This book is dedicated to
Matt, Xer, and Fen.
“Your candles are out, but your light shines on.”
The Great Frontier
Today was the day. The day he had been waiting for since he visited the RDI recruiting station in the city, since weeks gone by; yet to him it felt like a lifetime of expectation. As if he had been born to make this journey into the stars, out of Sol System to another galaxy, and forward to the new frontier. Even the words ‘New Frontier,’ bounced around in his head like a jumping-bean on amphetamines, making it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. His time was neigh at hand now; only an hour or so until the launch, and his stomach was churning with anticipation as they neared John F. Kennedy International AAC (Airport/Aerospace Consortium).
The Magna-Tram rolled gently along its magnetic tracks, AI guidance and coordinate systems moving it along its designated course in excess of 120 miles per hour, calculating as it merged the tram in with other vehicles on to the main magna-track, vehicles that were also under the control of the Infrastructure AI. Country folk don’t trust AI, but it was only a one-time trip for him, and he kept his eyes closed during the parts of the ride where he felt frightened. Cars crossing in front of the tram with only inches to spare. AI engines making throughput and load capacity calculations and opening five lanes instead of four. None of it made any sense to him, but he could do nothing but hold close to his faith and trust in a system that was designed by engineers and built by lugs.
Finally, the airport could be seen off into the distance. It was calming to see his destination. Airbus’s circling the tarmacs, one on approach and one just landing on the runway, screeching its wheels as small clouds of smoke left marks of its presence in its wake. Another on approach just behind, the whole system moving with calculated precision. More AI at work here for sure. It was all very exciting for a young man who had never seen the cities, that had just left his simple life in the county, farming and milling and tinkering for the family business; a business that had become so dross and unfulfilling.
His father would always say, “A job worth doing is a job worth …”
“Doing right?” John would interrupt.
“I was gonna say doing yourself, but that’l do boy. That’l do,” he would say, patting his son on the back.
John had been working for his father, a general maintenance specialist for agricultural robotics, equipment and structures, since he was fifteen years old, and it had always been the same for our young blue-collar boy. Day in and day out, over and over, since he was just a child. The 3am starts, the manual labor, working like a dog for nothing more than a waif’s wage. Fourteen hour days of the most strenuous activities just to make the ends join, just to provide, just to live. Embarrassing and shameful for a person who graduated Drexel Engineering at the ripe young age of thirteen years. He was about ten years ahead of the general population, 3.94 GPA, Dean’s List, Phi-Theta-Kappa, International honors; but none of that means anything anymore. Times on Earth have changed so much during the course of his life, and those changes have left him behind. Left him to flail or fail.
“It’s a new frontier in space Mr. Namoth,” said the woman behind the counter at RDI Recruiting. She spoke so slowly and confidently. Her voice was smooth like the leather in her office, and warm as if that leather had been sitting in the sun. John could remember how exotically beautiful she was. The stunning pail complexion of her skin, yet flat in texture so to repel anything that would attempt to stain her beauty. Her eyes were deep and blue, deep like a well of sky crammed into the size of a marble. He remembered how silver her short, straight hair had been. Not the silver-blue coloring of an elderly woman, but something strangely firm and metallic about it. Oh, how he had desired to run his fingers through that hair.
“People are living out their dreams in the Calypso system John, finding there place with their societies, earning money beyond their wildest dreams,” She had reached her hand across the desk and was now lightly caressing his. She looked deep into his eyes almost as if she loved him, almost as if she wanted to reach out and kiss his lips.
John almost felt trapped in that moment, until she slowly withdrew her touch, gently and calmly sliding her hand in retreat across the desk from whence it came, but her eyes never left his.
She spoke again, as if to release John from his swoon or trance, “The streets are paved with gold on Calypso Prime.”
He sighed, leaned his head back and thought to himself, ‘Paved with gold, huh?’
Now here he was, staring out towards his new destination, anxiously thinking ahead towards his next, and he began to wonder if things would be like his dreams, his expectations, or at least similar to the description in the RDI travel brochure that he had been given. Lush plains, fertile wilderness, and new species of man and beast as far as the eye could see. Just the thoughts of its potential forced him to subconsciously draw the brochure from his jacket pocket. Thumbing through the fold-out, gazing deeply into the glossy images of a new home, of a new life, and it made him giddy with a welling of anticipation, like a child waiting to get home with a new toy, or a man waking from a delightful dream, only to find that it had been real all along.
