The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  The children left the stage to find their parents, Ruth found her daughter Autumn, and embraced her.

  “Does your father know?” she asked.

  “Yes. He gave me his blessing, too. I promise I will not be a stranger. None of us will. We love you all very much.”

  The Fougarden spacecraft was huge. It dwarfed the latest Antarean Mothership. Its shimmering skin was more liquid than solid. There was no visible means of propulsion; no engines, drives or Parman type Guides. It hovered 150 miles above Antares’ frozen surface.

  Final good-byes were said outside the Probeship that would take the children up to the awaiting Fougarden craft. The Erhardt twins and Laga had returned to Earth. The parents, who had only spent a few days with their children, were understandably sad. But now they knew there would be regular contact, long life, and the prospect of visits in the future. There was even some joking about their soon becoming grandparents. The off-planet children who had not grown up at Butterfly House were now part of the group. Everyone lingered, touching, hugging, kissing, promising...

  And then it was time to board the Probeship. With long, tight embraces, wishes of safe voyage, blessings and tears, the Brigade children, a new race, were on their way to destinations and a future unknown.

  The hatch of the Probeship was sealed. It slowly moved into the launch tube that would catapult it to the Antarean surface. The tube sealed shut. A loud whoosh of compressed gas propelled the Probeship up to the planet’s surface where its engines engaged and launched out into the void. The vessel’s pilot, Amos Bright, locked into the vector coordinates to rendezvous with the Fougarden inter-galactic craft in orbit high above Antares.

  Spooner and Ruth left the spaceport together. Both understood that they had experienced something very special in knowing the children.

  “It is good that Amos is the one to pilot them from Antares,” Ruth said.

  “Yes. He requested that honor, and I was joyful to grant it. It closes a circle,” Spooner said. She paused. “Are you sorry that he brought you out from Earth?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” Ruth answered quickly. “Not one of us feels that way. We talked about it last night with the children. No, Head Counsel Spooner. We are delighted with our work, and our lives. Are you sorry we came?”

  “Not at all, my dear friend Ruth.” Spooner touched Ruth’s shoulder. It was a familiarity that Spooner had never used. They began to walk again. The children have changed Antares, Ruth thought. “Scott Green privately told me something very profound,” Spooner then said. “You are advanced, he said, but chose to stop your evolution by cloning instead of mixing genetically, and by doing so, you advance only technically. But you advanced our parents, perhaps unknowingly, and that, in turn, brought us forth. That is how we believe the Universe works, he told me. Actions cause change; change causes advancement; advancement causes growth...”

  “Maybe that’s right, But advancement and growth toward what?” Ruth asked.

  “That is what Commanders Alya Mark and Beam also wonder. Perhaps Antares will investigate that question by experimenting with a return to genetic mixing.” Spooner’s thin lips widened. Was that a smile, Ruth wondered. “Who knows?” Spooner mused. “Perhaps we might even find that emotion you call love.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said softly. “You might. But what might that do to your belief in The Master’s Grand Plan?” Spooner stopped and put her thin blue hand on Ruth’s shoulder again.

  “Nothing can change that belief, only perhaps its name.” They walked a little farther to the elevator that would take them down three miles to the city. “There are other questions I would like to have answered, Ruth.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where will the children go? What will they do? What will they become?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth answered. “But I suspect, in time, we will find out. What I wonder most of all is what might the future generations of these children be?”

  EPILOGUE

  The children of Butterfly House, with their counterparts from the Fougarden, dispersed across the galaxies in pre-determined pairings. They were to be mates for life. Their offspring would make even greater evolutionary leaps, and influence many species and races in this Universe.

  The Geriatric Brigade continued to work with the Antareans, exploring many other galaxies. Every few years, fifty or so women, with their mates, returned to home-planet Earth to bear their young. The unborn blended their genes with other races. While the people of Earth struggled to survive and cleanse their planet, Butterfly House flourished, and its secret was kept. The new children were nourished, taught, and grew there. And when their time came, they too moved out among the stars with mates.

  The Fougarden, whose galaxy was on the very edge of our Universe, had made an incredible discovery that they shared with the children. In what seemed an infinite void beyond their own galaxy, they had discovered the existence of the Universes. In other words, a Multiverse. There were billions of them, containing trillions of stars, quadrillions of planets, moons, asteroids, and upon them, sextillions of races and species. From the tiniest particles of an atom – electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, all rotating around a nucleus, to the vastness of endless space, there was matter, infinite matter, churning in a void without end – becoming, heating, cooling, growing, combining, changing, dying, beginning. It was a never-ending cycle without boundary or containment that was there and had been there for all time.

  Everything in it, alive or inanimate, was part of everything else. Everything changes. Nothing is lost. Nothing is destroyed. Nothing is wasted. Nothing, including time and space, ever ends. It goes on and on.

  The children of Butterfly House, and their descendants, understood that their mission was to travel to the Multiverse. Before they left on their journey, Scott and Melody, now mates for life, sent a message back to the Brigade, Antares and Butterfly House.

  “We are all; everything and everyone, made of the same. We are stardust. At this moment, in time and space, we are in a form that is a gift. It is called life - precious and glorious. But we will end, die, and this form we now possess will again become stardust. And then, perhaps in time, which is endless, the stardust that once was us will become a part of life again. It will not know past or future. It, too, will begin and end. We are all, forever, part of what IS, and that is our gloriously endless journey. There is nothing else.”