Chapter 34: Family

-- Daniel --

I’m surprised by how well Pip and I have learnt to work together.

It’s not been an easy task, and we both realise that we still have a lot of work to do and a lot to learn about running a city and a community. The people we rescued have been settling into the city and taking over a lot of the work of rebuilding their lives and new homes.

I think the fact that they could spread out a bit sorted out a lot of the animosity between the different factions. Captain Dale has been of great assistance and the fact the troops had no problems switching to supporting us also helped.

As far as the troops were concerned, they worked to protect the people of Aurum. Since Pip and I ruled Aurum, they worked for us. We paid better too, apparently. They helped us get six more shield towers fixed, and now the storage facility and mine were back in production this eased a lot of pressures, as far as resources went.

The soldiers have also been out collecting villagers from areas still outside the shield. They have been offering to help them relocate to the shielded area. We have an 80km area by diameter, back under our shield. That’s a lot of land. Most of it is good farming and grazing land, once we clear a few more trees.

We allocated land according to what was required and what our people could and would do. Ardra, our SAI, had a lot of say in this. She knew a lot more about running a city than Pip, and I did. Well, more than me, as Pip was a lot more people savvy than I was.

At heart, I am an archaeologist and historian. I am very easy to side track as I find it hard not to get distracted by some interesting find. Lee had let me do my thing, and poor Pip was working this out. I could organise people, but that was a distraction and not what I wanted to do.

Luckily, for me, Pip worked this out very early on in the piece. She sized up the people who liked to think they were in charge and worked out whom the rest actually followed and set up a council so we could palm a lot of the drudge work off onto them.

The androids were also invaluable. Pip and Ardra had allocated a different android to each council member, and they helped keep them on track. It was a shame I could distract my best buddy Merv, the android.

Pip would come looking for us, and we’d be in some deep discussion over how, where, why and what of a design and then the use of the building. We were probably supposed to be looking at how we can fix it or utilise the building and not spending our time discussing its historical significance or architectural design.

She did leave me in charge of restoration all the same, as once Merv and I worked out to our satisfaction what a building used to be used for, we could get on deciding on how we could use it now. I wasn’t totally useless, and I did understand what we were attempting to do, I just had my own quirky way of doing it.

I think the others also slowly worked this out too. It was very hard to change my mind once I had determined how the building should be used in the future. If you told me you wanted to gutter a museum and turn it into a feed store, for example, you and I didn’t get along for very long.

There were more than enough feed stores sitting around that I didn’t care what you did to them, but several buildings became out of bounds. Ardra would record these for me and once I’d got the major buildings categorised she let the people put them to use.

Somehow, I also got plumbing and drainage put on my to-do list. I’m not sure Pip realised that this would also become a major issue, as I was very particular about this subject. When the androids and I had whole sections of town blocked off while we were fixing an issue we had identified, complaints fell on deaf ears.

Pip asked me one day if I had been a council worker in a past life. I guessed they got a bad rap on this world like on Earth. Many people just didn’t realise what went into making sure shit flowed downhill and didn’t come back up it.

Since I had acquired drainage, I also got the recyclers. Made sense, since most of our wastes went to them. In retrospect, this may not have been a good idea, either. Apparently, I also had this bent towards good engineering design.

Merv wasn’t a great help in keeping me out of the shit on this issue. Merv, being an android, appreciated good design. She is my sort of android. A kink in a pipe was bad news, and we both hated kinks in our pipes. Pip had learnt not to kink my pipe. That was bad news too.

But all said and done, I was having fun. I think when we both looked over all the work we had got through in the three and half months to the beginning of what I referred to as 2102, and not 3082 as the locals did, we hadn’t done that bad of a job.

Pip and I’d had a bit of a strenuous night, and we were resting up on what they called tenth-day here. I was still getting used to a ten day week. The locals actually worked a more five day week. Fifth-day and tenth-day were like my old Saturdays and Sundays.

