Chapter 1

“I don’t want to be a researcher! I want to captain my own ship!” I protested as only a ten-year-old can. I even managed a decent foot stomp.

I had read and re-read every true adventure tale I could find, including those that had to explain the sudden disappearance or demise of the captain at the hands of pirates.

Dad rolled his eyes meaning that I was skating on thin ice. Mom’s brow wrinkled like it always did just before she lit into me.

“We didn’t pay to have the testing and implants just so you could waste your intelligence. Do you know how many people would love to be half as smart as you are?” she asked, her voice getting shriller with each word.

Somehow, I managed not to crack a smile. This was an old and oft-recurring argument, and I’d figured out a year ago that having half of my intelligence would mean the person would still be above average intelligence.

My parents’ intellects rank in the top one-tenth of one percent of the population. They met at the top-secret government research facilities where they still work, primarily on advanced weapons design.

My siblings, a younger sister, two older brothers, and I all inherited that intellect. My siblings currently test in the top ten percent of the top one-tenth of one percent of the population. I rank even higher.

While not filthy rich, our parents are very well paid for their work and no expense was spared in our education and upbringing. The CC12 test, a computerized cerebral cortex assessment, is routinely given to all newborns approximately twelve hours after birth to assess their native potential.

Mine showed that I would end up high in the top one-tenth of one percent of the population, as did those same tests when done on my siblings. Our parents paid the extra expense to have the CC24 test done, which supported the conclusion of the CC12.

Thirty-six hours after birth, each of us had undergone minor surgery to implant two Class-A memory chips and a Class-I processor chip in our brains, followed by implanting “washed” differentiated cells in six pockets in our brains. The washed cells were able to be implanted into anyone regardless of sex, race, blood type, or any other genetic characteristics. These cells were differentiated to become active thought and memory centers to increase the functioning part of the brain. Technically all of the brain functions, but most of the brain isn’t actively involved in thought, learning, creativity, or memory. The implantation increased the active area of the brain by ten percent.

One of the memory chips contained all the important information: math, science, multiple languages, etc. The second chip was to facilitate long-term memory, creating a near-eidetic memory. The processor was just that. It sped up the learning process and the retrieval of data from the brain and chips.

The operation could have been done any time before our first birthday, but studies showed that the later it was done, the longer it took a child to learn to use it. Children who had it done at thirty-six hours showed no detectable lag in learning to use the processor. Most learned to walk and talk at a statistically significantly younger age and learned to read around age three.

For some reason, our parents also paid to have a genetic extrapolation done for us. Mine predicted that I would be 6’4”, capable of exceptional musculature, and quite handsome. Considering what my parents and grandparents looked like, that information wasn’t much of a surprise.

The CC24 test and genetic extrapolation were expensive, hence Mom’s complaint about spending so much money on testing and about me wasting my intellect.

Of course, the fact that I had two minor patents before I was ten strengthened her argument. I had a third that should be announced in a day or two, just after my tenth birthday, which was today.

All four of us kids attend the Confederation Advanced Studies Institute, a school for the extremely gifted. The CASI curriculum begins with the first day of a child’s schooling, no matter how young they start school, and continues through the equivalent of high school. I started at age three, already driving my parents to distraction with my constant bombardment of questions. I had already learned to read, and I read a lot. The questions I asked my parents were usually about something I’d read and didn’t understand.

The CASI curriculum is advanced enough and fast-paced enough that the last few years, what would usually be the equivalent of high school for normal students, was usually a college education.

Just like in college, students chose classes based on the degree they wanted to earn. Upon completion of the CASI curriculum, a student received a college degree in their chosen field and usually continued with post-graduate work. Ninety percent of CASI students earned at least a master’s degree. Sixty percent earned a PhD. Ten percent earned multiple doctorates. Even with the advanced curriculum, almost half of the students set an even faster pace for themselves by taking additional classes each semester or completing classes in less time than they’re scheduled for. The extra classes can be completed either in a classroom setting or via independent study.

Three years later

My parents took me to dinner to celebrate my graduation from the first part of the CASI curriculum, receiving eight different Bachelor’s Degrees, at age thirteen.

