Chapter 5

I had almost missed Cary’s investiture as a Prince of the Pacific, but its date had been moved to the 14th. He was a cute kid, and Albert was adapting well to again being a big brother. He seemed to appreciate that the bedrooms were soundproof so that he didn’t hear the crying of the babies. Bess called me ‘dada’ every time she saw me now.

I probably spent more time carrying Albert, or holding him than was necessary after Melanie’s death. Holding him and the others was a comfort deep in my soul. The remaining Melanie books had all been published, each four months after the previous. Each one contained archaeological clues to places and events that wouldn’t be confirmed or discovered for decades. In each book I lost Melanie early, and tragically, usually in the process of her saving someone else.

The children kept getting born, and I remained on the island caring for them. In 2006 on the fifth anniversary, and just before Albert turned 7 I brought him up to Melanie’s statue. I explained to him for the first time what had happened to his mother, showing him video Melanie and I took during our short years together. I showed him the videos of the sword making, and ‘the three curses.’

It was hard for me, but relatively easy for Albert. He rarely came to talk to Melanie anymore. There were a myriad of questions he asked about her, and the people she saved. He wanted to know if this was why he wasn’t allowed to ride a Sky Cycle. I assured him, that he would get a Sky Cycle of his own when he was 10 years old, but would have to wait till then.

He wanted to know more about me, because he had heard I stopped going to school when I was eight. He was eager to quit so he could go play on the beach every day. So I spent several hours telling him about my life, and the things I accomplished with my abilities. I showed him my fan club website, and talked about my oldest friend Amber.

I showed him pictures of the homes I had around the world, and all the places I’d ever been. There was a new eagerness to him, seeing all these places. He had no memories of the lake house, or the Empire State Building apartment. I promised him that we would go to these places as a family this year.

There was a new guest house on Petre Island for me and my brood. I had three boys, three girls, Albert, Bess (Bessie), Cary, Dottie (Dorothy), Ed (Edward), and the newest Fran (Francine). The weather was horrible all Thanksgiving. Albert suggested I should just put a big dome over the top of the whole lake to keep out the cold and the heat in, he spent most of the trip bundled up in a ski jacket. He felt like going outside in anything below 70 degrees was torture after living on the island for so long.

We went to the New York apartment afterwards. I visited with old friends and toured the construction site at ground zero, where work continued. Albert and I visited the West St Buddhist temple, and viewed the glass platform that stood above the circle I cut in the street. It was a tourist spot, with exhibits about the sword, and the curses, including a running total of deaths by supernatural lightning and meteorite impacts. They had on display the unused portion of the meteorite that went into Melanie’s sword, and a table top with a bloody handprint on it on loan from a museum in Japan.

Albert found it fascinating. I had allowed him to handle the sword the day I explained the events to him. He got into an argument with one of the monks about what the sword was made of. I eventually confirmed that Albert was right, that love was an ingredient in the sword.

I thanked the monks for closing the temple to tourists the day we visited, and made a donation to its continued care and upkeep. I then asked that they reduce the planned size of the statue of me. Five times life size was too big. I requested a simple life size replica of me standing, holding the sword after ‘the three curses.’ they agreed to the change.

We stayed for New Year’s, watching the fireworks from the roof of the Empire State Building. Then I packed up the family, the nurses, nannies, and guards and we all flew home to Ocean City.

Babies kept being born, as is the nature of the universe. My babies were scheduled. In 2009 the world got to witness the return to the Moon, on the day of the 40th anniversary of the original landing, Saturniinae One, a modified Atticus Atlas capsule landed on the Moon.

July 20th was also the day that Isaac Asimov Cook was born. My fifth son, and ninth child with Melanie. As was tradition I brought him up to show to her. I could feel the ache in my heart lessen as each child was born. One more kept promise, one more new life.

