by Lea Tassie
Now you're confused? Yes, you're quite right, it couldn't have been Charger the Hyborg, because he wasn't yet in existence when Danny was in the cave. He was still an innocent young man called Henry, working in a gas station.
I'll just finish James's story for you. He found a wife and they had a good life together; their daughter Suzie was named after Danny's first love. The family line endured through the Tasker war and the aliens' invasion of Earth, and fled to Ceres just before the Day of the Black Rain. Ceres was the one planet the Grays never attacked, which was always puzzling because they clearly knew of its existence. Most historians later theorized that the extreme cold and subterranean nature of the colony was what saved them.
I can see you're still thinking about Charger. Have you figured it out yet?
Of course! He was traveling through time, from far in the future, after he had been resurrected. That's what happened on Neo Terra, too, when the Mahouds were living in the hollow black planet. It was Charger R/T, ricocheting back and forth on the time line, who exploded into their laboratory and killed one of the workers who tried to interfere with him.
No, not today. But I will tell you that whole story. Yes, and I'll tell you how time travel works, too.
>>>
Charger, banished to Mars and helping to open up settlements on the barren red planet, could still watch humanity. It happened, slowly at first, then faster. Humanity's need to feel safe meant that things of the past had to go. The Hyborgs and Lycans were monsters who had served a purpose, but now they were a drag on the world's economies.
So it was said.
Racism, prejudice, and phobias of the past ruled humanity as much as they ever had. A program had been set in motion to move the Hyborgs and their Lycans from Earth, which meant that at first they would be employed in restoring Mars to a useful planet, but if killed or injured, they would not be repaired. Besides, it was reasoned, things that were so close to being dead could not have souls and should not be regarded as having the same significance as the living. General Harris's rants about these unholy demons of humanity's own creation remained legendary, in spite of the fact that he'd been the one to create them.
The Hyborgs had never represented a threat to humanity. Drawn largely from the downtrodden members of society, they tended to readily accept being commanded, which made them ideal soldiers. They were not so stupid, however, that they couldn't see what was happening to them.
It made sense for humans to use Hyborgs for work on Mars, for they didn't need much air or sleep in order to do what was needed in terraforming the planet. The new human society, the survivors of the war, experienced little in the way of crime, and wanted nothing to do with Hyborgs for fear of creating problems they hoped never to deal with. Everyone had a good-paying job, and it was common to see families with six or more children, all being supported by a society on the mend.
As people grew prosperous, the Hyborgs began to be seen as even more of a blight on humanity's rise to dominance once again. Sending them en masse to replenish Mars just made good economic and political sense. So, as humans came and went on the planet, the long-lived Hyborgs worked on, creating a subculture on Mars, one that had the potential to be violent, but was generally peaceful. This was a culture that Charger had been tasked with eliminating, a culture to be destroyed by one of their own.
He thought about the situation for long hours, becoming bitter as the years went by. He had been programmed to obey humans and, so far, had not been able to figure out how to break that programming. Rejected by humanity and labeled a malediction by others of his own kind, he went on working, with Mac and Jill by his side, and sharing his thoughts only with them.
>>>
Jack, Beth and Henry's son, grew to be a strong and proud young man. He enjoyed life in the high North, and was at peace with the lands. When Jack was twenty, he built a cabin thirty miles north of the village, married a young Inuit girl, and fathered two boys. The oldest boy found work in the new cities of Earth when he came of age, but the youngest, like his father, was in love with the high North, so he remained and worked in the new industries that were developed.
This youngest boy, Maxwell, also married an Inuit girl and they had a daughter. Named after her great grandmother, young Beth hated the North but grew to worship the stories told by her namesake. She learned of the adventures her great grandmother had while surviving the invasion, raising a family, being accepted by the Inuit and, eventually, becoming mayor of the village.
When Beth was very young, one Christmas her great grandmother gave her a necklace. "This is a special necklace, dear," Beth's great grandmother said in her old woman's voice as they sat together in the living room near the Christmas tree. "It was given to me by my first love. He was your great grandfather. He was a great man who fought for the freedom we have today. I never knew if he was killed in the war, or if he even survived the invasion, but I've always loved him."
