Chapter 13

Patty, Amber, Jade and Ruby arrived with the food and bedding. “You guys stick around for the unveiling. The girls will be awake soon.”

“Us, too?” Dale asked.

“No. I want you to go upstairs and help the Lab Girls set up the new sleeping quarters. As a rule, we all share the same bedroom. Saves space and keeps us together.” He grinned. “We do everything together. The flying saucer will keep.”

They scooted out and Kevin turned to Amy. “How are you fixed for energy?”

“Getting better. But I’ll take whatever you can spare. Alice reports that with the additional acceleration time, you’ll be in orbit in eighteen hours. She and Alix have located a big icy dirtball, which will be perfect for my reactor. Lots of rare metals. The amino acids and simple proteins will go straight to the replicator feed.”

“Sounds like a captured comet. Or bait.” He replied. “How’s Crysta coming along?”

An Olivia Newton John voice came out of the speakers. “Doing well and getting better. Not recharged enough to do much but think and talk, but I’m not dormant. When smaller Eridanians are drained completely, the internal microcircuits disintegrate and ooze apart. The person is gone. Amy was doing all she could to keep all of us alive, but without your feeds to the reactor and especially the direct electrical, we would have been dead in hours. Thank you.”

“Your life is important to us. Amy is our sister and a friend. Anyone willing to stand with her to the bitter end, is doubly important. All seven of you went through amazing times together and it would be a terrible shame to let the story pass away untold.”

She laughed. “It would suck if we voyaged and fought and played and struggled and learned astonishing things all over this side of the galaxy, then died because we ran out of gas!”

“Have you been in touch with the colony through Rocky, Gemma or Jewel?”

“I lost touch before we had to power down. We can communicate at maximum about 10,000 light years. The New Terra colony is a little over 175,000 light years away.”

“So, not the next arm over. Really, all the way across to the other side of the disc.” Patty said. “It’s a smallish galaxy, after all.”

“It is easy to lose track when you are being chased by monsters and nightmares. Anyway, smarty, I kept up for the first 800 years after we left and they were doing fine. The Founders were still running strong, but after 45,000 years, give or take, I can only assume they have crossed over or are bored to death.” Crysta continued, “The Eridanians measure life in the millions of your years, so they are still around to tend the new crèches.”

“Outwardly, the Demopolis girls have aged two of your Terran years, since this adventure began.” Amy offered, “But two thirds of the time they were frozen in stasis. Their travel companions at New Terra may look six or seven years older. Death by old age is not likely.”

“The New Terrans may be colonizing other planets just to have something to keep busy.” Patty said.

“We may never know. It would take 15,000 years at Amy’s maximum speed to get there.” Kevin laughed. “Unless we can get the Möbius Quantum Improbability Traveling Circus Wormhole Drive working.”

“You guys can’t even decide on a name for it!”

Alix chimed her two cents worth. “Unclearly enough, if they can describe it, they can build it. It ought to be called the ‘Metaphoric Hamster Wormhole Generator.’ It will work because they believe it will.”

“‘Quantum Simultaneity Selector’ works just as well.” Ruby said.

“In our legends, when you know the true name of a wizard or a dragon, you control their power.” Amber growled and then cracked herself up. “You own its ass.”

Alice chuckled, broadcasting through the earwigs. “It makes sense in an illogical way, so these crazies, never admitting defeat, will figure out how to get us to Andromeda unencumbered by the thought processes rational beings use.”

“This is all very pleasant, but the girls are waking up.” Amy announced as the cover domes disappeared. “Allow me to introduce Petra, my sister, the Demopolis sisters, Clio and Circe, and their cousins, the Demopolis sisters, Rhea and Thalia.”

The five girls sat up and grinned. “Real people! Different people! We’re not dead!” Thalia shouted.

“Now, this feels like home.” Circe said. “It’s the same brownstone, but not the same atmosphere.”

“After what we’ve been through, anywhere we’re alive is home!” Rhea giggled. “It feels good to laugh. But I see what you mean, Circe. I just couldn’t do that D/S, swear fealty ritual.”

