Salvation (Technopia Book 4)

by Greg Chase

  The mother bird on the screen stood just a little straighter. “Good. I’ve never been a fan of being left in port. Ships were built for exploring, not being kept safe at home. Though you must realize there aren’t many uninhabited minor planets that can accommodate all that I have aboard.”

  “Who said anything about staying within our solar system? We’ll be stopping along Jupiter’s moons to offload Rendition and as many refugees as possible. Do you think you can access their technology and figure out a way to stay powered up for a prolonged trip away from the sun?” The ideas were pouring out of her mouth faster than she had time to process them.

  “Sara and Jess aren’t going to want to leave. They’ve both been working hard on making that corner of the solar system into Earth’s salvation. I don’t see them leaving that behind to join us.”

  Emily knew Lev was right. Her mother would do as she pleased as always. Lord knew that woman had gone off on her fair share of adventures—no one would understand Emily’s desire better than Jess. Sara was another story, but Emily couldn’t spend her life trying to keep her sister from embracing the power their father had rejected. “Emotions aside, if they were aboard, would they be people we should let stay or ask to leave?”

  Lev ruffled her feathers. “That’s not a fair question.”

  “I know. I also know you’re right—they wouldn’t join anyway. My point is it may be time for me to strike out on my own, and I’d like to think this is where I belong.”

  Lev brought up a current view of the village nestled in the agro pod. “So you’ll become another space monkey?”

  “No. They’re my family, and those bonds of love will sustain me, but I need to build something new. I’m too tied to you and the other Tobes to cut myself off from technology. For human societies to develop, we need the new life we’ve created. I respect the village’s ideal of person-to-person connections, but in my experience, people need a thin layer of lubricant in their dealings with others to help prevent friction—metaphorically speaking. I don’t have the details worked out yet. Just find me those like-minded people who can help me advance where the village left off. And do what you can to give the Tobes back the life they deserve. Power up, my friend.”

  19

  Jupiter and her moons looked oddly peaceful out Leviathan’s bridge view screen. Emily didn’t know what she’d expected, but after Earth’s destruction and the work her mother and sister had engaged in, seeing transport convoys lazily make their way along the space corridors came as a surprise. Everything appeared to be business as usual, but then, she was a little late to the party.

  She smoothed out a wrinkle from her elegant business dress, preparing for what would be less a family reunion than a meeting of high-powered interests. Jess and Sara had done their parts to secure this corner of the solar system, and Emily had saved what she could of Earth’s culture, history, and people. All that was left would be to fit the pieces together. At least, that was what she hoped.

  Her time running the family business had changed her, but not in the ways she’d expected. Instead of growing hard and calculating as her sister had, or altruistic like her mother, Emily had become more sensitive—Earth had stripped away her innocence to reveal the raw wound of love. That connection to humanity, however, had been an undirected emotion. People’s greed, self-interest, and lack of empathy toward others offended her. Most people she could only handle in small doses before that love within her rose up and turned into anger at their pettiness. And that was just from being on Earth. She couldn’t imagine how the pirates and moons had changed her mother and sister.

  The two ships made their approaches from different directions. Emily smiled to see the gleaming space yacht Persephone work its way out from behind one of the nearby moons. The menacing ship that also descended from the darkness of space, however, only bore a passing resemblance to the pirate ship Rampike—not that she’d had much time to inspect it during their brief encounter years earlier.

  Before long, the two ships came up alongside Leviathan. Emily wanted to run to the loading bay and wrap her mother and sister in her arms, but now wasn’t the time. As she looked around the bridge, she knew it wasn’t the right place, either. “Lev, tell them to meet me in Jillian’s bar. I think I’d like a room slightly less formal for our meeting.”

  The walk down the length of the grand space freighter gave Emily a chance to consider her position. She needed to offload as many people as possible. Only a small handful of those aboard fit her need. The rest would only contaminate what she would be trying to create. Next, there was the issue of ownership. She’d managed to bluff the world’s government into thinking Earth had no legal standing when it came to Leviathan, but people had a strange way of taking whatever they wanted after a catastrophe. The last person to lay claim to the space freighter had been Dr. Shot, though that was through Rendition. Lev, of course, was a free being and thus should have some say in what happened to the ship she considered her body. The problem was all the people looking for some replacement for Earth. The huge ship with its life pods already decked out in businesses and domiciles reminiscent of where they’d just left would look like the logical choice. The passengers had no say, but Emily knew that seldom stopped people from taking what they thought they deserved. Enticing them to leave the ship wouldn’t be easy.

  She stopped to inspect the underside of the mile-long tube nestled next to the main gangway. What was she supposed to do about Rendition? As if the family had been playing a game of hot potato, no one really wanted the responsibility for Rendition, and each person quickly passed it on to the next. If she were to leave, she’d need to offload that obligation as well. For a moment, she wondered if the company was even worth the effort.

  For all the modifications Leviathan had endured, the opulent bar that overlooked the length of the ship retained its nostalgic charm. She hadn’t stepped more than a few feet into the room before Jillian flung her arms around Emily’s neck in a full-body hug. “I hardly see you anymore.”