Nainsi, my girlfriend of one year, and her parents, accompanied us to my celebratory dinner. Not quite a year later, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, I received three master’s degrees.

When my two brothers graduated CASI, rather than getting an advanced degree and becoming researchers like my parents had hoped they would, both enlisted in the Navy, much to the chagrin of my parents. Yeah, there was lots of yelling both times.

Both parents thought my dream of being a ship’s captain was a young boy’s fantasy of adventure and derring-do. Rather than fight me about it, they indulged me, to an extent. They let me take courses specific to space travel such as interstellar navigation, battle strategies, and shop classes where I learned to operate a ship and repair damn near every important part of a ship. Those classes were the impetus for my first patents.

Our compromise was that I also had to take the courses they wanted me to take, courses to prepare me for life as a research scientist. As much as I hated to admit it, my parents did have a good reason to expect me to become a research scientist. The first time the school tested my native IQ, the lowest estimate was 219, and it was a struggle for them to agree on that because they didn’t like native IQs above 200! The adjustment was made by subtracting what they felt the implants added so they were only showing my native IQ.

Follow-up tests showed that theoretical physics, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering were the three fields where I could best exploit my aptitude. The fact that I had twenty-three patents by then didn’t help my argument to get my own ship instead of going into research.

Add to that the fact that my name is Jim Reynolds. I’m a direct descendant of my namesake, Jim Reynolds, aka Lucky Jim II, not that it means much anymore. The last descendant to earn the “Lucky” sobriquet died just over a thousand years ago. Everyone in the extended and extensive Reynolds family has their own theory as to why there hasn’t been another Lucky Jim. Some think the luck stopped when mankind reached out to planets beyond the Earth. Others blame it on the greedy Reynolds families who used genetic engineering to ensure the correct sequence of male, male, male, female children to trigger the luck.

I don’t understand the emphasis they put on that because the third lucky Jim was the eldest of only two children born to his biological father and mother.

Personally, I think it was the greed. Being a red-headed namesake and potential heir to the luck, I have carefully studied the lives of each man. Each cared about others, unselfishly risking their lives to save others on numerous occasions. All shared their wealth generously and disliked being considered lucky, although they eventually grew to accept it. I love the quote from the third Lucky Jim. “A Catch 22,” he commented. “To be Lucky Jim you have to want to not be Lucky Jim.”

I’ve also studied the lives of many “Lucky Jim” wannabes in the ensuing years. Most felt the luck was their due, eagerly waiting for it to kick in. Many were selfish, while others gambled away large parts of their family’s portion of the inheritance, expecting the luck to kick in and make them richer. Personally, I don’t think any of them deserved the luck, which is probably why they didn’t get it. I think the luck is somehow tied to their karma. I have no idea if my karma is good enough to qualify and honestly, I hope I don’t qualify.

The Lucky Jim thing is something else Mother constantly harps on me about. She expects me to be the next Lucky Jim and to develop something great for the human race.

When my brothers joined the Navy, my parents upped the pressure on me, and we finally reached another compromise. I agreed to do research for five years. If, after five years, I still insisted on “throwing away my future”, as my father termed it, he would help me buy my first ship. What was funny was that, by then, I had earned enough from my patents that I could afford my own ship, albeit a medium-sized one.

Upon completion of my first PhD at age fifteen, my parents took me out to dinner again. The stated reason was to celebrate my degree. Personally, I think they were also celebrating our agreed-upon compromise. Once again, I invited Nainsi and her parents to accompany us. Her parents begged off, explaining that their family had to deal with an unexpected family issue. When I expressed my concern and offered to help, they assured me that they could handle it. They just needed to do it right away.

Stepping out of our shuttle when we returned home, my jaw dropped, and I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Two shuttles away I saw Nainsi, draped all over some guy older than my parents. She was loosely wearing the beautiful silk robe I had given her for Christmas last year, one she usually wore right before and after we had sex.

When the shuttle hatch opened, she crawled into the shuttle. The man pushed gently against her like I had done frequently when we had sex, and she rolled onto her back. When he spread her legs, her red, swollen labia left no doubt as to what she’d been doing while we were at dinner. I heard my mother gasp.

