A minute went by while Lonia connected to the control center of the city and calculated.
A few seconds later, they could almost hear the smile in the tone of her thoughts.
“The technology really is basic. Considering its state and the available resources, I can copy all the machines and Atlantean technology necessary to make replicas of myself. However, I have to make not only the parts but the machines to make the parts. It will take time, but it can be done.”
“How much time?” asked Althaea, worriedly.
“If you give me access to everything, I can have a complete replica in three hundred forty days.”
Althaea relaxed and smiled.
“You’ve got it, but take time to help us as well. We need your help to solve other problems,” said Sofía.
“At your service,” announced Lonia decisively and Althaea smiled. She didn’t need to tell Lonia that Sofía wasn’t an Atlantean. If she couldn’t detect it, there was no need to point it out.
“Start as soon as possible, please.”
“I can’t help but notice what’s happened in the world in general from the time I sheltered until now. The human historical registers are fairly complete, especially the past few years. There are some holes, though, that I’d like to complete, especially with reference to the massive disappearance of the humans.”
“Take my memories,” Althaea offered.
Lonia did, and was silent for almost a minute.
“Lonia?” Althaea inquired, worried.
“I’m confused...Marsan eliminated humanity through a virus? But why?”
“For revenge, because the humans destroyed Atlantis,” Juan Carlos explained.
“But it wasn’t the humans...” and Lonia projected the memories from the cameras at the reactor in Atlantis.
“Stop!” shouted Sofía at the image of Elohim saluting the camera, and looked at Althaea.
“Lionel...” spit Sofía, grinding her teeth.
“Oh, those damned bastards! He was telling the truth. They were playing with us from the beginning! I didn’t want to believe it...” Althaea screamed in frustration, kicking everything at hand.
“Those beings are truly insufferable,” muttered Juan Carlos.
“Sofía, please tell me there’s a way to destroy them!” implored Althaea.
“I don’t know, but if there is, I assure you that with Lonia’s help, we’ll find it before the thousand years is up. Much before.”
“Oh, hell,” Althaea suddenly exclaimed, bowing her head.
“What?”
“I have to show you this...Sofía, come here, please,” she said as Juan Carlos went over to talk with Lonia.
Sofía tried to figure out what it was about while she followed Althaea into the main building of the city, took an elevator and went down to the bottom level, more than twenty subfloors under the earth.
She knew this was a security area, but when Althaea passed by the guard and he opened access to the VIP cells, nothing prepared her for the surprise. Sofía’s legs shook.
“Hello, child. You look pale,” smiled Marsan, saluting her with his right hand. The left ended in a stump surrounded by a ring of metal, a growth inhibitor.
Sofía gasped and her tiara started to light up.
“Sofia, wait,” warned Althaea.
“You!” Sofía gasped, angry. “The whole time you had him here, making us think he was dead!”
“I’m sorry, but he was much more useful to us this way. And I need you to examine his mind when you show him the news.”
“And what news is that?” Marsan said, looking bored.
“Lonia?” Althaea concentrated.
“I’m ready,” they all heard in their minds.
“Lonia?” asked Marsan, bewildered.
“Lonia has returned to us...and she has something to show you, Marsan,” Althaea told him.
They could see, once again, the images of Lionel sabotaging the Atlantean reactor.
Marsan watched the scene, first with skepticism, then attentively, then with shock. Sofía was tuned into to his mind and could capture exactly what he was feeling. Intrigue. Shock. Anguish. Shock again, and finally guilt and remorse. Guilt, above all. An unbearable burden of guilt.
He tried to look at Sofía but couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Now you know who really killed your partner, Marsan. What are you going to do about it?” said Althaea coldly.
“Do? What can I do? What’s done is done,” answered Marsan, still in shock.
“Well, I’ll give you an idea. That,” she said, pointing at Lionel’s image, “has manipulated us from the beginning for his whims. We have the opportunity to destroy him. We are few, we have little time and you’re an expert in things we don’t know anything about. Do you want to help us, or would you rather stay here indefinitely?”
Sofía was about to protest but being still connected to Marsan, she could see the depths of his mind. The man slowly collapsed to his knees and advanced until he was in front of Sofía. He bowed forward, almost touching the floor with his forehead, in a pose of total humility.
“I don’t deserve anything, but if you allow me to help, I’ll do it to the best of my ability. I’ve committed...” he stopped.
“Genocide,” thought Sofía. She felt the magnitude of Marsan’s pain and repentance and saw that he was sincere. She gestured her assent to Althaea, but she still wasn’t ready to pardon him. She turned around and left.
TRANSPORT
Rho, August 15, 2028. 11:00 a.m.
Everything was ready. Sofía had been working twenty hours a day at full capacity in the ZSLP and the fusion reactor. With Lonia’s help, the best human engineers and all the Atlanteans, including Marsan, she’d succeeded. For twenty-four hours, the generation of the fusion reactor had been increasing and they’d multiplied the original production of energy more than one hundred thousand times. They had developed new superconducting materials to be able to contain and transmit energy to the conveyor ring. They also redesigned it to support the tension that would be created by bending sidereal distances from space. Even Juan Carlos had been working for months on a new program for calibrating and monitoring the orientation of the ring.