I started calling the days of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, which was fifth-day and in reality no one on Earth every really did any work on that day anyway, Saturday, Sunday, Mageday, Greyday and Danday.

Danday was my day to veg-out. The locals soon worked out not to bother Daniel on Danday. Pip was also learning not to plan work on Danday because if I could, she was imprisoned in the bedroom for at least half of it. I loved just being with Pip and asking for at least one day of the week that I kept her all to myself wasn’t asking too much, was it?

So it was Danday, and my stomach had finally won out over my cock, and we were eating brunch. For the uninformed, this is a meal between breakfast and lunch because you missed the first meal and were too hungry to wait for the second. It is not morning tea, as that is a totally different meal and we had missed it too.

I did get to eat brunch before our visitor arrived. When Ben turned up, I was surprised. I’d not had a lot to do with his bloke. He did tend to be a bit on the serious side, but he was a good bloke all the same. At least he and I loved screwing around with things from the past, and he had a very analytical brain that I related too.

So Ben pops in, as that is what wizards who can, do. He happily accepted a cuppa and then started peppering me with questions about my mum. I pulled up the only picture of mum and me on my Mad (multi-application device) and gave it to him.

Mike had taken it just before things went to shit and she and he had split up. I’ve never worked out what the cause was but knew I was part of it. It has haunted me over the years, as I knew mum really liked him. I also suspected his father had something to do with it as the blow up happened after he had visited us.

Ben studied the picture for several minutes and then shocked me by saying, “Did you know you were born on Amity in around 2000 local time?”

“How do you figure that?” I had to ask.

“Because here and then, was when your mother Crystal had you,” he said.

“So I’m over a thousand years old!” I stated.

“Well, not in real time. She time jumped into the past here for about a year and then time jumped into her future on Earth. She was born in 2036 Earth time. Are you aware that Storm is your grandfather?”

Okay, now I’m a bit weirded out. I’d really liked Storm, and in the couple of months we had spent in Orient, I’d come to enjoy his company. Lee had hinted before I left Harmony that I would like him. I did feel as though we were related, but not that closely.

“How do you figure that out?” I wanted to know.

“Because he left four kids on Earth before he came here. Raina, as you know, is one of them and Crystal, your mother, was another. She doesn’t look a day older than she does in that photo,” he told me.

He looked at me with concern, “Daniel, she is very sick. The Pix Wizard’s box that she found on the island she lives on wasn’t well, and it has affected her. The other Pix box is broken. We don’t know how she has managed all these years to not go insane from just the pain the damaged items inflicts on her.”

“She didn’t desert you, she was trying to get help to get it fixed, but when the portal worked, you weren’t with her. It brought her back here and then it couldn’t send her back to you. She has been stuck here for twenty-five years local time.”

I looked at the picture of my mother when he handed me, my Mad back. I was surprised that I was just plain relieved. Her being sick and my knowledge of magic explained so much of my childhood and her behaviour.

Being a sick wizard in a world where magic didn’t seem to work as well anymore would not have been pleasant. How the hell could she have gotten help? Her lies and evasions also made sense. She didn’t exist in the time that we were on Earth.

I remembered all the times she just seemed to need me to hug her. I knew why she had clung to Mike when she found him. All the times she went out and found men after they split up. I’d thought she was lonely, but I know realised it was worse.

“She is here? Where? I need to see her,” I said with a hitch in my voice as the emotions of knowing my mother was alive hit me.

“The young man, who helped her find us, also believes she needs to see you too. She is with Raina and the other wizards in Leslie’s Palace. I had to check a few facts before I came to you, but I believe she is your mother,” he told me.

“Pip, we have to go,” I said and got up abruptly. I hurried to our room and dressed more appropriately for the day. Pip joined me but didn’t say anything as she got dressed as quickly as I did. We headed out, collected Ben and went down to the portal room. It was the fastest way to Nickel City without exhausting our magical abilities.

We could then blink to where my mother was.

