I couldn't get over how big this plane was. Its passenger cabin was as long as the cabin of two 747 cabin sections put nose-to-end, and as wide as five side-by-side, not counting the wings, of course.

According to the pamphlet, the cabin was roughly like a flattened rectangular cube (which I found out, according to the dictionary, was called a "cuboid") that was five hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide and sixty-three feet tall divided into five decks.

It didn't feel quite like a plane, actually, but more like an oceangoing cruise ship. And it's my understanding that it could accommodate two thousand passengers. And it had a cargo area the same cubic space as its passenger area – about 122,400 cubic feet or ninety cargo containers worth of space. Amazing. But that was necessary - there were very few commercial Arcadian passenger planes and flights, so each one needed do double duty, and take on the work of several cargo and passenger planes. In any case, I knew tickets for Strato-Liner flights were fiercely competed for. In fact, there were a couple of companies that did business by buying up tickets and auctioning them off, typically at three or four times the price. (They're currently under investigation by the SEC.)

Stewards were everywhere, and of course they were all Arcadians. Male Arcadians. The cabin crews of commercial Arcadian flights were almost always all men (I wasn't sure about the flight crews, though, since you don't really see the pilot or copilot - you just hear them over the intercom occasionally). I've tried to find out why no Arcadian girls were chosen as stewardesses, but I couldn't find any reason for it (and it seems the whole hullabaloo about calling stewards and stewardesses flight attendants instead wasn't an issue for Arcadians).

Though I knew the stewards walking around in the cabin were men, I couldn't shake the impression that they were women: It was well known that female Arcadians were relatively short, like five feet to, at most, five-five, whereas the men were at least five-eleven and usually much, much taller. Other than the height, though, they all looked and sounded like beautiful women. It was only the stewards' heights that betrayed their gender. At least to us humans.

But, even knowing this, I couldn't get it out of my head that they were women. Gorgeous, tall, elegant, statuesque women, like supermodels. I've heard actual supermodels were not too friendly to Arcadians, and lobbied to have the professions of modeling and acting be made exclusive to humans. And when the modeling and acting industries caved in, organizations like the Screen Actors Guild and the International Modeling and Talent Association passed regulations that modelwork and acting jobs be exclusively for human models and actors only. And though these regulations didn't have the power of law, everyone observed and complied with them.

The Arcadians didn't complain, though, because no Arcadian ever really aspired to get "human work." But then, when actors and models found their Arcadian equivalents, they clamored that they be allowed to apply for jobs in Arcadia. The thing was, the few that were lucky enough to land contracts or commissions found that they had to labor under massive inferiority complexes, and there were less and less humans trying to find Arcadian modeling or acting gigs. The only ones that found "acceptable" jobs were those applying for acting or modelling jobs specific to males (Arcadian filmmakers would sometimes attempt to make "human films," as they call them, and would naturally need male human actors and models because Arcadians trying to be human males was, frankly, ridiculous).

"Could I refill your glass, Mr. Barlowe?" one of the in-flight stewards asked in heavily accented English. The Arcadian's voice, like all Arcadians whether male or female, sounded like sexy human women's. And though his grammar was perfect, the accent was so heavy I had trouble understanding the words. I could only conclude that this one was new to the outside world and was just learning English. The grammar was spot on, but the accent… After a little more time, the accent would improve, I’m sure. But, to tell the truth, I didn't really mind. Most people find Arcadian accents femininely sexy, and I wasn't any different. To me it sounded like a cross between a French aristocrat, a Brazilian-Portuguese call-girl and a high-class geisha. Even if she was just offering me a stick of gum, it would be a turn-on. I meant "he"...

As was usual when I met Arcadians, I blushed and got all tongue-tied. But I must have said yes or something because she, I mean he, bent over and poured me another glass of that wonderful Arcadian mango wine that I loved so much.

The cabin crew's uniforms were made up of a tight, white, shiny-stretchy satin-like blouse with short capped sleeves, with a belt at the waist almost as wide as cumberbunds, in either solid fire-engine red, canary yellow or royal blue, with appropriately wide, decorative belt buckles in either chrome or gold. My steward was wearing a red one with a gold buckle.

