"I'm…" Harold hesitated. "Not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing." He watched as James, four arms, moved stationary equipment as easily as he might move a datapad.
"And I told you," James said simply. "Your mind is what this project needs. That my body can accelerate progress is irrelevant. We're still partners on this."
"And yet, I'm told you can do the work of one of our computers in your head," Harold insisted.
"That's just one less thing to plug into the computers," James argued.
"And one less thing I can actively contribute to. James… I think it's time I accepted it. I will hold you back. Maybe not for a few months, but eventually, you'll make more progress without this old man slowing you down."
"You said it yourself. Retirement isn't your speed."
"My speed was determined by the fact that there hadn't been any qualified Travelers with the knowledge and skill you have. You surpassed me when we finished the camera. Now? I'm an anachronism."
James paused, his control of his mind working against him. He knew the old man was right. And he hated it. He wanted to again suggest joining the Travelers, but he knew better at that point. Harold had accepted that he was a part of the old universe. James knew he was wrong, but convincing the other man was impossible.
"Losing your mind is a tragedy," James said miserably, continuing to move equipment into place.
"I've decided that when I leave to visit my sister next week, I'll be offering my resignation."
James nodded, opening the chest on his suit and hopping down onto his smaller feet. He offered his hand to Harold, but the man pulled him into a hug instead.
"I'm gonna miss you," James admitted. "You better answer my messages if I have questions."
"I'll miss you too. I will. And you won't. And you're always welcome to visit."
"I'll make an exception for you," James allowed. "Family gatherings." He said it like a slur.
Harold laughed. "I'll start transfering my notes to your terminal and datapad. You had most of them anyway, and I doubt they contain anything you don't have in yours in any case. Thoroughness."
James nodded. "I'm guessing you're not going to be in here much?"
He smiled and shook his head. "I have paperwork to fill out, and a suitcase to pack."
"How are you getting to earth?"
"I'll hitch a ride on the next passenger transport."
James contemplated his next words for only a fraction of the time he would have a week before. "Take the Caelum. She's been docked up, collecting dust for five months. She's fast, and you won't be tied down to public transportation."
"I can't-"
"I'm not asking. She's yours. I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't really fit anymore."
Harold nodded. "I'll take good care of her. Some travel will do me good."
"Don't get lost. I know I did."
Harold laughed. "You can't get lost when you don't know where you're going."
"I used to think that."
James watched Harold leave the new lab. It wasn't actually in the Nest, but it was nearby and could be quickly accessed by both the conventional hallways that spanned the station, and the Traveler tunnels James more frequently utilized. More importantly, it had access control that would prevent any outsiders from spotting him in his suit. He'd continued to work with Harold in their old lab for the previous two weeks, storing his suit in the Tunnels above, until he finally convinced his partner to move the lab. His lab now. A new space. A new lead scientist.
"You okay?" Tracey asked.
They had spent most of the last two weeks with their minds intertwined. It was a comfort to have her there, and he knew that feeling was mutual. Nearly every aspect of each other's day was conveyed in realtime to the other. This was no exception.
"I suppose. I guess at some level, I knew this was coming. It feels like such a waste though. One of the greatest minds of a generation."
"It's not a waste. He chose mortality and humanity. We chose differently. Neither choice is wrong."
"I know," James admitted, releasing the mental equivalent of a sigh. "Doesn't make it easier to accept." And in that moment, he realized that despite his choice being forced by his injuries, he still chose it. It was freeing in a way. This was what he wanted, even if he hadn't known it at the time. Tracey shared in the happy moment, sharing her own glowing emotional state. They were both happy in this new life, with few sour notes marring it. For one, they were together most of the time, telepathically, if not physically. In addition, their respective projects had seen massive leaps forward, thanks to their new gifts.
James had been nervous at first. There were no struggles left to endure. But he quickly understood a deeper truth. Struggle, could be a choice, and in fact was, even for those struggles were thrust upon. He'd chosen struggle, even as they'd been inflicted on him. He'd chosen to become a scientist, attempting to ferret secrets from an endlessly fickle universe, even as he woke from nightmares of the grizzliest kind. His new life was devoid of the kind of struggle inflicted upon him, but that could never take away his drive to struggle toward a goal.
