Planet Ut

By Jacek Twardowski

John is frustrated with his life. Faced with unexpected opportunity he decides to migrate to a distant planet colonized long time ago by outcasts from Earth. Book explores life in an alternative society built on different principles around different values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacek Twardowski
• Release date: Apr 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215012246

Jacek Twardowski

Born1965, sculptor.

Book preview

Planet Ut

Copyright 2023 Jacek Twardowski

Published by Jacek Twardowski at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

I

The Earth. From the start, as soon as my feverish head cooled down enough that I could fall asleep, I dreamed of Earth. The images from which I had been trying to escape all my life started coming at me. And it was now when I had succeeded - when I had become a freaking hero, and a fugitive.

The roar of the sport machines crashing deep into the canyons of the Ramos projects still ringed in my ears, but it morphed - as I woke up and regained my senses - into the soft hum of the pump, patiently pushing air into the fish tank.

True, the pleasure of waking up on Einstein was able to compensate for the nightmares that preceded it. The name of the ferry was quite extravagant. For me it sounded a bit like an ordinary earthly irony. The great scientist undoubtedly postulated in his theory of relativity that light moves at the highest possible speed in the universe. While - here I moved my gaze from the aquarium to the small screen mounted in the wall next to the porthole - at this moment, after three transformations, the shuttle was moving at l64c speed.

The cabin was almost dark. The darkness was diffused only by the greenish light coming from the aquarium and the gently glowing screen. I lazily reached for the switch of the bedside lamp. Soft light flooded the room without taking anything away from its coziness. A fluffy rug, a leather seat, walls covered with a soft cotton, a small painting - probably oil, some exercise kit in the corner. I still couldn't enjoy enough this cabin and the warm silence of it. I was not at all tempted to turn on music that was on Earth, along with food, the basis of my existence. I just lay listening to the air bubbles and watching the colorful fish nudge the glass with their mouths.

It was my second week of travel and I still couldn't get used to the idea that I was flying to Ut. About 95% of Earthlings dreamed about it. Many of them even more than about hitting a million in the Grand Lottery.

My cabin, as probably every passenger cabin on the ferry, was equipped with a BILL OF RIGHTS AND DUTY OF THE PLANET UT RESIDENT. It's not a typo. There was only one obligation. The bill was, in fact, a volume of quite a sizeable dimensions. The content reminded roughly of the Earthly laws. The dry tone and banality of phrases were well known to me from the court rulings back on Earth.

Not that it was a copy of the Pan-American Constitution. Apart from the right to control one's own body, it was possible to find curiosities such as the right to being depressed and with it, in the form of footnotes, obviously fragments of a some psychiatric textbooks. On top of all this, there was Duty with it’s presence hovering over the entire document, illuminating it with a bright orange light of unbearable humanism.

I had already gotten through the first ten paragraphs and still didn't know what to make of it. I dreamed of talking to one of the inhabitants of the planet from which I was still half a month of flight away. Unfortunately, apart from almost hundred heroes, who were as surprised as me, only the crew traveled on the ferry. True, there were flight attendants, and mine had a quite unique smile, but I was embarrassed by the thought that the summoned girl would think that... I just didn't want to fool around anymore. After all, I started my life anew, I was a new born man.

While the right side of the brain was making it clear why I wouldn't call a flight attendant, the left side was already considering some other options. I did not have to wait long for the effect: Suddenly I jumped up like a scalded cat, ran to the fish tank, grabbed the container with chaff for fish and threw the entire supply under the carpet. Still controlled by the left hemisphere, I lunged at the recall button, then tossed myself back onto the couch. As I barely had time to grab the BILL OF RIGHTS, there was a knock on the door. The doors were hermetic bulkheads, perhaps some forty centimeters thick. The knocking on the door, however, was possible thanks to a simple electronic device with which the entrance to each cabin was equipped. I shouted, probably a little too loud, Please, and the flight attendant came in:

Good morning John, how did you sleep? She spoke with a certain accent, a little rounding off sharp consonants, which, as I have already figured out, was typical of the entire crew on the ferry.

Not too well... I dreamed of Earth, I added in an excusing tone.

But is everything okay now?

Maybe with me, but the fish... I must have blushed a little here. My fish have nothing to eat.

She did have an amazing smile, although I wasn't sure at the moment if she was smiling or laughing. Such a smile was rare on Earth. Not only the top row of teeth was visible, but the entire gums as well. That's how children laugh.

Of course, I'll get it right away.

She left. I jumped into the bathroom and changed my T-shirt. Just as I was putting some toothpaste on my toothbrush, I heard a soft hiss of pneumatics and she reappeared.

How is that? You have a storage of fish food behind my door?

The smile she gave me now was no worse than the previous one. I was starting to slowly get closer to the conclusion that she was laughing at me, big time. She crouched next to the aquarium and tapped on the glass trying to encourage the fish to eat. The beasts refused to eat even from her pretty hand. Again, I summoned up my courage and said:

Do you have any penalties for speeding?

She was clearly not surprised by the question. All in all, it might even sound straightforward and natural. Good one.

