Oxygénia

Translator's initial note: Legally, this translation IS copyright
infringement. There. I admitted it. But I think this book is far too important
to have no English version of it, so I took the chance and translated it,
anyway. So, we have the copyright issue out of the way.
The original book was written by Hungarian author Klára Fehér (1919 –
1996). It was published first in Hungarian language in 1974. The only
translation into another language that I'm aware of is that into German,
first published in 1977 and for a second time, in the "Romanzeitung" (lit.
"novel newspaper") in 1985. Fascinatingly enough, both German issues
were published in the GDR, in Eastern Germany, only. There appears to be
no copyright holder of this book anymore: Klára Fehér owned the copyright
herself, but she died about 23 years ago; and the GDR publisher doesn't
exist anymore. No one so far has made any attempt to bring this novel back
into public, so what and why should stop me?
I'm a native German, English is only my first foreign language. So this
translation maybe reads strange to you native speakers, and I doubt it's
even good after all – if you want, feel free to rephrase sentences, but please
stay close to the original content. As my source, I used the 1985 GDR issue
of the "Romanzeitung" and translated it. I tried to stay as close to the
"original" as I possibly could – I only "updated" some very minor details.
The book is set in the far future, and when Klára Fehér wrote it in 1974,
some things appeared to be state-of-the-art – things that have become
extinct since then. For instance, no one uses a "punch card" anymore so I
replaced it with an NFC chip instead, but I kept the whole context and
changed only such minor details that make it easier to read and
understand for today's readers.
I won't tell you my name, and I won't sign here – I really don't want to
get sued by some greedy Northern American lawyers with million-dollar
copyright claims, please leave me alone with this. Instead, please read the
story... think about it... and let's hope it's not too late already, that we still
can leave the path we're on just now... the dreadful path of transforming
Earth... into becoming Oxygénia.
1

Oxygénia
From Hungarian to German by Heinrich Weißling
From German to English by ???, 2019
(C) Klára Féher 1974, 1977
Content
01 – What does the stranger want? .............................. 4
02 – Aboard spaceship "Humanitas" ............................ 7
03 – Report ............................................................... 10
04 – Somewhere, but where? ..................................... 11
05 – Growing concerns .............................................. 17
06 – Search for the unknown one .............................. 25
07 – At the spaceship ................................................ 30
08 – ON 711 314 ....................................................... 32
09 – ON wants to sleep .............................................. 33
10 – The secret of the strange planet ......................... 35
11 – Two reports ....................................................... 41
12 – The Grand Spring Festival ................................. 42
13 – The Rescue expedition discusses ........................ 48
14 – Three reports ..................................................... 49
15 – The City of the Rememberers ............................. 51
16 – The mysterious booklet ...................................... 59
17 – In the best friend's house ................................... 65
18 – Council at night ................................................. 70
19 – Little ONs gift .................................................... 72
20 – In subterranean wonderland .............................. 75
21 – ORO 91 ............................................................. 77
22 – Underground council ......................................... 84
23 – Report ............................................................... 92
24 – ORO gets an answer .......................................... 93
25 – The clouds are opening ...................................... 97
26 – Like in an old English castle ............................ 103
27 – Council at the king .......................................... 106
28 – Does Peter meet friends? .................................. 110
29 – An evening under seven moons ........................ 114
30 – This is July! ... This is Peter!!! .......................... 119
31 – Three reports ................................................... 121
32 – Soiree at the princess ...................................... 122
33 – Report ............................................................. 126
34 – Hunt – with a surprising prey .......................... 127
2

35 – The house of the Central Economy Control ....... 136
36 – In the park ...................................................... 147
37 – A frightening meeting ....................................... 149
38 – Now only acting can help ................................. 150
39 – Strange orders ................................................. 152
40 – To try the impossible ....................................... 154
41 – Spaceship "Humanitas" has landed!!! ............... 157
42 – The successful attack ...................................... 159
43 – Inside the aircraft ............................................ 162
44 – The landing ..................................................... 168
45 – In the canyon once again ................................. 170
46 – A plane arrives empty ...................................... 172
47 – The danger isn't over yet .................................. 175
48 – The escape ...................................................... 178
49 – Interrogation at the king .................................. 180
50 – Farewell........................................................... 185
Where is Oxygénia? (Author's notes.) ....................... 187
Translator's final thoughts ...................................... 188
3

01 – What does the stranger want?
The young man acted as if he studied the menu, but indeed he
peered above the upper edge of it to the other table.
He was suspecting it. In that corner he was sitting again, the
oddly looking stranger, and he saw, even through the half-dark of
the hall, that he spotted him.
He felt he began to sweat.
If he got up now and left the dining hall, it was even worse. If the
stranger was on his trace indeed, he would follow him outside, too,
and of course also into the sleeping room. Had it been possible that
all his care was in vain? Where could he hide his logs?
His heart beated fast. This couldn't lead to a good end. His
oxygen consumption was at least ten percent too high, and he had
even used up the hibernation tabs.
"You didn't order yet", a pleaseantly silent voice said from the
speaker on the table. "May I recommend? Our specialty today is
algae creme with banana taste for just four units of oxygen."
"A half portion, with cranberry taste, please", he answered and
put the menu aside.
The odd man at the other table went up and straight up to him.
'Just no heart beating. I still have enough oxygen for a fight. I
won't give my life cheap!'
"Good evening, sir", the stranger said. "May I take a seat at your
table for a minute?"
"Who are you?"
"A friend. I'd like to explain..."
'Keep cool, keep cool", the young man thought. He didn't answer
and just nodded an approval for the stranger to sit down.
The unkown bowed a little.
"Thank you. And if I might, I'd like to introduce myself. I am
Peter MacGulliver... I've been watching you for days..."
"There's nothing worth watching about me."
"You're wrong, sir. You're acting completely different from the
others."
"I can assure you that I act exactly the same way", he answered
hoarsely and felt his heartbeat going up again. The indicator at his
oxygen consumption meter at his wrist leveled dangerously.
"I'd just like to ask you for some information..."
The young man sighed in pain.
He was ready for Them From Above to force him into a fight one
day, for they to surround him, he'd need to beat and fight, and
4

then, with his last power, he wanted... But this? These questionings
that might last for hours or days, until his oxygen was used up. Or
would they just rip off the hose of his breather? It was all the fault
of his rashness, his eternal greed. Long since he should have
brought the little case to a safe place, and he should carry around
only as much files as was absolutely mandatory for his actual work.
If only he knew which intelligence group this guy could belong to!
He had never seen before a breather of this kind and such a sort of
helmet.
He brought up all his self-confidence and tried to speak calmly.
"I don't believe that any information by me could be of any
interest for you. It is better if you tell me frankly what you want
from me."
"Help", the stranger replied.
'Don't believe him... don't fall for that...', the young man
encouraged himself silently.
"I don't understand you", he said aloud.
"I want to get to know where I am."
"You want to get to know it, from me?"
"Yes, sir. As I mentioned before, my name is Peter MacGulliver, I
am from planet Earth which is located in the solar system BG 97
614 in the Milky Way galaxy. I had an accident with my spaceship
and got stranded here."
'It's false! It's false! He wants to rob me my breath, wants to
confuse me. They discovered my mind is working... No, I must not
know what the Milky Way galaxy is. I mustn't know anything at
all... The oxygen... the oxygen... the indicator...'
"What is it, sir? Don't you feel alright?", the stranger asked.
"Oxygen..."
"Is your oxygen used up? Would you allow me to help you out?"
The unknown put some tabs in his oxygen container.
"Better?"
It seemed he wasn't to be killed instantly. His secrets were to be
lured out of him. Maybe this would be going on for a whole year. He
was even given oxygen. He was treated well. But he couldn't let
himself become a traitor.
"Sir, what do you want from me?", he asked again.
"I just told you: help. And I beg of you, bring me somewhere
where we can talk in private. If I may ask, into your apartment."
"Sir, why are you mocking me? Arrest me if you want. I'm fed up
with it."
5

"But for heaven's sake, don't you believe me? I'm stranded here
with my spaceship, I'm from a distant planet. My name is Peter
MacGulliver... I don't know who you are and don't know where I am.
I beg of you, help me."
And the unknown folded up his hands just the way it was usual
at the Grand Spring Festival.
"I don't understand you", the young man said. "But if that's all
you want from me, my designation is ON 711 314. We are on the
planet number 1 234 567 in the Milky Way galaxy. Its name is
Oxygénia. And of course I don't have an apartment."
6

02 – Aboard spaceship "Humanitas"
July, in her despair, didn't know what to do.
The indicators of the instruments had swung around for a
moment, she had realised strange light and sound signals – and at
that same moment, Peter had disappeared from the viewscreen...
and then, nothing more had happened since.
Peter and July had beed on their honeymoon trip. According to
Earth's calendar, they had started on January 30, 3069, with the
two-seater spaceship "Humanitas". This had come into fashion
amongst young people on Earth since the propulsion systems
almost reached light speed. Such a trip could be a proving ground
for some things: braveness, reliability and loyalty in situations that
demanded for joined forces. Those who returned to Earth and still
loved each other had proven that to themselves. But right now, the
spaceship raced along its wonderful celestial ride with Peter and
July, two happy humans who loved each other. They felt the power
and might of mankind, the overwhelming feeling of being alive – and
the tinyness in the middle of space. Two tiny spots in the infinite
Milky Way, drunk with happiness and the adventure of the ride.
Every now and then, they passed a space station. Those artifical
satellites shot up there from Earth provided information and helped
the passengers of spaceships, provided them with instruments, food
and equipment in case of any emergency. One could also take a
stop at such a friendly little island in infinity. But July and Peter
weren't in the mood for that. Just flying, continue flying.
They were in range of the space station "Fortuna-710". On a
regular basis, they called over the radio and reported.
Everything fine?, the space station asked.
Thank you, everything is fine.
On the path of spaceship "Humanitas", a sparkling star grew to
become a sun. Smaller objects surrounded it, amongst them was a
strange planet which shone in a bright purple color. They wanted to
get closer and orbit it. Soon, they initiated their drives.
Get away! Keep distance! Correct your course at once!
"Humanitas"! Get away from the purple planet! Grave danger!
July gave Peter a concerned look. "What is this?"
"They just try to prove that they're important", Peter smiled.
"That's what all space stations are doing. They can't move through
space, and that's why they envy us."
But he programmed the course correction data anyway.
7

The purple planet didn't come any closer anymore, but it didn't
move away, too. The spaceship "Humanitas" was entering an orbit
around the unknown planet.
Space station "Fortuna-710" was just issuing a new order to
engage the main drive when the bad luck happened.
The outer hull of the space ship was hit by a meteor.
The radio central received the report and decided it was
mandatory to repair the damage before the drive was powered up.
Peter hugged July.
"I hope you've calmed down. I'll have this fixed in five minutes,
and then we'll leave this unfriendly region. You know what? While I
get this, you could prepare me a nice refreshing drink."
Peter put on the space suit according to the official regulations
and went through the airlock. It was an everyday maneuver, they
had practised it during space farers' school countless times. July
wasn't afraid indeed.
Peter went out into space while July kept an eye on the screen
with the instruments and the moving appearance of Peter. Then a
blinding light flashed... the instruments' indicators hit their limiters
for a moment... and Peters shape was gone from the viewscreen.
Right next to the spaceship drifted the the ripped cord and some
tools. It looked as if someone had caught Peter away. Maybe
another meteor had ripped the connection cord? Or had they
encountered some previously unknown phenomenon in space?
Because even during the pracitising it had happened for the cord to
rip, but there had always been a second, a backup cord. And there
had also been incidents when some funny guy, being sent out for
practice, wanted to scare the others, had long since been back in
the safety of the airlock but left some tools or his detached safety
belt out there to scare the others with the view of these items
floating around the ship... No. This wasn't what Peter would do.
And especially not now when they wanted to get away from this
covered in purple fog strange orbital object.
And July continued to hope. She waited for Peter to enter the
cabin. Her gaze was focused on the handle of the inner lock, but it
did not move. Now she looked to the airlock and tried to open it. No
one. Peter wasn't there. Something had happened, something
terrible. Oh well, there had been stories of antimatter, there were
reported causes of unlucky space farers, being gone in the blink of
an eye, fallen victim to the radiation. But that had only happened to
those who had dared to go in the regions outside the Milky Way...
and in such a case, the whole spaceship was lost. Maybe it was just
8

the instruments now, maybe the viewscreen wasn't working
properly. But what was that blinding flash? And time was flowing
away. Peter should've been back long since.
The clock indicators of the ship had progressed by four minutes
space time already. And still no trace of Peter.
Now, the space station was calling again.
This is "Fortuna-710"... this is "Fortuna-710". Has the hit to your
ship been repaired?
Peter has vanished... Peter has vanished, July screamed in
despair. Whatever should I do?
9

03 – Report
Oxygenville, 12.4.1207, 19.99
The alien spaceship has entered an orbit around our planet. It is in
permanent radio connection with space station "AAA"! Its last radio
transmission at 19.96 was: Peter has vanished, Peter has vanished.
Whatever should I do? Continue to watch spaceship!
Brought the being which left the spaceship down in a silver light
shell. The shell has enclosed it without injury.
Origin: Planet BG 97 614, Sol system, Milky Way Galaxy.
Being is completely covered with skin, six feet tall, male.
Breathes oxygen.
Provided no resistance.
Order
Arrest the being and forward to the zoological institute
immediately.
10

04 – Somewhere, but where?
Peter MacGulliver hadn't seen the flashing. His last memory was
him repairing the hull of the spaceship. 'Okay, I can get back in'
had been his las thoughts.
Then he found himself in the middle of the square.
The square looked like a children's playground area. On small
sand hills, children were sitting and played with their little buckets.
Around them, on benches, adults were sitting, they took small
round cans out of their pockets and tinkered around with them.
Others got up and went away. And still, this place was not like on
Earth. But why?
Peter settled himself on a bench and tried to figure.
Something was strange... really odd.. so totally
incomprehensible. Maybe he just dreamed? He had just been
aboard the spaceship "Humanitas" together with July, the ship was
hit by a meteor... Then he had gone outside... and then... Where
was he now? Had he been returned to Earth? But this landscape,
this was not Earth. Something was missing. Something that would
have been there on Earth... Colors! Here, nothing had any color.
Here only was a dim light, a phase between night and day,
everything was grey and lit in a monotone way. And that was also
the case for the clothes of the people, and their faces... But right,
their faces weren't to be seen. They all wore breathers, the adults as
well as the little children. And they moved so strangely, so very
slowly. And there were no animals. Neither a cat nor a dog. Nor
even a sparrow in a tree... But there were no trees, either.
'I'm dreaming', Peter thought and slowly rose to his feet. Fact
was that he was wearing his space suit, a breather, a replicator and
some instruments. So he had left the spaceship... had fixed the
damage... and then, something had happened. He was no longer in
the spaceship... but somewhere. Where was he?
He felt dizzy, tired, and his heartbeat was slow and unsteady.
His wristband multi-purpose instrument indicated respiratory
disorder and arrhythmia. With a reflexive move, Peter pressed the
small button at the device at his chest, and the filter of his breather
cleaned itself, and the device filled itself with fresh, oxygen-rich air.
His pulse returned to normal, and his confused thoughts slowly
began to clear.
He wasn't aboard the spaceship "Humanitas" and not back on
dear old Earth, that much was for sure. But where was he?
11

He still had his bag of instruments, but his safety belt hang
down, ripped. He was also missing some tools, the ones he had
used for fixing the damage to the ships hull. But his instruments
were complete, amongst them the little localisation device.
Excitedly, Peter pushed the red button. The device was working.
The data appeared on the display: Distance to "Fortuna-710": three
million kilometers. Gravitation of this planet was about the same as
on Earth... and look for it... the planet's mass was almost identical
with that of Earth, too. Composition of the air... the air... no, this
instrument had to be failing, this couldn't be possible: nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot, exhaust fumes and sand
particles... oxygen only in traces! Accordingly, on this planet there
couldn't be any higher life like on Earth. 'But the hell! I've seen
them with my own eyes, children as well as adults, humanoids...
With a trunk? Or a breather? Or a gas mask? ... I don't understand
it', Peter thought, uneasy. And now, another horrible question came
to his mind: 'If I don't dream at all, if I started with spaceship
"Humanitas" for real and if I'm thrown onto this alien planet by a
mystic unknown force, then where is the spaceship? And where is
July?'
Slowly but steadily, the dawny light went dark. On the concrete
square, there were almost no one to be seen anymore. Those who
passed him – with slow, tired steps – didn't pay him any attention.
Only now, Peter thought of the closest thing: the radio. He adjusted
the little device to match the frequency of the spaceship
"Humanitas". If it still existed and was anywhere nearby, it had to
answer.
Deep silence. Now he switched to the frequency band of
"Fortuna-710". No reply.
'They are blocked by something', he thought. 'But surely there
will be a radio station on this planet where I can get a reply or a
signal.' He tried searching and grew more and more terrified as he
switched from band to band. His radio was useless.
What might have happened to July? And what was it he had
experienced?
Once again, he gazed on his localisation device. He was three
million kilometers away from Earths space station, in the Milky Way
galaxy, on a solid planet, air temperature was twenty-six degrees
Celsius, without any humidity. Oxygen existed only in traces or
bound in other substances.
His instruments were working, only the radio didn't.
12

And he didn't dream. He was absolutely sure he didn't dream. He
was on an unknown celestial body. Had he been landed here
coincidentally or by alien will? Was he free or a prisoner? He had to
contact somebody.
Some young people approached the square. Judging by human
standards, they were juveniles. They wore grey overalls and gas
masks. But the gas masks did not cover their eyes, they more
looked like a trunk: the mask sat only on the nose, and the long
pleated hose led to a container which they wore on the back, which
meant they had a good vision. The mouth was only protected by a
light gauze.
Peter approached them and waved. The juveniles looked at him
indifferently and moved on. Now, a young woman came across the
square. Peter waved to her because he could not talk through his
space helmet. The woman moved on just the same indifferent way
as the juveniles before. Peter pulled out his space suit and just kept
a breather in front of his face. Luckily, today's modern space suits,
including all technical equipment, weren't much heavier than a
pound. In a few moments, he had stored away his suit in the side
bag. He did it all there in the open space. Meanwhile, some people
passed him without taking any notice.
Peter realised that they were all going in a certain direction,
towards a nearby cube-shaped building. What might have been
there? A restaurant? A train station? A hotel? A metro stration? No
matter what, he decided to take the same direction. Walking was as
easy as it was on Earth, just as he had expected, because the
planets' mass was about the same as Earth's, and so was the
gravity. But at the same time, he began to feel a dull headache, and
his omniscope indicated a decrease of his blood pressure. He
pushed the small button on the side of the omniscope, and soon
enough felt a mixture of sugar, adrenaline and caffeine flood into
his body.
Without any hurry, he blended into the the people's stroll.
He found his guess to be correct. He came into a hall with
numerous doors with symbols on them. The symbols almost looked
like the small pictures in kindergartens which help the little ones to
know whom the towel with the bunny, the lily or the red triangle
belongs... On getting closer, he could get a clear view of some of the
symbols. One showed an eating man, another indicated for a
shower room, and a third one showed a bed.
First, he entered the showers.
13

Light was uncomfortably dark here as well, but he had almost
gotten used to this. Sinks and showers where installed in rows. A
bit farther on where the toilets. Just like on Earth. He turned a tap
on a sink: a pleasantly lukewarm liquid poured out. He brought a
drop of it into his analyzer. The liquid turned out to be ordinary
water with some disinfectant mixed into it. Another secret.
Obviously, oxygen only existed in compounds on this planet! One
could imagine that these strange humanoid beings breathed oxygen
from the containers of their gas masks!
No one talked to him.
Washed and at least somewhat refreshed, he went to the next
hall with the sign of an eating person on the door.
It was the dining hall. Shiningly clean, but giant, grey and
uncomfortable. Even the tables were made from grey plastic. And
there was more that was strange here. But what was it? The people
at the tables sat in absolute silence, ate slowly without looking at
the others, without any talking and without even taking notice of
the others.
Peter MacGulliver instantly found an empty table. He sat down,
grabbed the menu and turned on the interplanetary translator. This
new invention was a wedding gift from July. On Earth, since
ancient times – for a thousand or even more years – everything that
was needed by its inhabitants was free: shoes and sailing boats as
well as tickets for the opera or chocolate cream. But new inventions
were made constantly, and good work, new scientific knowledge or a
special work of art, maybe even outstanding sports results, were
rewarded with them to keep up an incentive and not letting life itself
become monotone. The interplanetary translator was such an
invention. Not only could it translate the languages of the known
planets which already had relations with Earth, but in a matter of
moments, it could find the key in all acoustic and light signals
(given there was one) and present it in a way that was
comprehensible for the human eye and brain. July, who had written
the best discourse on language science recently, had been rewarded
with this device.
"I gift it to you", she had told Peter before their departure.
"Maybe there's a gorgeous fairy on some of the stars who wants to
ask you something, and you won't understand her."
They had laughed about it back then. How long ago had it been?
One year... one week... infinite space times...? They hadn't planned
to land on even a single planet. They didn't want to talk to anyone,
only to each other and maybe with Earths space stations at best.
14

The translator had two buttons, one labeled Vox, the other one
had a hieroglyph. The first activated the translation of spoken
language, the latter one translated letters and scripts. Peter turned
the controls. A little lamp shone on, lit the menu, and with this, the
translation appeared:
Algae sauce, requests one unit of oxygen to eat;
Mushroom cream, two units oxygen;
Mixed casserole, two units oxygen;
Casserole with banana cream, four units oxygen.
'I'm reading this and yet don't understand', Peter thought. Back
in school, he had learned that in ancient times, food hadn't been
available infinitely on Earth and had its price back then. When
someone went to a restaurant or a grocery store, a certain amount
of "money" had to be given in exchange for the food. He wouldn't
have been surprised if behind the algae sauce, it would've read: one
bit of gold. But why was it important how much oxygen was needed
to eat it?
The speaker on his table sounded with a strangely deep,
resonate voice. Quietly first, then more impatient. Peter switched
the translator to "Vox", and he heard it from the little device:
"You didn't order yet..."
"Mushroom cream", he said quickly. The translator said
something aloud as it translated Peters reply to the unknown
asking one. The grey table surface opened up, and on a plate, a
mash-like dish appeared, together with a spoon-like thing. Peter
took his gas mask off his face, but pushed it back the next instant,
shocked. The air that hit his face was acidic and made him choke.
He looked at his food clueless. If he took the mask off his mouth, he
would suffocate. If he let it on, he couldn't eat. He looked around
and at the others. They all only had the trunk-like mask. They put
the gauze-like cloth which covered their mouth aside and took one
end of the spoon in the mouth, about the same way like a straw. It
was only now that he realised that the handle of the spoon was
hollow, like a pipe. He would need to get such a half-mask
somewhere. With some trouble, he managed to put aside his
breather a little bit from his chin and put the spoon handle in his
mouth. Now he could suck the mash. It indeed tasted a bit like
mushrooms, but a bit like salted semolina, too. It tasted neither
especially well nor especially bad.
He had profusely began to sweat when he had finished his meal.
Once again, he heard something from the speaker.
"Your health", the interplanetary computer translated.
15

"Thanks", he muttered. What should he do now?
He went up, and with the blink of an eye, his seat was taken by
another one. He went to a door which symbol showed a bed.
Presumably, this was a hotel.
He expected to get into a reception hall. Instead, he found
himself in a giant sleeping hall with beds, shelves and closets.
Around him, he saw people getting off their clothes or sleeping.
Infinite fatigue overcame him.
What if he just laid down in one of the beds? If the owner would
appear, he'd apologize and move on.
No. He couldn't do it.
He should ask someone where he even was. But if he asked, he'd
gain attention and would need to come up with some explanation.
No. He was way too tired for that now. But what was with July? If
he laid down and fell asleep now he'd get to know it even later...
Maybe she needed help? Maybe she was in danger and waited for
him? But sleep and tiredness lasted on him like lead. The food! This
strange, unknown mushroom cream. Had something been in the
food? Maybe a sedative? How could he miss out on analyzing the
cream before he ate it? But now it was too late anyway. Lay down
and sleep... but maybe he would need to ask the young man...
He switched the translator back to "Vox" and approached a
bypassing young man.
"Sir, who is allowed to take a bed here?"
"Whoever is tired", the indifferent response was.
'I should take off my clothes', Peter thought. But he already laid
on the strangely soft bed and fell sound asleep.
16

05 – Growing concerns
Peter was awakened by quiet, pleasant music. He opened his
eyes and looked up at the ceiling. It was gray and served as a
projection screen for a movie.
He tried to wipe the fogged up glasses of his breather to be able
to watch it. In the beds all around him, humanoid beings were
laying. They all were awake, laid on the back and looked up at the
ceiling. Of course, they wore no breathers, only the trunk on their
nose.
He switched on the translator and listened.
On the grey screen, a young man and a young woman appeared
– as far as Peter could guess their age and sexes. In jogging gear
and with the oxygen trunks, they sat on a bench and talked about
love. Very slowly and boring. They said something about the Grand
Spring Festival and that they were going to hug each other. "You are
beautiful", the man said. "You are good", the girl said. Then, the
picture changed. Now the screen played medical advice. People
should chew slower as this would consume less oxygen. Another
change. Now a cildren's choir was singing about the Grand Spring
Festival. "We are going to be happy and healthy, will pray to
experience the Grand Spring Festival". Then, just for a moment, the
picture became colorful: it was as if one would see a landscape on
Earth with blue sky and green grass. A strange excitement
overcame the people in the hall. Many sat up and started to sing.
This all was only for a minute. The picture at the ceiling became
grey again. The hall went silent. Behind the couple, nothing but a
concrete cube building was to be seen, as well as behind the doctor
and the children's choir.
Then, the picture faded out completely. The people in the
neighboring beds got up and went to the bathroom. Peter remained
in bed, deep in thoughts. Again, pleasant music was to be heard. He
recognized wind and string instruments. The melody resembled the
one heard before.
Again, he tried to think.
Undoubtedly, he was the victim of a space ship accident. Maybe
July had survived, too, and was somewhere nearby. Maybe she had
been arrested. He had to search for her without any further delay.
And he mustn't eat from the local food. Maybe they contained an
unknown sedative or other substances that were harmful to him.
Better to nourish from his stock of grocery tabs.
17

He had to establish a connection to July. The ship wasn't
responding on its frequencies, neither did the space staton
"Fortuna-710". But July had her own transmitter and receiver, just
for an emergency case. Why didn't she answer? And why didn't she
try to hail him?
Again, he turned the radio controls. Utter silence.
'In vain! The device is shielded by something. I have to get out in
the open... outta here, but at once.'
He quickly washed himself, put on his equipment which he had
put into his sidebag yesterday and began, as far as his breather
allowed for it, to run. It was only when he was already on his way
he realised that no one had charged him for the accommodation or
had even given him as much as a glance.
Again, he was at the grey square. The open concrete plain wasn't
structured by anything. There were no roads, no fountain in the
middle, only benches made of stone and playgrounds for children.
Just as before, people were sitting on the benches, an oxygen trunk
on their noses, and most of them tinkered around with a small
object which looked a bit like a pocket watch.
The place was huge. It almost stretched out up to the horizon.
On all sides, it was surrounded by grey buildings, concrete cubes
like the one he had slept in. He noticed another strange thing about
the houses – yes, they had only doors, but no windows.
Peter went to the middle of the square and switched on his radio.
Again, the speaker remained silent, he received not a single station,
and he got no reply to any of his hails.
He needed to get someplace higher, somewhere where he would
have a better orientation and could successfully use his radio. He
chose a random direction of the place to go to. His chronometer
indicated both the time on Earth as well as the stardate. But on
this evil planet, was it day or night now, morning or evening? From
somewhere, the planet got this dawny twilight. Somewhere there
had to be a sun, or maybe more than one, but the sun light wasn't
able to get through this polluted atmosphere. Yes, he needed to get
to a higher point, perhaps on the roof of one of the buildings, where
there was not that much traffic going on and where he could get
some orientation... To the side of the place, there where buildings
just like the one he had spent the night in. Grey, cube-shaped and
with smooth walls. The entrance also looked the same, with a huge
door and a frosted glass panel in it. Only now he realised that there
was the number Three above the door. The next house had the
Four. To be more precisely: above the first door, there where three,
18

above the other door four vertical lines. Curious, he entered number
Three. Just like in the other building, he got into a huge hall, but of
a totally different kind from the one which had led to the dining and
the sleeping halls. Here, one went from the entrance through
swinging glass doors in some kind of storage room. The swinging
doors were made from some sort of frosted glass, too, and above
each door was a little picture with a different symbol. The first plate
showed a shoe, on the second door was a plate with an overall, the
third showed a puppet. Peter was pushed through the door with the
shoe by the mass of people who flooded inside. The storage room
was giant in size. On seemingly endless shelves there were grey
shoes with a profiled sole, made of a rubber-like leatherette, and the
same model on all shelves. The shoes were sorted according to their
size, right at the entrance the very small ones for children, about in
the center of the room ones which could have fitted Peter. Those
who entered asked no one something, neither interest nor curiosity
was apparent on their faces. They took their size from the shelf, put
the new shoes on and threw the old, worn-off ones in a chute
beneath the shelf. And then they left the storage the same way they
had entered, with slow steps.
Peter stopped at a shelf and took a pair of shoes.
An alarm sounded. Stunned, he put the shoes back. He heard a
voice. He switched on his translator and got the command in Earth
language:
"Not your size. Please move on."
Only now he realised that in front of the shelves, a grey rubber
mat was attached. People walked on this mat, and they stopped at
the spot where a small indicator lamp lit up. Obviously, some
technology inside the mat measured the size of the foot, and as
soon as one approached the area with the right size of shoes, the
device indicated the fitting shoes could be taken here.
Peter went on and watched the rubber mat. Two rows on, the
yellow indicator lamp lit up. Peter took a pair of shoes and tried
them. They fitted. He disposed off his old shoes which he had
brought from Earth. The new shoes did not only fit perfectly, but
were also elastic and comfortable. He left the storage. No one talked
to him, no one charged him something for the shoes.
With searching for the shoes, he had spent a full hour. No, he
didn't come here for that in the first place. He needed to find a
staircase, get up onto the flat roof and activate his radio again.
He tried the other doors, but came back out only moments later.
He didn't find a staircase anywhere. Even in the rooms where the
19

storage was several stories high – for instance, at the overalls' the
goods were stored in three stories - , even there stairs existed only
in the storage room, and they only led to more shelves, but there
was no way to be found which would have led to a balcony or onto
the roof. And there wasn't even a window which he could have
opened, switch on radio and tried to orientate in his surrounding.
Inside the storage, there were countless goods. The humans
(Peter called the beings with their breathing trunk that surrounded
him in great numbers that name, for the lack of a better one) got
everything without having to wait. This "everything" basically meant
clothes: working clothes and underwear. There were no coats or
blankets. In a spacious storage he found breathers. This masks
which were only to wear before the nose were sorted by size, too,
and all the same model. Each mask came with two or three gauzes
which were to wear before the mouth. Apparently, the wear and
consumption on gauzes was higher. The same way as in the shoe
hall, Peter found the rubber mat again, but here it wasn't on the
ground but in the height of the faces. When he reached the middle
of the hall, the indicator lamp before him lit up. Meanwhile without
hesitation, Peter took the next mask from the shelf and tried it on.
It pressed itself smoothly on his nose and face, but he was stunned
to realise that this device completely sucked itself onto his nose
when he tried to take a breath, but no air came through the trunk.
Maybe the container had some failure. But soon enough, an alarm
bell rang off, and the translator gave the instruction:
"Report to the next oxygen filling station."
So that meant there wasn't air yet in the container of the
apparatus. It needed to be filled in somewhere. There, where the
oxygen was given out... there had to be an office of some kind, a
filling station, he could finally clear up his situation there.
With certain trouble, he ripped the mask which threatened to
suffocate him off his face and put his own one back in place
quickly. The whole action had taken about half a minute, he had
fought for breath and for dear life. He sweated, and his heart beated
like mad. After he had recovered a bit, he put his new thing into his
bag.
From the mask storage, he came into a toy storage. He found
small machine models, puppets with gas masks and small overalls.
Ten thousands, hundred thousands, all grey, only differing in size.
There were adults walking in front of him. He realised that they
mostly took a round, can—like thing from the shelves. He took a
closer look and found it to be a puzzle. Between geometric figures,
20

small marbles had to be shook into the destination, a small pit.
Peter remembered having seen many people handling those things
out there on the square, turning and shaking them.
He also saw children in this strange warehouse. They went alone
or in groups, had pale faces, took one or two games and moved on.
Just as in the other building, everything was monotonous, the
omnipresent grey color made it depressing. And one more thing:
there were only very few kind of goods. In a toy store on Earth, one
could see small enignes, cars, rockets and many different
mechanical toys, as well as teddy bears, stuffed plush animals –
oddly enough, here there wasn't a single animal figurine amongst
the toys. And for bricks, there were only grey, windowless pieces
which only could be put together to dark monotonous cube-shaped
buildings.
After the toy department, a book store followed. It was a storage
just like the others. On long shelves, he witnessed a total of only
eight or ten different books – in giant numbers. On the first shelf,
all were labeled "School book". He took one of the massive tomes,
pressed it under his arm and went on. At the moment, he didn't pay
much attention to the other books. He had seen a thin booklet
labeled "Love" and another one "I'm waiting for the Grand Spring
Festival". On the cover of the second one, a man and a woman
kneeling looked up to the sky.
He pressed the school book firmly to his body and felt an
enormous excitement flooding his body. He couldn't help but
directing the translator on it to understand at least the first page.
School book for children
it said on the title page.
Neither an age for which children it was written was stated, nor a
certain topic. In general, it was the only school book in the storage.
He felt that he would find the solution to many of the mysteries
of this strange planet in this book. He paced up his step and
returned into the entrance hall. Once again, he looked around
thoroughly if he could find a staircase or another ascend to the roof
somewhere, but in vain. He hurried out on the street, or more
precisely, on the huge square. From there he went randomly into
the building marked with five vertical dashes. Once again the
already familiar sight: a spacious entrance hall with frosted glass
swinging doors to all sides. But above those doors there were no
symbols. He opened one of them.
It was as if he would have been in the control room of a power
plant, or in the pilot's cabin of a spaceship, or in the cockpit of a
21

plane or in the operator's room of an automated factory. Machines
and insruments stood there in long rows. In front of the
instruments sat humans with breathing trunks on their noses and
worked. They pushed buttons, spinned wheels, without talking to
each other or taking any notice of the other ones. Peter slowly
passed one of the instrument tables. A light gray lamp lit up, and a
voice was heard. His translator gave him the instructions.
Push the lever on the right side until you hear a buzzer, then
repeat with the lever on the left side.
He wanted to go on, but his curiosity got the better of him. He
sat down on the comfortable – grey – chair, found the right lever
and pushed it. Again and again until the buzzer sounded. Then he
looked for the lever on the left side and now pushed this one. After
the buzz signal, he changed back to the right one. This way, he
spent maybe two hours until he was fed up with the task. When he
started to get up, the lamp lit again, and a plastic arm appeared.
And since Peter didn't know what to do, the instruction came:
The oxygen bin! The oxygen bin!
Peter went up, not understanding. The machine repeated the
instruction persistently. Then he got it. The oxygen bin! The bin
that belonged to the gas mask which he had taken in the storage!
The strange arm snatched the grey bin which belonged to the
mask like a magnet. On the side of the bin, a small gap opened. On
the machine, a little window appeared. Out of it, like at a chocolate
vending machine, three tabs fell into the bin of the gas mask. Then
the openings closed themselves.
So this was the secret!
This was an oxygen filling station. One had to do some sort of
work, and in exchange, the machines filled the breathers. But did
those tabs really contain oxygen?
Excited, Peter changed the gas masks. This time, he carefully
prepared each movement and was ready to change back to his own
breather right away in case of any emergency.
Now, the whole process worked excellently. The new device
worked perfectly. The air that was streaming through the hose was
easy to breathe. Peter analyzed the mixture. The gas that
subliminated from the round tabs contained of nitrogen and oxygen
and was a mixture very similiar to the air on Earth.
He couldn't resist and went to the next machine. (Was it really to
be called a machine or more an instrument table? No matter.)
Again, a signal lamp lit up, then the instruction came. Here, a pedal
had to be stepped on and simultaneously, a wheel had to be
22

spinned. Peter worked on this station for a while, too, and when he
went up, again a plastic arm appeared. Peter held his oxygen bin to
it right away. This time, only one tab came out of the machine.
It was obvious: on this planet, oxygen served as "money", as
value indicator as it had been usual on Earth in ancient times. The
wage was paid in oxygen. Presumably, he had done some useful
work, and for this, his salary were four units oxygen.
Suddenly he felt that he was terribly hungry. If only he knew
where the dining hall from yesterday was. He decided to look for it,
eat something and then resume his search for a higher location, for
a spot that allowed radio signals, or some information bureau to
somehow establish a connection with the life forms of this strange
planet... Again, he went out to the square and had to realise that he
wasn't able to find yesterday's restaurant. Now the weather was a
bit clearer than yesterday. One could see a bit better, but
everywhere there were only the same gray concrete cubes with
seamless walls.
He decided to simply enter one building after another until he
found someplace to eat.
The next one was some sort of hospital. On stretchers, humans
were brought in. He noticed that none of the sick was injured, no
one moaned or cried, they weren't even conscious. As if they were
sound asleep, they laid on the stretchers, and the emergency staff
with masks on their faces slowly walked the way with them. After
the hospital, he found another warehouse, and finally a building
like that where he had spend the previous night. Here, there were
bathrooms, sleeping halls and a huge spacious dining hall. Finally!
Already familiar, he took a seat. According to the menu, he
ordered algae pudding with mushroom sauce. Expertedly, he put
the spoon under the gauze and began to suck the mash. He was so
hungry that once again, he forgot to analyse the food. Around him,
men and women with masks sucked their mash. They ate, went up,
and others took their seats. But he decided to stay for a while after
he finished to have a look in the school book. It was then when he
realised that on the third table, a young man didn't eat but instead
smeared the mash from his plate onto a linen cloth. The young man
worked focused, he didn't pay attention to anyone, the same way no
one seemed to care for him.
Only Peter watched curiously. The young man applied the mash
with the handle of the spoon, made some dashes, waited patiently
for the mash to dry on the cloth, folded the cloth over, applied a
new layer and again drew some signs. Yes, it looked as if he would
23

write or draw. At this moment, it came to Peters mind that he had
found no writing utensils in the storages, as well as no paint, no
pencils, neither chalk nor pens or paintbrushs. Nothing like that.
Neither had he found furniture, cameras, flowers, watches, radios,
carpets, curtains or pictures... What was the young man up to?
"Do you wish something else?", the speaker on his table asked.
"One raspberry cream", he replied quickly since he wanted to
continue to watch the young man.
The cream arrived. At this moment, the young man realised he
was watched by Peter. It was obvious that he realised it because he
looked up and scared. Quickly, he folded the cloth, put it into a
small bag and hurried out of the hall without having eaten the rest
of his food.
24