And so he had. His work towards the subject of Subspace Mapping had tripled. His oft exhausted human mind was replaced with a vibrant and energetic one. He could lose himself for days if he allowed it, observing, fabricating, and otherwise carrying out the tasks of science with a tenacity possible only for his species. But he didn't. The beauty of chosen struggle, was the freedom to put it down, instead choosing contentment and happiness for a time. For James, that contentment and happiness could be found within the one thing his mental link with Tracey did not accommodate. If anything, the near constant intellectual intimacy, made their physical love a more important and rewarding experience.
And thus his cyclical existence continued. The next week, Harold left. James wished him well, and watched the Caelum depart from the open airlock door, where he stood in the vacuum, at peace in mind and body. His new perspective on the universe did little to alter his perspective on holidays, and so Christmas passed, followed by new years. His only marking of each was the decision to spend them with his partner. Time ceased to mean much after that. Hours to days. Days to weeks. Weeks to months.
"Hard to believe it's been a year," he whispered. They spoke aloud and telepathically when together. The sound of her voice, soft and engaging, never ceased to make his head spin. She shifted, maximizing the contact of their skin, bare.
"Has it really?" she breathed against his neck, but it was more of a gasp.
"Mhm."
The silence resumed. Soon enough, they separated, minds full of each other, prolonging the sensations, even as they slid into clingsuits, the name for the sense preserving and insulating suits nearly all Travelers wore when not in their true suits. They went about their days, full of discovery and progress.
James had long since completed work on the Subspace Camera. He'd moved on to the much more ambitious task of actually finding predictable patterns within that frontier. His current lament, was that his most recent creation had not been completed before Greg and his team left. The planet they had departed for, was more than three months from the nearest repeater, so the middle seven months of their fourteen month mission had been radio silent.
James had successfully built the first rangeless transmitter. It turned out, only fifteen degrees needed to be employed on average to reduce the functional distance between any two points in real space to less than a light minute. It was enough. Occasionally, one might encounter subspace eddies that could vastly increase or decrease latency. If he had completed the design before they had entered the blackout zone, he could have given them instructions on how to convert one of their radios into a rigged version. Maybe then, they would have heard when Knox announced that the location they were enroute to was a bust. The nature of that mission was shrouded in secrecy, and James didn't presume to inquire.
As it stood, the team was less than two months from Valhalla Station, and were good natured about the situation. It wasn't uncommon for such missions to end that way, and by the time they returned, James believed he could further reduce the latency, and decrease the influence of eddies. There was an additional advantage. Without reliance on repeaters, they no longer had to worry about 'wiretaps'. In the vastness of space, their communications could very nearly be plain text, requiring only the most basic encryption to remain secure, and only due to the risk of a stray signal reaching something it shouldn't. The speed of inter-ship communication improved drastically, with throughput being almost entirely dedicated to actual data as opposed to complex encryption.
Tracey's work followed a different avenue. She had more or less abandoned her original field of study, and moved instead into the subject of pharmaceuticals. Gordon had been forced to intervene when she attempted to submit some of her work to the corporation's marketing department.
"What do you think will happen when these drugs hit the market?" Gordon asked pleasantly.
"Sick people will get better," Tracey insisted stubbornly.
"Sure. For a month. Then what?"
"You're going to have to just tell her," James said sadly. "She's not going to get this one on her own. She is literally too pure."
"You mean naive," she mentally hissed at him. It was the closest they'd gotten to an actual fight.
"Yes. And it's because you're too kind for this universe."
His complete sincerity ended the hostility immediately. She pushed warmth into his mind.
"Within a month, the doctors prescribing these medications will be arrested on some unknown charges. An investigation will be initiated, and soon, no doctor will be brave enough to prescribe them."
"So you're telling me no?"
"No. I'm telling you to think. Think like a shrewd business owner. You don't want to completely undermine the existing market. If I had done that, this company would have failed before it even got started. Start small. Find some mildly inconvenient ailment with a simple inexpensive solution. Make your treatment slightly better, OR, slightly cheaper. But not both. Not at first. Then, ever so carefully, you push the envelope. As the market is driven downward, or upward, whichever you choose, you take advantage. Not only will you be introducing better products, you'll be forcing complacent corporations to innovate. Capitalism can be manipulated to create a better universe, but you have to be careful."
