by Ben Winston
“You may call me Abraxis. I am the local segment of the Rafliss Alliance Assembly, Sector defense Artificial Intelligence Construct.”
“You’re an AI? Cool! I’ve got, like a trillion questions! Since you appear to be human, may we assume that this Alliance you mentioned is also human?” Mandi asked, excited.
“That would be an incorrect assumption, young Fixer. In the case of humans, you have no interracial experience with what you would call aliens, so I altered my displayed image to one you should be more comfortable interacting with. I should also mention that the Alliance Assembly lost cohesion as a viable ruling body one-hundred ninety-two of your centuries ago. It is surmised that the Alliance was also destroyed shortly after,” Abraxis replied.
“Abraxis, why is it imperative that you speak to us now?” Greg asked.
Abraxis turned slightly to face Greg, and bowed. “Greetings, Fighter. It has become necessary because your lives are in danger, and I must begin your training in order to ensure your survival.”
“Excuse me? How do you know we are in danger?” Jolene asked.
Again, Abraxis bowed to Jolene. “Greetings, Finder. I know this because there has already been an attempt on Fighter Greg and Fixer Amanda. I believe you refer to it as ‘The Mederos Incident’." Abraxis then turned to Bella and again bowed. “Greetings Pilot.”
“Oh man, we are so gonna need the parents for this one.” Bella said as she nodded to Abraxis.
“The final decision is Fighter Greg’s to make, but I would recommend limiting those who have knowledge of me. Your planetary officials are still very immature and I believe they would attempt to capture this interface and the other equipment for their own use,” Abraxis advised.
“Why is it my decision?” Greg asked, concerned.
“You are the Fighter; security is your responsibility,” Abraxis replied reasonably.
Jolene snorted. “That makes perfect sense to me!”
Bella nodded at him. “You always were a good leader, Greg.”
Greg sighed and closed his eyes to consider letting the parents know what was going on. He always came back to the same conclusion; if they were going to need time away, then the parents at least would have to know what was going on so they could cover for the missing teens.
“Okay, we’ll get the parents here, but for now, that’s it. We’ll need them to cover our asses anyway,” Greg said.
Abraxis nodded acceptance. “As you command, Fighter. Do you wish for me to withhold a full explanation until ‘the parents’ have arrived?”
“Yes, please. I think I need a little time to come to grips with all this anyway,” Greg replied.
“Um, Abraxis?” Mandi asked.
“Yes Fixer?”
“You mentioned ‘other equipment’ earlier. What kind of equipment did you mean? No one has found anything else.” Mandi asked.
“Nothing else has been dispatched yet. There is a special storage facility on your moon, placed there a number of years ago, that contains the equipment I was speaking of earlier. I am currently readying the transfer of the equipment once the team has decided on the location they wish to store it,” Abraxis answered.
“How much stuff are we talking about? Will it fit in here?” Jolene asked.
“Negative, Finder. The equipment list includes three Spectra class hyper sleds. Each sled will require space equivalent to two times the area of one of your standard two-car garages, complete with door for easy egress. I am sure the Fixer will also want sufficient room to repair the craft as well.” Abraxis paused a moment. “I would also suggest that you include apartments for the entire team.”
“Okay, so if we need to have a hanger large enough for twelve full-size cars, four apartments ...” Mandi started to list their requirements, but Abraxis interrupted her.
“My apologies, but you will need training room as well as a computer and medical center. For training, much can be accomplished with holographic projectors, but the room will still need to be there. This underground area is well shielded from orbital detection scanners. However, it is far too small. If at all possible, you will need to remain shielded.”
“So, any ideas for where?” Mandi asked. “Abraxis seems to think we need to do this quickly.”
“Well, we have no way to build anything without letting more people in on the secret,” Bella said, muting the headset she had been speaking on.
“I don’t know how much digging we’d need to do, but there’s the old silver mine outside of town. There’s a lot of steel and whatnot above ground. Plenty of places to hide things,” Jolene offered.