06 – Search for the unknown one
Peter felt he had to find the young man. Some inexplicable
feeling told him that this young man wouldn't reject his approach,
not walking by him without noticing him. This young man...
He jumped up, left the raspberry cream and hurried into the
entrance hall. The young man, however, had already disappeared.
Angry and disappointed, he went out to the square again. Before
his dinner, it had been much brighter than the day before, now it
was much darker. Peter mused whether the air was much more
polluted now, whether the source of light – the sun? – much weaker
now. The square made an even unfriendlier appearance, even
repulsive.
Peter exactly knew the history of spacefaring of mankind. He had
learned about the conflicts that came with the first contacts with
other inhabited planets. There had been planets where the
spacefarers from Earth had been welcomed warmly and with open
arms. With numerous satellites along the Milky Way there were
regular radio and television connections, and there were space
flights that ran to schedule. But there had been cases where the
bold explorers had to endure torture and death. Sometimes, the
natives had been scared by the comers from Earth, had put them in
chains or showed them in zoos. On other planets, they were taken
for gods, natives threw down themselves before them and offered
them sacrifices. There were planets where it was tried to
communicate with the inhabitants with the interplanetary
translator, and others where a landing couldn't even be attempted
because the defense weapons of the planet destroyed them long
before. Who knew who lived on this planet? Was it a united tribe?
Or where there differing beings here? Was July also get captured by
them? How would she be? Or had she also met these strange,
indifferent beings that were equipped with masks? The machines he
had worked on and the supply indicated for the presence of beings
that were higher developed. But where? And who were they?
His thoughts went in circles. He couldn't break through this
chain with logic. Now that he wasn't hungry anymore he decided to
take a look in the school book. He had given up on finding the
unknown young man.
He sat on the concrete bench next to the playground, switched
the translator to the little hieroglyph and pointed it towards the
school book. Eagerly, he started to read:
25

"At the beginning, God created the sky and under the sky
Oxygénia. God is kind, and so he created a huge, wonderful world.
He set up to the sky the sun, surrounded it with its servants, with
twelve moons and thirty-three million stars for them to shine. The
sky was bright and blue like a curtain made of silk, silky grass grew
on the ground, and on the trees grew honey sweet fruits. Then God
called the sun and the moons and asked them what was still
missing in this beautiful world? The sun answered: the men. The
moons answered: the women and the children. And God formed
from clay thousand men and thousand women and ten thousand
children, smaller and taller, and he sat them all on the grass under
the trees. But the clay figurines could not move.
'Is something not right?', The Lord mused. 'Where may I be
mistaken?' And the moons said: 'Give them, oh Lord, from your
sublime edema oxygen. And then God lifted up all clay figurines one
by one and breathed them through his sublime lips edema. The clay
reddened by this, the stiff legs began to move. And then God took
another giant blow, and the bright blue silk curtain of the sky
moved, the wind was born, and he brought oxygen all over
Oxygénia.
'This Earth is yours, as is the grass and the fruits', The Lord
said, 'but do not yearn away from here because I forbid you to leave
the place where I put you. Who moves uses up more oxygen, and he
is robbing his brothers and sisters of my holy edema. Oxygen but is
the Great Treasure which I gifted you and with which I gave you the
life. And I forbid you to think, because thinking also uses up more
oxygen, and you do not need other thoughts than those you have
gotten from me.
And I forbid you to talk superfluous things, because words also
cost oxygen, and who is talking much lessens the Joint Treasure to
his other people. But who is offending my order, I shall punish and
chastise.'
But The Lord had warned the people in vain, because The Bird
appeared to them, the birth of Hell, with extended wings he came
from the other side of the mountains. 'Look', he said, 'I'm sitting on
Gods holy edema and am swimming in it like fish in the water, and
I go everywhere I want. Make yourselves wings, too, and make
yourselves sails and tame the storm and conquer the air and
possess the oxygen, and you can get where the sun, the twelve
moons and the thirty-three million stars are, because it's even a
hundred times nicer there than in Oxygénia.'
26

The human beings, however, did not know that the Evil Bird was
not sailing on the edema of God but on the edema of Satan and that
all his words meant annihilation and destruction. In vain the kind
father had warned the humans, in their hearts, curiosity,
insatiability, unrest and envy nested in, and they made from palm
leaves wings; from big fig leaves, they made sails, and they wanted
to conquer the wind, the living and moving oxygen. And one catched
away the air from the other, they fought and coughed, every one
wanted to get higher, and as they already approached the nearest
moon, The Lord sucked in the air, the wind died, the oxygen
returned to Gods soul, the humans, however, fell down like grey
clay figurines.
But God had mercy with his dead creatures and said this: 'You
have sinned, but I do not judge you to eternal doom. But from now
on, I will decide how much oxygen you get, because you cannot take
care on your own, and the good only serves you for the bad.'
And the wind was gone, as was the Blue of the sky, und who did
not put the godly umbilical cord, the life-donating nose protection,
on the face but rather wanted to breathe without it, his lungs filled
with scathing gases, with the breath of Satan, and he would die of a
painful death.
And because of the sins of the ancestors, the people of Oxygénia
gets its daily oxygen only according to the rules of justness and
work and through the godly umbilical cord, which it is only allowed
to rip one time a year for one day, for the Grand Spring Festival,
when the godly mercy pulls open the curtain of the sky and our
eyes can watch the brightness which we, at the end of time, after
the arrival of the Messiah, can enjoy for all eternity. Amen."
Stunned, Peter turned the page. After this religious lesson, the
civil rights and duties followed.
"I am a loyal citizen of Oxygénia. Oxygénia is my home.
Oxygénia takes care of me. I get shoes and clothes, and I get as
much of everything as I need. And I get the life-donating oxygen.
For the oxygen, I have to work. The work is nice, easy and pleasant.
If I work carefully according to the instructions, if I work good, I'm
getting oxygen. This oxygen is mine, no one can take it from me.
And I can accumulate oxygen supplies, as much as will fit in the
bin. If I want, so much it will last for three days and three nights.
What am I using the oxygen for?
I need oxygen to live. I breathe oxygen.
27

The fewest oxygen I need when I sleep or lie down quietly without
thoughts. Movements are consuming lots of oxygen! So let's walk
slowly and thoughtfully! Before we get started, we need to assure we
have enough oxygen. If this is not the case, we head to the next
working hall where we can obtain new oxygen! We need to keep in
mind to not let our body get cold because of lack of oxygen, because
else we cannot take part in the Grand Spring Festival!
One also needs oxygen to eat. On the menu, you find next to
each dish the required amount to digest it! Be economical! Don't
waste too much oxygen for one dish!
Watch the TV broadcasts! For this, one doesn't need oxygen!"
In the school book also were illustrations. On one picture, a
sleeping hall just like the one Peter had experienced was shown.
Children laid on the beds, strechted comfortably, and watched the
projections shown on the ceiling. But these pictures also were grey
and sad. The whole school book bore sadness. A map-like drawing
gained Peters interest. It was around the middle of the book, at the
chapter Our home.
" Oxygénia is our home.
Oxygénia is a giant plain under a wide sky on which the sun, the
twelve moons and thirty-three million stars are standing. The
edema of Satan covers the sky from our eyes, but once a year, for
the Grand Spring Festival, the sky opens its curtain, and the stars
become visible. The sun and the moons circle around Oxygénia
according to Gods command. When the releaving mercy will arrive,
we all will see their golden discs.
The inhabitants of Oxygénia is us, the beings. Amongst us, there
are men, women and children. Children come right from the sky at
the Grand Spring Festival. They bring the mercy.
On the plain of Oxygénia, the cities raise. All cities are identical.
The beings live in cities. They all have the same temperature and
are equally supplied with light and food. And each city has twelve
sun places, and around each sun place, twelve moon living blocks
are raising. We find the same rooms in all living blocks. Block Three
serves as sleeping room and dining hall. Number One is the school,
and the children are living here, Numbers Two and Four are the
warehouses, Five, Six and Seven are the working stations,
respectively, the oxygen distributors. Eight is the hospital..."
28

Shocked, Peter stared at the school book. No doubt, the cities all
were built according to the same scheme. In their centre were
identical places, around them cube-shaped buildings; windowless,
monotonous grey blocks. And there was no single tower, no stairs,
no terraces, nothing... 'Where I am stranded?', he thought,
shuddering. 'The inhabitants of Oxygénia live in cities... all cities
are the same... they all have the same temperature and are equally
supplied with light and food...' He felt as if he was stranded in a
giant mouse trap... or more like he would be in an old-fashioned
stockbreeding factory like they had been on Earth centuries ago,
back in the times when the technology to gain full-worthy proteina
out of plants with photosynthesis hadn't been developed yet. Back
when in so-called mews animals where held and fattened, those
giant barns might have been something similiar... The view of the
depressingly slowly creeping beings with trunk-like breathing
hoses was unbearable...
He put the school book in his side bag and looked around,
unsure. There he spotted the young man again, wearing his bag-like
baggage under his arm again now. Just now, he entered one of the
oxygen distributing working places.
29

07 – At the spaceship
According to Earth dates, weeks had passed, and the spaceship
"Humanitas" still orbited Oxygénia. "Fortuna-710" hailed for maybe
the thousandth time.
This is space station "Fortuna-710"... this is space station
"Fortuna-710"... "Humanitas"! We order you to immediately land at
our space station... To adjust your course, now ignite...
No... No...
"Humanitas", leave the dangerous zone...
I can't...
It's no use and hopeless to orbit this planet...
Peter might require my help... Something happened to Peter... I'm
feeling he is in danger... I can't leave Peter to his fate.
Think. You have to come to terms with the fact that he fell victim to
an accident.
Peter may still be alive, I'll be waiting for him.
For how long?
Forever if I have to, July replied and sobbed.
Time and again, "Fortuna-710" hailed, gave orders, tried to
explain. The ship would have to leave he orbit of this strange planet
which was infamous for its purple gas cover. Until now, no attempt
to explore this planet with a probe had been successful. Its
atmosphere mostly contained of carbon dioxide. Many signs
indicated that there might be organic life on it. But there was no
reply to any radio calls. All spaceships which had come close to it
had been lost. 'Peter most likely is lost, too; for sure he is...'
No, no, I don't leave him to his fate.
"Humanitas"... engage the main drive now... Leave this area! We'll
launch a squadron of rescue ships. "Humanitas" is just a small sports
spaceship. It has no technical ability to help Peter even if there was
the opportunity. You are just endangering yourself. And alone in the
infinite space, you're going to lose your mind at this aimless orbiting.
I'm staying. July cried. But deep inside, she felt that she should
return to Earth because the narrow cabin and the shiny
instruments table, the calls at the radio became unbearable... and
everytime, the space station hailed, but never Peter. Nerveshattering
and unbearable as well was the darkness of space, this
timeless, eternal darkness. And the unbearable thought that maybe
she would have to orbit here forever without being able to attempt
something, just in mindless, oppressive fear. What might have
happened to Peter? Where had he gone? Maybe his radio had failed,
30

maybe he waited for help. Maybe, maybe... maybe... But whatever it
was, she would continue to orbit here until she got to know
something for sure, until she herself turned into a star or a moon...
And to Julys mind came her parents, her siblings, her friends on
Earth, the marvellous sunlit areas on Earth, the oceans, the trees,
her work... and then again Peter, time and again Peter, and she
swore to herself not to return to Earth without him...
31

08 – ON 711 314
The young man with the designation ON 711 314 went through
the door of the next working station. He put his strange luggage
next to him on the ground before he carefully studied the machine's
instruction. Turn the central button four times, then press the left
lever again and again until a signal is heard, then the same with the
right lever and then again turning the central button four times...
So this was a work with three steps, already a bit more
complicated, hopefully it would earn him more oxygen as well. So
get it on.
He pressed the button... oh, this was wrong, he was supposed to
turn it... if he made two mistakes, he didn't get oxygen. Now he
turned the button, one... two... three... four... now the left lever
followed... Who might have been this strange guy in the dining hall?
He had watched him... for sure he had done so... The signal
sounded, now the right lever followed. Just no mistake... and he
was not to think about anything right now because every thinking
used up oxygen, oh dear, and how much... The indicator on his
oxygen bin was in the lower half. He should for once save up an
enormous amount of oxygen, so much it was enough for a whole
year... oh dear, he had almost made a mistake again... If he had an
oxygen supply for a year... no use even dreaming about it. Maybe
when Little ON was grown up sometime... now the left lever, he
mustn't think, his oxygen was dangerously fainting...
Who might have been the unknown? His breathing mask wasn't
like the one of the others. How could he get rid of him? He could
move to the next town, but the trip would cost him thirty units
oxygen, at least. And what for? If he had come after him, he would
find him there, too. He should bring the bag to safety... Now the
right lever... Careful, turn the button one, two, three, four times...
and then the left lever again.
The machine only gave him two tabs of oxygen. On a very modest
calculation, he would need three for lunch. He sat back at the
machine and continued to work for another almost four hours until
he had earned the necessary oxygen.
Then he went to the neighbouring building, sat at the table and
ordered a half portion of casserole with raspberry taste. Then it
happened that the stranger came to his table.
32

09 – ON wants to sleep
Peter MacGulliver blankly looked at him for a moment. "How
come you have no apartment? Where do you live?" ON didn't
answer.
'I behaved incredibly stupid already', he thought. 'I should have
done the same all others do: I should have moved on as if I hadn't
seen the stranger, as if I hadn't heard his words, as if I hadn't
understood him. I revealed myself. Now it doesn't matter anymore.
If he is an enemy, if he is sent from there, he's stronger than me...
But if he tells the truth and really is in need, if he is a stranded
spacefarer... then maybe I can save him... Depends... maybe he can
even help me... Yes, maybe he could really help me.'
At this tought, ON was overcome with such excitement that his
heart began to beat fast. He felt that his oxygen was draining
dangerously.
"Sir, in Oxygénia, no one has his own apartment. We don't
reside, we only live. To be more precisely, anyone can stay where he
wants, where he finds the next bed, a sink and a table. He can eat,
drink, clothe and watch TV."
"And your family? Your friends?", Peter continued to ask
persistently.
"Sir, the talk is tiring me. I'm already using my reserve oxygen."
"But I can give you oxygen as much as you want."
"Where do you have oxygen from?"
"I'm producing it... With my device, any element can be
transformed to oxygen. You can build or destroy an atom with it,
change the electron number..."
ON was affected and stunned, then, his face became even more
tired.
"Sir... I'm not able to think now... please don't tell me such
information..."
"In which state you'd like oxygen? Solid? Or in liquified state?"
ON grabbed into his bag and took out an empty breather.
"My spare mask. Could you fill it?"
Peter MacGulliver opened his oxygen bin which he had obtained
on Oxygénia and put one of the oxygen tabs he'd gotten for his work
in the little replicator he wore in front of his chest. The device
analyzed it and filled ONs bin up to the brim.
ON shuddered in excitement. His eyes dwelled with tears.
"I don't know... how I should thank you... Sir... dear... dear..."
"My name is Peter. And now I'm asking you to explain to me..."
33

"Everything you want. But before, I just have one request, a very
large request. Please allow me to sleep for some hours. I haven't
slept with full oxygen ever since."
"What didn't you do? Since when and what?"
"At night, we have to reduce the oxygen supply. We are only
allowed to sleep with the half dosis. The lacking oxygen is replaced
by hibernating tabs."
"And if you have enough oxygen?"
"We can never have enough oxygen. Even if we work hard all day,
we don't get more than we use up on one day. For working harder,
you need more energy, so the consumption is higher. Then, you
need more food, and the digestion also rises the oxygen
consumption. If you work less, you have less oxygen for the meal.
Practical exercise teaches everyone an optimum between earning
and consuming oxygem. About ten hours of work, two hours for
meals and TV and eight hours of sleep is the approximate relation.
And sometimes, one even has half an hour to spare, to rest on the
square and play with the little puzzle. The oxygen mixed and diluted
with hibernation tabs ensures a total rest: the mind is switched off,
and one doesn't dream. This is cleverly devised... diabolically
devised... When I've slept in... but now, please let me go to sleep..."
Peter MacGulliver was grabbed by such an unrest that most of
all, he would have shaken ON and demaned of him to tell him at
once, without further ado, everything, explain it all. Angry,
uncomfortable emotions overcame him which were
incomprehensible to him and bothered him. In school, he had heard
in psychology class that men once, maybe a thousand years ago,
had no control about their infuriations, emotions and feelings, that
by unpleasant influences their blood pressure rised from time to
time and hormones which caused oppression, unrest and rage had
flooded their blood. But this was all just in theory, no one could
really imagine it anymore. But right now, Peter felt that since his
mishap those unknown bad emotions grew inside him and
accumulated. He looked at ON, but the young man staggered with
exhaustion.
"Let's go to sleep... please, come, let's go to sleep", ON said, and
Peter had no choice but to accompany him to the next sleeping
room.
34

10 – The secret of the strange planet
Peter awoke to find ON awake already.
He now made a completely different impression than before they
had gone to sleep, he was more lively, faster in his movements,
almost bright. He went to the dining hall with Peter. According to
his recommendation, Peter ordered just a milk-like liquid, nothing
else. "Else, you feel dazed", ON explained. "In all other food are
drugs."
"What kind of drugs?", Peter asked.
"You're going to understand in time." When they were finished
with the meal, ON said: "Now I am completely available for you."
"I need help to get to know what happened to the spaceship and
my wife."
"This is not possible", ON replied.
Peter thought that maybe the translator wasn't working properly,
so he tried to express the matter more clearly. "I want to talk to
someone who's in charge of the inner city transport... the director of
the rescue services, or the security service."
"Something like that does not exist."
"Where are the local authorities?"
"There are no authorities."
"Let me explain it this way: I want to get somewhere where I can
establish a radio communication with a station on Earth or the
spaceship."
"I don't know what radio communication is."
"Sending a message with electromagnetic waves."
"This way, I understand it. You cannot send radio signals from
Oxygénia."
"Radio waves are everywhere, in the whole Milky Way system. If
anything, they are shielded here by something. Do you
understand?"
"Exactly", ON replied. "But you can't send radio signals from
outside the city, either. At least not that I'm aware of. It's not just
that we can't send radio signals, I haven't heard of it ever before."
"How can I leave this city?"
"The cities around this one are exactly like this one."
"And what's in between?"
"The Black Space."
"Would you bring me there?"
"Why do you want to get in the Black Space?"
"Maybe I can use radio from there."
35

"I don't believe so."
"I'd like to ask you anyway to accompany me there."
"I will try, but it's hard to get out of the cities."
Later, Peter remembered the way like a nightmare. They went,
went and went, without a word, passing giant grey concrete blocks,
surrounded by slowly walking beings equipped with trunk-like
breathers. In this strange world, there was not a single sound.
Presumably inside the blocks, the TV was switched on here or
there, but not a sound got outside. Grey blocks, grey sky, a horizon
disappearing in the fog and again the same grey buliding blocks.
Peter felt nausea creeping up.
"Which transport systems are in those cities?"
"Transport systems are almost non-existent", ON replied.
Peter felt that if the way would continue to last for long, he would
just slump down, lay on the street and sleep, not caring what might
happen to him next.
Suddenly, they arrived at the last building block. At the end of a
concrete cube, they faced the void. A dark, infinite, empty space.
The concrete ground was replaced by some kind of soil. The air was
much more dense and much more polluted here. He had to switch
on his wristbeam to be able to continue.
"Why is it this creepy dark here?", Peter asked. "Isn't it morning
or noon here, too?"
"We don't know when it's morning or evening", ON replied. "Our
school book doesn't teach it that way, but I know that Oxygénia is
orbiting around a sun and that once, according to the rotation
around the own axis and its orbit, day times and seasons had beed
on Oxygénia. We had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and rainfall, too.
But ever since we do live under artifical light, the sunlight can't
permeate the gas layer. But since the biological rhythm is
mandatory for the beings, the time to sleep or being awake is hinted
by strengthening or weakening the artifical light.
The names remained. The time to sleep we call night and the
time to be awake, day. And we divide them up into ten hours each."
"And who indicates this time organization?", Peter asked.
"The Central Control."
"Where is this Central Control?"
"I don't know."
"How can I get in touch with them?"
"There's no way at all. Except you may try it at the Grand Spring
Festival."
"When this will be?"
36

"I don't know for sure. But we have to go to sleep and awake
several times until then."
"I hope I'm long gone until then."
"This, you're hoping in vain", ON replied portentously. "You
cannot escape from Oxygénia."
"But that is impossible!", Peter yelled desperately.
"I want to hope that I am wrong", ON mumbled to himself.
So here the artifical light ended. It was as dark as in space, as in
the areas between the stars. But this dark was scary, seemed like
moonscape drained of all life. There are such areas on the islands
shaken by volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean, where ash grey craters
are yawning, where half-burnt trees and burnt remains of destroyed
villages arise. Sometimes they deemed to be on old roads where
maybe once animals, humans and vehicles had passed. When they
had walked between the concrete cubes of the city, he had felt as if
there couldn't be anything more depressing than that. But this no
mans land between the cities, this sad landscape that reminded of
doomsday, was worse than anything before.
He hadn't even a guess of time anymore. At the edge of the city,
ON had refilled the oxygen bins, but they again had to struggle for
breathe. It seemed they were on their way for a long time and had
covered a great distance. Now the wristbeam shone on a strange,
billowing dark mass. ON indicated they had to stop.
"What is this?", Peter asked.
"The ocean", ON replied. They had reached the coast. Peter
moved the wristbeam. The powerful light beam of the atomic lux
lamp seemed like a thin thread, it disappeared, was swallowed by
this impermeatable, billowing black. It reminded Peter of the ocean
indeed, but more of the bubbling lava pond of a volcano. This sea
had no color and didn't show the foamy light rhythm of the waves,
it didn't hit against rocks, didn't sparkle in light and had no spray.
This sea moved like a sluggish, scary protozoan, like a fear
spreading puddle in a trough-like bed which devoured everything.
"Don't get any closer!", ON called. "It's dangerous."
"What kind of sea is this?"
"Once, ships were riding on this sea", ON explained, his voice
now shaking with infinite pain. "This sea which was traveled by
ships, cheerful sailors and happy fishermen had blue water, and
the sky beamed above it. I don't know when that was. Ever since,
there's no time in Oxygénia. In the sea's water, there lived fish,
crabs, seashells, jellyfish and starfish. Scurrying little fish and
fearsome predators. The sea was full of life, and along the seaside,
37

there were cities which were completely unlike today's cities. There
were colorful buildings, small and large ones, simple and
magnificient ones, ones with towers and ones with flat roofs.
Sometimes I feel like I had seen those cities with my own eyes,
another time I believe I have only read about them. Since this
happened to me, I'm lacking every sense of time."
"What happened to you?", Peter asked.
"I've come from the City of the Rememberers", ON grumbled
instead of a detailed answer.
"From where we left this morning?"
"No. We came from the city of the Trunk Bearers or, as it is
called in another term, a servant city. The City of the Rememberers
where I came from is a completely different one."
"But you told that all cities are identical."
"Here, yes they are."
Peter shook his head, angrily.
"What you are telling me is all contradictions. I can't make sense
of it."
"I'd like to express myself clearer. I'm sorry if you don't really
understand what I'm saying. That's why I asked you for oxygen and
why I wanted to sleep, so the oxygen can penetrate my brain a bit
and refresh my mind."
"Excuse me, please, I didn't mean to be mean..."
"Well, no. You cannot understand me at all. The City of the
Rememberers is terribly far away from here. I didn't come here on
my own decision. In this city, humans with a mind do live.
Scholars, doctors, engineers, designers and researchers. It's a
beautiful city with colorful houses. There is everything that I love:
my son, my wife, my friends and my home."
"And why did you have to go away from there?"
"I was thrown to the Trunk Bearers as a punishment."
Peter looked at ON affected and a bit bewildered. On Earth, there
was long since no crime anymore and therefore no punishments.
Evil guys were only characters in fairy tales, and only in history
books and in literature they were still mentioned.
"But why... whatever did you do?"
"I have read and thought", ON replied.
"So that's why???"
"Yes, that's why."
"Who could sentence you? A court? Or a governing ruler? A king
or a president?"
"The Central Control."
38

"So it is there? In the City of the Rememberers?"
"No. It's not there", ON replied.
"Where is it, then?"
"I don't know."
"But if the verdict was told to you..."
"It wasn't told to me."
"How did you know you had to leave the city?"
"I was thrown down."
"And you didn't fight? Didn't you object?"
"Where?"
"At the Central Control. Who has thrown you down, anyway?"
"Machines. One cannot discuss with machines. They just bring
you the orders and commands. Not even ORO can talk to the
central."
"Who is this ORO?"
"My best friend, a wonderful man, sacrificial, intelligent, great."
"Where is ORO?"
"When I was thrown down, he still was in the City of the
Rememberers. I think... I hope he's still there."
"And how could one get into the City of the Rememberers", Peter
asked, thoughtfully. "If you get back... would the machines arrest
you again? Would they find you? Don't you want to get back?"
ON remained silent, affected.
'Should the checking instance have sent the stranger after him?
What if he just acted the whole time?' Because what Peter had said
aloud now was his deepest secret, all his wishing, everything he
prepared for ever since he was thrown down. Now ON was as
stunned as in the dining hall when Peter had approached him for
the first time.
For some time, both remained silent. ON slowly calmed down.
For which reason the Central should need an officer like Peter? He
was sent to him by good fate, a miracle. On his own, he would try to
save up oxygen in half tabs in vain for a thousand years, and he
still couldn't get to the Rememberers. But if Peter provided him with
enough oxygen, if they tried it together...
"And how can one get to those with a mind?", Peter asked again.
"Right now, there's no way", ON replied. "But maybe it can
happen at the Grand Spring Festival. It's not possible earlier."
"Why not?"
"At the Grand Spring Festival, the way opens up. But we mustn't
enter it because... well, you'll get to know in time the reason why
not. But next to this way is the entrance to the Old Path. Since I
39

was thrown here and sentenced to erasure of my mind, I'm drawing
this way. I know it from a map, I don't want to forget it. I already
made a draft, it's in my bag. I have to get back there. As I said
before, my son and my wife are living there. But I don't know the
entrance of the path. But at the Grand Spring Festival, the
pilgrimage goes out. Then I will find the starting point. And if we
have this, we'll find our way. Do you want to get along?"
"At the Grand Spring Festival, I hope to be back in my spaceship
long since", Peter replied.
"Let's go back to the city now. No matter which one. The sky is
round everywhere..."
"First, I want to try the radio again."
ON didn't say anything. Peter tried to send, hailed July, then
switched to the band of the space station "Fortuna-710", sent his
messages with great hope, but he didn't get a reply. All around
them was only hopeless, dense darkness. No reply from anywhere.
40

11 – Two reports
Report
Oxygenville, 15.4. 1207, 8.99
Radio transmission on band 6.17: July, come in, please... July,
come in. Shielded on zone "A-B". Result of locating: the Black Space
between Servant Cities Alpha and Beta.
Order
Take further locatings! Report the results immediately!
Report
Oxygenville, 15.4.1207, 9:71
No more radio transmission on band 6.17.
41

12 – The Grand Spring Festival
One can get used to have no sense of time anymore.
There's no Yesterday and no Tomorrow, no sunrise and no
sunset. There is only paler or brighter light. There are concrete
squares and benches on which beings that appear to be humans,
equipped with a breathing hose and a round puzzle in their hands,
clothed in overalls, are sitting. The marble rolls into the hole, a
second marble follows. Now the whole thing is shaken and could be
restart, but that's not possible because for playing the little thing in
breaks, only a few minutes are available. They have to go back in
the machine halls, else they don't get oxygen. The squares, by the
way, are pretty hot. The working halls are more comfortable, cooler.
The Trunk Bearers flood back in the cube-shaped blocks, turn
levers, push buttons, left, right, left, right, hours and hours,
without looking up. All this for not running out of oxygen...
Peter and ON didn't lose sight of each other for a moment.
Luckily, Peters replicator worked excellently, they could refill their
oxygen bins plenty. And additionally they even worked, too, to pass
the time and out of boredom because they had to do something at
all if they didn't want to get completely numb, sitting only on a
bench, shaking the round puzzle. ON worked on his scripts
diligently, completed the map and took notes on his cloth. Since he
had a rich supply of oxygen, more and more details came back to
his mind. Peter watched continuosly: if he didn't notice some sign,
could find a place suitable for radio... but utter silence, only the
world of the concrete blocks and the indifferent beings with
breathing hoses surrounded him. ON was the only reasonable
being. A central office, an authority or some sort of office in general
was nowhere to be found.
There were days when even Peter lost all hope and became
apathetic. He felt like a shipwrecked who had to deal with spending
his life in this grey, dumb world.
At other times, he was overcome by rage and fear. He went
around restless and searched for July. Maybe she had landed here,
too, maybe he didn't have a coincidental accident but was held
hostage by unknown evil forces who guarded and watched him
here. Maybe ON didn't tell the truth, maybe he just was one of this
unknown force... No... he himself had walked past ON, had
approached him, had requested from him to be led into the Black
Space. He needed to go with ON to the Rememberers because he
42

had to escape this concrete dungeon... He had to stay with ON,
maybe his friends could help him...
ON worked on his scripts and the map and tried to explain them
to Peter. He also told him about the difficulties they were to expect
and made it clear that they mustn't get into the hype of the
intoxicated and dazed crowd.
The Grand Spring Festival came closer.
All of a sudden, all other books disappeared from the shelves in
the warehouses, only the booklet about the Grand Spring Festival
remained. Peter took one from the shelf and browsed through it.
It read from the celestial miracle, from the mercy and the joy of
love, but pretty slurred and unclear. More and more Trunk Bearers,
sitting on the benches of the squares, browsed this booklet. On the
ceilings of the sleeping halls, more and more often colorful pictures
appeared, together with music with an arousing rhythm. The food
however, just as ON had warned Peter, contained more and more of
the mysterious drugs. Peter analyzed some grams of mushroom
cream, but only could find out the presence of a complex organic
substance of an unknown composition.
One day, they woke because of strange sounds in a rhythm that
became ever faster. It sounded a bit like drums and bells. The
sound became ever stronger and was to be heard all day. The Trunk
Bearers became more and more unrestful. Only a few worked in the
working halls. Peter and ON sat on machines for a short time, the
oxygen tabs they got for their work also contained an intoxicant. ON
had led Peters attention to that in advance. They needed to be
careful. Now, they mustn't eat any food or breathe any of the given
oxygen.
For the huge, festive procession, the crowd also was prepared by
a mysterious higher power. The food now contained certain sexual
hormones and stimulants. Without a break, music played
everywhere, in the sleeping rooms and dining halls, in the storages
and on the squares outside. Then it became brighter, as if the sun
would appear between the clouds. It shone so bright and clear Peter
had to held his hands in protection before his eyes. All around him,
they were just outside on a square, they all suddenly threw
themselves to the ground. "Mercy! Mercy! The spring is here! The
spring is here!", the crowd cried.
"Take care not to be carried along... We better stand at the side!"
ON took his arm.
To Peter, it was as if he awoke from a dream. ONs warnings had
been in vain, he was intoxicated, too, and the waving, raving crowd
43

almost carried him away. As if they would shoot out of the ground,
these grey, breathing hoses wearing beings flooded the square as far
as the eye could see, and moved towards a shining light beam. They
rose their arms up to the sky and moved to the rhythmic, far
sounding drum sounds with ever faster steps, dancing and almost
running at the same time.
"Let's wait... only at the end", ON pressed Peter against a
concrete block. "We don't want to get amongst them, then all our
hopes would be gone... We only follow right at the end..."
It lasted minutes or maybe hours until this living flood had
passed. ON and Peter followed the procession, but they needed to
be careful since there still came more out of the buildings along the
way. On the edge of the city, they all moved further on. Peter
recognized the landscape, this impassable area, but now, they went
along a broad, mighty light alley. From the city, more and more
hooked up in huge groups.
On an insurveyably large conrete square, the procession
stopped. Here, the sky opened, the fog layers above them lifted like
a curtain in the theater, and a bright, light blue sky looked down at
them.
"Oxygen! Oxygen! Divine edema!", the crowd chanted.
"Oxygen", Peter joint in.
"No", ON replied, "that's only an illusion, a projected picture.
There's no oxygen here yet."
On the blue firmament, now children appeared, countless
amounts of children. Hundred thousands or a million running,
lovely little beings with shining eyes. The music played, and the
crowd chanted: "Mercy! Mercy!" But those were no living children,
they were motion pictures, illusion. Then, the firmament closed
itself again, and now, far away, somewhere at the front end of the
procession, the entrance of a cave opened up. It was unusually
broad. About two or three hundred people could enter at the same
time. Out of the cave, light radiated, and the long row rushed
inside, running and pushing each other.
"What is there?", Peter asked.
"We can take a sneak peek inside, but we must not enter... don't
forget, if we enter, we're lost."
Carefully, walking at the very end, they followed the procession
until the entrance of the cave. Meanwhile, a new row of people had
formed behind them. They stepped out of the line and just watched
from the entrance what happened inside, but they could only see
very few from the wild orgy.
44

Those who reached the opening of the cave ripped off their
breathing hoses because inside, there was a wonderful,
intoxicating, oxygen-rich air. At the ceiling and the walls, colorful
pictures shone. Those flooding in further deemed to be in a lush
jungle, in the domain of coconut and date palmtrees, giant
mahogany and eucalyptus trees, entwining lianas and deep green
moss. Likewise, the ground of the cave was green, too, instead of
soild concrete, one believed to have silky grass under his feet. The
beings who kept flooding in soon got fully naked, hugged each other
and rolled on the ground. In regular gaps along the walls, cups with
sweet, honey tasting, euphoria intoxicating drinks stood ready for
the crowd. And as the procession moved on, they sang, drank and
fell into an unrestrained ecstacy of love. Before the last ones of the
incredibly long procession entered, the first ones already staggered
out at the other end of the cave, barely a mile away from where the
entrance was. Inside, winding paths led for many kilometers, and
side corridors, opening up and closing lock doors swallowed a part
of the crowd. The majority, however, reappeared almost at the spot
where they had started, and flooded, still drunk by dancing and
love ecstasy, into a store like they were half asleep, all getting grey
overalls again and breathers with filled oxygen bins. After the trip of
several hours, they all returned to one of the cities with the concrete
cubes, where they went on with their usual life until the next Grand
Spring Festival.
Peter and ON watched for a while as the cave slowly devoured
the more and more drunk crowd.
"What's the purpose of this festival?", Peter asked.
"The cave system houses a giant computer", ON explained. "All
inhabitants of Oxygénia pass it. Voluntarily. If someone doesn't
enter, no one cares. He just doesn't go, then. But all want to get
through here, it's their dream, their longing, the meaning of their
life, the only thing they remember and desire. Inside the cave, the
air contains oxygen, added with scents and stimulants. In the
ecstasy of free breathing, music and being drunk, they throw away
their clothes, love each other, eat and drink. Meanwhile, sensors
fast as lightning measure, qualify and sort out. They are selecting.
Doors open and close. In the first lock, those boys and girls who are
thought to be suitable for getting up to a City of the Rememberers
are chosen. The City of the Rememberers is the world of scholars.
Only those in whose brains the machines found special abilities will
get there: a logical, mathematical predisposition, talent for drawing
and more like that. They are led into certain corridors from where
45

long moving sidewalks are transporting them up. Just like this, I
got up in a City of the Rememberers a long time ago. In another
group, those with especially good fine motoric skills are gathered.
Those with an art predisposition are getting into a third group;
another group is for those with especially strong emotions. About a
mile before the exit, the women who became pregnant during the
festival are sorted out."
"And what's happening to them?"
"They are brought into giant camps nearby the City of the
Rememberers. There, they give birth to their children and breastfeed
them until the next Grand Spring Festival. Then, the children
are separated from them. The mothers immediately are returned
into a servant city, the children only after six Spring Festivals. The
little ones are taken care for in the servant cities in the buildings
marked with a Two and are raised there until they can take part in
the Grand Spring Festival where their fate will be decided."
"And the mothers? ... Do they simply give away their children?"
"No", ON said, grimly. "The mothers lament and cry, but
machines and locks don't know any mercy... They are sedated,
sedatives are sprayed out, the oxygen is drained from them, they
are getting hibernal instead, and they slump down unconscious...
After erasing their minds, they get back in the cities with the
concrete cubes."
"And there is no other possibility?"
"For this, one needs to be as lucky as I was. When I got to know
in which danger I was, I was strained to protect my mind. I
entrusted myself to ORO, and in secret, he did the operation to me,
inserting a thin protective plate into my skull at the spot where the
mind-erasing radiation is directed, and he gave me medics which
neutralized the toxics which block the metabolism between the
oxygen and the ribonucleic acid. When the terrific had happened to
me, I started to take notes... and for my good luck, the good fate
has sent me a good friend crossing my path again after ORO, you."
"You said the mothers would forget everything? Is their mind loss
so complete they don't remember their children?"
"They can't remember anything. Maybe at the Grand Spring
Festival when they again fall into sexual ecstasy and can get
pregnant again."
"And who is raising the children?", Peter asked. "If the mothers
aren't with them? Do you have foster-mothers, teachers?"
"As long as they are very little they are entrusted to fostermothers
who also feed them. They also practice their first
46

movements and steps. After this time, they are learning solely from
robots and motion pictures. They see in motion pictures how to put
on the breather, how to take care of the body and how to handle the
food tools. Their toys are mostly small models of the working
machines. On them, there are small wheels and buttons, and if they
play skillfully, their little bin is filling up with fresh oxygen. When
their time comes, those capable of living have learned what they
need to know. And those who haven't learned it aren't needed", ON
said with an emotionless, indifferent voice.
"And you can just plainly talk about such a monstrosity?", Peter
asked, shaking.
"It doesn't change the truth if we don't face it. But now, dear
Peter, if you think, we want to try the nearly impossible. The Old
Path has to start on the left side, about half a mile from here."
47

13 – The Rescue expedition discusses
"Humanitas" ... "Humanitas"... This is "Fortuna-710". This is
"Fortuna-710". Our rescue ship "Ra-1" is on its way! I'm ordering you
to couple the vessels and return to "Fortuna-710".
This is "Ra-1" ... This is "Ra-1" ... "Humanitas", start your
maneuver engines numbers 2 and 3...
I will not change my orbit! I don't leave the area of the purple
planet.
This is crazy. Do as you are ordered!
I am ready to die, but not to leave Peter.
You can't help Peter and put yourself into tragedy. If Peter would
be still alive, he would have called via radio.
I know he's alive, he will call.
Maybe he has been arrested...
Even then, he will call... Maybe he has called me a million times
already, but magnetic storms, solar influence or other circumstances
don't allow for radio transmission. If I can't establish radio
communication, I'm going to land on this planet.
"Fortuna-710" will not give permission for that under any
circumstances.
Then I'm landing on my own responsibility.
48