Ben took us to a seating area in their wing of the Palace where the wizards were gathered.

When Ben checked their location after we got to Nickel City, they had reconvened to this room. I walked in, and then I stopped to drink in the sight of the woman who had birthed me. My mother took one look at me and flew at me.

She hugged me so darn hard that, she bruised my ribs, but I didn’t feel it at the time. I gathered later that it was the second big tear session for her in as many hours. We didn’t say a lot, but my mum and I never had the need to.

We didn’t need to apologise or speak words of forgiveness. That was all said by us being able to hug each other. My mum and I had been pretty tight until we were separated by fate. Hugging my mother to me, I looked at the others, “How do we help her?” their glum looks didn’t reassure me.

Kale indicated two sets of boxes sitting near a wall. He said sadly, “We can help keep her in better physical health, but we can’t fix the boxes.”

I took her to a couch but kept her tucked under my arm. Pip crawled under my other arm to tell me she was here for me. I realised I had a similar bond with Pip to that which I’d had with my mother. We didn’t a need a lot of words either.

I looked at the woman who had stolen my heart and gently kissed her forehead. Then I kissed my mother’s. I had my two best girls under my arms. Well, maybe except Lee. But I knew she was safe and well. My Queen would always hold a little piece of me, just because she had saved me. Plus she was an awesome person.

“What about Queen Lee? Can she help us?” I asked the others.

“No son, wrong sort of Queen. Lee is a decad Queen, and this is a Pix box. Apparently, the Queens of old were a bit fussy about who could fix them. Only an Empress can fix both,” Storm said. He’d startled all of us when he appeared with Kim and Sarah beside him.

He greedily drank in the sight of Crystal. I guess I must have had a similar look on my face when I saw her. Unlike my grandfather, I at least knew her for thirteen years. This was his first time seeing her. I wondered how hard it has been for him this last year. Knowing he had children but not being able to see them.

Even worse finding them all grown up before he had time to get hold of the idea of them being in nappies. I guessed there was a lot of that in this room. Raina had gone through the same thing with her daughter Dana, and poor Ben didn’t even know he had a child. Then he found out that she was a grandmother when he did meet her. That was surreal when they did meet.

David had a similar experience with his daughter Trixy and Raina and Crystal had also not known who their father was. Pip still has that the problem. We still didn’t know who both of her parents were. We believe her mother died not long after her birth but had no idea who sired her other than a tall stranger.

An old man in a village we had moved to the city said that Pip looked like his first wife. He said that she had been a shifter and had the same hair as Pip. Doyen Dolton had taken his youngest daughter. She had been born by his second wife. She had gotten the madness and been sent to the cave.

Dolton had then claimed his oldest daughter. The old man was heartbroken when he was told. He believed that his daughter didn’t carry Dolton’s child. Dolton had handed the child over to the priests to raise.

He had wanted to claim the child, but his then wife and Dolton had refused him. He threw his wife out after Dolton sent the child to the cave when she was fifteen. He’d tried to care for her as she grew but they kept denying access. He was convinced that Pip was his granddaughter.

She had disappeared at the time he knew his grandchild was sent to the cave. When Pip had given him a hug, I think they were both certain. Pip had at least found her grandfather, and I think they were both glad of this. It had made Pip a lot happier, and they have since become close.

I nudged my mother, and she smiled that special smile I remembered so well. She chuckled at my return smile and got up to hug her father. I think she was out of tears, but Storm wasn’t. Raina gave me a happy teary look and joined them.

I saw Storm’s aura brighten as he hugged his girls. It was a big day for all of us. Not having come from a big family I now realised that I had one and chuckled. “From zero to infinity,” I said to Pip.

She smiled softly at me, and I had to hug her. It was so cool that she understood me and loved me. We had gone from being orphans to members of a big family, and I think we both found it daunting but wonderful.

Storm said to Crystal and Raina, “It’s a shame about your brothers. I would have loved to have them here, so we were all together.”