Her great grandmother placed the necklace in Beth's hands. It was truly one of a kind. Henry had fashioned it himself, using various sized piston rings from different car motors, welding them together to create a representation of our solar system. On each of the nine rings, Henry welded a small polished nut to represent a planet. For Earth, Henry welded a small steel ball with grooves to represent the planet's surface. At the heart of the solar system, the sun was represented by a large yellow diamond that had once belonged to his mother.
"His name was Henry, dear," Beth's great grandmother said. "He gave this to me with the promise that even the entire solar system would never be powerful enough to destroy his love for me." The necklace was not small or dainty, qualities a guy would never think necessary, but Beth's great grandmother had worn it from the day he had given it to her until now.
Because Beth's father and grandfather had married Inuit women, Beth looked Asian, except for her eyes. A genetic throwback to her great grandmother, she had ice-blue eyes, a color uncommon in ninety-nine percent of the world's population. She also had a taste for adventure. When Beth completed her university education, she decided that after the death of her great grandmother, she would travel to a place no one would have expected her to go. Beth chose Mars.
>>>
Dart speaks to Reader:
Well, Reader, at this point in time, Earth was enjoying a golden age. Although it celebrated the heroes of the past, the main thrust was for the future, for scientific progress.
What kind of progress? Oh, there were amazing innovations! Two of the greatest advances were using a galaxy to bend light to see stars in the distance, and bending light with gravity of our own design. Another stunning achievement was making a solar system into a gigantic telescope. And yet another was making world lasers powerful and refined enough to core deep holes in distant planets to allow mining to take place. Sustainable stellar travel and quantum computers of immense power drove innovation and ecological sustainability to new and fantastic heights.
Settlements on Mars were being opened up. Moon was a space station. Neo Terra was thriving.
Yes, everybody was happy. Except for Charger and the other Hyborgs.
People were well-fed and industrious. Moral behavior improved as the threat of persecution was removed, and some of the less desirable traits of humanity seemed to dim. The few remaining religious groups were pitied for their backward beliefs and shunned, as science created great and wondrous new understandings. A brave new world shone, a world of a better human in a better place.
Advances in health care permitted longer lifespans and made for smarter humans. Because knowledge had expanded exponentially, schools all over the world increased schooling to grade fifteen, then college or university for an additional six years. So much had been learned in this time period that the average IQ had risen by several numbers. Humanity was healthier, smarter, safer, and better prepared for anything that the galaxy had to throw at them.
Or so they thought.
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GLOSSARY
Real world terms and definitions.
antigravity the antithesis of gravity; a hypothetical force by which a body of positive mass would repel a body of negative mass
Antikythera Mechanism 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks
antimatter matter's twin, but with an opposite electric charge. When matter and antimatter meet, they annihilate each other, leaving nothing but energy behind. The big bang created equal amounts of the two, but today the observable universe is composed almost entirely of ordinary matter. This asymmetry is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics. Antimatter is not the same as dark matter (see below).
Area 51 The US Air Force facility commonly known as Area 51 is a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base, within the Nevada Test and Training Range. The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore.
BCE Before the Common Era. Now used in place of BC (Before Christ)
binary language the digital representation of speech
black hole a geometrically defined region of space-time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—including particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it
bunker buster a bomb designed to penetrate targets buried deep underground
CE Common Era. Now used in place of AD ("Anno Domini" in Latin, or "the year of the Lord" in English
cryo a combining form meaning "icy cold"
cyborg A cyborg (cybernetic organism) is a being with both organic and biomechatronic parts. The term cyborg is often applied to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback.
dark matter a mysterious substance; its gravitational pull seems to hold galaxies together, like a massive skeleton, but we can't see it. We only know it's there from calculations of the speed at which galaxies move. The matter we know and understand accounts for just four per cent of the known universe; the rest is dark matter and dark energy.
Dhuusamareeb Dhusamareb in English, also spelled Dhusa Mareb, is the capital of the central Galguduud region of Somalia. It serves as the center of the Dhusamareb District.
dimensions Classical physics describes the first three basic dimensions as up/down, left/right and forward/backward.
Enola Gay the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber which dropped the first atomic bomb.
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency.
fourth dimension The fourth dimension is time, which is not spatial, but a way of measuring physical change. We cannot move freely in time but must subjectively move in one direction.
Gobekli Tepe An archaeological site, regarded as of great importance, at the top of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey.