14 – Three reports
Report
Oxygenville, radio control, 1.5.1207, 3.67
Zone "A-B" reports:
Between the spaceship and the space station "AAA" there is
continuous radio communication.
The foreign being is attempting to establish radio transmission. We
received these transmissions:
On band 6.17: "July, where are you, July, come in, I'm alive, come
in." (shielded)
On band 19.31: "This is Humanitas... July is hailing Peter."
(shielded in Zone B)
Radio control reports: Shielding ensured according to the
directives.
Find the sender on band 6.17!
Order
Report
Oxygenville, radar control, 2.5.1207, 1.10
The spaceship, type F-1, continues to orbit in zone "B-C", it does
not change its orbit.
Its radio communication with the space station "AAA" remains
unchanged!
Outside zone "C", a new spaceship of the type "RR" has appeared.
Between both vessels, there is ongoing radio communication.
Keep watching!
Order
Report
Oxygenville, radio control, 6.5.1207, 2.25
Zone "A" reports:
On band 6.17: "July, where are you? This is Peter, this is Peter,
come in. I am alive." (shielded)
Coming to notice: radio transmissions on band 6.17 become rarer.
49

On band 19.31: This is "Humanitas". This is July. Peter, where are
you? Come in, this is July, it's July. (shielded)
On band 43.211: Rescue expedition on its way. Adhere to our
orders.
On band 51.2: This is Ra-1, Ra-1.
Zone B:... Shielded – Shielded.
Radio control reports: Shielding ensured according to the
directives.
We continue locating the radio station on band 6.17 permanently.
50

15 – The City of the Rememberers
The way was called Old Path, but as well Cursed Path. In the
City of the Rememberers, sometimes it was talked about, and back
in the days, ON had looked it up on an old map, but nothing was
known for sure about it. So it was unknown whether it would lead
through plains or was ascending somewhere. Maybe an
insurmountable swamp would block their way? They also didn't
know how great the distance they had to cover would be since there
had been no scale on the map ON had seen and used to make his
draft by recall. But they had nothing to lose. They had enough
oxygen supply and nutrition tabs, and Peter could not only replicate
pure oxygen but water as well. If they should encounter some
failure on their way, they always could return as long as they drew
the way they had passed precisely on the draft.
But they didn't want to retun, mustn't return. ON wanted to get
to his son and his wife. For Peter, however, this was – he felt it – the
only possibility to escape.
Suddenly, the light in the cave went out. The festival was over,
the rock walls closed like the entrance to a magical cave in One
Thousand and One Nights. If they hadn't seen the opening with
their very eyes, they wouldn't have believed it had ever been there.
Not a trace of the past intoxicating festival remained to be seen.
Gone were the blue shining sky and the golden shining sun disc,
the twelve pale silver moons and the diamond-like dots of the stars.
The landscape became even darker, gloomier, blacker. But following
the narrow light beam of the lamp, they soon reached a path.
The ground was rocky, they needed to go carefully. But the path
had clearly been stepped on by feet, was good to walk on and
without great distances in height, although ascending permanently.
To the left and the right of the path, unpermeatable darkness
reigned. The silence was almost unbearable. A landscape where no
breeze, if ever so gentle, blew, no leave moved, where no rock rolled,
where no sound whatsoever was to be heard. This hellish indeed
way came from the Nothing and led to an uncertain future.
They had been walked eeriely far, at least forty hours according
to Earth time measurement, when they took their first rest. Peter
replicated coffeine and sugar for both of them, and they refilled
their oxygen bins.
They sat next to each other for a long time, deep in thoughts.
Peter stared into the darkness: it was silent and unpermeatable.
51

He thought that maybe he should have gone with the procession
of the Spring Festival. The crowd had arrived somewhere. Wherever
that was. Maybe he would have gotten before a higher instance that
way, maybe to the mysterious Central Control where he could have
negotiated something, but where did he go with ON? Maybe...
maybe... – at this point, Peter felt an icy fright – ON was sick?
Maybe he wasn't normal at all? Maybe once he had done senseful
work, but then had gone insane and stranded for that reason in
this strange concrete city? Was that why he drew like possessed?
Maybe this way wasn't leading into the void at all? Maybe...
He took out his radio device and hailed again. As before, no
reply.
"Don't you sleep?", ON asked.
"No, I can't. I'm musing about...", he swallowed the next words.
"Well?"
"If maybe we should have gone with the others... maybe you're
wrong... Maybe... There should be some sort of office, a registration
authority, where to get an answer..."
"Or where they just annihilate you", ON replied.
Peter felt an icy chill run down his spine at this words.
First rule for spaceship accidents, the words Peter had heard so
often on Earth came to his mind. It was published in all space
ports, they had learned it in the space driving schools, but he
hadn't paid it any mind, not more than when in planes or on cruise
vessels the use of live vests was explained. What was that again?
First rule for spaceship accidents.
Stay calm! Don't panic!
You are a citizen of Earth, you are under Earths protection also
when out in space.
All space islands and rescue stations are there for you!
Try to determine where you have landed and what happened to
your vessel and your fellows!
Try to establish radio communication immediately!
'Basically, I acted according to these rules, but they haven't been
of much use to me', Peter thought, desperate. 'I actually should get
some sleep, get rest and then think again.'
But ON couldn't sleep, either.
"Peter, I got the impression you don't believe me and don't trust
me. Before we go on further, you need to make a decision. From
here, you can get back into the servant city without much trouble...
But before you make your final decision, please hear me out. I want
to tell you everything, absolutely everything about me and what I
52

know about Oxygénia... I have no knowledge about my father or my
mother, neither do I know at which Spring Festival I got into the
concrete city. There is, however, a huge birth register in which the
registration machines enter the data of all children ever born, and
this data and a NFC chip with these data accompany everyone
throughout the whole life. Out of these data, we are only told our
designation which we have to learn, it's our personal registry
number. Mine is, as you know, ON 711 314. For some time I
believed I could come to some conclusions with it, maybe about the
year I was born, or where it has been. But we also don't know about
the system of the designations and numbers. As I told you before,
time is something uncertain, incomprehensible in Oxygénia.
Therefore I don't know how much time has passed, how many
Spring Festivals, because as you've seen, children take part in this
intoxicating festivity already at five, six or seven years of age. Well of
course they don't get into sexual ecstasy yet, but they play, scuffle,
their feelings are awoken, they feel the desire for intoxicating
drinks, and they do get high on the music, the unlimited oxygen
and the dancing. Then they get back between the concrete blocks
where they learn that you don't have to struggle for food or shoes,
everyone gets enough of it, and they learn that one mustn't move
much, mustn't have any longings, one has to learn that God created
Oxygénia, one has to watch the TV broadcasts and skillfully play
with the puzzle, that way, time passes quite agreeable."
ON kept quiet gloomily for a moment, then he continued:
"Maybe it would have been better to spend my life this way. It's
the fate of millions. They work for their daily oxygen, eventually get
tired of it, don't get up from bed anymore, take more and more
hibernation tabs until finally, they fall asleep, congeal and don't
wake up again."
"And what happens to them?"
"A conveyor belt transports them away..."
'If I ever get home from here... to Earth... to my beautiful home',
Peter thought and felt as if all power left him.
"I don't know how old I might have been, but not mature enough
for love yet, an adolescent boy, when the computers selected me.
Drunk, I jumped through the cave flooded by bright light at the
Grand Spring Festival. From a broad path, I got into a narrower
corridor unexpectedly. Just like in the cave, numerous boys and
girls wandered with me. A voice repeated without interruption: 'You
are the lucky chosen ones... The mercy has befallen on you... You
get up into the light... God loves you.'
53

The 'light' was some sort of hospital. We were subjected to
numerous examinations. We were examinated in laboratories,
probed and subjected to several measurements. More and more
brain measurements, every part of the brain was examinated
repeatedly, until it was decided which areas of the brain should be
stimulated and which ones inhibited."
"What did they do?!", Peter asked, horrified.
"You don't need to be stunned. They didn't drill our skulls. The
operations were performed by machines, similiar to repair or
maintenance work in a complex telephone network.
With these operations, the part of our brains that had proven to
be the most distinctive – on me, it's the logical and mathematical
predisposition – were further stimulated, as was the ability to
remember, the imagination, eyesight and hearing. All other parts
were only developed to the degree it was necessary to solve my
mathematical tasks. Then I got into a school where I studied math
for long years. We also played and did sports exercises, and we
always got the oxygen that was needed for it. We only wore
breathers on the street, and even there only light, comfortable
masks, not such a crude, heavy equipment as in the servant cities.
And our houses were nice, friends could live together in them or on
their own. For love, we could use as much oxygen as we wanted.
But we were not allowed to get children. The women and men were
sterilized at the same time of the brain operation."
Peter listened and got pretty dizzy. He didn't say anything
anymore and didn't ask. But the words kept flooding out of ON like
a torrent held back for a too long time.
"Basically, it wasn't a bad life. No. I had friends, and we got good
food. When we had done our work, we could spend time as we
pleased. There was one stringent rule: at the working place, we were
only to occupy ourselves with the task we were assigned. I, for
instance, worked on new computer programs.
It had repeatedly been made absolutely clear to us to only think
about things that mattered for us. We got plenty of drinks, often
played cards. And long years passed without us thinking about the
social order of Oxygénia, about justice or injustice. It hadn't
bothered us on whose command or wish all of this happened. What
would have been if our brains could've had developed freely.
But as perfect as this procedure was, the living organism
develops, changes, builds up resistance and can eventually
overcome the interventions. Sleeping abilities came to life, neural
activity increased. It happened as well that an occasional couple
54

stayed with each other forever, that affection and love, stronger
than physical attraction, let them stay true to each other. And every
now and then it also happened that an ovum was fertilized... So it
happened that a beautiful blonde girl stayed true to me and that a
little boy was born to us, Little ON. But we had to raise Little ON
secretly, we mustn't let him be registered into the birth register..."
"But how was it possible to secretly give birth to a child and raise
it that way? Didn't your neighbors, your acquaintance notice
anything?"
ON looked at him, puzzled.
"I don't quite understand your question."
"The neighbors should have been able to see that your wife was
pregnant. Didn't they ask? Didn't they say something? Wouldn't it
have been possible that someone reported you?"
"Absolutely not. We in the City of the Rememberers also didn't
care about the others. It didn't raise any furor if a neighbor
suddenly didn't live there anymore, if at work another co-worker
appeared... Likewise, it was with my pregnant wife. In our
neighborhood, ORO lived, my best friend. He is a surgeon and
helped with Little ONs birth. The others on the street, in the dining
halls or stores didn't even turn around for her. You've seen it for
yourself, Peter, that down in the concrete city, neither your different
breathing device nor your helmet raised any attention or interest."
"And the computers? And the checks?", Peter asked.
"As I said before, everyone has an NFC chip. Stored on it is the
designation that is assigned to the person after the brain operation.
This NFC chip opens every door. You could observe that something
like that didn't exist in the servant city. There, if you have oxygen,
you can eat, sleep and choose something in the stores according to
your needs. Those beings with the breathers simply don't count.
They only exist – and multiply. In the City of the Rememberers,
however, every machine needs to be activated with the NFC chip. A
pleasant sound distinctively like a little bell, a quit knock or a small
green light – whatever it is on the different machines – indicates
everything is in order, and then the desired food comes up to the
table, or the clothes that are under a glass cover can be taken, or
one gets the desired drink. I don't remember a single case where
someone had a chip which wouldn't have been in order. But then
again, I never paid attention to the others. But I think it can't have
been any different. We had the chip with us; at the beginning of the
working hours, we opened the door to our working station with it,
and a valid NFC chip was also the precondition to be able to leave at
55

work again. It was only taken from us when a brain examination
was due, and when it was over, we got it back."
"What kind of examination were these? I don't understand this",
Peter said.
ON sighed, tired.
"This is all so complicated, so difficult... you'll see for yourself. As
I said before, there's no police in Oxygénia, no offices or something
like it. And yet, there is a fiendish control system. One part of the
day, we worked. We loved our work, it was what our whole
organism was conditioned for. We solved our tasks with ease, but
we were afraid of the checks. There was a strict rule that after work,
we had to talk, play or rest. Thinking, being busy with other tasks,
was absolutely forbidden.
The checks came without warning. Above our working desk, a
red lamp lit up. That meant that our NFC chip would be valid again
only after the check. Those checks were done in a laboratory. We
were examinated with an encephalograph, and this device proved
merciless if there was activity in the shielded areas of our brains.
We knew what those who were caught with it had to expect. After
repeated examinations, a new operation. Only the 'useful' part was
allowed to be stimulated – feelings and different interests weren't
needed. And if the examinations brought the result that our brain
was tired and exhausted, that nothing new was to be expected to
come from it, the verdict was: the shaft. Then, the convicted would
be thrown down to the Trunk Bearers at the next Grand Spring
Festival, on the path of forgetting, and thus, his fate was sealed.
Some weeks before the birth of Little ON we had to fear that an
examination in the encephalography of my wife could show
divergences. At this time, I decided to hide her, her and the child
which was yet to be born, in the canyon... but you'll see it for
yourself. Others are also living there, whole families who fled there
from the checks.
I don't know when I started to think and to discuss, but
suddenly, playing cards and smalltalk weren't of any interest to me
anymore. I cared for the great questions of existence, and all our
discussions were shaded by the oppression that we busied
ourselves with secret thoughts when even thinking was prohibited.
Most frequently I discussed with ORO, and I also got the drug Deep
Sleep from him. I'm no chemist, I have no clue about its
composition, I only know its effect: when I drank from it, I was able
again to focus solely on my work, every other problem I had busied
myself with just before was gone from my head. I don't know
56

whether there are hundreds or thousands who use this mysterious
drug. I also have no idea where ORO got it from, but I always had a
small bottle with me, ready to drink from it whenever the lamp that
summoned me to a check lit up. My work, by the way, I did
flawless. I've never seen a superior. I don't even know on whose
orders I had worked. Every day, I found a task on my desk. After
solving it, I got the next one. If I couldn't solve it in the first day, I
could continue to work on it the next day or even a whole week.
On this gruesome day, I went to work unsuspecting. I had a nice
work which I attened to with pleasure. For a moment, just for a
little moment, I thought about Little ON and how I would bring him
food into the canyon after work, then I focused again on the work.
There, I found a booklet between my documents. It was a thin
booklet, written with a typewriter, and of course I read it. If only I
would have adhered to the directives we were taught time and
again: 'Your work is the mathematical tasks, don't care for anything
else! You have no right to use the oxygen of Mercy for another
purpose than the one you're getting it for...' If I had never busied
myself with anything else than my work, if I hadn't hidden my wife
and my son, if I hadn't been occupied before with forbidden,
blasphemic, rebellious and obscure thoughts, I would have pushed
the booklet aside. I wouldn't even have understood it if my brain
would indeed have only been capable of solving mathematic
problems... But those corrrecting operations aren't, as I already
said, for all eternity and not always perfect. Besides, to be a good
mathematician, several areas of the brain need to remain intact and
undisturbed, such as the memory and the logics. And the living
organism regenerates... not to mention that the operation itself
doesn't succeed in the same way on every single one...
I started to read the booklet and became terribly excited. When I
finished it, I sat there, disturbed and depressed. I was staring into
the void, unable to continue witk my work. I had to do something...
This was so terrible... I had to do something... do something...
Just then the light above my desk lit up. While I stood up to
report to the skull examination, I was thinking frantically. I felt like
I had to drink much more from the drug Deep Sleep than usual. I
downed the small bottle to the last drop, and with that, I had
drunken too much of it. I only vaguely remember the examination,
the light signals and ringing signs. I became tired and sleepy. Then
I thought about my wife and Little ON, but only very, very faint.
After the examination, I waited for the machine to give me back my
NFC chip. But it didn't return it.
57

I knew what was following next.
Those who don't have an NFC chip can't open the door to their
home, can't get to their work and don't get any food! But I didn't
have to care just for me but for my wife and Little ON, too. And then
there were the traps! I didn't mention them yet. On the streets,
sometimes – and completely random and unexpected – obstacles
were towering up as if they had grown from the ground, out of thin
air. Walls, lists, grids, glass doors. We just had to present our NFC
chip and could move on. But the escaped ones who lived hidden
and had no NFC chip were promptly surrounded by a cage by this
devices, similiar to a prison cell. I had to choose: I could either hide
forever in the canyon, raising the number of those who had to rely
on help from others... Either I vegetated without a NFC chip for a
while outside the city – or I could ask ORO for assistance.
He was scared when I told him that I hadn't gotten back my NFC
chip. We discussed and came to the resolve to try to report for
another brain examination.
'The worst that could happen to you is that you're brought to
another brain shielding', was OROs opinion.
'Another operation?'
'Unlikely, I think. More a radiation treatment... But watch out... I
discovered something while researching... I can implant a thin,
radiopaque plate into your skull...'
ORO executed the operation. After it, he gave me plenty of
diverse medications, memory inhibiting sedatives and tranquilizers,
and I reported again for an encephalography. I had no NFC chip, so
I spoke my personal data into a computer instead – and the door
opened. Machines were humming, lights flashed – but I didn't get
back my NFC chip even now.
I fell into a half sleep-alike numbing.
Then, I awoke in a giant concrete building. There it became
obvious to me that something terrible had happend to me: I hadn't
been brought to another shielding. No, the machines had sorted me
out. At the next Grand Spring Festival, I was to be pushed down
into the slave city of the Trunk Bearers. I was convicted to total
mind erasure.
But OROs operation saved a huge portion of my memory."
58

16 – The mysterious booklet
"In the mysterious booklet which led to my doom and that I
never want to forget", ON continued, "the history of Oxygénia was
stated, as well as the transcript of the secret constitutional meeting
of the Oxygénia Trust. When I found the booklet, I hesitated for a
moment. I opened it and closed it again. I didn't want to read it. It
was known to me that from time to time, captious questions and
information was smuggled into our work, tasks that didn't belong to
our specialization. And woe to those who bespoke themselves by
understanding and answering it. But this booklet couldn't have
been smuggled in by Central Control. This could only have been
sent by the Invisibles, the unknown friends and allies, the
mysterious producers of the drug Deep Sleep, the defenders of the
citizens of the canyon. No, I shouldn't have started to read the
booklet instantly. I should have taken it home with me – maybe I
already mentioned that at home or in the club, only in rarest
occasions security checks occured – to read it at home. After it, I
could have taken hibernation tabs and sleep over it, because this
booklet raised outrage. I was taken by unrest and wanted to
struggle with the impossible.
Was it a coincidence that I was summoned to a check just at this
moment? It's possible it was a coincidence. But I just remember my
horror and the fact that I drank way too much of the Deep Sleep.
Well, I don't remember the booklet's content word by word since I
only read it one single time, and terrible things have happened to
me since. What I can remember is about the following:
On Oxygénia, there were continents and seas. Seventeen
continents raised from the Big Ocean, and there were also inland
seas, lakes, rivers and secluded bays... Our geography was quite
similiar to those of numerous other planets in the Milky Way
system. We also possessed spaceships and had relations to
surrounding planets. Many peoples inhabited our planet, and
sometimes they lived together in peace, sometimes in fight. There
was plenty of food, prosperity reigned, culture and science were in
bloom.
There were several centuries in our history that were an epoch of
undisturbed bliss. One by one, inventions and explorations were
made, and the immoderate arrogance of its inhabitants increased
more and more. The means of transport were so fast that one could
fly around whole Oxygénia faster than it spun around its own axle.
Plans for interplanetary traffic were crafted, as well as for
59

controlling the weather. Maybe if the citizens of our planet had tried
to solve these tasks with joint forces for peaceful purposes and wellthought...
But the different people built their giant research
institutes and industrial facilities in competition to each other, one
overtrumping the other. Nuclear tests in the atmosphere caused
heavy downpour on one location and droughts on another.
Underground nuclear explosions rattled the earth's crust of
Oxygénia, and all of a sudden, terrifying, inexplicable phenomena
ocurred. At the beginning, plagues spread out, plagues that were
unheard of for centuries. Oxygénias inhabitants turned all yellow,
their liver swoll, and they got very high fever. The newborns often
were crippled, rashes with bubbles covered the skin of the people.
Tumors formed inside their bodies. The scholars researched
frantically. And they found out that the ground, the ocean, the air
was polluted at a vastly increasing rate. First, the environment was
flooded by invisible microbes, then the danger became more and
more obvious. In living waters, the animals perished. The water
turned into a thick dirty brew. Seaweed and algae, plankton and
other water plants were annihilated. The animals died, and a stench
burned ones nose when getting close to waters. The woods turned
pale, the fresh green of the leaves vanished, the trees died under
their suffocating, yellow and brown turning leaves. More and more
rarely, the blue sky was to be seen above the big cities. Grey, yellow
and rusty brown smoke clouds sailed on the sky. At the beginning,
people didn't realise the danger. The food industry substituted the
missing natural ingredients with thousands of articifical well-tastes.
The colorful lights of the cities, the noise of the amusement sites
distracted from the smoke layers and let them forget the strange
storms. The weather had changed, too. The distinction between the
seasons was gone. There were no real winters and no real summers
anymore. The regular rhythm was missing.
If the inhabitants of Oxygénia would have stood together back
then... but their smallest concerns were bigger to them than that.
Rivalry between tribes, deeming better than the others and pursuit
for power encouraged them in producing weapons. Conquering,
occupying other's territory, profit, power... do you understand these
terms?"
"Once, they were known on Earth as well", Peter replied and
nodded.
"There were some who took advantage of this threatening danger.
Since flowers, grass and trees had been exterminated in the densely
inhabited cities, they produced artifical flowers, artifical grass and
60

artifical trees from plastic and sold them to people for expensive
prices. Counting by thousands, people were brought to the
hospitals with suffocating symptoms. For those who could afford it,
there were oxygen bins, tents with oxygen rich air scented like fir...
The profit... yes... the profit...", ON said. "In vain were the warnings
of scholars, authors and artists, in vain the best of Oxygénia rose
their voices against this development. In vain had they warned the
people in advance that devastation was coming, that they should
save the forests and the clear waters... All in vain. Those who could
have done something acted deaf. They only saved themselves. So,
the Oxygénia Trust was founded. I've read this secret transcript...
I've read it, and I know everything... I don't want to forget it even if
I'm banned to here... I will write it down, it must not be forgotten...
Oh, damned you are, be damned a thousand times!... My son, Little
ON..."
ONs words came fitfully. His oxygen bin was almost completely
empty. In a flash, Peter turned on his replicator and refilled ONs
bin.
"Excuse me", ON said after he had regained himself. "I
completely lost my composure..."
"You were at the point when the Oxygénia Trust was founded."
"Right. Danger was already very real at this time. The air
temperature at our planet rose permanently, and the share of
oxygen dropped from twenty to ten percent. Sulphur, carbon
dioxide, lead, soot and ash polluted the air. The mothers covered
the faces of the children with gauze, they didn't dare to let them
outside on the street otherwise. The doctors prohibited running and
other sports. The people got more and more used to the Green
Drops."
"What are these Green Drops?", Peter asked.
"Maybe I'll remember the formula... It's a strange drug. It causes
a pleasant excitement, a light intoxication, accelerates the blood
circulation and makes breathing easier. But after a certain time, it
causes one's arms to get heavy and inhibits the mind. Whoever has
taken it becomes tired and slumps down like a bag, or he gets
aroused, feels the urge to fight, maybe even takes a knife and for no
reason assaults whoever happens to cross his path. At the
beginning, one could get this drug only secretly, later it was handed
out in pharmacies on medical prescription, especially to people who
worked or lived in places where the air was already heavily polluted
and bad. And since more and more people moved to the cities and
lived cooped up in the overcrowded concrete buildings, they felt the
61

desire for those drops even at home. The Oxygénia Trust brought
them into circulation in colorful bottles. Doctors, scholars and
artists protested against that, too..."
"And what else was in the transcript?", Peter asked.
"At that time, the situation on our planet must've already been
terrifying. A giant cruise ship crossed the ocean. It brought children
to a field trip to a marvellous palm island. At the port of the island,
however, they were refused to disembark because their bodies were
covered with rashes over and over. The vessel was sent back to its
home port, to the city UR. But the port police didn't allow its
landing there, too, since the ship's doctors had detected that the
pest had spread out on the vessel. Even the doctors weren't allowed
back on the land."
"And what happened to the vessel?"
"It's unknown. It was supplied with food by helicopters for some
time... What happened later is unkown..."
"Incredible."
"It was stated at that time that the ocean was infested. Because
of the huge amounts of spilled oil and millions of tons of chemical
waste, fish perished, the plants rotted, and insoluble plastic
amassed in it. On the call of scientific academies, tests were
started. A species of microbes that dissolved the macro molecules
was bred and spread into the ocean in huge quantities. The result
was horrible. The microbes multiplied by division. They needed a
hundreth of a second for it, which meant that only after half a
second, five hundred trillion bacteria existed which continued to
multiply in the ocean. In just a few days, the whole ocean turned
into a single bacteria breed. Their black, dense, foaming mass ate
everything, living and dead matter alike, and even started to get on
the coastside rocks. The following was a fight for live or death. The
coastside cities depopulated. The population fled to the inland of
the continents. This resulted in even more traffic, more dirt, more
concentrated industry. On the seasides, however, chemical barriers
were erected, as well as concrete dams covered with chemicals. In
the scientific institutes, symposia, debates and discussions on how
to save Oxygénias water, air, the inhabitants, the fauna and flora,
didn't stop. The various tribes were forced to make peace with each
other; international committees for the rescue of the biosphere were
formed. The Oxygénia Trust got into the hands of the one hundred
most influential families of the planet. People with money, generals,
bankers and politicians came from those families. The number of
their factories and corporations was giant. They managed canned
62

food factories and chemical facilities in which the drops were
produced and bottled, as well as newspapers and traffic
corporations. Of course, their representatives also were in the
international committee for the preservation of Oxygénias
biosphere. The committee had its historical summit with several
thousand participants. Scientists had come there from all parts of
the planets, from each of the seventeen continents, telling how
oppressing it had been to fly over the stinking ocean which was
completely flooded with the all-devouring bacteria. Artists described
the suffocation dangers of the people in the cities covered in dense
smog. They reported of the horrors of hunger, problems of rapidly
multiplying tribes which had to fight against the shrinking of
agricultural land and drinking water shortages. At this point, the
observer of the Oxygénia Trust made a strange observation in his
report. To debate most excitedly were those coming from
comparatively healthy areas. The representatives from cities where
the lack of oxygen had already reached a certain degree spoke
slower, made a more tired impression, their data was less precisely,
as if they couldn't rely on their minds anymore. 'A huge
opportunity', the observer, a man aged forty back then, noted in his
diary. We don't know his real name. He became the first chairman
of the Oxygénia trust, an unyielding, tough, hard man. Our history
gave him the name Benefactor I. In his recordings he also states
that even in this time of dire crisis, disagreement and controversy
were characteristical for the debate, instead of quickly coming to
concordant resolutions. Cleaning of the oceans seemed almost
impossible. In the air, incredible amounts of fumes and exhausts
whirled around, and on the whole planet's surface, zones of hot air,
hurricanes and storms formed themselves. The agricultural land
was threatened, and the ever increasing population suffered of
hunger. The factories didn't want to employ expensive sewage
plants. Ranchers didn't care for replacement for the grazed plains.
In the cities shrouded in smog, people moved more sluggish and
tired, they layed down more often, became more lethargic and fed
themselves on cheap, bloating artifical food. The Trust's
representative had come to this summit originally with the order to
donate a giant sum for the noble action as the benevolent donator.
But this representative who found his way into the history of our
planet by the name Benefactor I., as I already said, suddenly and
unexpectedly declared that the Trust would provide four billions of
refreshment drops of his product for free for the support of the
urban population. Then he stated his report to the executives of the
63

Trust. According to it, it would be the biggest of insanity to get into
giant expenses, besides, cleaning of the biosphere would already be
hopeless after all. On the contrary, things should be left going as
they went. And so it happened that the Oxygénia Trust immediately
bought all building sites in the Great High Mountains, the complete,
still uninfested space still suitable for human settlement. There,
they began to build cities. And this way, it was their free choice
where to give the single one a place. Can you still follow me?"
"To a certain degree", Peter replied.
"Well... if I could remember exactly... but the essentials... I still
know the essentials... The Trust decided that in the hills of the
Great Continent, the Cities of the Rememberers were erected. The
first settlers could move in there... and they also got oxygen. In
exchange, they had to work for it. They planned the other cities, the
concrete blocks, the machines and the computers."
"And which way the population was forced in those dull cube
cities?"
"Forced?" On laughed bitterly. "I learned from the booklet that
the fugitives from the cities at the infested coast sides pleaded on
their knees to be allowed to move in the new cities. They threw
themselves to the ground out of sheer gratitude when given the
oxygen masks, and they were glad to be let working for oxygen tabs
and breathing on the godly umbilical cord. Meanwhile, all life
became extinct in the cities left behind, even the trees and the
birds... But why? Why? Was there really no rescue for the old cities?
Has it been Gods will indeed? Or more that of the Trust? Who is
this Trust? What is this Trust? And why it isn't allowed that
everyone is thinking with all abilities of his brain? Whom this would
hurt? Would it be of any harm at all? The booklet has whipped up
all my unrestly thoughts all the more. I'm sitting at the desk and
solve mathematical problems, but why, on whose orders? This was
what I was thinking about... thinking about... when the indicator
lamp lit up... My oxygen is draining... I'm suffocating..."
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17 – In the best friend's house
The way appeared to be endless, and it seemed to Peter as if they
were walking since the forming of the planet. Now they walked on
softer, a bit swampy ground, and their feet became heavier. Then,
rocks followed again. In front of them, the narrow beam of the
wristbeam showed the way; beneath, above and behind them,
impermeatable darkness reigned.
Now Peter had the impression, too, that the only thing that could
help them was getting to ORO, the good friend. He didn't allow any
illusions to himself anymore. It surely was more advisable to hide
from the dark, mysterious power in the Central Control if that was
possible. Because who knew if his mishap really was a coincidence?
If he wasn't brought here on purpose? If he wasn't watched, his
every step being closely followed from the first moment on? If his
radio transmissions which had remained unanswered had been
registered somewhere?
And July? Where was she? The thought what might have
happened to July almost drove him insane. Maybe the
Rememberers knew something about her, maybe he got to knew
more in their city...
And Peter walked along the impassable path. Sometimes he felt
as if they were followed. Then he lit around with his atomic
wristbeam. But nowhere there was anyone to be seen, only the
heavy, dense darkness.
They moved on, unceasingly moved on. They barely talked to
each other anymore. ON, too, was tortured by uneasy thoughts. If
his map was correct? If they were on the right path? Would they
reach their destination? When? And what would expect them there?
Then there were times when confidence and joy overcame them.
ON hoped to see his wife and Little ON again, and Peter hoped that
maybe July would be in the City of the Rememberers, too. Maybe
ORO knew something about her. Anf if not? What then? Where
should he go, what should he attempt?
The replicator produced the substances they needed to survive.
Again, Peter refilled ONs oxygen bin – who knew for how many
times. They swallowed pills. And for the first time, the thought
occured to Peter whether his devices would continue to work
indefinetly. They were merely constructed for a short space trip,
more of a toy than serious equipment...
Suddenly, ON who walked in the first place, hesitated.
65

"Now I remember... I do remember exactly... We'll soon reach the
city."
Again, exictement flooded his body, like back when he told about
the content of the secret booklet.
"According to the map, we are here, at the end of the path, and I
can remember this canyon... We're there any moment... But we still
have to master the most difficult part..."
There are things like this in fairy tales: steep glass mountains
with polished walls, where only gryphons or dragons can fly over.
"I remember again... The City of the Rememberers is completely
enclosed by a Dark Rift, and the edge of this ravines is covered with
thick undergrowth, and beyond those, the houses start. But I don't
know how to overcome this ravine. Maybe we have a rest first..."
"I'm sure we'll make it", Peter said. "I have moon ladders in my
equipment."
They stopped on the bottom of a steep rock wall. It was petrified,
cold lava, the result of a giant subterranean explosion.
Peter opened his instruments bag and took out two moon
ladders. They looked like simple, spooled up threads. One needed to
do nothing but to roll off this spool in front of him. The twine stuck
at the rock wall and engorged on contact with a solid body. One
could step on the rungs with the shoe tips, shore on it with the
knees and climb up along it. On a single spool was a cord of several
hundred meters length. Every spacefarer had dozens of them in his
luggage since it was possible to fall into a deep ravine on some
foreign celestial body or encounter a steep rocky obstacle, and then,
those sticking ladders helped with ease. They had been employed
on the moon during the 21 st century for the first time and therefore
gotten their name ever since.
The climbing, however, was not that easy. But the ladders proved
to be stable, rung by rung, meter by meter they got closer to the
upper edge. One last unreeling, and Peters ladder kept stuck in the
twigs of a tree beyond the rock wall. One last effort... and Peter got
a hold on the branch of that tree. It felt smooth like plastic. It was
no living tree.
ON, too, reached the brushwood. They switched off the
wristbeam and waited for several minutes to catch their breath and
refill the oxygen bins, and they mused about what would expect
them here. ON could remember that in general, the inhabitants of
the city didn't stroll out here. The entrance of the houses faced –
like down there in the concrete blocks cities – towards the center.
People never got out of the town. What would have been the
66

purpose, anyway? Here, the void already began, the end of the
world, the lifeless planet. For a trip, the oxygen supply wouldn't
last... and well, the world was the same everywhere, as were the
buildings and the cities of the scholars. So where to go? And for
what reason?
According to this, ON didn't know whether there was a guarding
system around the city, some security system. Wouldn't someone or
something arrest them? It was possible they had made all the way
only to enter some cave and all of a sudden be back down in the
concrete cubes, in the city of the beings with the breathing hose...
With a strange sound, the plastic branches and plastic leaves
moved as they struggled their way through the undergrowth. All the
brushwood looked black, but as they progressed, this blackness
turned more and more into a dark green by each step. Now Peter,
too, could recognize that there were colors in the City of the
Rememberers – just as ON had reported.
They fought their way through the undergrowth for several
hundred meters when it suddenly stopped like it was cut off. They
stood at the edge of a wide plain – the ground didn't consist of
concrete here but was covered by a thick green plastic mat. And at
the other side of this artifical grass, houses stood surrounded by
artifical bush and artifical flowers in artifical gardens.
"We're there!", ON exclaimed. "We found the way back! I'm
recognizing everything."
Above the houses was a pale grey sky, but in any case, it was
brighter than down in the concrete city. The houses weren't all the
same, they differed both in material as well as in color. In front of
the houses, humans were to be seen who went as deliberate as the
Trunk Bearers down there. They too had masks, but a much lighter
and more comfortable one.
Peter analyzed the air: "Nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide
and... look at this, ON, the air here even contains five percent of
oxygen."
ON nodded. "Yes, this enables for people to live without a
breather within hermetically sealed working places, appartements
and clubs by use of according filters and air conditions."
They crossed the grass and reached the first street. No one cared
for them, no one turned his head after them, no one approached
them. Neither ONs grey overall nor the lumpish oxygen bin on his
back raised any attention.
ON grabbed Peters hand.
67

"I am inexpressible grateful for your help. Alone on my own, I
could have never ever returned here... Now we want to hurry to
ORO."
"How far away does he live?"
"Not very far."
ON accelerated his pace.
"Strange, when I think about it. For quite a long time, we lived in
OROs neighborhood, and I didn't even know what was his
occupation. I already told you that we all worked separatedly. Also
on the working places, everyone had a room to himself. We weren't
allowed to discuss our work with each other, everyone got his own
partial task. And... now that I'm thinking back, it's really strange
that I didn't notice back then... after work, we entered the moving
sidewalk and headed home or for the club – but never with ones
who worked in a similar profession. Our living houses also were
sorted the way that next to a doctor, a chemist lived, next to him
maybe a computer technician or a physicist. When sitting together,
it was improper to talk about work. But we didn't understand
anything about the other's profession anyway, and it was of no
interest to us at the start. I already mentioned we played cards and
listened to music. ORO 91 was an excellent surgeon. He lived in the
next house. If I remember correctly, it was he who engaged for our
friendship. He told about himself and entrusted me he was having
his own thoughts. ORO is the greatest being I've ever met. You
know I've told you it was him who explained to us what the strange
changes at my wife's body were about, and he helped at Little ONs
birth in the canyon."
As much as they were full of expectation and walked down the
street excitedly and as much the question of what ORO knew
busied them, what he would tell and advise them, it didn't fail to
come to Peters attention how different everything here was from the
concrete city since the divergence was so obvious. Here, the houses
had windows, but they, however, all were closed. If they even had a
handle? Or could one only see through them, but not open them?
Here the living houses could be clearly divided from the rest of the
buildings. Around the houses were places with artifical grass. On
the artifical grass artifical flowers shone in red, yellow and blue
colors. Some of the larger buildings were stores with huge display
windows. Here, there were many goods: colorful clothing, furniture,
houseware, writing utensils and strikingly much parlor games,
amongst them some kind of Roulette and about thirty card games.
In the concrete cities of the Trunk Bearers, one could only eat in the
68

same everywhere grey dining halls. Here were dining halls, too, but
with huge glass panels with people sitting behind them at colorful
tables without breathers. There even existed grocery stores. On the
shelves, however, only sweets and many kind of drinks were to be
found.
"We're there!", ON exclaimed, beaming.
He had stopped in front of a friendly looking green house. On his
ringing the bell, a door opened. They entered, and the door closed
behind them, then, another door opened. Through such locks they
got into the house. Obviously, these locks were necessary so the
oxygen of the inside could not escape.
After the fifth or sixth lock, they found themselves in a spacious
hallway. From here, stairs led up to the rooms on the upper floor.
ON stopped in the middle of the hallway.
"ORO, are you at home?"
"Yes, just a moment", the answer came from above.
On the upper end of the stairs, a tall man with an intelligent face
appeared. As far as Peter could tell about the inhabitants of this
planet, it was a strong young man about the same age as ON.
The man stopped at the stairs and looked at the comers,
stunned.
"ORO, dear friend! Don't you recognize me? I am ON, ON 711
314... your best friend..."
"I don't know you, sir", ORO replied and stared at ON with an
empty gaze. "I have never seen you."
"I'm pleading you... don't get at my mind... can you tell me what
happened to my wife and where I can find Little ON?"
"I understand your words, yet I don't comprehend what you
want. I have never seen you."
"This is worse... this is worse than death", ON cried and began to
sob.
69

