Chapter 38: Tilling the Ground

"Sorry, sorry, ohmygod I'm so sorry," a flustered Mandy Ball frantically apologized as she backed out rather quickly from the family dining room – only to cannonade into her boyfriend Bob Crittendon. They had just returned from meeting friends at the neighbourhood coffee house. She was right now desperately wishing she was back there and the gang hadn't broken up.

"What is it?" demanded Bob, mystified.

"Don't ... just don't go in there," Mandy instructed, pointing in a general direction toward the door she'd just exited. "Just ... don't."

"Ooookaaay..."

"I did NOT need to see that." Mandy's eyes were still focused on the floor.

"See what?"

"That." She gesticulated at the door again. "Just ... don't. Don't go in there."

"Amanda Dorothy Ball, get in here. And bring Bob with you," commanded the imperial voice of her mother Linda from the dining room that Mandy had mysteriously declared out-of-bounds.

"It can't be that bad..." Bob assured her, and placing one arm over her shoulder, steered the horrified girl back into the dining room.

"Or maybe not," he muttered as he looked at the tableau presented inside. "Hello, Mrs. Ball. You're looking ... ah... well ... this morning."

"I'm feeling well, thank you. And yourself?"

"I'm ... I'm doing alright. Ah, are you aware ... ah, did you know ... that you're ... wearing ... nothing?" the disconcerted teen told the older woman's breasts. He remembered what the Spican broadcasts had to say about naturist etiquette, and with a mighty effort heaved his eyes northward to lock onto the eyes of his girlfriend's mother. She had pretty eyes, he decided, just like her daughter's, as he frantically tried to take his mind off her chest. Although he'd seen Spican female medics and lots of coverage of life in Spica, this was still his first live close-up encounter with uncovered female breasts, and seeing them so unexpectedly was like a hit to the solar plexus. He and Mandy had not gotten that far along in their relationship yet for him to have seen her even topless. Speaking of Mandy – he shot her a look. She was desperately trying not to break down completely, and staring at a piece of artwork standing in the corner behind him.

As he looked around him, Bob was mistily aware that there were other people around the large dining room table. Like Linda, the three women and four men were nude. One couple was considerably older, grey-haired and smiling at him with the wisdom of the ages.

"Why don't the two of you have a seat?" Linda suggested with saccharine sweetness.

"Uh, sure," stumbled Bob, still in shock.

Mandy was still an unwilling participant. "Yes, why don't we ... down at the pub..."

"Oh, we can't do that," responded the eldest male, calm as milk. "They don't allow public nudity yet."

"Yet?" Linda squeaked.

"Hopefully in a couple of weeks."

"Weeks?" Mandy breathed. Her mother said weeks. Not months. Weeks. Mandy's head began to swim.

"Yes." Linda introduced her seven table-mates. Bob recognized one as the number two member of her political party, the Liberal Reform, four others as the top pair in each of their parties. "We're discussing adding a naturist plebiscite to the election they're holding in two weeks."

Naturist? "You mean the planet would go nude? Like Spica?" Bob asked, curious.

"Exactly," one of the other men nodded.

"Bob," Mandy whispered, "my mother has lost what little is left of her demented little mind. We need to get her a good psychiatrist."

"All our medical care comes from Spica," Bob reluctantly reminded his frantic girlfriend. "A Spican psychiatrist will take one look at your naked mother and one look at the clothed you, and decide YOU'RE the one who needs treatment." He took an iron grip on her hand and steered her to one of the four remaining chairs around the glass topped table. "Let's just sit down and hear them out before we decide to lock them away for their own safety, shall we?"

Mandy allowed him to guide her to a chair like she was a puppet on a string. She noted gratefully that the chair he sat her in placed her not next to any of the naked males but between him and the elderly female, who reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

Mandy did not feel terribly reassured.

Linda addressed Bob and Mandy directly. "After The Battle, we realized that our society is broken, and needs to be rebuilt. The First Families were wasting a tremendous amount of human potential, they'd driven off the best non-First Family settlers and tried to kill them, they were successful in making women feel like second-class citizens. In short, the society was sick and getting sicker. We now need a shock treatment to wipe out the era of the First Families, and what better way to do so than in an immediately visible shock to the eye. In other words, naturism."

"Yes, I can see how that would be a shock. It certainly is to Mandy." He shot her as sympathetic a look as he could. She shot daggers back.

"And we're hoping that if we combine educational reforms and societal reforms together, we can rebuild Arcturus into a productive, wealthy and independent planetary system and not a colony dependent upon the goodwill of the galaxy to survive," added the elder man.

Every one of the nudes around the table nodded sagely at the comment, and Bob could see the appeal. "So you want to create a clean break with the past, then, and see that a change in wardrobe would be the visual clue that things were different?"

"Excellent, my boy, and excellently put too," the elderly male congratulated Bob. "That's exactly the effect we're going for. A change in how we see the world starts with a change in how things look. The shires were all but unaffected by the unpleasantness in Arcturus City and as a result their attitudes are little changed. In the city they're still in shock and awe, and the changes haven't started yet. If we change the picture society looks at, we start to change society."

Mandy was beginning to see exactly what her mother had in mind. Understanding wasn't exactly approval though. "And you're hoping to get this through by plebiscite?" she exclaimed. "I think there'd be a lot of 'NO' votes, and even a lot of 'hell, NO' votes."

"True, but remember a lot of us have now been to Spica where they've had nice experiences in the nude, and a lot more of us have encountered Spicans as they run around our planet doing nice things in the nude. It's become a lot more acceptable." Linda pointed to the patients who had just returned from Spica, another batch having taken their place, and to the midwives, now a third of their way through training at the hospital the Spicans were running and still only wearing clothes when they went home for the weekend.