TERRA formed, Part 1: The Edit

1

Cat's Meow

in April 19th, 2007 @ 20:13

HOORAY! My sugestion was taken! I definitly want to help edit this, and I might even write a bit in the future.

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2

E2MB

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:00

I was just about to on the other thread. All right, here’s my draft so far.
~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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3

E2MB

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:01

*sigh* part of it got snipped.
The rest:

~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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4

Kiki the Mindbogglingly Magnificently Great

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:02

Alright. LET’S EDIT!!! I know a whole lot about editing, due to the editive nature of my (now finished) top-secret MiB project, which, incidentally, no-one’s asked about.

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5

Kiki the Mindbogglingly Magnificently Great

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:09

When Kari and company leave Luna, you need expansion. A lot of this needs expansion. The transitions are too quick.

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6

Cat's Meow

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:10

4-*asks*

So…what are we exactly supposed to do? Just read it and say if we find any errors?

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7

Cat's Meow

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:33

Are we allowed to do ANY edits, no matter how small/insignificant (like adding more adjectives), or are we only supposed to do the larger sort of edits?

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8

E2MB

in April 19th, 2007 @ 21:44

7 – Sure. Anything that might make this story better.

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9

Cat's Meow

in April 19th, 2007 @ 22:02

This thread is already REALLY long, with only 8 posts. xD
———————————————————————
Paragraph 1: Cursory? What does that mean?
Paragraph 2: add “translucent” in between “in” and “green” (Sentence #2), Change “blue-green” to “blue and green”
———————————————————————-
Sorry, more later. Survivor’s on.

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10

Alice

in April 19th, 2007 @ 22:13

I’ll post after dinner. For real. (Last time I said that, HPBs took over MB, but that won’t happen this time.)

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11

E2MB

in April 19th, 2007 @ 22:31

9-Done.

2
Ian walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text and relevant images onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.

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12

Alice

in April 19th, 2007 @ 23:06

I’m back!
I stated lots of grammar/spelling/consistency errors earlier and E2MB fixed them, but I have a new one.
In paragraph 28, Ian says Kari asn’t old enough to have memories of Terra. In 29, she responds by saying she’s 83 and a half. What isn’t said after that, is that she still isn’t old enough to have memories of Terra.
Alright, I know I’ve already said this, but we have to stop saying that Ian and Kari are similar! They aren’t! Especially in paragragh 18. from now on, I’m going to call these paragraphs Ps, for short. Ps 21-22 are really rushed. In P 24 Kari appears to be somehow connected to the government. Is she? Are the Parents a sector of the government? In P 33 Kari says “who said we were gonna take a ship” but then they do. P 43: if there is no atmosphere, how can they power down through it? P 48- Space pirates? Does he mean the Parents? I suppose it’s all right, it’s kind of amusing even, but I’m just asking clarification. And maybe Kari should correct him. Ps 49, 50- There’s all that suspense building up: no idea what was waiting them… Is it really necessary to make such a big deal about a betwer? In P 59, what foundation has Ian for his theory that the betwer knows the password? P 62- How can a day have passed since ian read the time travel book? It wasn’t that long. P 80- Can you change that to “dark hair and green eyes,” please? I wrote that bit, but I didn’t remember Ian had green eyes. In P 85, “parents” should be capitalized.
And the whole story is over way too quick. It’s just so sudden.

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13

E2MB

in April 20th, 2007 @ 11:05

12 – How’s this? I fixed some of that.

29
“Did they not teach you about cryogenics in school? I’m eighty-three and a half,” said Kari, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the tattoo every resident of the solar system had, which listed her birthdate, home planet, identification number, and status. It read: January 27, 2104/Mars/08234919, and then the last line of ink was blurred by a black crater with scorch marks that wrapped around her whole elbow. However, even being eighty-three and a half still wasnâ€™t old enough to have memories of Terra.
“So you’re a real renegade, then, if you haven’t got a status,” said Ian. Really that old, too, if her birthday and ID number were to be believed.
“Yep. And let me tell you, putting a lighted firecracker to your skin to get rid of your microchip hurts a lot worse than you’d think.”

33
Ian started. “Terraâ€™s moon? But there isn’t any habitation there!”
“Exactly.”
“What are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra and the moon are almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
“Who said we were going to take a ship?” Kari pushed Ian off the mattress on to the dusty Cerean crust. â€œMaybe weâ€™ll take something else!â€ She got off the mattress her self, and muttered something. The mattress turned back into the Globe.
“Come on,” Kari said, “It’s not far from here, but we have to get there before sunrise.”
With that, Kari started to walk toward the dark side of the dwarf planet, unyielding to all of Ian’s questions.

85
“All right,” he said, “What we need to do is to stop this plan from happening. They haven’t bothered to think about all the people who live on Ceres. Do you have any ideas?”
Ian suddenly felt a wave of shock. He lived on Ceres! If the Parents had done thisâ€¦
“Where are we heading anyway?” Kari asked.
“We are heading toward Io.”
“Do you know anything about the plans for redoing Terra?”
“I designed some of them, back when I wasn’t against these people.”
“What plans did you design?”

80
They hurried down another corridor, and then another, Ian always conscious of his dark hair and green eyes that marked him as an outsider.
They reached the hangar without difficulty, and securing a ship was a cinch. Though Kari was a renegade, her fingerprints unlocked the door nonetheless, and soon they were flying through the black nothingness of space at a rate close to the speed of light.
“That was easy,” remarked Ian confidently, leaning back in his chair.
But Kari was frowning. “Too easy, almost. They didn’t notice you; I got a ship even though my prints shouldn’t do that anymore; Kerj let us through even though he should have just let himself die rather than help us; it’s all so unnatural.”
Ian’s confidence was shattered. He was no longer brave and intrepid, but a naive kid again, and he wished he was back on Ceres, sneaking into the library to look at Terran books, and scrounging for food in the tunnels. Back before he’d met this dangerous girl named Kari.

(last comment) – well, at least this RRR had a sort of conclusion. The other ones are still lying around, half finished and abandoned.

This may be overkill posting each section every time a little change is made.

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14

Kiki the Great (lolcat)

in April 20th, 2007 @ 13:59

E2MB, you didn’t reply to comment 5. And I agree with your post 15, it’s probably overkill, so just make the little changes in your Keeper’s copy and post it every now and then on this thread.

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15

pie parade

in April 20th, 2007 @ 16:15

5 agreed. thats what happens when u have a bunch of writers

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16

Cat's Meow

in April 20th, 2007 @ 17:13

I’m going to try to add to the description.

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17

Cat's Meow

in April 20th, 2007 @ 17:22

I just noticed that the first three paragraphs all start with the word Ian, making it pretty choppy. Does anybody object if I change that?

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18

Cat's Meow

in April 20th, 2007 @ 18:37

I’m slowly working through it on a Word document, and I’m up to Paragraph 33. Unfortunately, I must now depart for soccer practice, but when I’m done I’ll post my edited version with the changes I made bolded. Trust me, I’ve made a lot of them.

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19

E2MB

in April 20th, 2007 @ 18:51

18 – Remember though, bold on Word documents doesn’t come out bold here. You’d have to type the brackets and such on the Word Document itself.

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20

Alice

in April 20th, 2007 @ 19:32

Darn it, I don’t have Word on this computer. I’m gonna do TextEdit though, cause I have ideas for fixing the inconsistencies. Apart from that, I’ll barely change anything at all.

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21

E2MB

in April 20th, 2007 @ 19:46

17 – No.

20 – Sure. It’ll be more efficient if you make the changes yourself.

But to people who are doing this, please make sure that you clarify what has been changed.

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22

Alice

in April 20th, 2007 @ 20:14

Okay, I’ll…um… I’ll do something.

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23

Alice

in April 20th, 2007 @ 20:31

2- Changed.
Ian walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.

18- Changed by taking out the part where Kari thought they were similar.
Kari looked at him thoughtfully.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, wellâ€¦umâ€¦”
“You were planning to stowaway on an interplanetary trading ship?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomachâ€¦hard. Kari was only thirteen, or at least that’s all she looked, and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not this girl was any good at allâ€¦.

21- Changed.
“All right,” Ian said. “Where do you plan to go? Mars?”
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. It’s habitable like Siberia was habitable.” Of course, neither Siberia nor any other part of Terra was now habitable by any stretch of the imagination, but Ian understood the metaphor.
“No,” Kari continued. “We’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
"But there's no way I'm stowing away," said Ian so firmly that Kari had to give in. "If you have the money, then we can take a shuttle. It's still illegal, but not quite as bad."
Kari and Ian boarded the next shuttle to the Jovian moons as quick as they could, for they were now classified as interplanetary outlaws. (Planet hopping is illegal, you know.)

22- Changed. A lot. I couldn’t stand the briefness of the writing.
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, one of the engines failed. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them, and they plummeted back towards Ceres, while the ship became hotter and hotter still due to the air friction. Pieces of the ship soon started to fall off and disintegrate, but there was nothing Kari and Ian could do. The pilot was dead or unconscious: the radio that connected the cockpit to the passenger seating was silent. As the surface of the planet loomed ever closer, Kari gripped Ian's hand for balance as she unbuckled her seat-belt and stood on the tilting floor.

23- Changed.
"C'mon, help me open this!" Kari was at the emergency exit, struggling with the heavy handle. Ian cautiously stood up, and together they managed to open the door.
“Alright, when I say to do so, jump out of the shuttle, alright?”
“What?!” Ian protested, "Without inflatachutes, or anything? We can't!"
“Do you wanna live, or not?” Ian braced himself.
“On 3â€¦1, 2, 3!” They jumped. Ian felt the wind lick his face as they free fell towards Ceresâ€¦was this the end? Was this how he would go? Falling towards the very planet from which he had tried to escape?
Don’t breathe, Kari thought silently toward Ian. We haven’t hit the artifi-sphere yet. You’ll die. She didn’t expect him to understand her, since telepathy bugs were a part of pre-War technology that hadn’t been transported past Terra. That was for the best, too, no doubt about that, but she didn’t want this kid to die. For some reason, it felt good to be able to talk to somebody again, though her instincts, slowly implanted in her, screamed against human contact. Fifty years of boredom in sentient cryogenics could do that to a girl, she supposed.

24- Changed.
He seemed to be alive, even if he was going blue in the face, which was (awful) good. It shouldn’t be too long before they reached the artifi-sphere. They’d have to leave soon, because Ceres would have pulled up her bio-signature from the database and would have half the asteroid looking for her in no time. Unless Ian was also a wanted renegade Container (which she doubted even without taking into consideration his physical appearance), his signature would take longer to find, but if they discovered him with her he’d be executed in the most inhumane way the torture generals could dream up. One of the few advantages to Kari’s Container status was a relative immunity to the law; only if she committed a truly heinous crime (blowing up a planet, killing a President) would she be killed. Otherwise, she'd simply be rescued by the Parents and frozen again until they could extract all her data from her. But harboring herâ€¦harboring her was suicide.
She pitied this Ian, though pity was the last thing a Container was supposed to feel. (It was a contaminant, it would taint her data, and it would jeopardize everything they’d planted in her head.) No doubt he’d lived the perfectly normal life of an orphan in the asteroid belt. Then she’d swept in, and now he was a wanted criminal. Ah well. Life at large, she supposed, was cruel.

And that’s all I’ve got so far.
Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?!”
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing blue fire. His were pools of deep green fear. She squeezed his hand.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded in agreement.

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24

Alice

in April 20th, 2007 @ 20:32

Huh? I don’t know what’s up with my previous post. *glares at screen*

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25

Jadestone

in April 20th, 2007 @ 21:41

Meep!! I’ll read this all later and comment. I promise. But I don’t have time now, sorry.

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26

Cat's Meow

in April 20th, 2007 @ 22:05

19-Yeah, I know.

Also, everyone that’s doing their own versions needs to make sure that they update their version with the group’s edits too.

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27

E2MB

in April 20th, 2007 @ 22:09

23 – Thanks!

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28

E2MB

in April 20th, 2007 @ 22:56

I made all of 23’s changes to my draft.

26 – This could get a bit confusing.

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29

Cat's Meow

in April 21st, 2007 @ 12:23

28-We’ll find a way, somehow. xD

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30

Cat's Meow

in April 22nd, 2007 @ 16:00

I’m almost halfway through my draft as we speak, at about paragraph 50.

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31

Alice

in April 22nd, 2007 @ 16:26

I haven’t worked on mine in a while, having dealt with many of the more irritating bits, but I’ll finish it sometime.

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32

Cat's Meow

in April 22nd, 2007 @ 17:02

31-Yeah, mostly what I’m working on right now is the small stuff, like grammar, spelling, and descriptions.

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33

E2MB

in April 23rd, 2007 @ 11:00

I feel like my version is becoming outdated very quickly.

I haven’t made any edits, as you are probably making them yourselves.

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34

in April 23rd, 2007 @ 12:05

I just mailed it to myself.

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38

E2MB

in April 23rd, 2007 @ 12:21

No, I have the day off because I have a bad cold and keep sneezing constantly. Are you homeschooled.

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39

Alice

in April 23rd, 2007 @ 12:33

Yeah.

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40

E2MB

in April 23rd, 2007 @ 20:55

I was homeschooled for a while.

in April 26th, 2007 @ 21:54

I made all the changes. Some of them made a lot of sense and made the story much better!

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51

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in April 26th, 2007 @ 21:55

(49) Done.

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52

E2MB

in April 26th, 2007 @ 21:58

Alice’s new version has 15,009 words. (that’s not including the paragraph numbers)

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53

Alice

in April 26th, 2007 @ 22:01

50- Yay! I made the story better!

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54

Alice

in April 29th, 2007 @ 15:03

E2MB, what is the name supposed to mean?
I’ve been wondering that for ages. What was formed, besides friendships? Or is that it? Or was it the references to terraforming?
?????

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55

E2MB

in April 29th, 2007 @ 15:28

54 – Three things:

First, terraforming is the process of changing or altering a planet, something that is very common in our story.

Second, which isn’t quite as obvious, humans are formed from Terra, thus they are “Terra-formed”. (I know it doesn’t work very well.)

Third, it sounds cool.

That’s about it. We can always change the name if someone comes up with something better.

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56

Alice

in April 29th, 2007 @ 16:13

Nah, I like it. I was just wondering.

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57

Kiki the Great

in May 1st, 2007 @ 11:30

what are the second two again? terra formed, and then terra what and terra what again? remind me.

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58

Alice

in May 1st, 2007 @ 11:40

I haven’t the faintest idea, probably because we never decided. If we wanted to destroy something, we could call the last one TERRA broken. That’s always good. Why is “terra” in capitals? I thought that that TERRA could be the title, capitals and all, and we could call the three parts, terraformed, [?], and [terra broken?].

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59

Alice

in May 1st, 2007 @ 13:33

Why did they go to Luna? For fun? Oh, I see. There isn’t any habitation there. It’s not very clear, though. I will fix that when I re-edit the story..
Also, we should think of a pseudonym. All the screen names of everyone who helped would be too long, and just the screen names of people who helped a lot would be too mean. Suggestions, anyone?

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60

Alice

in May 1st, 2007 @ 16:36

I re-did the first chapter, adding drama and suspense and half-hints about Kari. The things I’ve changed are in italics.

~~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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61

Alice

in May 1st, 2007 @ 16:54

Make that, “They boarded a shuttle to Jupiter as quick as they could”, so that it fits in with the other story.

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62

Alice

in May 1st, 2007 @ 16:56

Oh, okay. Don’t bother. The Jovian moons are right around Jupiter. Sorry.

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63

E2MB

in May 1st, 2007 @ 22:47

59 – If this is published, we could just have it say: “Written by MuseBloggers at http://www.musefanpage.com/blog” and then have the list on the first page or something. The list isn’t that long.

Here’s my data sheet for Part 1 I made:

RRR. Version 2007.2, part 1 (Science Fiction)
Major Contributors: Prarilius Canix, Kiki the Great, Shadowkat, twilightswordsman, Amanda, Pentatonikk, grnqween2011, E2MB, Lord Ragevuire the Shadow Mage, Alice
Minor Contributors: Pheobe, I bet that you look good on the dance floor, kt the gr8, burnzkid, pie parade, agagabagabag
Major Editors: E2MB, Alice, Catâ€™s Meow? [she says she’s done stuff, but she hasn’t posted any changes she made yet]
Compiled by: Alice
Word count: 15,009 [not including Alice’s recent changes…I’ll upload them to my document as soon as I can]

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64

E2MB

in May 1st, 2007 @ 22:49

Wait… this makes it easier to read.

RRR. Version 2007.2, part 1 (Science Fiction)
Major Contributors: Prarilius Canix, Kiki the Great, Shadowkat, twilightswordsman, Amanda, Pentatonikk, grnqween2011, E2MB, Lord Ragevuire the Shadow Mage, Alice
Minor Contributors: Pheobe, I bet that you look good on the dance floor, kt the gr8, burnzkid, pie parade, agagabagabag
Major Editors: E2MB, Alice, Catâ€™s Meow? [she says she’s done stuff, but she hasn’t posted any changes she made yet]
Compiled by: Alice
Word count: 15,009 [not including Alice’s recent changesâ€¦I’ll upload them to my document as soon as I can]

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65

E2MB

in May 1st, 2007 @ 23:03

I made the changes; Word count = 15,190.

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66

Alice

in May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:17

Yes, but we could also do that with a pseudonym, and that way MuseBlog remains a place for people who read Muse, and not people who read our sci-fi story. Besides, I like pseudonyms.
I don’t know what other people would do, but if I saw that kids on a blog were writing stories together, I would waste no time in joining the blog. Wouldn’t you?

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67

Alice

in May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:29

Just for fun, I’m writing profiles for all the characters. Also, if someone had a question about them, they could come here rather than skim through the old threads looking for that one piece of information. Also, like I said, it’s fun. Ignore my excuses.

Ian
Ian is a nice, innocent, moderately ignorant, orphan. He’s thirteen, and has dark hair and blue eyes. He’s an orphan, and was living on Ceres until he met Kari and started running all over the galaxy. He likes adventure, or at least part of him does, but when it comes to the crunch, he generally starts wishing he was back on Ceres, in the library, which is his favorite place to be. If he has time to think about that sort of thing. He is fascinated by anything from Terra. He doesn’t like the thought of killing or hurting people, except the Parents or Containers (not the renegades). He has a habit of picking up useful things, e.g., the auto-spear or the book about time travel.

I think I’ll do everyone else later.

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68

E2MB

in May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:36

66 – I would feel extremely uncomfterable hopping into a website’s forumn for readers of some magazine I hadn’t read before, and adding to their stories that were already in progress. People might come here to read the stories, but they might be hesitant about hopping in if they don’t read Muse. But maybe that’s just me. *shrugs*

67 – Cool!

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69

Alice

in May 2nd, 2007 @ 10:57

68- Yeah, I guess I might feel similarly, in fact when you put it that way I probably would, but I’m not sure that feeling would stop me. The urge to write could easily overwhelm the feeling of guilt and not-belonging. And if I didn’t know it was just for people who read Muse… then there would be absolutely nothing to stop me. But I don’t really know how I would react, since I’ve never been in such a situation. Who knows, I might be to shy to write! That’s unlikely though.

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70

Alice

in May 2nd, 2007 @ 13:58

Kari
Kari is a fierce and determined renegade Container. Though she looks to be 13, she is in actuality 83 1/2, having spent 80 years frozen in sentient cryogenics. She was born on Mars and orphaned at age 3. The Parents kidnapped her and turned her into a Container. She ran away 6 times, and the 5th time she got rid of her microchip, thus making it harder to be caught. She had very recently gotten out of cryogenics when she met Ian, and is rather ignorant about the more modern inventions. She has the standard Container looks: white-blond hair and green eyes; and superior vision. Her name comes from the 3-letter ID given to her by the Parents: KRI.

Jaa
A cool, authoritative Container, he is a renegade scientist, and the designer of the gravitational engines that were part of the Parents’ master plan. He is needed by the Parents to redesign the engines. His Container name is JAA. The Parents kept him as young as possible, only unfreezing him when absolutely necessary, so he is only eleven or twelve. He was born on Terra, before WWL, and his Parents died in the evacuation.

And that’s it for the good guys. I’ll do Kerj later.

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71

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 10:37

I think that the Parents should be loosely connected to the government. Just a few people with lots of power know about the master plan, and they’re not in the asteroid belt that’s going to be destroyed.
We may never put it in the story, but knowing it ourselves might add some depth.

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72

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 15:38

Here’s the next 3 chapters edited.

~~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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73

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 15:45

Oooh, major problem in chapter 1. A sandwich?! Please. They eat pills and food paste, and Ian barely even eats.

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74

E2MB

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:01

73 – I wondered about that myself, but forgot to say so on this thread.

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75

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:40

If you want some of the earlier edit deleted to slim down this thread, just say the word.

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76

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:48

Oh, yeah. Sure. “The word.”

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77

E2MB

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:49

75 – The word.

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78

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:54

Somehow I anticipated you might say that. What exactly shall I cut?

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79

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:58

How about post 60. That’s an older edit. And maybe 47 and 48. E2MB, what do you think?

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80

E2MB

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 19:58

Maybe the whole version could be moved up to post 0 (very long posts seem to be easier to load when they are up there) and then Alice’s changes could be moved up there. She posts her changes in huge chunks once every few days, so it might not be that hard. .:?::?:?:.

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81

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 20:01

It’s freaky how similar 76 and 77 are.

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82

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 20:42

(79) Are you sure 60 was to be deleted? It appeared to be the first chapter, continued with 72, or do you have a new version of it on the way? I can reinstate it if necessary.

(80) I think the post would be too long.

(81) Well, you know, brilliant minds, and all that.

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83

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 20:53

82- You’re right. I don’t have a new version yet; I’m not even done editing chapter 5.
But you could still delete 47 and 48.

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84

E2MB

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 21:22

But wait! On this thead, out of Chapters 1 through 9 only Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are availible to read. Anyone who hasn’t saved their own version onto their hard drive now cannot access it.

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85

Alice

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 21:34

Uh-oh. But the only people who come here are you, Cat’s Meow, and me, and we all have it. Don’t we? Anyway, If someone comes along who wants to read it, I can C-and-P it from my Word document. Tomorrow I’ll finish my second edit and post the whole story.

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86

E2MB

in May 3rd, 2007 @ 21:41

85 – Oh yea. I suppose if we all have it then there’s no real need for it to be here.

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87

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 5th, 2007 @ 17:01

Alice and E2MB: I’ve created a separate document comprising the first four chapters of TERRA formed, so you can see it all on one page in a more standard format. I’ve kept the section numbers and a couple of Alice’s comments where necessary. I can update it as needed. See what you think:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d2nvgdc_148dg5zt

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Alice

in May 5th, 2007 @ 17:37

Cool. Thanks!

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Cat's Meow

in May 5th, 2007 @ 19:05

I’ve gotten really behind on editing. Sorry…:(

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E2MB

in May 6th, 2007 @ 20:05

in May 8th, 2007 @ 20:22

(99) Yes, just as this page can be. Though no one is likely to stumble accidentally onto a page with “id=d2nvgdc_148dg5zt” in its address.

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Alice

in May 8th, 2007 @ 20:28

THAT was bizarre. I don’t really get it. I got several results, one of which was The Times Heading, or something similar, and another of which was auto nissan. However, when clicked on, neither of them showed the story. Most of the others just had to do with terraforming or Ian somebody or Kari someone.
If you want to try it, E2MB, I googled “TERRA formed” Ian Kari.

106-Sounds great. Thanks!

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Alice

in May 10th, 2007 @ 16:04

Alright, Cat’s Meow, here it is. My changes and comments are in italics.

~~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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Alice