He stared into his favorite image; what at first seemed to be dirt looked more like brown grass upon closer inspection. Not dead grass that had been given too much sun and not enough water for weeks on end, but lush growing and flowing grass, as if brown was its natural color. Blends of light-brown, dark-brown, chocolate-mocha, all blended and whirled together in a rich tapestry of nature. The few trees that could be seen in the image were more than unusual to say the least. Nothing of the sort could ever be found here on Earth. The tree deep in the background of the image was tall, and lush; so tall that the purple leaves from this giant seemed to be forty meters from the base. Another shorter tree, more bush-like and covered in red foliage that inhibited the view of its branches, was visible in the foreground. A third tree was visible, and nothing like the others. It looked more like a suspended barrel with large spikes or prongs sticking out of it. John couldn’t help but to think that it looked more like a trap than a tree.
John was awoken from his reverie by the Magna-Tram slowing down, and there was an unusual rumbling in the air. Our hard working friend may not be from the city, but he could tell this was not the Tram’s stop; it was nearly the middle of the road.
“Take a look at this kid’s,” said the driver as the tram finally crept to a stop. The attendant was looking out the window to his left, and his four passengers followed suit. The rumbling continued to increase until even the tram itself began to vibrate. It seemed that the very earth itself was shaking violently. Nearly all the vehicles on the road came to a stop, and John noticed that the road was lined with lights that where now red and blinking.
There was nothing in that direction but a handful of smaller brick buildings lined neatly in five rows. There seemed nothing to look at, nothing much to see, nothing but the infernal rumbling. It was nearly a minute after they stopped when John began to notice the aircraft’s that had originally been circling the airport were now gone. In fact he thought that it was unusual compared to the activity that was bustling in the sky prior to the stop of the tram.
One of the passengers, a quiet young lady that had been sitting in the front, finally spoke up and said, “Look at what man? What’s it we supposed to be look’n at anywayz?” She moved closer to the window.
‘Bad-Ass,’ John thought to himself as he looked at the girl bouncing around in her seat like a man with a social problem. ‘This girl thinks she’s a bad-ass, huh?’
No sooner did he think the thought then there was an enormous, ‘PANG’ noise, and then everyone could see what the fuss was about. The roofs on all the smaller brown buildings were actually two enormous doors, and one of the buildings was now opening, slow and lumbering, like a sleeping giant waiting to yawn. As the doors neared full vertical position, they stopped and slowly a strange bar, or rod, started to spire out of the building. Enormous heat plumes began to emanate from the openings in this building, and it looked a lot like the heat rising from an asphalt road in the heat of the summer sun, or the mirages that rise off the embers of a bar-b-q grill.
“That’ll be you mates,” said the tram-man, with an almost hellish grin from ear to ear. “In just a few minutes, that’ll be you.”
Then it all happened so fast. An explosion, of sorts, emanated from the building. Great clouds of white smoke shot out from all sides, shooting far into the air, making all but the dark spire nearly disappear. The rumbling now had grown so vicious that the Magna-Tram began shaking very aggressively. Then, without an instants notice, ‘Va-Wooosh!’ the craft was gone. Like watching a bullet leave the barrel of a gun, or trying to watch a golf ball in flight on a sunny day, it was just gone. I don’t even think anyone could have said what the ship looked like, it had all happened so fast.
The quiet young woman in the front was not so quiet any longer, “Holy Shit!” she cried out, frantically jumping up and down in her seat. “How fast was that?”
“Damned if I know, but I’m not sure I can do this,” said the gentleman in the seat adjacent to her. He turns to the tram-man and asks, “What if I don’t wanna go, huh? What do I do?” The man was cringing back in a corner of his seat now.
“Are you kidding me? You freak’n puss man,” shouted passenger number four, the one adjacent to John. He was nearly jumping up and down on his seat too. “That thing was Awesome dude! I can’t wait to get in! I want the front seat yo.”
“That seat is mine little boy, so you need to check yourself,” their female companion forced her claim.
The Magna-Tram was now moving again. The silence that had once been the norm for this trip, the quiet reflection that had saturated them through all of this time, was now overcome with excitement and terror and fear of the unknown. The people that were once keeping to them selves were now in full conversation. All John could think was that they, all of them, would never be the same again.
