by Bill Nolan
Robert was still surprised by that. He decided to ask Maria about it. “Well, Maria, why do you think all these people chose the To’Ach’an instead of the Empire? Most places in the Galaxy, people are afraid to even walk on the same side of the street with us.”
Maria just laughed. “They’re still scared to death of you. I thought you knew that. The thing is, they think you’re invincible. Your weapons and ships seem like magic. If you want a protector, a super powerful magic-using badass seems like a good way to go. Who’s going to mess with you?”
Some Earth governments had foolishly tried to fight the Empire or the To’Ach’an. They were so easily defeated that people began thinking the aliens were some kind of supermen, but that wasn’t true. It was true that the To’Ach’an, due to the high gravity on their planet of origin, were very fast and very strong, but that didn’t apply to Empire people. The difference was technology, and it was not a minor difference.
The human race on Earth had been sitting mostly naked around campfires just a few thousand years before. Three hundred years before, a bow and arrows was the best weapon system available, and armor was unable to stop even a bolt from a crossbow. There was no medical science. Humans on Earth didn’t even know that germs existed until less than 200 years ago. They had gone from bows to H-bombs in just a few hundred years, and it was clear that the rate of technological advancement was accelerating. If you can, project that accelerating advancement many thousands of years into the future, and you will have some idea of what they faced with the Empire and the To’Ach’an. It’s been said that any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic, and that made the aliens, both To’Ach’an and Empire, seem like the mages of legend.
Maria led Robert to the food service area for lunch, and they met Kamci. She had really taken to her business classes, and she had put this whole project together. Now that it was almost ready to open, she was ready to hand over the business part to someone else.
“Robert! I didn’t know you were coming by today. Have you seen the whole place?”
“Sure have. Maria gave me the tour. I hear you’re almost done with your part.”
“I am. As soon as we open, I’m going to go back to liaison with the Empire. So far everything is going pretty smoothly, and I want to make sure it stays that way. Of course, your daughter being Empress doesn’t hurt.”
Robert nodded his head yes. “I agree. Two thousand years of war is enough. Are you going to join us for lunch?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
After lunch Robert went down to speak with a woman who had been captured while trying to sneak into the facility to steal drugs. She was asleep when he entered the holding room. Maria was watching on a viewscreen, and she couldn’t help but remember when she had been the one naked in the room. She knew how frightened Judy must be. Robert sat down on the bench which slid out from one wall.
“Judy, wake up!” He nudged her leg with his foot.
It took a few moments for her to come to full awareness, but when she did, she slid backward away from Robert until her back hit the wall. He was the first person she had seen since being confined. She was shaking uncontrollably.
“Please don’t hurt me. Who are you? Do you know whether my daughter is still alive? Please, I’m so sorry I broke in. I won’t ever do it again. Please…”
Robert held up his hand with the palm facing her and quietly said, “Be silent.” Judy stopped speaking immediately. There was something about Robert’s very presence which frightened her into immediate submission. She knew in that moment that she would do whatever this man told her to do. Maria, watching on the screen, knew exactly how she felt.
Robert waited a few seconds to make sure she was going to stay quiet. “Don’t speak again until I tell you that you may. Nod if you understand.”
Judy nodded.
“OK. You were captured while breaking into our facility to steal from us, and so you were confined here as punishment. Once we confined you, we were responsible for your care and safety, and so you have been kept safe and warm, fed and bathed, and we would have provided medical care if you had needed any, which you didn’t. Please shake your head to indicate whether you have any complaints about how you were cared for during your stay.”
Judy shook her head no.
“OK then, your 19 days is up, and you will be released from captivity. You may dress now.” Her clothes, fresh and clean, slid out of the wall on a shelf, and she quickly put them on.
Robert continued, “Do you have any questions?”
Judy took a deep breath to try to stay calm. “Please sir, do you know if my daughter is alive?”
Robert motioned for her to approach him, and she sat on the bench next to him. He took her hand in his. “As I said, when we captured and confined you we became responsible for you. You mentioned your daughter during your capture. Since she is a child, our responsibility extended to her as well. One cannot place a single mother into confinement and morally ignore the child dependent upon her. Maria, the medical director of this facility, asked a To’Ach’an team to go to Chicago and see about Daisy. They checked her out of the hospital there.”
At that, Judy interrupted. “They let your people just take her?”
Robert laughed out loud. “Well, our team didn’t ask permission. Luckily nobody was foolish enough to try to stop them, and so there were no casualties. Maria, can you report on the child?”
A screen lit up, showing Maria. “Daisy was a very sick little girl. We were able to avoid cloning, but she was in the tank for 11 days. She was our very first real patient. She is now fully recovered and waiting for you, aren’t you Daisy?” A girl who looked about five ran into the picture and jumped on Maria’s lap.
“I’m good, mom. I’ve been helping Maria.”
