audio of the korendor contacts, plus update. and remark that this is not channeled. 

The ArKay Files.

Over a period of three years, a Korendian gentleman who chooses to be called ArKay provided a series of 21 informative and detailed communications on subjects ranging from United Worlds Alliance government to Korendian history to many problems facing our little blue marble in space. While some of the information in them is no longer applicable in today's world, they serve as an introduction to the Korendians and the United Worlds Alliance. The majority of the content is as relevant in the 21st century as it was when it was received, and in some cases even more so. Two other files are included that were received much later. 

The messages included in Series One were received in October and November of 1988. They were released on "floppies" (remember those?), which explains the reference to erasing the diskette in message G.

Introduction - Part 1.


Love and light, my Terran friends. From beyond the night, I send you the greetings of the United Worlds Alliance and the planet Korendor, via the "New Age" medium of the personal computer.

The availability of inexpensive computer equipment to the world's citizens has given to us an excellent "high-tech" way to communicate with your people. We much prefer this to the more common approach that you call "channeling" and telepathy.

Let me now introduce myself. My selected name is "ArKay", which is no more than the pronunciation of the initials of the name I use when I am present amongst you. If it will aid you in understanding my work, you may think of it as being the acronym of the title, "Representative of Korendor".

I have been chosen to serve as a "liaison" between my people and yours, much as Bob Renaud has been since our first contact with him in 1961. Now, after his 27 long years acting as the exclusive source of information about the United Worlds Alliance and my people, we have agreed to his request to begin this new era of more direct communication with your world.

To establish this, I have become so to speak, Bob's "opposite number" on our side. Just as he has served as your only access to us, so I will now be our primary "channel" to you. If any questions are to be answered or any information to be presented, it will be my privilege to do these things.

Bob will of course continue to be actively involved in our operations on Earth, but it is my honor to function as the "go-between" through which all of your people may have access to us, with Bob's capable assistance.

Allow me now to deliver a "fair warning". If you anticipate the type of message delivered by other channels, then what is to follow is not for you. If your expectations run to the mystical or the psychic, go no further. We fully support the work of those who deliver such messages, but they are not our focus of interest. If you want your extraterrestrials to be perfect, godlike beings, then we, who are only imperfectly human, will no doubt disappoint you.

If, however, you care about the "behind the scenes" events that are now shaping your society and your destiny, if you are curious as to the nature of some of your visitors, then what is to come will satisfy your needs and offer the enlightenment you seek.

With the prologue now finished, I will use the rest of this communication to provide insight into the Alliance and its operations on your world.

As I stated earlier, the United Worlds Alliance has been in contact with you since 1961, although our presence in this system began several years before then. In the beginning, it was our goal to undertake a program that would educate and elevate you to the level needed to become a candidate for "Protectorate" status in the UWA, the first step in the process leading to full membership.

At that time, we did not discern any substantial impediments to this goal. The Confederation (commonly known to you as the Federation), although it was very actively involved on Earth, did not challenge our presence, but gave us no encouragement or aid, nor did previous dealings with them lead us to expect their open cooperation.

It must be explained here that the primary difference between the UWA and the Confederation is in the level of adherence to what your people know as "non-interference" laws. It has been the strict and invariable policy of the Confederation to abide by these laws without exception, no matter what the provocation might be to do otherwise.

The Alliance has through long experience learned that a much looser interpretation is often called for, and has broadened the directives to permit activities on other worlds that are unheard-of in the Confederation.

Earth's present situation is a prime example, as we shall soon see. Our work here has created much tension and controversy between our groups.

While there is no open hostility between our organizations, neither are there other than formal diplomatic relations. This is the principal reason that Alliance presence has never been acknowledged by the Confederation in its contacts with your people, and why we in turn will not corroborate their spokespersons or their communications to your people.

The Confederation has its tasks and we have ours.

What, then, are our activities on Earth that have generated this intense division? To answer this, we must now introduce into the cast of players a third party, which over the years (and by their own desires) have come to be known as "Omegans".

Historically, the Omegans are descended from a group of rebels that originated within the Confederation many years ago. As there is in any form of government, no matter how benign or peaceful, there were some to whom power and wealth were consuming passions. However, the peaceful, egalitarian ways of the Confederation rendered such goals impossible within its social and cultural dominion.

These malcontents thus were driven by their insatiable lusts to leave their systems. From their exile they worked within the infrastructure of many planets to enlist others of similar desires, and their numbers grew slowly into a substantial force. In the late 18th century (the actual date is unknown), they arrived on Earth.

Although this solar system is under Confederation jurisdiction, Earth is uncommitted because of the Confederation's non-interference laws that disallow them from presenting to your people the opportunity to join with them. Your level of advancement is inadequate to permit the full contact with you that is prerequisite as a prelude to their offer.

This non-alignment made Earth for the Omegans' plans. As well, your basically militaristic history gave them a great advantage, as it was their intention to manipulate your warrior instincts, in order to groom your people into an irresistible military force able to attack and overpower other planets.

The "invention" of nuclear fission weapons was mainly due to the Omegan influence within your scientific and military institutions, although their actual use in warfare was of your own volition entirely. Indeed, it was this event that precipitated the intense interest of the Confederation and the Alliance in your world, although the UWA did not consider actual programs on Earth until years later.

Following World War II, the Omegan policy was to prevent the initiation of another major war, but to promote many small-scale conflicts to maintain your war-readiness while their technological input into your military capability continued and grew in sophistication. Their most effective weapon, however, was psychological.

The Omegans' principal tactic is fostering international distrust and hatred, to maintain a state of mutual suspicion that prevents the world's people from uniting in the common good. Remember that their policy is to build you into a potent, unstoppable military force with which to attack and dominate Confederation worlds in many systems.

Ordinarily, the Alliance takes a "hands-off" approach and allows the Confederation to tend to its affairs. However, Omegan activities have been directed against the Alliance as well. In fact, their attacks on us led to the destruction of their base on their "home planet" of Kaldan by an Alliance invasion force.

After the successful routing of this base, the Council of Elder Masters and other Alliance policy-makers deemed the Omegan influence crushed, and, as you say, they let their guard down. It was only several years later that we discovered that the Kaldan facility had been sacrificed to create exactly the impression that we received.

In fact, their governing bodies had been transferred to Earth, which is now the hub of Omegan operations. This is a very effective move, because your non-alignment prevents any outside organization from open intrusion into their activities. The vulnerability of your world to their attack also makes it imperative that they be fought only on a clandestine, non-military basis.

This is the Alliance approach. By operating in the "underground" we are able to counter-attack without forcing them into an open confrontation that would inevitably result in the complete destruction of your world.

One advantage of our approach is that because the Omegans require your people for their purposes, they are unlikely to consider endangering you as long as they are not confronted overtly. Another factor that I shall not discuss at this time renders open conflict with the Alliance on Earth exactly what they do not want.

Their enforced restraint has, however, created a deep hostility and anger that incites vicious retaliation in those cases where it will not result in peril to their programs.

For this reason, it is of vital importance that you heed this warning:

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO ATTEMPT TO COMBAT THEM ON YOUR OWN!

Although they have need of you, they are ruthless, and any resistance will without question result in the deaths of everyone involved.

If by some chance you do encounter them in a manner that removes any doubt as to their identity, do absolutely nothing except escape without delay.

If their activities are so open that they can be uncovered by Terrans, rest assured that the Alliance already knows of them, and is handling the matter in the appropriate fashion.

Bravery is a noble virtue, but trying to fight them by yourselves is not bravery, but foolishness, and it is indeed suicidal. Be aware that they exist, and allow us to combat them. We are well equipped for this task. You are not.

With that warning, I must end my opening message to you. I have much more to relate, and with Bob's kind assistance and patience, these messages will be made available to you, my Terran brothers and sisters.

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.

- COMMUNICATION TERMINATED.




	


next is, .

Date of reception: 7 October 1988.


Introduction - Part 2.


Love and light, my Terran friends. In this second part of my introduction I shall acquaint you with the extent of the Alliance and Korendian presence on Earth. We desire that you become fully aware of the degree to which we have committed ourselves to resolving your problems, as I outlined in Part One.

To begin, let me say that after what we assumed to be the successful elimination of the Omegan influence, we reduced our staff to the "skeleton" level and closed all but a few of our many bases on Earth and on the moon.

This was due to the initiation of "Project Terrawatch", in which we were to be merely observors monitoring your progress free of Omegan control. As I said in Part 1, this was, not to put too fine a point on it, a most premature decision, and as you say, after a time it came back to haunt us.

Our return to Earth then began in earnest. As a first order of business we re-opened several of the Terran bases and constructed two entirely new facilities on the moon, under the craters Plato and Copernicus, which were to be our major operations centers for this revitalized project. PlatoCom (Plato Complex) was to be a primarily "civilian" base. CopernicusCom was to be purely military in function. With these existing and new bases completed and furnished, the influx of personnel began, coming mostly via the California and Massachusetts "Arrival and Indoctrination" centers.

Nearly all of the previous operatives volunteered to be reassigned to the project, but the extent of our work required the recruitment and training of many thousands of new people to reach the desired complement of personnel. This was not as smooth as we might have wished. Several major setbacks were suffered during this period. Two had a particularly harmful effect:

First, an Omegan agent teleported with an explosive device into the MassCom A/I processing center on a suicide mission that shut down the section for four months.

Second, several of the "returnees" from the Alliance were in fact double agents who performed sophisticated sabotage on the CalCom and MassCom A/I computers, used in training new operatives, and it became necessary to recall about 70,000 of them to correct what might be called "psychological time-bombs".

The operatives were all scheduled to assume sensitive positions in major world governments, and their defective imprinting would have caused them to be unaware of, or incapable of responding to, certain types of Omegan activity. This would have had a profound if not a crippling effect on our ability to effectively react to Omegan operations.

Despite these delays, we are at this time operating with essentially a full staff, the charts to follow being some indication of our presence.


Chart #1: Field Operatives,
Region	Personnel,
United States	151,400,
Soviet Union	128,500,
Europe (East/West)	94,300,
Middle East	42,900,
Africa	34,000,
Asia (except USSR)	69,200,
All other areas	105,000,
 	 
Total personnel	625,300,


Chart #2: Base Personnel,
Base Site	Personnel,
Massachusetts	24,600,
Washington, DC	4,100,
California	32,800,
Europe (UK)	22,500,
Soviet Union	28,400,
China (mainland)	18,800,
Mid-East (Egypt)	10,300,
Others (sea, etc.)	87,600,
Plato (Luna-1)	65,200,
Copernicus (Luna-2)	14,600,
 	 
Total personnel	308,900,


There was also a base on Mars, but frequent attacks by Omegan and Kalran warcrafts led to its being declared indefensible, and it was abandoned.

[Note: due to changes in policy and operations, only the Massachusetts and California bases are now active. All others have been closed and "mothballed" in the event that unforeseen needs require reopening one or more of them],

These brief listings should serve notice that we are not merely "talking a good fight", but are backing up our words with action. It should also shed some light on why the Confederation is at odds with our program on Earth.

By any definition this constitutes a major breach of their interpretation of the non-interference directives, and it is the primary "bone of contention" between our organizations.

We had long since concluded that they could not be reasoned with on this matter, and we had informed them that with or without their approval we fully intended to commit whatever force is necessary to defeat the Omegan presence on Earth and wherever else it exists. The Confederation labelled us intruders and adventurists, and informed us that we were completely on our own.

In recent times, however, the Confederation has apparently begun to appreciate that the danger posed by the Omegans is too great to ignore it and hope that it will fade away on its own.

Envoys from their High Tribunals have approached top Alliance officials "sub rosa" to explore the possibility of an "Agreement of Mutual Interest" that would result in the Confederation dropping its opposition to Alliance anti-Omegan activity, and offering us comprehensive non-military aid.

In turn, the Alliance would extend its aegis to Confederation systems if hostile forces pose a threat that they are unable to resist. There is nominal resistance in high Alliance ranks, but the pact is expected shortly.

Some of this softening of the Confederation's "hard-line" is due to their new awareness that Earth is but one of seventeen planets on which this battle is being waged, and that the stakes for success or failure are far higher than losing the involved worlds.

Earlier, I mentioned the Kalrans. They are another major Alliance foe, similar in purpose and methods to the Omegans, but far less civilized and far more aggressive. Apparently out of common interest (their mutual hatred of the Alliance) they have loosely joined with the Omegans, and brought their violent tactics into the arena.

To say that this adds a deadly complication to the conflict with the Omegans is considerably understating the scope of the problem.

The Kalran Empire thrives on war. They do not usually fight for gain or power, but simply to fight. It is their nature to wage war, and they do it with a damnable efficiency. This alone is a sufficient reason to be alarmed, but the restrictions that govern the Omegan program here and elsewhere (I mentioned them briefly in Part One) don't apply to the Kalrans.

Let me now expand on these limits. They are imposed on the Omegans by a powerful extra-galactic group that, for lack of a better name, the Alliance dubbed "The Syndicate" after the Terran criminal organization. The "Syndicate" has offered the Omegans its formidable support in our galaxy, IF they prove that they merit it. The condition: the Omegans must defeat the Alliance on these 17 worlds or face abandonment by the Syndicate.

The UWA has sent several formal objections to the Syndicate for its involvement in this galaxy, and has been informed that although they will continue to offer the Omegans their support and guidance, they will not provide economic or military assistance to them in their task.

What scarce data is available on the Syndicate now suggests that they are essentially profiteers rather than militarists, and prefer to commit their resources to aid those who will act as their enforcers, while themselves avoiding the untidy business of war.

When asked about their possible use of the Kalrans, they stated that their interests centered upon those groups that had more rational motives than love of a good battle.

At this moment, a tenuous sort of "gentleman's agreement" exists between the Syndicate and the Alliance: neither group will overtly endanger the other, nor will the Syndicate "bail out" the Omegans if they appear to be losing.

Neither they nor the Alliance have any great desire to test the other's capability in war, and both appreciate that such an encounter would be costly beyond measure. However, if the Omegans achieve victory, the Syndicate will back them with military and economic power, to the end of Omegan/Syndicate domination of the galaxy.

It is this monumental threat to the safety and security of all that they know and love that now moves the Confederation to rethink their ways.

In short, then, the Earth is an unknowing host to an interstellar test of power and resolve, for nothing less than the control of the uncounted thousands of worlds in this galaxy.

It can be seen from this summary of the situation that the Alliance has taken upon itself a prodigious task indeed, here and on the 16 other worlds like yours. Yet, it's a responsibility that we accept willingly and eagerly. We know the benefits of success, and the terrifying outcome of failure.

At this point, the question in your minds must be, "what can we do to help?" In the material sense, nothing. As I pointed out in the first part of this message, you are just not equipped to meet the Omegans directly.

Yet, there is much that you can do to make our work more effective. I will amplify this in later messages, but for now let it suffice to say that your contribution lies in what you can do to influence the thinking of your brothers and sisters on Earth.

The Omegans dominate you because you have not adopted a way of life and thought that will render their control ineffective. I must repeat that the Omegans' primary tactic is keeping your world in constant war-readiness by creating suspicion, distrust and fear that frustrate any possibility of uniting for the good of the whole.

The people of Earth of their own free will adopted the philosophies that sow the seeds of war and nourish them.

The Omegans arrived to find a condition that meshed perfectly with their own plans. They did not initiate war on Earth. Your long history of conflict offers ample proof that it has been a human vocation for millenia.

What the Omegans did bring was a technologically-based way of war that enabled man of Earth to sit in a safe place and cause the deaths of millions by "remote control".

It's arguable that there was at one time a certain excitement in the hand-to-hand, head-to-head combat of early warfare. It was a test of skills, man against man with life the prize for the victor. Gunpowder took away some of that mystique. Modern war science has eliminated it.

For that you must thank the many "advancements" afforded you by Omegan infiltrators. That Moscow or Washington can vanish in an instant in the searing heat of a micro-sun is one of the many "gifts" from the Omegans to you.

One questions whether man of Earth would find much appreciation for these benefits that other-worldly visitors have bestowed upon your civilization. Yet, you accept them as the price of living in perilous times, unaware that these times are the workings of the selfsame invaders who provided your infernal engines of destruction.

Poor, sad marionettes, dangling from Omegan strings, marching to their war tunes and believing them to be your own steps and your own brave music.

How wisely you say, "when the ball is over, the piper must be paid." The payment that your Omegan pipers will exact is dear indeed. It is no less than your souls in their service as they reach outward to conquer and rule by force ever more worlds.

You, my dear brothers and sisters of Earth, will be their pawns in their galactic game of chess, and like good pawns you will follow their game plan eagerly and faithfully, convinced by their lies and their orations that it is your destiny to take your warlike ways to the stars.

And then, dear people, the truth will become known to you and you will weep for your violent, misguided ways. And it will be far too late for other than your flowing, bitter tears.

Is this inevitable? NO!!! You can begin this very day, this very moment, to make a difference. You can teach the ways of love and peace, the same great teachings that another visitor to your world, Jesus Christ, once offered.

Is teaching enough? Will your students heed your words? Unless you live by them, they will have no effect. Your life must be an example of your philosophies or your words are hollow.

In future messages we of the Alliance and the planet Korendor will share with you knowledge that guides our thoughts and our lives. We will offer our accumulated centuries of wisdom to provide you with what we hope is a model for your own future.

We will tell of many things, to any who will accept our presentations.

We will speak of science, of art, of culture, of philosophy, of the many aspects of our life in the service of humanity throughout the stars.

We will also tell you of the ways by which we serve the Infinite One, our Universal Father, God.

For now, I must end this message, with the promise of many to come.

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	


next is, 

Date of reception: 10 October 1988.


Alliance Government.


Love and light, my Terran friends. My message -- my lesson, if you will -- for this evening concerns the ways and means of the "United Worlds Alliance", of which Korendor is but one of almost 740,000 member planets.

The UWA officially came into being about 650 of your years ago. At that time, Korendor, one of the founders of the UWA, and about 150 other planets that had for many years formed a loose trade and cultural union decided that a formal organization was called for, to handle the ever-mounting complexity presented by expanding horizons.

These worlds dispatched their highest officials to Korendor, where the First Conclave of Elder Masters took place, dedicated to the goal of uniting the planets into a single body devoted to furthering the common good.

After many days of negotiations, suggesting, considering, accepting, rejecting and compromising, the First Conclave issued the "Pact of Alliance", that rests to this day in the Hall of Archives on Arcturia.

This document laid the foundations for the United Worlds Alliance as it exists today. In its preamble are the most stirring words in our history and our present day. Allow me to offer them to you here.

WE, the divers planets of the vast realms of space, under the omnipotent guidance of the Infinite One, do hereby ordain that from this day forth, the divers worlds shall be united in the bonds of Alliance, Friendship and Beneficence.

WE do promise by this pact that we shall be:

A Light in the Darkness;
A Guide for the lost;
A Shelter for the homeless;
A Friend to the friendless;
A Doctor to the ill;
A Father to the young;
A Companion to the aged;
An Aid to the strong;
A Guardian for the weak.

OUR embrace encompasses all; none shall be refused; who come to us shall not be found wanting in our realm; who seek us out in time of trouble, we shall give help till order be restored; who join us in time of peace shall be welcomed with the hand of friendship; who choose to be our enemy shall not find us revengeful, yet we shall not be less than strong.

DEDICATION is our cornerstone, service our walls, love our roof. Within this edifice of truth let all come to rest, for a house without tenants is but a shell.

THEREFORE, by these words do we of this First Conclave pledge the allegiance of our divers worlds to the united good of all. By this pact do we join in inseparable bond, under the firm but gentle hand of the Infinite One, to forevermore be as one within this, the Universal Alliance, until our heart is stilled and our final breath no longer stirs. This we have decreed. So let it be through eternity.

With these inspiring words, the "Alliance of Worlds" was formed, 150 planets joined in a dream that has flourished these many centuries. The name has long since been "United Worlds Alliance", but the great visions of our founders are as fresh today as they were in that hallowed place that for almost 650 years has been a shrine that every Alliance citizen tries to visit at least once.

Earlier, I stated that the present count of Alliance worlds is about 740,000. Although that is the full number, the UWA is now split into five major "Divisions", of which Korendor's has 143,000. This segmenting was made necessary by the sheer enormity of the task of attempting to govern so many worlds under one "roof". The process of partitioning took place over four years, and was ended on your date of September 19, 1986. The system of government that I will now outline came about at the Conclave that carried out this mammoth operation.

The Council of Elder Masters is still the official ruling body of the full Alliance, but there are now five Sub-Councils that handle the matters within their respective Divisions. In turn, these are subdivided into Sector Councils that each control about 10,000 planets in a specific region of space. These are again segmented into Sub-Sectors, the lowest level of the official Alliance hierarchy. Each of them handles the affairs of 100 worlds in spatial proximity. This basic diagram illustrates this new format.


