Chapter 9

Let's take 'er for a spin...

We visited ... but none of the planets had everything ... close but no cigar. The big ones were too big ... had too high a gravity ... or a myriad of other difficulties ... one even had too high a concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The just right ones were occupied with some really close bipedal humanoid look-a-likes but there were politics or religion or ... well ... just plain or!

Too small ... weird ... even as much as a thousand miles ... a 23 hour day instead of 24 ... or 20 degrees tilt instead of 23 ... or ever a completely circular orbit just screwed up the works.

One would think ... in a universe of 100 billion galaxies with as few as 100 billion or as many as 700 billion stars that there would be SOMETHING ... ya know?

And there were several somethings ... about five and a half percent somethings ... but every single one of them had a disqualifier.

It gives one furiously to think!

Is Sol 3 unique?

Are We the chosen few?

Have we no where to go?

Is this the end?

Vee suggested the only alternative that had the least possibility of working.

"Nothing seems to fit. Let's build our own," she said.

She looked at each of us.

We all laughed...

nervously

... even Vee.

After the infinite pause, "Gods?" asked April.

"Slap your face, April!" said Vee. "We are not Gods ... we just need a home of our own. Got any better ideas? Hmmm?"

"Where would you put it?" asked Gary.

"Hells bells, Gary. I'm ideas ... you are the access man," She said. "How about the other side of the sun? 180 degrees ... they'd never notice."

"You mean?" April said.

"Hide it in plain sight."

Window Shopping for parts...

Well, what would you call looking through assorted space junk in the asteroid belt?

Since none of the planets we had explored had the proper ingredients necessary to support human ... as in homo sapiens ... human is a touchy term ... life, we had to window shop.

What we had to find was the minerals and gases from the periodic chart and 26 elements from that chart:

Specifically: Ce27, He27, Oe27, Ne26, Pe25, Se24, Cae25, Ke24, Cle24, Nae24, Mge24, Fee23, Fe23, Zne22, Sie22, Cue21, Be21, Ie20, Sne20, Mne20, See20, Cre20, Nie20, Moe19, Coe19, Ve18.

(In human chemistry, the human molecule is the atomic definition of a person. The following 26 element formula is the latest calculation (2007) of the molecular formula for a typical 70kg (154lb) person:

CE27HE27OE27NE26PE25SE24CaE25KE24ClE24NaE24MgE24FeE23FE23

ZnE22SiE22CuE21BE21IE20SnE20MnE20SeE20CrE20NiE20MoE19CoE19VE18

where EN, e.g. E22, means exponent to the power of ten.) (For those of you who like to verify things, see http://www.eoht.info/page/Human+molecule)WIKIPEDIA.

Leave any one of those 26 elements out of the human molecule out and what you have is not human ... er... homo sapiens.

April knew ... so she helped ... umh ... didn't hinder.

We found an enormous sphere of elemental iron, moved it to the optimum orbit from the local system star, gathered assorted junk from the asteroid belt and started pitching chunks of junk at it.

The sphere accumulated mass ... the mass began to spin ... the iron sphere in the center started banging around in the middle ... the friction created heat ... the heat melted the iron ... gravity. Whoa ... way cool! Uhm ... hot! Volcanics ... free hydrogen ... free oxygen ... sun of a gun ... water.

It didn't happen over night but it didn't take all that long either. With April and her Speed of Thought gathering the necessary elements from the asteroid belt it was a sort of Clank Clank Clank of chunks hitting the sphere like rate of fire of the German MG42; 1200 clanks per minute.

We kept it up... 75 years of junk collecting.

For 75 years we captured space junk ... including the odd space exploring voyager ... NASA refused to give up wanting to see what the other side of the sun looked like ... what was on the other side of us?

At the speed of thought.