They also wore something like a pastel colored cravat around their necks in solid pastel colors complementing the belt, and a pair of what looked like tight, opaque, matt-black spandex leggings or tights that made you wonder where he hid his... package.

The bottom part of the blouse that extended down past the belt was loose and billowy and extended down to just above his crotch, giving the impression that the steward was wearing a very, very, very short white skirt over the leggings, his cute tights-covered derriere often peeking out when he walked around, and especially when he bent or leaned down, as he did when he poured my wine. It was all very sexy, if you just don't think of him as a man.

And this ensemble was matched up with high, dark khaki, almost brown, leather boots that looked like suede riding boots with tall stiletto heels.

When he bent over and poured my drink, I couldn't help notice how... well his pants fit her, and as she straightened up, her blouse molded to what looked like spectacular B-size breasts, at least – maybe C. So, it was true - Arcadian men had boobies... Wait, I've been doing it again - sorry. I meant "her," not "him"... wait...

Arcadia's line of fruit wines were some of their best exports. No wonder - it was mildly sweet, effervescent like champagne, and had this kick that just gives you a kind of mild glow instead of making you drunk. And it was delicious. Sure there were a lot of imitations, but they couldn't hold a candle to the Arcadian original.

Actually, the few export products that they had were all doing well in the marketplace, many of them displacing their human-made counterparts. Consumers weren't really complaining - Arcadians make good stuff. But that's not the thing. What pissed the government off was that the stuff that Arcadians are rumored to have that governments around the world were really interested in - propeller-driven supersonic superfighters and superchoppers, supercomputers that were several generations ahead of ours, tank armor that was impenetrable but was thin and light as well, room-temperature superconductors (though many believed this one was not really true), environmentally-safe fertilizers, new crossbreeds of food plants and livestock, anti-pollution technology, high-performance supercars, weapons with specs that were suspiciously like rail guns the size of Glocks, cheap and super-efficient solar cells, high-capacity batteries, a rumored totally-renewable clean-burning fuel substitute, and, my favorite - non-rocket-based rockets (sorry!). Because they're all not for sale.

That's part of why State was happy His Excellency asked for me. Well, not me, specifically – anyone from State would have done. But since the Arcadians asked for me, the government quickly agreed, and then prepped me so that if I was lucky enough to get a peek at the goods, I’ll be able to take notes, and maybe even take some video and pictures.

- - - - -

I suppose I shouldn't drink in the morning, but it was still evening in my head (Arcadia's time zone was about twelve hours ahead of ours). So I continued to sip the delicate drink and looked out the window of the "strato-liner" as it cut through the clouds. I saw the engine pods attached to the wings and couldn’t see the propellers that I knew were in them - they were hidden by cowlings. But I could see the vapor trail that trailed the back of the propeller pods and made what looked like white plumes. I wondered why the condensation forms.

They must spin very fast in order to be able to propel the plane to over six hundred MPH. Our engineers were still trying to figure that out. How could propellers alone push air along with sufficient velocities? Our science said that was impossible. Propeller-driven planes flying faster and higher and longer than 747's... imagine a turbojet engine that didn't burn fuel and eject them for thrust, yet achieve thrust more than equal to a jet's. My understanding was their engines could accelerate them past mach one (several spysats haves tracked some of their fighter planes flying faster than mach two). In the case of the strato-liners, they were supposedly deliberately throttled down because of the plane's extreme dimensions and shape, and going supersonic would be dangerous.

But scientists say that, even if a propeller could turn fast enough and survive the catastrophic vibrations they could create, their cutting through the air, regardless of how they were designed, could not accelerate air faster than the speed of sound even if they didn't disintigrate from the intense vibration that a fast-spinning propeller would generate. But nevertheless, the Arcadians were able to do it.

Our direction of flight was east-south-east, and it felt like we were moving towards the rising sun. In front and to the right of us, the sun had just broken through the horizon. The colors were beautiful.

We've been flying non-stop for almost twenty hours. I didn’t mind. The “mall” on the deck below (just a couple of dozen mall-type stores and et etcetera) had lots of stuff to provide enough distraction. But unlike my little nieces who could spend days just trawling through malls shopping, eating, watching movies or stuff like that - that just wasn't my thing. On the phone, they sounded so jealous of me being able to go to Arcadia, and even more so when I told them about the on-board mall.

