Darkworld: Earth

2.34.

“Sarah, I’m afraid that it is time to make a decision,” Trenola stated calmly, her hologram flickering nearby. “We have determined that while the current course of treatment has stabilized your condition, there is no sign that the treatment will lead to further improvements. We are running out of reasons to withhold you from your people’s own medical teams. You may request that we keep you here indefinitely, but we will be forced to admit that it is due to your own desires and not medical necessity.”

“I understand, Trenola thank you.” Sarah looked at the beautiful sunset. So like Earth’s, and yet the colors were subtly alien. “I believe I am ready now.”

“Ready to return to your people?”

“Ready to undergo your experimental therapy,” Sarah corrected. “I understand that whoever I am will change. That frightens me, and that’s the reason I’ve been putting it off so long. But you’re right. Today is the day that we make a decision.”

Sarah turned to her doctor and smiled. “Make me well again.”

~~~~~~

Gabriel sighed as he put away his laptop and his PHDA into his messenger bag. The lecture hall was empty; he had outlasted them this time. Most of the members of his actual class were watching the recordings of his lecture rather than the lecture itself. He was going over the strange anomalies that he had detected in his analysis of the data from the Seeker’s scientific mission. Strange ripples in the gravitic field that couldn’t readily be explained by the existing models of astrophysics.

The majority of experts he’d shown it to had said ‘oh, that’s neat. What do the Yonohoans say that it is?’

To which he had unfortunately been forced to say ‘the Yonohoans refuse to touch this data for fear that they would taint it with their advanced knowledge of magic and bullshitery. They insist that earthborn science remains pure.’

Which, unfortunately, Gabriel was beginning meant that independent work on the standard model was falling apart as the scientists around the world rushed to grapple with alien sciences which viewed the world in a very different way and grappled with forces that Earth technology could not measure, let alone control.

Instead of lecturing on the crowning achievement of Earth’s space program, he was answering heckling questions by youtubers and bloggers about how it felt to be responsible for the first alien invasion of Earth.

He sighed and stalked away from the podium. Perhaps someday, his research would be taken seriously and he wouldn’t simply be a mascot to the university for which he now worked.

~~~~

“So in summary, if we throw the book at him, then we can effectively kiss our hopes of reelection goodbye,” the special prosecutor explained. “The fact that he is a Yonohoan citizen complicates things to no end. We don’t have any treaties with them on this subject. We do have existing laws for spies and potential terrorists, but they were written decades ago and public opinion has changed.

“Even now, the good Captain Moon’s revelation that the boy was brainwashed from the age of four to infiltrate planets and pose as an abandoned child is swaying public opinion in his favor. She points out that he had the technology and the weaponry to cause endless devastation, but instead all he tried to do was fit in. The fact that the Yonohoans have made public the reports to the defunct organization which he once served is only further complicating the matter. The way that he says ‘Earth girls are pretty’ is just so damn endearing that even I feel empathy for the kid.

“The Yonohoans insist that we treat him with respect and dignity. Our laws demand that he receives a fair trial. If the defense calls him to testify about all of the trauma and abuse that he remembers from the original Eodar’s time in training, I doubt that there’s a jury in the world which would convict him. I’ll prosecute this matter to the fullest extent of the law if those are my instructions. But it will be the end of my career. And if I go down, I’ll do my best to take everyone who signed off on this with me.”

The prosecutor sat down, and President Walker shifted side to side in her swivel chair, considering the presentation. Her chair squeaked beneath her as the room filled with legal experts waited for her to speak.

“Right now, if I’m not mistake, the child responsible for the two incidents where we tried to take him in is presumed dead, am I wrong?” Walker asked after a moment.

“Technically, according to the logs pulled out of his wetware by the Yonohoans, he was dead for forty-five seconds or so,” One of the experts in the room pointed out.

“We can’t keep his trial secret. If we prosecute him, we have to announce that he’s alive, correct?” she asked.

“That’s correct.”

“What happens if I pardon him?” She asked. “Do we have to reveal that John Doe AKA Eodar of the Yonohoans is still alive?”

“We could write the pardon in such a way that it appears we are giving to him postmortem,” the prosecutor explained. “Then we can quietly hand him over to the Yonohoans and let them take the situation from there. As I understand it, they don’t want to make too big of a deal out of a fact that a clone of their cultural hero is back from the dead either.”

“After hearing the accounts of what this boy went through, I’m disinclined to make things worse,” she admitted. “What about the boy’s wishes? What does he hope will happen to him?”

The room met her question with silence. She looked around, frowning. “Does nobody know? None of you geniuses thought to ask?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant,” the prosecutor admitted.

“Well go fucking find out you moron!” Walker shouted, and the meeting adjourned.

~~~~~~

Kirk bathed in the light of the trinary star system of Beta Centauri. He wasn’t the first human from Earth to be this close to the stars; that honor went to the first team to leave the solar system aboard a ship powered by the Tunnel Drive, a predecessor to the Seeker of New Discoveries . But that was fine. He wasn’t boldly going where no man had gone before, but he was boldly doing things which no man had done before in those locations, he thought.

Or at least he had been. His passion for making love to his new wife was starting to wane. Not his love for her. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak, so to speak. She, too, was beginning to move on to a less passionate phase of their relationship. She sat next to him, his arm around her, in the cockpit of the ship as they stared at the foreign sun.

“How long until we have to go back?” she asked him.

“According to the ship, the food forge can keep us fed for decades. The water recycler will function for twice as long,” he answered.

“Yes, but how long is the deal with the spacecraft company good for?” she asked.

He frowned, because the answer to that question was six months. “Not as long as I’d like it to be, but there’s no reason to hurry.”

“I think it’s time to go home, Kirk,” she said. “Let’s enjoy the rest of the day, and then set course and fly through the night. It will take some time to arrive, but we’ll have some fun along the way and talk about what life is going to be like once we’re millionaires.”

“Life is good. I got to fly in a spaceship, I bagged a trophy wife, and I’m going to be rich,” Kirk said, smiling.

“Oh, I’m a trophy, am I? Will you put me on the wall and forget about me?”

“Never,” he answered.

“Let’s go outside one more time. See if you have another round in you while we’re floating out in open space,” she suggested.

They equipped their vacuum exposure devices, and they made love out amid the stars with nothing protecting them from the vacuum of space except alien technology. When they returned to the ship, they showered, and then Kirk entered the course to head home.

Just as the FTL drive was powering up, a ship appeared.

“Who the hell is this now?” Kirk asked.

“They are broadcasting a message,” the Enterprise informed him. “Translating into english. Message is as follows. You are suspected of piracy. Power down your engine and prepare to be boarded.”

“Can they do that?” Kirk demanded.

“They are broadcasting the IFF beacons of the Rosantean empire’s police force,” the Enterprise answered. “However, this is not Rosantean space, nor is the Enterprise a Rosantean spacecraft. I have broadcast that I am a Yonohoan crafted vessel. They know that they are outside their rights in their proposed course of action.”

“Yeah, fuck them then. Kick it for Earth, full speed.”

“They are faster than us by a significant margin.”

“Can they shoot us down in hyperspace?” Kirk asked.

“No, they cannot.”

“Then fuck them, let’s go.”

“Entering the hyperatomic plane now,” the ship said, and it made the translation from the material plane to one of the higher dimensions where light speed was a suggestion and not a rule.

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