Solarans 1: The Gift From Aquarii

by Don Koch

  "This stone wall you have here would be a good place for a portal until or unless you decide you want it somewhere else. After a few days you will be able to teleport guided by Aston. Nevertheless, the portals are still a nice convenience. Now, if you will follow us, we will take you up to the ship and get you started. Finn, when you are back home, you can establish with Aston, where you would like your portal to be." They followed Andy and Pat through the portal to the ship. After a few minutes Andy noted, "Well you have all been implanted. Welcome to the Solarans. You should rest a bit and chat with Aston and whoever else comes along while your bodies adjust to the changes. All the Solarans know you are here. Pat and I have 24 more candidates to visit before the day is done so we will get back to it. In two days we will have a meeting so you can meet everyone. If you use mind to mind speak, then language will not be a barrier. We will be in touch in a few days to get your training underway."

  Andy and Pat then visited a small village near Nikko, Japan, and successfully recruited there. This was followed by another pair of families in the Anle District of Keelung City in Taiwan, and another in Hadera, Israel and finally another at Inverness near Blackpark Farm. The recruiting was 100% successful. Each effort was a bit different than that the others.

  Andy wondered why the recruiting efforts were achieving the 100% level and asked Aston why that might be.

  Andy and Pat decided to continue with the next set of potential candidates. This resulted in successful recruiting from Los Alamos, Chile; Hanstholm, Denmark; Looe, England; Oetz, Austria; and, Syasstroy, Russia. The primary implant couples from Chile and Austria were married couples. In a days time the group had more than doubled.

  Chapter 15 - Betrothal Marathon

  # Juneau #

  # Tuesday, July 5

  Josè contacted Andy to advise that Mexico wanted to accept the Solaran offer to build their new facility on Isla Maria Magdelena very much as described. They liked the efficiency of what they had seen in the plans and felt that it would work nicely. Currently they were using tents provided by the Army and those were already crowded. Josè went on to say that they had already put the prisoners to work preparing the site. He noted that the island was mostly rock and leveling sites in some locations was giving them some grief but it was progressing. Josè noted that so far they had staked out the layout for 50 compounds that would give them a capacity of slightly over 108,000 prisoners. There was room on the island for at least another 50 compounds but they felt that the 50 would be more than sufficient.

  Andy pointed out that they had a number of new Solarans who were ready to start training in solar absorption and redirection. “This might be just the ticket to show them some of what they have available to them. Besides those containers will need some foundation steel to interlock the units in the stack. These will need to be embedded in bedrock. On those sites that are ready, we can help with the site preparation. We will order the construction of the modular container units today. We should be able to start delivery and placement of the units in about 10 days. Just as critical is the water desalinization plant and the sewage treatment plant. Contracts for both are ready. And we will get those going pronto. We will be delivering some temporary modular units today for the sewage treatment needs. I see that your Navy has supplied some ships to help with the water supply. It is still going to take a bit of time to stabilize supply and demand. We will also be hiring consultants to assure quality control on these efforts. We will start delivering supplies for construction of the dining hall/training facility/recreation hall. The stockpiles of material and equipment are going to grow quickly. You will need to identify prisoners with the needed construction skill sets. They should understand that this is where they will live so they have some control over the quality they bring to that.”

  “This design has our people pretty excited. They believe it may be a model for other applications including affordable housing.”

  “Actually, some of this notion came not only from the terrorist army but also from people that have done exactly as you say. There have been some fairly nice conversions done for just that purpose. You would be amazed at how nice they are. That may be just the thing for the staff here.”

  “We will have growing pains for a bit, but that is to be expected I suppose.”

  “I think you will be pleased at how quickly this will come together. In four months, the construction at Isla Maria Magdelena will be pretty much completed. We will also be moving in mountains of top soil to enable farming and recreation on grass instead of bare rock.”

  “Well I had better get back. I will let El Presidente know that things are underway. Hasta luego, mi amigo.”

