“Yes. If you don’t mind, you can sit with us as we explain 4GC to him, and then we will leave.”
I found Burt in Mike’s room, brought him down, and in 20 minutes he had signed on as well. He was as incredulous as I was. We went down the elevator and as we walked through the first floor of the building, Linda spoke to the robot that approached her. Burt and I put on headsets and signed out of the Terrafoam system with her. We walked about a quarter mile to a waiting bus.
When we got on, the bus was nearly full. It was easy to tell who was who. Every terrafoam resident was wearing a brown coverall like me, while all the escorts were dressed like rainbows. Everyone was looking through the catalogs and talking.
Linda and I sat down on one side. Burt and Cynthia sat down on the other, and the bus pulled away. Like everyone else I was looking through the catalog, reading and asking Linda questions during the whole drive. We were on the bus for about three hours, but it seemed to go by in 10 minutes.
This had all seemed something like a dream, but it started to become very real when we arrived at our destination. It was an immense airport, with dozens of jets waiting at the gates. There were dozens of buses dropping off passengers, and hundreds of people moving through the facility. Every jet was painted bright green and marked with a blue 4GC logo on the tail, and all of the buildings were painted the same way.
We got off the bus and it really hit me as we walked into the first part of the building. “This is our first stop,” said Linda. “We’ve got to get you out of those dreadful coveralls.” She and Cynthia guided Burt and me into a room on our right, which opened up into an immense store. It was filled with racks and racks of every conceivable kind of clothing.”
“Once you get to Australia, the way you order clothing will be nothing like this. But this is what you are used to right now, so it is easier. Let’s pick you out some decent clothes.”
Linda and Cynthia picked out clothes for Burt and me. The robot sized us, and we went to the dressing room and changed. Just that one thing — putting on real clothing for the first time in a year — made such an impact on me.
It was when we walked out of the store and got on the plane, however, that I knew for sure we were not in Kansas any more…
Chapter 6
Linda and Cynthia seemed to know exactly where we were going. We simply walked through the airport, then through a wide door with a large group of other people. It was as though we were heading into an auditorium, but instead we were on the plane.
This airplane was immense. It had to be able to hold a thousand people at least, and the entire cabin was appointed with the most opulent first class features I had ever encountered. Every seat was a recliner that was also able to fold out into a bed. They were arranged in pairs, 14 across at the point where we entered, and there were at least 5 other doors that I could see with people streaming in. Linda took us to a pair of seats and said, “This pair is for us. You take the far seat.” Cynthia and Burt sat in the next pair over.
There was something odd going on, so I asked Linda, “How did we get here?” Thinking back, I had realized something. There was not a single sign anywhere in the building. There were no announcements over any sort of PA system. Linda had never talked to anyone besides Cynthia, Burt and me. The seats did not even have numbers on them. Yet she had walked straight through the building, onto the plane, straight to our seats and we sat down. So did everyone else.
“That is one of the many things that you will learn during the orientation.” She said. “Now make yourself comfortable. It’s a bit of a flight.”
“Can I put my seat back?” I asked. I had seen that several other people had already turned their seats into beds.
“Sure.” She said. She did not touch anything, but the seat unfolded automatically and I had myself a very comfortable single-size bed. She opened a drawer and handed me a blanket.
I lay down, and I fell asleep immediately. It had been an incredibly long day…
I felt someone squeezing my hand as I came back to consciousness. I opened my mind, and then my eyes, and it took several seconds for things in my head to snap back into place so that I could realize what was going on.
We were still on the plane. Linda was still beside me, and she was the one squeezing my hand. I looked at her and she looked at me. My seat was raising itself slowly. All of that was normal. What was abnormal was the walls of the plane.
I had not really paid attention to it before, but this plane had no windows. Instead, the walls, ceiling and floor had turned completely transparent. Or so it seemed. I reached down and touched the floor and apparently it was some kind of screen. The entire interior of the plane was covered with this screen material, and it was displaying a view that made the plane appear transparent. Overhead there was a brilliant blue sky with a few puffy clouds. Beside us in the distance were other planes. Below was a remarkable city and we were flying right over it.
The scene was absolutely amazing. An entire section of the landscape was covered with the structure of the city, but it was entirely different from a U.S. city. In the U.S. there would be rows of buildings intersected by a grid of roads jammed with cars. Here the structure was designed with an entirely different intention. The amount of glass was the most impressive part. You could see huge glass bubbles with lakes and parks inside of them. Tall buildings that looked like apartment towers with an amazing variety of shapes sprouted everywhere through the glass.
Up ahead I could see the airport. It was immense, with dozens of planes parked next to terminal buildings. To the far right of it were several immensely tall black structures. With the plane transparent like it was, I could see how tall they were, and apparently they did not have tops. I asked Linda, and I was not the only one pointing to them.
“Those are the space elevators,” she said, “You can ride them if you want. They are just starting to be fully operational. There’s even an orbiting hotel and you can stay there for several days if you like. It’s a very popular spot for couples, but lots of people go simply for the novelty of it.”
“How can you have space elevators built and operational already? Last I heard they were still 50 years off in the U.S.” I asked.
“Things have slowed down a good bit in the U.S. I’m afraid.” She replied. “The economy retracted quite a bit when so many people ended up in Terrafoam. Then you have the combined problems of egos, politics and lawyers in the U.S. There are immensely rich people in the U.S., but they all seem to have large egos. They would rather compete and bash each other than cooperate. They are constantly suing one another. And none of them wants to have anything to do with taxes. With all that happening, it is very hard to get people together to work on big projects. It makes it much harder to innovate in the U.S. You will find that things are streamlined here, and we are innovating at an incredible pace. It’s all part of getting better and better.”
As if to illustrate her point, the plane was now landing vertically. There was no runway, nor any need for one. We settled next to the terminal building and the walls became opaque and normal once again. I suppose the walls could display anything, but they had become beige. The floor looked like polished marble.
We stepped out of the plane through the wide doors into the concourse with about a thousand other people from the flight, and walked a short distance. Here we stood in one of about 100 short lines. 100 “cars” would pull up, their overhead doors would flip open automatically, two or four people would get in, the doors would all close automatically, and those 100 cars would depart. A new set of 100 cars would arrive and the cycle would repeat. We stood in line for less than two minutes and we were on our way. Inside the car, Linda and I faced Burt and Cynthia sitting across from each other in very nice reclining seats not unlike those on the plane. The interior was roomy and well-lit, but there were no windows.