Rescuing the Future: A Naomi Kinder Novel

By Vincent Miskell

Naomi Kinder’s saving the solar system from a black hole incursion makes her the most-celebrated hero of 2097, but a capsule from 2313, teeming with new technologies and warning of the future nanobot invasion of the Earth, challenges Naomi, her Russian-Belgium lover Leo, and her friend Bonnie to travel more than 200 years forward in time to prevent humanity’s destruction.

Meanwhile on a future Earth, mankind battles for its very survival while forces on Luna and Mars consider "sanitizing" the solar system. It will take a miracle to save the planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Miskell
• Release date: Jul 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465953308

Vincent Miskell

Vincent Miskell is a college instructor, a writer, and a poet. He is the co-author (along with his wife Jane) of OVERCOMING ANXIETY AT WORK and MOTIVATION AT WORK. His short fiction has appeared in ROSEBUD, INTERTEXT, ECLIPSE, and in the SF paperback anthology, the AGE OF WONDER. His poetry has appeared in THE LYRIC, POETIC VOICES OF AMERICA, and MOBIUS. In 2006, his poem "Screen Savior" was nominated for a Rhysling Award and his poems have been published in ASIMOV'S SF mag (Sept. and Oct./Nov. 2006 and March 2010). His poem, "Seven Dates with a Time Traveler," appeared online in the May 2007 issue of FROM THE ASYLUM. "Giving the World Away for Almost You" appeared in the December 2010 issue of AOIFE'S KISS. "Godspeed Inc," a novelette, begins the Naomi Kinder SF adventure series, which continues in the full-length novel, RESCUING THE FUTURE. Two more novels in the series are in the works.

Book preview

Rescuing the Future: A Naomi Kinder Novel

by Vincent Miskell

Copyright 2011 Vincent Miskell

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

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Also by the Author

Godspeed Inc.: A Naomi Kinder Adventure is a prequel novelette to Rescuing the Future.

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Disclaimer

Rescuing the Future is a work of fiction set in an imaginary universe, where names, characters, events, and things are used fictitiously. People, organizations, means of communication, and places in that imaginary universe are not meant to represent real places, real organizations, real means of communication, or real people in whole or in part. In fact, everything in this work’s imaginary universe is fictional. Any similarities or resemblances to real people, organizations, places, or things (to anything at all) in the past, present, or future are purely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Title Page and Copyright

License Notes

Also by the Author

Disclaimer

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Part II

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Part III

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Part IV

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Chapter 126

Chapter 127

Chapter 128

Chapter 129

Chapter 130

Chapter 131

Chapter 132

Chapter 133

Chapter 134

Chapter 135

Chapter 136

Chapter 137

Chapter 138

Chapter 139

Chapter 140

Chapter 141

Chapter 142

Chapter 143

Chapter 144

Chapter 145

Chapter 146

Chapter 147

Chapter 148

Chapter 149

Chapter 150

Upcoming Novels

About the Author

Appendix: From THE HISTORY OF MODERN INTERSTELLAR

Note on Esperanto and Ido

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Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future—Niels Bohr

The most difficult thing to predict is not the future, but the past—Russian proverb