“You folks will have to tell us about it later after we feed you. Then we can chit-chat and catch up on the last 47,990 years we skipped over.” Patty smiled. “Welcome to the ‘Last Chance Diner’. I’m Patty and I’ll be your server this evening. Later, you can sleep in the Asteroid Belt Inn, just past Mars.”

“Far out! And I mean that literally.” Clio chuckled. “Where are we?”

Kevin answered. “The ‘here’ is about a thousand lightyears above the galactic plane, where you’ve been drifting for thirty-five thousand years. Up the stairs, through the wormhole, are our flying science research lab, mountain cave and a flying saucer. It is moving outbound from an earth wiped clean and about to be the center of attention in a land grab.”

“We have a pretty snazzy AG lifter, generate scads of electricity with a cold fusion reactor and two, count ‘em, two functional, actually safe, time machines that make you healthier, proving that what doesn’t kill makes you stronger.” Marly blurted, “But we got no stinkin’ FTL drive. So we decided to invent our own transport.”

“Slight correction, Marly. Time travel does wonders for your health if you use your machine before our optimization.” Alice said, “Our enhancement nearly evens things up for everyone else. Those of us tossed about by the storm gained a bit more also.”

“I guessing the constant milli-pulses from the souped up AG drive don’t hurt.” René chuckled.

As it turned out, the Demopolis girls did not need assistance to get around. As they slept, the stasis chamber used a pulsing force field to keep atrophy away. After they rested up after resting for millennia, they and everyone else met in the lobby. Kevin lingered long enough to appreciate the view:

Theo’s daughters Age Hgt. Eyes Hair Size Home

Clio Demopolis 13+2 4’11” blue white B NYC

Circe Demopolis 15+2 5’00” blue white C+ NYC

Kris’ daughters

Rhea Demopolis 14+2 5’00” green white B+ NYC

Thalia Demopolis 12+2 4’10” green white C+ NYC

Amy’s sister

Petra O’Neal 17 4’11” turq. blonde C- Cyber Born

Over the course of the evening, the girls had a session with any AI by whom they had not been examined. As he expected, the Lab Rats rose to the top of the added benefits charts. Then the triplets, with Vivi next, thanks to her latent skills. Petra was a special case. She became stronger, but her mental sharpness was already at the peak. The AI girls were able to level out all the others, thanks to the energized alloy field, in proportion to their original abilities. Kevin rehashed the changes made to the rabbits back at the lab and those improvements from the optimization:

‘Total immunity from biological agents, viral, bacterial or fungal.

Can neither absorb nor metabolize harmful chemical agents.

Dysfunctions and imperfections corrected. Natural ageing virtually halted.

Recovery from physical injury will be rapid.

Can still be killed by suffocation, severe head trauma or extreme bodily harm.

Quickness, strength and reaction times maximized according to ability.

8 to 11 times for LabRats.

Physiology adjusted for additional stresses.

Reproduction controlled at will.

Memory optimized and organized for total access and retrieval.

Brain usage and capacity increased to maximum levels.

Nutritional intake cannot exceed need.

If required, limb regeneration will complete within 24 hours, LabRats only.

All others require regenerative/healing beds supplied by Amy.

Latent mental abilities activated or magnified. (Me, Vivi, Petra, NYC Girls)

The NYC girls entered with a medium empathic sense, now enhanced. Petra, who already could mind talk to Amy and Crysta, added me, Alice and Alix.’

‘Pretty impressive, SuperGirls might be accurate.’ He thought, ‘Each and every one of the girls now considered themselves part of the Carson Group.’

Alix insisted they eat more to replenish their reserves.

The girls gathered around the table, he sat in his favorite chair. Another, more substantial meal was shared as they discovered a lot about each other but primarily about why the Demopolis sister/cousins never felt ‘right’ about joining the Pixies. (The formal/informal name given to the 72nd Street group.)

Confirmed by Kevin’s scans, it boiled down to the attitudes. The girls liked the collars, for instance, as jewelry and as a symbol of the family, but to the larger group, it symbolized an accepted, wanted, form of ownership, not quite as chattel, but close. The Pixies loved the collars and associated accessories and had no problem with the real nature of the relationship with the Alpha or the other sister/wives. It was an advertisement: ‘I belong to him. I am under his protection.’

