Blue Rubicon

By Terry Ann Brace

In the year 3008, Theresa Bray woke up from an unexpected cryonic suspension from the year 2015. Theresa Bray finds out that most of the water on Earth is contaminated. Theresa wants to join Earth's federation to collect freshwater from the Andromeda I Galaxy. A former spaceship engineer who is now a whore gets Theresa into the federation. She also has one of her brothers insert a dead captain's brain implant in Theresa's brain to get her up to speed with the times. Theresa finds out she isn't who she thinks she is, and some people aren't who they seem to be either. During her years in the federation, Theresa Bray gets curious if her husband was cryogenically suspended too. She finds the base station where she was cryogenically frozen. It is called the Cryo-Gyro. Instead of finding her husband's cryo-pod, she finds something else. When the water is collected from the Andromeda I Galaxy, most of the crew gets infected with a virus. The virus has a collective consciousness and wants to get to Earth. Theresa Bray teams up with other forces of the universe to destroy the virus before it reaches Earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642140736

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Blue Rubicon

Terry Ann Brace

Copyright © 2018 Terry Ann Brace

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64214-072-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64214-073-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

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

Acknowledgments

I thank my husband, my mom, and my dad for supporting me no matter how unique my decisions are in life. My husband has held a lantern for me in a dark forest. He has shown me the paths in life to take, which helped me avoid the pitfalls along the trail of life. In my journey down the paths of life, I have come across many names, faces, personalities, and, sometimes, personas. I thank them for inspiring me to put their essence into the characters of my novel. During one path of my life, I found God and I thank him for giving me the ability to write.

I thank Walter Pilger for encouraging me to get my novel published. I give special thanks to my agent Elliot Butler and my coordinator Olivia Marr at Page Publishing for helping me get my novel published. I thank Jay Yozviak at Photography by Jay for an exquisite photo shoot for my novel. I also thank anyone who helped in putting their hard work into collating my novel.

Chapter 1

What the Future

I woke up to a vision of black to gray and then light. The sounds of doctors and medical equipment echoed in the room. All of a sudden, everything came into focus. An Asian doctor was looking at my vitals from a monitor projected in the air.

You’re up, finally, said a voice next to me.

I sat up. My eyes focused on a girl close to my age lying on a levitating gurney next to me.

I thought I was dead! I gasped. I remember having cancer!

Well, you were obviously cryogenically frozen, she said.

What year is it? I asked her.

It’s 3008, she said.

I died in 2015, I stated. I’m 1,026 years old.

The technology is really advanced now, she said. The doctors said to me that there are flying cars, spaceships, teleportation, and the discovery of galactic wormholes.

Galactic wormholes? I asked.

Yeah, wormholes, she said. A doctor explained it to me. It’s like creating a hole through a wrinkled sheet. It’s an ancient technology that wrinkled the fabric of space. There are preexisting ones, but scientists are working on making the wormholes themselves. We can go through light-years of space in a matter of days. Scientists discovered a large freshwater ice field in the Andromeda I Galaxy. The discovery might solve the water problem here on Earth.

"What about the other water sources in this galaxy?" I asked.

Scientists discovered most of them are a sea of heavy metals due to asteroids. It’s too toxic for humans to drink, she said. Processing all of it would be impossible because the teleportation computers can only handle so much matter.

What will become of us?

I overheard one of the doctors . . . we are going to be slavers in the mines.

We are medical marvels to be thrown in the mines?

Unfortunately, yeah, she sighed.

I don’t want to become a slaver.

What is your name?

Mrs. Theresa Bray.

You were married, huh? she asked.

How did you know I was married?

I see you have a wedding ring on.

Oh my god, yes, I stressed. Have you seen my husband?

No, nobody has, she said. I asked the doctors before if they saw your husband. They told me they didn’t see him on the base station where they took us from.

A base station? I asked.

We were cryogenically frozen on a base station called the Cryo-Gyro, she said. I’m surprised that your muscles didn’t atrophy like mine. I’m stuck lying down for now.