The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion—Albert Einstein

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Part I

Back to Contents

~~~~~

CHAPTER 1

ARES CITY, MARS

08 OCT 2097: 1017 ARES LAB TIME

It's maybe a month after all the UN and Godspeed award ceremonies and net interviews for our heroic diverting a black hole out of the solar system. Now Leo and I get to take deep breaths, moon over our leisurely journey back from Umbriel, and think about our immediate future. Secretly to surprise Leo, I’m using a Godspeed handheld to map out my re-feminization body reconstruction, very similar to what Bonnie had done when she returned from Sweeper duty. Once I transmit the specifications, Godspeed Inc. will have to make good on its contract to restore some of my vital parts, the ones I’d temporarily sacrificed to be a little medically safer way Out West near Pluto’s old orbit.

But the future has other plans.

Bonnie Perez's beautiful, big-eyed face suddenly commandeers the handheld’s screen (apparently she knows some override codes I don’t). Naomi, we've had a huge breakthrough! she shouts. You and Leo need to get to the lab right away. Hurry, there’s a storm coming. Then she cuts the transmission, leaving my body specification files scrambled.

I swear. Then I smile. If Bonnie needs us at the lab, then we definitely want to be there.

Floating naked in a small clear pool of recycled water, Leo studies Q-drive schematics on the large screen of an outdated console computer. I try an old joke: Do you have a handgun in there with you? Or are you just happy to see me?

Leo's mouth drops open and his thick, dark eyebrows arch up. Naturally, I'm confusing him. Growing up in Belgium with Russian parents has given Leo many gifts, especially in languages and mathematics, but he is hopelessly out of touch with hundred-year-old nostalgia jokes.

We've got to get to the Ares Lab, right away, I add.

Ares Lab? Why? What's happening? he asks in his cute French-accented English.

I roll my eyes and feign impatience with his perfectly reasonable questions. I know he still holds a grudge against Godspeed, so I have to talk fast. Bonnie said they had a breakthrough. She couldn't tell me more over the transmission, so I assume it's something really big.

He nods.

So dry off and put on a survival suit, I say gratuitously. Then I go in search of my own suit.

~~~

Navigating a closed electric cart down the unpaved dusty roadways of Ares City on a clear, calm day can be a hair-raising challenge for the most experienced Martian cart driver. For non-native Martians like Leo and me in a wobbling open cart during an earsplitting dust storm, it’s a near-death experience. Swirling salmon-colored dust barely allows the pinhole blur of a pink sun to shine its faint image through our goggles. Seeing only a few meters on every side, even with the cart lights on, frightens the hell out of us. Suppose we collide with some above-ground structure or with another electric cart? What if we overturn? The roaring wind keeps lifting the cart, and without our weight, it would overturn or become airborne. Although we are both pilots, it feels like we’re flying blindly through a thunderous dark-red maelstrom without any instruments. And particle by particle, dust seeps into our goggles and into our survival suits—and into our mouths. If our breathing hoses clog, we’ll asphyxiate within minutes.

Damn global warming! I shout into the microphone, just to say something humorous and to spit some dust from my mouth.

"What?! What kind of warning?"

"No, I mean warming due to terraforming! You know, energizing the dust storms!" Of course, I’m exaggerating. Mars has always had dust storms.

Ugh is Leo’s response. Since he's driving, worrying about the warming effects of a few decades of planet tampering isn't high on his list of concerns.

Meter by hellish meter, it seems like a journey better done in cold sleep, but finally we make it to the Ares Lab complex, most of which occupies extensive underground excavations. After securing the cart in one of the complex’s protected ports, we check each other's air supply, using routine to shake off the remaining adrenaline jitters. Both blue indicators look good, and we stash the breathing gear before stepping into a clear-plastic elevator.

As usual, the small elevator falls too fast, but the trick is not to watch the stratified layers zooming upward. When it stops, Bonnie is standing right there with a huge perfect smile, hurriedly greeting and hugging us as soon as the door opens. Obviously, she’s excited, making us both nervous and excited too. Leo and I look at each other. We haven't ever seen Bonnie this edgy.

I can't say anything until we get into my office. But it's unbelievable! Then she fast-walks through a maze of taupe-colored corridors and wide-open, high-ceiling work areas overcrowded with techs. Hundreds of people fill up the large areas, with the brightly clothed techs going in and out like bees working a hive. Where did all these people come from? Godspeed must have imported a small army from Luna and Earth. The air crackles and burns with electricity, and undertones and overtones hum with such high- and low-frequency acoustics that my skin itches and my eardrums whistle and buzz. Most of these preoccupied drones and workers ignore our passing presence, except for a few nods and simple greetings of Director aimed at Bonnie.

Bonnie’s office is really a small lab, and she takes us straight to a computer console with a holovid projector. After a few seconds, the image of a blue-and-white cylindrical capsule about three meters long and about a meter wide materializes in front of us.

Leo involuntarily steps back. That's the capsule that almost collided with Sweeper Six. How did you get it? he asks.