  “Later, Josè.”

  # 8 am that morning #

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Andy, Pat, Gus, Barb, Jeff, Judy, Nik and Anya went to the London mall site invisibly. Andy had explained that Jeff and Judy were to stay with the hostages and explain what had been done to protect them. The rest would take the terrorist to the bomb disposal site and disarm them. They arrived at the site and immediately removed the six terrorists. Andy went up to the leader in transparent mode and slapped him in the face. "What is your name?"

  "I am Fahad Aziz."

  "How do you disarm this bomb vest?"

  "By pushing this button here."

  "Do it." The terrorist pushed the button. "Now take off the vest." He did so. Andy indicated that the others should do the same thing. He had the leader sit in place, put his hands on his head and remain there until told otherwise. They then went and retrieved all the hostages. Once at the site Andy told Aston to trigger settings two and three on each hostage. When that was done, Andy said, "May I have your attention please. If any of you are part of this terrorist group, please raise your right hand." Two hands went up, both were female. The two were disarmed and told to sit with the other terrorists. Each hostage was relieved of the bomb device and told to go toward the guards at a walk. The duty officer then approached Andy. "Captain, those folks need to be treated nicely, they have been through a terrible ordeal. As to the prisoners, I leave them to your tender mercies. Seems like a pretty large cell. In fact if you don't mind can you bring in some witnesses and a recording device, I want to be sure we have them all along with their supplies. I have a few questions for them before we go. I need to know if there are more to this group."

  The Captain sent a runner for the witnesses and recording equipment. Andy took the Captain aside and explained that the prisoners had been tagged and could not lie under interrogation. "This may give you some leads to more of them. Also, where do you want all these bombs?"

  The captain indicated a pit about 200 yards aw
ay. The group delivered all the materials in seconds. When the runner returned with 2 officers and the recording equipment and everything was set up Andy started questioning the leader. "Fahad, how many more are there in your group?"

  "We have another 16 persons."

  "What are their names?"

  "Where are they located?"

  He identified 16 names and the locations of 14 of them.

  "Where are the other two?"

  "I do not know precisely."

  "How about imprecisely?"

  "They are on the train for Paris with a bomb that is set to go off when they are under the English Channel."

  "Where on the train is the bomb and how can we recognize it?"

  Fahad described the bomb and its location. It was due to go off in 30 minutes. Andy asked the Captain to halt all trains before they could enter the tunnel. Jeff and Judy stayed behind to help with the terrorists while the rest went after the train. Aston identified the train and the terrorist. He was tagged. The Solarans transported the bomb to the disposal pit where it was disarmed and then they proceeded to tag and capture the rest of the terrorist cell and all their equipment. Judy updated Sergeant Adams on all that had occurred.

  # Later that morning #

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Aston interjected,

  Andy said,

  Ed commented,

  # Still later that morning #

  Andy and Pat were walking the beach near the Boy Scout Camp. They had a picnic lunch with them. They found a nice place along the trail and laid out a blanket on which to have lunch. "Pat, we have been best friends since fifth grade and going steady since we started high school. I don't tell you often enough how much you mean to me. The last two weeks have been unreal and I could not have coped with all of it had you not been there as my anchor. We are both 18 and it looks like our future has been carved out for us. I know this is not the most romantic way to bring this up." He got down on one knee and opened a ring box with an engagement ring. "I know this ring is miniscule considering the way I feel about you. But will you marry me?"

  Pat was taken aback momentarily but quickly said, "Yes, of course I will marry you. When do you want to do this, today, tomorrow, whenever? I am ready whenever you say. I suspect this will be a bit of a shock to our parents, but they have certainly been prepped for it. I can't see them raising the maturity angle either. Almost all of the other parental arguments that might arise are pretty well useless for us. I also suspect that this may bring on a rush of marriages from the rest of the group."