Tracey, had detested the idea, but she had capitulated when her mind verified the logic, and could find no argument. A month later, the first of her medications had hit the market. Gordon had opened a subsidiary corporation in her name. Though she ultimately answered to him, she was free to take it in any direction she chose. She chose up, making her treatments better, and matching the going market rates. Her strategy had been even more insidious than James had believed her capable of. She advertised the chemicals as merely an alternative to the existing products. No better, and no worse. The result was a slower distribution, but in time, doctors quietly began to abandon medications they'd been prescribing for years. It was so gradual, and so subtle, that it had taken four months for a headline to mention it. And by that point, a competing corporation had released something to match. She had taken her first step.
The day Greg returned was a momentous one, because in a stroke of luck, James had actually discovered a solution to the problem of axis sixteen and axis seventeen. Average precision had gotten within twelve light seconds.
He and Tracey met the team as they stomped their way out of their ship into the large hangar.
"Welcome back," James said warmly.
"Good to be back," Greg replied, pulling James' suit into a tight, almost dangerously so, hug.
"You got new kit for us, nerd?" asked Charity. This warrior was Greg's second in command, and easily the most terrifying being James had ever encountered. Where Greg was mostly cool and collected, at least when he wasn't pretending to be drunk, Charity was a monster, through and through.
"Always," James replied easily with a mental chuckle.
James had only seen her outside her suit once. Charity had the physical characteristics of a runway model. Long, straight, blond hair. A symmetrical face with pouty lips and crisp blue eyes. She possessed the usually slim Traveler physique, but somehow managed to achieve a womanly figure within that boundary. It was so at odds with her crude and brash personality, that James had stood in stunned disbelief as he'd watched her climb into her suit. There was no attraction, not because she wasn't attractive, but because his head was full of Tracey. He was unable to want anyone else.
The team had left to debrief fully with Knox, and the happy couple had retreated to their shared alcove. The evenings as always were filled with the physical. The few conversations they had were had in the moment, as they had no part of their day they hadn't shared already. This was one of those times.
"I don't like this," Tracey said softly.
James, not understanding what she meant at first, paused. But he immediately identified her displeasure as unrelated and continued. To his amusement, she actually expressed momentary annoyance at the pause in the sensation she'd been enjoying. Instead, her mind was full of her company, which she had chosen to name Angelichem. He'd thought it was a bit too on the nose, but she'd insisted. Gordon had thought it was funny, but allowed it.
"Every time…" She was momentarily unable to speak. "Every time I push a new product onto the market, the other corporations push something new. It's like they have a backlog of chemistries that they've already created, and just don't release, because the worse the treatment, the more money they make."
"That is exactly what they're doing," James thought directly into her head.
She brought her hands up to her face, first in frustration, and then to cover her mouth.
Eventually she continued. "Every time they do it, I have to start all over. They've done it three times."
"You'll figure it out." James encouraged.
"I can't believe you once told me I chose a… A line of work with consistency."
James's laughter forced him to pause again. "In all fairness," he said aloud. "That was back when you were working just biology. It's not my fault you got into the business world."
She whimpered. "You stopped."
He chuckled softly.
"I wonder if I can just change my chemistry and just not tell anyone," she continued once she was no longer being neglected.
"You can't not tell anyone," James replied, reverting back to mental communication. "There are regulations. But that doesn't mean you have to make a big production of it."
"That's what I meant. Tell everyone who absolutely has to know, and just keep using the same product names."
"That's a really good idea. Almost maniacal. I'm impressed."
She rolled her eyes, then closed them and bit her lower lip. "Alright. That's enough, you. Lay down."
He laughed. "I love you."
James' work over the coming weeks led to a groundbreaking discovery. It was known that Traveler's used Subspace for their Telepathy, but James was finally able to definitively prove that they could in fact access all twenty-seven axes. And more, their control over it was entirely instinctual. This implied that it was possible to intuitively path Subspace in real time. If he could figure out a way to replicate that, it would open the door to some of the most important technology in the universe. They had already surpassed all known instances of Engineer technology. If their progenitors still existed somewhere in the universe, the Travelers might one day arrive on their planet as a more advanced species and share their technology.