in May 10th, 2007 @ 16:06

~~~~
[text replaced by newest draft; see top of page for link]

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Alice

in May 10th, 2007 @ 16:25

Rebecca, in the document where it says “Sector 8 was isolated from the other sectors in the middle of the great Luna desert,” That’s actually part of the story.

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Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 10th, 2007 @ 16:56

OK, thanks. I’m tied up with meetings for the next few hours, but I’ll update everything as soon as I get a chance.

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Alice

in May 10th, 2007 @ 16:59

When you do, could you leave these new posts up until Cat’s Meow gets a chance to update her version?

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E2MB

in May 10th, 2007 @ 20:44

In a glance, Terraformed is the fastest-growing RRR on MuseBlog. The stats:

After 97 days in existance, the first sci-fi RRR on MuseBlog has gathered
26,600 words (an average of 274 new words per day)
611 posts (an average of 6 new posts per day)
17 writers (an average of a new writer every 6 days)
10 dedicated writers (an average of a new dedicated writer every 10 days)
3 threads (an average of almost 1 new thread a month)

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Alice

in May 10th, 2007 @ 20:50

WOW! Awesome!

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E2MB

in May 10th, 2007 @ 21:32

To compare, this is 274 words:

in May 22nd, 2007 @ 22:57

Updated word count, including all of Alice’s changes on all the chapters: 15,651

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Alice

in May 24th, 2007 @ 11:44

Whee! Fun! And we’re almost done with Part 2.

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E2MB

in May 24th, 2007 @ 12:47

Should we have a seperate thread for editing part 2 or edit it here?

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E2MB

in May 24th, 2007 @ 12:48

I got a little behind on making those pictures. One’s almost done, and I started on another one.

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Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 24th, 2007 @ 15:23

Alice and E2MB, I’ve made a new document of the entire story which you can access here:

in May 24th, 2007 @ 21:32

132- She meant the drafts in comments, 72, 108, and 109. Slow typing right now cause my fingers feel weird.

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Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in May 24th, 2007 @ 21:35

in May 28th, 2007 @ 16:00

141 – Where’s the origional explanation?

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Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 16:15

142- Right here. After they fought (or didn’t fight) the betwer.
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t.
Later . . .

“What was that?” Kari demanded. “That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears.
Here’s my remake:

His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears. To distract himself, he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was big news about seven years ago, and they’re used by just about everybody.”
Kari gave a look, and he shut up.

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E2MB

in May 28th, 2007 @ 19:34

143 – What I meant was, which subsection in the story? (That’s what I added the little numbers for – easy reference.)

Here’s the text of Part 2, which was kept by me. I added chapters where I thought the divisions should be (you are welcome to change them.) I have included a summary of facts along with it.

RRR. Version 2007.2, part 2 (Science Fiction)
Major Contributors: Alice, Prarilius Canix, E2MB, Lord Ragevuire the Shadow Mage
Minor Contributors: twilightswordsman, Kiki the Great, Catâ€™s Meow, grnqween2011
Editors: no editing done yet
Compiled by: E2MB
Word count: about 15,500

[Text deleted; replaced by later post.]

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E2MB

in May 28th, 2007 @ 19:34

CHAPTER SIX

72
“4 squared times 10 to the power of two equals 1,600,” Jaa muttered, frantically scribbling the amount of electromgnets needed per 1,000,000 cubic feet. Kerj had demanded the plans for the anti-gravity machines in 80 hours, which was sooner than when Jaa would have them done at his current rate. The Parent’s headquarters were now on the dark side of Callisto, and machines were starting to get shut down.
Kerj walked in. “YOU ARE WORKING TOO SLOW, YOU DESPICABLE REGENADE,” he shouted as he examined the chains that held Jaa within 8 feet of the working desk. Two containers walked in. “MEET YOUR ‘ROOMMATES’, JAA,” Kerj said as he introduced VAK and VEN. “YOU WILL HAVE THEIR COMPANY THROUGH OUT THE NIGHT,” he laughed as he chained VAK and VEN to Jaa to ensure no chance of escape. Kerj wasn’t taking any chances, especially during the night when it was easier to sneak out of the main building.
73
Kari didn’t feel the effects of strong radiation, which suprised her. “Those cursed Parents probably put some kind of temporary protection on me that’ll make me suffer longer on this godforsaken peice of dirt.”
She looked around. The sky was a dark gray, with bits of green swirling around. The temperature was at least 140 degrees. Further examination of the horizon gave way to a small domed building of some sort in the distance. The terrain was a rough sand, with a few rocks scattered across the desert. Kari realized she was in Antarctica.
Kari recognized the dome from her implanted memories. It was the research station where a monumentally important event had taken place, namely, the invention of the gravity-pulse drive. This amazing engine created tiny folds in the space-time continuum, allowing any ship on which it was installed to skip across space at unbelievable speed. She realized that she was standing near the spot where the backbone of the solar system’s economy had been created. The research station had also been famous for several other discoveries, such as carboglass synthesis and the advances in genetic manipulation that allowed Betwers to be created.
None of this, Kari reflected sourly, was going to help her to get out.
She stood undecided for a second and then broke for the dome. She didn’t know why. She just did.
74
Jaa was exhausted. He didn’t see how he could re-design the engines in a single night, when he was practically falling asleep. He remembered when he was little, there had been a very rare commodity known as “coffee”. He had tried a sip once. It had been dreadfully bitter, and his parents had not let him have any more even if he wanted to. They said it would keep him awake. Now he didn’t care how foul it had tasted, he wanted some. He had to stay awake! But there was no longer such a thing as coffee, much less for renegades and prisoners. He noticed that his guards were even more exhausted than he was, mainly from discovering they were already asleep 15 minutes after Kerj had left the room.
Jaa looked at the electrotablet on which he was designing the engines on, and then threw down the mettalic pen in disgust. “I’m leaving,” he thought, getting up and starting to walk until it flashed on him that he was still chained to 2 snoring containers. Jaa had the strength to drag them with him through the maze of passageways to freedom outside the Parent’s headquarters, but VAK and VEN’s microchips were being tracked by a central computer. Jaa wouldn’t get much farther than the room he was in unless he removed their microchips. “It’s a good thing I never showed Kerj when I was still a slave of the Parents that I figured out how to do this,” he muttered, as he got down and lifted VAK’s arm.
75
Ian had a feeling that SAJ knew more than he was telling. He didn’t say so, though, for fear of what might happen if he did. The two sat in silence on opposite sides of the door. Ian was sure that if Kari or Jaa were there they would already have escaped, but even as he was thinking this depressing thought there was a clatter of boots outside the door.
“SAJ,” said a voice.
“YES, GENERAL HAV?”
“HAVE YOU BEEN FRATERNIZING WITH THE PRISONER AGAIN?”
“NO, SIR!”cried SAJ in alarm, but the General didn’t seem to believe him, for he said, “SAH, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TAKE SAJ’S PLACE FOR NOW.”
Another Container- presumably SAH- appeared from the shadows and took up position near the door. SAJ walked off, seething.
Ian thought and thought, but he could come up with no solution to his situation. Eventually, he curled up on the hard bunk and fell into an uneasy sleep.
He was awakened by a strangled grunt, and a thud, as though a body had slammed forcefully against his cell door. As he got out of the pathetic excuse for a bed, the door hissed open, and SAH fell inward. Ian couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt, but he was unconscious or worse. SAJ was standing over him, a look of triumph in his eyes.
“LISTEN, IMPURE,” SAJ hissed. “I HAVE NO SYMPATHY FOR YOU, BUT I THINK YOU ARE A WORTHLESS HOSTAGE, AND GENERAL HAV WILL BE CHASTISED FOR HIS BAD CHOICE OF SENTRIES.” He looked down at SAH and grinned. Ian shuddered. “IT WILL NOT SIT WELL WITH THE PARENTS IF A PRISONER DISAPPEARS ON HAV’S WATCH. WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO.”
Ian hurried down the corridor, reflecting on the horrible pettiness of the Container and his own unexpected good fortune.
76
He tried to shake off the horrible incident. “Now,” he said quietly to himself “where are Kari and Jaa?”
Ian ran through the winding passageways, hopelessly lost.
He knew that his life was in danger and that one wrong move would kill him. By pure chance he wound up in the System Control Room. There was only one Container ona duty, he was unnarmed, no one expected an invasion in the what was usually the hub of the security operations.
Ian’s first reaction at the Container’s appearance was shock. Solana, he’s old! Ian thought, His hair is accually white! He began to creep up behind the old man, drawing SAH’s autospear as he did so. At this the Container (Who’s ID code was, by a freak coincidence, IAN) turned. “Freeze.” said Ian.
77
Just as Jaa was about to remove the wires that turned off the tracker on VEN’s chip when its light turned red.
Uh oh.
Jaa closed his eyes and opened them again in astonishment. That wasn’t the regulation alert messageâ€¦
“Hop. Pop. We like to hop…”
Ian had grabed the first elebook he saw and shoved it under IAN’s nose. “Thank you for deactivating the security system, now read!” Ian snarled.
He laughed as he realized tha the shelf had been marked ‘ancient Terran childrens’ literature’.
“…we like to hop on top of pop…”
The message continued. Jaa was seriously confused by now.
He seemed to remember as a little child, listening to his dad read those very words to him. Something about a doctor . . . But that wasn’t what concerned him at the moment. Why would this be coming over the intercom?
78
“Right,” Ian said, his confidence boosted. “Where are Renegades KRI and JAA?”
“JAA MAY BE FOUND IN MULTIPURPOSE ROOM 323.”
“Right. Give me the video footage from that room.”
IAN swerved around and tapped a few buttons. An image of an empty room on the wraparound monitor.
“HE’S GONE!”
Ian cheered up. Jaa must have managed to escape. “So, what about KRI?”
“SHE WAS USED FOR TESTING A TELEPORTATION DEVICE. IT WORKED AT 100% CAPACITY.”
“Where’d it send her?”
“TERRA.”
79
Kari was already feeling a cold burn beginning on her skin. The temporary nanobots that had been installed in her cells wouldn’t last much longer. She dashed down the corridors of the deserted facility, hoping to find what she needed.
And, by sheer luck, she did. RADIATION STUDIES was printed on a skewed sign above a hall in peeling paint. Kari made a sharp right, racing against time. There would have to be radiation suits here somewhere. She just hoped they would be intact. If not, she would die a slow, agonizing death.
80
“What!?!?” Ian almost screamed.
“IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THE TELEPORTATION DEVICE WORKS PERFECTLY, SO KRI SHOULD BE SAFE EXCEPT FOR THE RADIATION.” IAN informed Ian.
Ian suddenly remembered he needed to get out of the Parent’s Headquarters. He had a first-class chance! “Where’s the nearest exit?” he asked.
“OVER THERE UNDER THE RED LETTER ‘E’,” IAN droned like a machine, and Ian rushed over to what seemed to be where the door was. As he pushed against that spot in the wall, a LED screen popped up. WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR EXIT? it inquired.
“Fire!” Ian spoke the first thing that came to his mind. Instantly infared heat sensors flashed all over the Parent’s headquarters, looking for signs of a fire. When they found none, the LED screen dissapeared immediately.
Ian kicked the door. The LED screen popped up again and repeated the question. “Hydrogen bomb!” said Ian, louder than the first time because he was frustrated. He was within a hair of geting out and the door wouldn’t open! Instantly radiation detectors scanned a diameter of 1 AU around the Parent’s headquarters, found nothing threatening, and the LED screen disappeared for a second time. Ian was getting steamed.
81
“Um,” said Ian, trying to come up with something plausible. “I have to go . . . relieve a watch, or something?” The “or something” was reflexive, and he automatically cursed himself for saying it. However, the screen didn’t seem to be too smart, as it buzzed for a moment and opened the door.
Ian looked out to see that he was thirty feet from the ground. He decided not to worry about it and he jumped.
IAN the old container had not switched off the intercom. Their entire convesation had been broadcast all over the building. Just after Ian jumped, several security guards rushed into the room. “WHAT THE !@#$%& IS WRONG WITH YOU?” barked one of them. IAN looked up. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST,” he said coldly.
“IAN HAS MALFUNCTIONED,” the guard announced. “TAKE HIM TO THE REPROGRAMMING WING.” Several security guards picked IAN up and carried him off.
82
Jaa walked purposefully along the halls, or would have been walking purposefully if he hadn’t been dragging two insensible Containers along with him. He had heard the commotion, and when all the guards went running to the main control room, he knew he had a chance to escape.
Jaa saw one of the guards drop his autospear on the way to the control room. Perfect! He picked it up and quickly cut the chains that attached him to VAK and VEN.
He heard a big argument going on in the main control room. HAV was being charged with letting the hostage go. HAV argued that SAH and SAJ should have been watching, and blows were being exchanged. Jaa peered in and saw that the controls were being left unguarded.
He sneeked in. Since he looked a great deal like all the other Containers, nobody would recognize him unless they looked closely or saw his identity tattoo. When he got up to the switchboard, he instructed the computer to send all the unprogrammed Containers to the reprogramming ward. Then he snuck off to the reprogramming ward.
83
IAN was busy being programmed in one of the 15 reprogramming stations. Jaa looked around, and saw nobody was there. All the guards had all rushed to the control room after hearing the bizarre message and a hostage escape.
The machine asked him for a password. Jaa typed in “EXIT0000042” which brought him back to the main desktop. He opened Programs.exe and typed in a short computer program that would try every possible combonation of numbers and letters until it found the password. After grinding for a few seconds, Jaa gained access to reprogram Containers.
About 2 minutes later, all 10 of the W-series Containers came through a transportation tube into the reprogramming ward. Jaa quickly wrote up instructions to destroy the Parent’s headquarters by whatever means possible, then plugged the instructions into all the W-series Containers.
When the X-series Containers were shuttled into the room, Jaa saw there were far more of them – there must’ve been at least 100, if not more. Jaa programmed them with the same instructions as before, but with a new command added: Attack all humanoids in the building except KRI and JAA (he knew Ian had escaped). When the Y-series Containers came (there were about 75), Jaa started to program them when a voice yelled, “FREEZE!”
Jaa looked around. 15 security guards, armed with autospears were standing defiantly in the doorway of the reprogramming ward. Jaa looked around, saw a box of auto-spears on the shelf, and in a split second ran to the box, spilled all the auto-spears onto the floor, and yelled “X and Y series Containers, grab an auto-spear and ATTACK!” And thus the Great Container Revolt (as it was reffered to later by Parents who survived) began.

CHAPTER SEVEN

84
The 15 security guards could not face the hordes of Containers about to attack them. They called for backup. The Containers charged.
Jaa, protected by his army of Containers, programmed the rest of the Y-series Containers to fight, but when the Z-series Containers came (only about 30 in number), he gave them a new instruction: find an hydrogen bomb and set it off. Then he picked up an autospear and started to look for a way to get out of the escalating carnage.
Jaa made his way to the main control room, dodging auto-spears right and left. He looked through the front window and saw their escape pod still lying exactly where it had been before, but he could see several security guards around it, and in the middleâ€¦.no, it couldn’t beâ€¦..was it Ian?
When Ian had jumped out, he had ran to the escape pod, but some security guards had followed him. Ian had been able to get to the escape pod in time, but he didn’t know how to drive it.
85
Jaa called for 6 X-series Containers (who were usually tougher than those of the Y-series) to follow him, and saw a W-series Container tearing apart a wall with a knife. The seven made their way to the door eventually. “Attack the security guards around that ship!” Jaa pointed, and the Containers obeyed. As the security guards fled, the Containers chased them around to the other side of the building before giving up and going back inside. Jaa turned to Ian.
“What’s going on?” said Ian, dumbfounded. “Are all the Containers suddenly going mad?”
“That’s not important,” said Jaa quickly, “Where’s Kari?”
“They sent her toâ€¦.to Terra.” Ian said quietly.
“WHAT???” yelled Jaa in shock.
“IAN said they were testing some teletransportation equipment on her, and sent her to Terra.” Ian replied. Jaa sputtered, “We have to get to Terra!” and climbed aboard furiously.
Ian scrambled into a chair right before Jaa slammed the capsule door shut and pulled down the speed lever all the way, cursing the Parent’s name. They had just blasted off when they heard a huge boom. Ian turned and saw a mushroom cloud rising from Callisto’s surface. He informed Jaa.
“We’ve done it!” cried Jaa victoriously, “We’ve defeated the Parents once and for all!” but then slumped, and his face turned red with anger once again. “But they’ve given Kari a !@#$%* of a way to die!”
Ian was quiet. He knew Kari would die on Terra if she was unprotected. He solemely went to the window to gaze out at Jupiter.
86
Kari looked wildly around for the suits. She saw them lined up along the far wall, but most of them were smashed to bits. She managed to find an intact one, or so she thought, but before she put it on she saw the tiny rip . . . But there was no more time to find another one. She seized a roll of something silver that her memories registered as duct tape, and bound it round and round the hole. It probably wouldn’t stand up to radiation, but it would have to do. There was no more time.
87
“Do you think she’s dead already?” asked Ian. He knew he shouldn’t think about it, but it was hard not to.
“Depends,” muttered Jaa. “If they gave her any protection at all, and when she got there. But I’d say, knowing the Parents, yeah.”
“If Kari is dead, then why are we going to Terra?” Ian asked Jaa.
“Because if by some obscure chance she is still alive and we do not attempt to save her,” said Jaa, “A burden of guilt will forever be upon me.”
“But even if we get to Terra and Kari is still alive, how will we find her? We can’t track her because she tore out her microchip.”
Jaa sighed deeply. “I suppose we’ll find a way,” he said drearily as he steered through the asteroid belt.
88
Kari wasn’t dead yet, but she was getting very close. As she struggled to get the suit on, she saw tiny bubbles starting to form on her skin. They started to pop, and then new bubbles formed underneath. To her relief, the formation of bubbles slowed when she had sealed herself inside the radiation suit, but she knew she didn’t have much time. She wasn’t able to think clearly anymore.
She limped around, as she was loosing her strength, and saw an elevator. She went toward it and saw a sign above the elevator door that read “UNDERGROUND RESEARCH STATION”. Good, she thought (as best she could). If I get far enough away from the radiation on the surface, maybe these symptoms will stop. She pressed the button and the elevator door opened. As soon as she was inside, the elevator started to go down jerkily, for it probably hadn’t been used in over 100 years.
It seemed forever for the rusty pistons to carry the elevator to it’s destination, but Kari did not have a clear sense of time so she did not notice.
89
Eventually, with a sudden jolt, the elevator stopped, and the doors slowly opened. There before her stood a long winding tunnel through the dry earth just big enough to walk in without having to crouch down. Kari was starting to think clearly again and the radiation effects were stopping, so she figured that she must be at least 20 miles down. What would something be doing down here?
She started to walk into the tunnel, which was lit only by a few brave, flickering LED bulbs every 100 feet or so. Kari could barely see where she was going, but there seemed to be nothing in the tunnel. Then suddenly she cringed as the tunnel suddenly flooded with light.
In front of her stood a sign, and then a small door a dozen feet behind it. The sign read, “YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER A TRIP TO ANCIENT TERRAN HISTORY. IF YOU ARE HONEST AND TRUE, PROCEED. IF YOU ARE FALSE AND VIOLENT, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE OUR PRECIOUS TIME. THANK YOU.”
Kari, mystefied, walked quickly toward the door and opened it. Then she gasped.

CHAPTER EIGHT

90
She saw a brilliantly bright room that must have been miles long and wide, and have a ceiling at least 300 feet in the air. Trees (real Terran trees!!!) and other plants populated the ground, with rabbits and deer darting around and wildflowers dotting the landscape. Birds flew overhead. Bright lights lit up the enclosed world from the extremely high ceiling. Kari was not exactly stricken with awe, she had seen things like this in the Habitats orbiting Mars. But what suprised her was, What in the heck was this doing on Terra?
Then she saw another sign to her left. It was titled, “MISSION STATEMENT.” She read it eagerly.
Welcome to the ancient Terran recreated world. This is an entirely self-sustaining environment created by the Preservers, which is us. When everybody else left, we attempted to preserve Terra forever by creating this. There might be a few humans still living here, but they may have all died out by the time you read this. If there are any humans left, you may contact them for further information. Please do not harm our creation.
91
“Hello?” hollered Kari, but she only succeeded in frightening the rabbits. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to meet the “Preservers” after all. It sounded too much like Neoterra for her liking.
Kari started to wander into the forest. About 100 feet in, there was a stretch of red tape. She was wondering why this was there when suddenly she heard two voices scream. She looked up and saw two young children, who must have been 5 or 6, running away. Kari ran after them, through the forest, and out into a grassy feild. There were different food crops growing there, all authentically Terran. At the end of a feild was a huge grey building. The young children ran up to it and went through the door. Kari wandered closer.
92
A sign above the door read, “THE PRESERVERS. POPULATION 31.” Kari cautiously opened the door.
Inside were vast computers, science labs, chemistry tables, and several people working very intensely at them. The children were tugging at one of the older workers, saying, “There’s a stranger! There’s a stranger!” He looked up, and dropped his flask.
“A SPY!!! A SPY FROM THE PARENTS!!!” he yelled. Immediately a metal cage dropped over Kari. Kari did not understand for a moment, but then she figured that these people did not like the Parents, and that she looked like one of their Containers (which she had been).
Thundering down a stairway over on the far corner were several men, women, and children. “What’s going on?” one of the women asked.
“A spy, Laura,” said the man, “The Parents sent a spy.”
“Wait!” said Kari. “I’m not from the Parents!” That wasn’t exactly true, so she added, “And I’m not a spy for them! They sent me here to get rid of me!”
The Preservers, who Kari figured correctly were all the people living here, paused. “How do we know she’s not lying?” one of them said suddenly, and they began to argue amongst themselves.
93
Back in the asteroid belt, a red light flashed on the display board. “Oh no,” said Jaa, “I completely forgot. This is only an escape pod!”
“What does that mean?” said Ian.
“It means that there’s not enough fuel in this tin sphere to get us all the way to Terra!” said Jaa, obviously frustrated. “We only have enough to get to Mars!”
Oh no, thought Ian, remembering his last visit to the Red Planet.
94
Suddenly one of the children gasped, and pointed to where Kari had been standing only a moment before. There was now only a faint haze, and a few billionths of a second later, that too was gone.
Kari regained consciousness in the teleportation lab on Callisto. It was curiously empty. Kari had not got to see it before, but it looked completely unremarkable.
And, miracle of miracles, there were her clothes, lying on the smooth cold floor next to the metal table! But with that welcome sight, there came another, not so welcome, one.
The robot that had been about to pick them up had malfunctioned and now stood frozen. And the Parents’ robots never malfunctioned.
95
Kari opened the door onto a scene of devastation. The artifisphere generator near the headquarters must have been intact, because she was able to breathe. Other than that, the remnants of the headquarters were mostly shreds of twisted metal.
She did not feel any great sorrow for the Parents or the headquarters; indeed, at first she felt only relief, but then a thought popped into her head.
What happened to Ian and Jaa?
As she looked around, she saw the landing pad. There was a familiar ship on it. It wasâ€¦
96
“The Victory!” Kari picked up her clothes and ran to her ship, which she thought had been lost to the Parents forever. Then, when she raised her fists up in the air, she noticed a blue spot on her arm. She looked at it.
“Oh no,” she muttered, “The Parents gave me a new Microchip!”
97
The familiar red globe came into the window’s view once again as Jaa prepared to land. Since he had not come to go to MarsGarden, he could land in the country he pleased. He steered toward Mars03, as it had humbly accepted it’s status as the third country founded, and had not fought over the rights to the artifacts like Mars02 and Mars01.
98
“Drat!” said Kari. She was reluctant to go anywhere with the microchip in her arm, as it would only be a matter of time before she was caught, but she couldn’t stay here either.
At last she reasoned that the Parents were probably all dead, if the headquarters were anything to go by. It was more to reassure herself that it was safe to leave than because she actually believed it, but she chanted it to herself while she started up the Victory, and by the time she blasted off from Callisto, she was beginning to believe that none of them, not even Kerj, could possibly have survived the bomb that devastated the headquarters.
99
To her delight, the ship had been entirely restocked with gadgets and the fuel tank had been filled. She now had enough fuel to travel at least 15 AUs.
Since she figured she was out of reaches of the bomb’s radiation, she put her clothes back on.
Now where would Ian and Jaa be? She thought for a moment. What if they were the ones who set off the bomb? What if they were blown up when the Parent’s headquarters were destroyed?

CHAPTER NINE

100
The people of Mars03 were a mild and pleasant bunch, in sharp contrast with their neighbors. Jaa landed their pod in a public port and they debarked from the ship.
Jaa reached a bench and collapsed, head in his hands. “Kari’s dead, we’re stuck on the most warlike planet in Solana, and we have no money or food. We’re doomed.”
101
Ian was equally depressed. Despite the fact that Kari drove him crazy fifty per cent of the time, he had gotten used to the sharp-witted, sardonic girl. He trudged back into the Victory and slumped into the control chair. Not knowing why he did it, he called up a tracking program and entered his ID number. INVALID flashed on the screen. No surprise there. His microchip was out. He put in Jaa’s. INVALID. But when he entered Kari’s, for no particular reason, the results were more surprising.
REQUESTED CHIP NO LONGER VALID. SEARCH NUMBER OF REPLACEMENT CHIP? Y/N
A faint flutter of hope started in Ian’s chest. Fingers trembling, he pressed Y. A map of Callisto appeared on the screen, slowly rotating and zooming in.
“JAA!” he cried, more loudly than he had intended. “Come look at this!
102
Jaa was at his side before you could say “microchip.” “What-”
“Kari must be alive! And she has a new microchip!” Ian had never thought he’d be happy about that fact. Neither had Jaa, but in fact they were jubilant.
“She’s on Callisto,” Jaa began, but before he could say whatever it was that he was going to say next, the map shifted, so that it was now showing space around the Jovian moons.
“Not anymore,” said Ian, grinning from ear to ear. But Jaa had thought of something, and was suddenly sober.
“How are we going to contact her? We don’t even know what ship she’s on.”
103
Then Jaa thought of something else. “How could she be on any ship?” he said. “The Parent’s headquarters and all their rockets got blown up!..at least I think they did. What if that hydrogen bomb wasn’t big enough to destroy the entire building. What do you think, Ian?”
Ian’s eyes were following the map on the screen. Kari appeared to be traveling at a very high speed on a route commonly taken to get to Ceres.
“She’s going to Ceres,” he said, clearly not paying any attention to what Jaa was saying.
“Ian!” cried Jaa in frustration, then is curiosity got the better of him. “Why would she be going to Ceres?”
“Maybe she thinks that we’re there?” said Ian doubtfully.
104
Jaa picked up the radio off the wall. “Well, we’ve got to tell her that we’re not,” he said as he began dialing all of the Parent’s ship numbers he could remember. None of the numbers found a destination, every time the radio would say, “There is no ship with that number. You may have incorrectly dialed the number, or that ship may have wrecked. Please try again.” Frustrated, Jaa started redialing all the numbers when Ian asked, “Have you tried dialing the Victory?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Jaa irritably. “The Victory wouldn’t have survived.” But he dialed the number all the same. To his suprise, someone answered.
105
Jaa almost dropped the phone. “Hello?” said Kari’s voice aprehensivly. “KARI?! Howâ€¦?”
Kari recognized the voice. “Jaa!” she said. “Is that you?”
“Yesâ€¦” stuttered Jaa, shocked. “Whatâ€¦what are you doing on the Victory?”
106
Kari felt a wave of relief. The police were not the ones calling. She was afraid that with her new microchip, the police could hunt her down, and she was pretty well wanted for some of the things she had done.
But then Kari began to wonder, what had happened?
“Jaa! Are you alright? What happened to the headquarters? Is Ian there? Where are you?”
107
“First things first,” said Jaa, amused to hear Kari so full of questions. “Do you want to hear bad news, or good news first?”
“Bad,” said Kari automatically.
“You have a new microchip.”
“I knew that. Is that all?”
“We’re out of fuel on Mars. Luckily, it’s Mar03. Now for the good news. We blew up the headquarters.”
“I saw! It was almost completely demolished.”
Almost? thought Jaa, but chose not to pursue the matter. “And we’re both fine,” he continued. “Now I get to ask the questions. One, why are you going to Ceres?”
108
“Ceres?” said Kari. “I assumed that that would be where you would go, since that’s where Ian lived before he met me. Why in the Solana would you be going to Mars?”
“Ian found out that you were teleported to Terra, so we were heading there to try and rescue you. But then we tracked your microchip and found that you were, in fact, still on Callisto. I think Ian misheard the bit about Terra.”
“No, no,” said Kari, “I was on Terra for a little while.”
109
“How did you survive?” asked Jaa.
“I think they put some nanobots in me to protect me for a little while. But I found that underground in Antarctica there’s a group of people called the Preservers and they’re doing something thatâ€¦”
“Wait!” said Jaa. “Can you please come to Mars? We have no food or money. Do you have any food or money?”
“I don’t have any food, but I have lots of money,” said Kari. “The Parents stocked our ship well. There’s at least 40 betrens in the storage unit.”
110
Two sol-days later, the trio was sitting around a table in a public park on Mars.
“What should we do now?” asked Jaa.
“Why don’t we go and find out what the Preservers are doing?” suggested Ian.
“That sounds splendid,” said Jaa. “Now that we don’t have to worry about the Parents, we can do whatever we want. We defeated the Parents, didn’t we?”
“I don’t knowâ€¦” said Kari. “About everything in the Parent’s headquarters was destroyed, except for the teleporting room and part of the ship garage.”
111
The Container straightened up from the computer in front of him, pressing a button on the wall. “SIR?”
“WHAT IS IT?” came a cold, annoyed voice through the speakers.
“HIGH PATRICIAN, I’VE MANAGED TO RECONSTRUCT THE PLANS FOR THE GRAVITY ENGINE FROM RENEGADE JAA’S NOTES. SHALL WE BEGIN CONSTRUCTION?”
“WHERE, THOUGH? OUR HEADQUARTERS AND OUR FACILITY ON IO HAVE BOTH BEEN DESTROYED.”
“WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET CORE FACILITY, SIR?”
“YOU READ MY MIND. SET COURSE FOR MERCURY.”
“YES, SIR.” Kerj ended the transmission and flicked a lever. The engines powered up, sending the Orca, the only ship to escape from the wreckage of the Parents headquarters, towards the most inhospitable planet known to man.

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146

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 19:44

Okey-doke. I’ll start editing in a couple of hours.

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147

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 19:47

144- The subsections are 56 and 58.

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148

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 21:27

Chapter 1, Part 2. My comments are in italics and my changes in bold, to avoid confusion.

CHAPTER ONE

I switched paragraphs 1 and 2. It makes more sense that way.

1
Things were not going well at the Parents headquarters. Since Renegades KRI and JAA had escaped security had tripled over night. Some systems were simple, but others were devastatingly complicated. In one corridor an image was captured when someone entered. If it did no match the records on the database huge steel triangles slid up from the floor, quickly unfolding into squares of metal origami. At others the floor rose up and portcullises slammed down trapping the intruder. Every door was fitted with a scanner that detected weaponry. If an autospear or anything else was detected an alarm would go off and high-speed cameras would make sure the face did not go unnoticed. The beauty of the alarm system was that it went off in every room except the room that had activated it. A break-in was hardly possibleâ€¦
2
“Five betrens. And that’s final,” said Kari firmly.
“Seven,” said the betwer.
“FIVE.”
“Six,” said the betwer, but its argument was weak, and within minutes Kari was gripping the can of food paste tightly as she walked back to the ship.
Less than a week had passed since Io exploded, but the three adventurers were already much richer than they ever had been. Kari could easily have spent twice as much on the food paste and still have been well off. However, it never hurt to pay as little as possible.
3
“Hey, Kari!”
Kari spun around. Across the hangar, she saw Ian waving from on top of their tiny ship, the Victory. Jaa was only half visible, his upper torso, head and arms buried in the ship’s innards behind an open panel. Muffled Terran curses came from deep in the wiring, usually accompanied by loud clanks.
“I got some food,” said Kari when she reached the ship. Ian looked dolefully at the food paste, remembering the flavor of the Parents’ food, but he did not complain. It was something to eat, after all.
4
The fuel had proved remarkably tricky to sell, despite the fact that the betwers obviously wanted it, and at one point they had been forced to flee Deimos for a day or two and land elsewhere, after Kari had demanded a most exorbitant price for a can of the fuel. As a result of these relatively minor incidents, it had been some time before they had managed to get food, and the Parents’ stash of TV dinners had gone quickly.
5
Kari caught Ian’s expression. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
Jaa emerged from the ship, his white-blond hair stained an oily black. “What is it?”
“The Parents are probably paying more attention to their headquarters after Project Neoterra failed, and less to their other outposts, such as the illegal habitats that they have orbiting Terra.”
She paused, waiting for the penny to drop.
Ian gasped. “You don’t seriously meanâ€¦ ”
Jaa grinned. “Why not? If we capture one of them and move it into a different orbit, we’ll have a home base and somewhere to get food. Real food, not just this paste.”
“But there are only three of us! And our only ship is an escape pod! It’s minuscule!”
“Don’t worry,” Kari said. “I sold one canister of fuel to the Betwer for the food, and three others for a little addition to the ship. Jaa?”
“Everything’s ready for the linkup,” Jaa replied. “Come on, let’s go over to the maintenance dock.”
6
“We’re going to attach more powerful engines, a storage module, and maybe a couple of weapons,” Kari explained as they boarded. “I sold the canisters to a guy who runs the best illegal ship upgrading business in the inner planets.”
“Illegal???”
“Sure. We would never be able to afford a legal one. And we can’t go gallivanting around the solar system in a tiny little pod like this. After the upgrade, we can call ourselves proper traders.”
“But the ship still won’t be able to haul an entire habitat! Those things are almost a mile around!”
“It has its own engines, and Jaa and I are Containers, so we’ll be authorized to operate them.”
“But you’re renegades!” His voice dropped to a whisper here. “They’ll have erased your DNA from the database.”
“Nah. They’re too busy trying to keep Project Neoterra afloat to attend to little details like that.”
Et cetera, et cetera. All the way to the maintenance dock, Kari ruthlessly crushed Ian’s objections. By the time they reached the dock, he actually thought it was a good idea.
7- Spelling corrections were necessary here, so I made them.
As they reached the maintenance dock, Kari pulled out her list of upgrades they wanted to get and which ones they could afford.
“First things first,” said Kari. “We need a bigger ship.”
Ian glanced at the escape pod, which was roughly the size of a small room.
Kari looked at the upgrades available. “We’ll take that one,” she said, pointing at a drawing of a storage module that could be added easily to the side of any ship. It would almost double the size of their escape pod.
8
“Second things second,” Kari continued. “Better engines. Can we have size 4, please?” Ian looked at their own engines, which were size 1. Everything on an escape pod was the cheapest available, as the pods probably wouldn’t be used anyway.
9
“Third things third,” said Kari. “We need some weapons.” She turned to Ian and Jaa. “Any suggestions?”
“Well,” Jaa said, thinking, “we don’t want to kill anyone. I’d say a couple of high-power magnabeams- they’ll shut down ships and knock people out, but nothing fatal.”
“Nothing fatal?” Ian nearly shouted. His arm was still not back to normal, and he was very sensitive to any mention of magnabeams.
“The good ones aren’t,” Jaa explained. “It’s the low-quality beams that can kill.”
This didn’t much sense at all, and Ian said so.
10
“They were only designed a few years ago, to stun but not kill.” By a few years ago, Jaa meant a few decades ago, but being frozen had messed up his sense of time. “They were mostly used by the top government ships. Then the lower-class weapons manufacturers realized that magnabeams would be a huge hit among traders and so forth, and started making them. But the originals were very fine-tuned, and it was something that couldn’t be duplicated. I guess even the Parents couldn’t get their hands on real government magnabeams.”
“But if they couldn’t, how could we?”
“As it happens,” replied Kari, “this particular maintenance dock has some. Second-hand, of course, but it will do.”
Ian sighed deeply. He hated going against the law, but he figured as they had already been doing so much illegal stuff anyway, it wouldn’t matter if they got some smuggled weapons on their ship. Even if he had thought otherwise, it would have been impossible to convince the former Containers of this. They were practically ecstatic at their good fortune.
11
After the upgrades had been installed, the trio climbed aboard their new, improved ship. “Which habitat do you think we should try and take over?” Kari as the started up the powerful engines. “The one orbiting at 14 degrees latitude has a good variety of life in it,” Jaa replied.
Several hours later they were blasting off from Ganymede on a test run. Jaa and Ian wanted to leave right then (well, mostly Jaa,) but Kari was firm. They had to see how the ship worked first, because who knows what could happen?

I didn’t do too much editing, since this thread is mostly free of inconsistencies, but I did put in more detail where I thought it was necessary.

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149

E2MB

in May 28th, 2007 @ 21:57

148 – Wow, you’re quick.

Why did you think 1 and 2 needed to be switched? I like how it splashes you into the story, then gives you some back information, then continues with the story. I also think 2 doesn’t quite sound right as the beginning. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t.

2 could be a breif prolouge.

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150

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 22:02

149- Okay. I don’t much care, and besides, looking back on one of the previous threads, I see we had already decided that that was how it would work. I’ll change it back in my draft.
And my most annoying writing habit is stating with all the background information and stuff.

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151

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 22:30

In segment 22, why are they going to Mars? I thought that Mars was a dreadful place.

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152

E2MB

in May 28th, 2007 @ 23:19

151 – The reason they were going to Mars because MarsGarden was there. Remember?

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153

Alice

in May 28th, 2007 @ 23:43

Yeah, but that was before they decided to throw Kerj in MarsGarden. By the way, does that plan still stand?

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154

E2MB

in May 29th, 2007 @ 11:25

153 –

#1 – They were origionally going there to get away from Kerj. Then Kiki posted the MarsGarden plan. Then PC wrote a post about how war-torn Mars was and then I added to it. It’s a teense inconsistent, but I don’t think readers will notice.

#2 – I would assume no. It failed the first time and now Kerj feels like killing them at first sight.

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155

Alice

in May 29th, 2007 @ 11:45

Alright. Maybe we should change it to, “and we’re off to Terra!” (I’m dreadfully nitpicky, maybe I should shut up now.)

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156

E2MB

in May 29th, 2007 @ 12:04

155 – That makes even less sense than Mars. Why on earth would they go to Terra? (pardon the pun) I think what would make most sense would be that we change it to, “and we’re off!” They were trying to get away from Kerj origionally, so they don’t have to have a defined destination.

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157

Alice

in May 29th, 2007 @ 12:11

156- Okay, that works too. But they were going to Terra to get the illegal habitat orbiting at 14 degrees latitude.

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158

E2MB

in May 29th, 2007 @ 12:15

157 – They were?

I have made a conceptional cover for the Terraformed books and a conceptional icon for the Terraformed series. (It has a planet with one side earth as it looks today and on the other side how it is in Terraformed, all radiation-bombarded and such, with a lightning bolt running down the middle.) I have figured out how to e-mail pictures. Which e-mail address should I send them to?

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159

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in May 29th, 2007 @ 12:21

gapa @ musefanpage.com

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160

E2MB

in May 29th, 2007 @ 12:37

159 – Thanks. I’ll send it as soon as I can.

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161

Alice

in May 29th, 2007 @ 13:28

158- That sounds good, but weren’t we going to put all the books together into one novel?

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162

E2MB

in May 29th, 2007 @ 13:52

161 – Oh yea. Well, maybe it could be the cover for all three books, if I take off the title of Part 1.

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163

Alice

in May 29th, 2007 @ 15:36

I’m redoing segment 93 of Part 1, because we somehow neglected to smooth out a really bumpy piece.

in June 1st, 2007 @ 21:19

176 – The dirt probably contains magnetic material. This is Ganeymede, so we’re not confined to ordinary, earthly dirt.

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178

Alice

in June 2nd, 2007 @ 18:23

I finished Chapter Two. (Finally!) Here it is:

CHAPTER TWO

They got a relatively bumpy ride, but Jaa was pleased with the speed of the ship. “We clocked 70 minutes and 22 seconds over 148,800,000 miles,” he proudly announced as they pulled into Ganymede’s dock. “That’s almost 1/5 the speed of light!” Kari exclaimed, beaming.
12
Ian said nothing. He was a proper trader now, supposedly, as well as an outlaw, but even though traders often bent the law, and outlaws outright broke it, he still felt uncomfortable doing anything illegal. He voiced something that had been bothering him since Io.
“Guys?” he said uncertainly. Kari and Jaa turned. “You both burnt out your microchips, but I didn’t. I’m still trackable. And probably being tracked, too.”
“No, you’re not,” said Kari. She pushed up his sleeve. There was the tiny green pinprick of light that signified a microchip. “It’s still there,” said Ian bluntly. He wasnâ€™t sure what heâ€™d been expecting, but not that.
“That doesn’t mean you’re trackable,” replied Kari. “Remember the magnabeam? It struck this arm, right? That would have shut it off as effectively as if you’d died. And you have the bonus of it still looking like it’s there. Much less conspicuous than a gaping hole in your arm. ”
“Wow.” Ian suddenly felt as though a huge weight, one he’d had all his life, had lifted from his shoulders. He still couldn’t comprehend it completely- no microchip!- but he knew it was good.
13
“We’ll need to refuel this,” Jaa said. “I’ll drive it over to the fuel tanks.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Kari said. “I’ve seen Ganymede five times. You guys, if I’m correct, are new to this place. You might want to look around.”
Jaa grinned. “Sure, why not? I hear the Great Cavern is breathtaking.”
14
As Ian and Jaa got off the Victory and stepped into the elevator leading to the lower levels, Ian tried to remember all he could about Ganymede. Cavern City, where they were now, consisted of two main parts. The first was the Spire, a massive tower that loomed up seven hundred feet from the icy, barren surface. Docks lined the walls in a spiral pattern, and all of the spacefaring businesses were crammed into capsules on its inside.
Below the Spire was the Great Cavern, a huge cave half-filled with water. A triple volcano, its lava generated by the constant gravitational pull of Jupiter, kept the subterranean sea from freezing. In the low gravity, fantastic towers and crenellations of ice had formed on the cavern ceiling as the water melted and refroze. The rest of the city’s population dwelt in living units anchored to the icy stalactites. Ian was looking forward to seeing it.
15
When the elevator door opened, Ian was more fascinated then he could have imagined. All the lights flashing off the stalactites across the ceiling created an eerie feeling, while the water contrasted the greenish-white ceiling with black and dark blue. There were shops everywhere, buying and selling, and people traveled around the underground sea on personal hovercrafts.
Ian and Jaa had a fair bit of time to look around, while Kari would be negotiating fuel prices on the Spire. As they both walked out onto the steel platform, they approached a hovercraft rental. The price was steep, but they had plenty of money to pay with.
Ian, in the midst of sheer excitement in the depths of Cavern City, almost rammed his hovercraft into a wall. “Slower,” said Jaa, “We can’t run into people or we could cause a disturbance and get thrown out.”
16
But a disturbance found them first. As they rode through an empty section of sea closer to the main part of the city, they were forced to turn around by a mob of people going the opposite direction. Apparently something had happened.
17
Meanwhile, Kari was looking for some good fuel. The larger engines, while a bonus in some ways, made it awfully hard to find fuel. She had almost found what she needed when she found out that it was some of her own canisters of fuel she had sold a while ago. The spire was a crowded place, and it took a great deal of time to move from one place to another. She eventually found another fuel dealer.
“I’d like some canisters of something between quality 100 and quality 110 fuel,” she told the woman who was at the front, hoping to be more specific than last time. “We have 4 canisters left of quality 108 fuel.” said the woman.
Kari did a quick mental calculation. Their ship would be able to travel 1 AU on one canister of quality 100 fuel. Mars was a little more than 2 AUs away. Would that be enough?
“Do you have any more in that range?” she asked. “I’m afraid not,” said the woman. “A lot of private ships have been asking for fuel lately and we’re just about out.” Sighing, Kari paid for the fuel and started to return toward the ship.
18
“What’s going on?” Ian gasped, in the underground part of Cavern City.
Jaa looked around. Then his mouth dropped open. “It can’t beâ€¦ ”
A sleek, black hovercraft was powering over the water toward them. At the controls was a young woman, her features obscured by the shaded carboglass windscreen. Another one, a man, was standing upright, holding a magnabeam in his hand. He had the unmistakable white-blond hair and green eyes of a Container.
Ian pulled the hovercraft around in a hard right. A slash of white spray cut the dark water as the small boat powered up and shot forward.
Jaa knew what they wanted. They needed him to reconstruct the gravitational engines for Project Neoterra. And they didn’t care what they did to get him.
19
Kari had put the fuel in their ship and had gone to the underground part of cavern city to tell Ian and Jaa that they could get going to Mars when she heard a commotion behind her. She turned and saw, beyond all the people, two hovercrafts racing across the water. As she watched, a thin pulse of magnetic energy, visible only to Kari, with her superior vision, shot out from the black hovercraft towards the smaller one. Which held Ian and Jaa. Her vision zoomed in almost of her own accord. That wasn’t just any man, it was a Container. And not just any Containerâ€¦
“Oh, God, no,” Kari whispered. “Is he invincible?”
It was Kerj.
20
Kari quickly ducked out of sight. If Kerj saw her, all three of them would be doomed.
“Gangway!” screamed Jaa, as he turned the hovercraft onto full speed in a desperate attempt to break free from the grasp of the magnetic pulse when he ran into a cavern wall and found himself tunneling through Ganymedeâ€™s rough soil, the magnetic shield pushing the dirt out of the way.
“YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME,” roared Kerj, “AND YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR DESTRUCTION OF THE ARTIFICIAL-GRAVITY MACHINES.” And with that he released the magnetic shield, just as Ian and Jaa’s hovercraft burst through the surface of the planet.
The hovercraft’s engine gave a little gargle and died.
21
“I think we’re safe,” said Jaa. “For now.”
“‘Gangway’?” asked Ian, half amused.
“Terran,” gasped Jaa.
“Right. You’ll have to teach me Terran sometime. In the meantime, I thought these things only worked in the water?”
“Apparently not,” said Jaa.
22
When the pair reached Victory, they found Kari already there, just about to blast off. “Wait!” called Ian, and Kari stopped. “I thought you had been captured by Kerj!” she said, surprised.
“We escaped,” said Jaa breathlessly. “It’s a long story.”
They both clambered aboard, while Kari was still in a state of shock. “Turn the engines back on,” said Jaa, “We’ve got our fuel and weâ€™re off!”
They had just blasted off when Kerj climbed out of the hole the hovercraft had made. He glanced at the sky and saw their ship. He knew who was in there. And he had no intention of letting them get awayâ€¦
23
Back on the Victory, Ian and Jaa were recovering from their horrifying encounter.
“How did he survive?” Ian said incredulously, referring to Kerj.
“My best guess,” Jaa replied, “is nanobots. At least three in every cell, to provide oxygen and sheathe his body in a pressure field. The Parents must have worked obsessively on him, but it paid off. He would be able to survive in up to 500 degrees Kelvin, absolute zero, or a total vacuum. He’s what they would call a perfect Container.”
“The nanobots can even protect him from some Terran weapons if necessary”, continued Jaa. “He’s the kind of container you don’t want to get on the bad side of. Unfortunately, that’s right where we are.”
24
“Well, he can’t be too dangerous, can he?” asked Ian. “it’s not like the nanobots give him superstrength or anything. Right?”
“Uhhâ€¦wellâ€¦that’s the other thing.”
“Oh, no.”
“He is very strong,” said Jaa, “and the nanobots can cure him of whatever injury he obtains except death. The only way we could ever get rid of him would be to kill him very quickly.”
Kari sighed. “Then we’d better get away from him,” she said suddenly, turning the speed on the Victory up a notch.
“But,” said Jaa, “Pain still hurts him. So he avoids it when he can. It was one of the only things that the Parents couldn’t help him with.”
25
“Wait!” cried Ian in realization.
“What?” asked Jaa and Kari in unison.
“If pain hurts him, and the only way for him to be killed is to do it quickly,” he mused.
“Yes?” said Kari impatiently.
“I read this book back on Ceres about the Marsgarden Discovery,” said Ian.
Kari and Jaa looked at Ian quizzically.
“You, know,” sighed Ian. “In 2099, Terran scientists discovered a system of methane, hydrogen, and other assorted poisonous gas caves under the surface of Mars. These caves are easily accessible from the ruined Base 1, and will immediately kill any carbon-based lifeform that enters unprotected.”
Jaa still looked confused, but a look of understanding dawned upon Kari’s face.
“So,” she began.
“We throw Kerj in the Marsgarden!” announced Ian.
26
“Hmmmm,” said Jaa, “He’s always trying to destroy us, so maybe we could lure him in by – ” He was interrupted by a flash from the advanced radar system, indicating that they were within 400 miles of some object. Traveling at nearly 30 miles per second, they wouldn’t want to risk slamming into something that quickly.
Kari looked at the screen. “It says there’s an object recognizable as a spaceship of some sort 38.23 miles away. It seems to be following us, as it does not get any closer or farther away while we are moving.”
27
“Kerj, do you think?” mused Jaa.
“Wouldn’t Kerj try to gain on us?” asked Ian. “His ship can probably go much faster than Victory.”
Kari smiled. “Not necessarily. I think you underestimate our little escape pod.” Her smile turned fierce. “Let’s see how effective those new engines are, why don’t we?”
Ian turned pale. “This is only our test run!” he remembered. “Shouldn’t we go back?”
“Not possible,” said Kari shortly. “We paid the man, so now we can do whatever we like. Anyways, we already did our test run. It worked fine, didn’t it?”
28
“But the ride got pretty bumpy when we turned it up to the higher levels of speed,” said Jaa. “We may want to strap ourselves into some seats if we want to turn it up to full speed.”
“Whatever you say,” said Kari, sitting down in a chair behind her. “Now let’s turn the rockets onto full speed!” She pulled down the speedshift lever all the way to the bottom.
29
A force of 8 G’s crushed all three of them into their seats as the rockets flared up. The speedometer said they were approaching 80% of the speed of light. “Myâ€¦ visionâ€¦ isâ€¦ bluuuryâ€¦” Ian shouted as well as he could, it required so much energy to move his mouth.
“Atâ€¦. thisâ€¦.. rateâ€¦.” said Jaa, “We’llâ€¦.. reachâ€¦. Marsâ€¦.. inâ€¦ minutes..”
Kari, unable to take the pressure any longer, pulled the speedshift lever up two notches. The ship slowed down some.
30
“It didn’t used to do that,” said Ian limply.
“That’s because this ship isn’t built to take it. We could do that in the old rescue ship easily, but Victory’s just made for getting away.”
“Well, it did get us away.” said Kari. “That other ship is no longer in our radar.”

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179

Alice

in June 2nd, 2007 @ 19:10

By the time the GAPAs come back and moderate all these posts, I’ll be done with the entire book!

I just did Chapter Four.

in June 16th, 2007 @ 14:12

192- It will be!

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194

Alice

in June 16th, 2007 @ 18:45

The editing is coming along nicely. I made this story so much better you wouldn’t believe. I’ll post 1.1 soon.

What I’ve done is added everything missing from four-letter adjectives to whole scenes, snipped sentences that are no longer relevant, and in general improved on it. I also added about 300 words. So far.

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195

E2MB

in June 17th, 2007 @ 19:16

194 – Sounds pretty significant. When you’re done, we probably won’t be able to recognize the edited story versus the origional posts!

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in June 17th, 2007 @ 19:17

Btw, you don’t have to bother putting all changes in bold. With the amount of editing it sounds like you’re doing, I’ll just re c+p the whole thing onto my word document.

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Alice

in June 17th, 2007 @ 19:24

196- Good, because I was going to have to check it against my other draft, since I made so many changes and ignored the bolding.

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Alice

in June 18th, 2007 @ 12:21

Chapter 1

1
The lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed. He was safe here.
2
Ian walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their pages. No one had ever read the books. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
3
Ian sighed. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen electroimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite Terran tale, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form. He really didn’t get what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photos”, or whatever they called live imaging back then. So Ian had really no idea what trees looked like, and he tried to imagine them as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He was so engrossed in imagining Terra that he didn’t see the girl heading towards him with her eyes on the shelves around them.

Whooomph!
4
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that the girl had taken the books from.
5
The entire section was very dry, something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships; a section that not even Ian had touched. Why would a thirteen-year-old girl be interested in that?
6
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly and belatedly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was caught full on by another roaring, faster moving one. He had to apologize. His mother would have liked it. He remembered back when she was alive and they had had a room. Ian had been very young, but every morning before he went to education session, she would call him over to her, and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls and the carboglass windows. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on her feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into your or step on your feet, do the same.”
“That’s their fault, isn’t it?” the boy had said.
7
“Not the point,” she’d snap, and Ian would mumble something and her in the eyes, if only for a brief second before his gaze fell towards his shoes. “You apologize!â€ said the voice of Ianâ€™s memory. â€œChase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but it would be disrespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
