Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 17

1

Now that it looked like things were starting to settle down, Mark wanted to get some insight into how everyday life was for most citizens.

Angela suggested that everyone come to her home, since it was time she returned anyway.

She tapped a couple of icons on her wrist and ordered a lift. Liyana, Gyges and Maren opted to stay at the palace to plan the next steps, whereas Candy and Laruun volunteered to stay behind since they were going to return home anyway. Mark, Annabelle, Rayven, Solara, T'Soona, Elisha, Gerald and Angela were the only ones going.

The lift arrived and it looked very much like a shuttle, except no fold down wings, no tail fin and no ramp just two small doors that opened like a bus, with a bus-like sign above it with MARSBE displayed on it.

Inside there was no cockpit, just a U-shaped padded bench that wrapped around the vehicle and tinted windows all around, except for the back

Once they were in the lift, Angela's list of preset favourites popped up on the display, so she just selected 'HOME' and the lift rose off the ground and as it sped up it increased altitude, but because of the inertial dampeners you really didn't feel anything.

This was the first time ever experiencing a lift, so there was lots of questions about how the lift system worked and how safe was it, etc.

Angela explained, "Every location on the planet is addressed by parallels and meridians and the lift system uses the base lines as the routes. The north-south lines run north on odds and south on evens at an altitude of 750 metres. The east-west lines run east on odds and west on evens, but at an altitude of 700 metres. You change altitudes as you turn corners. The lifts travel at 1,000 km per hour, so it is going to take just over 2 hours to get to my home.

Then when you get within 10 km of your destination, you turn, decelerate and descend toward the surface and the lift will drop you off at the designated landing zone at those coordinates."

Because lifts flew, almost every building had entrances on both the ground level, for foot traffic, as well as on the roof where the lifts landed and departed. Lift rates were 0.01 credits per km, so it really didn't cost much to use the lift system and only the person that ordered the lift had to pay for it.

Atlanterra was slightly larger than Earth, but about the same distance from its sun, so the temperatures and climates were very similar to those on Earth. Each day was 25 hours and each year was 360 days. Its orbit was elliptical like Earth's, but the axial tilt was less, so the seasons were still noticeable, but the changes weren't as drastic.

There were snow covered poles, with mountains, oceans, rainforests, savannahs and semi arid deserts just like Earth. The population was distributed a lot like Earth, with the densest populations in the warmer temperature zones and closer to the shorelines and they thinned out as you went north or south or further inland from the oceans.

Everyone had the same level of technology. Houses were all self-sufficient for power, water, food and clothing. Then services like communications, medical, security and basic education were all free.

Wages weren't like what you see on Earth either, you could live a pretty full life on a few credits per hour so most people only worked part-time. Personal taxes were 10 credits per person per year, with 1 credit for your local community, 2 credits each going to municipal and federal governments and 5 credits for public services like education, medical and security. Taxes and service fees took care of any shortfalls. Business taxes were also 10 credits per year, but there was a sales tax.

Everybody could easily pay their tax bill, which left people with a lot of time to volunteer, do hobbies or participate in sports or other leisure activities.

Since all the communal meals were paid by donations, most people volunteered to work at least one meal each month, just to get a little extra spending credits. Then as you entered a community meal area, there was a couple of pedestals where people could stop and select the amount you wished to donate. It wasn't unusual for each volunteer to make 10 credits or more for working a single meal.

For many people, the meals were their unofficial jobs, but it meant that no one went hungry and anyone could make some credits, if they wanted... plus you got to know your neighbours.

Communal meal schedules and menus were posted near the venue itself, were breakfast from 7-9, lunch from 12-14 and supper from 18-20. That was something else Mark noticed, all clocks and times in the Federation did not use AM and PM. Angela said it was because every planet has a different rotation and it was just easier to use hourly numbers. Mark then noticed that his wrist now showed two times, the current time was large and his preferred time (the clock you live by) was shown smaller and up in the top corner. On the ship, your preferred time was the only one that was displayed.

Everything sold had a 2% tax on it, so any luxury items and activities you paid for were taxed, and since the government ran the monetary system, they kept a running total of each businesses sales and the taxes were withdrawn automatically with each transaction.

You didn't need to make much to live or survive, but you needed to have credits if you wanted to do anything fun, such as organized sports, vacations, restaurants, movies or even wear clothes that weren't synthed.

With such a low cost of living, personal credit and debt were outlawed. Only businesses with offices and employees could get loans, but businesses that lost money over the course of a year, had a government business specialist assigned to help get them back on track or to close the business down.

Buying a house was a one-time expense, there were rentals available from companies, but there were no mortgages. To buy a house you would visit the town hall to review the lots they had available. Once you decided on a lot and paid the deposit, they would upload the lot plan and design restrictions for that lot to a holocube. You would then hire an architect and they would either design a new building or upload one of their existing designs onto the holocube, as long as it met the design restrictions.

Once the design was finalized, you would then activate the holocube on the lot and neighbours would have a period of time to contest the construction with the elected community official. If there were no issues, then you would pay a government fee to have the design transferred to a construx, and they would then come and activate it and you could move in the next day.

