Blame Charlie
© 2011/2016 by K Pelle
Chapter 9
When I returned to the ranch after my temper tantrum, I headed for the kitchen where Angie was bustling around preparing lunch, only to have Chen walked over to face me and put her hands on my shoulders.
"Will I be permitted to give orders to your cook and have her please me in the same way that I instructed our family's servants when we lived back on Earth?" she asked quietly.
I didn't have a chance to say anything before Angie decided to answer her question, quickly moving closer until she was pressing her body against Chen's back. As Chen's eyes grew wide, Angie slid her hands under Chen's blouse and around her belly, then shifted her hands upward before gently flexing her fingers as she cupped Chen's breasts.
Then Angie sent a tiny whisper of thought. "You probably had to order your servants at home because they couldn't read your mind to learn what you really wanted, but I can," then she grinned and winked at me over Chen's shoulder. "This one will not be yours alone, Patrón. You will need to share her with me since she wants to belong to both of us and yearns to become our mutual concubine."
To say that I was astonished by the actions of either one of them is an understatement, but I knew better then to argue with them and as a result, our lunch was very late that day. The results of our dalliances that day and over the next few weeks were somewhat predictable, yet quite surprising to me. Chen hadn't been living with us for two months when both women showed up in my den one afternoon and both of them were holding a bright blue 'pee stick' in their hand. What had taken six months for Angie to accomplish took Chen only six weeks.
That was the moment that I realised I was really going to be a family man in my own home. You see for six months the only permanent partner I'd had in my home had been Angie, and although she and Chen were both pregnant now, neither had any intention of moving to a house of her own. I think they were surprised that I felt that raising their children in our home was a good idea, but by then I felt Angie had earned the right to live with me on a permanent basis. As for Chen, she had been spoiled in her former home, so she was almost a pet of Angie's, yet in a way she became the glue that held us together.
The next few months were a very busy time for me, both on a personal front and business wise and surprisingly much of that started because Chen couldn't cook. In fact she didn't seem to be able to boil water without burning the bottom of the pan she had tried to boil the water in. All right, I'll admit that's a slight exaggeration, she only did that once and even then she had a valid excuse, but that's a fairly long and involved tale in itself.
You see Donna and her daughters decided they wanted a dog and they found one that looked quite similar to my old mutt, Shep. Now my dog answered to the name Shep when I got it, but Shep is actually a female and of course Donna had found a male dog. Now I'd had Shep for a good twelve years back on Earth and I considered her to be an old dog and well past breeding age. Not only that, but she had been neutered, and I had never even considered the fact that Shep had also been cloned when we came to Terratoo or that all her organs were now functional. So to make a longish story quite short, it didn't take very long before Shep was gonna have little Sheps.
And to tie that to the story about Chen's burnt pot, Shep decided to sneak into the house and drop her litter on the little rug under the kitchen table, which sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. Attending to Shep as she gave birth was the reason Chen wasn't paying attention and let the pot of water boil dry, which resulted in a scorched bottom on one of Angie's favourite pots.
Angie wasn't about to let Chen forget it though, so after about a week of being teased about not being able to boil water without burning the bottom of the pan, Chen called her Mama. Since I have absolutely no understanding of Chinese in any form, I thought she was just looking for sympathy, but I couldn't have been more wrong if I'd tried.
Four days later two young women and a middle-aged man came up the driveway, but they weren't in a car. They were each peddling a bicycle and each bicycle was pulling a small two-wheel trailer, which were packed high with their worldly goods. They had peddled all the way from Lee Ming's factory to my ranch in four days - nearly two hundred miles, just on the off chance that I would hire them. It turns out the two girls were excellent cooks who were there to teach Chen how to cook, so I decided they were a definite go for a job.
Meanwhile the guy had an extremely varied background, but one of the jobs he'd held was as a charge hand at an LNG plant, that's right, liquid natural gas. Song Woo had been in charge of repairing the main compressors at the plant and when he had explained that to Lee Ming, he'd been told to come ask me for a job. That put me in between a rock and a hard place because I wasn't ready to start developing the gas well, let alone build a compressor plant for LNG, yet this guy had experience that I would definitely need in the future. I had to hire him, but I didn't really have a job for him to do, at least not right then.
