2150 A.D.

"Then you don't have prostitutes?" I asked.

"Of course we have prostitutes," she replied. "Micro man has always needed sexual variety. It's the oldest profession women have ever known. We are true to the ancient micro customs which permit man to have anything he's willing to pay for. Of course, like many other pleasures, it's illegal to patronize a prostitute."

"What do you mean, 'like other pleasures'?" I asked.

"We have laws against many pleasures so that our people will appreciate them and work hard to earn enough money to afford them," Sela answered.

"You mean you encourage crime bypassing laws that you know will be broken?" I asked incredulously.

"Of course," she replied. "Hasn't it always been so? It's one of our best sources of revenue. Besides, look at the history of the world. Crime is an essential ingredient in micro life. It makes life exciting and interesting. After all, you can't have conflict and competition if you don't have the right kind of laws."

"You seem to mean that you and Elgon Ten have organized crime so that it benefits you and your followers," I commented.

"That's right, Jon Ten. That's how it's always been," she answered with a shrug of her shoulders that set her lush bare breasts to jiggling in a way I struggled to ignore. "But it benefits everyone because our organized crime provides everyone who is willing to pay for it the most delicious pleasure of all-rebellion and revolt-which is what breaking a law is all about. Micro man has always thrived on it."

"It's hard for me to believe that the two of you could have grown up in the Macro society, attained high levels of Macro awareness, and then given it all up for this," I remarked.

"But, Jon Ten," Sela cried out, "we didn't give up our awareness. We developed it further. I am now level nine; Elgon is ten. You don't understand. What we left behind was only boredom. Here there is the delicious excitement of forbidden fruits being fought over and taken by the strong and courageous. I tell you, Jon Ten, without pride and conflict life is so deadly dull that it's not worth living."

"You must have forgotten," I said, "that I came from the world of 1976 where conflict and competition were polluting and destroying this planet."

"We haven't forgotten," she replied, "that as long as competition and conflict were allowed free reign there was no great danger of pollution or overpopulation because the strong survived and the weak perished or lived lives of minimum consumption and pollution."

"But," I said, "aren't all your assistants with Macro powers called controllers, and aren't you limiting and controlling conflict and competition for your own interests?"

"Of course we are," she replied candidly, "because we are the strong, and the strong always control if they aren't shackled by a mythology of love, equality, and unity."

"You must recognize that no social, organization, including your micro society, can survive without cooperation," I stated.

"Yes," she agreed, "we cooperate so that we can better enjoy the fruits of conflict and competition."

Our conversation was interrupted at this point by our landing near a small town in the red state. Carol and I got out and this time walked all the way through this community of generally small unattractive houses. There were, however, a few larger homes, so we selected one of the largest and most ostentatious in the community. Before we knocked on the door Carol commented on the very few people we had seen in, the streets, which were almost deserted. Before I could knock on the door it was opened by a short middle-aged man with a large well-fed stomach and bright red skin. He welcomed us into a large and lavishly appointed living room saying that everyone was watching our progress on the TV, interspersed with the gladiator games from the capital city of Elgonia.

"Well," I said as we sat down in luxuriously comfortable form-hugging chairs, "I suppose that accounts for the absence of people outside. But tell us about the gladiator games you mentioned."

His face lit up and he gri

"You mean red gladiators fight gladiators of other colors?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "but we have many types of competition besides the individual sword fights, fist fights, or wrestling that gladiators performed in the past. We have team conflicts that include football, baseball, and basketball as well as larger conflicts such as capture the flag."

"Well," I said, "I remember playing a game by that name when I was a boy. How does your version go?"

"When we practice it locally," he explained, "we use fewer gladiators, but when it involves interstate-competition the standard team size is 100 men who play on a standard size C.F. field of 1,000 square yards. The object of the conflict is to capture the other state's flag. We use both sword teams and bare-handed teams."

"You mean that you actually kill each other in these contests?" I asked.

"Of course," he replied, "but since the gladiators can wear armor in the sword contests, not very many are killed-only ten or twelve a week but they're still the most exciting contests we have."

"How often," Carol asked, "do you watch these games?"

"Since we work six days a week, and must attend church on Sunday morning, that leaves our evenings and Sunday afternoons for watching the games," he replied.

"My God!" I exclaimed. "Don't you get tired of watching that much fighting?"

He laughed, then said, "There's one thing that we red men never get tired of, and that's fighting!"

"But isn't that sort of brutality against your religion?" I inquired.

"The red religion holds that God created four races of men and was disappointed," he explained. "Then he created the red race to fight for the glory of God. We are the chosen race to lead all other races by our dedication to courage and our loyalty to our race and to God."

"Sounds strangely familiar," Carol commented quietly to me.

"Scoff if you like, decadent woman," he replied angrily, "but our women are proud to bear us warriors, and they are decently married to one man."

Sensing that it might be wise to change the subject, I asked, "As a representative of the chosen red race how do you manage to accept a leader like Elgon, whose skin is certainly not red?"

"It's true that his redness doesn't show," he explained, "but the soul of our president is red. He wears his skin white in sympathy for the weakness of the white race."

"Then how do you know his soul is red?" I asked.

"Because when we asked him, he replied that he would never deny it," was-his response.

That Elgon was a sly one, I thought to myself. Then I decided to ask one more question before leaving. "Tell me," I said, "what do you do that allows you to live in such a large home and in such luxury?"

"I was hoping that you would ask," he said, gri

"Aren't you afraid," Carol asked as she glanced at the valuable articles in the room, "that you might be robbed of some of your wealth?"

He laughed rather scornfully and said, "We believe in the value of personal property, so we have law and order. Every tenth person on our island is a police official and we take great pride in our ability as crime fighters. I myself was appointed personally by President Elgon Ten as one of the ten top law officers in our Red State."