If you ever wanted to make changes to your house, you would hire an architect, who would then request your original plans from the government and make the modifications. Once the modifications were approved by your elected official, the government would upload the changes, and your house would adjust itself.

The catch was you could only ever own one primary residence and one vacation residence at a time, only rental businesses could own multiple residences, but then you had to actively be renting the properties and show a profit, so you couldn't just setup a company so that you could own multiple houses.

If you ever wanted to move, there was a 1 week period where the two residences could both exist and then the old building would revert back to the original landscape, so there wasn't derelict old buildings around. Since houses were not bought and sold, like on Earth, and you couldn't have a mortgage, houses were not very expensive. So most people did own their own home within a year or two of graduating school. Also since transit was cheap and fast, people often opted for living where they had more room rather than the tighter

The cities and towns on Atlanterra were just like the ones on Earth, except more spread out and only some sports facilities were taller than two storeys. The only townhouse type developments were run by businesses and there was a limited number of those allowed in each community. The other difference was each neighbourhood had a community hall where communal meals were run by volunteers and paid for by donations. As such, many houses didn't actually have a kitchen in them, but most had a basic kitchenette.

Unlike Earth, where everything is built around driving, everything was built to follow the natural terrain. There was still a road network, and they often had small business sections where most shops were, but the roads were more or less just glorified bike paths, no powered vehicles. People got around by walking or riding bikes, skateboards or other non-powered transportation devices. The larger communities had an elevated rail transit system.

The biggest difference to Earth was the business hubs which floated on the oceans or large inland seas. This was where most of the entertainment and a lot of the commerce on the planet happened. They had office buildings, hotels, restaurants, bars, sports venues, event facilities, movie theatres and malls, but no residents.

During the day they were commerce hubs, in the evenings and nights they were entertainment hubs, these were where the professional sports leagues played.

Considering the ease of life with being able to automate most manufacturing, most jobs were assembling, sales and support along with research and development. Most people only worked 4 to 6 hours per day and almost every company used shifts to cover the daylight business hours and heavily relied on their online presence for sales and support.

With all the spare time, there were a lot of sports, leisure and activity companies. Golf courses, baseball diamonds and fields for all kinds of sports were everywhere.

People also didn't spend all day playing video games or watching TV and they didn't build stuff that would make people lazy, no moving sidewalks. There were escalators in some of the office buildings in the hubs, and there were hover elevators in a few of the taller buildings.

The trip to Angela's house, was very educational for everyone. It gave some real insight into some of the questions everyone had on their minds.

Life on Atlanterra was similar to Earth in most aspects, but very different in some. Work was work and everyone had to make credits somehow as there were no social assistance programs, but there was also no debt or credit cards. If you didn't have the credits in your account to buy something, you simply couldn't buy it.

Many people worked hard for a few years and then moved to part-time hours and lived a relaxed life taking care of their gardens or working on their hobbies. Almost everyone had a hobby or two, so they could make art, trinkets or whatever that they would sell at public markets, any monetary transfers, that were not declared as wages, were considered sales though and the taxes were collected.

Everyone needed to make enough each year to pay their taxes and that was about it. If you didn't pay your taxes, you had to do public service until your taxes were paid.

Angela's home was in a warmer climate than the palace, she had a beach house along one of the ocean shores, so there was a lot of humidity. The first thing Mark and Annabelle noted though was that even there, where there was more population, the air was still clean and clear.

The close proximity of the beach everyone was soon changed into bikinis and swimming trunks and running toward the water.

Everyone tried their hand at surfing, Angela rocked and Rayven and Elisha weren't too bad, but everyone else kind of sucked and just laid down on the boards. T'Soona however wasn't very fond of the water and just stayed on shore.

After a bit, Elisha and Gerald indicated they wanted to go explore the community and check out some of the shops, so they all went back to Angela's house and fixed some snacks, then everyone changed into street clothes and went off to explore the shops, leaving Mark, Annabelle, Rayven and Angela lounging around the swimming pool in her yard.

Mark went inside to use the washroom and when he came out, he found everyone else had decided to sunbathe nude. Needless to say, Mark's cock was instantly hard and the bulge in his swim trunks was almost painful, so he decided to join the crowd as he stripped off his trunks and laid down on his lounger. His cock pulsed as it tried to get harder, while the girls were staring at it.

Mark closed his eyes and tried to relax a bit, but Angela decided to take advantage of the situation as she got up from her lounger and straddled Mark's chair with her pussy in his face and began to stroke and suck on his cock.

Mark was obliged to lick her sweet bare pussy, tasting the salty wetness of the sea water mixed with her natural juices. Using his hands to spread her lips apart, allowing his tongue to dip deeper and extract more of her sweet nectar.

Angela was moaning around his cock as he expertly licked her to orgasm. As soon as her pussy stopped contracting around his tongue, she turned around and impaled herself on his cock. Mark could now see that Annabelle had laid her lounger down flat and Rayven was fucking Annabelle in missionary position.

