Caryn_Galactic Archaeologist

by James Warner

  “Dear friend, I don’t know what to call you. What is your name?”

  “Caryn,” she said in a husky voice, “I have been thinking about that while struggling up here. You are right, physical exercise helps one to think. I would like to be called Cynthia. Since I am a synthetic person, it has a certain, uh, humor to it. So call me Cynthia. I would like to take your last name, if you will let me. Since I am part of you and forevermore will be, it seems appropriate.”

  “Cynthia McDowell, I am very pleased to meet you.

  Wait a minute! My little sister’s name was Cynthia

  McDowell!”

  We shook hands and I started crying again and so did she. I hadn’t cried like this for years. It felt really good. We hugged and I think she was experimenting with some of my memories. Anyway she was really sensuous. And we were both nearly naked. Or at least Cynthia was naked. And it was apparently a terrific turn on for her, or she was getting cold. I guess we would have to talk about that some time.

  “Cynthia, why didn’t you put on any clothes?”

  “I didn’t think of it until I was halfway here and got my knee scratched. Now I see why you wore shoes.

  My feet really hurt!”

  I checked out the soles of her feet and they were definitely raw. Well, what did she expect, being in storage for thousands of years? So I took some antiseptic out of my pocket and rubbed it into the cuts on her knees and the bottoms of her feet. I had no idea if it would work. She sure was sexy. I almost envied the men she was going to choose to play with.

  Then we settled down to watch the rest of the sunset. Cynthia sat on my shoes to avoid serious damage to her rear.

  Right when the sun went down below the horizon, there was a rainbow of stratospheric ionization layers.

  “Oh wow! This is the most incredible sunset I have ever seen!” I said to Cynthia.

  “This is the first sunset I have ever seen since becoming a brainship, Caryn.”

  I decided right there that my fears were groundless. I loved her too much to ever put petty emotions between us. And I loved having a sister, since mine had been killed so many years ago. Wait until Meph found out! Wait a minute! Did Cynthia 2 know about Cynthia 1?

  “Caryn, we have to talk about that. This is going to be hard to explain. How old would your sister be now if she had lived and been with you?”

  “Let me see. I’m 30 ship years, so she would be about 27 years old if she had been with me aboard ship.”

  “And conveniently, this body is 27 years old. You know the Parents made prototypes for every human genome. But did you know that they modified them for each Parent who chose to inhabit one, to match their specific genetic code?”

  “How would I know that? Well so what is it you are saying?”

  “I’m sorry, this is hard for me. You know that a brainship uses the human brain of a recent accident death as the central computer. You know I was a brainship as the Silver Hornet and had a human brain running the whole thing, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you know what happened to your sister after she was hit by that bus?”

  “How do you know about that? Oh, you got all my memories, right. She was cremated and the family survivors were given a huge government condolence settlement. It helped me go to the Academy. So what?”

  “No, Caryn, she wasn’t. She didn’t even die in the accident. Her brain and spinal column were transferred to a secret base and her brain was cleaned and melded into the command system of a Scoutship, then reprogrammed. It happens, but not very often. And it isn’t always a successful procedure. In her case it was very successful. She didn’t know anything except being a starship and the integration was a wild success.”

  “Are you telling me you know her? That you met her? Does she remember anything of her childhood or family?”

  “Caryn, I am your sister.”

  “Of course, you’re like a sister to me. I love you dearly.”

  “Caryn, I am your sister. Mine was the brain that was put in the Silver Hornet. Until the Parents released me and transferred me into their implantation system, I didn’t have any memories of before, the Admiralty’s doctors were thorough. But now and with your help, I have all my memories. All of them. I am your younger sister Cynthia. This body was engineered to match my genome from my brain in the Hornet. My soul, my life essence, was stored and then transferred here.”

  Cynthia held her hands to her chest. She looked at me and tears were rolling down her cheeks. Her upper lip was trembling a little. She kept blinking and I think she was really not sure how I would take all this.

  “Oh my god. Oh my god Cynthia.” I grabbed her and hugged her close. I began crying. I couldn’t say anything else. She began sobbing and I was holding her, rocking her and we both let out years of anguish on that rock.

  We spent several days together, just the two of us, no voices, no other sentient interference. I showed her everything I could think of about being a woman. Since she had my memories, I was often startled to have her tell me about a time from my past that I had forgotten, for better or worse. I noticed immediately that she had much faster recall of my distant past than I did. And she never seemed to forget anything I told her. So in a few short days, I felt that we were ready to face the world.

  During the time we were getting to know each other better, the Silver Hornet was being fitted with an innocuous computer control system and the fuel factory was being prepared for operations. When it became time for me to choose a new ship, we packed up the shelter and waited for the pod.

  Cynthia spoke to the Hornet for me and I, of course, listened in. She was so fast, I didn’t pick up anything from her thoughts except some sort of mental blur. But of course! She could think in binary!

  The pod from the Hornet appeared in front of us and we both got in. I had loaned Cynthia a spare pair of slippers to wear until we could get to my clothes in the Hornet. We were some sight - goddesses from the past and future.

  In the meantime, events did not stand still. There were apparently a few ships from the Admiralty headed our way, as I had been warned by Station 3.

  The Hornet was picking them up on Meph’s equipment. Cynthia wandered about the ship in a state of constant animation, asking the Hornet this and that, enjoying, I suppose, this new look at the ship from the outside of the inside, if you know what I mean.

  We went to Station 142 to pick up our new ship, since none of the ships at Caryna were operational.

  Cynthia and I had several lengthy discussions about what type of ship we should take. I reminded her that the ship would have to serve as a normal scout, as well as a home away from home for us. We touched on that a little bit, as I knew she was not going to be staying with me for the next two hundred years. But it was a touchy subject and neither of us was prepared to confront separating right after making such a great friendship. So we concentrated on the task of choosing a starship.