Bonnie laughs nervously. She is so jittery she seems outright giddy. As she speaks, I wonder if she’s slept recently. She’s probably using nucaffeine or maybe something stronger to stay awake. One of the techs here saw your recorded vid in the Sweeper's logs and passed the information on. Godspeed Earth wanted us to take a closer look, so a satellite communications crew retrieved it before it got too far away from Mars orbit.

So what's in it? Where’d it come from? I ask.

Bonnie’s big eyes moisten and she swallows. Both classic signs of nucaffeine withdrawal, but maybe she’s anxious about something else. Then through a choking voice, she says, as though confessing to some shameful crime, The future.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 2

ESTES PARK II, KOLORADO

28 APR 2313: 1525 EP TIME

Romero was like an arm-weary boxer down for the long count on a godforsaken piece of rock terraformers tagged a transition planet, whose official name was Kolorado. He was domed near Estes Park II, doing nanocontrol jobs when he could get them. Mostly, he consulted on water-sewage configurations for born-again pioneers who’d busted their guts and credit accounts to live in remote scenic regions.

These little communities of 25 or so pioneers, usually fresh from the Outer Institutes and armed with the latest sims, nearly always underestimated control factors and created messes that threatened the general health and safety. Real life, especially nanolife, rarely behaved like a computer simulation. That's when they called Romero in—for clean up. And over the years, he’d developed the best all-around fix-it nanobots in 27 systems, customized to reprogram almost any nanobot configuration. His well-protected secret was he could communicate directly with his bots, using a modified visor array.

But he hadn’t done a job in several weeks and was looking to get off planet, off system—to go anywhere. His stomach gurgled, reminding him it was getting close to mealtime. For two weeks, he had been on a one-meal-a-day diet to conserve credits. He felt hungry almost all the time and barely satisfied even right after eating.

He knew his credit account approached max overextension. Then a minor miracle happened. A UN consulting grant he’d impulsively applied for years before popped up with an approval icon on his visor (blue background and wreath, white twinkling stars, very official). Over eight hundred thousand tax-and-tithe-free UN credits bleeped into his account when he blinked on the acceptance glyph. He ignored all the secrecy provisions of the contract, agreeing to everything without a moment’s reflection.

He was solvent again!

Romero was so excited he lost visual focus and the visor display started strobing like a decompression distress alarm. Fortunately, he always scrolled with the audio low or he would have bonged and blipped his ears deaf, too. Flipping up the visor, he powered off and stared at snowcapped mountains 30 kilometers in the distance and breathed in the deep forest smell of assorted firs. Kolorado is damn pretty, he thought. Then he headed back to his dome, energized by his new good fortune. He promised himself a good meal, and imagined what he might be eating at either of Estes Park II’s two food dispensaries.

It took him less than ten minutes to reach the grassy fields and gravel-covered dirt of the dome grounds. Then he saw them positioned in front of his dome. The four, dressed in UN powder blues with silver piping, stood unsmiling like a military detail come to arrest him for interplanetary sabotage or some other treasonable offense.

At first, he couldn’t make the connection and his mind accelerated through his last half-dozen jobs, searching his panicked memory for any possible foul-ups. Had his negligence somehow killed several hundred colonists?

Shuddering slightly, he slowed his pace and pushed back hard against a fierce impulse to run madly into the wilderness. Perhaps after a few days of hiding, he could join one of his client’s communes at least until this horrible trouble passed. But when he was about ten meters from them, the four saluted simultaneously. Peter Romero, the nearest one shouted. It was not a question. They knew who he was.

He answered softly, Yes?

As he moved closer, he realized they were a detachment from the elite UN Medusan Marine Corps, fondly known as the Stone Goddess Brigade. None was his size. Each stood at least a head taller, and even without help from her sisters, any one of them could have tossed him over his dome without mussing her hair.

The fact that they were all so breathtakingly beautiful—coffee complexions, French-braided platinum hair, marvelous genetically engineered bodies—made them all the more menacing. He felt as though beholding such quadruple beauty carried some enchanted and inescapable punishment. Naturally, the punishment must be death.

