A Colony on Mars (33 page)

Soon there were enough hydro-electric plants in operation so that the nuclear plants could be once more shut down. There was actually traffic on the highways and freeways of the American West. Crops were ripening in the fields, grapes in the vineyards, fruit on the trees, Artonian fruits and vegetables were coming to market in abundance. Factories were reopening manufacturing everything from tooth paste to automobile tires. Clothing was being produced the old way, from cotton. America was once again becoming the land of milk and honey.

CHAPTER – Meanwhile on Mars and Arton

December 15, 2189: By the time the Dedov fleet arrived and made Mars orbit the people on those ships were pretty hungry and tired. They had been away from their homes for a long time. They had already been briefed as to what they would find on Mars. Even knowing what to expect they were still pleasantly surprised. Most of them were so thril ed to be on a stable planet with plenty of room and plenty of food that they voiced few complaints. It took the entire fleet two trips to Mars from Arton to evacuate all of the Dedovians who wanted to go to Mars. It took the four Earth ships three trips. The people arriving on Mars had also been briefed regarding the conditions on Earth. Almost one hundred thousand of them expressed a desire to move on to Earth. The ships that had brought them to Mars were continuing on to Earth so, after seeing Mars many elected to continue their journey on the ships once they had been provisioned. Meanwhile on Earth there were more than 150,000 people who liked what they had heard about Mars and requested that they be allowed to live there. The population of Mars was once again at two hundred thousand With so many space ships now at their disposal the Mars Runner was retired.

A Dedovian ship left Earth every Monday morning for Mars. A Dedovian ship would leave Mars every Friday evening for Earth. Passage was free for anyone who wanted to change residence or visit the other planet was welcome to do so.

One of the Arton ships left Mars every three months for Arton. People were also allowed free passage to and from Arton. Once Arton started receiving regular shipments from Mars big changes took place.. City's were springing up, stores and restaurants opened, corporations formed so that in time Arton bore a quite similar appearance to Earth. The natives of Arton were al owed to remain on the islands they had always lived on if they wanted to but they could board one of the merchant trade ships and get off at any island they chose. From any vantage point on any island you could see several nearby islands. Just as there were no continents on Arton there were really no Oceans either.

PART IV

THE NEW ORDER, After January 1, 2181

(How things worked on the newly resettled Earth)

CHAPTER – The Dedovian Religion

September 17, 2185: The last five years had been a tumultuous time on the Earth and on Mars. Both groups had new cultures to assimilate and new technologies to master. The races were so computable that a male from either race could father a child with a woman from the other race. On Earth there had been no effort to segregate people by race. Inter marriage was commonplace. December 25, 2185: As for religion, the human survivors had been limited at the time of the holocaust to Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists. On Dedov religion had not played as important role as it had played on Earth. Perhaps that is why the people of the planet Dedov did not share the violent past that Earth had. The people of Dedov were taught one religious concept as children which they retained throughout their lives. A Dedovian in conversation with an Earth native gave the following description of the Dedovian religion:

“God was the product of evolution that had occurred on a planet long ago and far away. The people of that planet had mastered the art of out of body experience. When their planet had run it's cycle, lost it's orbit and was plunged into its sun most of the population had left their physical bodies and stood helplessly by as they lost their planet. Not knowing what else to do and having no place to go these out of body beings merged into one being. And went in search of a new home planet. Once a planet had been found the being took stock of itself . The entity retained the spirits that had reached a state of perfection and cast out the others. That central perfect spirit that remained is what we think of as God.”

“The other spirits, the imperfect ones were to go to the new planet they had found and seek perfection. Once that perfection had been achieved they were told that they would be welcomed back to join that central spirit as perfect beings.”