8
“Er, look, er, sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl at last.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass reading table and turned it on. Ian was shocked and hurt. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody really refused an apology. But still . . .
9
“What’s, er, your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl. She intrigued him, no matter how rude she was.
She didnâ€™t glance up. “It’s Kari, but that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?” asked Ian. Now he was really interested. Anyone who spoke words like â€œbeeswaxâ€ was someone to take notice of.
“Terran word.”
Ian sucked in his breath. “How do you know Terran?” Terran! Impossible.
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, so interesting . . .
10
“Whatâ€™s it mean? Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, his apprehension battling with his curiosity.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye.” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him.
11
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.”
Ian turned around. “Uh, thanks,” he said. The ice seemed to be broken between them. Thank Solana. Suddenly he blurted out, “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari evaded the question, by merely pretending he had said nothing. “Why are you here?” she asked. “This is about the time when most kids should be in the education session.”
12
Ian bristled. “I’m as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody to make me go anywhere else. Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could be translated to mean, “never coming back.”
13
It had happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony, in the old days, over a century ago, when people were evacuating Terra. Once your ship breaks through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars . . . it’s probably a 50-50 chance for survival. Anything could happen, and more often than not it did. Many a horrible fate lay in the dark galaxy, but even those were better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than you can say “nuclear.”
Of course, that had all been a very long time ago, and it was more likely that Kariâ€™s mother had died of some disease, or, like Ianâ€™s parents, an incident on another planet or asteroid, but just thinking about it sent shivers up Ianâ€™s spine.
14
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely. There wasn’t a lot to say in a situation like this.
Kari didn’t reply, and just looked straight ahead in a way that seemed both unnatural and inhuman. She was good at not showing her feelings. She had to be. In her mind though, she could be screaming of loneliness and no one would ever know. In Ian’s colony, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the clever modern scientists with their clever modern schemes, and even that was being threatened. The mind was the last place of privacy, but many were trying to break even that barrier. Some had succeeded, and Kari would never forget the dreadful years spent in their clutches.
15
Kari needed time to think. She needed to be where no one could find her, until she could make a plan. But that required getting off Ceres, and you couldnâ€™t do that without a passport. At least, you werenâ€™t supposed to. But that was why she’d been researching interplanetary trading ships. Particularly the maintenance corridors. And how to access them from the ground. Illegally.
16
“Listen,” she said to Ian. “You seem like a kid who can keep a secret, and judging from the fact that you aren’t in school – no offense – you don’t have any ties to Ceres. Are you familiar with the old Terran term â€˜stowawayâ€™?”
“No” replied Ian, and his face took on a stony look. “I hate stowaways.”
“You donâ€™t have to like them. You know what they are, right?” Kari said, and she realized that she had overstepped the line. She grabbed Ianâ€™s arm suddenly.
“Yes- no- I mean leave me alone! And go save a galaxy yourself because I am going to go read!” and he shook off her hand and stormed away.
17
Ian stopped. He half-turned and looked over his shoulder at the girl now using watery to eyes to cast a glance at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t like the idea of stowaways . . . it was a stowaway that killed my parents on their way back to Ceres from a trip to Ida. He killed them and all the other passengers, then stole the ship. No one knows what happened to him, but the final transmit from the ship was a recording in which he said that he ‘was off in search of peace’ . . . we’re not sure what that meant, but we never heard from him again. Anyway, that’s why I blew up at you . . . sorry.”
18
Kari looked at him thoughtfully.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, well . . . um . . .”
“You were planning to stow away?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach . . . hard. Kari was only thirteen, or at least that’s all she looked, and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not this girl was any good at all . . .
19
“Well, yes, but, look, I don’t plan on killing anybody, and I just want to get away from here! You have no idea what it’s like to have no home to go to at the end of the day, and to have to scrounge for scraps to live on, andâ€¦” Kari bit her tongue, hard. She had nearly said more, and if she had, then she would have been in big, big, trouble.
“Actually, I do,â€ said Ian, unaware of how close he had come to finding out Kariâ€™s biggest secret.
Kari looked flustered. “Oh, well . . . yes, I suppose you do . . .” she trailed off.
20
“I would like to go with you.” Ian said.
“You would?”
“Yes. I, too, want to get out of here . . . if I can do something other than creep around town like a rat all day, hoping I don’t get caught by the police, and then sleep in a tunnel at night on an empty stomach, I’ll take it. I just wish it wasn’t something so dangerous.”
Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him . . . maybe they weren’t so very different, after all â€“ if you ignored their histories. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
21
“All right,” Ian said. “Where do you plan to go? Mars?”
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. It’s habitable like Siberia was habitable.” Of course, neither Siberia nor any other part of Terra was now habitable by any stretch of the imagination, but Ian had read enough books about Terra to understand the metaphor. Sort of.
“No,” Kari continued. “We’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
“But there’s no way I’m stowing away,” said Ian so firmly that Kari had to give in.
“If you have the money, then we can take a shuttle,â€ she said finally. Ian looked at her questioningly and opened his mouth, but she cut in. â€œIt’s still illegal, but not quite as bad.”
Kari and Ian boarded the next shuttle to Jupiter that very day, though it cost seven years worth of saving whatever Ian could find in the horribly clean tunnels of Ceres. The shuttle was nearly emptyâ€”not many people could afford to or wanted to leave their safe and tedious existences on the asteroid, and if they did, they had to get passports, a process that took a very long time and a good deal of money. Ian had one from his vacations from his parents as a small child, but Kari shook her head at it.
â€œTheyâ€™ll be able to track you if they know about that,â€ she said. â€œHave any money?â€
Ian put his small collection of cores and half-cores into her hand. Kari looked oddly at them.
â€œWhat on earth are these? Is this what they use on Ceres nowadays?â€ She tapped one mistrustfully.
â€œWhat else should we use?â€ asked Ian, genuinely puzzled. â€œAnd whatâ€™s earth?â€
Kari said nothing, but when they boarded the shuttle, she slipped them into the pilotâ€™s hand without a word. He did not question the legality of their passports.
22
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, one of the engines failed. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them, and they plummeted back towards Ceres, while the ship became hotter and hotter still due to the air friction. Pieces of the ship started to fall off and disintegrate, but there was nothing Kari and Ian could do. The pilot was dead or unconscious: the radio that connected the cockpit to the passenger seating was silent. As the surface of the planet loomed ever closer, Kari gripped Ian’s hand for balance as she unbuckled her seat-belt and stood on the tilting floor.
Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?!”
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing green fire. His were pools of deep blue fear. She squeezed his hand.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded shakily in agreement.

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in June 18th, 2007 @ 13:08

Oh boy, you posted the first chapter! *reads eagerly*

Wow. That is much better. If you know the end of the story, you can write the beginning a lot better.

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in June 19th, 2007 @ 16:33

Should we start making plans for how to get this published?

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Alice

in June 19th, 2007 @ 16:41

200- Well, I think we should wait until we have the whole story. But I suppose we could start making plans. Mayhap we should have a new thread, because I think that Prarilius Canix would like to help with that, and he has never come here.

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Alice

in June 19th, 2007 @ 21:34

In the meantime, here are the next two chapters of Part One.

Chapter 2

23
“C’mon, help me open this!” Kari was at the emergency exit, struggling with the heavy handle. Ian cautiously stood up, and together they managed to open the door.
“Alright, when I say to do so, jump out of the shuttle, alright?”
“What?!” Ian protested. “Without inflatachutes, or anything? We can’t! And what about him?” He pointed towards the only other passenger, snoring softly in a nearby seat.
â€œAt least heâ€™s asleep. He wonâ€™t even notice when this thing crashes.â€
â€œBut â€“ â€œ
“We canâ€™t rescue him and us both. Do you wanna live, or not?” Ian braced himself, casting a last sorrowful look at the snoring man.
“On 3â€¦1, 2, 3!” Ian took a deep breath, shut his eyes tightly, and they jumped. Ian felt the wind lick his face as they free fell towards Ceresâ€¦was this the end? Was this how he would go? Falling towards the very planet from which he had tried to escape? He wished the police had caught him before he had gone into the library; he wished he had never met Kari; he wished life was still normal. But wishing changed nothing. Life was not normal, and he was going to die in only a few minutes.
Don’t breathe, Kari thought silently toward Ian. We haven’t hit the artifi-sphere yet. You’ll die. She didn’t expect him to understand her, since telepathy bugs were a part of pre-War technology that had been transported past Terra only by a few fanatics, and most lucky, ordinary, average citizens were ignorant to the fact that they had ever existed. That was for the best, too, it was horrible to feel someone . . . else in your brain, but she didn’t want this kid to die. For some reason, it felt good to be able to talk to somebody normal again, someone fully human, though her instincts, slowly implanted in her over the decades, screamed against human contact. Fifty years of boredom in sentient cryonics could do that to a girl, she supposed.
24
She looked over at Ian again. He seemed to be alive, even if he was going blue in the face, which was (awful) good. It shouldn’t be too long before they reached the artifisphere. They’d have to leave soon, because the Parents were already looking for her. Going to Ceres had been a mistake. Ceres would do anything to get into the good graces of the government, and looking for a teenage girl, who, they were told, was an escaped criminal would be the smallest price to pay for a bit of praise. They would be given her biosignature by the Parents, surely, and from there it was an easy step to finding her. Unless Ian was also a wanted renegade Container (which she doubted even without taking into consideration his physical appearance), his signature would take longer to find, but if they discovered him with her he’d be executed in the most inhumane way the Parentsâ€™ torture generals could dream up. One of the few advantages to Kari’s Container status was a relative immunity to the law; only if she committed a truly heinous crime (blowing up a planet, killing a President) would she be killed, and even then it would be, not by the hands of her creators and captors, but the government. Otherwise, she’d simply be reclaimed by the Parents, and frozen again until they could extract all her data from her. But harboring herâ€¦harboring her was suicide.
She pitied this Ian, though pity was the last thing a Container was supposed to feel. (It was a contaminant, it would taint her data, and it would jeopardize everything they’d planted in her head.) No doubt he’d lived the perfectly normal life of an orphan in the asteroid belt. Then she’d swept in, and now he was a wanted criminal. Ah well. Life at large, she supposed, was cruel.
25
Kari felt a vaguely familiar fizzle on her skin, which her information recognized as the artifisphere. “You can breathe now!” she shouted, and wondered how to tell Ian what he’d gotten himself into.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” breathed Ian, though Kari couldn’t hear him through the rushing of the air around them.
“So you’re alive?” she yelled.
“Yeah, but I won’t be for long!” Ian yelled back.
“Why?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, we’re falling at extremely fast speeds towards the HARD GROUND,” said Ian sarcastically.
Dang! thought Kari. The impact!
26
She searched her information. “Come on,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Aha!” From her pocket she pulled a small round globe of what looked like red glass. The ground was getting closerâ€¦ closerâ€¦
“COME ON!!”
Kari squeezed the globe.
“Oof!” A red mattress had sprung up out of nowhere and Kari and Ian now rested on it floated slowly down towards the barren ground of Ceres’ rural areas.
“Is that aâ€¦ Globe?” asked Ian incredulously. Globes were ancient Terran technology that could contain anything useful, as Ian had learned one fateful day when he snuck into the library to read some of the older, more valuable books. He had been caught later, but not before he learned a good deal about pre-WWL Terra. “Howâ€¦?”
Kari stuttered, “Erâ€¦ umâ€¦ wellâ€¦ I’mâ€¦”
She’d have to tell him.
“I’m a Container.”
Ian had no idea what a Container was, but from the look on Kariâ€™s face, he gathered that it was nothing good. When that was added to the events of the past four centidays â€“ meeting Kari, the bribing of the pilot, and the shuttle crashing â€“ it became too much for him. He fainted.
27
“A â€¦ a Container?” stuttered Ian when he recovered. “What in Solana is that?”
Kari groaned. She hated explaining all this. Fortunately, she’d never had to do it before, and intended never to do it again.
“It all started,” she said, “a few years after World War Last. A sort of fanatical group of people- they call themselves the Parents, since they’re supposed to be the forebears of this â€˜master raceâ€™â€¦” She was really giving him the condensed version, but a full explanation would have them there till the sun came up. And on Ceres, that was very bad. The artifisphere offered no protection against ultraviolet light. Anything not in the underground colonies was baked within minutes.
28
“Anyway, the master race is us, the Containers. The Parents want to create a new Terra somehow, so we can live there. I know, crazy. It would be impossible.”
“A new Terra? That canâ€™t be so bad.â€
Kari sighed again. Did this dolt not know anything?
“If they were going about it any other way it would be wonderful. Perfect. And so green . . .” Kari’s voice drifted off, and her eyes glazed over. Ian could almost see strange images flickering behind her pupils.
Suddenly, he blurted out, “How would you know? You’re not old enough to even have any memories of Terra!”
29
“Did they not teach you about cryogenics in school? I’m eighty-three and a half,” said Kari, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the tattoo every resident of the solar system had, which listed her birthdate, home planet, identification number, and status. It read: January 27, 2104/Mars/08234919, and then the last line of ink was blurred by a black crater with scorch marks that wrapped around her whole elbow.
“So you’re a real renegade, then, if you haven’t got a status,” said Ian. Really that old, too, if her birthday and ID number were to be believed. But still, she shouldnâ€™t have memories of Terra. World War Last had been much longer ago than eighty-three years, and she was born on Mars besides . . . But he knew better than to ask these questions. He could only imagine the response he would get.
“Yep. And let me tell you, putting a lighted firecracker to your skin to get rid of your microchip hurts a lot worse than you’d think.”
30
She had no microchip? But that meant she shouldn’t be able to function now, since the removal of a microchip instantly destroyed the information in the brain. Every idiot knew that; kids learned it when they were in primary school. Then again, Ian was getting the sense that Kari did a lot of things that shouldn’t be able to be done. Instead of asking her about it, he settled for the question, “What’s a firecracker?”
“Terran,” she responded, deflating the mattress and shoving it back into the Globe.
“Right. So, it’s kind of really dangerous to associate with you?” Ian was beginning to think that following Kari hadn’t been the best idea. Whatever these Containers were, they sounded bad, and Ian wasn’t the sort who liked bad. (Probably, he thought, Kari was.)
31
“Yep. Which means you’re stuck with me now. They know we’re together, and if they catch us, they’ll freeze and brainwash. You, they’ll destroy just enough cells to keep you within an inch of your life, then put nanobots in you and repair them, then do it again. Again and again and again.” She sounded bitter, as if she’d seen this happen before. She probably had.
So it had been a definite bad idea to get involved with Kari. Was he really going to almost die? The thought scared him, more than the idea of a nice swift execution or a ship crash. Everyone died like that, and he’d long since accepted it as inevitable. But thisâ€¦he wasn’t sure why it was so terrifying, but he was absolutely certain that he didn’t want it to happen to him.
32
“What do we do now?” Ian asked, trying to keep his voice stable.
“Leave.” Kari ran her finger over the edge of the burned pockmark in her skin, then replaced the black sleeve of her shirt. “How would you like to see Terra in person?”
“But we can’t go to Terra!” Ian exclaimed, thinking that, however she knew what Terra was like once upon a time, it must have badly damaged her sense of what it was like now. “We would die almost inst-”
“JUST LISTEN TO ME!” Kari interrupted, rather loudly. She was tired of explaining every little thing to this dim-witted child. “Of course we’re not going to land on Terra. As you said, it would be suicide. No, I’m talking about Terraâ€™s moon.”
33
Ian started. “Terraâ€™s moon? But there isn’t any habitation there!”
“Exactly. No one will look for us there if no one lives there. Right?”
“What are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra and the moon are almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
“Who said we were going to take a ship? Maybe weâ€™ll take something else!â€
â€œLike what?â€ asked Ian.
“Come on,” Kari said, “It’s not far from here, but we have to get there before sunrise.”
With that, Kari started to walk toward the dark side of the dwarf planet, unyielding to all of Ian’s questions.

Chapter 3

34
As they reached the dark side of Ceres, Ian began to see a large shape looming out of the gloom. It was roughly conical, almost likeâ€¦
“A ship?” he gasped out loud. “B-but it’s unregistered!”
“Blast,” muttered Kari. “I suppose I can’t blame you. The Solan Republic hasn’t hindered the Parents at all by making people think that lawbreaking is unthinkable. This guy isn’t exactly a friend of mine, but he’s an associate. Takes people off-planet, no questions asked, as long as they have money.”
35
“Uhâ€¦and where would you get the money? You can only get it from your assigned class,” said Ian. â€And I donâ€™t have any more.â€ He had barely been able to pay for the shuttle ride with money that he had been scrounging off the streets for seven years. Though, admittedly, that had been mostly bribing material.
“Again, the government’s fault. In Terra, people used to be able to work toward the class or job they wantedâ€¦oops. Forget I said that. I have plenty of money.””
Ian looked at Kari strangely. Why didn’t she want to share her memories? And if she had â€œplenty of moneyâ€, why hadnâ€™t she paid for the shuttle? And whatâ€™s more, if Kari had known about this man, why had they even bothered with the shuttle? Unless, of course, she hadnâ€™t wanted Ian to know about him. The boy sighed. Kari was just strange.
Kari led the way toward the ship, and hit the hull 12 times. A short, stout man appeared from nowhere.
36
“What the tikko-oh, hi, Kari!”
“Glad to see you,” said Kari insincerely, pushing the man aside and striding up to the wall of the ship and walking straight through. Ian, getting used to very strange things happening often, walked right in after her.
The man was left standing there on the rough Cerean crust with a disgruntled expression on his rather chubby face. “Dem kidsâ€¦” he muttered, and disappeared.
37
“Who was that?” asked Ian. He could accept strange things happening, but he still wanted to know why and who, if Kari would tell him.
“Just a friend of the Parents, if you could call it that. The Parents don’t really have friends, not even amongst themselves. They just share a common goal, and stay on together because of that. If they got a planet to be like Earth used to be, I wouldn’t know what would happen. They would try to destroy each other possibly, since they had finished what they joined together to doâ€¦” Kari gazed into the ship, and you could tell she knew something that she wasn’t telling Ianâ€¦ probably her Terran memories again, Ian decided unhappily. Her eyes had that weird flickering quality that must signify her implanted memories at work.
38
She snapped out of her reverie as the man appeared beside her.
“Well, if we’re going somewhere, let’s go now,” he said impatiently. “Where to, Kar-kar?”
“Luna, and don’t call me Kar-kar,” she said. â€If you do that one more time Iâ€™ll call you Antie.â€
The two followed the man, who Kari informed Ian was called Antavo, into the main passenger cabin. The ship was not very large, but the passenger cabin was holographically enhanced to make it look like it was bigger than it really was, as Ian discovered by walking into a wall. Kari selected two seats in the middle of the cabin, and Ian and her sat down. The seats were covered in some exotic fabric that looked very soft and silky, but to the touch it felt like burlap.
“Are we buckled in nice and tight?” called Antavo from the pilot’s cabin.
“Yeah, Antavo, whatever. Let’s just go.”
“Posi!” called Antavo in agreement from the pilot’s cabin, and without another word, they took off.
39
After breaking the thin artifisphere, Ian and Kari started to experience the pleasure of weightlessness. Kari had experienced it before, but Ian had not. Any ships he had ever gone on had artificial gravity. He was like a child in a candy shop. He took off his seat belts and went flying around. The driver didn’t pay much attention to him. He was used to first time passengers, not that he got many, maybe three or so. He never saw them again after their flight.
“Oh get down Ian, youâ€™re making a fool of yourself.” Kari snapped. She was strangely irritable, and not at all fond of Ian at the moment.
40
Ian slowly floated back to his seat, still unused to there not being gravity on the ship. When had there ever not been gravity in spacecraft? Not for a long, long time, since Terra maybe. Waitâ€¦ This had to be a Terra craft!! And a really old one at that. After all, all recent spacecraft have begun to simulate artificial gravity.
Ian became even more excited. Why couldn’t this be one of the transpace vehicles that had been built in the pre/Last War era in Terra?
41
Then suddenly, his meal arrived. He had not expected it, as he rarely ever ate (usually about once a month). However, it seemed that the ship was not as low-tech as it looked. Only the most important ships made meals of their own accord!
Ian slowly chewed the 48-carboprotien multivitamin tablets. They had no taste at all. Ian remembered when he had been safe, back at the library on Ceres. It had seemed so long ago, even though it was less than a day. There, he had absorbed information about when food had been GROWN, not chemically assembled from raw protons, neutrons, and electrons in particle accelerators. He could not think of what taste would be like, because his mind could not comprehend it. He often wondered what it would be like in a world where things just seemed to happen, as he had read about Terra, instead of being automated and fully predictable. Then he thought, Perhaps I know. After all, this whole . . . adventure wasnâ€™t predictable. He even smiled a little at the thought of Kari being predictable.
42
After he was done eating his nutritious, but flavorless meal, he settled into his chair to attempt sleep. No luck. Kari poked him in the arm none to gently and told him that they were just about there. “Where,” Ian asked, befuddled by a full stomach and a warm environment, “are we going again?”
“We’re headed to Luna, you dimwit. I just told you that. But youâ€™re just a youngster, you can’t be expected to remember things like I can.” Kari replied haughtily. She was nervous and edgy, and the best way to hide that was to use words incomprehensible to anyone but a Container. Ian sat with a puzzled expression on his face. Dimwit? Youngster? Kari did like to show off.
43
As they approached the lunar landscape, they headed toward the landing spot at the top of Luna. It was the site of an abandoned colony. It had originally been built in 2041, but after Terra’s World War Last, two years later, the colony had been abandoned as there was no longer a source of vital nutrients and items for life. It was never revived later as the atmosphere is very poor.
The ship slowly powered down through the thin atmosphere. It landed roughly among the random debris that was scattered around the colonies observation dome. Ian was thrown backward with the force of the impact. He crashed against the wall of the ship. “Stupid Terran technology,â€ he muttered, despite the fact that he had been ecstatic about it only a little while ago.
The driver each handed them a spacesuit, since there was no air on Luna. Ian and Kari each put one on. They were as flexible and thin as clothing.
Kari paid for their ride â€“ Ian noted the currency was like none he had ever seen – and the boy and girl headed toward the abandoned colonial landscape. “A real ghost town,” Kari said. Terran words, thought Ian with a sigh. Iâ€™ll never get used to them.

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203

Cat's Meow

in June 20th, 2007 @ 22:37

I’m sorry….for some reason I just forgot to come here for ages and ages and ages. I’ll try to be more diligent now, but I can’t promise anything. I guess I’ll just start with the most recent version on the webpage thingy and edit that, okay?

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204

Alice

in June 20th, 2007 @ 23:11

203- Does this mean I have to start bolding my changes again? Ugh. Anyway, Cat’s Meow, you should start with the first three chapters that I recently updated. (Posts 202 and 198.) They are more recent than the website.

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205

Alice

in June 21st, 2007 @ 00:13

Chapter 4, heavily redone.

Chapter 4

44

As they went inside the observation dome, Ian glanced at display cases. He marveled at how bulky the old spacesuits were. Those bags of bricks! But Kari was already ahead of him, giving him no time to look around.
â€œBut Kari,â€ he protested, as she seized his wrist with a mutter of impatience.
â€œCome on,â€ she said. â€œWe have to get to the life-support system in Sector 8.â€
â€œBut why? I want to look around!â€
â€œOh shut up and stop being an idiot. Youâ€™ll have plenty of time to look around later. And besides,â€ she added, â€œI think youâ€™ll like the next room.â€
Ian muttered furiously, but his protests were cut short. They had entered the library. A huge collection of books on every topic, all from Terra! Ian was in utter awe. He pulled a book off the shelf. The text did not automatically appear on a screen in front of him, and it took him a few minutes to figure out how to turn the pages and so forth. The title said, “TO THE MOON AND BACK: THE FIRST EPIC JOURNEY.” Ian was puzzled. Which moon did the book mean? There were hundreds of moons in the solar system.
45
He glanced at some other titles:
OUR ENDANGERED PLANET
FASHION PASSION: A PHOTO ESSAY
TECHNOLOGY – THE ULTIMATE EVIL
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ALGEBRA
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? HISTORIANS PONDER THE WORLD WARS
GENETIC MODIFICATION AND ITS BENEFITS TO HUMANKIND
DESTINATION: MARS! REMEMBERING 2043
A COMPLETE HISTORY OF SOCCER
MUSE COMES TO AN END – THE WHOLE WORD WEEPS
RELIGION WARS
AN ARCHIVE OF COMIC STRIPS
THUMBDISKS: A PIECE OF THE PAST
HISTORY IN THE B.C. ERA
THEY SAID ALIENS WOULD COME
THE END OF EARTH: A PREDICTION OF THE FUTURE

Ian looked at the last one, utterly confused. He remembered Kariâ€™s exclamation at seeing the cores, and concluded that earth was something Terran. “Kari,” he said, “What’s earth?”
“What is Earth? What is Earth?! Geez, how dumb are you?” Kari said, clearly shocked at his ignorance. “Terra. Terra, Earth? Earth, Terra? Same difference! Terra IS Earth!” Ian turned back to the shelf, newly amazed.
46
He looked through some more titles, then stopped at one that looked interesting: TO TRAVEL IN TIME. He lifted the book off the shelf and began to read.

Time travel had always been dreamed of in the history of humankind. But as humans became more advanced, time travel, it seemed, was not possible. After all, if you went back in time to make sure your grandmother never had any children, what would happen to you?
However, the 20th century dawned a new age of information. Armed with such knowledge as the quantum theory, theory of relativity, and speed of light, and black holes, scientists pondered the predicament. They finally discovered that there is no natural law preventing time travel, though the method for making a time machine under their reckoning would be virtually impossible for anyone to construct. (see Appendix 1, how to build a time machine, circa 2000 .)
But that was only the dawn of time traveling knowledge. With new telescopes (such as the J telescope, which replaced the Hubble Space telescope in 2008) scientists finally cracked the code of tachyons (then called dark matter), the missing matter in the universe that baffled astronomers for half a century. Tachyons were previously invisible to any form of discovery before due to their speed faster than light. As they traveled forward in time, they made no appearance as they literally fizzled out of existence into hyperspace while rocketing forward at a speed of nearly 500,000 miles per second.
47
With scientist Joseph Hawkinsâ€™s reckoning that time travel was only possible to be forward, scientists realized this was time travel. The public was in awe as NASA released its 200-page report on time travel in 2018. The thought of actually building a time machine, however, was unthought-of, as how would you capture something that doesn’t really exist?
Then, shocking new hit the e-papers in 2032, as Dr. Stephen Rosinburg announced he had finished a time machine after years of work shrouded in secrecy. The one and only test of his machine came in the middle of a field near San Francisco, where he attempted to go to the future. Hundreds of thousands of people watched as his big, bulky mess of equipment seemed to disappear. Unfortunately, most of the time machine stayed put, not properly attached to the tachyons. But Dr. Rosinburg’s body was among the rubbish that did vanish, and he has not been seen since. His predicted return is August 10, 2187.

48
“August 10, 2187?” Ian gasped. “But that’s tomorrow!!!”
`”No way!” said Kari, reading over his shoulder. “That’s got to be a spoof.” Boy did she like to show off!
“Huh?”
“A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Ohâ€¦ But waitâ€¦” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?
“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked Kari, quite pleased with his new theory. “What if those space pirates-â€
Parents,â€ corrected Kari. Ian shrugged.
â€œOkay, Parents who were following you put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited.
Finally she spoke. “I don’t know, Ian, I just don’t know. Maybe we should wait here until tomorrow to see if someone shows up.” Kari seemed to ask if this was all right with only her eyes. It occurred to Ian that she had never used his name before.
49
“Ship to Kari!” a voice crackled over the radio attached to her suit, “The sensors pick up a activated life-support system in Sector 8. Out.”
“Kari?” Ian asked unsurely, “Where’s sector eight? And what’s out there?”
” Oh stop being a goon-head, it’s probably just a Betwer, one of those metallic crab things. Theyâ€™re usually rather reclusive. They won’t hurt us.” Kari replied, annoyed. Ian filed away â€œgoon-headâ€ in his list of Terran words. So far he seemed to have mostly insults.
“C’mon,” Kari continued, “Let’s go to sector 8. These cheap suits will only last us approximately 34 hours with no air.” So Ian set off with Kari towards sector 8.
50
Sector 8 was isolated in the middle of the great Luna desert.
As they walked up toward an open door, it mysteriously vanished to reveal a thick cast-uranicium (atom 138 on the periodic table) door with a message on virtual HTML, saying, “ENTER PASSWORD.” Ian was confused. Kari was annoyed. “Curse them holograms,” she muttered, as she approached the number pad.
The number pad had the numbers 0 through 9 and 10 spaces in the crystal display. That meant there were roughly 10,000,000,000 possible passwords, and they were ignorant as to what it could possibly be.
Kari had never seen this before. Last time she visited sector 8 on Luna, (which admittedly had been twenty years ago) there had been no password. Or at least, she didnâ€™t think there had been, but the information may have merely been erased when she was last frozen. Along with the password. This is not good, she thought. We need that life support system soon, or else our space suits will run out. She did not allow herself to think about the fact that they might not be able to operate it without the password.
“We should get inside,” said Ian, looking across the desert.
51
Kari stared at the screen. She had tried almost every combination that popped into her head. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine. There was a beep, smoke, and a long drawn-out hiss. “Oops,â€ said Kari.
Antavo was getting very uncomfortable. The kids didnâ€™t really need his help, did they? He imagined what the Parents would say if they heard he had let one of the renegades slip through his grasp, and although he didnâ€™t really care what they thought of him, he didnâ€™t like to think of their weaponry against his.
The door had been blown off of the lubricated sliding tray that held it in place. “Wow.” said Ian as he staggered to his feet. “Hey, Kari? Never do that again.” Another door stood a short ways down the hall. The second door didn’t have a password.
Kari and Ian started down the hall when a radio transmission reached them. “Ah gotta go now,” said Antavo. “Must get off ta Mars. Business, taxi service, ya know? And don’t make too much noise on Luna. Ah heard all yer ruckus at sector 8. Ah’m hearinâ€™ there are government spies here to catch people who ain’t s’possed to be wand’rin ’round.” He didnâ€™t really have business on Mars, and both Kari and Antavo knew it, but Antavo thought nothing of telling a few lies to get out of danger. All the answer he received from Kari was a curse.
52
They walked down the hall and opened the door. It seemed much, much, too easy, Kari thought. The Container entered first as a precaution, with Ian following. “Now where’s that Betwer,” she muttered, then stopped in shock. There was a black box floating in the middle of the room, surrounded by streaks of lightning.
Or at least there appeared to be. With holographic technology, Ian was beginning to doubt supernatural-looking objects.
THIS IS A TIME PORTAL FROM THE FUTURE boomed a voice. Ian and Kari stared.
53
IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHY I AM TALKING TO YOU, IT IS BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND IT IS MY DUTY TO GIVE YOU THIS MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE OR COSMIC ORDER WILL BLOW APART.
Ian was still shocked. Kari was beginning to get suspicious.
I HAVE SEEN YOU READ THE TIME-TRAVEL BOOK IN THE MOON LIBRARY. YOU KNOW OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO TRAVEL IN TIME. HE WILL ARRIVE IN MERE HOURS, BUT HE WILL LAND ON TERRA. IF NOBODY RESCUES HIM, HE WILL BE DOOMED TO DIE.
BUT I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE. HE WILL NOT DIE, BECAUSE TWO YOUNG PEOPLE WILL SAVE HIM. IF YOU WILL GIVE ME YOUR IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS, I CAN MAKE SURE THAT IT IS YOU.
Ian rushed to reply. “Okay. I think Kari’s number is 08234919, and mine isâ€¦” Kari lunged at his mouth and clamped it shut before he could say more.
54
The voice continued. QUICKLY! QUICKLY! RED ALERT! ALL COSMIC ORDER WILL FALL APART IF I DO NOT GET YOUR NUMBERS! TELL THEM TO ME! HURRY! HURRY! Kari shook her head firmly.
“But Kari,” Ian whined, “Maybe he’ll give us the password. We really could use that passwordâ€¦” Suddenly Kari stiffened.
“Ian. Don’t. Move. It’s behind us.” Her voice had suddenly turned cold and commanding, as she realized the Betwer was coming.
“I’m going to slowly turn around. Be still.” Her voice was shaking, but whether from fear or excitement Ian didn’t know. He turned around. The Betwer was bigger than he had imagined, and its black body was impressive, at the least.
55
The black box, meanwhile, had continued talking. WHAT IS GOING ON? TELL ME YOUR NUMBERS! TELL ME Yourâ€¦ The voice slowly faded away. The Betwer looked at the box, and then at the two kids standing by the door. Ian went cold with fear. Kari went even stiffer than before.
“You wouldnâ€™t happen to have an idea of how to get out of this mess, would you?â€ hissed Kari into Ianâ€™s ear.
56
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t. He opened his mouth to explain, but Kari clamped her hand down over it. It tasted horrible. “If you don’t have one in your pocket, don’t bother explaining.”
“But,” said Ian, trying to talk through her hand, “but I do have one. I picked it up on the shuttle.” Kari released him, and he drew a long thin metal bar from his pocket. A point extended with a hiss of well-lubricated metal. He flicked his fingers over a few buttons and the point began to hum and glow.
57
STOP! YOU ARE ENDANGERING THE COSMIC BALANCE, yelped the box, surprising everyone with itâ€™s sudden recovery. The Betwer looked around at it, slowly.
“You know,” said Ian suddenly feeling, well, brave. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.” He gripped the auto-spear tightly, looking from the Betwer to the box and wondering if he could possibly scare the Betwer off and avoid hurting it. He suddenly didnâ€™t like the thought of hurting something.
But before Ian could do anything to either the Betwer or the black box, the Betwer stepped forward, causing Ian to look uncomfortable and slowly start towards the door on the other side of the room, and, with one crunch of its large metallic claws, broke the box into rubble.
The auto-spear went wild. Ian valiantly tried to keep hold of it, but it began to glow so hot that he dropped it on the floor and screamed, “Run!”
58
They ran. They could here the spear fizzing and popping as it short-circuited when they were ten feet down the hall.
Had he been religious, Ian would have prayed for the Betwer, trapped in the room with the dreadful auto-spear, but religion was one of those things that disappeared after World War Last. So he simply leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.
“What was that?” Kari demanded, not looking best pleased.
“That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears.
59
They were silent, and then Kari thought of something, and swore. Ian didn’t blink, not understanding the word. But he sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“We still don’t have the password.”
“Why do we even need the password?” asked Ian. â€œI mean, weâ€™re in sector 8, which is what we wanted. Isnâ€™t it?â€
“Because we need to get to the vault where the life support system is.”
â€œBut the door blew up. We can get to the vault now, canâ€™t we?â€
â€œBut we canâ€™t operate it without the password, or at least I donâ€™t think you can.â€
â€œYouâ€™re confusing me,â€ complained Ian. â€œIf youâ€™ve been here before, why donâ€™t you know the password to operate the life-support system?â€
Kari sighed. â€œIt was erased with most of my other data when I was last frozen. Itâ€™ll come back eventually, but I donâ€™t know when.â€
“Maybe the Betwer knows the password,” said Ian, hopefully. â€œIt lives here, after all.â€
“Itâ€™s a robot. It doesnâ€™t need to breathe. And even if it did know the password, it wouldnâ€™t help us much,â€ scoffed Kari, â€œnow that it’s trying to kill us.”
Kari And Ian walked down the hall, Kari opening doors at random. The sixth door she opened led back out onto Lunaâ€™s surface. She walked out into the clear dusty atmosphere, scanning the sky.
“But Kari,â€ said Ian, â€œwhat if itâ€™s not trying to kill us? We didn’t exactly hang around for an answer.”
“Well, you set that thing on it,” said Kari. “I’d try to kill you if you did that to me.” Ian didn’t mention that Kari had been perfectly supportive of the auto-spear, even if she hadn’t actually operated it.
60
“Look!” cried Kari suddenly. “A ship!” Ian looked up and was shocked to see that she was right. “It is!”
It soon became clear that the ship was heading towards them, but as it came closer, they realized that there was no pilot. It spiraled out of control, crashing down towards the rocky surface of Luna.
Kari seized Ian’s arm and pulled him back into Sector 8. The ship fell with a noise like thunder, barely missing the spot where they had been standing mere minutes before. It was still intact, amazingly, and the number on the hull read: 983157.
Kari gasped.

I didn’t bold my changes on this one, because I started it before I realized that Cat’s Meow was back.

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206

Alice

in June 21st, 2007 @ 00:15

Oh, and also, bolding my changes was what was making it hard to edit, sadly enough. Maybe Cat’s Meow and me can just work through the things that are posted and copy the changes into our drafts? *is hopeful* I wouldn’t mind doing that.

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207

E2MB

in June 21st, 2007 @ 13:01

*gasp* Cat’s Meow is back!!!!!!!!!

Hi.

206 – I can imagine. It’s actually taking me less time myself to just c+p the entire chapter over the old one on my draft then to go through and retype all the changes.

Um……..can Cat’s Meow just c+p the entire edited chapter onto her word document and delete the old one? (That may be what you said.)

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208

Cat's Meow

in June 21st, 2007 @ 22:46

Yes, don’t worry. I’m not going to make you do that. I’m not going to do the entire draft at a time, now. I’ll just do it chapter by chapter. Which chapters on the website are the most recent, if any, and for the other chapters which posts are the most recent versions in? I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.

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209

Alice

in June 21st, 2007 @ 22:57

208- I am currently editing Chapter 5, so chapters 5,6,7,8, and 9 haven’t changed since they got put on the website. Chapter 1 is in 198, chapters 2 and 3 in 202, and chapter four is in post 205.

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210

Cat's Meow

in June 22nd, 2007 @ 13:04

209-Thank you so much. I guess I’ll start at Chapter 1 and follow behind you.

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211

Cat's Meow

in June 22nd, 2007 @ 13:52

Here’s my edit of Chapter 1.
1
The lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed. He was safe here.
2
He walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their pages. No one had ever read the books. No, they were too valuable for that. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
3
Ian sighed. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen electroimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite Terran tale, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form. He really didn’t get what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photos”, or whatever they called live imaging back then. So Ian had really no idea what trees looked like, and he tried to imagine them as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He was so engrossed in imagining Terra that he didn’t see the figure heading towards him with her eyes on the surrounding shelves.
Whooomph!
4
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was already gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that she had taken the books from.
5
The entire section was very dry, something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships; a section that not even Ian had touched, or given a second glance. Each book was several inches thick with dusty bindings showing just how long it had been since anybody had wanted to know the information they held. Why would a thirteen-year-old girl be interested in that?
6
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly and belatedly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was caught full on by another one, this one sleek and turbo powered. He had to apologize. His mother would have required it. He remembered back when she was alive and they had had a room. Ian had been very young, but every morning before he went to education session, she would call him over to her, and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls and the carboglass windows. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on her feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into you or step on your feet, do the same.”
“That’s their fault, isn’t it?” he would always say.
7
“Not the point,” she’d snap, and Ian would mumble something and look her in the eyes, if only for a brief second before his gaze fell towards his shoes. “You apologize!â€ said the voice of Ianâ€™s memory. â€œChase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but somehow he felt that it would be disrespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
8
“Um, look. Iâ€™m really sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl at last.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass reading table and turned it on. Ian was shocked and hurt. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody was supposed to refuse an apology. But still…
9
“So, umâ€¦whatâ€™s your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl. She intrigued him, no matter how rude she was.
She didnâ€™t glance up. “It’s Kari, but that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?” asked Ian. Now he was really interested. Anyone who spoke words like â€œbeeswaxâ€ was someone to take notice of.
“Terran word.”
Ian sucked in his breath. “How do you know Terran?” â€œTerran!â€ he thought to himself. â€œImpossible. Those words had died out centuries ago!â€
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, so interesting…
10
“Whatâ€™s it mean? Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, his apprehension battling with his curiosity.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye.” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him.
11
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.”
Ian turned around. “Uh, thanks,” he said. The ice seemed to be broken between them. Thank Solana. Suddenly he blurted out, “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari evaded the question, by merely pretending he had said nothing. “Why are you here?” she asked. “This is about the time when most kids should be in the education session.”
12
Ian bristled. “I’m as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody can make me go anywhere else. My Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could be translated to mean, “never coming back.”
13
It had happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony, in the old days, over a century ago, when people were evacuating Terra. Even once your ship broke through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars . . . it wass probably a 50-50 chance for survival, in the best of conditions. Anything could happen, and more often than not it did. Many a horrible fate lay in the dark galaxy, but even those fates were better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than you can say “nuclear.”
Of course, that had all been a very long time ago, and it was more likely that Kariâ€™s mother had died of some disease, or, like Ianâ€™s parents, an incident on another planet or asteroid, but just thinking about it sent shivers up Ianâ€™s spine.
14
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely. There wasn’t a lot to say in a situation like this.
Kari didn’t reply, and just looked straight ahead in a way that seemed both unnatural and inhuman. She was good at hiding her feelings. She had to be. In her mind though, she could be dying of loneliness and no one would ever know. In Ian’s colony, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the clever modern scientists with their clever modern schemes, and even that was being threatened. The mind was the last place of privacy, but many were trying to break even that barrier. Some had succeeded, and Kari would never forget the dreadful years spent in their clutches.
15
Kari needed time to think. She needed to be where no one could find her, until she could make a plan. But that required getting off Ceres, and you couldnâ€™t do that without a passport. At least, you werenâ€™t supposed to. But that was why she’d been researching interplanetary trading ships. Particularly the maintenance corridors. And how to access them from the ground. Illegally.
16
“Listen,” she said to Ian. “You seem like a kid who can keep a secret, and judging from the fact that you aren’t in school – no offense – you don’t have any ties to Ceres. Are you familiar with the old Terran term â€˜stowawayâ€™?”
“No,” replied Ian, and his face took on a stony look. “I hate stowaways.”
“You donâ€™t have to like them. You know what they are, right?” Kari said, and she realized that she had overstepped the line. She grabbed Ianâ€™s arm suddenly.
“Yes- no- I mean leave me alone! You can go save a galaxy yourself but I am going to go read!” and he shook off her hand and stormed away.
17
Ian stopped. He half-turned and looked over his shoulder at the girl staring sadly at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I just don’t like the idea of stowaways . . . it was a stowaway that killed my parents on their way back to Ceres from a trip to Ida. He killed them and all the other passengers, then stole the ship. No one knows what happened to him, but the final transmit from the ship was a recording in which he said that he ‘was off in search of peace’ . . . we’re not sure what that meant, but we never heard from him again. Anyway, that’s why I blew up at you . . . sorry.”
18
Kari looked at him thoughtfully.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, well . . . um . . .”
“You were planning to stow away?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach . . . hard. Kari was only in her teens and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not being friends with this girl was a good idea at all.
19
“Well, yes, but, look, I don’t plan on killing anybody, and I just want to get away from here! You have no idea what it’s like to have no home to go to at the end of the day, and to have to scrounge for scraps to live on, andâ€¦” Kari bit her tongue, hard. She had nearly said more, and if she had, then she would have been in big, big, trouble.
“Actually, I do,â€ Ian interrupted, unaware of how close he had come to finding out Kariâ€™s biggest secret.
Kari looked flustered. “Oh, well . . . yes, I suppose you do . . .” she trailed off.
20
“All right. I guess I would like to come with you,â€ Ian said.
“You would?”
“Yes. I, too, want to get out of here . . . if I can do something other than creep around town like a rat all day, hoping I don’t get caught by the police, and then sleep in a tunnel at night on an empty stomach, I’ll take it. I just wish it wasn’t something so dangerous.”
Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him . . . maybe they weren’t so very different, after all â€“ if you ignored their histories. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
21
“All right,” Ian said. “Where do you plan to go? Mars?”
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Even Iâ€™d be out of my league if I tried that. Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. It’s habitable like Siberia was habitable.” Of course, neither Siberia nor any other part of Terra was now habitable by any stretch of the imagination, but Ian had read enough books about Terra to sort of understand the metaphor.
“No,” Kari continued. “We’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
“But there’s no way I’m stowing away,” said Ian so firmly that Kari had to give in.
“If you have the money, then we can take a shuttle,â€ she said finally. Ian looked at her questioningly and opened his mouth, but she cut in. â€œIt’s still illegal, but not quite as bad.”
Kari and Ian boarded the next shuttle to Jupiter that very day, though it cost seven years worth of saving whatever Ian could find in the horribly clean tunnels of Ceres. The shuttle was nearly emptyâ€”not many people could afford to or wanted to leave their safe and tedious existences on the asteroid, and if they did, they had to get passports, a process that took a very long time and a good deal of money. Ian had one from his vacations from his parents as a small child, but Kari shook her head at it.
â€œTheyâ€™ll be able to track you if they know about that,â€ she said. â€œHave any money?â€
Ian put his small collection of cores and half-cores into her hand. Kari looked oddly at them.
â€œWhat on Earth are these? Is this what they use on Ceres nowadays?â€ She tapped one mistrustfully.
â€œWhat else should we use?â€ asked Ian, genuinely puzzled. â€œAnd whatâ€™s â€˜Earthâ€™?â€
Kari said nothing, but when they boarded the shuttle, she slipped them into the pilotâ€™s hand without a word. He did not question the legality of their passports.
22
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, something went wrong. There was a crackling and sputtering from one of the engines, and then, with a sickening crash, it failed. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them, and they plummeted back towards Ceres, while the ship became hotter and hotter still due to the air friction. Pieces of the ship started to fall off and disintegrate, but there was nothing Kari and Ian could do. The pilot was dead or unconscious: the radio that connected the cockpit to the passenger seating was silent. As the surface of the planet loomed ever closer, Kari gripped Ian’s hand for balance as she unbuckled her seat-belt and stood on the tilting floor.
Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?!”
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing green fire. His were pools of deep blue fear. She squeezed his hand.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded shakily in agreement.

0

212

Rosanne Spector (Administrator)

in June 22nd, 2007 @ 14:12

And then ….
Someone get them out of this sticky situation!

0

213

in June 23rd, 2007 @ 10:19

Okay, last night I edited chapters 5 and 6, but then the internet crashed. Here they are:

Chapter 5

61
Ian looked at her, puzzled, but she did not explain, and he did not expect her to. It wasnâ€™t like Kari to explain, at least not until the crucial moment had passed.
Instead she rushed towards it and through the door that had sprung open with the impact. Ian followed, every nerve in his body vibrating with wariness. “Shouldn’t we have-” he began, but Kari seized him from behind, and for the third time, clamped her hand over his mouth. He struggled furiously, and she let him go with a warning glance. She went into the cockpit and pressed a button that closed the door. She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked, perching on one of the passenger seats with a mistrustful look around the interior of the ship. “Terra,” answered Kari shortly.
“Terra!” Ian squawked. “But-”
“This ship has radiation suits. It’s made for rescuing people.”
“Hang on.” Ian frowned. “How do you know?” But Kari didnâ€™t say how she knew for at least thirty minutes. Ian waited patiently while she pressed a button and the old ship lifted off into the vacuum of space.
“We have to rescue that person from that Time Travel book you read at Luna’s library!” said Kari at last. “He needs our help!”
62
She explained. “That number on the ship is 983157. Each number stands for a letter in the alphabet in code001. (code 001 is A=1, B=2, etc) You get IHCAEG. That’s the special emergency code for Imploring Help! Come At Earth, G because the code is always IHCA and then the celestial body’s number, and G means it’s in the G position from the sun. [A day has passed since Ian read the book about Time Travel.] Let’s go!” And she turned on the engine.
“But I thought you said the book was a hoax!” Ian said as they started to take off. “Not with this kind of coincidence!” replied Kari as they headed toward Earth at 660,000 miles per hour.
Ian wasnâ€™t buying it. “But why is it ‘Come at Earth’?” he asked. “Why not ‘come at Terra’?”
“Because when it was made, Terra was called Earth. Obviously.”
“Oh.”
63
But as they approached Terra they noticed that a ship was slowly flying in a circle around a large once-white space station. The illegal alien police. Kari immediately brought the ship to a halt. “Do you have your passport?” she asked.
“Why do we need it?” asked Ian. â€œAnd I thought it made us easy to track?â€
“If we don’t have a passport, we will be arrested for illegal planet hopping!” Kari said urgently.
Ian thought it odd that Kari would care about being arrested, after the things she had done, but he dug into his pocket nonetheless. He came up with what looked like a tiny green calculator. “Here it is! But what about you?”
“I have my methods.” By this she probably meant bribes. Except that there wasnâ€™t any more money . . .
“But your armâ€¦” Ian knew that while shuttlers might not ask too many questions, the Police most definitely would.
“Oh rats, I forgot about that. Look, you can drive this for a little, right? I’m going to hide.”
“But if they search us they’ll find you!” Ian was too concerned about this to mention that no, he couldn’t drive the ship, even for a few minutes. He was too concerned even to ask what rats was.
“Oh, shut up, will you? Put it on auto-steer if you think driving it will be too hard, and then all you’ll have to do is stop when they come near. If you press the yellow button they won’t board us.”
“Why not?”
“It means illness.”
“Illness? We’re not ill.”
“Quarantine, stupid. The oldest trick in the book.”
“Books?” Ian perked up at the mention of books, but Kari, weary of their meaningless conversation, was already gone.
Ian shrugged, pressed the yellow button, and put the ship on auto-steer, then gripped the handle that stopped the ship and waited.
64
The ship retreated in fright. The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug, although there had been many of them. But unfortunately for Ian and Kari, the Adromeaneedle had been wiped out a century or more ago, and served to make the Police only more suspicious. And they had radiation suits. As soon as the Police were outfitted they charged back, wearing protection from the virus.
Ian decided that as Kari was born on Mars, if they went to Mars, they couldn’t be arrested for planet hopping. He turned around the spaceship and set the speed on MAX.
“What are you doing?” demanded Kari as soon as it was safe to come out.
“We’re going to Mars. Since you were born there, they can’t arrest us if we’re thereâ€¦ Is that alright?”
“It is not alright! We need to rescue that man!”
“But the illegal alien police have protection from the virus.”
“Well then we can’t land on Mars at all. They won’t let us if we’re in quarantine, and they can stop us if they have protection.” Kari had taken over the steering while she was talking, and they were under her control once more.
65
“What are you going to do?” asked Ian with a sense of dread.
“Blow up their ship, of course.”
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to crying.
“Actually, thatâ€™s the Parents that will do that to you,â€ Kari said, but added heartlessly, â€œYou’ve broken the law so much already that if we’re caught, they’ll do that to you anyway.” Kari’s voice was harsh and cold. “One more crime won’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t do this, you’ll be caught sooner than later.”
Ian felt like his insides were being squeezed by an iron fist. A single tear or sheer terror rolled down his cheek.