Despite the tiered structure, each Alliance planet remains essentially autonomous, having its own internal governing bodies and answerable to no others in matters of world policy. Only in matters of military power or the economy, or when its actions affect or involve another world in some way, does the Sub-Sector level take control.

In such cases, each Sub-Sector has as an integral part of its operations an Interplanetary Court of Affairs, in which inter-world business is formally transacted. This includes such matters as commerce or trade pacts, resource sharing, minor and major disputes (they do arise even in our highly advanced societies!), and any other dealings or problems requiring an arbiter, but not of a great enough significance to need the action of a higher court.

As the particulars of a given case increase in complexity or importance, the judgement level rises up the ladder until the Court of The Council of Elder Masters is called upon for a decision, approximating your Supreme Court.

At each level, an appeal can be presented by any involved party that might feel that a judgement was unfair or not in the best interest of all. This right extends even to the rulings of the Elder Masters, unlike your Supreme Court, whose verdict is not subject to appeal except in highly extraordinary cases.

It is possible that a decision reached at any level will be subject to change by a higher one, but only the court making the initial ruling can request that action after the appeal process has been exhausted.

Ordinarily, such instances will involve matters of interpretation of the law, as opposed to a clear-cut enforcement of it. To minimize this, and to make fair judgements simple, the next step in the re-organization is the convening of the "Law Commission".

Its 15,000 members are examining every Alliance law in effect at this time. Through exhaustive analysis by both the most brilliant legal minds in the Alliance, and by the huge LawBase computer complex on Arcturia, every regulation will be examined for merit, application, and ramifications.

At that time, any laws which have through disuse or obsolescence become of no value will be deleted outright. Any that have merit but are vaguely worded, or any that are considered too broad in scope, will be "flagged".

Those that pass the criteria of the Commission will be passed through the third phase without change other than rewording for clarity.

"Flagged" laws will be dealt with by the third restructuring process, the "Assembly for Alliance Law". This will consist of 10,000 members who will take each flagged law, tear it apart to find every flaw, discard any sections that are valueless, and then recodify the entire body of Alliance Law.

To gain some appreciation of the task we face, consider that in the 650 years of the Alliance, the laws and regulations that have come from that long-term bureaucracy number almost twenty million, a veritable legal nightmare.

The intention is to reduce the total to perhaps 100,000. This will be aided by massive purging of "special interest" laws that creep into any code over the years. It's also expected that half of them in some way duplicate others, and can be discarded.

More will disappear when all laws that sought to impose on planetary governments are rejected. An entire block of them dealing with the old Alliance structure is now passe. And so on to the glory of simplicity.

Our goal is a uniform, precise legal code that deals fairly with every Alliance matter without burying our adjudicators in mountains of laws. From then on, every potential law will be subject to this same scrutiny before enactment. We dislike repeating errors.

As well as the judicial and legal overhauling, every other function is being changed or eliminated.

The enforcement division of the UWA, which used to be the "Guardian Patrol", is now designated simply as "The Guardians". It has been split into civilian and military branches.

The former deals with internal Alliance business, and the latter is responsible for defense of Alliance interests wherever needed. There is of course some inevitable overlap, but in general the military end is involved in such affairs as the one here on Earth. Indeed, it is that branch that is now working against the Omegans on the 17 planets, including your Earth.

Also in the military section of the Guardians are the intelligence, espionage and infiltration operations. It is these, rather than the actual military, that are at work within your society. One couldn't ask for more dedicated, loyal and selfless men and women. I am deeply honored to know and love and work beside them.

Another segment of the old way that has been abandoned is the "New World Development Associates", the group that initially located and began working on Earth.

Master Kalen-Li RETAN, Lin-Erri Elani, Orii-Val and the others of Bob's long acquaintance were part of this organization, and in fact, until the revitalized Project Terra was initiated the NWDA had sole responsibility here.

The group's purpose was to locate planets, inhabited or otherwise, and to evaluate them as potential members if they bore intelligent life, or as being of some economic value if they didn't. Inasmuch as the NWDA's people shared in the returns from such discoveries, competition was fostered and they were a highly motivated crew.

The reasoning behind abandoning the NWDA was not that it was in any way inefficient, but rather that for at least fifty years it had been a mostly commercial operation only nominally under Alliance government control. In dissolving the group, the only real change was in severing its ties with the "feds" and turning it over to a private corporation. The new company now contracts to the Alliance for a profit. Capitalistic, but effective!

In essence, then, the new United Worlds Alliance is a phoenix risen from its own ashes of stagnation. From an aging, ponderous behemoth has emerged a new, lean, vital organization that will serve the needs of this galaxy for millenia to come.

The principle that guided us was simplification. Any function that might better be served by the "private sector", as you say, was given over to it. The UWA unburdened itself of many hundreds of bureaus and offices that came into being over the centuries to provide control over such matters.

The result is a "minimalist" government that restricts itself to law and enforcement. The improvement will be nothing short of amazing.

The "Alliance of the future" has arrived. To my mind, it has been far too long in the coming, and speaking for everyone of my acquaintance, it's as welcome as a new friend.

Our purpose here is to serve your people and your beautiful world. With the new Alliance, we're a giant step ahead.

My time is now ended for this message, but there's more to come.

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	






next is, 

Date of reception: 12 October, 1988,


Alliance Technology,


Love and light, my Terran friends. This evening I wish to offer to you a brief commentary on the technology of the United Worlds Alliance, to give you some small understanding of what your science can become if you apply your great abilities to it with as much "gusto" as you devote to seeking to expedite each other's demise.

Let me begin with energy, since that seems to be a major topic these days on your world. Our primary power sources are what you call (often with ill-concealed dismay) "nuclear".

Without doubt, I have just caused any number of eyebrows to raise. "The Alliance uses nuclear power?" Yes, we do, as well as limited-load solar and (rarely) hydroelectric. However, for large-scale applications, we rely on the immense energy in the atom.

We tap this energy, not with the relatively inefficient technique of fission, but with hydrogen fusion and matter-energy conversion (anti-matter), the latter generating truly prodigious power in confined spaces.

M-EC is the energy source for our smaller interstellar crafts, where its compactness and high output are vital factors in addressing the needs of ship mass and space requirements.

Where size is not a significant factor, such as in the power systems on planets, we prefer fusion energy. Also, the cost of creating enough anti-matter to energize our "high-tech" societies would be prohibitive (it's a very long, complex and expensive process, although using it once it's made is a fairly simple matter). Even with Universal Economics, there are some things that aren't financially justifiable.

We do, as I mentioned, use solar energy, but because we are aware of its inherent limitations, it is used primarily in areas away from the supply network, where low demand and tolerance of sunlight's interruptions make it the method of choice.

Hydroelectric power is nowhere as extensive elsewhere as on Earth. We can seldom find an argument adequate to convince us to impede the natural flow of rivers and flood vast areas of land in order to generate electricity.

This is not to say that it doesn't exist elsewhere in the galaxy. Rather, any world becoming an Alliance member is provided with our power technology. If such a planet had hydroelectricity, in most cases it's abandoned and the dams are then dismantled, allowing full recovery of the flooded lands and the return of the rivers to nature.

We find it difficult to fathom that your environmentalists promote hydro-power when its ecological effect is so vast and devastating. However, we leave that matter to you to sort out.

Returning to nuclear energy, we strongly advise your science to seek practical fusion energy. Although we have no aversion to fission power as an interim source, fission is much less efficient, and relies on materials that are comparatively rare and costly.

At the moment, however, your world faces the choice of nuclear fission or fossil fuels for several decades at the least, until fusion energy comes into its own in the next century.

Given that decision, there's not the merest question that fission power, for all of its limitations, is far and away to be preferred. It might not be the best that's available, but it's the best that you have for now.

My next topic is the drive systems in our spacecrafts. We do not use any form of rocket propulsion, including your proposed ion drive systems for flights to the stars. Rather, our ships employ nature's own energy fields, gravity and magnetism, primarily the former, as magnetic fields of adequate strength are usually not present.

The magnetic system operates in much the manner of a linear motor, with the ship being the "rotor" and the planetary field being the "stator". As noted, without a substantial field with which to react, this is an ineffective system, and has been all but abandoned by the Alliance.

The gravitic technique is not as simple as it might seem. It must first be explained that at any given point in space away from nearby masses, the net gravitational field is zero. Yet, at that point and at every point, the combined gravitational flux from every atom in the universe is present.

The reason that it isn't normally sensed is similar to the reason that despite Terran air pressure of 15 PSI, amounting to literally tons of pressure on the area of the average human body, one is completely unaware of it. The pressure is equalized inside and out, and it is omnidirectional (coming from every direction simultaneously). If one considers how the ears "pop" with rapid altitude changes, or how a strong wind makes walking difficult, one can then understand the effect of unbalanced air pressure on the human body.

In a similar manner, although the totality of gravity from all the mass in the universe is present at every point in it, we do not feel it because it pulls equally on every atom from every direction. It is only in the nearness of a concentration of matter, such as a planet, that an imbalance in this universal field is created, and the effects of gravitation are felt.

Imagine, now, a ship drive that fully negates the pull of gravity in one direction. The effect is that of the gravitational force of the entire universe pulling the other way, with the vector being directly opposite the center of the negated area. It is not an exaggeration to compare the force on the spacecraft to that in the proximity of the event horizon of a black hole.

For that reason, we do not hazard total negation. Our technology creates a partial shield to cancel a fraction of the flux opposite the direction of travel. The imbalance causes motion, and depending on the percentage, it can be very rapid and abrupt motion.

Why, then, do the occupants feel nothing, given the enormous "G-forces" created by right-angle turns and full reversals at high speed? Why does a skydiver in free-fall, accelerating at 32 feet per second squared, feel nevertheless weightless? The reason is that gravity pulls every atom at once, with no external force to resist it, at least until the parachute deploys.

When one travels in an auto or an aircraft, the force that accelerates that person comes from the seat, and inertia resists the force. Our ships do not propel themselves, but rather are propelled by the unbalanced external force of universal gravity.

This force attracts every atom of the ship, and every atom inside it, with equal strength, regardless of the direction, or how abruptly that vector is changed. The same energy that turns the ship 180 degrees at 50,000 MPH will turn its occupants just as quickly. The net effect is no sensation whatever. A passenger could be standing on one foot when the reversal occurs and not even sway to the side.

The penalty we pay, since as you say, "there's no such thing as a free lunch," is in the amount of energy that is expended in generating the shield at the desired intensity. This power is used at approximately the same rate as it would be were the ship to perform the maneuver on its own.

Let me explain that. A helicopter hovering at a certain height requires a given amount of power to maintain that station. A "saucer" of that same mass, utilizing G-shielding, would put almost as much power into the shield as the helicopter does into its rotor. I say "almost" because air friction and other mechanical energy losses in the helicopter have no equivalent in the saucer. However, the force actually supporting each would be the same.

As for velocities beyond that of light, this requires far more complex systems that "warp" space to increase the absolute velocity of light within the "bent" space, relative to "normal" space. In fact, the actual velocity in warped space does not exceed that of light within that space, although in comparison to normal space, the speeds can be many multiples of light.

Gravity drive also operates here, because gravitation, being the effect of matter that has existed since the beginning of time, does not involve propogation velocities. Also, because mass in the universe is constant, the totality of gravity does not change. In short, it's the force, not the source, that drives our ships. It is a very powerful force, to be sure.

The third facet of Alliance technology that I wish to discuss is communications. Let me say that what you call "telepathy" is inate in every human being anywhere, but the ability of the individual to use it depends to a great extent on how it is enhanced within the first two years of life. The areas of the brain that control psychic activity tend to atrophy unless they are nurtured almost from "day one".

In large part, this is a social rather than a scientific matter. If a society has not traditionally been psychically oriented, it offers no aid or encouragement to those seeking to advance this ability in the children. Indeed, in many cultures the concept of being able to "read minds" is actively suppressed, and considered repulsive and somehow unnatural.

In fact, it is as natural as sight or breathing, and many "lower" animals actively use a rudimentary form of this ability, down to the level of insects. Much of what is considered "instinct" is actually telepathic rapport on a fundamental basis, a "gestalt" of many separate, unthinking brains united into a whole that is capable of elementary thought and decision-making. The swarm "instinct" is evidence of this.

Would there be any great benefit in creating a society that supports psychic development? There are several races "out there" in whom the mental faculties are acutely developed. These races have advanced their psychic power to the exclusion of any other form of inter-personal communication.

Meeting one of these races is, however, unsettling. There is an inate alien-ness about them that no amount of surface humanity can conceal. They have no personality, no individuality, no human uniqueness. Wonderful though they are, these beings evoke unease.

They are merged into a totality that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the same swarm mentality as insects, vastly more wise and intelligent, but nevertheless lacking those singular traits that make John different from James and Lin-Erri from Astra-Lari.

Most of all, they have no privacy. In becoming a communal mind, they have sacrificed the right to isolation. One may fear the pangs of loneliness, but envision a world where one can never be alone. It's far more fearsome, indeed.

Do we of the Alliance use psychic communication? To an extent, yes. We do bring our children into it, but we do not allow it to become the sole means for them. A civilized world depends on much more than absolute truth.

This is possible only when social communication is mainly external, where the human foibles that render our minds and our thinking less than perfect can be counteracted by the graces of good manners, kindness, diplomacy, and tact.

Do we rely on psychic energy? Not at all. It has applications, but only for matters of informality. In all our official and important inter-personal communications, we use purely physical means, based upon various approaches to "radio", as you call it.

One of the most sophisticated of these technologies is the "implant" network. This is a system that links all Alliance citizens, not in the manner of the "swarm" I mentioned, but rather via what you might think of as "personal telephones" placed directly into the brains of the people.

These implants, when within one of the planet-wide grids, on a ship, or in one of our bases, allow the people to communicate with one another, to tie into our many computer systems, and so on, anywhere within the Alliance.

By this means they can converse, learn, do research, attend conferences, and perform any other activity that requires that the individual be in full and reliable communication with others.

As well, implants are the sources of brain activity data that allow us to utilize our teleportal networks to full advantage, as I'll explain in a few moments. They also provide personal ID codes for security, such as for ship control and access to classified areas and information.

These devices are bio-electronic in nature, using organic materials that are invisible to any form of detection, and invulnerable to electromagnetic or nuclear radiation at any level that would not result in immediate death of the individual.

The "grids" that I mentioned are generated by a precisely-placed network of what you call transponders or repeaters, operating in a manner similar in concept to "cellular telephones".

The person desiring to communicate directs his implant to link with the system, which requires a mere thought to activate. The unit then transmits a coded signal that is received by the nearest relay, which acknowledges that the user is on-line. The individual then commands the computers to perform whatever linkup is desired and in a few seconds he or she is "in business".

There is no charge to the person for services accessed via the implant network. Communication is considered a fundamental right of everyone, and this technology addresses that right.

However, non-implant communication systems operated by private corporations do often charge fees. This primarily involves commercial, non-personal communications such as image or data transmission, visiscreen broadcasts, and so on.

Interplanetary and interstellar comms use "sub-space" radio as the medium for almost immediate access to the farthest reaches of the Alliance. It would be futile to explain the SSR technology, because you have nothing comparable to it, but it involves the principle we use in our starships.

Let me now use as my last topic what your science fiction usually calls "teleportation". Until the advent of implants, this involved scanning the entire body's atomic structure and transmitting the resulting codes to the receiving end, where the body was built out of "raw materials" in the precise likeness of the individual. This, on an uncommon basis, involved Point-To-Point Receiverless Transport ala "Star Trek", but with a staggering usage of energy, and only for life-safety or having no practical alternative to PTPRT.

While the system worked, it was by no means ideal. It required an enormous energy supply, even though the only thing sent out was data, just because there was so much of it. To send it all in a reasonable time made the use of million-channel data streams mandatory, and this entailed a full transmitter section for each transport channel.

As well, the body produced at the receiver was identical to the one that was transmitted, even though the environment at the receiver might well be much different. This necessitated conditioning periods for even moderate adaptation, and often the individual simply could not live there at all.

After a time, we decided that it was best to use our computers to create a body designed for the conditions at the receiving end, based on the data from the sending portal. This worked far better, but the algorithms that did the conversions were, to understate it considerably, extremely complex.

With the implants, an entirely new process became possible. At the instant of transport, the implant is queried by the transmitting portal, and the brain activity is the only thing actually sent out. At the receiving end, a body pattern is fetched from storage and is used to create the perfectly adapted physique at the receiver. The incoming data is then modified to exactly match the brain of the recipient body, and transport is complete.

At the transmitting end, if the return will be fairly soon, the body is stored outright to await its owner. If the trip is extended, the body pattern is scanned and stored, and then reduced to "raw material" for use by others. As storage facilities increase, this time frame is expanded, and ultimately there will be no "demat" except in strictly one-way journeys.

Since the data consists only of mental patterns to program the implant in the recipient body, the amount of it is spectacularly less than the earlier method required. The entire system is now many billions of times less complex, and that much faster and more reliable.

We call THAT progress!

I shall end this commentary on a few facets of Alliance technology with the hope that these words might ignite in some inquisitive far-reaching mind a small spark of inspiration that will flare up into a brilliant blaze of invention.

Nothing I have described is beyond your ability to discover and use. Your people have consistently displayed much ingenuity and creativity. These are a few of the characteristics that make you such a valuable prospective member in the Alliance. You are half-way to the stars. We'll be waiting for you!

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	


next is, 

Date of reception: 14 October, 1988,


A Tour of Korendor - Part 1,


Love and light, my Terran friends. My topic for this evening is rather less a message than a travelogue, and will be a brief description of my home world of Korendor, a subject on which I am always eager to expound.

To begin, I shall present for the technically-oriented two tables of physical data on my planet and its parent star, Korena. Skip by it if it's of no great interest. Note that in the charts, an "e+" in a number indicates an "exponent" or power of 10 follows it, whereas "(E=1)" means that the value is compared to Earth as a unit standard.

 hope that the preceding data wasn't overly boring. It seemed appropriate to include that much information to create in your minds a physical planet, so that what is to follow will be envisioned based on that picture of the world.

It can be seen immediately from the data that Korendor is considerably different from Earth in many respects. The dominant factors are our gravity, which is over three times yours, and our atmospheric pressure which is twice yours.

These two conditions would make a stay on Korendor in your Terran form difficult at best, and then only with one in the peak of health. Most of you simply couldn't survive on Korendor.

For this reason, all visits to my world (other than by races accustomed to our planet's conditions) are via the conversion technique that I described in my message on Alliance technology, in which physically adapted bodies are created by the teleportal system. This is done even if travel to the planet is via spacecraft.

How different are we? If you were to see us in our native form, you might well think that we are one of the races associated with abductions. Our normal appearance is similar to that of the group actually doing it, although there are also many differences to be seen.

Under no circumstances do we come here in an unaltered form, just because Earth's conditions would be equally intolerable to us.

As to our actual appearance, Bob once described his Korendian form as "ugly" (and, to be fair, he similarly described his own Terran body when he saw a picture of it while in our form). Beauty, in your words, is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Suffice it to say that our bodies are perfectly suited to our world, as are yours to Earth. Perhaps Bob will consent to add to the computer diskette on which these messages are recorded a description of Korendian physiology. I shall not go further into the matter, preferring instead to begin now the verbal tour of Korendor.

This first part will be restricted to Vrell City (pronounced "virell"). In the next communication, I will describe a little of the rest of my beautiful planet. And now, I welcome you to Korendor!


Whether one arrives by spacecraft or teleportal, his or her first steps on Korendor are taken in Vrell City. Although there are other spaceports and portal stations all over the planet, they are for the use of Korendians and visitors that are already registered.

This is standard procedure on all Alliance worlds. The capital city is the arrival point for non-residents of a planet, simply to permit centralized facilities for greeting and registering visitors, and introducing them to our worlds and their customs.

The Visitor Registry on each world is also connected to the Alliance data banks so that a guest's whereabouts are known in the event of an emergency or other situation that would require our immediately locating that person.

Under normal conditions, once the visitors are processed, they are then granted full, unrestricted access to the planet for the duration of their stay. The implant network described in Part Four assures that needed communication with them would be simple and quick, although no attempt is made to "keep track" of their whereabouts.

Usually, a pleasure visit begins with Vrell City itself, with our young people in the Guide Service assigned to take them wherever their whims dictate. An aerial tour is almost always the first thing on the agenda, since Vrell City has (quite rightly) become legendary throughout the Alliance as a place of spectacular beauty.