The new portal was twice as big as the others and was in a room that they’d excavated in the center itself. The room was watertight, armored, and also protected by a force field generated by the reactor itself. It could contain a nuclear explosion. What worried Sofía was what would happen if the force of gravity at the other end was very different from theirs. The tension at the crease point might produce tremors, or perhaps even be fatal. Sofía was confident that the Elohim had no intention of destroying them, but neither could she trust that they cared in the least.
She and her main engineers were in the control room in the same building, observing and measuring everything with cameras and monitors. A gigantic screen monitored the transporter. Damaris, Alexis, and Leora were there as well. Juan Carlos and Althaea had left a little over a month ago towards Michurinsk and they still hadn’t been heard from. She’d have liked to see them now. She missed her father. They certainly had never been separated this long before. Marsan was smart enough to stay out of sight when it wasn’t absolutely necessary for him to be there. He’d collaborated with them, persuading his followers to abandon their hostilities, and had even done some important work in developing the new technologies, but his part in the butchery hadn’t been forgotten nor forgiven by the majority of the people.
“We’re ready. The generator is at maximum, it isn’t going to generate any more than this,” the energy controller informed Sofía.
Sofía’s heart, which was already beating fast, jumped. The whole future depended on her not being wrong about anything. If anything was fundamentally bad, there wouldn’t be time to start over. They all looked at each other for a second when the jewel in her tiara lit up for a minute. Sofía opened her mouth and inhaled deeply a few times. Don’t panic, she told herself. But the
truth was that she was afraid. The stakes were very high.
She thought about the Elohim. Is that why they made bets, so they could feel something? But they had nothing to lose. Or did they?
“Let’s go,” she ordered, as she entered the coordinates that Lionel had given her. Someplace in the orbit of Alpha Centauri A, the nearest star.
The ring oriented with a vertiginous movement and then kept vibrating. That vibration was actually the result of continuous micro-adjustments to keep it pointing at a precise place. They chose a time when their objective was just on the horizon. The reactor’s consumption rose while the ring absorbed more and more energy. The coolers worked to the maximum, to keep the conduits within the necessary range to sustain superconductivity. When it reached the critical point, the ring was activated. The indicator lights turned green. And space bent.
A tremor of the earth shook all the buildings, while people exclaimed in fear. Sofía gritted her teeth.
The portal opened and a gust of air flowed towards the ring.
Several alarms went off and Sofía verified that the atmosphere’s pressure had lowered abruptly, before stabilizing again. The temperature had dropped, and the air was changing. A mist had formed in the room, that now had less oxygen and more nitrogen. The tremor had lessened but was steady. Sofía looked at the chief of installation design, who looked back at her and nodded his head in recognition. He had insisted on not wasting time on new installations, but she made him create the secure and isolated room, all operated remotely. If they’d been on the side with the ring, they’d have died of asphyxiation or from decompression.
However, the most important thing, which indicated the success of the experiment, was the view in front of them. Through the ring they could see what was on the other side.
A room. A laboratory, a transport center, that was completely different from anything they knew. They’d contacted the extraterrestrials’ transporter.
Sofía confirmed that the reactor was holding the connection. It was near the limit, but the connection and the generator were stable and as long as the reactor had hydrogen, they could keep the link. The rotation of the Earth had made the ring rotate almost imperceptibly to keep the connection. The software developed by her father worked perfectly.
“Elohim, if you want to go, this is your chance,” Sofía exclaimed out loud, making more than one person around her jump.
A series of alarms went off and there were shouts and exclamations when they could see from the camera that Lionel was in the transporter’s antechamber, accompanied by half a dozen people.
“How did they get in?”
“What happened to security?”
Sofía quieted them all with a peremptory movement of her hand.
“We knew this could happen. Silence.”
The alarms kept going off and the indicators moving when Lionel and his group went into the transporter room. Once everything had stabilized again, Sofía, on an impulse, saluted the image of Lionel on the screen.
He looked directly at the camera, smiled and waved back, which caused a strong sense of déjà vu, until he remembered that he’d seen something similar when Lonia filmed the last day of Atlantis.
“Take note, Sofía. A thousand years from now. I’m sure we’ll meet again. It’s been interesting.”
And at that, one after another, they crossed the portal.
Sofía started the discharge of the reactor and the shutdown of the portal as soon as the last Elohim had passed through. When space was unfolded, another tremor shook the area, again causing the professionals to exclaim in fear. Some things fell to the floor from the tables and several had to hold on.
Sofía supervised the shutdown sequence until the reactor returned to its normal values. Then she could finally relax and smile. As if she had given a signal, everyone in the complex started to clap and cheer. Damaris came running and embraced her, to which she responded with a loving kiss.
