" "Okay." "Okay." There were childish screams and giggles coming from somewhere around me. I turned around to find a large swimming hole almost literally crawling with little kids splashing, screaming, and making a mess. "This is quieter?" I asked. "This way," he said, leading me down a pathway. Once through a cut in the trees the sounds faded quickly into the background. "One thing I've never understood is the need we seem to have for the artificial." "Huh?" "All those kids back there. Do you realized that that pool is kept sterile by circulating it's entire mass of water every hour almost a klick underground to a superconductor storage ring next to a fusion plant just so the gauss can shred anything going through it? Why, when any natural swimming hole will do, and is chemically probably a lot cleaner? As far as I know, there's nothing artificial about the lagoon where you live. |