Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 53

It could generate various toys besides bottles, diapers, wipes, clothes and had a water and snack dispenser. There was even a diaper change button that would raise the hover cart to the height of whoever had the clip and remove one side.

It was incredible and would free up Annabelle to do other activities. It made Mark immensely happy as well, since he had been feeling bad about always leaving Annabelle and the others caring for Joseph.

As they placed Joseph into the playpen, all the gadgets and gizmos to play with instantly enthralled him. That was when Cricket pointed out, "The saucer has a force field that will prevent the child from throwing anything out onto the ground, but will also protect the child from the sun, rain, and even wind. The saucer will follow whoever has the detachable clip. It'll follow fairly close, but if you click the button, the carrier will stay where it is, but will alert you if the carrier gets too far away from your person."

Mark explained the features of the saucer to Annabelle, who just attached the clip to her pants, smiled and started walking away. Mark followed her and the playpen followed them by a couple of metres.

Upon returning to the group, Ra'ki and Rayven were checking out Joseph's new ride. He was happy with all his new toys and his own play space.

The putting green, chipping green, and driving range were all technologically enhanced. Practice balls were free and when you hit it down the driving range, it would tell you how far you hit it, then the balls would simply disintegrate after they stopped moving for 30 seconds or if they went into a cup, the material recycling itself to make more practice balls. The same with the chipping and putting greens, the practice balls just kept recycling into more practice balls.

Now that everyone had their clubs, Mark then led them over to the driving range and showed them how to tee up and hit a ball. There was a tee and practice ball dispenser, and as one item dispensed, a replacement appeared. Mark then teed up the ball and settled into his shot. Annabelle was explaining everything he was doing and why.

Mark started with his 3 Wood, and then hit a few other clubs as Annabelle explained, "The various clubs had different angles on the clubhead. The larger the angle, the more loft you get and the less distance the ball will travel."

Mark then pulled out his 1 Wood, informing everyone that the club was called a driver, and tried a shot. He didn't hit it square, and the ball hooked off way out of bounds, prompting Annabelle to joke, "If you're ever in a lightning storm, hold your driver in the air, because even Mother Nature can't hit a driver!"

The newcomers tried to hit the ball, mimicking what they had just seen Mark do. With barely any coaching, they were soon hitting the balls decently. They then showed them the chipping green and practice green, just so they got the basics of using those clubs.

Eventually Edward commented, "I see what you mean by, 'it's easy to do, but it can take years to get any good at it.'"

Mark told him, "The trick is consistency! Work on your swing and try to swing the same way every time. Use the different angles of the clubs to control how far the ball goes."

He then looked at his watch. "It's getting late, so I doubt we can get more than a few holes in. Why don't we all break into foursomes and take carts to different holes? I think we should only play 3 holes today. Maybe we can come back for a full round tomorrow?"

Mark and Annabelle paired up with Edward and Elizabeth, while Jonah and Rebecca paired up with Liyana and Maren and headed off to hole 2, while everyone else split up into foursomes and took off down the fairways toward other holes.

Edward and Elizabeth didn't do too badly and seemed to enjoy themselves. Edward said he could see the attraction to the game. It was scenic, there was a challenge to it, yet there was friendly conversation as well.

During the few holes they did, they talked about lots of things. Mainly about how to get golf courses started in other locations and other businesses and jobs. Then about how to market themselves to improve their economy. In the end, Mark suggested, "With the simple structures that currently were on the island, it shouldn't take very long to get everyone updated to the type of houses that the people of Hope are getting. Then, with such a beautiful island, we need to set up lots of golf courses and other entertainment venues. Also, because of the extreme terrain, this island could have some excellent hiking and backpacking trails. The island has a lot going for it."

As they finished their third hole, they made their way back to the clubhouse, just as everyone else was returning. It surprised them to find some villagers at the driving range and practice greens. They stopped and coached some villagers while waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Once everyone had returned to the clubhouse area, they soon started following the winding path through the trees and past the waterfall toward the village. As they emerged from the forest, Hans came to greet them as one of the younger women shouted that supper would be ready in 10 minutes, then started down the path to the golf course to tell the residents there.

Hans repeatedly thanked Mark for building their village and insisted that they stay for their first community supper at their outreach centre.

They accepted his invite and as the rest of the villagers gravitated toward the outreach centre, they all stopped to thank Mark and Annabelle for their new homes and their new village.

During the meal, Hans and his wife brought up what everyone could do now that they didn't have to care for animals or their gardens.

Mark replied, "As a gift, you now have a golf course business that needs to be run, so you'll need bartenders, cooks and servers for the restaurant, people to staff the pro shop and booking tee times, plus you'll need to staff the beverage carts. It will take a while for the business to really pickup, and I suspect with a beautiful community such as this, you'll soon find the community growing."

Annabelle then added, "This valley is so picturesque that I think you should build yourselves a hotel so that visitors can rent rooms and stay here for a few days and then scout out some good hiking trails and maybe even setup a bait and tackle shop, I'm not sure what fish are in the lake, but I'm sure they're probably good eating and enjoyable to catch."

Mark said, "Once we get every community a bit more modernized, we can advertise all the amenities of this island to the rest of the Federation. People will come and visit. Golf is a very popular activity as is hiking, trekking and fishing.

With the hyperspace gates and the ability to travel almost instantly to other federated planets, tourism is at an all-time high on every planet. Believe me, you'll soon find yourselves busy."

Hans asked, "So how do we go about building additional things for our community?"

Mark tried to explain how things worked. "The municipal planning section in the computer system will grow in complexity as the population of your municipality increases. There are many pre-designed amenities, such as sports fields, transit stations, street lights, benches, washrooms, boat docks, bridges and basic residential buildings, like what we built for you already, just so that there is never any homeless in the community. It will take a bit of learning about the process, and hopefully we'll soon have some architects on the island. To build anything other than the basic residence, it must go through the proper building processes involving architects and any applicable contest periods."

They finished the meal and after showing Edward and Elizabeth their new houses; they left the residents to their community and called for a lift to return to Federation City.

On the ride back, Edward asked if all residents were going to get houses like Hope had.

Mark said, "It's trickier in an established community, but the first step will be to convert all the pathways. That will immediately clean up the community by significantly reducing the dust in the air. Plus, the pathways allow the outreach centre to communicate with everything. I can't remember the process, but I think all residents would need to bring anything they wish to keep out onto the pathway, then their residence would reconstruct and they could move their belongings back inside."

It again only took a few minutes until they were setting down atop the outreach centre in Federation City; a quick look around from the roof revealed most of the paths around the community had already been converted to what looked like brown aggregate stone pathways.

There were lights along the paths that lit up as dusk settled in. Tomorrow would be a busy day upgrading the community.

Settling into their temporary residence in the outreach centre, Rayven asked, "Isn't the new ship ready? It would be more comfortable up there."

Mark agreed. "Yes, it is ready. Maybe tomorrow night we'll move into the new ship. Which reminds me, we still need to come up with a name for it. Cricket and I already decided on Nereid-class, so I'm thinking maybe we could use the name of a Nereid. There are 50 names to choose from."

After a minute, he added, "Although I kind of like staying on the surface. It doesn't disrupt my internal clock as much, plus it puts us closer to the people."

Annabelle cuddled him. "Yes, but they're on the path to recovery now. They've officially joined the Federation, they're using the outreach centres and they've got proper pathways. The space station is operational, so the mayors all have support. It's time we step back."