Chapter 4

My great uncle’s lawyer, Sam Timmons, told me Charles’ estate should finish escrow in about two months. Our lottery winnings should be enough for us to start buying land in our area. Once escrow closed, I can restore the money we used to buy property to the accounts we use to pay for the negotiations. Until then, we should have more than enough money to start buying the local property and see us through the next two meetings. I would have to talk with Betty about funding part of the second meeting’s costs.

I had talked with Betty about our plan for housing and feeding the delegates. She wasn’t as hard to convince as I had feared she would be. Evidently, she shared my opinion of politicians and diplomats that used meetings to expound at length about things without really saying anything new. She mentioned something about getting revenge for being forced to sit in meetings while the attendees droned on and on because they just had to have their time in the spotlight; back then, she hadn’t been in a position to end their never-ending repetitive statements.

*****

Madge had just returned from her office with the printouts, and she also brought her large map and pushpins with her. We all set our tasks aside and started reviewing the descriptions of the properties available for sale. If a property meeting our requirements was within our thirty-mile radius, we would try to buy it. The only question was the amount we should make as our initial offer.

Madge’s background had conditioned her to go for the highest price possible when selling a property and less than the asking price for property her clients wanted to buy. ‘Less than’ wasn’t necessarily as low as the price the owner might accept, for Madge worked on commission and the lower the purchase price, the lower her commission. Yes, she was in business to serve her clients, but she also had to pay the bills and make a living. Our approach would be a new experience for Madge.

We all agreed that we would try to keep the speculators’ attention from being drawn to this area by keeping the average sale price per acre close to the current value. There was nothing we could do to hide the increase in the number of sales in this area. Hopefully, they would consider the higher number of sales to be a short-term aberration, and if so, we would hopefully be able to obtain all of the properties we wanted to buy before they investigated the cause of that aberration.

Our initial offer would be lower than the asking price and we would then negotiate a sale price close to the current average price per acre. After discussing what our offer price should be, we decided on ten percent below what Madge considered to be the fair market value as our opening bid. That rule only applied when we felt the asking price didn’t seem to be inflated well above the current market value. In those cases, we started at fifteen percent below fair market value. Madge entered the data for recent similar property sales and ran her comparison software for each of the properties we were interested in buying. That gave us a good idea of the fair market value of each property. Phyllis had started a spreadsheet file to track the properties and other data pertinent to us purchasing them.

It was well into the evening before we finished reviewing the available properties. The push pins on Madge’s map were almost evenly scattered around our farm. We did have two final things to decide before going to bed.

The first was, should we make offers for the properties not currently on the market before we submitted offers for the currently available properties? We decided to base the decision on whether our purchase of the available properties would drive the average price per acre up or down. Mary got involved before we reached a final decision, and what she said answered both of the things we needed to decide.

She told us, “You need to acquire as many properties as you can and as soon as possible. When you make the offers, make them on all of the properties close to the farm to include the properties that are not on the market. You may have to pay above the market value for those properties, so don’t get involved in a protracted negotiation on a specific property. The important thing is, you need to lock-in ownership of the close-in properties. If you wait to make offers to the landowners who haven’t placed their property on the market, you won’t be able to do so and complete closing on the available properties before the third meeting starts. That could have a negative impact on the meeting and lead to legal repercussions. You also can’t wait for that meeting to end to make you offers because land speculators will take an interest in this area by the time the third meeting begins. Once that happens, the price per acre will increase.”

I said, “One more thing, Mary. We need to establish contact with Altairian traders. We are hoping you might be able to arrange that for us.”

“Don’t worry, Jeb. I monitored your earlier conversations. While monitoring the Time Continuum some time ago, I observed your request. Before The Seeker left, I asked Advisor Tim Xlau to pass a message to my father. Tim said he would give him my message and he said my father will make the necessary arrangements. A trader will be arriving after the second meeting ends.

Mary’s revelation about the property decided things for us. Madge had the majority of the offers for the available properties we were interested in buying filled out. Tomorrow, Madge would start submitting the offers we had prepared on the available properties to the prospective real estate agents; then she would prepare offers for the remaining available properties we wanted to buy and submit them to the respective agents. After that, she would start preparing offers for the properties that weren’t on the market. She would have to present those offers directly to the property owners.

I would get Mike and his people to help me open the unopened crates in Buildings 2 and 3. As soon as we had time, we would clear out Madge’s office, and then she could inform her landlord she no longer required the use of the office. She said she would probably have to pay rent until the end of the lease, if the landlord wasn’t able to find someone to lease the office space. Madge would have to set her computer equipment up here in the house, until we could arrange for the third out building to be remodeled.

It was also nice to know that Mary had already made arrangements for a trader to visit us. It would be nice to know exactly when the trader would arrive, but Mary didn’t usually pass on details like that. She said we needed to learn to be flexible to changing circumstances. I could sort of see her point.

While we were on the Seeker, we noticed one of the more pleasurable side effects of our enhancements: our nerve endings were becoming more sensitive. The second time we made love after we were enhanced, the pleasure was so intense that a single bout of three-way lovemaking was all that we could tolerate. Phyllis still isn’t ready to join us, so we assumed she took care of her needs without help from us. The soundproofing in our rooms was very good.