  It was true. With the weight of the world on her shoulders, Emily knew she’d neglected the one person on board who she still considered part of her immediate family. “I know, but that’s going to change soon. I promise.” She pulled back from the embrace. “Think you can round up a couple of Yoshi Beers? I’d like Mom and Sara to feel at home.”

  Jillian gave her a peck on the cheek. “Of course.”

  The barmaid’s dress swirled around Jillian’s body as she moved to the elegantly carved wooden bar, and Emily smiled at the only boss she’d ever truly respected. Being part waitress and part assistant to the free-spirited woman on Chariklo had been the only job that ever gave Emily satisfaction. Every position since then felt too much like being a sacrificial calf fattened for the slaughter.

  Emily took a seat at the back of the room to look out the upgraded view screen that filled the far wall. Rampike and Persephone, docked next to Leviathan, filled the lower section of the screen with Jupiter arching overhead. It was a magnificent image, but all Emily wanted to see was the blackness of space dotted with faraway suns, beckoning her to their unknown worlds.

  Jillian barely had time to deliver the drinks before the main entrance opened to the women Emily barely recognized. She’d seen Sara’s superheroine, dominatrix, cartoon-character outfit on Earth. It didn’t look any less ridiculous in person, but the way Sara sashayed across the room left the impression she’d fully embraced the made-up persona. The sight of Jess, however, made Emily’s breath catch in her throat. For all the stories she and Sara had created about their adventurous mother, nothing compared to seeing the woman in her element. The way she wore the scaled armor—tight fitting with guns hanging low on her hips and laser-blast marks darkening the black-and-bloodred outfit—made Emily look around the room for some prospective adversary. She looked the reality to Sara’s make-believe, a true pirate queen meant to be feared by all.

  Emily smoothed out her dress as she stood. “Well, the three of us co
uldn’t look more different if we tried.”

  “We do represent three very different worlds, Emi.” As Sara held her tight, Emily could feel the electronic microshocks from the film that covered her sister from head to toe. She was still Sara but more technology-human hybrid than the twin Emily remembered from Chariklo. They had both paid a heavy price for their father’s unintended creation.

  Jess waited quietly, but when Sara pulled back, she was quick to wrap Emily in her arms. “I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

  Emily embraced the woman she knew more from stories than in person until Jess eased her grasp. Emily motioned them to seats around the table. “I suppose the questions are: where are we at, and what do we need from each other? Ra, everything revolves around you. Why don’t you start?”

  Sara brought up the familiar three-dimensional projection of the moons surrounding Jupiter. “I’ve formed an uneasy alliance with all of the major players. Between the Tobes who worship me and Joshua’s contingent, we have our eyes and ears on enough of the boards to know what they may be planning. But even with my stake in the corporations, I’m afraid my influence won’t hold long. They’re pretty sneaky out here when it comes to retaining control. I’ve secured a moon as our home base. Once Rendition’s up and running again, that will give us the clout we need to stay in the game. As just one force out here, though, it’s going to be tough to regain the control we had on Earth.”

  Jess set her half-empty beer glass on the table. “I suppose that’s where I come in. The pirates are fiercely autonomous. They’ll never accept one overall leader or even participate in a joint project that isn’t limited in duration. I have, however, established myself and the crew of Rampike as adventurers worth following. The pirates taking over transportation of goods around the Moons of Jupiter was only a temporary power play to wrest control away from the corporations. Those pirate outposts see space as their domain and are happy to leave the moons to the companies, but running a business isn’t their desire. They’re proposing that once Rendition is up and running and established as impartial, the pirates turn the day-to-day operation of the transport ships over to the company, with the pirates taking a cut and providing input of course. This should keep enough pressure on the Moons to keep them in line, especially if one of the three of us stays in control of the corporation. Unfortunately, that can’t be me. I’ll need to stay with the pirates to keep them from going rogue. Think of them as a semicontrolled wild dog that will keep the Moons on their side of the fence. Those who step foot outside our desires will find it difficult to conduct business.”

  The family company had never been anything more than a pain to Emily. She never realized how much the other two had counted on its arrival. “I have all of Rendition’s hardware on board. With Joshua doing his snooping among the Moons’ corporations, he and the other Tobes who were connected to us on Earth should be able to set things up pretty quickly. But at the risk of sounding like the last one to say not it, I too have no interest in running the family business. I’m sorry, Ra. I just wasn’t any good at it.”

  Sara nodded in what Emily assumed to be resignation. “My return as head of the company makes the most sense. I’m the most closely associated with both the Moons and the Tobes.”

  Emily tried to take a drink and nearly spit it back into the glass. The heavily hopped dark beer with overtones of cannabis had never been to her liking, but she knew it was the beverage of choice when it came to negotiating. “Rendition’s what I bring to the table. What I need is to offload as many passengers as possible. Then there are the other spaceships fleeing Earth. How are Jupiter’s moons set for taking on more than a billion refugees?” Jess motioned Jillian for another beer while Sara silently contemplated hers for longer than Emily thought reasonable. “I know it’s a lot of people. I’ve done what I can to spread out as much of Earth’s population as possible, but Jupiter’s moons are the most developed human habitations in the solar system. This whole endeavor has been about saving the people of Earth. Hasn’t it?”