Or worse.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 3

ARES CITY, MARS

08 OCT 2097: 1138 ARES LAB TIME

Impossible, Leo says. This is a joke, no?

Shut up, Leo, I say gently, placing a restraining hand on his arm. Usually, Leo’s accent charms me to near ecstasy, but now I feel annoyed.

But, Naomi . . . .

I shake my head no.

Arnsdale, he says flatly, giving our private code word for bad or dangerous or we should leave without any attempt at context. We used this name whenever we wanted to escape some meeting or net conference. Leo would say, Naomi, Arnsdale is waiting for us. Or I would say, Remember, we have that meeting with Arnsdale? Or even, Arnsdale is in trouble. He needs us right away. We have to go.

I continue to shake my head.

For months, Bonnie and I teamed up in Sweeper Two, using special particle beams to mend the busted seams of space-time. But most of the time, we had nothing to do, so we shared all our memories, feelings, and thoughts in very close quarters. And without becoming physically intimate, we were as intimate emotionally as any lovers or perhaps even twin sisters could be. I know her facial expressions and gestures better than my own. She is deadly serious.

There is no doubt about its authenticity, Bonnie says. This is no hoax—though at first we were convinced it had to be. She swallows again, and then plunges ahead, The capsule’s origin is more than 200 years in the future.

But why would anyone send a capsule back in time? The past can't be changed, Leo says.

Bonnie nods. The techs believe this was an accident, a mistake.

Bonnie waves her finger at the holovid image, the capsule opens, and the outer shell vanishes. She waits for our reaction.

Leo and I freeze. The capsule is half filled with exotic-looking mechanisms, which are trance-inducing enough. But the other half of the capsule looks eerily biological, as though a good-size animal had been segmented into cubes and spheres for easy storage and covered with a tessellated translucent sheath. If this is a hoax, it’s a damn good one.

We are stunned into breathless silence at the images. Even Bonnie is stuck on pause.

Finally, I blurt out, What the hell is that?! meaning the biological part.

Bonnie forces herself to smile, but reverts to swallowing. It’s a human being, she says between swallows.

Why. . .? Leo begins, but even his own nascent question makes no sense to him.

Okay, Bonnie says, regaining her full voice. Here’s what the techs found out so far. Then she tells us about nanotechnology, nanobots, and traveling in T-space—whatever that is.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 4

ESTES PARK II, KOLORADO

28 APR 2313: 1602 EP TIME

Twenty minutes was all the detachment gave him to gather his gear and dissolve the dome. Two Goddesses hoisted and shouldered some of his equipment. Then they all hiked single file downward through the shadowy forest until they reached a sunny clearing on the shore of a deep-blue, stream-fed lake. A slight wind lazily rippled its surface, and Romero imagined a fish leaping into the crisp air and hitting the water with a plunk. He wasn’t sure whether Kolorado had many fish yet. But it was only a matter of time before bioengineered pike, perch, and trout thrived in the lakes and streams of Kolorado’s forests.

Until today, Romero had hated this backwater, backward, boring planet. Every day, he had scanned the nets for off-system work and cursed his bad luck to be so thoroughly stranded in this dull-green purgatory. He had been desperately eager to move on. Now, he didn't want to leave. I'm leaving this beauty probably forever, he thought.

The bullet-shaped, jet-black shuttle, resting half in and half out of the lake, was featureless except for the distinctive blue-and-white wreathed circle of the UN insignia. Romero followed the troopers as they stepped through a few inches of lake water. After they all climbed aboard, the Goddesses powered up the shuttle, and the five of them rose swiftly to an equally dark T-ship, waiting almost invisibly in orbit. The shuttle docked and the five transferred themselves and Romero’s gear to the ship.

On board, Romero ate voraciously. His stomach hurt from too much food, not too little, but he didn’t care. The hunger disappeared. Then the official mission briefing began. His duties were defined in a step-by-step fashion. But the briefing was so short and sketchy he worried that whole chunks of information were being withheld from him. There was no background data, no history or other context. He verbally reaffirmed the agreement anyway.