So I did what a smart rancher would do, I invited the guy into my office, grabbed the phone and called my foreman, then asked José to come up to the house to meet Song Woo. That was the smartest thing I did that day. Ten minutes after José had arrived, the two of them were discussing various mechanical problems we were having with various pieces of equipment. Before I knew it, Song Woo was on his bicycle and peddling off toward the main ranch. Then Jose was telling me he'd hired the man as a mechanic, and quoted a wage that I thought was ridiculously low.
"José, if he knows what he's doing and is any good, double that wage."
"You sure o' that, Patrón?"
"Yeah, we won't keep him long if you don't and we're going to need him when we get around to opening up that gas well."
"Actually I was gonna talk to you about that, Jefé. I was in at the vet's the other day and on the way home I stopped a Soda John's for a beer, then got talking to a guy at the bar. He used to make conversion kits for converting gasoline burning engines so they'd run on propane, but was bitching that we're running just as short of propane as we are gasoline. I gave him your number and address here, then said he should talk to you. He's good with his hands and knows a bit about horses, so if you want to, we could hire him as well, because we can certainly afford to have another handyman around here."
"Did you get his number?"
"Yep, got it down at the house. Want me to call him?"
"Yep, call him and tell him we've got work for him to do, then when he gets here you might put him together with the other new guy, Song Woo. Just see if they can work together and mention that we have a gas well down the valley. We might be surprised at what the two of them come up with."
"Okay Patrón, I'll plan on doing that right now. You got anything else for me?"
"No, except that if you take off and don't talk to Angie before you go she's gonna be pissed with you." I grinned. "She's got news that she'll want you to hear."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, and if I say anything more she'll kill me. So go see her before I get myself in deep horse pucky."
José gave me a wink and a thumbs up sign before walking out of my office and closing the door behind him.
I was left with a major problem. I'd originally promised Lee Ming that I wouldn't open the gas well or the gas plant for at least two years. Only now I had hired a man who could probably build and operate an LNG plant and another man who could do the conversions on engines to run on natural gas. Wait a minute, Ming had sent the first guy to me, so he knew about that much, but I still needed to talk to him about it. So I went to the office door and called Chen to ask her if her father had a phone at his factory and since he did, I asked her what his phone number was. She just laughed and came into the office and dialled the phone, then rattled off a string of Chinese before handing me the phone. A minute later I was talking to Lee Ming.
It seems his oldest son was just as ambitious as his old man, so by the time Lee Ming had returned home his son had not only started turning out bicycles, but he'd also bought the next door business in order to expand. That business had originally been a supplier of parts and repairs for motorcycles, so along with the addition of square footage for the bicycle business they'd also inherited a ton of designs for lightweight engines, transmissions and the like.
Not only that, but the local authorities had decided that they were wasting an economic gold mine by flushing their sewage into the ocean and since they had a surplus of labour, they'd built a sewage composting facility. Not only was that facility going to produce tons of fertilizer, but one of its byproducts was methane gas, which they could use for heating the local homes and offices. As a result Ming and his son Choo had hired a designer to come up with an engine and fuel system that used either methane or natural gas, then they'd gotten into the motorcycle business as well. He knew darn well that there wasn't going to be much spare methane produced by the local plant, so his new engines were going to need fuel and he knew that with a little help I could be a supplier. That's why Ming had sent Song Woo to see me as something of a gentle hint to get off my duff and develop that stupid natural gas well.
Needless to say I took that hint and ran with it. I didn't realise it at the time, but by stirring my stumps and getting involved, I changed the future of my life and the lives of all of my family and all the people on the ranch. Not only that, but I think that might have been the point where I became much more active in the future of every human living on Terratoo.
Behind the ranch and stretching up into the hills was a plot of thousands of acres of forest, land that on Earth had been leased by a logging company. Before I went too far with that though I took a look through my old files and found a copy of an old seismic survey that had been done during Granddad's lifetime. What I saw on that survey made me grin and get off my duff all right, even more than Lee Ming had done. I took a gamble and mortgaged the ranch, then purchased almost a hundred thousand hectares of second growth timber from the government, but included the rider that it had to include the mineral rights. Most of that land had been logged over, then replanted, so it wasn't worth much, but the mineral rights on that land might be worth a bundle, at least those rights might be worth a lot if that old seismic survey was worth the paper it had been printed on.
Then I set my crew to work on developing that natural gas well, but also set them to rigging out a full LNG plant, complete with scrubbers, compressors and storage tanks. Everyone thought it was strange that I went to the expense of having the gas from the original well piped six miles into the hills and beyond a ridge, so it wasn't in view of the ranch. Not only that, but prevalent the winds beyond that ridge would blow any odours out to sea and not toward the ranch. It was bad enough to get the occasional whiff of the stench that plant produced. When we did smell it and if one of the womenfolk would complain, I'd draw a deep breath, then grin and say, "Smells like money to me!"