The man was also wearing a robe, although I didn’t recognize it. From behind, we could see him open the robe when he pulled at the tie. As the shuttle hatch began closing, he crawled between her legs and plunged into her just before the hatch closed.

Dad told me later that he had put an arm around my shoulder and guided me back to our place since I’d been too stunned to move. I found out a few months later that the old man was some extremely rich guy. All I knew at the time was that I was heartbroken and pissed. She and I had talked about our future together and I thought she was serious. We had even discussed getting married once we turned eighteen.

I wondered how long she’d been seeing him behind my back, laughing at me mentally when I spoke of my love and a life together.

When I finally felt capable of talking to her parents civilly enough to ask what the hell had happened, I learned that they had moved away almost immediately after that night. They had even changed their com numbers, including Nainsi’s. With all the government’s privacy programs, it was impossible to track them down if they didn’t want to be found.

Trying to forget her betrayal, I threw myself into school, working feverishly on my second PhD, only stopping to sleep when I was too exhausted to continue. I became a recluse, and only my sister Trish had the courage to visit me in my lab/workshop, bringing me food and making me eat at least two meals a day. My first PhD had been in electrical engineering, the field and subject I chose so I could avoid alienating the entire staff of the school’s physics department.

Until I started on my second PhD, I had walked a fine line between the two main camps of physics theory. I could see where both were partially correct, and where both were partially wrong. Or both were entirely wrong, and a third theory was needed to explain what was known at the time.

I had read and digested thousands of books, papers, and published articles on physics, many dating to the very beginning, including the earliest Greek, Babylonian, Chinese, Indian, and Arabic scientists. I was trying to find a thread I could use to begin weaving a unified theory. I had chased down every imagined theory all the way back to the ancients, not that they had a comprehensive theory of physics ... or really ANY theory of physics. I was just looking for something ... anything ... to inspire me.

Looking through some of Albert Einstein’s written musings before he developed his partially correct theory of relativity, I found what I was looking for. His early written notes had been mostly forgotten since the thought process he had started had been quickly discarded in favor of his theory of relativity. Physicists knew that, if his theory of relativity was correct, then his earlier musings couldn’t be correct. Even Einstein had felt that way.

His early musings weren’t correct, far from it, but they provided me enough of an impetus to yank my thought process out of the confusing and dizzying circle it had been running in and gave me a direction.

I spent the next six months in almost complete isolation, tying together everything I felt should be included, including parts of both current and conflicting theories of physics. When my thesis was presented, it opened a proverbial shitstorm among theoretical physicists. I had done the unforgiveable, publicly pointing out, and proving, the flaws in both current theories, flaws the two camps were unsuccessfully trying to explain or correct. I had managed to pull threads from both current theories, several older theories, and my own new ideas to weave the fabric of a new theory, complete with hundreds of pages of mathematical equations guaranteed to cure the worst case of insomnia in all but a handful of the Confederation’s top mathematicians.

While said handful of mathematicians studied my work, and the two camps of physics theory tried their best to discredit me, I set out to prove my theory. A week before my eighteenth birthday, I took my parents, the admiral who had acted as my liaison with the Navy, and a panel of four who were still debating (read ‘trying to discredit’ here) my thesis for a ride in the small transport the Navy was letting me use to test my theory. The ship had originally been used to shuttle people down to the planet’s surface from huge interstellar ships that had to remain in orbit.

The Navy had no idea what I was doing with the ship, even after I tried to explain it. They only understood that whatever I was working on had to do with propulsion and would be revolutionary if it worked. With my parents pestering me to tell them where we were going, I just grinned and directed the ship away from the planet and then beyond the system’s heliopause.

“Hang on,” I said unnecessarily, since the ship had more than adequate inertial dampening. The impulse engines had kept us at maximum impulse speed for quite a while and the warp drive was warmed up. Seconds later, I engaged the warp drive. Due to the ship’s size constraints limiting the size of the power plant, small ships like this one could only reach a maximum of warp two. Some of the largest Navy ships could make warp five. The thrust-to-mass ratio of the ship and the engines, and especially the amount of fuel the engines consumed, were the practical limiting factors regarding how fast a ship could travel, and for how long. I heard gasps as we passed warp five, and then nine, and finally reached warp 9.995. Once there, I nodded to my android pilot, who toggled another switch.