Although Vrell City is by any definition a metropolis, every effort has been made to maintain a rapport with nature. As one glides over the city, the eye is struck by the vast amount of space devoted to gardens and parks. No place within its 590 square miles is more than five minutes by foot from one of these botanical garden areas.

One also notices a conspicuous absence of traffic on the streets. Small electric vehicles can be seen plying their way through the city, but most travel is done by walking, or via the complex network of underground or overhead transit tubes that link most buildings. Intra-city portal stations also connect the major city divisions.

The layout of the city (and indeed of most cities on Korendor) might be described as clustered "wheels". There are 55 of these wheels, consisting of concentric rings of buildings with a large park/garden at the hub of each wheel. The number of rings varies, but the average is 25.

The architecture of the buildings is widely varied, but always in harmony with their neighbors and with the city's overall plan. We find much beauty in geometric designs, especially in long, graceful arcs and sweeps. Domes and spires abound.

Aerial walkways weave amongst the buildings, alive with people strolling alone or in groups. Some lean on the railing, engaged in casual conversation or simply watching the busy city below.

The "wheels" are in turn part of much larger rings that have as their hub the vast Capital Complex, wherein all of Korendor is governed. This single area could contain your city of Los Angeles with room to spare, yet there is no sense of bigness, because here also there are many gardens and parks to break up the "big city" image.

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.

Beyond the forest belt lie the residential clusters, laid out in the same basically circular configuration, and always carefully designed to be in perfect harmony with the surrounding countryside. When a tourcraft is seen flying low over the homes, the visitor is always greeted by energetic waves from adults and children alike. We all want our visitors to feel welcome.

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.

Visitors watching the traffic from the city are always puzzled by the constant flow of "trucks" that seems to come from out of nowhere. If one follows them back toward Vrell City, at the perimeter of the residential areas, one will see both trucks and road disappear into the mouth of a tunnel, inconspicuous below the branches of several large trees. Once the truck enters, a sliding door quickly closes to prevent the entry of inquisitive animals and children.

There are 150 of these tunnels for commercial traffic, and over 1200 more leading to the home clusters, all for private vehicles. Some of the tunnels extend over fifty miles, and all merge into a vast complex of underground passages that link every part of the city with all others. The absence of surface vehicle traffic is due entirely to this underground road system. In our cities, the surface is reserved for the people, unless a vehicle cannot reach its destination by any other means.

About five miles beyond the forest belt to the northeast, Vrell City's spaceport commands attention. Let us travel along with the visitor as the tourcraft approaches its outer edge. Crisp dialog between the Guide and Port Control quickly places the small craft into a standard pattern for cruising over the busy facility.

As we glide over the vast areas of parking for the thousands of crafts that come and go daily, we see a wide variety of designs. There are winged ships, triangles, a few odd geometric shapes, but the majority are variations on the traditional discoid format. The size range is astonishing, from small personal crafts to several mammoth ones half a mile or more in diameter.

There are three runways for the benefit of winged airborne ships that require a running start. Most, however, are capable of vertical flight and go in orderly progression from a number of defined "departure columns" until they reach the assigned altitude for breakaway to their destination. Those ships headed for space continue upward and out. Similarly, all incoming ships enter "arrival columns" for their descent to the port.

As we watch, one of the half-mile leviathans rises from its station and moves silently toward its column, where it hovers awaiting clearance, and then tilts on edge and is gone in a flash of acceleration far too fast for meager human reflexes to track.

Our overflight continues as we follow marked lines on the surface that delineate the tour corridor over the port. Many gardens and park areas are scattered about the facility, in use by thousands of people relaxing or waiting for their ships to arrive or leave. Most acknowledge our tourcraft as it passes overhead.

A winged craft moves onto a ramp leading to a north-south runway. We crack the side window open, to listen for the anticipated thunderous roar. The ship begins its takeoff roll, accelerating rapidly, then noses into a steep climb and arches southward. There is no noise, no smoke. The Guide explains that the vessel belongs to a museum in the southern hemisphere that maintains and flies antique ships using hydrogen-oxygen rockets and ram-jets.

The lack of noise is due to full silencing that renders them all but inaudible beyond a few hundred feet. As another of them heads to the runway, our Guide says that these are carrying a group from Vrell City going to the museum, and suggests that the visitor avail himself of it if time permits, to see the long and fascinating history of Korendian flight.

If we're on a typical guided tour, our craft leaves the port toward the city. Once it crosses the city-side perimeter of the forest belt, it banks toward the "nerve-center" of the Korendian government. Fast messages clear the little vehicle to enter the controlled airspace over the Capital Complex, and a moment later the flight ends in a spacious reception area.

The gull-wing doors open with a soft hiss, and our visitor steps out, to be met by another Guide. As they leave, a gentle rush of air tells them that the tour craft has departed as silently as it arrived. A short walk brings them to the registration office. A quick check of Alliance records determines the level of clearance held by the visitor, which establishes where in the Complex he or she is permitted to roam without an escort.

At this point, unless the Guide is specifically requested to remain, the visitor is free to wander thoughout the Complex. One "must-see" is the Vrell City Historical Museum, containing a splendid variety of displays on every aspect of the city, from its inception to the present day. This alone could occupy at least two days for the person wishing to thoroughly explore every fascinating and informative exhibit.

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.

Lodging is cared for by the 230 "hotels" in the Complex, again with many specializing in catering to the needs of alien visitors who prefer the furnishings or decor of their own world to the typical Korendian trappings. In all ways we want our guests to feel at home on our planet, and to leave with pleasant memories of their stay and the desire to return again and again.

Although much of the complex is devoted to the running of Korendor, a substantial section is involved in the Alliance-related operations of which our planet is the Sector Capital. It is in this capacity that the vast majority of visitors from other worlds come to the Complex, since of course the inner workings of planetary government are of interest mostly to its citizens. We are proud of Korendor, but we can't expect aliens to share our feelings.

One of the major features of the Complex is a combined museum/library of Alliance history, inasmuch as Korendor is privileged to be one of the Founding Worlds of the UWA. This facility alone draws over eight million visitors each year, and affords a veritable warehouse of information for researchers and students.

Even with the considerable wealth of resources to be found within the Complex, the average visitor will after a time grow weary of the place. A call will fetch a Guide to bring him or her out into the city proper, with its vast array of cultural, educational and scientific attractions. Usually, the Guide is no longer required. From the moment that a guest arrives on the streets of Vrell City, he or she is one of the Korendian family.

There is no place in the city, nor any time of day or night, that the visitor can't find at least a dozen citizens eager to assist in finding places of interest, or to help arrange transportation, or simply to provide friendly companionship to lessen the feeling of being a "stranger in a strange land".

One might easily spend many days touring Vrell City's thousands of points of interest. If the visitor is inclined toward music, there are twenty major orchestras and over 200 other institutions devoted to music in its many forms. You would be interested to know that many of your own composers are known on Korendor.

Dance is well represented, but as might be expected, those forms such as your ballet are unknown on Korendor, due to our planet's high gravity. Our dance is more in the nature of what you call "interpretive".

Art is one of our passions. There are 320 permanent art exhibits in the city, and on any given day, at least fifty temporary shows or travelling displays. Sculpture, painting and photography are equally enjoyed, and we delight in bringing to Korendor the artworks of other Alliance planets, so that we might share in their cultures and their concepts of beauty.

The Alliance being a technocracy, science plays a central role in our way of life. Over a thousand facilities in Vrell City reflect this, exhaustively covering every aspect of technology and pure science. Principal amongst them is the Institute of Science, comparable to your science museums. Within its multi-building campus occupying ten square miles, brings to Korendor every facet of scientific knowledge from the entire Alliance.

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 these major city sites, there are many thousands of smaller places to visit -- restaurants, shops, entertainment centers, libraries, the entire retinue that forms the typical city's lifestyle.

The one thing that is conspicuous for its absence is any form of in-city residential facility other than lodging for guests. The city is a place for business and pleasure. It's not a home.

In the next part of our brief tour of Korendor, I will present a world view, and introduce you to "the rest of the story".

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	




	


next is, 

Date of reception: 16 October 1988.


A Tour of Korendor - Part 2.


Love and light, my Terran friends. In the first part of my verbal tour of my home world, Korendor, I focused on its capital, Vrell City. Now, I shall attempt within the restrictions of this message to bring you around the rest of the planet. First, however...

If one reads the data on Korendor that I provided to begin the last part, one will discern that by any Terran standards ours is not a livable planet, nor would Earth be suitable for us.

Yet, we of Korendor find it an ideal world. If one envisions the great variations in conditions on Earth, one can well appreciate that life adapts itself perfectly to its surroundings. Just as a human being would be crushed instantly in the depths of the oceans, those fish and other creatures that are at home there would die almost at once on the seashore.

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.

Eight billion people call my world "home". We are very different in our physical appearance from Terrans, but we are every bit as human. We are not perfect. We laugh, we cry, we know joy and sorrow, and, yes, we do on occasion also feel anger and hatred. These are feelings and emotions that, for better or worse, are a part of being human.

In short, as I said in my first message, if you come to us expecting to find the flawless, godlike beings of some "contact" tales, you will be sadly disappointed. We have our strengths and our weaknesses, but I believe that in this admission of our humanity, we will create far greater receptivity in your people for what we have to say. We do not offer our advice as neo-deities throwing crumbs to their inferiors, but as fellow human beings who have in our days met the challenges you now face.

The purpose of the preceding five paragraphs, though they might seem a wide deviation from the context of this presentation, is to demonstrate that on every planet where life exists, there you will find human beings of whatever appearance with all the imperfections that living imposes.

On those millions of worlds, there is much good, but there is also evil. Just as light must be accompanied by shadows, there is in the complexity of human existence a "dark side" of every person's nature. We of Korendor and the Alliance are here just because there are beings who have permitted the dark side to control their lives, and whose ways are contrary to the laws of the Infinite One, our God. It is my goal to make you aware of this presence, and by revealing my people as human, to make you know that you are not alone.

Returning now to the subject, my world is a place of extremes as is your Earth. Although somewhat warmer as a whole, we do know the chilling days of polar winters and the sweltering heat of our tropical summers.

You have an expression that says, "Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it." Many years ago, we attempted to modify and control our world's weather patterns. After not too long a time, we realized that we are puny in comparison to the awesome power of nature. Do not feel inadequate if your efforts to do this inevitably fail. I know of no planet where it has been accomplished.

We have simply accepted that our climate is its own master, and have learned to live in harmony with nature rather than warring with it. Although it can be cruel at times, it usually serves us well.

Because of the lesser axial tilt of our world, the seasons are not as pronounced as on Earth, thus tending to create permanent zones of unlivable conditions. A band of approximately six degrees either side of the equator is simply too torrid for human life, except for enclosed habitations.

A wider belt from 6 to 20 degrees north and south is livable, if not especially comfortable. Much of this region is taken by what you would call "tropical rain forests". There are a few cities of hale and hardy souls who choose that sort of life (of whom yours truly is, needless to say, not one). Interestingly, much of this area has remained unexplored even in this day, although it has been meticulously mapped by airborne surveying teams. We prefer to allow it to remain a mystery, there being so little of that left.

From 20 to about 75 degrees are our "temperate" regions, in which the bulk of Korendian life exists. Over 98% of our world's people live within a band from 30 to 65 degrees in either hemisphere, and oddly enough almost 60% of the people are concentrated in the northern half, for reasons unknown.

If that seems to be a bit crowded, consider that Korendor's surface is over 7.5 times greater than Earth's, and 53.7% of that is land, or over four times your entire surface. Within the 30-65 regions lies 61.3% of our land area, or almost 2.5 times your total. It should be evident, then, that we are far indeed from reaching the point of overpopulation. That we group ourselves in cities is simply due to the inate human tendency to seek companionship. Perhaps it is some primitive tribal instinct, but we enjoy togetherness.

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.

Another that you have so far only touched upon is hydroponics. Although we do not find wide application for it on Korendor, it is used extensively in our bases and large ships, to enhance their self-sufficiency. Our two lunar bases are capable of complete isolation from outside supplies because of their advanced hyroponics facilities. Earth would do well to develop this method on a large scale. You really do not have much room to grow things these days.

Getting away from the developed areas of my planet, we find huge spans of forest, several of over a million square miles each, and many in the tens of thousands. These are essentially untouched, although this was not always so. We had an extended period of random deforestation, because we found in wood an excellent material for construction on Korendor and elsewhere.

For a time, we were a primary supplier of wood products to many of the worlds in Korendor's region of space. Then, about a thousand of your years ago, we began to realize that in our heedless harvesting of our forests, we were setting ourselves up for an ecological cataclysm. Despite the enormous profit we were reaping, we reversed course, about twenty of our years short of irreversible disaster.

The signs were all there for many years before we took action. Slowly increasing air pollution from our use of combustion for energy, massively increased levels of what you call "greenhouses gases" in the air, all the symptoms of a world gasping on the very edge of environmental death.

When the change came, it was swift and certain. We banned exportation of any wood products, eliminated them for our own construction, and undertook a vast, world-wide program of planting new trees. We vowed then that never again would we interfere with nature's handling of its forests.

It was an action that caused great economic upheaval, but we created a new material out of vegetable fibers that, although it had none of the beauty of wood, was much stronger. In the end, this new material proved a far greater profit-maker. The Infinite One does have mercy for blind fools.

It was at this time also that we undertook a "crash program" to develop new sources of energy that did not rely on the combustion of fuels. Although it was not especially auspicious in an environmental sense, we went heavily into hydropower. We also exploited the uninhabited desert areas of the equator to construct enormous solar electricity stations to supply our power demand.

The development of practical nuclear fusion ended all these futile efforts to meet our rapidly-expanding power demands by natural forces. The limitless energy of fusion made water and solar energy obsolete, and, now free of partiality to them, we saw that in their own way they were as damaging to the environment as our earlier abuse of the forests. We had finally learned our lesson, and we learned it well!

As a stark reminder to all our future generations, we left several of those huge land-devouring solar energy systems in place, where they would be impossible to ignore by anyone whose course takes them across the equator.

They lie in disrepair now, unused and untended monuments to a plan that went awry because the consequences were not thought out. To that end, we have given them to posterity, so that our children and theirs will use wisdom in all their choices, rather than seeking the "easy way out".

One thing that a visitor from your world might notice is the conspicuous absence of anything resembling your mountains. It is a rare Korendian rise that reaches a mile, and our tallest is by your measures 8,730 feet in height.

Our gravity of course renders impossible the formation of mountain ranges such as the Alps. Indeed, the photographs of your world's mountains never fail to astonish our people. Most of us have never visited a planet of such spectacular heights as Earth possesses in abundance. The awe that they inspire makes us wonder even more at your lack of concern for the planet that affords you a home of such beauty, of such splendor, of such majesty.

What Korendor lacks in mountains, it makes up for in rivers, and several are of truly heroic proportions. There are at least ten on the scale of the Nile, and three are a factor of five larger. The one that flows to the east of Vrell City is approximately equal to your Mississippi River.

Because we are a people who love the water, rivers are among our most popular places of recreation. Boating is a planetary pastime, and on any day the rivers are dotted with thousands of crafts of all sizes, both private and public. Tour boats run day and night, with people spending the hours aboard in sightseeing, friendly conversation or simple relaxation.

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.

As well as our rivers, there are thousands of lakes and inland seas on Korendor, many the size of your "Great Lakes", and some that on Earth might be labelled small oceans. Again, these are the sites for much recreation, and a home by the water is a high privilege.

In many places, cities have been located with a nearby body of water as an integral part of the planning. It is not uncommon to find a number of small man-made rivers extending from the core of the city to the lake, so that the people can use their "lunch hours" to enjoy the water. Swimming is a sport that we relish, and we feel deprived if the day passes that does not provide an opportunity to "take a dip". It is very difficult to express in words the union that we feel with the water and the creatures that share it with us.

Because water is such an integral part of our daily lives, we take very strong measures to assure that it will remain pure. The notion of using our waterways for waste disposal is utterly unthinkable to us. Although we have stringent laws governing this, they are never called upon because the people could never conceive of defiling their water. Korendians would sooner destroy their homes than befoul their world.

If this seems to you to be hitting "below the belt", let me just say that I have not yet begun to preach. In a future message, I intend to elaborate in painful detail on what Korendians think of beings who heedlessly do harm to their world. It will not be a harsh condemnation, but rather a chastisement from the "voice of experience". We know where you are because, unfortunately, we were once there ourselves.

Continuing our spotty tour of my planet, there are a number of natural phenomena that merit mention. One of these is a vast network of caverns extending for many hundreds of miles beneath the southern continent known as Markama.

Dubbed "The Caves" by a wondrously creative fellow (whose name is unknown, perhaps thankfully for the sake of his descendants), this is a fascinating day-trip for anyone who is interested in natural grandeur on a mammoth scale. The largest of the caverns could easily contain all of Manhattan, and are so high that rain often falls as the water evaporating from six underground rivers condenses into heavy clouds near the ceiling. Speaking of rivers, one of them enters the caverns from a 950-foot multi-cascade waterfall. This must be seen (and heard!) to be appreciated.

We have no concrete evidence to support any of the various theories as to what formed these caverns so many eons ago. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that during Korendor's formative years, an asteroid-sized ball of ice plunged into the soft surface and fragmented on impact, burying huge shards in a fan-shaped spray.

The planet then coalesced around them, and as internal forces began to heat things up, the ice-chunks slowly melted, leaving behind their enormous "footprints" for future man to look upon with wonder. And wonder we do!

Further south is a feature that leads us to praise the Infinite One that we were not around when it was created.

Visible from half a million miles in space, there is the impact crater we have colorfully named "The Eye of The Worldshaker". About 800 million years ago, a planetoid of at least 250 miles in diameter came straight at Korendor. As it reached the Roche Limit, it exploded and showered the surface with billions of tons of rock and ice.

The core, however, was iron, and it easily survived the blast and the brief trip through the atmosphere. Estimated to have been at least thirty miles in diameter, it hit Korendor with a fury that to this very day continues to send detectable shock waves through the planet, an echo that may continue for another hundred million years.

The contact created a roughly circular crater 85 miles in diameter, and 4.8 miles deep at its center. The top third of the meteorite protrudes from the center of the crater like a grotesque eyeball resting in its huge socket, thus its name.

The rest of the core vaporized on impact, peppering the crater walls with steel globules, and blasting metallic spheres as far as 3,000 miles from the site. The cloud of vapor and dust that was blown into the air spread around the planet. For a thousand years it obscured Korena's light before finally settling. All but the most stubborn life-forms were extinguished.

We look back now at this event, and try to stretch our imaginations to fathom those minutes so long ago, and end in a prayer of gratitude for life.

Another item of interest on a colossal scale is "The Greeting". Many centuries past, long before our people had developed space flight, we wondered at the stars that dusted the night sky, and envisioned travellers "out there" who might be looking for a refuge from their journey.

In order to signal to these unseen visitors, our people, working with a technology equivalent to yours of the 18'th century, undertook to build in white stone a smiling Korendian figure with an open hand raised in welcome.

In order to be visible from far out, they surmised, it had to be big. They made it big indeed! From the top of its head to the tip of its toes, the figure extends for 233 miles. Its upraised arm is 78 miles long. Massachusetts could comfortably fit into its torso, and Rhode Island into its head.

In order to make the shape clearly visible, the stone was laid in a line two feet high and 300 feet wide. When the framework was done, crushed rock was dyed and used to "color" the figure and give it substance.

Although the figure used only half the stone employed in building your Great Wall of China, the task was truly a prodigious feat. Sadly, it was built on the far side of Korendor from Vrell City, and it waves its welcome only to those who make a special journey to see it. It would have been wonderful to have its smile to greet our guests.

Oviously, comparisons will be made between "The Greeting" and the "Nazca Lines" in your nation of Peru. Let me say in response that the construction of enormous images is a very common practice around the galaxy. We have no information at all on the reasoning behind the Nazca figures, but usually these projects have some religious significance for the people who decide to undertake the task, and they are primarily the efforts of culturally primitive societies.

In the case of "The Greeting", however, the sole intent was as a huge signal of welcome to potential space travellers. The builders made this very clear in their lengthy records of the construction. Our people wanted to say "Hello" to whoever might be up there. They chose to do it on a grand scale, but then, that IS the Korendian way!

There are many lesser but equally interesting places to go. The Museum of Flight, mentioned briefly in part one of this world tour, covers six square miles with exhibits containing air and space crafts from the very earliest days of manned flight over 800 years ago.

Over 35,000 vehicles of every imaginable configuration are lovingly cared for by people whose lives are dedicated to the freedom that flight represents. Most of the crafts are Korendian, but a separate campus of buildings is devoted entirely to ships donated by other Alliance worlds.

