Chapter 1
Alright, I can now admit I was a snob of the first order. I will also admit that I used
Daddy’s rank and position, and his wealth, to get what I wanted, when I wanted it and I
was extremely disparaging towards persons of lesser rank than myself.
Daddy is the Earl of Hepburn and my name is Stephanie. Actually, it’s the Lady
Stephanie Amelia Burleigh, although I don’t use my title very much these days. Neither
Daddy nor Mummy, and for that matter my older brother Vincent and my smaller sister Anne,
were like me. Daddy and Mummy are on numerous local committees and always extend a
helping hand to the people in the villages around Hepburn. Not me. I liked the party
life and I used my title and Daddy’s money to enjoy myself to the fullest.
Parties and balls and outings and holidays were my life and woe betide anyone who
got in the way of that lifestyle. All the remonstrances of my family fell on deaf ears
but I know now that Daddy wasn’t strict enough with me. Indeed, he doted on me, perhaps
because I was a rather good-looking girl.
Oh, I was just nineteen when IT happened.
I am fair, slim, athletic and I knew I was quite beautiful. I also made sure
everyone told me so, too. In short I was a pain in the proverbial, but I was out for a
good time and I didn’t care about anyone else.
IT happened at a ball.
We were at the Duke of Summerfield’s house and I had gone to powder my nose – don’t
you just love those English euphemisms? Anyway, I was alone in the ladies room and then
without any warning at all, I wasn’t. In the powder room, that is.
I was standing in a room quite unlike anything I had ever seen in my life, or could
have imagined for that matter. It had the proportions of Westminster Abbey. Yes, it was
that high although not perhaps as long. But it was the material it was made of that
startled me most. The pillars and walls, unlike the Abbey, where they are darkish stone,
were of some glittering crystal-like substance. They scintillated and sparkled and they
seemed to emanate a light of their own as well.
The floor was like marble but was even more beautiful than that wonderful stone.
It too sparkled but whereas the walls and pillars did so with all manner of beautiful
colours, with the floor it was with gold and silver.
Seated on a throne-like chair right in front of me near the back of the vast room
was a being who had an aura of radiance about him. The throne was made of the same
materials as the walls but the man seated in it emanated a radiance of his own. I felt it
immediately. It was at once calm and peaceful but I also felt a sense of beneficence.
He was dressed in flowing robes of some gossamer material of the purest white. His hair
was also white but his skin was tanned and he looked to be in perfect health although of
indeterminate age. Perhaps anywhere between thirty and sixty, I thought.
Around him were other men and women but their robes, while of the same quality,
were coloured. I was reminded of the Pope and his cardinals.
As he stared down at me, his expression of goodwill changed, hardened and he now
addressed me sternly: “Stephanie Burleigh, you are a disgrace to your family, your class
and your country! In this new millennium and at your age, you should be well aware that
rank carries responsibilities as well as privileges and yet you have shamed your family,
snubbed your nose at your class and done not a thing for your country…”
“Who the hell are you?” I said, stung by his words, “and what gives you the right
to lecture me? Anyway, where the hell am I?”
He smiled thinly then answered my questions, or some of them anyway. “My name is
Archon and I am the magistrate of this province. You are, by the way, now on Arret, which
is a sister world of Earth. It exists in exactly the same place and time as your planet,
but on another dimension altogether.
“Unlike your planet, however, ours has been at peace for thousands of years. We
have a single world government which operates as a meritocracy; that is, rank here is
earned, not inherited. We have, as a result, developed far past your world since our
resources have all been directed towards the betterment of our peoples and not the
destructions brought on by wars.
“You will find many similarities between our world and yours, however, as well as
many, many differences. Our basic geography is the same, as are our racial
characteristics. Technologically we are far in advance of you and socially, well, we
don’t have arguments between individuals, let alone civil strife or wars between states.
We operate as a single governmental unit and everyone in it has the same chances of
success as anyone else.”
“But why am I here?” I asked.
He smiled a little. “Until now, although we have for centuries been able to move
to and from your planet and observe your wars and your revolutions, we have held ourselves
aloof from you. Oh, we have come among you from time to time but always fitted in to your
societies perfectly and seamlessly. You were never aware of our presence. We didn’t
interfere in your affairs however – until now.
“Now we have decided you are rapidly heading towards a destruction of your planet.
Your activities are quickly exhausting its resources and in less than a century, if
unchecked, it will become uninhabitable. Your scientists, however, are now moving very
swiftly towards an understanding of the physics involved in the fifth dimension. If you
were to discover it and came here in significant numbers, we believe you might infect our
people with your belligerence and your other nasty attributes.
“Accordingly, we are moving to correct your errant ways. You, Stephanie Burleigh,
are an experiment. You were chosen as a member of the hereditary upper class of Great
Britain as a fine example of snobbery and utter disregard for anyone except yourself. We
are going to attempt to turn you into someone more like your parents and siblings, who, by
the way, are perfect examples of what inherited privilege ought to bring to an
individual.
“I am afraid you are not going to enjoy your stay with us. We do not have crime
here in the sense you understand it but when we do discover errant behaviour in a person,
it is a simple matter to probe his or her brain patterns and correct the abnormality.
Your planet uses other, vastly more barbaric methods however and so that you learn as a
Terran, these will be now be employed on you.
“As a start, you are hereby stripped of your rank. You are now reduced to the
equivalent of a slave, yes, just as they had in Roman days. You will now strip your body
of that finery. As a slave, you are not entitled to clothing of any kind.”
I stared up at him. Did I believe him? I think so. The building I was in, for a
start… It was just too way out. It was the sort of thing one sees in a science-fiction
movie and I didn’t think any prankster could possibly have set it up. I knew it wasn’t
drugs. I have never touched them. I may have been a snob and all the rest of it but I
didn’t smoke cigarettes and had never over-indulged in alcohol, let alone tried the hard
drugs.
But believing him was one thing. I wasn’t going to strip naked for him, though.
Not for anything! It wasn’t that I was a prude. I had been keen on sports and at school
we all showered together after a game of hockey or whatever and I had already had a few
boyfriends, some of whom I had invited to my bed so I knew what was what in that
department.
He sat there and watched me, his grey eyes boring into my blue ones as if reading
my mind. “Well, slave? Are you going to remove your clothes of your own volition or
shall I make you?”
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