Basking in the sun on the beach, eyes closed, Mike stirred as a shadow passed before him. As he sat up, he realized that Penny had ordered drinks, which the Mandroid bent to offer them. Mike couldn't quite get used to the Mandroids - built like athletic men, but with featureless faces, they gave him the creeps. Penny seemed quite taken with them, and Mike took jealous satisfaction in their conspicuous lack of certain masculine attributes! Well, he chuckled, the tables were turned for the housekeeping Maidbots, a fact which seemed to annoy Penny to no end.
Of course, Mike was normally the technophobe of the pair of them. Even now, as he turned to look at the immense Atmospheric Maintenance Unit drifting by on its world-spanning peregrinations, he couldn't believe that such a massive bit of machinery wouldn't just fall out of the air.
Not that he begrudged its presence, of course - he knew full well that without it and its kin, the atmosphere would be unbreathable, and the local sun's UV would burn human skin to a crisp, instead of being finely tuned to allow for a golden tan without any burn. That was one reason why he would have been charged such an exorbitant price for this vacation. Tourist credits from the idle rich were what kept the machinery humming along in perfect order. Thank goodness he had won their tickets in the lottery - he could never have afforded it on his own!
Craning his neck a little further, he saw one of the luxurious atmospheric liners floating inland to the skyport. Now, that was a nice-looking bit of machinery - so graceful that even he couldn't imagine it falling from the sky! He sure hoped not - he and Penny were booked on one for a planetary tour in just a few days' time!
He took the proffered drink, and smiled as he sipped it - all things considered, life was pretty good!
This Bryce 5 image uses a few of the new features of version 5: the new trees; greatly improved volumetric textures (for the low-lying clouds); and metaballs (for the Mandroid's head, and for the high-flying liner, which will show up again soon, as Mike and Penny's 'dream vacation' continues...)
And, yes, this image owes a lot conceptually to the film 'The Fifth Element' with its depiction of an exotic tropical paradise planet as a vacation destination for the obscenely wealthy!
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