James was making progress so quickly, that he had begun a side project, just to help him unwind from the rush of it in the waning hours of Tracey's longer work day. He didn't mind waiting for her. He'd begun assembling a ship, much like men in the twentieth and twenty-first century might assemble a canoe in their garage. James' 'canoe' by contrast was extremely large. It was sleek and organic looking, a hybridisation of two styles. Conventional Traveler vessels did not possess pressurized hulls, instead equalizing with whatever atmosphere or lack thereof was outside. This ship was different in the sense that it contained a separate living space inside which would pressurize to a full atmosphere, though only with nitrogen. It wasn't a large space, really no larger than one of the living quarters on the human section of Valhalla station. But it was a luxury he'd included due to his desire to keep all aspects of his and Tracey's relationship intact no matter where they went.
He could have requisitioned a space in the hangar to do this, but he'd instead chosen the challenge of assembling it in a full vacuum, tethered to the station. This had introduced various design complications he'd had to carefully plan around. More than a year and a half after the start of his 'second life' the 'Horizon' was christened. It sat, sleek, black, and ominous visible through windows viewing the very same Docking port James had docked the Caelum to almost two years before.
"I don't understand why you built this." Tracey knew perfectly well why he'd built it, the meaning behind her words addressing the timing of its construction more than the act itself. She ran a hand over the sleek interior console. "It is beautiful though." She spun in surprise when the door slid closed and James pulled the undock lever. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
"I'm kidnapping you," James explained smoothly, his thoughts mischievous. He didn't like having to hide things from his lover, but surprises sort of necessitated it. He'd been hiding a great many things from her over the preceding two months. He let them pour into her head then.
"James no," she attempted to argue.
"I've cleared it all with Gordon. Luke will take control while you're away. He knows what direction you wanted to take things."
Tracey's mind was filled with affection for the eager young upstart she'd found in Lucas Yelter. She'd taken him on as a kind of apprentice and assistant, but he'd quickly made himself invaluable. He was now nearly as critical to the daily operations as she was.
"But-"
"Gordon himself will oversee the continuation of your most recent strategies where Luke is out of his depth. You are free for six months. And this ship can pull almost nine lightyears per sidereal day. We can go wherever you could possibly want."
"What if I want to go back to my office?" she tested.
"Seems an odd choice. Arrival time, fifteen seconds. Company is nice, I've heard."
"Where are you taking me?"
"Earth first. I know you haven't seen it since you were a little girl. Plus it gives me an excuse to go bug Harold."
"Isn't it dangerous to bring a Traveler ship so close to earth?"
"Not unless human scanner tech has gotten a lot better in the last thirty minutes. Electromagnetic shielding will slip right past the defense grid. We won't even get spotted. She's more or less invisible unless you point a laser directly at it, and even then the naked human eye still isn't going to spot the distortion."
"We're going to Earth? Really?" She was starting to feel the excitement James had hoped for, and he was feeling relieved that he hadn't overplayed the surprise.
"Really." And so, their first journey together began. James slid easily into the cockpit and began keying instructions to the computer. In just fifteen seconds, the ship accelerated to more than three thousand times the speed of light, and barely more than a feather's worth of force could be felt inside the cabin. "Arrival time, three days eight hours," he announced in an official sounding mental tone.
"Is your presence required in the cockpit Captain Derringer?" Tracey asked pointedly.
"Not until about an hour from our destination First Mate Motai," he replied.
"Then your presence is needed in the bedroom. You'll be released in approximately three days and seven hours."
James did not argue with anything that followed.
James had been mostly correct in his assessment that the Horizon could easily evade any kind of conventional detection. He had however made one slight miscalculation that made him feel incredibly stupid. He initiated reentry and immediately aborted it. The heat bloom their ship would give off would absolutely show up on every detection suite on that hemisphere. He immediately thought of a solution that would unfortunately require nearly six hours of re-tuning the ship's engines and computer. Most of that process could be automated, and it was easy enough to set down on an unpopulated section of the moon. Tracey was acting like a little kid on a snow day. As soon as he'd set the computer to work, he and his lover grabbed their goggles and leapt out the airlock into the lunar dust. She'd watched videos of the very first moon landing. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bouncing in their bulky space suits. They didn't have the suits, but they could bounce just fine. The low gravity was only half the fun for her though. The stark pale landscape was gorgeous. It was a mercy however that their clingsuits and skin refused to allow adhesion of most kinds, because lunar dust had been notorious for sticking to everything.