He sat quietly watching, waiting. His thoughts now turned to home and family and loved one’s that he would never see again. Suddenly, the whole thing depressed him.
______
Commander Jacobs walked swiftly through the bright white marblyst corridors of the Asteroid Space Station, followed closely by his entourage of command. He was dressed in full military gear and Warrant colors from head to toe. He moved so rapidly that his Master Coat flew like a wing trying desperately to follow him, and his cohorts were just as desperate.
“What’s the situation with our communications array?” he asked, without looking back, without missing one single step. His disciples kept pace.
“Seized sir,” was said from the background in a meek and mild female voice.
Jacobs knew the voice, “What do you mean seized? By what? How?”
A short, fat, yet well decorated man began to walk closer to the commander, trying desperately to keep up with his pace, huffing and puffing all the way, “We believe that … uuuh … something drastic has happened with the … mmmm,” the fat man looked to the left and to the right, desperately seeking approval or support, “… our infrastructures artificial intelligence engines, and that they are … uuh …beginning to fail by some unknown ...”
“PLEASE!” yelled the commander, stopping in his tracks and turning summarily to face them all. Everyone stopped and surrounded him, awaiting his instructions, awaiting further questions, or just awaiting reprimand. “Would someone who’s not interested in saving their own ass tell me what the hell is going on here? Damn-it people, this is a crisis situation!”
“It’s the Odysseus probe Jon,” spoke the meek female voice from before.
She was one of the few people under his command that could actually call him Jon and still keep their job. She gently nudged between two ranking officials to get closer to Commander Jacobs, so he could see her and her him. Her white frizzy hair brushed the shoulders of the men she needed to squeeze through to get closer. She moved nearly right in front of his face and they stood eye locked on one another; a posture that would offend the sensibilities and boundaries of most people, but they shared something deeper. Standing next to the commander made this small and frail woman look like a mere child or doll, but is was obvious from her stance to him that this was no child, this was no doll. This woman was revered.
“We have a serious problem,” she said with the utmost certainty. There was no light in her voice, no happiness, no light-hearted tone. She meant business.
“All personnel report to the control room,” came an automated voice through the hallway. “Code 2 collision alert, all personnel please report to the control room immediately.”
“Great,” sighed Jacobs. “Everyone report back to your stations, we’ll continue this in the CR.”
The group that had once been following him very closely now began to disperse.
“Not you MindStar,” bellowed the commander as his female counterpart began to walk away. “You come with me.”
They walked a short distance to a cylindrical blue light that went from floor to ceiling. Commander Jacobs placed his hand in the light, closed is eyes, and with a ‘Wo-womp’ he was gone. MindStar followed close behind, ‘Wo-womp.’
The control room was a mad-house. People running frantically from machine to machine, display panel to display panel, pushing buttons in the hopes that something would change the state of desperation they were all in.
‘Wo-womp … Wo-womp,” Commander Jacobs and MindStar entered the Control Room, and Jacobs went straight to work.
“Ok people, Ok,” he shouted with both hands in the air. “Everyone needs to calm down and stay focused. Return to your stations, and let’s get to work.”
The crowd slowly settled while he kept his hands raised, waiting for everyone to return to their seats, looking at them, analyzing them. Control officials shuffling to return to there stations as if there was no big rush, returning his gaze as if to find their solutions in his eyes. Some of them looking at the paperwork in their hands, or turning to quickly gaze into a display, then looking toward the commander and shaking their heads. Something was wrong, desperately wrong. He lowered his arms.
Realizing that nearly half of his crew had yet to find their seats, he decided to start anyway, “Now, what’s the problem people? Communications, have we regained control of our arrays yet?”
“No sir.”
“Jon,” MindStar nearly whispered, desperately hoping he would hear her and they could speak in private.
“OSEDS warning nets,” the Commander was nearly in full motion now, walking the room and verifying data for himself. “Are they still in centripetal placement? Are they operational?”
A young man popped his head over a large panel of instrumentation, “Yes and No sir. We’ve lost the outer tiers, but the inner tiers are fine and orbiting.”
She tries again, so quite, so subtle, “Jon?”
Commander Jacobs leans over this young mans shoulders and begins to analyze the data along with him, “Is it an attack or an invasion?”
“It doesn’t seem so sir,” replies the young officer. “They just appear to be failing sequentially one tier at a time.”