  At Station 142 the choice was more limited, but still plentiful. Some of the ships previously not available had been made operational and it was hard deciding. I was leaning toward a smaller ship due to the advantages of stealth should I get in a jam. But with the possibility of three (or more?) people on board, a ship the size of the Hornet would not be big enough for a lengthy stay. And a Scoutship Captain was dedicated to a very lengthy stay with his/her ship.

  Also, I wanted to be sure that our new ship was technologically up to par. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to make the decision in that area, but Cynthia certainly was. She knew the specifications of every starship in the Admiralty as well as those she had studied here when in dry dock. So I bowed to her wisdom.

  What we finally decided on was a very interesting ship. Very long and slender, it was designed for atmospheric penetration at near light speed. However it was narrower than but three times as long as the Hornet and thus had slightly more room inside. It was a military-type craft fully armed with a wide variety of weapons. Cynthia told me she could easily install Meph
’s devices with the help of Station 142 into the new ship and that otherwise it was much more powerful than the Hornet. And I had to admit it was impressive to look at. It reminded me of one of the Admiralty’s light cruisers. And of course, it was dark gray, like all the Parents’ starships.

  We supervised, as much as we were allowed to, the modification of the interior. There had to be quarters for three and a guest, a bio-lab, a second bridge, chairs and Meph’s equipment and knickknacks he had left, anticipating a return to my command, no doubt. I was flattered that he left so many things with me. In the middle of all this, the Admiralty’s fleet arrived at Caryna and we were millions of miles away. So, the Hornet being properly gutted, with most of Meph’s equipment transferred to our new ship, we prepared my “gift” message and sent her back to Caryna to be “discovered” orbiting Caryna 3, just before the Admiralty’s fleet got within detector range of the orbit we had chosen. I was sad to see the Hornet go, knowing I would never see her whole again. But surprisingly, Cynthia was not sad at all.

  “Do you feel any loss, sis?”

  “No Caryn. I thought I might, but aside from a brief pang, it seems that it’s more like a snake shedding its old skin than loss of anything significant. I do miss the sensors, but through my implant I can pick up pretty much the same thing once this ship is finished. By the way, what do you want to call her?”

  “Now that’s a very good question. Since you and I are going to be her first passengers, I was thinking something, well, feminine might be appropriate. But I can’t think of anything. I’m still missing the Hornet.”

  “Well, we have a culture memory of witches and magic and this ship will seem like magic to many people, what name seems to fit?”

  “Right!” I exclaimed, interest pulling me from the possibility of a blue mood from the loss of the Hornet. “Witchcraft, oh. Witchcraft! That’s it! Witch Craft. Get it?”

  Cynthia laughed her throaty laugh which would someday soon get men into serious trouble. “Yes,

  Caryn! I do get it. That’s a great idea!”

  So the new ship became Witchcraft. It seemed to be very appropriate. The ship even had the look of magic. And there was a cloaking device, which as I had recently told Meph, was thought to be popular only in science fiction.

  I kept my technological edge, my sister and plenty of toys for Meph. So now it was time to return to Caryna and face the Admiralty’s wrath. Witchcraft had been monitoring happenings and my communication had been found and relayed back to HQ. It was time for us to make our entrance.

  A quick check by Cynthia showed that Witchcraft was ready for space. We had power for 1000 years and enough weapons to blow the entire Admiralty fleet out of space. And I had a gut feeling that we would never have to use even half the capabilities of this ship. It was a very warm, comfortable, secure kind of gut feeling.

  Cynthia took over the First Mate’s desk, I sat in my old comfortable Captain’s chair, brought over from the Hornet and we left Station 142 for Caryna. I finished my required survey thanks to Sassy and Witchcraft and still had a month left on my year’s sabbatical. I intended to fill it with adventure. I was sure the Admiralty would be happy to oblige. But there was a nagging thought almost buried in the back of my mind: where is Meph?

  About This Author:

  James Patrick Warner has been a writer since the age of ten. His first work was entitled Who Are We? His only comment about it was, besides the grade of B+ from his teacher, that the teacher said it took him three martinis to get through it. The summer school teacher was a Buddhist and the paper was about Reincarnation. This was a warning that the subjects James was going to be exploring in his fiction work would have humor, truth and insouciance.

  James decided to write some short stories about other adventurous subjects ranging from the sudden disappearance of the Brooklyn Bridge to a graduate student proving in a doctorate thesis that mermaids do exist, and ending up marrying one.

  A story about a scientist who was certain the world was going to end, who backed up his theory with calculations and observations proving his theory, was an adventure into alternate realities that led James into realms of science fiction that brought him to his first novel: CARYN.

  Through the dramatic early electronic age, writing this novel spanned the era of early desktop machines, IBM PCs, Apple Macintoshes and through the evolution of the personal computer. After transferring this book from typed pages to floppy disks and dot matrix printers he realized it could be rewritten and put onto a modern computer and printer.

  When he created CARYN and her friends and associates as a novel he realized that by imbuing those characters with life, they would begin demanding he tell their stories through their voices, and so they did – and so he did.

  CARYN and the other characters in this book began telling him how their lives went 2,500 years and more into our future, and so a series of 10 novels began: The McDowell Saga.

  James is the father of three grown children. His birthplace is said to be Barstow, California; though his birth parents are unknown; as an infant he was found on a park bench in Barstow and taken to the local police station. His Parents were never found.

  He sings with his church choir of which for a time he was the conductor. He has played Principle Bassoon in various Southern California orchestras after studying bassoon as a major at the University of Southern California.

  He served in the United States Army during the Vietnam era in Frankfurt, Germany. He has composed and performed two music albums and several pieces for large choral ensemble.