Eventually, the modifications required James' direct intervention and he was forced to return to the ship. Tracey stayed outside for a while longer. Finally, they were ready to leave. He promised to take her back on their way out.
The maneuver he had planned was tricky in the extreme, and required more precision than any human pilot or human designed ship could have delivered. James selected a landing site from among a list of unpopulated locations. The one nearest to Harold's location was in death valley. James lined the ship up and pointed retrograde. He brought the ship to a dead stop. It dropped like a brick. With controlled burns from the ship's landing thrusters, he kept the speed below those that would give off enough heat to render them visible. They would appear to be no more than normal atmospheric temperature fluctuations. Finally, as the sandy ground rushed up at them, James fired a long burn, and brought it in for a smooth landing.
Tracey had separated her mind from James during the descent, and for once he'd actually been so focused he hadn't noticed. Only after did he learn just how unnerved she'd been by the impossible trick.
"You didn't think I could screw that up did you?" he pressed.
"I'm not a great flier okay? Old habits die hard I guess."
"You're okay. Seriously, I was more worried about getting spotted than crashing."
"It's fine. I'll just turn my senses off when you're landing from now on."
James sighed mentally. "Come here, Love." He pulled himself out of the cockpit and gestured. "Sit." She backed away a step and shook her head. "Come on."
She reluctantly took the seat. James had needed a moment to calibrate the EM shielding in any case, tuning it to the atmosphere so they would stay invisible. That task complete, he sat in a passenger chair, strapping himself into it before more or less leaving his body behind. His mind had taken up nearly complete residence with Tracey. What he did next left her reeling. It was more than instruction. He poured hundreds of hours of flight experience into her head. Not in the literal sense though. Instead, he gave her an almost instinctive sense of what would make the ship do what she wanted.
"Whatcha waiting for?" he asked. "Get us airborne."
She didn't answer, rather she simply redoubled her focus. The throttle lifted exactly enough to initiate a smooth climb into the air. As she experienced each part of the flight, James extracted a piece of himself, until she was flying the ship entirely on her own. The token presence he maintained in her mind was in case of an emergency. By the time she realized his lack of assistance, she had relaxed and was beginning to enjoy the experience. He let her fly for the remainder of the trip. They had timed their arrival with the cover of dim evening light. Tracey fired shielded landing thrusters and brought them in for their second smooth landing that day.
"Do you think we can get away with our suits?" Tracey asked, knowing the answer already.
"Not unless Harold has been breaking all the rules," James replied, confirming her understanding.
"I don't suppose you packed us anything other than clingsuits?"
"In the bedroom." He followed her there, pulling a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, in addition to sturdy boots.
Tracey selected a pale blue crop top and a matching pair of jeans and boots. In addition to the outfit, James retrieved a credit chit containing nearly two-hundred thousand credits, accumulated from his ongoing trust and what parts of his Gordon Co. salary he didn't reinvest in the Prometheus Division, which wasn't required, but was the norm. The small device contained a veritable fortune by nearly all standards. He didn't anticipate the money would be needed during their short stay, but as always, he believed in being prepared.
The pair made their way out of the ship and began picking their way through the surrounding forest at a speed only they could. Just a few months after Harold had arrived on earth, he'd sent word that he'd purchased a plot of land and begun constructing a home he planned to live in with his sister and her family. They'd moved into it only three months before, which had been a deciding factor in the timing of James' trip. Only twenty minutes later, they had covered the intervening distance and arrived at the luxuriant home under the cover of a nearly completely obscured moon.
Tracey had known Harold for longer than James had, and though she was excited to see him again, James could see her true draw was to meet Harold's as yet undefined extended family. He hoped fervently that no one had been watching the forest in the pale moonlight, because they would have appeared as wraiths, moving like predators even in their still human looking skin. They moved up to the house and climbed the staircase up to the porch with silent leaps. At the door, they both seemed to realize that the speed they'd been moving at would need to be avoided for the duration of this visit, and they grinned at each other, smoothing each other's hair and outfits from the slightly wild appearance they'd acquired.
Two knocks from Tracey, and the house inside erupted in chaos, though only to them. The sound of tiny feet scrambling to get a look at the visitors they'd no doubt been forewarned of made Tracey smile. James was less thrilled. He'd had precious little experience with kids, but he put on a warm smile in any case.
