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Jupiter

Like most things in life the job that I had been given was boring. What made it worse I could see no point in looking at this huge sheet of glass. The glass it is true changed its colours every few minutes. This changing of colours told me nothing. Why the change in colours? Why was no one looking at other screens of which there were many on board this monstrosity that was steadily but surely carrying the crew and I to Jupiter? What would we find on Jupiter apart from a few minerals? My last question why was I not given the job of looking after the telescope? Now that would have been a job to my liking, but no this sheet of ever changing colours Seven hours on duty and still no relief. I felt my hand reaching for the intercom I need a break I can feel things happening in my brain. Possibly staring too long at this stupid glass. It has all happened at once the glass settled down and objects moved from one side of the glass screen from one side to another. At first the pictures did not make sense then the colours seemed to sort themselves out. Now I saw strange vehicles perhaps that is the wrong word. Not vehicles I could see no wheels and the long and short containers seemed to be floating on cushions of air. Some form of control was at hand some stopped and others carried on occasionally one or the other disappeared from the moving columns. A thought crossed my mind, what if I was a Policeman that had to control the traffic, if that is what it is day after day. I shuddered this glass screen was bad enough but what if that is real traffic and I was put in control

 of it. I shuddered and spoke into the speaker system. I chose my words carefully and explained what I had seen on the screen. A voice told me that I would be relieved in a few minutes. Write out a written report and leave nothing out. This is the fist detailed picture of this planet. Now this, I grumbled to myself they know that I hate writing. Someone has it in for me I will have to keep my eyes open just to be on the safe side.

I wrote and wrote reams of paper with my small neat print. I left out no detail, I was angry they wanted detail I gave them detail even down to what I thought were messengers that flew from one of these moving crate systems to another. Like all of what I saw all of the descriptions were vague how could they be otherwise the glass appeared to be covered in thick fog most of the time. My report disappeared in one of the huge machines later it left the machine reduced to about fifty words. I had written at least three thousand or more words. It was only when the Captain thanked me personally for an excellent report that I realised that my work such as it was, had been taken seriously. Eight hours rest then back to one of the many safety factors each deck had a life way that slid down to an escape bubble that held ten people. This meant that I was now considered to be capable of conducting a rescue unit if something went wrong. I must admit that I have had no training whatsoever for this kind of work, why I did not even know how to collect the water that ran down the walls of the bubble it had to be collected and used for drinking water. Does one have to disinfect it and that was only one question, a thousand more were on the tip of my tongue. Strange looking aircraft are approaching our ship. We are being bombarded with questions in every earth language. How on earth did the Jupitianiens get knowledge of our languages?

 Not just French, English, German and all of the other languages but the languages used on small Islands strewn all over the world.

The second shock followed the first the people from Jupiter were exactly like us in build and in body no strange men and women with huge heads all looked familiar. Intelligence as far as I could make out about the same as our own in fact any one of them could land in the world and live the same as any other earth Person without falling out. We were asked not to land but to wait out in space until teams of their Doctors put all members of our space ship through a thorough examination. This examination was really thorough. Twenty of the manschaft were taken to one of their hospitals and in a week they were brought back home completely healed from Cancer, from mental illness and a dozen other illnesses. Then and only then did we get an invitation to visit?  Jupiter is much larger than earth. All of its buildings were built on a very large scale. All families had enough room so that all could retire into his or her, own part of the building.

No weapons of war were shown or even hinted at by these people from Jupiter. It was as if there had been no history of warfare of any kind. No Churches were to be seen. One person that I asked did not even know the meaning of the word prison. Crime was unknown. No each person that came on this visit to Jupiter were escorted back to the space ship, Extra care was taken to make sure that no one would be left behind, The Jupitianiens did not want their Planet contaminate with any kinds of war, no illnesses and above all no forms of weapons.

We arrived back on Earth with little or no knowledge of Jupiter. The fact that Jupiter was similar to our world had been a terrible disappointment to our governments. The fact that no one knew whether the people from Jupiter were armed or even if they had an army was another reason not to have anything to do with them. Illness had been mastered on Jupiter but again here on earth we are getting better and better as far as illness is concerned. Then the Governments of the World came out with this statement. No earth ship is allowed to visit Jupiter. We were told that Jupiter is a war mongering series of races that are uneducated, warmongering and have no civilization at all. I myself left the service of the ministry of space and got myself work in a factory making sweets. I am now satisfied watching the sweets come off the conveyer. It is just as boring as my job on the space ship watching that awful glass screen but at least the sweets were finished ready to be sold. Sweet making is in my eyes better than making guns and weapons of war. It is a pity that the people of Jupiter do not want immigrants. I would have stayed there and believe that a life without guns and weapons would be a small touch of Heaven. What do you think Bern.