The only problem with that odour was that it meant we were releasing hydrogen sulphide into the atmosphere, and hydrogen sulphide is poisonous. I didn't like the idea of causing pollution of that sort, and mentioned it to the crew working at the plant. I'm not sure exactly who developed the idea or how they did it, but they improved on the original 'scrubber' design and inside of a few months the smell disappeared, but the scrubber plant was now producing a few extra products as well. The scrubbers managed to produce some oils and heavier lubricants, along with a few other products, but best of all, the hydrogen sulphide was now being converted into sulphuric acid, which is one of the basic acids used by other industries. As well as that the LNG which we sell is almost pure methane, which produces little more than water when it is burned in a well-designed engine, so Lee Ming's engine designs had to be improved to include cylinder lubrication. Danged if one of his young engineers didn't develop a way to produce ceramic liners for the engines they had begun to produce because ceramics could be lubricated by the water that burning methane produced. The exhaust emissions on those engines was astoundingly clean with 96% water vapour, a little under 3% carbon dioxide and less than 1% of either nitrous oxide or carbon monoxide.
Inside of two years we had five more gas wells in production so the plant was in full operation all day, every day. That meant we were able to sell LNG and other products in bulk, so the money was simply rolling in. Between the money made by the LNG plant, the bicycle works, the motorcycle sales and the music residuals that I held, I was able to pay off the mortgage on the ranch within five years. That's when I approached Lee Ming with the idea of starting a tractor manufacturing plant, but thankfully someone else had already made a start in that business. Not only that, but there was a high compression alcohol engine being built that produced very few pollutants. There was even a small car manufacturing plant which was building electric cars. In fact there were a ton of inventions being developed, but I managed to keep my nose clean and stayed as a silent partner and financial backer on some of the more lucrative developments.
It's probably a good thing that I didn't get physically involved in another business development about then, because about that time all the babies I had sired were growing up and becoming old enough that they needed some 'Daddy time.' Oh boy, did I ever have my hands full for the next twenty years, but by that time all eighty-four of my initial progeny had reached the age of eighteen, which meant that almost all of them were either in a university or a college. Any that didn't feel the need to have a 'higher' education were apprenticing toward a trade or attending a trade school, so it wasn't long before I and my women were left with a lot more time on our hands.
Thankfully I'd been smart enough to encourage our government into setting up a scholarship fund for any child wanting to take advantage of an advanced education. The idea was eventually implemented world wide and was sandwiched into the universal taxation program which covered all government services, including roads, bridges and other infrastructure, as well as education, health care, pensions, etc. We had several people at first who called the idea "Cradle to Grave Coddling," but although I'm not a socialist or even a liberal, I disagreed with them and was willing to argue. I felt that while I and many others who were doing well could afford to send our kids to get a higher education, there were many young people who would be left out because their parents couldn't afford the costs, so I felt I should get involved. Luckily the Eritol and the Maminai agreed with me, but insisted that I step back, then they took over the battle and defeated the naysayers using logic and advertising. (Actually for all I know they might have cheated and used telepathy to change the minds of those who didn't feel strongly and waffled when the universal vote was conducted. I wasn't broadcasting that suspicion though, not since the "Common Care" party won the vote! )
What that political decision did was to allow me to give each and every one of my kids a few thousand bucks as a head start after they finished their schooling. Besides that I was able to provide low interest loans to many more young people who needed a boost to be able to enter the business world in one way or another. Indeed almost all of those young men and women have spread out into our new world and are doing quite well at a variety of jobs. Meanwhile I believe my kids individual successes might be because each and every one of the children born from my multiple encounters was quite intelligent and also a strong telepath. Not only were those children successful, but most of them soon settled down with partners and many of them began having children of their own.
On reading back through what I've already written I notice that I haven't mentioned one pertinent fact. That extreme 'sexual charisma' that I had suffered through when we had first been awakened eased off after three or four years, then I was no longer sought out for 'stud service' or whatever you might want to call it. That meant the 'biff, bam, thank you ma'am' sessions with various, cute and cuddly 'visiting' gals has long since died out - THANK GOODNESS!