The rules are quite complex.

And what’s worst? I insisted.

Hmm, it will be probably exceeding the speed limit by more than 30m/s in A-class settlements, she frowned. I think that without extenuating circumstances, in conditions of recidivism, it may be even ten years of jail.

Your years? I remembered that the year on Ut was 2.7 Earth years.

Yes.

Not bad... and yet they call Ut ‘Free Planet’ back on Earth.

That was pretty flat. She looked at me serenely, and I continued on:

Well… Sometimes I do like to drive fast, men like speed, you understand...

I sounded fake even to myself. As a matter of fact I was not much of a driver and I could never afford a jet.

I do not know anyone who would exceed the speed in the estate by 30m/s. We have STRADAS!

I knew she was gonna say it. On Earth, they told legends about these roads. Their name came from some dead European language. The cars reached speeds of up to Mach 2 down there, and the death toll was said to be that of a limited nuclear conflict.

These are suicide roads, I blurted out.

She was a bit annoyed:

No way! I used to drive in the left lane once. It was when I bought my first vector. I was seven, she added with a slight tinge of justification.

After all, 0.1% of your population is killed there every year... is it true?

Freedom comes at a price, she looked at me seriously, n o longer smiling.

You don't like to talk about it. Is this a forbidden topic in your country?

No, but my father... her voice got low and she nodded her head.

OKAY. I didn't mean to… sorry, I muttered through a lump in my throat.

What is this? Again? Do I always have to pick on someone? The more so, the more I care? Even though I left Earth on a shuttle that is going through three transformations, I myself have not undergone any. I cursed myself thoroughly. Ugliness of that must have been reflected on my face, because the girl looked at me, got up and came over. She touched my arm with the back of her hand, smiled, and left before I had time to misunderstand her.

I was left alone. I looked helplessly at the porthole that was useless at this stage of the flight. For the first time since the start, I thought that the whole story, me - the hero, and all, made no sense. A hero! - I don't even know how they found out about it. I have never had too much courage. On the contrary, in difficult moments my stomach simply refused to obey me. Life on Earth was for the brave. And the rich. If someone did not have an eight-digit account and shunned bravado, he was doomed to a great illusion.

It was called VR, or the Virtual Reality. This pathetic euphemism was invented in the twentieth century, despite the fact that the level of contemporary neurology did not allow for the construction of an autonomic system fully independent of the senses. Every household, even the poorest, was now equipped with this bullshit. Of course, the essential part was the computer. If it weren't for VR, most Earthlings would never even touch their computers.

It was enough to buy the latest program, feed the machine, lie down on the bed, put on an electromagnetic helmet and life began. There were plenty of programs. The ones bought legally weren't that dangerous. They mainly consisted of short advertising films that perfectly suited the average tastes, because that was how they were designed. For example, you were sunbathing on the seashore, a light breeze gently chilled your tanned body, and suddenly you heard a call. You jumped up, you ran in long leaps onto the pier, the boards shook under your strong feet, thump, rush of air in your ears and you were already cutting the blue, crystal clear water. After a while you surfaced (not because you already ran out of air) 50 meters away, right on the side of the boat, from which a beautiful blonde, smiling like a million ACU, was handing you a Mars chocolate bar. You chewed on soft peanuts and (if the version of the program you were using was for adults) kissed the girl, thus sharing the contents of the bar. If you did not feel like it, you could of course grab her hand and throw her into the sea, the choice was yours. But you had to hurry, because in a moment you could find yourself in a luxurious bathroom, where you had to choose between a blunt razor or the latest generation of Conan razor with a vibrating blade. It didn't matter that you shaved an hour ago, since on VR you could see that you had a stubble of two days. It was nothing that you couldn’t really swim, that your teeth were rotten and your face scared off all the girls in the neighborhood. In VR, the circumference of your biceps was not determined by the years of exercise, but by the programmer's imagination.

The VR projection time was of course limited. Every legal program had a built-in timer that allowed for a maximum of a two-hour session. After this time, the computer carried out the command and stopped the program. You opened your eyes and your senses began sending information back to your unlocked brain. You suddenly felt that you were terribly cold because you forgot to close the window, or you jumped up and ran as fast as you could to the toilet.

This was the case with legal programs. However, whoever wanted to, could easily obtain illegal copies of turbo programs intended for the military, secret services or the police.

Everything was there: use of direct force, mob fight, forensics, interrogation methods and most importantly - without any time limits. These programs were intended for internal use only, under the compulsory assistance of a medic. It was one big fiction. Unlicensed use of turbo programs has become the third cause of premature death on Earth - right after drug addiction and homicide, and before traffic accidents.

Ordinary, commercial programs weren't that healthy either. Although the officially published research results did not confirm this, there were suspicions here and there that VR caused premature aging of central nervous system cells. The poor spent most of their time stuck to VR, so the high mortality rate in this group was explained by the general low standard of living. Wealthy people (some 4% of the population) rarely used VR.