Goldilocks zone Also called the habitable zone or life zone, the Goldilocks region is an area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star so that its surface is neither too hot nor too cold and liquid water remains on the surface of the planet without freezing or evaporating out into space.
hertz The hertz is defined as one cycle per second. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications, such as the frequency of musical tones. The unit is named for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves.
Higgs boson field (nicknamed the 'god particle') an invisible force field that stretches across the universe, encasing us like a Jell-O mold, and giving mass to elementary particles within it: the stuff that makes up stars, planets, trees, buildings, animals and all of us. Without mass, electrons, protons and neutrons wouldn't stick together to make atoms; atoms wouldn't make molecules; neither we nor our planet would exist.
hominid any of the modern or extinct bipedal primates of the family Hominidae. Used in the text as a term for naturally evolving humans.
hominoid same as above, but used in the text to refer to human lines altered by the alien Grays.
Kuiper Belt a disc-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune – billions of kilometers from our sun. The Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud are believed to be the home of comets that orbit our sun. The known icy worlds and comets in both regions are much smaller than Earth's moon.
LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (acid) is a psychedelic drug, known for its psychological effects, which can include altered thinking processes, closed- and open-eye visuals, synesthesia, an altered sense of time and spiritual experiences. First synthesized from a chemical in ergot, a grain fungus that typically grows on rye.
Lycan A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope (from the Greek) is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or hybrid wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (e.g. via a bite or scratch from another werewolf).
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
nanoparticles particles between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. Nanoparticle research is currently an area of intense scientific interest due to a wide variety of potential applications in biomedical, optical and electronic fields.
plasma one of the four fundamental states of matter, the others being solid, liquid, and gas. A plasma is an ionized gas, into which sufficient energy is provided to free electrons from atoms or molecules and to allow both species, ions and electrons, to coexist. In industry, plasma torches are used to cut metals.
quantum entanglement In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. The phenomenon so riled Albert Einstein he called it "spooky action at a distance."
redshift In physics, redshift happens when light or other electromagnetic radiation from an object is increased in wavelength, or shifted to the red end of the spectrum.
R/T the performance marker used on Dodge automobiles since the 1960s. R/T stands for Road/Track. (See below for the definition used in the book.)
Shillelagh This particular type of alien fighting machine was named after the Ford MGM-51 Shillelagh, an American anti-tank guided missile designed to be launched from a conventional gun.
star-in-a-jar Nuclear fusion is nature's atomic power - it is what powers the sun and, if it can be made to happen on Earth on a large enough scale, promises to solve all of mankind's energy problems. It would be clean, last forever and create no long-term nuclear waste. One experimenter claims to have achieved it using simple sound waves. Sonoluminescence is a process that transforms sound waves into flashes of light, focusing the sound energy into a tiny flickering hot spot inside a bubble. This star-in-a-jar effortlessly reaches temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees, hotter than the surface of the sun.
supersymmetry In particle physics, supersymmetry is a proposed type of space-time symmetry that relates two basic classes of elementary particles: bosons, which have an integer-valued spin, and fermions, which have a half-integer spin.
telematics the branch of information technology that deals with the long-distance transmission of computerized information.
telomeres an essential part of human cells that affect how our cells age. Telomeres are the caps at the end of each strand of DNA that protect our chromosomes, like the plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces.
Tesla coil a form of induction coil for producing high-frequency alternating currents.
Titan the largest moon of Saturn. Thought to be a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic chemistry with a possible subsurface liquid ocean serving as a biotic environment.
Toba The Toba eruption occurred in Indonesia about 71,000 BCE. Its erupted mass was 100 times greater than that of the largest volcanic eruption in recent history. The eruption deposited an ash layer over the whole of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian and South Ch
ina Seas. This event may have caused a global volcanic winter of 6–10 years and possibly a 1,000-year-long cooling episode.
Ununseptium a super-heavy artificial chemical element with temporary symbol Uus and atomic number 117. It is the second-heaviest of all the elements that have been created so far and is the second-to-last element of the 7th period of the periodic table.
Wankel engine a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. Over the commonly used reciprocating piston designs the Wankel engine delivers advantages of: simplicity, smoothness, compactness, high revolutions per minute and a high power to weight ratio.