Life on another planet

INTRO (How it all started)

https://www.berkshire.net/~brenaud/HTML/TKInfo.htm

 

https://www.berkshire.net/~brenaud/HTML/C19610708.htm

 

 MAIN index link

 https://wwwberkshire.net/~brenaud/index.htm#Info 

 

Life on another planet

https://www.berkshire.net/~brenaud/arkay/arkay_index.htm

 

A Tour of Korendor - Part 1

https://www.berkshire.net/~brenaud/arkay/RK-S1-E.htm

 

A Tour of Korendor - Part 2

https://www.berkshire.net/~brenaud/arkay/RK-S1-F.htm 

 

Another fascinating place to spend a day (or many days) is the Alliance's World Center. This mammoth facility, half again larger than the Institute of Science, is dedicated to offering in a single location the entirety of the Alliance.

Each of its over 740,000 planets is fully represented here by an exhibit that uses photography, computer data files and samples of the planet's art and culture to bring the visitor into an intimate rapport with it and its people.

One very popular feature is the network of rooms that allow the visitor to experience via holography and environmental conditions exactly what life on any of the worlds is like.

You might be interested to know that Earth has recently been added to the roster, although you aren't (yet) an Alliance member. This was done to satisfy the intense interest in your planet that has been generated by our activities here. It has become one of the most widely requested experiential-room programs. 

 

 
  Beyond the "outskirts" of the city is the forest ring, a 13-mile-wide belt of deep green dotted with meadows where people and wild animals frolic together in joyful play and communion. These forest creatures are not tame, but neither do they fear us. They know that we afford no danger to them, and we are therefore simply accepted as cohabitants of their lush green world.


Once past the residences, there are what seem to be endless miles of farmlands, with row upon row of grains, greens, and fruit trees of a hundred kinds. Automated equipment tends the fields, with the deft precision of the farm's computer. Very little manual labor is required, although our people love the land and the soul-satisfying experience of working it as it has been done for countless centuries Whatever physical work is done on the farms is by choice, not necessity. 


Harvesting is also by unmanned machines taking their direction from the "farmouse" computers. The useable part of the crop is removed, and the remainder is at once pulverized and returned to the soil, to nourish the next planting two or three years later. 


Should the pangs of hunger strike, there are over 500 restaurants located around the Complex, offering a rich and variegated menu of Korendian and other delicacies, the latter for those guests that are able to travel about our world in their native form, and prefer the cuisine of their home planets. Every such race is represented by its own specialized dining facility.  

Do not, then, be misled by any statement that our environment is not hospitable to life. It flourishes in its abundant forms on Korendor as it does on your lovely world. Were you to see the vast multitude of species that inhabit this universe, the range would test your very sanity. Nevertheless, in God's kingdom all are equal, and in His great family all of us are brothers and sisters. "Human" is not the shape of the body but the essence of the spirit. 


Of that populated 61% of our land area, nearly 5% is devoted to the agricultural pursuits. Farming is a vast and highly advanced technology, but we do not abuse our land through overplanting. Under no circumstances do we seed more often than every other year, and in most cases it is every third year. The idle years are given over to the growing of high-yield grasses that are tilled under to form fertilizer for the coming planting.

Because we do not use meat or any animal products, we have no ranching or dairy industries. Our science of food synthesis is capable of creating "meat" of a quality beyond your finest cuts, with uncompromised nutritional value and none of the harmful contents of animal meat (the consumption of flesh is distressing to us in any case).

We grow fruit in abundance, many of which are similar in texture and taste to Terran fruits. One fairly new addition to the Korendian diet is the apple, which we imported from Earth, the only world in the galaxy where they are found in nature. Other fruits are similar to those you call citrus. We have no equivalents to bananas, melons, and so on, nor have our people found their taste desirable enough to make it worth cultivating them.

One form of farming that we have quite widely exploited might be called "aquaculture", growing foodstuffs in the oceans. We have developed several prolific species of (lacking a better word) seaweed, which provides an almost inexhautible source of fiber and pure protein. In processed form, we mix it with our grains to create the basis for some truly exquisite breads and pastry.



To answer the unspoken question, we do not "fish", because our respect and love of life extends to all animals of whatever form. We find it abhorrent to think that there are those who would capture and kill harmless creatures for "sport". This aversion extends to the brutal practice of "hunting", and races that engage in this savage ritual lead us often to wonder whether the hunted or the hunter is the lower life form.



One last place that comes highly recommended, given our well-known love of things botanical, is the Tropical Garden, a veritable paradise for the devotee of the plant world. Within its five square miles are contained over two million species of trees, shrubs and flowering plants from a thousand worlds. The most mundane are there, as are the most exotic.

An aquatic section contains almost 300,000 different water plants. The desert display contains about 100,000 varieties of plants found in arid areas of Alliance worlds, including many that take their moisture from the air and need no external watering at all.

Several hundred species from Earth have been included over the years, from the lowly dandelions and daisies to the most exquisite of roses and orchids.