“Dad said he would round everyone up, and head home,” Bella said. “They should all be here in about fifteen or twenty minutes. He mentioned that Uncle Carl would like to meet the two of you, but I asked him to make sure it wasn’t tonight.”
“Scanning” Abraxis said. “It would seem the Finder is correct. I cannot get a good reading inside the buildings, and nothing at all underground there. I know there are chambers there, but since it’s listed as a mine, it should be ignored if the Drellians scan it.”
“I’d still like to know why these Drellians want me and Mandi dead in the first place,” Greg asked rhetorically.
“You know, there isn’t room for everyone down here. Maybe we should move into the house?” Bella asked
Greg sighed then nodded. “Abraxis, can you operate in there, and will it be safe for you to do so?”
“It should be for now. The Drellians are currently searching for you near Colorado Springs. The company that your parents work for listed your family as having moved there. I would say we have a good idea where they are getting most of their information,” Abraxis replied. “However, once the ‘mistake’ is cleared up, they will be here. Time is short.”
“Sheesh! Impatient isn’t he?” Mandi asked Jolene as she picked up the medallion.
Jolene chuckled as she followed Greg up the steps. “I don’t think he’s the only one!”
Blane Residence
Shermandale, Utah
North American Continent
Earth, Sol System
“Hey guys, why don’t we make dinner for everyone? Then we talk this all over around the table while we eat,” Jolene suggested.
“Sure, but what do we want to make?” Bella asked.
“Cheeseburger Hot-dish!” Mandi said grinning.
“Bacon Cheeseburger Hot-dish!” Greg said.
“Uh, neither of us have ever made that, but we’ll try to help. What do you need?” Jolene asked.
With all of them chipping in, dinner was almost finished by the time they heard the first car door slam.
When all six parents had gotten in the house, Beth Grien, Bella’s mother asked. “Uh oh, they made us dinner.”
Sharon Adams picked it up without missing a beat. “Yeah, but it can’t be that bad, they made Greg and Mandi’s favorite dish. If it was something involving blood, we’d be having Steak and Lobster.”
“She does have a point. I think they just wanted to make sure they had our attention. With the way that smells, I know they got mine!” Jolene’s father, Ned Blane added.
Carla Blane winked at her daughter. “So what was so important that you had Jon talk Carl into letting all of us out of there early?”
“Let’s talk over dinner, I know at least my folks are hungry when they get home!” Bella said.
Jarad Adams nodded his head. “We usually are too, so I don’t think we’ll complain to much about an early dinner!"
By now, almost everyone had found a chair around the Blane’s expanded dining room table. It was pretty much elbow to elbow, but everyone had a chair. After everyone had gotten a plate dished up, and had retaken their seats, they all focused on Greg for the explanation.
“As you all know, Mandi and I have been online friends with Bella and Jolene for a few years now.” He glanced at Bella and Jolene, as he continued. “We decided to meet over here today to get reacquainted, and renew our friendsh
ips. We also met Mr. Grien via video chat and discussed the incident that took place at Mederos High School.”
Jon interrupted him. “Excuse me, son, but not everyone here is familiar with the event. As I said earlier, it’s classified.”
Greg nodded to him. “Thank you, Sir, but for this explanation to make sense to all of you, they need to know.” speaking to the rest again, he told them of the event and his and Mandi's parts in it.
“Like I told Mr. Grein, the reason I took the time to tell you about the incident is that it has a bearing on the rest of what I have to tell you. You see, since speaking with Mr. Grien, we’ve discovered who the aliens were looking for. We haven’t gotten to the why yet.” He paused to set the medallion in the middle of the table.
“A few days ago, Jolene and Bella found this cool looking medallion just outside the door to the bunker ...” again, Greg was interrupted, but this time it was by his father.
“What bunker?”
“Ned and Carla let the girls have an old bomb shelter in the back yard as a playroom of sorts. They’ve pretty much turned it into their own research lab,” Jon explained, proudly. "It’s pretty neat.”
