章 51: Lance – Liftoff
Kids came into the family, grew up and left. Now grandkids and great-grandkids were in the mix. I had cultivated a number of our kids to stay behind, but some had figured out what was going on and had asked to go with us. I'd have to sort that out as soon as possible as we planned to leave before the year 2020 arrived.
Bit and I had been able to build a field generated ship that looked just like the movie version of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-F, but smaller. We had placed our fusion generators in the nacelles, so they were safely far from us humans. Yes, the shape worked well for that purpose, but in reality—I just loved its looks-fast-standing-still feel. The ship was in orbit such that it was always on the far side of the moon relative to earth. Bit had been taking supplies to it for some years now. While energy and fields could do a lot, we still needed air, food, and water.
Our onboard hydroponic gardens are being fed carbon dioxide artificially so that when actual people arrived the plant load would match closely the carbon dioxide exhaled. We had several tons of the various minerals needed to do proper hydroponics and give us humans all the trace elements we needed. We used the concept of tissue culture to generate the animal protein we needed or that at least our taste buds desire. Soybeans turned into flavored textured vegetable protein (TVP) would help supply that texture-taste requirement also. However, in general, our diet during the trip would be mostly vegetable. We did have live chickens and roosters, so eggs would be no issue.
Fuel was limitless in outer space. Hydrogen was found in densities around one atom per cubic centimeter. When you are traveling at anything near light speed, we were going to sweep in a lot of hydrogen. The issues were collecting hydrogen while shunting aside anything more significant. We had paid a lot of attention to the field generators that protected us.
Bit worked overtime as a shuttle to load the ship as we had around a hundred-year trip ahead of us. The team had been working on recreating the life-extending drugs that the empire used, we still had not got it right, but we had something that should allow everyone to complete the trip and still be alive at the end when combined with minute amounts of Beauty's concoction—which had turned out to be incapable of analysis. Without Bit to help us plan I am sure we would have left out some critical element, but Bit is pretty thorough when it comes to this type of thing. I helped plan the library including paper books as well as audio-visual material. Making sure to save some anime classics that had not survived when we lost Japan.
I arbitrarily picked a cut off as being only those who did not have married children. This left fifty families as staying behind. (Now I understood where the council of the fifty had originated.) Then we invited those remaining kids to come back home for a visit….
Serina and I peeked out the curtain at the crowd gathered at the research facility. I really had not considered just how many kids eight child hungry women, who were perpetually at their physical peak in their mid-twenties, could produce… Most everything in the building had been destroyed, and all that was left was a vast empty building. We had created a stage at one end which is where the rest of the team and I had gathered. I could hear our girls all chattering excitedly after seeing some family or another in the audience. The theory was that it did not matter who was the mother, that they were all ours equally, but favorites had crept in. Still, no matter how you looked at it, I was responsible for all of them. I asked the team, "Well girls are you ready?" Then not really listening to all the responses. I continued, "Then it is show time, let's go…"
We all trooped up on the stage, Serina and I in the lead. Now our kids knew that we had this harem type marriage arrangement, but not all of the spouses were aware of just how many wives. There was a lot of whispering going on. Not as much as I had expected though, probably because all of our kids were college graduates; most with masters and a decent proportion with doctorates, both the M.D. kind as well as the other. There was also a disproportionate amount of military school graduates, West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs. Plus we had provided for our kid's spouses to finish their degrees. So consider that this was a highly educated group. They were willing to wait for the answers.
"Welcome to the Young family reunion," I started the presentation and did not beat around the bush. "You are here because it is time for Serina and me to go home. Your mothers all want to go with us. Where is the home you ask, well it is over a thousand years in the future." Now, this was something that very few of the kids had heard. A few more had picked up that Serina and I were different, but not just how different. What had me bursting with pride was that other than a collective gasp, and the whispered questions of the spouses it stayed relatively quiet. No cat calls, No exclamations of denial. Just a cautious waiting.