I heard a soft knock and woke up. It was her. Surprised, I got up. Is it time for a meal? I asked stupidly, although I knew that there were no fixed times on the ferry and everyone, when he felt like it, would go to the bar and order something. She was kind of confused:

Why...? No, I'm here to talk. Do you have a minute John?

Yes, of course, I replied stiffly, although I tried to put more affection into it - You know that... I couldn't resist: You are very beautiful.

That professional smile again. She did not believe that I was dead serious. How many times have I been told that honesty in dealing with women is a completely flawed tactic.

"You are very polite, John. My name is Terra. Or just Ter.

A bit of a strange name, I think I know this word from somewhere.

It's a very common name on Ut. Terra means Earth in Latin.

Ha, in Latin… They must be at a good level in schools there. You need yourself to be careful.

Please, ma'am... Have a seat, Ter.

She slipped off her shoes and, tucking her legs under her, made herself sit, quite comfortable for the first visit, on my couch. I felt a little dizzy and the couch turned into a speeding carousel seat in my imagination. I sat down on a little seat.

Is it true that there are orphanages on Earth?

The couch stopped spinning. I cleared my throat. Orphanages? Sure, both in the Euroasian and American bloc. They are sponsored by both governments - especially before the elections, I added.

Why?

Why are they sponsored by the government? I didn't understand what she meant.

Why are the children not in the families?

Well, they don't have families. They are orphans.

John, why won't anyone take them to their family?

You mean foster family?

Yes, family, she was stubborn.

"Listen Ter, there are a whole lot of reasons. There are children who are sick, black, colored, low IQ... or simply unwanted.

Black? Is it some kind of disease?

Oh no... I was getting impatient. Black means, you know... Negros. After all, you have many blacks over there."

But they are brown.

Fact. In any case, the brown" are less popular on Earth.

She pulled her legs deeper under her, understanding flashed in her eyes.

I already know, I learned about it in school. You mean racism.

Well... racism is too much to say, I protested. Yeah, blacks used to have no rights, but that's history.

Tell me John, would you like to be a Negro? If you could choose?

She surprised me with this question;

"Hell no! You're not saying that you can choose your race on Ut?

Of course not, she was clearly amused. I'm asking, do you like Negroes?

Well, I've always liked them. They feel the music. I don't know what it is, genetics doesn't explain everything. Besides, how they walk! Whites can no longer walk. And their... I bit my tongue right on time, because I was already started to talk about black women. Whites always told legends about their love. They have always intrigued me. They had some undefined aura of dignity in dealing with whites. I have never dared to pick up a black girl, although many times I felt like it. True, you could buy them in every Quarter on every corner, but that was self-deception. And I was never good at that.

What did you want to say, John? Do you like ebony? she asked with interest.

What? Ebony?... Yes, I made a senator's face. But you know, to like black women and wanting to be black are two different things on Earth.

Why? Didn't you say everyone has equal rights?

But not equal bank accounts. They are traditionally the poorest demographics. What will property rights do for you if you don't own any property? What will the right to 24 days of paid vacation do for you if you are unemployed?

I heard many times that the Earth is a strange place... She sighed, resting her chin on her knee. But the Big Family was from there... I thought I could understand… She paused, looked at the pager strapped to her belt. Sorry John, Martha is calling me.

She straightened her legs, slipped with a soft movement off the couch, hit the slippers without a miss, and ran out of the cabin.

I went to the couch. In the place where she was sitting there was still a small warm depression. The delicate scent, too faint to judge if it was from the soap she was using, the perfume, or if it was just a natural scent of her body, was still in the air. Calculatingly, I laid myself in her place, trying to gather thoughts.

The Great Family that Ter mentioned was a group of approximately 1,200 male and female astronauts who, at the end of the 21st century, were sent on a settlement mission to the planetary system of the star Eta-Eridani, 11 light years from Earth. It was the last joint project of both political blocs and it was probably more for propaganda than pragmatic in nature.

The mission was possible thanks to the revolution in physics (not the first in the history of the mankind and probably not the last), which was the discovery of the space-time transformer. The transformation required enormous amounts of energy, but with the method of cold thermonuclear fusion mastered by the Earthlings, it was only a matter of time before it was put together.

There were two cyclotrons running around the globe. They were raised by two competing geopolitical blocks. Cyclotrons accelerated particles to speeds that allowed the formation and maintenance of thermonuclear fusion. Energy production exceeded Earth's demand many times over, which made it possible to accumulate excess in superconducting toroids.

Two space shuttles with a displacement of 120 billion cubic meters each were built. Both ferries were pretty identical and consisted of three toroids with a radius of 1.5 km, a space-time transformer, cargo, and members of the crew.

Energy was continuously fed into toroids for four years, and it took almost the same amount of time to select the crew. These people were never to see Earth again. The capacity of the toroids was only sufficient for a one-way trip. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, up to the seventh generation, were not to see the Earth either. It was estimated that it would take that long to settle on a selected planet, build infrastructure and industry, and possibly correct the composition of the atmosphere. The final stage was to build a cyclotron, which was to provide energy for the return of the astronaut delegation in the ninth, perhaps eight, generation.

Unfortunately, attempts