So that's it? he asked his briefer, Corporal Liliana Santana.

Yes, that’s it, Mr. Romero, Santana answered.

You can call me Peter, he said and smiled.

She shook her head no.

Well, at least drop the mister, then.

Okay, Romero, she said and moved forward closer to the pilot, leaving him isolated at one end of a long bench. At least his stomach still felt full.

In less than an hour, they were worming their way through T-space toward some new system with a planet dubbed XT4—this time, a planet without actual colonists. Instead, something else was there. Something maybe trying to communicate using apparently out-of-control nanobots.

This was where his eight-hundred-thousand-credit expertise came in. His job was to determine whether the bots carried a message or were a deliberate attack. So far, the alien nanobots had deconstructed several central habitats and, in the process, killed seventeen research specialists. But maybe it was accidental.

Maybe not.

Two hours after the briefing, Operations Specialist Corporal Amanda Teuton, approached him with a dozen titanium-plastic vials.

Mr. Romero, she said, I’m going to inject you with several megs of nanobots, which we call ‘blackbox bots.’ But I don’t want you to worry. This is SOP, standard operating procedure. It's just a precaution. I'll extract them when the mission is completed. We've already had our injections. Within minutes, she had injected all twelve vials.

Naturally, he knew how they worked. The nanobots would remain in stasis unless he were dead or dying. If suddenly dead, they’d reconstruct and resurrect enough of him to encode a final report. If slowly dying, they’d prolong his life at least by several hours—by days or even indefinitely if possible. Elaborate and expensive nanobots could do even more wondrous things, but Romero doubted whether the UN would waste any on him.

The Medusan lovelies, he knew, were brimming with bots, but probably not the standard blackbox ones. Their nanobots, called MRBs (military resurrection bots), would keep reviving and resurrecting them to continue combat—or whatever else they needed to do. Their primary mission was to bring him back alive with critical data about the alien nanobots, but for the first (but probably not for the last) time a detachment of Medusans failed.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 5

ARES CITY, MARS

08 OCT 2097: 1247 ARES LAB TIME

Leo and I watch what seems like hours of holovid images, showing models of T-space and the intricacies of nanotechnology and the workings of nanobots. Our mouths hang open, and our eyes protrude with perpetual astonishment. And our poor heads ache with technological shock, sensory overload, and lack of water.

Fortunately, Bonnie feels thirst too and retrieves three drinks from a cold storage unit and hands them around, along with some pre-packaged pretzel-bread snacks.

Wow! I say after a few gulps. How did you figure all that out in just a few months? I ask.

You saw the wall-to-wall techs as we came in—about 300 people?

I nod and bite into some pretzel bread.

Well, they’re only one shift out of three—though nobody works less than twelve hours a day. Godspeed has given this top priority and allocated its best resources and researchers. The research has been cranking every hour without stop for almost two months now. That's at least 75 human-years’ worth of research. Hundreds of experiments and simulations carried out daily.

Amazing, Leo says.

Unbelievably advanced technologies, Bonnie says. But that’s not why I told you to come here today. She waves her hand at the computer console. All this is just background—stage setting. The huge breakthrough today is with the message.

I’m about to ask what the message is, but Bonnie holds up her hand, stopping me.

It involves you two—and me.

You? Us? asks Leo. Not possible.

Bonnie shakes her head no, sweeping her long auburn hair from side to side. It is possible, she says. In fact, I need your firm commitment before continuing.

Leo scowls and swears almost inaudibly in Russian and French. Absolutely not! he says loudly. "We are done—retired. Finished. Godspeed can find other guinea pigs for whatever it is they want to do. They almost killed Naomi and me the last time I followed their stupid orders. You do whatever it is they want. But we are finished."

Leo, I whisper and squeeze his upper arm. Bonnie is our friend. Let’s give her a minute to explain.

He holds up one hand as if in surrender. He says loudly, Okay, since I am outnumbered.

Thanks, Bonnie says. Everything I’ve shown you so far is proprietary. You are still Godspeed employees. I don’t expect you to reveal this information to anyone—not friends, not relatives, and especially not to the UN—though we are sharing the nanotechnology with them. You know all this. She gestures for us all to sit down around a large table, and we all do.