“Ian you have to do this, anyway, you don’t have a choice. We’re going to Terra whether you like it or not. And there are things weâ€™ll have to do to get there that you wonâ€™t like. Live with it.” Kari’s voice had taken on a commanding quality and Ian figured he’d just go ahead and comply quietly.
Kari lurched the ship towards Mars, a distant star but still visible. The ship, old and dilapidated as it was, went where Kari told it to go. Ian frowned, confused.
66
“Uh, Kari?” he asked tentatively.
Kari cast him a glance. “What?”
“You said we were going to Terra. So why are we going to Mars?”
“Space near Terra is too conspicuous. We have to fight them near Mars. There are so many wars going on around Mars, no one will even think twice about a few more battles.”
“Oh, I see.”
67
The pair was almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
“Attention,” the voice went on. “You are entering the space of one of the Preserved Terran Habitats. Please transmit authorization code or we will be forced to immobilize your ship.”
“Oh no,” Kari muttered. “What are- ”
“The PTHs?” Ian asked. “You were born on Mars! Don’t tell me you don’t-”
“I don’t. I was kidnapped when I was three, and then experimented on in sentient cryonics for eight freaking decades. Just explain.”
“Some environmentalists put together huge spaceships with what was left of Terran wildlife during the Great Evacuation. For a while they just sat there orbiting Terra because the scientists couldnâ€™t get enough funds to put them somewhere else, but now The Habitats orbit Mars, and you have to pay to enter them.” Ian had always dreamed of seeing one of the Habitats, but he lived too far away and had never had enough money.
68
Kari put on speed. The Habitat was visible in the view screen, a huge metal globe with massive diamond panels through which a lush jungle could be seen.
“Whoa,” breathed Ian. “Are- are those trees? Oh my gosh! That’s a parrot! I’ve only heard about those in books!!”
Kari grimly clung to the controls, a plan forming in her mind. The police ship was still on their tail. If she could just steer away at the second that the Habitat fired its magna-beamâ€¦
A bolt of magnetic energy rocketed out from the PTH. Kari did something she hadn’t done in years. She quickly flicked her vision through the electromagnetic spectrum until the projectile appeared as a bright blue glow.
“There’s something to be said for genetic manipulation,” she muttered, as she twisted the joystick violently. The ship shuddered and dropped. The blast shot over the top of its plating, becoming briefly visible as the exhaust ionized, before striking their pursuers head on.
Kari forced the ship into a sharp turn, made sure it was on a trajectory towards Terra, then opened the throttle. They shot forward at speeds only dreamed of during the Terran Era. Only the artificial gravity’s compensation prevented them from being smashed into blobs of jelly.
69
A job well done, Kari reflected. On to save the scientist. If there really was a scientist traveling through time, and it wasn’t just a trap. She wouldn’t put it past the Parents to reprogram that box and plant the book in Lunaâ€™s library. They would stop at nothing in their mad quest to create Neoterra, and therefore would stop at nothing to capture Kari, as she jeopardized their plan. What if one of them was waiting at the very place they were supposed to land?
Kari forced the uneasy thoughts out of her mind. If there was any chance that somebody was about to die an agonizing, slow death from radiation poisoning, she was going to rescue that person. She’d been through that during the time that the Parents had tried to find out how their “children” would stand up to neutron bombardment. She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.
“What?” asked Ian, somewhat disappointed at not getting a good look at the PTH.
“What, what?” Kari quipped.
“What did you say about genetic manipulation?”
“Oh that. I’m a Container, remember.” She tried to say it in an offhand way, so that he wouldn’t question her, but it seemed rather strained instead.
Ian tactfully said nothing.
70
“What was the name of the city he set out from?” Kari muttered, half to herself.
“Sanfran Sissko,” Ian stated proudly.
“How did you know that?” Kari gasped incredulously.
Ian held up the book, which he had carried all the way from Luna. “I can read, you know.”
“Well, if my memories are correct, Sanfran Sissko used to be where that crater is now.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go.”
71
As Kari guided the ship in, Ian went into a small chamber to put on a radiation suit. The suit was made of thick, interlocking plates of uranicium, with a small antigravity engine to keep the wearer from collapsing under its weight. Ian felt like he was putting on a medieval suit of armor. He had read about one of those in a book at the Ceres library, something about a round table. He still didn’t see how a round table was connected to primitive warriors, but the pre-WWL documents were fragmentary, if not completely incinerated.
The ship landed, steam hissing out of its hydraulic jets. Kari went into the compartment to put on a suit, while Ian stepped out of the airlock.
No sooner had he done so than a loud whine started up and increased in volume. Ian held his breath. Was this the arrival of the time traveler?
A ship, roughly spherical with matte black plating, dropped out of the sky and zigzagged across the crater with bursts of its landing jets. “Kari!” Ian yelled, his voice distorted by the speaker of his suit, and even more by the irradiated atmosphere. “He’s here.”
72
Kari stepped out of the airlock, and an expression of horror crossed her features.
“The bookâ€¦ the boxâ€¦ they were fakes!” she babbled.
“What do you mean?” Ian gasped, stumbling backward from the sinister ship as quickly as he could. A small hatch opened in the black plating, and a blunt cone nosed out. Kari knew what was coming. She grabbed Ian’s hand and twisted the dial on her suit’s antigravity engine to MAXIMUM. They shot upwards just in time to see a missile strike their ship and reduce it to red-hot slag.
“It was a trap to lure me here,” Kari rasped. “That ship was sent by the Parents.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Ian with an effort, trying not to think about a slow and painful death.
Kari’s face was grey beneath her helmet. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s no one to help. We’ve lost our ship. The air in these things will only last a little while, less if we run. We’re trapped.”
Then there was a blinding flash beneath them, and when it faded and their eyes recovered, they could make out a man. An unprotected man, Dr. Stephen Rosinburg.
73
Ian gasped and stared. The man stumbled a little, and Ian could see that he was faring badly in the irradiated atmosphere. “We have to help him!” Ian yelled, turning off his antigravity engine and falling heavily to the ground. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch this man die.
Kari yelled at him. “No! It’s just a-”
Then Rosinburg disappeared, and a hatch opened in the side of the Parents’ ship. A man stepped out, unprotected, but not seeming to mind, and holding an autospear. He leveled it at Ian. “SURRENDER, RENEGADE,” he said, “OR THE IMPURE ONE DIES.”
“-hologram,” Kari finished lamely.

Chapter Six

74
Ian woke in a cold blue and white chamber. He couldn’t remember what had happened after the man had aimed the auto-spear at him, but he wasn’t dead yet, and Kari lay unconscious but alive and unfrozen on the other side of the room, so it couldn’t be all bad.
“Kari!” His voice was almost silent, but the curved walls of the chamber picked it up and magnified it over and over, so that it echoed as loud as if he’d spoken it.
Kari jerked and woke up. Her eyes weren’t angry, only hopeless and sad.
“What happened?” Ian asked.
“They captured you. I surrendered. They knocked us out, and here we are. Again.” Kari said the last word to herself. She was silently resentful for a few minutes, and Ian was silent too, waiting.
75
“Again!” she yelled suddenly. “Again! I hate it here!” She kicked the wall again and again, and pounded at it with her fists, but it didn’t give, and she slumped exhausted to the floor.
“Have you any idea how many times I’ve been here, Ian? Six times. Six times! Last time I burned my microchip out and escaped, but they caught me anyway, and now you’re going to die, and I’m going to sit on ice for a decade until the Parents thaw me out for another experiment. I hate it!”
Suddenly, a section of the wall disappeared. Kari knew that the wall had been made from interlocking nanobots that could disengage at the press of a button, but Ian didn’t, and he was dumbstruck. When Kari saw who stepped through the doorway, though, she was just as dumbstruck as Ian.
76
“KRI,” the man said expressionlessly. He was only a few years older than Ian, not really so much a man as a boy, and he was unarmed.
“Kerj, you know very well that my name is Kari. You were my friend once. What have the Parents done to you?”
“THEY MADE ME SEE THE ERROR OF MY WAYS,” Kerj replied.
“You mean they destroyed half your brain cells and replaced them with nano-implants. Wake up, Kerj.”
“What were your ways?” asked Ian, feeling reckless and brave now that he knew he was going to die soon.
Kerj looked at him blankly, but said, “I WAS A RENEGADE. LIKE HER.”
“Kariâ€¦ Kerjâ€¦ What’s up with the weird names?” Ian asked. If he was going to die in minutes, he at least wanted some answers.
“We were given three-letter ID codes by the Parents,” Kari said. “I was KRI. He was KRJ. We renegades gave ourselves names that were somewhat like our ID codes.â€
Kerj spoke. “ENOUGH. KRI, YOUR RENEGADE EMOTIONS SERIOUSLY JEOPARDIZED PROJECT NEOTERRA. YOU AND THIS PATHETIC IMPURE ONE MUST DIE.”
A circular section of the floor abruptly disappeared, and an auto-spear telescoped up from it. Kerj seized the weapon and stalked towards them, a feral smile on his face.
Ian,” said Kari, “now would be a very good time to have another auto-spear.â€
“What about your ‘genetic manipulation’?” asked Ian.
“We weren’t given weapons, for fear of exactly this sort of thing. And even if I did have superpowers that way, they wouldn’t work against Kerj any more than they would against a Betwer. Less, even.”
“Great.” Ian rummaged in his pockets for something, anything, but they were all empty. “Nothing.”
Suddenly it hit Kari. She wasn’t going to be wounded and stuck in a freezer. She was going to be killed. And she didn’t like that thought one bit.
77
Kerj thrust ferociously. Kari jumped aside, just in time, but stumbled and fell heavily to the white tiles of the floor, her palms making a smacking sound as she thrust them out to break her fall. Kerj pulled back the spear for another try, one that would surely succeed.
Then Ian, who had made his way around the room to behind Kerj, grabbed the butt of the auto-spear and pulled it back. The combatants fought for control as the spear twitched and jerked, almost another opponent. Kari leaped on Kerj’s back in a flying tackle. Already embattled, Kerj fell over. Ian’s fingers scrabbled desperately at the buttons while the spear flailed wildly around the room. Then he got a firm grip and gained control. He pointed the tip at Kerj’s vulnerable neck. “Get us out,” Ian commanded.
“GET THE SPEAR AWAY,” said Kerj.
Ian lowered the spear cautiously.
Kerj raised himself to his feet and tapped a few buttons on a tiny keyboard. The wall opened. Kari and Ian stepped through it.
Kari half-turned and opened her mouth to say something to Kerj, but thought better of it and fled down the corridor, pulling Ian along with her, still clutching the auto-spear.
78
At the end of the corridor, Kari stopped. They had entered a massive room with balconies ringing the walls. Hundreds of people, with the same white-blond hair and green eyes as Kari, were standing on the balconies, tapping control panels, staring at instruments, or just watching the screen in the middle of the room. It rotated slowly, affording a view to everyone of the man it showed.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. He looked less like a Container than the rest of them. His hair was blond and his eyes grren, but his features were not the even, regulated, ones of the Containers. His Nose was slightly too large and a little crooked, his mouth thinner than normal. “You already know the details of Project Neoterra, but I will reiterate them for those of you who just came out of cryogenics and suffered some memory loss or modification. Using the gravitational engines designed by JAA, we will pull Ceres, Ida, Dactyl and these uninhabited asteroidsâ€¦” An image of the asteroid belt appeared on the screen, with several dozen objects highlighted in green. “â€¦out of their orbits and crash them on Mars. The resulting body will have a mass approximately equal to Terraâ€¦”
Ian gasped. “What do they think they’re doing? Thousands of people will die!”
“Do you think they care?” Kari whispered back. “Shush.”
79
“â€¦Superterraforming will commence,” the voice went on. “First, we will inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, setting up a global warming effect. We will then land the plants from the Preserved Terran Habitats, which will photosynthetically convert the new atmosphere into oxygenâ€¦”
“We have to get out of here!” Ian hissed.
“Wait,” Kari replied. “We need to find out where the gravitational engines are. I have information that they’re in the Jovian systemâ€¦ ”
“So that’s why you really wanted to stow away!”
“Of course. But I need more specific- Hang on, I think he’s getting to itâ€¦”
“â€¦ the gravitational engines are being constructed on Io, in the Experimental Mineralogy facility of Gigacorp, where we have allies.”
“I know where that is,” Kari whispered excitedly. “I’ve been on Parents mother ships like this one- the hangar for the smaller ships should be down this corridor. Let’s go.”
80
They hurried down another corridor, and then another, Ian always conscious of his dark hair and blue eyes that marked him as an outsider.
They reached the hangar without difficulty, and securing a ship was a cinch. Though Kari was a renegade, her fingerprints unlocked the door nonetheless, and soon they were flying through the black nothingness of space at a rate close to the speed of light.
“That was easy,” remarked Ian confidently, leaning back in his chair.
But Kari was frowning. “Too easy, almost. They didn’t notice you; I got a ship even though my prints shouldn’t do that anymore; Kerj let us through even though he should have just let himself die rather than help us; it’s all so unnatural.”
And with those words, Ian’s confidence was shattered. He was no longer brave and intrepid, but a naive kid again, and he wished he was back on Ceres, sneaking into the library to look at Terran books, and scrounging for food in the tunnels. Back before he’d met this dangerous girl named Kari.
81
Suddenly, the dangerous girl whirled around.
“I thought I saw something,” Kari exclaimed, not too loudly though, as they were in secret.
“There it is again!” That time, Ian had seen it too.
A young boy, not yet twelve, stood in the shadows next to them. Quietly he’d snuck up on them, but he was spotted.
“Hey!” Ian cried. “You there!”
“Shhhhh, not too loud”, Kari whispered. “We’re still hiding.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Jaa,” the kid said, leaning casually against the padded seat next to him.
82
Funny he’s so young, Kari thought. JAA? He’s one of the J-series Containers. Even I’m only a K. He should be older. How many Containers do the Parents need?
Aloud, she said, “How did you get on this ship?”
“Snuck on. I reprogrammed the door to open under your fingerprints.”
“Wow. You shouldn’t have been able to hack into the system. This is state of the art.”
Jaa smiled. “So am I. The Parents designed me to be the best of the best. But I wasn’t happy, even so.”
He sighed, suddenly looking decades older. “Can I trust you?”
Kari thought for a moment, then rolled up her sleeve, revealing her ID number and blasted transmitter.
Jaa grinned. “So you’re a renegade, too?” He rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a destroyed transmitter, an ID number, and a birthday-
A birthday!!
Kari thought her eyes were playing tricks. She scanned the ID tattoo again. 1/8/ 2037. There was no denying it. This kid had been born before World War Last.
83
“And who is this?” asked Jaa, nodding at Ian. “He’s not a Container, who is he?”
“Ian,” Kari said. “He’s a civilian that I dragged into this. I’m sorry now.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you?”
Ian perked up, hoping that he would get some answers, but Kari only sighed. “I don’t know. I guess I was lonely, which was why I invited him in the first place, and he wanted to leave too. That was before he knew I was a Container.”
Ian felt a flush of guilt. He had said he’d like to come, and he’d been blaming Kari for all his hardships since then.
84
“LONELINESS IS-” began Jaa, but stopped at the look of horror on Kari’s face.
“Sorry, honestly, I am. It’s an old habit and dies hard. I am sorry!”
“Hey guys,” Ian said, “Shouldn’t we be getting going?”
“Not now Ian. We’re talking.” Kari said in an exasperated voice.
“Umm, I really think we should go.” Ian looked with a meaningful glance at the Containers behind him.
“Fine, what is it?” Kari and Jaa looked at each other conspiratorially.
“Someone,” Ian said, “is coming. And I don’t think it’s a good guy.”
Jaa looked around. He didn’t see anyone, but Ian had a better view of the shipâ€™s viewscreen than he did, so there could very well be someone coming that Jaa couldnâ€™t see.
85
“All right,” he said, “What we need to do is to stop this plan from happening. They haven’t bothered to think about all the people who live on Ceres. Do you have any ideas?”
Ian suddenly felt a wave of shock. He lived on Ceres! If the Parents had done thisâ€¦
“If youâ€™re that good, do you know anything about the plans for redoing Terra?” asked Kari.
“I designed some of them, back when I wasn’t against these people.”
“Which ones?”
86
“Well, for one thing, I designed the artificial gravity that they plan to use. I could hack the system and redesign the plans that they have so that the gravity works backward.”
“How does the gravity work?” Ian asked.
“Actually, I’m one of the smartest people here,” said Jaa, though it seemed rather irrelevant. “They don’t want to lose me. It works because neutrinos swarm to electromagnetism. If you have a big enough electromagnetic force, the neutrinos are attracted to it. However, I have also found that nuclear force repels them. Even the Parent’s most brilliant scientists haven’t figured that one out!” He laughed.
Kari said, “Well, then if we could put nuclear force in the spot of electromagnetic force, that would keep the asteroids apart, instead of being smashed together.”
Jaa grinned at her. â€œAre you sure you werenâ€™t designed to be a scientist, too?â€
87
Ian suddenly thought of something. “Why are we going to Io?”
Kari spoke slowly, as though talking to a dimwitted child, which indeed she felt the was. “Havenâ€™t you been listening at all? We’re going to Io so that Jaa can deactivate the gravitational engines and, if we’re lucky, destroy them.”
“All right,” Ian said, “butâ€¦”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
Ian wasn’t so sure it was nothing. He could have sworn he saw something out of the corner of his eye- some sort of ship that darted out of the viewscreen’s range as soon as he turned to look. He pushed it out of his mind and began scrutinizing the newcomer.
Then he noticed the birth date on Jaa’s ID number. Not only was it from before World War Last, it was before any permanent colonies had been set up on other planets.
88
Ian gasped. “You were born on Terra!”
“Yeah,” Kari said. “Don’t mind him, Jaa, he’s absolutely obsessed with anything Terran.”
The gibe would have stung, but Ian was too fascinated. “What was it like?”
Jaa smiled. “Absolutely beautiful. Even in the grip of the Warming Effect, it had more variety of animals and plants than on all the planets combined. Even Europa only has a bit of algae and these blind shrimp-like things. Terra had billions. The Preserved Terran Habitats are only a tiny slice. I remember days at the seashore, or climbing trees in my backyardâ€¦ I was very young back then, before the Parents captured me. They go for orphans, people nobody would miss, and my own parents died during the Great Evacuation. They were victims of one of those â€˜superbugsâ€™ that flourished even in the sterile environment aboard ships.”
Ian nodded, sympathetically. The “superbugs”, the Andromeaneedle among them, had evolved aboard ships with long-term voyages, where the viruses had to adapt quickly to infect the limited amount of people. Now, quarantine was much stricter, but thousands of people died back then. Evac Ship 39 was particularly infamous, but other ships had been struck too.
“I was lucky,” Jaa continued. “We lived south of the equator. When the first nukes fell, it was in the northern hemisphere. I think America and some country in western Asia were the first to go at it- Or was it China? Russia? I really don’t know, I was little back then. Anyway, when the South American countries finally got involved- my home was neutral until almost the very end- the evacuation ships were ready, and my family boarded them as soon as possible. We got off before everything started falling apart. I hear the last days were really horrible- people starving, dying of radiation sickness, killing each other for the last drop of water.”
89
Ian shuddered. Because of that, he thought for a moment that the ship’s sudden vibration was just a figment of his imagination, and not a laser shell striking the reinforced hull.

0

218

Alice

in June 27th, 2007 @ 23:04

The last three chapters.

Chapter Seven

“MEEP MEEP MEEP” bleeped the ship’s computer. “Curses,” said Jaa, which was putting it mildly. “The Parents are after us!” He ran to the front of the ship just as a violent blast caused the ship to shudder and the computer screen flashed, “Hull damaged 68%”.
“We’ve got to eject!” screamed Kari, panicking for once in her eighty-three years of life. She stared at the hundreds of buttons on the control board. “Which button is it, Jaa?”
“Iâ€¦donâ€™tâ€¦ rememberâ€¦” Jaa said, as he grew sweaty.
Ian, realizing the impeding doom, started pressing random buttons on the keyboard, hoping to be the hero. He was knocked off his feet as another blast caused the screen to flash, “Hull damaged 83%”.
As he struggled to his feet, he saw Jupiter in the distance. Io orbited Jupiter, so if he could just keep the ship safe for another minute or soâ€¦
He noticed Kari was looking for the steering wheel. Jaa had passed out on the floor. Ian remembered that cold water on a towel for ten seconds on somebody’s head would revive them. As he ran down the hall to get a towel, he heard Kari shriek, “WHERE THE HECK IS THE DANG STEERING WHEEL?”
90
Just as he had reached the door to the ship’s bathroom, another blast shook the ship so violently that Ian slammed into a door on the opposite side of the hall, promptly busting it in half. As he slid through the gaping hole, he noticed a steering wheel. “What’s it doing in here?” he wondered.
“Ian!!!” Kari yelled. “Where are you? The hull is damaged 95%! One more blast and the whole ship is going to blow up!” Ian struggled to his feet and hobbled toward the steering wheel. He had just reached it and started to turn the wheel when he heard the sound of another laser firing. He saw it shoot past his window and knew they had just missed it.
The second thing he noticed when he looked out the window was Io’s landscape. “Holy smokes!” he said. They were a mere mile from Io’s surface. He started to frantically turn the wheel. It was at times like this that he wished he were back in Ceres’ library, reading about trees.
He gave a last wrench to the wheel, and the wall opened, revealing a smaller ship, barely large enough for four people.
“Kari!” he yelled. “Jaa! I found an escape pod!”
91
He ran back through the hall. Kari was standing over the still unconscious Jaa, looking terrified.
“Weâ€™re going to die, Ian,” she said. “And Jaaâ€™s fainted. How could he faint at a time like this?â€
“Well, can we carry him?” Ian didnâ€™t think it unusual that Jaa had fainted, after all, he, unlike Kari, probably wasnâ€™t programmed to face danger with a perfectly straight face. Not that Kari was facing it with a perfectly straight face right now. Nevertheless, she wasnâ€™t used to Containers fainting. It wasnâ€™t natural. She had been brought up to believe that they were a superior race, and untroubled by the weaknesses of humans.
“Maybe,” she said.
Somehow they managed to drag him down the hall, just as a blast from the Parents’ ship shook the hull.
“The ship’s coming apart!” Kari yelled.
She leaped through the airlock and into the pod, pulling Jaa behind her. Ian was last, scrambling in hurriedly. The walls began to shake and glow red-hot. As the airlock sealed and the booster jets of the escape pod fired, Ian had a last glimpse of the ship’s interior. A reinforced hull plate ripped away, and the inner wall crumpled like tinfoil as the unobstructed pressure blew it out into the vacuum of space. Then the pod was soaring away over the volcanic rocks and sulfur vents of the Ionian surface. Kari clutched the controls like a lifeline, guiding the little ship farther away from the Parentsâ€™ vessel.
92
Numb from the shock of the events in the past few minutes, Ian suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten since- he didn’t even remember. He wasnâ€™t really used to eating often, but habit couldnâ€™t stop hunger. The Parents had probably put food in the pod anyway; cruel as they were they still needed their creations to eat. After rummaging around for a while, he located the food locker and opened it. The white steam billowing out obscured the contents for a second, but when it cleared, Ian gasped. “What is this stuff?”
“Food,” Kari said. “Not just nutrition paste or vitamin pills, real food. The Parents used the Containers’ memories to genetically engineer replicas of food crops and livestock. They have several illegal habitats orbiting Terra that they grow food in. They would have used the habitats around Mars, but those were mostly the pristine, undisturbed Terran ecosystems. Nobody cared about saving a plain old cow. Let me have some.”
She reached back and deftly pulled out something that, 200 years before, would have been called a TV dinner. A press of a button on the pack, and a tiny, built-in microwave generator warmed it up. Ian did the same to his, wondering what a cow was, and cautiously tasted it.
His eyebrows shot up. “YEOW!!”
It didn’t hurt, but the overwhelming sensation that he didn’t have a name for was more startling than pain. “What happened?”
“It’s called flavor. I guess you’re not used to it, now that they synthesize all the food- Wait, that’s Gigacorp’s facility up there!”
93
Sure enough, a building loomed up on the horizon. A metal dome, matte black, with the Gigacorp logo embossed on it. Smaller capsules and pods were connected to it by long carboglass tubes that snaked through the almost nonexistent air, making the entire building look like a demented octopus with swollen tentacles.
Jaa stirred, then reawakened. “Whereâ€¦where are we?” he said.
“We’re on Io, inside the ship’s escape pod.” said Kari. “We’re right next to Gigacorp’s facility. Do you know any way we could get in?”
Jaa thought for a moment. “We could try and bust through one of the carboglass tubes and enter that way. We don’t stand a chance against the security at the doors.”
“Well that’s better than nothing” Kari said. “If we know we canâ€™t get past the security, then why try?” She was acting oddly cheerful, and Ian tried to think what reason she had for being so happy, when they were about to go and risk their lives.
“But the one problem is, to get through carboglass unharmed you need special suits,” Jaa pointed out.
“Like these?â€ asked Ian.
â€œWhereâ€™d you get those?â€ Kari exclaimed.
â€œRight here, in this little cupboard,â€ replied Ian. Sure enough, in a tiny compartment lay four carboglass protection suits.
â€œCool!â€ said Kari, snatching one up and putting it on.
â€œKari, are you sure?â€ asked Jaa. It all seemed awfully convenient to him.
â€œOh come on,â€ Kari said. â€œWhat could possibly happen? They put it in an escape pod, for heavenâ€™s sake.â€
â€œWell,â€ said Jaa, about to list off everything that could happen, but he was cut short.
“AAAAUGH!!” screamed Kari. “GIGACORP INTERNAL LASER TRAP!”
“What?” Ian screamed, leaping out of his chair.
“Just kidding!” Kari smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Neverâ€¦ doâ€¦ thatâ€¦ again,” Ian grated out.
“Come on! It was just a joke. Iâ€™m fine. Put yours on.”
94
Several minutes later, three suited individuals leaped out of the airlock and drifted towards the tube in Io’s low gravity.
Ian knew that carboglass wasn’t actually solid, just carbon alloy atoms suspended in an electromagnetic field. With the proper suit, it could be passed through like a mirage. Still, it was a shock to seemingly hit the surface and then pass through.
It was still more of a shock when a magna-beam struck Ian in the arm. A horrible, numbing pain shot up to his shoulder. His head was buzzing. He knew he was on the verge of passing out.
“FREEZE, RENEGADES,” snarled a robotic-sounding voice. Jaa and Kari looked up, afraid of whom they might see.
With a magna-gun in his hand and a coldly triumphant grin on his face, Kerj stood before them.
“I CAN SPARE THE BOY, EVEN THOUGH I WILL HAVE TO CRIPPLE HIM,” Kerj said. “BUT YOU, RENEGADES, I WILL HAVE TO KILL.”
Ian was on the ground, struggling against the heavy fog of pain. His arm was immobilized, and the paralysis was spreading to his torso. But his other arm was free.
95
Kerj discarded the empty magna-cartridge. It fell to the ground with a clink that sounded even louder in the silence. Then he slotted an illegal laser cartridge into his weapon and placed the barrel against Kari’s forehead. “YOU LED ME ON A MERRY DANCE THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM. BUT IT ENDS NOW, SISTER. IF YOU CROSS THE PARENTS, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE.”
Sister? Ian thought. But there was no time to ponder the Container assassin’s choice of words. With a supreme effort, he grabbed Kerj’s leg and pulled hard.
Kerj jerked back, flailing wildly. His gun went off, its charge hurtling upward and striking the carboglass.
“Uh-oh.” That was all Jaa had time to say before cracks decimated the tube and the carboglass blew out into a vacuum.
The impossibly bright shower of shattered carboglass was the last thing Ian remembered before he lost consciousness.
96
“We need to get in there!” Jaa yelled over the suit’s radio. “The air in these suits will only last about ten minutes!”
“Then let’s go before the blast doors close!” Kari yelled. “They’re sealing them off to keep from losing oxygen!”
Jaa leaped upward, propelling himself toward the stranded side building. Kari followed, dragging Ian along with her. She absentmindedly heaved him through the closing gap before stepping in herself.
Kari wondered why he had saved her life. He thought that she was just a dangerous renegade who had intruded on his safe little existence, and therefore was better off dead. Didn’t he?
97
Suddenly an alarm went off. For real.
“BLEEP BLEEP INTRUDERS. INTRUDERS,” a loudspeaker blared as video cameras over the door recorded their movements.
“Run to the main room!” Jaa yelled as he grabbed a box labeled ‘gunpowder’, hoping it was something nuclear. “That’s where they have the gravity center set up so they have more gravity than Io’s weak pull!”
As Kari scrambled to her feet and Ian (he had regained consciousness when the alarm went off) tried painfully to get to him, security guards rushed toward in every direction. Kari pulled him up by his good arm and they started to run towards a door, but Ian, despite his wounded arm and aching chest, got there first and Kari was grabbed by six strong hands. “Curses,” she muttered. “Why did I have to let him in first?”
98
Jaa had reached the portal to the center of Io, where the machines were. He leaped into the elevator, and the doors closed just as Ian came rushing in, just escaping the security guards. As they neared the center of Io, they saw swarms of white light coming from every direction. “Those are neutrinos,” Jaa whispered to Ian. Ian barely heard. Another time he may have gasped in awe, but now, he could only clutch his arm and try not to cry with the pain.
Jaa bolted out the elevator as soon as it stopped, and ran toward the mass of electromagnets attracting trillions of neutrinos from all directions. All that was needed was to get rid of the electromagnets and replace them with some sort of nuclear thing. But that, however simple it may have sounded was going to be quite hard enough, considering that first, he needed to deactivate the cord that was powering the electromagnets, and it was going to be impossible to unplug. Where was the end of it? “Ian,” Jaa called, “do you have a knife?”
“No,” said Ian. It seemed perfectly obvious to him. Civilians weren’t allowed knives. He stepped out of the elevator and noticed for the first time that Kari was missing. “Where’s Kari?” he asked, momentarily forgetting painful numbness that was spreading slowly through him as a burst of panic made his cold chest turn to fire.
99
“I don’t know,” replied Jaa, trying to find the end of the cord.
“She didn’t get into the elevator!” cried Ian, shocked, and the cold flooded back. “She must have been captured!”
“Great,â€ moaned Jaa, not sounding surprised, just despairing. “Can you go back to rescue her? How’s your arm?”
Ian ignored the last question and rushed toward the elevator.
“No! Wait!” yelled Jaa. “Don’t be an idiot! You can’t just go rushing offâ€¦” but obviously Ian could, for he didn’t slow his pace one bit.
Jaa fumbled in his pocket for an auto-spear to throw to his friend, but Ian was already in the elevator, and Jaa forgot all else as his hand closed around the spear. It was as good as a knife, or better. Far better.

Chapter Eight

100
Back in the elevator, Ian clutched his wounded arm to him. It hurt far worse than he would like to admit, and his head spun if he thought about it too much. He snuck a glance at it, preparing to see the worst. He didnâ€™t. With magnabeams, it wasnâ€™t possible to see the worst. The magna-gun would leave no blood, or obvious injuries. But the arm would be paralyzed for a long while, perhaps forever, and if it went without treatment, would spread throughout his body until he died. It occurred to Ian for the first that there was no way to rescue Kari with a three-quarters dead arm. The elevator came to a stop, but Ian still squatted on the floor, unmoving, with his brain full of images alternately of victory and defeat.
Slowly Ian raised himself off the floor and pressed the button that took the elevator down. When the doors slid open he stepped painfully out into the room with the engine.
“Did you get her?” asked Jaa.
“No,” replied Ian numbly.
Jaa said nothing more, but bent himself to the task of cutting the cord with the auto-spear. It was much harder than heâ€™d thought, and he realized now that a knife would have been better. Knives didnâ€™t have a mind of their own.
101
Suddenly Ian gave a shout. “The elevator! Someone’s coming!” Jaa, hearing this, hastily shut down the auto-spear and clambered up the rough wall, agile as a monkey.
Ian, unable to climb as well as the Container even if he had had both his arms, ran and hid in the corner as the door slid open. The voice that emerged was familiar and chilling. “RENEGADE KRI, YOU MUST COME WITH ME.”
“What makes you think I will?” snapped Kari.
Ian started. Kerj!! How?â€¦
Jaa dropped to the floor as Kari and Kerj stepped out of the elevator, with Kerjâ€™s hand fastened firmly around Kariâ€™s right arm.
“Ja-“cried Kari.
“Shut up!” he hissed.
“RENEGADE JAAâ€¦ A PLEASURE,” smirked Kerj.
“Pleasure is an emotion- something you’re not capable of, traitor,” hissed Jaa.
Ian stared at Kerj. He had been in the room with the shattered carboglass! He ought to be dead! And there was no sign of the bulky metal studs that signified an implanted Life Support system, so he shouldnâ€™t be standing here right now. There must be some sort of explanation, Ian thought, but his head was muzzy and he couldnâ€™t think, not right now.
102
Kari’s mind was racing. She had been grabbed by elite guards and hauled away, when to her infinite shock Kerj had appeared and had ordered the guards to hand her over. This also puzzled her. Had he been saving her? Was it possible? Or . . . did he have something worse in store than the cryogenics lab?
“ON THE CONTRARY, RENEGADE JAA,” said Kerj seriously. “THE PARENTS CANNOT GET RID OF EMOTION, NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY. AS A RESULT OF WHAT MY SISTER DID, NOW I MUST FEEL FEAR AND PAIN AND JOY AND LOVE. BUT THEY HAVEN’T KILLED ME. I AM AN EXPERIMENT. AS IS KRI.”
“Sister?” asked Ian, forgetting that he was hiding. This was the second time Kerj had used that word. “You have a sister?”
“Me,” said Kari bitterly. “I’m his sister, and I’m anything but proud of it. He was my older brother, once, before they froze him for the first time, while I kept on aging. Then he was still just seven and I was nine, and I took him with me when I ran away.”
“AND NOW I WILL BE AVENGED ON YOU,” said Kerj.
“Did you say you could feel love?” said Kari, as she tried to wrench herself from his grasp. “Hardly.”
103
Jaa suddenly had an inspiration. “Hey Kerj!” he said, keeping several feet away. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
Kerj had never had a girlfriend. This impertinent brat was teasing him. He stepped forward angrily, unconsciously letting go of his sister.
Kari, un-gripped by Kerj’s hands, ran.
She ran into the elevator and stopped with her finger over the button. She couldn’t leave Jaa alone to fight Kerj with only Ian to help in the best of circumstances, and this was certainly not the best of circumstances. Ian, unaware that she was watching, was clutching his injured arm to him and his eyes were closed tight. Jaa was staring, horrified, at his autospear, which he had dropped to climb the wall. It was halfway across the room. Kerj had out his magna-gun and it was pointed at Jaa. Kari was not going to stand in the elevator and watch Jaa be killed by Kari’s own brother.
But on the other hand, she couldn’t fight her own brother, either. Not anymore.
Kerj caught sight of her indecision and swung the gun round at her. Ian’s eyes flew open. Jaa dived for the auto-spear. Kerj fired.
But when the pandemonium ceased, it seemed that he couldn’t kill his sister any more than his sister could fight him. Perhaps he could feel love, after all. Though Kari had been the perfect target, he had moved the gun at the last moment so that instead of hitting Kari, the bolt had hit the very cord that Jaa had been trying to cut. Though it remained intact, the neutrinos were floating around the room, no longer pulled to the electromagnets. Suddenly there was very little gravity.
104
Jaa was having an extremely hard time getting to the engine with the box of gunpowder. He hadn’t figured this into his calculations, though it was simple logic. That was one of many problems with being a renegade- you became flawed, if only slightly. The plans did not work quite as well without the Parents to execute them. And the Parents had kept Jaa as young as possible, so that he was easier to manipulate. All his strength lay in brains.
Jaa pushed off the far wall and floated over to the electromagnets. He pulled the box open and began detaching the rivets that held the first magnet in place. Unfortunately, he lost his balance. He floated down and the box floated up just as Kerj, his conscience quelled, fired again.
105
The next moment, a wave of heat and smoke struck him as the box exploded. It isn’t nuclear, but it still explodes, he thought before he smashed into the floor headfirst. He didn’t lose consciousness, but it felt as though someone had driven a red-hot poker into his temples. The autospear spun upward and away. Kari yelled, “The coolant- ” before her voice was drowned out by an eruption of flame from the wall.
“What happened?” Ian gasped.
“The coolant’s burning. Without that, the electromagnets will overheat.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Anyway, the circuit’s broken, and the magnets can’t work at all. Right?”
“No to your first statement. If the magnets overheat, the gravity engine will go wild. And your second statement is also wrong. The backup circuit will probably come on in a minute.”
Kari’s assumption was correct. With a loud hum, the neutrinos began whirling around the room again. This time, however, a high whine, increasing in intensity, rose up until it drowned out the hum. Alarms flashed on, their strident whooping adding to the general chaos.
106
“By the time anyone gets here, it’ll be too late for them to stop it!” Kari shouted. “Io could very well blow up! We have to get out of here!”
Jaa stumbled towards Ian and Kari, as fast as his legs would carry him, his head banging far louder than the alarms. Kari seized his arm and all three ran toward the elevator.
Ian jabbed the UP button far more than was necessary. The elevator seemed painfully slow. “Faster, faster,” said Ian under his breath, forgetting even his arm in his panic. “Oh, please go faster.”
They reached the surface after what seemed a hundred years, though it was closer to a hundred seconds, and closer still to a hundred half-seconds.
“A ship!” cried Kari. “We don’t have a ship!”
“The escape pod. Hurry!” They raced across the room. There was no sign of the Parents. At the door, Kari stopped dead. “No oxygen,” she murmured, her face a chalky white. “We don’t have oxygen suits. We’ll never make it.”
107
The lights flickered suspiciously. Ian paled until his face matched Kariâ€™s. What was going on?
â€œThe circuits were overheated,â€ Jaa said. â€œI should have known. In a minute â€“â€œ
Then, with a big flash, all light and heating mechanisms ceased. They were suddenly in the dark, with cold rapidly attacking the air. The air that soon wouldnâ€™t be there anymore. â€œWe need to get out of here,â€ said Jaa.
“We’ll have to hold our breaths,” said Kari, suddenly very calm, â€œand make a run for the escape pod.”
Kari opened the door and took off running, followed by Ian and Jaa. Ian had always thought that holding his breath was unpleasant, but holding his breath while running was worse. They barely made it to the escape pod without passing out. Just as they had secured the door shut, Io rumbled- and blew up, rocketing the pod into the sky.

Chapter Nine

Ian leaned back against the wall. “That was awful,” he said shakily.
108
“Where to now?” asked Jaa, taking deep breaths.
“I don’t know.” Kari sat down on the floor. “Did we even destroy the engines?”
“It hardly matters now,” said Ian. “Even if the magnets didn’t blow up with Io, what good would they be just floating around in space?”
And for once, he was right.
Kari walked over to the viewscreen, looking back at the ruinous cluster of asteroids that was once Jupiter’s volcanic moon. Already some of the battered hunks of stone were swinging out into a new orbit, forming another ring around the gas giant. Then Jaa raised the engines to full power, and the image blurred as their ship shot forward at 40% the speed of light.
109
The escape pod slowed down when it reached the asteroid belt about an hour later. Ian’s arm was now encased in an electron gel sac, which was slowly healing his fried nerves. Jaa twisted the control joystick, and the ship dropped into orbit around Ceres, hovering at the very edge of the artifisphere.
“Well, Ian, I guess this is goodbye,” Kari said. “I hope you can manage on Ceres.”
Ian looked around at the former Containers. “Where will you guys go?”
“I don’t really know, but Antavo, that old smuggler who took us to Luna, told me a lot about some of the illegal markets in the solar system. This escape pod has a few canisters of Ionian mineral fuel, and that will be a rare commodity now that Io is gone. We’ll probably trade that for some other things, and then make a living in spaceâ€¦ ” She trailed off.
110
“I’m coming with you.”
“What?” Kari ejaculated.
“That life sounds a lot better than mine was on Ceres. Besides, you guys are my friends. Did you think I was going to want to let you have that much fun without me?” Ian joked.
Kari opened her mouth to object, or to agree, or simply to express her shock at Ianâ€™s sudden taste for adventure, but Jaa settled the matter. “Right. Where’s the first market?” he asked.
A slow grin rose over Kari’s face. “Well, I hear a Betwer colony has discovered massive peridot deposits on Deimos, and the Solar Trade Service has gone to check it out. We’ll beat them to the punch. Those Betwers will pay through the nose to get this fuel.”
111
“That sounds great, except for one thing.” Ian said.
“What?” Jaa inquired, looking apprehensive.
“Do Betwers even have noses?”
Everyone burst out laughing. It wasn’t that much of a joke, but after the strain of the past few hours, it felt good to release the tension.
“One more thing,” Ian said. “Can we stop at the Preserved Terran Habitats on the way?”
Jaa grinned. “Sure. Let’s go.”
The tiny ship pulled out of orbit and shot out into the starry vista like a stone from a sling, heading toward Mars.

0

219

Alice

in July 4th, 2007 @ 18:46

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! We need Cat’s Meow! *panics* Please, Meow, come back! We need you to edit!

Oh well, I’d better go edit Part 2 now.

0

220

Alice

in July 4th, 2007 @ 23:21

Here is the first chapter of Part Two (Callisto):

Chapter One

1
“Five betrens. And that’s final,” said Kari firmly.
“Seven,” said the Betwer.
“FIVE.”
“Six,” said the Betwer, but its argument was weak and Kari was relentless, and within minutes the girl was gripping the can of food paste tightly as she walked back to the ship.
Less than a week had passed since Io exploded, but the three adventurers were already much richer than they ever had been. Kari could easily have spent twice as much on the food paste and still have been well off. However, it never hurt to pay as little as possible.
2
Things were not going well at the Parents headquarters. Since the Renegades, KRI and JAA, had escaped security had tripled over night. Some systems were simple, but others were devastatingly complicated. In one corridor an image was captured when someone entered. If it did not match the records on the database huge steel triangles slid up from the floor, quickly unfolding into squares of metal origami. At others the floor rose up and portcullises slammed down trapping the intruder. Every door was fitted with a scanner that detected weaponry. If an autospear or anything else was detected an alarm would go off and high-speed cameras would make sure the face did not go unnoticed. The beauty of the alarm system was that it went off in every room except the room that had activated it. A break-in was hardly possibleâ€¦
3
“Hey, Kari!”
Kari spun around. Across the hangar, she saw Ian waving from on top of their tiny ship, the Victory. Kari waved vigorously back. Jaa was only half visible, his upper torso, head and arms buried in the ship’s innards behind an open panel. Muffled Terran curses came from deep in the wiring, usually accompanied by loud clanks.
“I got some food,” said Kari when she reached the ship a minute or two later. Ian looked dolefully at the food paste, remembering the flavor of the Parents’ food, but he did not complain. It was something to eat, after all, and there had been precious little of that for the last seven years of Ianâ€™s life.
4
The fuel had proved remarkably tricky to sell, despite the fact that the Betwers obviously wanted it, and at one point they had been forced to flee Deimos for a day or two and land elsewhere, after Kari had demanded a most exorbitant price for a can of the fuel. As a result of these relatively minor incidents, it had been some time before they had managed to get food, and the Parents’ stash of TV dinners had gone quickly.
5
Kari caught Ian’s expression. “Don’t worry. I have an idea.”
Jaa emerged from the ship, his white-blond hair stained an oily black. “What is it?”
“The Parents are probably paying more attention to their headquarters after Project Neoterra failed, and less to their other outposts, such as the illegal habitats that they have orbiting Terra.”
She paused, waiting for the penny to drop. It didnâ€™t take long.
Ian gasped in a mixture of hope and horror. “You don’t seriously meanâ€¦ ”
Jaa grinned. “Why not? If we capture one of them and move it into a different orbit, we’ll have a home base and somewhere to get food. Real food, not just this paste.”
“But there are only three of us! And our only ship is an escape pod! It’s minuscule!”
“Don’t worry,” Kari said. “I sold one canister of fuel to the Betwer for the food, and three others for a little addition to the ship. Jaa?”
“Everything’s ready for the linkup,” Jaa replied. “Come on, let’s go over to the maintenance dock.”
6
“We’re going to attach more powerful engines, a storage module, and maybe a couple of weapons,” Kari explained as they boarded. “I sold the canisters to a guy who runs the best illegal ship upgrading business in the inner planets.”
“Illegal???”
“Sure. We would never be able to afford a legal one. And we can’t go gallivanting around the solar system in a tiny little pod like this. After the upgrade, we can call ourselves proper traders.â€ She paused. â€œIan, you have to get used to it.”
“But the ship still won’t be able to haul an entire habitat! Those things are almost a mile around!”
“It has its own engines, and Jaa and I are Containers, so we’ll be authorized to operate them.”
“But you’re renegades!” His voice dropped to a whisper here. “They’ll have erased your DNA from the database.”
“Nah. They’re too busy trying to keep Project Neoterra afloat to attend to little details like that.”
Et cetera, et cetera. All the way to the maintenance dock, Kari ruthlessly crushed Ian’s objections. By the time they reached the dock, he actually thought it was a good idea.
7
As they reached the maintenance dock, Kari pulled out her list of upgrades they wanted to get and which ones they could afford.
“First things first,” said Kari. “We need a bigger ship.”
Ian glanced at the escape pod, which was roughly the size of a small room.
Kari looked at the upgrades available. “We’ll take that one,” she said, pointing at a live image of a storage module that could be added easily to the side of any ship. It would almost double the size of their escape pod.
8
“Second things second,” Kari continued. “Better engines. We should get size 4, I think.” Ian looked at their own engines, which were size 1. Everything on an escape pod was the cheapest available, as they were only for temporary use.
9
“Third things third,” said Kari. “We need some weapons.” She turned to Ian and Jaa. “Any suggestions?”
“Well,” Jaa said, thinking, “we don’t want to kill anyone. I’d say a couple of high-power magnabeamsâ€“ they’ll shut down ships and knock people out, but nothing fatal.”
“Nothing fatal?” Ian nearly shouted. His arm was still not back to normal, and he was very sensitive to any mention of magnabeams. The thought of firing them at innocent people made him sick.
“The good ones aren’t,” Jaa explained patiently. “It’s the low-quality beams that can kill.”
This didn’t make much sense at all, and Ian said so.
10
“They were only designed a few years ago, to stun but not kill.” By a few years ago, Jaa meant a few decades ago, but being frozen had messed up his sense of time. “They were mostly used by the top government ships, since no one else could afford them. Then the lower-class weapons manufacturers realized that magnabeams would be a huge hit among traders and so forth, and started making them. But the originals were very fine-tuned, and it was something that couldn’t be duplicated. I guess even the Parents couldn’t get their hands on real government magnabeams.”
“But if they couldn’t, how could we?”
Jaa sighed. â€œThere is the other possibility. The Parents, could get them, but it was no good wasting them on us: two renegades and an impure human.â€ As he said, â€œimpureâ€, his voice took on a slightly robotic sound, but his eyes showed nothing more than a flicker of realization, and no one pursued the matter.
Kari was staring at the screen on with the upgrades were displayed, and obviously hadnâ€™t heard past Ianâ€™s question. “As it happens,” she said, momentarily baffling her companions, “this particular maintenance dock has some. Second-hand, of course, but it will do.”
Ian sighed deeply. He hated going against the law, but there was no way to convince the renegade Containers that they ought to stay away from smuggled weapons. They would only brush it off anyways, and tell him that it didnâ€™t really matter. Kari and Jaa were practically ecstatic at their good fortune.
11
After the upgrades had been installed, the trio climbed aboard their new, improved ship. “Which habitat do you think we should try and take over?” Kari as the started up the powerful engines. “The one orbiting at 14 degrees latitude has a good variety of life in it,” Jaa replied. Ian sighed and shook his head, but the other two didnâ€™t notice. They didnâ€™t notice much, or if they did, they chose to ignore it. The boy wondered if it was something to do with Containers, if their sense of caution had been tampered with, while the Parents were perfecting their race. Whether or not that was true, Ian felt he was the only one with a grain of sense, and resolved to try to keep them all out of trouble from now on, although it seemed like it would be pretty near impossible, if what had happened so far was anything to go by. He sighed again, and amused himself by watching Kari fiddle with the controls.
Several hours later they were blasting off from Ganymede on a test run. Jaa but Kari was firm. They had to see how the ship worked first, because who knows what could happen?

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221

Alice

in July 4th, 2007 @ 23:22

Oh, and by the way, what purpose do the numbered sections now hold? Can we take them out?

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222

Alice

in July 5th, 2007 @ 16:03

Oops. In the last paragraph, make that:

“Jaa wanted to leave right away but Kari was firm,” not, “Jaa but Kari was firm.”

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223

E2MB

in July 5th, 2007 @ 16:50

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO VISIT THIS THREAD FOR WAAAAAY TOO LONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!!!

*scrambles to c+p everything into his now very out-of-date word document*

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224

in July 5th, 2007 @ 17:41

I’m taking out the numbers, and I found an AWFUL mistake. *dies of horror* I fixed it, though. It’s in Chapter One, Part One, what was once section 14:

Kari didn’t reply, and just looked straight ahead in a way that seemed both unnatural and inhuman. She was good at hiding her feelings. She had to be. In her mind though, she could be dying of loneliness and no one would ever know. In this world, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the clever modern scientists with their clever modern schemes, and even that was being threatened. The mind was the last place of privacy, but many were trying to break even that barrier. Some had succeeded, and Kari would never forget the dreadful years spent in their clutches.

Originally it said, instead of “this world”, “Ian’s colony”, and since Kari is not from Ian’s colony, it didn’t work very well.

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228

E2MB

in July 5th, 2007 @ 17:47

I’m done…

*pants*

*drags tounge across the keyboard*

That took FOREVER!!!

Alice – Which chapters of Part 2 have you done your basic editing for already?

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229

E2MB

in July 5th, 2007 @ 17:50

227 – Fixed. *wipes brow* I am NEVER leaving this thread for another week ever again.

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230

Alice

in July 5th, 2007 @ 17:53

228- Only Chapter One. I’ll work on Two later, but right now I’m just running through Part One for the LAST TIME, and taking the numbers out.

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231

Alice

in July 6th, 2007 @ 01:03

I finished 2.2 today, but I won’t post it tonight. *yawns*

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232

Alice

in July 6th, 2007 @ 10:40

Here ’tis. Read and enjoy.

Chapter 2

They got a relatively bumpy ride, but Jaa was pleased with the speed of the ship. “We clocked 70 minutes and 22 seconds over 148,800,000 miles,” he proudly announced as they pulled into Ganymede’s dock.
“That’s almost 1/5 the speed of light!” Kari exclaimed, beaming.
Ian said nothing. He was a proper trader now, supposedly, as well as an outlaw, but even though traders often bent the law, and outlaws outright broke it, he still felt uncomfortable doing anything illegal. He voiced something that had been bothering him since Io.
“Guys?” he said uncertainly. Kari and Jaa turned. “You both burnt out your microchips, but I didn’t. I’m still trackable. And probably being tracked, too.”
“No, you’re not,” said Kari. She pushed up his sleeve. There was the tiny green pinprick of light that signified a microchip. “It’s still there,” said Ian bluntly. He wasnâ€™t sure what heâ€™d been expecting, but something more promising than that.
“That doesn’t mean you’re trackable,” replied Kari. “Remember the magnabeam? It struck this arm, right? That would have shut it off as effectively as if you’d died. And you have the bonus of it still looking like it’s there. Much less conspicuous than a gaping hole in your arm. ”
“Wow.” Ian suddenly felt as though a huge weight, one he’d had all his life, had lifted from his shoulders. He still couldn’t comprehend it completely- no microchip!- but he knew it was good.
“We’ll need to refuel this,” Jaa said. “I’ll go try to find some fuel.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Kari said. “I’ve seen Ganymede five times. You guys, if I’m correct, are new to this place. You might want to look around.”
Jaa grinned. “Sure, why not? I hear the Great Cavern is breathtaking.”
As Ian and Jaa got off the Victory and stepped into the elevator leading to the lower levels, Ian tried to remember all he had read or learned about Ganymede. Cavern City, where they were now, consisted of two main parts. The first was the Spire, a massive tower that loomed up seven hundred feet from the icy, barren surface. Docks lined the walls in a spiral pattern, and all of the spacefaring businesses were crammed into capsules on its inside.
Below the Spire was the Great Cavern, a huge cave half-filled with water. A triple volcano, its lava generated by the constant gravitational pull of Jupiter, kept the subterranean sea from freezing. In the low gravity, fantastic towers and crenellations of ice had formed on the cavern ceiling as the water melted and refroze. The rest of the city’s population dwelt in living units anchored to the icy stalactites, and Ian was looking forward to seeing this strange mode of living.
When the elevator door opened, Ian was more fascinated then he could have imagined. All the lights flashing off the stalactites across the ceiling created an eerie feeling, while the water contrasted the greenish-white ceiling with black and dark blue. There were shops everywhere, buying and selling, and people traveled around the underground sea on personal hovercrafts.
Ian and Jaa had a fair bit of time to look around, while Kari would be negotiating fuel prices on the Spire. As they both walked out onto the steel platform, they approached a hovercraft rental. The price was steep, but they had plenty of money to pay with.
Ian, in the midst of sheer excitement in the depths of Cavern City, almost rammed his hovercraft into a wall. “Slower,” said Jaa. “We can’t run into people or we could cause a disturbance and get thrown out.”
But a disturbance found them first. As they rode through an empty section of sea closer to the main part of the city, they were forced to turn around by a mob of people going the opposite direction. Apparently something had happened.

Meanwhile, Kari was looking for some good fuel. The larger engines, while a bonus in some ways, made it awfully hard to find fuel. She had almost found what she needed when she found out that it was some of her own canisters of fuel she had sold a while ago. The Spire was a crowded place, and it took a great deal of time to move from one place to another. She eventually found another fuel dealer.
“I’d like some canisters of something between quality 100 and quality 110 fuel,” she told the woman who was at the front, hoping to be more specific than last time. “We have 4 canisters left of quality 108 fuel,” said the woman.
Kari did a quick mental calculation. Their ship would be able to travel 1 AU on one canister of quality 100 fuel. Would that be enough?
“Do you have any more in that range?” she asked. “I’m afraid not,” said the woman. “A lot of private ships have been asking for fuel lately and we’re just about out.” Sighing, Kari paid for the fuel and started to return toward the ship.

“What’s going on?” Ian gasped, in the underground part of Cavern City.
Jaa looked around. Then his mouth dropped open. “It can’t beâ€¦ ”
A sleek, black hovercraft was powering over the water toward them. At the controls was a young woman, her features obscured by the shaded carboglass windscreen. Another one, a man, was standing upright, holding a magnabeam in his hand. He had the unmistakable white-blond hair and green eyes of a Container.
Ian pulled the hovercraft around in a hard right. A slash of white spray cut the dark water as the small boat powered up and shot forward.
Jaa was twisted around in his seat, staring back at the black hovercraft, ever gaining on them. He knew what they wanted. They needed him to reconstruct the gravitational engines for Project Neoterra. And they didn’t care what they did to get him.