Many flights each day are given in the ancient crafts, for the stout of heart who want to experience what their grandfathers' grandfathers felt as they watched Korendor slip away below them.

To be sure, most of these "oldies" are still years beyond your present jet aircrafts, but to Korendians used to the security afforded by our modern disc-ships, riding in these antiques is an adventure that is safer but no less thrilling than a skydiver's first jump.

On a planet where risk is all but nonexistent, anything that offers one a few moments of excitement, and even a smattering of fear, is welcomed with the avid anticipation of a six-year-old awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.

However, you would not soon entice one of us to board your amusement-park roller-coaster rides. What you find stimulating would in all probability reduce us to white-knuckled catatonia. Facing danger is not unknown to us, but as for doing it for its own sake, we will pass on it, thank you very much!

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.

There are many other things and places that I could describe, but for the moment, we must move on to more important topics concerning your world and the many difficulties it will be facing in the months and years to come.

I hope that one day I might be able to welcome you aboard a Korendian ship for the journey to my world, so that you might share for yourself its countless marvels. This is a goal that I and my associates strive for with every fiber of our beings.

Help us, please!

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I Am ArKay.




	


	


next is, 

Date of reception: 21 October 1988.


Earth - A World In Peril.


Love and light, my Terran friends. From the light-heartedness of the last message, I must now return to far more serious and sobering discussions. Let me state at this point that what is to follow will in many cases be brutally frank, and it is very possible that it might evoke from you the reaction, "mind your own business, alien."

My friends, you ARE our business! The peril that threatens you threatens us. The "forces of darkness" are the avowed enemies of every one of us.

It does not give us pleasure to find fault with the conditions on your world, but since many of these things are not of your own doing, we must try to bring you into an awareness of the problems, so that you might better appreciate the necessity of the steps required to correct them.

To begin, I will address the most feared and debated hazard of the day, the possibility of nuclear warfare. I cannot emphasize too strongly that your people are not entirely responsible for nuclear weaponry. As I stated before, this capability was the dubious "gift" of the Omegan infiltrators who are in such intimate control of your planet. However, your race's seeming love of battle did nothing to impede the swift adoption of nuclear arms into your own arsenals of war.

The force of the atom is a neutral thing. Of itself it is neither good nor evil. Used for the purposes of peace, nuclear energy can be an enormous power for advancement and abundance. We of the Alliance have long employed what you call "the peaceful atom" to supply unlimited energy to our society.

On Earth, you have exploited both sides of this force. Many nations tap the enormous energy of the nucleus to generate electricity in a manner that, for all its (considerably overplayed) problems, is by far preferable to the prodigious burning of "fossil fuels" with their environmentally disastrous waste products. As I said before, the fission process is by no means the best solution to your energy needs, but it is better than the alternatives until you at last harness the immense power of nuclear fusion.

Unfortunately, you have developed a very efficient application of the fusion process. You have named it the "hydrogen bomb". Here your science was fully culpable. The Omegans provided only the knowledge of the military use of nuclear fission. The H-bomb was your world's "native son". In matters of warfare, you are surely a creative lot.

The principal reason that your scientists have continued to refine these fiercely destructive devices is that the Omegan program is maintaining your world's nations in a constant and unrelenting state of war-readiness. Your invention of the fusion bomb was unanticipated by them, but they found it most encouraging. They would have ultimately provided it themselves, but your ingenuity only reinforced their belief that you are an ideal race to carry out their objectives.

What, then, do we think of your "peace movement"? Sadly, we must say that we cannot agree with their naive solutions to the nuclear issue. It is an unfortunate but inescapable reality that the world's nations are split by fundamental ideological differences.

As long as one of the ideologies employs oppression and tyranny to gain its ends, and that ideology is in the "nuclear club", then those nations that have become the defenders of freedom and democracy must maintain their own ability to respond in kind.

Remember that the Omegans do not create these political or ideological schisms. They merely enhance them. Also be aware that although the Omegans will seek to prevent a major war, they are no longer in a position to absolutely rule out such a conflict.

It is perhaps ironic that the Alliance has in one way fostered this greater potential for nuclear war. By our efforts to wrest control of your world from the Omegan infiltrators, we have reduced their ability to prevent a third world war. However, before you judge us harshly, think well on what this represents.

You have an expression, "the cure is worse than the disease", referring to the sometimes violent reactions of people to medications that treat an illness. Yet, for all that reaction, is there anyone who would suggest that the disease is better left unchecked, to spare the victim the adverse response to the medicines?

The Alliance's medication for the Omegan infection is harsh indeed, and one might well object that there is no value in a treatment that might kill as surely as the illness. To this I say that wherever Omegan control is reduced in the governments of the world powers, Alliance influence is put in its place.

Although we have given your people more control of their own destinies, we are also working to lessen the tensions that the Omegans have used to sustain international distrust and hatred. If we have given your leaders more power to initiate nuclear war, it has been balanced by reducing the incentives for doing that unthinkable thing.

We will wean you away from your millenia of violence and blood-lust. We will give you a just and lasting peace with or without your approval.

However, until the process is far enough advanced that total nuclear disarmament will not invite wholesale adventurism by the enemies of democracy and freedom, the existence of nuclear arsenals is a "necessary evil".

We find this state of affairs to be immensely troubling. Yet, we cannot support unilateral nuclear disarmament on the part of the "Western" nations, because the "other side" will not then respond in kind. Given the intense and long-standing antipathy involved here, it may well embolden "them" to use the arms disparity to launch a pre-emptive "first strike" that would cripple the West's ability to respond. Rest assured that we have seen documentation to that effect. Our support of Western nuclear arms is not without firm foundation.

However, we of the Alliance are at work to eliminate this necessity. One should thoroughly analyze the unique phenomenon of "glasnost", the amazing ability of Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev to do things impossible under past regimes. What is going on in the Soviet Union is unprecedented in Communist history. Why is it happening? HOW is it happening?

Do you believe that the men in the Kremlin have "gotten religion", or have become "jolly good fellows"? The old guard still exists within those walls, yet Comrade Gorbachev is apparently "doing his thing" with impunity. The inescapable conclusion is that he is, as you say, "holding all the aces". It then leads one to wonder who dealt the hand to him, who stacked the deck in his favor. Interesting, is it not?


My second topic is non-political. Although it is far less feared, it is a vastly greater threat than nuclear war, because it is taking its toll of lives every day without a shot being fired.

I speak of the war that you are waging against your own small planet.

Several times I have mentioned the seeming indifference that you have to the wholesale destruction of Earth's environment. Evidence indicates that "the chickens are home to roost". The consequences of your assaults on your fragile eco-system are now manifesting themselves in potentially deadly ways.

We know that these things are the inevitable result of your actions. We have much confidence in this statement. We are not proud of this, but we once did this ugly thing to Korendor.

Without elaborating, I will say that we followed your same general course of events. Profligate burning of hydrocarbon fuels. Rampant destruction of forests. Injudicious waste disposal. We did not pay attention to the warning signs until it became impossible to ignore them any longer.

This happened when nature took those signs and beat us about the head with them. Because of the differences in our worlds, the effect on Korendor was greater yet. The denser atmosphere held higher levels of noxious gases and vapors in suspension, and our lower level of rainfall offered less chance for the air to be "scrubbed" of these toxic pollutants.

You describe your problem as "the greenhouse effect". It is a benign term for a very deadly phenomenon, indeed.

For those unfamiliar with the term or its causes, let me briefly explain. Sunlight consists of a wide range of light wavelengths. A pure atmosphere is essentially transparent to all of these wavelengths. During the day, sunlight pumps immense energy onto a planet, but most of that energy is sent back into space by reflection and radiation, so that a balance is maintained.

When pollution occurs, the air is no longer a transparent shell. At long wavelengths it becomes opaque, and heat energy that formerly radiated outward is reflected back to Earth. This is how a glass greenhouse works, and this is how a pollution-laden atmosphere works. Low infrared wavelengths ("heat rays") emitted by warmed surfaces are trapped, and the planet's ambient temperature slowly increases. Therein lies the formula for an ecological nightmare.

On a world scale, a small increase of temperature might not seem terribly significant, but an average rise of as low as three to five degrees has a very profound effect on weather. This is not the place for a lesson on meteorology or the dynamics of an eco-system, but this information is readily available from your own scientists. Suffice it to say that they will verify what I have presented thusfar.

The single greatest contributor to the greenhouse effect is carbon dioxide gas, created as a byproduct of burning carbon-based fuels. This "burning" may be rapid (combustion), or slow as in living cells. The key chemical reaction is oxidation of carbon. The CO2 gas, once in the atmosphere, is a mirror to long-wave infrared radiation.

In a balanced system, the amount of carbon dioxide is stable because plants convert it back into oxygen via photosynthesis. This occurs both in the air through land vegetation, and in the water by CO2 dissolved in rain that carries it to the rivers, lakes and seas, and thence to aquatic plants. It is a "closed-loop" bio-system that ordinarily regulates itself very well.

Enter the efforts of mankind. The carbon dioxide from natural processes is supplemented by the use of fuels for energy. Simultaneously, the green world is reduced through injudicious cutting, or, as in the Amazon forests, burning. Whether it is for obtaining wood or to clear land, the wholesale destruction of trees drastically reduces nature's ability to collect and convert CO2. Strike one!

Man's burning creates vast amounts of CO2, but also adds nitrogen and sulphur compounds that react with atmospheric water to create rather virulent acids. Rainfall then washes them out as "acid rain", which in turn poisons vegetation and water, further reducing nature's filtration system. Strike two!

By carelessly disposing of waste products in the planet's waters, much aquatic plant-life is killed, and the CO2 conversion factory loses more of it workers. Furthermore, dead vegetation and animal life decays with the release of still more CO2 into the atmosphere. Strikes three and four!

It is not necessary to beat this to death. The point is made. Of all Earth's animals, humans alone are able to destroy the world that they live in. We came very close to doing it. You are doing it right now. From the casual toss of a piece of paper or a drink can out of an automobile window, to the wholesale attack on your ecology that I have just been discussing, your apparent indifference to the health of your planet is truly appalling. We of Korendor are alarmed because in our history we went that same way, but we caught ourselves in time.

The cure must be as fundamental a change for you as it was for us, and it is vital that you begin it at once. The technologies exist that will allow you to break this "vicious circle". Learn of them and demand them. If you join to speak with one voice, your leaders will listen. For your sake and your world's, they MUST BE FORCED to listen. The alternative is the death of Earth!


A WARNING BEFORE YOU CONTINUE.


I have thusfar illuminated the physical aspects of the peril you face. I will now discuss the moral pollution that destroys your souls even as your chemical pollution kills your bodies.

I shall "pull no punches" here. If you would prefer to live in a world of blissful ignorance, then read this no further. Erase the diskette, load a "destroy-the-aliens" game into your computer, and turn your brain off.

If the above applies to you, then what is to come is not for you!

The decision to address the issue of morality places one in a precarious position. The trend of Earth's "modern" society is toward "situational ethics", in which there are no moral absolutes.

In this bizarre, historically indefensible pseudo-philosophy, the morality of any action is judged solely by the circumstances surrounding it. Gone are the ancient and immutable laws of the Infinite One, our God. In their stead are the legal codes of man. The Ten Commandments? Who cares about THEM? This is the Twentieth Century!

Yes, this is the 20'th Century, and you are fast approaching the 21'st. We of other worlds wonder just what you will be by then, if you continue to foresake your moral and religious past.

The Twentieth Century seems to be a license for irresponsibility and amorality, a permission to invert every principle of righteousness, an excuse to reject your Judeo-Christian heritage as outdated. Where is it leading? The omens are very frightening indeed.

This is a time when a nation's courts refuse to permit schoolchildren to offer a prayer to God, but allow them to be exposed to vulgarity and obscenity in the guise of literature; to be taught all the physical facts about their sexual nature, but none of the moral and social responsibility that must accompany it.

This is a time when "comedy" is shouted filth; when a film cannot be successful unless the performers are naked and engaging in sexual acts, this including a depiction of Jesus Christ in that sordid manner; when television programming portrays the use of alcohol and drugs as socially acceptable and indeed very desirable, and teaches that the answer to a person's problems can be found in the firing of a weapon.

This is a time when the champions of "freedom" vigorously espouse the civil rights of criminals, but have no compassion for the rights of the little ones in the womb, whose only "crime" is being inconvenient. This is a time when the sanctity of life is forgotten, and the meanness of spirit that engenders it permits the utterly unthinkable acts of abuse committed against children by their parents and guardians.

This is a time when every known standard of music has been abandoned in favor of dissonant, atonal primitive rhythms; when lyrics directed at your innocent, impressionable young children advocate suicide, drug use, violence, hedonism and utter disregard for every social virtue that makes civilization worthwhile; when the "musicians" are seemingly intent only on competing with others for supremacy in disgusting, tasteless, talentless excess.

This list could go on for several more pages, but it illustrates that the "modern lifestyle" is a moral vacuum. If an enemy of humanity desired to rid Earth of all that is good and noble, that foe could not devise a blueprint for action more effective than your way of life in the Twentieth Century.

A character of your comic strips of several years ago, whose name was "Pogo", wisely observed, "we have met the enemy, and he is us." My friends of Earth, you are, in your misguided quest to achieve a perfect freedom, confusing liberty with license. Freedom entails responsibility and the wisdom to use it to the benefit of all. Perfect freedom is anarchy. There must be limits within which all live, or there is only chaos.

Those limits are defined for all of us in the flawless laws of our God. In denying those laws, your people are inviting their moral death. Despite the errant claims of "modern" teachers and religionists, there are indeed many moral absolutes, unquestionable truths not subject to being interpreted or changed according to humanity's whims and social fashions.

Twentieth Century Earth suffers from an affliction of the spirit. It goes by the name of conceit, and its primary symptom is the delusion that mankind no longer needs to pray to or rely upon God. You, dear friends, are thus infected. You are trying to eject God from your private and public lives, and to convince yourselves that you are too sophisticated and educated to need the old religions. Poor, sad Terrans.

HOW VERY WRONG YOU ARE!!

You will find as you mature in wisdom and knowledge that your need for God increases as you grow. We of other worlds accept this without question. The Alliance, despite its technocracy and science, recognizes the existence and importance of the Infinite One in the lives of its worlds and its people.

As long as you persist in trying to place yourselves on God's level or to dispense with him and set yourselves up as his successor in the world, you are doomed to failure. God gives freely to those who accept and call upon him. Those who believe that they can succeed without him are offered the opportunity to try. God gives of himself, but he will not force himself upon anyone. We all have free will, to use wisely, or or to use foolishly, at our own risk.

Look about you, my friends of Earth. Do you like what you see going on in your nation and your world? Do you not see the unmistakable signs of a nation that has abandoned its God and that has been abandoned in return? If what you see is not to your liking, then it is well past time to take the offensive against the forces of evil.

The Omegans are here, and they are doing their best to destroy your moral codes. However, only you will permit their efforts to be successful.

A character from one of your films said, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." The merits of that film aside, the attitude is one that Earth had best adopt very soon. We will do our part by ridding you of the Omegan influence, but we cannot bring you back from moral chaos. This must come from within each and all of you.

You must reach within yourselves, and draw out the fortitude and resolve necessary to change your own lives if they are not according to God's laws, and then to take that message of hope and love to those around you.

The "New Age" is a promise of love and light. The word of God IS love and light. THE TWO CANNOT BE SEPARATED! This awareness is the dawning of real knowledge, and the beginning of wisdom.

There is much that I could add to this message. Your little world has problems enough for ten more of them. But, we prefer to open your eyes and let you see the reality for yourselves.

We are here in the capacity of lighthouses along your rocky shoals of life, guiding you to a passage through the treacherous currents so that your world might find a safe harbor. We will give you the light you seek, but in the end it is you that must pilot your ship toward the safety and security of your home port. The wind is now at your backs. Steer well, my Terran friends.

In the next presentation, I shall endeavor to offer a few solutions, a bit of free advice, as it were, from us to you. For now, do consider what has been given to you. Your society, and indeed the survival of your species, may well depend on what you decide.

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	



	


next is, 

Date of reception: 25 October 1988,


Toward Your Tomorrows.


Love and light, my Terran friends. At my request, this message has been titled "Toward Your Tomorrows". In the next several pages, I will offer to you a number of suggestions as to what you can do to alleviate the major problems that beleaguer your little planet.

You are of course free to reject any or all of them. We will not impose ourselves upon you. The purpose of the Alliance is to eliminate the Omegan influence from your world. Once we have attained that goal, we will withdraw to act as observors.

You will then be left to your own devices, as you say, to demonstrate to us either that you have learned from the errors of your past, or that you will remain a warlike species into the indefinite future. In the latter case, we will depart, leaving behind only our automatic recorders to monitor your world, placing you "in quarantine".

If you are again threatened by any hostile alien force, we will return to repel that threat, but your world will remain in an isolated state as far as the Alliance is concerned. What the Confederation would do then is for them to know. We have discussed this with them, but they have not said what their response might be. As I noted before, the Alliance and the Confederation are not on the best of terms.

With that said, let us examine the steps leading "toward your tomorrows". Your highest priority must be to bring yourselves out of thousands of years of unrelenting violence and hatred.

There was of a time when, although you engaged in frequent wars, they were limited to personal encounters on the battlefield. Death was just as real, and violence just as brutal, but the grief caused by the war away from the battlefield was only psychological.

And then your technology of death and destruction began to grow in its sophistication and impact. The effects of war left the battleground, and the innocents began to suffer the horrors of war along with the soldiers.

You developed flight, and the air became a new and far-reaching arena for warfare. Your aircrafts were able to deliver large payloads of explosives to remote places, and the cities and homes of the combatants became targets.

Whether there was was strategic justification for these attacks is not at issue here. My discussion now deals only with means, not ends. The means expanded in scope and destructiveness, until at last, thanks to the intrusion of the Omegans, your military science "discovered" the atom as a weapon.

In two brief moments in your year of 1945, the awesome power of nuclear fission changed forever the course of war. Man of Earth was given a force capable of destroying civilization in a few hours of exquisite violence.

It is partly due to humanity's continuing horror of that possibility, and partly due to the Omegan's policy of preventing another major war, that your world has not since seen conflict except in a limited capacity. This is the "modus operandi" of the Omegan program -- to keep you at each other's throats, but to hold the reins tightly enough to disallow another world-scale war that might undo everything they hoped to accomplish.

Now, the Omegan grip is being loosened, and more than ever there is a need for a fundamental change in your thinking. The Omegans did not initiate the international hatred and distrust that fosters your wars. They merely manipulated them to their own ends. It is therefore your task to eliminate these progenitors of war before your new freedom endangers life on Earth.

This will not be a simple task. We are well aware that the differences are so profound that it may be many years before they can be successfully resolved. We are also aware that the ideology of the "Communist" system has embraced oppression, fear and violence as viable instruments of control.

In short, we know that unless that ideology is rejected completely, the "western" nations must be constantly on the alert, and be prepared to defend their precious blessings of freedom and democracy. We of the Alliance are first pragmatists, and then idealists.

The Alliance is deeply involved in the Communist nations in an ongoing effort to create in the people a strong dissatisfaction with that way of life.

Our infiltration will not be in evidence except to the astute observor. The tactics we use may well prove to be harsh and painful in the short term, but it is a long-proven fact that in a system where there is contentment with, or resignation to, the "status quo", there is no impetus for major cultural reform. We intend to put the needed "burrs under their saddles".

It may be by causing shortages of life's staples, or by bringing about incidents that demonstrate convincingly the corruption and bankruptcy of the Communist way of rule, or by giving to those in places of influence a taste of freedoms that are denied them at home. Whatever the approach, our aim is to plant the seeds of evolution, if not revolution, and to nurture them until they blossom into a popular demand for change that cannot be ignored.

Simultaneously, we will be working within the highest levels of government to further the careers and power of those whose principles, no matter what degree of deviation they might actually represent, are toward moderation and less restrictive governance.

The aware individual can see this tactic in action. "Glasnost" and the successes of Mikhail Gorbachev are not due to overt Alliance intervention, but rather to subtle "behind the scenes" assistance and persuasion. We do not force. We merely help things to move in the desirable direction.

We are also at work in the United States government, to create a greater degree of patience with the slowness of changes occurring in the Soviet system. The desert does not bloom overnight.

Many signs of our activity will be seen. Soviet "satellite" nations will begin to assert their individuality and their desire to move toward democracy. This will not happen easily, and the Communist leadership will oppose it. Yet, it must transpire, because within the limits of our power, we will not permit these trends to be reversed.