If I can move, I’m not staying here, I said.

Where are you planning to go? she asked.

Anywhere but the mines, I stressed.

Good luck, she said.

What is your name? I asked.

Jenna Hanley, she replied.

Nice to meet you, Jenna, but I have to go, I said.

When the doctors left the room, I snuck out. I found a scrub closet with clothes from a doctor and put them on. I took the belongings out and put them on a shelf. I found something that looked like a gun. The writing on it read Vanlaz Laser Pistol.

That explains what that is, I said to myself. It will come in handy.

I came out of the room calm and followed the signs reading Elevator. I walked up to the elevator.

State your destination, it said.

Um, ground level, I said.

The doors opened. It took me to a waiting room where people were sitting in chairs and looking at a screen projected in the air.

The water crisis is at hand. Starship captains and scientists are still finding a way to solve this never-ending water problem, a news reporter said.

I walked outside to find hover cars flying about. I walked out across the street to the sidewalk. I found myself face-to-face with the Statue of Liberty. I looked down to see the old rubble of New York. It looked like an earthquake decimated the city.

They built a new city on top of an old one, I said to myself. The poor were left to rot in the bowels of the city, and the rich raised high and mighty above them.

My attention snapped when I heard voices.

She’s right there! yelled the familiar Asian doctor with two guards.

We see her, Dr. Wong, a guard replied.

I ran until I found an escape route. I jumped onto a roof of an old skyscraper. I kicked the door in and ran down dozens of flights of stairs. I found St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cathedral was falling apart, but it looked like the religious poor were trying to restore it. I went inside and walked up to a statue of Jesus. I touched the statue’s cheek.

What am I doing here? I asked it.

I sat down on a pew and fell asleep.

Chapter 2

Whore Are You

In the morning, I woke up with no one around. A girl entered the cathedral. Her high heels over fishnet stockings echoed off the walls of the cathedral. She was dressed like a cyber Goth. She had red and purple hair and a black leather dress. Her pink faux feather scarf was draped around her neck. She walked up to me.

I’m here because I am a whore, she said. What are you here for?

I’m here because I am out of place and out of time.

What do you mean?

I’m one of those people who were frozen in a base station.

Yeah. I saw your corpse on the AVS.

AVS?

Air vision screen, she said. It works by light bouncing off particles in the air. Don’t worry, the particles are cleaned in the hospital.

She changed the subject.

So did you see the light?

What light?

When you were dead.

No, just black.

So we don’t have an afterlife?

My soul could have been trapped inside my frozen corpse.

True.

Do you think I am going to hell because I am a whore?

No, Jesus took pity on whores during his time.

What is your name? I asked her.

Georgahna Whitlock, she said. What’s yours?

Theresa Bray, I said.

I can help you. I can get you food and water and get you up to speed with things, she said.

How are you going to get me up to speed?

My brother Galen is a brain surgeon, she said. He can implant a microchip into your brain by molecular teleportation or beam it into your brain. My other brother Seth is a computer programmer. He can get you an account and the credits you need to survive. Come, follow me to my apartment.

We rode in a flying car to her apartment.

How does this car fly?

By the repulsion of the electromagnetic field of the Earth.

That’s so cool.

She lived in a space needle. Her apartment was spectacular.

Why don’t you have a kitchen?

Because stoves and microwaves are of the past, she said. The food we have is replicated.

How does it work?

We buy element cubes to put them into the replicator. An element cube has all nonradioactive elements in it. This is put in the replicator. The replicator computer combines the elements to form food.

Holy shit! I said in awe.

You get paid pretty well. Don’t you? I asked her.

Captain Edwards got me this apartment. He’s my best customer, she boasted. "You know, I formerly worked for the federation. I’m a whore, but a smart one. I couldn’t hack the federation. Captain Thiaxston was such a hard ass. I was an engineer on his ship. One day, I forgot to change an ionic exchange unit coupling for the power core because I was busy. Later that day, the old one blew and almost killed someone. If the captain was at a higher light speed, it would have happened. He gave me a tongue lashing and put me in the brig for five days."

