"What!?"

Carlton Brock stared at general Roy McAdam as if he was defying the general to repeat what he'd just said. But McAdam was not easily intimidated. Unlike many other generals, he had actually seen combat, and taken part in it. He was not intimidated by hostile stares.

He said:

"It appears everything in the New World is ten times smaller than here on Earth."

"They lied to us," Carlton Brock said dramatically. "They lied to us! All that revered ancestors bullshit, all that crap about giving us a new, better, richer, Earth so that we aren't thrown back into the Stone Age... All lies! Our children, I mean those guys ten thousand years in the future... A bunch of liars! They promised us the Earth, and gave us a fucking peanut."

Roy McAdam swallowed a couple of times. It wasn't easy to explain things to Carlton Brock, but he had to try. He said:

"The planet is the same size as our Earth, sir. What I meant is that everything on its surface is actually ten times smaller."

"Bullshit," Brock said decisively. "You know something, general? I've actually been over there myself. Several times, over the last few days. Everything is the same size as it is here."

"It just appears to be that way, sir. Because everything is to scale. Trees, animals, mountains, geographical features - everything is ten times smaller."

"But that's impossible! Impossible! You just said that this new Earth is the same size as ours. How do you know, anyway? How have your guys worked this one out? It's not like we have all sorts of scientific instruments over there."

"It's a relatively simple exercise in trigonometry, sir. If you want, I can explain - "

"No. No. I don't want to hear it. But... Fuck! That means all of America is the size of Nevada, right? Or something like that."

"Well no, sir. Of course we have to look into it some more, but it appears the all the land masses - continents, islands, and so on - are the same size as on Earth. We have plenty of land over there. Even more than we have here - there are those new archipelagos."

"But that's impossible! You've just said that all geographical features are scaled down, as well."

"Not the size of the land mass, sir. Just mountains, valleys - you get the drift."

"I don't. Listen, general, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. That would mean - I mean, look at the Rockies. Massive mountain chain, right? You're telling me that the Rockies are just a thin row of anthills over there? It's not true. I've been receiving reports from the settlements we've been setting up all over the place. And it happens that I've just been reading the report from New Denver this morning. The mountains there are as big as the ones we have here. Bigger, if anything."

"That's because of the scale."

"Scale! Scale! Fucking nonsense. The Rockies stretch over a vast area, general. What you're saying implies that this area is ten times smaller over there. General Merton, who's in charge of New Denver, reports his teams have been exploring around the settlement. It took them forever to travel beyond the peaks around the town."

"The consensus is that there are many extra valleys between the peaks, sir. We've seen some of that around our New York colony as well. There are extra features in the range of hills west of our New York settlement. What's more, I've heard that the Saudis report their desert isn't quite the desert they have here. It actually has quite a few rivers flowing through it. There is plenty of sand and rock, but also plenty of oases."

"They're fucking us around. Our own children are fucking us around!"

"It seems they've done their best to improve on Earth, sir. There are rocks high in valuable mineral content scattered virtually everywhere. There is plenty of extra arable land. There is a vastly improved drinking water supply. Now that we've been there for a while, it's also clear there is a lot of food around, in the wild. Berries and roots and herbs and stuff. I wouldn't say they're fucking us around, sir. If anything, what they've done is the opposite. They've tried to make things as easy as possible for us, sir. For example, there is plenty of wild game, but few predators. My men have to see a wolf or a bear, yet."

"Okay. So they've engineered this fucking planet of theirs, I mean of ours, to be as easy to colonize as possible. But why the difference in scale? Why? Why would they turn people and trees and everything into midgets?"

"I don't think we have the answer to that, sir. Not now."

The answer was provided by the end of the day by no other than the brilliant Olaf Troll. He took part in the meeting of the Colonial Council that took place that afternoon, and listened to the others fight over the significance and consequences of the discovery that everything in the New World - excluding the land mass - was ten times smaller than on Earth. Once the hubbub died down, Troll signaled to Jean Caron, who was chairing the proceedings, that he would like to speak.

"I have been listening carefully to everyone here," Troll began, "And I've been constantly hearing a single word. That word is 'why'. And in my opinion, the answer is simple, so simple that you, I mean everyone, has overlooked it. It's easy to overlook something that's right under our nose.

"This scaling down of every thing and everyone in the New World serves the same purpose as the rule that governs inter-dimensional travel and transport between Earth and the New World. You all know we cannot transport goods to the New World. You all know that we cannot transport or replicate anything alive from the New World here on Earth.

"Try to imagine what would happen if that restriction didn't exist. Can you? Because I can. And I'll tell you: what would happen is that the colonists in the New World would end up invading Earth, and taking it over. Though probably there wouldn't be much to take over, if a war like that broke out."

Olaf Troll paused, and noted with pleasure that some mouths had fallen open, and that everyone was following him very, very closely. He resumed:

"The New World has enormous potential, much bigger than our own Earth. It's obvious by now that it is much richer in resources. Given modern tools, the civilization we're growing there would easily overtake the one we have on Earth. That's why we're being forced to start everything from scratch over there. Replicating or transporting the colonists back to Earth would end in an invasion, and in a war that would destroy our civilization here.

"Our children don't want an Earth destroyed by war. Our children want an Earth that has been rescued from the brink we've brought it to. Our children are wise enough to know that given modern weapons in the New World, we would probably end up destroying it in a fight over its resources. There will be plenty of fighting over there as it is, I'm sure. But it will be done with swords and bows and arrows, and maybe muskets and cannon. Not with nuclear warheads. And I suspect that once we've developed sufficiently to fully explore the New World, we'll find that it contains no radioactive materials. No uranium, no plutonium, no resources that would enable the colonists to construct weapons of mass destruction.

"Wars are always fought to acquire or exploit new territories. By scaling down everything except the actual size of the land mass, our children have given us ten times as much territory as we have on Earth. There is more than enough land to build thousands, millions of colonies. The New World has been designed for peaceful coexistence.

"I'm not so naive as to think our colonists are all going to live in peace. It's simply against human nature, at least in its present state. I ask you: what do people do for entertainment? They watch movies packed with violence - the more, the better. They play, or at least used to play video games whose common denominator is killing, killing, killing anything and anyone that stands in the way. Thank God for movies and video games! If we hadn't had them, we would have all killed each other by now.

"There is a strong possibility that the colonists in the New World will be able to develop means of traveling to Earth. In my opinion, the resource called timon will be key to developing this ability. Please note that so far, no one has found even a trace of timon in the New World. And we definitely don't have any here.

"I suspect that eventually, we will find timon in the New World. I suspect timon resources may well be hidden in the new archipelagos that contain mesozoic life forms: terrible creatures that act as guardians of this extraordinary resource. But even if New World colonists find and exploit timon resources, and eventually manage to send an army back here, it will be an army of midgets. Easy to defeat even by a bunch of people armed with nothing but rocks and clubs.

"Thank you for your attention. I shall now leave you to your deliberations. I'm already late for a meeting with our new minister of finances."

And Olaf Troll walked out of the room, leaving a stunned silence behind him.

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