance to answer her, leaning over and pressing the final button. Our room vanished and I found myself standing in a meadow. I was naked save for a leather strap around my right bicep and the only things I had with me were a pouch and a sling. The pouch was a leather bag with a leather strap that went over my neck and across my body to position the pouch on my side at elbow height. It was presently empty.
The sling was made from a solid piece of leather and had a hole at one end, which was around my right wrist. There was a section about three inches wide and six inches long, then it formed a pouch large enough to hold a baseball. There was delicate stitching both around the wrist hole and the edge of the pouch, both to add strength and to hold their shape.
The sling was the main item used for hunting and defense in this world. I hesitate to call it a weapon because the people (they had no other name for themselves) did not war with each other. They used the sling to kill what they were going to eat and to protect themselves if something wanted to eat them.
They hadn’t evolved to the point where the leaders would send their children out to kill or be killed so that the leaders could have some coveted property. Any disputes were between two individuals. If it was two women, they would do the standard scratching and pulling of hair until one of them gave up. The men had a style of wrestling they used to settle disputes. If somebody fell wrong, there might be a broken arm, but both usually walked away, more often than not to sit down and share a cup or two of their homemade brew.
Men and women did not fight each other. It was accepted that they were different and both sexes were proud of their differences. If there was a male female dispute, one of them had to convince their mate to do battle with the other party. It was rare that that worked and there were usually some hurt feelings between the “wronged” party and the mate who didn’t think it was important enough to fight about for a day or two.
There was a chief who would listen to disputes and try to come up with a solution but it was far from law. The two people with the disagreement could follow the suggestion, do something completely different or settle it in front of their friends and neighbors. Gambling was a favorite pastime and when disputes arose, villagers dreamed of making a fortune from one of the infrequent fights.
The people married for life but that had a different meaning from what it was on Earth. Their medical knowledge consisted of which herb was best for a headache, stomach ache or labor pains. They could ease a fever but they didn’t have the wherewithal to take care of the infection that caused it. If it bled, they wrapped a skin around it and waited to see if the patient lived or died. They had no therapy for broken bones. Wild animal attacks, disease, falls – all these things caused the lifespan to shrink in a people who could live 175 years or more. When something they couldn’t remedy took a life, it was agreed that it was the will of one of their gods. They had gods for the weather, the land, the rivers, wind and the plant and animal kingdoms to name a few.
It was not unusual for a person to have multiple spouses, either because a mate had died or because the male could provide for more than one wife. Marriage was made by the couple stating they were married before the tribe and there was no provision for divorce.
The only use of clothing was in their mating customs. I was wearing a strap around my right bicep to indicate that I was single and was agreeable to finding a mate. Women wore theirs around their left biceps. Children were naked until they reached puberty, at which point the females would wear a loincloth and a wide band around the bust. Males would wear the loincloth and a skin that went over the left shoulder and left the right one bare. When they hit their fourteenth birthday, they would remove the tops and just wear the loincloths until they were married or reached fifteen and traded them in for arm straps.
Puberty, and the right to wear the clothes, was determined by the onset of menses in the females and the first liquid ejaculation in the males. The evidence would proudly be displayed to the village and then the new adult would get dressed in front of everybody. That evening, the grog would come out and the whole village would celebrate their new adult. The females would proudly wear their blood on their legs as a badge of honor until it wore off. If the males were lucky, they would have a wet dream and have the sleeping skins to prove it. Many a male didn’t think fast enough when he erupted all over the ground for the first time and had to do his best to scrape up the proof to justify his skins.
None of these traditions prevented anyone from covering up when the weather required it but that just consisted of a fur or other skin; you never saw one of the people wearing a pair of pants. The warm temperatures made covering up uncomfortable most of the time and even the rain was refreshing on the skin.
The idea that menstruation was a curse given to half the race by a vengeful god was unknown in this world. It was something to be celebrated. The women operated just as they did for the rest of the month, no cramps and no irritability, only the joy of being reminded they were women and were the only ones who could bring children into the world. These women had missed out on being told for thousands of years that they were responsible for the corruption of mankind and appeared to be thriving as a result.
I was familiar with this area, as I was the whole continent, part of my sleep training. There was a stream a half mile east of here, flowing southwest. I could turn left and hit it after five or six minutes of walking or I could continue straight ahead and come across it in a half hour. If I went straight, then turned right when I reached it and followed it for another ten minutes, I’d come upon the village.
Both the pouch and sling would pass for being native, but the stitching was so well done that they would garner attention. The leather had been treated with a combination of easily found plant materials that made it softer, more supple and longer lasting than what they were used to. They would be the equivalent of a hot car in my world, sucking in the admiration of males and females alike. Nobody on this world had thought to combine the juice from the three plants and soak leather in it, so teaching them how to do so would help my popularity. Add to that the fact that I was more accurate with the sling than the best hunter around and I was about to become a valued member of the village.
I searched around and
found some suitable rocks and put them in my pouch. One of them was sharp enough to use as a knife, at least for today’s purposes. Later, I would make myself a real knife, using technology superior to what was currently used. My knives would be sharper, stronger and last longer and would be another thing to make me valuable.
I started heading south. The sun was over my right shoulder, making it approximately 2 PM. It seemed like it should be earlier because I’d gotten up a little over an hour ago. I had been in two different places today, one not even in this universe, so it was silly of me to expect the times of day to match. Besides, the days and nights in the realm I had just left were what we chose them to be. The lights went out when we slept and it was daytime until we went back to sleep. Our ‘days’; were determined by our meals and our sleep. There was no sun, no moon, no stars and no clock on the microwave.
It was a gorgeous day, about 75 degrees with a slight breeze coming from in front of me. The sun was a bit redder than I was used to and the sky was slightly more purple. The clouds were white and the grass was green for the most part. There were some yellows and browns where it neared the end of its growth cycle. This part of the planet was in a temperate zone and the temperature varied from 60 to 95 degrees.
I spotted some movement ahead of me, a little to the right, 75 feet in front of me. I reached into my pouch, found a suitable stone and transferred it to my sling. I’d already knelt so that I would be covered by the grass from the bara’s point of view.
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