Because the Communist system of government is a failure, it must be rejected by your world. It has ruled by fear and oppression, and many millions of people have perished in its lust for control. The time is now past when an enlightened civilization can allow this abomination against the laws of God and the precepts of freedom to continue to rule on Earth. Communism must perish!

To be fair to all, your American way of life is far from flawless in its politics and government. The ongoing spectacle of the "presidential race" gives us cause to wonder how the leader of so powerful and influential a nation can be rationally selected by a voting public exposed to such a sorry display of negativism and verbal vitriol.

We know that this is a tradition in your political arena, a tactic long practiced in your country's history. This is, however, scarcely a credible justification for continuing to engage in it. We have discerned, as a point of interest, that historically the amount of rancor and negative politicking is inversely related to the competence and popularity of the candidates that use these sordid tactics. You may take that observation as a "rule of thumb".

Beyond that, we recommend that your nation begin at once to return its government to the minimalist force that its founders envisioned. Over the years it has expanded in size and power until it is now a ponderous behemoth that is beyond responding to anything that has not reached the state of crisis.

Your "social consciences", as they envision themselves, spend their time promoting an even larger government to oversee every aspect of life in your nation. They demand further investment of tax monies in what you call welfare programs, despite overwhelming evidence that these programs are self-defeating, and merely intensify the problems that they were created to correct.

I shall not go into this in detail at this time. All of you know of many instances where programs started by good intentions have soon "gone sour", because "throwing money at a problem" does nothing to correct the causes that create and sustain the problems.

This is the impetus for failure that plagues the large, unwieldy form of government that you have in America. Bureaucracy is a self-perpetuating evil that survives by creating new reasons for its existence.

When a social condition arises that demands action, another government department is formed to channel tax monies into the "solution" to that condition, without the merest knowledge of whether or not the application of money will do one thing to correct it.

We find this a most uncomfortable parallel to where the Alliance was heading, before the re-organization that I described in an earlier message. As any governing body grows larger, it loses flexibility and responsiveness.

Over the years the U.S. government has become irrational. It now exists primarily to collect and dispense an inordinate amount of tax money to no good end other than to preserve the workplace of those assigned to this task. You spend many billions on the "social programs", and yet there is an ever-mounting shame of poverty, hunger and homelessness. Many more billions are devoted to defense, and yet your military by and large relies on aging, hopelessly inadequate weapons and tactical systems that imperil your soldiers' lives.

A change is in order, a profound reworking that turns most of the tasks now "handled" by governments over to what you call the private sector, which can be far more effective. If for no other reason than that profit is a very compelling motivator, private business is more efficient in dealing with the challenges and problems in society.

The government must, of course, continue to be the controller of the economy's monetary system, and the wielder of military power. These are things that cannot be converted to the private sector. However, such things as the postal service, communications, energy, transportation, and so on are perfectly suited to the competitiveness and adaptability of private business. The concomitant decrease in taxation alone would spur economic revolution.

Is this likely to happen? Not as long as your country's politicians and citizens continue to believe that more government is the only answer to the nation's difficulties. You hear of the need to raise taxes to feed the hungry giant in Washington, and see horror and disbelief when someone dares to suggest that the federal bureaucracy ought to be "put on a diet". Reflect on the loud rhetoric that resulted from the law known as Gramm-Rudman, that sought to tame the federal beast.

Yet, this is the only hope America has for entering the next century as a vital and influential member of the world community. Your nation is at the point this very moment when delay will condemn you to economic and social collapse. This is not a prediction. It is an inevitability unless you act now!

I have discussed to this point the courses of action necessary to bring your world toward your tomorrows in the material sense. Now I must turn to the spiritual, the moral, the philosophical changes that must be brought about to permit a free society to best avail itself of its liberties. Here once more I may be "treading on toes". If I give offense, then so be it. I am not writing to appease or to please, but to enlighten and stimulate. I said in my very first message that if your idea of communications from aliens is vague, innocuous pablum, then you've certainly come to the wrong place.

With that in mind, we shall now proceed.

The Infinite One, our God, is the source of all strength and courage, of all compassion and mercy, of all wisdom and intelligence. He is all. With God, mankind can do anything. Without God, mankind is nothing.

That, my friends is the solution to all of your world's difficulties, and the banisher of all its evils. You have failed because you have forsaken that ultimate truth. You have chosen to tell God that you can do without him, and he has obliged you.

Turn back to God, people of Earth. Give him your worship, your love, your hopes and your dreams, and he will then provide for you as he has for us on the many worlds he has bestowed with life.

Is it really that simple? Yes, and no. The solution is that easy. Bringing it into your world is not. That will be a challenge that only the bravest and most dedicated will face, and many will "fall by the wayside" in despair. Yet, without that return to God, humanity on Earth is doomed.

That may seem melodramatic, an unfounded hyperbole. It is not. It is as certain as sunset! Without a full recommitment to God and his immutable, eternal laws, my friends of Earth, you are condemned to the final failure. We of the Alliance cannot help you on this one. We will, if at all possible, rid you of the Omegan influence, but you must bring about the change of heart that will permit you to become great, and move out into the community of the stars. Your fate is yours to decide.

Some specifics, now. In order to begin this conversion to the righteous and spiritual way of life, the major promoters of immorality and cultural decay must be eliminated. Inasmuch as your "entertainment" media have a most profound influence on your thinking, it is with them that you must begin.

Your country has as one of its founding precepts the First Amendment, which quite rightly defends freedom of speech as a sacred trust. I do not for an instant propose to dispense with it, because it is a bulwark of an open and democratic society. However, freedom of speech can be abused. You have a saying that "free speech does not include the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater." It is time that you realized that there are other things that it ought not protect.

Not too many years ago, America's entertainment was wholesome, fit for every member of the family. The motion picture industry relied for its success on actors and actresses of talent and "screen presence". Legends such as Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Judy Garland and Bette Davis brought vitality to the "silver screen", and drew the viewer into their make-believe worlds.

The music makers provided the clean, innocent, often nonsensical but always decent sounds that listeners could enjoy anytime and anyplace. The print media gave you that same "family" atmosphere. Magazines and books were literate, informative and always an adventure in entertainment. Television and radio were the sources of light amusement, of mystery and comedy and drama and fine music.

And then your society changed.

In a mad quest for greater freedom of expression, you began to tolerate more and more "adult" entertainment. Where once competence was the measure of success in films, now a star's film future was determined by his or her willingness to mouth foul language and disrobe before the camera. Acts once confined to the "stag films" were found with ever-increasing frequency and graphicness in Main Street theaters.

The "rating system" appeared, and to be commercially successful, a film required the "PG" or "R" label. The "X" became a badge of honor, and the film that carried the "G" rating was doomed at the box-office. Filthiness replaced finesse, and pornography donned the mantle of legitimacy.

In 1988, the world's entertainment is a travesty, spurning everything that is pure and decent in spirit.

In this year, the ultimate slap in the face to God was presented for all to see, as Hollywood depicted Jesus as a man of lust, fantasizing a sexual encounter with Mary Magdalene. When Christians, with every justification, protested this disreputable slur upon their Lord, they were mocked and told by so-called religious leaders that it was a proper portrayal of Jesus the man facing temptation.

Sheer, arrant nonsense! This film is just one more effort to destroy the presence of God in your society. The demons of Hell could do little more than Hollywood is already achieving.

The same sickness of spirit befell other forms of entertainment. Evilness has overtaken the print and electronic media. I will not expand on this point, beyond saying that when crude, obscene, immoral trash is offered on "the tube" to your children, then you have carried free speech too far, my Terran friends.

It is necessary, then, to define the limits of First Amendment aegis. If a thing is beyond the farthest bounds of decency and good taste, then it must be exempted from that coverage. This may disturb the sensibilities of the libertarians, and they will fret about whose tastes will determine the limits. However, this shallow argument has for far too long allowed the peddlers of smut and social decay to run rampant in your society.

It is now time to set those bounds beyond which "entertainment" no longer enjoys First Amendment rights. The statement that filth and amorality are merely the byproducts of a free and open society is a pure sham. They are no more than the foolish experiments of a culture enamored of its self-styled maturity, and unaware of its ignorance and childishness.

Once you begin to critically look at what you see and hear each day, it will be no major effort to establish a set of guidelines. It is time to return American entertainment to the morality and righteousness that it for so long enjoyed, before it "grew up" and became "adult" at the expense of its innocence and its quality. This is the next step toward your tomorrows.

The final and perhaps the most critical point that I wish to discuss deals with traditional values. The world of 1988 seems to have forgotten the elementary social graces. Courtesy, respect, discipline, compassion, all have vanished. Responsibility for one's actions is passe.

Beyond all these, however, there is an over-riding concern that your people have lost their love of life. Each day's news brings more evidence that the sanctity and preciousness of God-given life is being forgotten or simply ignored.

The daily toll from "little" wars is in the hundreds. Millions starve to death in impoverished nations. Millions more are never born because the horror of abortion kills them in the womb.

Death, whether of individuals or en masse, has lost its significance. Euthenasia is promoted as a way to deal with the hopelessly ill. A doctor makes the suggestion that new-borns ought to be subject to death in the first few weeks of life if they are found to be deformed or diseased.

Certainly, death is the end of every life, and taking each one to heart would soon become overwhelming. Compassion does not demand that, but it does require that you do more than shrug off the loss of life from murder, narcotics, warfare, terrorism and the other causes of violent death.

That these victims are not known personally to one is no excuse. Death by the thoughtless or malicious acts of man should be of grave concern to all.

Sadly, this indifference to death has created an indifference to life as well. Nowhere is this more profoundly evident than in the cruel epidemic of abuse. Whether it is the brutality of beating a spouse, or the unspeakably vicious act of inflicting pain and suffering upon a helpless child, it is a logical extension of the hardening of the human heart toward the sacredness and preciousness of life.

The evils of the Twentieth Century have destroyed the millenia of progress that you have made from your primitive roots. In the 2,000 years since Jesus walked and taught upon your world, his wonderful, eternal words brought you slowly out of the "dark ages" of fear, ignorance and superstition. Now, in less than a century, my brothers of Earth, you have undone all of it.

Your last and most important step toward your tomorrows must be to bring about in mankind a new awakening of the spiritual life. You will continue on your present materialistic course of action at your own fatal risk.

Yes, try as best you can to make the worldly existence of all people more comfortable and pleasant. However, do not view that as an end unto itself. Without the true satisfaction that is obtained from a soul that is full of the love of God and the wealth of his blessings, you may own the universe and yet have nothing.

There are none so poor as those with the riches of the world who cannot buy happiness, love and peace. Truly, if there is no bread, the wealthiest of kings will starve.

The bread of the spiritual life is God's presence. Why humanity desires to subsist on the crumbs from the floor, when God offers this abundance of food for the soul, is a mystery that we of other worlds cannot understand.

You have had in your history the "Master Baker", Jesus Christ, who gave you the recipe by which you can forever sate your souls with his bread of life. Yet, you have rejected Jesus and his fulfilling words in favor of attempting to create your own cookbook without God's guidance and assistance.

Recognize the hunger for God that grows stronger within your soul with each day that passes, and you will know that the meager, stumbling efforts of mankind cannot assuage it.

Reach out to the Infinite One, and with your hand securely in his, place one foot in front of the other, and commence at his side that long journey toward your tomorrows. Earth knows no problem that cannot be solved by the application of God's law in your lives.

We of the Alliance will do our part by driving out the "dark forces" that have for so long held you in their evil grasp. Then, you must begin on your own to return to the spiritual way of living that will bring you into the higher awareness and consciousness that will make you worthy to take your place in the universal brotherhood.

Your arrival is eagerly awaited.

My last communication in this series will offer some insight into what it will mean to Earth to become a member of the United Worlds Alliance.

You will learn about a few of the scientific, economic and sociological benefits of that status, as well as the responsibilities that you will assume if you elect to "sign on" with the UWA. I believe that you will find it to be an interesting "read".

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	




	


next is, 

Date of reception: 2 November 1988.


Many Worlds United.


Love and light, my Terran friends. We have arrived at my last message in this first series of communications. I shall attempt to keep this briefer than several of the previous offerings, but I give no guarantees, inasmuch as these things tend to develop a life of their own as I progress.

The topic for this evening is what Earth (and the Alliance) will gain from your world's membership in our group. Of course, the Confederation also wants you, but surely you don't want to be associated with THEM, do you?

Seriously, the UWA offers to its members benefits that are far and away superior to anything provided by other organizations. I'll outline a few of them here, but first let me digress to explain the procedure by which a planet affiliates with the Alliance.

There are three steps to becoming a full member of the UWA. The first level is known as "Protectorate". The planet is only a prospective member. That status is in force until the world meets several criteria for advancement.

These include certain sociological conditions, adoption of the Universal Economics system, and unison of all the world's people into a single planetary "super-government" (we do not require eliminating nation-states, only that they all answer to one central power).

The Protectorate has the full use to our technologies, but control of them remains with the Alliance. This is to say that although, for example, you would be given access to space, there would be no spacecrafts or portals under Terran jurisdiction, nor would technical data be given for them.

This policy is a "safety net" in the event that the world decides after a time (as some few have) to reject a membership in the UWA. We would then withdraw and the world would go on its own course with no permanent change to its society because of our presence.

Once the world meets the criteria for elevation, the second plateau is "Associate" member. At this point, the planet has removed any question of its intention to continue with us.

This level is equivalent in all respects to full membership, with the following exceptions:

• The world does not have voting privileges or a voice in the Alliance governing process;

• The world is not represented in our courts except by appointed agents from Alliance member worlds, who act on their behalf;

• The training process for the creation of Masters is not provided;

• "Implant" communication is not provided except to planetary officials approved by the governing Council;

• Access to Alliance data banks is restricted.

These might seem rather severe limitations, but given the other things that Associate status offers, these few exceptions are seldom a source of hard feelings. In any case, except for the 150 Founding Worlds, every one of the 740,000 Alliance members went through the same procedure.

Associate Membership is usually a brief stop, while several enhancements are made to the central governing body of the world. How long that stop lasts depends entirely on how quickly the refinements are adopted and put into operation. Since they involve the transfer of certain matters of control to the Alliance, the usual impediment is the resistance of the people to giving the Alliance a say in the world government.

These requirements are limited in scope, but often the reaction is, "stay out of our business", because a world accustomed to absolute autonomy balks at outside influence.

For example, a frequent complaint is that the Alliance does not permit a planet to maintain its own military force (not to be confused with civilian police agencies). It takes us some time to convince them that there is just no conceivable need for it under Alliance affiliation, but then, logic often succumbs to tradition.

Another stumbling block is the transfer of final control of the world economy to the Alliance's "Universal Economics System". This objection fades once the resources available to them via the UnEcSys links are elucidated.

In short, planetary pride and stubbornness are the typical reasons for staying a while as an Associate. However, since membership in the UWA is understood to require a world to become a selfless, active partner to every other world, the planet must learn to shed its societal childhood and mature into the Alliance way.

The last step is, of course, full membership with all its privileges and its responsibilities. The world that reaches this honored status has just cause to be proud of its achievements.

Although it is one of over 740,000 members, each planet is a vital and indispensable component of the vast machine that is the Alliance. We do not offer membership lightly. If we thought that a world had nothing to contribute to the UWA, we would simply bypass it.

For that reason, you may look upon yourselves with considerable pride. The Alliance is not prone to becoming so involved with non-members unless they present some qualities or capabilities that we find very important to future needs. Given the vast problems that you face from within and without, you may rest assured that the Council of Elder Masters has some extremely good motives for permitting us to commit our great resources and manpower to your world.

With that preliminary information taken care of, the remainder of this text will provide an overview of a few of the advantages to being a UWA world.

The most important aspect of being a UWA affiliate is that Earth will be under the aegis of the Alliance. It may seem a trivial matter, but if you have read the preceding messages in depth, you are aware that there are a number of "dark forces" in operation that make a pastime of annexing those worlds that cannot defend themselves, or will not.

In the UWA, the full force of our vast resources of defense are available to any member world faced with a threat that it cannot repel on its own.

Unfortunately, because you are not as yet in our fold, we are unable to oppose the Omegans as effectively as we might desire. This forces us to work by stealth and "underground" activities, rather than by open confrontation, as would be the case were you one of us.

We will do our best here, but the Omegans know that in dealing with them, as you say, "our hands are tied". We are forced by our laws to work covertly within Terran society, and to assure that your people will not be directly involved in our programs. You must not obtain material proof of our presence. We may communicate, but landing a carrier in Central Park is a definite "no-no".

The second benefit that we offer is the full and immediate access to the realms of space. From your first moment as an Alliance Protectorate, we will provide the means for you to travel to anywhere in the Alliance. As I noted, we will control these means, but your use of them will be at your pleasure, without hesitation or limitation.

As well, we will provide any sort of technical assistance in developing your own space program that does not involve concepts new to your science. We will offer aid in refining rocket propulsion, and provide new chemical fuels, but until (or if?) you advance to Alliance Associate, nothing such as gravitic drive can be supplied. Once you attain that second level, we will of course then transfer the knowledge required for you to manufacture and maintain our transportation methods.

Although I said IF you achieve the Associate status, I personally do not doubt it for an instant. I am certain that the awesome thrill of being able to travel at will throughout the galaxy will prove so irresistible to you that you would do anything, even make peace amongst yourselves, to preserve it.

The benefits of joining the UWA are not limited to space. Most of the improvements will be on Earth itself. As an Associate, you will receive our fusion power technology, to free you forever from the limitations of fossil fuel and fission energy. We will also make available the ability to create anti-matter for M-E power systems in the spacecrafts that you will no doubt prefer to build for your own use.

We are well aware of your passion for "doing it yourself", and you are a remarkably creative and versatile race when it comes to inventing and adapting things to meet your needs. We of the Alliance find this a valuable trait in people, and even if you had no other saving graces, for this reason alone you would be welcomed into our numbers.

In the medical field, we can offer advances in treatment that would render surgery all but obsolete, and in those few instances where it is unavoidable, our surgical procedures quite frankly render your best techniques little better than medieval blood-letting.

Major diseases are unknown to us, and our physiology is considerably different from yours. We therefore have no immediate cures for your "killer" diseases. However, by working with your research professionals, and providing the necessary computer programming, we can easily give you the capacity to cure and to prevent these diseases.

We would like nothing more than to give your people the means to achieve perfect health. As an Associate of the Alliance, you will have it.

Speaking of computers, although you have made spectacular advances in this science, there are fundamental principles that you have yet to learn. We will teach them. To list just a few:

• "Neurosynaptic logic" that duplicates the thinking and reasoning processes of the human brain;

• Molecular-level integration made possible by "room temperature" super-conductors, offering computing speed increases by a factor of at least ten thousand over your best existing technologies;

• True "parallel processing" that your computer science is beginning to explore, but which is still decades in your future at your present rate of progress.

In the communications field:

• A planet-wide implant network that allows interface with a vast array of information resources, and instant, free contact with any other person;

• Link-up with every Alliance visiscreen system, providing a window into the universe on almost a million "channels", and the ability to study the cultures of people very much like yourselves, and others entirely alien to you;

• Access to the prodigious UWA "data-bases" that store the combined knowledge of the entire Alliance, often reaching back many thousands of years.

You may believe that you have very good communications, but you have only "scratched the surface". Let us show you all that you have been missing.

In the artistic and cultural pursuits, we will share our concepts of beauty and expression with you, and of course your own artists will be welcome to join in this exchange. We have art enough to occupy one for a thousand lifetimes, and we would be privileged to add your world's efforts to that great diversity.

There are so many more areas of interest that I could discuss that it would be no effort to extend this well beyond the limits of the computer that Bob Renaud uses to convert it to your technology. Let me therefore conclude by indicating what we expect of our member planets in return for the many benefits we provide.

Our principal requirement is that an Alliance world must contribute to the good of the whole. Each planet has qualities and capabilities that make it an invaluable member of the UWA.

However, we do not expect a world to sacrifice in order to meet the needs of the Alliance. We require no gifts. Rather, we operate on the ancient and honorable system of free commerce, of economic incentive, of profit (a "dirty word" in the lexicon of some of Earth's politically extreme viewpoints, but an eminently effective motivation).

We of the UWA believe that a world that provides a service or a product should be fairly recompensed. Earth has much of great value to us, and we will make it well worth your while to become an active partner in Alliance business.

One trait of your people that we find especially important is your inate capacity for leadership and instinctive decision-making. Over the years, we have many times witnessed this ability in action. You are, in your own words, "born leaders". Our many centuries of peace have rendered us quite frankly unprepared for the military way of life that has been forced upon us within the last thirty years by Kalran and Omegan initiatives against the Alliance.

