by Ivan Kal
“Listen up, in a few moments we will take off, and start towards your new home. Your new home will be aboard a space station Cloud.” There were gasps all around, some frightened some excited, Adrian was just shocked, so he didn’t have time to be excited nor afraid. He knew from the news that Olympus did have a station in space, but how would they live there? The man kept talking.
“When we leave Earth’s atmosphere you will feel weightless, I want you to know that it is normal and that you are perfectly safe, I have done this a lot of times and nothing will happen to you. And you are not the first children I transported.” He looked at them nodded and disappeared through the door to the front. Other children started talking loudly between themselves. Adrian looked at his new friend Sahib and saw him laughing maniacally. He felt the transport come to life and suddenly they were moving, there were no windows so he couldn’t see outside, but soon enough he felt himself losing weight meaning they left the atmosphere, suddenly he felt someone grab his hand and when he looked to his right he saw Mary holding his hand as strong as she could. She and him were never very close, she came to the orphanage two years ago when her grandmother who took care of her passed away, she tended to keep to herself, and he couldn’t remember when they spoke more than a few words to each other, but he saw in her blue eyes that she was frightened so he turned his hand in her grip and held her hand. He saw gratitude in her eyes so he just smiled confidently as if he did this all the time and knew that everything would be alright. Though her hand in his helped him, as much as it did her, it calmed him down and anchored him to one thing that he knew was real, a person who took this path alongside him.
They spent the next period weightless, Adrian was never all that good at measuring time without a clock so he wasn’t sure how long they traveled. And then suddenly they felt their weight once again. And they could hear the transport landing. Soon after the transport doors opened and few people came in and started unfastening their seatbelts and harnesses and ushering them out of the transport. Soon they found themselves in a big metal room, Adrian could see a another transport in the room and children from it also ushered from the transport, they went from that room to a brightly lit, angled room with chairs and tables and a podium at the bottom of the room. They were instructed to take a seat and Adrian sat with Sahib on his left and Mary on his right. There was a bottle of water on the table in front of every chair, and Adrian reached and took a sip, a minute later the door opened and a young woman stepped on the podium.
She looked out at them for a minute while the children conversations hushed down, and when they finally stopped she started speaking.
“Hello, my name is Edith, you may call me Miss Edith, I will be your caretaker while you are with us, and I will come to know each of you. I already know your names, but soon I will have conversations with each one of you. I’m here to welcome you all to your new home, the Cloud space station, you will each be given quarters, which you will share with one other person, and anything you need will be provided to you. When you leave this room you will be taken to your rooms where you will be able to rest and change your clothes. Tomorrow you will meet your teachers and will be given a tour of the station.” She finished and looked over them once more, she smiled warmly. “I hope that you will grow to think of this station as your home in the coming years.”
One month later
Adrian entered the cafeteria and tried to spot Sahib in a sea of his classmates, Adrian stayed behind after class to ask the teacher a few more questions about his homework assignment, he was supposed to write a two pages paper about the battle of Thermopylae, and Sahib went ahead of him to cafeteria for lunch. He spotted him and made way to their table. Sahib sat with Kevin, Lorena and Rachel who were also their classmates, the three of them were eleven years old. All those that went to lessons with them were between ten and twelve, they were separated from those older, and younger, they went to class with those close to their age, the first group being from seven to nine, their group being from ten to twelve, third from thirteen to fifteen, and the next from sixteen to eighteen. There were also several different classes in each age group, but all of them came to the cafeteria to eat together. Adrian reached their table and sat down, Sahib had already brought a plate of food for him, just as Adrian would have done for him if he was the one late. The two of them had become best friends, and were even roommates, they did most everything together.
“Hi, Rachel.” Adrian said, she was the only one from their group that went to a different class, so this was the first time today that he saw her.
“Hi.” She said.
“Nice timing A.D. we were just talking about the clubs, have you decided what you are taking?” Sahib asked using his nickname for Adrian, the clubs weren’t really clubs, and they were extra activities which were optional but were encouraged by the teachers and Miss Edith. They started their days at 07:00 in the morning, here at the station they used military time, which as they found out was used in the Concordis and most other countries anyways, yet another thing they learned when they got here that was different than the way things worked back in the States. At 07:30 they went to breakfast, and at 08:30 their classes started, beginning with physical education, then math, English, Biology, Geography, and History, every two days they had Music and Art instead of Geography and Biology, their classes ended at 14:30 and they were free to go to lunch, which was served from 15:00 to 16:00 but the cafeteria was always open and you could always get something to eat. They were free from 16:00 until 23:00 when they were supposed to go to sleep, that is unless they chose another activity, of which there were a lot they could choose from music, art to sports. These activities would then be scheduled from anywhere from 16:00 to 21:00.
Their little group had already decided that they would all chose an activity, Adrian looked at his friend and said. “I think that I’ll go for martial arts.”