Judy started crying and hugging Robert while repeating, “thank you so much,” over and over.
Robert helped her up and said, “Let’s go see your daughter.” When the door of the confinement room opened, Daisy and Maria were waiting right outside.
Chapter 3, Philosophy
The To’Ach’an philosophy had always been one of self-reliance, and since the populations in those areas now under their protection had tended to agree, major changes happened. Anything resembling welfare was pretty much gone. If you wanted to work, you were guaranteed a job. If you couldn’t find one yourself, you would be assigned one suitable to your talents and skills. If you didn’t want to work, that was fine, but you were on your own. School was considered a job, and tuition to any public school was free, including public colleges. In addition, you were paid a salary while you learned a new profession or skill.
Health care was also free, so Maria’s clinic wouldn’t need a billing office. The money for these new programs was provided by the Empire, under an agreement with the To’Ach’an. The power boxes and phones which were being sold by the To’Ach’an meant people had no utility bills, and they were encouraged (and taught) to grow as much food as possible. It doesn’t really take much space to grow a lot of food. The space put into growing the average lawn can provide most of the vegetables for the family who lives there. Of course, apartment dwellers and the like didn’t have that option, but community gardens did help.
For only the last few hundred years of its history, Earth had moved toward centralization. Things like power, food, and a lot more were provided from a central source. Now it was going the other way. Besides, a lot of plants were very valuable if sold and shipped off planet, and many people started producing those. Greenhouses became as commonplace as garages. Sometimes they were garages. The power boxes made electricity essentially free, and banks of lights let you grow anywhere, not just outside. It was a whole new kind of green revolution, with endless, cheap power that produced no pollution. The power boxes, like most of the technology, seemed like magic, but the principle was simple enough. Earth scientists had just begun to realize that dark energy – an unknown and undetectable something – pervaded the
universe in immense quantities.
One scientist had famously declared that any cubic foot of space anywhere contained enough energy to boil away the Pacific Ocean. The power boxes (and phones, and aircars) simply tapped that energy, converting it to electricity. It was like sipping a little water from deep in the ocean. The surrounding water just filled in what was taken. Since the entire universe was filled with this energy, there was no danger of running out.
People who didn’t want to be part of the new self-reliance were encouraged to leave, and if they chose to stay, they could expect no governmental help. The Empire had learned a very long time ago that welfare just breeds more welfare recipients, until eventually the whole house of cards falls down. You can’t keep supporting more and more of your population with less and less of your people and expect it to work for very long, and both the To’Ach’an and the Empire thought and planned on much longer time scales than Earth humans were accustomed to do.
So, how did this get paid for? Generally, individuals could not afford starships under the Empire, and so interstellar ships, except the To’Ach’an ships, all belonged to the Empire. They handled interstellar commerce, including passengers, and the profit was immense. Since the To’Ach’an allowed them to trade on Earth, they were making a huge amount of money, and they used most of this to provide the services mentioned. Taxes were no longer needed. This was part of the reason why the To’Ach’an had been so unpopular with the Empire until just recently. They threatened the monopoly on interstellar transportation which supported the Empire infrastructure. Of course, now they were working together, and the To’Ach’an were so few that they didn’t really cut into that business enough to matter. The agreement on Earth was simple. The Empire wouldn’t compete with the To’Ach’an.
Jim and Tiffany quickly adjusted to the new routine. Tiffany enjoyed the work at the daycare, and their kids were doing amazing things at the new To’Ach’an school. The technology was quite literally out of this world. Jim was learning how to handle air car sales. This involved a lot of steps. He told Tiffany, “You know from using ours that these things are amazing. The freedom they give someone is fantastic, and I really enjoy their different personalities. I have been passing up some ideas for features to include as we go along, and the higher ups are showing some interest. I had a meeting with Jonu today about it. He says some can be retrofitted easily onto the cars already sold. The amazing thing to me is that if they do that they aren’t going to charge for the upgrades.”
Tiffany replied, “Well, I have good news, too. I had my meeting with Maria at the clinic today, and she is going to send me to school to be a healer! I will be off world for about a year for the school, but it will be worth it. Then I can work at the clinic. Maria is arranging for me to go to the same school she attended.”
Jim was surprised. “Really, only a year? I would have thought it would take a lot more than that.”
“Yes, I did too, but Maria explained that things tend to go from simple to more and more complexity, and then back to simple again. She says Earth medicine is currently in a very complex stage, but their medicine is much simpler. I got a tour of the facility. I can’t wait to work there.”
Chapter 4, The Dream
Things were going pretty well on Earth. Nevertheless, Robert had a dream for his people, but he needed a place to make it happen. Over the centuries the To’Ach’an had discovered a total of four unoccupied planets with conditions suitable for life as we understand it. It wasn’t enough for the long term, and, in any event, defending them should the Empire really commit to the idea of destroying the To’Ach’an was chancy at best. He had been working on his plan for years before the final piece needed to test it fell into place, and that final piece turned out to be Jane.