2010 saw the birth of Julietta Rae Cook, and the completion of the space tether. Julietta came in November, and the first passenger started the 4 and a half day ride to MWC station on Christmas day. MWC station was an inflated torus, inside an aluminum truss frame. It had docking ports on the inside of the ring, and the exterior. It didn’t physically touch the tether, which ran through the 1600 meter hole in the middle, but could dock to cars moving up or down it. There was no reason to ever run a car back down the tether, returning to Earth is the easy step, provided you have a good heat shield.

The first tether passenger was the stations new commander, Joy McNair, the rest of the crew was already on station from construction or had arrived later by traditional means. At 12:01 AM UTC on January 1st 2011 she made an open broadcast declaring Melanie Waters Cook station operational, and open for business.

The cargo pods that rode the tether were designed to serve as reentry pods for cargo, and passengers. They could also serve as cargo pods for transport of materials across the system. Capable of releasing from the tether at any point they could release from high Earth orbit on a flung trajectory anywhere in the solar system. They only had a week’s life support, so they couldn’t move people, but they could move supplies. The first cargo ships delivered supplies to the tiny four person outpost on the Moon.

MWC had an initial interior volume greater than 3.7 billion cubic meters, divided into separately sealed sections. It was completely in microgravity, with no rotation. Besides acting as a cargo hub for future trips around the solar system, it also served as mankind’s first space based factory, producing a high temperature superconductor only producible in a micro g environment. It had a superconducting temperature of 350 K, 170 degrees fahrenheit. The pod system had a specific design to allow the transport of this material back to Earth.

It was in such demand that ninety percent of all the pods going up the tether were bringing the materials just for production of the super high temp superconductor. That one product was more than paying for the entire operation of my entire space venture, including everything spent to date.

I was still charging a hefty lift fee though. One in a hundred pods was earmarked for tourism, at five thousand dollars a kilo for a week trip into space for you and up to three of your friends it wasn’t cheap, but it was overbooked. It included flight to Spaceport Island from Paris, or Orlando, a one day training session, a fifty hour trip up the tether, ten orbits, followed by splashdown, pickup, and return flight to point of origin.

I brought the entire family for the ten year anniversary to New York for the dedication of the 9-11 memorial at ground zero. Jane was having trouble bearing up to the media attention over her daughter. All ten kids were there, my parents, and myself. The final boy, Kirk Patrick Cook was due early December. The final girl would be born in September the following year.

I gave a short speech thanking them for honoring the fallen. The design I had submitted was partially used, in that there was a sunken pool, and statues. The statues were rows of stone seats, each with a name on it. 147 for the flight crew and passengers, laid out in the shape of an airplane, inside a outline of a 767, grey seats for crew, white seats for passengers. A single seat next to it, in Air Force blue with Steve Jackson’s name and a picture of his F-15 eagle on the seat. Next to him was a red stone chair with a picture of a Sky Cycle with Melanie’s name on it.

On the opposite side of the airplane shaped seating was the outline of a fire truck silhouette, and both blue and red chairs inside it for police and fire, the first responders who died during, and since due to health conditions from exposure to the destroyed building.

That afternoon I attended a second ten year memorial observance, without my family, where the statues I had wanted were unveiled placed in Central Park. Made of marble, they stood back to back on a raised marble platform that had the simple message, “Honoring the Noblest Sacrifice.”

I spent a few days taking Albert and the older kids to the New York Metropolitan museum of art. Albert found the Dendur Temple fascinating. I was able to translate the hieroglyphs for him, and tell him all about the people who made the graffiti on the temple. I suggested to Albert that a career in archeology might be interesting.

In December we all returned to Ocean City for the newest family member. The four oldest children accompanied me as I introduced him to Melanie. For Albert Mommy had just gone away for a few weeks before turning into the statue on the roof. Bess, Cary, and Dottie had a much different relationship. They had never heard Melanie’s voice, or known her embrace. To them this was just one of Dad’s many weird things he did.