I watched Micansen marry Felarnen, that Elder lady. She’ll live here, with him. They wouldn’t let him leave healers chambers, but they got a room in that hall for married folks.
People would go down there and I’d hear their bellsongs, and my face burned. When that happened, Ella and Becky, if they were in here, got red faces, too. But not one healer did! Just we three can hear it?
I’d get antsy to go run, but sometimes, I’d come back from a run exhausted, and still had high anxiety. Suma’s prog offered me strong-tasting candies as one strategy I could try. One of the sour and bitter ones worked well, which surprised me. Tasted awful, but my anxiety level went down.
Days passed where I’d take healers around, then Keiley woke up and we’d take a walk in that garden, and shared things. Sometimes he’d shake and his progs’d run, but he didn’t have any full-blown seizures. That got better. He was gradually awake more.
Finally, Wulai went in the festival with us. Oh, what fun! I was glad I waited until Keiley could come with me! Becky was in another meeting. Elsie came, Nespa came with Elsie, and even Ella. Farley had a great sense of humor. It was fun seeing Keiley with his friends! Yelena and Nathan came, Tom 2 and his lady, and Stacy with Het Paren, who looked much better. Becky’s sister and Os danced a while, then joined a musical group and she learned some more piano while playing duets with him. Her family made a choir and were very good!
We didn’t last long. Healers made the fellas lie in the nearest mud puddle when they so much as yawned, but everyone seemed happy to have a mud bath in the middle of a festival. Since we were near the musicians, we had entertainment and lots of yummy pastries.
I still felt awkward eating in front of people, but I watched their surface thoughts—so rude! But no one watched me eat. That helped a lot, to know people didn’t pay attention to me as I thought they did, all my life.
I realized, a lot of things just weren’t as hard. I still hid a lot of jumbled feelings, but guilt over eating a second pastry in a row wasn’t intense now. Trusted the progs more.
Keiley wasn’t as tense in his sleep here.
After a couple hours, healers decided to port us back, and I led a smaller group around to about a hundred more Esta Fahoans. The last hundred.
After that, I spent more time visiting with our Earthans. These days, it was more worry about their husbands than what they were going to study, or do for work. Or, people worried about relatives on Earth, who didn’t marry a Zheien. There are 35 worlds in Alb now!
“What can I do to make my brother leave Earth? Could you talk to her, the next time Gospenden visits her?” Kelly worked for someone on Escet Vu! How does he know about me?
I sighed. “I have relatives who won’t leave. There’s really nothing we can do. In that other future, people I knew were there when friends or relatives got snatched, and they still wouldn’t leave. A few did, and I was sorry it took that.” And, Keiley was too sick to stand visiting them, once they came. Felt bad that I couldn’t tell him how they fared in Rainbow. I didn’t know.
“Even after that, they wouldn’t come? How many people went to slavers? I didn’t see my future.” He shook his head and red curls flopped. He’s not much older than me.
I sighed. “In the other future, a billion people left Earth and a billion Elshars came, but I never saw any accurate estimates of how many became slaves. Maybe half of those who left, did. But they didn’t talk about how many were taken from Earth, or what proportion of the billion left unwillingly.” Politicians won’t talk about negative things. That didn’t change--
“But, with this tech, surely they knew how many people vanished!”
“You know how politics works on Earth. Nobody wants negative press. They couldn’t do anything about it, in the future I saw, because they didn’t agree to progs to track it! But the new treaties have provisions to prevent things. There won’t be any Merit Colonies because that’s how Earth lost a lot of people to slavers!”
“Merit Colonies? What’s that?”
“You know how public housing works, right? They gather poor people in one place to provide services. Except it doesn’t work. Too many people need public housing and never qualify, or they get there, and crime increases because of drugs. Now they build more mixed-income housing, but funding for that is hard to get, so most people at the lowest income end up homeless. But we don’t count them except once a year.
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“There’s a provision in both treaties to make Earth take care of poor people, and they showed how it’s profitable, because if people have their needs taken care of, they contribute to society.”
He frowned. “How can lazy bums contribute? Especially if they stay drunk!”
“Not all of them are addicts! But healers can cure addiction with vek ea. When people are given the option to take it, 90% do. The other 10%, 2% of them used it within the—oh, the Alliance Treaty passed today! That provision is one they accepted, so all people can get a healer for free. Look at this!”