Until they visited Myoba (the home star of the To’Ach’an) and Myoba released Jane’s talents, Robert had a problem. It turned out that Jane had several talents. Two of her talents had never been seen before. She had an amazing location sense, and she could apparently talk to all stars. At least they had yet to encounter a star who wouldn’t talk to her.
There are several galaxies near our Milky Way. Some are considered satellites of our own galaxy. “Near” in this context isn’t like next door. Even the closest ones are incredibly far away, and no human had ever journeyed to one and returned. Never. That was the problem.
It started with how ships jumped to new locations almost instantly by moving in directions, or dimensions, other than the three we normally can perceive. While Empire mathematicians believed there were 17 total dimensions, Robert knew there were at least 23, and probably 29. He also knew that if Shanna moved in some of those directions nobody had ever moved before, they could also go places nobody had ever gone before. The problem was knowing where you were once you got there, and mapping the jump points well enough to find them again. OK, you could see stars and galaxies from the new location, but that would only let you map your location in three dimensions, not 23 or 29. You could know in general terms what direction and distance you were jumping, but that isn’t enough for navigation. You need to know exactly where you are once you get there, and that is very hard to determine after arrival. If you didn’t know where you were, there was no way to go back to where you had been. You couldn’t just put it into reverse. A new jump had to be calculated, and to do that you needed to know your exact starting and ending points in a lot more than three dimensions. Without some way to do that, you would never find your way back again. Even if you did somehow get back, there was no way to return to where you had been. “Lost in Space” wasn’t just an old TV show.
That’s where Jane came in. She had a talent nobody had ever seen before. She always knew where she was. Always. At least so far. Would it work if she left the Milky Way? Well, there was only one way to find out. Robert wanted to take a little trip – to the Large Magellanic Cloud – a galaxy that is close by the standards of the universe, but still so far away as to boggle the imagination. It is only 1/100 the size of the Milky Way, and is 163,000 light years away. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you can see it, looking like a broken off piece of the Milky Way.
Robert and Jane decided that a good use of the huge amount of money they were making on Earth would be to build a new ship – truly new – a ship like none before. It would be a ship designed for exploration, and also designed to take advantage of Jane’s special talent. Jane decided to name it Serena, because that was the feeling which always came over her when she was in the voids. They held no terrors for her. It was also similar to the name of the ship in her favorite science fiction story.
The design and construction of Serena took almost six months. This ship was completely different. Serena is about 200’ in diameter. That’s 50’ bigger than Morkalla, but she was nothing like Miko’s ship. Most ships, especially among the To’Ach’an, are generalists, built to fight, haul cargo, and provide spacious and comfortable living quarters for hundreds of people. This ship was an explorer, built to travel and survive in unknown places and conditions. It had very little cargo space, and almost no living space.
There was a “side effect” of Jane’s ability to always know where she was. As a result of this talent, she also didn’t suffer from any jump sickness when she translated. That’s why she and Robert had decided on the concept of a scout ship. On Morkalla, which is somewhat smaller in size than Serena, about a fifth of the available space is taken up by ship’s systems, such as power cells, drive components, shielding equipment, and the computers responsible for the ship’s intelligence. Since the volume of a 150’ sphere is about one and three quarters million cubic feet, this left a lot of space for people, and Morkalla generally had about 45 people living inboard.
Serena was very different. At 200’ in diameter, she contained over four million cubic feet of volume. She had one garden and living quarters for about 20 people, and this occupied less than one fifteenth of her cubic volume, so it was the opposite of Morkalla. Over nine tenths were taken up
with ship systems. Serena had computing power equal to Shanna, a quadruple hull (other ships had double hulls), and her power cells and drives would have been ample for a ship 10,000 times her size. She also had the most powerful shields ever designed, with two complete backup systems. Naturally she had a very powerful version of the spatial distortion generator which Robert had designed, and weapon systems almost on a par with Shanna. This was a ship intended to explore, often with only Jane inboard, and to survive whatever she encountered when she got there. Serena was a badass.
Serena could jump into most any situation and probably handle it. If she did get in trouble, she had the speed to escape. It’s a bad analogy, but think of a fighter plane with the armor of a battleship and the fighting power of an aircraft carrier battle group. Nothing like this ship had been seen before. Her shields would let her fly practically inside a star, while her drives and distortion generator would let her jump from there. When Jane was the only one inboard, Serena could jump once a second for minutes at a time. Nothing known could compete with that.
Shanna had shared huge amounts of information with Serena, so the little ship knew pretty much everything Shanna knew. She and Shanna also had the two most powerful computing systems ever built into spaceships. With her ability to jump once a second when only Jane was inboard, plus her advanced shielding, she was the single best fighting ship ever built. Also, and again like Shanna, she was independent.