Chapter 31

Mark, Candy and Danyria got into one lift and Bentiri, Meles and Lydia got into the other. Soon they were flying northwest along the Evenor River and mountains and then turning and going through some scenic mountain valleys, before coming to a very lush river valley with steep hills on both sides.

Candy asked, “This is beautiful, are they thinking about living here?”

“No, Cleo from the embassy was raving about the beauty and scenery there, so the girls wanted to check it out. The girls all live in the palace with me.”

Candy asked, “I thought you didn’t want to live in a palace?”

“I didn’t, but we all kind of fell in love with this one, so we decided to stay. You must come check it out sometime.”

When they stopped, everyone got out, and the lifts floated up into the air. All that was around them was a small shelter that looked like a bus stop with a sign that said, ‘Mestor 09’ and it had room for two hover carts to park, although both carts were currently out. Inside the shelter was a blue LIFT terminal and a white INFO button.

The area itself had a fair sized meadow near a small lake that collected the water from 3 different waterfalls around it. The meadow wasn’t huge, so it couldn’t grow into a sizeable community, but it would definitely be a very scenic one. He could definitely see the attraction to the area.

Cricket said, “I just used the name of the region for now and a two-digit number, eventually when the communities have names, I’ll change it to the name.”

Just then they heard “Candy!” and “Daddy!” shouted from behind them as Laruun and Marta came running up. Annabelle, T’Soona, Solara and Rayven bringing up the rear.

“Where’s Liyana and Gyges?” Mark asked once everyone had arrived.

Rayven said, “I think they’re doing stuff at the Planning Office. Liyana is more about work than just going out and playing.”

Mark asked, “Well, this is a pretty place. What do you girls think?”

“It’s pretty, but it’s definitely not ranch land,” Annabelle said, as she gave Candy a hug.

“Are you guys moving here and who is this?” Annabelle asked Candy, while looking at Danyria.

Mark said, “Sorry, I forgot to introduce you, Danyria is Candy’s friend, she’s moving here too. Danyria this is Annabelle, Solara, Rayven, T’Soona, Laruun and Marta.”

“We’re going to be ranch partners with your mom and dad,” Candy said excitedly.

Rayven said, “That’s great! We’ll get to see you more often!”

Mark was curious, so he pressed the INFO button and it displayed a holomap showing the various lots and there were already 10 lots claimed.

“Cool, there’s already been 10 lots purchased around here. Let’s go check out some ranch locations you found yesterday,” Mark suggested, to which they all agreed.

Since they were taking multiple lifts, Solara was going to ride with Meles and Lydia, Mark and Annabelle were going to ride with Candy and Danyria and the rest were going to ride in a third lift.

Cricket told Mark, “I know the locations of the areas that Annabelle liked, so when you choose the location, go down to the bottom of the list and choose the 99 location, it will only show up for the people in your group.”

Mark told everyone, “Annabelle, Cricket knows where you were looking and since they were all quite a distance away from the transit stops, she created some special locations that only we can see ... Atlas 99, Autokthon 99 and Mneseus 99. Those locations are very close to where you were looking yesterday.”

They were soon all off to a location that was near the interior of the Atlas region, in between Mount Cleito and the Meteor Plateau.

Since it was half an island away, they had time to talk. Candy told them that a few days after they had left her on Savann, she realized she enjoyed having her parents and friends around, but quickly bored with just volunteering and running around. She then said she dated a guy for a few days and when it came to sex, she realized how much she missed Mark’s cock, but mostly his stamina. Fortunately, Dany had filled that role well, but she hoped Mark would fill her now and then too!

A few centons later, they passed beyond the enormous mountains and started turning towards the plains and foothills in the valley between the Meteor Plateau and Mount Cleito. Not long after that, they were soon approaching the location, and the lifts started descending toward an open meadow amongst the foothills about halfway between Mount Cleito and the Meteor Plateau.