Kari had put the fuel in their ship and had gone to the underground part of cavern city to tell Ian and Jaa that they could get going to Mars when she heard a commotion behind her. She turned and saw, beyond all the people, two hovercrafts racing across the water. As she watched, a thin pulse of magnetic energy, visible only to Kari, with her superior vision, shot out from the black hovercraft towards the smaller one. Which held Ian and Jaa. Her vision zoomed in almost of her own accord. That wasn’t just any man, it was a Container. And not just any Containerâ€¦
“Oh, no, no,” Kari whispered. “Is he invincible?”
It was Kerj.
Kari ducked out of sight. If Kerj saw her, all three of them would be doomed.
“Gangway!” screamed Jaa, as Ian turned the hovercraft onto full speed in a desperate attempt to break free from the grasp of the magnetic pulse when he ran into a cavern wall and found himself tunneling through Ganymedeâ€™s rough soil, the magnetic shield pushing the dirt out of the way.
“YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME,” roared Kerj, caring nothing for subtlety, “AND YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR DESTRUCTION OF THE ARTIFICIAL-GRAVITY MACHINES.” And with that he released the magnetic shield, just as Ian and Jaa’s hovercraft burst through the surface of the planet.
The hovercraft’s engine gave a little gargle and died.
“I think we’re safe,” said Jaa. “For now.”
“‘Gangway’?” asked Ian, half amused.
“Terran,” gasped Jaa.
“Right. You’ll have to teach me Terran sometime. In the meantime, I thought these things only worked in the water?”
“Apparently not,” said Jaa.
When the pair reached Victory, they found Kari already there, just about to blast off. “Wait!” called Ian, and Kari stopped. “I thought you had been captured by Kerj!” she said, surprised.
“We escaped,” said Jaa breathlessly. “It’s a long story.”
` They both clambered aboard, while Kari was still in a state of shock. “Turn the engines back on,” said Jaa, “We’ve got our fuel and weâ€™re off!”
They had just blasted off when Kerj climbed out of the hole the hovercraft had made. He glanced at the sky and saw their ship. He knew who was in there. And he had no intention of letting them get awayâ€¦
Back on the Victory, Ian and Jaa were recovering from their horrifying encounter.
“How did he survive?” Ian said incredulously, referring to Kerj.
“My best guess,” Jaa replied, “is nanobots. At least three in every cell, to provide oxygen and sheathe his body in a pressure field. The Parents must have worked obsessively on him, but it paid off. He would be able to survive in up to 500 degrees Kelvin, absolute zero, or a total vacuum. He’s what they would call a perfect Container.
“The nanobots can even protect him from some Terran weapons if necessary,â€ continued Jaa. “He’s the kind of container you don’t want to get on the bad side of. Unfortunately, that’s right where we are.”
“Well, he can’t be too dangerous, can he?” asked Ian. “it’s not like the nanobots give him superstrength or anything. Right?”
“Uhhâ€¦ wellâ€¦ that’s the other thing.”
“Oh, no.”
“He is very strong,” said Jaa, “and the nanobots can cure him of whatever injury he obtains except death. The only way we could ever get rid of him would be to kill him very quickly.”
Kari sighed. “Then we’d better get away from him,” she said suddenly, turning the speed on the Victory up a notch.
“But,” said Jaa, “Pain still hurts him. So he avoids it when he can. It was one of the only things that the Parents couldn’t help him with.”
“Wait!” cried Ian in realization.
“What?” asked Jaa and Kari in unison.
“If pain hurts him, and the only way for him to be killed is to do it quickly,” he mused.
“Yes?” said Kari impatiently.
“I read this book back on Ceres about the Marsgarden Discovery,” said Ian.
Kari and Jaa looked at Ian quizzically.
“You, know,” sighed Ian. “In 2099, Terran scientists discovered a system of methane, hydrogen, and other assorted poisonous gas caves under the surface of Mars. These caves are easily accessible from the ruined Base 1, and will immediately kill any carbon-based lifeform that enters unprotected.”
Jaa still looked confused, but a look of understanding dawned upon Kari’s face.
“So,” she began.
“We throw Kerj in the Marsgarden!” announced Ian, with a look of triumph.
“Well,” said Jaa, “he’s always trying to destroy us, so maybe we could lure him in by – ” He was interrupted by a flash from the advanced radar system, indicating that they were within 400 miles of some object. Traveling at nearly 30 miles per second, they wouldn’t want to risk slamming into something that quickly.
Kari looked at the screen. “It says there’s an object recognizable as a spaceship of some sort 38.23 miles away. It seems to be following us, as it does not get any closer or farther away while we are moving.”
“Kerj, do you think?” mused Jaa.
“Wouldn’t Kerj try to gain on us?” asked Ian. “His ship can probably go much faster than Victory.”
Kari smiled. “Not necessarily. I think you underestimate our little escape pod.” Her smile turned fierce. “Let’s see how effective those new engines are, why don’t we?”
Ian turned pale. “This is only our test run!” he remembered. “Shouldn’t we go back?”
“Not possible,” said Kari shortly. “We paid the man, so now we can do whatever we like. Anyways, we already did our test run. It worked fine, didn’t it?”
“But the ride got pretty bumpy when we turned it up to the higher levels of speed,” said Jaa. “We may want to strap ourselves into some seats if we want to turn it up to full speed.”
“Whatever you say,” said Kari, sitting down in a chair behind her. “Now let’s turn the rockets onto full speed!” She pulled down the speedshift lever all the way to the bottom.
A force of 8 G’s crushed all three of them into their seats as the rockets flared up. The speedometer said they were approaching 80% of the speed of light. “Myâ€¦ visionâ€¦ isâ€¦ bluuuryâ€¦” Ian shouted as well as he could, it required so much energy to move his mouth.
“Atâ€¦. thisâ€¦.. rateâ€¦.” said Jaa, “We’llâ€¦.. reachâ€¦. Marsâ€¦.. inâ€¦ minutes.”
It was Kari, unable to take the pressure any longer, who pulled the speedshift lever up two notches. The ship slowed down some, although it still shot forwards much faster than any ship would in ordinary circumstances.
“It didn’t used to do that,” said Ian limply as he recovered.
“That’s because this ship isn’t built to take it. We could do that in the old rescue ship easily, but Victory’s just made for getting away.”
“Well, it did get us away.” said Kari. “That other ship is no longer in our radar.”

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233

Alice

in July 7th, 2007 @ 21:08

You ready for this? I was obsessing over an RRR I couldn’t write on, so the only logical thing to do was edit. *grins sheepishly* Well, here it is:

Chapter 3

31
Mars appeared in the distance, first as a bright point, then as a rusty dot, then as a rapidly enlarging blood-red ball. Kari reflected that when the ancient Terrans had named that planet after their god of war, they hadn’t known how apt it would be thousands of years later.
When Mars had been subjected to the primitive terraforming techniques of the olden days, it remained uninhabitable except for a fertile belt around the equator. Several dozen colonies had already been set up when it happened, so there wasn’t enough space to go around. The only “solution” apparent was war. And war had been the zeitgeist on Mars for the past century. As such, the Red Planet was not a popular tourist destination.
As Kari slowed down the ship and they entered the cloudy atmosphere, she scanned the ground for a landing site. â€œLook for somewhere to dock,â€ she told the others.
â€œWhat about that?â€ asked Ian, pointing to a landing site right next to the Capitol of Mars02, the second country founded on Mars. Mars02 had bragging rights to some of the primitive Terran robots sent to Mars in the previous millennium, and it had a huge museum of these and Mars artifacts. It would have attracted more tourists if Mars01 hadn’t always been fighting Mars02, claiming it should own the pieces of Mars history because it was founded first.
32
“Looks like some sort of riot down on the streets,” said Jaa, who knew that Mars02 citizens were relatively violent.
“Then why are we here?” Ian said nervously, looking down at the rioters.
“If we don’t want Kerj to chase us all around creation for the rest of our lives, we have to let him catch up to us, then get rid of him,” Kari explained. She had a catch in her voice as she said this. Ian wondered if she still had some lingering affection for her brother.
33
Ian looked down at the screaming mob again, weaving their way through the round domes of the buildings.
“We don’t have to go down there right away, do we?” he asked. He would have been quite happy not to go down at all, but Kari had a point. Ian would almost rather brave the rioting Marsicans than Kerj, and that was saying something.
“No,” said Kari, but Ian’s relief was short-lived. “We want Kerj to see us before we go rushing off.”
She flipped on the radar, and set it on its biggest scannable setting, and then told it to look for a ship.
After exactly 13 minutes, Kari said, “There’s a ship approximately 4,000,000 miles away from us and heading toward us at 522 miles per second!”
“Then we have about 7,660 seconds until Kerj gets here. That’s less than three hours,” said Jaa.
“What if that ship isn’t Kerj’s?” said Ian.
“We can’t take the chance,” Kari replied as she steered the ship closer to the landing pad.
34
They stepped out of the Victory, only to be confronted with an unreasonably tall person. “What in the weirdness are ya doinâ€™ here?” the person barked.
“Ohâ€¦” said Kari, desperately seeking for a plausible excuse for anyone to come to Mars02 by their own free will. Oddly enough, it was Ian who saved them.
â€œWeâ€™re tourists,â€ he said. â€œWeâ€™ve come to see the museum.â€
The strange person continued. “Well yer weird ship and such need to pay before you can park here.”
Kari handed him 1 betren. “Here,” she said, handing it into this Marsican’s hand.
“Hee hee,” the person shouted as he ran off. “Now I can pay my rent!”
“Cursed Marsicans,” said Kari, “I should’ve known better. Always cheaters and frauds. Oh well. At least we got him out of our hair.â€
35
“From what I remember,” said Jaa, “the original bases are about 170 miles north from here. The entrance to MarsGarden is at base 1. All the bases were abandoned because they got too cold, so we should be able to sneak in.”
Kari started bounding north, soon followed by Ian and Jaa. They were able to run very quickly, due to the fact that Mars’ gravity is not very strong and the air is relatively thin.
They were within sight of what was formerly base 1, when the wind started to pick up. “This is making it hard to run,” said Ian, pushing against the oncoming air.
Jaa looked up. A cloud of dust was rising in the distance. “Uh-oh,” he said. â€œLook.â€
“It’s a sandstorm!” exclaimed Kari. “Those things can last for days!”
36
A voice shouted, “FREEZE!” just as the cloud of dust hit them.
“Oh, great, is it Kerj again?” moaned Ian, covering his head.
“How could he get here so fast?” asked Jaa frantically.
Kari was the only one of the three who had turned around, having had the good sense to turn her back to the storm. It didn’t help much, but she used her Container vision to see through the cloud of dust. “He didn’t,” she replied. “It’s not Kerj. It’s not even anyone I know.” She squinted. â€œNo, itâ€™s definitely not Kerj. Itâ€™s a woman.
â€œIt still could be someone dangerous,” said Jaa. “Let’s head toward what remains of base 1 and hide there until we can figure out what this guy is doing here.”
“They wouldn’t be able to find us very easily, as you can’t see 5 feet in front of you right now.” said Ian.
37
“IT’S THEM, KRJ!” the unknown person called.
“Well, obviously they have,â€ said Kari. â€œLetâ€™s get out of here.â€
Jaa was groping around in the flying sand until suddenly he hit a building. “I think I found base 1!” he hollered.
Kari turned around to look at the unknown Container. A second body had joined the first, and Kari saw that it was Kerj.
At that moment, she also saw that they had an advantage. Kerj could not look at them or else sand would hit his eyes and blind him, but Kari could look back at them and see where they were, because the sand would only hit the back of her head. â€œAt least we have a chance,â€ she thought.
Ian walkedâ€“well, stumbled, reallyâ€“in the direction that Jaa had called from, and soon banged against the building too. “KARI!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Shut UP,â€ hissed the Jaa into his ear. â€œWe’ve got to be quiet or theyâ€™ll find us.â€
Running his finger lightly along the wall, he started walking.
38
Ian didn’t know what to do, and thought that perhaps they ought to wait for Kari, but he didn’t want to stay where he was, so he followed Jaa.
Pretty soon they hit a corner in the wall and Jaa had to turn. Then the wall ended, though it felt like part of it had been destroyed. Jaa and Ian felt their way tentatively over to the other side. Jaa let Ian walk first this time, out of fairness or fear Ian didn’t know.
Suddenly there was no ground beneath Ianâ€™s left foot. He withdrew it hastily and kneeled down. By running his hand along the ground, he found that he was at the rim of what could be a huge hole. “Jaa,” he whispered, “I’m pretty sure I’ve found MarsGarden!”
39
“Perfect!” said Jaa. “If only we could see something. How are we going to make this work with a raging sandstorm going on?”
“No, no,” said Ian excitedly. “This is perfectâ€“hang on. You can’t see anything? But you’re a Container. Canâ€™t you use your â€˜genetic modificationâ€™ or whatever it is?â€
“Never mind. What’s your plan?”
“You, me, and Kari all have to get to the other side of this. Then we’ll holler and yell like mad, and Kerj’ll go charging across the hole- right into the MarsGarden.”
“That would be great, except for the fact that we don’t know where Kari is.”
Ian frowned. â€œShould we go back and get her? I mean, can she fight two Containers?â€

But in truth, Kerj was not focused on capturing Kari. Though he had been sent to capture both renegades, it was stressed that JAA was the most important, if he could capture only one of the two. The gravitational machines needed to be reconstructed, and JAA was the only one who knew how to design them.
40
Kari shrank against the ruined wall of Base 1, hoping against hope that Kerj didn’t use his Container vision to find her through the sand. Using her own, she saw Kerj and the other Containerâ€“the woman who had been in the hovercraft, she presumedâ€“walk around the building. She could see Ian and Jaa crouched over something maybe fifty yards away. Suddenly Jaa stood up. He seemed oblivious to the Containers so near at hand. Why didn’t he use his vision? Kari was practically frantic. She tried to sharpen her hearing, but Ian and Jaa were silent now. They began to walk away from Kari and the other two, following an odd curving pattern. The sandstorm blurred even her vision, so that Ian and Jaa were only two shadowy figures.
41
Kerj pulled out a magnabeam from a concealed pocket in his coat. The sand stung his eyes, but nanobots swarmed about them, replicating the optic tissue, and so he felt no need to blink or turn away. Taking precise aim, he fired, striking first Jaa, then Ian.
He turned to LAQ, the female Container. “GET THEM. I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU DO WITH THE IMPURE ONE. I NEED JAA.”
Kari could only watch in horror as Jaa was carried away, insensible. Ian lay on the sand by the side of the MarsGarden. Kari didn’t know what to do. It would take hours to get an unconscious Ian back to the ship so that they could rescue Jaa, and by then it might be too late for both boys. It all depended on what kind of magnabeam Kerj had used.
If he had the right equipment, he could get away with using the second-rate, dangerous, kind, and still be able to keep Jaa alive. In that case, Ian was doomed. If the Parents had been worried about the danger of killing Jaa, then they would have used the more fine-tuned type. If that was true, then Ian would wake up in a few hours, confused but alive.
42
Kari waited until Kerj and LAQ had vanished into the whirling sand, then ran over to Ian, nearly falling into the MarsGarden in the process.

Ian woke feeling gritty and dazed. He opened his eyes, and was surprised to feel sand in them. He closed them again, ignored the almost painful sand on his cheeks.
“No! Ian!” said a voice. “You have to wake up THIS MINUTE!”
Ian opened his eyes once more. “What?” he asked blearily. Kari was squatting near him, her face dirty with dust and sand. “What happened? Where’s Jaa? Did you kill Kerj?”
Kari shook his head. “Kerj caught up with us, remember? He shot you and Jaa with magnabeams.”
“And Jaa-?”
“Yes. Lucky for you the Parents wanted him alive. They didn’t use the really nasty kind of magnabeam. But now we have to rescue him.” She stood up and helped Ian do the same. â€œC’mon. Let’s go.”
43
By the time they reached the landing pad, the sandstorm had abated somewhat, so Ian could see as well as Kari. What he saw, though, puzzled him as much as if he had been unable to.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was hallucinating. “Kari?” he said. “Where’s the Victory?”
“Oh, no,” Kari breathed. “They must have taken the Victory as well as their own ship. Or if it wasnâ€™t them, it was a Marsican.â€
“And we donâ€™t know which, even if we could get off Mars!” Ian exploded, finally recognizing their dire predicament.

Chapter 4

44
Jaa was in Kerj’s ship, bound by some sticky and unknown substance to a wall in the control room. LAQ was piloting the Victory by their side, as Jaa could see on the viewscreen.
“WAKE UP!!!” Kerj demanded, shaking Jaa violently until he stirred, and woke up.
“Wha – who is this?” asked Jaa, disoriented by the strange surroundings.
“REGENADE JAA,” said Kerj furiously, “YOU HAVE BEEN CHOKING OUR THROATS WITH YOUR DANGEROUS ANTICS.”
“Kerj! ” Jaa was suddenly wide-awake. He looked around at the inside of the ship, and he fell into despair. He had not been in the power of the Parents for several weeks, but he knew what they did to traitors.
“LISTEN TO ME!!!” Kerj screamed in Jaa’s face. “YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE GRAVITY MACHINES! YOU MUST RECONSTRUCT THEM, OR YOU SHALL BE PUNISHED.”
Jaa’s face was filled with a mixture of anger and fear. “No,” he said quietly, “I – I forgot how.”
Kerj grabbed Jaa around the neck. “DO NOT LIE TO ME, BOY,” he said coldly, “OR YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN!”
He continued, “I HAVE DECIDED TO BE MERCIFUL TO YOU. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY IN NEED OF A COMPLETE REPROGRAMMING. BUT I WILL GIVE YOU A CHOICE.
“YOU CAN EITHER REBUILD THOSE GRAVITY MACHINES,” Kerj paused, “OR YOU CAN GO TO RACK 50.” Jaa shuddered. Rack 50 was one of the most horrible forms of torture ever invented.
45
Kerj suddenly let go of Jaa’s neck, and laughed as the boy hit the floor in a helpless bundle of the sticky substance. â€œI need to figure out how to get out of here,â€ Jaa thought.â€ If I do nothing else with my life, I must escape the Parents.â€ Suddenly an idea dawned on him. Nothing else with his life . . .
Jaa reached into his pocket and pulled out an autospear, glad that it had occurred to him to take one from the Victoryâ€™s large store. It wouldn’t harm Kerj, but it would harm Jaa. He held it up in a position to slit his wrists. “Let me go, and I will not commit suicide,” he said, with a smirk upon his face. He knew he was too valuable for the Parents to let him die.
“PUT THAT SPEAR DOWN, RENEGADE JAA,” Kerj said, with a look of worry, “OR I’LL NOT GIVE YOU A CHOICE AND SEND YOU TO RACK 60!”
Jaa held his auto-spear closer. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill himself, but he had to scare Kerj. “Auto-spear,” he whispered, “Attack . . .”
46
In an instant, Kerj lunged at Jaa and tackled him. “Gaaaaack . . .” Jaa sputtered, as the burly older Container knocked the breath out of him. Kerj lifted his fist menacingly, while with the other hand he reached out to seize Jaaâ€™s spear. “Kerj!” cried Jaa. “Wait!”
But the auto-spear interpreted this as the order to attack Kerj. It used technology that ought never to have been invented to lift Jaa’s arm and stab Kerj in the chest.
Kerj fell over at the burst of pain, and struggled to get up, but he couldn’t. He watched Jaa run to the center of the control room as he waited the eternity of 10 seconds for him to heal.
Jaa grabbed an oxygen suit and clambered into it, knowing that he’d need protection, and just as Kerj got up, revived by the ever-useful nanobots, cracked the glass in the window with his auto-spear. He squeezed through the opening just out of Kerjâ€™s reach, as the latter snatched at him in a last effort to redeem his quest.
47
Ian slumped to the Martian ground. “I don’t believe it,” he moaned. “Jaa gone; the Victory gone; us trapped here . . . I don’t believe it.”
“I do,” said Kari. She was staring up into space with a look of extreme annoyance on her face. Nothing more than that: she had learned to control her emotions long ago. “But still, we have 7 Â½ betrens. That’s enough to live on for a day or two, longer if we donâ€™t eat much.”
“Is that enough to buy a ship?” Ian asked half-heartedly.
Kari would’ve laughed if they weren’t in such a state of anguish and despair. “Even the cheapest escape pods cost at least 15 betrens.” she said.
48
“Maybe we could earn the money,” said Ian, looking purposefully around him. He stood up and headed in the direction of downtown Monopolis, the capitol of Mars02.
â€œIan,â€ Kari called after him. â€œI donâ€™t think â€“â€œ Ian ignored her.
He walked up toward a businessâ€™s building and went inside. It appeared to be some sort of high-tech gadget shop.
“Whyhellothereyoungman” said an employee, appearing as if from nowhere. “Wouldyouliketobuyabrandnewautospear?”
“Um, no thanks,” said Ian. “I already have one. What I’m looking for is a . . .” “Pocketorganizersareveryusefulasyoucancommunicateacrosstheplanetswithaminimumthirtyminutedelaythey’rethebestthingavailibleforau’saroundandinstocktoowannabuyone?”
Ian spoke a bit louder. “What I’m looking for is a job. ”
The reply came even more quickly than the first two things the Marsican had said, and Ian had trouble deciphering the words. It was clear, though, that the Marsican was not best pleased. “Wedonotneedyougetoutgetoutscram,” he said, and within seconds, Ian was out the door and back on the street. He made a mental note not to live on Mars when he grew up.
49
“No luck there,” he told Kari.
“I warned you,” she said. “Mars is awful. I hate it.”
“But you were born here.”
“I still hate it.”
“Okay, so what do we do now? Sit here and mope?” Ian groaned. “I never should have left Ceres!”
“But then the Parents would have had an even easier time,” Kari said sharply. “Ian, you HAVE helped.”
“I sure don’t feel very helpful right now . . .” Ian whispered. “Jaa’s in trouble and I just have to sit here and feel sorry for myself. What’s worse, YOU feel sorry for me. You and Jaa could have stopped the Parents alone. I didn’t change anything.”
“Ian, you saved the ship from blowing at the last minute by finding the steering wheel,” Kari said. “If you hadn’t done that, we’d be dead.” Ian thought for a moment. He had forgotten all about that close shave.
“No,” he said finally, “I’ve had enough. I can’t go on like this. One of these days we won’t get so lucky and we’ll all die.” He got up. “I’m going back to Ceres.” he said. “It only costs 2 Â½ betrens, so we could both go back.”
“But what about Jaa?” said Kari. “We can’t just leave him in the hands of the parents. They’ll make him suffer beyond comprehension for all he’s done against them.”
50
At that moment, Jaa was floating in the middle of space. He watched Kerj’s ship and the Victory blast across the huge vacuum of space. He would have to get onto another ship fast, because the oxygen suits lasted only 32 hours. But this was a common space route, so he expected that some sort of transportation ship would come soon.
Ian stared out the portal of the space shuttle. They were on their way back to Ceres. Ian had convinced Kari that they could concoct a plan just as well on Ceres as on Mars, and Kari hadn’t taken much convincing. She hated Mars with a passion. Ian was still in the throes of despondency, and Kari imagined that it would just be her rescuing Jaa this time.
51
As Kari reflected on this, becoming nearly as depressed as Ian, the boy nudged her with his elbow to get her attention. “Look,” he said. “What’s that?” Kari looked. “That” was a small white figure floating in space, right in the path of the shuttle.
“Good heavens,” Kari gasped. “It’s Jaa!”
She dashed out of their compartment in the shuttle, running along the antiseptically clean corridor until she reached the cockpit. The doors slid open to admit her.
The pilot swiveled around in his chair. He looked out of place in the clean environment. A mass of greasy black hair hung down over his barely visible, grimy face. “What is it? And make it quick, this here is a dangerous part of the route.”
“There’s someone out there!” Kari exclaimed. “He looks like he’s stranded in space. We have to stop the ship!”
The pilot deliberately looked the other way. “No can do.”
Desperate, Kari slammed the remainder of her funds onto the control panel. It only amounted to 2 Â½ betrens.
“Got anything else?” the pilot asked. “If not, vamoose.”
52
Kari’s response was eloquent. It consisted of a punch in the face, a shove off the chair, and a quick jerk of the retro-rocket lever. The ship shuddered to a halt.
The pilot looked up from his position on the floor, propping himself up with an elbow. “You’ll be fined for that. Probably do some time in jail, too. Striking a ship official, piloting without a license, endangering crew and passengersâ€“” He was cut off abruptly by a kick in the nose. Kari knew that she, Ian and Jaa had broken dozens of laws already. A few more wouldn’t make any difference.
53
“Get him to pass out,” said Kari to a very pale Ian, as she got a piece of rope and scrambled into the emergency exit’s airlock. Ian went several shades paler. He didn’t know what to do. He was fine with breaking laws that were made by the cruel Parents, but he didn’t feel he could hurt another human being. The pilot, whose nose was bleeding, was starting to recover from seeing stars. Ian didn’t have much time to make a choice.
Ian rapped the pilot lightly on the crown. The man looked up at him, his gaze full of contempt. “That all you can do, kid?”
The boy hit him a little harder, but not much. The pilot seized his arm and twisted it. Ian, whose nerves still hadn’t healed entirely, collapsed in shock.
54
Kari opened the airlock and tossed a rope to Jaa. They couldn’t talk to each other as sound doesn’t travel in space, but Jaa understood that he was getting rescued, and heaved a sigh of relief.
As soon as Jaa and Kari had gotten into the air lock and it was beginning to close, Jaa took off his cumbersome oxygen suit, wishing all suits were as thin as the ones that had been manufactured in the 2050s. Somehow, suits had declined since then, becoming more bulky and uncomfortableâ€“though admittedly more effective as well.
“How did you get here?” Jaa asked, still shocked that Kari herself would be the one rescuing him from floating in space.
“Ian and I got a shuttle to Ceres, and I hijacked the ship so I could rescue you.”
“You hijacked this shuttle?” Jaa marveled. â€œImpressive.”
Kari smiled slightly. The Parentsâ€™ training systems arenâ€™t completely useless, I guess.â€
The air lock opened, and they dropped into the control room. Ian was lying on the floor. The pilot was standing up, his nose dripping blood, and he didn’t look happy.
“Umâ€¦Kari,” whispered Jaa, “I thought you hijacked the shipâ€¦”
â€œThat Ian,â€ thought Kari. â€œIf you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.â€
55
“You are in big, big trouble,” began the pilot. He picked up a pocket organizer. “Guards! I need some guards!” he barked. “Control room!” Instantly a pounding of footsteps could be heard.
Kari realized she was out of time. She ran forward, grabbed the speed throttle, and pulled it down to top speed. The force blasted everybody in the shuttle backward. The pilot fell backward and his hand slammed hard on the floor, while Jaa got pushed into a file cabinet and Ian just rolled across the ground and bumped into the door.
The ship, now rocketing through space, had little room to maneuver in. The guards, who’d come out of nowhere, were nothing more than small robots, easily defeated by Kari. When everyone surrounding the three outlaws was knocked out or broken, Kari slowed down some. They were near Ceres by now, and it was time to make a plan.

Chapter 5

56
When they reached the artifisphere of Ceres, Kari jettisoned the passenger compartments. Air-filled cushions enveloped screaming interplanetary commuters, and parachutes blossomed over them, carrying the steel rooms down towards Ceres’ surface. The shuttle was now just a cockpit and some engines.
Kari wheeled the ship, or what was left of it, around and pulled the throttle. She hadn’t, however, accounted for the fact that the shuttle’s engines had been designed to move about three times the mass of the cockpit. A slight touch on the lever, and the ship leaped forward like an eager panther.
Kari was delighted. She seized the throttle with a grin. “Let’s see what this bucket can do.” And she pulled the lever down all the way.
The image in the front window became blurred as they approached 10,000,000 miles per hour. Kari set the autopilot on Callisto, and they sped off through the vast chambers of space.
“Ouch,” said Ian quietly. “That hurt. A lot.”
“That,” Kari returned icily, “is why you knock him out.”
Ian was confused as to whether he should cause suffering to another human being or draw the suffering upon himself. He peered at the navigational screen, which showed where they were going and how fast.
â€œCallisto?â€ he said. â€œWhy Callisto?â€
Kari rolled her eyes. It was rare that Ian failed to ask this sort of question, it seemed. â€œWeâ€™re going to Callisto because thatâ€™s where the Parents have their headquarters. As you should know.â€
â€œNo, I shouldnâ€™t,â€ said Ian, surprisingly level and matter-of-fact. â€œYou never said anything of the sort.â€
â€œOops,â€ Kari said sheepishly. â€œSorry.â€
Ian shrugged.
57
After about 2 hours of cruising at nearly 1/4 the speed of light, they received a matter transmission. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. HALT OR WE WILL USE MAGNABEAMS.” Kari looked at the radar and sucked in her breath. Several ships were following her 60,000 miles back at speeds slightly greater than her own.
She looked at the weapon options for the shuttle. It had two low-quality magnabeams and a handheld laser gun, the latter of which would be useless. “The low-quality magnabeams don’t stun, they kill,” said Jaa. “I’m not sure we want to get ourselves into the position of murderers or they’ll send a sheriff ship after us.”
“I’m not sure that a sheriff ship after us would make the situation much worse,” said Kari fiercely. “We can’t let them capture us!”
58
“Why in Solana not?” said Ian, who would gladly have gone to jail in exchange for something normal. And to him, who had been there so many times simply for being an orphan, jail was normal. “It’s not as though they know about the Parents.”
“They don’t know about them,” said Kari. “But they’ll pull up mine and Jaa’s biosignatures, which will be easy to find, due to everything we’ve doneâ€“especially mine. The biosignatures will say we’ve escaped from a high-security prison, and that we must be put back there. There isn’t really a high-security prison though; it’s the Parents’ headquarters. So we’ll be back to square one.” Jaa nodded gravely.
Ian didn’t like to think what would happen to him if they were caught. Kari would be frozen, Jaa mind-wiped and put back to work re-designing the engine, and Ianâ€“he would never forget the day Kari had told him what would happen if he was caught. He shuddered.
â€œWhy, oh why didn’t I stay on Ceres?” Ian mumbled to himself. “My quest for knowledge about Terra just got me running around the solar system with 2 Containers so bent on bringing down the Parents they put all moral and ethical issues behind!”
“All right,” said Kari, “I’m going to blast our first magnabeam. If we don’t fire first, they will!”
Ian realized he was stuck on the last moral issue he had just faced. Should he kill others to save himself or risk his life to save others?
59
He realized he didn’t have much time to make a choice. â€œKilling innocent people is not right,â€ he decided, â€œand I need to stop Kari.â€ He walked determinedly up to her.
“Kari,” he said, “You are not going to blast them with your magnabeam.”
“Ian!” said Kari, maneuvering the ship so as not to make an easy target. “Hold on! I’m steering for dear life!”
“Well, you don’t seem to appreciate the dear life those police have,” said Ian. “You’re about to kill them all just to prevent yourself from being captured.”
“Do you want to die?” Kari said. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll just keep driving.” She wondered why she had brought this boy along with her on her quest to stop the Parents. He was never much good in moments of danger, though this was the first time that he had actually added to the danger.
“Look,” said Ian. “Why don’t you save your magnabeam to blast the parent’s headquarters to smithereens? We’ll be at Callisto in minutes!”
“We don’t have time for that!” said Kari. “The police will get us before then!” She put her hand on the lever.
“Wait!” said Ian. “You have two. Could you fire this one off aim, to scare them, and save the other one for blasting the Parents?”
60
Kari thought for a moment. It could work. She decided, in a brief instant that if she didn’t do what Ian said, he would keep arguing until they got hit. She swerved far left and fired the first magnabeam. It missed the police by several miles. “There’s more where that came from!” she yelled into the pilot’s pocket organizer, which had fallen out when he fell over into the passenger room.

Becca, the leader of the police ships, was getting slightly worried. She hadn’t known that this shuttle had magnabeams. But when a magnabeam missed her by several miles, she decided that whoever was in the shuttle was a very bad operator of ship weapons, and therefore not especially dangerous. “I’m going to fire if you don’t stop!” Becca yelled into her pocket organizer.
“What theâ€“?” Kari did not understand. Weren’t they scared? “Only 90 seconds until we reach Callisto,” said Jaa, who could see Jupiter as a blotch of orange-red in the window.
Kari swerved frantically to hold them off just as Becca opened fire. The shot missed by half a mile. “That was too close,” said Ian, extremely worried. Perhaps his plan wasnâ€™t as foolproof as he had hoped.
Hoping to demoralize the police, Kari shouted into the pocket organizer, “You police can’t shoot for beans!”
“Beans?” asked Ian. He had thought that he was getting rather fluent in Terran vocabulary, but this one was new.
“Oh never mind!” Kari said, exasperated, as a magnabeam whizzed past them a mere mile away. “Lot of good your plan was!” she shouted, dodging it. “Now will you let me hit them?”
61
“Only 60 seconds,” said Jaa. “And now we need to keep that magnabeam for the Headquarters. Sorry, Kari.” He grabbed her wrist as she reached for the lever that would launch the beam. Too late she saw the police’s magnabeam, and though she swung the wheel frantically with her free hand, the magnabeam hit the stern of their ship with a faint pop.
Ian crouched on the floor with his eyes closed tight, thinking of the library on Ceres. That was his fondest memory, and he wanted to take it with him when he died. Well, he didn’t really want to die, in the first place. But if he had to die, he would rather be thinking about the library than the two renegade Containers who would stop at nothing to destroy their “Parents”.
“Don’t be an idiot, Ian!” Kari’s voice broke through his thoughts. “We are not going to die! They barely grazed us. We still have air. Now get up; you’re in the way down there.”
Ian cracked one eye open, but did not move.
62
A magnabeam shot past them. “AAG!” screamed Jaa, before realizing it hadn’t hit them. “Why do the police keep shooting all these magnabeams off target? Magnabeams are expensive!”
“Just 18 more seconds before we can blast the Parents . . .” said Kari, trying to stare at the liquid-crystal clock and keep swerving at the same time.
The clock seemed to take forever in changing digits. 7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .
“Dangit!” said Jaa. “The ships are getting too close to us! Next time they could get a good aim!”
“To !@#$%^& with clocks!” said Kari furiously. “I’m firing now!” She aimed at the grey splotch on Callisto, which was now only 100,000 miles away, and fired.
Predictably, she missed. A mining city 104 miles away from the headquarters was completely demolished. None of the kids knew this, although Kari and Jaa saw that it had missed. Jaa looked at Kari sternly. Kari swore. Ian opened both eyes. â€œDid it work?â€ he asked.
He was ignored, but he due to Kariâ€™s language, he assumed it hadnâ€™t worked.
63
Kari swore again. “I’m going to crash the ship into the Parent’s headquarters!” she said. “Get in the escape pod!”
Ian and Jaa obediently climbed into the escape pod, despite Ianâ€™s muttered speculations that Kari was perhaps going mad.
The escape pod was exactly like the Victory, except it had none of the upgrades they had bought at the repair shop. Ian sighed. “Stuck in a steel ball for a ship again,” he muttered.
Kari carefully guided the ship until it was heading dead straight for the Parent’s headquarters. Then she jumped into the escape pod and ejected it.
As they descended toward the ground, they viewed the ship heading straight toward the Parent’s headquarters. It was pulverized by the policeâ€™s magnabeam right as it hit the mass of buildings, and Kari looked like she could have cried at her failure. Both boys lacked Kariâ€™s long-simmering hatred and thirst for revenge, and were merely thankful that they were safely in the escape pod when the magnabeam had hit the shuttle.
64
Safe from the magnabeam they may have been, but not safe from the police themselves, who had seen them try to destroy the Parents’ headquarters and were now under the impression that the three kids were dangerous murderers who were bent on bringing down the civilized world.
But the Parent’s headquarters had defenses of its own, and many secrets that needed defending. Disturbed by the policeâ€™s ships so close by, deadly magnabeams shot out towards the police. They never even knew what hit them.
The escape pod hit the surface of Callisto hard, and made a small crater. “This is it,” said Kari. “The Parent’s headquarters. Letâ€™s go.â€
65
Ian frowned. “What are you guys going to do? They’ve got hundreds of Containers and all sorts of weapons, and we’re three kids with a half-wrecked escape pod and a couple of autospears.”
“We don’t have to defeat all the Containers,” said Kari. “All we have to do is capture one and reprogram it. You can reprogram Containers, right, Jaa?”
“I could reprogram you if I liked,” said Jaa with a grim smile. “In fact, I may have before. That’s what’s generally done with renegades. Reprogram ’em, freeze ’em, and bend them to your will.” His smile disappeared. “Yes, I can reprogram them, butâ€“â€œ
Ian cut in, sounding doubtful. “All very well, but how are we going to get the Container?”
“I could reprogram them,â€ Jaa continued, ignoring Ian, “but I don’t like the idea of controlling a human being.”
â€œThey arenâ€™t human beings,â€ said Kari flatly. â€œTheyâ€™re robots.â€
Jaa shook his head. â€œNo,â€ he said. â€œThey are human beings, underneath. They were human once, and they have the capacity to become human again if they were ever given a chance.â€
“All right, let’s compromise,” Kari said exasperatedly. “Once we’ve defeated the Parents, we can deprogram all the Containers and let them live normal, human, lives. Satisfied?”
“I guess so . . . If I have to beâ€
“Good. You have to be. Now to the more pressing question. How do we get inside that fortress?”
Jaa might have been about to come up with a brilliant idea, which they would immediately carry out. The Parents would have been defeated, and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Conversely, he might have been about to suggest a foolhardy plan that Kari and Ian would either scathingly reject or agree to, and die in the Parents’ headquarters in the latter case. Another possibility is that he was about to say he had absolutely no idea.
Nobody will ever know which of those it was, because a high-powered magnabeam struck the tiny escape pod at the second that Jaa opened his mouth.

Chapter 6

66
“Great,” moaned Kari when she came to. “This seems awfully familiar.”
The fact that she could make a joke (if indeed it was a joke), cheered her a little, but she was not cheered when she received no answer. Neither was she cheered by the fact that her eyelids seemed to be stuck shut. “IAN!” she yelled as loud as she could. “JAA!”
Nothing.
She tried to wriggle into a more comfortable positionâ€“she was lying flat on her backâ€“but found she couldn’t move. However, feeling around with the tips of her fingers, which gave them an odd tingling feeling, she decided she was lying on a surface of cold smooth metal. This was a frightening prospect. It was not the escape pod, that much was for sure, nor the surface of the moon. Therefore it must be somewhere inside the Headquarters, and as she had never been in a place remotely like this, she was most likely about to experience something infinitely more unpleasant than the usual routine of being frozen.
Kari suddenly heard footsteps. The sound of a husky breath loomed closer. “FOOLISH GIRL,” the breath muttered. “FOOLISH GIRL. SHE ESCAPES, RUNS AROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM, THEN WALKS UP TO OUR DOORS TO BE CAPTURED.”
67
Kari felt her clothes being taken off. “What are you doing?” she yelled.
“BEFORE OUR USUAL LITTLE ROUTINE OF FREEZING YOU FOR A FEW ROTATIONS AROUND THE SOL, WE WILL BE USING YOU FOR A LITTLE TESTING.” The voice laughed. “OUR SHIPS ARE TOO SLOW, AND ARE GOING OBSOLETE. WE HAVE DEVELOPED A NEW METHOD OF TRANSPORTATIONâ€“TO DECONSTRUCT YOUR ATOMS AND THEN SEND THEM IN LIGHT TO A RECEIVER, WHICH WILL RECONSTRUCT YOUR ATOMS THERE. WE HAVEN’T HAD ANYONE VERY WORTHY OF THIS LITTLE STINTâ€“ UNTIL NOW.” Kari realized the implications and struggled more than ever to get free of the horrible bonds that held her immobile.
“STOP IT,” the voice said. “YOU CAN’T ESCAPE.” A hand took her clothes and dropped them somewhere, Kari couldn’t tell where. “YOU WON’T BE NEEDING THOSE FOR THE TEST. NO, YOU’LL BE NEEDING SOMETHING DIFFERENT.” She felt some sort of cloth being wrapped around her. It felt like plastic sheets and clung to her skin like a magnet to steel. Soon every inch of her body was covered, though for some strange reason she could still breath and hear. “THIS PROTECTIVE LAYER OF INSULATION WILL KEEP YOUR ATOMS INSIDE UNTIL THEY ARE FULLY DISINTEGRATED. NOW, SHALL WE TEST?” the voice laughed again.
Kari could suddenly move, though her eyes remained obstinately shut. But she didn’t get to move for long, as she slid down the steep incline on the smooth steel surface into some sort of padded sphere almost too small to hold her.
“WE WILL BE CONDUCTING THE TEST WITHIN A FEW MINUTES,” the voice said as it walked away. “WE MUST GET THE RECEIVING LOCATION READY FOR . . .” Kari couldn’t hear the rest through the sphere.
Instead of minutes, it seemed like seconds before a long tube appeared out of the wall. “insert mouth on tube” an artificial voice droned out. Kari decided that she had better do what they wanted, so she inserted her mouth around the tube. There was a tingling sensation not unlike the one she had felt when moving her fingers, and she lost consciousness as her body disintegrated and got sucked up, the layer of smooth plastic cloth keeping holding her atoms until they disappeared into the tube.
68
Ian had decided even before he fully regained consciousness: this was not a good place to be. He wasn’t even sure where he was, but he knew that much. He wanted to get out. Away. Not-there. He opened his eyes and was surprised to find that that his surroundings were fairly innocuous.
He was lying on a soft bed in an enclosed room, bare of any furniture except the bed he was lying on and a bed on the opposite side of the room, which was empty. Did we get captured? he wondered, but right away he chided himself for his stupidity. Of course they had been captured. He suddenly remembered all the things Kari had told him about what happened one was captured by the Parents, and he began to get extremely worried, not for the first, nor the last, time. He tried to sink back into merciful sleep, and failed.
69
“What’s going on?” Jaa murmured groggily. His vision was a mess of blurry color. Then a face swam into focus. It was grinning.
“Kerj,” Jaa croaked wearily.
“THE SAME. I’M GIVING YOU ONE LAST CHANCE. TELL ME THE ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY FORMULAE, OR IT’S RACK 50 FOR YOU. AND DON’T PULL ANY LITTLE STUNTS LIKE YOU DID LAST TIME. A NANOBOT SWARM WILL BE ON YOU BEFORE YOU CAN BLINK. IT’LL WRAP YOU IN A COCOON OF STEEL AND TRANSPORT YOU TO RACK 50 IN A MOST UNPLEASANT MANNER. WHAT WILL IT BE?”
Jaa did not want, above all, to go to Rack 50. He was too tired and head his hurt far too much for him to try to argue with Kerj. The only option left was to agree to redesign the gravitational engines, he realized. Kerj wouldn’t put up with anything after he had already escaped the Parents twice. “Okay,” he finally said, “I’ll write out the antigravity for you.” I can always escape later, he added mentally.
“EXCELLENT,” said Kerj, remembering the harsh words directed toward him when Jaa had escaped from his ship. He resolved to make JAA suffer as much as possible while he was in Kerjâ€™s power.
70
In the strange bedroom, Ian got up out of the bed. There was a titanium-steel door on one side of the room, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were made out of reinforced concrete. Ian walked over to the door, and knocked on it. “What is it?” the voice of a young Container asked from the other side.
Ian was suddenly very frightened. “Uhâ€“nothing,” he said. It was true. There was nothing to say. He got back into the bed. A few minutes later he got out again. Even talking to a Container would be better entertainment than sitting there waiting to die. Maybe he could even get important information out of him.
“What’s your name?” Ian asked the Container outside the door.
“SAJ,” was the reply.
“What are you doing here?”
“MAKING SURE YOU DON’T GET OUT.”
â€œWhat are they going to do with me?” asked Ian, more than half to himself.
“I HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN THE HONOR OF KNOWING THAT,” replied SAJ.
Ian was silent for a while, then he asked, “What did they do with my friends?”
“WHO ARE YOUR FRIENDS?”
“Kari and Jaa,” said Ian. â€œKRI and JAA to you, I suppose.â€
â€œJAA? I REMEMBER JAA,” SAJ said. “HE RAN AWAY NOT TOO LONG AGO. HE IS BACK NOW, I HEAR. HE’LL PROBABLY GO BACK TO HIS WORK AS A SCIENTIST . . .” he paused. “KRI . . . HER RECENT CAPTURE HAS MADE BIG NEWS AROUND HERE. KRI HAS RAN AWAY AND BEEN CAUGHT SO MANY TIMES THEY WILL PROBABLY JUST ROUTINELY FREEZE HER FOR A FEW ROTATIONS, THEN PUT HER IN A HIGH-SECURITY PRISON CELL.â€ Then he chuckled unpleasantly. â€œBUT I HEAR THAT THE PARENTS HAVE SOME NEW PIECE OF EQUIPMENT TO TEST.”
71
Kari’s body felt strangely detached from everything, which was not surprising, considering that her atoms were disintegrated and the only thing holding them together wasâ€“to be frankâ€“a plastic bag. This feeling (which she didn’t feel at all, due to her unconscious state) lasted less than a fifth of a second, and then she woke up.
Her atoms had been reconstructed perfectly. Kari felt much strongerâ€“much stronger than before she had been supposedly beamed to who knows where. She tried to get up, and found she could, for nothing was holding her down at all.
She also found that she could open her eyes. This was definitely a bonus, she thoughtâ€“but that was before she saw where she was. What a cruel, cruel joke the Parents had played! They needed something tested, so who better to test it on than the most rebellious rebel in reach? And as if that weren’t enough, they had decided that they would put her in the worst place imaginable.
Terra.

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E2MB

in July 7th, 2007 @ 21:43

Ooh, cool. Lots of editing going on.

I just realized this isn’t on the DFTT thread. *heads off*

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Alice

in July 7th, 2007 @ 21:57

That is what happens when the internet goes down at the climax of the RRR. *shakes head* Maybe it should do that every day. It would help me with my addiction, that’s for sure. Plus I would get the whole thing edited in no time at all.

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E2MB

in July 7th, 2007 @ 22:10

235 – When the internet’s down, I work on the Terraformed Encyclopedia!

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Alice

in July 7th, 2007 @ 22:27

236- Cool! You will have to post it, or some of it.

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E2MB

in July 7th, 2007 @ 22:46

237 – here’s a small sample:

Terra
Terra is the name given to Earth after World War Last. Terra bears a striking difference to Earth, which may be why it was renamed.
The general terrain is black dirt and huge puddles of water. There is no atmosphere except for abundant swirls of green radiation, which are visible from space.
There is generally a lack of life on Terra, though it can be assumed a few archaebacteria still live deep inside the soil. Aside from that, all other life lives in the underground headquarters of the Preservers.
Terraâ€™s currency is still dollars, despite nobody has them except the Preservers.

Teleportation Device
A device invented by the Parents to speed up interplanetary travel. The only known use of it is when the Parents use it to send Kari, their prisoner, to Terra. See also Parents.

â€œTo Travel In Timeâ€
A hoax book planted in Lunaâ€™s Library by the Parents in order to lure Kari and Ian to Terra so they can be captured. A significant portion of the text is printed in Terraformed: IO.
Short plot summary: Several new theories are brought up about time travel. New evidence is found that time travel is actually possible. A mysterious scientist, Dr. Stephen Rosinburg, makes a time machine and tests it in San Francisco in the year 2037, traveling forward in time 150 years.
Kari and Ian read that his predicted landing date is the next day, Ian persuades Kari to take him to Terra so they can rescue the scientist, but this ends in them being captured by the Parents.

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E2MB

in July 7th, 2007 @ 22:48

Most of the articles are still quite small, so I’m working on expanding it.

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Alice

in July 7th, 2007 @ 23:31

238- Cooooool . . . *must read*

I did Kari, Ian and Jaa earlier, in posts 67 and 70.

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 11:47

Chapter 7

72
“4 squared times 10 to the power of two equals 1,600,” Jaa muttered, frantically scribbling the amount of electromagnets needed per 1,000,000 cubic feet. Kerj had demanded the plans for the anti-gravity machines in 80 hours, which was sooner than when Jaa would have them done at his current rate. The Parent’s headquarters were now on the dark side of Callisto, and machines were starting to get shut down. Which meant Jaa had to do them on paper, something he hadnâ€™t done for well over a century.
Kerj walked in. “YOU ARE WORKING TOO SLOW, YOU DESPICABLE REGENADE,” he said as he examined the chains that held Jaa within 8 feet of the working desk. They couldnâ€™t be called anything but chains, but they barely resembled the chains that had been used in the golden days before WWL. â€œYOU WILL NEVER BE DONE IN TIME. AND THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO GO TO RACK 50 AFTER ALL. WHAT A SHAME.â€ Kerj turned back to the door and barked, â€œCOME IN HERE!â€ Two containers walked in. “MEET YOUR ‘ROOMMATES’, JAA,” Kerj said as he introduced VAK and VEN. “YOU WILL HAVE THEIR COMPANY THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT,” he laughed as he chained VAK and VEN to Jaa to ensure no chance of escape. Kerj wasn’t taking any chances, especially during the night when it would be easier for Jaa to sneak away.
73
Kari didn’t feel the effects of strong radiation, which surprised her. “Those cursed Parents probably put some kind of temporary protection on me that’ll make me suffer longer on this godforsaken piece of dirt.”
She looked around at the â€œpiece of dirt.â€ The sky was a dark gray, with bits of green swirling around in a way that made her eyes ache. The temperature was at least 140 degrees, probably hotter. The terrain was rough sand, with a few rocks scattered across the desert. After some contemplation, Kari decided that she was in Antarctica.
Further examination of the horizon revealed something that confirmed her suspicion: a small domed building of some sort in the distance. Kari recognized the dome from her implanted memories. It was the research station where a monumentally important event had taken place, namely, the invention of the gravity-pulse drive. This amazing engine created tiny folds in the space-time continuum, allowing any ship on which it was installed to skip across space at unbelievable speed. She realized that she was standing near the spot where the backbone of the solar system’s economy had been created. The research station had also been famous for several other discoveries, such as carboglass synthesis and the advances in genetic manipulation that allowed Betwers to be created.
None of this, Kari reflected sourly, was going to help her to get out.
She stood undecided for a second and then broke for the dome. It would be a little bit of protection between her and the headache-inducing sky.
74
Jaa was exhausted. He didn’t see how he could re-design the engines in a single night, when he was practically falling asleep. He remembered when he had been very small, there had been a very rare commodity known as “coffee”. He had tried a sip once. It had been dreadfully bitter, and his parents had not let him have any more even if he wanted to. They said it would keep him awake. Now he didn’t care how foul it had tasted, he wanted some. He had to stay awake! But there was no longer such a thing as coffee, much less for renegades and prisoners.
He sighed and turned back to his seemingly endless task. The paper wasnâ€™t even real paper, he thought bitterly, because for that they would need trees. It was some sort of plastic, which tried to look like paper by being white and slightly rough. In his opinion, it failed.
It was then that Jaa noticed his guards were apparently even more exhausted than he was, as was evidenced by the fact that they were fast asleep, and Kerj had been gone only 15 minutes.
Jaa looked at the newest sheet of â€œpaperâ€ on which he was designing the engines, and then threw down the metallic pen in disgust. I’m leaving, he thought, getting up. He was about to deactivate the alarm when it flashed on him that he was still chained to 2 snoring Containers. Jaa knew he had the strength to drag them with him through the maze of passageways to freedom outside the Parent’s headquarters, but VAKâ€™s and VEN’s microchips were being tracked by a central computer. Jaa wouldn’t get much farther than the room he was in unless he removed their microchips.
“It’s a good thing I never showed anyone that I figured out how to do this,” he muttered, as he got down and lifted VAK’s arm.
75
Ian had a feeling that SAJ knew more than he was telling. He didn’t say so, though, for fear of what might happen if he did. The two sat in silence on opposite sides of the door. Ian was sure that if Kari or Jaa were there they would already have escaped, but even as he was thinking this depressing thought there was a clatter of boots outside the door.
“SAJ,” said a voice.
“YES, GENERAL HAV?”
â€œHOW IS THE PRISONER? HE HAS NOT TRIED TO ESCAPE?â€
â€œNO, SIR. I DONâ€™T BELIEVE HE HAS EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT ESCAPE.â€
â€œIS THAT SO?â€
â€œYES, SIR.â€
“HAVE YOU BEEN FRATERNIZING WITH THE PRISONER AGAIN?”
“NO, SIR!” cried SAJ in alarm, but the General didn’t seem to believe him, for he said, “SAH, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO TAKE SAJ’S PLACE FOR NOW.”
â€œNO!â€ SAJ said loudly. Evidently this meant that he was in deep disgrace. There were quiet mutterings on the other side of the door, and then the boots receded into the distance.
Ian thought and thought, but he could come up with no solution to his situation. Eventually, he curled up on the bunk, which now seemed harder than the tunnels of Ceres, and fell into an uneasy sleep.
He was awakened by a strangled grunt, and a thud, as though a body had slammed forcefully against his cell door. As he got out of the pathetic excuse for a bed, the door hissed open, and SAH fell inward. Ian couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt, but he was unconscious or worse. SAJ was standing over him, a look of triumph in his eyes.
“LISTEN, IMPURE,” SAJ hissed. “I HAVE NO SYMPATHY FOR YOU, BUT I THINK YOU ARE A WORTHLESS HOSTAGE, AND GENERAL HAV WILL BE CHASTISED FOR HIS BAD CHOICE OF SENTRIES.” He looked down at SAH and grinned. Ian shuddered. “IT WILL NOT SIT WELL WITH THE PARENTS IF A PRISONER DISAPPEARS ON HAV’S WATCH. WELL, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO.”
Ian hurried down the corridor, reflecting on the horrible pettiness of the Container and his own unexpected good fortune.
76
Ian ran through the winding passageways, hopelessly lost and more than a little shaken. He tried to shrug off the horrible incident, with mixed results. “Now,” he said quietly to himself, “where are Kari and Jaa?”
He knew that his life was in danger and that one wrong move would kill him, but he didnâ€™t really see how he could help that, and acted with only a little more caution than usual. Which was still considerable, as Ian wasâ€“most of the timeâ€“a very careful person.
By pure chance he wound up in the System Control Room. There was only one Container on duty, and he was unarmed, since no one expected an invasion in what was usually the hub of the security operations.
Ian’s first reaction at the Container’s appearance was shock. Solana, he’s old! Ian thought. His hair is actually white! He began to creep up behind the old man, drawing SAH’s autospear as he did so. At this the Container (Who’s ID code was, by a freak coincidence, IAN) turned. “Freeze.” said Ian, holding the autospear in front of him.
77
Jaa was about to remove the wires that turned off the tracker on VEN’s chip when its light turned red.
Uh oh.
Jaa closed his eyes and opened them again in astonishment. That wasn’t the regulation alert message . . .
“Hop. Pop. We like to hop . . .”

Ian had grabbed the first elebook he saw and shoved it under IAN’s nose. “Thank you for deactivating the security system, now read!” Ian snarled.
He laughed as he realized the shelf had been marked ‘ancient Terran childrenâ€™s’ literature’.
” . . . we like to hop on top of pop . . .” The message continued. Jaa was seriously confused by now.
He seemed to remember as a little child, listening to his dad read those very words to him. Something about a doctor . . . But that wasn’t what concerned him at the moment. Why would this be coming over the intercom?
78
“Right,” Ian said, his confidence boosted. “Where are Renegades KRI and JAA?”
“JAA MAY BE FOUND IN MULTIPURPOSE ROOM 323.”
“Right. Give me the video footage from that room.”
IAN swerved around and tapped a few buttons. An image of an empty room on the wraparound monitor.
“HE’S GONE!”
Ian cheered up. Jaa must have managed to escape. “So, what about KRI?”
“SHE WAS USED FOR TESTING A TELEPORTATION DEVICE. IT WORKED AT 100% CAPACITY.”
“Where’d it send her?” Ian asked with the slightest hint of dread.
“TERRA.”
79
Kari was already feeling a cold burn beginning on her skin. The temporary nanobots that had been installed in her cells wouldn’t last much longer. She dashed down the corridors of the deserted facility, hoping to find what she needed.
And, by sheer luck, she did. RADIATION STUDIES was printed on a skewed sign above a hall in peeling paint. Kari made a sharp right, racing against time. There would have to be radiation suits here somewhere. She just hoped they would be intact. If not, she would die a slow, agonizing death.
80
“What!?!?” Ian almost screamed.
“IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THE TELEPORTATION DEVICE WORKS PERFECTLY, SO KRI SHOULD BE SAFE EXCEPT FOR THE RADIATION.” IAN informed Ian.
Ian had to get out of the Parent’s Headquarters. Jaa had escaped, and Ian imagined he would go to the escape pod. Ian had to do the same, and here he had a first-class chance! “Where’s the nearest exit?” he asked.
“OVER THERE UNDER THE RED LETTER ‘E’,” IAN droned like a machine, and Ian rushed over to what seemed to be where the door was. As he pushed against that spot in the wall, a LED screen popped up. WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR EXIT? it inquired.
“Fire!” Ian spoke the first thing that came to his mind. Instantly infrared heat sensors flashed all over the Parent’s headquarters, looking for signs of a fire. When they found none, the LED screen disappeared immediately.
Ian kicked the door. The LED screen popped up again and repeated the question. “Hydrogen bomb!” said Ian, louder than the first time because he was frustrated. He was within a hair of getting out and the door wouldn’t open! Instantly radiation detectors scanned a diameter of 1 AU around the Parent’s headquarters, found nothing threatening, and the LED screen disappeared for a second time. Ian was getting steamed.
81
“Um,” said Ian, trying to come up with something plausible this time. “I have to go . . . relieve a watch, or something?” The “or something” was reflexive, and he automatically cursed himself for saying it. However, the screen didn’t seem to have a way to disprove this fact, as it buzzed for a moment and opened the door.
