“Yes, I’ve learnt that,” I answered.

“To summarise, the first mission is to create conditions to encourage people to love one another,” Yoshida continued with his explanation.

“By creating disasters? I think that’s rather cruel. Why don’t those beings transmit positive energy to fill in the missing part? They do have infinite power to create this, don’t they?” I argued.

“The best way is to give the people on the planet the opportunity to learn and master their capacity to love one another. Let me give you a comparison: to raise children … oh, do you have children, by the way?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I replied.

“Let’s assume you have. You would want them to be able to stand on their own feet and put food on the table themselves one day. If you keep feeding them all the time, do you think they would be able to fend for themselves?”

Without waiting for my answer, he continued, “The best way is to encourage them to earn a living and provide for themselves. At times, though, your children may have to experience hunger, but that’s really good for the development of skills that will help them survive,” Yoshida explained.

“But taking away lives so that only love could be expressed, I don’t think it’s fair. The people who have died or suffered were victims. They did nothing wrong,” I responded.

“And how do you know it’s not fair?” he asked. “Everything that has happened is like a puzzle of the universe. The right people were chosen as actors and were sent to be at the right place and at the right time. The right people were also chosen to be witnesses; they were sent to experience the event performed by the actors. Like you and me sitting together here now, we are pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and, to make the picture complete, we are dependent on each other, too,” he explained.

“Okay, let’s get back to the other mission of the Federation. As I said, its role is to adjust the physical balance of the planet. First, you must understand that our planet’s current weight is imbalanced. This imbalance is mainly caused by the movement of its mass from one place to another, or sometimes by exhausting certain resources. For example, blowing up a mountain to erect buildings, blocking the flow of water to build a dam, or drilling for oil to meet fuel demands. These actions have added up and reduced the mass and weight of the planet, which directly affect its rotation. You may compare it to the movement of the wheels on a car. If they are not balanced, the wheels will wobble and shake when the car travels at high speed. The solution to prevent that is to insert a small stabiliser at the right place, and only when it is inserted exactly at that right position then the wheels will stop wobbling.”

“The same thing with our planet, which rotates around itself at very high speed. Have you ever thought of the speed at which you move while you are on the planet?” Yoshida asked and paused to wait for my answer.

“Uh … I don’t know,” I wasn’t prepared for this question, and didn’t know the answer.

“The circumference of our world is 40,077 kilometres in length. The rotation rate of the Earth is 24 hours per cycle. If we take 40,077 divided by 24, it is equivalent to about 1,669 kilometres. That means, if we stand still at any point around the equator, we would be moving at a speed of approximately 1,669 kilometres per hour. That’s pretty fast, don’t you think? The fastest modern plane can only fly at less than half that speed,” Yoshida said.

“Our world has continuously rotated around itself at a constant speed for hundreds of millions of years. But if the stabilisers, previously put in place, were removed and reinserted at other positions or thrown away, what do you think will happen? The world will be in a state of imbalance. Certainly, it will sway and shake. The velocity and the tilt angle of the Earth axis directly affect the seasons, the warm and cold currents, the release of magnetic waves, the airstream, and even the movement of the Earth plates. All members of the Federation have been working hard and around the clock, taking no time to rest, not even for a second, on this critical mission because the survival of the universe is at stake. If they can’t stop our world from swaying until it turns over or spins off its orbit, the whole system of the universe will be destroyed.”

“The main mission of the Federation,” Yoshida continued, “is to intervene in the process, both before and after the actions of mankind, interceding wherever possible before these actions occur. But this method does not work very well because, eventually, humans are still proceeding nonchalantly with their destructive activities.”

“Our world now has entered a stage of physical rebalancing, and in fact has remained in this mode for many years. Hence, the next stage of operation is not to influence humans to act accordingly, but to create objections to what they do. They need to take this to the next level because humans are very stubborn and egoistic.”

Yoshida looked at me with a very serious expression. “I think our world is not very safe now. We are facing destructions and disasters; be it through wars, environmental issues, social challenges, epidemics, moral problems, and especially, the absence of happiness. We are fooling ourselves that we are contented with all the leisure facilities and amenities that we have, but in fact, we are not really happy at all. We have become more comfortable. True happiness is what I have now. You see, I have a loving family, my loved ones are close to me, and we have an abundance of healthy food and fresh air. I don’t feel the need to have more. All my time each day is devoted to serving others.”

“And the most important thing is,” he went on, “when I look back to the time when I was in my old world, I felt that I had no worth at all. I thought I was the best. I tried to excel in school, to get good grades in order to have a good job. I became a pilot because I was good, so they picked me.”

“But on reflection, what I did was only for myself, never for others. Unlike here, where I always have the opportunity to do things for others every single second, even though my job is menial when compared to the one I had on Earth,” Yoshida said, as if to get things off his chest.

“What is your job now?” I asked.

“My job is to take care of the forests and the pathways in the area that I am assigned to and for which I am responsible, making sure they are in good condition and in good order,” he replied, and I could hear that he was proud of what he was doing.

“Oh, I now understand,” I responded. “I was wondering why the forests and the paths were so tidy and organised. No fallen tree branches obstructing the way, and no overgrown weeds. It looks so neat, as if someone is always taking care of them.”

“That’s right. When you see all those tidy paths while traveling, you can be assured that someone is taking care of them. You can also stay at any of the caretaker’s houses. Everyone will welcome you and offer you a place to stay and food to eat,” Yoshida explained.

“No matter where you go in this world, you don’t need to bring food with you.”

“Can anyone stay at anybody’s house?” I asked. “Aren’t the people here afraid of being robbed or physically harmed by others with bad intentions? I mean how about you, for example, living in this house with two women?”