MindStar was nearly fuming. She could feel her face grow hot and red with the anger, the rage, the fury of it all. The anger had nothing to do with her leader, or her fellow officers. It had nothing to do with her inability to get their attention. In fact, their undivided attention was the last thing she sought. This was a very delicate matter, and she knew it. If one word of this were to reach the wrong ear there could be panic and chaos on Calypso.
“Jon?”
“You can’t destroy a whole tier instantly, is it an inside job? Are they being sabotaged? What the hell is …”
“JON!!” she screamed to the top of her lungs.
Everything stopped. Everything was silent. It was as if someone had given pause to all existence, and everything just ceased. All eyes were on her. Everyone waited to hear the reason for her outburst, a normally calm and quiet person that she is. Some looked at her in shock and fear. Even Command Jacobs gazed at her with a sense of awe the likes he has never done before.
“What is it MS?” Commander Jacobs asked in a quiet and relaxed voice.
“Sir, the Odysseus probe is returning to us.”
Jacobs walked to his chair and, turning to sit, said, “Resume your duties everyone. I want situation reports should there be any change in status.”
He looked at MindStar and waved her closer. She abides. Leaning forward in his chair, he nodded for her to come even closer still, and she knelt before him and leaned in very close, by then face to face.
“Exactly what in gods name are you talking about woman?” he said with almost a chuckle in his voice, as if such a thing was impossible, as if the absurdity of the idea was not even worth entertaining.
She replied in a calm and mildly voice, “Early intelligence reports from deep-space satellite imagery indicate that the Odysseus probe has changed course and is heading back to the Caly system. At the date of the findings, it was clear from its distance that it had been plotting its course back to us for fourteen weeks,” she held up a piece of crumpled paper, “and the report is dated four weeks ago.”
The commander was now looking at the paper in her hands, his hand grasping and rubbing at his chin, thinking. Moving his fingers to his forehead, temples, and finally his eyes, he then rapidly throws himself back in his seat, arms at his side, and asks, “How long until it arrives?”
MS leans closer to him yet, moves her hand to his, and says, “It’s here now, which explains the failed OSEDS outer perimeters. We think they are staying out of range our defenses that are outside of their control, and are using our OSEDS defenses to keep us from leaving the system.”
“Out of their control? What exactly do they control?”
“What don’t they control Jon? We have robots everywhere on the planet working in toxic areas, high radiation areas, doing our high-risk work so not to put humans in danger. We even use them in this ship. Our satellites, our communications systems, not to mention the bloody nanites. They control everything, and you know what? That’s the good news.”
Commander Jacobs leans back once more, looks MindStar right in the eye and says, “You gotta be kidding me, right?”
“I wish.”
“Sir,” speaks up the man behind the instrumentation panel, “Here’s our incoming!”
The commander jumps to his feet, “Status report?”
“It looks like a cargo vessel sir, but it’s coming in way to hot. It’s approaching the system barely under hyper-drive.”
Rushing forward and in panic, Command Jacobs presses the comm-link button with his whole hand, “Unidentified vessel, this is Asteroid Station Caly Prime, do you copy? Unidentified vessel, this is Asteroid Station …”
“… yeah we hear y … aly Prime,” it was the voice of a man, in panic and distress, with a horrible rumbling noise in the background, and people screaming “We see … … … ttack by something, I don ….”
“Sir, they’re not slowing down,” the commander turned his attention to the voice and the instrument panel. “Telemetry indicates they are on a course for the station. They could hit anywhere Commander. We got two minutes”
Slapping his hand on the comm-link again, “A.S. Caly Prime to unidentified vessel, you have exactly one minute to slow your vehicle or we will slow it for you. If you can not …”
“ … THERE FREAKI …. *thump-thump*… .. I CANT DO ANYTHING EVERYONE’S DEA… …*screetch* … EAKING THROU … E AIRLOCKS … … … AAAAAGGG”
That was the end of the transmission. Nothing but static remained on the comm as Commander Jacobs shouted, “Engage all auxiliary power units and warm-up the tracktor-beam.”
He turns his head to MindStar as she quietly said, “Those people could still be alive in there Jon.”
He shook his head in disagreement, “I don’t think so.”
“There are projectiles behind, surrounding, and ahead of this vessel sir,” says the man working the terminal. “They’re ball shaped objects that I can’t make out, but there sure are a lot of them, and they appear to be moving faster then the cargo ship. Some of them will breach our atmosphere first.”