Once they were all out of the lifts, Annabelle said that was far more convenient than going to a nearby transit stop and then travelling from there. There’s no way her parents would live right in town, so this area she thought they would like the most was probably a good 20 to 25 kilometres away from the nearest transit stop.

The spot they were at had a stream that came down from Mount Cleito and eventually ended up connecting to the Evenor River, which formed the big delta on the southeastern side of the island, although they were still quite a distance from the Evenor River to the east.

The valley at that point was several kilometres wide, and the stream was shallow enough to cross, offering easy access to Mount Cleito to the North, the massive Meteor Plateau in the Autokthon region to the South. They had stayed away from the Evenor River that bordered the Ampheres and Evaemon regions, as Cricket had told them anywhere near a major river was a prime location for a city to develop.

Candy said, “I can see why you would choose this location for your parents’ ranch, it’s not near any planned towns, easy access to multiple mountains, lots of foothills and the big plateau for a variety of different trail rides.”

Mark agreed, “I can definitely see the attraction to this area. I take it the stream was the reason you stopped here? Natural water source for the horses?”

Annabelle was smiling as she used her phone to take a panoramic video of the location, “Do you really think they’ll like it?”

Everybody agreed that they would probably love it, but Mark said, “This place is definitely nice, but let’s go check out the other places.”

Mark called a lift, Solara did the same as did Laruun. Soon lifts were descending toward them. Annabelle explained the next stop was ‘Mneseus 99’ at the very north end of the Mneseus region, on the edge of the foothills in the middle of the plains.

Soon they were off to the location and they were there within a few minutes, since it was just on the other side of the Meteor Plateau.

It was all foothills at that location, but they stopped at a decent sized meadow that looked up towards the Meteor Plateau to the north. From that elevation, you could see the ocean to the east, west and south sides of the island.

Candy said, “I can also see the appeal of this location also, but I like the first one better as it has more options and variety for trail rides. This one just feels so ... exposed.”

Annabelle took out her phone and made a panoramic video. Just as she finished making her video, Mark’s stomach growled and pretty much everyone heard it, so they headed back to the city for lunch.

The third location she had liked was much like the one they were at, but closer to Mount Cleito in the Ampheres region, but after thinking about it, the first location was definitely her favourite as Cricket had told her that, historically, the Ampheres region was one of the more populated regions because of the many lakes and rivers and the proximity to Acropolis.

From the Mneseus 99 location, it took a little more than 30 centons to reach the city and they landed at the main city centre transit stop, which was near Cleito’s Temple. As the newcomers exited the lifts, they were in awe of the size of the buildings and the amount of gold and silver everywhere.

Mark turned around and pointed down the gold path and explained, “The temporary residential houses were on the outer ring, but they could take any of the four paths out of the city centre to reach the area. If you didn’t already have a temporary house assigned, visit the Planning Office to get one.”

They had decided rather than self-claiming houses; they needed to have some record of assigned houses and which ones were vacant once the larger transports arrived. There was a plan in place that they were going to set up an immigration booth, that everyone could stop in to get the information speech, and they could sort friends and families and assign them housing at that point in time. That way even the kids would have a HOME location.

That was one handy function of the lift system. Anyone could call a lift; with a lost child or someone injured or too intoxicated to operate the navigation system, as long as they could get in the lift it would take them home by default. If someone failed to get out of a lift after two centons, it notified security. If items remained in a private lift, it wouldn’t take off and it would give an audible warning saying, ‘Please collect all items from the lift!’ and send an alert to your wrist device, if you were a citizen. Again, if the item wasn’t removed after two centons, it would notify security. Plus, the lifts cleaned and reset themselves after every trip. Public transportation lifts just continued on their route and reset themselves only once they were empty.