18 – Council at night
There were times when ON doubted himself. Maybe he was
wrong? Maybe his brain had suffered on the Path of Forgetting after
all? Maybe he had a complete stranger taken for ORO... maybe his
senses failed him? But on the map which he had drawn with so
much effort down in the concrete city he had marked the house of
ORO 91 on exactly that spot. And he had even recognized the
house. And he had recognized OROs figure, the face, his voice. And
this man referred to himself as ORO...
Had something happened to ORO? Had ON been deleted from his
mind by an operation or a sedate? Or was ORO afraid of something?
Or did he believe to see a ghost? ON knew from his own experience
that everytime when a colleague or a friend was sorted out by the
checks, no one ever asked for him again. If one of those had
reappeared after one or two years, wouldn't he himself thave
thought to encounter a ghost? Wouldn't his answer also have been,
sir, I have never seen you...?
ORO had hoped they could live in OROs house and get help from
him. But this way, without a NFC chip, they could only stay on the
street, couldn't enter anywhere.
In the city, they met passers who went by them as indifferent as
the Trunk Bearers down in the concrete city. And yet, ON and Peter
felt a certain concern since they had left OROs house. It was
possible they would get into a check which arrested everyone
without a NFC chip. Mysterious corridors, locks and shafts may
open right before them...
They decided to leave the city as far as they could and spend the
night in the artifical undergrowth so they could try something new
the next day, rested, refreshed and with new energy.
Here in the City of the Rememberers, the change of daytimes was
already recognizable. The blue of the sky and the sun weren't to be
seen here as well, but temperature and the intensity of the light
changed distinctively. "This is no artifical light", ON said, "at least
not that I knew of. If I still know anything at all.
The whole time, I concentrated on not to forget the name and the
house of ORO... I don't know... whom of my friends to contact. We
had been actually many, we discussed, drank together... but there
was no intimate relationship between us. When someone was
reassigned or a new one appeared in our circle, no one asked
questions..."
70

It was night again. With difficulty and need, they made a camp in
the artifical brushwood. The sky above them was dark, but between
the branches of the bushes, light from city could be seen now and
then. At night, artifical light shone from the stores and restaurants.
They laid there silent and sleepless.
ON closed his eyes and opened them again.
He tried to remember.
From there, the light shone... accordingly, in this direction the
entrance, the canyon had to be...
In his tortured, mutliple times operated brain, waves of rage and
hatred formed.
Why can't I remember clearly and exactly? What did they do to
me? What is done to each and every single one?
He laid there with open eyes and watched the lights of the city
while thinking of the bright and asking eyes of his son. And
suddenly, he calmed down and felt new confidence.
"Let's start, Peter. Now I'll find it."
"We can go, ON. But around us are elevations, steep lava walls,
rocks."
"Let's trust our luck."
They agreed to walk on the outer site of the brushwood, at the
edge of the steep cliff and bypass the city. They rolled the spool of
the moon ladder before them so their feet got a hold without
slipping. 'Like Ariadne's thread', Peter thought, and once again
Earth came to his mind, his dear, beautiful home, with its peaceful
areas, its happy humans, its fairy tales and its beauty...
71

19 – Little ONs gift
It became day and night again. Untiringly, ON and Peter went
along the cliffside. Peter got the idea to establish a communication
with the canyon inhabitants by light signals.
He started to draw circles with his atomic wristbeam.
He repeated those signals time and again, but got no reply. Dull,
dark silence was everywhere.
"But they have to be nearby here", ON said quietly.
"The don't respond", Peter replied. "They are presumably afraid of
us."
"Afraid of me?", ON exclaimed. "Why should they be afraid of
me?"
"The heck", Peter said, "they can't know it's you! Maybe they see
the light, but not us. Wait a moment..."
They stopped and grabbed a hold on the rocks. Peter turned
towards ON and lit him. The beam of the atomic lamp highlighted
ONs figure, his curly brown hair, his slim body. For some minutes,
they stood like this, then Peter switched off the lamp and turned it
on again after a while. Like this, he showed ON to the canyon
inhabitants.
After some minutes, a women was heard yelling out in the night:
"ON... OOON... wait for me! Stay there, wait for me..."
Then, a tiny, swaying light lit up in the distance. It came closer
and closer. And suddenly, a beautiful, slim young woman stood in
front of them. Peter didn't know exactly much about Oxygénias
fashion, but it was obvious that her clothes were made by herself,
sewn together with an unpractised hand, and yet she emanated
charme and gracefulness. She approached ON, hugged and kissed
him. To Peter, she paid almost no attention.
"And Little ON?", ON asked after the hug.
"He's already this tall", she indicated it with her hand, "and
prays every day for you to come home so he can give you his gift...
but this, I am giving you..."
Sunshine, the young woman, handed ON a piece of
phosphorescent, rotting piece of wood.
"It's glowing", she said.
Excited, Peter asked to be allowed to get a closer look on the
wood. With his instruments, he determined it was indeed an
organic, real wooden bark and that its glowing was a result of its
decaying process.
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Peter lit with his wristbeam, and Sunshine led the way. They had
to grab a hold frequently and sometimes even to rely on the moon
ladder where the young woman had come up in such a short time,
evading stones with skillful steps and climbing across rocks. If
Sunshine wouldn't have stopped and shown them the entrance,
they wouldn't have realised the gap of the cave.
"A good friend... a good friend", Sunshine called. "I know him...
Come, Little ON, God has answered your prayer. Bring your gift to
your father!"
A lovely boy came running from the depths of the cave. He wore
sandals made from some plastic waste and some sort of a cape. He
had no breather. Only now, Peter and ON realised that Sunshine,
too, had taken off her mask.
"We have air, we have oxygen", she exlaimed happily. "Take off
your masks."
Now, Peter and ON too took off their breathers. The air was fairly
pleasant, well smelling and good to breathe.
"Sunshine!", ON called full of joy. "Little ON, my son..."
The re-united family laid in each other's arms, oblivious of their
surrounding, and kissed each other. Peters eyes had become well
accustomized to the half dark of the cave. From the big central
grotto, more smaller arched grottos and corridor-like diversions led
off. From all sides, curious and concerned looks met their presence.
They were humanoid beings – mostly children and women. They
didn't dare to come out of their grottos, only bent forward a bit and
retreated again, but didn't let them out of sight. Little ON indicated
to a bowl-like jar which could be some plastic waste or a hollowed
stone, and presented it happily to his father.
"We grew that for you...", Sunshine explained.
ON took the jar, looked at it blankly and returned it.
"What is this?", he asked.
"It lives... it sprouts and lives and grows. We planted it for you!
We knew you would come back!"
Curiously, Peter looked at the jar. It contained earth, real
humus, and from the earth, a slim stalk with delicate leaves grew
up.
"This is my friend, Peter MacGulliver", ON introduced him now.
"He is from a far away planet of the sky. Please welcome him
warmly."
"Follow me", Sunshine said and led the way with Little ON.
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ON laid a hand on Sunshines shoulder, used the other one to
hug his son to him and went towards the inside of the cave
labyrinth. Excited and curious, Peter MacGulliver followed.
74

20 – In subterranean wonderland
Peter couldn't determine how big this subterranean world might
be or how many people lived in it. During the first hours, ON was so
overwhelmed by the joy of reunion that he had practically forgotten
him. Peter didn't want to get far away from his friend, but he tried
to take a look around the cave labyrinth as best as he could
nonetheless, at least in the part where Sunshine and Little ON
lived.
The cave system had a broad main corridor which was smaller
here or widened to giant arched halls there. The walls of the cave
were partially moist. To his surprise, Peter found that from one gap
in a wall of a grotto a small waterfall bubbled out and vanished in
another one. Smaller and larger spaces opened up into all
directions, one had to descend to some or to climb up to others. In
some caves were loungers on sand or gravel, covered with plastic,
on others, however, he saw fresh grass. It was the first time for him
to encounter plant life since he had set foot on this strange planet.
In the caves, mostly women and children lived. After the silence in
the concrete cities and the slow movements of their inhabitants it
came to his attention how lively they all were in this place. There
was much talk and even singing.
Peter strolled along the main corridor and all of a sudden found
himself in some sort of thick forest. There were no trees, but bushes
and brushwood and real creeper plants, a lush thicket, not without
traces of a system. All of this was incomprehensible and surprising
to him, especially the fact that from above, light fell in. This
glistening light was inxplicable to him, and he didn't understand
the whole thing at first. On Earth, he had seen such only in a few
spots, nearby Neapel on the Capri island and on the island of Malta
not far from La Valetta, in the so-called Blue Grottos, in the depth
of dark caves with shining turquoise colored water. Where did this
light come from? And where did the vegetation come from? Where
did these humanoid beings come from? How did they live, from
what did they live, who supported them, and which fate waited for
them?
Nowhere in the cave, a fire burned. This wouldn't have been a
good idea anyway since the fire would have used up a lot of oxygen.
Quite dizzy, Peter stood between the plants. He felt as if he had
somehow stumbled into a bizarre greenhouse. He suddenly felt as if
he'd be moving in this cave in a dream. Yes, maybe he was just
dreaming all of this, maybe he was at home on Earth or slept in the
75

cabin of the spaceship "Humanitas" and dreamt all of this
impossible, about the trunk bearing beings, the canyons, about the
monstrous, black-as-coal ocean, about the humanoid beings with
controlled brains. He just dreamed, would wake up again... for sure
he would wake up again.
Shouting snapped him out of his dull dizziness.
He foud himself surrounded by children who stormed at him
with countless questions. Peter had already learned so much of
Oxygénias language from ON that he didn't need the translator
much anymore. The children spoke hastily and shrill, with much
more color and excitement in their voices than the beings in the
concrete cities.
"What are you going to tell us? Where did you come from? Can
you write? What strange clothes do you wear?"
Peter looked from one child to the other. They all were pale,
skinny, dressed in tatters, but their eyes nonetheless shone lively.
He was going to answer, but just then ON came to him.
"The guest is still tired, kids. He has come from far away, and
he's going to tell you many things. But let him rest for now, we have
still so much time."
"And who are you?", the children asked him.
"Little ON is my son", ON replied.
"He can't be your son, you aren't a woman", a little boy called
out, and the others laughed slyly. "So don't claim Little ON would
be your son."
"I will explain that to you", ON said, "but first, we have to rest."
"Sweet dreams", the children said and gave them the way.
ON grabbed Peters hand.
"Please excuse me for leaving you alone... but the excitement
almost took away my mind. But now, I accompany you back to
Sunshine. We're expecting you with food and a lounger."
"I'm not tired, dear ON. I'm plagued by curiousity. I want to
know..."
"We want to rest now because at daybreak, we have to go back
on our way again. ORO sent for us: he's expecting us."
"He sent for us?", Peter asked and looked at ON, surprised and
consternated. "Do you understand this?"
"I don't know how to take this", ON replied.
76

21 – ORO 91
ORO had recognized ON immediately.
He had alreday recognized him when he had heard his voice and
when he had stopped up there on the stairs. When he had seen ON
down in the hallway, the unknown man next to him, his first
thought had been to hurry to his friend and hug him. But the next
moment, he scared back from it: 'This is impossible... this can only
be a provocation... it is impossible... ON cannot have returned... no
one can return from there... This man can't be ON, he's just
wearing ONs mask and imitating his voice... And the other one, next
to him? ... No, I mustn't betray myself.'
He hesitated for a moment when he saw the affection and the
true despair in in ONs face. But then he remained still showing a
dark look and waited until the sobbing, defeated ON had left the
house together with the stranger.
He remained excited and in uproar the whole day. His calmness
and discipline had completely left him. Luckily, it was just his day
off. He felt that his nerves would fail him at work right now. He put
the drink Deep Sleep on the table next to him, ready to drink from it
at any moment. He felt like he had never been in such a great
danger before.
ORO was about the same age as ON. About his origin and his
childhood, he knew almost nothing. He had only very vague,
unclear memories of a concrete city, of a small face mask, and
sometimes he remembered an infinitely long shelf filled with grey
building blocks from which one time, he wanted to take very many,
but let them drop, followed by the shrill sound of a bell, a shaft
opened up and swallowed the dropped blocks. His next memory was
already the Grand Spring Festival. He could remember of a great
number of adults and children, of dizzy-making motley colors,
intoxicating drinks and a happy romping around. He still knew how
he had been washed away by the crowd like by a huge, living
torrent. He would have had no chance of backing off, and he didn't
want to anyway. He enjoyed his nudity. He was still a little boy, but
sometimes someone hugged and caressed him, and along the way,
he found food and drinks everywhere. The more he ate and drank,
the more desire he felt for it, the more elated he felt, the happier he
moved forward. His breath was light, the air had an unforgettable
good scent, and suddenly he found himself in a narrower corridor,
on a moving sidewalk, and a voice repeated without interruption:
77

"You are a child of the mercy, you belong to the happy chosen ones,
we bring you into the light..."
The instruments had detected unusal fine motoric skills on ORO.
ORO had become a surgeon and worked in a clinic which belongend
to the City of the Rememberers.
But before, ORO had been brought – just like the other chosen
children – into a hospital. The transfer had been on a moving
sidewalk, and he heard speakers everywhere. This was something
he was perfectly used to since down in the concrete city of the
Trunk Bearers, his whole life until now had been guided by
machines and motion pictures. Doors opened and closed
themselves, light signs indicated where he was to take a seat,
devices attached instruments to his neck and the wrists, and he felt
quite dazed. Whatever had happened during the next time with him,
he couldn't recall at all. Presumably he was taught by machines
later. He got mathematical and biological tasks and had to do
exercises which increased his motoric skills. Machines tested him,
machines measured his performances, machines told him that first,
he was to absolve general medical studies, then got further
education in obstetrics and on this topic had to work on the
perfection of operation procedures and the design of devices and
instruments. The operations were performed by machines, but their
programming was the task of medical researchers. And when ORO,
exhausted from all the learning, went to rest, during the night, he
permanently heard a monotonous voice repeating: "You are a child
of mercy. You get plenty to eat and drink and also plenty of oxygen.
Oxygen is the divine edema, you are only allowed to use it for the
things you're getting it for. The divine providence has decided which
work you have to do for the good of Oxygénia. Think only about
your work, care only for your work. All other worries are taken from
you by the divine mercy. When you are done with the work assigned
to you for the day, rest and talk."
In the City of the Rememberers (it's unknown when those cities
in which the specialists lived got this name, or who gave it; it is
possible that the desgination was just an irony, maybe it just
should say that it would be better to remember nothing) the day
was separated in two phases, the first half, the morning, was
designated for learning and later for work. Curriculums and
workload weren't overly big and not too tiring, but extraordinarily
intense. Every youth was taught individually by a teaching machine
in a separate room. The computers explained what appeared on the
screen and assigned tasks that became more and more complicated
78

over time. Every now and then, the lessons were interrupted, and a
monotonous voice was heard. The text sounded very familiar to
ORO and the other children. It was the same that they had heard
for years, before their segregation, down in the city of the Trunk
Bearers: "At the beginning, God created the sky and under the sky
Oxygénia. God is gracious and powerful. He created a wonderful
world..." These were religious lessons, morals education and citizen
education at the same time. It was what had to be burned down so
much into the heart and the brain that there was no doubt about it,
so one didn't need to think about it, and also wasn't allowed to do
so. The oxygen would be distributed by the godly mercy and
wisdom: down in the concrete cities through the godly umbilical
cord, up here in the City of the Rememberers, as a special favor,
more plentiful, and this had to be thanked for by devotion and work
for the community, according to best knowledge by every single one.
And one was only permitted to think about his work, using the
godly mercy for anything else would be a mortal sin.
And the young student soon got to learn about the punishment
for sinners. When he took his seat in the learning room in front of
the machine, he got a band of steel around his wrist. And from time
to time, the machine smuggled something between the tasks to test
the student. When solving a biological problem, the screen before
OROs eyes began to flicker, and the image of another boy appeared.
And the image asked: "Who's to tell that you have to learn right
now, when you'd much rather get up and play? Who is this god
that's bossing around? Why doesn't he appear to us?"
ORO put down his pen and stared at the screen thoughtfully.
The next moment, he felt a strong electric jolt at his wrist, and
again, he heard a voice: "God sees and knows everything. I, ORO
91, used the blessful oxygen that is invigorating my brain for sinful
thoughts. Forgive me, my Lord, have mercy with me and don't
throw me back into the concrete city between the Trunk Bearers."
"Have mercy, my Lord, and don't throw me down because of my
sins amongst those who mustn't occupy themselves with science,
who mustn't drink to their desire and mustn't make love to each
other, don't push me out of the chosen ones. I will be obeying and
devote." ORO learned this until he grew up and the teaching
machine told him that this had been the last task he had to solve,
tomorrow he already had to report at the Central Square of the city
from where a moving sidewalk would bring him to the clinic which
was assigned to him as his working place. The metal band was
79

emoved from his arm, he was allowed to move into a beautiful
house, he was grown up.
Until they finished their studies, the youths lived in mixed
groups, boys and girls together, and spent their off time in clubs. In
the study groups, there were three main tasks aside from the
learning: playing cards, drinking and making love. They got
unlimited supply of a beer-like, slightly alcoholic beverage. Most of
them lived slightly intoxicated from the afternoon until the next
morning. The drink caused a cheerful mood and contained
hormones. On the cards were religious pictures: scenes from the
story of the godly mercy: God breathing a soul into the clay figures.
The arrival of the Evil Bird and the temptation of the beings...
Playing cards itself was a godly action, almost religious. The ceilings
of the sleeping rooms where everyone could sleep with any other at
any time at will were painted blue, together with the sun, the twelve
moons, and even if not thirty-three millions, but many, many
stars... In the clubs, there were books and of course TV. In the TV,
they often watched documentations from the cities of the Trunk
Beares. "The godly mercy also cares for these lower beings. They by
far don't give as much value to the community and to Oxygénia as
we do, but they, too, have a right for food and rationed oxygen", the
narrator taught, and at the end, the thanksgiving prayer was
repeated: "I am a lucky chosen one... don't push me amongst the
Trunk Bearers because of my sins."
OROs first working place was a surgical clinic were he was busy
with the programming of operations and new methods. From there,
he was later re-assigned to his new working place, into the
obstetrical ward.
Down in the concrete cities, no children were born. Children
came there – as it was taught in religious lessons – after the Grand
Spring Festival "out of the sky". The little ones who were born in the
City of the Rememberers, who were nursed and cared for there,
were brought down in the city of the Trunk Bearers at age five or
six, where they were selected after some Spring Festivals by the
machines...
ON had met IF 717 whom he had given the nickname Sunshine
in the studies group. It was usual that the boys gave nicknames to
the girls. ON and Sunshine decided to stay together. Looking for a
flat was very easy, they just chose an uninhabited house. A
machine with a camera at the doors of uninhabited houses gave out
the key after they presented a valid NFC chip, and the new tennant
could move in.
80

ON and Sunshine had chosen a one-story, spacious, pale green
painted house. It had comfortable rooms with pastel colored walls,
countless pictures, carpets and artifical flowers. ORO was their
closest neighbor. At the beginning, they just played cards together
and talked about the TV schedule or about music. Once, Sunshine
said completely unexpected during the card play: "Yesterday, they
talked about strange things in the club... Since I heard this, I don't
find any rest. A man has claimed that there are other worlds
besides Oxygénia... and that it would be unnatural to live this way,
not to try to explore the system of the Central Control."
ON approached her harshly: "Sunshine, don't sin yourself... we
mustn't even speak about that."
But Sunshine looked in his eyes defiantly: "I want to understand
the world!"
Everything had started with this. ORO had jumped up, he was
totally pale when he said: "We mustn't speak about this, Sunshine!
And why shouldn't we speak about it, ON? My soul, too, is almost
torn by doubt."
What followed was more terrible than every intoxication. They
had talked the rest of the afternoon about their doubts, about
everything they conincidentally had gotten to know and what they
had tried to forget in vain. During that time, ORO was assigned the
task to perfect the examination procedure which the mothers who
had been separated from their babies were subjected to.
Through a glass wall, he had to watch how the mothers were
separated from their babies. The newborns lived in a huge hall
together with their mothers who nurtured and nursed them. The
small beds of the babies stood in a long row on one wall of the hall.
On the other side, the mothers lived. The hall was separated by a
light curtain. All of a sudden, a grating lowered down in the middle
of a hall, locks opened up and closed again. The beds of the babies
were transported out of the hall by a conveyor belt, and the ground
under the mothers' feet started to move as well. The machines were
in action, they collected data, selected and directed. OROs attention
was directed to his task, whether the instruments worked correctly,
if they recorded everything and entered it into the birth registry: the
designation, the weight, the size, the body temperature, the
measurements of the heads and the reflexive qualities of the
children. Suddenly, he heard a despaired knock and crying. On the
other side of the lock, women began to cry painfully. They cried
heartbreakingly, bitterly, cursed God and demanded their children.
Then, a sedative was sprayed out in the mothers' room, and the
81

cries subdued. ORO felt his heart beating loudly. His face was
flooded with sweat, and his teeth rattled because of overpowering
infuriation. Half unconscious, he grabbed for the drug. This was his
luck. A few minutes later, he was summoned to a control check.
ORO laid on the examinaton bed calmly, he was in a state of a dull
daze when the electrodes of the encephalograph were attached to
him. The readings were excellent, only the brain areas determined
to solve his tasks were agitated. ORO had passed the first big test:
he had proven himself as reliable.
He was assigned more and more tasks like that, by which he
learned more details about the strange life on Oxygénia.
And the fear inside him kept growing.
He was in fear when he discussed nights away with ON. He was
afraid when ON and Sunshine confessed to him they wanted to stay
together, and even more when he learned that Sunshine was to
have a child and he needed to assist with the birth in secret. He
was frightened because his brain was already full of forbidden
sciences, of doubts and questions, and he shuddered because of
fear that at the next check, the sedation by the drug Deep Sleep
wouldn't be enough anymore and the next encephalography would
mercilessly uncover him. Then there would be no running from his
fate, he would have to endure another brain operation, or even
worse, be convicted to memory erasure and thrown into eternal
illiteracy, to the Trunk Bearers from where no one had ever
returned yet. He was afraid because he knew that there was a
canyon, a mysterious cave somewhere near the town where those
who were thinking were hiding, those with unwanted stimulated
parts of their brains, and where those fled to who had to fear to be
thrown down into a concrete city, or those who had become
pregnant despite all operations, had their child and wanted to raise
it. ORO knew of the canyon and the secret cave. He had led
Sunshine there before Little ONs birth. And it had not been long
after this that ON had been captured in the net of the checks, that
he was convicted to memory erasure and was thrown down into the
city of the Trunk Bearers.
His friends calamity overthrew the fear in OROs heart. Instead, it
filled with bitter determination. In his eyes, ON had been miserably
and irreversibly perished, but Sunshine and Little ON and all those
who hid in the cave of Bald Mountain, in need of food and medics
supply from time to time, weren't to perish. ORO visited the cave
regularly. And together with him, good friends came here at night
and brought packages and presents, only to vanish again. They
82

were the Invisibles, they knew from each other even when they
barely knew each other and didn't know where everyone of them
worked or how many they were together, and only few of them had
connections to each other. They didn't dare to get more intimate
than that because they feared to endanger themselves and the fled
ones in the cave.
ORO was one of those who dared the most for the cave
inhabitants. But if something happened to him, the others would be
in danger, too. That was the reason why he had acted disguised on
ONs arrival.
Just a minute later, he would have rather runned after his
friend. But if it was him indeed, if he had returned, it didn't just
mean that ON needed him and was coming for him, but it also
meant that from there, a return was possible.
And suddenly, ORO didn't find his place anymore. He drank
from the drug, but the drink that was usually so soothing and
sedative now didn't help much. Dull despair overcame him, he now
laid down, then got up and ran out of the house. On the morning of
the fifth day, Sunshines secret message arrived: ON had come back.
And ORO replied to her the same secret way: Tonight we meet at
the usual place.
83

22 – Underground council
Peter was awoken by Sunshine. It was night.
Together with ON, they headed for the inner depths of the cave.
The cave was now pitch black dark, and Peter lit with his atomic
wristwatch. Spooked by the harsh light, the sleeping ones startled
everywhere, frightened children and adults who were ready to
protect them.
"Good friends, good friends", Sunshine said everwhere they were
passing by.
They went fast, and Peter tried to look around everywhere, to
mind everything.
The way was much longer than he had believed, and even in
these deep parts, refugees lived everywhere. Peter couldn't
determine whether there were some dozens, several hundred or
even more than a thousand hiding down here underground. The
subterranean corridor was crossed by small watercourses several
times, and short planks were placed above them as a sidewalk.
Here and there, water dropped down from the ceiling, crystal clear
drinking water even. Many of the walls were bare, others were
covered with moss, and frequently, the miracle of the subterranean
brushwood and vegetable gardens repeated itself. But the biggest
miracle of all was the respirable air.
Some of the side corridors were uninhabited.
"We're breeding mushrooms here", Sunshine explained. "They
grow plenty and are quite nutritious."
It was obvious that the cave got a part of its oxygen from the
green plants, but the oxygen they emitted would've been too few.
Where did the additional oxygen come from? And where did the
water come from? Where did the seeds for the plants come from –
this last one seemed less mysterious to him since he knew that
Oxygénia once had an oxygen-rich atmosphere as well as plant and
animal life.
The light of the atomic wristbeam now lit a somewhat larger cave
again. There were rocks in the middle of it, and it was unclear
whether they were made by nature or aligned there as seats by
human hands. Anyway, around thirty people sat there, men and
women. And amongst them, ORO.
"We're there", Sunshine said, and to Peter: "This is the 'garden'."
The entrance to the cave was in the canyon, the inner part was
called the garden. It was unknown when or by whom it had been
84

discovered, but many knew of its existence. From somewhere, water
and oxygen got there, and if one laid down still, it was bearable for
some time without a breather. The refugees added to this low
oxygen share with their artifically grown bushes and plants.
Usually, the town inhabitants never came here, they didn't dare
down here. This cave was also called Devil's Breath or Ravine of
Sin, if it was acutally even talked about. But for what reason should
they even talk about it? After doing their work, they went to the
restaurants and clubs, ate, drank, played cards, made love to each
other and thanked the eternal power, the Lord of the sky, the
Creator of Oxygénia for His goodness and mercy.
It wasn't quite forbidden for the town inhabitants to discover
caves in the surrounding area or to leave the city. Travelling itself
wasn't forbidden – it was impossible. Neither in the concrete cities
of the Trunk Bearers nor in the City of the Rememberers there were
any means of traffic as would have been on Earth. There were no
cars, no trains, no trams, no buses, no helicopters, only the moving
sidewalks in the City of the Rememberers bore some resemblance to
Earth-like means of transport. But they were few, and they only
brought the inhabitants from the Central Square to the working
places and back.
The town inhabitants didn't move much because it just wasn't
possible to them. The oxygen ration only lasted for the time that
was necessary to get from one spot in the city to another one.
Between the cities was a dark, left, empty void. They had no idea
how big it was. The future engineers, architects, constructors and
scholars of other sciences learned a lot in the City of the
Rememberers, but amongst their lessons was neither geography nor
astronomy nor history. For instance, no one knew how many people
lived on Oxygénia, not even which ones of the seventeen continents
were inhabited, or how many Cities of the Rememberers actually
existed, and they had only a vague idea that somewhere, there was
a Central Control. Even if they thought about it – which only very
few did – they only saw computers, NFC chips and cameras, but
who was behind all that, who and which beings might have been in
charge of all these devices, they didn't think this far.
The first inhabitants of the cave had been women who had
experienced the same as Sunshine, who had become pregnant
despite of the sterilization and wanted to save their children. Later,
others had come, ones whose brains occupied themselves in
forbidden ways not just with the assigned tasks, ones who asked
85

questions, had doubts, didn't understand why it should be a sin not
to drink in their off time but to be interested in another science,
and who therefore – just like ORO – lived in permanent fear of the
examination checks which could mean their revealation. The worst
part was that they didn't knew who did those examinations and for
what reason. Should God need to use such a method to look into
their souls? And why should it be something godly to spend half of
their lives in a dull, intoxicated state? And why was it necessary to
have the functions of their brains directed? Why, why, why? Doubt
gives birth to doubt, thought to more thoughts; the slowed brain,
having become somewhat dull started to work...
In the cave, also the mothers who had managed to escape before
the separation from the children found shelter.
Some days in advance of the Grand Spring Festival, a panic-like
unrest grabbed hold of the women, as if they had somehow felt that
their children were to be taken from them and they be pushed back
into the realm of forgetting, to the Trunk Bearers. During this time,
ORO and some other doctors supervised the checking
measurements and examinations. ORO tagged some of the files as
"Deceased" and thus helped the mothers and their children to
escape from the hospital.
The registry machines did their job. No one pursued the fled
ones.
"Friends", Sunshine began to speak, "tonight we will be told
about wonders unheard of so far. Here is my mate and husband,
the father of my son, ON 711 314, who has returned from the city of
the Trunk Bearers. And here is a dear friend, Peter MacGulliver,
who has come from a far away world."
ORO jumped to his feet and hugged ON. The others stared silent,
with eyes wide open.
First, ON reported about their escape from the city of the Trunk
Bearers, about the map which he had seen in the forbidden book
and drawn from his memory. He also talked about the Cursed Path
in the pitch black dark night and from the starting point of their
escape at the Grand Spring Festival. He described the city of the
Trunk Bearers and how he had been able to protect his memory
with OROs aid. Then, he introduced Peter MacGulliver, the
inhabitant of a distant world and in possess of the secret of how to
produce oxygen. This would contradict with the doctrine in
Oxygénia, according to which oxygen was only donated by a
singular central source, the mercy of God, and the total amount of
oxygen could neither be decreased nor increased...
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ON fell silent now, and all eyes went questioningly to Peter.
What Peter told them was more exciting for his listeners than the
most suspending novel and more intoxicating than the drops,
despite he just told very plainly and dryly about some facts. He told
them that he had started from a celestial body, a planet like
Oxygénia, since there were countless amounts of suns, stars,
planets and moons in the universe, not one, not twelve, not thirtythree
million but an uncounted number. On planet Earth where he
came from, there would be as much oxygen so everyone could
breathe freely and go wherever he wanted; everyone could learn
whatever he pleased and that the beings which lived there, the
humans, would be very happy. In Earths history there had been an
epoch as well during which life had been threatened by doom
because the waters had been infested, the harvest of the fields had
been declining and the inhabitants of the cities fought against
suffocating. There had been humans who fell down on the streets
and died because of toxic fumes. Others lost their mind. The
animals...
At this point, a murmur went through the crowd. Peter tried to
use his interplanetary translator, but to no use, most of his
listeners didn't understand what animals are.
"They are beings of a lesser state", Peter explained, "they can't
talk... and can't think... More and more of these animals died. Life
became fully extinct in the oceans. There had been areas where the
animals became sterile due to the chemically toxic air... At this
point, one horrified summit followed the next. Some people clearly
realised that mankind was about to destroy itself if they continued
to let industrial smokestacks pollute the air and industrial toxic
waste infest the water, if forests were lumbered down and used as
construction material. Others, however, had the opinion that
everything was only half as bad. The polluted air, the toxic water
would annihilate the weak majority of mankind which had become
superfluous anyway. By the law of natural selection, those who
were the most resistant would survive, those who had the healthiest
breathing organs...
But the majority of mankind decided another way. At the last
moment, peoples made the saving decision. They wiped away all
those who thought their profit interests to be more important than
the fate of mankind. Conferences were established, and essential
agreements were made.
First, all atomic detonations were forbidden to reduce the
malicious radiation. By international actions, the waters, the
87

sources, creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans were cleaned. Factories
and cities were only allowed to flood their sewages into rivers and
oceans after it had been treated in giant purification plants. Instead
of weapons; cleaning facilities, watering plants and agricultural
machines for the cultivation of the ground were built.
By international measurements, an intense reafforestation was
established, watering plants in the deserts were built, and terraces
for gardening were modelled into steep cliffs. The responsibility for
the protection of the trees and forests was transferred to the youth
of the world.
Science was in bloom again. One invention after the other was
made, already considering from the beginning that technology and
civilization mustn't need to be developed at the expense of the
natural environment. With immediate effect, all means of transport
which infested the air were banned. All factories that were
malicious to their environment were moved. Instead of the narrow
and unhealthy cities, sunny places to live were erected. At the end
of the 21 st century it came to the total disarmament. The industries
of war were halted. Their facilities of element transformation now
only serve for peace and prosperity. "We have unlimited oxygen,
forests, flowers, clear water, uninfested air, fields which harvest
plenty and millions of happy and healthy humans. That's how life
looks now on Earth."
"Who are you, and how do you come here?", again a children's
voice called.
"Who I am? I am just a simple human, a being in your language,
who came flying here through the vastness of space. I came in a
spaceship which looks like a small house in your cities, but I fell
out and don't know what became of my spaceship, and I also don't
know what happened to my wife, she was still inside. On my search
for her, I've come to you, maybe you know something about her...
Maybe you can help me find her..."
Again, the cave fell silent. The beings tried to grasp all this
incomprehensible information. Finally, a young man broke the
silence. He, too, belonged to those who lived and worked up in the
city but came down here from time to time to discuss and to think –
as there was no danger of a sudden control check here – or simply
to help the refugees under the surface, to teach them.
"I know something that maybe could be of use. I am an
electronics engineer and work on the construction of devices which
can receive and register high frequency electromagnetic waves."
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"A radio receiver", Peter exclaimed excitedly and jumped up. "But
you told me, ON, that radio devices are unkown in Oxygénia and no
radio transmissions can be made from here..."
"I've heard from you about radio for the very first time", ON
replied.
"During my work, I realised something strange", the engineer
continued. "For some time now, a rhythmic sound is permanently to
be heard, something I've never heard before. I can't understand
what this message from the far means, it always registers on wave
length 19.31..."
"The frequency of spaceship "Humanitas"!"
"Listen, I can reproduce what I heard by knocking."
He did as he said. With a pounding heart, Peter recognized the
Morse code: . -- . / . / - / . / . - . = Peter. So July lived! July lived
and was aboard the spaceship "Humanitas"! She was aboard and
searched for him!
"How could I give an answer to these calls? And from where?", he
called, excited.
"From nowhere. Every transmission from here is being deleted by
Central Control."
"That can't be! As well as you can receive the signal, someone
else can, too."
The engineer shook his head.
"The signal only gets to where Central Control wants it. I don't
know why it was allowed through to my working place. And on this
wave length are always only these signs, never anything else. Sadly,
I don't know precisely the sending and receiving facilities in
Oxygénia. Our group produces this devices for Central Control. I
also know that there are such devices in the Cities of the
Rememberers, but those are not allowed to contact each other, only
Central Control. Signals coming from space can only be received by
Central Control."
"But you just showed us that you can receive the calls from
spaceship "Humanitas"."
"We can only receive the signals that Central Control lets pass
through to us because of our work. To us, these are always
completely incomprehensible signals, and we mustn't occupy
ourselves with solving them. If we tried to answer them, Central
Control would delete our signals on the spot. Just the same way, all
attempts from stations in the Cities of the Rememberers to contact
each other are blocked."
"But how does Central Control that?"
89

"I don't know."
"And what is this Central Control? Who is this Central Control?
What kind of unknown force is that?", Peter called. "And where do I
find this Central Control? I want to get to them!"
And since no one answered, he asked again.
"How can I get to this Central Control?"
Again, dead silence was the only answer.
He had spoken aloud the most important question. It was what
they all here wanted to know about. Where this mysterious
Something or this Somebody was who was directing their fate. And
no matter how much doubt they had about the rightness of the
conditions here, how much they discussed, no one had dared yet to
tell aloud about the possibility to get to Central Control, to see them
eye to eye...
"I have to get back to my spaceship... and have to find someone
who can help me with that. July is waiting for me. My home is
Earth. I'm not staying here!", Peter called out again. "When I find
Central Control, I'm willing to leave my instruments and equipment
here, one might estimate my oxygen replicator and use it. I want to
say everything I know, but someone shall help me getting back to
July."
Grave silence was the answer to Peters despaired emotional
outburst.
Then, ORO got up.
"There is a chance... one single possibility. From time to time, I'm
getting questionnaires regarding my work. I don't know who sent
them or from where, but one thing is certain, they come from
Central Control! Sometimes, I have to add a statement to my
answers. Sometimes I'm told that they are satisfied with my work. I
believe this isn't unknown to you all..."
"That's right... we all are getting such questionnaires..."
"On the next one, I will write that we are visited by a guest from
a distant planet and that he is staying at my home."
An oppressive deep silence filled the cave.
Then, there were affected calls from all sides.
"ORO, you can't do this! Writing only a single word on those
sheets which doesn't belong there is a deadly sin..."
"ORO, that's impossible..."
"No, ORO, we have to think for something else!"
"We'd rather take up Peter with us, he should stay here forever.
He can live with us and could teach us..."
"We plunge us all into misfortune by reporting his presence."
90

"I don't believe that there is another solution", ORO spoke up
again, calmly. "Of course, it's a daring step. Once we directed the
attention towards ourselves, if we tell that Peter is here, this could
trigger an avalanche... And mostly, we're endangering Peter without
even having an idea what's expecting him. But maybe they're
already knowing everything anyway, maybe they're observing him
for a long time already. That way, isn't it smarter to try to look the
inevitable straight into the eye?"
Peter went next to ORO.
"If you are ready to do this, ORO, and are doing me that favour...
If you can muster that courage... I am really grateful to you. I'm
determined to get to this power, whoever it might be and wherever it
is. I can't keep being idly any longer because I'm losing my mind
since I don't know what happened to my wife... But I don't want to
endanger you with this. If it should be very dangerous, I'm going
away from here, keep walking the streets and try to get into every
house until I'm getting caught by the security checks. I'll try to open
every gate and get on every moving sidewalk. And whatever will
happen to me, never I shall give the information about your cave or
someone of you to anyone."
"I hope the good fate has guided you here, Peter", ORO said and
got up. The council was over.
91

23 – Report
Oxygenville, radio conrol, 14.6.1207, 8.77
On band 6.17: This is Peter MacGulliver! July, come in! This is
Peter, this is Peter!
Important note: The transmission originated from the area of the
City number Five of the Rememberers.
Transmission shielded!
To security control
Urgent!
Order
Oxygenville, 15.6.1207, 9.30
Every radio control and every radar control is to report to the
Successor hourly.
Security control is to schedule general checks in the Cities of the
Rememberers.
Report within 60 hours to Successor Warrior.
Benefactor XIII.
92