Yes, we have our military people, and they do they very best, which is quite good, but we would far prefer to enlist your aid as leaders and planners and tacticians. You seem to be uniquely adept at these tasks, and applied to Alliance needs instead of against each other, your talents would be a highly prized addition to our capabilities.

Beyond this, as I stated earlier, your inventiveness and ingenuity would certainly be enormous assets to us. We are constantly amazed at the rate of progress that you have maintained in this century, far beyond our wildest anticipations.

Sadly, however, your morality and spiritual life have not only failed to keep pace with your scientific and materialistic progress, but indeed have suffered to the point of stagnation, if not of imminent collapse.

This is in part due to the "dark forces", but much of it is directly attributable to your misguided concept that in becoming scientifically astute, you have eliminated your need for God and his eternal word.

I have discussed this previously, and will not dwell on it here. However, to become a member of the UWA, you must acknowledge that your greatness is due to the benificence of God, and not to your own labors without his guidance.

You have many talents, many things to offer the Alliance, and we in turn will provide much of inestimable value to you. We would be honored to count you amongst our member worlds, but we hold that in the end, all of our mighty works, all of our blessings, everything that we cherish, we owe to our loving and providing Infinite One, our God.

If you cannot bring yourselves to return to that faith of your forebears, then sadly we must leave you to your own inevitable moral self-destruction.

In this, we can only watch and pray that God grants you the wisdom to see the folly of your ways before you can no longer turn back. You are at a bridge in humanity's life, my friends. If you cross it, naught lies ahead but moral desolation, without end or hope.

We will erect the warning signs at that bridge, but you alone can read and heed them, and in enlightenment turn back toward the road that leads you to a world of love and spirituality, of living by God's laws.

When you make that choice, there you will see the open arms of God, eagerly waiting to embrace you, his "prodigal sons", his lost children coming home once more. Behind him, you will see us, offering you a way of life to fulfill your dreams of destiny.

With these words, I bring to a close this first series of messages to you, my brothers and sisters of Earth. I hope that in these nine discourses, I have given you perhaps a smile, perhaps a tear. More than that, however, I hope that I have given you pause to think of yourself, your people and your world as vitally important in the vastness of God's wonderful universe.

If I have done this, then I am well satisfied.

Va i luce eno nol si unir. Go in light until next we meet.

I am Arkay. May peace be yours.




	


	


AN AFTERWORD FROM BOB RENAUD.


My intention is to make this short because there's little that I can think of to say to properly follow ArKay's messages. However, as ArKay said, don't be surprised if....

It has been my profound honor to work with this marvelous gentleman in the preparation of this first series of communications. More than once, I have found myself reading his words as they scrolled across my monitor, and feeling anguish for what we have become in our misguided quest for "freedom".

Perhaps it requires the views and perceptions of an outside observor to swing that two-by-four at our heads, to wake us up before it's too late.

In my capacity as the recorder and processor of his messages, I've been given many "off-line" conferences with ArKay, communications that will never be made public, but which offer deep insight into the workings of his mind and soul and spirit.

Rest assured that the concern that you read in his writings is genuine, that his toughness and frankness come not from any attitude of superiority, but from his commitment to assist us in lifting ourselves out of the moral pit that we are digging by our errors.

ArKay, the Korendians and the Alliance are here because they care. We are where they once were many centuries ago, and they know what it will take to leave our immaturity behind.

We are a haughty race, we humans of Earth, and one thing we don't like is advice from others, no matter that it's in our best interest. How much more so are we going to reject the wisdom and teachings from people of other worlds and star systems.

Yet, in them we are seeing what we can become. When we realize that we're not the quintessence of creation, but rather just one race of beings out of multiple millions throughout God's vast "house of many mansions", we can begin to grow in understanding of our real destiny in the universe.

These wonderful people, every bit as human as we are, have transcended the difficulties we now face, and want to share with us the path they followed in attaining a life of love and light.

The secret to their success is no secret at all. The Alliance (and the Confederation) live by God's laws, and they apply them rather than fighting or rejecting them. By so doing, they reap the benefits that God bestows upon his faithful children.

Twenty centuries ago, in another time of darkness and evil, a visitor from beyond our world came here to teach those who would listen. His words were spurned, and he was abused and finally put to death for his heresies against the established philosophies.

As time passed, the teachings of Jesus spread, and became the foundation for modern civilization. Let us now start anew the journey into light that began so long ago. Let us now follow God's laws into a glorious future in the brotherhood of all worlds.

I must offer an "olive branch" to those whose Confederation links might have caused them to take issue with the apparent harshness of the treatment given them in these communications.

The controversy that divides the Alliance and the Confederation is due to means, not ends. The goals of the two organizations are very much alike. However, the approach taken by the UWA on Earth has created the formal rift between the governing powers that ArKay mentioned on several occasions.

This divergence does not affect informal relations between the people. Their social and personal lives go on without interruption, and many groups have formed on both sides to plead for an end this high-level discord.

A few moments before I began this addendum, I conferred with ArKay to verify a few points that I wanted to make. In answer to my question on this subject, he said that although the two groups do not and probably will not see eye to eye on Alliance activities on Earth, movement toward reconciliation at the highest levels is under way.

The motivation for this is simple, and ArKay and I have spoken of it: the awesome, irresistible power of the laws of God. Both sides are listening to the Holy Truths that govern us all. Where man alone fails, man with God succeeds.

In one of his messages, ArKay suggested that I provide in this piece a brief description of the Korendian physiology. For this, I'm simply going to "splice in" a segment from the transcript of my tour of the PlatoComm lunar base in July of 1987, concerning this very subject. The text refers to my seeing the Korendian form on a base viewscreen for the first time. It's slightly edited to fit this format, but true to the original.

The "he" in the text is one of my Korendian associates, a member of the original team that first came to me in 1961. His name is Orii-Val, and a finer person you'll not soon find here or anywhere else (despite his occasional well-timed jibe if he feels that things are getting a bit too emotional or sentimental, but that's another story).

    This is your 'new' Korendian body as of your last replica visit to our lovely little world. So, what do you think?" He looked over at me, and apparently noticed my stunned expression, because he leaned back in the seat and just smiled.

    I studied that image for a long time. He was right. It was ugly. It was expectedly short, although Orii told me it was somewhat taller than the average, and solidly constructed for their gravity, which is 3.2 times that of Earth. The eyes were about the same size ratio to the head as ours, and placed at about the same location on the face. They were deep blue, almost indigo, with smaller pupils because of Korena's light being about 1/6 brighter at the Korendian surface than our sun's on Earth. There were no discernible eyebrows (or in fact any hair at all). The skull structure over the eyes protruded more than a Terran's, perhaps to shade the eyes from overhead sunlight.

    The ears were smaller in relation to the head than ours, lobeless and distinctly peaked at the top. They were pressed almost flat against the head. The nose was small, with slit nostrils. The mouth was slit-like, with lips that were less pronounced than ours, and slightly narrower in proportion to the jaw. It was curled upward in what on Korendor must pass for a smile.

    The head was rounded, with a larger cranial cavity (comparatively) than a Terran's, with concavity in the cheeks that started at the lower jaw and ended in front of the ears. The neck was thick and sinewy, again an effect of higher gravity. The torso was compact and powerfully muscular. The arms and legs were at about the same ratio of length to body height as ours, but were heavier and very well developed.

    The hands were proportionate to ours, but with slightly longer fingers and a discernable webbing between the thumb and the rest of the hand. As with the rest of the body, it appeared to be quite strong. The skin was very smooth. It was what we would call "white" in color, but with a "tanned" appearance not unlike what one would see on any California beach.

    All in all, the alienness of the body was alarming. It was obviously a product of an environment vastly different from our own. By any Terran standards, it was thoroughly uncomely. 

I'll grant that it's a heck of a way to talk about oneself, but from the Terran point of view, the Korendian is genuinely unlovely. Of course, as ArKay also mentioned, I found my Terran body equally disconcerting while I was in their form, so there's much to be said about beauty being only skin-deep, and in the eye of the beholder.

Returning to these computerized messages, ArKay has outlined a new series that he is working on for later transmission. In these communications, he will respond to several questions that I asked during the course of preparing this opening set.

He has also offered to reply on a personal (albeit quite limited) basis to questions from readers, and at a later time to use one or more messages to respond to a number of queries from New-Agers via this computerized format.

Both of us would appreciate your comments, suggestions for future messages and so on to the glory of God and the great work of the Alliance.

However, it is necessary that I respectfully decline visits, telephone calls and personal appearances. The time is not available for these things, and I must request that the readers agree to this. The written word is to remain my only medium of comunication.

In closing, I hope with ArKay that you have found much of interest, and much to provoke thought, in his nine messages. We thank you for your most valuable time, and we would be honored to serve you again in the future.

May God abundantly bless you and yours, and may you feel His presence in your life. May you know the serenity of His love and the peace of His strength. Believe in Him and His words, accept Him as your Father, heed the teachings of Jesus, and you will find the peace that only God can give.

Farewell!


Index of ArKay communications, Series Two.


The messages in Series Two were received in May through July of 1989. They continue the introduction to Korendor and its people, and deal further with matters on our own world.


	


next is, 

Date of reception: 2 May 1989,


Questions and Answers.


Love and light, my Terran friends. Welcome to the opener in this second series of messages, lessons or whatever you might elect to call them. It seems appropriate at this time to respond to a number of questions that have been posed to me over the months since I became involved in this work.

Let me preface this second series by making a short observation on the Alliance's intentions and how these messages relate to this program.

Those of you who have the first series know what the UWA is not. We offer no promises to descend from the heavens in a multitude of ships to save mankind from their own errors and undoing.

Whatever is the intention of the Confederation, the Ashtar Command and the others that have made statements of that sort, the UWA is not involved in those matters. Our task here is not to gather a select few to be evacuated out of danger, but rather to work in your society to eliminate the problems that might cause such a catastrophe.

My communications will reflect our orientation to the physical aspects of life, with proper attention to God's laws as they apply to the universe. The Alliance has a spiritual foundation but our work is in the "here and now".

You will not find here the typical concentration on vibrations, energies, crystals and the other elements of the channeled teachings. This is not to say that we disapprove of them or challenge the validity of that approach, but only that we do things differently.

We believe that there is room in the New Age for many diverse methods of attaining peace. Ours is to make it happen by working within the societal infrastructures of those worlds that we find worthy candidates for membership.

If your interest is in the etheric realms, in meditation, in metaphysics or so on, then we heartily approve of your efforts. We must, however, advise you that you will have to seek them elsewhere. And now, let me begin this evening's session.



QUESTION 1,


QUESTION 1.


A question that you have raised deals with our names. In many instances one finds a commonality in our way of naming ourselves no matter what worlds we call home. Often it is a single, hyphenated name, such as Astra-Lari or Orii-Val. Are these our actual names? Do we use names in the same way as you of Earth?

Speaking now of the Alliance, we do not rely on names to the extent that you do. For example, we do not use them in any form of official identification. At birth, every Alliance citizen is assigned a Universal Economics ID Code, equivalent in function to your Social Security numbers. The "Unecode" is our lifelong method of identification. It is also the security code transmitted by our implants.

Names are primarily for those uses where the absolute accuracy of the Unecode is not required. This is very like Earth, where there may be many who are called John Smith or Mary Jones, which on a large scale can obviously lead to confusion of a high order.

The names that we employ in our communications with you are phonetic equivalents. My Korendian name is thus an approximation of Delin-Trevar. As well, although we seldom use them on other worlds, we all have family or "Lineage" names, surnames, if you will.

Mine is Mirrak, Orii-Val's is Denora, Astra-Lari is of the Lineage of Setarr, and so forth. We seldom find a need to use them in contacting you, because there is little chance of names being duplicated in that capacity.

However, Masters are always known by their full names as a distinction or sign of station. Thus there is the Master Kalen-Li RETAN amongst those of the Korendian team. To distinguish between Masters and the High or Elder Masters, the latter use capitalized surnames. You will note in Bob's 1960s contact reports, Kalen-Li's surname was not capitalized. This is because he was elevated to the stature of Elder Master in the mid 1970s.

In answer to a question that may well arise, there are fully as many women as men who have attained the most honorable status of Master. Amongst us, there is no "feminist" movement. We have never entertained the peculiar notion that one's gender is a cause for differentiation or bias. We simply know that we are all humans, and live that philosophy. Thus, Master is the proper designation for men and women alike, without the merest thought of it being a "sexist" word.



QUESTION 2,


The next question: are there any truly non-human races in the Alliance?

This depends entirely on one's conception of "non-human". If by this is meant species that are physically unlike the customary humanoid form, then the answer is definitely yes. Many such races are long-time members of our group, yet are so unlike us in their appearance that in some instances one might fail to recognize them as being life forms.

We prefer to define human in an all-encompassing manner: a human is a being of whatever form that shares the common bonds of love, compassion, hope, faith, happiness, all those wonderful facets of the human spirit that make life in God's kingdom worth living.

Still, within the known universe are a number who by even our far wider definition are not thought of as human. Often they are beings of incredible advancement and knowledge, but they are utterly non-human in their customs and philosophies. Yet, they are often quite humanoid in form. Appearance deceives.

This may seem to contradict a statement in the first series, about human beings on every world with life. I was referring to Alliance worlds, but neglected to note the fact at the time. Please excuse the oversight.

We engage in trade and cultural exchange with them, but they have no link with us other than the physical and economic. They do not seek nor do we press them for membership. We ask once, and if they decline we go on with our affairs on that basis.

The answer then is that, by our definition, there are no non-human races in the Alliance. However, your limited view of what constitutes an alien or a non-human being might cause you great discomfort or fear in the presence of many of the species that we call our brothers in the Alliance.

This is one of the many ways in which your people must expand their consciousness and understanding in the coming "New Age". It is well to enhance the spiritual and "cosmic" aspects of your minds and souls, but it is vital that you accept that you are not the only species in the infinite realms of space.

You are human beings with all the virtues and failings that are found in countless races throughout the known and the yet unknown universe. Many of these people -- yes, they are indeed people -- would be utterly beyond your comprehension, but in the wholeness of God, we are all equal, all family.

In short, if on some lonely night you're travelling down a seldom-used back road, and there appears in the sky a glowing object that descends to a landing in front of you, from which a strange creature exits and comes toward you, extend your hand in welcome. After all, it would be the human thing to do!



QUESTION 3.


The next question is rather less weighty than the last, but life is not, after all, forever serious. It deals with the intimate subject of romance. When Korendians fall in love and seek a life together, how do we go about it? With your month of June, so long the traditional time for such matters, fast approaching as this is being transcribed, it is an appropriate moment for the topic.

When the moment arrives for our betrothal, though each family may know the other chosen one very well, a very old formal process takes place. It begins at the home of the bride, with all of her family in attendance. There are what we call the "Old Words" that are spoken, not as a legal requirement, but just because in our vast, complex scientific culture we find much comfort and continuity in preserving our past.

The father meets the couple at the door, and the first words are spoken by the bride-to-be. We will use Daron-Tora as the name of her man, and Demarr as her family surname.

"Father, I am pleased to present Daron-Tora. Daron-Tora, I am privileged to present my father."

"I welcome you to my home in love and light, Daron-Tora."

"In love and light, your welcome honors me."

The Words are then repeated with her mother, and then with the rest of the family as a group. With this done, the young man is now accepted into the family as an integral member.

About an hour of informal talk follows, usually with drinks and light snacks served by the children of the family. There is always background music, a series of ancient melodies that were composed for this formal occasion, and always played on original instruments to preserve their essence.

After the hour, the family departs and the lovers follow her parents into the parlor. They are seated in the curved sofa that is a fixture in all Korendian homes. In the center is a large round table, holding a silver tray with four crystal goblets and a pitcher of what we call "pera trala", freely translated, "sweet oil". The bride pours and serves, then takes her place across the table from her man, with her parents between them, her father seated next to him.

There may or may not be further social conversation, but ultimately they will return to the Old Words, with her father speaking.

"Cherished daughter, you bring honor to the Lineage of Demarr. Your chosen one has found favor."

"You have made my love whole, revered father."

"Son in spirit, we accept you in love and light."

"You have made my life whole."

"My children, may the Infinite One guide you in all your days. Go in peace and love."

With that, the couple usually will leave to be alone with their thoughts, their betrothal now half-completed. The formality will be repeated at the home of the man the next day, to "seal" it.

Such things may seem "corny" to a sophisticated, worldly Terran, but as you plunge headlong into the rapidly changing future, you will discover that there is much to be said for holding on to the traditions of the old ways. A race that preserves its heritage is a race that will meet the unknown with courage and comfort.

The period of "pre-joining" is indefinite, but is typically about two to three months in your terms. During those days, the couple will choose a home, prepare for the joining and so forth. It is a very full time for them, and many will be the nights that they will return to their homes happy but weary. Their families will always be supportive, but will never interfere in the process. If errors are made, they are a part of life, and savored for the valuable lessons learned.

At last, the day of the joining arrives. Because we have no churches as you know them, our ceremony takes place in the "Chamber of Unions" in one of the city's government centers. Given the sterile, lifeless image that such a facility may well present to you, this might seem a not especially romantic setting for the event, but it is where joinings have always been done.

The Chamber is devoted solely to the purpose, and is a veritable journey into Korendor's past. Antiquity is the rule here. The furnishings, the decor, everything within the Chamber is from our history. The clothing worn by all is patterned after the garments of those early days. From beginning to end the joining is a recreation of rites that served our parents and theirs into the days when the Old Words were new.

The families arrive first. A chime sounds three times to annouce to them the presence of the couple.

They come separately, carried to the Chamber in small, flower-trimmed carriages pulled by two men, usually friends of the couple, as did their distant ancestors. They arrive together and follow the High Magistrate into the Chamber.

The ceremonial music then begins, played on what you might well call a pipe organ. The attendees stand to face the entrance, the couple clasp hands and proceed toward the raised platform in the center where the Ceremony of The Joining will take place.

For about ten minutes, there is a formal exchange that is far too detailed for this limited space. The Union is done with Old Words that sing with such serene beauty that they bear repeating.

M: "Woman of my life, our hearts beat as one."

W: "Man of my life, our souls become as one."

M: "Cherished love, I am yours until the stars cease to glow."

W: "Cherished love, I am yours until the last moment of time."

M: "We are one beyond eternity."

W: "Beyond forever we are one."

M: "My love is complete."

W: "My life is complete."

With her last words, the two are joined. The Magistrate then performs a brief legal recitation, and the rest of the day is devoted to celebrating. The "reception", if you will, is held in the courtyard of the Chamber, in every way as historically authentic as the room itself.

Dancing, song-fests, and general merry-making consume the afternoon all too quickly. As Korena drops below the horizon, the newlyweds bid their guests farewell and are off to whatever place they have chosen to begin their life together. The families usually depart to the home of the bride's family to continue their socializing long into the night.

If this seems much like the way by which your people are wed, then you must remember what I said earlier: we are all kin in the family of God. As humans, we cherish the same things. We hold to our past far more tenaciously than you, perhaps, but this is only because we have grown so far beyond it that were it not for this strong link with our early days, we would soon be overwhelmed by the pace of change.

Your time will come. Your society is at the point where it will grow in technology and knowledge more rapidly than you can adapt to it. You will find the same longing for your antiquity that we know so well. Do not fight it. Accept it. You will learn that it is the only means you have of preserving your sanity.



QUESTION 4.


The last subject is one that I was asked about some months ago, and is our opinion of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Although I believe that my response is not likely to be surprising, I shall nonetheless offer our viewpoints and "let the chips fall where they may". If in the course of this text I appear to deviate from the subject, please stay with me. Everything to follow bears on the central point that I will make.

These "habits" are to us at once amazing and unsettling. We have tried often, without success, to fathom the reasoning that persuades an otherwise rational human being to ingest into his or her body substances that numerous remonstrations from your medical and scientific professionals have made abundantly clear are hazardous if not deadly to your wellbeing.

Is there within your psychological makeup some undetected niche, some deep and secret recess wherein there resides the same suicidal stimulus that drives the lemmings to march to their death in the waters of the sea? Is there some ingrained feeling of immortality that disables common sense and logic in the matters of health?

Whatever the force that governs this self-destructive behavior, it is assuredly not the universal reverence for life that guides my people. We just cannot conceive of the motivations for this, but we must conclude that on the microcosmic scale it represents the malaise of spirit and soul that sorely afflicts your society as a whole.

Once more, you may decide that I am "treading on toes". If this disturbs you, then you have two options: stop reading now and use this computer for the mindless diversions that are so popular, or press on and ask yourself why the facts are so painful to digest just because they come from an outside source. I believe you will find more than a little intrusion of pride and defensiveness in such a response.

