'Oh, no, Solari, not at all! My job isn't that important at all, as such, you know, not really, it's not really that important. In fact, to tell you the truth, it's pretty ordinary, pretty routine. I'm as dispensable as the next man. When it comes down to it, I'm just a number to them, a name on the payroll. OK, so I have tenure, they can't fire me, the perks are attractive - I get to see Lemuria! Ha-ha! - and the pension is good, but in the final analysis, it's just a job. No, there's nothing very special about me or my job.'
From the compassionate expressions on their faces, I could see that I'd just put my two feet in the cowpat. What I should have been saying was that as head of Health & Safety at the QSA, my job was very important, that I was a vital and indispensable contributor to the Government Advisory Body, that society depended on people like me with all my qualifications, experience and skills and above all, that I loved it, I loved my job. In fact, it wasn't a job at all, it was a vocation. Yeah, I could have said that. I could have said all of that. Of course I could. But they'd know at once that I was lying.
'My friend, ' said Xendo, 'although we share a sense of discomfort in our critique of your society, would you mind very much if we continued with our queries and evaluations?'
'Absolutely!' I promptly replied. 'I mean, not at all! No! I wouldn't mind a bit! Please do continue! Your views are so important to me! Really! I am so grateful to you for your interest!'
'Thank you. What I would like to ask you about is in connection with your towns and cities which are full of homes for older inhabitants, many of whom are senile or disabled. We understand that the life-expectancy of your elders in such homes is relatively short. Is that true?'
'Yes. I'm afraid that is correct. But the life-expectancy is expected to be short anyway because, well, you know, they are old. '
'We would contend that the life-expectancy is short in these homes because the residents want it to be short.'
'Oh. Really? '
I had never thought about this.
'Are you happy with that?'
'Happy? Why would I be happy?'
'This would fall under your category of regulation of quality control in the Health & Safety Division of the QSA, would it not?'
'Yes, but, well, it's not seen as a problem, as such. Is it? I mean, we do our best. Within our limits.
'The loneliness, the feeling of abandonment?'
'You can't expect family members to take care of our elderly, can you? It's unrealistic.'
Of course they can. Xendo and Solari were smiling. They had read me.
'We do have schemes,' I hastened to add, 'where people can stay at home and have special care.'
'Schemes? For everybody? Or for the very few? ' asked Solari, rhetorically.
'Well, yes, I'll be honest with you, they are costly. Not everybody can benefit from such schemes.'
'Only those people who have been fortunate enough to get hold of enough money to pay for a carer so that they can remain in their own homes?'
'Yes. I'm afraid so.'
'Many years ago,' Xendo began, addressing the landscape, 'oh, long before your time, missionaries went to your continent to offer assistance. They were disguised as diplomats, who had, of course, been invited. We told them they had to work with nature, not against it. But your decision-makers refused to listen. For example, the pollution in your air contributes to your problem of dementia, did you know that? The endless bombardment of all types of pollutants and pesticides, water pollution, particulates from car exhausts and from the primitive aircraft in your skies. How can you possibly expect to remain healthy and whole in such a toxic environment?'
'Having failed to persuade your Government, ' added Solari, 'that investment in prevention would be a fraction of the cost involved in the treatment of illnesses and would lead to a healthier and happier society, those same diplomats offered to provide free, clean and limitless energy supplies to the people of your continent. I believe you call it Zero Point energy.'
'Yes, I remember reading something about that. As you say, it was before my time. It never caught on, of course, for some reason. What happened?'
'The principle is based on harnessing the Earth's electromagnetic field. Why didn't it catch on? Our missionaries reported that your people were at first curious, then bemused, then cynical, then hostile. Indeed, proponents of your energy production companies were so suspicious of our delegates that they even conspired to assassinate one of them.'
'What?!'
'But surely you must know?' questioned Xendo. 'As a Government official?'
'It was many years ago. I was still at school. But there you go again, suggesting conspiracy. Surely you don't believe that nonsense, do you?'
'One of our people escaped with his life, ' Solari continued. 'Can you imagine how he must have felt? We recalled all of our diplomats immediately. From that time onwards, we decided to offer assistance to your people only when invited to do so. Needless to say, we haven't been invited since then. As it happens, there is, of course, a very thin line between assistance and interference. Clearly, our offer to help was unwelcome. So why do you think they rejected us, your grandparents' generation?'
'I don't know. Maybe our trade unions were worried about all those jobs that would be lost in the process. I mean, not just in energy provision but all the other peripheral jobs that feed off the industry. You know what I mean? Maybe our economists might have seen it as premature. It would certainly have turned the economy on its head. '
'And your politicians? What about vested interests?' asked Xendo.
'I don't know.'
'It would have been a turning point in your history, with your burgeoning population growth. How ironic it is that we, who live to be almost a thousand years old, have no problems at all with over-population.'
'I meant to ask you about that. Is there a scheme to assist population control in Lemuria?'
'Such a scheme, as you call it,' Xendo promptly responded, 'would constitute interference, a breach of the Prime Directive. You people are attracted to each other physically, but not spiritually. Sex is a drug. That is the root of the problem. You cannot see into the heart, into the life-spirit of the other. And so you are driven by desire to get close to, enter into, or receive one another in a vain, unconscious attempt to merge your energy bodies by joining yourselves physically. However, there can be no true merging without spiritual awareness.'
'But what about love? People fall in love, don't they? And, as we say, love conquers all, ha-ha!'
'Clearly, love has a limited meaning in your society. If your lover hurts you or goes off and loves someone else, you fall out of love. You feel anger and resentment, even hate. You're not in love any more. Is that love?'
'Well, eh...we're only human, after all.'
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