“The imperfect ones not knowing how to go about this task of becoming perfect became bored and began to enter the physical bodies of the birds and animals that lived on that planet for a few minutes or hours or days in order to experience life in the physical flesh again for themselves. As time went by more and more of these errant ones became trapped in the physical body of some animal or bird. The central God seeing this said “This will not do, if these errant ones want to enter a physical being then I shal create a being that I approve of as the host animal. He chose a being that seemed to be at the top of the evolutionary ladder and seemed to have more intel igence than the other animals on the planet. God then told the errant spirits that this would be the only animal they would be allowed to enter. They could only enter the body of that animal as it drew it's first breath after leaving it's mothers womb. God also decreed that once a spirit had entered such a body that it must remain with that body until such time as that body was no longer capable of sustaining life. Once that body had succumb the spirit would be free to rejoin the other errant spirits. They could repeat this process as often as necessary until they succeeded in living a perfect life in the flesh. None of the errant spirits ever succeeded in doing this so they complained to God that it was impossible to lead a perfect life in the flesh, the test was unfair.”

“God then sent one of the perfect spirits from his central Godhead to the planet to enter a newborn body and live an explanatory perfect life to show the errant ones that it could be done. The life of this perfect one has been written about in history although he walked on Dedov more than a thousand Earth years ago. His life has been recorded for us to emulate. He has been known as the Son of God. Some of us stil try and be like him and lead a perfect life but others have given up trying and just enjoy the physical life that they have been given for the time that they have it. Some have had doubts that there ever was one who lived a perfect life. Yet others have come to believe that if they put their faith in him and beg him for mercy they wil be accepted into the Godhead when they leave their physical body.”

“None of us have any way of knowing whether this is true or not, we are taught that we must just accept it on faith. Once we make the decision to enter the physical body of a newborn child we are not able to recall our lives before that moment. When we depart that physical body it becomes impossible for us to communicate with those who remain in a physical body. Thus it is a matter for conjecture whether anyone has ever lived a perfect life on Dedov. It is also conjecture as to whether those who have put their belief in he who did live a perfect life has entitled any of us to return to the Godhead. There are endless conversations and disagreements on this subject. We, the people of Dedov are those errant spirits. There is now much controversy over whether or not us moving to other planets and interbreeding with non believers from other races wil have any effect on our eternal lives.”

Our definition of a perfect life is to be able to actually love the most despicable person you have ever met more than you love yourself. That does not mean to give lip service to the concept it means that you must actually feel that way deep down inside yourself. To my knowledge no one has ever succeeded in doing that but it is what we are all taught to continue to strive for.

“At any rate that is the substance or our religious beliefs in capsule form. I know that you Christians and Jews have a holey books that you read from and you attend meetings in churches, sometimes weekly and sometimes even more often than that. I am quite sure that your religion is far different from ours, though I have never read one of your holy books.”

“Our religious beliefs may not be as different as you might think Aglgd, Merry Christmas.”

CHAPTER – The new Government

The new Government that developed started with the issuing of credits and kind of evolved from there. As soon as the Government started issuing credits they found that certain kinds of skil s were becoming scarce because so many people with those skil s had left Government service, striking out on their own. In order to lure those people back to fil the hard to fil positions they started offering to pay some workers more than the basic thousand credits per month. Soon the thousand credits had just became the minimum wage. As the society grew and matured the need for skil ed workers in every field was realized. The most critical need was in the medical and technical fields. One of the first thing the new society had done was to start schools to provide children with a basic education. That natural y lead to starting colleges and Universities to provide those interested in special skil s the vehicle to acquire them. Once again Earth was forced into tapping into Mars for help. Mars had been running schools of higher education for centuries and some of their universities had developed rich traditions. Better than half the population of Mars had a col ege education. Mars sent teams of educators to start the Universities on Earth and to staff them. Mars was where most scientists had gravitated. In the early 23rd Century Mars was a far more sophisticated planet than Earth.

It was also an interesting phenomena that ever since the institution of free interplanetary travel Artonians had been flocking to Mars to complete their educations then returning to Arton to apply what they had been taught of Mars. The natives on the inner Islands of Arton were almost as developed as the Martians. Earth not only called out to Mars to help organize higher education but also to Arton. Artonian teachers and professors were highly sought after and were considered the best instructors because of their patients with the students and because their students were perceived to learn more in a shorter period of time.