24 – ORO gets an answer
It had well been some days since ORO had sent the message. On
a questionnaire, he had to report about the usability of a new kind
of surgical instrument. The questions referred to the precision of
the instrument, its design and the quality of the metal alloy. ORO
carefully answered every question, and then wrote in the field
"Other important notes", which he always left blank, that an
inhabitant of Earth who wanted to get back to his spaceship was in
the city.
He hesitated for a moment, then pushed the button on the
dashboard, and the sheet was gone, somewhere into the unknown –
now, nothing could be changed about the whole thing anymore.
The report was sent, but no reply came back.
ORO got new instructions, had to do calculations and tests, he
also got new questionnaires, but nothing indicated that someone
had gotten his message, read and taken notice of it.
After two days of mulling over the matter, Peter decided to move
into the City of the Rememberers because if ORO would get an
answer it was likely that an instant pursuit for him, the comer,
would start, and if he stayed in the cave, his hideout could reveal
the others as well. If the life of the ones who hid in that cave from
the unknown Someone even was a secret at all.
The longer an answer kept them waiting, the uneasier Peter and
his friends became. Peter felt more and more clearly that
somewhere someone knew about him, that his arrival to this planet
had been registered somewhere and that his path from the city of
the Trunk Bearers had been traced, somewhere where the calls
from the spaceship "Humanitas" had been received as well as his
despaired, stubborn attemps to establish a radio communication on
which he tried to search for July, and by tracking those radio
signals, it was possible to determine where he had been at which
given time. Well, he had reported officially now – if there was any
kind of registration office here at all – and he had to move into the
city.
Sunshine and ON accepted those facts, too, and thought it to be
right, although it was very hard for ON to part with Peter. And even
Little ON and the other children didn't want to accept the departure
of Peter.
"Stay with us, man from Earth, stay here", they pleaded, "and
teach us!"
93

During the days he spent in the cave, the most touching to Peter
were the children. It was hard to believe which excellent offspring
these beings from the concrete cities who lived on reduced oxygen
and were blunted for one or two, maybe even for ten generations
procreated during the Grand Spring Festivals.
During the first months of their lives, the babies were supplied
with plenty of oxygen. No one knew what else they got except from
the breast milk, but one thing was sure: their brain literally sucked
in everything that could be learned like a sponge. With a shiver,
Peter thought that even those innocent little beings would have
been thrown in the cities of the Trunk Bearers and that only few of
them would have been assigned into a City of the Rememberers
with strictly limited tasks...
But the way it was, was a better fate waiting for them?
Compassionately, Peter looked at the pale, never sunlit faces, eyes
that sparkled feverly, the bodys that were lean because of hunger
and the greed with which they gulped down raw mushrooms, grass
and roots.
Sometimes, the mothers cried and accused themselves. Was it
right after all that they, together with their children, had escaped
the divine providence, the separation?
What should become with the children's lives? What for the
heroic effort, those few edible plants grown in the depth? For what
was the learning of the children, their feverly struggling, if their live
was a constant fight for a bite of food, a gulp of water, a breath of
air, against an unvisible power?
Peter told about everything he knew of, about spaceships, plants
and animals. He showed them his equipment, and he constantly
produced oxygen and sugar – and he gave everything to the
children.
"Earthly being, come back to us... earthly being, we'll wait for
you", he heard their farewell calls.
He bid goodbye to ON and Sunshine with a friendly hug. Would
they see each other ever again?
He would have preferred to leave his equipment in the cave, but
he had to take it with him since he had no idea which fate was
waiting for him.
He climbed up the ravine. ORO was waiting for him up there and
brought him to his house.
Only now Peter got to see the house in detail. When he was here
the first time with ON, he was much too excited and had only
stayed in the entrance hall much too shortly to get much details.
94

It was a spacious, pleasant, expedient flat with comfortable
furniture. The sleeping rooms with pale blue, gold patterned
wallpapers were in the first story, as well as the bathroom where
one tap delivered water with added soap and the other one clear,
lukewarm water. There was also a study with books on the shelves
– exclusively about OROs profession. At the ground floor, next to
the large room at the entrance, was a small TV room and at the
other side a gambling hall with card tables and roulette, with bar
shelves and closets, all filled with plenty of drinks. There was no
kitchen in the house and no food, only some sweets at best. If they
got hungry, they had to go to a club or a restaurant.
On the street, the air was very poor of oxygen. Here, a mask and
additional oxygen was needed. Oxygen was filled into the bins only
when presented a valid NFC chip. Luckily, Peter could produce so
much oxygen it would have lasted until the end of his and OROs
life.
At the beginning, Peter was hesitant to enter the dining hall.
ORO and the others organized food for the cave inhabitants for a
long time by first eating on their own on their NFC chip, then going
to another dining hall and simply taking the ordered food from the
table with them. ORO suggested to Peter he should wait at home,
he would bring the food. But then, Peter changed his mind. He sat
at a table in the dining hall and presented OROs chip to the
machine. The next moment, the ordered meal was on the table. Now
ORO sat down on the chair just opposite, and the machine
delivered his meal, too, on the same NFC chip without a complaint.
If they had wanted to, they could've had lunch ten times...
After the first week had passed by without ORO getting an
answer, Peter already thought that the message had passed
unnoticed. Maybe it was archived into some bottomless index box,
between designs, drafts and calculations, so it was gone and no one
would ever answer to it. At the first moment, the thought let him
despair, on second thought, maybe it would have been the best if he
didn't draw attention and if he tried to get away from here some
other way... But he felt as if he was in a mouse trap and got so
hopeless sometimes that he considered asking ORO for the drug
Deep Sleep, drinking himself into intoxication, just to not to know
about anything at all and to forget his hopeless and pointless
situation.
He was living for the third week already in OROs home.
ORO, too, was anxious. In the morning, he went to the clinic, in
the afternoon he sat with Peter in front of the boring TV and stared
95

wordlessly on the screen. ORO didn't dare to invite his friends, and
even when he went with Peter to the nearest dining hall, they sat on
a separate table. They were afraid of endangering everyone who
would talk to the human from Earth.
One day, ORO got a new task. At the end of the detailed
instruction, there was a note at the lower end of the sheet: "The
earthly being is to go to the fourth moving sidewalk of the Central
Square!"
Nothing else.
As much as ORO had waited for this message, he was scared to
the bone now.
He took a break from his work and ran back home.
Peter became totally pale when he heard the message.
"Did we act right or wrong?", they asked each other and
themselves.
But there was no choice anymore. The mechanism had come into
action – unstoppable.
96

25 – The clouds are opening
The Central Square was the starting point of numerous moving
sidewalks. They brought the Rememberers from the residential
district to the working places. In the well-ordered, nice town there
were fifteen to twenty different kind of houses, larger and smaller
ones, with different colors, between artifical trees and bushes. After
every tenth or twentieth house a club, a restaurant and a store
followed, then parks with artifical plants and residential houses
again. The city was surprisingly big and except for the Central
Square not very comprehensible.
ORO accompanied Peter to the Central Square.
Silent and concerned, they walked side by side.
The decision was irrevocable. They couldn't know what the power
to which mercy or disgrace they had subjected themselves now had
planned for or against them.
But there was no other possibility.
Peter entered the moving sidewalk number Four.
Would they ever see each other again?
"Thank you for everything, ORO."
"Good luck, Peter, to you and to all of us."
Peter looked back. He was sad, but also strongly determined.
"No. There has been no other solution. I don't fear it!"
The moving sidewalk led through streets similiar to those Peter
had seen until now in the City of the Rememberers for a while.
Suddenly he found himself in front of a lock, a door opened up.
Now, an inner corridor with pale green twilight followed. The moving
sidewalkd sped up considerably, and the way was steadily climbing
up. Then, it stopped abruptly. Peter had almost lost his balance. He
stood in front of a second lock. This one opened, too, without him
needing to do anything. Peter took some steps forwards, and the
lock closed behind him.
He felt like he would have gotten into thick fog, into seething
haze.
Strainedly, he tried to recognize something, but all he saw
around him was grey, wafting mist. Completely alone, he stood on
an unkown spot, saw nothing and heard nothing.
There, something silvery shimmering ladder-like lowered itself in
front of him. Peter went on the first step, it were stairs. Affected and
doubtful, he ascended some steps.
Even now, he couldn't see much.
97

In the fog, the outlines of a plane shimmered. Its door opened
and closed behind him.
Peter MacGulliver found himself in the quite comfortable
passenger cabin of a pretty small plane. Aside from him, there was
no human in here. Not even a pilot.
After he had taken a seat at the window behind the wing, the
aircraft started immediately and almost vertical.
The plane flew for a very long time, several hours, through the
fog. Gradually, the clouds became lighter, then the aircraft broke
through into the light.
Below the plane, the clouds billowed endlessly. But those clouds
weren't white as the ones the inhabitants of Earth are seeing under
them in aircrafts, but rather dirty, yellow and grey. But above him,
the bright blue sky blinded him. Peter had to close his eyes since
they had become so unused to the bright light.
Obviously, everything around him was only illusion. Such a blue!
It was as if liquid oxygen was glowing, as if the sun in the sky would
shine a hundred times brighter than the one on Earth.
A small table rolled in front of him. On it was a glass with
something to drink and a plate with fruit paste. The refreshment
was so tempting in color, shape and scent that Peter grabbed for it
hastily and devoured it.
Maybe he was wrong after all? Maybe he shouldn't believe
everything he had seen and heard down there? Maybe he hadn't
gotten into the hands of some evil, destroying power after all? Here,
everything was sheer comfort and attentive care. Or where they just
smart and clever? Maybe they just wanted to subdue his fear and
suspicions with the good taste, the scent and the glow? Maybe this
all was some kind of a test? Maybe friendly and unfriendly
surprises would supersede each other? It was possible they showed
with this that they wanted something from him. If they could be
graceful and frightening at the same time? Who could know?
'Careful! Careful!', Peter thought.
But the pleasant experiences continued.
He wasn't even fully done with his meal when the plane started
to descend.
It landed on a short runway. The aircraft stopped, the door
opened itself, and the stairs came out.
Peter left the plane. Below his feet, a moving sidewalk started. An
automatic glass door opened, and Peter found himself in some sort
of hall which was decorated with apple green tiling. Here, too, he
met no one, and the sidewalk continued to transport him further on
98

– another door opened in front of him. And suddenly, he stood
outside the airport – on a wonderful square.
Peter cried out with elation.
It was a very large square, larger than the one at St. Peter's
Basilica in Rome. In its center was a fountain with a group of light,
elated figures, with marble men, women, children and prancing
horses which seemed to dance under the shimmering, foaming and
floating water. Around the fountain, there were trees, bushes and
flowers. In the distant, one could see the outlines of magnificient
buildings, of palaces built of white and pink marble. And above the
square, the sky shone blue, silky blue...
With a sudden decision, Peter took off his breather and took a
deep breath.
He breathed in oxygen-rich, good smelling, real air.
Air, like it was to be found in the nicest regions of Earth, in the
sunlit snow landscapes of the Caucasus or the Alps, in the palm
tree groves of Hawaii or the lavender fields of Tihany. He breathed
in again and again and was quite intoxicated with pure joy. Oxygen!
Wonderful invigorating element! In unrestricted wealth under a
bright blue sky! Fountains and blooming trees, not far from him
was a bush. He went to it and touched a leaf with his finger. It was
a living, real plant with lush branches and glowing red blossoms.
Was this possible? Was he still on the same planet? On the
planet of the suffocating fogs, the concrete buildings, the miserables
hiding in the cave?
He had been there for maybe two minutes, blinking in the bright
light, taking deep breaths and enjoying the oxygen which permeated
his lungs and blood, when a snow white vehicle rolled next to him.
It looked like a car on Earth, going on wheels, glowing brightly,
moving without a sound. The door sprang open, and a friendly
young man stepped out. He wore a slightly strange looking, overly
tight-fitting suit (for earthly understanding at least) made of a very
nice fabric. He, too, wore no breather. With great warmth, he
extended his hand to Peter and welcomed him, smiling.
Peter was going to answer, but had a second thought right in
time. For the moment, it might be better to act as if he didn't
understand Oxygénias language. He shook his head and indicated
with movements of his hand he wouldn't understand the words.
He grabbed into his sidebag, took out his interplanetary
translator, switched it on and looked back at the young man.
His host repeated:
99

"I want to warmly welcome the citizen of the distant Earth to the
Central of Oxygénia. I hope you had a pleasant flight and will have
a good time with us after your regrettable accident."
So it was known here how he had come here, and presumably
also when.
He returned the handshake and said something about how
surprisingly beautiful eyerything here was and that he didn't dare
to dream about it.
The young man nodded politely, and they took their seats in the
car.
There was no steering wheel in the car, only a dashboard. The
host pushed a button, the doors of the car closed, and the car drove
them comfortably along an excellently built winding road up a
mountain cliff.
Never before Peter had seen such a marvellous landscape. It was
as if the most beautiful regions of Earth, the snowy summits, rocks,
water falls, eucalyptus and palm tree groves, silver firs and laurel
trees had come together. Embedded into the bright colorful,
scenting lush nature were buildings here and there. Now it was a
marble-stone palace, then a house that reminded him of a Finnish
wood house, there a miracle completely made of glass that caught
his astonishment. The street was lined by flowers and bushes. From
the mountain cliff, creeks and water falls fell into the depth, and in
the valley a beautiful lake reflected the sunlight. Sailing boats slid
across its surface, and motor boats raced along with happy, waterskiing
people. He felt like brought into a country which put with its
beauty Switzerland, Hawaii or the Crimea into the shadows. Around
the single buildings, people moved, strikingly few people compared
to the great distances and the measures of the buildings.
"Should I open the window?", the host asked politely.
"Thank you", Peter said and nodded.
The push of a button – and fresh air from outside, filled with
wonderful flowery scent, flooded in. Even more silent than the
noiseless driving was the landscape. They closely passed a lake with
several water skiing pulling motor boats. The boats didn't hum or
roar, they slid noiseless across the lake.
At the same time, however, he heard other noises. Birds singing,
music, the noise of branches in the wind, everything spread as well
as the intoxicating pleasant scent of the air. Peter couldn't
remember ever having felt so good. Unrest and uneasiness had
already been gone in the plane, and now he even dared to ask the
unkown man a question.
100

"So you know I came from Earth?"
"Yes, we now it."
"And that my spaceship had an accident?"
"Yes."
"And what happened to my wife?"
"She is aboard the spaceship. She is fine!" Peter felt his heart
beat in his throat.
"Do you have a regular radio connection to her?"
The man smiled unfathomable.
"Regular? No, I can't say that. Due to atmospheric interferences,
no radio connection is possible at the moment."
"And can I... may I hope to get help in getting linked with my
wife? May I hope to get help to get back to the spaceship?"
"Of course", the young man replied, smiling. "That's why we
asked you to come here."
The car was approaching the summit of the mountain. The
winding road led through a giant park. If even possible, the trees
and flowers were even more magnificient here. Amidst of waterfalls,
ponds and fountains, hundreds of sculpturs appeared. Peter had
noticed garlands of fresh flowers on other statues already before.
One of the statues looked strikingly similiar to his host.
After he had admired the twentieth or thirtieth of this sculptures
and had diverted his attention between the statues and the young
man next to him, the latter smiled humbly and a bit embarrassed.
"My dear Peter, Oxygénia is a kingdom. Our recent monarch is
Benefactor XIII, whose firstborn son I am. My name is Warrior, and
one day, I will reign by the name Benefactor XIV. ..."
Peter looked at him, surprised. On Earth, not a single king
reigned anymore since a thousand years. Was it possible that this
friendly and open minded man would be the future ruler of this
contradictory and incomprehensible planet? Had the brains of ORO
and ON been programmed on his command? Struggled the Trunk
Bearers for breath due to his actions? Did the beings hide in the
cave from him? From him, who's giving him a ride in his
comfortable car... giving a ride, but where?
As if it was an answer to his thoughts, the car stopped.
"If you wish, a separate house is at your disposal... or if you want
to content with an appartement in my humble home..."
The "humble home" was a dream castle. The prince gave him a
wink. Peter got out of the car and stopped in front of the main
entrance.
101

Whatever one might imagine of beauty, comfort, fantasy, taste
and wealth – Peter had it in front of him. The huge number of
arcades at the mosque of Córdoba, the snow white marble domes of
the Taj Mahal, the dignified quietness of the Buddha in Kamakura...
No, there were no fitting comparisons to Earth. Astonishment and
deep affection overcame Peter when he stopped at the main
entrance, in front of him an architectural work of art made of
marble, semiprecious stones and gold, and above it, the deep blue
sky. Even the fleecy clouds appeared to be of lace, and the green of
the trees and the grass shone like emeralds.
"Good bye in two hours for lunch", the prince said, nodded and
went away.
A broad door opened before Peter. He entered a moving carpet
which brought him, now already inside the palace, from hallway to
hallway, along on walls decorated with silk, velvet and gobelins,
along precious and beautiful furniture. Sometimes, the carpet
changed into an escalator, until Peter found himself in front of a
snow white door. This one also opened without a sound. Peter
entered a splendid room. Only now he realised with a scare: he had
not been accompanied to here by a human. In the marvellous
castle, he hadn't met a single living being aside from the prince.
102

26 – Like in an old English castle
Peter MacGullivers young wife, July, was a philologist and
especially fond of ancient English novels. She often had talked to
Peter about her reading, these old romantic novels, in most of which
some spooks and ghosts appeared. He could remember their
heartily laughs about that, which great feeling it had to be to stay in
castle haunted by ghosts, if the door or the windows opened
unexpected or a mysterious voice was heard in the chimney...
Well, now he had his spook, his ghost, the enchanted castle.
Peter stopped in the middle of the spacious room and didn't
know what to do. On Earth, the third millennium had been the
begin of an epoch of peace and wealth, and now, in the year 3069,
in the first century of the fourth millennium, life of people was
really happy and pleasant. They had nice flats, comfortable,
spacious houses, but this unbelievable luxury... such furniture,
pictures and wall carpets were only to be seen in museums on
Earth where they were common property and everyone could enjoy
them... But so much carving, so much ornamentals, the work of so
many hands in one single room!... And from this first room, doors
opened up to all sides: to balconies, to other rooms and other halls.
There were no such cleverly built corners in the Topkapi Serail in
Istanbul, the old castle of the Turkish sultans, no such
unexpectedly appearing hanging gardens like in these chambers.
One could gaze in awe for a hundred years if...
Well, if this all wouldn't have been so creepy.
He approached a door: it opened noiseless. He stepped back: the
door closed. He approached a table: on its surface , polished glasses
and bottles full of beverages appeared. He went to another table –
its surface opened, and a bowl with fruits came out. Peter couldn't
resist, he took a fruit from the bowl and took a bite. The taste
reminded him of the aroma of Earth fruits, and yet it was different.
It was as if he had tried an apple, orange, banana, mango, grapes
and pineapple at the same time.
Somewhere, a short melody sounded, very short, like the strike
of a clock.
In two hours, the prince expected him for lunch! But how long
was an hour here? Where, through which door, in which direction
he had to go?
He paced along the room again, and as if even his thoughts were
read here (maybe this was the case indeed?), a wallpapered door
which he hadn't noticed before, which maybe hadn't even been
103

there, opened. It led into a wonderful bathroom with a huge pool
that was also fitting for swimming. Next to the pool stood
comfortable loungers, snow white soft towels were ready, and on a
table were fragrant soaps, salves and other hygienic articles.
Peter put off his shoes and slipped off his clothes. What a great
feeling to bathe in this shining, clean pool!
He couldn't resist his curiousity, took a drop of the warm liquid
on his hand and analyzed it. It was fresh spring water with the
scent of woodland herbs, thirty degrees Celsius warm – an excellent
bathing water.
Peter splashed in the pool with great pleasure. First, he cleaned
himself, then he made some swimming movements. At this
moment, the water started moving, began to wave in the pool and
became some degrees cooler.
""This is a fairy land!", Peter called.
Again, he heard the melodic clock strike, he had to finish his
bath.
He climbed out of the pool – and almost fainted with scare.
The lounger where he had put his clothes and equipment now
was empty.
The clothes he had brought from Earth were gone, as was his
sidebag with the breather; the omniscope, the oxygen replicator, his
radio device, his compass and his chronometer... all had vanished.
In horror, he stood at the edge of the pool. He didn't even realise
that the air was getting warmer, that a gentle, good smelling breeze
came up which dried his body completely before he had even
touched one of the soft towels.
'What happens to me? I've been lured into a trap! I'm caged! My
instruments...' Now he had no orientation at all. Without the
interplanetary translator... without oxygen...
In his panic, it took him a while to realise a cabinet had opened
in which instead of his vanished clothes and his equipment new
shoes, underwear and a snow white suit were ready. An elegant suit
made of comfortably soft fabric, perfectly to his size.
He had no other chioce, he got dressed.
He began to sweat. He grabbed for a cloth to dry his face and
was thinking that his shaver had also disappeared.
Stunned, he looked at the cloth: by the light, drying movement,
his stubbles were gone. The fragrant cloth which was impregnated
with chemicals had removed his beard from his face and then
covered the skin with a pleasant, scenting salve.
104

The more perfect this silently serving mysterious technology was,
the more desperately frightened Peter became. How to escape from
here? How big was this universal power? The bathroom door opened
automatically again.
Exhausted by the excitement, Peter sat on a couch. The pomp,
the beauty, the sophisticated comfort of the hall added to his fear
and horror all the more: He felt the mysterious power in which
claws he had gotten into ever more.
105

27 – Council at the king
While Peter, plagued by uneasy thoughts, waited in the palace of
the Successor, there was another concerned council in the palace of
Benefactor XIII. It had only four participants: the king himself,
prince Warrior, the Successor; his brother prince Valiant and
Bighead, the chairman of the council of the Hundred Lineages.
Somberly, the king listened to Bigheads report.
In Oxygénias history, it had been countless times to bring down
lifeforms or liveless things from space. The cosmic defensive system
of Oxygénia automatically activated when a foreign object
approached its airspace. Bighead very politely reminded His Majesty
that this had happened for the first time during the reign of
Benefactor IX. It had been the first time to bring down a lifeform
unharmed from space. It had been subjected to a biological
examination. Today, it could be viewed, preserved, in the
cosmological section of the National Museum in Oxygenville... "Back
then, the Council had enacted the law considering Oxygénias space
relations. If I may remind about it...", Bighead said.
The king nodded. Bighead pushed a button. On the gobelindecorated
wall of the throne room, the text of the law appeared:
§ 1. The space surrounding the planet belongs to Oxygénias
sovereign territory.
§ 2. Every intruding foreign object – spaceship, lifeform or
liveless object – is to be considered as an enemy and to bring down
to Oxygénias territory for the purpose of closer examination.
§ 3. In case of an emergency, our automatic missile system can
destroy the intruder to Oxygénias airspace.
§ 4. If the approaching lifeform or the liveless object does not
pose a threat to Oxygénias existence, the launch of a protective hull
is ordered which brings the intruder down to our planet unharmed.
§ 5. If it proves to be an unknown object of lifeless matter, it is to
be subjected to physical and chemical examination under all
circumstances.
§ 6. If it is a higher lifeform, the chairman of the administration
board decides whether:
a) it will be brought into a servant city (also called city of the
Trunk Bearers) for memory erasure,
b) after an extensively detailed brain examination of the
lifeforms abilities – after according programming – it is to be
brought to Oxygénias profit in a City of the Rememberers,
c) biological examinations on it should be ordered.
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The display went dark. The king looked at Bighead
expectationful.
"Majesty, five and a half months ago, a foreign spaceship was
approaching our territory from the direction of the space station
'AAA'. It slowed down between the zones B and C and went into an
orbit."
"And has it been shot down?", prince Valiant interrupted
impatiently.
"No, Highness. Our automatic defense only activates in Zone A-
B."
"So the range of our defense system should be extended without
disturbing me at playing golf. Besides, security issues don't belong
to my business at all but are the matter of the Successor."
Bighead fell silent, embarrased.
"Go ahead", the king said.
"The spaceships hull had been hit by a meteor. The lifeform
exited the vessel into space. Hanging on a cord, it touched zone B at
this moment."
"So there was just the limit of zone B! Astonishing!", prince
Valiant called.
"Highness, even from a million miles, the limit is just a
millimeter", Bighead said, "a coincidence, but it was that way. The
lifeform came into the range of our silver light missiles, and of
course we instantly launched a silver light shell to bring it down
unharmed and forward it to the zoological institute. Regrettably,
however, it has vanished without a trace in the area of servant city
Alpha... According to the report of the radar control, the silver light
shell shattered at the moment it met the ground."
After a short break, Bighead continued:
"Some hours later the radio control reported that at wave length
6.17 weak signals were sent from this very same area, with the
repeating text: 'This is Peter, July, come in, this is Peter.' This
signals probably originated by the being. It was decided to bring the
being to the biological institute at the Grand Spring Festival, given
it was still alive by then. All of this wouldn't have been that much
important, if not..."
Bighead took another break.
"The frightening on this matter, which consequences we still
can't really estimate, is that the being... has gotten from the servant
city into the City of the Rememberers number Five."
The king looked at Bighead, affected.
"I don't understand."
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"Neither do I, majesty. It can't be understood at all. Oxygénias
security is based on the basic procedure that Central Control is
only managing the connection between the Cities of the
Rememberers and the servant cities under strictest control, using
the Secret Path. The Secret Path, however, is only known to the four
of us – at least that's what we thought until now. But after all that
had happened, it has to be known, who knows to how many!"
"The being from Earth could have found it by coincidence",
prince Warrior said.
"No, not in such a short time. And not without helpers", the king
stated and shook his head.
"The being could produce oxygen and also had food supplies, so
it could set off. The servants or the Rememberers, however, could
never overcome the way even if they knew about its existence."
"Find, arrest and execute!", prince Valiant shouted. "And extend
the range of our missiles. This is my suggestion, even if my dear
brother, prince Warrior, has the opinion that Oxygénia is already
completely safe with its actual missile defense system."
"My dear brother doesn't know how this case went further on,
but I do", Successor Warrior said icyly. "The being doesn't need to
be found and arrested because it has reported on his own from the
City of the Rememberers and is staying at my palace right as we
speak. We brought it to Oxygenville on the Secret Flight Route.
Here, we confiscated all its equipment and instruments. And it
would be an utmost foolishness to execute it too soon because if so,
we'd never get to know how his helpers were."
"And if it doesn't confess who his helpers were?"
"It will confess", Warrior said. "It will confess since it wants to get
back to its spaceship. I will make it believe that we bring it back
there. I welcomed it extremely friendly. We already smuggled
euphoria drugs in his drink during the flight and subdued all its
suspicion and uneasiness."
"We spoil it, flatter it instead of..."
"If my royal brother wishes for it, I forward the prisoner to him if
I can serve Oxygénias security better that way", Warrior replied.
"Bah, what does the prisoner matter to me! Are we done?"
"Soon, highness", Bighead said. "For the time during which we
watch the lifeform, I'd like to recommend some new security
measures. We should immediately have checked all schoolbooks,
the entertainment literature and the TV broadcasts which we send
in the servant cities, and let computers check the literature sent in
the Cities of the Rememberers. Facts hint that they may contain
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something that stimulates to think or creates unrest. It is probably
a superfluous security measurement since for now, after more than
two thousand indicated testings no single encephalograph has read
a stimulation or unprogrammed thoughts."
"Are we done now or not?", prince Valiant called impatentiently.
"If the books are suspicious, so there should be just the double
ration of alcohol made available after work. This is cheap and
doesn't bring any problems. I still want to go on a hunt today,
gentlemen."
"Of course, we are done, highness", Bighead said. "I only want to
ask permission of your highnesses to trigger alert in case of an
emergency again..."
"That depends on my royal brother", prince Valiant said, "if the
supreme leader of the state security is up to his post, we can go to
hunt reassuredly..."
109

28 – Does Peter meet friends?
Peter sat on the couch so exhausted as if he had climbed onto
mountains for three days and three nights. But he had sat there for
just a few moments when he heard the pleasant clock strike again
and then a low echoing gong. The double door opened, and Peter
went out. A moving carpet started to move along with him, through
halls and hallways, up some escalators and down others. He was
brought into a spacious luxurious dining room. It was set for two
persons. The moment his moving carpet arrived at the door and it
opened before him, the door on the opposite side of the hall opened,
too, and the smiling Successor entered.
The prince waved at his guest friendly, and they took their seats
opposite each other on the splendid set table.
Next to each set laid the menu, printed in golden letters, the
sequence of the foods and beverages of the royal lunch.
Surprised, Peter looked at the parchment menu.
The prince looked over to him, smiling.
"Yes, today's menu was already printed in the language of
Earth", he said, still smiling, "and you see, you even understand
what I'm saying."
"Indeed", Peter replied, surprised. "And I just wanted to tell you
that my translator has vanished... and as I realise now, you also
understand me despite me using the language of Earth."
"And I the one of Oxygénia. But we understand each other. The
translator is woven into your suit. With your friendly permission, we
examinated your translator and copied it. A very clever device!
Apparently, there are completely different yet not less insteresting
instruments built on your planet than on ours. Ours are light,
really tiny, flexible and comfortably fit into the pocket or the collar
of the suit. Before I forget, I have to beg for your pardon if you took
offense in us giving you clean clothing instead of your belongings
from Earth. We will gladly put everything at your disposal you'll
need , and the moment you depart back to your ship, you will get
everything back that is yours."
The prince looked at Peter with such an open and friendly face
that he once again didn't know what he was up to. If they had evil
intentions, they could already have killed him or have him thrown
to the Trunk Bearers. They could have him put on a chain and give
him to a research institute, or put in a cage to show him off to
curious ones... Only his fear, his impatience and his distrust
caused his bad emotions. It was only logical and natural that his
110

clothes which he hadn't washed in who knows how long time had
been exchanged for clean ones! And it was also obvious that here,
with plenty of oxygen rich clean air, it would have been ridiculous
to carry around a breather, an oxygen bin and unnecessary
instruments. Oh well, but why didn't a cabinet door open in his
rooms where he cut put everything on his own... why wasn't he
given a locker or a coffer? If he had knocked along the walls in his
room, maybe a cabinet door would have opened... but he had put
down his instruments together with his clothes in the bathroom.
Now it didn't matter anymore, it had already happened... Good
thing... luckily, he never pulled his ring from his finger... his
marriage ring.
He took the festive menu. There was a huge number of starters
from seafood and salads, followed by soups, roast, fruits, cheese,
ice cream and dessert. This was not the menu of a restaurant where
one had to choose from but the enumeration of the dishes of a
festive lunch. Suddenly, Peter felt a cramp in his stomach: the
Trunk Bearers with their pipe-like spoons and the salty thick mush
came to his mind, he had to think of Little ON tho whom raw
mushrooms and roots already were a delicacy...
"Cheers, to our friendship", the prince said and raised his glass.
The table plate opened up and closed, opened and closed again.
Fresh plates, richly loaded and artistically decorated bowls came,
tasty foods from which they ate only a bite each. And as soon as
they had enough of one and put down the cutlery, the next dish
appeared.
Quietly, accompanying the conversation, pleasant music played.
The melody reminded of the work of former, long since deceased
composers of Earth – of Bach and Beethoven – but the instruments
weren't the same. If they wanted, they could listen to the music, but
as soon as they started talking, the music became quieter, literally
faded, was still present, yet did not interfere with the conversation.
"If you wish for something, dear Peter..."
"Just a single one, prince. I'd like to get a radio transmission to
my wife who stayed aboard the spaceship."
"We will succeed in doing so still on this day."
"And how long is a day here?"
The prince laughed.
"It has the same length as you know it from Earth. But I thought
you would have found a watch and a calendar in your suit."
"I didn't really try and look", Peter replied, slightly embarrased, "I
just put on the clothes and found that I was so unused to them that
111

I didn't look for pockets on them. But now I realise that the suit
actually has some."
Thread-thin zippers were in many places of the suit. Peter only
needed to touch them and had a thin golden pencil, an empty
notepad and a pocket calendar in his hand. The front page of the
calendar said: Calendar for the Year of Mercy 1207.
He would so have loved to open it... but at the table of the prince
of Oxygénia, during lunch, this was unfitting. He didn't find,
however, a watch. He just wanted to mention it when he realised
that the sparkling cufflink was a small watch, both the left and the
right one. The watchface of the left was divided in twelve, that of the
right one in twenty parts.
"The clock on your left arm shows the time set of Earth while the
right one shows the time here. The duration of a day, however, is
the same. Just use the one which suits you best."
"You even have a clock of Earth?"
"During your bathing, we could easily reproduce it. And what a
nice jewelry are you wearing on your finger..." The prince looked at
Peters hand.
"I would be happy if at least I could gift it to you for your lovely
hospitality. But this is the one thing from which I'd never like to
part in my whole life... It's the engagement gift of my wife. On Earth,
it is common to put such a ring to each other's fingers as a symbol
of love at engagement. It means that both belong together, love each
other, that..."
"They wouldn't know without the ring?", the prince asked,
smiling.
"It's possible that to you, it's kind of a barbaric tradition... but
Earth is my home, and the traditions and conventions of my wife
are sacred to me."
"Of course, of course." The prince nodded politely.
They had already reached the twentieth dish. The dishes bore
earthly names: pheasant roast, turkey with chestnuts, apple flan...
and the taste much reminded of the one on Earth, but was finer.
Maybe this was caused by the air? Or was his longing for earthly
foods that big already? With each bite, he felt an inimitable,
pleasant aroma. The beverages, too, were excellent. He drank only
few so it couldn't get to his head. But there wasn't just a huge
choice of whine, but plenty of juices, milk, yogurt, mineral water,
tea and coffee on the table.
"I'd like to ask what plans you are pursuing with me?", Peter
asked.
112

"We don't purse any plans. You are a welcome guest to us. Our
astronomic central does calculations, establishes a connection to
your spaceship, and when it reaches an advantageous constellation,
we'll bring you back aboard your ship, if I got it right, the
"Humanitas". We'd like for you to feel well in the meantime, and will
take care of your schedule. May I seek for your approval not to
reject the request of the Academy of Sciences of Oxygénia? We
would be grateful if you would like to hold some lectures about
Earth to us. We infinitely value everything which extends our
knowledge."
"Of course, my pleasure", Peter answered.
"For tonight, we are invited at my bride, princess Goldhair. It will
be huge party. You are very welcome. You'll find the schedule of the
evening at your room. If you want to take a walk or drive a car,
please push the green button on the desk of your study. If at any
time you want to talk to someone, just push the golden button. Of
course, the translator will be working. Or do you wish for anything
else?"
"I just want to talk to my wife, to July..."
"Of course, we will notify you immediately once the connection is
established. And if you wish for anything else, it's enough to just
speak it out aloud, the listening computers are at your service."
113

29 – An evening under seven moons
The moving carpet brought Peter back to his apartments. During
the ride, he clearly determined that he passed completely different
rooms than on the way to the dining hall. It deemed to him that
they made the castle appear a labyrinth to him on purpose to show
him that it would be of no use to get on his way on his own since he
would get completely lost by trying so. But he hadn't that in mind
anyway. He was tired and apathetic. As great as the lunch had
been, how lovely and friendly the prince acted, as soon as he was
alone again, he had that uneasy, uncomfortable feeling again.
He was literally happy when the carpet stopped in front of the
door of his now already familiar apartments and the door opened.
He went from one room into the other, there were flowers
everywhere; everywhere, conservatories and balconies opened up;
then he reached the study. Undoubtedly, it looked very similiar to
elegantly furnished studies on Earth. There were comfortable
armchairs, a smoking table and some kind of huge writing desk.
"Interesting that there are no books here", he said, surprised.
The next moment, two boxes lifted from the desk plate. Peter sat
down in an armchair and grabbed in the left box. It contained a
catalog which was labelled "Fiction". The right box contained a
catalog of scientific books. He pushed a white button on the box.
On the desk plate, the subtitles of the scientific catalog lit up:
biology, astrophysics, mathematics.
"That's enough for me right now", Peter uttered, and the catalog
disappeared.
He grabbed into the pocket and took out the calendar.
C a l e n d a r f o r t h e Y e a r o f M e r c y 1 2 0 7
On the first page, the members of the family of the monarch
Benefactor XIII were pictured. The king and the queen Daisylike
with their two sons, princes Warrior and Valiant, and next to prince
Warrior, his elected bride, princess Goldhair.
On the second page was the map of Oxygénia, two semiglobes
with seventeen continents and the ocean. So up here, they knew
Oxygénia was not flat but a globe... they knew... and what else did
they know? More and more curious and excited, Peter turned the
pages.
Precise maps, statistics, history... Where was he now? On the
first map, Oxygénias seventeen continents were shown. They were
of about Australias size and shape. There was a single bigger
continent, this one was bigger than Eurasia. The smaller continents
114

surrounded it like a wreath, and the giant Black Ocean separated
the continents from each other. Eleven continents were marked as
uninhabited. The biggest part of the Large Continent was a plain.
Here in the plain were the servant cities, marked with grey squares
and divided by letters and numbers. Peter found zone Alpha.
Somewhere there had to be the servant city from which he had
started. No paths or roads were shown on the map. There was no
trace of the Secret Path. Also, the map didn't tell anything about the
cave system that had opened up at the Grand Spring Festival, and
in vain he studied the plan of the City of the Rememberers, no locks
or moving sidewalks were drawn. The middle and the northern part
of the Great Continent were hilly. According to the map, this was
where the Cities of the Rememberers were situated. There were
other Cities of the Rememberers on the continents II, III, IV and V.
These cities appeared to be completely independent from each
other; the fact that they belonged together was only recognizable by
how regularly they were set up. Peter didn't know in which City of
the Rememberers he had been exactly since there where three of
them not far from zone Alpha. How much this "not far" might have
been indeed he couldn't determine. There was a scale on the map,
but he could only see the bee line between the cities. The map
didn't state where rivers, valleys, canyons or walkable paths might
have been.
Amongst the smaller continents was one which didn't bear a
number. According to the map, it had the highest mountains. It was
comparatively far away from the inhabited continents and included
two inland seas. One was called Blue Sea, the other one Living
Water. On this continent was Oxygenville which lowest spot was
two thousand meters above the sea level.
The next page showed the city map of Oxygenville. Peter studied
it with full attention. This map was not as they were usually on
Earth, it was a tiny picture book. Peters exploring eyes found giant
mountains, unbelievably beautiful landscapes with springs, water
falls, motorways carved into the rocks, parks and magnificient
palaces. He even found prince Warriors castle, and after a short
look, he recognized the square where he had arrived, with its figures
and fountains. Interestingly enough, there was no hint of an airport
nearby. Maybe it wasn't the right square after all? Peter looked
again and again at castles, palaces, the houses in the forest, the
arenas, figures, squares, winding roads that led into the mountains
and the broad, seamed with trees and flowers streets. None was like
the other, every sculpture, every memorial and every waterfall had a
115

different color, a different character and triggered another mood.
Now he was certain: this was the square, without a doubt he had
arrived there. He minded it well: it was the south west edge of the
town.
There were also statistics on the map. In Oxygenville, only ten
thousand inhabitants lived. In the Cities of the Rememberers –
fifteen together – lived five million scientists and researchers, but in
the thousands of concrete cities on the Great Continent eight billion
beings.
Peter continued. The next was the calendary part. In Oxygénia,
the year was divided into twenty months. On the central continent,
climate was always pleasant, with a temperature between twenty
and twenty-six degrees Celsius, with frequent drizzle and a lot of
sunshine. The year consisted of three hundred days, so each month
had fifteen days, and every third day was the celebration of another
family. Oxygenvilles inhabitants were called Createds. They were
the successors of one hundred families or, if one wanted to put it
that way, one hundred tribes, the grandsons and great-grandsons
of those hundred families which, 1207 years ago, founded the
Oxygénia Trust. The founding had happened – as was to be read in
the short history summary – on a divine promise. The CEO, Mr.
Hart who would later become king Benefactor I, had a vision, and
on this godly inspiration he bought all areas in the middle of the
infested seas and continents which could still somehow be rescued.
By his genius, his energy, his excellent organizing talent he
gathered thousands and ten thousands of scholars, workers and
constructors and developed with them the blueprints of Oxygénia,
had it built according to his plans and founded the dynasty
Benefactor, and "that way created the happy life of the Hundred
Families and saved billions of beings from suffocation."
The history summary briefly indicated which advances had been
made in Oxygénia under the reign of the single monarchs.
Benefactor IV. had founded the Academy of Sciences, during the
reign of Benefactor V., greyhound races and encircling hunts had
been introduced... Here, Peter stopped short in his reading again.
Hunting? Greyhound races? So, accordingly, there actually were
animals in Oxygénia?
Amongst the celebrations of the Hundred Families, the first one
was the festivitiy of the royal family. In the pocket calendar was the
exact protocol for it: when the guests were to arrive, which clothes
were wished for, with which kind of flowers the girls were allowed to
decorate their hair and how deep the men had to bow. Also, the
116

highlights of the festivities were stated: the parade of the royal
guards (so something like this existed, too), a poetry competition, a
dance evening, sports competitions and a hunt that went on for two
days.
The family names in the calendar translated into Earths
language as such: Spruce, Loyalty, Wisdomer, Bighead, Glorious,
Kindness, Beautiwell and more like that. And next to each name,
the deeds and earnings of the family were stated, as well as of
course the opulent program of their family celebration.
"Which day may be today?", Peter said aloud.
On the desk, the answer lit up: sixth day of the eleventh month.
Namesake day of the Goldhair family.
Peter searched the pocket calendar and found that princess
Goldhair, the Successors bride, was to host a ball at eleven in the
evening.
Now he closed the calendar, and at that moment, the plate of the
desk opened again, and a nice little package appeared. Inside it,
there were invitations printed on gold shaped parchment paper.
"Princess Goldhair has the honour to invite the man from Earth
to her party", then there was an invitation by family Spruce to a fox
hunt, an invitation for a tennis match, an inviation to the cocktail
party of the Academy of Sciences. Invitation... Invitation...
"Hmm, that is lovely indeed... But I'd rather stay here for only a
short time", Peter mumbled to himself.
He approached the window and looked outside. Above a
wondrous garden of roses, firs and limes, the sky caved up dark
blue. The stars sparkled, marvellous like diamonds. And the
moons... Not only one moon, but one, two... seven out of twelve
moons were now visible in the sky, shining silvery-golden, smaller
and bigger crescent moons in seven spots of the firmament... and
somewhere between them, a spaceship orbited the planet, the
spaceship "Humanitas"...
Peter looked at his finger, at Julys ring. Now, this was his one
and only, his well kept secret – because inside the ring, a tiny radio
device was implemented. But in this room where the computers
always listened to every little noise, he couldn't make any use of it.
Here, the control stations of Oxygénia would receive every
transmission he attempted to send. And if he tried to receive Julys
signals, the computers inside the room would hear it, and his hosts
would get to know he still had a radio device with him. The only
place where he could try to get the signals from "Humanitas" was at
a very safe spot, if such one even existed, maybe outside... Where
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was July? Where was the spaceship "Humanitas"? Would he ever
get back there?
The pale light of the moons reflected on the ring.
On his desk, a greenish shimmering light began to blink, and a
voice spoke up in Earths language:
"Mr. Peter MacGulliver, we have established a radio connection
to the spaceship..."
118