Greg picked up his narration again. “When they found it, they had no idea what it was, but since it had glyphs and such on it, Jolene was planning on doing some research to try to discover what it was and what it said. However, when she picked it up, the crystal on the middle glowed a bright cobalt blue."
“Well, not really glowed, it was more like one of those old mood ring things you guys had in the seventies,” Jolene quickly explained. “When Bella touched it, it took on a green glow.”
Greg nodded and continued. “Strangely, she didn’t think much of it at the time, and set it aside for more pressing matters. When she saw it today, Mandi picked it up and asked Jolene about it. After Jolene explained what she knew about it, Mandi tossed it to me. The crystal glowed very brightly and began pulsing red.
“Mandi figured out that we each needed to touch the medallion at the same time and in a certain way. We had no idea what would happen, but we did it anyway. I think it’s safe to say we were all very surprised at the results.” He grinned. “Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, I would like to introduce to you, our new friend, Abraxis.”
Blane Residence
Shermandale, Utah
North American Continent
Earth, Sol System
The same hologram they young people had seen earlier appeared over the medallion, and it spoke. “Abraxis systems online. Good evening everyone, it is a pleasure to meet all of you.”
Greg continued. “Abraxis is the holographic avatar of a very old, alien, artificial intelligence.”
“Impossible! We’re nowhere near the level of technology needed to create an AI,” Jon said. However, he was studying Abraxis intently.
“Affirmative Mr. Grein, human technology is still rather primitive. However, the Fighter did not say I was of human origin,” Abraxis replied. “Fighter, do you wish that I now impart the delayed explanation?”
Greg nodded, and took Jolene and Bella’s hands. “Yes, Abraxis. That is my wish, please.”
“Before I begin, I must mention that some of this data comes from Abraxis Prime Main Memory, other sources include hyper-net news services and the private insights of the researchers and technicians of this branch installation. The possibility for error exists due to input without a viable means of corroboration.
“Eons ago, there was a race of beings that were very warlike, and felt that in order to rule the universe, they had to first defeat it. They would invade, and enslave whole star systems. But it soon became apparent that their existing military was insufficient to continue their conquests. Their answer was to put slaves into their military. The megalomania of the far away Emperor had infected his Realm. The Empire turned cannibal; it now had only two choices; grow or die. So it grew.
“Far away, an Alliance had been formed to defend against this invader Empire. The races banded together and merged all of their navies into thousands of separate battle groups large enough to counter anything the enemy had used to date, or so they’d believed. When the first battle was fought, three of these battle groups had been utterly destroyed and four star systems had fallen to the Empire. The Alliance was in shock. They had thought themselves safe behind the invincibility of their mighty fleets. They were wrong.
“In a far corner of the Alliance, one of the member races had developed, in secret, what they felt was the weapon that would finally end the war. They had no idea how right they were. The original Abraxis Project called for the large-scale genetic alteration of beings, Alliance Volunteers, into a form of super-soldier. These beings would have traits and abilities far superior to those of normal beings. However, the Alliance rejected this part of the project in favor of racial screening to search out the beings that already possessed the special combination of traits and abilities naturally. They planned to train these gifted people and provide them with all the knowledge and wisdom of all the member races of the Alliance.
“In order to ensure no one could tamper with, or corrupt the project, it was decided to turn it over to a sentient, non-centralized, Artificial Intelligence. They believed that the very nature of the virtual construct would protect it from tampering or destruction. Abraxis Prime was brought online, and immediately assumed its primary duties of defending the Alliance.
“It became a great a honor to be chosen for training. The project always found the Rangers in groups of four, although at first, it was thought to be groups of only three: Fighter, Pilot, and Finder. The forth type identified for Abraxis to train was called a Fixer.