Ben chuckled, “With this family, what’s the bet they disappeared too? Lee’s notes say they never recovered the bodies or their ship.”

I think we all looked at him in surprise. “Well they didn’t,” he said. He looked at David thoughtfully and grinned, “I wonder if a certain wheelship intervened? She did with David and then with Raina and me. She seems to have a thing about rescuing us humans for some reason.”

David said thoughtfully, “She does, doesn’t she? Even that strange side trip to Torus had its purpose. I agree, Ben, I don’t think Zara sent us here without knowing certain things. She was an old ship even when I met her.”

“I suspect that she did it when she was bored even before I found her the first time. I don’t think she intervened and only observed before she met me. I believe she didn’t know how to send me where she wanted me to be when we first met. I don’t think she interfered until she had put a lot of thought into it.”

Sarah chuckled, “My mother is very devious for a wheelship. Zarka said that she had so many hidden files in her system she was still trying to access them. By the way, has she contacted any of you? She has been gone nearly four months, and JJ said she didn’t know when they were coming back?”

We all shook our heads. I did kinda miss those three. They had been a lot of fun on the trip here, and the couple of nights I spent with them had been very entertaining. I looked at Raina and started chuckling. “Just as well, we didn’t get intimate, Aunty Raina,” I said.

Raina gave me an odd look and then Ben cracked up. He was laughing so hard Raina hit him and scowled at him and then she started laughing with us. Raina then had to explain that she had slept in my room with me on the trip here after she and Ben had a fight, and that we had pretended that we were lovers.

Storm and my mother both cracked up as hard as Ben had. It seems our wacky sense of humour ran in the family. Pip just shook her head at me and said, “You’re just lucky your Aunt had better sense than me.”

I gently kissed Pip’s lips and looked into her eyes. I told her with mine that I just plain loved her. Her eyes melted, as she knew it was true. I’d not been with anyone since I had her and felt no need to either. She was all that I needed right now, and she knew it. She snuggled into me.

My mother caught my eye, and she knew as well I did that I had my mate. Her look of approval was soul freeing. All kids like to know their parents approve of their choice of a mate.

The fact my own grandfather had thrown us together wasn’t lost on me either.

Since thing had settled down, Storm approached Crystal’s boxes and touched them.

We all watched him and wondered what he was going to try. He opened a case he had brought with him and pulled out a machine that looked a lot like a big handheld vacuum cleaner. He turned it on and held it against one of the boxes.

I had to go and see what he was doing. When I stood beside him, he pointed to the needle on the old style analogue read out. Ben and David had to join us too. Storm explained that his new best friend, Bron, on Green Island had let him borrow it. They had used it to remove what they called hydrazine contamination.

He said, “Hydrazine is the fuel that wheelships used to navigate the solar systems. Toffee, the SAI or as he calls her, the controller of Bron’s piece of ship told him that wizards were not allowed anywhere near hydrazine. The Keltrians didn’t even fix their own engines. Only androids could do this job.”

“Toffee said that they had a few uses for hydrazine and it was often used in the terraforming process. It could be used to sterilise the ground, and it prompted new growth and even sped it up. I’ve worked out that the device on Sarah’s ship uses it to create that beam.”

“That was why she and David had been able to damage the medallion Seneca was in. We checked it out and worked out it took only a microscopic amount of hydrazine to do this. If Crystal’s ship had a major leak, it would have infected everything on it.”

“Her consort, Dane, told me that the wizard who owned the box that died had buried the engine that was contaminated deep in the earth. I checked the ship, and it still had traces of hydrazine.”

He pointed to the needle that was slowly moving to zero. “They didn’t decontaminate the boxes after the items returned to them. So over time, they have been getting slowly worse. Crystal handling the magic books wouldn’t have been good for her either.”

Storm looked at the handsome young man that had joined us. He smiled at him, “Hi Sable, nice to meet you at last. Your father speaks highly of you. What you did for my daughter was very noble, and I thank you for looking after her.”