If the opinions of an outsider to your world are considered from a purely logical viewpoint, you will see that we can be far more objective than your people about your difficulties. We do not live in the society that breeds such problems, and can therefore study them and offer possible courses of action based on that isolation. With that in mind, let us continue.

This is not the first time that this particular message was composed. Twice before I sent the text of this question-and-answer session, and twice developments in your nation have caused those messages to be rethought. It is this very segment that has engendered the rewritings.

The news of your country is alive this day with the ghastly, unthinkable story of a group of youths in your city of New York, whose definition of "fun" is vicious abuse and sexual defilation of a woman. Aware though we are of the evils that a society that has abandoned morality suffers, this event horrified us nevertheless, because it sounded new depths of human baseness and ugliness far beyond our direst imaginings.

Yet, can one truly say that is was an unexpected crime? We fear not. Your "modern" lifestyle, with its emphasis on unfettered freedom without control or responsibility, has provided fertile ground for the growth of such depraved behavior. We do not for an instant make excuses for this wantonly brutal act, but we submit to you that such horrors are not only probable but inevitable.

Again I point the accusing finger directly at the heart of this fearsome degradation: amorality. In this "day and age", the very concept of morals is at best passe, scorned and rejected as "repressive of the human spirit". How terrible it is to demand that people be accountable for their actions, and that they base their lives on high principle rather than on instant carnal pleasure.

Yet, as the daily news reports so lucidly exhibit, amorality is the seed of immorality. When a human being is no longer governed by the eternal truths, when he or she is enslaved by the lusts of the flesh rather than enveloped by the love of God, that person loses all sense of reason. The meaning of life is lost. The value of life is forgotten.

Why do people ingest dangerous chemicals? Not for lack of knowledge of their effects. Why do people wantonly abuse or kill? Not for lack of knowing that it is wrong. In either case, they are victims of a moral vacuum. Whether it is one's own body that is assailed, or that of another, no longer is it sacred. No longer is the body perceived as a way-station for immortal spirits on the long journey to eternal life.

Instead, it has become a shell, a thing that lives and dies and is gone. In that context, there is nothing very special or important about it, and if one finds pleasure, however hazardous or bizarre, in endangering the body, then that person finds nothing wrong in so doing, the consequences be damned.

Thirty young people raised in this atmosphere of "anything goes" found a sadistic form of enjoyment in the pain and torment of a helpless woman. The agony she endured was not theirs, so they did not care. The anguish that they inflicted on her was nothing to them because they were never taught the human fundamentals that I cited -- love and compassion and mercy. More than that, they were reared in a society that in its quest to be "modern" has forsaken its need for God.

Without God and His infinite love, what is there to satisfy the cravings of the soul? Is not the major reason offered for drugs, alcohol and tobacco that in using them one finds pleasure? Substitute happiness for pleasure, and you will know what mankind is seeking. However, "modern" intellectualism has no idea where to search for it.

Because your society has expelled God from its way of life, your people can no longer find joy in their hearts at knowing the love that He provides to those who seek Him. Yet, joy is one of the human being's most basic needs.

In your futile quest to substitute worldly pleasure for the perfect joy of being united with God, you indulge in chemicals that distort your perspective and deliver a false euphoria. This sham pleasure is your illusion of happiness.

We of other worlds find true joy and peace in His all-embracing arms. We have no need of the deceptive pleasures that "chemical dependency" provides at a dear price to the body and soul. God is the only source of our happiness. In knowing Him, our lives are fulfilled.

If you like what you see happening to your nation and the world, if you find comfort in the daily reports of war, death, violence, environmental disaster, and the other ills that have befallen your planet and your people, then it would be useless to attempt to convince you that there is a better way of life.

If, however, you are as distressed as we believe you must be, then it is time to act. It begins with returning to God. It cannot be clearer than that.

In my next message, it will be my privilege to offer some insights into the religious beliefs and practices of the Korendian people. I do hope that you will find as much pleasure in reading about our love of God as I will have in presenting it to you.

Va i luce, and peace be yours.

I am ArKay.




	


	





Letter date: 1989, 10,06.

Your question about the method used to input ArKay's commentaries is best answered by him.


 ALEN, BROTHER GABRIEL. THE TECHNOLOGY THAT WE USE IN ADDING
 MY WORDS TO THESE LETTERS INVOLVES A DEVICE THAT WE PLACED
 IN THE GROUND TEN FEET BELOW HIS CELLAR FLOOR. THIS UNIT, A
 RATHER SIMPLE TRANSPONDER, MONITORS THE EMISSIONS FROM HIS
 COMPUTER AS HE IS WORKING, AND REPRODUCES THEM ON A SCREEN
 IN THE MASSCOM SECTION WHERE I "HANG MY HAT", EXACTLY AS
 THEY APPEAR ON HIS OWN MONITOR.

 WHEN IT IS MY DESIRE TO PROVIDE INPUT, THIS SAME DEVICE
 TRANSMITS A SIGNAL THAT IS INTERPRETED IN HIS COMPUTER AS
 KEYBOARD ENTRIES, AS THOUGH HE WERE PHYSICALLY TYPING EACH
 LETTER. THE KEYS DO NOT MOVE AS THIS IS BEING DONE.

 THE PROCESS IS NOT WITHOUT ITS DRAWBACKS. IT IS SUBJECT TO
 INTERFERENCE FROM ELECTRICAL "NOISE", EXTERIOR TRANSMITTERS
 ON THE SAME FREQUENCY, LIGHTNING PULSES, AND SO ON. BECAUSE
 THERE IS NO FEEDBACK FROM HIS COMPUTER WHILE I AM SENDING
 INPUT, I CANNOT KNOW UNTIL I FINISH WHETHER THE INTEGRITY
 OF THE INFORMATION IS MAINTAINED. THIS REQUIRES FREQUENT
 STOPS TO VERIFY WHAT IS SENT, AND I HAVE ON OCCASION BEEN
 FORCED TO RETRANSMIT AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH. I THEN LEAVE IT
 TO BOB TO EDIT THE "GARBAGE" OUT OF THE FINAL VERSION.

 MY METHOD OF ENTRY VARIES WITH MY DEGREE OF AMBITION AT THE
 TIME THAT THESE LETTERS ARE WRITTEN. ALTHOUGH AN ACTUAL
 KEYBOARD IS AVAILABLE, I PREFER USING THE IMPLANT TO ENTER
 THE TEXT INTO OUR COMPUTER, AND LETTING IT HANDLE THE
 "DRUDGEWORK". STILL, I DO NOW AND THEN REVERT TO THE KEYS
 WHEN I AM IN A PARTICULARLY SPRIGHTLY FRAME OF MIND, MOSTLY
 TO "KEEP IN PRACTICE".

 AS FOR THE PRESENCE OF ASTERISKS BEGINNING EACH LINE, ASTRA
 HAS FOUND A SIMPLE "FIX", BUT BOB HAS STATED THAT HE WOULD
 RATHER THEY REMAINED, AS THEY PROVIDE A DISTINCTIVE WAY OF
 EMPHASIZING MY WRITINGS, AND I DEFER TO HIS JUDGEMENT.

 LET ME NOW ADDRESS YOUR SEVEN QUESTIONS, BROTHER GABRIEL.

 QUESTION 1: THE ADVISOR WITHIN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS
 WITHIN THE WHITE HOUSE "INNER CIRCLE", AND HE HAS A GREAT
 DEAL OF INFLUENCE WITH THE PRESIDENT. HOWEVER, HE HAS BEEN
 "SWORN TO SECRECY" AND IS IN NO WAY TO REVEAL HIS ACCESS TO
 US. AS WELL, HE IS NOT PRIVY TO THE DEGREE OF INFORMATION
 THAT WE HAVE PROVIDED TO YOU THROUGH BOB. WE TELL HIM ONLY
 AS MUCH AS WE FEEL IS APPROPRIATE TO OBTAIN THE DESIRED
 RESULTS, AND HE THEN ASCRIBES IT TO TERRAN SOURCES BEFORE
 CONFIDING IT TO THE PRESIDENT.

 TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, HE IS UNAWARE OF YOUR COMMUNICATIONS WITH
 US THROUGH BOB, AND BY NOT SPECIFICALLY ACKNOWLEDGING OUR
 ALLIANCE AFFILIATION AND KORENDIAN ORIGIN, WE SHALL ATTEMPT
 TO MAINTAIN THIS ISOLATION. OUR "OFFICIAL" CONTACT WITH YOU
 SHALL CONTINUE TO BE BOB RENAUD.

 QUESTION 2: THE ALLIANCE IS NOT ACTIVE IN THIS PROCESS. OUR
 OPERATIONS ON EARTH, AS WE HAVE STATED, ARE SPECIFICALLY TO
 COUNTERACT AND HOPEFULLY TO DEFEAT THE OMEGAN INFLUENCE IN
 YOUR SOCIETY. WHAT ROLE THE CONFEDERATION IS PLAYING IN THE
 EVENTS THAT YOU CITE IS UNKNOWN TO US. WE DETECT THAT THEIR
 ACTIVITY ON EARTH HAS INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY, BUT THEY ARE
 EXTRAORDINARILY "TIGHT-LIPPED" ABOUT THEIR NEW PROGRAM.

 BY RIGHTS, YOUR WORLD IS WITHIN A CONFEDERATION SYSTEM, AND
 BECAUSE THEY HAVE SAID THAT THEY WOULD NOT INTERFERE WITH
 OUR OPERATIONS, WE HAVE FOUND NO JUSTIFICATION FOR PRESSING
 THEM FOR FURTHER DETAILS. THEY DID SAY THAT SUCH AS THEY
 CHOOSE TO REVEAL WILL COME THROUGH THEIR CONTACTS WITHIN
 YOUR RANKS. I REGRET THAT I CAN OFFER NOTHING MORE ON THIS.

 QUESTION 3: THERE ARE NO BEINGS THAT WOULD BE CONSIDERED
 "ETHERIC" IN THE ALLIANCE. WHILE WE HAVE A PLETHORA OF
 SPECIES, ALL ARE PHYSICAL, ALTHOUGH SEVERAL HAVE ATTAINED
 THE ABILITY TO TRANSFORM THEIR SHAPES ESSENTIALLY AT WILL.
 YOUR TERM MIGHT BE "POLYMORPHS". OF THESE, A FEW CAN ATTAIN
 TRANSCENDENTAL PHASES THAT EXIST OUTSIDE THE NORMAL THREE
 DIMENSIONS, BUT CANNOT MAINTAIN THIS FOR EXTENDED PERIODS.
 THEIR NORMAL EXISTENCE IS PHYSICAL.

 THE CONFEDERATION, BEING FAR OLDER THAN THE ALLIANCE, DOES
 INDEED HAVE RACES THAT EXIST "ETHERICALLY", THAT IS, WITH
 NO PHYSICAL ASPECT, UNLESS THEY SO DESIRE THAT STATE. THIS
 TYPICALLY OCCURS WHEN THEY WISH TO MEET PERSONALLY WITH
 PHYSICAL BEINGS. THERE IS IN YOUR EARLY "STAR TREK" SERIES
 AN EPISODE DEALING WITH "ORGANIANS" THAT PROVIDES A FAIR
 DEPICTION OF THIS FORM OF LIFE.

 QUESTION 4: THERE ARE IN FACT THREE LEVELS OF MASTERS: THE
 SIMPLE "MASTERS" WHICH REPRESENTS THE INITIAL STATUS: THE
 "ELDER MASTERS", REPRESENTING THE ADVANCED STATUS; THE
 "ASCENDED MASTERS" WHO THROUGH DEATH OR BODILY TRANSLATION
 EXIST IN THE HIGHER REALMS. THE FIRST TWO ARE PHYSICAL IN
 NATURE, THE THIRD IS WHAT YOU CALLED "ETHERIC". THE ELDER
 MASTERS CAN COMMUNE FREELY WITH THE HIGHER REALMS AND CAN
 VISIT IN A NON-PHYSICAL SENSE, BUT ULTIMATELY MUST RETURN
 TO THEIR CORPOREAL BODIES.

 ON OCCASION, THE CONCLAVES HAVE BEEN VISITED BY ASCENDED
 MASTERS DISPATCHED FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER AND GIVEN A
 PHYSICAL FORM FOR THAT PURPOSE. THIS IS NOT FREQUENT (AND
 HAS OCCURED ONLY AT CONCLAVES OF ELDER MASTERS, THEMSELVES
 VERY INFREQUENT), AND WE HAVE ONLY EIGHT SUCH VISITS ON
 RECORD SINCE THE VERY FIRST ONE.

 HOWEVER, ASCENDED MASTERS DO APPEAR AT OTHER TIMES THAN AT
 CONCLAVES, AND THIS OCCURS WITH GREATER FREQUENCY, USUALLY
 AT A TIME OF CRISIS OR MOMENTOUS DECISION. THEIR ROLE THEN
 IS AS ADVISORS ONLY. THEY DO NOT IMPOSE WILL OR EXERT ANY
 DIRECT INFLUENCE ON PHYSICAL AFFAIRS. THAT NOTWITHSTANDING,
 THEIR COUNSEL IS ALWAYS ACCEPTED, SO THE EFFECT IS THE SAME
 IN THE END.

 QUESTION 5: WITHOUT DELVING IN DETAIL INTO THE NATURE OF
 THE "ETHERIC" WORLDS, LET ME SAY THAT IN MOST CASES ENERGY
 WEAPONS SUCH AS DISRUPTORS HAVE NO EFFECT ON THEM IN THEIR
 "ELEVATED" STATE. AT A LATER TIME IN THE THIRD SERIES, I
 WILL GO INTO SOME DETAIL ABOUT THE SIMPLER TECHNICALITIES
 OF THE SO-CALLED ETHERIC STATE.

 AS TO THE REASON WHY CONFEDERATION SHIPS ARE NOT ARMED, ONE
 MIGHT ASK WHY THIS ASSUMPTION IS MADE. MANY ARE NOT FITTED
 WITH ARMAMENT, AND THOSE THAT ARE SO EQUIPPED MAKE A POINT
 OF NOT DISPLAYING THE FACT TO NON-CONFEDERATION PARTIES,
 BUT THEIR CRAFTS ARE NOT AS DEFENSELESS AS THEY MIGHT HAVE
 YOU BELIEVE. THE POINT IS THAT THE CONFEDERATION IS DEEPLY
 COMMITTED TO AVOIDING CONFLICT AT ALL REASONABLE COSTS, BUT
 NOT AT ALL COSTS.

 TO BE SURE, THE PROVOCATION THAT WOULD FORCE THEM TO ACTION
 WOULD BE CONSIDERABLY MORE SEVERE THAN MIGHT BE THE CASE TO
 INSTIGATE ALLIANCE RESPONSE, AND GIVEN A CHOICE THEY WOULD
 USUALLY CONSIDER SURRENDER IF IT WOULD SPARE VIOLENCE. THEY
 WOULD NEVER CONSIDER A RETALIATORY STRIKE SUCH AS WE MADE
 ON THE OMEGANS' SIRIUS HEADQUARTERS PLANET, AND WOULD IN
 MOST CASES NOT FIGHT BACK UNLESS A CONFEDERATION WORLD WAS
 IN IMMINENT DANGER OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN
 THEIR WEAPONRY IN USE, BUT WE KNOW THAT IT EXISTS.

 QUESTION 6: THE PRINCIPLE THAT WE SHOWED BOB IN THOSE EARLY
 YEARS IS THE SAME THAT WE USE TODAY, ALTHOUGH OF COURSE FAR
 MORE SOPHISTICATED, BECAUSE WE ARE NOW USING SYSTEMS BUILT
 ON KORENDOR INSTEAD OF FROM TERRAN COMPONENTS. AS TO OUR
 POTENTIAL IMMORTALITY, THIS IS ENTIRELY CONCEIVABLE, BUT
 THE QUESTION IS NOT ONE OF "CAN IT BE DONE", BUT RATHER OF
 "WOULD WE WANT TO DO IT". THE PHYSICAL ASPECT OF ENDLESS
 LIFE BY THIS MEANS IS QUITE PRACTICAL, BUT WOULD ONE REALLY
 DESIRE IT ON A PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS?

 WE HAVE NO OBJECTION, EITHER MORAL OR LEGAL, TO IMMORTALITY
 THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, BUT BEING A GOD-CENTERED SOCIETY, WE
 ALL ASPIRE AS DO YOU TO MOVE ON TO THE HIGHER REALM, TO
 GO TO HEAVEN AND FIND ONENESS WITH AND IN GOD.

 AS APPEALING AS THE NOTION MIGHT BE TO A RACE SUCH AS YOURS
 THAT NATURE LIMITS TO PERHAPS A CENTURY OF LIFE, WE WHO BY
 OUR NATURE LIVE AS MUCH AS TEN TIMES LONGER HAVE CONCLUDED
 THAT ONE PRODUCTIVE LIFETIME IS MORE THAN ENOUGH. WE HAVE
 OUR FAITH AND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT IS TO COME "BEYOND THE
 VEIL" OF PHYSICAL DEATH, AND WE HAVE NO FEAR OF IT.

 PERHAPS YOUR SEARCH FOR IMMORTALITY IS INSPIRED BY YOUR
 UNCERTAINTY ABOUT WHAT FOLLOWS THAT FINAL BREATH, THAT LAST
 HEARTBEAT. IF YOU ENTERTAIN THE CONCEPT THAT LIFE IS ALL
 THERE IS, AND THAT THE GRAVE IS THE END OF LIFE, THEN IT
 IS UNDERSTANDABLE THAT YOU WOULD THIRST FOR IMMORTALITY.

 YET, DO NOT YOUR SCRIPTURES TELL YOU THAT THE EARTHLY LIFE
 IS BUT A PRELUDE TO A FAR GREATER, ETERNAL LIFE WITH GOD?
 AS WONDROUS AS KORENDOR IS, I HAVE NO DESIRE TO REMAIN ON
 THAT WORLD FOREVER. I LONG, WITH ALL MY FELLOWS, TO ONE DAY
 "PASS ON" TO THE HIGHER REALM, IN COMPARISON TO WHICH MY
 BEAUTIFUL HOME WORLD PALES INTO INSIGNIFICANCE.

 YOUR APPREHENSION, IN MY ESTIMATION, IS DUE TO YOUR RUSH
 TO DIVEST YOURSELVES OF GOD. IN SO DOING, YOU DENY FOR
 YOURSELVES THE COMFORT AND JOY OF ANTICIPATING HEAVEN. IF
 THERE IS NO GOD, THEN THERE CAN OF COURSE BE NO HEAVEN.

 YOU FEAR DEATH BECAUSE YOU HAVE LOST THE MEANING OF LIFE.
 WE KNOW THAT LIFE IS A TEST TO DETERMINE OUR WORTHINESS TO
 JOIN WITH GOD AT THE END OF OUR DAYS. JESUS CHRIST TOLD YOU
 IN YOUR BIBLE THAT YOU ARE INDEED IMMORTAL, AND HE WARNED
 AGAINST PLACING YOUR TRUST AND LOVE IN WORLDLY THINGS. YOUR
 PHYSICAL LIFE IS JUST SUCH A THING. SEE IT FOR WHAT IT IS,
 AN OPPORTUNITY TO MINISTER TO HUMANITY AND SERVE GOD, TO
 MAKE YOUR MARK AND THEN DEPART TO UNITE WITH HIM IN HEAVEN.

 KNOW AND LOVE GOD, TRUST IN HIS INFALLIBLE WORD, AND YOU
 WILL NOT FEAR DEATH. READ IN 1 CORINTHIANS 15:55 THE JOYFUL
 QUESTIONS THAT YOU CAN ASK ONCE YOU HAVE TRULY ACCEPTED GOD
 IN YOUR LIFE: "O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? O GRAVE, WHERE
 IS THY VICTORY?"

 QUESTION 7: RETURNING TO MATERIAL MATTERS AGAIN, ALL OF OUR
 ACTUAL TERRAN AGENTS ARE STILL KORENDIANS, JUST BECAUSE THE
 ALLIANCE HAS NOT RECOMMENDED TO US THAT WE DO IT ANY OTHER
 WAY. HOWEVER, WE ARE INCREASINGLY SEEING BASE PERSONNEL WHO
 COME FROM OTHER WORLDS, AND IT SEEMS PROBABLE THAT ON OUR
 OWN INITIATIVE WE WILL SOON BEGIN TO TRAIN NON-KORENDIANS
 FOR OPERATIVE POSITIONS.