Because it was part of their upbringing, the Demopolis girls had no problem being part of an exclusive group family, but not one with an almost stylized medieval feel. They would have no problem having sex with the main guy or other girls in the right family. They were looking forward to finding out why the Pixies loved it so much.

However, the public sex/cherry popping ritual seemed contrived and artificial to all four young girls, more scripted, not quite voluntary, not quite required. For the Pixies and other women in the house, it was true and proper, and they welcomed every part, including the declaration of loyalty and obedience. They took comfort in having their place sealed. No harm done, no regrets. With no loss of friendship and with otherwise full participation in the decisions affecting the group, Thalia, Circe, Rhea and Clio kept their virginity.

These girls were built differently, submissive at the core like all of the Demopolis women, and aware of it, but not as ready to fall prey to the first strong Master, good or bad, as their grandparents thought. There was also the unique Demopolis aversion to cross-generational group bonding. Their aunts, Selena and Athena, were already members of the Pixies in excellent standing (or sitting or bent over the desk, etc.), and it seemed wrong to be part of the same frequently intimate family on a permanent basis.

Here, it did feel right. The time was right. That the right man was also the last man on earth was happy circumstance. Him saving them from certain doom had major appeal, too. He clearly enjoyed the naked girls, that was an obvious fact and they decided they would like being enjoyed. Any time, any place.

Each girl came to the family through necessity or fortunate circumstance. But each subset had different motivations.

Marly and Kevin were engaged to be married and the other Lab Rats were secretly attracted to Kevin before the chaos and traveled to their ultimate union independent of the time storm. Once ensconced in the year 4510, they group ‘married’ him. He was informed after the fact. They formed the core of the group. They were also the most physically fit, the superest of the SuperGirls.

The Bright Triplets, culturally conditioned to be subservient to the head of the household, were flung to the group by the storm they survived because they were in a small boat. Rather than treat them as they were in Hong Kong, disposable trade goods, Kevin freed them to define their place in the family on their terms and valued their ideas and opinions. In their minds, he gave them a life.

The West Coast girls came to be part of the group by riding out the storm in a very high tech carnival ride, beginning the day as budding exhibitionists and winding up gleefully, if not accidentally/on purpose, naked on the streets of Venice Beach, and then playing their anime/manga fantasies out as naked flying saucer jockeys when it got weird. In the present company, they used the first available excuse to pretend the exposure was unavoidable in order to stay naked for Kevin because it made them so hot and wet they could hardly stand it.

Interesting. And then he had his uncloaked and augmented abilities to discover. Mind reading was crazy easy. He had to be careful when tweaking emotions and attitudes or the girls would be permanently changed, perhaps damaged, a total violation he would not allow to happen. The mind touches were more selective than before, with less leakage.

The access to the data stored in the AIs’ memory banks was a revelation. As long as it was unconscious, he could live with it. Wondering where a particular bit of information originated would be a distraction, spoiling the inventive process. Better pass it off as focused intuition and let it go.

Then there was the teleportation! It might be triggered by stress or a sense of urgency. He needed to gain control soon. If it happened at the wrong time, or didn’t happen when it was needed, it could be very inconvenient. He had to find out if he could transport people or things and if there was a distance limit.

Kevin reached for his fork only to see it jump into his hand. What’s up with that? Now he had telekinesis? Quickly, he put the fork down and pictured the spoon in his hand. It came to him. Wow! Control was easy, at least.

Alice, Alix and Amy made no comment. He had the feeling they didn’t notice. A scan of the girls told him that Vivi was the only one who noticed. She was not surprised. On the contrary, she expected Superheroes and Wizards to have powers so far unseen. The sight of her first actual sorcerer sort of excited her. Might as well deal with her now.

“While you all are getting acquainted better, I’m going to check out the quarters in the brownstone.” He announced, “Alice, please power down the AG drive. I still have the feeling we are not alone. Go into full stealth mode and keep the passive sensors working at full strength. Alix and Amy, do what you can to make us invisible while drifting.”