Rayven soon came inside Annabelle and as she extracted her cock, she offered it to Angela to clean, which she happily did. Then Angela smiled at Mark as she got up, went over to Annabelle's chair and climbed atop Annabelle to lick the cum out of her pussy. Mark followed and Annabelle guided his cock into Angela's wet slit. Mark sank balls deep into her warm wet cunt as Annabelle massaged his balls and licked Angela's clit.

Annabelle's massaging and Angela's pulsing pussy, as she was going through another orgasm, prompted Mark to flood her pussy with his hot cum. Angela moaned deep from feeling him erupt inside of her and then gasped as her pussy was vacated when he extracted himself.

Mark stood there watching the erotic beauties 69ing on the lounger as his cum was seeping out of Angela's pussy and onto Annabelle's waiting tongue and he didn't see the look in Rayven's eyes as she pushed him backwards into the pool.

Annabelle and Angela laughed and proceeded to jump into the pool to join Mark, since there was a good likelihood that he was going to throw each of them into the pool also.

Eventually, everyone returned from exploring the shops and found the four of them sunbathing nude on the edge of the pool.

Gerald however wanted nothing to do with getting naked in public, so he said he was going to go watch the baseball game at the nearby high school. Everyone decided that was a good idea, so they got dressed and all went to the ballgame. There were volunteer student vendors selling drinks, hot dogs, snacks and souvenirs at the game, and all proceeds went to support the school.

Physical activity was a big part of Atlantean life, so most of the sports on Earth and other planets also existed on Atlanterra. There were a lot of free or almost free sporting activities for people to attend and due to the amount of time people could spend practicing or playing their sports, most of the sports, that Mark saw in the community, were quite competitive, making him wonder just how good the professional level sports were.

In order to make the competition fair between species, they often made changes to the equipment or rules to try and level the playing field. For example, since some species have clear advantages concerning strength or speed, all baseball games had a homerun limit, similar to most slo-pitch leagues. Each team got a limited number and once both teams reached their limit, they got one more each. If you were out of homers and hit one, it was an automatic out. Also, for many sports, all players had to run on two legs, so you could field species that could fly, but they couldn't use their wings, similarly you could field cat people in the outfield, but they had to run on two legs, which hindered their speed. Likewise, you could field a Tharkian, like Solara, but they could only wear one baseball glove and they could only catch the ball with their glove hand or the hand designated as their throwing hand. As you got to the most competitive and elite leagues, they often limited which species were allowed to compete.

There were hundreds of people watching the high school baseball game and people seemed to be pretty supportive of their local school teams. The game was quite competitive and the home team won, which capped off a good day in the community.

However as nightfall came, there wasn't enough room at Angela's house for all of them to sleep, so they checked in to a hotel near the school and Angela said she would meet them at the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

The next day, Angela met them for breakfast and asked Mark what was on his agenda for the day?

Mark indicated he wanted to visited some schools to see how the education system worked. Annabelle thought that was a great idea and asked to come along. Everyone else was going to go visit some of the other tourist attractions and maybe partake in a round of golf.

The first school they visited was an elementary school which went from grades 1 through 8. The first couple of grades were pretty much just like schools on Earth where the kids were learning to read, write and basic math. Then at grade 3 it started getting more advanced and by grade 8 they were already into algebra, quadratics and physics.

They then visited the high school, that had the baseball game last night, seeing grades 9 through 13 was like going back in time for Mark. Back when PhysEd was a required course and there were practical courses to help you in life... like budgeting, business development and management, marketing and courses like construction, cooking, mechanics, photography, art and basic engineering.

Of course, the equipment they got to use was state-of-the-art and safe. You didn't cut wood for instance, you designed your project using a computerized drafting type program, then uploaded your design into the mass fabricator and it would create all the individual pieces for you. You just assembled and finished, but the design portion was the most important. The same with mechanical engineering... design, upload, assemble, finish, but at least they were learning real-life skills and using their brains.

There wasn't any bullying or anything like that and all the kids were pretty serious and focused on learning. Mark saw why in one of the classes, if a student wasn't paying attention or not doing their work they got disciplined. What a novel concept... discipline! Something that's sorely lacking on Earth these days as we try to bubble wrap children, stifling their learning and taking away their competition by giving everyone a prize even if they don't win.

Otherwise school days looked pretty much like on Earth. One or two classes... recess... one or two classes... lunch break... one or two classes... recess... one or two classes... home time.

Another thing that was different for some of the subjects was the teaching system. All classes had an instructor and depending on the class size at least one teaching assistant. The teachers worked off the preset education curriculum, but unlike most Earth schools, they did school year-round, there was a week-long break spanning the spring and autumn equinox, and a two-week break spanning the summer and winter solstice, and every other Friday was what everyone called catch-up day. If the school was where they were supposed to be in the curriculum, it was an off-day, otherwise it was a catch-up day. If a student was really having problems, there were weekend classes and tutors.

All tests were online and were system wide on the same day. Which is why your school had to stick to the curriculum, but students couldn't cheat as the question numbers were randomized, so question 1 on your exam wasn't necessarily the same question 1 for the person next to you and the tests weren't multiple choice either. Apparently it wasn't that way on all planets, but that's the way it was on Atlanterra.