Chapter 9: Scientists

~~ Delta - Oct/02 - (Earth - April/2095) ~~

“Clarksville control tower, do you copy?”

“Copy,” the operator replied.

“This is Captain Ken Papua. We have a shuttle headed your way. Arrival approximately thirty-two minutes, over.”

“Pad four is vacant, over.”

An alarm beeped on Lee’s Mad, “Lee, here, what’s up?”

“They are here, Lee,” the voice said.

“Thanks, you guys keep your ears open for any chatter,” she replied.

“That’s what you pay us to do, later Lee,” the voice came back.

Lee grinned. Her team of Watcher’s as she called them, were very diligent.

At the Retreat, Lee had remodelled the door that opened onto the backyard as Lee thought of it. She had built a large covered courtyard that then led to the new garage. She moved all their vehicles and shifted the workshop for looking after them into the new structure.

She then added a new shed to the back of the Replicator Dome. It provided a larger storage area for their recycler. They also had a shield that protecting a 2km radius from the central dome. She had left the electric fence in place for added safety.

She had then added a wing between the now empty dome and the animal’s dome. She used it to join them together and turned it into the apartments for her workers, leaving the other rooms in the central dome for her guests.

The old vehicle dome now housed the workers’ pools, a gym, a kid’s play area and several rec-rooms designed for different functions. She even had an open area set of classrooms upstairs.

She now had a teacher who coordinated with the school in Clarksville for the younger kids. The older kids ferried over to Clarksville for the week and came home on the weekend. Sixty plus people called Watson Island home.

They had their own veggie gardens, some indoors on level three and the rest outside, an orchid and herds of animals, including Sean’s sheep. The few odd things the people liked to pick up, they ordered through Magda and Lee or Sean would pick it up.

A couple of days before, Lee had taken Titan her head gardener with her. He wanted to expand their orchard, so she told him to find what he wanted.

One of the Prols spotted Titan and had a go at him about still being a Pix slave when he heard him call Lee, ‘My Lady’.

Titan had pulled himself up to his massive height of 111cm and coolly informed the person that if he were a slave, then any man would be lucky to be in his shoes.

The Prol didn’t understand. Titan pattered his back in sorrow for his lack. He said, “If you worked for my Lady, you too would be happy. She treats us all as if she is there to help us, not us her.”

“We want for nothing. I ask for some more trees, so she drops her important work and brings me here to get my trees. She tells me, ‘Pick what you like Titan’. I go a little crazy and pick many trees.”

“I get worried, I get too much. My lady looks at my selection and says, ‘Titan, we can easily plant twice that many, you can get more if you wish, what about those lovely mango tree’s?’ Is this a woman who treats me like a slave?”

“They even gave me my new name,” he said proudly.

The Prol looked at him perplexed, he certainly didn’t sound like an unhappy slave, “Why did they rename you if you are not a slave?”

“Lord Sean saw me working in the garden and came to help me. We worked side by side for some time when he calls a halt and tells me I work like a Titan and didn’t know how I kept up with him. That I was a giant hiding in a Pix’s body. So, this became my new name.”

“He was working with you? But he is a Lord and a Wizard,” the Prol exclaimed.

Titan nodded in agreement, “He is both those things. But he is also a man who likes to work in the gardens with me. If I say, we need to dig the hole here, then that is where we dig the hole.”

“A slave doesn’t ask his mistress to take him shopping and masters don’t dig holes where a slave says. I am no slave. But I am one of their happiest employees,” Titan finished and happily walked off to find his mistress some more trees.

Lee and Magda had to giggle over the confrontation. “Lee, they must be the most spoilt workers I have ever seen or heard of,” Magda said.

Lee shrugged, “Well, I suppose you could call them employees as they do get paid. But to be honest, they are our friends. They live and work at the retreat, but I don’t really tell them what to do. They just do what they think they should.”

Magda looked at Lee. She never ceased to amaze her. She had been a wizard for over a year, and she acted as if it was no big deal. She was now Queen of the Wizards, arguably the most important person on two worlds.

But Lee still turned up to the council meetings when she could. She still dropped what she was doing to help someone in need. She still expected everyone to call her just Lee. She still didn’t realise the full effect she had on others.

Magda wasn’t surprised her workers did everything she asked or even tried to anticipate her needs, or that they idolised her. She hoped she didn’t change, as she loved this Lee too.

She knew her devoted husband Jim would still drop whatever he was doing if Lee needed him. She had won his heart on the ship when she treated him as her right-hand-man.

The thing was, she knew she would do anything Lee asked too.

Lee collected the troops.

They turned up as a welcoming committee to greet the scientists for Anzacs. The Australasia group had sent a ship with sixty-four people aboard and several tonnes of cargo. The Warship Menzies had their ship dock up with them, so they could help ferry the scientists down. The Captain informed Lee that the Aurorains were still three days behind the Anzacs.

When the scientists got off the transport, they couldn’t believe that Clarksville hadn’t celebrated its first birthday yet. It was a thriving, busy township housing over two thousand residents.

Many of the scientists were delighted that if they needed help, it wasn’t going to be that far away. Some of the more adventurous ones had expected things to be a bit more, rough and tumble. But there was nothing rough about this sparkling new, very tidy, well thought out town.

Gary and Nick’s new hotel was four stores high and had 150 rooms for rent. It had four conference rooms, a kitchen for room service, a cafe, a jewellers and a gift shop. Each floor had two replicator ports.

One of the Burgis’ they had acquired had a good handle on local architecture, and you could see his touches to all the buildings since the first ones went up. It gave the town a nice foreign, even slightly medieval feel and everyone liked it.

They even had a Gods House like Lee’s, which made the locals and the new arrivals happy. It also maintained a shield over the compound that had already deflected a mini meteor show.

Gary had asked his immigrants from Utopia to come up with some ideas of locally made things that the visitors might consider interesting as gifts to take home. They had presented him, Nick and Nicko with their selection. They got the rest of the Earthling’s to vote on what they reckon would sell, i.e. what they would buy.

All the jewellery got top votes, so that was why they decided on a separate Jeweller’s Shop. The gems they were digging out thanks to Justin were going to go a long way to ensure this shop did well. The gems were, after all, from Harmony.

Everyone agreed that all the items made by the faeries were on the must-have list. Gary now had a thriving community of faeries. They had acquired faeries from Aaron and Allan as well. Cia was their Mayor. They had even set aside an area under the shield that was owned by the new faerie committee.