Page 14 - My FlipBook

pilgrims, after their technology had passed the point of causing
great pollution, so this planet never went through the growing
pains of a society developing through that adolescent phase of
consuming all the natural resources and producing little but

indulgence and pollution.

On this planet the eco-friendly housing units just popped out of
the local flora as if they had always been there. They looked
like they belonged, were part of the natural landscape. Pointed
brown and green buildings sprung up like strange trees. The
outside skin of the buildings, a highly insulative plastic, was
also a high-efficiency solar collector/rainwater collector. The
buildings were each self-sufficient in terms of energy,

environment and waste. They had no doors, however,
wherever one walked towards the building the skin would pull
open like the petals of a flower-bud opening, allowing one to
walk through. Windows were portals looking like circular spots
on the trunk of a tree where someone had chopped off a large
limb and the bark began to grow in from the edges. There was
a thin film of plastic only a few molecules thick over the

opening which would keep out any bugs, but allowed the
atmosphere to flow freely through. With a vocal command,
however, one could cause the temperature of the plastic to
drop, causing it to clamp the molecules tightly together,
keeping the atmosphere from passing through. The string-
powered local transportation vehicles produced no measurable
pollution in this universe, however, in the dark-matter world it
made the equivalent of stinky mud everywhere. The beings in

4 BeerQuest