Radiance

Don’t worry, kids! The whales don’t feel a thing, any more than you do when a strand of your hair falls out and wafts away on the wind. Once the milk arrives on shore, it enters our clean and modern processing stations.

[Footage of assembly lines and bottling machines; workers smile and wave at the camera.]

Prithvi Holdings cares about sustainability. Our facilities are wholly integrated with Venusian village life, providing safe, reliable employment and a number of enrichment programs that make life on Venus a breeze. Happy workers make premium products!

Take young master Willem Greenaway.

[A fresh-faced young man with wide-set eyes shakes hands with the foreman of the Hedylogos sector plant. The boy wears a Sunday suit. He is well fed and tall, with excellent posture.]

Only sixteen and already possessed of a lifetime of applicable skills! When his tour on Venus is finished, he will be able to choose his homestead from any planet or moon—and, no doubt, his wife from any of the solar system’s most eligible ladies.

[Willem’s steely, stalwart stare takes in the crashing Sea of Qadesh, the massive callowhales floating like islands offshore.]

Yes, his work is dangerous, but young Willem knows that without his service and the devotion of everyone at Prithvi, from the lowest milkmaid to the fleet-fingered shipping agent to every last shareholder, there could be no saloons on Mars, no cruises on Neptune, no movies on the Moon. Willem Greenaway and those like him are truly the backbone of all the worlds. And Prithvi makes it possible.

[A young, buxom mother with well-muscled arms sets a platter of pint jars brimming with milk in front of her crowd of five ruddy-cheeked children. She holds the dish before her ample breasts—a wonderful substitute and improvement on their bounty—and smiles beatifically, the vision of responsible motherhood.]

And now, Prithvi Brand Concentrated Callowmilk has a new, better-tasting formula!

[The children, all taller than average and without blemishes or birthmarks, clamour for their mother’s milk. She gives them what they want and settles into a hickory rocking chair with her newborn—and a bottle of Prithvi Brand Callowrich Infant Formula.]

Fortified with a secret blend of spices and vitamins, callowmilk products don’t just taste good, they taste better than dairy products, more wholesome, richer, cleaner, and better for you! We know you care about your family’s health—and so do we.

/>

[A nutritional graph shows briefly, the bars of the chart represented by cartoon callowhales with cheery grins and spouts of water bursting from friendly blowholes in varying, informational heights.]

Just one serving of Prithvi products at every meal provides a wallop of protein, fat, immuno-boosters, ultra-calcium, and plain, old-fashioned deliciousness. In recent taste tests, mothers preferred Prithvi milk over our competitors nearly two to one. Those are numbers we can be proud of. And it doesn’t stop at the supper table!

[An array of PDSH products flashes before the camera in new, redesigned packaging.]

Our callowmilk proves itself over and over, as a foodstuff, industrial lubricant, fuel additive, fertility aid, antibiotic, anaesthesia, base for many indoor and outdoor paints, recreational hallucinogen, and coal substitute. When dried and moulded, it produces excellent building materials and its proteins provide fibre for the most fashionable fabrics. And, of course, callowmilk is the only source for the all-important bone density supplement and radioactivity prophylactic, without which humanity would still be bound to one lonely planet.

[The buxom mother tucks her children into bed one by one, finishing with the baby in its bassinet. Her face shows infinite love and careful concern.]

Yes, Prithvi Brand Concentrated Callowmilk truly is the stuff of life. We take our duty as stewards of this priceless substance seriously. You can taste our commitment in every sip.

[A bottle of classic Prithvi Callowmilk on a black starfield, the label showing the same genial, comic callowhale blowing a fountain of milk out of its grinning blue head.]

Prithvi Brand Concentrated Callowmilk: You can’t leave home without it. See your local recruiter for information about lucrative opportunities in Prithvi’s Offshore Operations Sector!

From the Personal Reels of

Percival Alfred Unck

SEVERIN UNCK

Daddy, why won’t the movies talk to me?

[PERCIVAL UNCK laughs and crouches down next to his dark-haired gamine child. His beard is thin along his jawbone. She pats the silk projection screen with her hands, imploring it to speak.]

PERCIVAL UNCK

Do you remember Uncle Freddy, from the Christmas party?

SEVERIN

He gave me a wind-up pony.