  Pat put on the ring, grabbed Andy and soundly kissed him. Andy said, "Your folks are coming over for dinner tonight. Let's see how long it takes them to spot the ring"

  "Oh, you are going to be a mischievous imp with this news, but I like it."

  What they did not know was that a similar occurrence had taken place on the West Glacier trail with Gus and Barbara.

  Later that afternoon

  What Andy had forgotten was that Ivanovs and Petrovs were also going to be there for dinner. Instead of 8 people there were 14. They did have enough table space for everyone so adequate room was not a problem. They chatted about the terrorist cell takedown earlier that day in London. Jim asked Andy, what led him to suspect that there might be terrorists mixed in with the hostages. "I don't really know, but something just didn't feel right about the whole thing so I played a hunch. Even after they were disarmed, something didn't feel right, so I kept on poking with questions and we managed to duck the bullet in spades. It was a close thing."

  Later as everyone was sitting at the table preparing to eat, both Jim and Bill rose pretty much together, both tapping a spoon on the side of their water glasses. Bill said, "As host, I offer the floor to Jim."

  "Thank you Bill. Lest you young people around the table think we old fuddy duddies are no longer observant, I would like to offer the following toast with Bill. Andy and Gus, welcome to the family, girls show everybody your rings." The girls were surprised and it showed.

  Bill went on, "Pat and Barbara welcome to the family, though we do not know the date yet. We have been wondering when you would firm up the decision that we know you made in your hearts long ago. We are delighted for all of you."

  Nik commented quietly, "My best wishes my friends, this is amazing. You see, earlier today Anya agreed to be my wife as well."

  Andy was startled,

 

 

 

 

 

  "Wow!"

  Pat said, "Andy you just went white as a sheet, what's up?"

  "I just talked to Jeff and Ed. They got engaged today. I also talked to Aston and he was not a motivating factor. I am happy for all of us and wouldn't change what has happened. It is just that the odds for such a condition are off the charts. I would also like to suggest that we may want to take this party to the ship so we have room. We can then invite the whole group. This is too good not to share. Everyone is available including Ed and Jane. They have not left on their mission yet. We can teleport all the food and Aston says he can supplement this with more of the same."

  Best wishes were shared by al
l. Sensei Mizukami and the Martinez/Mendez family were all there. The Clark family was able to stay for about an hour and Alban showed up with Bethany, as did Jose. Only two alerts occurred during the gathering, one in Los Angeles and one in Buenos Aires. Both were resolved in minutes by John and Alice Stern who took Alban and Bethany with them for the experience. Andy noted, "We will have to do this kind of gathering again in a week so everyone can meet and greet and get to know each other. We will have a lot of new faces by then and we want to be sure everyone is up to speed with their gifts. By tomorrow all of our new Solarans will have been practicing their new skills and we can start to show them how we work. So far, everyone has been in tune so we want to be sure it stays that way. All but a few told me that they can get away for a few days, so we are going to gather at a secluded lake in Siberia to work on our training. We are also going to be helping with the Isla Maria Magdelena project. That will require a lot of heavy lifting. One thought that occurred to me is that we may meet some of our topsoil requirements by recovering some useful materials from some of the river deltas around the world and see what we can do with that. That would be a good exercise in energy absorption and teleporting heavy loads. I also suspect that some of the landfills may be a good source if we can properly compost the stuff. We will be meeting with the new group tomorrow on the ship."

  After everyone had eaten their fill, Bill stood up and said, "Can I have everyone's attention, we have some business to discuss. Item #1. Today was not as much of a surprise as you might imagine. We have all watched our kids grow to this point, some almost wondering why it took so long. It is rare that such a group has such a focused and formidable goal in front of them. What many of you know is that Andy has had a wonderful inheritance from his grandfather that has been used to fund and outfit his home dojo. We intend to maintain that property for convenience sake. It is something we are quite used to by now so we intend to keep it that way. It will be open to any of you that wish to use it. Since you will also all have homes at what we are now calling Whale Point, that might become on occasion, more than a convenience."