As a result, life became much easier for me. I was able to devote more time to the ranch's needs and other details of life, rather than the spending as much time caring for the needs of a plethora of 'wives' and a multitude of children. Once all the resultant kids were involved in getting an education, I'm astounded how relaxed life became for almost everyone associated with the ranch - especially for me.
Now just because that my 'charisma' thing eased off doesn't mean I don't have a 'harem' any longer. Donna, Alanna, Theresa and Marika are still living in the cabins here on my acreage and along with Angie and Chen, they make sure I never lack for female attention. They're all quite willing to help care for my needs when they can tease and tantalise me into having the urge to slip off for a short session of loving. Come to think of it, I suppose that being sexually involved with each woman in my 'harem' at least two or three times a month is unusual for a man my age, but it has grown to seem normal to me. Of course having six women get along that well with me and with each other for fifty years is something I find extremely hard to believe.
Yeah, that's right, I said fifty years, because that's how long we humans have lived on Terratoo. In fact I started writing this book because I'd just gone through my second fiftieth birthday - the first one happened on Earth and the second one happened recently and celebrated my initial awakening here on Terratoo. So I suppose you could say that I've had a hundred years of life's experiences, but I look in the mirror and see a man who looks about twenty-five years old. In other words I appear to be aging at less than one fifth of what I would have aged had I remained on Earth.
However my two cousins, Fred and Bert, as well as most of the weaker telepaths all seemed to age rapidly after being transferred to Terratoo. Indeed in almost every instance, anyone who was over the age of fifty-five at the time of our transfer from Earth died before they'd been here for much more than thirty-five or forty years. As an example Fred died of a heart attack while he was trying to swing another of his 'tricky' deals. Meanwhile Bert seemed to age rapidly and was developing dementia as he aged, then he quietly died in his sleep.
Those two deaths took my by surprise, but what surprised me even more was the fact that each of their children had similar personalities to their father, they all liked to speculate. In each case their progeny felt that making bicycles was a dead end and that they could make more money by investing in newer technologies. So I purchased their stock in the bicycle works and shook my head at their lack of foresight. I felt that a slow, but steady increase in the value of my investment was safer than speculating on unproven technology.
I certainly don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from and neither do any of my far-flung family who have spread across the whole continent that we occupy on Terratoo. There are a lot of us too, almost all of my 'first crop' of eighty-four progeny had an average of five children and many of my grandkids are now married and having babies. Every ten years we have a family reunion and this spring there were almost a thousand people who descended on the ranch and camped out here for a four-day weekend. To be honest I find the idea that all of those people are my descendants to be quite scary. The fact that they are all healthy was somewhat reassuring, but at the same time it brought on a fear of our mutual mortality. The death of my two cousins at what I would have considered to be relatively young age bothered me as well, especially since I was approaching the age when those weaker telepaths passed away.
So after everyone had departed from the reunion, I decided to brace Sawish of the Maminai and Bniss, the local Princess of the Eritol to see if they'd admit to modifying my DNA to allow me to remain healthy and live longer than normal. I was astonished to have both of them appear within moments of my request and in my office at that. Sawish looked much older than she had when I'd last seen her, but seeing Bniss was a total surprise. I had never even heard of her appearing before anyone, even if it was by hologram, so that was the first time I could see what she really looked like. (Imagine a large octopus with huge lidless eyes, a wide mouth with a meat eater's teeth and gills far back on the cheeks of a large bulbous head, all sitting above a truncated body that boasted eight tentacles.)
When they heard my question, both of them looked at me as if I was being facetious, but then they seemed to realise that I was being serious.
'Of course we did our best to extend your human life expectancy,' Bniss managed to sound slightly offended. 'First of all you are el Patrón, the hero of the dome, and the human who saved my life and the lives of those in my hive. Besides that though, you and your progeny are innovative and inventive, so the result is a constant flood of new developments that benefit all three races. You and yours provide us with a constant flow of new machines, new materials and new uses for old developments that we would most likely never even dream of developing. Humans are constantly developing machines or systems that do tasks which we would have considered inpossible.
'Eritol and Maminai are not inventors or innovators, certainly not on the scale that Humans are, so it took us a million years to achieve space flight and even then we stole it. Humans went from living in caves to exploring their Solar System in only a few thousand years. Yours is a race of experimenters and developers who create innovations much faster than we do, but reading your history tells us that you and your family are special. The decisions and developments that you and your family make are seldom wrong, so it is only natural that we would wish you to be here as long as you wish to live.'