30 – This is July! ... This is Peter!!!
July!
Peter!
Dearest!
Beloved!
You're alive!
I was so worried!
The radio waves brought the happy calls here and carried them
there.
Are you alright?
You're healthy?
We'll soon be together.
We'll return to Earth.
Be patient in the spaceship.
How are you? Everything alright?
The inhabitants of the planet will help me to return to you.
Should I land the vessel?
I can't really say anything about that yet, dear July. But as far as
I know, they're doing calculations as to where and when our reunion
will be the least dangerous and the best...
Shouldn't I land at your place?
No, July. Under no circumstances. I want to depart from here, but I
don't know when; it will be told to us in good time. Are you alright?
I'm fine and you, beloved?
Everything's fine!
Take care...
I can hardly wait to see you again.
We will be so happy...
How do you spend the time aboard the ship? Have you been very
scared? Didn't you get help from Earths space stations?
I did. By the rescue mission by Fortuna-710... I have everything...
I was just so worried... Now, everything's good... Just take care of
yourself, Peter!
You take care of yourself, too!
I love you...
I love you, too...
The transmission was lost. Peters heart beated so rapidly he was
almost afraid it would jump out of his chest. He wasn't sure if these
were his most important messages... But whatever. The prince had
kept his first promise, now there was already a radio connection.
July was alive. She was alright, a rescue ship was nearby... Now all
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that was necessary was a little patience. They would recover from
this adventure back on good old Earth...
In a glass on the table, a greenish drink shimmered. Peter
downed it with a single gulp and got pretty dizzy. ON, ORO and the
Trunk Bearers seemed so far to him as if he had only dreamed
them.
120

31 – Three reports
Report
Oxygenville, 7.11.1207, 9.20
The laboratory reports to Central Control:
The remains of the tabs found in the oxygen bin prove that the
being has worked on one or more machines in the servant city.
Report
Oxygenville, 7.11.1207, 11.86
A thorough chemical examination of the clothing and the shoes
shows dirt stains which origin from different spots.
According to this analysis, the being has left the concrete city, has
approached the coast and was next to the cave entrance at the
Grand Spring Festival. It got up to the City of the Rememberers by
foot on the Secret Path.
On the shoes, traces of lava and humus were found. The humus
contains living topsoil, remains of mushrooms, traces of fermentation
and rotting dead leaves. By the crust layers it becomes clear the
being has left the City of the Rememberers and returned there several
times, each time adding more humus remains to the soles.
Report
Oxygenville, 7.11.1207, 18.00
Zone "A-B" reports to Central Control:
ORO 91 encountered the being from Earth for the first time at his
home. It asked ORO 91 for help and accommodation.
ORO 91 has reported the presence of the being to Central Control!
According to calculations by the computers, it is likely that ORO 91
didn't know anything about the journey of the being between the
servant city and the City of the Rememberers along the Secret Path!
Encephalograph was negative.
Despite, ORO 91 was moved to servant city 78 after mind erasure
for security measures.
121

32 – Soiree at the princess
Again, this pleasant clock strike.
Unordered, the door to the bathroom opened.
That was what reminded Peter that he had to get ready for the
evening of the princess.
Now, he wasn't puzzled anymore in the least that all his clothes
were gone from the coucher in the bath when he left the water.
Instead, a brand new gala suit laid there. According to Oxygénias
calendar, he was invited for dinner at eighteen o'clock, what
corresponded to 21:36 o'clock when converted to Earth time. The
cufflinks of his new shirt were watches again, and yet again, he
found numerous little commodities in the pockets.
He had some minutes left until he would have to leave, so he
took a seat at the small table in the entrance room. He got the idea
of asking the computer whether there were newspapers in
Oxygénia.
As answer, a batch of newspapers and magazines appeared on
the table. The top one featured announcements regarding the ball of
princess Goldhair and the preparations: the flower decoration and
the main dishes of the event. A headline reported that a high visitor
had arrived to Oxygénia: Mr. Peter MacGulliver from the far away
planet Earth...
'I should take such a newspaper back home!', Peter thought. His
enthusiastic mood kept up as the escalator brought him to the
main entrance of the castle where, again, the prince arrived at the
same moment.
"I don't find enough words of gratitude", Peter said. "I was able to
speak to my wife: she is alright, and she's waiting for me... And this
whole lovely welcome, the newspaper report..."
"Not worth talking about. It's a pleasure and an honour to us",
the prince said, smiling, and indicated for Peter to take a seat in the
car that had just arrived.
"I hope that some time, we can welcome your highness as a
guest to Earth", Peter said. "And maybe we humans can help
Oxygénia. For instance, in producing enough oxygen."
"Why? Do you have the impression that the air here doesn't
contain enough oxygen?", the prince asked with a strange smile.
The car drove with them alongside a mountain ridge. The
landscape was probably even more beautiful now than during the
day. Five moons shone the sky, so no headlights were needed. They
wouldn't have been necessary anyway since the radar equipment of
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the automatic car would have recognized every obstacle, but the
passengers could enjoy the beauty of the silvery moonlit landscape.
The houses and palaces built on the mountains, on the edge of the
forest, on the shores of lakes and waterfalls shone like diamonds.
Peter couldn't determine whether electricity, neon or some other
glowing gas was emitting light in the colorful lanterns. But it was
marvellous. Now, at night, it was even better to see the giant
dimensions of the mountain area, and in the crystal clear air, the
lights from farther away buildings could be seen from the distance
already.
"I don't know if the data in my calendar is correct", Peter said,
"but I can't believe that in this wonderful and large city, only ten
thousand citizens are living."
"And yet, there are no more", the successor answered.
"Including staff?"
"There are no servants here. We only have machines."
"I'm seeing so many buildings..."
"Oh yes, every family has their living houses, plus some villas on
the lakes and some country houses in the mountains, and of course
the hunting huts. Additionally, there are the public buildings, the
clubs, the academy, the museums, the parliament and the
buildings of the economy controlling institute. And of course we
have stables for our horses, kennels for our hunting dogs, cages for
our falcons, and then, there are the sports halls, the yacht ports...
But you will get to know them all..."
The palace of princess Goldhair maybe was even more beautiful
than the one of the successor. Fountains shimmering in all colors
surrounded the snow white palace. Dancing colorful waters glowed
in the moonlight, and thousands of slim palm trees seemed to
guard the fairy palace.
Princess Goldhair – a marvellous being indeed! – awaited them
on the upper end of the stairs. The successor introduced Peter. The
gathered young men and girls welcomed him by loud clapping.
In old stories, Peter had read about such, seen similiar in
ancient movies: ball at the court, music, dances, beverages, spicy
air, glorious night, five silvery glowing moons, everything like in an
intoxication... Peter was offered a greenishly gleaming beverage in a
crystal glass... by drinking it, he once again felt as if he was
hovering in his sleep... Oh, how great it would be if July could land
in this fairy tale world and they could enjoy its wonders for one or
two weeks... maybe he just needed to ask the prince for it...
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"Mr. MacGulliver, don't you dance?", a young lady asked and
smiled at him.
"Why yes, I'd love to..."
It was a waltz-like dance. The young lady, wearing a light blue
dress, seemed to float in Peters arms.
"Take care", the girl said.
"For what?"
"If your face touched mine, you'd have to marry me."
"I'm married already", Peter said.
"I know, I couldn't become the wife to a man from Earth anyway.
Not to mention that my future husband was determined already at
my birth."
"Is this the usual way here?"
"Yes, for the balance of the families, there is a certain order for
marriages. And that is not a bad thing. My groom is very nice. Well,
if the engaged ones do oppose the decision very much, the king may
cancel it, but usually, we get along with it. We're learning together
from young age on, play together, and that way, anyone is a good
familiar to the other one, and a good friend. And all are beautiful
and healthy."
Puzzled, Peter looked at the girl. He thought she was joking or
wanted to make him believe something since she knew he was from
a distant planet. But the lady smiled.
"You don't believe it? It's even set how many childrens we can
get, and when. In Oxygénia, ten thousand Createds are allowed to
live at the same time, no more and no less."
"And how is this... how can such be controlled?"
"Oh, the computers are calculating it... we, for instance, will have
two children. And since the average life span expectation is three
hundred years..."
"Really? With us on Earth, it is only half as long. And the other
inhabitants of Oxygénia?"
The young girl made an affected, a bit bewildered face.
"You mean the beings? Those whom we give oxygen? I think they
exist about thirty years, as long as our dogs. Oh, you need to see
my great hounds! Did you get the invitation for the derby at the
Soughing Lake? It is tomorrow, at the race track of prince Valiant...
and the day after tomorrow, there's a fox hunt..."
"Yes... yes..."
"You, man from Earth, you don't even listen to me." The girl
laughed. "What is it with you?"
"I'm so unused to all of this. I've been a little dizzy..."
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A slim, blond young man bowed before the girl.
"My groom." Peters dancing partner nodded goodbye to him with
a friendly smile und floated away in the arms of the other man.
The music played, the whole giant hall seemed to spin, on a long
table, new crystal glasses filled with refreshment beverages kept
appearing, the empty ones sank away. "Ask the princess for a
dance", Peters dancing partner whispered to him while dancing by.
Peter MacGulliver approached the table where the stunningly
beautiful young lady of the house sat, together with the successor.
He bowed deeply, prince Warrior smiled approvingly, and the
princess graciously extended her hand to him.
125

33 – Report
Oxygenville, 13.11.1207, 8.05
Report of the Biological Observations Institute to Central Control
Increased the daily dosis of PXE for the being from Earth to 0.7
MG. The drug is 100% effective. The condition of the being is good,
temporarily euphoric. Its memory gets dull, its reflexes get slower, its
feeling for time is disturbed.
In our opinion, its interrogation can be started soon.
126

34 – Hunt – with a surprising prey
Peter had been in Oxygenville for a week already, and his time
flew by filled with continuous entertaimment. The young successor
acted as if he would take Peter for a friend of his own rank, he let
him invite everywhere and took him to water skiing competitions, to
dance events and ballett shows. The dance group consisted of
young people from the Hundred Families. Dance, singing,
instrumental music and art were taught to the younger members by
the elder generations as family traditions; anything else, from
handicraft to high mathematics, was taught by learning machines.
The newspapers and magazines, just like the sports review in the
TV, occupied themselves extensively with the winners of
competitions, brought long articles about the derby at the Soughing
Lake wich had been running great, and it was mentioned everytime
that His Majesty King Benefactor XIII with his wife, the two sons
and Mister Peter MacGulliver from Earth had taken part. The
winners got cups, medals or laurel branches as rewards. Many wore
the medals as awards. Peter was a good observer, but after the first
week, he was barely able to distinguish the faces of his new
acquaintances.
"I am in an embarrassing situation", he said during dinner to the
successor. "Just this morning, I greeted two young men at the
tennis square as team mates, but it turned out I had never met
them before. On the other hand, I passed by in a quite unpolite
manner Miss Lily-of-the-Valley without greeting her, but I had
danced with her at the ball of the princess."
"No wonder", the prince laughed. "We all look much alike here.
When the computers determine the future partner for the newborn
boy or girl, they also consider the recombination of the blood within
the Hundred Families. This doesn't just lead to an optical
similiarity, but also to an inner one and is a guarantee for a well
balanced administration of the state. Did you, dear Peter, already
read the memories of our king Benefactor I.? He put down this basic
principles in there."
"Thank you very much for this advice. I will read it", Peter said.
But a week had already gone by, and he hadn't made any advance
at all in his knowledge about Oxygénia. He would have loved to
attend a meeting of the Academy of Sciences. The successor had
mentioned that he would be expected there and that they would like
to ask him questions about the life on Earth. But the days went by
with cocktail parties, dance, horse races, garden festivals in
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fabulous orchid forests... and now, there was the royal hunt
scheduled for the early morning today...
Peter had never taken part in a hunt. On Earth, this pleasure
had been discontinued over a thousand years ago. The number of
wildlife animals had alarmingly decreased.
They were now kept in huge national parks where they could be
watched through binoculars. From time to time, the TV made
documentaries about them with cameras equipped with powerful
zoom factors, but to kill them for pleasure only or hunt them was
strictly interdict. Just as that, no bull or cock fights existed
anymore. Peter had turned the invitation back and forth with some
disgust. He'd have much rather stayed in the castle with some
interesting books or had visited the Central Economy Control where
Oxygénias economy, millions of machines, were controlled from.
But of course he had to take part in the royal hunt.
Instead of the clock strike, he was woken by a hunting horn – at
two o'clock in the morning already.
The bath water was somewhat cooler than usual, and he felt a
bit more refreshed after the bath than the days before. For
breakfast, especially tasty and spiced food was served, and a hot
beverage which reminded him of japanese Sake, a rice whine. He
wore a green suit, like the leaves in the wood, and light, brown
hunting boots. Down at the entrance, a green car waited for them.
"Isn't it somewhat bothersome to Your Highness to always be
occupied with me?", Peter asked.
The prince smiled.
"You are a polite man, dear Peter. I'm sure what you mean is
that sometimes, you wish for a different program than permanently
be in my company. I believe your wish is reasonable since I see that
with all the invitations and programs, you already know how to
handle them. I mentioned it at the first day already, there is a green
button on the desk in your working room. If you want to go
somewhere on your own, push it, and the car is at your disposal.
You simply tell it your destination in your language, and the car will
bring you there. Where do you want to go?"
"Quite frankly, I'd be interested in the methods of Economy
Control..."
"I always enjoy your company... But please, go there on your
own, and if you want, you can visit the institute tomorrow already."
"I'd like to do so even more because I think I can get back to my
spaceship in a few days..."
128

"That's right", the prince nodded. "Although it was just today
that I got the report that due to cosmic storms, the radio connection
is disturbed, and for at least ten days there's no hope for another
connection."
The green car now drove along a completely different route than
on their former trips to the castle of the princess, to the meadows at
Soughing Lake or to the tennis squares of the Wisdomer family. On
both sides of the road, steep rock walls ascended, and they drove
through this canyon for a long time until the road got onto a plain.
Here, the grass was as green as Peter had never seen it before. It
was as if someone had woven a carpet out of green gold, like silk in
the sparkling sunlight, with huge light blue, purple, red and pale
yellow flowers. It was a huge pasture land. A mountain with
unpermeatable brushwood and trees that seemed to grow up into
the sky rose behind it. They had reached the area of the royal
forest. On both sides of the roads, creeks fell down; on big,
overgrown with moss stones, the water glowed, and in the spraying
foam, trouts shimmered silvery.
The sun hadn't rose yet, but the moons began to pale. A dreamlike
pink-turquoise colored veil covered the sky, and the celestial
glow shone a silvery gleam across the land.
Suddenly, the car stopped. Prince Warrior gave a sign to Peter,
and they got out.
They had to walk several hundred steps on their own. The path
rose up and became narrow, a tight forest path. But the walking
seemed extraordinarily easy. Peter realised that the path moved
upwards with them under their feet.
The narrow path led to a clearing. On the opposite was the royal
hunting house. It was almost cloaking itself in the forest landscape,
as if it was made from trees, moss and leaves. It looked bright and
sublime, simple and noble – a masterpiece of architecture.
The king was already outside and sat on an armchair made of
forest moss. Around him, hundreds of young people in hunting gear
stood, but only men. To the kings left, prince Valiant sat, the
younger brother of successor Warrior. The successor accompanied
Peter to the bench and asked for permission to introduce him.
The king was an already elderly, stately, tall man. Peter knew
that he was approaching the twohundredfifty, but he still seemed to
be quite spry; on Earth, no one would have guessed him older than
eighty or ninety. Prince Valiant deferentially kissed his fathers
hand. The king accepted the obeisance of his son and Peters bow
129

with a merciful nod. He rose up and gave the sign for the beginning
of the hunt.
"I've never been to a hunt before", Peter said to the prince. "I
don't know what I have to do there."
The prince looked at Peter somewhat bewildered. For the
inhabitants of Oxygenville, hunting was a popular pastime.
"Get on your watching post and have fun there", he said, a bit
condescendingly.
The horns sounded and got ever more exciting, energizing. The
dogs became impatient and sniffed in all directions. The groups of
young men stopped their talking. No one of them bore a weapon
with him.
Now, the king started. Both princes walked closely behind him,
and they waved for Peter to join them. The other young men, too,
followed in small groups of two or three. Walking was again as easy
as from the car to the clearing. While they were on their way, the
one or other young guy friendly patted Peter on the back. As soon
as they had passed a few hundred meters towards the thicket, the
path suddenly divided. A dozen of narrow paths led to the right and
the left. Everyone knew where he had to go. Peter stopped for a
moment, hesitatingly. The successor turned around and indicated
towards a path. As Peter entered it, he noticed that it was a moving
rollway. It worked invisible and totally silent and brought him
through the dry leaves to the inside of the forest. Here, he was
completely alone. The lush forest hid him from his hunting
comrades; in the thicket, neither the dogs nor the hunters were to
be seen. Here, the quiet of the soon-to-come morning reigned.
The moving path ended at a massive oak. Peter looked around.
On the moss-grown side of the tree was some sort of ladder so he
could climb up very easily. Obviously, that was the perch that was
meant for him. He climbed up and looked around. Between the
branches, he found a marvellous hunting rifle equipped with a
scope. Back on Earth, he had seen similiar ones in the Anti-war
museum of the United Nations. As a school boy, he had visited it,
even took some of those murderous weapons into his hand, but
never had come to the idea to ever direct it at a living being. He
lifted the weapon to his shoulder, as it was shown in a movie in the
museum, pressed his eye to the scope and watched the forest. But
then, he put the rifle back down and looked at the tree more
attentively. In a cave, he found a nice canteen with spring water,
and fruits and biscuits on a tray. Peter bited in a fruit that looked
like an apple, then he directed his attention back to the landscape.
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The morning forest was glorious. Only the distant soughing of
water and the whispering of the leaves was to be heard. The sun
was just rising and formed a golden bridge between sky and earth.
The sky was silky blue like above the most beautiful islands of the
Mediterranean Sea or the Pacific Ocean, the air was filled with
honey scent.
Now, he heard bellowing horn signals, followed by the excited
barking of the hounds.
It seemed to him as if the thundering of hooves, the smashing of
branches and the sound of racing bodies would rip the silence of
the morning to pieces. Through the scope, Peter spotted a herd of
animals. He had never seen other animals like them, they were
stunningly beautiful. Their color was a transition from the brown of
the tree barks to the green of the moss. Black-brown stripes and
flecks decorated their backs. The shape of the body and the antlers
reminded him of deer, but their sparkling eyes and their sharp teeth
bore more resemblance of a tiger. The wild raced down into the
valley and back up again towards the clearing, towards the royal
hunting castle and the posts of the hunters. Now, rifle shooting was
heard from everywhere. The escape of the aninmals became faster.
A strange crying and roaring permeated the forest. The barking of
the hounds became wilder and wilder. Somewhere, hurt animals
cried. Then, the bushes before Peter opened, and mereley a
hundred steps away from him, a glorious animal with a giant antler
stopped. Only a tiny movement at the trigger of the rifle: the shoot
couldn't miss by any chance. Peter hesitated for a moment, then let
the weapon down. The marvellous animal ran on. At the same
moment, another rifle thundered, two shoots in a row. The glorious
wild was rearing up and collapsed. Blood streamed out of his eye
and the neck.
Peter felt a strong pressure in his stomach. Sweat began to cover
his face. He was shaken by fever and disgust. He was dizzy and
sick.
The son of Earth, for the fist time in his life, witnessed murder,
useless bloodshed, the death twitch of a living being.
On Earth, the forceful dead had become unknown for over a
millenia. The flowing blood, the broken eye of the killed animal, his
painful twitching was enough to shake Peter awake. The effect of
the daily dosis of the narcotic PXF was gone.
'What happened to me? What did they do to me? Since when do I
live here?', Peter thought in horror and wiped his sweat wet face.
Was it really himself who lived in this luxury and pageantry for days
131

or maybe even weeks? Spending his time with entertainment and
mindless pleasure? Should it be him, Peter MacGulliver, the son of
Earth, who was dancing there, participating in banquets and not
taking a single step towards his rescue? Had he really forgotten ON
and ORO and even almost July? What kind of fog had gotten onto
him?
The animal which laid in his blood twitched for the very last
time. And Peter was now completely sober.
'The ring! The ring at my finger!'
During the past days, he had sometimes, as much as his
intoxicated state had allowed for it, thought about using the tiny
radio device. But he was afraid that Central Control would hear and
delete his hails before they got through to July.
He also didn't dare to try to receive with the device because he
was afraid that the computers which were always listening to every
even so little sound would betray him at the very instant. The ring
would be taken away from him, the same way all his other
belongings were taken...
But what use was the tiny radio device inside the ring to him if
he didn't use it? What was it with him that he didn't dare to dare
anything?
He turned the ring at his finger, put it to receive and pressed it
against his ear.
He was alone on the oak. From the far, rifle shooting was heard,
the roaring of the wild and the barking of the hounds. The noise
was so much that he could barely hope to hear anything, but only
this way there was a chance that no one else would pay attention to
the radio signals.
At first, he heard only numbers. Someone was giving someone
orders. Were it machines or living beings? He didn't know. Six
million-four hundred thousand-sixteen... Received... Understood...
Eighty-five thousand-ninehundred-seven. Sixty-three thousand-0-
eight... Received... Understood.
Peter switched to another frequency. Now, he heard a
conversation. He listened carefully. Curious at first, then blankly
and then horrified.
The zoological institute claims possess of both beings from Earth
after the arrestation of the female since for the first time, this will be
the opportunity for biological observation of a pair.
Approved, another voice answered.
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Again, numbers followed. Peter couldn't determine their
signification. Then... Then something followed which let Peter
almost fall off the tree in horror.
A thundering voice hailed the spaceship "Humanitas".
And July responded to that hail.
The communication was in the language of Earth.
Peter was covered in sweat at his whole body as he listened to
the strange dialogue with curious attention.
This is "Humanitas"... You promised me that he will talk himself
today.
We ask for a little patience...
You told me so two days ago...
Two days ago? What did that mean, two days ago? So the radio
connection was established for several days? Peter felt his blood
freeze.
Please, it's not possible yet. It's true that it is only a slight
concussion, but we don't know...
What concussion?, Peter asked himself, affected.
At least one word so I can calm down...
If you insist... Please, Mr. MacGulliver, if the doctor allows for it,
speak a sentence...
Shocked, Peter heard his own voice.
July, dearest, we will meet soon, be patient in the spaceship...
This were his own words, the ones he had spoken about a week
ago to July. They had been recorded, re-arranged and now been
replayed.
He wanted to scream out loudly, to switch the device to send and
call to July: Watch out, don't believe them, but luckily, he could
grab a hold of himself. If he had spoken now, they both would have
been lost without any hope.
The communication went on.
Your husband is in our hospital with a broken leg and a
concussion since the accident, a voice said. So I repeat, there is no
other possibility than for you to land at us... The landing will be in
exactly seventy-two hours, we will guide your ship down with our
instruments or, if necessary, you will get instructions from us how to
steer the ship and how to set your instruments. In the meantime,
please rest.
The communication was terminated. Peter almost got
unconscious in his excitement and the realization of his
helplessness.
133

He hadn't even noticed the sun was already in the zenith. He felt
no hunger and sank down in despaired brooding.
Now he decided to stay outside as much as he could so he could
continue to follow the radio communication. Maybe... maybe he
could take some action. Now, he congratulated himself for his
caution not to try to hail July until now because towards the
outside, all signals were shielded, and he would have given away
himself before the right time...
For hours, he was so deep in his thoughts that he was startled
when the horns sounded again and thus announced the end of the
hunt.
As if he was sleepwalking, he climbed down from the tree. The
water and the food on the tray remained back, almost untouched.
He had the chills, felt a fever the next moment, but he decided to
restrain himself so his excitement wasn't to be seen to the others.
The moving path at the bottom of the tree now moved backwards
so he hadn't to look for the right path.
The forest was cool, a slight wind moved the leaves of the trees.
The air was filled with the pleasant scents of the evening, the moons
rose in the sky, and Peter felt that there would be no being more
unhappy than him in the whole universe.
By the time he returned to the clearing at the moving path, a
giant campfire was already burning there. Around the moss-made
throne of the king, now girls stood, with floral wreaths in their
hands – for the best riflemen. The horns sounded without a break.
The hunters put their prey down in the grass and stood proudly,
their rifles on their shoulders, between their hounds and the dead
animals. Peter was the only one who came without a rifle, without
prey, sweaty and exhausted.
The horns faded out, and the king spoke up.
"The gold medal of today's hunt is earned by our guest, the man
from Earth, Peter MacGulliver, who showed a great deal of selfcontrol
and let the tiger deer with the golden antler for His Majesty!"
"Horray!", the hunters shouted.
Now, Peter didn't understand anything anymore.
The young hunters next to him shook his hand. The tiger deer
which had raced past his post wore golden rings at the ends of his
antler. It would have been the biggest rudeness to shoot this wild
from the king. Surely, only very few would have been able to resist
the temptation... Hooray, hooray, hooray...
134

A beautiful girl put a floral wreath on Peters head. The king
waved for him to come to him and handed him a hand-sized gold
medal.
"How do you feel here with us? Do you wish for anything?"
"It is really great here, majesty. But I would like to retun to the
spaceship, get back to my wife and to my home."
The king turned to prince Warrior.
"How are things going with the journey of our dear guest?"
"Everything is going very well, father", the prince answered and
bowed deeply.
135

35 – The house of the Central Economy Control
The morning after the hunt, Peter felt a massive urge to run
somewhere outside, switch on his radio again and hear Julys voice
and get to know everything, everything.
But he had to be smart.
They had returned to the castle only after midnight because the
hunt was followed by a giant banquet. The dining hall of the royal
hunting castle had been set for a thousand people. Poultry and
venison, uncountable kinds of wine and delicious fruit had made for
a joyful mood. The young hunters sang happily, then formed a big
circle and showed a circle dance.
Peter had drunk, danced and sung with the others, but his heart
nearly shattered from impatience.
On schedule for the new day was the visit at the house of the
Central Economy Control.
He always met the prince according to a pre-scheduled program.
He didn't know how he could have called him, and the prince,
likewise, never called him in his rooms. Peter wondered about that.
Was there no telephone here? On Earth, everyone had his phone
and could call anyone at any time and from any place. Or was
something like that here, too, and he was just not supposed to
know about it? If he had some wish, he just had to speak it aloud –
in Earths language - , and the invisible machines served him
without a reply, but with scaring precision.
To his visit today, he went alone. He pushed the green button on
his desk, the doors opened, moving carpets and escalators brought
him to the exit, and there, a marvellous ivory-colored little car was
waiting for him. "To the house of Central Economy Control", Peter
said.
The car's door closed, and it drove along with Peter, again at
another road, into a different direction. Thanks to his pocket
calendar, Peter already had a good orientation in Oxygenville and its
surrounding. He had also re-evaluated that the square he had
found at the map was indeed the airport where he had landed with
the plane. He also knew that the Central Economy Control was
settled in the southern district, pretty far away from the centre.
Peter studied everything he got his hands onto with great
diligence, maps and statistic annuals. He felt as if he could only
stand to the mighty and devious enemy if he would comprehend
him, if he found a hole in the suffocating net, if he managed to find
a gap somewhere in the inexorable controls. Sometimes he felt as if
136

his limbs were heavy as lead and his brain numb, then it was
enough to think of July and his despair situation, and he felt new
energy. Just like that, he had sat into the car with the hope of
maybe finding a solution at the Central Economy Control, to get to
know something that was important for his survival. Maybe he
could discover something here at the dashboard of the car that
could help him to escape. No, it couldn't be that he was completely
lost. He had achieved the impossible with ON, he had gotten with
him from the city of the Trunk Bearers to the City of the
Rememberers. But where was ON now, and where was ORO, where
were his friends? And where was his equipment, his oxygen
replicator? The small sender and receiver, the only thing that was
left to him, he wore at his finger, but he didn't dare to use it.
The car drove up the winding roads; summits, forests, lakes and
castles appeared and disappeared again. The sky was shining azure
again. The speed of the vehicle increased more and more. There was
no speedometer, but Peter realised at the landscape streaking by
that the speed had multiplied by several times. Without an
announcement, the vehicle rose up in the air. Peter felt that it
retracted its wheels and was now flying as a jet.
Soon he was looking down at the landscape from about two
thousand meters above the ground. When the vehicle rose up in the
air, he was surprised and stunned although from Earth, he knew
vehicles that moved at three, four, five or even six different modes of
transport. But on this planet, everything happened so unexpected,
without any announcement or explanation.
He had flown for maybe an hour at a great speed when the
vehicle touched down again and continued to drive on a winding
road. After a short time, it stopped in front of a huge complex of
buildings.
The main building was unpretentious, with smooth walls and
without windows. It had a cylindrical tower from which thousands
of metal rods rose, like TV antennae, and a giant radar was
spinning.
Peter got out of the vehicle. The door of the main entrance
opened before him, and a polite man in a blue suit approached him.
"I am the manager of the Central and its single employee at the
same time. I would be glad if you felt good at us... Please tell me
what you want to know."
137

'How I can get back to Earth', Peter thought, bitterly. Aloud,
however, he said: "Whatever you want to show me... I'm interested
in everything, and I am very grateful for everything..."
The middle part of the institute was the computer central. It was
enormously huge, with thousands of screens all around at the
walls. Other screens continuously displayed scrolling data.
Something was softly soughing, humming and ticking.
"What you are seeing here is the brain of Oxygénia. Everything
that happens on our planet is controlled from here. There are
processes which we programmed five or six hundred years ago, and
we only change them if at least ten out of twelve of our checking
subcentrals deem this right and reasonable. But if it's necessary,
we can change thousand different processes in a thousandth
second, beginning with the smallest innovation up to the biggest
invention."
"And how did you become manager of the institute?"
"We are one hundred managers and take over from each other
every ten hours. As you may know, Mr. MacGulliver, there are one
hundred families in Oxygénia, or, if you like to put it that way, one
hundred tribes, and each tribe has one hundred living members.
One member of each tribe is educated for manager of the Economy
Control. If needed, the one hundred managers can come together
and make important decisions. But luckily, the whole economy
process built after the principles of our first king, Benefactor I., is
so flawless that during the last twelvehundred and seven years, the
manager's council had to come together only about four hundred
times, and even then, mostly because of superfluous caution."
"On our planet, there are also lots of machines... but I believe not
nearly as many as in your central institute."
The manager smiled, proudly.
"I don't believe, either, that there is something like this
somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy again. We are following what's
going on on other planets as good as we can, learn from it and
make use of that knowledge for our purposes. But please, if you
want to follow me now into the observation tower."
A noiseless elevator brought them in a hurry to a circular room.
A push on a button, and the walls were gone and replaced by
some glass-like, look-through material.
"I may assume that you know the map of Oxygénia. Now we want
to look at it from a vertical point of view."
Peter looked down: he saw summits and the palaces of
Oxygenville and, farther away, an orange colored billowing.
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"I'm zooming right in", the manager said.
He pushed a button, and the glass screens went misty for a
moment, only to shine up in a purple light. And at the bottom, the
landscape appeared, but it looked like the lid would have been
taken from a cardbox to look inside, or as if the the roof of a ten
story high house had been lifted so one could see from the attic to
the basement.
The upper layer was Oxygenville.
"You know that, that's uninteresting", the manager said, "let's
look at the next layer."
Oxygenville disappeared before their eyes and was replaced by a
complicated, silvery shining system of tubes.
"This is about one hundred meters below Oxygenville", the
manager explained. "Wait, I'm zooming in."
Only now, Peter saw it more clearly and began to understand it.
It was an almost impermeatable network of cables, tubes and pipes,
of canals and pump systems. And there were machines and more
machines, and everything was working, rotating; levers that moved
automatically, arms, gears, subterranean giant factories with
instrument dashboards and conveyor belts – everything without a
single living being to control it. The camera now followed the
conveyor belts. Into immeasurable storage rooms, immeasurable
amounts of products were delivered. Food, bright colored carpets,
tennis balls and armchairs, cars and rifles. Then, again huge
instrument dashboards became visible, with constantly humming
computers with greenishly glowing screens. "These are the
automatic server centrals", the manager said. "The energy sources
of our planet are almost inexhaustible. For the technical stand of
our factories it maybe is characteristic that we have about two
hundred thousand computers at our disposal which are
programmed by one million of experts. But maybe everything gets a
bit clearer if I start the visualization of our production at the most
primitive part..."
Again, the manager pushed a button. The glass screens became
glowing red and then slowly changed to grey.
"Now we've pushed through the ion curtain", the manager
explained. "It is the locking border of the oxygen zone. But we'll see
about this later... Please look there..."
Before Peters eyes, a picture well known to him appeared: a
square in a city of the Trunk Bearers. Beings that moved along
slowly and tired, benches, then the working halls, a row of
139

machines, the monotonous work: pulling a lever on the right side,
then the same on the left side, again and agin, without an end.
"The method is very simple", the manager explained. "We could
work those machines with machines, but that wouldn't be of much
sense. On Oxygénia, eight billion servant beings are living, and we
want to keep them occupied. In exchange for their work, we cover
the physical and psychic needs of these lower beings with our
machines. The oxygen they are given is perfectly enough for living.
Of course, we could produce unlimited amounts of oxygen with our
advanced technology, could clean the biosphere, make the ground
of the black continents fertile and clean the ocean, too. But for what
reason? Today's system of rationing oxygen was developed by our
great king Benefactor I. The limited oxygen warrants the total quiet
of the mass. Everyone stays in his place because why should he go
somewhere else? There is no competing, no envy, no revolution, and
there is no thinking. There is no travelling around, because for the
movement, oxygen is needed. That way, we got rid of one of the
biggest dangers for our civilization, the overcrowding, at once. The
rationing of oxygen has completely stopped the thoughtless and
scaring proliferation of the lower layers of the population... The
eight billion beings do work our machines and multiply due to strict
calculations. And so, we created a so sophisticated culture,
literature, philosophy, social peace and justice like it, I want to
repeat that, won't be found anywhere in the universe again."
"Have you... ever been down there at these beings?", Peter asked
with a hoarse voice.
"No. This is neither necessary nor even possible", the manager
stated calmly. "The traffic between the continents has been
terminated for all times. From down, no one can come up here, but
we – you can well believe me this – don't feel any desire to get down
there... By the way, may I explain the function of the ion curtain at
this point. This constantly heavily moving curtain of gas ions and
radiation is keeping the oxygen-rich air of Oxygenville from mixing
with the gas layer of the continents. This ionosphere consists of
about a thousand meters of ozone-rich gas. All waste of the huge
industries of our planet gets into the Black Ocean and in the lowest
air layer. The lower five hundred meters of the ion curtain enclose
the polluted gas layer so tightly that there is constantly absolutely
no wind in the servant cities. The same zone enables for us to direct
a bit more light and a slightly better air mixture in the Cities of the
Rememberers. But I believe you won't be much interested in these
chemical and physical matters..."
140