"Molly, Caily," a female voice chastised. "Let me get the door." A moment later, the owner of the voice pulled the door open and blinked in surprise. She was plain faced, brown hair and eyes, with two lookalike twin girls bouncing with excitement behind her. "Well. He didn't say you both were so…" she trailed off, but from the fluttering of her heart, James could guess her sentiment. Traveler skin was smooth, lacking pores or any other perceivable texture other than hair. James could guess what she was seeing. Two unnaturally perfect faces, flushed slightly from exertion atop the slender physiques of career sprinters. In Tracey's case, she had been beautiful before the transition.
"I'm James," he said, stepping forward and offering his hand, breaking the spell.
"Sarah," she replied, accepting the handshake and smiling pleasantly. "These are Molly and Caily, my little monsters." She tickled each one in turn as she introduced them, inciting giggles. They each looked to be around the eight to ten year mark.
"Pleased to meet you all,"
"I'm Tracey. Do you guys like hide and seek?"
If it were possible, the two little girls seemed to vibrate with excitement at their new friends. They bolted, presumably to go and find places to hide. Sarah laughed. "You'll never find them," she promised, though James knew with certainty that there was no place in that admittedly huge house they could hide from he or his partner.
"Come on in you too. Uncle Harold has been raving about his scientist and hiking enthusiast friends for days. I just smile and nod. It all sounds like gibberish to me."
James filed this piece of information and began to build on it, cataloging a list of fictitious stories to recount of hikes, and even a few mountain climbs, feeding Tracey a constant stream of the data.
He laughed. "Don't let him fool you. It is gibberish. Quantum physics makes about as much sense as eating soup with a fork. That's what makes it so fun!"
"More power to you I guess."
"You guys have a minute to find a good place to hide. There will be tickles inflicted upon those foolish enough to get caught." Tracey's smile was euphoric, and widened when the girls giggled maniacally.
James kissed her on the cheek while Sarah was looking ahead and away from them. She led them into a huge living room containing three men and two women. James quickly identified Harold, who grinned ecstatically at him, and Evelyn, his sister who he had seen a few pictures of.
"James, Tracey," Sarah began. "You already know Harold obviously. These are my mom and dad, Evelyn and Daniel. My husband Mike. And my sister in law Charlie."
Evelyn greatly resembled her pictures, even faced, a little on the heavier side with brunette hair and a gracefully aging face framing brown eyes the same color as her children's. Daniel, her husband, was a corpulent but excitable looking man who smiled widely and invitingly at the newcomers. His hair matched the color of his children more closely than his wife's did. Mike was possessed of a combination of features from his parents, though he had taken good care of his body. Muscles could be spotted beneath the button up shirt he wore. Charlie was the black sheep, almost literally. James could smell hair dye on her black hair, highlighted with dark purple strands, which matched the gradient purple eyeshadow. She was nearly as skinny as James and Tracey were, and black clothes hung loosely on her.
"She's gorgeous," Tracey thought to him, before she could stop herself.
James couldn't help but agree.
"So happy to finally meet all of you!" Tracey gushed.
"I heard you already met my two little nuclear reactor, great nieces," Harold said, standing and extending his arms for a hug.
James embraced the man. "They do seem catastrophically close to meltdown. Hope you guys have radiation suits."
This elicited a chuckle from Mike. "We do frequently discuss bottling their energy. It would rival the current market rates."
"No doubt," James agreed, pulling away from Harold. "It's good to see you."
"You as well," the other man replied.
"Ten seconds," Tracey called, and two more giggles could be heard by the two Travelers in the room.
"I'm gratified to see you riling them up before bed," came the deep voice of Daniel, coupled with an equally deep laugh. "Payback has never felt so sweet." He glanced fondly at his son and daughter. "Welcome of course. Are you hungry? Beer?"
"We ate before we hiked up here," James replied easily. "I'll take that beer though. Thank you." They could eat if they were so inclined, and would before the visit was over, but there was no need for it at that moment.
"Good man." Daniel stepped from the room and began rifling through the fridge in an adjacent room.
"Save me one Daniel," Tracey called. "I have tiny people to hunt."