There weren’t that many people at the pavilion for lunch. Mark had suspected there would be a lot more, so Mark talked to the pavilion coordinator. Apparently lunch was always a hit-or-miss situation, and thus they always had troubles finding volunteers for that meal, even on Atlanterra. Mark looked around and saw some food vendors with carts, so he asked, “Would it impact you too much if we only did breakfast and supper in the pavilions?”

The CMP coordinator said, “That is a wonderful idea. It would give me some time to go exploring, plus it is always easier to find volunteers for the busier meals.”

Mark countered, “Since we’re going down to two meals per day, would you mind if we expanded the hours a bit? Instead of 7 to 9 and 17 to 19, maybe we go 6 to 9 and 16 to 19?”

She agreed that would make more sense, so he said, “After lunch, change the sign and I’ll go update the people at the port. Also, starting tonight, we’ll start coordinating meals in the residential pavilions in Row M.”

Everyone got in line and got themselves some sandwiches and drinks and went outside and sat in the shade of the trees in one of the many parks. During their lunch, there was a group of people walking around trying to recruit people to go play some soccer in the stadium and another group trying to organize a baseball game.

After lunch, everyone just wanted to relax, so they all went swimming in one of the deeper ponds. Most of the ponds and fountains were just wading pools, but a few of them were a metre or so deep. Nothing deep enough to safely dive into, though.

As they played around in the water, Mark got to thinking about the wildlife, or the lack thereof. That was one thing that had been bothering him in the back of his mind, there wasn’t any wildlife on the island. A few birds had found their way out there and a few fish, but that was it.

Cricket provided Mark with a list of animals that used to live on the island. It was a list of the animals found on the African plains, including a large population of elephants that the Atlanteans had domesticated and used for farming.

After a while they were all laying in the shade and looking up at the leaves, when Mark brought up his thoughts.

“Is it just me or has everyone else noticed the lack of birds and other animals on the island?” Mark asked to no one in particular.

T’Soona was the first to respond, “Good! Someone has noticed, it has been bothering me since I’m not used to being the only flier around. When I’m flying, I hear the birds talking to me, but it’s just eerily quiet here.”

“So how do we fix that? Do we go round up a bunch of wild animals and just relocate them here?” Solara asked with no other solutions in her mind.

Laruun then pointed out, “What animals would we even bring? You must ensure the circle of life is complete. If you bring something over that has no predator, it’ll eventually become a nuisance, but you also don’t want to bring over a bunch of dangerous creatures that may hurt citizens.”

Mark questioned, “Does anyone have any ideas? I really have none, including capturing and relocating animals ... I’m not even sure how we could do that?”

T’Soona suggested, “What if we could just get some of their DNA, then we could grow our own animals here and not have to resort to capturing and relocating.”

Mark said, “If that’s even possible, I like that idea better than capturing. I wonder how zoos and aquariums do it?” Then a thought occurred to him, “Hey! If we can work from DNA, maybe we can help some endangered species of the world?”

Laruun and Marta then piped up, “Can we be in charge of looking into options for this?”

Mark laughed, “By all means! I look forward to seeing what you two come up with.”

No one had any plans for the afternoon. The only thing on the agenda was to eventually get Annabelle to the port so she could return home. So the girls offered to take the new arrivals on a tour of the city, while Mark decided that he should go to the port and inform them of the dining changes.

Mark called a lift and took the 30 centon trip to the port.

Apparently a lot of personnel from both orbiters had permission to go explore the island today. So shuttles had been going back and forth almost constantly. All the staff from the embassy had retrieved all their personal effects and whatever else they wanted to save and brought it to the surface.

Taryn was out of her booth and she updated Mark, “The Embassy has emptied and we’ve setup some immigration booths so, after they get through security, they could get together in their own groups and visit an immigration booth, which would explain the process and assign them a temporary residence.”

Mark asked, “So, are you going to move here?”

Taryn looked nervous, “I still haven’t decided. Part of me would like to stay, but part of me says stay the course I’m on, living on Atlanterra, but working elsewhere for a few sectares each year.”