Chapter 7: Distant Borders

With lunch over, and the cleanup accomplished, everyone turned to me expectantly.

"Okay, we're going to get a look at what our sensor platforms have to tell us, but let's meet back here in fifteen minutes. That'll give everyone time to get washed up, brush their teeth, the usual. Meet us in the main dining room."

We all got together in the dining room at the designated time. I had everyone take a seat.

"Ava?" I asked out loud.

"Yes Dave?" a silky smooth female voice said from nowhere.

"Opaque the windows, please."

"Yes, Dave." Came the reply. At the same time the floor to ceiling windows instantly went opaque.

"Legionnaires, I'd like to introduce you to Ava. Her name is a Con-inspired abbreviation of 'Audio Visual Assistant.' She can be called for in any room in the house. Lights off, and bring up the main display Ava, no responses required."

The lights went out and were replaced by a glowing holographic display in the center of the table.

"Con is actually going to control what we see from here on. Go ahead Con."

The display changed to show a slowly rotating globe, full of familiar continents and seas, mountains and deserts.

"This is Meadow. The image you are seeing is a composite integration of still images from the entire high orbit network. We, of course, are here."

As he said this a glowing red dot appeared on the western edge of what those of us from Earth would be calling North America.

"Now we're going to overlay all detected electromagnetic energy sources detected." The map remained unchanged as we watched it through an entire rotation.

"Now we're going to overlay all detected sources of industrial output, including high heat sources and pollution." Again the map remained unchanged.

"Now we're going to add the output of what we call our 'bronze age' filter. This filter looks for low level energy and particulate output, the patchwork visual effect that you get from farming large areas, and infrared concentrations that would indicate large, concentrated groups of warm blooded animals, human or otherwise."

We saw a few fuzzy red blobs in the North American Plains, but the rest of North and South America was unchanged. Europe, Africa and Asia however changed dramatically.

"Wow!" I said. I heard it echoed around the table.

"Con, can we get one of the low level platforms to give us a visual on one of the sources on this continent?" I heard Chet ask. "I think I know what those are, but I'd like some visual confirmation."

"Certainly Chet. I'm tapping in to the nearest platform now." After a few seconds, the display suddenly changed, and we now seemed to be floating above a sea of rough, hairy backs and shoulders."

"Buffalo." Chet said. "Buffalo like we thought could never be seen again."

"Pan out slowly Con, lets see the whole herd." I said.

"Our field of view slowly expanded. We were seeing miles of buffalo, thousands and thousands of them.

"Wow!" Someone said again. We watched silently for a while as a living sea of brown moved slowly past our view.

"These creatures, in such vast numbers managed to trigger one of the filter parameters." Con said. "Lets go back to the global view."

The display in front of us flipped back to displaying the entire globe.

"It looks like we've got our choice of places throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. Its indicative of something that we see no signs of anything triggering our filters in any location separated by water from the European/African/Asian landmass."

"I've always wanted to see Rome." Alicia commented.

"Works for me." I said. "Con?"

"lets overlay this globe with a geo-political map of Earth." Con said, and as he spoke, the continents were suddenly outlined in what we all thought of as the traditional map features of Earth's countries and cities.

We saw many, but not all of the concentrations of red dots were in the same locations as cities on our Earth.

"Towns and cities usually formed near rivers, lakes, where trade routes intersected or near valuable resources, such as wood, coal, clay, salt, tin or other resources." Mike said. "It makes sense that some of the cities would be in the same spots. The same favorable conditions exist in both places."

"Oh, look at Sicily!" Felicia said suddenly. "Its the first time we've seen red dots on an island."

"Makes sense when you think about it." Cyrus added. "Assuming these people have boats of any kind, they would wind up on the islands close enough to see from the mainland. Even if all that happened was that they got blown there by the wind and the tide.

"Lets not speculate too much in advance of actual knowledge. Lets go see Rome!" I said.

The display switched smoothly to a still shot of an area of small buildings and roads.

"Can we get live video from this platform?" Arden asked.

"I'm sorry Arden" Con said. "What we have been looking at from Europe so far are still images captured during the daylight hours. It is approximately 10:30 pm in Rome at this time."

We spent another hour checking the still pictures that had been taken of other places. Paris, Athens, Cairo, Barcelona and Madrid, We checked the fertile crescent and all around the Mediterranean. We checked spots in Africa and Asia and they were all the same. In fact they were more the same than they were on Earth!

Meadow, based at least on our very unscientific sample, had far less ethnic divergence than Earth. The people here were very similar wherever they were. The Asiatic epicanthal fold did not exist. There were no negroid characteristics in Africa or elsewhere. Nor were there Blond, blue-eyed tribes in northern Europe. The slightly dusky, 'olive-skinned' Mediterranean skin tone seemed prevalent everywhere, and most people had black or brown hair and brown eyes.