  Sara finished her beer as Jillian set two more on the table and left the trio to its discussion. “I know, Emi. It’s just been easy to lose sight of that goal with everything we were doing out here. A billion people is more than I’d expected. Any hope some of them might settle aboard Leviathan?”

  Emily forced her throat to accept a swallow of the swill in her glass. “I need them off my ship.”

  Jess set her glass on the table with slow deliberation. “Your ship?”

  “You two have your plans. I have mine. Jupiter’s moons aren’t my final destination. I’ve brought replacement satellites from Mars. There aren’t enough to reestablish all of the abandoned planets, but they’re a start. I’d love to tell you I plan on rebuilding Chariklo. That may still be an option, but ultimately, I’ve seen enough of humanity to know there has to be a better way. Maybe I’ve spent too much time with Grandpa Doc. I want to start fresh somewhere uncontaminated by the greed and aggression I see all around me.” She hadn’t meant it to sound as though she was referring to Jess and Sara.

  Jess sipped at her beer. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t have a destination, only a journey.”

  Emily breathed a little easier at seeing Persephone and Rampike veer away from Leviathan, but she couldn’t prevent the tears. She’d gotten what she wanted, the freedom to strike out on her own without the expectations of others. But she’d lost her mother and, far worse, her sister in the process.

  “They have their futures, and you have yours.”

  Emily’s heart skipped a beat as she turned to the table view screen to see Ellie’s smiling face. “You’re not in hibernation?”

  “Lev’s working on a power upgrade. I can’t manifest out of a computer, but I am aware and can interact with you on any of her view screens.”

  Tears that had formed at the loss of her human family began running down Emily’s face at being reunited with her technological sibling. “What does Lev have in mind?”

  “We thought if you intended on building a new utopia, we would like to be included.”

  Emily knew the pieces were in front of her, but she didn’t know what the finished puzzle was supposed to look like. “It would be a society no longer based on a human ideal or a technological interpretation of our needs but on both species being equal. Our two species would bring different skills to our new society. I don’t have it figured out, but I like the idea.”

  “There may never be an ultimate success,” Ellie said. “Joshua used to say perfection was like juggling. The ball only stays at the top for a short time before falling to be tossed up again. He believed the answer was to have multiple versions so one would always be at the top. I never really agreed with him, though. It was like each ball had a separate answer. If we combine them all, we might get something so heavy it never works, or it might be so wonderful it never comes down.”

  Again, pieces of Emily’s life started fitting together. “Doc used to say individuals, left to their own desires, fell to their lowest common denominator. I think we’ve both seen that enough on Earth. The challenge is, as I see it, even if people are all struggling toward that higher ideal, we need an external guide to make sure we’re not creating a monster by mistake.”

  “That’s where we can help,” Ellie said. “We still carry all of Earth’s history in our memory banks. We found that people need help dealing with each other—without intending to, complete naked honesty can rub people the wrong way. Our version of perfection involved freely giving people the information they desired, whether that was impartial facts or personal information. We hoped that people wouldn’t be able to hide from each other behind professional personas or lies or just plain fear. But too often, we ended up being crutches to human interaction instead of furthering it.”

  Emily looked out over the length of Leviathan, imagining all the human history and knowledge contained in her pods—a distillation of all Earth had achieved, not just the achievements of peop
le but also the DNA of all of nature’s biological advancements as well. Every plant and animal that could be examined by scientists could be reborn from Lev’s hold of precious cargo. “I can’t let it all burn to the ground like on Earth.”

  “We may know someone who can help.”

  20

  Iam flexed his hands open and closed in time with his breathing. The action helped calm his nerves. He snickered silently to himself—what would all of humanity’s religions say about their God suffering a panic attack? After one hundred thousand years and over two hundred billion people, he only had two individuals left to deal with before he, hopefully, could get on with his life.

  He breathed in the burnt, dry air of Praxidike. Every experience felt new. Nothing was really new, of course, but each action was now his own. There were no more demands on him, at least none that he had an obligation to respond to. He ran his hands over the worn fabric arms of the office chair. Every person who’d sat in it, every conversation that had taken place around it, every room in which it sat, all the way back to the people who’d stitched the chair together, played in his memory like some old, poorly made movie.

  He turned in surprise as the door opened. That was another experience he needed to conquer. Gods weren’t supposed to be caught off guard.

  “What do you want, old Tobe?” Sara asked.

  She looked much as he remembered her, but unlike every other visit with every other human he’d ever known, for the first time, he had no idea where she’d just come from or what she’d been doing. “It’s just Iam now.”

  Her laugh carried hints of sarcasm. “You’re no longer a Tobe?”

  “I’m no longer To Be. I Am.”