Ian looked out to see that he was thirty feet from the ground. He decided not to worry about it and he jumped. Luckily for him, Callisto had an artifisphere. That had not even occurred to Ian, and it still didnâ€™t occur to him, as he tried fruitlessly to locate the escape pod.
IAN, the old Container, had not switched off the intercom. Their entire conversation had been broadcasted all over the building, consequently everyone in the building, from the most important of the Parents to Jaa knew that a prisoner had escaped. Jaa smiled secretly to himself, and important Parent cursed.
Just after Ian jumped, several security guards rushed into the System Control Room. “WHAT THE !@#$%& IS WRONG WITH YOU?” barked one of them. IAN looked up. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST,” he said coldly.
“IAN HAS MALFUNCTIONED,” the guard announced. “TAKE HIM TO THE REPROGRAMMING WING.” Several security guards picked IAN up and carried him off.
82
Jaa walked purposefully along the halls, or would have been walking purposefully if he hadn’t been dragging two insensible Containers along with him. He knew he had a chance to escape; he just needed to figure out how to take that chance.
Jaa saw one of the guards drop his autospear on the way to the control room. Perfect! He picked it up and quickly cut the strange chains that attached him to VAK and VEN. Leaving them lying unconscious in the passageway, he snuck along the halls, relieved to be free of the load.
As he approached the Main Control Room, he heard a commotion coming from inside it. HAV was being charged with letting the hostage go. HAV argued that SAH should have been watching, and the other argued that SAH had been nearly killed. HAV argued that it was not his fault, and blows were being exchanged. Jaa peered in and saw that the controls were being left unguarded.
He snuck in, trying to look inconspicuous. Considering he looked a great deal like all the other Containers, nobody would recognize him unless they looked closely or saw his identity tattoo, which, provided he did not draw attention to himself, no one was likely to do. Standing at the switchboard pretending to be doing something useful, he instructed the computer to send all the deprogrammed Containers to the reprogramming ward. Then he strolled out and off to the reprogramming ward. It was almost too easy.
83
IAN was being programmed in one of the 50 white-plastic-and-steel reprogramming stations. The whole room was white-plastic-and-steel, lit by eerie fluorescent lights, and hummed continuously. A guard stood on either side of the door, but when Jaa assured them that he was only a scientist who had come to reprogram IAN, they let him through.
With a weird tense feeling that came from the whole process being too easy, Jaa walked across the sterile room to the reprogramming computer. His footsteps echoed loudly, seeming to intrude on the quiet hum of the ward.
The machine asked him for a password. Jaa had known it onceâ€“he still didâ€“ but the password changed every day, and probably even more often now that there had been such a security breach on Mothership05. Not that security here in the Headquarters had improved. The Motherships always had better security anyhow. Perhaps the philosophy was that if something got through Callistoâ€™s outer defenses, there was no hope for the inner ones. But he was wasting time. The password.
Jaa bit his lip, always aware of the guards on the other side of the room. He thought for a minute, and typed in several combinations. All of them failed. He tried again, and again, and again. Finally the machine gave up. â€œput your finger on the pad,â€ it droned. â€œwe will analyze your fingerprint.â€
Jaa glanced over at the guards, but neither of them gave any sign of having noticed. He placed his index finger on the pad. The computer whirred.
â€œaccess granted,â€ it said finally, and Jaa heaved a sigh of relief, typed in a command or two, and waited.
About 2 minutes later, all 10 of the W-series Containers came up through a transportation tube into the reprogramming ward. They looked strange and robotic under the fluorescent light, and Jaa had to look away from their waxy faces.
Jaa had been writing up instructions to destroy the Parent’s headquarters by whatever means possible, and now he plugged these into the 10 unconscious Containers.
In the brief moment between them leaving and the next series appearing, Jaa leaned against the reprogramming computer and sighed. There he was, doing the very thing that he had refused to do.
When the X-series Containers were shuttled into the room, Jaa saw there were far more of them – there must’ve been at least 100, if not more. This would take a while.
When he was done, all the X-series Containers were programmed with the same instructions as before, but with a new command added: Attack all humanoids in the building except KRI and JAA.
Jaa was just starting to program the 75 Y-series Containers when a voice yelled, “FREEZE, RENEGADE JAA!”
The boy looked around. 15 security guards, armed with autospears, were standing defiantly in the doorway of the reprogramming ward. Jaa seized a box of autospears, spilled them all out onto the floor, and yelled “X and Y series Containers, grab an auto-spear and ATTACK!”
And thus the Great Container Revolt (as it was referred to later by those who survived) began.

Where’s Cat’s Meow? Anyone know?

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 12:57

I dreamed about editing this.

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 13:14

Hey E2MB (and Meow, if she’s here), I forgot to add this into my draft when I first wrote it:

His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears. To distract himself, he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was big news about seven years ago, and they’re used by just about everybody.”
Kari gave a look, and he shut up.

I’ve copied it into the correct place, but I already posted that chapter, so could you just take this bit and put in your draft(s)?

Argh bad WordPress!

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E2MB

in July 8th, 2007 @ 13:36

240 – I know! They were good profiles! I used them for Kari, Ian, and Jaa in my encyclopedia, and redid a little of the wording so it sounds more like an encyclopedia. You don’t mind, do you?

242 – lol

243 – Done!

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 13:49

244- I don’t mind at all.

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 16:00

Will I ever get to read it? If you get banned ( I hate that) maybe you could send it to the GAPAs on the sly? *realizes she is leading her fellow MuseBlogger into temptation and possible trouble* Sorry. I wish you weren’t going to be banned; I’ll miss you. So will the story. *very worried*

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 20:50

I’m sorry I have to do this, E2MB. But I just have to edit this out, since Cat’s Meow isn’t around. Okay?

In what was formerly section 87 of Part One:
Ian hadn’t been listening very intently. “Are we going to Io, then?” he asked.
Kari spoke slowly, as though talking to a dimwitted child, which indeed she felt the was. “Yes, we’re going to Io. Havenâ€™t you been listening at all? We’re going to Io so that Jaa can deactivate the gravitational engines and, if we’re lucky, destroy them.”

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E2MB

in July 8th, 2007 @ 21:13

246 – I’m trying to do everything I can and I messed with the internet settings so I no longer have to type in the password when I come on http://www.musefanpage.com so I’ll be able to come on here at least until we get a new computer GAWD I feel like an evil psycho. I’m going to ask my pastor what I should do; maybe he can tell me.

247 – Okay, but why does it have to be deleted because Cat’s Meow is not here?

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Alice

in July 8th, 2007 @ 21:45

248- Oh good. Or is it bad? You’re not an evil psycho, just a MuseBlog addict. (Or does that make you feel better at all?)

It doesn’t have to be deleted! It’s just getting on my conscience that it wasn’t changed to sound a bit less choppy, and as Meow isn’t around, she won’t be able to catch it when she edits.

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Alice

in July 9th, 2007 @ 19:19

The New and Improved Last Few Chapters, because I can’t be called anything but obsessive, and, having finished this, do not celebrate, but instead start going through the story again, finding lots of Mistakes in the first few chapters. *sigh*

Chapter 8

84
The 15 security guards could not face the hordes of Containers about to attack them. They called for backup. The Containers charged.
Jaa, protected by his army of Containers, hastily programmed the rest of the Y-series Containers to fight, but when the Z-series Containers came (only about 30 in number), he gave them a new instruction: find a hydrogen bomb and set it off. Then he picked up an autospear and started to look for a way to get out of the escalating carnage.
Jaa made his way to the Main Control Room, dodging auto-spears right and left. He looked through the front windowâ€“a luxury, as most of the rooms in the Headquarters were windowlessâ€“and saw their escape pod still lying exactly where it had been before. But now he could see several security guards around it, and in the middle . . . no, it couldn’t be . . . was it Ian?

It was indeed Ian. When he had escaped from the building, he had run to the escape pod, only to find himself surrounded by Container guards. He could have escaped, had it not been for his sense of honor and, naturally, the fact that he didnâ€™t how to drive the pod.
85
Jaa called for 6 X-series Containers (who appeared to be tougher than those of the Y-series) to follow him, and saw a W-series Container tearing apart a wall with a knife. There were other scenes of destruction, too. All in all, Jaaâ€™s plan was working well.
The seven made their way to the door eventually. “Attack the security guards around that ship!” Jaa pointed, and the Containers obeyed. As the security guards fled, â€œJaaâ€™sâ€ Containers chased them around to the other side of the building before giving up and going back inside. Jaa turned to Ian.
“What’s going on?” said Ian, dumbfounded. “Are all the Containers suddenly going mad?”
“That’s not important,” said Jaa quickly. “What is important is that we get out of here. Where’s Kari?”
“They sent her to . . . to Terra.” Ian said quietly.
“WHAT???” yelled Jaa.
“IAN said they were testing some teletransportation equipment on her, and sent her to Terra.” Ian replied.
Jaa sputtered, “We have to get to Terra!” and climbed aboard the pod.
Ian scrambled into a chair right before Jaa slammed the capsule door shut and pulled down the speed lever all the way, cursing the Parent’s name.
The tiny ship blasted off and zoomed away at speeds that were unheard of for a pod as small as this. Ian turned for a last glimpse of Callisto, and saw a mushroom cloud rising from the surface of the moon. He pointed. â€œLook.â€
“We’ve done it!” cried Jaa victoriously, momentarily forgetting his wrath. “We’ve defeated the Parents once and for all!” But then he slumped, and his face turned red with anger once again. “But they’ve given Kari a !@#$%* of a way to die!”
Ian was quiet. Kari hadnâ€™t a chance of survival if she were unprotected. By the time they got to her, she would be as good as dead.
86
Kari looked wildly around for the suits. She saw them lined up along the far wall, but they were ancient and most of them were smashed to bits. She ran along the row of radiation suits, searching for one that would work . . . Aha!
She managed to find an intact one, or so she thought, but before she put it on she saw a tiny rip in the sleeve. But there was no more time to find another one. Something silver lay at her feet, and her memories registered it as duct tape. It was crumbling but somehow she managed to break off a large piece, and bound it round and round the hole, cursing its lack of stickiness. It wouldn’t stand up to radiation, but it would have to do. There was no more time.
87
“Do you think she’s dead already?” asked Ian. He knew he shouldn’t think about it, but it was hard not to.
“Depends,” muttered Jaa. “If they gave her any protection at all, and when she got there. But I’d say, knowing the Parents, yeah.”
“If Kari is dead, then why are we going to Terra?” Ian asked Jaa. â€œDo you think maybe thereâ€™s a chance sheâ€™s not dead?â€
“No, I donâ€™t. But if by some obscure chance she is still alive and we do not attempt to save her,” said Jaa, “a burden of guilt will forever be upon me.”
“But even if we get to Terra and Kari is still alive, how will we find her? We can’t track her because she tore out her microchip.”
Jaa sighed deeply. “I suppose we’ll find a way,” he said drearily as he steered through the asteroid belt.
88
Kari wasn’t dead yet, but she was getting very close. As she struggled to get the suit on, she saw tiny bubbles beginning to form on her skin. They started to pop, and then new bubbles formed underneath. To her relief, the formation of bubbles slowed when she had sealed herself inside the radiation suit, but she knew she didn’t have much time. She wasn’t able to think clearly anymore, and the crumbling, century-old duct tape had fallen off.
She spotted an elevator, and limped over to it. A sign above the door read “UNDERGROUND RESEARCH STATION”. â€œGood,â€ she thought (as best she could). â€œIf I get far enough away from the radiation on the surface, maybe this headache will stop.â€ She pressed the button and the elevator door opened. As soon as she was inside, the elevator started to go down jerkily, for it probably hadn’t been used in over 100 years.
It took a long time for the rusty pistons to carry the elevator to its destination, but Kari did not have a clear sense of time so she did not notice.
89
Eventually, with a sudden jolt, the elevator stopped, and the doors slowly opened. Kari stepped out, already slightly more steady. There before her lay a long winding tunnel through the dry earth, just big enough to walk in without having to crouch down. Kari was starting to think properly again and the radiation effects were stopping, so she decided that she must be at least 20 miles down. What would something be doing down here?
She started to walk into the tunnel, which was lit only by a few brave, flickering LED bulbs every 100 feet or so. Kari could barely see where she was going, but there seemed to be nothing in the tunnel, so it didnâ€™t matter greatly. All she wanted was to get away from the surface, and to find a way off this deadly planet.
She walked on, and noticed for the first time that the tunnel was slightly sloped. She had no time to analyze this before the tunnel was suddenly filled with unexpected light, and Kari cringed, her eyes shocked by the brightness.
When she could see again, a curious sight met her eyes. In front of her stood a sign, and then a small door a dozen feet behind it. The sign read, in precise but handwritten capital letters: “YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER A TRIP TO ANCIENT TERRAN HISTORY. IF YOU ARE HONEST AND TRUE, PROCEED. IF YOU ARE FALSE AND VIOLENT, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE OUR PRECIOUS TIME. THANK YOU.”
Kari, mystified, walked quickly toward the door and opened it. She blinked at the view, and then, as the full implications of what she was seeing sunk in, she gasped.

Chapter 9

90
She saw a brilliant room that must have been miles long and wide, and which had a ceiling at least 300 feet in the airâ€“if it could be called air so far underground. Trees (real Terran trees!!! Ian would have been thrilled!) and other plants populated the ground, with rabbits and deer darting around and wildflowers dotting the landscape. Birds flew overhead. Bright lights lit up the enclosed world from the extremely high ceiling, simulating the sun. None of this was new to Kariâ€“this was an image straight out of her memoriesâ€“ but it was an impressive sight nonetheless. But what really surprised her was the fact that it was on Terra. Terra had had nothing so green and alive on or under its surface for nearly 150 years, though, when she thought about it, Kari did not know how long this environment had been hiding below the surface of the seemingly poisonous planet.
Then she spotted another sign to her left. It was titled, “MISSION STATEMENT.” She read it eagerly.
â€œWelcome to the ancient Terran recreated world. This is an entirely self-sustaining environment created by the Preservers, who are we. When everyone else evacuated, we attempted to preserve Terra forever by creating this. There might be a few humans still living here, but they may have all died out by the time you read this. If there are any humans left, you may contact them for further information. Please do not harm our creation.â€
91
“Hello?” hollered Kari, but she only succeeded in frightening the rabbits. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to meet the “Preservers” after all, if indeed they were still around. This sounded too much like Neoterra for her liking, even if it claimed to be peaceful.
Kari started to wander into the forest. About 100 feet in, there was a stretch of red tape. She was wondering at this, when she heard two voices scream. She looked up with a start and saw two young children, who must have been 5 or 6, running away from the stranger.
Kari ran after them, through the forest, and out into a grassy field. There were different food crops growing there, all authentically Terran. At the end of a field was a huge grey building. The young children ran up to it and through the door, slamming it behind them. Kari went closer.
92
A sign above the door read, “THE PRESERVERS. POPULATION 113.” Kari cautiously opened the door.
Inside were vast computers, science labs, chemistry tables, and several people working very absorbedly at them. The children were tugging at one of the older workers, saying, “There’s a stranger! There’s a stranger!” He looked up, saw Kari hesitating at the door, and dropped his flask.
“A SPY!!! A SPY FROM THE PARENTS!!!” he yelled. The other child had been standing by a wall, and at these words the little girl stared to yank determinedly at a lever. Before Kari could realize what that meant, an adult had dashed over to the lever and pulled it down.
Immediately a metal cage dropped over Kari. She did not understand for a moment, but then she figured that these people did not like the Parents, and that she looked like one of their Containers (which she had been). It ought to have been comforting, but considering that she was in a metal cage by a large group of hostile people that thought she was a spy from their enemy, she was not comforted.
Thundering down a stairway over on the far corner were several men, women, and children. “What’s going on?” one of the women asked.
“A spy, Laura,” said the man. “The Parents sent a spy.”
“Wait!” said Kari. “I’m not from the Parents!” That wasn’t exactly true, so she added, “And I’m not a spy for them! They sent me here to get rid of me! To kill me!”
The Preservers, who Kari figured correctly were all the people living here, paused. “How do we know she’s not lying?” one of them said suddenly, and they began to argue amongst themselves. Due to this, they did not notice at once the odd thing that was happening to their prisoner.
93
In the escape pod, flying through the asteroid belt, a red light flashed on the display board. “Oh no,” said Jaa, “I completely forgot. This is only an escape pod!â€
“What does that mean?” asked Ian.
“It means that there’s not enough fuel in this tin sphere to get us all the way to Terra!” said Jaa, obviously frustrated. “We only have enough to get to Mars!”
â€œOh no,â€ thought Ian, remembering his last visit to the Red Planet.
94
Suddenly one of the children gasped, and pointed to where Kari had been standing only a moment before. There was now only a faint haze, and a few billionths of a second later, that too was gone.

Kari regained consciousness in the teleportation lab on Callisto. It was curiously empty. Kari had not got to see it before, but it looked completely unremarkable.
And, miracle of miracles, there were her clothes, lying on the smooth cold floor next to the metal table! But with that welcome sight, there came another, not so welcome, one.
The robot that had been about to pick them up had malfunctioned and now stood frozen. And the Parents’ robots never malfunctioned.
95
Kari opened the door onto a scene of devastation. The artifisphere generator near the headquarters must have been intact, because she was able to breathe. Other than that, the only remnants of the headquarters were mostly shreds of twisted metal.
She did not feel any great sorrow for the Parents or the headquarters; indeed, at first she felt only relief, but then a thought popped into her head.
What happened to Ian and Jaa?
As she looked around, she saw the landing pad. There was a familiar ship on it. It was . . .
96
“The Victory!” Kari picked up her clothes and ran to her ship, which she thought had been lost to the Parents forever. As she changed from the radiation suit into her clothes, inside the airlock, she noticed a glowing pinprick of green light on her right arm. She looked more closely at it, and her face fell.
“Oh no,” she muttered, “The Parents gave me a new microchip!”
97
The familiar red globe came into view once again as Jaa prepared to land. Since he had not come to go to MarsGarden, he could land in any country he pleased. He steered toward Mars03, as it had humbly accepted its status as the third country founded, and had not fought over the rights to the artifacts like Mars02 and Mars01.
98
“Drat!” said Kari. She was reluctant to go anywhere with the microchip in her arm, as it would only be a matter of time before she was caught, but she couldn’t stay here either, in the wrecked and radioactive remains of the Headquarters.
At last she reasoned that the Parents were probably all dead, if the headquarters were anything to go by. It was more to reassure herself that it was safe to leave than because she actually believed it, but she chanted it to herself while she started up the Victory, and by the time she blasted off from Callisto, she was beginning to believe that none of them, not even Kerj, could possibly have survived the bomb that devastated the headquarters.
99
To her delight, the ship had been entirely restocked with gadgets and the fuel tank had been filled. She now had enough fuel to travel at least 15 AUs.
Now where would Ian and Jaa be? She thought for a moment. Had they been blown up when the Parent’s headquarters were destroyed? What if they had been the ones to set off the bomb? Would they still have been killed? There was little hope that they were still alive, and less hope that she could find them. She sighed despairingly as she lifted off; where should she start looking?

Chapter 10

100
The people of Mars03 were a mild and pleasant bunch, in sharp contrast with their neighbors. Jaa landed their pod in a public port and they debarked from the ship.
Jaa reached a bench and collapsed, head in his hands. “Kari’s dead, we’re stuck on the most warlike planet in Solana, and we have no money or food. We’re doomed.”
101
Ian was equally depressed. Despite the fact that Kari drove him crazy fifty per cent of the time, he had gotten used to the sharp-witted, sardonic girl, and he missed her sorely. Simply to shut out the sight of Mars, he trudged back to the Victory and slumped into the control chair. Not knowing why he did it, he called up a tracking program and entered his ID number. INVALID flashed on the screen. No surprise there. His microchip was out. He put in Jaa’s. INVALID. But when he entered Kari’s, for no particular reason, the results were more surprising.
REQUESTED CHIP NO LONGER VALID. SEARCH NUMBER OF REPLACEMENT CHIP? Y/N
A faint flutter of hope started in Ian’s chest. Fingers trembling, he pressed Y. A map of Callisto appeared on the screen, slowly rotating and zooming in. Ian gasped, the ghost of hopefulness becoming something more solid, and his heart leapt.
“JAA!” he cried, more loudly than he had intended. “Come look at this!
102
Jaa was at his side before you could say “microchip.” “Whatâ€“” He stopped at the sight of the screen.
“Kari must be alive! And she has a new microchip!” Ian had never thought he’d be happy about that fact. Neither had Jaa, but in fact they were jubilant.
“She’s on Callisto,” Jaa began, but before he could say whatever it was that he was going to say next, the map shifted, so that it was now showing space around the Jovian moons.
“Not anymore,” said Ian, grinning from ear to ear. But Jaa had spotted a dilemma, and was suddenly sober.
“How are we going to contact her? We don’t even know what ship she’s on.”
103
This having been brought to his attention, Ian, frowned. “How could she be on any ship?” he said. “The Parent’s headquarters and all their rockets got blown up!
â€œThatâ€™s we think, Ian,â€ said Jaa. â€œBut itâ€™s not necessarily true. What if that hydrogen bomb wasn’t big enough to destroy the entire building? No, it has to be true! I wonâ€™t let it not be. The Parents are DEAD!” he said vehemently.
Ian’s eyes were following the map on the screen. Kari appeared to be traveling at a very high speed on a route commonly taken to get to Ceres.
“She’s going to Ceres,” he said, clearly not paying any attention to what Jaa was saying.
“Ian!” cried Jaa in frustration, then his curiosity got the better of him. “Why would she be going to Ceres?”
“Maybe she thinks that we’re there?” said Ian doubtfully.
104
Jaa picked up the radio off the wall. “Well, we’ve got to tell her that we’re not before she goes there and gets into trouble. Because she will get into trouble,” he said as he began dialing all of the Parent’s ship numbers he could remember. None of the numbers found a destination, every time he tried a new one the radio would say, “THERE IS NO SHIP WITH THAT NUMBER. YOU MAY HAVE INCORRECTLY DIALED THE NUMBER, OR THE SHIP MAY HAVE BEEN WRECKED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.” Half frantic, Jaa started redialing all the numbers, when Ian, who had been patiently watching this performance, asked, “Have you tried dialing the Victory?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Jaa irritably. “The Victory wouldn’t have survived.” But he dialed the number all the same. To his surprise, someone answered.
105
Jaa almost dropped the phone. “Hello?” said Kari’s voice apprehensively. â€œWho is this?â€
“KARI?! Howâ€¦?”
Kari recognized the voice. “Jaa!” she cried. “Is that you?”
“Yes . . .” stuttered Jaa, shocked. “Itâ€™s me. What . . . what are you doing on the Victory?”
106
Kari felt a wave of relief. The police were not the ones calling. She was afraid that with her new microchip, the police could hunt her down, and she was pretty well wanted for some of the things she had done.
At first her relief robbed her of both speech and curiosity, but then Kari began to wonder, what had happened?
“Jaa! Are you all right? What happened to the headquarters? Is Ian there? Where are you?”
107
“First things first,” said Jaa, amused to hear Kari so full of questions. “Do you want to hear bad news, or good news first?”
“Bad,” said Kari automatically.
“You have a new microchip.”
“I knew that. Is that all?”
“We’re out of fuel on Mars. Luckily, it’s Mar03. Now for the good news. We blew up the headquarters.”
“I saw! It was almost completely demolished.”
â€œAlmost?â€ thought Jaa, but chose not to pursue the matter. “And we’re both fine,” he continued.
â€œOh good,â€ said Kari. â€œI was kind of worried.â€
“Now I get to ask the questions,â€ said Jaa. â€œOne, why are you going to Ceres?”
108
“Ceres?” said Kari. “I assumed that that would be where you would go, since that’s where Ian lived before he met me. For that matter, why in Solana would you be going to Mars?”
“Ian found out that you were teleported to Terra, so we were heading there to try and rescue you. But then we ran ot of fuel and got stranded here. Ian tried to track your microchip and found that you were, in fact, still on Callisto. I think he must have misheard the bit about Terra.”
“No,” said Kari, “he didnâ€™t. I was on Terra. And Jaa! I found somethingâ€“”
109
“How did you survive?” asked Jaa, interrupting.
“I think they put some nanobots in me to protect me for a little while. But I found that underground in Antarctica there’s a group of people called the Preservers and they’re doing something that . . .”
“Wait!” said Jaa. “Can you please come to Mars? We donâ€™t have any food or money. Do you have any food or money?”
“I don’t have any food, but I have lots of money,” said Kari. “The Parents stocked our ship well. There’s at least 40 betrens in the storage unit. Iâ€™ll be there in a bit.â€
110
Two sol-days later, the trio was sitting around a table in a public park on Mars.
“What should we do now?” asked Jaa, polishing off the last of the dull food tablets.
“Why don’t we go and find out what the Preservers are doing?” suggested Ian, eager at the thought of seeing something that even remotely resembled Terra.
“That sounds splendid,” said Jaa. “Now that we don’t have to worry about the Parents, we can do whatever we want. We defeated the Parents, didn’t we?”
â€œSure,â€ said Ian. He didnâ€™t know why Jaa had to keep bringing the matter up, but he did.
“I don’t know . . .” said Kari. “About everything in the Parent’s headquarters was destroyed, except for the teleporting room and part of the ship garage. They canâ€™t really have survived that.”
111
The Container straightened up from the computer in front of him, pressing a button on the wall. “SIR?”
“What is it?” came a cold, annoyed voice through the speakers.
“HIGH PATRICIAN, I’VE MANAGED TO RECONSTRUCT THE PLANS FOR THE GRAVITY ENGINE FROM RENEGADE JAA’S NOTES. SHALL WE BEGIN CONSTRUCTION?”
“Where, though? Our headquarters and our facility on Io have both been destroyed by the cursed renegades.”
“WHAT ABOUT THE SECRET CORE FACILITY, SIR?”
“You read my mind. Set course for Mercury.”
“YES, SIR.” Kerj ended the transmission and flicked a lever. The engines powered up, sending the Orca, the only ship to escape from the wreckage of the Parents headquarters, towards the most inhospitable planet known to man.

0

251

E2MB, a Citizen of ICE

in July 10th, 2007 @ 23:30

249 – ~~GAAAAAH EVIL MUSEBLOG EVIL MUSEBLOG TOO ADDICTING TOO ADDICTING CURSE YOU ALL~~ Okay good. I was worried I was becoming insane. Wait a minute… ~~GAAAAAH EVIL MUSEBLOG EVIL MUSEBLOG TOO ADDICTING TOO ADDICTING CURSE YOU ALL~~

Done already with Part 2? And you’re going to do it again? *faints* This editing is almost as much work as writing the story! Especially since I, being obsessed as I am, am tracking how many revisions each chapter has had, and what their word count is, and adding a tab at the beginning of every paragraph….*whew*

~~I COULDN’T MAKE IT THE ENTIRE DAY WITHOUT COMING ON HERE AAAARRRGHHH!!!~~

MuseBlog is driving me to ~~BBLLOOOODDYY TTOONNSSIILLSS insanity.~~

0

252

Alice

in July 11th, 2007 @ 02:27

251- *feels sorry for him* It’s much easier if you add the tabsâ€“oh wait, you’re not doing the Edits, just copying, so you can’t. But here’s a tip: highlight the whole story, and then do the tab. *isn’t sure what will actually happen if he does that* Okay, never mind…

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253

E2MB

in July 12th, 2007 @ 15:38

I just realized this thread is insanely long. Can a GAPA snip post 144, since all of the text in that thread Alice has reposted?

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254

Vixen in the Eyes of the Moon

in July 13th, 2007 @ 04:16

Here’s my edit of Chapter 1.
1
The lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed. He was safe here.
2
He walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky casing and vanished between the shelves. Each book was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their pages. No one had ever read the books. No, they were too valuable for that. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
3
Ian sighed. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen electroimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite Terran tale, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form. He really didn’t get what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photos”, or whatever they called live imaging back then. So Ian had really no idea what trees looked like, and he tried to imagine them as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He was so engrossed in imagining Terra that he didn’t see the figure heading towards him with her eyes on the surrounding shelves.
Whooomph! I wouldn’t put in the sound. It makes it cartoony.
4
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was already gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that she had taken the books from.
5
The entire section was very dry This is a confusing use of the word. You might want to use “dull” instead. , something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships; a section that not even Ian had touched, or given a second glance. Each book was several inches thick with dusty bindings showing just how long it had been since anybody had wanted to know the information they held. I had the impression that they were disks that you put into a computer or something. How could the disks be thicker than usual? Aren’tthey all the same size? Why would a thirteen-year-old girl be interested in that?
6
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly and belatedly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was caught full on by another one, this one sleek and turbo powered. He had to apologize. His mother would have required it. He remembered back when she was alive and they had had a room. Ian had been very young, but every morning before he went to education session, she would call him over to her, and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls and the carboglass windows. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on her feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into you or step on your feet, do the same.”
“That’s their fault, isn’t it?” he would always say.
7
“Not the point,” she’d snap, and Ian would mumble something and look her in the eyes, if only for a brief second before his gaze fell towards his shoes. “You apologize!â€ said the voice of Ianâ€™s memory. â€œChase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but somehow he felt that it would be disrespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
8
“Um, look. Iâ€™m really sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl at last.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass reading table and turned it on. Ian was shocked and hurt. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody was supposed to refuse an apology. But stillâ€¦
9
“So, umâ€¦whatâ€™s your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl. She intrigued him, no matter how rude she was.
She didnâ€™t glance up. “It’s Kari, but that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?” asked Ian. Now he was really interested. Anyone who spoke words like â€œbeeswaxâ€ was someone to take notice of.
“Terran word.”
Ian sucked in his breath. “How do you know Terran?” â€œTerran!â€ for thoughts, use italics. The quotation marks are confusing. he thought to himself. â€œImpossible. Those words had died out centuries ago!â€
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, so interestingâ€¦
10
“Whatâ€™s it mean? Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, his apprehension battling with his curiosity.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye,” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him.

are yo planning on removing the numbers?
11
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.” This is really abrupt. I would rewrite this to make it a smoother transition. We also never find out what the “slam” is. You could have it where Kari’s book fell on the ground, and she is just sitting there, staring at the table, and Ian picks up the book for her.
Ian turned around. “Uh, thanks,” he said. The ice seemed to be broken between them. Thank Solana. Suddenly he blurted out, “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari evaded the question, by merely pretending he had said nothing. There’s a good rule to follow. If there is an easier way to say something, say it the easier way. This entire sentence can be replaced with “Kari ignored him.” It’s easier, it’s cleaner, and it flows smoothly. “Why are you here?” she asked. “asked” is a vague word. Is she asking this nicely, or angrily, or accusingly or, …“This is about the time when most kids should be in the education session.” “should be” is rather passive. Try using “are”.
12
Ian bristled. “I’m as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody can make me go anywhere else. My Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could be translated to mean, “never coming back.” “could be” leaves to many questions. “This “gone” could only be translated as meaning, “never coming back.”
13
It had happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony, in the old days, over a century ago, when people were evacuating Terra. Even once your ship broke through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars . . . it was probably a 50-50 chance for survival, in the best of conditions. I don’t have a ship. “Your ship” implies that the reader is involved in the story. This is a problem. Anything could happen, and more often than not it did. Many a horrible fate lay in the dark galaxy, but even those fates were better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than you can say “nuclear.” there’s that “you” again. “Faster than someone/Ian could say “nuclear.”
Of course, that had all been a very long time ago, and it was more likely that Kariâ€™s mother had died of some disease, or, like Ianâ€™s parents, an incident on another planet or asteroid, but just thinking about it sent shivers up Ianâ€™s spine.

I’ll do more later.

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255

Alice

in July 13th, 2007 @ 11:09

OK, thanks! A lot of that is being changed in my current and final edit, but I’ll change the things you pointed out, too. We already took the numbers out (or I did) in my draft, but it’s been a while since I posted the updated draft.

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256

Kagcomix

in July 13th, 2007 @ 17:25

i started reading the story. it was okay, it still needs a lot of work. i didn’t finnish it because i don’t have a lot of time, i just sort of edited Ch1, 1.
1
The lights flickered ominously as Ian carefully ascended the worn steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, thankfully. A person like him (then later talk about his back ground) would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him. ( you can’t start a scentance with but) once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely glanced at him in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed. He was safe here.

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257

Jadestone

in July 14th, 2007 @ 18:11

Alice- I’m sending you the part I’ve made notes on. I’ve gotten partway though chapter 4. It’s long, so I don’t want to post it here.

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258

Alice

in July 14th, 2007 @ 18:16

257- Okay, thanks!

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259

E2MB

in July 17th, 2007 @ 15:08

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
SSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOO MMMMUUUUCCCCCHHHHHH EEEDDDDDIIIIITTTTIIIIIIIIINNNNNGGGG!!!!!!! IIIIII SSSSHHHAAALLL NNNNNEEEEVVVEEERRRR KKKKEEEEEEEEEEPPPPP UUUUPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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260

Alice

in July 17th, 2007 @ 17:51

259- Never! Don’t worry. When everyone is done helping edit, I shall then post the finished story, and not edit it anymore.

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261

E2MB

in July 18th, 2007 @ 13:15

260 – Okay, good. This has been edited so many times I’ve gotten exhausted from all the c+ping. And the long posts makes the selection go really slow too. *phew*

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262

Jadestone

in July 20th, 2007 @ 13:00

Mmkay, I edited more on paper, got up to the midst of chapter 8. I havn’t gotten it into the computer yet though, and I’m going to relitives for the weekend so I probably won’t send that part to Alice ’till after that. Plus there’s HP, but I’ll have that fiished efore I come back

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263

Alice

in July 22nd, 2007 @ 20:00

Oh joy. I just read about copyrighting. Firstly, it’ll cost a lot of money. $50 dollars, about. Maybe less, maybe more. Secondly, copyrighting under a pseudonym can lead to debates about the ownership of the manuscript, so one should register their manuscript under their legal name. But since none of us know the other’s legal names, that’s going to be hard. Thirdly, even the supposedly comprehensive chapter about copyrighting was pretty much gibberish. Fourthly, I feel guilty about using a lot of paper. (Pathetic, I know.) In short, I am not so very eager about publishing anymore. (The thought of printing my manuscript out on paper, or more accurately the amount of paper my manuscript will take up, has dampened my enthusiasm for a very long time.) I’m not sure how involved everyone else is in this process, but we need to discuss this. I’m posting this on the official RRR thread and the publishing thread too, and if Canix and E2MB don’t reply I’ll take more desperate measures.

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264

Alice

in July 23rd, 2007 @ 20:19

in July 29th, 2007 @ 13:54

168 idk

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271

Alice

in July 30th, 2007 @ 19:19

270-

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272

Prarilius Canix

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 18:09

ACK. I read only the first chapter, and already I see problems. The stuff about the asteroid belt coming under the banner of the mining barons is misleading to the reader and not even the real reason she wants to go to the Jovian moons. Also the mention of the government trying to invade people’s minds is misleading.
Or is the link at the top no longer the current version? If so, forgive me.

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273

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 18:31

272- Oh, no, the link at the top is minimally edited and ancient. Here’s the stuff that has already gone through it’s final edit. This version is also sure to have flaws, and if you see them please point them out.

TERRAFORMED
By Robin R. Randall

PART ONE: IO

Chapter 1

The tunnel lights flickered ominously as Ian cautiously ascended the worn stone steps of the Ceres Municipal Library. Nobody was around, to his profound relief. A vagabond like him would have been taken off the streets at once if the police had seen him, and Ian had spent far too much of his life already in a cast-uranicium jail cell to relish that thought. But once he entered the sliding carboglass doors, the auto-librarian barely gave him a cursory glance in the X-ray spectrum to make sure he wasn’t carrying any weapons. Ian relaxed considerably. He was safe here.
He walked past the auto-librarian’s bulky chrome casing and vanished between the shelves of elebooks. Each elebook was a thick disc coated in translucent green plastic, which projected the text and, on rare occasions, pictures, onto a flip-up screen. At the back of the Library was a carboglass case containing three paper-and-cloth books laid reverently on soft red padding. One was Green Eggs and Ham, which Ian had always assumed was about early experiments in genetic engineering. No ordinary citizen knew what the books contained between their carefully preserved pages. No one had ever read the books. No, they were too old and valuable for that. They were all ancient artifacts from before the Great Emigration. Before World War Last. They were from a time when humans lived on a beautiful blue and green planet, a time when mankind had not been forced to scatter through the solar system and carve out artificial bits of worlds. A time when the human race had a home.
Ian sighed, staring past the shelves of plastic-coated discs, past the unoccupied reading tables, towards the back of the library, where a huge projected liveimage of Solana, the solar system, slowly wheeled and turned against the wall. The boy looked back at the shelves, reflecting on the image. It seemed to confirm that humans would never go back to their own small beautiful planet. Ian knew it had been beautiful once, even if it wasnâ€™t now. He had read tons of books about Terra, and once he had even seen liveimages of what Terra would have looked like before the Warming Effect took full hold, and before the heavy metal pollution made the atmosphere completely opaque. He decided to find his favorite book, Trees: A New True Book. It was one of the few Terran books copied onto modern elebook form, and Ian had read it so many times that it was a wonder it had not yet worn out. He really didn’t understand what trees were, except that they made oxygen, maybe through some primitive electrolysis system, and they were green and brown. All of the pictures in Trees had been eradicated, like all of the original Terran “photos”, or whatever they called live imaging back then. Ian had spent many a happy hour trying to imagine trees, and he tried to imagine them now as he automatically turned down the many aisles towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He was so engrossed in thoughts of Terra that he didn’t see the figure heading towards him with her eyes on the surrounding shelves.
Ian and the girl collided, both falling towards the air-cushioned carboglass floor. The girl was first to recover. She leaped up, grabbed a handful of elebooks from a nearby shelf, and dashed off into the depths of the library. Ian stood up barely two seconds after her, but she was already gone. With a sigh, Ian turned around and looked at the shelf that she had taken the books from.
The entire section was very dull, something about the floor plans of interplanetary ships; a section that not even Ian had touched, or given a second glance. Each plastic case looked thick enough to contain at least three discs, with layers of dust showing just how long it had been since anybody had wanted to know the information they held. Why would the girlâ€“who didnâ€™t look older than Ianâ€“be interested in that?
“Sorry,” Ian stated rather stupidly and belatedly, reaching the end of his train of thought, and than was caught full on by another, this one sleek and turbo powered. He had to apologize. His mother would have required it. He remembered back when she was alive and they had had a room. Ian had been very young, but every morning before he went to education session, she would call him over to her, and he’d stand in front of her, surveying the shabby walls and the carboglass windows, while she gave him hurried lessons in etiquette. “If you ever knock into a girl, or step on her feet, apologize,” she’d say to him. “If they knock into you or step on your feet, do the same.”
“That’s their fault, isn’t it?” he would always say.
“Not the point,” she’d snap, and Ian would mumble something and look her in the eyes, if only for a brief second before his gaze fell towards his shoes. “You apologize!â€ said the voice of Ianâ€™s memory. â€œChase after her if you have to!” Now, he pulled his head back into a forward position and scrambled to his feet. It was stupid, but somehow he felt that it would be disrespecting his mother’s memory if he didn’t run. And so he did.
“Um, look. Iâ€™m really sorry,” he stuttered, catching up to the girl at last.
“Do I really care?” said the girl, who had set down the elebook disk on a carboglass reading table and turned it on. Ian was shocked and hurt. Ceres was an extremely peaceful and conservative planet. Nobody was supposed to refuse an apology. But stillâ€¦
“So, umâ€¦whatâ€™s your name?” he said, trying to strike up a conversation with this strange girl. She intrigued him, no matter how rude she was. Something about her just didnâ€™t seem quite right. She seemed differentâ€“like an outsider.
She didnâ€™t glance up when he asked his question, but continued to stare at the screen. “It’s Kari,â€ she said, â€œbut that’s none of your beeswax.”
“What’s beeswax?” asked Ian. Now he was really interested. Anyone who spoke words like â€œbeeswaxâ€ was someone to take notice of.
“Terran word.”
Ian sucked in his breath. “How do you know Terran?” Terran! he thought to himself. Impossible! Those words had died out decades ago.
“As I said, none of your beeswax.”
Ian looked at this girl, this Kari, in astonishment. She was so rude, and yet, she became more interesting by the second.
“Whatâ€™s it mean? Do you know a lot of Terran?” he asked, his apprehension battling with his curiosity.
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s none of your beeswax!”
Ian looked at her, dumbfounded. Dejected, he turned away.
“Good-bye.” he said sullenly, and started back towards the “Questionable Nonfiction” section. He heard something slam behind him and turning around, saw that Kari had dropped her book. And there was another of his motherâ€™s rules, springing unbidden into Ianâ€™s mind. He stepped forward, picked up the book, and handed it to her without a word. When she still said nothing, he turned away and headed once more towards his the shelves near the front of the library. A moment later, there were footsteps.
“Wait!” Kari cried out, as she ran up to him. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been a little more gracious. I guess I’m just stressed out. I accept your apology.”
Ian turned around, a little surprised by the sudden change in her attitude. “Uh, thanks,” he said. The ice seemed to be broken between them. Thank Solana. Suddenly, startling even himself, he blurted out, “I noticed that you were looking in the section about the architecture of interplanetary ships- are you really interested in that?”
Kari ignored him. “Why are you here?” she asked, though it was more a formality than because she didnâ€™t really know. It was easy enough to tell just by looking at Ian why he was there. “This is about the time when most kids are in the education session.”
Ian bristled. “I’m just as old as you are,” he said. “Why are you here?”
“Nobody can make me go anywhere else,â€ said Kari. It seemed a little false, like she was pretending to be someone that she wasnâ€™t. Ian frowned slightly, but all thoughts of Kariâ€™s strangeness were driven out of his head when the girl said, â€œMy Mom’s gone.” The way she said gone seemed to imply that it was not just a trip to the supply base. This “gone” could only be translated to mean, “never coming back.”
It had happened all too frequently to the members of Ian’s colony, in the old days, over a century ago, when people were evacuating Terra. Even once a ship broke through the atmosphere, gliding softly towards the stars . . . it was probably a 50-50 chance for survival, in the best of conditions. Anything could happen, and more often than not it did. Many a horrible death lay in the dark galaxy, but even those fates were better than staying on the remnants of the old planet and dying faster than one could say “nuclear.”
Of course, that had all been a very long time ago, and it was more likely that Kariâ€™s mother had died of some disease, or, like Ianâ€™s parents, an incident on another planet or asteroid, but just thinking about it sent shivers up Ianâ€™s spine.
“I’m sorry,” he said lamely. There wasn’t a lot to say in a situation like this.
Kari didn’t reply, and just looked straight ahead in a way that seemed unnatural and almost inhuman. She was good at hiding her feelings. That was the way she had been made, and it was burned into her mind in a way no renegade emotions could ever change. In her mind she could be dying of loneliness and no one would ever know. In this world, the mind was the one place that has not yet been invaded by the clever modern scientists with their clever modern schemes, and even that was being threatened. The mind was the last place of privacy, but many were trying to break even that barrier. Some had succeeded, and Kari would never forget the dreadful years spent in their clutches.
Kari needed time to think. She needed to be where no one could find her, until she could make a plan. But that required getting off Ceresâ€“why did I even come here in the first place? she wondered to herselfâ€“ and you couldnâ€™t do that without a passport. At least, you werenâ€™t supposed to. But that was why she’d been researching interplanetary trading ships. Particularly the maintenance corridors. And how to access them from the ground. In short, illegally.
“Listen,” she said to Ian. “You seem like a kid who can keep a secret, and judging from the fact that you aren’t in school – no offense – you don’t have any ties to Ceres. Are you familiar with the old Terran term â€˜stowawayâ€™?”
“No,” replied Ian, his face taking on a stony look. “I hate stowaways.”
“You donâ€™t have to like them. You know what they are, right?” Kari said, and she realized that she had overstepped the line. She grabbed Ianâ€™s arm suddenly.
“Yes- no- I mean leave me alone! You can go and ruin someone elseâ€™s life, but I am going to go read!” and he shook off her hand and stormed away.
Ian stopped. He half-turned and looked over his shoulder at the girl staring sadly at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I just don’t like the idea of stowaways . . . it was a stowaway that killed my parents on their way back to Ceres from a trip to Ida, when I was six. He killed them and all the other passengers, and then stole the ship. No one knows what happened to him, but the final transmit from the ship was a recording in which he said that he ‘was off in search of peace’ . . . we’re not sure what that meant, but we never heard from him again. Anyway, that’s why I blew up at you . . . sorry.”
Kari looked at him thoughtfully.
“It’s alright,” she said, a little cautiously. “I was just asking because, well, I want to get out of here, and if you have nowhere else to go, either, then, well . . . um . . .”
“You were planning to stow away?” Ian felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach . . . hard. Kari was only in her early teens and was already planning illegal activities! He began to have doubts about whether or not being friends with this girl was a good idea at all.
“Well, yes, but look, I don’t plan on killing anybodyâ€“â€œ Oh no, never, said a tiny part of her brain, mockingly. Come on, Kari. Stop living in denial. Kari ignored it. â€œI just want to get away from here!â€ she cried. â€œYou have no idea what it’s like to have no home to go to at the end of the day, and to have to try to find foodâ€¦” Kari bit her tongue, hard. She had nearly said more, and if she had, then she would have been in big, big, trouble.
“Actually, I do,â€ Ian interrupted, unaware of how close he had come to finding out Kariâ€™s biggest and most dangerous secret.
Kari looked flustered. “Oh, well . . . yes, I suppose you do . . .” she trailed off, not quite trusting herself not to get carried away.
“All right. I guess I would like to come with you,â€ Ian said.
“I didnâ€™t offâ€“â€œ she began, but something made her change her mind. â€œYou would? Really?”
“Yes. I, too, want to get out of here . . . if I can do something other than creep around like a rat all day, hoping I don’t get caught by the police, and then sleep in a tunnel at night on an empty stomach, I’ll take it. I just wish it wasn’t something so dangerous.”
Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him . . . maybe they weren’t so very different, after all â€“ if you ignored their histories. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
“Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Even I’d be out of my league if I tried that. Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. They’ve been working on it for nearly 150 years, and even at the equator it’s like Siberia. I mean, I know it takes thousands of years for the terraforming process to be complete, but you’d think they’d have made a bit more progress by now.
“No,” Kari continued, “we’re heading for the Jovian moons.”
“But there’s no way I’m stowing away,” said Ian firmly.
Kari took a deep breath to argue, paused for a very long moment, and said finally, “If you have the money, then we can take a shuttle.â€ Ian looked at her questioningly and opened his mouth, but she cut in. â€œIt’s still illegal, but not quite as bad. Just leave it to me.”
â€œWhat do you mean?â€ asked Ian suspiciously. He didnâ€™t like the thought of leaving it to Kari; something told him that she was no ordinary orphan. If she had already been planning to stow away, who knows what else she might do?
Kari seemed to know what he was getting at. â€œDonâ€™t worry. It wonâ€™t hurt anybody, or anything like that. Do you have money?â€
Ian hesitated. His answer would be the binding promise, but he could still back out now. If he told the truth, he would be stuck with this venture, and forced to see it out till the end. Did he really want to do this? Of course he did. â€œI do have money,â€ he replied truthfully. â€œNot a lot, but it might be enough.â€
Kari and Ian boarded the next shuttle to Jupiter that very day, though it cost seven years worth of saving whatever Ian could find in the horribly clean tunnels of Ceres. The shuttle was nearly emptyâ€”not many people could afford to or wanted to leave their safe and tedious existences on the asteroid, and if they did, they had to get passports, a process that took a very long time and a good deal of money. Ian had one from his vacations from his parents as a small child, but Kari shook her head at it.
â€œTheyâ€™ll be able to track you if they know about that,â€ she said. â€œHave any money?â€
Ian, not liking the sound of, â€œtheyâ€™ll be able to track you,â€ doubtfully put his small collection of cores and half-cores into her hand. Kari looked oddly at them.
â€œWhat on Earth are these? Is this what they use on Ceres nowadays?â€ She tapped one of the half-cores, a thing like a marble cut in two with a manâ€™s head on the flat side, mistrustfully. The cores looked much the same, minus the flat edge. Instead, the head was stamped on one side, covering half the ball with the manâ€™s face.
â€œWhat else should we use?â€ asked Ian, genuinely puzzled. â€œAnd whatâ€™s â€˜Earthâ€™?â€
Kari said nothing, but when they boarded the shuttle, she slipped them into the pilotâ€™s hand without a word. He did not question the legality of their passports.
â€œCâ€™mon,â€ said Kari, sweeping ahead of Ian and into an empty compartment as though she were royalty, an effect rather spoiled by her simple and not-terribly-clean clothes. She sat down in a seat, and Ian sat beside her, remembering the last time heâ€™d been in a ship, aged six. It had been nothing like this one, with its cheap white plastic seats and fuzzy radio. This shuttle was . . . Ian searched for the word . . . seedy. A little like Ceres, really. He sighed and almost relaxed. Maybe he ought to feel at home.
He stiffened again as a man entered the compartment. He sat down in the seat farthest from Kari and Ian, and put a pair of SilencePlugsÂ® into his ears. Then, with a none-too-friendly look at the young people with which he shared the compartment, he went to sleep.
As the massive G-forces pulled them out of the planet’s gravity, something went wrong. There was a crackling and sputtering from one of the engines, and then, with a sickening crash, it failed. Ian gasped. â€œWhat was that?â€ he asked Kari, his chest tightening with fear. He didnâ€™t know what had happened, but nothing that made that noise was good.
â€œEngine,â€ replied Kari curtly, her voice betraying no emotion. â€œI might have known this little shuttle would do something like that. Weâ€™re going to crash.â€ And she was right. Not being far enough out into space, the gravitational pull was still around them, and they plummeted back towards Ceres, while the ship became hotter and hotter still due to the air friction. Ian moved closer to Kari, trying to avoid the glowing walls. He didnâ€™t want to die! Oh how idiotic he had been to come with Kari. A tear slipped down his cheek, but Kari didnâ€™t notice. She was watching the window. Ian followed her eyes in time to see a large piece of metal from the side of the ship disintegrate into small pieces which fell and rattled against the shuttleâ€™s hull. Ian gave a strangled half-sob, knowing there was nothing he or Kari could do but wait for death. The pilot was already dead or unconscious: the radio that connected the cockpit to the passenger seating was silent. Ian wept for himself, and Kari, and the man in the compartment, and the pilot, and simply out of sheer terror. Kari did not spare him a glance as she watched the surface of the planet loom ever closer. Kari gripped Ian’s hand for balance as she unbuckled her seat belt and stood on the tilting floor.
Ian jumped. “What’re you doing?” Was she insane? She would be killed! Not, of course, that her chances of life were any better if she was sitting down than if she was standing up.
“Getting ready to save our lives, got a problem with it?” Kari sounded fierce, fiercer than when they had been on Ceres. Ian looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers burned with a blazing green fire. His were pools of deep blue fear. She squeezed his hand, her fierceness melting away slightly to reveal a hint of gentleness.
“Look, we’ve made it this far.” she said, “No way we’re giving up now.” He nodded shakily in agreement.

Chapter 2

Kari made her shaky way towards the emergency exit and pressed a bright blue button next to the door.
â€œWhatâ€™s that do?â€ asked Ian, gulping down his fear.
â€œIt activates a ship-contained force field that will keep all the air from rushing out of the ship when we open the door and enable us to move around and talk.â€