A few of the passengers were able to get cabins, but the government wouldn’t splurge for one for me. So I was stuck with the majority and made do in the main passenger cabin. Not that I was complaining – my couch was pretty comfortable and roomy, and I could stretch out completely if I wanted, and I didn’t need to share armrests – the seats had about a foot of space between them. And I had my own video player and little cubby table.

As the sun rose, I couldn't help myself and walked to a window.

I tried to see if I could spot the islands of Arcadia, but we were still too high and too far away. But the captain said over the p.a. a while ago that he was expecting us to land in a couple of hours. Or was it a she? Can't really tell.

Tiring of the view outside, I turned to look at the other passengers.

Less than a twentieth of the seats were occupied, mostly by American tourists. In fact there were almost as many stewards as passengers. My neighbor in the nearest chair said there was a steward per two passengers at the moment, or maybe four if the crew were doing shifts. No wonder I felt well taken care of.

Actually, very few people get to go to Arcadia. Some people in the government said Arcadia was isolationist, like the Ming Dynasty of China in the thirteen-hundreds, but those in the know say it's more like the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan of the seventeen-hundreds - where contact with the rest of the world was still there, but not actively sought out. Still, a lot of people continued to want to visit the newest recognized sovereign nation in the world, and the royal government obliged this by granting a lucky few visas.

- - - - -

For me, my own visa was a three-week one, giving me only a few days to do any sort of sight-seeing after I'm done with work. Still, it was issued by no less than the King himself.

My visit was work-related: the Arcadian government had asked the US to send someone to help them negotiate a commercial treaty they were making up to allow them to do business with China and Russia, as well as to give them a hand with similar treaties with other countries, too. They could have just negotiated directly with China but I guess they were still a bit skittish.

So, when they asked, the government "kindly" offered to send a large delegation, but the Arcadian Royal Government declined the offer, and insisted that only one person be sent, and they specifically requested for me.

No one knew how they got my name. And although many people in the State Department were qualified, at least I was one of them. So I was acceptable as the government’s rep despite my lack of seniority.

I had a chance to meet with the King during her, I mean his, last visit to DC. I and my staff of two had just finished briefing President Maxwell about some forgettable thing on imports from England. My staff and I were just about to leave when the King was ushered into the oval office with his entourage for a short photo op. Needless to say, he was the most drop-dead gorgeous woman I ever saw. It was too bad he was a man...

As he and his staff walked in, he sort of stopped short. He looked at me, with a look I didn't precisely understand, but it was definitely a look of surprise, of confusion and maybe something that I thought was a kind of hopefulness. He broke away from his group and went to me. He asked me who I was and what I did for the President. I told him that it was a pleasure to meet him, and said I worked in the State Department, on matters relating to trade and commerce. He reached out and we shook hands.

His Highness's voice and the touch of his hand - it was incredibly feminine. His scent, which Sherry from my staff said it was probably Flora by Gucci, was feminine but not overpowering. And the feel of her hand was so smooth and soft, softer even than Teddy's. And she was beyond gorgeous.

Teddy was my other staff and, unbeknownst to anyone, she and I had been having a secret relationship for a while now. But people in government frown on romantic relationships between staff, so Teddy and I have been keeping it under the radar. Thing was, it’s been growing serious. I even brought up the idea of her moving in with me last week, but she said she’d think about it first. So when the Arcadians came in, she looked at them with a bit of a frown, and I guess it was understandable given how obviously taken I was with them, especially Her Highness. Or, rather, His Highness. All of the visitors that came in were beautiful, and they were all coiffed and glamorous even though many of them were carrying briefcases and folders. It was like an office-themed fashion show in the oval office.

After some photos and an exchange of gifts, the President’s secretary ushered all of us out so he and the Arcadian leader could have a private chat, but the King asked for me to stay. So there were three of us left in the Oval Room.

Per Arcadian custom, the President and the King opened their gifts. The King had received a hand-carved hardwood sculpture of Abraham Lincoln from a new artist that currently had a display over at the MOMA in New York, a boxed set of cuisine-style American spices and condiments for the Queen, and two sets of designer kid’s outfits from American superstar-designer Percy Roth for their two children.