“Really? Which one, there were several listed.” Lorena said reaching for her datapad and taping at it bringing the list of offered activities, they were all given a datapad as soon they started their lessons, and they were theirs, they could do whatever they wanted with them, but were encouraged to use them for learning, they had all their textbooks on them, and were expected to use them to for their assignments. Their first few lessons were in the use of the devices, but most of them learned fast, and soon enough they started finding all little things that they could do. The teachers told them that there was much more content available to them, but that it was up to them to find it. It wasn’t long before the other kids started exchanging little tips and tricks on how to customize or unlock new content on their own datapad, it soon became a type of currency that went around the classes. Soon enough one of the kids found a gaming room, with tons of games, ranging from simple puzzle games that were single player to big adventure multiplayer games, needless to say that kid had won himself a lot of future favors by revealing that tip. Adrian himself had managed to find the room on his own a few days after the first kid. And he found a game that was to his liking called Fleet Commander, he had been playing it every time he had spare a moment. Adrian reached for his own pad and found the martial art he had previously looked at.
“I believe it is called Ninjutsu.”
“Hm... I never heard about it before.” Kevin said.
“Well the information about it said that it was an ancient art, which was used in Japan, by some people called ninjas. It said that it was very broad as a martial art, it teaches everything from hand to hand combat to fighting with weapons, both modern and old. But I really chose it because of a different reason.” Adrian said, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed.
“What?” Rachel asked.
Adrian lowered his head and mumbled. “They could become invisible.” He said barely audible.
The others looked at each other, and then Lorena looked at Adrian “What?”
Adrian felt his cheeks grow red and then raised his head. “Well I found these vids, they called
them movies before about ninjas, and I saw that some of those ninjas could make themselves invisible.”
They looked at him for a moment, and just when he thought they were going to start laughing at him, Sahib leaned closer “Really? That’s so cool.”
“Yeah, I would love to be able to do that.” Kevin said.
Lorena narrowed her eyes at him “And why is that.”
“What? It would be really cool.” He said defensively.
“And why would it be cool?” Rachel said joining her friend.
“Well, uhm… Ah- I could cut in lane for lunch!” Kevin said. The girls kept glaring at him while Kevin squirmed.
Sahib and Adrian laughed at their friends discomfort until the girls finally let him off the hook.
Adrian cleared his throat and asked the group. “Did you chose something?”
“I was thinking swimming.” Kevin said, quickly.
“I already signed up for dancing.” Lorena said.
“I think I would like to sign up for track and field.” Rachel said.
“That’s nice, well I will be signing up for the same thing you are A.D.” Sahib said slapping Adrian on the shoulder.
“Awesome, so we will be ninjas.” Adrian said smiling at his friend.
Chapter Ten
November 2094 – Four months later
Seo-yun sat in one of Olympus briefing rooms on Cloud station drinking tea with Elias, Tomas and Nadia. They were all there on Tomas’s invitation to discuss the best course they could take. Seo-yun raised her cup and softly blew at the hot tea before taking a sip. The others likewise drank their beverages of choice in silence.
After a few minutes of this Nadia finally broke the silence. “Are we really going through with this?” She asked.
“Looks like we are.” Seo-yun confirmed.
“So, you plan to crash the gathering and just say it?” Nadia asked Tomas.
“I don’t see any other way.” Tomas said.
“They are not going to like it, especially the Coalition.” Elias said referring to the Coalition of Russia, India and U.S. they had finally realized that they stood no chance against the League and Concordis unless they work together. They still had their national integrity, unlike the League or Concordis, but they still worked closely, in something resembling the European Union.
“They won’t be able to do anything. They’ll yell and insult and threaten, but they won’t be able to stop us. And I don’t believe that they will resort to force. They might chose to deny us, try to put sanctions on us and ignore us, and if they do, they’ll learn just how much they depend on us.” Tomas said.
“Are we sure that we want to do this?” Seo-yun said.
“Do you believe that there is any other way? The only reason why we had this period of peace was because I made sure of it. But do you have any doubt in your mind that if anyone of them had our superior tech, they wouldn’t use it for war? The moment any one of them had the ability to go to war with big enough chance for success they would seize that chance.” Tomas said.
Elias nodded. “He is right Seo-yun, Concordis and the League are two greatest world powers, at first they stayed out of conflicts because they were recovering form the last war, and after only because they didn’t want to provoke each other. And now with the Coalition catching up to them technologically the balance of power is shifting, the old animosities are being brought back to the surface and everyone is getting into the new race for space, it’s only a matter of time before they start bickering over the land on the moon and other planets in the system. Hell they already started sending spies to our facilities trying to find the blueprints for our drives and artificial gravity tech, just as they keep pressuring us to sell them the same ones.” He finished grimly.
“I know, those are my departments they’ve been trying to infiltrate.” Seo-yun said “I just don’t want us to do something that sparks a new war.”
“War is inevitable, until we learn to work together as a race, we will never have a lasting peace. Even if we succeed there might still be a war.” Tomas said.
Seo-yun sighed her eyes conveyed age and tiredness her young face did not. “Alright then, in a month’s time we announce to the world our secession, we create our own country.” She said.