Alexis and Leora approached her, holding hands. When Leora and Sofía met, they could have been mother and daughter from their ages. Now, although due to their physical differences they didn’t look like sisters, they could pass as classmates. Leora took Sofía’s hand and smiling, rested it on her belly. She stroked Leora’s belly while scanning the baby’s health.
“It’s perfect,” she told Leora smiling.
“I know, he told me himself,” she said, smiling too.
“Soon he’ll be more and more uncomfortable in there. It’s incredible he can talk to you.”
“Only with me, but yes, it’s still incredible for me. Sometimes it’s shocking to think that other mothers can’t do it.” “It’s the first time we’ve ever heard of it. Tzedek definitely knew what he was doing. Your son is something new, an evolutionary leap.”
“And you? Tzedek planned the same for you.”
Sofía took Damaris’ hand.
“We were talking about that. I must confess...a few months ago it seemed crazy. Now that the worst has passed and I see you with Alexis, well, I feel jealous. It must be the remnants of Gea’s personality.”
“And what were you talking about?”
“Damaris told me about Mederi. And we were talking with him. While we were focused on getting rid of the Elohim, at least for a while, he dedicated himself to building a genetic operating room, with the help of Raquel and her team, her knowledge and the factories of the city. Impressive work, by the way, and which could be the envy of the Atlantean installations.”
“A genetic operating theater, what’s that?” asked Leora, concerned.
“It’s where Mederi will take one of my eggs, one of Damaris’ and mix them with the DNA sample of Gea’s baby in stasis. Then he’ll implant it in my belly so it will develop and be born naturally.”
Leora was stunned.
“You’ll have a baby with Damaris? I thought you’d need...” Leora faltered, and there was an uncomfortable pause.
Sofía looked at her impassively.
“...you know, sperm. To make a baby,” Leora finished, blushing.
“That’s what’s incredible about genetic engineering. Masculine genetic material isn’t necessary if the embryo is going to be female. It’s just convenient to be from two different people, so it won’t be a clone. And Mederi, as he never tires of boasting, is the best at it. Besides, it isn’t just our DNA, but also Gea’s. Mederi knows how to take from her the part that will make him special, without canceling out our contribution.”
“Well, I see you’re decided. Congratulations!” smiled Alexis.
“Yes, excuse me. Congratulations from me, too. And when will they implant it?” asked Leora.
“In a few months. When everything is going okay with...your son. We think in February or March of next year.”
“I understand,” murmured Leora, frowning. And she did understand. Sofía and Damaris wanted to be sure that her son wasn’t some kind of monster before creating one of their own.
“It isn’t that,” said Sofía, intercepting Leora’s thoughts. The genetic installations are limited and we’re sure that under Mederi’s leadership, they can handle any eventuality, but having two women with special pregnancies at the same time is tempting bad luck too much.”
“You believe in luck?”
“I believe in being prepared for any possibility and in trying to reduce the probability of something turning out badly. In this case, there’s no rush, so we can learn from your pregnancy and reduce any risk to ours.”
Leora relaxed.
“Well, there’s no reason anything should go wrong. After struggling with the pandemic, the psychotic, and even the gods themselves, we deserve a little peace,” Leora sighed, feeling a shudder as she remembered Elias.
“How’s the therapy going?”
Leora smiled.
“Great. I have to say that therapy is a thousand times more effective when they can read your mind, although I must confess that my therapist had to seek help herself after seeing for the first time what ha
d happened to me.”
“Is she a convert?”
“Yes,” said Leora without explaining more. No words were necessary.
The converts were humans who’d been submitted to Raquel’s nanites. Until now, they’d been performing impeccably, but as a precaution they were administering it a little at a time and to people who were eligible volunteers. The final effects seemed to be identical to those of the Atlanteans, but there was still a lot of testing to do.
Leora composed herself and smiled at Sofía.
“You know, that sounds great. I was afraid that Enrico was going to be very alone, but if you have a little girl, well, you understand.”
“So you decided on Enrico? And yes, I understand, but don’t be in too much of a hurry to be a matchmaker,” answered Sofía, smiling too.
KADENCE
Rho, October 27, 2029. 10:00 a.m.
Sofía stroked her belly. She was seated in a rocking chair, rocking gently, getting some sun in front of the window in the living room of her house. She finished singing a song to her belly like she always did.
“Not much longer, my baby. Less than a month, I hope,” she said aloud.
“I wish you could hear me,” thought Sofía.
“I hear you,” she heard a little voice in her mind.
Sofía was startled, frightened. She closed her eyes and concentrated, probing the surroundings. There was nobody, except...
“Mama,” she her again in her mind.
Sofía held her belly and cried.
“Well, I’ve never heard of anything like this. Before Leora, of course,” conceded Mederi.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” asked Sofía.
“All of the examinations look good. She’s perfectly healthy.”
“You don’t think that this time...”
“It’s clear that Tzedek knew what he was doing, once again,” observed Mederi.
“I couldn’t stand to lose her.”
“The other time was a terrible accident and you aren’t Gea. This time everything will turn out fine.”
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