“Target the cargo ship Moonie,” Commander Jacobs removed a chain-like necklace from under his coat, took a key from its end and placed it into another control panel to the rear of the facility.
BloodMoon turned to look at MindStar, his eye looking towards her with hope of finding approval from her first, seeking comfort or solace in what he was about to do. There was nothing of the sort. She could only shake her head.
“Moonie!” shouted Jacobs. “Target the damn cargo ship!”
Hi eyes were still locked on hers when the first hits arrived. They thumped the surface of the asteroid like cannon-balls the size of meteors, in rapid succession they pummeled the ground and shook the very foundation of the stations structures. BloodMoon snapped his head side to side as if to wake himself from a deep sleep.
“Yes sir,” he said, turning his gaze from hers. He tapped a few buttons on his designated panel, “Cargo ship targeted.”
Commander Jacobs turned the key, entered a pass code, and then pressed a little green button labeled, ‘Yes.’ The sound was horrible, and the vibration from the forces needed to stop a cargo vessel at near hyper speeds was alarming to say the least. The projectile objects continued to pound the surface of the asteroid, throwing great clouds of rock and metal into the atmosphere, shaking the building every time they struck. Then, as promptly as it started, it stopped.
The impacts and vibrations were just beginning to subside when the commander said, “I want a recon team and a small military group to go to level 1 docking bay 1R. If there is a threat I want it neutralized. Take a medical crew with you too, and get me some video feed from the entrance to 1R now.”
Everyone was now busying themselves acquiescing to his orders. People frantically working their respective control panels, others engaged on comm-links coordinating the effort to hold the docking bay, and others still continuing their duties just to insure that the station was unharmed and remained operational.
Then the visual came to the screen. The front of the docking bay, the outside of it, was filled with debris and dust and was barely noticeable, but at least it was still there. Impact craters from the ball like objects slamming onto the surface left great flaming holes everywhere. From the top right corner of the display the cargo ship could be seen being gently settled to the ground.
“Joh,” spoke his young female assistant. “You have to bring them into the bay.”
“Not until the threat is neutralized,” he responded. He leans forward to engage communications with his team, “Air suits for everyone men. We’re going outside.”
“Aye sir,” came the response.
Everyone in control was looking toward the visual screen. The cargo ship looked beaten, ripped, burned, and completely destroyed. I was barely recognizable as a machine that once flew the heavens, and now looked more like an old dumpster thrown through the universe, discarded by its previous owner in a fit of rage.
MindStar was nearing the visual display, and pointing her finger to a smashed ball-like object attached to the vessel asked, “What’s that?”
“Air lock’s opening now commander,” came a team voice over the comm. “Alpha team move out, secure the area. Medical and Recon teams stay in the rear. We’ll take the point girls.”
“Red team leader to Alpha team leader,” appeared a new voice over comm. “You’re such an ******* Boomer.”
“Yeah, the guy everyone loves to hate,” laughed the voice of Boomer. “Just stay to the rear and wait for my signal to move forward, and shut your stinking pie-hole man.”
The point group, Alpha team, could now be seen in the display. They were slowly approaching the wrecked vessel when the crumpled object fastened to the cargo ship moved.
“Oh my god, Jon,” cried out MindStar. “Get those people out of there!”
The ball like object now appeared to have legs. It stood on the ship and with a great grasping motion ripped into the alloy of the vessels hull and stood ready to pounce, its one large eye now glowing red. Hurriedly, another ball-bot rounded over the ship from the leeward side of the vessel, where it had once been hidden from view. Every step it took over the hull of the ship crunched a big chunk of metal under its mighty grip.
Commander Jacobs was now thoroughly frantic, “Get your people out of there NOW! Move, move, move!”
The ball-bots and Alpha team had now opened fire on one another. MindStar stepped back and gasped at the sight of it. The rapid succession with which they opened fire was startling and fearsome. The robots seemed almost undamaged by the gunfire from eight point team members, and the laser blasts from the robots was nothing less than the fires of hell flying sideways. The recon and medical team could be seen making their way back into the docking bay when first reports of the battle came in. The open channel was insane with screaming, and coordination was lost to the chaos.
The sounds of laser fire and binary liquid propellant was deafening over comms, “GET YOUR MEN BACK! GET THEM BACK NOW CPATIAN!”