"But yes... Very much indeed", Peter assured him. "And what
happens when ever more dirt gets in the seas and the air of the
servant cities... Where is the limit?"
"Of course, we closely follow the composition of the atmosphere
of our planet at any time. The situation is far from being dangerous.
No matter how much carbon monoxide is in the atmosphere of the
Great Continent, it won't threaten the inhabitants of Oxygenville.
And under the breathers, it doesn't matter at all. And as I said, it is
completely up to our capabilities to clean the biosphere..."
"Right now", Peter said, "and if the pollution gets even heavier?"
"Right now." The manager shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, the
pollution keeps getting heavier all the time, but our technology also
keeps getting more perfect. And what our technology is up to, I'd
like to demonstrate to you with a little game, the Grand Spring
Festival."
'Game', Peter thought. 'The fate of eight billion beings, their
religious delusion, their longings and hope, is all only a game
viewed from here.'
"You will soon see the Cities of the Rememberers... But maybe I
may invite you to a business lunch meanwhile. We can follow all
this as well from the table..."
In the middle of the observation tower, a small round table with
comfortable armchairs stood. At the push of a button of the
manager, marvellous tablets with roast meat, fruits, ice cream and
refreshment beverages rose up.
"On the occasion of the Grand Spring Festival, we pull the
curtain aside, figuratively speaking. Through the lock system, we let
air enriched with oxygen and according stimulants flow at certain
points above the servant cities. They see this as a cave, are learning
it this way from their books that way, too, albeit it is in fact wind
streams flowing along natural valleys. The air can only flow
downwards, of course we block a backflow of the polluted
atmosphere and mixing with our air. The most important goal of the
Grand Spring Festival is the selection of the Trunk Bearers. Imagine
the enormous administration that would be necessary and the costs
it would cause if we wanted to check out on every single servant
and equip them with NFC chips. It would be troublesome, awkward
and completely superfluous after all since they are unadventurous,
peaceful beings that are unable of thinking and making
observations on their own. Their senses are numbed. Therefore, it is
necessary for us to add more colors to the grey TV broadcasts when
the Grand Spring Festival is getting closer, make them more lively,
141

ignite certain longings and excitement. Apart from that, they know
of no other wishes than for oxygen and food. Their sexual drive, too,
is reduced to the Grand Spring Festival, to a few hours, like with
animals. If, for instance, you would fall right into the middle of a
servant city, you could walk along these beings for years without
anyone caring for you. All of that is achieved by our excellent
numbing drug, the Green Drops. This drug lets everything in the
beings get numb except for a certain reflex, which is limited to
realise that there is a connection between the oxygen, the food and
the work. So the beings work precisely, attentive, with all their
power and diligence. Of course, there are changes in the production
schedule, it can become necessary for one or other facility to
produce more or less. Our computers change the program and the
quota of the single machines in a thousanth second. Some
machines get blocked by gratings, so the beings need to go to
another working place. On another station, we reduce the amount
of oxygen for the same work and this way can force the Trunk
Bearers to work longer. In a similiar way, the usage of food can be
controlled. We provide more or less oxygen consuming foods, add
more or less Green Drops... But I got a bit off our topic, I'm afraid.
We demand work and regulated proliferation from the beings to
ensure the continuous support of Rememberers. The most
important feature of the Gren Drops is that they don't interfere with
the psychic and physical abilities of the offspring, don't mess with
the sexual hormones and the biological cells. They don't destroy
their function, only subdue them. Thanks to this, the servants
procreate healthy offspring from which we can select several
millions of engineers, mathematicians, architects, biologists and all
other kind of specialists without any trouble, whatever is needed in
the future. But I don't know whether all of what you just saw wasn't
very exhausting for you?"
"No, not at all", Peter exclaimed, eagerly.
"Good, because the interesting part is yet to come. I'd like to
show you the Cities of the Rememberers. Until the reign of
Benefactor VIII., we weren't completely in charge of directing those
who do the more advanced mental work. They consumed too much
oxygen and used only a part of their energy to do their assigned
tasks. Without oxygen – I mean, without oxygen in bigger amounts
– there is no advanced mental work. So we provided the intelligence
plenty, I'm tempted to say, we spoiled them. In exchange, we wished
for nothing more than that they cared for nothing else and didn't
think of anything else than solving the problems they were assigned
142

to. But sadly, this fight was in vain. Even if the majority of the
reasonable scholars and engineers adhered to this holy duty, they
consumed unnecessary energy for keeping themselves disciplined
and thus wasted oxygen. According to the encephalographs taken at
random times, they fought a continuous fight against their
wandering and drifting thoughts. The continuous checks were
expensive and difficult, and the results showed that, induced by the
precious oxygen, in most scholar's brains there were superfluous
thoughts, even dangerous and malicious ones for the order of
Oxygénia.
The court physician of the aforementioned king Benefactor VIII. –
back in this time, healing hadn't been an exclusive task to
machines – so the court physician, named The Genius by history,
discovered the simplest and best method to resolve this issue. The
brain of the beings doesn't use its full capacity even when fully
supplied with oxygen. So we determine the most valuable part of
the brain according to the results delivered by the very careful
examinations performed by the instruments, and we stimulate that
part. The oxygen supply of the other parts, however, is reduced to a
minimum. The activitiy of the parts supplied with plenty of oxygen
is increasing; excellent thoughts, ideas and crisp logic resolves are
born from it. How much that is the case indeed is proven by the
unbelievable technical progress of our economy and science since
the reign of Benefactor VIII. The other parts of the brain, the
subdued ones, will of course live on, but don't produce thoughts,
they perform their vegetative functions automatically, but don't
disturb the specific thoughts which are directed towards one single
goal. The beings are balanced, happy, they have no worries, no
disturbing thoughts. We care for their convenient living, and they
thank us for it with great solutions of their assigned tasks. If you
allow, I'll accompany you to the second control room from where
you can watch these tasks. Controlling of the scholars is, of course,
more strict than the one of the inhabitants of the servant cities.
Those who are chosen for the Cities of the Rememberers get their
personal NFC chip together with their brain screening. They present
this NFC chip to the control machines at their working places, they
open and close the doors of their houses with it, they can enter the
restaurants with it, can shop with it, and according to the signals of
our machines, they are to report to their brain checkups with it."
"I don't understand this", Peter said.
The director explained politely.
143

"The human brain is an imperfect computer. Even the most
careful operation is not for all eternity and not perfect. From time to
time it happens that after some time, the brain of some scientist
doesn't work in the exact direction it is meant to do. He occupies
himself with superfluous, useless and maybe even disturbing
thoughts. So he doesn't just consume more energy and has a lower
performance, it can eventually become, hm... even if not dangerous,
so at least malicious for the great working whole. Our sensors and
computers react very sensitive to even the slightest difference. In
this case, they send a danger report to the Central Control of the
Rememberers, and the according scholar has to report for an
encephalographic examination at once."
"And what happens if he doesn't report?"
"His NFC chip becomes invalid. So he doesn't get oxygen or food,
can't open the door to his apartments..."
'These are the refugees in the canyon', Peter thought.
"But maybe we should have a look at a City of the
Rememberers!"
The manager pushed several buttons at the dashboard, and the
outer wall, this strange, glass-like maerial – or was it some kind of
radiation? – now vibrated in a pale purple glow. The city was visible
beneath them now, the same way as the landscape is seen from the
cockpit of a plane. The view was wonderful: beautiful buildings,
colorful houses, gardens and radial roads.
"The vegetation is artifical", the manager said, "let's get closer!"
He turned some of the buttons and continued to explain.
"I don't know if I mentioned it already that those who are elected
for mental work are given a designation at their NFC chip which
encodes their special profession. For instance, the group of the
draftsmen bear the beginning letters FE, the chemists AK, the
mathematicians ON and the surgeons ORO. Within these main
groups, there are several subgroups: FE 1, FE 2, FE 3, which are
completed by personal numbers, like FE 1-31... But maybe you'd
like to look down at a working place."
The manager indicated at a keyboard with letters and numbers
within Peter's reach.
"Just push different letters and numbers at will."
FE, AK, OS, SOM, Peter read. 'There!' The group ORO followed.
As if he did it randomly, he typed ORO 91 and looked excitedly at
the screen.
"ORO, these are the surgeons", the manager said. "The subgroup
9 is responsible for programming highly complex operations.
144

Surgery, in our society, doesn't mean that the surgeons are
operating a sick person at a surgery table. Here, all operations are
performed by machines, but the developing of new operations, the
research of new procedures, especially the brain screening..."
"Right", Peter replied and stared down at the picture. The
working place had appeared. Complicated instruments, a male face
watching them attentively. A face... the picture was clear, of perfect
quality...
"ORO 91", the manager said.
It was an unknown face, a completely unknown face which didn't
look the least like the ORO he knew.
"... and what happens", Peter asked, swallowing hard, "if, say, a
being... let's say, can't go on to do his work..." (Peter didn't muster
the strength to ask the question as he meant it: "What happens if a
being dies?")
"It happens that a scholar isn't able to continue working at his
tasks. Then, we keep the NFC chip, and he is reassigned back to a
servant city. Before that, his memory is erased. His place is taken
by another one. Since the designation at the chip doesn't specify the
person but the working place, the successor gets the sign and the
number of his predecessor. ORO 91, whom you just saw, always
refers to the tasks, independently from the person which is
assigned to it... We're working with a pretty plenty supply of
scientists. And those scholars held at backup are in a continuous
training. There are working places where we have only one or two as
backup, but there are other areas where the wear, the loss, is
extraordinarily huge due to inevitable contacts of the logical
thoughts with the disturbing zones; there, we have twice or even
thrice the number of active scientists as backup available... What
else could I show you?"
"It has been a bit tiring indeed. Understandable since all of this
is unknown at our planet", Peter said with a sparing smile. "I
believe it would be wise for me to get back to the palace."
The manager rose, politely.
"I would be glad if you would want to visit us again another
time."
"Thank you very much. Please allow me for one question. Maybe
it would be useful if I would take a little walk out in the fresh air. Is
there a park somewhere nearby here, a service area or a recreation
area where I could for an hour..."
"There are thousands of them", the manager laughed. "You do
have a pocket calendar, or may I give you one?"
145

"Yes, I have one, thank you."
"Well, you see, the aircar will bring you back to Oxygenville at
this route. If you command the machine: get back with a stopover
in YA, then it will stop at the point marked with YA at the map and
will wait for you for any time. The handling of these new cars is
extraordinarily simple. Its inventor, his designation is ONG 3, is
working at them for seventy years, and this is his two thousandth
accepted project. If you just think how many brains not stimulated
and directed would have been necessary for such an achievement!"
"Genius indeed", Peter said and got into the waiting ivory-colored
car.
146

36 – In the park
"Back to the palace with a stopover in YA", Peter said.
Obediently, the car started moving. It went at a high pace, and
soon, the huge block of the Cental Economy Control had vanished
from Peters view. Friendly forests and meadows followed, and there,
the car rose up in the air again, flew along the blue sky in the bright
sunshine above a heart-pleasing landscape.
He had to try to think strategically.
He had to shake out of this petrifying despair.
He was already aware that the society of Oxygénia was a scary
closed world, that every one of his steps was controlled, that...
No, he didn't know anything, and less than anything else, he
knew what was wanted from him and what was planned for him.
The vehicle flew above two snow-swept mountain tops and
landed at a lake shore in the middle of a fairy land. On the map,
this was point YA.
For the first time, Peter saw children nearby. Down in the city of
the Trunk Bearers, the little children went along crippled, pale, with
breathers. Tired and uninterested, they took the grey machine
models and the puppets with grey trunks from the shelves of the
warehouses. In the canyon, however, he had met premature,
hungry children with glowing eyes. But the flock of children that
was dancing, playing and jumping here was the sheer luck itself.
The children sang, danced, yelled, threw colorful balls, played their
wheels and played with wonderful puppets and little cars. Peter
climbed out of the car and watched their bustling. Two little boys
jumped around naked in the crystal clear water of a fountain. On a
tennis square, smaller than the one for the adults, girls in snow
white dresses hit the balls. And the sun shone from the clear sky
above so much undisturbed joy...
In a corner of the playing park, music sounded. Young girls and
boys played beautifully on small instruments which reminded of
violins. Strollers surrounded them and then went on. The youths
gave a concert for their own pleasure.
Just a few meters from the concert stage away was a row of
colorful parasols. Peter sat on one of the tables. Its plate opened
right away, and a cup with ice coffee and cream appeared.
'This is not true', Peter thougt. 'It can't be that on one single
planet, there is so much pain and so much beauty, so much joy and
so much hellish unjustice at the same time. Where had ORO gone?
147

Had he been killed? Had he been thrown down to the Trunk
Bearers? What about ON? And which fate was waiting for him?'
Except for him, no one sat on the tables with the colorful
parasols. He felt as if he was safe here. Once again, he switched his
tiny device to receive. Then, he waited for at least half an hour. A
monotonous voice listed infinte amounts of numbers. There was no
radio connection between July and the local station.
He didn't feel in the right mood to return to the palace already,
so he decided to take a stroll for half an hour and then try receiving
once again.
At the other end of the park, he noticed a bigger flock of children.
Here, between deep rocky canyons, was a zoo. The animals could
roam freely down there and where only separated by the steep rock
walls. The kids happily looked down there, at the teddy-like, clumsy
animals which trotted along slowly, and the tiger deer which
jumped from one rock to another.
Peter sat at the edge of a rock and switched his ring to receive.
Oxygénia is hailing "Humanitas"...
This is spaceship "Humanitas"... I'm reading you, he heard Julys
voice which he held so dear.
Course correction is necessary... Set preparations for landing...
I've set the preparations...
Peter began to shake, and his whole body began to break out in
sweat.
148

37 – A frightening meeting
Peter still sat on the edge of the rock and listened to the radio
communication. He felt the almost irresistible urge to switch the
device to send, to yell into it, only short: "July, be careful... July,
watch out... This means grave danger..." But he knew that this was
impossible, that he mustn't give away himself, that he still had to
wait with the device... But for what? How could he have become this
clueless, this helpless? ... The children around him noised around
happily and jauntily.
Suddenly, an urgent calling caught his attention.
"Earth inhabitant, help me... Human, brother, help..."
Peter almost jumped, startled.
He understood the words. They were in the language of the twoheaded
inhabitants of the planet F-317 of the Milky Way. For three
centuries, Earth had close relations with this friendly planet. The
language of F-317, or the Fire Planet, was taught at the universities
of Earth, and delegations of both planets visited each other
regularly. The planet had earned its name by the phenomenon that
during dawn and dusk, its surface gleamed red like fire.
Peter looked out for the source of the voice.
He gazed down into the rock valley. A nude, two-headed,
despaired being tried to climb up the by far too steep and smooth
rock wall and waved to him.
"Earth inhabitant... Do you understand my words? I'm held
caged... Help me... Earth inhabitant, my name is... Do you
understand me? Bring the message to my home that I was caged...
tortured... They don't let me home... Earth inhabitant, help me...
don't believe them... Answer me if you understand me... No, don't
answer... you would get yourself in danger... Farewell, Earth
inhabitant... Bring the message to my home world..."
The children who watched over the edge had a really good time
about the gesticulating little two-headed creature. They threw him
sweets and oranges and clapped their hands.
"Oh, how adorable, oh, how sweet..."
"If you don't watch it, you'll grow two heads, too!", a somewhat
older girl jokingly called to a little boy.
Peter had nearly come to the point to turn the ring at his finger
and yell into the sender. "July, leave me to my fate... Don't land,
July, don't believe them, flee..." But he knew that this would be to
no avail, that Oxygénias radio control would catch and delete his
despaired hails.
149

38 – Now only acting can help
The successor furthermore didn't find anything suspicious in
Peters behaviour, only maybe that his guest was pale and had deep
eye bags.
"Are you tired?", the prince asked.
"I'm unused to the many balls, the dancing and the many events.
At home, I live quieter. I'd like to do more sports exercises and
swim."
"How about the hunt?"
"With pleasure", Peter replied and thought that at it, there would
again be the opportunity for radio receiving.
Because now, all of his mind was occupied with the thought that
soon, July would be brought down with the spaceship "Humanitas"
to Oxygénia. Maybe even in a few hours already. Or was she here
already, caged somewhere...?
How could he get to know for certain?
How could he hurry towards her? If the mighty ones of Oxygénia
wouldn't have evil plans, they would have long since told him that
July was preparing for landing. But every time he had asked the
prince in the meantime about the spaceship and why there was no
radio connection, he had smiled at him trustworthyly and told him
that the cosmic storms were about to fade, he'd ask for a little more
patience... maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow... And this
while there was a permanent radio connection between July and the
local Central Control.
It always drove him insane. 'They will lure July down and... It is
possible that she will be... Everything is possible here.'
Shivering, Peter thought about the native of the Fire Planet who
was caged in a zoo. He thought about the fate of ORO and ON, and
he thought about the Trunk Bearers. At this point, he made the
decision to slough his paralyzing powerlessness and attempt the
impossible.
He had to act as if he would like to stay in Oxygénia as long as
possible, had to show more interest for their art, literature and the
customs and traditions.
Satisfied, the prince observed that Peter was in better mood. He
asked questions and liked to talk about the life and the traditions
on Earth. And when the prince asked if he would like to accompany
him to a literature evening, he said that nothing could be of greater
interest to him.
Before lunch, Peter had a bath again.
150

He was already used to get new clothes every morning and after
every bath, with brand new utensils in the pockets. Now he just put
on new clothes after leaving the pool, and a nice cream colored suit.
With a practised move, he grabbed into the pockets and found to
his surprise that he didn't get a pocket calendar. So he was without
a map.
151

39 – Strange orders
The commander of the rescue vessel "RA-1" once again earnestly
urged July to insist that Peter was brought back to the spaceship.
She should not obey and should not land on the dangerous and
unknown planet.
But you heard it! Peter had an accident! He is injured and waiting
for me...
This accident appears to be quite strange to us... And it is strange,
too, that Peter whenever he comes on continues to repeat the same
sentences over and over. This allows for the assumption that they are
recorded, as if he would not speak them himself...
If he is in danger, I will do land there even more so! You heard it,
as often I asked to send Peter out there, the answer was: it's not
possible, we can't do.
Well, so we will land, and you'll be waiting up here.
No... No. If something happens to you, I can't rescue you. But if
something happens to me, you can notify the rescue station and
order, if necessary, a fleet of a hundred ships here!
You are stubborn, one cannot talk to you. So act as you see fit.
And indeed, July took preparations for the landing. She checked
all instruments and adjusted everything according to the orders of
the Central Control of Oxygénia. There were about forty hours (two
days on Oxygénia) until the landing.
We draw your attention to the fact that any changes to the
descend angle and the speed as well as the appearance of any other
ship would activate the system of our defensive missiles at once...
I've acknowledged that changes to the descend angle or the
speed..., July repeated obediently.
After the command "land" is given, the radio communication will
be cut off. As soon as your spaceship touches down at our planet, a
committee to pick you up will get on its way. Before the committee
arrives, the locks of your spaceship mustn't be opened. Leaving the
cabin would be life threatening and is forbidden for that reason. You
will wait inside until we open your spaceship! We repeat: After the
command "land" is given, the radio communication will be cut off. We
order you to not send radio signals of your own. In the landing zone,
the establishing of a radio communication isn't possible... So, once
again... Wait patiently inside the cabin of your spaceship...
And Peter... Will Peter come to pick me up, too?
After the command "land" is given, you activate your auxiliary
drives...
152

Anxiously, July listened to the orders.
153

40 – To try the impossible
As often as Peter was alone even for a moment, he switched the
ring to receive – of course never inside the microphone-equipped
palaces, but always outside in the open – and listened excited to the
radio signals.
... In forty hours...
According to this, July had two days left until the landing.
He hadn't gotten a map since. During the last two days, he had
taken more baths on purpose and changed his clothes several
times. Every time, he got everything, a comfortable shirt, fitting
shoes, a pocket knife, a comb and writing utensils, but no calendar
and no map. Orientation was made – whether coincidentally or on
purpose – impossible to him. He had also observed that the
sounding clock strikes in his rooms didn't come anymore, only the
beginning of the meals was announced by a gong.
Peter was at the tennis square. He had played until now.
"Now you play a match, I'm watching", he called towards some
young men and stopped at the edge of the square. Hastily, he
activated his receiver: numbers, more numbers and signals that
were incomprehensible to him.
From the other side of the square, the prince approached.
"How is our dear guest? You seem to be a bit distracted today.
Don't you want to continue playing?"
"Thank you... I don't know how, I feel a bit exhausted today."
"There, I have a suggestion that may be refreshing to you. Do you
like fishing?"
"I don't know what that is."
"Oh, it's a wonderful pastime. I'd like to invite you to the Mirror
Pond, there is my little water kingdom. I have some official business
to do tomorrow, but you, however, can get to the shore in the early
morning already, you'll find my fishing equipment there."
"What do I find there?"
"Well, a long fishing rod... with some line at the end...", and the
prince drew the rod with the hook and showed how the silvery
shining fish swallows it, how it shakes, how his silvery scales
shiver, how it beats around itself when pulled from the water.
"And what becomes out of the fish?", Peter asked, shivering.
"If you want, roast it. If you want, leave it there or throw it back
into the pond. It really doesn't matter. It's a sport, a game... Try it.
Spend two or three days at the Mirror Pond, it's going to refresh
you, brighten you, and you'll feel about ten years younger."
154

'A trap', Peter thought and said aloud: "Thank you very much.
This is great, but how do I get to the Mirror Pond? I didn't get a
calendar with a map recently."
"Indeed?", the prince asked with a surprised face expression. "I'm
going to give orders. It seems it has been forgotten."
'Forgotten? Here? The computers?', Peter thought.
"But by the way, what do you need a map for, dear friend? It's
enough to give your car the instruction: T-3, and it will bring you
there..."
"I thank you very much for the invitation. I'll be there tomorrow
in the morning."
"Well, meanwhile we'll meet for dinner."
For dinner, this evening even more spicy, tasty and numbing
food and beverages than usual were served, and the prince asked
even more questions than usually. What he had seen in Oxygénia
until now? What he had liked and what not? And then,
unexpectedly, he looked Peter straight into the eyes.
"I have never asked you before, dear Peter, how you have gotten
into the City of the Rememberers?"
"When I crashed on your planet, I was unconscious. Later, I tried
to get orientation. I found myself between strange, trunk bearing
beings in a grey concrete city, but as far as I remember, I already
told about that. I tried to speak to those beings, to communicate
with them... Back then, I still had my radio device... and I tried to
send radio signals. I didn't get an answer. It was of no use to speak
to the Trunk Bearers... But I had oxygen and my equipment, so I
got ony my way just on good luck. I walked for a long time, and
when I get into inhabited space again, I found myself in a city from
where you brought me here with a plane. Many details have
completely failed me. Presumably I suffered a concussion when I
landed."
"And how did you get to ORO?"
"I don't know who ORO is. I knocked at a house... I got help...
Then I got the instruction to get to a moving sidewalk. It brought me
to the aircraft."
'He's lying', the prince stated.
'They want to lure me into a trap', Peter thought. 'He doesn't
even flinch... You lied to July I had a concussion.'
"And what dou you plan for tomorrow?", the prince asked. "I
heard you got numerous invitations again."
155

"Yes, after the fishing in the morning I'd like to visit the Museum
of the Beautiful Arts or the library of the academy... Most of all, I'd
like to get back home..."
"So you don't like it here after all? And I'm doing everything, dear
Peter, for you to feel good, please believe me."
"I am very grateful for everything, prince. But I'm longing for my
wife and am concerned. If at least there was a radio
communication."
"Sadly, it was only this morning that I was told that the cosmic
storms still go on so any connection is completely impossible."
At the same time, July got instructions for the last changes of
her course.
The whole night, Peter rolled sleepless in his bed.
156

41 – Spaceship "Humanitas" has landed!!!
The Mirror Pond appeared like a sparkling silver mirror indeed.
Everything mirrored in the smooth water, the fleecy clouds of the
sky, the sunbeams, the leaves of the trees and the red roof of a
lonely little fishermens hut. There was no wind, and the air was full
of scents.
The snow white car stopped. Peter looked for the fishing
equipment, but didn't think of throwing the hook into the water. Far
and wide, not a single soul was to be seen. Silvery fish swam
guileless and careless in the lake, the sun shone sparkling, between
the green leaves of the trees, purple, pink, white and red flowers
bloomed.
Peter laid under a bush into the grass and turned his ring. With
eager attention, he pressed his ear to the little device.
It seemed that the region of the Mirror Pond was especially
suitable to receive because receiving on frequencies where no
signals were heard before was possible. He noted orders,
commands, signals, numbers, more orders and more commands...
and, shocked, Peter realised that those signals and calls were
related to his fate and the trap that was set for the spaceship
"Humanitas".
You arrive with your car at point Y-4 at 11 o'clock sharp. Repeat!
I arrive with my car at point Y-4 at 11 o'clock sharp.
Further instructions on the handheld, code number three. Beneath
the ion curtain, there is no radio connection. Repeat: all further
instructions on handheld.
At this point, the conversation was disturbed by another wave
length.
This is Central Control! Calling airport 1103. Prepare a two-seat
airplane, type AKA, for start! Oxygen replicator and breather
required. Programming: Departure 11.30; arrival 18.30, return the
next day 11.30 to 18.30.
I repeat, beneath the ion curtain there is no radio connection!
Get the being from Earth alive! Alive at any cost! Disable its
starting ability! Further instructions on the handheld, code number
three!
The vessel of the Earth being will land at point BX 3' 4". The
runway is marked with a silver arrow on the map. Beneath the ion
curtain, there will not be any radio instructions. Repeat! Code number
three, instructions on the handheld... The vessel of the Earth being...
157

Here, the transmission was lost. After a short break, the same
voice called at the same wave length.
Start now for point Y-4... The spaceship "Humanitas" is to land
today... No more radio-based instructions beneath the ion curtain.
Code number three. Now start for point Y-4.
All of Peters nerves were strained.
If he didn't act now, everything would be lost. He jumped up like
one who was determined for and daring everything. Quickly, he got
into the waiting car and gave the order:
"To point Y-4."
The car's door closed. He literally flew along the marvellous
mountain roads, past lakes, passing viaducts and tunnels, lush
forests and blooming trees. The landscape blurred before his eyes.
He didn't see anymore the castles with their towers, the lodges, one
more beautiful than the other. Unstoppable, the car brought him
towards unknown adventures and dangers. He had no watch, didn't
know how long the ride took. His excitement and unrest were even
more increased by the fact that he didn't dare to switch on his radio
device here inside the car. He was afraid of being monitored, feared
that the received voices could trigger the computer-driven car to
steer off its course. Nervously, he waited where the car would stop
with him. Nervously yet ready for the fight, determind for
everything. What he could do for July, he would do. And if it came
to fighting, he wouldn't give away his life cheaply.
Now, the car raced through a giant rose garden, then past the
bottom of a waterfall. Now they arrived at a round square, decorated
with sculptures and surrounded by sleek palmtrees and fountains.
The place was stunningly beautiful – and empty. Suddenly, the car
stopped, and its door opened.
Peter got out and recognized the place.
He had arrived here when he was brought up from the City of the
Rememberers.
158

42 – The successful attack
Peter got away a few steps from the car. There was no doubt: he
was at the entrance of the secret airport. Another fact was that
according to the radio instructions, someone (or maybe more?)
would arrive here with the order to bring July here. He had to
switch his device to receive... no, first of all, he had to let his car
disappear. Anyone getting here would instantly catch attention of
the snow white car.
Behind one of the fountains was a lush banana grove. The way
descended very gently. Peter collected all his strength to push the
huge car. He was surprised when the car rolled so easily as if it
would have no weigth at all. A few minutes later, it was covered by
the thick green branches.
Now, he could get to receive without worries.
He laid down beneath the orchid bushes, only a few meters away
from the airport's entrance, hidden in the thick flower brushwood of
a thousand colors, and pressed the device to his ear.
He heard numbers, orders, signals and commands on a hundred
diverse wave lengths. Unrestly and with tensed attention he tried to
find out which of the many messages could affect their fate.
This is Central Control!
I'm back.
Take pictures of the spaceship "Humanitas". Until further
instructions, leave the vessel at the landing spot. All instruments and
equipment is to be taken from the being from Earth. Bring up alive,
sedate if necessary. Further instructions on the handheld device.
Code number three. You'll break through the ion curtain at 11.38,
radio connection will get lost.
Do not shield zone A-B!... "Humanitas", get in, "Humanitas"!
This is "Humanitas", this is "Humanitas"! What is it with my
husband?
Your husband is doing better!
I want to talk to him.
As you wish. We put through.
Peter! Beloved! It's July!
This is Peter! Dearest July, I can't wait to see you again. I'm
longing to see you! Stick exactly to the instructions!
The world spun around Peter. He heard his own voice clearly and
sharply. Was this a result of Oxygénias hellish technology? Or had
all his previous talks been recorded and the answers now been put
together from those? Or had they stored the sound of his voice in
159

one of their terrifying machines so they could say now anything in
his voice? And July? How appalling. July was straightforward going
into their trap! But wouldn't he believe himself what was played to
him in Julys voice?
After the landing, you wait patiently inside the cabin! Opening the
airlocks is life threatening! Attention! Get ready to engage the drive!
Radio connection will get lost...
Understood! Understood!
Now, a male voice switched into the transmission.
I'm en route to point Y-4.
Beneath the ion curtain, further instructions on the handheld
device! Code number three.
Carefully, Peter looked through the orchids. From which
direction the vehicle would approch? And would his daring plan
work out? It had to. He had nothing to lose.
The fountain, the orchid bushes, the roses, the head-sized,
sedatingly scenting orchids, the mountains shimmering blue in the
distance, the bright sky, the water drops of the fountain carried
over here by the wind, sparkling like diamonds... this whole
magnificient, deserted landscape was scaring and affecting. The
more beautiful everything was, the more oppressing it was to him
that all of this was a single dreadful net which enclosed him
mercilessly, strangled and suffocated him and was now trying to rip
July away from him.
With slow breath, he listened and waited.
It had to be eleven o'clock because right now, a big, cherry red
car rolled towards the entrance of the airport. A tall, athletic man
got out. He turned around again for a bag on the passenger seat. At
this moment, Peter jumped up from the orchid bushes. With a
single giant leap, he was behind the unknown man. The man
guilelessly handled at the case. Suddenly, Peter was cool and calm.
His mind was clear, instead of the excitement it had felt until now it
was ready for quick and considered acting. He could have killed the
man, but didn't even bother with that thought. He only wanted to
disable him for the time of the escape.
Peter grabbed the man's throat, and only as he began to groan,
he loosened the pressure of his fingers. In the fraction of a second
he made a decision. He hit the man's neck with the edge of his hand
so he got unconscious. Then he pushed leaves into his mouth. He
took the fishing line he had taken at the Mirror Pond from his
pocket. It was made from an elastic, undestroyable material. Peter
turned his opponent's arms on the back and tied them up.
160

"Clock is ticking, clock is ticking", it hammered in Peters brain
while he tied up and secured the man's arms, then searched his
pockets and collected the instruments and notes he found. Now he
lifted his prisoner to his shoulders and carried him to the banana
grove, to the hidden car. He pushed him inside, called loudly "point
T-3" and slammed the door of the car shut. The marvellous snow
white car shuddered and began to move, and down the road it
raced, towards the Mirror Pond.
At the entrance of the airport, the cherry red car waited with
open doors. Now, Peter took the bag and looked around for which
else equipment the man ordered to pick up July could have had
with him. In front of the seat, he found another small white case,
like the ones glasses are stored in; presumably it had fallen from
the man's pocket during the attack. Peter took this one, too,
grabbed the bigger case and walked towards the entrance of the
secret airport, leaving the cherry red car behind with open doors.
161

43 – Inside the aircraft
At Peters approach, a wide glass door opened automatically.
Peter entered, and the door closed behind him.
He got into a giant hall decorated with apple green tiling – the
same one where he had arrived weeks ago: the main hall of the
secret airport. He didn't see signs or letters anywhere. But a pale
green beam of light in front of him at the ground appeared like a
carpet, as if it were an orientation sign. Peter followed the light
beam and crossed the empty hall.
He met no one, didn't hear a single voice.
Again, an automatic door opened before and closed behind him.
Then a third one opened and closed. Peter now stood at the
runway. At the same or a very similiar one like the one on which he
had arrived.
Several meters away from the exit, a silvery shining aircraft sat
on the runway. When he had flown up here from the City of the
Rememberers, Peter hadn't had the chance to look at the plane in
the thick fog. And when he had landed up here, it simply hadn't
come to his mind to turn around. Now, he looked at the aircraft,
astonished. Had it looked the same? Was it the same plane? And if
it was, were his calculations logical? Did they intend to send this
plane to July?
He had no other choice than to enter the plane. As he
approached, silver colored stairs were extended. Peter entered the
lowest stair, the door of the aircraft opened, the stairs moved up.
Peter went in, and the door of the plane closed.
He thought. Should he give the order: City of the Rememberers?
Or should he order the point BX 3' 4" which was determined for the
landing? Should he even say anything at all?
But none of this was necessary anymore. At precisely 11.30, the
aircrafts engine quietly started to hum, and the plane went up in
the air.
Through the window, one could see the wonderful blue sky
shine.
He could see Oxygenville with its unforgettable colors, the
marvellous buildings and slim towers. If he had made better use of
the time, he could have seen so much more...!
Within a few moments, the city was gone from his view.
Now he saw mountains, forests, blue lakes and foaming
waterfalls, and he receded more and more. The landscape below
wasn't visible anymore already. Now, Peter recalled. When he was
162

ought up from the City of the Rememberers, the dark fog
suddenly had lit up, then everything had started to glow in a pink
aura until all of a sudden, he had seen the brightly shining blue
sky. There, at the edge of the horizon, the pink-purple glowing
appeared, but it appeared so strange as if it was a closing dome or a
ring which got bigger and bigger but fastened around him at the
same time. He jumped, startled: without a warning, a speaker
sounded.
You are approaching the ion curtain! In two minutes, the radio
connection will get lost. If you noticed any irregularity, report it now!
We repeat for the last time: bring up the being alive. The course of the
spaceship is marked with a silver arrow. The blue line is your flight
course. Code number three. Leave the spaceship at the spot of its
landing. Execute routine RG (YFK) JJCK. The plane will start back
tomorrow at 11.30...
Deep silence.
The sender was quiet, but the nose of the aircraft literally drilled
into a sparkling, pink-purple wreath of light. The plane's windows
almost seemed to glow – but all of this only lasted for the blink of an
eye, then the windows became dark; foggy, grey-brown nebulas and
clouds billowed, the clouds became darker and darker, and nothing
was to be seen anymore; here, the fairy kingdom of the colors and
the light was over. Peter felt his heart tighten: he had returned to
the scary, real world of this planet. And without any warning, he felt
his courage fade away. Where should he find July here, and if he
found her, how and where to could he flee with her?
The outside world grew darker every moment while at the same
time a pale green lighting began to shimmer at the planes
dashboard. It reminded a bit of the screens of portable computer
devices...
The handheld device! It had to be somewhere in the looted bag.
'It won't work like that!' During the first minutes of the flight, he
had only mulled and stared in front of him instead of searching
through the content of the bag which he had taken with him. Now
he opened it. He found things he knew and others he had no idea
of. A breather, an oxygen replicator, refreshment tabs and a
carefully packaged SD card.
Peter took it out. The armrest of his seat automatically moved
out to reveal a card slot. He inserted the storage card.
The dashboard transformed into a screen. On it, dancing green
streaks appeared, incomprehensible figures and letters, and the
whole thing was accompanied by an indistinctable, unclear text.
163