Her brother Galen was brushing his teeth with an ultraviolet ray toothbrush. He came out of the bathroom. He was a thin man in his early forties. Thick black glasses covered his brown eyes. His hair was blond and spiked.

Oh my god, you are her! he exclaimed. You’re the woman who was cryogenically frozen. Well, I am the doctor who got your brain synapses going. You didn’t see me yesterday. I had the day off when you escaped the hospital.

She needs to get up to speed with things around here, she said. "Maybe you can put that brain implant in her head."

Captain Adam Aaronson’s microchip brain implant? he asked.

Yes, Georgahna said.

I’m assuming he’s dead, I said.

Yeah, she said.

And how did he die? I asked.

Let me explain to you what I know, she said. "He was one of the guys who was all go for the water project. The captains are going to transport the contaminated water off this planet and replace it with new water from the ice fields of the Andromeda I Galaxy. The contaminated water will be transported to the Sun to be disintegrated. Most of the water is processed by reversed osmosis or replicated these days.

One day, there was a ship following Adam’s ship. I followed them into the ice fields. After a while, one ship came out of the ice fields and the other did not. I went to investigate. I found Captain Aaronson’s body decapitated in an ice cave. The space glacier was so large it had its own earthlike gravity. In the cave, there were carved writings on the wall. There was also a wide carved staircase that led up in the cave. At the top, there was a pedestal with a vial on it. I got scared, and I took the head of the captain. I thought his brain implant would contain the memories of what happened to him.

Did you mark the coordinates of the cave? I asked her.

No, I was too scared, she said.

So are you going to go through with the procedure knowing this? Galen asked.

Yeah, I want his knowledge, and I want to know what happened to him too, I stressed.

The other brother Seth walked in from the front door. He was heavyset, had brown eyes, and had dark brown hair. He spotted me.

Holy shit, it’s the woman from the base station! he exclaimed.

Yeah, dumb ass, she snapped. Can you give her an identity?

Yeah, cake, he said.

Well, we are going back to the hospital you escaped from, Galen said.

We got into his hover car, and he flew me to the hospital. He took out his laser knife and cut my forehead. Drips of blood rolled down my face.

Hold the towel over your face.

You should have let me know you were going to do things this way.

This woman has a severe laceration of the face. I need to fix her up, he said to a registered nurse.

Fine, I’ll register her later, she said.

He took me into an operating room.

I have to put my scrubs on, he said.

Ten minutes later, he showed up again with scrubs on. He used a dermal stimulator to heal my face.

Get on the table and put your head where the three panels are going to come down. I did, and he locked the three panels into place.

Do I need to be put under?

Nope.

He grabbed a digital notebook and began punching something into it.

Watch as I do my magic, he said. Now hold still.

He held his rubber gloved hand out with a one-half inch by one-half inch microchip in it. It disappeared.

Now it’s inside your head, he said. Next, I will connect your neural net to it.

There was no pain at all.

Done.

That was it? I gasped.

Yes. Most diseases have been cured with molecular transfer teleportation for the upper-class citizen, he said. The pathogen is screened out by a computer. The main killer now is water contamination. You can’t screen a whole ocean, lake, or underground aquifer. Also, there are not enough scanners to scan millions of people who have water-related pathogens in them. That’s why the captains and the scientists came up with transporting contaminated water to the Sun and bringing back freshwater to Earth from the ice fields from the Andromeda I Galaxy. A lot of the starships are being converted to tanker ships.

What if the space ice is contaminated? I asked.

Mankind is in trouble, he said.

Maybe I can help by joining Starfleet, I stated.

Maybe, he said. It’s expensive. My brother Seth can help you with that. Also, it’s who you know and who you blow. I guess my sis can help you with that. It’s going to take you a year of flight school and a year studying water quality lab to get where you want to go.

We went back to Georgahna’s apartment.

Do you remember anything? she asked.

I remember some of that guy’s life, I said. The last part of his life is blurry.

So who killed Captain Aaronson? she asked.

"All I can