“CHECK LEFT, CHECK LEFT!” was the screaming from the Recon leader. “OH MY GOD, THERE’S ANOTHER ONE!”
Commander Jacobs engaged the comm, “Pull you men out now Alpha leader, that’s an order!”
“PULL YOURE MEN BACK TO THE DOCKING BAY BOOMER!” came the voice of recon leader. “I GOTTA SHUT THE DOOR MAN! I GOTTA DO IT!”
“You will hold your ground recon leader! You will not leave those men to die out there, is that clear?” Jacobs strongly asserted over comm.
“BOOMER’S DEAD COMMANDER! HE’S DEAD!” exclaimed the voice of Red leader. “FALL BACK TO THE DOCKING BAY NOW! DOUBLE-TIME, MOVE, MOVE!”
All eyes had been locked on the visual display panel at the far end of the room. Horrifying. One of the robots never stopped ripping the ship to pieces. Another, the earlier that had been hiding behind the ship, out of view of the cameras, was gripped to front of the cargo ship firing its laser weapon at anything that moved. Finally, there was a third. Nearly impossible to say where it was hiding, but it had grabbed Boomer and was now standing with one great arm atop his body, gripping it with its claw like clamp, shooting at the other teams as they retreated to the safety of the docking bay. Boomer was still moving.
“SECURE THE DOOR NOW!” came the voice of Recon leader. “The airlock is secure sir, but Boomer is still out there!”
Silence. Nothing but silence as everyone watched the carnage. The bot that had held Boomer in its unmerciful grip now had its eye fixed on the docking bay doors. It gripped its clamp that had held down their fellow team member with incredible force and speed, cutting his body in two pieces, and then trampling his head as it rushed to tear into the airlock. The other bots never stopped ripping and tearing into the cargo vessel.
“DO YOU HEAR ME? BOMMERS STILL OUT THERE!”
“BloodMoon,” sounded the commander, but he didn’t have to finish his request.
“Yes sir,” BloodMoon replied, and he flicked a few switches on his consol and laid his hands purposefully on a pair of knobs. His eyes never left the video screen.
In the visual display could be seen two large cannons protrude from the sides of the docking bay. They moved to target the robots as BloodMoon turned the knobs, and for once the robot attack stopped. They stopped their assault and looked toward the guns. They stopped their massacre and gazed upon the gun turrets as if they had found an ally, as if there were two more robots that would join their cause and help destroy the human race on Calypso, but they were mistaken. These turrets were not under the control of any artificial intelligence or infrastructure systems. These guns were under the control of BloodMoon, and there was hell to pay.
No sooner did one of the bots cock its head to the side, almost as if an expression of curiosity, did BloodMoon open fire. Both turrets firing binary liquid propellant rounds with great speed and velocity. The noise from the rounds penetrating the titanium endoskeleton of the bots almost sounded like screaming. The turrets moved in synch with the knobs in BloodMoon’s hands, and his pressing them down kept the chambers open and the depleted slugs flying.
The bots were destroyed, but BloodMoon kept shooting.
“Moonie,” appealed MindStar as she quietly approached him.
The cargo ship finally exploded, quaking the foundation of their buildings once more. BloodMoon kept shooting.
“Moonie,” MindStar reaffirmed her presence, and placed her hand on his. When he finally stopped, dropping his hands and blankly staring out to nowhere, she bent forward, put her hand on the back of his head, and whispered in his ear, “It’s over now.”
Commander Jacobs turns to MindStar and asks, “That’s the good news, huh?”
“Yepp,” as she stood up and moved forward to the commander. “RDI was planning a promotional effort to increase our population. There’s a grand launch event today, and there will be 500 ships leaving 10 different aerospace consortiums all at nearly the same time.”
“We have to warn someone,” replied the commander as he walked toward the primary communications panel.
“You can’t,” said MindStar in a very somber voice. “The Odysseus has up-linked to our communications array, reprogrammed the AI, and are constantly in communications with Earth. They are sending messages back to the planet telling them that everything is ok, and that we anxiously await their arrival. When those ships arrive, they will all look like this one.”
_____
The Magna-Tram finally rolled to a stop in front of JFK/AAC Intake. The door opened and the driver turned and said, “Welcome to JFK. Next stop, Claypso Prime.”
John Namoth stepped out of the bus, and onward to his new life.
Linear Mode