'And you have given our races music and art,' Sawish smiled. 'The beauty of the sounds your race can make and the elegance of your artwork and architecture can make the heart of the Maminai sing. For that alone you deserve so much that we have no way to repay you and your family for what you have done by preserving the old and creating the new.'
'However as well as our intervention in your genetic makeup to prevent you from dying early, there seems to be a correlation between telepathic ability and resistance to aging in all humans. It seems that the stronger telepaths live longer and have more children,' Bniss added. 'The identical trend appears to be happening back on Earth, but there it appears to have developed along both genetic and ideological lines, which we find to be mystifying. As an example, those who are most evangelical, no matter what faith, seem to live far shorter lives than those who are indifferent toward religion. As a result the agnostics and the atheists appear to be living the longest, which is somewhat mystifying. Of course a very strong belief in an all-powerful being also seems to correspond with an equal resistance to telepathic ability, so there may be a correlation there.'
"What? Are you sure of that?" I frowned.
'Absolutely, we have studied the situation for almost six hundred years now. During that time some of Earth's religious organizations have been decimated, indeed some countries have been decimated. Almost every country that borders on the Mediterranean has lost more than fifty percent of its population, but then that area was the center of development for three main religions, Judaism, Christianity and Moslemism. Unfortunately this development has left us with the impression that we have released a plague upon the world and we don't have any idea what to do about it. We are caught in a situation that appears to have no solution. The people of Earth need our assistance, but at the same time we appear to be the cause of a far greater problem, for in most cases it is the most active and eloquent leaders and educators who are dying earliest.'
"Wait a minute, are you saying that anyone who is religious is dying early, or are you saying that only those who are extremely religious are dying early? What about those who are intensely political, or extremely rigid in adhering to any other philosophical stance, are they dying early as well?"
Both Bniss and Sawish became very quiet at that point and although Bniss had no facial expression that I could recognise, Sawish looked to be frowning slightly. Then both of them stared at me with wide eyes, and Sawish snorted and shook her head, almost imitating the actions of a man or woman who was astonished by something.
'I checked with the statisticians and it would seem that almost anyone with a zealous philosophical, political or religious bias has a shortened span of life, and the more extreme the stance, the shorter the lifespan,' Sawish sent quietly. 'Meanwhile moderates of all kinds seem to have developed extended lifespans, but how did you know to ask about politics and philosophy?'
"They are all sides of the same coin."
'A coin only has two sides, heads and tails,' she sent softly.
"No, a coin has one broad side which is heads, and the opposite is tails, but it also has a narrow, but measurable edge," I winked at her. "That adds up to three sides, but it's the inside of the coin that you need to worry about. In this case I believe we could call that the ego of the subject, which develops as an infant ages into adulthood. I think the question you have to answer is what influence does telepathy have on that ego and what effect does zealotry have, but as well as that what effect does the ego have on the body? If you find the answer to those two questions I think you'll know why zealots die earlier than telepaths?
"I do have another question though, what effect has the trend had on the various countries and races on Earth since the Xalibrox incident?" I asked with a slight frown.
'As you probably remember it initially created havoc, mostly because of the rabble rousers in various communities and countries around the world,' Bniss responded. 'In fact we approached you for advice on that point and you suggested use of stasis and isolation of the worst offenders, but once telepathy became more common amongst the population, that became unnecessary. It seems that those whose thoughts were dominated by desires for personal or political gain couldn't hide their thoughts from those who are adept at telepathy. The stronger telepaths began to shun and ignore the more zealous and domineering and soon the trouble causing element became isolated. Communities became more cooperative and those who had been causing trouble were being ignored and isolated even without our intervention.
'In the countries where there had been dictatorships, the dictators were losing their lieutenants and supporters. Inevitably they were overthrown and often they were incarcerated, then died in prison. The monarchies and oligarchies broke down and along with communistic countries, were the next to follow, all of those slipped into what you could call socialistic democracies. In fact socialism in one form or another is the norm now throughout the whole world. As a result borders are largely being ignored, other than for geographic barriers where terrain creates natural borders.'
"Wait a moment, I just realised something, when I was on Earth I wasn't telepathic and I'm quite certain that it wasn't common amongst others. Did you interfere with everyone's genetic makeup to turn them all into telepaths?" I scowled at the pair.