Tracey did her best impression of an evil laugh and rushed from the room.
"You said you hiked up here?" Charlie asked curiously, her soft voice at odds with the sharp edged look she had achieved.
"Yeah. Figured you guys wouldn't want us tearing up your pretty lawn with landing feet and thrusters. Our ship is about eight kilometers out. We found a little clearing in the forest where no one will bother it."
"You hiked eight kilometers in a dark forest?"
"Not the whole way," James lied smoothly. "There was a bit of light out when we started off."
She smirked. "You guys are nuts."
"Oh completely," James agreed with a chuckle. "All astronauts are insane."
"I'd heard."
Daniel returned with the beers and handed one to James, placing another on the table for when Tracey returned. She was stalking through the house, deliberately avoiding the location the children had chosen for their hiding place. James could see that Tracey would let them win this round, then catch them in the second round, just to keep it interesting.
"You want to see the lab?" Harold asked.
Evelyn groaned and muttered something meant to be under her breath, but James heard clearly as "damn lab."
"Love to." He followed the other man from the room and into what might have been a garage, and was actually likely constructed as one before Harold converted it into the space it became. It was clean and organized, much as his lab on Valhalla station had been. There were a variety of instruments and terminals present, though not as many as when he'd been under Gordon Co's employ.
"This is impressive," James said sincerely. "How'd you manage to get nuclear filaments?"
"I have a friend in the industry. I also have a bit of a reporte, so it wasn't too much red tape."
James nodded. "Like I said. Impressive." He moved further into the room and tapped a control on a console. His eyes narrowed. "This is really close. How'd you get this?"
Harold peaked around him to see what he was talking about.
"Oh. It's all theoretical. I don't have the facilities to test it."
"Just math?"
"Just math. Haven't worked like this since I was in my twenties."
"May I?" James asked, gesturing at the console.
"Please!" Harold replied, grabbing a chair and offering it to him.
He sat and began keying instructions to the terminal. In just a few minutes, he had added corrected formulas and some of his practical data.
"That makes sense!" Harold said excitedly. "I missed the interaction between thirteen and fifteen."
James shook his head in surprise. "I'm frankly impressed that you managed this without practical experimentation. I tried to tell you that you're still needed."
Harold sighed and dropped onto a stool. "And how many axes have you resolved?"
James bit his lip, then replied sheepishly. "Seventeen. Just a few months ago."
"And how close are you to eighteen?"
James hung his head in mock shame. "A month. Maybe."
"Uh huh," Harold said pointedly.
"I got lucky with eighteen though," James argued. "It'll take a decade of computations to resolve nineteen and probably longer to do twenty."
"James, you're everything I am and more. I'm just happy to see you've come so far. You're so confident. And Tracey… Well… She's lovely as always. You both seem very happy. Angelichem her work?"
James nodded. "Gordon gave her the go ahead. She has layers and layers of strategy at play. I practically had to drag her kicking and screaming to get her to step away from it for this trip. Thank goodness for Luke or she never would have agreed."
"That's very in character for her. I'm honestly surprised at the shrewdness though. There was a bit of a back and forth for a few months. Her stuff would pull ahead, and then a competitor would swoop in. Things seemed to have settled a bit for now though."
James grinned and shook his head.
"She's got something cooking?"
James nodded. "Can't say much more."
Harold returned the grin and nodded. "Can't wait."
James heard a squealing laugh from somewhere in the house, marking the end of the second round of hide and seek. Tickles were clearly plentiful.
"Alright. Your momma says bedtime. How about Trace gets you ready and tells you a story?"
"Yes yes yes!" they chanted, thrilled with their new friend.
James chuckled, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Harold. "Tracey playing with the girls," he explained.
"That's one thing I wish I could have," Harold admitted somberly. "The telepathy."
James didn't bother bringing up the old argument.
"I've made up a room for you guys," Harold explained, his brief melancholy passed. "I know you don't need it, but it's there."
James nodded. "We'll sneak out and back to the ship once you're all asleep. I need to run some diagnostics. I had to do a kind of tricky maneuver to get us downside without turning into a heatbloom on every detection grid in the western hemisphere."
"I wondered how you would manage that. I half expected you to disembark and hire a shuttle."
"No need. I did a flat drop."
"Actually flat? What's the acceleration time on the ship?"