The disorientation was fleeting, a second or two at most. When it ended and everyone had regained their bearings, the ship was coasting towards a different system in a different spiral arm of the galaxy.

“Where the hell are we and how did we get here?” the admiral demanded angrily.

“We’re approaching the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy,” I explained calmly. “I built the wormhole generator that physicists have been debating the feasibility of for centuries,” I announced excitedly.

Once I got the shaken admiral home, along with everyone else, my notes and the Navy’s ship were confiscated for them to study. My workshop was sealed and guarded by armed guards. I wasn’t even allowed access because I wasn’t eighteen yet and couldn’t qualify for a security clearance until I was. It pissed me off so much that I blew off the deal with my father, telling the government they could kiss my ass before I’d ever work for them again.

Days later, the day I turned eighteen, I filed suit against the Navy for taking my research. My parents had been afraid to file the suit for fear of retaliation by the government, especially at their workplace. The government tried to hush everything up, but I had already sent information about the existence of the wormhole generator to every top news outlet in the Confederation, explaining that the Navy had taken it away from me because I wasn’t eighteen yet, even though I had designed, developed, and built it. In addition, they hadn’t even mentioned compensating me for building the working model, or for the intellectual property they took. Plus, with no access to my notes and data, they left me hanging as far as being able to finish my PhD.

Amidst a huge uproar from politicians on all sides, they quickly apologized and compensated me handsomely. They even returned my notes ... after copying them. I grudgingly agreed to return to help explain the wormhole generator to them but warned that I would be leaving after ninety days, and would not be doing any additional research for them during that time. Still, I made several influential friends despite our little problem, as the Navy continues to refer to it.

Once I got my notes and research back, I was able to finish my second doctoral thesis, although the process was contentious.

I apologized to Dad for reneging on our agreement, but the little problem had soured me on doing any further research where the government was involved. With what I had already saved and what the Navy had paid me for the wormhole generator, I bought my own ship, one I named the Jump To It. The ship wasn’t new but was nearly a hundred times larger than the experimental ship the Navy had loaned me. I went to work immediately, modifying it with several innovations I’d come up with while working on the wormhole generator, especially strengthening the shields.

When the rebuild was complete, I was eager to become a venture capitalist. Now, ten years after obtaining my first PhD, I’m a venture capitalist and captain of my own ship. My cargo is ingots of different metals, preferably the more valuable ones. I sell those ingots to the mining consortium I work with. Notice that I said work with, and not work for.

As far as being a venture capitalist, these days the phrase means you venture out into the vast, unexplored reaches of space searching for rich enough deposits of minerals to mine on asteroids, moons, or unexplored planets. If you’re successful, you become a capitalist.

Despite my vow not to do research for the government, life alone aboard an android-crewed ship was filled with days of mind-numbing tedium. Having read comments about the boredom in the stories of nearly every captain I had read about, I brought along a hobby. I started working on ideas to make better weapons systems for my own protection. I know, I know. Ironic.

The first new system I devised increased the power and range of my lasers. It was one of more than a dozen ideas I’d had while working on the wormhole generator. Rather than build each of the new ideas, I’d made notes about each idea in my private journal and refocused my time and effort on the wormhole generator. Fortunately, the Navy didn’t know about that journal since it was kept in my bedroom. Most civilian ships only had Class II or III lasers; military ships had Class V lasers.

Official reports confirmed that many pirate vessels had Class V lasers within a year of the Navy installing their first one. In fact, the pirates had them well before most Navy ships had been outfitted with them. There had been several demonstrations against the government by cargo ship captains, demanding access to the same armament that the pirates had, to no avail.

When I contacted the biggest mining consortium, I learned that I was too young and inexperienced for them to trust me enough to front me one of their mining pods. A new captain had to prove himself first.

It’s the captain’s job to find rich enough sources of ore that the mining pods can extract it profitably and turn it into ingots to sell to the consortium. Even in a deposit of low-grade ore, the mining pods will work. They just take longer to produce the same amount of refined ore.