Excerpt from “Journeys Out of the Body” by Robert A. Monroe ~~Locale III~~Locale III, in summary, proved to be a physical-matter world almost identical to our own. The natural environment is the same. There are trees, houses, cities, people, artifacts, and all the appurtenances of a reasonably civilized society. There are homes, families, businesses, and people work for a living. There are roads on which vehicles travel. There are railroads and trains.
Now for the ‘almost.’ At first, the thought was that Locale III was no more than some part of our world unknown to me and those others concerned. It had all the appearances of being so. However, more careful study showed that it can be neither the present nor the past of our physical-matter world.
The scientific development is inconsistent. There are no electrical devices whatsoever. Electricity, electromagnetics, and anything so related are non-existent. No electric lights, telephones, radios, television, or electric power.
No internal combustion, gasoline, or oil were found as power sources. Yet mechanical power is used. Careful examination of one of the locomotives that pulled a string of old-fashioned-looking passenger cars showed it to be driven by a steam engine. The cars appeared to be made of wood, the locomotive of metal, but of a different shape than our now obsolete types. The track gauge was much smaller than our standard track spacing, smaller than our narrow-gauge mountain railways.
I observed the servicing of one of the locomotives in detail. Neither wood nor coal was used as a thermal source to produce steam. Instead, large vatlike containers were carefully slid from under the boiler, detached, and rolled by small cart into a building with massive thick walls. The containers had pipelike protuberances extending from the top.
Men working behind shields performed the removal, casually cautious, and did not relax their automatic vigilance until the containers were safely in the building and the door closed. The contents were ‘hot,’ either through heat or radiation. The actions of the technicians all seemed to indicate the latter.
The streets and roads are different, again principally in size. The ‘lane’ on which vehicles travel is nearly twice as wide as ours. Their version of our automobile is much larger. Even the smallest has a single bench seat that will hold five to six people abreast. The standard unit has only one fixed seat, that of the driver. Others are much like living-room chairs, placed around a compartment that measures some fifteen by twenty feet. Wheels are used, but without inflated tires.
Steering is done by a single horizontal bar. Motive power is contained somewhere in the rear. Their movement is not very fast, at something like fifteen to twenty miles per hour. Traffic is not heavy.
Self-powered vehicles exist in the form of a four-wheeled platform which is steered by the feet acting upon the front wheels. A mechanism pumped by the arms transfers the energy to the rear wheels, much like the children’s “rowing wagons” of some years back. These are used for short distances.
Habits and customs are not like ours. What little has been gleaned implies a historical background with different events, names, places, and dates. Yet, while the stage of man’s evolution (the conscious mind translates the inhabitants as men) seems to be identical, technical and social evolution are not completely the same.
