Chapter 6

Roy finished an outline of his plan to assimilate her into his time. He fixed them a sandwich for lunch and had to teach her to eat a sandwich! She made several snide comments to the effect that eating food was very inefficient and wasteful. He was amazed that in her time people existed on pills she called nutrition capsules and he didn't even want to think about what they contained. They seemed to have a pill for everything.

After they had finished eating, he started to question her about how the women of her time took care of the everyday tasks such as hygiene, sleep, drinking water and everything that women in his time did. He found that when he explained to her how the people of today took showers or baths she told him that his way was very wasteful of water. In her time it only took about 15 seconds of water use to complete the daily hygiene regimen.

Drinking water was provided to each person in a monthly allotment. If a person used their allotment before the end of the month, they had to go to the water commission for re-education and an emergency allotment. After the second time, the person would only receive half of the daily allotment. She had never heard of anyone going back for a 1/3rd time. She told him that water usage on her space capsule was even more strictly controlled. There was impossible for her to overuse her water ration, as it was not available to her except at the scheduled time.

Hunger, anxiety, fear, and happiness could be adjusted or even eliminated by the proper pills. Most of the body's functions were checked in the home upon awakening and the computer would dispense the pill to adjust or correct the function that was deemed improper or malfunctioning.

He finally had to stop her. He couldn't stand it any more. What a horrible way to live!

"Thea, I think that with a couple of weeks intensive work we can prepare you to function in my world. I know we're backward when it comes to technology, but I think there are a lot of things about my world that are better. It would be like me going back to the 1400's and trying to get along. It would be rough but I could do it. I think that I could con the people of the 1400's into believing that I came from the 1400's. The main thing you'll have to realize is that you can't keep telling people that you know a better way and what they are doing is so backward. Remember, no giant leaps in technology. It's going to be hard for you. You'll just have to grit your teeth and put up with it."

She nodded, "But how do you travel? I haven't seen any sky transporters since I came to this backward place."

"We get around by cars, buses, airplanes and trains. We'll go over that later. That's my car outside."

She snickered, "Does it still run?"

"What do you mean does it still run? That's a 2003 Lincoln Navigator. It runs very well."

She could see that he was upset, "I'm sorry. On earth, people travel by sky transporters. We haven't had roads for 300 years. I remember that those automobiles had to be replaced because they polluted so much."

He snorted, "On earth? You are on earth remember?"

She got up and stomped into the living room and sat down in front of the television. Every so often she would change the channel. She found out how to increase the volume and ran it up to a level that was uncomfortable.

He went out on the porch and sat down in the rocker. This was a real mess. He knew that they both had to be careful or the government would pick her up and try to glean every bit of information that they could from her. Then they would use the knowledge for "changing the world for the better." It's amazing how petty government workers knew what was good for the world and the common people didn't.

It dawned on him that he was downing government workers and he was one of them. He was not ashamed that he worked for the government. He had done his job and had made a lot of contributions to the weapons programs that he had worked on. He knew of many that didn't. Many figured that their main job was to protect their job at all costs. Often a job grew way past what it was originally intended to be. The more professional ones finagled the job to where they became so entrenched that no one knew what their tasks really were or if the job was really needed. Often the main task of a government worker was generating paper to prove to the world that they were needed.