Once she sits, I notice Bonnie’s face looks ashen and slightly teary-eyed. After wiping the moisture from her eyes, she continues, But the message itself is much more important than these advanced technologies. She pauses as though catching her breath and begins swallowing again. We Ares Lab monkeys, she says and smiles briefly, have come up with a plan to respond to the message. She pauses, then adds, I’m already fully committed to the plan.

She watches our faces to make sure we understand. She swallows again and says, I trust the two of you more than anyone on Mars, Luna, or Earth. She lets her statement settle in our heads for a minute.

The plan needs you two and me to succeed. She stares directly at Leo. And Leo, you are right to call us guinea pigs. We will be, and we may not survive. But we risk our destruction to prevent a much greater destruction.

I’m in! I yell. I have to know what the hell she is talking about even if it kills me. And apparently it just might.

Leo glares at me scornfully. But the scorn quickly dissipates as his face softens. Then he laughs out loud. "Okay, my love, I am in too," he says.

I feel relieved and jittery at the same time. Bonnie had better make this really good.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 6

T-SPACE

-0000 ∞

Romero usually slept through T-space trips, but he couldn’t even close his eyes without their popping open after a few seconds. His heart and mind raced each other, and his hands felt slippery with sweat. Perhaps, the whole thing was typical UN hyperventilation or some mix-up no one wanted to admit. Why send such a small secret contingent to face a potentially huge alien threat? Why not an armada? Was the UN afraid of provoking a war with unknown entities or just concerned with getting some bad netpress?

He felt unsure whether to be angry or frightened, so he was stuck on jittery. Did they really expect him to follow orders with so few details? He was no UN trooper. Okay, he was only a nanotechnician, but he was among the best. Didn't his large UN grant deserve more respect? More information? How did they even know for sure the damage was due to nanobots?

Nonchalantly, he slid along a metal bench toward the squad leader, Sergeant Rebecca Bhupal, who busily mulled over a colorful holomap. When he sat close enough to smell her phernomed cologne, he asked quietly, Is there more to this mission? I'm a little unclear about the background. Can you tell me what you think might be happening?

She looked up annoyed, stared directly into his dark eyes, and replied, I’m not at liberty to discuss the mission beyond what’s in your briefing file, Mr. Romero. Then she returned to her map and ignored him.

The exchange told him nothing, except maybe she thought he was a weak tool because he was non-military. Maybe they all thought he was the feeble link, the pain-in-the-ass civilian no one wanted to babysit. Or maybe they suspected he’d be the first casualty in an attack. The other NCOs, Santana and Li, just shook their gorgeous heads when he tried to catch their deep blue eyes with his persistent gaze.

His jitters grew worse. Romero wanted to back out—to say his agreeing had all been a mistake and they could take back the credits from his account. But he couldn't. He wouldn't admit to being such a coward, and he was too broke. Already, creditors had probably raided and reduced his credit balance. The Medusans weren’t about to reverse course and return him to Kolorado anyway. No, he had to go through with the mission even if it killed him.

To distract himself, he shifted his uneasy attention to the UN’s motives. He knew explorers had supposedly discovered intelligent alien life and artifacts before. In the end, it had all been netpress hype. Except for some exotic plants, nothing larger (or more intelligent) than a crayfish-like creature had ever been found—along with the usual microbes that seemed to abound on every hundredth planet or so.

The UN’s impressive military had only been deployed against wayward humans—the occasional rebellion by colonists with ideologically insane manifestos or against a sprinkling of T-space pirates, whose marauding careers were cut short after being surrounded by a dozen UN warships.

Shouldn't they have a few warships as escorts for this mission?

Since nothing made sense, Romero would have confidently bet the entire eight-hundred-thousand credits that some dumb-ass pioneer had accidentally misengineered a few megs’ worth of nanobots to go cannibal—and that the bots were not so dangerous or alien after all.