As for the President, he received four of the little handkerchief-size squares of cloth that Arcadians usually gave as gifts. They were simple cotton kerchiefs that had simple embroidered designs in the middle, usually pastoral scenes or a picture of the Lyssium Palace, or other scenes from Arcadia, and were highly prized.

The embroidery of these kerchiefs were all very well done, and we're told the design of these kerchiefs were hand-sewn by the family of the person giving them, meaning these particular ones were probably made personally by the queen.

Usually, people who received them would mount them in frames like you would a picture or a painting, and display them like that, and would be treated like family heirlooms. The pictures were all very pretty, and it was a happy family that had an embroidered Arcadian handkerchief mounted on their living room wall.

The King confirmed that it was the Queen herself who made the two kerchiefs for the President and the First Lady, and the two little ones were especially made by their two children for the President’s son.

The President’s thanks were so effusive - these were made by the Royal Family itself!

There were other other gifts, each in beautiful carved-crystal boxes. Originally, we thought the boxes themselves were the gifts, but it turned out they weren’t the real gifts, and were just the boxes that the gifts came in.

Inside one of them was a matching set of silver chain necklaces with sapphire and pearl pendants carved to look like dolphins (the dolphin was the current royal family's mascot), four thin bangles – two in silver and two in steel-blue, a pair of silver pendant earrings with small dolphins carved in sapphire and pearl, and two rings – one in silver and one in steel-blue.

The President commented that the First Lady will be very pleased and excited to receive the jewelry.

The next box contained a pair of heavy, carved-silver pens with cobalt-blue ends, a thin, silver pen that the King said was a mechanical pencil, a silver tie-clip with a tiny sapphire dolphin in the middle, and a pair of heavy silver cufflinks with sapphire jewels.

“The pens can use standard ballpoint-pen refills, and the pencil uses standard-sized pencil leads,” the King explained.

The last box contained a cell phone in a steel-blue case and a metal matt-black belt holster. “I’m sure that your son will love this,” the King said. “It can accept standard GSM-type SIMM cards so he can readily transfer his card into the phone. It also interfaces with Google so he can treat it like an Android phone.”

After that pleasant little chore, we all sat down. I didn’t want to be a third wheel so I tried to be useful and served them with coffee and the little biscuit squares I saw sitting on the table in front of us.

Anyway, I guess what I wanted to say was that my short "talk" with Her Highness... I mean, His Highness, that day, and sitting in at his tete-a-tete with the President was the extent of my contact and personal knowledge of the leader of Arcadia. And I guess that was the basis for their selecting me. Ridiculous, I know. But what else could it have been?

I got to stay and chat with His Excellency because he requested that I stay on after the photo op was done and he and the President had finished a short, very pleasant half-hour visit. He got me included in their conversation, too, but I deferred to the President whenever I could. As far as I could tell, they didn’t really talk any business - it was mostly small talk, except, of course, that the King invited the presidential family to visit Arcadia. Which, I suppose, was reason enough for His Highness to pay a visit.

When the President and the Arcadian ruler was done, His Highness insisted that I walk him out. And on the way to his limousine, he asked me a lot of inconsequential things, like what my hobbies were, the things I liked, where I lived, what my folks did for a living, that sort of thing.

For my part, I asked him what he was interested in, and he mentioned an interest in our history, specifically maritime history from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, whereas the Queen loved the fashions and music of the twenties. That was something new, I thought.

The King signaled to his staff and an Arcadian (I knew it was a girl because she was only around five-three) dressed in the stereotype outfit of a secretary - simple blouse, skirt and heels (except hers looked like a designer blouse, skirt and heels) - came forward and gave him a crystal box similar to the ones he gave to the President. He then gave it to me with a flourish, and I bowed to express my thanks.

He looked at me with expectation so I opened the box and brought out an embroidered Arcadian kerchief. I looked up from the box and saw the King holding out his hand. I reached out and shook his hand.

“I am honored, Your Highness.”

“There is an Arcadian saying that goes, ‘the real honor is in the giving and not the receiving.’”

“Nevertheless,” I said and smiled.

The King chuckled and gave me a hug. That surprised me, but knowing this was royalty, I accepted it and lightly hugged her back. I meant him.

I looked at the embroidered kerchief again and noted that it was plain white. I could have sworn that the embroidery in the middle was colored. I guess I was mistaken.

