Spectrum was no idiot. But he was no genius either. He had figured out that the world he was on was NOT the one he was familiar with. At first the One World Government insignia set off conspiracy alarms, that some group from his earth was plotting some kind of overthrow. But his exploration had turned up something far more alarming. His first clue was that the administrative head of the facility was from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, District 16. As far as he knew Pennsylvania and all the other states were divided up into counties and townships, not districts. A few other files confirmed that the whole bloody US of A was partitioned up like some bureaucrats dream. He found a picture in case he needed to assume an identity of authority. He also found that he was promising some sort of results. Obviously observation was not enough for these guys. What else was planned he could only imagine. The grunts patrolling the base were useless as a source of information and after his recent stay at the White House he had no patience for them. Dang! The White House! There was no way he was going to be able to report for his janitorial duties for a month. When the feds investigated his disappearance they were bound to turn up something suspicious. Oddly enough a sense of relief flooded him though he would miss the friends he made there. There was no going back to that particular source of information. But then again it HAD turned up this whole can of worms. The guards had coughed up one piece of interesting information. They were not there to guard against entry but against exit. He wondered why. Was the gate used for more than one destination or they were just plain paranoid?! How could their world be a threat?

It would seem that the world he was stuck in for at least one month had truly achieved a form of global authority. It struck him that it would be good to find out what the culture was like. Besides, he could always come back later. For all their security they had no way of preventing his arrival. That suggested a reason for their paranoia. Perhaps they had no metas in this world. One potent meta could really play havoc with the world, particularly a world with such a centralized form of government. He shuddered to think what would happen if the Mockery Brigade were set loose on them. When he checked back in at the gate site he found the technicians taking apart various consoles and repairing or replacing equipment.

"So, you think we'll get anything good from this one?"

"I dunno. Way I heard, it's about the same as here. But you know they

never tell us anything."

"Maybe antigravity, that'd be cool."

"Yeah, you can bet we'd never see that tech."

There would be no action there for a while. He paused and came to a decision. Exiting the building, he dropped his invisibility and transformed into an arc of light.

The road took him to Junction City, Kansas, District 3. It seemed EVERYTHING required an identity card, from food to transportation to lodging. He solved his problem by camping out in a mall department store. They always had lights on and there were plenty of beds to choose from. Since he had no taste for stealing from any but the most deserving, he lived off scraps from the food court. As he rummaged around the stores he discovered marvel after marvel. Their tech was astonishingly eclectic. Their telephones were unbelievable, producing 3d vids that rivaled Spectrums abilities to produce images. There were self-cleaning carpets (based on some kind of biological tech), wrist coms using microchips unseen in any of their other goods, "Strecho the Clown, the unbreakable toy", a hangover remedy that REALLY worked (based on some kind of psychic tech), and much more. It was soon apparent that their whole society fed on the technological advances of others yet failed to completely integrate them. Spectrum assumed that either the world hopping technology was new or the public had lapsed into a sort of parasitic lethargy. The people seemed happy and productive so he leaned towards the former. If their society ever assimilated all this technology they would be truly terrifying, particularly if their government turned a little less benign.

After a visit to the Library, a long and tedious job for someone with a 4^th grade reading ability (hey, at least he was getting better), all of his assumptions were verified, or at least not contradicted. There were no metas as far as he could tell from reading the newspapers. The government was set up in the 1970s. Somehow the people were convinced that a one world government would be able to solve the worlds problems with maintaining national boundaries in a highly technological world. The British had taken the lead so London became the capital, but all officials were drawn from all countries and races. At first the result was pure chaos and it looked like the whole shebang was going to collapse. But in the 80s some yahoo discovered a way to visit alternate universes. The government quickly seized the technology for its own uses. With the ability to pillage entire civilizations without there even knowing about it had a profound affect. The population of this world was literally bought off. Common resources and technologies from one world could be easily bartered in other worlds where they were rare or unheard of. Starvation was literally a thing of the past as common trinkets could be traded for enough food to feed an entire city.

With a population so fat and happy there was little to no opposition to the current government. And the criminal system was quite obvious. Any serious criminal was subject to portation. And most of the destination sites were NOT pleasant. Though crimes of greed were rare, other crimes were still quite prevalent, and some were even more common. But the technology was closely guarded and emigration was strictly controlled and limited and almost always one way. No one wanted to threaten the goose that laid the golden egg.

He picked up a whole slew of small trinkets from his trip. The authorities in the area must have been having fits trying to figure out who was performing the thefts and why. One piece of technology that struck him as particularly fascinating was a mini-computer based on crystal/light technology. Light was beamed through the crystal at various angles and read from various angles. The wavelength and frequency of the refracted light at the exit point was somehow read by the computer. Truly astounding quantities of information could be stored in a single crystal, though the media was read-only. Spectrum bought an encyclopedic version for the trip home. Everything anyone knew about the world that was not classified. He then wondered what was classified and determined to find out.

The trip to London was not fun though mercifully short, made in a rocket. All the normal passengers were seated in nice comfortable chairs designed for the god knows how many Gs the stupid thing pulled. But Spectrum spent the trip in the bathroom, his head buried in the sink unable to lift it an inch. Even invisible it was hard to stay unnoticed in the cramped quarters. When he finally got to London, any place of importance was protected by all sorts of alien devices. Sure that he did not want to try his luck against that unknown arsenal, he stole a mini-computer from what looked like a high-ranking military bureaucrat. There were plenty of bureaucrats to choose from. In fact almost everyone in the city was either a bureaucrat or in a position that supported the bureaucrats. The military types all wore the insignia with a red outline. He chose the one with the most do-dads. But it was somehow secured against his use. He kept it anyway. Never knew what it might be useful for. His theft caused a minor uproar but the search was futile. They had no idea what they were dealing with and had no clues to go on.