But he would have lost.

~~~~~

CHAPTER 7

ARES CITY, MARS

08 OCT 2097: 1520 ARES LAB TIME

"Around 2 a.m. this morning, teams of techs, cryptographers, and linguists assembled the entire message. Originally, it was voice recorded in some kind of Esperanto-Ido-English hybrid. Then encrypted and stored in the energy sheath surrounding the biological parts. A few hours later, after I met with the T-space and nanotech teams, we worked out a plan. An hour after that, the full Godspeed board gave its approval—but only if I and you two agree to take on the mission."

Bonnie stops and shifts out of lecture mode. You know, I waited hours more before calling you to let you sleep, she says as an aside. I may have even napped myself. I'm not sure. I can't remember the last time I slept in a real bed. Most of the teams have been awake for almost four days now, too.

Bonnie, I say, signaling her to get to the point.

What? Oh yeah, sorry. The message.

Wordlessly, we stare at her. Obviously, the giddiness is wearing off. Bonnie is close to passing out. I can't let that happen, at least not before she tells us what this is all about—what the message is.

Sip your drink, I say.

She gets what I mean. She drinks a little and then says, It’s a warning about the destruction of Earth.

In the future? Incredible! Leo's eyes widen and sparkle.

But not good, I say.

"Oui."

Right. First, it's arrived 200 years too early, Bonnie says. Second, even the narrator wasn't sure how to stop the destruction.

Third, we're supposed to stop it, right? I add.

Bonnie nods.

So, we are about to hear the infamous Ares monkey plan for saving the future Earth, Leo says sardonically. The one that will most probably end in our own destruction instead.

Let me guess what will cause the destruction, I say. It's T-space or nanotechnology.

Both. That's what I love about you two, Bonnie says, her speech noticeably slowing. You're always jumping ahead of me in my line of reasoning.

Push us out of the way any time you want, Bonnie. Just tell us the plan, I say.

Bonnie's big eyes flicker shut, but she takes a large gulp from her drink to stay awake. Godspeed is already secretly building a T-ship, she says. When it's done, we’re going to follow the capsule’s T-space trajectory backward into the future and stop the destruction of the Earth.

She closes her eyes and briefly nods her head toward her well-engineered chest. Then her head pops up, giving us a momentary exaggerated wide-eyed stare. But then her eyes almost close again. Haltingly, she murmurs as though already dreaming, I couldn't wait to tell you. I had to get you on board. She grunts a half laugh at her unintentional pun. She sits up straighter and tries again to shake off her sleepiness. We've got about a month to prepare. You two get started while I find a place to lie down.

I want to ask what she means by get started, and why she and Godspeed insist on including Leo and me in the Ares monkey plan. And why we just can’t create a message for the future, a warning in some sort of time capsule or in some other medium? But Bonnie is in no shape to keep answering questions, and anyway I can guess why they want us. It has something to do with our heroic celebrity status and our special expertise: we’re both pilots with sub-light and faster-than-light experience–who just happen to be missing the mandatory explosive UN brain implants. It doesn’t hurt that Leo has an advanced degree in some kind of energy physics, and I’m a whiz at electronics and computer architecture (I can usually fix anything with my magic hands). Obviously, the plan involves getting a whole FTL-ship built and launched without UN security discovering the plot.

Good luck, Bonnie, I whisper.

Bonnie, of course, is the third hero, credited with the plan to save Earth, Mars, and Luna from the black hole—the plan Leo and I implemented. Our celebrity status is what should protect us when the UN finds out what we’re doing.

Slowly, Leo and I get up. Sorry to get you into so much trouble again, I say, putting my arms around his neck.

Leo gives me his broad smile. Being with you is a perpetual adventure, he teases, as he brings his face down toward mine. My life would be far too dull without you, Naomi, he whispers, as he hugs and kisses me. So what choices do I have? he says between kisses. His accent is working its usual enchantment on me.

Bonnie’s breathing audibly deepens, and I glance across the table. She is clearly sleeping with her head down on the table. I don’t want to disturb her. Eventually, she'll wake up and find a cot or something.

I feel like raising the idea of a time capsule or stored warning for the future with Leo. But I already know the answer: 200 years is just too long. If