Changes Happen

Chapter 1: A Difficult Decision

"Another unsuccessful summit at the united nations left people with a great feeling of unease today, more and more it appears that the leaders of today's modern superpowers are gearing towards a war, possibly a nuclear war. But people still have their finger crossed that what is being termed 'the modern cold war' will end without anything like that, but as the threats pile up that hope seems fainter and fainter each day…"

True Heart shut the broadcast off and sighed, it was just as she and Noble Heart had feared and things were looking grim. This meeting of the entire Care Bear family was the first time in months that they had all been in the same place at the same time. In fact, many of them greeted each other like long lost friends as most of their caring missions had been solo recently owing to the widespread need for them in recent months. The only member of the family who didn't seem to be too down about everything was Bedtime Bear, partly because he was adjusting his sleeping pattern for the days temporarily but mostly is was because it was the first time in years that he'd been able to see the entire family in one place and able to interact with them, as he normally slept through the day so he could be awake at night.

Everyone was saddened by the report on television but it came as no surprise to them, for some time now they had been observing the rising tensions of the world but had stayed out of it as it was not their business to interfere. But now, the very real threat of a nuclear war was a major concern since it would mean the end of most civilized society, and probably the end of them if things continued as they were. The number of caring missions had been consistently high for the last few months, reminiscent of the rare extremely busy days they had had in the past. Yesterday, the Caring Meter had finally given out owing to a lack of maintenance, as no one had been able to fix it for a long time and rather than go to fix it, Noble Heart and True Heart had decided to call this meeting and now they sat, having just seen the report, all of them fatigued ranging from drowsy to completely exhausted. True Heart and Noble Heart looked at each other and stood up to face their family, not looking forwards to the announcement they were about to make.

"Care Bears, Care Bear Cousins, we are facing a crisis we may not be able to deal with," True Heart said.

"If the tension of the world continues as it is, we believe nuclear war is inevitable on earth. If this happens then we will…" Noble Heart trailed off, but everyone knew what he meant.

True Heart sighed again as she took over, "Care Bear Family, we are facing a very difficult decision: either we focus on leaving or hiding to avoid a nuclear holocaust, or we try to solve the world's problems and achieve world peace." The first option felt like impossibility for them because they couldn't just abandon earth, but the second seemed like it would be an un-accomplishable task. They primarily dealt with children who were open minded while most adults found it absurd to even talk to small multi colored animals; while it was mainly a stereotype, it was the close mindedness of politicians that was the problem to begin with which made their options limited.

"Does anyone have any ideas about how we could possibly solve our problem?" Noble Heart asked, imploringly. After about a minute, a very tired Bright Heart raised his hand and forced himself to stand, yawning deeply before speaking.

"I do have an idea," he said, "over a year ago Grumpy and I were working on something that might help. We were observing a small anomaly at the edge of the solar system and found out it was a wormhole, a shortcut to a distant system."

"How does this help us?" An irritated, and now grown up, Tugs said, before his twin sister Hugs pulled him back into a seated position and gave him a nasty glare.

"Go on Bright Heart," Hugs said.

"Thanks you, Hugs, I will. Now we've been observing the behavior of human adults both past and present and we've found that humans are drawn to both conflict and exploration. I know what you're going to tell me, this isn't star trek, but as much as that isn't true at the very least if humans were interested in exploring then maybe it might help smooth things over."

Grumpy took over at this point, "We managed to draw up the plans for devices that will allow us to use the wormhole at the edge of our system, and others like it, to open up the galaxy to explore. It's a long shot, but it's all we've got." The whole room was abuzz with muttering and debating on this revelation. The two founders gave everyone several minutes to debate this before they called everyone to quiet down and Noble Heart spoke up again.

"Bright Heart, how soon could you put something like this together?"

"I need a couple weeks working with Grumpy to do this, and even then we only have enough resources for a prototype and we wouldn't be able to test this in anything more than simulations," the raccoon admitted.

"Well you're right about it being a long shot," True Heart admitted, "but it is the only chance we have really," she sighed, feeling her drowsiness settling in.

"All right," Noble Heart said, "the next summit of the United Nations is in three weeks, with any luck the world will stable enough for us to try and settle this and calm everyone down. I know you're all tired so instead of sending out everyone to go on caring missions right away, we're all taking the next two days off to rejuvenate ourselves." The founder turned his head towards Bright Heart and Grumpy, "as for you two, you and anyone who might be able to help are relieved from caring mission duty until then, we need to get this idea working, if it works we may just be able to calm the planet down, if not, it won't matter. Now everyone go get some sleep, even you Bedtime, we'll all need it if we want to succeed at this."