This was the message, the order, the vital news, only it needed to be
understood, to be deciphered. 'Code number Three... Code... what
code?' Nervously, Peter watched the flickering images... time was
running, the video was playing, but he...
He looked into the bag, looked at the breather and the
instruments. Where could the key to the secret be? What did he
have to adjust, where to turn? ... Instintively, he grabbed at his
pockets where he had put the small thing that looked like a glasses
case. And inside of it – that was the surprise – he found something
like glasses indeed: it really looked almost like glasses, but the
actual glasses were made from an extremely thin, shining material.
These gleaming discs were framed by an elastic frame and could be
turned inside of it. With each turning, a number lit up between
them. 'One... two... three...' Peter stopped at the number Three and
put the strange thing on his nose. He looked up. The screen on the
dashboard was unexpectedly clear. Instead of just green, there were
hundreds of bright colors and lights: it was the map of Oxygénia.
And now, the voice explained clearly and comprehensible.
... and now a chart... Watch it very carefully...
What might have been at the beginning of the video? How could
he rewind it, restart it, watch it again from the beginning?
You need to fly along the blue marked route. And there is the
landing place of the aircraft...
A strange image, the control panel of an airlock system. Now, a
map of a tunnel system followed. A silver arrow and a silver circle
became visible.
Here, the spaceship from Earth has landed.
Has landed! So the spaceship "Humanitas" had already landed!
Peters heart beated hard, and the blood hammered between his
temples so he could barely concentrate on the information.
Mind carefully: always the blue marked path.
On the map, two points were marked overly clearly: the landing
spot of his plane and the location of the spaceship "Humanitas"
with the tunnel system between them. Moving pathways, tunnels
and airlocks lit up in blue.
In case of an emergency, code number six! In case of technical
failures, of any unforeseen situation! In case of an emergency, code
number six! ...
Attention! You are now leaving the plane and are to go to the
airlock on the right side...
This is not true, this can't be true, things like this only happen
in fairy tales: through the airlock on the right side, the way led to
164

the spaceship "Humanitas", to July, to the escape, and the tunnel
system running nearly parallel, marked in red, was the moving path
that led into the City number Five of the Rememberers. There, yes,
in this direction, was the Central Square, and to the right of it was
the canyon; there, ON, his wife Sunshine and Little ON were
vegetating... He held the key of the secret in his hand, the
blueprints and the maps. What a power, what a weapon could they
be in the hands of the Rememberers!
In excitement, he broke out in sweat. What if he wouldn't get on
the blue path but instead went into the City of the Rememberers...?
Which consequences would it have? In Oxygenville, everything
would be discovered in a few hours. They would arrest July... If he
could somehow notify July that she should escape... He had no
right to pull July, too, into doom. But did he have the right to
escape and leave ON and his friends to their fate?
No, he couldn't act any other way. He had to get to July, to the
ship, and had to attempt the escape... It was entirely possible that
the blueprints and schemes weren't of any use to the refugees after
all. How much time did he have for his escape? When would the car
at the Mirror Pond in Oxygenville be discovered? Maybe it was even
suspicious that he hadn't sent any radio communication from the
plane?
His thoughts were indistinctable and unclear. July had already
been landed. She might have been waiting inside the cabin of the
ship. He had to hurry to July... Yes, to July, who was waiting for
him, whom he loved. They were inhabitants of another planet, they
couldn't bind their fate to the unlucky beings of Oxygénia... They
had to escape, had to try to start.
Suddenly, the plane stopped.
Without a sound, the door opened.
The stairs slid out.
Outside was thick black darkness. Biting, suffocating gases
flooded inside. The breather! Hastily, he took the device and the
oxygen replicator from the bag. Presumably, the orders to do so had
been at the beginning of the video which he hadn't been able to see.
He became unrest and edgy, made one mistake after the other.
He had to put on the breather already inside the aircraft. For sure...
but then he would have had to put off the glasses and wouldn't
have had understood the video...
His fingers cramped, his hands shook, and he had trouble
connecting the breather and the oxygen replicator to each other.
Luckily, it was exactly the same type of equipment that was used in
165

the City of the Rememberers. Now he could breathe again, but he
didn't see anything. He stood there in the unpermeatable darkness,
the only glowing point was the plane behind him with its open door
from where a greenish light emitted.
Concerned, he wiped his hand across his forehead. At this
moment, a beam of light lit up his surroundings. The source of this
light was presumably at the upper edge of the breather; from there,
the beam spread out, and now he could get an orientation of where
he was. The plane stood on a round concrete disc within a giant
concrete trough. All around him, giant walls grew up, grey, bleak,
smooth, steep walls of concrete. Not a gap anywhere, no door, not a
soul around. 'Code number three' came to his mind. 'Nonsense.
There's no sign anywhere here, no letters, nothing. There isn't
anything to decipher...' But still. He took the glasses from the
pocket. The round discs fitted precisely into the eye openings of the
mask. Where the light beam had only lit a grey concrete wall before,
now a giant map was visible, the same that was to be seen in the
video before. He went towards it. After maybe twenty steps, the
picture began to vibrate and then was gone, and again, he only saw
the smooth, steep concrete. He grabbed at the discs and turned
them. Affected, he stopped.
He found himself at the entrance of an airlock system. A blue
light beam indicated in which direction he had to go. On a
dashboard were blue buttons with vibrating arrows on them,
indicating the direction they had to be turned to. Left from the blue
markings, a second airlock formed the entrance to another tunnel.
Here, all signs were colored a rusty brown. This path led to the City
number Five of the Rememberers. A crossroad like in a fairy tale.
When he was a child, he had read about things like that,
shuddering, with faltering heart. Now, he stood at the crossroad: to
the right the dangerous and uncertain escape, to the left the even
more dangerous and uncertain adventure, if he wanted to bring the
map and the keys to the canyon...
He didn't hesitate. He decided for the path with the rusty brown
markings. Likewise, there were buttons for pressing and turning
and levers... but without signs or explanations. 'Maybe the
glasses...' Again, he turned the discs which were to be adjusted to
different codes; now, the rusty brown signs started to shine, and
arrows became visible. He turned the first button, and the gate of
an airlock opened. The light beam from the breather shone brightly.
He hurried forward and found himself in a wide, deep cave. The
ground of the cave was a moving pathway, presumably the same
166

that had brought him here from the city. But this moving sidewalk
moved in one direction – away from the city. He tried to get forward
with small jumps against the moving direction, but it didn't work,
he didn't make any way. The speed of the moving path was too big
to overcome it.
He stood there clueless when he noticed that at the edge of the
moving path, there was a narrow, not moving strip. He pressed
himself against the rock wall and creeped forward with strained
effort. The pathway which was moving against him made him dizzy.
His whole body was covered in sweat. After he had made about five
hundred meters, this stationary strip ended. In the headlight beam,
he realised a rusty colored switch board at the wall.
In case of an emergency, code number six!
All of a sudden, this order came to his mind. Back in the plane,
he had barely paid attention to it. What could that mean: in case of
an emergency? If something unexpectedly didn't open... if
something unexpectedly didn't close... If something moved in the
wrong direction! He quickly took off the discs, searched for the
setting number six and put them back on. Now, he saw every ten to
fifteen meters a panel of switches, all along the rock wall. On each
button, a small green arrow vibrated and indicated in the direction
of the moving pathway. He grabbed for the next switch and turned
it around. A howling was to be heard as if a hurricane would rave
through the tunnel. All green arrows now indicated in the opposite
direction – and the moving path, likewise, changed its direction. It
rolled now towards the city, at a giant speed. Peter threw himself on
the moving belt and was carried away so fast that he almost seemed
to fly.
He didn't know since when he was transported, he had lost the
feeling for time, his legs became clay, he panted and gasped for air.
And then, the moving pathway terminated.
Again, he found himself in front of a lock, a giant grey concrete
wall. Now he already used the glasses in his breather calmly and
decidedly. He turned the discs until the switch board became visible
to him. Then he turned two switches, and the concrete walls
opened.
He stood at the Central Square of the City number Five of the
Rememberers.
167

44 – The landing
The spaceship touched down at the planet.
July felt an extreme fatigue in her limbs, and she was a bit dizzy
as well.
The last order had been a repeat of the text that was already
known to total boredom: "The radio connection will get lost, stay
inside your cabin until further instructions. Opening the airlocks is
forbidden. Leaving the spaceship is life threatening!"
During the landing, she saw purple light. All of a sudden, this
light was gone, and she found herself in the middle of a brownish
grey ocean of fog. Through the windows of ship, nothing could be
recognized. She tried to figure out the silhouettes of mountains,
searched for a city, for an area inhabited by humans or a sea. But
there was nothing, only the fog.
In the radio communication of the last days, she repeatedly had
heard Peters voice. His words had been soothing: they would soon
be together again; most likely, he wouldn't be able to come to
welcome her, but they would meet in the capital. July was happy to
be able to hear Peters voice, but after each talk, she felt an
inexplicable unrest. The voice was Peter's, but then again, it was
not. Something was missed in his words, something she just
couldn't explain. Maybe the warmth, the personal touch. Sometimes
she felt as if she wasn't talking to her Peter but to a robot-Peter.
'Ridiculous', she told herself, 'I'm just unrest, nervous, I'm seeing
ghosts. Or was this an effect of his concussion? Had Peter changed?
Had they done something to him? Or... No, I don't get it...' But now,
this uneasy oppression was over, they would meet, would get back
into the spaceship and fly back to their dear Earth, to their home...
Since her landing, one and an half hour had passed. Outside
was fog, fog and more fog. She felt an extreme fatigue. Again and
again, her head dropped down. Don't fall asleep! If so, she wouldn't
realise the arrivals. Would they come with a helicopter? Or by a
car? Would they send light signals?
She awoke, and the fog and the darkness outside were even
thicker than before. Since the touchdown of the spaceship, more
than ten hours had passed. What had happened? Had the welcome
delegation got lost? Hadn't she been landed at the spot where she
was expected? Had there been a mistake? She switched on the radio
device.
This is "Humanitas"! This is "Humanitas"! I'm waiting for ten
hours... I'm waiting for ten hours...
168

There was no reply to her hails.
169

45 – In the canyon once again
How much time might have passed?
Had his escape already been discovered?
What was with July?
Questions and more questions, and no answer to any of them.
He hurried along the streets seamed by artifical trees and
artifical grass through the City of the Rememberers, in the pale
light, he ran towards the canyon.
He had barely power left, it was his pure will which propelled his
feet. His legs hurt, his lungs gasped. And then, suddenly, he was in
the dim cave, surrounded by men, women and children. They all
were pale and thin – oh, so very different from the inhabitants of
Oxygenville! A little boy clinged to his arm.
"I knew that you would return, man from Earth! We've waited for
you. I've even dreamed of you. I knew nothing bad would happen to
you, because you are powerful."
ON and Sunshine stood next to him. They knew nothing about
ORO.
Peter spread all on a stone table, the maps, the SD card, he gave
them the instruments and the deciphering glasses, and he
explained hastily. The ion curtain, the system that divided the
oxygen from the suffocating gases, the whole tunnel system. He
explained, explained, and during that, the time went by.
And suddenly, the pale beings got the idea. They understood the
secret why eight billion beings had to get along with rationed oxygen
makeshift, why millions had to live with shielded brains... And
before them was the map, with the secret points, the locks that had
to be opened, the secrets of the billowing fogs that had to be wept
away.
"Peter, we elect you to be our leader! We work out a plan how to
open the locks quickly... We already have a lot of followers, we are
determined..."
"I wish you good luck with that, but I have to go!"
"You're going? But where? We will assault the locks... will be
victorious..."
"I have to go. The spaceship has been landed. My wife is aboard
the ship."
"And you're only saying so now? Where has she been landed?"
Peter indicated at the point BX 3' 4" on the map.
"Here, about six hours ago."
170

And only now he reported to his friends how he had escaped
from Oxygenville, how he had rendered the delegate of the capital
who had been sent to get July harmless and how he had gotten in
possess of the aircraft.
"And instead you had hurried to the spaceship... instead of you
fleeing instantly..."
Only now, the beings realised that Peter had done all of that for
them because he didn't wanted to let them down.
"And July. Didn't you try to get in contact with her?"
"But you know only too well that this is impossible, that every
radio transmission is captured and deleted at the border of the ion
curtain. Fight with luck... I will try it now... You see this tunnel
system on the map... If I can make it there, I'll get to point BX 3 '
4"."
"It's too late for that", ON said. "You have to stay with us when
we blow up the locks..."
"Your attempt is in vain, man from Earth, your spaceship for
sure has already been captured... And your feet are sore, you are
exhausted, need to rest..."
"I have to go. But I ask you to accompany me to the entrance of
the lock since I can't get through without the deciphering glasses."
ON and two young men stepped forward.
"We're going with you."
Sunshine broke a blooming branch.
"Take it as a reminder of the canyon. May it bring you luck."
171

46 – A plane arrives empty
Before the Central Administration Council, the exact plan and
the report were spreaded out. The plan had been elaborated by
Bighead himself.
According to it, the plane starting from the secret airport, type
AKA, was to break through the ion curtain at 11.38 o'clock and
arrive at 18.30 at the Big Lock. From there, the Wise Knight who
had been determined by the Council for this task would arrive at
point BX 3' 4" via moving pathways at 20.00 o'clock, precisely at
midnight in other words. He would execute the necessary technical
examinations and do recordings and get back to the Big Lock
together with July between 8 and 9 o'clock at the next morning. The
flight back was scheduled to start at 11.30, and it was supposed to
land at 18.30 at the secret airport of Oxygenville. Wise Knight was
only allowed to send radio signals in case of an emergency (but
what emergency should even occur to Wise Knight? Technical
failure? A wrong programming?) – all other radio signals were
deleted at the border of the zone A-B by the Huge Mirror.
The Council had decided to not bring July to the biological
institute at once, but instead, Council Member Bighead should
welcome her at the airport of Oxygenville himself, bring her to
comfortable quarters and even allow her to meet Peter. This meeting
could be an excellent opportunity to study the habits of the
inhabitants of the planet named Earth. The equipment would be
taken from her the same way it had happened with Peter
MacGulliver. Only after that, the Council was to begin the
interrogation of the two humans from Earth and to determine their
further fate. The same way, it was to be determined whether the
spaceship was to be thoroughly examinated in the whole or to be
disassembled first and whether this examination would be
performed down there in a City of the Rememberers or if the
spaceship "Humanitas" was brought up to Oxygenville.
At first, the program went excellent. The airport reported the
start of the aircraft just as scheduled and, just at the calculated
time, the passing of the ion curtain. The spaceship, too, had landed
unscathed at the determined point.
The reports laid on Bigheads desk. Only one single surprising,
not foreseen in the program event had happened, a radio hail.
This is "Humanitas"! This is "Humanitas"! I'm waiting for ten
hours... I'm waiting for ten hours...
172

Bighead smirked. The female of Earth is impatient. According to
the program, Wise Knight would be with her in about one hour. Of
course, there had been no reply to the hail.
According to the legal provisions, radio signals were registered in
zone A and deleted in zone B. How was this article again? "The
Lords of Oxygénia hear everything, but no one is ever to hear them."
The radio systems along the border of the ion curtain received and
registered radio communication on all wave lengths from the lower
regions, from the Cities of the Rememberers or the Trunk Bearers,
recorded and reported them. From the upper regions never came an
answer. Oxygenville sent radio signals only on very rare occasions
to the outside, into space. Even the spaceship "Humanitas" was
allowed to stay in contact with beings only as long as it had been
landed. Here, July sent horrified hails in vain – the answer was
grave silence. The numerous voices, orders and endless numbers
Peter had heard now and then with his ring receiver were computer
communications and orders, sent from one station in Oxygenville to
another, but they were never allowed to be heard by any
unauthorized ear beneath the ion curtain.
18.30 o'clock, the plane had to be back, with the Wise Knight
and the being from Earth aboard.
17.30 o'clock, Bighead sat in his silver street cruiser and ordered
point Y-4. Within half an hour, the car reached the magnificient
place. Bighead went out and watched the rose bushes and the
fountain at the square absentminded. In front of the entrance of the
airport sat the cherry red car of the Wise Knight with open doors.
It was already some minutes past 18.30, but no one came out of
the hall of the airport.
Bighead decided to go towards the comers.
The automatic door opened and closed again.
He crossed the hall and looked around. The passengers of the
plane should have been here already. He was perplexed. It had
never happened before in Oxygenville that the exact schedule hadn't
been followed.
He waited for maybe five minutes, then continued. He passed
another door which opened and closed, then a huge glass door until
he finally was at the edge of the runway.
The aircraft stood right before him.
Incomprehensible! Why didn't they get out? Maybe the being
from Earth offered resistance? Had Wise Knight not stunned her
enough? Or had they become sick from the toxic gases in the air
173

down there? He waited for another minute, then approached the
plane.
Its door opened, and the stairs slid out. The Council Member
entered them without hesitation and went into the cabin. He looked
around: not a single soul anywhere.
He turned around, but there, the door had already closed behind
him. The engine roared up, and the plane was airborne.
"Stop it... Where am I brought? ... Stop... turn around... get
back...", the Council Member shouted, infuriated. "I command
that...."
Oh, he, Bighead, who had never in his life come into an
unexpected situation – in Oxygenville, all machines had precisely
obeyed to his every order since his childhood – didn't get aware of
the fact that this aircraft worked according to the central
programming, and he began slamming against the wall of the plane,
shouted, raved and threatened.
After he had calmed down somewhat, he began to search the
plane frantically for instruments, a radio device or a signal device
with which he could call for help or could force the disobedient
aircraft to bow to his demands. But he himself should have known
best that the plane was programmed by the computer with the
highest security levels, that its passenger could not detour it from
its way, could not alter the course and that beyond the ion curtain,
a radio device wouldn't be of any help, either.
After a seven hours flight, the aircraft landed. Bighead remained
sitting there, motionless. Until now, he had only seen the billowing
gas clouds that got closer and closer and became thicker and
thicker, the dark, threatening fog; now, biting, suffocating gas
flooded inside through the open door. Bighead began to cough,
gasped and panted heavily, his face turned blue, and then, he lost
his consciousness.
After a certain time, the automatic door closed again. The
automatic air conditioning system pushed the suffocating gases out
and injected clean, oxygenious air instead.
Bighead still laid in the cabin, unconscious.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself at the airport
of Oxygenville. Two young men, two officers of the Royal Guard,
carried him out of the aircraft. They supported him along the long
hall and told him that he had to report before the Council
immediately.
174

47 – The danger isn't over yet
Peter, ON and the other two young men from the City of the
Rememberers, AT and GEN, went from the canyon to a deep valley.
According to the map, a tunnel system led from here to point BX 3 '
4", to the landing spot of the spaceship "Humanitas". But how the
valley looked like, whether there was a moving pathway, the map
didn't tell anything about. It also didn't become clear whether it was
an ancient tunnel system or had been built and used by the present
rulers of Oxygénia. It also didn't state whether it was of natural
origin or artifical.
A steep rock wall limited the valley. Disappointed, ON looked at
the rock wall that was barely visible in the billowing fog. Where was
here an entrance? Peter put the deciphering glasses on ONs
breather.
Now, ON waved for the others to follow him. He now clearly saw
the signs, the green direction arrows. Everything was the same way
as it had been on Peters way until now, everything was like he had
reported and ON had hoped for. Locks, switch boards and walls
obeyed. The lock of the secret tunnel system opened, the headlamp
attached to ONs breather shone with blinding light, and they came
into a moving storage. Yesterday – or was it the day before or a
hundred years ago? – the manager of the Economy Central had
shown Peter this tube systems. From the distance, they had looked
like a toy; here, inside, they were a giant, intimidating labyrinth. A
pneumatic tube system, a moving rollway system; goods
transported in tubes moved swooshing and humming in the
subterranean corridors. From the servant cities, from the work
places in the concrete blocks the things flooded somewhere, and
from somewhere, shoes and clothes came, and on another conveyor
belt, countless identical grey cardboxes. Peter recognized the smell:
it had to be the powder for the mash-like meal he had eaten in the
city of the Trunk Bearers. The deciphering glasses made orientation
signs visible. To point BX 3' 4", a conveyor belt led on which
balloons filled with a sticking, gluey substance were transported.
"Too bad that not shoes or overalls are going this direction, one
could have stand to them on the belt", ON commented.
"Code number six", Peter called.
The discs were adjusted. Now, the switch system became visible
to ON which could be operated in case of an emergency. He turned
the button of a belt loaded with clothes so that the arrow now
indicated towards BX 3' 4".
175

The conveyor belt stopped with a hard jolt, something slammed,
then the freight started to move again and now went into the
opposite direction.
"Jump on!"
They squatted on the packages rolling along like the wind. ON
watched the conveyor belts that roared above, beneath and next to
them and the signs that were attached at the walls and on pillars.
He took off the glasses and gave them to Peter.
"Have a look at this!"
Now, Peter could realise everything.
The direction of the transports changed, re-organized, as if the
switches in a railway junction had been turned. Lights flashed,
signal lamps lit and went dark again; maybe due to their
intervention, the computers stepped into action, re-arranged and
changed... Maybe everything was monitored and reported by control
systems... Maybe they ended up at another concrete wall in a few
moments, at a locked gate through which the uncountable clothes
could not get through, but instead piled up to a mountain and
would fall on them... Peter gave the deciphering glasses to ON.
"I believe I already know what we have to do", ON said.
Unexpectedly, they fell off the transporting belt.
They fell into a giant hole. Beneath them, maybe thousands and
thousands of packages with working clothes might have been, and
the belt kept bringing more.
Luckily, the walls of this room were shaped like a cone, and they
could easily climb up to its edge. ON looked back and realised that
there was a switch board just above the gap through which the
packages with the overalls fell down. Obviously, it could be used
just like all the others before.
Peter turned the button in the thick fog. In the brownish black
billowing, he finally spotted a faintly glowing silvery spot. It was the
spaceship "Humanitas"! They were only a few hundred meters away.
"The merciful fate may be with you so your escape will be
successful", ON said, "and we are grateful for all that you've done
for Oxygénia."
"The merciful fate may also be with you so you will become free
at last, and I am grateful for everything that you've done for me",
Peter replied.
The men shook hands, and ON and his mates slid back into the
gap. He switched again, and conveyor belt loaded with clothing
packages now moved in its original direction again.
"If you want, you can leave at the canyon", ON said.
176

"And where do you want to go?", AT asked.
"To the lock at the ion curtain."
"If we can be of any help to you, we stay with you, ON."
"We're gambling with our lives."
"We are always gambling with our lives."
"While I try to switch, signals need to be given, the Rememberers
must be called to be ready..."
Deep inside of Oxygénia, in the scary tunnel system, three
determined men were ready for a fight of life and death.
Peter reached on the plain of eternal fog and eternal darkness
the spaceship "Humanitas".
177

48 – The escape
Sometimes, July fell asleep, sometimes, she awoke again. She
dreamed she had received a radio signal. Then, she saw Peter
standing inside the cabin. And she awoke and saw the reality. She
was alone, all around her, thick fog and darkness reigned. She
decided to try it again with the radio device. It had been a day
already since she had landed at this eerie planet, and ever since,
she was surrounded by grave silence and darkness.
She pressed the face against the glass of her cabin and watched
the slowly hovering fog.
Suddendly, she saw a white spot, the beam of a weak headlamp.
It seemed to her as if a human would approach who went forward
only laboriously, with a breather and in a strange suit. Now the
man stopped, gave a sign, for sure gave a sign, rotated his small
lamp... The man was Peter! ... Peter, all alone...
There, she forgot every interdict, she pushed buttons, the first
door opened, then the second lock... And July was already down the
stairs... But biting, suffocating gas hit her face and her eyes, she
gasped, tumbled... felt she was being lifted and carried inside the
ship... Peter, he was here, he held her in his strong, dear arms.
Peter... dear Peter, did you come, where are the others? Why did
you come so late? Peter, just say something!!!
But Peter didn't have time for many and long explanations.
"Are the drives ready for launch?", he asked, and that were his
first words. "Start them right now... without any ado... Maybe...
maybe... we can still make it through."
A hiss was to be heard, and the vessel shuddered. The
shapceship "Humanitas" rose up and left a plasma trail behind it.
"I love you, July. Please forgive me for being so late... if you have
to die because of me..."
"Peter, beloved, what are you talking about?"
"Maybe we get through... maybe... maybe... maybe..."
And now, Peters whole attention was directed towards the
instruments. The airspeed of the vessel was still increasing. Who
knew when they had discovered his escape? Did they already know
about it at all? Were they on their trail already? And if so, which
range had the missiles of Oxygénia? How far away from the planet
their ship had to get to not be shot down anymore?
The altimeter showed one hundred kilometers... then three
hundred... eight hundred... one thousand...
178

The fog clouds had long been gone, as had the purple shimmer,
even the light blue strip and then the sunshine... Darkness
followed, distant glowing... space.
"Now I want to tell you everything", Peter said. "Now they surely
won't catch up with us anymore."
"How strange", July said, "look, Oxygénias color has changed.
The glowing purple is gone, the gas clouds are whirling around, as if
a hefty storm would be raging there..."
The spaceship got further and further away from Oxygénia.
179

49 – Interrogation at the king
His Majesty Benefactor XIII. only rarely used his throne hall, only
at formal receptions or at New Years Day when receiving the
traditional well wishes of the Hundred Lineages at best.
Bighead was affected when the two officers told him he had to
report before the royal Council. Beside king Benefactor XIII, only
the two princes Warrior and Valiant were present.
The interrogation was short.
How he would explain that he entered a plane from which he had
to know that its door opened and closed automatically and that its
route could not be altered from the inside of the plane? Why he
hadn't alerted the security measures of the airport as soon as he
had noticed a divergence from the program?
Bighead fell silent, affected. All of this he had to know already as
a child.
The king waved, and prince Valiant handed the report of Central
Control to Bighead.
When thirty minutes after the scheduled arrival of Bighead and
July at her assigned quarters still no report had been sent to
Central Control, they started to search for him via radio. There had
been no answer. Central Control found the car of Wise Knight,
parking according to the rules, in front of the secret airport. The
records of the airport showed that the aircraft from the City of the
Rememberers had arrived right on time and, after a short wait,
returned there.
The instruments stated that one passenger was aboard the
plane. Without delay, an examination was started as to maybe
something with the doors mechanism was wrong, because at first, it
was assumed that Wise Knight and July were aboard (or only one of
them??) and that the aircraft because of a technical failure had
flown back with its passengers to the starting point. It remained
incomprehensible where Bighead had remained and why the Wise
Knight didn't reply from the aircraft to any hail. During the flight,
the programming of the plane couldn't be altered so they needed to
wait until it had landed in the City of the Rememberers, and from
there, it was ordered back to Oxygenville by a new programming.
The plane arrived there safely. Two officers of the Royal Guards
were expecting it at the airport. Through the opening door, they
pulled the tumbling, half-unconscious Council Member Bighead
outside. Of Wise Knight or the female being from Earth, there was
no trace.
180

"I..."
At this moment, a new radio transmission arrived.
Central Control reported that Peter MacGulliver, the male being
from Earth, hadn't returned to the palace of the Successor for the
second day already. The car assigned to his personal use stood at
the Mirror Pond. Inside, the unconsicious and bound Wise Knight
had been found. Peter MacGulliver had vanished without a trace.
Perplexed, the king listened to this report. But as soon as it had
ended, another report arrived. Central Control of Oxygenville
reported that a second ago, the image of the spaceship "Humanitas"
had vanished from their screens...
"Why vanished? What does that mean, vanished?", Benefactor
XIII asked, his eyes sparkling.
"Presumably, it has departed", was the emotionless reply of the
Central.
"How could it have started?", Bighead shouted.
"That's exactly what I wanted to ask you!", Benefactor XIII said in
a threatening voice.
"The missile defense... Why didn't they shoot it down? What sort
of helplessness is this?", Bighead yelled, completely foregetting
about his own situation.
"Our defense missiles have stepped into action", Central Control
reported.
The king turned towards Bighead again.
"If someone should know the basic laws of our society, that is
you, Council Member Bighead. The smallest mistake, the smallest
carelessness or irregularity leads to incalculable consequences.
Together with our perfect computer system, we need perfect top
performance brains, or else, the machines will grow over our heads,
will only have scrap value, as my great predecessor, Benefactor II,
has stated. I am sorry, Bighead, that the excellent representative of
one of our outstanding lineages has to end this way. For farewell,
you are allowed to kiss my hand."
"For farewell? But majesty!!!"
"Yes, we will tell the irrevocable news to the members of your
family. We hope that you will continue to serve your home down at
the Trunk Bearers according to your skills..."
"Majesty, you cannot do that... you cannot do that to me..."
"We can do anything, Bighead, and we must it, too, for the sake
of Oxygénia", the king said. "Away with him!"
On the floor of the throne room, a trap opened.
181

Bighead felt as if he would be dipped into a sedative bath. The
air around him was vertiginous, foggy, darkness reigned;
impermeatable darkness, and he felt as if he fell down into a
bottomlessly deep shaft.
They remained the three in the throne hall.
The two brothers glared at each other.
"Traitor!", Valiant hissed. "You have let know the Earthling that
the ship would land. You showed him the way to escape. You let
him get away!"
"'Tis not true!", prince Warrior flared up. "Father, you won't
believe him that?"
"It don't believe him that", Benefactor XIII said, "because I know
for sure that you didn't give away our secrets. You have done
something much more serious and are therefore unworthy of the
throne. You have let it become obvious that you are a weakling."
"But father!"
"You didn't tell him that the spaceship was about to land, but he
got know it anyway. From where did he get that knowledge? He has
listened to our radio communication. Where did he get the receiver
from? Your order was to take all of his equipment from him. And
how could he understand our language?"
"I took everything from him."
"Did you also have his hair shaven off? Did you look inside his
body? Maybe he has swallowed the receiver? Did you check his
brain, too? Did you do everything?"
"Father... the hospitality... the chivalry..."
"Weaklings don't belong on Oxygénias throne."
"A single ring was left to him... He was clinging to it. He had
gotten it from his bride. Do you believe, father, that there is a power
in the world I would let the cloth to that princess Goldhair, my
beloved fiancée, has stitched for me?"
"Which fiancée?", the king asked. "You have no fiancée."
"Father... we were engaged to each other at her birth..."
"She was engaged with the successor of Oxygénia, with the
future Benefactor XIV. But from this moment on, that will be prince
Valiant."
"Father, have mercy!"
"As father, I would have mercy, but I'm not allowed to as the
ruler of Oxygénia. The spaceship from Earth has departed, has
outrun the range of our missiles. Because or defense only controls
the moving objects approaching us from outside and you, the chief
182

leader of our security, took too long to make up your mind to let the
missiles have reprogrammed..."
"But is it this disastrous for Oxygénia if a couple in their shabby
little spaceship returns to their own planet? Is it this disastrous if
someone somewhere far away from here, in another solar system,
knows about us? Oxygénia isn't threatened by anyone after all..."
"And yet, we are threatened. If it is possible to escape from here,
we are threatened. If information can leak from here, we are
threatened. For farewell, you are allowed to kiss my hand, son."
"You don't want to throw me, too, to the Trunk Bearers? Me? The
heir apparent of Oxygénia?"
"According to our laws, the ruler of Oxygénia always has two
sons. The older one gets onto the throne. If he is worthy for it. I, too,
was the second son of my father."
The trap in the floor of the throne hall opened. Prince warrior fell
to the depth, robbed of his consciousness.
Two hours later, a robot brought him together with Bighead on
the Secret Flight Route into a servant city. They wore grey working
clothes and a mask with a breathing hose. And they didn't
remember Oxygenville...
At the throne hall, they met for a new council. Led by the king
and prince Valiant, the new successor, a new security council was
elected. Its members were ordered to examine the cicrumstances of
the vanishing of Peter MacGulliver and check the technical state of
the Secret Flight Route at once. An immediate encephalograph of all
Rememberers was ordered, as well as the check of all school books.
As a further command, it was ordered that the defense missiles of
Oxygénia which until now only reacted to objects approaching from
outer space had to get an add-on with a shielding system to the
inside as well. If it had happened once that a spaceship could get
away from the sovereign territory of Oxygénia, it could very well
happen for a second time...
Satisfied, the king listened to the straightforward, energetic
proposals of prince Valiant. He demanded the development of a new
code system for opening and closing the locks, new...
The king looked up. At the giant crystal screens of the windows,
he realised strange light effects. He thought he had seen brownish
red shadows pass by.
Prince Valiant bowed before him deferentially.
"Great father... I was talking about a new code system..."
183

"Yes", the king said, distracted and stared towards the window.
"Open the windows!"
The giant crystal screens opened like on their own.
The council members stared outside. Above the garden grewn
with flowers and palmtrees, something strange and scary billowed
up. It was in contrast of the blue sky, approached and became
thicker and thicker. It was a cloud, a reddish brown, menacingly
growing cloud. The trees started to swoosh. A frightened herd of
tiger deers raced through the park.
"What is this?", prince Valiant yelled, startled.
The face of the king displayed mortal fear.
184

50 – Farewell
Three thousand kilometers above the planets surface, the rescue
ship "Ra-1" was waiting for "Humanitas".
The interceptor missiles of Oxygénia remained far beyond them.
The crew of "Ra-1" said their Goodbye and wished for a lucky trip
back home.
They were also greeted by a hail by the interplanetary station
"Fortuna-710".
Good luck, "Humanitas"!
You too, "Fortuna-710"!
July and Peter looked out of the window and at the receding
Oxygénia, the horrible planet.
"Now everything is fine... It's so good our escape was a success...
It has been so terrible, so completely alone", July said.
"I don't know... I don't know..."
"What don't you know?"
"If I have done enough for them... if I explained everything
precisely enough... if they can use the maps right... I still have so
much to tell you, July. It is just unimaginable that somewhere,
such evil beings are living... I will believe that it was just a
nightmare, that oceans are turned into pested goo out of sheer lust
for power, that some are rationing the oxygen for others, that
billions of beings are kept in slavery, tied to breathing hoses... Can
you imagine such a slavery work? Oh, if only they would succeed, if
only they would succeed..."
"Don't always think about them, Peter... We are humans from
Earth, we have to get back... Every planet can only solve its own
problems."
The purple planet was only as big as a soup plate at the horizon.
Peter didn't turn his gaze from it.
The planet emitted beams of light, sparkling light rays, and it
seemed to Peter as if the brown fog was moving, billowing...
"We don't want to get further away. July, let's get on an elliptic
orbit around Oxygénia... I want to see what's going on there..."
They turned their attention to the dashboard and adjusted the
vessels course. Again and again they orbited Oxygénia, approached
until three thousand kilometers and tensely watched the planet.
"Peter, do you want to orbit here forever?"
"No... no... just only half a day more... only half a day."
The color of the atmosphere of the planet slowly changed. It
looked as if a giant storm was raving in it. Sometimes, it shimmered
185

more reddish, then more blueish, then a reddish brown, now blue
again and became now darker, then brighter. What might be going
on on Oxygénia? Had the locks been opened? And what about the
beings?
On the fourth day, they unxpectedly received a radio call, but it
wasn't the interplanetary station "Fortuna-710". The transmission
was in the language of Oxygénia.
This is Oxygénia... the City of the Rememberers... Good friends are
hailing the spaceship "Humanitas".
This is "Humanitas"... This is "Humanitas"...
We want to thank you for everything... The locks have been
opened... The radio Central Control has been conquered... The ion
curtain doesn't exist anymore... We have air... We have air... We have
air...
This is "Humanitas"... This is "Humanitas"... We are so glad to
hear this... We wish you the best of luck... We won't forget you... May
the sky be with you, ON... I will always think of you, dear ORO... We
wish you good luck... Breathe freely...
The spaceship "Humanitas" was now receding from Oxygénia at
full speed. The radio signals became weaker and weaker; another
transmitting station, the relay station of Earth Sors Bona-300,
overlaid them with its call.
This is "Sors Bona"... This is "Sors Bona"...
This is "Humanitas", everything is fine, we're on our way back
home to Earth.
"I forgot something", July said.
"And that is?"
"You had asked for something to drink before you left."
Peter laughed, and they hugged each other.
And the spaceship flew along with them, towards their home, to
the dear old Earth, with its blue sky, its blue seas, its snow white
cities where flowers were blooming in the parks, where humans
lived happily and in peace, where one can breathe freely in clear air.
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Where is Oxygénia? (Author's notes.)
This book is a novel. It is entirely the result of the author's
imagination. Oxygénia is not really situated somewhere in the Milky
Way System, but rather nearby Liliput and Brobdingnag, maybe
also in the neighborhood of Tralfamador or Utopia... This book is a
novel. It is neither meant to be a popular-scientific article nor a
scientific description. To write something like that I wouldn't have
dared even if I understood a little bit more about astronomy,
chemistry, physics or biology. I'm asking my dear readers not to
want to research how the ion curtain and the air lock system may
have worked, how the breathing device of the Trunk Bearers had
been designed, how its bearers could talk while their mouth was
covered, and I also ask not to question about the nature of the radio
wave deleting and passing-through system of the mysterious
Central Control of Oxygenville and how the Hundred Lineages had
managed to establish their paradisiacal reign. Just believe me that
everything just happened like that.
This book is a novel, an invented story, the game of imagination.
And if you sometimes got the impression that during its creation,
some very earthly anxieties have played a role – then you are totally
right. I wrote about the scary, purple shimmering planet because I
fear about the cleanliness of the seas, about the oxygen donating
plankton, because I'm concerned about the inhabitants of the cities
struggling for breath in the smoke, about the streets contaminated
by the smog of the gasoline and the carbon dioxyde. I'm anxious
about the trees, the fresh grass and the flowers.
If I would be an architect, I would break my head about how to
construct smog free cities. If I would be a geologist, I would take up
the fight against the deforesting of the mountains, against the
devastation of whole landscapes. I'm an author, can only admonish.
Humans, sisters and brothers! Earth is so beautiful, the sunshine
so marvellous, the life so wonderful, let's protect it as long as it's
still possible, as long as it isn't too late...
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Translator's final thoughts
So, here we are... now you've read "Oxygénia", at least I hope you
did and didn't just skip forward to the last page.
In my opinion, this novel should be one of the most important
novels of the 20 th century as it very graphically describes what may
very well become of Earth if we, yes, we – our very own species, the
humans! – continue to go on as we did for the last, say, 200 years.
It has been quite an effort for me to translate it; as I mentioned
before, my native language is German, and translating into a foreign
language is never easy – but if it could bring only one single reader
on this planet to think about it, it's been fully worth the effort.
I read "Oxygénia" first when I was around 10 years old (I don't
remember exactly), and I re-read it several times since. And every
time, it makes me wonder: what would have become my fate if I
would have had the misfortune to be born on Oxygénia? Yes, I
know, it's a fictional, a metaphorical planet, but you see: no one has
the freedom of determining where, when or to whom he is born, so:
what about our successors? What about our children? Do you want
them to be born in a world like Oxygénia? So, I always wondered: if
I was born there, how would my life have been? Would I have been
born in Oxygenville, as a member of the "Upper Ten Thousand" as
we call them on Earth (you read it: Hundred Lineages with precisely
hundred members each, that makes for exactly ten thousand
beings. The term "the Upper Ten Thousand" is just way more
common in our language)? Very unlikely. Would the selecting
machines have found some useful talents in my brain, and would I
have become one of the Rememberers? Maybe. But much bigger
chances are that I would have become a Trunk Bearer, just like
eight billions of other beings, leading a life... no, not leading a life
but instead just vegetating for some years. What a horrifying
thought... isn't it?
Sadly, during the last decades, structures that could very well
lead to something scaringly familiar to the "Oxygénia Trust" have
developed, have become more clearly than back in the days when
Klára Fehér wrote her novel. Think of corrupt politicans, think of
namely Donald Trump – a billionaire who became the president of
the United States of America, only to immediately cancel the
membership of his country in climate protection protocols and
agreements, a man who could easily afford a safe place for himself
188

and his family to survive any results of the pollution and most likely
would not have any issue with thousands dying or being forced to
miserable living conditions because of his very own interests.
Surely, there are many more others like him. The thought that an
"Earth Trust" similiar to the Oxygénia Trust could form is, to me at
least, a nightmare coming true.
Sometimes, I wonder whether it already IS too late to change
something, if Earth already is on an irreversible course to become
Oxygénia. Given, the results of climate change may kill or at least
turn the life of our species to the much worse much sooner than
atmospheric pollution or polluted seas (isn't it astonishing and
frightening at the same time how accurately Klára Fehér described
oceans devoured of life but flooded with whole islands of plastic
waste back then when there wasn't even that much plastic waste in
the seas?), but does it really make a lot of a difference which
strikeback of nature is to kill us? And while we're talking about
climate change: well, it doesn't play any role in this novel; I think
that's because of when the novel was written in 1974, it hasn't been
quite that obvious as it is today; Klára Fehér may simply not have
known about it back then. Back in the days, smoking and fuming
car traffic and unfiltered exhausts from industrial facilities were
much more of a problem than they are today, at least in the western
world and the former East Block.
So I made this novel available to everyone in English language
because I really, really want as much people as possible to read it –
and to get to think about it... whether our species still has a chance
– or whether we all already are on the irreversible path of getting
into Oxygénia. Not just me, I believe I don't need to bother too much
about myself anymore – you see, I'm 42 years old already, I already
had a life, and I won't live forever. Three, four, maybe with some
luck even five decades – I can't expect much more, I'll possibly
survive this time one way or another, but what about the younger
ones? Humans that are still students today, or those coming after
them, not even born yet? Don't they deserve a chance for a life,
too...?
We all should think about it. Let's hope "Oxygénia" is still just a
glimpse of a possible future, only a nightmare that will never turn
into reality – and let's do our share about it. Or YOUR children will
find themselves in a city of the Trunk Bearers unexpectedly.
189

The translator, somewhere in Germany, June 2019.
190