'No, amazingly it seems that your whole race was on the verge of telepathy, but our arrival in their midst seems to have had a trigger effect. Exposure to our use of telepathy to communicate with those we rescued seems to have induced the factor to become common, especially amongst the young.' Bniss appeared almost to sigh. 'As you know, we are an aquatic race and cannot exist in your atmosphere. Even worse than that we did not understand your languages and our limited technology does not synch well with what existed on Earth at the time of our arrival there. We were able to conduct multiple rescue operations, but we had no way to communicate our intent to the general population. For the first few months that we were operating on Earth we were considered to be enemies who were attacking the population and the infrastructure even while we were intent on rescuing those we could. It was the aboriginal populations of Australia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands who first accepted us as benevolent beings. It was only after we had the assistance of several Maminai who braved interstellar travel to Earth that we were finally able to establish a communication linkage.'
'Initially those volunteers had several extremely confusing problems with the language. It was almost a year before they realised that the various aboriginal groups they were working with had been conversing in a variety of languages. Each of them not only had a tribal language, but they also spoke at least one or more additional languages which were popular in their home territory. Our people were not only being taught the native languages of an area, but also a polyglot of English, French, Portugese, Spanish, Russian and even a smattering of Chinese and Japanese, so the whole situation was very confusing,' Sawish sighed softly. 'At least our people managed to get across the idea that the Eritol were friendly and their activities were beneficial to the population of Earth.'
'We should mention that we instigated your idea of placing the worst trouble makers in stasis, however we were astonished to find that the majority of those we were forced to place in stasis were of one religious persuasion,' Bniss added, then paused.
"Let me guess, they were almost all Moslems, right?" I asked.
'Correct, but then too there were several of the most influential leaders within all three major religions who opposed us violently. Those who seemed to accept us most easily seemed to be a sect called Buddhists.'
"Well, if you study the basis of the three main religions you'd find that the Jews, Christians and Moslems all believe that man is the supreme race and were created by God to be the ruler of all other beings in the world. Those three religions are all based on a code of conduct created a few thousand years ago, by a group of wandering peasants. To understand their beliefs you might want to study the Old Testament of the Christian Bible or the Torah of the Jews. For the Jews, Christians and Moslems any living organism that doesn't look like a man is a lower being and will be treated like an animal, so anything besides man that has enough intelligence to display reason has to be an angel, a demon, or perhaps even a devil. I would imagine that once they discovered that the Eritol and the Maminai didn't look anything like a human they would be opposed to everything you did." I shrugged. "Meanwhile the Buddhists believe that all life is sacred, and so do most of the aboriginals. In fact the aboriginal groups you found most likely accepted you because Christianity was a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of gods that their ancestors worshipped."
'But why has there been so little opposition toward us here on Terratoo?' Sawish asked,
"Actually the only reason I can see why the population of Terratoo has accepted you so well is the fact that we were all gifted with telepathy when we were cloned," I shrugged again. "When you modified our bodies by your genetic manipulations you gave us the ability to understand your thought processes and you didn't hide anything we wanted to know. We understood that you were benevolent beings and you guided us, without forcing us to conform to your opinions. Then too, you were extremely helpful and allowed most of us to develop on our own, but were willing to assist with our projects even when you probably felt we were making bad decisions. Unfortunately because of the fact that you had to make split second decisions on Earth during the emergency and some of those choices probably seemed arbitrary to the people who were involved, they resented many of your actions. Combine that resentment with the prevalent beliefs of the masses and the result was a rising tide of rebellion. Since you say people on Earth are becoming telepathic, then they'll be able to see that you're not omnipotent, but are still trying to help, and because of that they're able to accept your existence far easier."
'And what effect do you see this having on humans in the future?' Bniss asked.
"Oh, that's easy to answer. Humans are a resilient bunch, who are very intelligent, have extremely high ambitions and are immensely inventive. You've seen what humans have done on this planet in the last fifty years, and my imagination boggles at the thought of what humanity might accomplish in a few hundred years, especially with your continued cooperation. I can't imagine that mankind will slow down or lose their talent for improving on technology and inventing new devices, so the people on Earth will take your spacecraft and adapt them to their purposes. Then I'm going to predict that within a few more years humans are going to take you on the ride of your lifetime, because humans are genetically programmed to want to know what's hidden behind the next hill. Since you folks have provided proof that space travel is possible, they're likely to set out to explore the universe from top to bottom, and end to end. Not only that, but since your two races have proven to be our friends, they'll drag you along," I grinned wickedly.
"All your descendants will be able to do is what I've done since finding myself here on Terratoo, just hang onto my hat and blame Charlie for the ride."