Ian nodded, although he wasnâ€™t at all sure he understood what she meant.
“C’mon, help me open this!” Now Kari was struggling with the heavy handle of the emergency exit. Ian cautiously stood up, and together they managed lift the door slightly.
“Wait!â€ cried Kari, as Ian attempted to pull it open. â€œThe force field wonâ€™t last for long, so weâ€™ve got to have a plan. When I say to do so, open the door. When I nod, jump out of the shuttle, alright?”
“What?” Ian protested. “Without inflatachutes, or anything? We can’t! And what about him?” He pointed towards the only other passenger in their compartment, snoring softly in a nearby seat. He still had the SilencePlugsÂ® in his ears, accounting for his unawareness. A GraviMaskÂ® was strapped across his eyes, bearing the scrolling message- “GraviMaskÂ®! Manipulates your sense of gravity so even during space travel you don’t feel the slightest movement!” The advertisement went on, but neither of them was reading.
â€œAt least heâ€™s asleep. He wonâ€™t even notice when this thing crashes,â€ Kari said coldly. Ian was shocked.
â€œBut â€“â€œ
“We canâ€™t rescue him and us both. Do you wanna live, or not?” Ian braced himself, casting a last sorrowful look at the snoring man.
“On 3â€¦1, 2, 3!” Together they tugged at the door and if swung open. Kari looked at Ian, and nodded. The boy took a deep breath, shut his eyes tightly, and they jumped. Ian felt the artificial wind lick his face as they free fell towards Ceresâ€¦was this the end? Was this how he would go? Falling towards the very planet from which he had tried to escape? He wished the police had caught him before he had gone into the library; he wished he had never met Kari; he wished life were still normal. But wishing changed nothing. Life was not normal, and he was going to die in only a few minutes. He scrunched up his face and tried to concentrate on living, breathingâ€“or not breathing, to more accurateâ€“, forcing his heart to beat a couple more times.
Don’t breathe, Kari thought silently toward Ian. We haven’t hit the artifisphere yet. You’ll die. She didn’t expect him to understand her, since telepathy bugs were a part of pre-War technology that had been transported past Terra only by a few fanatics, and most lucky, ordinary, average citizens were ignorant to the fact that they had ever existed. That was for the best, too, it was horrible to feel someone else in your brain. But she didn’t want this kid to die. For some reason, it felt good to be able to talk to somebody normal again, someone fully human. She was so lonely. 70 years of boredom in sentient cryonics could do that to a person, she supposed.
She looked over at Ian again. He seemed to be alive, even if he was going rather blue in the face, which was good in an awful sort of way. It shouldn’t be too long before they reached the artifisphere. They’d have to leave soon, because the Parents were already looking for her. Going to Ceres had been a mistake. Ceres would do anything to get into the good graces of the government, and looking for a teenage girl, who, they were told, was an escaped criminal, would be the smallest price to pay for a bit of praise. The Parents, surely, would give them her biosignature, and from there it was an easy step to finding her, with everything sheâ€™d done. Unless Ian was also a wanted renegade Container (which she doubted even without taking into consideration his physical appearance), his signature would take longer to find, but if they discovered him with her he’d be executed in the most inhumane way the Parentsâ€™ torture generals could dream up. One of the few advantages to being a Container was that she could not be killed. She was far too valuable, even as a renegade. The Parents would do almost anything to keep her alive, because they need the information in her head. If they ever wanted to complete the project, they needed her. Kari was safe, or so she thought. But Ian . . . Kari was not stupid. She knew what they did to non-Containers that got involved. She had seen it too many times. Harboring her was suicide.
She pitied this Ian kid, though pity was the last thing a Container was supposed to feel. (It was a contaminant, it would taint her data, and it would jeopardize everything they’d planted in her head.) No doubt he’d lived the perfectly normal life of an orphan in the asteroid belt. Then she’d swept in, and now he was a wanted criminal. Ah well. Life, she supposed, was cruel. She was already regretting it, although at the same moment she relished actually speaking to someone, including him in her plans, letting a few of her secrets out. But not the most important one. Never that one.
Kari felt a vaguely familiar fizzle on her skin, which the information that was continuously circling through her mind recognized as the artifisphere. “You can breathe now!” she shouted, and wondered how to tell Ian what he’d gotten himself into.
“Ohhhhhh,” breathed Ian blissfully, though Kari couldn’t hear him through the rushing of the air around them.
“So you’re alive?” she yelled.
“Yeah, but I won’t be for long!” Ian yelled back.
“Why?”
“Well, if you hadn’t noticed, we’re falling at extremely fast speeds towards the HARD GROUND,” Ian screamed sarcastically.
Dang! thought Kari. The impact!
She searched her information. “Come on,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Aha!” From her pocket she pulled a small round globe of what looked like red glass. The ground was getting closerâ€¦ closerâ€¦
“COME ON!!”
Kari squeezed the globe.
“Oof!” A red mattress had sprung up out of nowhere and Kari and Ian now rested on it as it slowly floated down towards the barren ground of Ceres’ rural areas.
“Is that aâ€¦ Globe?” asked Ian incredulously. Globes were ancient Terran technology that could contain anything useful that you could ever need or want, as Ian had learned one fateful day when he snuck into the library to read some of the older, more valuable books. He had been caught later, but not before he learned a good deal about pre-WWL Terra. “Howâ€¦?”
Kari stuttered, “Erâ€¦ umâ€¦ wellâ€¦ I’mâ€¦”
She’d have to tell him. There was no way to avoid it any longer.
“I’m a Container.”
Ian had no idea what a Container was, but from the look on Kariâ€™s face, he gathered that it was nothing good. When that was added to the events of the past however long it had beenâ€“ meeting Kari, the bribing of the pilot, and the shuttle crashing â€“ it became too much for him. He fainted.
“A . . . a Container?” stuttered Ian when he had recovered fully. “What in Solana is that?”
Kari groaned. She hated explaining all this. Fortunately, she’d never had to do it before, and she had no intention of ever doing it again.
“It all started,” she said, “a few years after World War Last. A sort of fanatical group of people- they call themselves the Parents, since they’re supposed to be the forebears of this â€˜master raceâ€™â€¦” She was really giving him the condensed version; a full explanation would have them there till the sun came up. And on Ceres, that was very, very, bad. The artifisphere offered very, very little protection against the deadly ultraviolet light. Anything not in the underground colonies would be baked to a crisp within minutes.
“Anyway, the master race is the Containers, of which I am one. The Parents want to create a new Terra somehow, so we can live there. I know, crazy. It would be impossible, and a bad idea in general.”
“A new Terra? That canâ€™t be so bad.â€
Kari sighed again. Did this dolt not know anything?
“If they were going about it any other way it would be wonderful. Perfect. And so green . . .” Kari’s voice drifted off, and her eyes glazed over. Ian could almost see strange images flickering behind her pupils.
Suddenly, he blurted out, “How would you know? You’re not old enough to even have any memories of Terra!”
“Did they not teach you about cryogenics in school? I’m eighty-three and a half,” Kari said matter-of-factly, pulling back her sleeve to reveal the tattoo every citizen of the solar system had, which listed her birth date, home planet, identification number, and status. It read: January 27, 2104/Mars/08234919, and then the last line of ink was blurred by a black crater with scorch marks that wrapped around her whole elbow. All you could see was part of a word: Civi.
“Civilian,” said Ian. â€œI thought you were a Container.â€ She was really old, too, if her birthday and ID number were to be believed. But still, she shouldnâ€™t have memories of Terra. World War Last had been much longer ago than eighty-three years, and she was born on Mars besides . . . But he knew better than to ask these questions. He could only imagine the response he would get.
“I am a Container. I got this,â€ she said, indicating the tattoo, â€œbefore I became a Container. And let me tell you, putting a lighted firecracker to your skin to get rid of your microchip hurts a lot worse than you’d think.”
She had no microchip? No, she didnâ€™t, because there was the horrible burn on her arm where it ought to be, along with her status. But that meant she shouldn’t be able to function now, since the removal of a microchip instantly destroyed the information in the brain. Every idiot knew that; kids learned it when they were in primary school. Then again, Ian was getting the sense that Kari did a lot of things that shouldn’t be able to be done. Instead of asking her about it, he settled for the question, “What’s a firecracker?”
“Terran,” she responded, deflating the mattress and shoving it back into the Globe.
“Right. So, it’s kind of really dangerous to associate with you?” Ian was beginning to think that following Kari hadn’t been the best idea. Whatever these Containers were, they sounded bad, and Ian wasn’t the sort who liked bad. Although, he thought, Kari probably is.
“Yep. Which means you’re stuck with me now. Pretty soon, theyâ€™ll find out that weâ€™re together, and if they catch us, they’ll freeze and brainwash me. You, they’ll destroy just enough cells to keep you within an inch of your life, then put nanobots in you and repair them, then do it again. Again and again and again.” She sounded bitter, as if she’d seen this happen before. Then, on second thought, she probably had. â€œOh,â€ she added, the bitterness in her voice increasing several-fold. â€œAnd if you try to leave now, theyâ€™ll hunt you down. They canâ€™t take the risk of someone possibly hearing about their precious plan.â€
So it had definitely been a bad idea to get involved with Kari. Was he really going to be tortured, and then killed? The thought scared him, more than the idea of a nice swift execution or a ship crash. Everyone seemed to die like that, and he’d long since accepted it as inevitable. But thisâ€¦he wasn’t sure why it was so terrifying, but he was absolutely certain that he didn’t want it to happen to him.
“What do we do now?” Ian asked, trying to keep his voice stable.
“Leave.” Kari ran her finger over the edge of the burned pockmark in her skin before replacing the black sleeve of her shirt. “How would you like to see Terra in person?”
“But we can’t go to Terra!” Ian exclaimed, thinking that, however she knew what Terra was like once upon a time, it must have badly damaged her sense of what it was like now. “We would die almost inst-”
“JUST LISTEN TO ME!” Kari interrupted, rather loudly. She was tired of explaining every little thing to this dim-witted child. “Of course we’re not going to land on Terra. As you said, it would be suicide. No, I’m talking about Terraâ€™s moon.”
Ian started. “Terraâ€™s moon? But there isn’t any habitation there!”
“Exactly. No one will look for us there if no one lives there. Right?”
“What are you talking about?” Ian said, glancing around. “Terra and the moon are almost 2AUs (astronomical unit) away, and we don’t have a ship!”
“Who said we were going to take a ship? Maybe weâ€™ll end up taking something else!â€
â€œLike what?â€ asked Ian. This didnâ€™t sound promising.
“Come on,” Kari said, “It’s not far from here, but we have to get there before sunrise.”
With that, Kari started to walk toward the dark side of the planet, unyielding to all of Ian’s questions.

Chapter 3

As they reached the dark side of Ceres, Ian began to see a large shape looming out of the gloom. It was roughly conical, almost likeâ€¦
“A ship?” he gasped out loud. “B-but it’s unregistered!”
“Blast,” muttered Kari, frustrated. “Though, I suppose I can’t blame you for being so naive. The Solan Republic hasn’t hindered the Parents at all by making people think that lawbreaking is unthinkable. This guy isn’t exactly a friend of mine, but he’s an associate. Takes people off-planet, no questions asked, as long as they have money.”
“Uhâ€¦and where would you get the money? You can only get it from your assigned class,” said Ian. â€œAnd I donâ€™t have any more.â€ He had barely been able to pay for the shuttle ride with money that he had been scrounging off the streets for seven years. Though, admittedly, that had been mostly bribing material.
“Again, the government’s fault. In Terra, people used to be able to work toward the class or job they wantedâ€¦oops. Forget I said that. I have plenty of money.”
Ian looked at Kari strangely. Why didn’t she want to share her memories? How did she have them, anyways? Eighty-three and a half was old, but she wasnâ€™t old enough to really have been on Terra back when it was still somewhat green and blue. And if she had â€œplenty of moneyâ€, why hadnâ€™t she paid for the shuttle? He thought that was rather selfish. He had spent more than half his life saving it up, blew it away on a whim of hers, and she had “plenty of money?!” And whatâ€™s more, if Kari had known about this man, why had they even bothered with the shuttle? Unless, of course, she hadnâ€™t wanted Ian to know about him. The boy sighed. Kari was just strange, nothing he could do about that.
Kari led the way toward the ship, and smacked her hand against the hull 12 times. There was a pause while the sound reverberated around the barren landscape, and for a dreadful moment Ian thought nobody was home. Then all of a sudden a short, stout man appeared, as though from nowhere.
“What the tikko-oh, â€˜ello, Kari!”
“Glad to see you,” said Kari insincerely, pushing the man aside and striding up to the wall of the ship and walking straight through a door that opened as if by magic. Ian, getting used to very strange things happening often, walked right in after her.
The man was left standing there on the rough Cerean crust with a disgruntled expression on his rather chubby face. “Dem kidsâ€¦” he muttered, and disappeared.
“Who was that?” asked Ian. He could accept strange things happening, but he still wanted to know why and who, if Kari would tell him.
“Just a friend of the Parents, if you could call it that. The Parents don’t really have friends, not even amongst themselves. They just share a common goal, and stay on together because of that. If they got a planet to be like Earth used to be, I wouldn’t know what would happen. They would try to destroy each other probably, since they had finished what they joined together to doâ€¦” Kari gazed into the ship, and you could tell she knew something that she wasn’t telling Ianâ€¦ probably her Terran memories again, Ian decided unhappily. Her eyes had that weird flickering quality that must signify her unnatural memory at work.
She snapped out of her reverie as the man appeared beside her.
“Well, if we’re going somewhere, let’s go now,” he said impatiently. “Where to, Kar-kar?”
“Luna, and don’t call me Kar-kar,” she said. â€If you do that one more time Iâ€™ll call you Antie.â€
The two followed the man (Ian later learned that he was called Antavo) into the main passenger cabin, a thing that Ian had seen only once, aged six, in a private ship. Most shuttles had compartments that could be jettisoned in case of emergency. The ship was not very large, but the passenger cabin was holographically enhanced to make it look like it was bigger than it really was, as Ian discovered by walking into a wall. The walls were painted a dreary grey that held the slightest hint of a sickly yellow, and apart from this depressing color, there was nothing in the cabin but a few seats. Kari selected two of these in the middle of the sparsely decorated cabin, and she and Ian sat down. The seats were covered in some exotic blue-green fabric that looked very soft and silky, but to the touch it felt rough and scratchy.
“Are we buckled in nice and tight?” called Antavo from the pilot’s cabin.
“Yeah, Antavo, whatever. Let’s just go.” Kariâ€™s pose was once again rigid and unnatural. Perhaps, Ian suggested to himself, she sits that way to keep from touching the seats.
“Posi!” called Antavo in agreement from the pilot’s cabin, and without another word, they took off. It was not the smooth, quiet, take-off of the shuttle, but loud, jerky, and altogether heart stopping. More than once, Ian was sure that they would crash back to Ceres again, but they did not.
After breaking the thin artifisphere, there was a sickening moment or two, as direction seemed to disappear, before they started to experience the pleasure of weightlessness. Kari had experienced it before, but Ian had not. Any ships he had ever gone on had artificial gravity. He was like a child in a candy shop. He took off his seat belts and went flying around. The pilot didn’t pay much attention to him. He was used to first time passengers, not that he got many, maybe three or so. He never saw them again after their flight.
“Oh get down from there, youâ€™re making a fool of yourself.” Kari snapped. She was strangely irritable. She had never wanted to be a passenger on Antavoâ€™s ship again, and yet here she was, and not only was she here, she was saddled with a naÃ¯ve kid who acted half his age.
Ian slowly floated back to his seat, still unused to there not being gravity on the ship. When had there ever not been gravity in spacecraft? Not for a long, long time, since Terra maybe. Wait . . . this had to be a Terran craft!! And a really old one at that. After all, all recent spacecraft simulate artificial gravity.
Ian became even more excited. Why couldn’t this be one of the transpace vehicles that had been built in the pre/Last War era in Terra? There really wasnâ€™t any other explanation.
Then suddenly, his meal arrived. He had not expected it, as he rarely ever ate, but Kari explained that Antavo provided every passenger with a meal. She neglected to state why.
Ian slowly chewed the 48-carboprotien multivitamin tablets. They had no taste at all, but Ian didnâ€™t even notice, having never experienced anything else. Ian remembered when he had been safe, back at the library on Ceres. It had seemed so long ago, even though it was less than a day. There, he had absorbed information about when food had been GROWN, not chemically assembled from raw protons, neutrons, and electrons in particle accelerators. He could not think of what taste would be like, because his mind could not comprehend it. He often wondered what it would be like in a world where things just seemed to happen, as he had read about Terra, instead of being automated and fully predictable. Then he thought, Perhaps I know. After all, this whole . . . adventure wasnâ€™t predictable. He even smiled a little at the thought of Kari being predictable. Yeah, right.
After he was done eating his nutritious but flavorless meal, he settled into his uncomfortable chair to attempt sleep. No luck. Kari poked him in the arm none to gently and told him that they were just about there. “To Luna? But we just left Ceres.â€
“So? This ship is fast. Besides, itâ€™s been a lot longer than you would think. You spent a long time floating about on the ceiling.â€ She said this scornfully, and turned back to the one window, out of which could be seen the velvet blackness of space.
They approached the lunar landscape, and headed toward the landing spot at the top of Luna. It was the site of an abandoned Terran colony. It had originally been built in 2041, but it was abandoned after Terra’s World War Last, only two years after the colony had been founded, since there was no longer a source of vital nutrients and items for life. It was never revived later, as the atmosphere even now is very poor.
The ship slowly powered down through the thin atmosphere. It landed roughly among the ancient Terran debris that was scattered around the colonies observation dome. Ian was thrown backward with the force of the impact. He crashed against the wall of the ship. “Stupid Terran technology,â€ he muttered, despite the fact that he had been ecstatic about it only a little while ago.
â€œBest put on the suits,â€ commented the pilot. â€œNo good wandâ€™ring round in your clothes. No air, see, and no artifisphere, neither.â€ Kari glared at him, but put the spacesuit on over her clothing nonetheless.
Kari paid for their ride â€“ Ian noted the currency was like none he had ever seenâ€“ So that’s why she couldn’t bribe the shuttle captain, he thought, sorry for his harsh feelings earlierâ€“ and the duo headed toward the abandoned colonial landscape. Ian nearly tripped over a something that resembled a miniature table made of an unfamiliar substance. â€œWhatâ€™s this?â€ he asked distastefully. It had an odd texture, like nothing he had seen before.
“Wood,â€ replied Kari, looking around at the heaps of similar items that covered Lunaâ€™s surface, looking strange against the pale grey dust. â€œA real ghost town,” she said. â€œLetâ€™s go in.â€ She nodded towards a large, mostly intact, metal dome, a few hundred yards away, and started walking before Ian could even ask what a ghost town was. Terran words, he thought with a sigh. I suppose Iâ€™ll never get used to them.

Chapter 4

As they went inside the observation dome, Ian glanced at the display cases, which were made out something Kari informed him was glass. There was a fine layer of dust over everything, but the glass was smooth underneath it, and Ian enjoyed feeling it under his hands almost as much of as he enjoyed looking at the contents of the cases.
His curiosity was captured by the ancient spacesuits, so much more bulky than his own, which had seemed quite bad enough. At least he could still move in this! But Kari was already ahead of him, giving him no more time to look around.
â€œBut Kari,â€ he protested, as she seized his wrist with a mutter of impatience.
â€œCome on,â€ she said. â€œWe have to get to the life-support system in Sector 8.â€
â€œBut why? I want to look around!â€
â€œOh shut up and stop being an idiot. Youâ€™ll have plenty of time to look around later. And besides,â€ she added in a more kindly tone, â€œI think youâ€™ll like the next room.â€
Ian muttered furiously, but his protests were cut short. They had entered the library. The shelves stretched far above him, almost touching the high ceiling, and ladders allowed a reader to reach the top shelves. But what fascinated Ian was the huge collection of books on every topic, all from Terra! He was in utter awe. He pulled a book off one of the lower shelves, and replaced it when he found that he could not read the language. Ian climbed up one of the ladders and pulled a different book off a different shelf, this one luckily in English. But even so, the text did not automatically appear on a screen in front of him, and it took him a few minutes to figure out how to turn the pages and so forth. The title said, To The Moon And Back: The First Epic Journey. Ian was puzzled. Which moon did the book mean? There were hundreds of moons in the solar system.
He glanced at some other titles:

Our Endangered Planet
Fashion Passion: A Photo Essay
Technologyâ€“The Ultimate Evil
The Complete Book of Algebra
How Did It Happen? Historians Ponder the World Wars
Genetic Modification And Its Benefits to Humankind
A Complete History of Soccer
Muse Comes to an Endâ€“The Whole World Weeps
Religion Wars
An Archive of Comic Strips
Thumbdisks: A Piece of the Past
History in the B.C. Era
They Said Aliens Would Come
The End of Earth: A Prediction of the Future

Ian looked at the last one, utterly confused. He remembered Kariâ€™s exclamation at seeing the cores, and concluded that earth was something Terran. “Kari,” he said, “what’s Earth?”
“What is Earth? What is Earth? Jeez, how dumb are you?” Kari said, clearly shocked at his ignorance. “Terra. Terra, Earth? Earth, Terra? Same difference! Terra IS Earth!” Ian turned back to the shelf, newly amazed.
He looked through some more titles, then stopped at one that looked interesting: To Travel In Time. He lifted the book off the shelf and began to read.

Time travel had always been dreamed of in the history of humankind. But as humans became more advanced, time travel, it seemed, was not possible. After all, if you went back in time to make sure your grandmother never had any children, what would happen to you?
However, the 20th century dawned a new age of information. Armed with such knowledge as the quantum theory, theory of relativity, and speed of light, and black holes, scientists pondered the predicament. They finally discovered that there is no natural law preventing time travel, though the method for making a time machine under their reckoning would be virtually impossible for anyone to construct. (see Appendix 1, how to build a time machine, circa 2000 .)
But that was only the dawn of time traveling knowledge. With new telescopes (such as the J telescope, which replaced the Hubble Space telescope in 2008) scientists finally cracked the code of tachyons (then called dark matter), the missing matter in the universe that baffled astronomers for half a century. Tachyons were previously invisible to any form of discovery before due to their speed faster than light. As they traveled forward in time, they made no appearance as they literally fizzled out of existence into hyperspace while rocketing forward at a speed of nearly 500,000 miles per second.
With scientist Joseph Hawkinsâ€™s reckoning that time travel was only possible to be forward, scientists realized this was time travel. The public was in awe as NASA released its 200-page report on time travel in 2018. The thought of actually building a time machine, however, was unthought-of, as how would you capture something that doesn’t really exist?
Then, shocking new hit the e-papers in 2032, as Dr. Stephen Rosinburg announced he had finished a time machine after years of work shrouded in secrecy. The one and only test of his machine came in the middle of a field near San Francisco, where he attempted to go to the future. Hundreds of thousands of people watched as his big, bulky mess of equipment seemed to disappear. Unfortunately, most of the time machine stayed put, not properly attached to the tachyons. But Dr. Rosinburg’s body was among the rubbish that did vanish, and he has not been seen since. His predicted return is August 10, 2187.

“August 10, 2187?” Ian gasped. “But that’s tomorrow!!!â€
“No way!” said Kari, reading over his shoulder. “That’s got to be a spoof.” Boy did she like to show off!
“Huh?”
“A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Ohâ€¦ But waitâ€¦” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?
“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked Kari, quite pleased with his new theory. “What if those space pirates-â€
â€œParents,â€ corrected Kari. Ian shrugged.
â€œOkay, Parents who were following you put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited.
Finally she spoke. “I don’t know, Ian, I just don’t know. Maybe we should wait here until tomorrow to see if someone shows up.” Kari seemed to ask if this was all right with only her eyes. It occurred to Ian that she had never used his name before.
“Ship to Kari!” a voice crackled over the radio attached to her suit, startling the pair. “The sensors pick up a activated life-support system in Sector 8. Out.”
“Kari?” Ian asked unsurely, “Where’s sector 8? And what’s out there?”
“Oh stop being a goon-head, it’s probably just a Betwer, one of those metallic crab-robot things. Theyâ€™re usually rather reclusive. They won’t hurt us,” Kari replied, annoyed. Ian filed away â€œgoon-headâ€ in his list of Terran words. So far he seemed to have mostly insults.
“C’mon,” Kari continued, “Let’s go to sector 8. These cheap suits will only last us approximately 34 hours with no air.” So Ian set off with Kari towards sector 8.
Sector 8 was isolated in the middle of the great Luna desert. As they walked up toward an open door, it mysteriously vanished to reveal a thick cast-uranicium (atom 138 on the periodic table) door with a message on virtual HTML, saying, “ENTER PASSWORD.” Ian was confused. Kari was annoyed. “Curse them holograms,” she muttered, as she approached the number pad.
The number pad had the numbers 0 through 9 and 10 spaces in the crystal display. That meant there were roughly 10,000,000,000 possible passwords, and they were ignorant as to what it could possibly be.
Kari had never seen this before. Last time she visited sector 8 on Luna, (which admittedly had been twenty years ago) there had been no password. Or at least, she didnâ€™t think there had been, but the information may have merely been erased when she was last frozen. Along with the password. This is not good, she thought. We need that life support system soon, or else our space suits will run out. She did not allow herself to think about the fact that they might not be able to operate it without the password.
“We should get inside,” said Ian, looking across the desert.
â€œ0752330917,â€ muttered Kari. â€œNo . . . no . . . 1832457012 . . . darn . . . 1234567890 . . .? No, I didnâ€™t think so . . . 7239090127 . . .â€
Ianâ€™s attention had been caught with a large piece of metal, and as he watched he could almost imagine it hiding all sorts of fearsome creatures . . . â€œReally, Kari,â€ he said desperately. â€œLetâ€™s get inside.â€
Kari stared at the screen. She had tried almost every combination that popped into her head, and she couldnâ€™t think with Ian talking so much. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine. There was a beep, smoke, and a long drawn-out hiss. “Oops,â€ said Kari.
The door had been blown off of the lubricated sliding tray that held it in place. “Wow.” said Ian as he staggered to his feet. “Hey, Kari? Never do that again.” Another door stood a short ways down the hall. The second door didn’t have a keypad.

Antavo was getting very uncomfortable. The kids didnâ€™t really need his help, did they? He imagined what the Parents would say if they heard he had let one of the renegades slip through his grasp, and although he didnâ€™t really care what they thought of him, he didnâ€™t like to think of their weaponry against his.

Kari and Ian started down the hall when a radio transmission reached them. “Ah gotta go now,” said Antavo. “Must get off ta Mars. Business, taxi service, ya know? And don’t make too much noise on Luna. Ah heard all yer ruckus at sector 8. Ah’m hearinâ€™ there are government spies here to catch people who ain’t s’possed to be wand’rin ’round.” All the answer he received from Kari was a curse.
They walked down the hall and opened the tarnished metal door. It seemed much, much, too easy, Kari thought. The Container entered first as a precaution, with Ian following. “Now where’s that Betwer,” she muttered, then stopped in shock. The room had a large round table with chairs seated around it, and its floor was white and grey linoleum. It appeared to be a conference room of some sort, and there was a black box floating in the middle of the room, right above the table, surrounded by streaks of lightning.
Or at least there appeared to be. With holographic technology, Ian was beginning to doubt supernatural-looking objects.
THIS IS A TIME PORTAL FROM THE FUTURE boomed a voice from the box. Ian and Kari stared.
IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHY I AM TALKING TO YOU, IT IS BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND IT IS MY DUTY TO GIVE YOU THIS MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE OR COSMIC ORDER WILL BLOW APART.
Ian was still shocked. Kari was beginning to get suspicious.
I HAVE SEEN YOU READ THE TIME-TRAVEL BOOK IN THE MOON LIBRARY. YOU KNOW OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO TRAVEL IN TIME. HE WILL ARRIVE IN MERE HOURS, BUT HE WILL LAND ON TERRA. IF NOBODY RESCUES HIM, HE WILL BE DOOMED TO DIE.
BUT I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE. HE WILL NOT DIE, BECAUSE TWO YOUNG PEOPLE WILL SAVE HIM. IF YOU WILL GIVE ME YOUR IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS, I CAN MAKE SURE THAT IT IS YOU.
Ian rushed to reply. “Okay. My number is 64230716, and I think Kariâ€™s is . . .” Kari lunged at his mouth and clamped it shut before he could say more.
The voice continued. QUICKLY! QUICKLY! RED ALERT! ALL COSMIC ORDER WILL FALL APART IF I DO NOT GET YOUR NUMBERS! TELL THEM TO ME! HURRY! HURRY! Kari shook her head firmly.
“But Kari,” Ian whined, “Maybe he’ll give us the password. We really could use that passwordâ€¦” Suddenly Kari stiffened.
“Ian. Don’t. Move. It’s behind us.” Her voice had suddenly turned cold and commanding, as she realized the Betwer was coming.
“I’m going to slowly turn around. Be still.” Her voice was shaking, but whether from fear or excitement Ian didn’t know. He turned around. The Betwer was bigger than he had imagined, and its black body was impressive, at the least.
The black box, meanwhile, had continued talking. WHAT IS GOING ON? TELL ME YOUR NUMBERS! TELL ME Your . . . The voice slowly faded away. The Betwer looked at the box, and then at the two kids standing by the door. Ian went cold with fear. Kari went even stiffer than before.
“You wouldnâ€™t happen to have an idea of how to get out of this mess, would you?â€ hissed Kari into Ianâ€™s ear.
â€œI thought they were harmless.â€
â€œNot if theyâ€™re hanging around! Not on Luna!â€
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t. He savored it for a moment; it seemed that it would be a rare occurrence. He opened his mouth to explain, but Kari clamped her hand down over it. It tasted horrible. “If you don’t have one in your pocket, don’t bother explaining.”
“But,” said Ian, trying to talk through her hand, “but I do have one. I picked it up on the shuttle.” Kari released him, and he drew a short thick metal rod from his pocket. A point extended with a hiss of well-lubricated metal. He flicked his fingers over a few buttons and the point began to hum and glow.
STOP! YOU ARE ENDANGERING THE COSMIC BALANCE! yelped the box, surprising everyone with its sudden recovery. The Betwer looked around at it, slowly.
“You know,” said Ian suddenly feeling, well, brave. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.” He gripped the auto-spear tightly, looking from the Betwer to the box and wondering if he could possibly scare the Betwer off and avoid hurting it. He suddenly didnâ€™t like the thought of hurting something.
But before Ian could do anything to either the Betwer or the black box, the Betwer stepped forward, causing Ian to look uncomfortable and slowly start towards the door on the other side of the room, and, with one crunch of its large metallic claws, broke the box into rubble.
The auto-spear went wild. Ian valiantly tried to keep hold of it, but it began to glow so hot that he dropped it on the floor and screamed, “Run!”
They ran. They could here the spear fizzing and popping as it short-circuited when they were ten feet down the hall.
Had he been religious, Ian would have prayed for the Betwer, trapped in the room with the dreadful auto-spear, but religion was one of those things that disappeared after World War Last. So he simply leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.
“What was that?” Kari demanded, not looking at all happy.
“That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears. To distract himself, he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was big news about eight years ago, and they’re used by just about everybody.”
Kari gave a furious look, and he shut up.
They were silent, and then Kari thought of something, and swore. Ian didn’t blink, not understanding the word. But he sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“We still don’t have the password.”
“Why do we even need the password?” asked Ian. â€œI mean, weâ€™re in sector 8, which is what we wanted. Isnâ€™t it?â€
“Because we need to get to the vault where the life support system is.”
â€œBut the door blew up. We can get to the vault now, canâ€™t we?â€
â€œBut we canâ€™t operate it without the password, or at least I donâ€™t think you can.â€
â€œYouâ€™re confusing me,â€ complained Ian. â€œIf youâ€™ve been here before, why donâ€™t you know the password to operate the life-support system?â€
Kari sighed. â€œIt was erased with most of my other data when I was last frozen. Itâ€™ll come back eventually, but I donâ€™t know when.â€
“Maybe the Betwer knows the password,” said Ian, hopefully. â€œIt lives here, after all.â€
“Itâ€™s a robot. It doesnâ€™t need to breathe. And even if it did know the password, it wouldnâ€™t help us much,â€ scoffed Kari, â€œnow that it’s trying to kill us.”
Kari and Ian walked down the hall, Kari opening doors at random. The sixth door she opened led back out onto Lunaâ€™s surface. She walked out into the clear dusty atmosphere, scanning the sky.
“But Kari,â€ said Ian, â€œwhat if itâ€™s not trying to kill us? We didn’t exactly hang around for an answer.”
“Well, you set that thing on it,” said Kari. “I’d try to kill you if you did that to me.” Ian didn’t mention that Kari had been perfectly supportive of the auto-spear, even if she hadn’t actually operated it.
“Look!” cried Kari suddenly. “A ship!” Ian looked up and was shocked to see that she was right. “It is!”
It soon became clear that the ship was heading towards them, but as it came closer, they realized that there was no pilot. It spiraled out of control, crashing down towards the rocky grey surface of Luna.
Kari seized Ian’s arm and pulled him back into Sector 8. The ship fell with a noise like thunder, barely missing the spot where they had been standing mere minutes before. It was still intact, amazingly, and the number on the hull read: 983157.
Kari gasped.

Chapter 5

Ian looked at her, puzzled, but she did not explain, and he did not expect her to. It wasnâ€™t like Kari to explain, at least not until the crucial moment had passed, by which time you had muddled through the situation best you could and no longer needed her to explain.
Instead she rushed towards it and through the door that had sprung open with the impact. Ian followed, every nerve in his body vibrating with wariness. “Shouldn’t we haveâ€“” he began, but Kari seized him from behind, and for the third time, clamped her hand over his mouth. He struggled furiously, and she let him go with a warning glance. She went into the cockpit and pressed a button that closed the door. She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked, perching on one of the plush dark brown passenger seats with a mistrustful look around the interior of the ship. There were four seats in the middle of the cabin, and a sort of bench that ran all around the inside wall, except for several gaps created by various mysterious doors labeled things like: â€œWeaponryâ€ â€œMagnabeamsâ€ and â€œRadiation suitsâ€, to name but a few.
â€œWhere are we going?â€ asked Ian again, as Kari hadnâ€™t answered the first time.
“Terra,” said Kari shortly.
“Terra!” Ian squawked. “But-”
“This ship has radiation suits. Theyâ€™re in that closet.â€
â€œBut Kari! Why?â€
Kari didnâ€™t say why for at least thirty minutes. Ian waited patiently while she pressed a button and the old ship lifted off into the vacuum of space.
“That book,â€ Kari said at long last. â€œThe one about the time traveler. Well, we have to rescue him. Heâ€™s going to be trapped on Terra after all.â€
She explained. “That number on the ship is 983157. Each number stands for a letter in the alphabet in code001. (code 001 is A=1, B=2, etc) You get IHCAEG. That’s the special emergency code for Imploring Help! Come At Earth, G because the code is always IHCA and then the celestial body’s number, and G means it’s in the G position from the sun. [A day has passed since Ian read the book about Time Travel.] See?â€ And she turned the engine on full speed.
“But I thought you said the book was a hoax!” Ian said as they started to take off.
“You said that.â€
â€œYou agreed!â€ he reminded her. Above all, Ian did not want to go to Terra.
â€œNot with this kind of coincidence!” replied Kari as they headed toward Earth at 660,000 miles per hour.
Ian wasnâ€™t buying it. “But why is it ‘Come at Earth’?” he asked. “Why not ‘come at Terra’?”
“Because when it was made, Terra was called Earth. Obviously.”
“Okay, but if the time traveler really is stuck on Terra, howâ€™d he send us the ship?” asked Ian, a challenging note in his voice.
â€œHe didnâ€™t.â€ Kari set the ship on autopilot and swiveled her chair so that she was facing Ian. â€œThere are people,â€ she said slowly, â€œthat watch Earth for signs of life. If they spot any, then they send for help. Easy as that.â€
Ian could spot at least five flaws in this explanation, but he decided not to hold it against Kari. It canâ€™t have been easy, being brainwashed every time the Parents captured her. But there was one thing he had to ask. â€œKari,â€ he said. â€œAre these . . . people . . . connected to the Parents?â€
Kari looked at him, for an instant doubt showing in her face. Then she turned back to the controls, and did not speak again.
But as they approached Terra they noticed that a ship was slowly flying in a circle around a large once-white space station. The illegal alien police. Kari immediately brought the ship to a halt. “Do you have your passport?” she asked.
“Why do we need it?” asked Ian. â€œAnd I thought it made us easy to track?â€
“If we don’t have a passport, we will be arrested for planet hopping!” Kari said urgently.
Ian thought it odd that Kari would care about being arrested, after the things she had done, but he dug into his pocket nonetheless. He came up with what looked like a tiny green calculator. “Here it is! But what about you?”
“I have my methods.” By this she probably meant bribes. Except that there wasnâ€™t any more money . . . Unless she had been holding out on him again? He shoved this thought to the back of his mind.
“But your arm . . .” Ian knew that while shuttlers might not ask too many questions, the Police most definitely would.
“Oh rats, I forgot about that.â€ Her hand went instinctively up to her arm to hide it, even though she was wearing long sleeves. â€œLook, you can drive this for a little, right? I’m going to hide.”
“But if they search us they’ll find you!” Ian was too concerned about this to mention that no, he couldn’t drive the ship, even for a few minutes. He was too concerned even to ask what â€œratsâ€ was.
“Oh, shut up, will you? Put it on auto-steer if you think driving it will be too hard, and then all you’ll have to do is stop when they come near. If you press the yellow button they won’t board us.”
“Why not?”
“It means illness.”
“Illness? We’re not ill.”
“Quarantine, stupid. The oldest trick in the book.”
“Books?” Ian perked up at the mention of books, but Kari, weary of their meaningless conversation, was already gone.
Ian shrugged, pressed the yellow button, and put the ship on auto-steer, then gripped the handle that stopped the ship and waited.
The ship retreated in fright. The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug, although there had been many of them. But unfortunately for Ian and Kari, the Adromeaneedle had been wiped out a century or more ago, and served to make the Police only more suspicious. And they had radiation suits. As soon as the Police were outfitted they charged back, wearing protection from the virus.
Ian decided that as Kari was born on Mars, if they went to Mars, they couldn’t be arrested for planet hopping. He turned around the spaceship and set the speed on MAX.
“What are you doing?” demanded Kari as soon as it was safe to come out.
“We’re going to Mars. Since you were born there, they can’t arrest us if we’re there . . . Is that alright?”
“It is not alright! We need to rescue that man!”
“But the illegal alien police have protection from the virus.”
“And thatâ€™s going to stop us? Ian, this is a matter of life and death.” Kari had taken over the steering while she was talking, and they were under her control once more.
“What are you going to do?” asked Ian with a sense of dread.
“Blow up their ship, of course.”
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to cry

0

274

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 18:35

WHOA. We have expanded this, I see. It used to go all the way into chapter 7 before it got cut.

“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to crying.
“Actually, thatâ€™s the Parents that will do that to you,â€ Kari said, but added heartlessly, â€œYou’ve broken the law so much already that if we’re caught, they’ll do that to you anyway.” Kari’s voice was harsh and cold. “One more crime won’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t do this, you’ll be caught sooner than later.”
Ian felt like his insides were being squeezed by an iron fist. A single tear of sheer terror rolled down his cheek.
“Ian you have to do this, anyway, you don’t have a choice. We’re going to Terra whether you like it or not. And there are things weâ€™ll have to do to get there that you wonâ€™t like. Live with it.” Kari’s voice had taken on a commanding quality and Ian figured he’d just go ahead and comply quietly.
He made a last feeble attempt to stop her. â€œBut the peopleâ€“â€œ
Kari ignored him, and lurched the ship towards Mars. Ian frowned, confused.
“Uh, Kari?” he asked tentatively, when she did not exclaim, â€œOops!â€ and turn back to Terra and the pursuing Police.
Kari cast him a glance. “What?”
“Thatâ€™s Terra back there. Weâ€™re headed towards Mars.”
“Space around Terra is too conspicuous. We have to fight them near Mars. There are so many wars going on around Mars, no one will even think twice about a few more battles.”
More battles. Ian could have screamed. Instead, he sat down in a chair and pulled his knees up to his chest, repressing the growing dread inside him.
The pair was almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
“Attention,” the voice went on. “You are entering the space of one of the Preserved Terran Habitats. Please transmit authorization code or we will be forced to immobilize your ship.”
“Oh no,” Kari muttered. “What areâ€“?”
“The PTHs?” Ian asked. “You were born on Mars! Don’t tell me you don’t-”
“I don’t. I was kidnapped when I was three, and then experimented on in sentient cryonics for eight freaking decades. Just explain.”
“Some environmentalists put together huge spaceships with what was left of Terran wildlife during the Great Evacuation. For a while they just sat there orbiting Terra because the scientists couldnâ€™t get enough funds to put them somewhere else, but now The Habitats orbit Mars, and you have to pay to enter them.” Ian had always dreamed of seeing one of the Habitats, but he lived too far away and had never had enough money.
Kari put on speed. The Habitat was visible in the view screen, a huge metal globe with massive diamond panels through which a lush jungle could be seen.
“Whoa,” breathed Ian. “Are- are those trees? Oh my gosh! That’s a parrot! I’ve only heard about those in books!!”
Kari grimly clung to the controls, a plan forming in her mind. The police ship was still on their tail. If she could just steer away at the second that the Habitat fired its magnabeam . . .
A bolt of magnetic energy rocketed out from the PTH. Kari did something she hadn’t done in years. She quickly flicked her vision through the electromagnetic spectrum until the projectile appeared as a bright blue glow.
“There’s something to be said for genetic manipulation,” she muttered, as she twisted the joystick violently. The ship shuddered and dropped. The blast shot over the top of its plating, becoming briefly visible as the exhaust ionized, before striking their pursuers head on.
Kari forced the ship into a sharp turn, made sure it was on a trajectory towards Terra; then opened the throttle. They shot forward at speeds only dreamed of during the Terran Era. Only the artificial gravity’s compensation prevented them from being smashed into blobs of jelly.
A job well done, Kari reflected. On to save the scientist. If there really was a scientist traveling through time, and it wasn’t just a trap. She wouldn’t put it past the Parents to reprogram that box and plant the book in Lunaâ€™s library. They would stop at nothing in their mad quest to create Neoterra, and therefore would stop at nothing to capture Kari, as she jeopardized their plan. What if one of them was waiting at the very place they were supposed to land?
Kari forced the uneasy thoughts out of her mind. If there was any chance that somebody was about to die an agonizing, slow death from radiation poisoning, she was going to rescue that person. She’d been through that during the time that the Parents had tried to find out how their “children” would stand up to neutron bombardment. She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.
“What?” asked Ian, somewhat disappointed at not getting a good look at the PTH.
“What, what?” Kari quipped.
“What did you say about genetic manipulation?”
“Oh that. I’m a Container, remember.” She tried to say it in an offhand way, so that he wouldn’t question her, but it seemed rather strained instead.
Ian tactfully said nothing.
“What was the name of the city he set out from?” Kari muttered, half to herself.
“Sanfran Sissko,” Ian stated proudly.
“How did you know that?” Kari gasped incredulously.
Ian held up the book, which he had carried all the way from Luna. “I can read, you know.”
Kari gave him an approving nod. “Well, if my memories are correct, Sanfran Sissko used to be where that crater is now.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go down.”
As Kari guided the ship in, Ian went into a small chamber to put on a radiation suit. The suit was made of thick, interlocking plates of uranicium, with a small antigravity engine to keep the wearer from collapsing under its weight. Ian felt like he was putting on a medieval suit of armor. He had read about one of those in a book at the Ceres library, something about a round table. He still didn’t see how a round table was connected to primitive warriors, but the pre-WWL documents were fragmentary, if not completely incinerated.
The ship landed, steam hissing out of its hydraulic jets. Kari went into the compartment to put on a suit, while Ian stepped out of the airlock.
No sooner had he done so than a loud whine started up and increased in volume. Ian held his breath. Was this the arrival of the time traveler?
A ship, roughly spherical with matte black plating, dropped out of the sky and zigzagged across the crater with bursts of its landing jets. “Kari!” Ian yelled, his voice distorted by the speaker of his suit, and even more by the irradiated atmosphere. “He’s here.”
Kari stepped out of the airlock, and an expression of horror crossed her features.
“The book . . . the box . . . they were fakes!” she babbled.
“What do you mean?” Ian gasped, stumbling backward from the sinister ship as quickly as he could. A small hatch opened in the black plating, and a blunt cone nosed out. Kari knew what was coming. She grabbed Ian’s hand and twisted the dial on her suit’s antigravity engine to MAXIMUM. They shot upwards just in time to see a missile strike their ship and reduce it to red-hot slag.
“It was a trap to lure me here,” Kari rasped. “That ship was sent by the Parents.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Ian with an effort, trying not to think about a slow and painful death.
Kari’s face was grey beneath her helmet. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s no one to help. We’ve lost our ship. The air in these things will only last a little while, less if we run. We’re trapped.”
Then there was a blinding flash beneath them, and when it faded and their eyes recovered, they could make out a man. An unprotected man. Dr. Stephen Rosinburg.
73
Ian gasped and stared. The man stumbled a little, and Ian could see that he was faring badly in the irradiated atmosphere. “We have to help him!” Ian yelled, turning off his antigravity engine and falling heavily to the ground. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch this man die.
Kari yelled at him. “No! It’s just a-”
Then Rosinburg disappeared, and a hatch opened in the side of the Parents’ ship. A man stepped out, unprotected, but not seeming to mind, and holding an autospear. He leveled it at Ian. “SURRENDER, RENEGADE,” he said, “OR THE IMPURE ONE DIES.”
“-hologram,” Kari finished lamely.

Chapter Six

Ian woke in a cold blue and white chamber. He couldn’t remember what had happened after the man had aimed the auto-spear at him, but he wasn’t dead yet, and Kari lay unconscious but alive and unfrozen on the other side of the room, so it couldn’t be all bad.
“Kari!” His voice was almost silent, little more than a breath, but the curved walls of the chamber picked it up and magnified it over and over, so that it echoed as loud as if he’d shouted it.
Kari jerked and woke up. Her eyes weren’t angry, only hopeless and sad.
“What happened?” Ian asked.
“They captured you. I surrendered. They knocked us out, and here we are. Again.” Kari said the last word to herself. She was silently resentful for a few minutes, and Ian was silent too, waiting.
“Again!” she yelled suddenly. “Again! I hate it here!” She kicked the wall again and again, and pounded at it with her fists, but it didn’t give, and she slumped despondently to the floor.
“Have you any idea how many times I’ve been here, Ian? Six times. Six times! Last time I burned my microchip out and escaped, but they caught me anyway, and now you’re going to die, and I’m going to sit on ice for a decade until the Parents thaw me out for another experiment. I hate it!”
Suddenly, a section of the wall disappeared. Kari knew that the wall had been made from interlocking nanobots that could disengage at the press of a button, but Ian didn’t, and he was dumbstruck. When Kari saw who stepped through the doorway, though, she was just as dumbstruck as Ian.
“KRI,” the man said expressionlessly. He was only a few years older than Ian, not really so much a man as a boy, and he was unarmed.
“Kerj, you know very well that my name is Kari. You were my friend once. What have the Parents done to you?”
“THEY MADE ME SEE THE ERROR OF MY WAYS,” Kerj replied.
“You mean they destroyed half your brain cells and replaced them with nano-implants. Wake up, Kerj.”
“What were your ways?” asked Ian, feeling reckless and brave now that he knew he was going to die soon.
Kerj looked at him blankly, but said, “I WAS A RENEGADE. LIKE HER.”
“Kariâ€¦ Kerjâ€¦ What’s up with the weird names?” Ian asked. If he was going to die in minutes, he at least wanted some answers.
“We were given three-letter ID codes by the Parents,” Kari said. “I was KRI. He was KRJ. We renegades gave ourselves names that were somewhat like our ID codes.â€ Bitterness tinged her voice as she spoke, bitterness at what the Parents had done, bitterness at Kerj for betraying them, bitterness at herself for falling into the Parentsâ€™ trap.
Kerj spoke. “ENOUGH. KRI, YOUR RENEGADE EMOTIONS SERIOUSLY JEOPARDIZED PROJECT NEOTERRA. YOU AND THIS PATHETIC IMPURE ONE MUST DIE.”
â€œBut Kerj!â€ gasped Kari, and Ian saw horror and disbelief on her face. â€œYou canâ€™t kill us! You canâ€™t kill me! You need me!â€
â€œNOT ANYMORE, RENEGADE. THE PARENTS CAN AFFORD TO LOSE A FEW MEMORIES. YOU ARE MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH.â€
A circular section of the floor abruptly disappeared, and an auto-spear telescoped up from it. Kerj seized the weapon and stalked towards them, a feral smile on his face.
Ian,” said Kari, “now would be a very good time to have another auto-spear.â€
“What about your ‘genetic manipulation’?” asked Ian.
“We weren’t given weapons, for fear of exactly this sort of thing. And even if I did have superpowers that way, they wouldn’t work against Kerj any more than they would against a Betwer. Less, even.” She was very pale. She wasn’t going to be wounded and stuck in a freezer. She was going to be killed. And she didn’t like that thought one bit.
“Great.” Ian rummaged in his pockets for something, anything, but they were all empty. “Nothing.”
Kerj thrust ferociously. Kari jumped aside, just in time, but stumbled and fell heavily to the white tiles of the floor, her palms making a smacking sound as she thrust them out to break her fall. Kerj pulled back the spear for another try, one that would surely succeed.
Then Ian, who had made his way around the room to behind Kerj, grabbed the butt of the auto-spear and pulled it back. The combatants fought for control as the spear twitched and jerked, almost another opponent. Kari leaped on Kerj from the side. Already embattled, Kerj fell over. Ian’s fingers scrabbled desperately at the buttons while the spear flailed wildly around the room. Then he got a firm grip and gained control. He pointed the tip at Kerj’s vulnerable neck. “Get us out,” Ian commanded, his shock giving him control and courage that he would never have been able to muster in ordinary circumstances.
“GET THE SPEAR AWAY,” said Kerj, his face showing nothing.
Ian lowered the spear cautiously and realized that his hand was shaking.
Kerj raised himself to his feet and tapped a few buttons on a tiny keypad attached to his sleeve. The wall opened. Kari and Ian stepped through it.
Kari half-turned and opened her mouth to say something to Kerj, but thought better of it and fled down the corridor, pulling Ian along with her, still clutching the auto-spear.
At the end of the corridor, Kari stopped. They had entered a massive room with glinting chrome balconies ringing the walls. Hundreds of people, all with the same white-blond hair and green eyes as Kari, were standing on the balconies, tapping control panels, staring at instruments, or just watching the screen in the middle of the room. It rotated slowly, affording a view to everyone of the man it showed.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. He looked less like a Container than the rest of them. His hair was blond and his eyes green, but his features were not the even, regulated, ones of the Containers. His nose was too large and a little crooked, his mouth very thin. “You already know the details of Project Neoterra, but I will reiterate them for those of you who just came out of cryogenics and suffered some memory loss or modification. Using the gravitational engines designed by JAA, we will pull Ceres, Ida, Dactyl and these uninhabited asteroids . . .” An image of the asteroid belt appeared on the screen, with several dozen objects highlighted in green. ” . . . out of their orbits and crash them on Mars. The resulting body will have a mass approximately equal to Terra . . .”
Ian gasped. “What do they think they’re doing? Thousands of people will die!”
“Do you think they care?” Kari whispered back. “Shush.”
” . . . Superterraforming will commence,” the voice went on. “First, we will inject massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, setting up a global warming effect. We will then land the plants from the Preserved Terran Habitats, which will photosynthetically convert the new atmosphere into oxygen . . .”
“We have to get out of here!” Ian hissed.
“Wait,” Kari replied. “We need to find out where the gravitational engines are. I have information that they’re in the Jovian system . . .”
“So that’s why you really wanted to stow away!”
“Of course. But I need more specific- Hang on, I think he’s getting to it . . .”
“. . . the gravitational engines are being constructed on Io, in the Experimental Mineralogy facility of Gigacorp, where we have allies.”
“I know where that is,” Kari whispered excitedly. “I’ve been on Parents mother ships like this one- the hangar for the smaller ships should be down this corridor. Let’s go.”
They hurried down another corridor, and then another, Ian always conscious of his dark hair and blue eyes that marked him as an outsider.
They reached the hangar without difficulty, and securing a ship was a cinch. Though Kari was a renegade, her fingerprints unlocked the door nonetheless, and soon they were flying through the black nothingness of space at a rate close to the speed of light.
“That was easy,” remarked Ian confidently, leaning back in his chair.
But Kari was frowning. “Too easy, almost. They didn’t notice you; I got a ship even though my prints shouldn’t do that anymore; Kerj let us through even though he should have just let himself die rather than help us; it’s all so unnatural.”
And with those words, Ian’s confidence was shattered. He was no longer brave and intrepid, but a naive kid again, and he wished he was back on Ceres, sneaking into the library to look at Terran books, and scrounging for food in the tunnels. Back before he’d met this dangerous girl named Kari.
Suddenly, the dangerous girl whirled around.
“I thought I saw something,” Kari exclaimed, not too loudly though, as they were in secret.
“There it is again!” That time, Ian had seen it too.
A young boy, not yet twelve, stood in the shadows next to them. Quietly he’d snuck up on them, but he was spotted.
“Hey!” Ian cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Shhhhh, not too loud”, Kari whispered. “We’re still hiding.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jaa,” the kid said, leaning casually against the padded seat next to him.
Funny he’s so young, Kari thought. JAA? He’s one of the J-series Containers. Even I’m only a K. He should be older. How many Containers do the Parents need?
Aloud, she said, “How did you get on this ship?”
“Snuck on. I reprogrammed the door to open under your fingerprints.”
“Wow. You shouldn’t have been able to hack into the system. This is state of the art.”
Jaa smiled. “So am I. The Parents designed me to be the best of the best. But I wasn’t happy, even so.”
He sighed, suddenly looking decades older than his eleven or so years. “Can I trust you?”
Kari thought for a moment, then rolled up her sleeve, revealing her ID number and blasted transmitter.
Jaa grinned. “So you’re a renegade, too?” He rolled up his own sleeve, revealing a destroyed transmitter, an ID number, and a birthdayâ€“
A birthday!!
