Contact across the Solar System

Jobs and Environments

Kalna and Ilmuth considered various other jobs besides cashier, especially jobs that don't require a lot of training or certification, since they didn't expect to be long-term residents. Fast-food work? Being a bank teller? A gas-station attendant? A dog walker? A tutor? A street peddler? A stripper? A phone-sex worker? A prostitute? They all had their pros and cons. The sex-related ones seemed very icky, though phone sex reminded them of what separated couples like to do over comm links. Ilmuth imagined what she might say to a phone-sex customer.

"I came from Mars in a flying saucer just for you", in a thick accent.

Kalna responded "You did, didn't you?" and she burst out laughing.

They recalled when a resident once described how she had once been an "escort". She explained that men would hire her to accompany them, with the expectation that she would have sex with them. It was a way of getting around anti-prostitution laws, she said.

They did do some tutoring, however, and they experienced the whole spectrum of types of students. They ranged from those who liked their schoolwork to those who did it as a painful duty to those who tried to shirk it to those who expected to buy credentials. Though they could be demanding, they were usually nice about it, and they liked to pose puzzles for their students. Like Kalna asking what the highest number is and Ilmuth asking if bats are birds if you look closely at their anatomy. Also that a hairdresser in a certain town is a woman who styles the hair of every woman who does not style her own hair. Who styles the hairdresser's hair?

They noticed a big change in the indoor environments since their last visit, one that made these environments much easier on their noses and lungs. Much less smoking. This bizarre Earther practice seemed only annoying at first, and Kalna once told George that only Earthers have that weird habit. The two recalled when around then a resident brought back a pack of cigarettes and everybody tried to smoke them. Kalna stopped after one breath left her coughing. Ilmuth was curious about what psychoactive effects it might have, but she stopped after a few puffs. She then opened up a cigarette and put some of its tobacco flakes in her mouth. She didn't notice anything and she soon spit them out. Everybody was baffled at what the Earthers get out of it, but they seemed to find it very difficult to stop doing it. Almost as if it is an addiction.

Then Earther medical researchers discovered that smoking can make smokers very very sick, yet many Earthers kept on doing it. That was almost as bizarre as the habit itself. Now some of the Earthers were banning it in indoor areas, and Earthers could be seen doing it outside of buildings.

They also noticed after a while that LA was much less smoggy than last time, and they discovered that here also, it was due to politicians cracking down on troublesome emissions. Emissions from the numerous cars in the LA area that would get trapped by the temperature inversions that the area sometimes suffered from. Earthers were gradually learning to avoid turning their planet into a garbage dump, even if that required fighting their commercial interests that whined about how expensive it was to avoid doing so. Nobody took such arguments seriously from shoplifters, that it was too expensive for them to pay for what they wanted to acquire. The two knew, because they helped catch some shoplifters with their telepathy.