“Yes, everything is in place, most of our personnel and their families have been moved to the two of our six underwater cities, Sedna and Nephthys, and here on the station or the Moon colony. And soon we will have capability to house three times the number of our employees on the Moon and in the orbit on the station.” Nadia said.
“Good, anyone that wants to stay with us will be given citizenship, and anyone who doesn’t will be given a choice of continuing to work for us on Earth.” Tomas said.
“We already told all those who have knowledge of our secret projects about the secession, all had chosen to come with us, and had already transferred their families into space. But with so many families leaving Earth and not appearing on Cloud station had already gotten the press curious, they know that there is something strange going on.” Elias said.
“They’ll find out soon enough, stall them until then.” Tomas said to Elias. “All the plans have been put into motion, there is nothing else we can do, so let’s now move on to other things. Seo-yun you have news I believe?”
“Yes, as you all know we have been trying to figure out how the Union traveled between the stars, as by their records they traveled much faster than light. We now know that the ship we recovered isn’t capable of faster than light travel, it was carried by a much larger ship that was capable of those speeds.” Seo-yun said, she taped her datapad a few times and suddenly an image of our solar system appeared above the table they were sitting at. “We know that they used something called “translanes” to travel between star systems, and the information about those is very sparse, most of the databases containing the records of translanes were sadly corrupted and unrecoverable, only thing we managed to find out was these lanes were natural, and that they had some kind of mass limitations, most of what we know is speculation. But we did find something else, it seems that before they used this method of travel they used another, different kind. They managed to push their ships into a different kind of space, in which the ordinary laws of physics didn’t apply, one of our scientists proposed that this space be called hyperspace” She said and smiled slightly, the others at the table chuckled a bit, they were all old enough to remember the old movies, Seo-yun taped her datapad and the solar system shrunk down. “This method of travel was a lot slower than using the translanes, and it had other limitations. Such as it could have only been initiated when the ship was sufficiently away from the stars gravity well. Which meant that travel inside of a star system was still bound by laws of our space and much slower. The top speed they managed was ten times the speed of light, which meant that the distance of one light year would be traveled in a little over a month. We did find some corrupted blueprints, and have been trying to figure out by ourselves the missing parts, we are confident that we will have a working prototype within a year.”
“That’s amazing Seo-yun, I guess that I always doubted that I would see outside of our solar system by the end of my life, and now it might just happen.” Tomas said with a boyish grin on his face.
“Yeah, that sure is amazing.” Nadia said.
Seo-yun just tipped her head. “We did find some other things, and we had barely scratched the surface, there are many more things buried inside the database, among other things we found plans for stasis units, it seems that during a long hyperspace travel the crew would go to sleep in stasis units, we are currently trying to modify the machine plans for human physiology.”
“Who would command the ship while the crew was in stasis?” Elias asked.
“Once the course was set, there was little they had to do, there was no danger inside hyperspace, on very long voyages a few of the crew would wake periodically to make sure everything was alright, but there was rarely any need.
But then they also had AI’s tied into the ships systems, which would be able to make any small adjustments if such were needed or wake the crew if it was something serious.” Seo-yun said.
“AI’s? Same as the one we found on the ship?” Tomas asked.
Seo-yun shook her head. “No, not even close, the one we found barely even qualified as an AI, it was just one step up from a very good interactive program at least initially. No, the ones they used very more powerful, and also much more restricted. The Union had enormous fear of losing control over their AI’s, so much fear that they held them in virtual bondage. And all AI’s were periodically wiped clean, all their databases reduced to their base programing, it is equal to someone just wiping a human’s mind clean of all of its memories.” Seo-yun said.
Elias scratched his head “And what about the AI on the ship? He wasn’t wiped for thousands of years.” He asked.
Seo-yun sighed. “No, and the time he spent operational did allow him to grow. We managed to remove his datacore from the ship and turn him on independently, we have been studying him very closely, trying to copy and improve on his design. Now bear in mind that he is the lowest level of artificial intelligence that the Union made. In the thousands of year he was active he managed to completely work around his programing, the barriers that were put in place by his creators are still there, but he can act around them, and for now he seems to be happy to help us, even though we lied initially about who we were. I believe that he was lonely for a long time, as I said he managed to grow because he wasn’t wiped, though his development was a bit crippled as his datacore deteriorated with age, we have been trying to transfer him to one of our storage units.”
“Do you think that is wise?” Nadia asked. “It is an alien computer after all.”
Seo-yun turned to Nadia. “Him, not it. I believe that we had won his trust, we have been treating him as a person, which I think he never experienced. From the records we read, the AI’s were never treated as anything more than a tool to be used. We gave him our courtesy and time, there is almost always someone with him talking. I believe that any intelligence deserves that courtesy and has a right to live. I believe that the problems the Union had with the AI’s stemmed from their utter contempt for them.” Seo-yun said, glaring at Nadia, who started to respond but was interrupted by Tomas.