"We went from orbital to dead stop in 427 milliseconds."
Harold whistled. "I'd love to see it," he said.
"Should be safe enough on the ground. I didn't design it for a breathable atmosphere. Cutting the atmospheric processor saves a lot on power and mass."
Harold nodded. They each sipped their beers for a few moments, each contemplative. James finally broke the silence.
"I know you came up with that silly hiking cover. How much do they know?"
Harold sighed. "I had a conversation with Gordon before I left. He tried to convince me to stay. When he couldn't he promised that I'd always have a place there. He also told me that I was welcome to talk to my family. To offer them a place. I'm… On the fence."
James nodded. "I know it's a huge decision. Of course, they have the benefit of not having preconceptions and fears. Ignorance is bliss."
"I know for myself, I've lived my life. Evelyn would probably feel the same way if I asked her. Daniel too. But Mike? Sarah? Charlie? The twins? How can I not offer them the choice?"
"If I had to guess based on my first interactions with them, Charlie is going to be an instant yes. Mike and Sarah will be hesitant, but they'll say yes eventually. I don't know what they'll say about the twins. They don't seem overly protective."
"Their answer might surprise you," Harold said sadly. "You know why I noticed the shift in the medical community?"
James' heart sank as he guessed. "Which one?"
"Both," Harold replied. "They didn't catch it until the twins were born. A little genetic quark. Both of them have immune deficiencies. It's cost a small fortune to keep them healthy, and even then, they still have episodes where hospitalization is necessary."
James suddenly felt weak. He slumped back in his chair. "You'd never guess from watching them."
Harold nodded. "There are days where I hate myself for not telling them. But I'm not even sure Gordon would authorize it for children. He's made exceptions before, but only in dire circumstances."
"Immune failure is dire Harold."
"They aren't in failure yet, but yes. You're right. Of course you're right."
James adopted an earnest expression. "Do you want us to talk to them?"
Harold covered his face and spun in his chair as he released an exasperated sigh. "I shouldn't say yes. It should be my responsibility. But yes. I'd be endlessly grateful."
Somewhere in a brightly decorated room, Tracey told two small girls a story of monsters and heroes, while absorbing knowledge of their poor health. Her heart broke in concert with her partner's.
"I'd be happy to," James said, reaching out a hand and placing it on Harold's shoulder. "Do you think we could get an excuse to get them alone?"
"They never leave the girls. One of them always stays close. Maybe you and Tracey could convince them to go out and breathe. A double date?"
James grinned. "That sounds nice. I can't remember the last time either of us bothered with such mundane measures. Trace likes the idea. Her head has gone soft as a marshmallow."
She jabbed him mentally at his teasing, and he sent her amusement.
"How's your piloting license look?" Harold asked.
"Maxed out. Between my military flight hours and my civilian ones, I have enough credits that I can fly just about anything with a thirty minute refresher. Why?"
Harold grinned. "I'd been saving up for this. There's an aerial obstacle course that was just put up about three hours away. You can rent some classic jets, ninth gen, from the 2080s, and have automated pilots run the course for you. But if you sign a waver and meet the licensing requirements, you can fly it yourself. Four seats per jet. I was going to take the girls for a few days and kick the overworked parents out. But it occurs to me that you might be able to generate some added thrill? Mike is a huge plane enthusiast, but with everything going on, he never got to go after his own license. He has about thirty hours."
"I'd be delighted. Perfect opportunity."
"I'll call tomorrow and move the scheduling around. See if they have an earlier slot. Don't mention anything until I get it sorted."
James nodded, and the pair made their way back out to the living room.
My upload schedule is Sundays. Unless otherwise specified. Or I get extremely distracted with life and stuff. Oof. Sorry about the delay in posting. I'm posting the two chapters I missed, plus one bonus chapter for my lapse. Enjoy! Posts will go back to the regularly scheduled Sundays now.
Credit for the Cover Art goes to my wonderful friend 𝐿𝒾𝓁𝓁𝒾𝓉𝒽.
This Chapter uses no generated content.
Story content for the early chapters written with the assistance of Chat GPT. Later chapters use less and less generated content. This story started as a kind of experiment. The results were good at first, but they began to drop off as the machine began to deviate further and further from my vision for this story. I'm sharing this information freely.