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all around the outside for the workers. Toward the center, outside the garden, the men who took me worked there. They were scientists, I think. Maybe they studied botany, too. The garden was located along the back side of the disk, away from the place where the leaders worked. At the end of the garden was a room full of beds stacked on top of each other. The children gardeners slept there. I did, too, when I was with them. The garden contained trees and plants from all over the world. There were birds, some I had never seen. A water tank kept the plants alive. Sometimes they sent smaller craft to collect water. They called these craft the ‘water bearers.’”
    “How big was the craft?”
    “It was huge. There were three levels. At the top were the men who operated city. In the middle level, there was an eating place and a relax place. On the bottom was the garden and resting places.”
    “Buddy tells me that you have been traveling in space all of your life. Over the years, did your role change?”
    He looked at me and offered more orange juice. “Yes. It did change. When I became a young man, I became a teacher of small children. I worked with scientists teaching them the mystery of the plants they retrieved from the jungles. I showed them how to prepare them. I discovered we had diseases on Earth they had never known, and they had diseases I had never known.”
    “Did you ever find out where they came from?”
    “They traveled to their planet several times. They took me when I became older. From a distance, it looked like a vacant world. It is far, far away. There are millions of stars in the universe and dozens and dozens of civilizations.”
    “Can you tell me about their planet?”
    “It was a desert. It was a purple-gray land. There were no trees or rivers. Only dust and rocks. Dust and wind. It was the reason they were interested in plants. They lived undergroundand tapped deep underwater reserves. At one time, there was a large above-ground civilization, but they were forced to move underground. Despite their advanced knowledge, there were problems they did not foresee. Artificial light was not like natural light, and a high percentage of their people suffered mental problems. But today that is no longer the problem. Many of their stories were told about life when they lived above ground.”
    “Did they ever tell you why they went underground and what happened to their planet?” I asked.
    “They told me that a series of catastrophes struck their planet. They never explained. Perhaps they did not think I needed to know or would understand.”
    “Buddy tells me you still go to the disk in the sky. What is your role now?”
    “I am an Earth Advisor according to them. I tell the children of life on Earth and about the jungle and the forests. I tell them the old stories I heard from my grandfather, and I continue to teach them about the importance of trees and plants, and how they can feed your soul and your body. The little ones call me
Zhantayillawoc.”
He spelled the word for me, stopping a couple of times, repeating the word, and then spelling phonetically. “In their language it means something like honored grandfather. I like that.”
    “What is the most amazing thing you saw during your travels?”
    “The underground caves where they lived. Their planet is huge. Several times bigger than earth, but it is a desolate world. When they moved underground there were caves so large I could not compare them to anything. There are no seasons there. They control the temperature. They have different sections where people live and tend to the plants. Some places are hot and moist; some are dry and cooler. Some are like the desert. They have hot zones and cool zones, but I never saw snow.”
    “Can you describe how they lived?”
    “They live all together. There is no private property. Everything is owned and given to you by the community. There were coupleslike we have in marriage. Children were born, but