Kari thought her eyes were playing tricks. She scanned the ID tattoo again. 2/8/2037. There was no denying it. This kid had been born before World War Last.
“And who is this?” asked Jaa, nodding at Ian. “He’s not a Container, who is he?”
“Ian,” Kari said. “He’s a civilian that I dragged into this. I’m sorry now.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. Why did you?”
Ian perked up, hoping that he would get some answers, but Kari only sighed. “I don’t know. He wanted to leave, and I was so lonely, I couldnâ€™t refuse. That was before he knew I was a Container.”
Ian felt a flush of guilt. He had said he’d like to come, and he’d been blaming Kari for all his hardships since then.
“LONELINESS IS-” began Jaa, but stopped at the look of horror on Kari’s face.
“Sorry, honestly, I am. It’s an old habit and dies hard. I am sorry!”
“Hey guys,” Ian said, “Shouldn’t we be getting going?”
“Not now, Ian. We’re talking.” Kari said in an exasperated voice.
“Umm, I really think we should go.” Ian looked with a meaningful glance at the Containers behind him.
“Fine, what is it?” Kari and Jaa looked at each other conspiratorially.
“Someone,” Ian said, “is coming. And I don’t think it’s a good guy.”
Jaa looked around. He didn’t see anyone, but Ian had a better view of the shipâ€™s viewscreen than he did, so there could very well be someone coming that Jaa couldnâ€™t see.
“All right,” he said, “What we need to do is to stop this plan from happening. They haven’t bothered to think about all the people who live on Ceres. Do you have any ideas?”
Ian suddenly felt a wave of shock. He lived on Ceres! If the Parents had done this . . .
“If youâ€™re that good, do you know anything about the plans for redoing Terra?” asked Kari.
“I designed some of them, back when I wasn’t against these people.”
“Which ones?”
“Well, for one thing, I designed the artificial gravity that they plan to use. I could hack the system and redesign the plans that they have so that the gravity works backward.”
“How does the gravity work?” Ian asked, curious despite his worries.
“Actually, I’m one of the smartest people here,” said Jaa, though it seemed rather irrelevant. “They don’t want to lose me. It works because neutrinos swarm to electromagnetism. If you have a big enough electromagnetic force, the neutrinos are attracted to it. However, I have also found that nuclear force repels them. Even the Parent’s most brilliant scientists haven’t figured that one out!” He laughed.
“Well, then if we could put nuclear force in the spot of electromagnetic force, that would keep the asteroids apart, instead of being smashed together,” Kari concluded.
Jaa grinned at her. â€œAre you sure you werenâ€™t designed to be a scientist, too?â€
Ian hadn’t been listening very intently. “Are we going to Io, then?” he asked.
Kari spoke slowly, as though talking to a dimwitted child, which indeed she felt that she was. “Yes, we’re going to Io. Havenâ€™t you been listening at all? We’re going to Io so that Jaa can deactivate the gravitational engines and, if we’re lucky, destroy them.”
“All right,” Ian said. “I heard that bit. But . . .”
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
Ian wasn’t so sure it was nothing. He could have sworn he saw something out of the corner of his eye- some sort of ship that darted out of the viewscreen’s range as soon as he turned to look. He pushed it out of his mind and began scrutinizing the newcomer.
That was when he noticed the birth date on Jaa’s ID number. Not only was it from before World War Last, it was before any permanent colonies had been set up on other planets.
Ian gasped. “You were born on Terra!”
“Yeah,” Kari said. “Don’t mind him, Jaa, he’s absolutely obsessed with anything Terran.”
The gibe would have stung, but Ian was too fascinated. “What was it like?”
Jaa smiled. “Absolutely beautiful. Even in the grip of the Warming Effect, it had more variety of animals and plants than on all the planets combined. Even Europa only has a bit of algae and these blind shrimp-like things. Terra had billions. The Preserved Terran Habitats are only a tiny slice. I remember days at the seashore, or climbing trees in my backyardâ€¦ I was very young back then, before the Parents captured me. They go for orphans, people nobody would miss, and my own parents died during the Great Evacuation. They were victims of one of those â€˜superbugsâ€™ that flourished even in the sterile environment aboard ships.”
Ian nodded, sympathetically. The “superbugs”, the Andromeaneedle among them, had evolved aboard ships with long-term voyages, where the viruses had to adapt quickly to infect the limited amount of people. Now, quarantine was much stricter, but thousands of people died back then. Evac Ship 39 was particularly infamous, but other ships had been struck too.
“I was lucky,” Jaa continued. “We lived south of the equator. When the first nukes fell, it was in the northern hemisphere. I think America and some country in western Asia were the first to go at itâ€“ Or was it China? Russia? I really don’t know; I was little back then. Anyway, when the South American countries finally got involvedâ€“my home was neutral until almost the very endâ€“the evacuation ships were ready, and my family boarded them as soon as possible. We got off before everything started falling apart. I hear the last days were really horribleâ€“people starving, dying of radiation sickness, killing each other for the last drop of water.”
Ian shuddered. Because of that, he thought for a moment that the ship’s sudden vibration was just a figment of his imagination, and not a laser shell striking the reinforced hull.

Chapter Seven

“MEEP MEEP MEEP” bleeped the ship’s computer. “Curses,” said Jaa, which was putting it mildly. “The Parents are after us!” He ran to the front of the ship just as a violent blast caused the ship to shudder and the computer screen flashed, “Hull damaged 68%”.
“We’ve got to eject!” screamed Kari, panicking for once in her eighty-three years of life. She stared at the hundreds of buttons on the control board. “Which button is it, Jaa?”
“I . . . donâ€™t . . . remember . . .” Jaa said, as he grew sweaty.
Ian, realizing the impending doom, started pressing random buttons on the keyboard, hoping to be the hero. He was knocked off his feet as another blast caused the screen to flash, “Hull damaged 83%”.
As he struggled to his feet, he saw Jupiter in the distance. Io orbited Jupiter, so if he could just keep the ship safe for another minute or so . . .
He noticed Kari was looking for a steering wheel, the joystick having snapped in two. Jaa had passed out on the floor. Ian remembered that cold water on a towel for ten seconds on somebody’s head would revive them. As he ran down the hall to get a towel, he heard Kari shriek, “WHERE THE HECK IS THE DANG STEERING WHEEL?”
Just as he had reached the door to the ship’s bathroom, another blast shook the ship so violently that Ian slammed into a door on the opposite side of the hall, promptly busting it in half. As he slid through the gaping hole, he noticed a steering wheel. “What’s it doing in here?” he wondered.
“Ian!!!” Kari yelled. “Where are you? The hull is damaged 95%! One more blast and the whole ship is going to implode!” Ian struggled to his feet and hobbled toward the steering wheel. He had just reached it and started to turn the wheel when he heard the sound of another laser firing. He saw it shoot past his window and knew they had just missed it.
The second thing he noticed when he looked out the window was Io’s landscape. “Holy smokes!” he exclaimed. They were a mere mile from Io’s surface. He started to frantically turn the wheel. It was at times like this that he wished he were back in Ceres’ library, reading about trees.
He gave a last wrench to the wheel, and the wall opened, revealing a smaller ship, barely large enough for four people.
“Kari!” he yelled. “Jaa! I found an escape pod!”
He ran back through the hall. Kari was standing over the still unconscious Jaa, looking frantic.
“Weâ€™re going to die, Ian,” she said. “And Jaaâ€™s fainted. How could he faint at a time like this?â€
“Well, can we carry him?” Ian didnâ€™t think it unusual that Jaa had fainted, after all, he, unlike Kari, probably wasnâ€™t programmed to face danger with a perfectly straight face. Not that Kari was facing it with a perfectly straight face right now. Nevertheless, she wasnâ€™t used to Containers fainting. It wasnâ€™t natural. She had been brought up to believe that they were a superior race, and untroubled by the weaknesses of humans.
“Maybe,” she said.
Somehow they managed to drag him down the hall, just as a blast from the Parents’ ship shook the hull.
“The ship’s coming apart!” Kari yelled.
She leaped through the airlock and into the pod, pulling Jaa behind her. Ian was last, scrambling in hurriedly. The walls began to shake and glow red-hot. As the airlock sealed and the booster jets of the escape pod fired, Ian had a last glimpse of the ship’s interior. A reinforced hull plate ripped away, and the inner wall crumpled like tinfoil as the unobstructed pressure blew it out into the vacuum of space. Then the pod was soaring away over the volcanic rocks and sulfur vents of the Ionian surface. Kari clutched the controls like a lifeline, guiding the little ship farther away from the Parentsâ€™ vessel.
Numb from the shock of the events in the past few minutes, Ian suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten sinceâ€“he didn’t even remember. He wasnâ€™t really used to eating often, but habit couldnâ€™t stop hunger. The Parents had probably put food in the pod anyway; cruel as they were, they still needed their creations to eat. After rummaging around for a while, he located the food locker and opened it. The white steam billowing out obscured the contents for a second, but when it cleared, Ian gasped. “What is this stuff?”
“Food,” Kari said. “Not just nutrition paste or vitamin pills, real food. The Parents used the Containers’ memories to genetically engineer replicas of food crops and livestock. They have several illegal habitats orbiting Terra that they grow food in. They would have used the habitats around Mars, but those were mostly the pristine, undisturbed Terran ecosystems. Nobody cared about saving a plain old cow. Let me have some.”
She reached back and deftly pulled out something that, 200 years before, would have been called a TV dinner. A press of a button on the pack, and a tiny, built-in microwave generator warmed it up. Ian did the same to his, wondering what a cow was, and cautiously tasted it.
His eyebrows shot up. “YEOW!!”
It didn’t hurt, but the overwhelming sensation that he didn’t have a name for was more startling than pain. “What happened?”
“It’s called flavor. I guess you’re not used to it, now that they synthesize all the foodâ€“ Wait, that’s Gigacorp’s facility up there!”
Sure enough, a building loomed up on the horizon. A metal dome, matte black, with the Gigacorp logo embossed on it. Smaller capsules and pods were connected to it by long carboglass tubes that snaked through the almost nonexistent air, making the entire building look like a demented octopus with swollen tentacles.
Jaa stirred, then reawakened. “Where . . . where are we?” he said.
“We’re on Io, inside the ship’s escape pod.” said Kari. “We’re right next to Gigacorp’s facility. Do you know any way we could get in?”
Jaa thought for a moment. “We could try and bust through one of the carboglass tubes and enter that way. We don’t stand a chance against the security at the doors.”
“Well that’s better than nothing” Kari said. “If we know we canâ€™t get past the security, then why try?” She was acting oddly cheerful, and Ian tried to think what reason she had for being so happy, when they were about to go and risk their lives.
“But the one problem is, to get through carboglass unharmed you need special suits,” Jaa pointed out.
“Like these?â€ asked Ian.
â€œWhereâ€™d you get those?â€ Kari exclaimed.
â€œRight here, in this little cupboard,â€ replied Ian. Sure enough, in a tiny compartment lay four carboglass protection suits.
â€œCool!â€ said Kari, snatching one up and putting it on.
â€œKari, are you sure?â€ asked Jaa. It all seemed awfully convenient to him.
â€œOh come on,â€ Kari said. â€œWhat could possibly happen? They put it in an escape pod, for heavenâ€™s sake.â€
Several minutes later, three suited individuals leaped out of the airlock and drifted towards the tube in Io’s low gravity.
Ian knew that carboglass wasn’t actually solid, just carbon alloy atoms suspended in an electromagnetic field. With the proper suit, it could be passed through like a mirage. Still, it was a shock to seemingly hit the surface and then pass through. Even more shocking, when, inside, you remembered there was just a bit of not-quite gas between you and that deathly black vacuum.
It was still more of a shock when a magna-beam struck Ian in the arm. A horrible, numbing pain shot up to his shoulder. His head was buzzing. He knew he was on the verge of passing out.
“FREEZE, RENEGADES,” snarled a robotic voice. Jaa and Kari looked up; afraid of whom they might see.
With a magna-gun in his hand and a coldly triumphant grin on his face, Kerj stood before them.
“I CAN SPARE THE BOY, EVEN THOUGH I WILL HAVE TO CRIPPLE HIM,” Kerj said. “BUT YOU, RENEGADES, I WILL HAVE TO KILL. YOU ARE MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU ARE WORTH, AS I HAVE INFORMED KRI ALREADY.”
Ian was on the ground, struggling against the heavy fog of pain. His arm was immobilized, and the paralysis was spreading to his torso. But his other arm was free.
Kerj discarded the empty magna-cartridge. It fell to the rough ground with a clink that sounded even louder in the silence. Then he slotted an illegal laser cartridge into his weapon and placed the barrel against Kari’s forehead. “YOU LED ME ON A MERRY DANCE THROUGH THE SOLAR SYSTEM. BUT IT ENDS NOW, SISTER. IF YOU CROSS THE PARENTS, YOU WILL PAY THE PRICE.”
Sister? Ian thought. But there was no time to ponder the Container assassin’s choice of words. With a supreme effort, he grabbed Kerj’s leg and pulled hard.
Kerj jerked back, flailing wildly. His gun went off, its charge hurtling upward and striking the carboglass.
“Uh-oh.” That was all Jaa had time to say before cracks decimated the tube and the carboglass blew out into a vacuum.
The impossibly bright shower of shattered carboglass was the last thing Ian remembered before he lost consciousness.
“We need to get in there!” Jaa yelled over the suit’s radio. “The air in these suits will only last about ten minutes!”
“Then let’s go before the blast doors close!” Kari yelled. “They’re sealing them off to keep from losing oxygen!”
Jaa leaped upward, propelling himself toward the stranded side building. Kari followed, dragging Ian along with her. She absentmindedly heaved him through the closing gap before stepping in herself.
Kari wondered why he had saved her life. He thought that she was just a dangerous renegade who had intruded on his safe little existence, and therefore was better off dead. Didn’t he?
Suddenly an alarm went off. For real.
“BLEEP BLEEP INTRUDERS. INTRUDERS,” a loudspeaker blared as video cameras over the door recorded their movements.
“Take the elevator to the main room!” Jaa yelled as he grabbed a box labeled ‘gunpowder’, hoping it was something nuclear. “That’s where they have the gravity center set up so they have more gravity than Io’s weak pull!”
As Kari scrambled to her feet and Ian (he had regained consciousness when the alarm went off) tried painfully to get to his, security guards rushed towards them from every direction. Kari pulled him up by his good arm and they started to run towards a door, but Ian, despite his wounded arm and aching chest, got there first and Kari was grabbed by six strong hands. “Curses,” she muttered. “Why did I have to let him in first?”
Jaa had reached the portal to the center of Io, where the machines were. He leaped into the elevator, and the doors closed as Ian came rushing in, just escaping the security guards. As they neared the center of Io, they saw swarms of white light coming from every direction. “Those are neutrinos,” Jaa whispered to Ian. Ian barely heard. Another time he may have gasped in awe, but now, he could only clutch his arm and try not to cry with the pain.
Jaa bolted out the elevator as soon as it stopped, and ran toward the mass of electromagnets attracting trillions of neutrinos from all directions. All that was needed was to get rid of the electromagnets and replace them with some sort of nuclear thing. But that, however simple it may have sounded was going to be quite hard enough, considering that first, he needed to deactivate the cord that was powering the electromagnets, and it was going to be impossible to unplug. Where was the end of it? “Ian,” Jaa called, “do you have a knife?”
“No,” said Ian. Civilians weren’t allowed knives. He stepped out of the elevator and noticed for the first time that Kari was missing. “Where’s Kari?” he asked, momentarily forgetting the painful numbness that was spreading slowly through him as a burst of panic made his cold chest turn to fire.
“I don’t know,” replied Jaa, trying to find the end of the cord.
“She didn’t get into the elevator!” cried Ian, shocked, and the cold flooded back. “She must have been captured!”
“Great,â€ moaned Jaa, not sounding surprised, just despairing. “Can you go back to rescue her? How’s your arm?”
Ian ignored the last question and rushed toward the elevator.
“No! Wait!” yelled Jaa. “Don’t be an idiot! You can’t just go rushing off . . .” but Ian didn’t slow his pace one bit.
Jaa fumbled in his pocket for an auto-spear to throw to his friend, but Ian was already in the elevator, and Jaa forgot all else as his hand closed around the spear. It was as good as a knife, or better. Far better.

Chapter Eight

Back in the elevator, Ian clutched his wounded arm to him. It hurt far worse than he would like to admit, and his head spun if he thought about it too much. He snuck a glance at it, preparing to see the worst. He didnâ€™t. With magnabeams, it wasnâ€™t possible to see the worst. The magna-gun would leave no blood, or obvious injuries. But the arm would be paralyzed for a long while, perhaps forever, and if it went without treatment, would spread throughout his body until he died. It occurred to Ian for the first that there was no way to rescue Kari with a three-quarters dead arm. The elevator came to a stop, but Ian still sat on the floor, unmoving, with his brain full of images alternately of victory and defeat.
Slowly Ian raised himself off the floor and pressed the button that took the elevator down. When the doors slid open he stepped painfully out into the room with the engine.
“Did you get her?” asked Jaa.
“No,” replied Ian numbly.
Jaa said nothing more, but bent himself to the task of cutting the cord with the auto-spear. It was much harder than heâ€™d thought, and he realized now that a knife would have been better. Knives didnâ€™t have a mind of their own.
Suddenly Ian gave a shout. “The elevator! Someone’s coming!” Jaa, hearing this, hastily shut down the auto-spear and clambered up the rough wall, agile as a monkey.
Ian, unable to climb as well as the Container even if he had had both his arms, ran and hid in the corner as the door slid open. The voice that emerged was familiar and chilling. “RENEGADE KRI, YOU MUST COME WITH ME.”
“What makes you think I will?” snapped Kari.
Ian started. Kerj!! How . . .?
Jaa dropped to the floor as Kari and Kerj stepped out of the elevator, with Kerjâ€™s hand fastened firmly around Kariâ€™s right arm.
“Ja-“cried Kari.
“Shut up!” he hissed.
“RENEGADE JAA . . . A PLEASURE,” smirked Kerj.
“Pleasure is an emotionâ€“something you’re not capable of, traitor,” hissed Jaa.
Ian stared at Kerj. He had been in the room with the shattered carboglass! He ought to be dead! And there was no sign of the bulky metal studs that signified an implanted Life Support system, so he shouldnâ€™t be standing here right now. There must be some sort of explanation, Ian thought, but his head was muzzy and he couldnâ€™t think, not right now.
Kari’s mind was racing. She had been grabbed by elite guards and hauled away, when to her infinite shock Kerj had appeared and had ordered the guards to hand her over. This also puzzled her. Had he been saving her? Was it possible? Or . . . did he have something worse in store for her? Worse than death?
“ON THE CONTRARY, RENEGADE JAA,” said Kerj seriously. “THE PARENTS CANNOT GET RID OF EMOTION, NO MATTER HOW HARD THEY TRY. AS A RESULT OF WHAT MY SISTER DID, NOW I MUST FEEL FEAR AND PAIN AND JOY AND LOVE. BUT THEY HAVEN’T KILLED ME. I AM AN EXPERIMENT. AS IS KRI.”
“Sister?” asked Ian, forgetting that he was hiding. This was the second time Kerj had used that word. “You have a sister?”
“Me,” said Kari bitterly. “I’m his sister, and I’m anything but proud of it. He was my older brother, once, before they froze him for the first time, while I kept on aging. Then he was younger than me, and I took him with me when I ran away.”
“AND NOW I WILL BE AVENGED,” said Kerj.
“Did you say you could feel love?” said Kari, as she tried to wrench herself from his grasp. “Hardly.”
â€œNO, KRI,â€ said Kerj. â€œI CAN FEEL IT. I HAVE SIMPLY HAD NO OCCASION TO YET.â€
â€œLiar,â€ panted Kari, and gave a last tug on her arm. Kerjâ€™s grip had loosened, whether by accident or on purpose it was hard to tell.
Kari ran.
She ran into the elevator and stopped with her finger over the button. She couldn’t leave Jaa alone to fight Kerj with only Ian to help in the best of circumstances, and this was certainly not the best of circumstances. Ian, unaware that she was watching, was clutching his injured arm to him and his eyes were closed tight. Jaa was staring, horrified, at his autospear, which he had dropped to climb the wall. It was halfway across the room. Kerj had out his magna-gun and it was pointed at Jaa. Kari was not going to stand in the elevator and watch Jaa be killed by Kari’s own brother.
But on the other hand, she couldn’t fight her own brother, either. Not anymore.
Kerj caught sight of her indecision and swung the gun round at her. Ian’s eyes flew open. Jaa dived for the auto-spear. Kerj fired.
But when the pandemonium ceased, it seemed that he couldn’t kill his sister any more than his sister could fight him. Perhaps he could feel love, after all. Though Kari had been the perfect target, he had moved the gun at the last moment so that instead of hitting Kari, the bolt had hit the very cord that Jaa had been trying to cut. Though it remained intact, the neutrinos were floating around the room, no longer pulled to the electromagnets. Suddenly there was very little gravity.
Jaa was having an extremely hard time getting to the engine with the box of gunpowder. He hadn’t figured this into his calculations, though it was simple logic. That was one of many problems with being a renegade- you became flawed, if only slightly. The plans did not work quite as well without the Parents to execute them. And the Parents had kept Jaa as young as possible, so that he was easier to manipulate. All his strength lay in brains.
Jaa pushed off the far wall and floated over to the electromagnets. He pulled the box open and began detaching the rivets that held the first magnet in place. Unfortunately, he lost his balance. He floated down and the box floated up just as Kerj, his conscience quelled, fired again.
The next moment, a wave of heat and smoke struck him as the box exploded. It isn’t nuclear, but it still explodes, he thought before he smashed into the floor headfirst. He didn’t lose consciousness, but it felt as though someone had driven a red-hot poker into his temples. The autospear spun upward and away. Kari yelled, “The coolant- ” before her voice was drowned out by an eruption of flame from the wall.
“What happened?” Ian gasped.
“The coolant’s burning. Without that, the electromagnets will overheat.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Anyway, the circuit’s broken, and the magnets can’t work at all. Right?”
“No to your first statement. If the magnets overheat, the gravity engine will go wild. And your second statement is also wrong. The backup circuit will probably come on in a minute.”
Kari’s assumption was correct. With a loud hum, the neutrinos began whirling around the room again. This time, however, a high whine, increasing in intensity, rose up until it drowned out the hum. Alarms flashed on, their strident whooping adding to the general chaos.
“By the time anyone gets here, it’ll be too late for them to stop it!” Kari shouted. “Io could very well blow up! We have to get out of here!”

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275

Prarilius Canix

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 18:56

Much better. I only read the first part, but it’s better organized and more enticing.

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276

Prarilius Canix

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 19:45

OH mAN. I had my doubts about its being worthy of publication before, but now I think it might have a chance. Whoever was willing to stop being creatively random for a while and work on the tedious job of editing (i. e. not me), you were great.

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277

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 19:57

276- Cat’s Meow and I. Thanks.

I know I could never have considered showing it to anyone until it was edited. Luckily, I like editing.

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278

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 20:03

Well, Meow and I did the bulk of the editing, but E2MB and Vixen and Jade and Kagy all helped.

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279

'Dotty-kay

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 20:48

274: Ooh, I think I’ll print that and read it after I get some summer reading done. I can’t really tell how long it is from the compy screen, but is this long enough to be, like, a paperback? That’s so awesome.

Oh, and in the name Robin R. Randall, I see that it’s RRR and it has “robin” in it, but what’s the randall part for…? Forgive me for being so clueless.

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280

'Dotty-kay

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 20:53

Oops, that was responding to 273-4. And, uh, nevermind about the printing. It’s 36 pages, heh heh.

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281

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 20:58

279- I don’t think it’s any more complex than RRR. And there’s definitely enough to be a paperback. This is naught but a sliver of already-edited-ness.

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282

Jadestone

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 21:05

Meep. I’ll read the edited version when I’m done with the other one…

Yeah, mostly Alice and Cat’s Meow. I add criticism/comments and send them to Alice, though not a lot. Just little stuff. Not worht posting the whole thing.
I should really work on that… again…

280- Really? My copy was 50 something pages in size 10 font (used front and back though so it’s only around 30 pages long, thankfully).

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283

Alice

in August 3rd, 2007 @ 21:28

Odd. It seems it ought to be longer, even without the third part. Let’s see, how many words total?

The whole thing as it is currently is 52,470 words long.

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284

'Dotty-kay

in August 4th, 2007 @ 09:40

282: That was just including chapters 1 thru 8, which I thought was the whole thing, but it’s not.

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285

Cat's Meow

in August 9th, 2007 @ 15:54

That’s awesome, Alice! It has changed so much from when we first wrote it…I’ll get around to editing smaller things later, but for now I’ve noticed one really obvious gap. In between

“Kari brightened, a bit. She could tell that this Ian kid had at least a little thirst for adventure in him . . . maybe they weren’t so very different, after all â€“ if you ignored their histories. “Well, it won’t be if we do it right. Here, I’ll show you a few of my plans, and you can tell me what you think of them.”
and
“”Heck no!” Kari laughed. “Even I’d be out of my league if I tried that. Trying to terraform that planet was a mistake. They’ve been working on it for nearly 150 years, and even at the equator it’s like Siberia. I mean, I know it takes thousands of years for the terraforming process to be complete, but you’d think they’d have made a bit more progress by now.”

in the original, Ian made some comment about heading to Terra or something, and that got deleted in this version, it looks like.

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286

Alice the Exception to the Rule

in August 9th, 2007 @ 16:33

285- Oh! He asked if they were going to Mars. I know what happened. When we realized that it took thousands of years to terraform, Canix revised that, and I cut and pasted into my document, over Ian’s comment. Bother. *needs to find it again* But I know what it said. I’ve practically memorized this whole book, I’ve read it so often.

I still think the bit about it taking thousands of year might be a problem when it comes to the Parents and Project Neoterra. Maybe… They used the word “superterraforming” at one point, and maybe that means some new process that only takes half as long, which would take away half our problem. Hmm. It still needs a little work. *shrug* We’ll fix it.

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287

Cat's Meow

in August 9th, 2007 @ 17:14

Other things:
One of the books that they find when they’re on Luna is called “Muse Comes to an Endâ€“The Whole World Weeps” Should we leave that in as an inside joke (that won’t make any sense to pretty much everybody else) or change it to something else?

A couple paragraphs later (Do Ctrl+F on “”Ohâ€¦ But waitâ€¦” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?” to find it) Kari thinks that the book is fake, but then in the next couple of lines she’s trying to convince Ian that it’s real…

Are we going to leave the comment “[A day has passed since Ian read the book about Time Travel.]” in there? I don’t really see any need for leaving it in.

The line “The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug, although there had been many of them.” doesn’t make any sense. How can there be just a few survivors but many of them?

Okay, I just read Chapters 1-8. They are absolutely incredible. I mean, I helped WRITE this story, so I knew what was going to happen, but I still couldn’t put it down. (Or switch the window, comparatively) Alice, are you still editing the rest of the story? How many more chapters do we have?

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288

Cat's Meow

in August 9th, 2007 @ 17:16

Wow, I just spent an hour reading that! 0_0

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289

Alice the Exception to the Rule

in August 9th, 2007 @ 17:43

287-

I left it in as an inside joke, honestly. But it is a bit iffy. Do you think we should take it out?

About the time travel book . . . Well, it makes sense to me, but if it doesn’t make sense to you, then we should fix it. I’ll change it to:
“August 10, 2187?” Ian gasped. “But that’s tomorrow!!!â€
“No way!” said Kari, reading over his shoulder. “That’s got to be a spoof.” Boy did she like to show off!
“Huh?”
“A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Oh . . . But wait . . .” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?
“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked, quite pleased with his new theory. “What if those space pirates-â€
â€œParents,â€ corrected Kari. Ian shrugged.
â€œOkay, Parents who were following you put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited.
Finally she spoke, sounding helpless. “I don’t know, Ian, I just don’t know. I guess we’ll find out if someone shows up, won’t we?” As she talked her voice regained confidence, but her eyes were doubtful and scared. It occurred to Ian that she had never used his name before.
Better?

I took out the comment [a day had passed since Ian read the book about time travel], but E2MB put it back in, so I assumed it was important to him somehow.

Is that sentence really so unintelligible? I meant that there were many superbugs, but only a few survivors. I’ll fix that.
The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug.

I’m glad it was so good! I’d always thought it was a bit mediocre, honestly, but I’ve been stuck with it since March . . .
I am still editing the rest of the story. We have a chapter of part one left, and all of part two, which has either nine or ten chapters, and then part three, which has about the same. And I’d been waiting to edit part three until Penty had written a scene for me. (The one where Kari cuts out her microchip, which I objected to at first on account of the blood, but seeing it without makes it look like we just chickened out. Which we did. But it was my fault.) She hasn’t written it yet.

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290

Cat's Meow

in August 9th, 2007 @ 18:34

in August 10th, 2007 @ 17:02

297- I’ll change that, too. And he doesn’t “come back to life.” Holograms are just images.

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299

Cat's Meow

in August 10th, 2007 @ 17:26

298-Okay, I understand. Sorry, I was confused. ^_^

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300

Alice the Exception to the Rule

in August 10th, 2007 @ 17:40

295- MUCH better. Thank you.

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301

Prarilius Canix

in August 10th, 2007 @ 19:20

Here’s the rest. Tell me if there are any inconsistencies.
“No way!” said Kari, reading over his shoulder. “That’s got to be a spoof.” Boy did she like to show off!
“Huh?”
“A fake! A phony! Not-real!”
“Ohâ€¦ But waitâ€¦” said Ian, “If it’s a spoof or whatever you said, then what is it doing in the Moon’s official collection of books and resources?
“What if someone planted the book here, especially for us to find?” Ian asked Kari, quite pleased with his new theory. “What if those space pirates-â€
â€œParents,â€ corrected Kari. Ian shrugged.
â€œOkay, Parents who were following you put it here?” He waited for Kari to reply. And waited. And waited.
Finally she spoke. “I don’t know, Ian, I just don’t know.â€It occurred to Ian that she had never used his name before.
“Ship to Kari!” a voice crackled over the radio attached to her suit, startling the pair. “The sensors pick up a activated life-support system in Sector 8. Out.”
“Kari?” Ian asked unsurely, “Where’s sector 8? And what’s out there?”
“Oh stop being a goon-head, it’s probably just a Betwer, one of those metallic crab-robot things. You remember, they were genetically engineered to colonize planets and moons that were either unterraformable or incompatible with an artifisphereâ€¦â€
â€œNo.â€
â€œTheyâ€™re usually rather reclusive. They won’t hurt us,” Kari replied, annoyed. Ian filed away â€œgoon-headâ€ in his list of Terran words. So far he seemed to have mostly insults.
“C’mon,” Kari continued, “Let’s go to sector 8. These cheap suits will only last us approximately 34 hours with no air.” So Ian set off with Kari towards sector 8.
Sector 8 was isolated in the middle of the great Luna desert. As they walked up toward an open door, it mysteriously vanished to reveal a thick cast-uranicium (atom 138 on the periodic table) door with a message on virtual HTML, saying, “ENTER PASSWORD.” Ian was confused. Kari was annoyed. “Curse them holograms,” she muttered, as she approached the number pad.
The number pad had the numbers 0 through 9 and 10 spaces in the crystal display. That meant there were roughly 10,000,000,000 possible passwords, and they were ignorant as to what it could possibly be.
Kari had never seen this before. Last time she visited sector 8 on Luna, (which admittedly had been twenty years ago) there had been no password. Or at least, she didnâ€™t think there had been, but the information may have merely been erased when she was last frozen. Along with the password. This is not good, she thought. We need that life support system soon, or else our space suits will run out. She did not allow herself to think about the fact that they might not be able to operate it without the password.
“We should get inside,” said Ian, looking across the desert.
â€œ0752330917,â€ muttered Kari. â€œNo . . . no . . . 1832457012 . . . darn . . . 1234567890 . . .? No, I didnâ€™t think so . . . 7239090127 . . .â€
Ianâ€™s attention had been caught with a large piece of metal, and as he watched he could almost imagine it hiding all sorts of fearsome creatures . . . â€œReally, Kari,â€ he said desperately. â€œLetâ€™s get inside.â€
Kari stared at the screen. She had tried almost every combination that popped into her head, and she couldnâ€™t think with Ian talking so much. Suddenly, with a wild yell she kicked the machine. There was a beep, smoke, and a long drawn-out hiss. “Oops,â€ said Kari.
The door had been blown off of the lubricated sliding tray that held it in place. “Wow.” said Ian as he staggered to his feet. “Hey, Kari? Never do that again.” Another door stood a short ways down the hall. The second door didn’t have a keypad.
Antavo was getting very uncomfortable. The kids didnâ€™t really need his help, did they? He imagined what the Parents would say if they heard he had let one of the renegades slip through his grasp, and although he didnâ€™t really care what they thought of him, he didnâ€™t like to think of their weaponry against his.
Kari and Ian started down the hall when a radio transmission reached them. “Ah gotta go now,” said Antavo. “Must get off ta Mars. Business, taxi service, ya know? And don’t make too much noise on Luna. Ah heard all yer ruckus at sector 8. Ah’m hearinâ€™ there are government spies here to catch people who ain’t s’possed to be wand’rin ’round.” All the answer he received from Kari was a curse.
They walked down the hall and opened the tarnished metal door. It seemed much, much, too easy, Kari thought. The Container entered first as a precaution, with Ian following. “Now where’s that Betwer,” she muttered, then stopped in shock. The room had a large round table with chairs seated around it, and its floor was white and grey linoleum. It appeared to be a conference room of some sort, and there was a black box floating in the middle of the room, right above the table, surrounded by streaks of lightning.
Or at least there appeared to be. With holographic technology, Ian was beginning to doubt supernatural-looking objects.
THIS IS A RECORDING; LEFT BEHIND BY A COLLEAGUE OF STEPHEN ROSINBURG boomed a voice from the box. Ian was shocked. Kari was beginning to get suspicious.
IF YOU ARE LISTENING TO THIS MESSAGE, YOU HAVE HEARD THE OTHER ONE HIDDEN IN MY BOOK. YOU KNOW OF THE MAN WHO TRIED TO SAVE THE CULTURE OF EARTH. HE WILL ARRIVE IN MERE HOURS, BUT HE WILL LAND ON THE RADIOACTIVE SURFACE OF EARTH. IF NOBODY RESCUES HIM, HE WILL BE DOOMED TO DIE.
BUT IF YOU RETURN TO EARTH, HE MAY BE-
Suddenly Kari stiffened, no longer listening to the message.
“Ian. Don’t. Move. It’s behind us.” Her voice had suddenly turned cold and commanding, as she realized the Betwer was coming.
“I’m going to slowly turn around. Be still.” Her voice was shaking, but whether from fear or excitement Ian didn’t know. He turned around. The Betwer was bigger than he had imagined, and its black body was impressive, at the least.
The black box, meanwhile, had continued talking, but the voice slowly faded away. The Betwer looked at the box, and then at the two kids standing by the door. Ian went cold with fear. Kari went even stiffer than before.
“You wouldnâ€™t happen to have an idea of how to get out of this mess, would you?â€ hissed Kari into Ianâ€™s ear.
â€œI thought they were harmless.â€
â€œNot if theyâ€™re hanging around! Not on Luna!â€
“I can use an auto-spear,” volunteered Ian.
Kari looked blank, and Ian felt a tingling rush of smug pleasure at knowing something she didn’t. He savored it for a moment; it seemed that it would be a rare occurrence. He opened his mouth to explain, but Kari clamped her hand down over it. It tasted horrible. “If you don’t have one in your pocket, don’t bother explaining.”
“But,” said Ian, trying to talk through her hand, “but I do have one. I picked it up on the shuttle.” Kari released him, and he drew a short thick metal rod from his pocket. A point extended with a hiss of well-lubricated metal. He flicked his fingers over a few buttons and the point began to hum and glow.
The box fizzled with static. The Betwer looked around at it, slowly.
“You know,” said Ian suddenly feeling, well, brave. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.” He gripped the auto-spear tightly, looking from the Betwer to the box and wondering if he could possibly scare the Betwer off and avoid hurting it. He suddenly didnâ€™t like the thought of hurting something.
But before Ian could do anything to either the Betwer or the black box, the Betwer stepped forward, causing Ian to look uncomfortable and slowly start towards the door on the other side of the room, and, with one crunch of its large metallic claws, broke the box into rubble.
The auto-spear went wild. Ian valiantly tried to keep hold of it, but it began to glow so hot that he dropped it on the floor and screamed, “Run!”
They ran. They could here the spear fizzing and popping as it short-circuited when they were ten feet down the hall.
Had he been religious, Ian would have prayed for the Betwer, trapped in the room with the dreadful auto-spear, but religion was one of those things that disappeared after World War Last. So he simply leaned against the wall and breathed deeply.
“What was that?” Kari demanded, not looking at all happy.
“That was an auto-spear,” said Ian. “They were made to fight your enemies for you, but something went wrong, and now they’ll kill you, if you let them get a chance. The makers didn’t withdraw them, and tons of people were killed.” His face saddened, as he thought of his Uncle Barnaby, one of many people killed by the auto-spears. To distract himself, he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. It was big news about eight years ago, and they’re used by just about everybody.”
Kari gave a furious look, and he shut up.
They were silent, and then Kari thought of something, and swore. Ian didn’t blink, not understanding the word. But he sensed something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked.
“We still don’t have the password.”
“Why do we even need the password?” asked Ian. â€œI mean, weâ€™re in sector 8, which is what we wanted. Isnâ€™t it?â€
“Because we need to get to the vault where the life support system is.”
â€œBut the door blew up. We can get to the vault now, canâ€™t we?â€
â€œBut we canâ€™t operate it without the password, or at least I donâ€™t think you can.â€
â€œYouâ€™re confusing me,â€ complained Ian. â€œIf youâ€™ve been here before, why donâ€™t you know the password to operate the life-support system?â€
Kari sighed. â€œIt was erased with most of my other data when I was last frozen. Itâ€™ll come back eventually, but I donâ€™t know when.â€
“Maybe the Betwer knows the password,” said Ian, hopefully. â€œIt lives here, after all.â€
“Itâ€™s a robot. It doesnâ€™t need to breathe. And even if it did know the password, it wouldnâ€™t help us much,â€ scoffed Kari, â€œnow that it’s trying to kill us.”
Kari and Ian walked down the hall, Kari opening doors at random. The sixth door she opened led back out onto Lunaâ€™s surface. She walked out into the clear dusty atmosphere, scanning the sky.
“But Kari,â€ said Ian, â€œwhat if itâ€™s not trying to kill us? We didn’t exactly hang around for an answer.”
“Well, you set that thing on it,” said Kari. “I’d try to kill you if you did that to me.” Ian didn’t mention that Kari had been perfectly supportive of the auto-spear, even if she hadn’t actually operated it.
“Look!” cried Kari suddenly. “A ship!” Ian looked up and was shocked to see that she was right. “It is!”
It soon became clear that the ship was heading towards them, but as it came closer, they realized that there was no pilot. It spiraled out of control, crashing down towards the rocky grey surface of Luna.
Kari seized Ian’s arm and pulled him back into Sector 8. The ship fell with a noise like thunder, barely missing the spot where they had been standing mere minutes before. It was still intact, amazingly, and the number on the hull read: 983157.
Kari gasped.
Chapter 5
Ian looked at her, puzzled, but she did not explain, and he did not expect her to. It wasnâ€™t like Kari to explain, at least not until the crucial moment had passed, by which time you had muddled through the situation best you could and no longer needed her to explain.
Instead she rushed towards it and through the door that had sprung open with the impact. Ian followed, every nerve in his body vibrating with wariness. “Shouldn’t we haveâ€“” he began, but Kari seized him from behind, and for the third time, clamped her hand over his mouth. He struggled furiously, and she let him go with a warning glance. She went into the cockpit and pressed a button that closed the door. She strapped herself into the pilot’s seat.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked, perching on one of the plush dark brown passenger seats with a mistrustful look around the interior of the ship. There were four seats in the middle of the cabin, and a sort of bench that ran all around the inside wall, except for several gaps created by various mysterious doors labeled things like: â€œWeaponryâ€ â€œMagnabeamsâ€ and â€œRadiation suitsâ€, to name but a few.
â€œWhere are we going?â€ asked Ian again, as Kari hadnâ€™t answered the first time.
“Terra,” said Kari shortly.
“Terra!” Ian squawked. “But-”
“This ship has radiation suits. Theyâ€™re in that closet.â€
â€œBut Kari! Why?â€
Kari didnâ€™t say why for at least thirty minutes. Ian waited patiently while she pressed a button and the old ship lifted off into the vacuum of space.
“That book,â€ Kari said at long last. â€œThe one about Rosinburg. Well, we have to rescue him. Heâ€™s going to be trapped on Terra after all.â€
She explained. “That number on the ship is 983157. Each number stands for a letter in the alphabet in code001. (code 001 is A=1, B=2, etc) You get IHCAEG. That’s the special emergency code for Imploring Help! Come At Earth, G because the code is always IHCA and then the celestial body’s number, and G means it’s in the G position from the sun. See?â€ And she turned the engine on full speed.
“But I thought you said the book was a hoax!” Ian said as they started to take off.
“You said that.â€
â€œYou agreed!â€ he reminded her. Above all, Ian did not want to go to Terra.
â€œNot with this kind of coincidence!” replied Kari as they headed toward Earth at 660,000 miles per hour.
Ian wasnâ€™t buying it. “But why is it ‘Come at Earth’?” he asked. “Why not ‘come at Terra’?”
“Because when it was made, Terra was called Earth. Obviously.”
“Okay, but if the time traveler really is stuck on Terra, howâ€™d he send us the ship?” asked Ian, a challenging note in his voice.
â€œHe didnâ€™t.â€ Kari set the ship on autopilot and swiveled her chair so that she was facing Ian. â€œThere are people,â€ she said slowly, â€œthat watch Earth for signs of life. If they spot any, then they send for help. Easy as that.â€
Ian could spot at least five flaws in this explanation, but he decided not to hold it against Kari. It canâ€™t have been easy, being brainwashed every time the Parents captured her. But there was one thing he had to ask. â€œKari,â€ he said. â€œAre these . . . people . . . connected to the Parents?â€
Kari looked at him, for an instant doubt showing in her face. Then she turned back to the controls, and did not speak again.
But as they approached Terra they noticed that a ship was slowly flying in a circle around a large once-white space station. The illegal alien police. Kari immediately brought the ship to a halt. “Do you have your passport?” she asked.
“Why do we need it?” asked Ian. â€œAnd I thought it made us easy to track?â€
“If we don’t have a passport, we will be arrested for planet hopping!” Kari said urgently.
Ian thought it odd that Kari would care about being arrested, after the things she had done, but he dug into his pocket nonetheless. He came up with what looked like a tiny green calculator. “Here it is! But what about you?”
“I have my methods.” By this she probably meant bribes. Except that there wasnâ€™t any more money . . . Unless she had been holding out on him again? He shoved this thought to the back of his mind.
“But your arm . . .” Ian knew that while shuttlers might not ask too many questions, the Police most definitely would.
“Oh rats, I forgot about that.â€ Her hand went instinctively up to her arm to hide it, even though she was wearing long sleeves. â€œLook, you can drive this for a little, right? I’m going to hide.”
“But if they search us they’ll find you!” Ian was too concerned about this to mention that no, he couldn’t drive the ship, even for a few minutes. He was too concerned even to ask what â€œratsâ€ was.
“Oh, shut up, will you? Put it on auto-steer if you think driving it will be too hard, and then all you’ll have to do is stop when they come near. If you press the yellow button they won’t board us.”
“Why not?”
“It means illness.”
“Illness? We’re not ill.”
“Quarantine, stupid. The oldest trick in the book.”
“Books?” Ian perked up at the mention of books, but Kari, weary of their meaningless conversation, was already gone.
Ian shrugged, pressed the yellow button, and put the ship on auto-steer, then gripped the handle that stopped the ship and waited.
The ship retreated in fright. The yellow flag symbolized that the ship had contamination of one of the deadliest viruses known to humankind: the Andromeaneedle, dubbed by the few survivors the superbug, although there had been many of them. But unfortunately for Ian and Kari, the Adromeaneedle had been wiped out a century or more ago, and served to make the Police only more suspicious. And they had radiation suits. As soon as the Police were outfitted they charged back, wearing protection from the virus.
Ian decided that as Kari was born on Mars, if they went to Mars, they couldn’t be arrested for planet hopping. He turned around the spaceship and set the speed on MAX.
“What are you doing?” demanded Kari as soon as it was safe to come out.
“We’re going to Mars. Since you were born there, they can’t arrest us if we’re there . . . Is that alright?”
“It is not alright! We need to rescue that man!”
“But the illegal alien police have protection from the virus.”
“And thatâ€™s going to stop us? Ian, this is a matter of life and death.” Kari had taken over the steering while she was talking, and they were under her control once more.
“What are you going to do?” asked Ian with a sense of dread.
“Blow up their ship, of course.”
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to cry
â€¢ 274. Alice ï¿½|ï¿½ August 3rd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
WHOA. We have expanded this, I see. It used to go all the way into chapter 7 before it got cut.
“But Kari! They might just pop you back into a freezer for a few years, but they won’t do that to me! Like you said, they’ll kill me slowly, again and again and again.” He was close to crying.
“Actually, thatâ€™s the Parents that will do that to you,â€ Kari said, but added heartlessly, â€œYou’ve broken the law so much already that if we’re caught, they’ll do that to you anyway.” Kari’s voice was harsh and cold. “One more crime won’t hurt. In fact, if we don’t do this, you’ll be caught sooner than later.”
Ian felt like his insides were being squeezed by an iron fist. A single tear of sheer terror rolled down his cheek.
“Ian you have to do this, anyway, you don’t have a choice. We’re going to Terra whether you like it or not. And there are things weâ€™ll have to do to get there that you wonâ€™t like. Live with it.” Kari’s voice had taken on a commanding quality and Ian figured he’d just go ahead and comply quietly.
He made a last feeble attempt to stop her. â€œBut the peopleâ€“â€œ
Kari ignored him, and lurched the ship towards Mars. Ian frowned, confused.
“Uh, Kari?” he asked tentatively, when she did not exclaim, â€œOops!â€ and turn back to Terra and the pursuing Police.
Kari cast him a glance. “What?”
“Thatâ€™s Terra back there. Weâ€™re headed towards Mars.”
“Space around Terra is too conspicuous. We have to fight them near Mars. There are so many wars going on around Mars, no one will even think twice about a few more battles.”
More battles. Ian could have screamed. Instead, he sat down in a chair and pulled his knees up to his chest, repressing the growing dread inside him.
The pair was almost to Mars when a voice told them to freeze.
“Attention,” the voice went on. “You are entering the space of one of the Preserved Terran Habitats. Please transmit authorization code or we will be forced to immobilize your ship.”
“Oh no,” Kari muttered. “What areâ€“?”
“The PTHs?” Ian asked. “You were born on Mars! Don’t tell me you don’t-”
“I don’t. I was kidnapped when I was three, and then experimented on in sentient cryonics for eight freaking decades. Just explain.”
“Some environmentalists put together huge spaceships with what was left of Terran wildlife during the Great Evacuation. For a while they just sat there orbiting Terra because the scientists couldnâ€™t get enough funds to put them somewhere else, but now The Habitats orbit Mars, and you have to pay to enter them.” Ian had always dreamed of seeing one of the Habitats, but he lived too far away and had never had enough money.
Kari put on speed. The Habitat was visible in the view screen, a huge metal globe with massive diamond panels through which a lush jungle could be seen.
“Whoa,” breathed Ian. “Are- are those trees? Oh my gosh! That’s a parrot! I’ve only heard about those in books!!”
Kari grimly clung to the controls, a plan forming in her mind. The police ship was still on their tail. If she could just steer away at the second that the Habitat fired its magnabeam . . .
A bolt of magnetic energy rocketed out from the PTH. Kari did something she hadn’t done in years. She quickly flicked her vision through the electromagnetic spectrum until the projectile appeared as a bright blue glow.
“There’s something to be said for genetic manipulation,” she muttered, as she twisted the joystick violently. The ship shuddered and dropped. The blast shot over the top of its plating, becoming briefly visible as the exhaust ionized, before striking their pursuers head on.
Kari forced the ship into a sharp turn, made sure it was on a trajectory towards Terra; then opened the throttle. They shot forward at speeds only dreamed of during the Terran Era. Only the artificial gravity’s compensation prevented them from being smashed into blobs of jelly.
A job well done, Kari reflected. On to save the scientist. If there really was a scientist landing on Terra, and it wasn’t just a trap. She wouldn’t put it past the Parents to reprogram that box, send the ship and plant the book in Lunaâ€™s library. They would stop at nothing in their mad quest to create Neoterra, and therefore would stop at nothing to capture Kari, as she jeopardized their plan. What if one of them was waiting at the very place they were supposed to land?
Kari forced the uneasy thoughts out of her mind. If there was any chance that somebody was about to die an agonizing, slow death from radiation poisoning, she was going to rescue that person. She’d been through that during the time that the Parents had tried to find out how their “children” would stand up to neutron bombardment. She wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.
“What?” asked Ian, somewhat disappointed at not getting a good look at the PTH.
“What, what?” Kari quipped.
“What did you say about genetic manipulation?”
“Oh that. I’m a Container, remember.” She tried to say it in an offhand way, so that he wouldn’t question her, but it seemed rather strained instead.
Ian tactfully said nothing.
“What was the name of the city he set out from?” Kari muttered, half to herself.
“Sanfronsisca,” Ian stated proudly.
“How did you know that?” Kari gasped incredulously.
Ian held up the book, which he had carried all the way from Luna. “I can read, you know.”
Kari gave him an approving nod. “Well, if my memories are correct, Sanfronsisca used to be where that crater is now.” She pointed out a place on the west coast of a roughly triangular continent. “Let’s go down.”
As Kari guided the ship in, Ian went into a small chamber to put on a radiation suit. The suit was made of thick, interlocking plates of uranicium, with a small antigravity engine to keep the wearer from collapsing under its weight. Ian felt like he was putting on a medieval suit of armor. He had read about one of those in a book at the Ceres library, something about a round table. He still didn’t see how a round table was connected to primitive warriors, but the pre-WWL documents were fragmentary, if not completely incinerated.
The ship landed, steam hissing out of its hydraulic jets. Kari went into the compartment to put on a suit, while Ian stepped out of the airlock.
No sooner had he done so than a loud whine started up and increased in volume. Ian held his breath. Was this the arrival of Rosinburgâ€™s ship?
A fiery comet appeared in the sky, growing in size as it hurtled down to impact about fifty feet away. As the flames died down, it was revealed as a decimated ship, blazing fluid leaking from broken pipes. But the front was mainly intact.
“Kari!” Ian yelled, his voice distorted by the speaker of his suit, and even more by the irradiated atmosphere. “He’s here.”
Kari stepped out of the airlock, and an expression of horror crossed her features.
“The book . . . the box . . . they were fakes!” she babbled.
“What do you mean?” Ian gasped, stumbling backward from the sinister ship as quickly as he could. A small hatch opened in the plating, and a blunt cone nosed out. Kari knew what was coming. She grabbed Ian’s hand and twisted the dial on her suit’s antigravity engine to MAXIMUM. They shot upwards just in time to see a missile strike their ship and reduce it to red-hot slag.
“It was a trap to lure me here,” Kari rasped. “That ship was sent by the Parents.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Ian with an effort, trying not to think about a slow and painful death.
Kari’s face was grey beneath her helmet. “There’s nothing we can do. There’s no one to help. We’ve lost our ship. The air in these things will only last a little while, less if we run. We’re trapped.”
Then Kari was proven wrong- or so Ian thought. The flames died down, and a man, clothed in a strange latex suit, stepped out of the hatch. Dr. Stephen Rosinburg.
Ian gasped and stared. The man stumbled a little, and Ian could see that he was faring badly in the irradiated atmosphere. “We have to help him!” Ian yelled, turning off his antigravity engine and falling heavily to the ground. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to stand by and watch this man die.
Kari yelled at him. “No! It’s just a-”
Then Rosinburg disappeared. A man stepped out, unprotected, but not seeming to mind. As he did so, the hologram around the ship vanished as well, revealing it as a perfectly sound, matte-black fighter. He leveled an autospear at Ian. “SURRENDER, RENEGADE,” he said, “OR THE IMPURE ONE DIES.”
“-hologram,” Kari finished lamely.
C

0

302

Alice

in August 10th, 2007 @ 20:32

YES! YES! Much better! I only saw one teensy inconsistency.

“Okay, but if the time traveler really is stuck on Terra, howâ€™d he send us the ship?” asked Ian, a challenging note in his voice.

But we can fix that easily. I have changed it to this:

“Okay, but if the scientist really is stuck on Terra, howâ€™d he send us the ship?” asked Ian, a challenging note in his voice.

0

303

Cat's Meow

in August 12th, 2007 @ 14:48

Yay! ^_^ Great job!

0

304

Jadestone

in August 12th, 2007 @ 15:35

Yay! There’s Alice’s comment 274 in the middle, but that’s easily deleatable. It makes a lot more sense now. Good job, PC

0

305

Alice

in August 22nd, 2007 @ 22:57

You know, Ian never introduces himself to Kari. And yet she knows his name…

0

306

the man for aeiou

in August 24th, 2007 @ 16:31

305-oh well. that happens alot in books. I asume that they talk but that is not writen.

0

307

Prarilius Canix

in August 24th, 2007 @ 16:57

How do auto-spears move around?

0

308

Kiki the Great

in August 26th, 2007 @ 22:40

I haven’t been following this, but

*gasp*

in September 7th, 2007 @ 22:06

what are the titles for these books?

0

317

Alice the Oracle

in September 7th, 2007 @ 22:16

*cough* Two points.

One: It’s BOOK, not BOOKS.
Two: TITLE, not TITLES.

Contrary to what the heading says, the title is merely Terraformed.

0

318

the man for aeiou

in September 7th, 2007 @ 22:31

317- there are three storys, right? and I thought the first part was TERRA: io. and I don’t know what the secound and third parts are named.

0

319

Alice the Oracle

in September 7th, 2007 @ 23:12

You’re behind the times. Or maybe just confused. Anyhow, you know how sometimes books have several parts in them? Well, the name of the book is Terraformed, and in the book there are three parts.

See, here’s a graph:

Terraformed

Part One: Io
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9

Part Two: Callisto
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Part Three: Mercury
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Epilogue

Get it? It’s all in one book.

0

320

the man for aeiou

in September 8th, 2007 @ 13:03

ah. I thought It was :
TERRA:formed

in December 6th, 2007 @ 22:11

OH GOD.

Kill me everyone. Please. Quickly. The story is gone. I asked Kiki if she had it, and she doesn’t, and I lost it in the fire, and â€“ oh god.

0

327

the man for aeiou

in December 9th, 2007 @ 18:34

326- can’t we just re-edit it?
see, we need a new theard!

0

328

the man for aeiou

in December 11th, 2007 @ 18:46

NEW THEARD TO GET BACK THE RRR 2007.2!

0

329

the man for aeiou

in December 12th, 2007 @ 17:07

new theard! please!

0

330

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in December 12th, 2007 @ 17:16

I see what you mean. I’ll get right on it.

0

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