I waved up stats between Wed and today, Monday, January 25th. “So, 92% of all Earth’s addicts are under a healer’s care, and already have tutors to help them learn new work. People who were homeless now have homes and half of those were working, even homeless, so the number of homeless working is 75% now, with another 15% seeing a tutor daily. They’re making an impact on Earth’s economy.”
Another graph showed that. Many people were working 3 jobs, and now they are only working at one, but still growing the economy. That shocked me! Unemployment also dropped, despite the number of people quitting jobs.
Kelly smiled. “Looks like life got better on Earth. I’m almost sorry we left, but I love it on Escet Vu. I’m in school myself to learn social work. I’ll be working on MarKu in their Earthan Colony—well, Earth MarKu—because that’s where most Earthans are coming. We also have a contract with Earthan Colonies to help new colonists adjust. They have the same deal as Alb does, but they don’t hire social workers. All of their workers are skilled trades, like mining or farming, or people with degrees in things like mining or research.”
“Will the miners have protections against mine poisons?”
“Sure will! They have research teams to make sure of that. Some of the research is because of progs you are running in Esta Faho. I spent half the day with Ms. Ella and Ms. Elsie learning about that, to reassure people on Columbia and Waf. Some of them saw their futures and worried, because in the other future, they had to trade hard to afford things, and some got poisoned on those worlds. Progs run to protect them, and that’s why they went there anyway. They saw how many colonists died there, and they want to prevent that.”
That made me feel good! In the other future, I was worried about so many deaths in our 50 colonies, and most of those were on Columbia and Waf. Twice as many on Waf because of the harsh conditions! But there was a lot of argument about slave trade there. The UN voted for no slave trade in any of Earth’s colonies, where they didn’t in the future I know. Slavers make a lot of false promises. It’s good to know they are running the same progs we enjoy here, on Earth and all her colonies besides the ones on Alb.
It shocked me how picky Earthan Colonies is! Alb takes anyone, but you need high skills to be accepted in any of the Earthan Colonies. No disabled or elderly people? The age cutoff is 35 there.
But he and a lot of others are here to learn about mine poisons from Ella and Elsie. Not the other programmers?
“Oh, I talked to Peh Ras, King Challet’s prog instructor. He taught me a lot, but he told me Ms. Ella knows a lot more than he does. She discovered that combinations of substances that aren’t poisonous alone, are in combination with others. And, she designed a new kind of hazmat suit that all of Diplomatic Service is using on their teams! How can an Earthan be better at this than a Zheien? Peh Ras is the 2nd best prog instructor in Alb, and Be~saech Of Ye~ is the best, and both of them said Ella is better at this than they are!”
I shrugged. “Maybe she just had a different approach.”
We looked at trading. Sure enough, Earth was trading a lot of things as a whole, and Alb was making a lot of trade from the relatively few Earthans here. My items were already gone and still trading, and I had 82,000trade already! It’s only noon, so it can trade a lot before sunset here! Other Earthans had similar balances, most not as high as mine. Ray Green had four times that. But her husband Asha’s the top trader for King Challet.
The Earthan Colonies were sitting pretty, too. That trade bal made them able to give their workers more protections and injuries went down. More healers came to work in them. Housing improved. So did Security and a dozen other headings.
Earth also improved conditions for all Earth’s people. No one was starving or homeless since Wednesday, but productivity improved drastically among workers, and they had increases in health and mental health as the biggest reason for that. In 5 days, they proved that Merit Colonies with all their rules and restrictions didn’t work. In this future, Becky wouldn’t have died of cancer. Maybe all the people I knew wouldn’t have died--
But, a list came up of my missing relatives. Of 569 people, 32 were already missing. Another list of 159 showed families moving to worlds of Alb, but not here. Some were related to me and some were my friends and friends of my relatives. I’m happy they are coming, but 32 missing in 5 days? That depressed me. Even with all the changes?
“Yeah, I’m looking at a list of mine, and 13 are missing. At least my brother’s not on it. Yet. Thanks for talking to me. My cousin’s here! Gotta go, but thanks!” He ported away.
Another Earthan’s holo came up. “Hey, I’m Roberto Gonzales, and I live on Hearrh. Have you got time? I’m worried about my relatives.”
“Sure! I have time.” He ported to me, and I repeated most of what I told Kelly to him and 16 others in succession, from all over Alb!
I went back to healers chambers worried, but everyone was crying! Galarsmen had a stroke!