"If we ever find ourselves with trained cultural anthropologists and geneticists and archaeologists and the like that we can bring to Meadow, and leave them to study. We might, several generations down the line, get some true understanding of the how and why of Meadow's differences. Until then, we at least know that the western hemisphere is free to settle." I said.

"Are we going to study these people in the meantime?" Learn their language?" Ginny asked.

"Until we can get audio, and arrange to compare what we pick up from a variety of locations, we don't know how many languages we might be dealing with. There could be a single language with tons of local dialects, or their could be distinct languages all over the place, just like Earth. Even if we're lucky, and we discover they share a single language, to match their physical similarities, how easy it would be to learn it is an unknown. Lets table that thought for now."

"Speaking of tables." Eru said. " A reliable source tells me we have Dave's parents coming for dinner tonight at 7, and since I'm cooking the main course, I'd like to spend the rest of the afternoon preparing."

"I know Mom is bringing the salad." I said to him. "Is there anything you don't have that I could get to make things go better?"

"Road trip!" Ginny called.

When the dust settled, Ginny, Eru and I were going to get in a little shopping, Cyrus and Felicia were going to stay home to 'rest' and Arden, Alicia, Mike, Chet, Fred and Con were going to take the cruiser for a little 'tour'.

"Con, keep it in this hemisphere, and I'm making you responsible for getting them and the cruiser back in time to get cleaned up for dinner. Got it?"

Con obviously got it, because he answered with a reluctant "Yes, Mom!!!" With a dead perfect teenager tone of disgust while drawing Mom into a two syllable word.

When the laughter died down, the cruiser contingent left, and I stood with Ginny and Eru. I decided to do it the safe way, and jumped us into my bedroom at Mom and Dad's house.

When we came down the stairs, we were surprised to discover Ginny's Mom and mine sitting in the kitchen. After Ginny and I had given both of our Mom's hugs and kisses, and I explained that we were making a quick trip to the Save Mart to pick up a few odds and ends for dinner tonight, we discovered that our Mom's had gotten together to discuss starting to make plans for our wedding. They pressed us on setting a date, and Ginny and I looked at each other.

"July 23rd." We both said at the same time. It was that day, after my first trip to the ledge, when I'd brought my first rock samples into her Dad's store and we had our first real Dave and Ginny conversation. That was less than two months away, so I'm sure we'd hear arguments against it after they'd had time to think about it.

We took off for the Save Mart in Ginny's GTO. She really hadn't had a chance to drive it much at all since she'd gotten it, and who could deny her?

The Angel's Camp Save Mart was not what you would call a high-end grocery, but it was pretty good. The manager took pride in her offerings and her staff, and with the tourist season almost set to kick into full swing with the approaching Memorial Holiday weekend, everything was primed and ready.

"Ahh, Ginny, if I'd had this!" Eru said when he saw the lamb chops on display in the butchers counter. "We would be having real 'Phrae Duciet' tonight! This is excellent lamb!"

It was vegetables, herbs and spices we were after though, and we quickly moved on through the store, acquiring what we needed. Ginny had not been happy with the dessert options back on Meadow either, so when we got to the ice cream freezer she quickly scrapped whatever plans she had and grabbed a half gallon of Vanilla Ice Cream and some cinnamon sticks, saying she had a half dozen ripe pears at the house that would be overripe and unfit in a day or two.

We took our bag and headed home. We saw neither of our mom's as we headed up the stairs, and once at the top of the stairs I jumped us all through without bothering to go into my room.

While Ginny and Eru quickly got busy in the kitchen, I went upstairs and changed for dinner, then decided to head back to the library and spend a little time with the sensor platforms, poking my nose in here and there.

I closed the library door behind me and sat in the big overstuffed chair.

"Hello Ava."

"Hello Dave."

"Opaque the windows and dim the lights, please."

"Yes Dave."

"Bring up the planetary survey system please Ava."

The global display popped into the air in front of Dave.

"List available control options, Ava."

"Dave, your options are verbal command, and holographic control overlay."

"Give me the Holographic overlay please."

with a slightly glowing representation of the familiar controls of an Observer station hovering chest high in front of me, I quickly sorted through the views until I hit daylight. Early morning was just starting to wash across the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus Strait.

I called up the 'bronze age' overlay that had given us such good information earlier, and used it to key in on what was probably the local equivalent of Istanbul. I pulled the nearest low orbit platform over to the area and switched to close-in video.

For the next hour I watched an old man guiding two young boys as they cast their nets into the Bosphorus. The mundane activity seemed so compelling, the three people I watched so alive. In the end I started to feel a little like a voyeur.