The King mumbled something that sounded like “eu tinha j'avais razao raison.” Very few people understood Arcadian, and that included me. I think I’ll ask Teddy later – she knew a bit of Arcadian.

When I waved as his car pulled away (a sleek Arcadian-built limo-like car), a couple of Secret Service agents came over and asked me to accompany them back inside…

Half a dozen Foreign Service people talked with me, and I told them everything that we talked about. Everyone was puzzled - who was I, after all, to make His Excellency notice me. Afterwards, I was told to go back to the Oval again, and the President asked if I knew him from somewhere. I told him I didn't - it was the first time for me to meet him. Nevertheless, I found out that the Secret Service had double-checked my background, and had a complete recording of our conversation. They didn't find anything, of course (if they knew about me and Teddy, they weren't saying). But I couldn't blame them for checking. Like everyone, I didn't understand it, too.

Anyway...

Being the dutiful public servant that I was, I agreed to go and brief the Arcadians, and used up our one-week advance notice to bone up on the material that I thought was relevant, especially on any kind of precedents we had established doing business with China. I didn't know exactly what the Arcadians wanted me to do - conduct meetings, negotiations or conferences, conduct business classes maybe, or maybe to just attend some diplomatic whatever. Guess I'll have to play it by ear. Regardless, I was requested, so I had to go.

But I would have gone even if it wasn't work-related. Hey, I'm not proud - I'm just like everyone else: I wanted to see the land of the beautiful Arcadians. Sherry and Teddy wanted to go, too, but it was only me they wanted.

State had given me all the help I could have wanted. They briefed me and gave me a team of five, aside from my staff of two, to help me bone up on things, and they put together the material I requested: several dozen copies of all the current relevant legal and commerce reference material, dozens of copies of the books I wrote about my experience in the US diplomatic corps, and so many others. All public domain, of course. Together, the stuff I was bringing amounted to several hundred pounds of printed material and maybe a hundred digital copies on computer disks. The intention was to distribute these in Arcadia. That didn't include the several boxes of souvenirs that they said I might want to give away - mostly little statuettes of the Statue of Liberty, some pens, paperweights and little mounted souvenir-type tourist pictures appropriate for adorning the tops of office tables.

State had also provided me with some things they thought I might need - a fully-loaded laptop, a tablet computer, a fancy new satellite-enabled smartphone, and a nifty little MILC camera (in case I wanted to take some pictures, they said). I was, however, told I don't get to keep them after. Darn...

All in all, my stuff amounted to two crate-sized boxes plus a smaller, tinier one that had my personal effects and work stuff, but my Arcadian hosts said it wasn't any trouble, and my boxes joined several hundred crates in the plane's hold. Like I said, this plane was as large as a cargo ship. In fact, it was a cargo ship-slash-passenger plane. My people enclosed a list of the material in each box so that I could inventory them when I unpacked.

I was running low on my drink, so I signaled the nearest steward for a refill.

- - -

The captain made another announcement, that we were about to land, inside Crescent Bay, Arcadia. Strato-liners were so big, they only landed on water (which is sometimes an issue when the weather wasn't cooperating). Strato-liners were actually seaplanes.

This fact was used to great effect when a strato-liner, specially modified with a water scoop and its cargo hold reinforced and made water-tight, was hired as a water-bomber in that string of forest fires and wildfires in California a few years ago. Imagine bombing a forest fire with almost almost a million gallons of water in one go. Ever since then, that specially-modified strato-liner that grateful Californians nicknamed Smokey the Bear found regular work during the summer months putting out-of-control forest fires in the US, in Malaysia and Indonesia, in China, and in Australia during their summer months. Since then, most major forest fires were put mostly under control.

I was disappointed that we didn't get Smokey as our strato-liner - Smokey still did the usual commercial work of regular strato-liners as well as moonlighting as a firefighter - but I had no complaints.

The sea was calm and the landing was quite gentle, We barely felt our ship touch water. In a while, our plane was powering through the calm waters of Crescent Bay like a regular boat, or more like an ocean-going cruise ship. I looked out my window and saw the plane's wings had been collapsed like accordions, the one-eighth that was still sticking out had the propeller pods on them, and were raised up so they would be clear of the water.

"We're finally here," I thought. "Arcadia..."

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