 IN MOST CASES, THE PLANET WHOSE EXPLORERS FIRST DISCOVER A
 WORLD ARE GIVEN EXCLUSIVITY OVER IT, UNLESS THEY REQUEST
 THAT OTHERS BECOME INVOLVED. THIS IS TRADITION, WITHOUT ANY
 LEGAL STATUS, BUT IT SERVES US WELL. YOUR CASE IS, HOWEVER,
 BECOMING OF MUCH INTEREST BEYOND KORENDOR, AND WE RECEIVE
 FREQUENT QUERIES ABOUT THE AVAILABILITY OF OPENINGS FOR
 NON-KORENDIAN PEOPLE.

 WE HAVE NOW DECIDED THAT AS POSITIONS BOTH NEW AND OLD COME
 TO PASS, THEY WILL BE FILLED BY WHOMEVER IS BEST SUITED,
 THE PERSON'S WORLD OF ORIGIN BEING NO LONGER A FACTOR IN
 THE ULTIMATE SELECTION.

 AS TO FUNCTIONING WELL OR MIXING IN ON EARTH, INASMUCH AS
 ALL AGENTS AND PERSONNEL ARE CONVERTED TO APPROPRIATE
 PHYSICAL FORMS AND TRAINED THOROUGHLY, THIS WILL NOT BE
 A SIGNIFICANT CONSIDERATION.

 WITH THAT, I MUST END THIS SESSION. VA I LUCE, BROTHER
 GABRIEL, AND GO WITH GOD. UNTIL LATER, BOB.


Cheers, ArKay. Take a break. You deserve it after that yeoman job.





Letter date: 1990, 12, 21.

Concerning the Mid-East situation, here's the word from the usual source at Mass Com.


 ALEN BREN. YOU ASKED ABOUT THE INCENDIARY SITUATION IN THE
 MIDDLE EAST. THE ALLIANCE HAS NO INVOLVEMENT IN THAT AREA
 AT PRESENT. THE CONFEDERATION IS ACTIVE THERE IN SOME
 UNOBTRUSIVE MANNER, AND AS FAR AS WE ARE ABLE TO DISCOVER,
 THE OMEGANS HAVE JUDICIOUSLY AVOIDED THE ENTIRE AFFAIR,
 MOSTLY OUT OF HAVING THEIR HANDS FULL ELSEWHERE AT THE
 MOMENT (THE ONGOING COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM HAS SEVERELY
 CRIMPED THEIR EFFECTIVENESS).

 THE ONGOING PROBLEMS IN THAT PART OF THE WORLD ARE BUT AN
 OUTGROWTH OF SOCIETAL CONFLICTS THAT HAVE PLAGUED THOSE
 PEOPLES SINCE YOUR EARLIEST BIBLICAL TIMES, AND WILL NOT
 END UNTIL ARMAGEDDON, WHICH WE ARE FULLY CONVINCED IS AN
 INEVITABILITY WITHIN THE LIFETIMES OF MANY NOW LIVING ON
 YOUR WORLD. INDEED, THE PRESENT DIFFICULTIES APPARENTLY
 ARE A PRECURSOR TO THE CONDITIONS THAT MUST EXIST IN ORDER
 TO BRING ARMAGEDDON TO PASS.

 WE DO NOT WISH TO CREATE SCENARIOS OF "GLOOM AND DOOM",
 BUT WE HAVE OF LATE, AT BOB'S BEHEST, BEGUN A DETAILED
 STUDY OF "OLD TESTAMENT" PROPHECIES AND THEIR RELEVANCE
 TO THE EARTH'S SITUATION, AND WE HAVE REACHED THE DEEPLY
 INSPIRING CONCLUSION THAT GODLY FORCES ARE AT WORK WHICH
 TRANSCEND HUMAN ABILITY TO NEGATE THEM. IT IS OBVIOUS TO
 US THAT THE FATHER GOD IS BRINGING TO PASS THOSE THINGS
 THAT HE REVEALED MILLENIA AGO TO HIS PROPHETS. LET IT BE
 SAID THAT THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE PROPHECIES AND THE
 WORLD CONDITIONS THAT FILL YOUR NEWS MEDIA IS STRIKING,
 TO UNDERSTATE IT CONSIDERABLY.

 WE DOUBT THAT THIS EVALUATION IS MUCH CAUSE FOR COMFORT
 TO THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPREHEND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WHAT
 IS HAPPENING. HOWEVER, TO THOSE WHO ARE AWARE THAT THE
 EVENTS THAT ARE DELINEATED IN YOUR HOLY BIBLE'S BOOK OF
 "REVELATION" ARE SIGNALS THAT THE MILLENIAL REIGN OF
 JESUS CHRIST ON EARTH IS IMMINENT, THE MID-EAST PROBLEM
 IS A CAUSE FOR GREAT HOPE AS WELL AS CONCERN.

 TAKE COMFORT IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THE "TRIBULATION" TO
 COME IS NECESSARY TO PURGE EARTH OF EVIL, DEMONIC FORCES,
 SO THAT GOD, IN THE FORM OF JESUS CHRIST, MAY RETURN TO
 YOUR WORLD TO ESTABLISH HIS KINGDOM.

 AS TO OUR ROLE IN THIS, WE HAVE CONCLUDED THAT WE ARE BUT
 A SMALL PART OF OUR FATHER GOD'S PLAN, AND WE WILL CONTINUE
 TO SERVE HIM IN THE HUMILITY AND OBEDIENCE THAT IS INTEGRAL
 TO OUR WAY OF LIFE. WE ARE EVIDENTLY HERE BECAUSE HE SENT
 US TO YOU. WE CAN DO NO LESS THAN OUR BEST TO FULFILL THE
 FATHER'S WILL FOR US AND FOR YOU.

 ON OTHER MATTERS, YOU ASKED IF I WOULD CONSENT TO A SERIES
 DEALING WITH ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY MATTERS, AND ANOTHER
 THAT GOES INTO DETAIL ON THE UNIVERSAL ECONOMICS SYSTEM. AS
 BOB NOTED EARLIER, THE PRESENT SITUATION MAKES IT DIFFICULT
 TO AFFORD ANY LARGE DEGREE OF COMMUNICATIONS, BUT YOUR
 REQUESTS WILL BE TAKEN UNDER ADVISEMENT. WHEN MATTERS HAVE
 RESOLVED SOMEWHAT AND MORE TIME IS MADE AVAILABLE, I SHALL
 GIVE THOSE CONCEPTS MUCH THOUGHT.

 YOU ASKED TWO PARTICULAR QUESTIONS ABOUT UNEC THAT I CAN
 ANSWER HERE. PERSONAL PROPERTY OF AN INDIVIDUAL IS, AT THE
 TIME OF HIS TRANSITION, DIVIDED AMONGST HIS FAMILY MEMBERS
 IN MUCH THE SAME WAY AS IT IS ON YOUR WORLD. WE DO NOT USE
 "WILLS" AS YOU DO TO SPECIFY THE DIVISION OF PROPERTY. OUR
 METHOD IS BASED ON A LEGAL "CODE OF DIVISION" THAT HANDLES
 INHERITANCE MATTERS FAIRLY AND EQUITABLY. ALSO, BECAUSE WE
 DO NOT EMPLOY TAXATION AS A MEANS OF REVENUE-GATHERING FOR
 GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS, THERE ARE NONE OF THE OPPRESSIVE
 "INHERITANCE TAXES" THAT CAN ALL BUT DESTROY THE WORTH OF
 A PERSON'S ESTATE. THE FULL VALUE OF THE ESTATE IS SHARED.

 ONE SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE SEPARATING OUR WAY OF LIFE FROM
 YOURS IS THAT WE ARE NOT "THING-ORIENTED". OUR LIVES ARE
 NOT CENTERED UPON THE ACCUMULATION OF MATERIAL WEALTH. WE
 HAVE NO "MILLIONAIRES" IN OUR SOCIETY. OUR PHILOSOPHY IS
 THAT MATERIAL THINGS ARE SERVANTS, NOT IDOLS. ALTHOUGH WE
 BELIEVE THAT EVERY HUMAN BEING IS ENTITLED TO A LIFE THAT
 ADDRESSES HIS OR HER PHYSICAL NEEDS IN A WAY THAT BRINGS
 COMFORT AND HAPPINESS, WE DO NOT REVERE THE AMASSING OF
 POSSESSIONS THAT CONTRIBUTE NOTHING TO ONE'S WELL-BEING.

 YOUR PEOPLE SAY, "COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS", MEANING THAT YOU
 SHOULD ENJOY THOSE THINGS THAT ARE ALREADY A PART OF YOUR
 LIVES, THE THINGS THAT BRING JOY AND LOVE RATHER THAN THE
 MERE SATISFACTION OF OWNERSHIP. WHEN ONE DESIRES WEALTH
 MORE THAN CONTENTMENT, THAT PERSON WILL NEVER BE CONTENT
 WITH HIS WEALTH.

 THE PURPOSE IN SAYING THIS IS TO INDICATE TO YOU THAT THE
 FREQUENT CONFLICTS AND BITTER ANIMOSITIES THAT DEVELOP IN
 YOUR SOCIETY OVER INHERITANCES ARE ABSENT IN OUR LIVES. IN
 PART THIS IS DUE TO PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCES, AND IN PART
 TO OUR "CODE OF DIVISION", WHICH SHOWS NEITHER FAVOR NOR
 DISFAVOR. NO ONE PROFITS OR SUFFERS LOSS BECAUSE OF FAULTY
 JUDGEMENTS. IT IS A TECHNIQUE WORTH YOUR CONSIDERATION.

 THE SECOND QUESTION DEALT WITH THE SITING OF BUSINESSES IN
 "HIGH FOOT TRAFFIC" AREAS WHERE WALK-IN CUSTOMERS WOULD BE
 A SOURCE OF HIGH REVENUE. I WILL SPEAK ONLY FOR KORENDOR
 HERE, BECAUSE EVERY PLANET IN THE ALLIANCE HAS ITS OWN
 CUSTOMS AND APPROACHES TO RETAIL BUSINESS.

 FIRST, I MUST SAY THAT THE COMPUTER TERMINALS IN THE HOME
 ARE BY FAR THE PREFERRED WAY OF "SHOPPING". ALL THE BASIC
 COMMODITIES SUCH AS FOOD AND CLOTHING ARE ORDERED BY THIS
 METHOD. REPEATED PURCHASES, SUCH AS CERTAIN FOOD STAPLES,
 ARE LOGGED INTO A SPECIAL SERVICE THAT PERIODICALLY SENDS
 THOSE ITEMS WITHOUT ANY CONSUMER INTERVENTION OTHER THAN
 TO REQUEST CHANGES IN QUANTITY AND SO ON.

 WE HAVE WHAT MIGHT BE LOOSELY DESCRIBED AS "MALLS", WHERE
 COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISES CONCENTRATE THEIR OUTLETS. THESE
 LOCATIONS ARE ALSO USED FOR NUMEROUS OTHER ACTIVITIES,
 SUCH AS SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT, CIVIC FUNCTIONS AND SO ON.
 IN MANY CASES, THEY REPRESENT A COMMUNITY RESOURCE AS MUCH
 AS A RETAIL SITE. NONE OF THE STIGMA ATTACHED TO YOUR MALLS
 IS FOUND ON KORENDOR, BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED FROM THE
 VERY FIRST TO BE AN ASSET TO A COMMUNITY.

 AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED, THESE FACILITIES ARE SITED OUTSIDE OF
 CITY AREAS, JUST BECAUSE THERE IS NO ROOM AVAILABLE IN A
 METROPOLITAN AREA. AS WELL, BECAUSE ALL THE NON-RETAIL USES
 ARE ALREADY WIDELY AVAILABLE THROUGHOUT A CITY, THERE WOULD
 BE NO JUSTIFICATION FOR IT BEYOND COMMERCIALISM, AND WE DO
 NOT CONSIDER THAT A VIABLE REASON.

 "STORES", WHETHER IN MALLS OR WITHIN CITIES, DO NOT VEND
 STAPLE ITEMS AS DESCRIBED ABOVE, OTHER THAN AS "IMPULSE"
 PURCHASES OR AS A FAST ACCESS TO MEET AN UNEXPECTED NEED.
 PRIMARILY, THEY ARE FOR PEOPLE WHO DESIRE THE PERSONAL FUN
 OF AN EXCURSION TO SEARCH FOR ITEMS THAT MIGHT NOT BE FOUND
 IN THE COMPUTER VENDOR RESOURCES, OR WHO JUST LIKE TO LOOK
 IN PERSON AT WHAT IS AVAILABLE.

 OFTEN, THESE STORES ARE OWNED AND OPERATED BY NON-KORENDIAN
 ALLIANCE CITIZENS, WHOSE WARES ARE NOT USUALLY FOUND ON THE
 PLANETARY COMPUTER NETWORKS. WE HAVE NO RESTRICTIONS ON THE
 PRODUCTS SOLD OR THE PLANET OF ORIGIN, BEYOND THAT THEY ARE
 SAFE FOR KORENDIAN USE AND DO NOT OFFEND OUR PHILOSOPHICAL
 SENSIBILITIES OR OUR LEGAL CODES. THIS ALMOST NEVER OCCURS.

 AS I NOTED EARLIER, OURS IS NOT A MATERIALISTIC CULTURE. AS
 SUCH, WHAT YOU CALL "LUXURY" OR "HIGH-TICKET" ITEMS ARE NOT
 SOLD, JUST BECAUSE WE WOULD FIND NO INCENTIVE TO PURCHASE
 COSTLY FRIVOLITIES OR "BUY IT TO HAVE IT" EXOTICA. AS AN
 EXAMPLE, WE HAVE NOTHING EQUIVALENT TO YOUR JEWELRY STORES.
 GAUDY ADORNMENTS ARE VIEWED AS DETRACTING FROM THE PHYSICAL
 BEAUTY OF THE WEARER. OUR WOMEN DO WEAR SIMPLE NECKLACES,
 USUALLY AS A SYMBOL OF BETROTHAL OR MARRIAGE, MUCH AS YOU
 WEAR RINGS, BUT BEYOND THAT WE SHUN SUCH THINGS.

 MOST ELECTRONIC OR "HIGH-TECH" ITEMS ARE PURCHASED IN
 PERSON AT RETAIL OUTLETS, PURELY BECAUSE THOSE THINGS ARE
 BY NATURE NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE APPRECIATED ON A HOME
 TERMINAL OR EVALUATED BY DESCRIPTION ALONE (THE CONSUMER
 CAN, HOWEVER, USE THE TERMINAL TO LOCATE THOSE ITEMS AND
 THE VENDORS WHO CARRY THEM).

 THE DIRECTION THAT THIS IS TAKING IS THAT "STORES" ON OUR
 WORLD THAT ARE SITED WITHIN CITY AREAS, THE LOCATION OF
 INTEREST IN THE QUESTION, GENERALLY DO NOT RELY ON "FOOT
 TRAFFIC" FOR CUSTOMERS. THE MINORITY THAT DO ARE GIVEN SITE
 PRIORITY BY CITY CONTROLLERS OVER THOSE APPLICANTS WHOSE
 SALES WILL BE THE RESULT OF PERSONS SEARCHING FOR SPECIFIC
 ITEMS AND WHO WILL GO WHEREVER THEY ARE FOUND. THE LATTER
 GROUP DOES NOT QUESTION THE DECISIONS OF THE CONTROLLERS.
 USUALLY, THEY SPECIFY IN THEIR APPLICATION THAT THEIRS IS
 NOT A BUSINESS THAT RELIES ON "IMPULSE" PURCHASES OR ON
 "WALK-IN" CUSTOMERS.

 ONE CHARACTERISTIC THAT STANDS OUT AMONGST OUR BUSINESS
 PEOPLE IS THAT THEY ARE NOT "CUT-THROAT", AS YOU SAY.
 THEY ARE AWARE THAT ALL BUSINESS PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO
 A SHARE OF THE MARKETPLACE. IT IS NOT UNCOMMON TO SEE
 RETAILERS IN AN AREA COOPERATING WITH A NEW ARRIVAL IN
 READYING THE PLACE OF BUSINESS AND OBTAINING CLIENTELE,
 EVEN IF THE NEW BUSINESS WILL COMPETE WITH SOME OF THEM.

 INDEED, THERE ARE OCCASIONS WHERE A RETAILER IN A HIGH
 TRAFFIC AREA HAS MOVED TO ANOTHER LOCATION TO PROVIDE A
 FACILITY FOR ANOTHER WHO WOULD BE MORE DEPENDENT ON THAT
 AREA'S WALK-IN CUSTOMERS. THIS IS DONE OUT OF BROTHERLY
 LOVE, AND IS IN NO WAY MANDATED BY CITY CONTROLLERS. ANY
 BUSINESS, ONCE ESTABLISHED, IS LEGALLY THE OWNER OF THE
 SITE UNLESS THE BUSINESS TERMINATES OR WILLINGLY GIVES
 UP THE SITE FOR JUST THE REASON DESCRIBED ABOVE.

 AS TO THE AVAILABILITY OF LOCATIONS FOR RETAIL BUSINESS
 WITHIN CITIES, ANY BUILDING CONSTRUCTED WITHIN A CITY IS
 DESIGNED WITH A GROUND-FLOOR RETAIL SECTION. THAT AREA IS
 THEN TURNED OVER TO THE CITY CONTROLLERS TO APPORTION AS
 THEY SEE FIT. IF NO TENANTS ARE IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE, THE
 SECTION IS SEALED OFF. BECAUSE OF THIS POLICY, IN VRELL
 CITY'S CENTRAL AREAS THERE ARE PRESENTLY UNOCCUPIED OVER
 THREE HUNDRED CHOICE RETAIL LOCATIONS. THAT THEY ARE NOT
 ACTIVE IS PRIMARILY DUE TO OUR WAY OF LIFE AS DESCRIBED
 EARLIER. WE ARE NOT A "SHOPPING" PEOPLE.

 AS OUR POPULATION GROWS, THESE SITES WILL EVENTUALLY BE
 UTILIZED. THE MAJOR REASON FOR THIS SURPLUS IS THAT NEW
 BUILDING CONSTRUCTION WITHIN CITIES IS AT BEST UNCOMMON,
 AND WE HAVE PLANNED FOR LONG-TERM FUTURE NEEDS IN RETAIL.
 OUR STRUCTURES ARE DESIGNED FOR A 500-YEAR LIFESPAN (THIS
 IS IN KORENDIAN YEARS, WHICH ARE ROUGHLY 4.5 EARTH YEARS).
 THEY ARE NOT TORN DOWN SIMPLY TO MAKE ROOM FOR A MORE
 "MODERN" BUILDING OR TO ADD NEW SPACE FOR COMMERCE.

 AS AN ASIDE, IT IS A SOURCE OF PRIDE TO US THAT BUILDINGS
 THAT HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED WITHIN THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE
 THE SAME BASIC DESIGN AS THOSE HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD. WE
 WANT NO UGLY, CHAOTIC HODGE-PODGE OF CLASHING DESIGNS TO
 INTERRUPT OR DESTROY THE AESTHETICS OF OUR CITIES. WE ARE
 PROUD OF AND ZEALOUSLY PROTECTIVE OF OUR CITIES. WE WONDER
 IF THE SAME CAN BE SAID OF LOS ANGELES, CHICAGO, NEW YORK
 OR BOSTON.

 I ASSUME THAT THESE TWO ANSWERS WILL SATISFY MR. BOURNE'S
 CURIOSITY. WITH THAT, I BID YOU FAREWELL, AND WISH FOR YOU
 THE BOUNDLESS LOVE, GRACE AND PEACE OF OUR FATHER GOD THIS
 DAY AND FOR ALL THE COMING YEARS. VA I LUCE.

 DIAMETER (MILES)             21,887.643
 DENSITY (EARTH=1)            0.713
 DAY LENGTH:
     EARTH=1                  1.027793
     HOURS                    24:40:01.32
 MASS (EARTH=1)               15.06
 SURFACE LAND %               61.7
 SURFACE GRAVITY (SEA LEVEL):
     EARTH=1                  1.97
     FT/SEC SQUARED           63.52
 SURFACE TEMPERATURES:
     MEAN                     87.6F/30.9C
     MINIMUM                  -22.9F/-30.5C
     MAXIMUM                  157.3F/69.6C
 ATMOSPHERE %:
     OXYGEN                   21.6
     NITROGEN                 75.2
     CO2 AND MISC             3.2
 YEAR (EARTH=1)               13.0494037
 ORBIT DIAMETER (MILES):
     MEAN                     811,985,297
     MINIMUM                  794,690,011
     MAXIMUM                  829,280,584
 ORBITAL ECCENTRICITY         0.0213
 ILLUMINATION (EARTH=1)
     MEAN                     1.4508
     MINIMUM                  1.3909
     MAXIMUM                  1.5146

the end.

© 2009 Robert P. Renaud -- all rights reserved.