"Yes, you heard me. Your dad is an alien from space…" At which point the laughter became a pressure relief valve, and they were willing to listen further. "Serina and I were ambushed in space, and the resulting implosion squeezed us out of our space-time and left us here on earth seventy some odd years ago. We need to get back to the future for a number of reasons. But the main one is to save the universe from destruction." At this point, the gasps were much louder. "And specifically Serina's father, the Emperor of the known universe. And yes that does mean that she is an Imperial princess…" The silence at this point was louder than the gasps.
"I can hear the questions that you are not asking, couldn't we just have left a time capsule or something. And the answer is no. We have thought this out for a long time, and this is the only way that we can accomplish this without affecting the space-time continuum and causing Serina and me, and coincidentally all of you, to pop like a soap bubble and vanish from this space-time."
"For over seventy years we have been working towards this day. And the reason we have asked you to be here today is to invite those of you who want to come with us to have that chance. Now you should know a few things.... First staying home is not a get out of jail free card. In the not too distant future, there will be a near miss flyby that will cause incredible damage here on earth. I'll leave it to your imaginations what life on earth will be like after that event." At this, the gasps were even louder. "But coming on this trip is not a for sure thing. We have calculated things the best we can, and we believe that we will succeed. But there are no guarantees. We want you to come for selfish reasons as well. Your mothers and I all love you, and we don't want to leave you."
"We plan to travel to a moon circling a distant planet that is many light years from here. On that planet is an imperial base, or I should say that by the time we arrive there will be an imperial base. We can arm our ship from the armory there and then use a device on that base that will sling us back to earth in zero time. Yes, technology in the future is amazing, but a family is still the heart of civilization."
I continued, "Serina, as a Captain in the Imperial Marines, has all the codes that we will need to access all this equipment. Time dilation as we approach the speed of light will make it so that we won't experience the ravages of time. And we have medication that will keep you young just as you see it has kept your poor old ninety-plus-year-old mothers here young." At that, the whole audience broke up as every one of the team looked to be a healthy, radiant, mid-twenty-year-old. And that single fact was what carried their belief. That and their trust in me.
"Talk it out, this is a huge decision, involve your kids. If you're sure that your child is on the verge of getting married—we can include their girlfriend or boyfriend also. If you are worried that anyone will talk, well the past seventy years have proven that no one wants to hear it. Whoever tries to talk will be laughed down, we have seen it happen all too often. We will all be leaving the stage and spreading out on the floor, so come cluster around, and we will see if we can answer all of your questions."
****
Five days later, they had decided. They were all going. I was stunned, the girls were all stunned. However, we should not have been, after all, they were our children, and they all loved us. Beside they could not deny the evidence of their eyes. Their mothers looked ravishingly beautiful and young.
It took around a month to ferry everyone. There were a few precipitous weddings, and some tears shed by spouse's parents who did not understand, as they were not told the whole story, they were told it was a top-secret government project and they had to be with their spouse and that it was dangerous and they would not be back for a long time, if ever. I felt that if someone had that much love and faith in their partner that they were willing to leave their family on a pipe dream, that there was something solid in that relationship, and I supported the marriage fully.
The kids that remained behind knew that we were leaving and we found that they had all figured things out long ago. Each of them had instructions on how best to survive. Plus each had a device to attach to Imp when he was created. If any three of those devices were connected, Imp would have the seed that caused him to wake up.
Little Lance and Jane took over the investment firm. They knew all about us and why we're leaving from long ago. They were attached to us but had way too many kids and grandkids here on earth, still plenty of tears were spilled. We gave them the same instructions that the 'fifty' had, plus our list of people that we had helped over the decades, just in case they needed to twist some arms, and our love.
Serina and I took were the last to leave, We sat in the cockpit and watched the earth turn into a blue-green gem hanging above the horizon of the moon as we docked with the Enterprise.
***
This ends part two of the Imperial-future saga.
When we arrive the military situation will be dire, and our heroes will need every drop of firepower that they can find. A harem of superwomen and a crew of military geniuses might not be enough to save the day.
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