“These specialized teams proved very effective against the Imperial Fleets. They operated small, armed Hyper-sleds that the Imperial forces simply couldn’t target. For the longest time, the Empire had no idea what was going on. Ships, even their big capitol class ships, would simply explode too quickly for them to issue a report.
“It was a Fixer named ShanDyrell of Clandeth, that discovered most of the enemy forces were slaves controlled by obedience collars. She discovered a way to release the collars saving millions of former enemy lives. As a result, Imperial loses became devastating to their expansion efforts.
“Due mostly to the vagaries of faster than light travel, (since countered by a temporal compensator in the hyper-drives,) the war would continue for another six hundred standard years, however that event marked the beginning of the end for the Empire.
“Once it was discovered, Imperial agents tried several times to destroy or disrupt the Abraxis System. They even tried hunting down the candidates and killing them before they could be identified, only that didn’t work either. Finally, after five centuries of trying, the Imperial agents managed to corrupt the Abraxis Prime Core in a most grisly and abhorrent way.
“The virus, as you would call it, allowed the Agents to change the way Abraxis trained the Rangers. New Rangers were being forcibly reprogrammed to become fanatically loyal weapons for the Emperor.
“The Abraxis Prime Core is a decentralized AI. That is, it doesn’t exist in one single computer system, but in billions. In order to force the virus to spread to the other Abraxis terminals, they had to destroy all of the computer systems on the core world at basically the same instant. They achieved that by triggering a short-term singularity in the outer system. Not only did the event succeed in infecting the Prime Core, it also killed eleven billion souls, and utterly destroyed four viable planets and the star system they were in.
“Meanwhile, and, at the time, unknown to them, several Ranger teams had penetrated all the way to the seat of the Empire. The most heavily defended system in the Empire, and they thought no one knew they had slipped past the defenses. That soon changed when they tried to enter the atmosphere of the planet.
“Distortion mines grabbed the descending sleds and blew them apart, killing two teams before they could pull out and avoid the mines. However, the surprises didn’t end t
here. The mines triggered a planetary force field that trapped all but one of the sleds. The distortion mines' tractor beams quickly finished the remaining sleds, killing off the rangers that had fought so valiantly, and so long, to get there. The remaining Ranger Fighter, after witnessing the deaths of her mates and friends, jumped to the local primary and used her sled’s hyper-drive to trigger a massive solar storm. The storm lasted ninety-eight of your years, and completely sterilized the Drellian star system.”
Jared held up his hands “Wait a minute; if both sides were destroyed, then what does all of this have to do with us?”
“When the Rafliss System was destroyed, Abraxis Prime Core spread the virus to many of its terminals. Those terminals are still functioning, and producing Drellian altered Rangers. In addition, if any Abraxis Terminal contacts any other, there is a sixty-five point nine-nine-seven-two percent chance that the connection will transmit the virus.
“Only the Capitol system of the Alliance was destroyed. Hundreds of systems that were vassals of the Empire or members of the Alliance are still there. Abraxis Prime Core is still active, and those worlds, along with Earth are in danger.
“The last information this unit received indicated that the Drellian Rangers were fulfilling their programming in ‘protecting and expanding the Empire’. If that is true, then there are thousands of worlds that are being suppressed by an Empire that hasn’t existed in thousands of years.”
“I still don’t understand the timing, why now, why here, and why our kids?” Carla asked.
Jon answered. “Why our kids is simple. They’re Rangers, although I don’t know which is which."
“The ‘why’ is because the Drellians have already tried to kill them once,” Sharon said thoughtfully.
Abraxis nodded in agreement. “You are both correct. Fighter Greg is the team’s leader and is the Combat Specialist. Isabella is the team navigation specialist and is the Pilot. Jolene is the team's intuition, curiosity, and problem solver, she is a Finder. While not considered a Ranger since she is a non-combatant, Amanda’s specialized skill is her intelligence. She excels in problem solving and troubleshooting. She has the ability to instinctively know what is wrong with a piece of technology and tell what will be needed to fix it. She is a Fixer.”