Read Alien Landscapes 2 for Free Online Page B

Now that he had begun to pay attention to his job and home life, he wasn’t sure what he himself was doing to be “productive.”
    Jane stood with her hands on her narrow hips, shaking her head. “I guess we’ll never know why he did this to himself. It’s like he was being punished.”
    “Uncle Asimov knew how to take care of himself. He was self-sufficient. I bet he built most of this trailer with his own hands.”
    “Do you think he used a spear to hunt for his food?” Elroy asked. “Maybe he killed some of those cattle, or jackrabbits, or prairie dogs.”
    “Whatever he did, he did it his own way. He must have felt a sense of accomplishment in just getting through each day.” George recalled how good he’d felt with the single task of making a pot of coffee with the old-fashioned percolator.
    “How inconvenient,” Jane insisted. “It must have been impossible for him! I’ll bet he was very miserable.”
    George wasn’t so sure. “I bet he was happy.”
    Judy laughed in disbelief. “Nobody could be happy out here. Just think of everything he was missing.”
    “But he had things most of us don’t even remember.”
    Jane remained unconvinced. “What does that have to do with anything? So much unnecessary work. It’s such a shame.”
    “And now this place is all ours, for what it’s worth,” George said, grinning. “Uncle Asimov willed it to me.”
    “But what do we do with this place?” Jane said with growing horror in her voice.
    “We’ll keep it. I just might come back, spend a whole two hours next time.”
    “If you do that, George, you’re doing it alone.” Jane was completely no-nonsense. Under the sunshine and with her own perspiration, her always-perfect hairdo had begun to come undone.
    He just smiled mysteriously at her. “That’s the idea.”
    Elroy pushed the creaking door and went back out into the bright sunlight, where he saw a lizard scuttle across the sand. “Can we go, Pop? Please?” The boy’s normally cheerful voice carried a whining tone. “We could get back home in time to play a game or two in the virtual immersion dome. Wouldn’t that be neat, Pop?”
    He saw that Jane had been ready to go from the moment they set down in the desert. Before the situation could grow entirely unpleasant, George agreed. Ironically, both of the kids had plenty of energy as they hurried back toward the waiting bubblecar.
    George had seen what he needed to see, and he would remember this for a long time. His family grumbled and complained, but their words washed off of him as he felt a strange sense of possibilities. He had a spring in his step.
    Elroy and Judy scrambled into the bubblecar, gasping and panting and moaning with the effort. Jane settled into her usual position beside him in the front of the craft. He sealed the dome over them, raised the vehicle in the air, and whirred away.
    “It’ll be good to get home and back to normal, now that you’ve had your little adventure, George.” Jane had the patient tolerance of a woman who had been married a long time.
    “Yes, dear.”
    The bubblecar picked up speed and they flew back toward the city. When no one was looking, though, George surreptitiously switched off the auto-pilot, took the controls, and piloted the bubblecar by himself all the way home.

    * * *

Job Qualifications
    The expectations we place on our politicians seem impossible for any person to achieve. A candidate needs to be all things, know all walks of life, understand every segment of his constituency. How could one person achieve so much . . . without a little help from a handful of clones?

    Candidate Berthold Ossequin—the original—never made a move without being advised or cautioned by his army of pollsters, etiquette consultants, and style experts. Whether in public or in the privacy of his family estate, his every gesture and utterance was monitored. The avid media waited for Berthold to make any sort of mistake.
    Elections would be held soon, and he