My Life (part 76)

The un-packaging of our returned present took time.  Everything was carefully inspected and categorized, scans made, notes taken.  Within a few days everything had been broken down into small packets and moved indoors.  Studies continued on desks, tables, nothing harmful had been found.

“So far so good as far as the Oaxions on Freedom having cloaking technology,” I said to Ted Johnson.

“Figures,” he said without looking up from the row of small packets he was studying on his desk top.  “If they had planned to use the technology to sneak bombs onto Jasper’s World or Earth they would not have returned this,” he replied waving at the items in front of him.

“So what did they send us?”

Well, Trenton, it looks like they sent us back everything we sent them, plus this,” he held up a thin stick of black plastic about a foot long, “everything else has been looked at, touched, and put back into the place it was in when we sent it.”

“Nothing gone?”

“Nothing.”

“This is new?” I started to reach for the thin, black, plastic strip.

“That stinks, by the way.”

I pulled back my hand and then reconsidered and picked up the  plastic strip.  I sniffed it, “Not so bad.”

“Try the other end.”

I sniffed the other end of the strip.  My eyes watered, “smells like something rotten.”  I sniffed the end I had smelled the first time, “this end, still not so bad.”

“That is all we have found that is not exactly what we sent them.”

“Weird.”

“Yes,” Ted turned his attention back to his work and I walked around the room looking at each person’s endeavors.  A lot of computer clicking, a lot of “Humms” and “Ahs” being said but I’m a farmer not a scientist so I was pretty much out of place in the room.  I smiled and nodded at the people who looked up at my passing but added little to their research.  I stopped at a long table covered with thousands of samples of  living and non-living items found on Earth and Jasper’s World.  No one was working at this table so I started poking around.  Bits of flowers of every kind, samples of vegetables like peas and corn and even common rocks and gem stones all still contained in the glass vials they were sent in.  I picked up a vial that was labeled “uncut diamond,” It looked like a glob of melted glass to me but it felt good to hold it.  Something about it drew me to it and I had never been one to be impressed by precious stones.  I set it down and the feeling passed.  I picked up a vial labeled rose petals and caught a whiff of the smell of flowers.  I brought the vial close to my nose and smelled it.  A definite flower smell but not the smell of a rose.  The smell was non-specific but definitely the smell of a flower.  I picked up a vial labeled “dandelion flower” and sniffed the container.  It had the same general flower smell.  I started smelling each vial with some sort of flower in it, they all smelled the same.  I picked up a vial labeled “wheat grass”.  I knew what wheat grass smelled like; I had worked in and around it most of my life.  The glass vial smelled in a general way like a grass but not like wheat grass.  I started sniffing vials and rearranging them according to smell.  I must has gone a little crazy with my sniffing because a group started to form around the long table covered with vials.

I pointed to a group of fifteen vials I had arranged, “this smell means flower,” I told the group.  I pointed to another group of about fifteen vials I had arranged, “this smell means grass.”  People started picking up vials and sniffing them.  The smell did not decrease or become less specific after being handled by several people.  Others around the table started to arrange vials. 

First vails were arranged in general groups like rocks and dirt but then people in the group with more sensitive noses found subtile difference and added sub groups for metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary and sub groups of clays, sands, silts and peats.  Before we stopped our frenzied  search we had discovered over two hundred words of the Oaxion language.  They spoke with smells.  They had labeled each item we had sent them with a smell.  The foot long thin black plastic stick was a message and we  needed to identify every item they had labeled for us in order to read that message.

My Life (part 72)

“Come with me.  I want to show you something,” Sally pulled on her long black winter coat, slid her personal communication pad into one of its oversized front pockets and pulled my hand away from the keyboard I had been typing on.  I managed to complete a sentence using only my right hand before I had to stand or be pulled onto the floor.  When I  stood Sally allowed me the use of my hands and I reached for my own jacket.  With the jacket zipped I pulled my cap out of the pocket of my jacket and put it on my head at which point Sally once more latched onto my hand and pulled me out of the room filled with busy people.  The door of the university room swished open and the chill of winter rushed in.  We exited swiftly and the door swished closed behind us.

“What’s up Goober?” I said, using my most tender pet name.

“Nothing Goober Head,” she never really liked that pet name, “time to take a walk.”  I allowed her to lead me past the main building of the university across the grounds and to the old high school both of us had attended.  She didn’t stop at any of the classrooms but walked around them on the concrete walkways until we came to the greenhouse that sat just behind the main school.  The greenhouse covered more ground than the entire school site and housed acres of climate controlled space.  Doors swished open to allow us to enter an airlock.  Those doors closed, a moment passed while the proper temperature and humidity were restored and then the doors to the inside of the greenhouse opened.  The air inside the greenhouse was warm and moist like an early spring morning.  Students worked diligently on their projects, projects that not only taught them the basics of farming but projects that would be transplanted into fields at the proper times and produce food.  We walked past sections growing tomatoes, sections growing peppers and vegetables of every other kind; each with its own micro environment.  As we walked I could feel slight changes in both temperature, humidity and even smells.  Some of the changes were abrupt and completely obvious.  Some of the differences were so subtile only a farm boy like myself would be likely to notice.  It had been a while since I felt like a farmer.

“Thank you Sally, I needed this,”  I pulled her close and gave her a big kiss.  Several of the students watched us and giggled and whispered to each other.

“Over this way,” she pulled out of my embrace and led me by my hand to a pile of black plastic seeding trays.  “One of these,” she said while digging a round seed out of a bag, “into one of these,” she placed the seed into the center of the first space in a seeding tray, “this deep,” she pushed the round seed down into the potting mix about a quarter of an inch and smished the dirt down around it.”

I started doing my job but asked, “kind of old fashioned isn’t it?  Don’t we have machines that could do about a thousand of these a second?”

“We do, but here we are teaching an attachment to the soil.  We want our future farmers to care for their plants and respect their occupation.”  She watched my fingers push a seed, “pay attention!  That’s too deep.”  We must have worked for hours.  A new crop of students came in and stared at us for a few seconds.  It wasn’t usual to see Trenton and Sally Jennings planting seeds.  On the walk back to the exit of the greenhouse I noticed the changes from crop to crop once more.  I noticed the different smells most of all.

Standing in the airlock I said, “we need to include smells and not just major differences, we need to include the smell of a rose and a tulip but also every smell in there,” I nodded toward the greenhouse.  Somehow I knew it would be important but at that timeI had no idea how important it would be.