The first major University to reopen was San Diego State University fol owed by UCLA, Cal Berkley and Stanford. When the law schools reopened everything went to hel . The court system had to be reestablished, then Police Departments had to be formed to feed the Court System. Civil law soon reared it's ugly head and lawyers proliferated, not only prosecutors, but the whole gambit of public defenders, private practice attorney's and public agencies for child care, mental hospitals and everything else that fed that system. Old law books were drug out and reprinted. The Constitution of The United States was revised. The voters approved the revised constitution. In the revised form there was no longer a representative form of Government but rather everyone voted on every issue. Anyone who wanted to introduce a bill could. New bil s were filtered through elected committees and eventually presented to voters who voted on them directly. A television station presented both the pro's and con's of every issue. People could sign on either their personal communicators or computers were required to give their password before voting on the issue. There was no Executive branch of government. The local committees were only paid a nominal sum for service to the community. There was a citizens committee that supervised the police but any split decisions called for a public vote. The members of the Supreme court ran for the office, anyone running for the office had to have the required number of years of service as judges in the court system. They had to take a written examination, an oral examination, a physical examination and a thorough background check. The results of these examinations were made available to the public, the public then voted on their favorite candidate. A judge was allowed to serve on the Supreme Court until some other judge challenged him for his position. Challengers would be allowed time to plead their case on public Television, fol owed by the Incumbents rebuttal. Then the public would vote on whether the challenger should be al owed to challenge the Incumbent or not. If the public voted to allow the challenge then the examinations took place. After the results of the examinations were known the public would either vote for the challenger or the Incumbent. Honest men of good faith and conscience were seldom challenged but a scoundrel would be ousted in no time. Most of the members of the Supreme court served for life or until they chose to retire. The concept of privately owned real property had never really caught on because there was so much of it. There were, however recording books at the local court house where a person could describe the property that he used for his personal residence. In the United States there were the old plat maps, lot numbers, addresses that could be referred to in giving an accurate description of the property. Each person was also allowed to record on one piece of recreational property. The size of any claim was limited to the amount of land required to make the property viable. If a person was running a thousand head of goats on a ranch he might claim that he needed ten thousand acres, but if he lived in a condominium complex he might only be al owed to claim his undivided interest in the complex and his personal interest in the unit he lived in. A person could claim anything they wanted to claim but if another person disagreed with that claim he could call for a hearing where the issue would be decided by a judge. Most people managed to work land use out between themselves and seldom was a hearing called for.

CHAPTER – The New Economy

So far the entire three planet system had been running without any real economic system for the last eighteen years. Everyone had just been too busy to give it much thought. They were trying to get things working again. There were few luxuries or special privileges to be had. Carl Marx would have loved it, the state of perfect communism. The problem with that was that as soon as al the pressing needs had been met people had a desire to acquire luxury items, jewelry, and special privileges that if made available to all wouldn't be luxurious or special. If a person wanted to have a splurge meal, there was no restaurant that served such meals. If a person wanted to give another an expensive special gift there was no place that manufactured such items and no store that sold them. If a person wanted to spend a week on a cruise ship seeing the sights there was no cruise ship. Everyone had tooth paste but it came in a generic tube labeled “tooth paste”. So far what exchanges that had taken place had been on the barter system. The planets need an economy. That set off a two year debate on how such an economy could and should work. On Mars, over the years they had dabbled in currency and an economy only to abandon it in times of turmoil and crisis. Once again the economy of Mars was working in a limited fashion. On Dedov they had a vibrant economy until the planet had faltered. On Earth before the disaster there had been a world economic structure so complicated that no one understood it. What they needed on the new Earth was a simple system that would allow people access to luxuries and special privileges that they had an opportunity to select for themselves. Private ownership of property didn't seem to be an issue with anyone on a planet that had formerly had enough real property to accommodate nine bil ion people but now was home to only four and a half million. No one wanted or needed private ownership of land. Everyone respected the place where another person wanted to live, if they didn't like it there were mil ions of other places to live. What these people needed was some kind of enticement to cause companies to produce a better product or induce a person to open an upscale restaurant. What they came up with was a computer program that started everyone out with the same amount of credits. The arbitrary number selected was ten thousand. Everyone had a cel phone that could access the system but only the individual that owned the credits could transfer a portion of them to someone else. Everyone that performed a job that benefited society in general would have an additional one thousand credits added to their account on the first of every month. If someone wanted something that cost more than the credits he had available he could borrow credits from someone else. The people all agreed that this could, in time, evolve into a good system so the majority was behind the idea.