When Madge, Alicia, and I settled into bed, our lovemaking was just as intense, if not more so, but our stamina was now greater. Alicia remarked that her mom must be climbing the walls if she wasn’t getting any satisfaction. As we were cleaning up in the bathroom, there was a piercing scream from Phyllis’s bedroom. Madge said Phyllis must have really enjoyed her orgasm, but self-induced satisfaction was never as good as shared-satisfaction. We all commented on what it would be like when Phyllis finally joined us in bed.

Paul, Aaron, Mike, and Simon stopped by the next morning for coffee. I took the opportunity to ask Mike for some help from him and his men. With a smug grin, Simon said he would assign Vert and Relpt to help us. There was something about that grin.

I went and retrieved the keys to the outbuildings. My first stop was at Building 1 to find the tools we would need to remove the lids from the crates. A large hammer, a pry bar, and shears to cut the plastic strapping should suffice. My ladies and I wanted to use Building 3 as an office, and to prepare an office floor plan, we needed the measurements of the building. So I also clipped a tape measure to my belt. Our next stop was Building 2.

Mike arrived with four burly soldiers. Alicia, Madge, and Phyllis were curious about the crates’ contents, so they had set aside their tasks and joined us. There were one light and two heavy, unopened crates in Building 2 and none of them had markings that might indicate their contents.

Mike said, “If you give me the keys, Jeb, I’ll have my men open Building 3 and bring back the forklift so we can unstack the crates.” I handed him the split ring of outbuilding keys.

Turning to the third and fourth men, he handed one of them the keys and said. “Go unlock Building 3. The forklift battery should be charged by now, so bring it back. I don’t want you hurting yourselves by lifting and carrying the crates.”

While they were doing that, a sort of plain looking young woman appeared at my side and took the hammer, pry bar, and shears out of my hands. With a cute smile, she said, “I’m Private Vert. Colonel Tanat sent Private Relpt and me to help you. We have a lot of experience opening crates and other things.”

When I looked past Vert, I could see a second plain woman. Don’t get me wrong. They weren’t ugly or anything even close to ugly. They just weren’t what I thought of as beautiful. I do have to admit they had fantastic smiles and very nice bodies with moderately large bust lines. If it wasn’t for my three very lovely ladies, I wouldn’t object to them as bedmates. Mary must have been monitoring us for she passed my thoughts on to my ladies who turned to look at me and smiled.

When the two men returned with the forklift, Mike said, “Move the top two crates out here where we have good access and can open them.” The soldiers used the forklift to move the top two crates out of the building. There was adequate space around the third crate to open it in the building. Only minutes after the first crate was lowered to the ground, Vert and Relpt had removed the lid from the crate and had then started removing the lid from the second crate.

There was nothing surprising in the first crate. Life preservers, coolers, water skis, tow ropes, and other accessories for the speedboat. The contents of the second crate were a surprise: a selection of firearms. I could understand the rifles and shotguns for hunting. What I didn’t understand were the other weapons. Six AK-47 rifles, four AA-12 shotguns, a .50 caliber sniper rifle with scope and range finder, and ten Glocks. After examining the AK-47s and AA-12s, we found they were all semiautomatic, which meant they were legal for us to own. The crate also contained a small box, which when opened, contained semi-automatic to automatic conversion kits.

Turning to Paul, I asked, “Why would a retired President of a Silicon Valley electronics firm need military weapons?”

“I have no idea, but technically they aren’t military weapons, since they are semiautomatic. They just resemble military weapons. I don’t know anything about Washington’s firearm laws, but those conversion kits may not be legal to own.”

Mike said, “My guess is we will find ammunition in the third case.” By then, Vert and Relpt had the lid off the third crate, and when we removed the top packing material, his guess was right.

I said, “Let’s put the lids back on these crates and put them back in the building.”

Vert and Relpt secured the lids to the three crates with a bit of help from the four willing soldiers, and the forklift driver moved the two crates back into the building. After locking Building 2, we walked over to Building 3; the soldiers had left it unlocked. We needed to talk about those weapons and what to do with them.

The forklift made it easy to reposition the crates far enough apart on Building 3’s concrete floor for easy access. Relpt and Vert picked a crate and started removing the lid. Once it was off, they started removing the lids of the other two crates.

As Vert and Relpt worked at opening the second crate, the two soldiers removed the packing material from the equipment in the first crate. Once we looked at all of the equipment in the three crates, we learned we had a Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server, a Synology DS3617xs Disk Station, eight 10-Tbyte Seagate 3.5-inch SATA internal hard disk drives, two RF Switches, a tape backup system, assorted cables, and accessories. I was familiar with the equipment, but the type of computer equipment was just as puzzling as the weapons. If we had the monitors, computers, keyboards, mice, and some additional equipment and software, this equipment could support a very large business.

I asked, “Why would a retired businessman want an Enterprise Computer System?”

Madge said, “We talked about setting this building up as a temporary headquarters for our businesses. Maybe the prior owner was bored and planned to start a new company. That would explain why the building is empty other than these three crates. He may have been looking for a suitable office building.”

I said, “That is a possibility, but this equipment is far more than a small office would need and there is nothing here for connecting to the internet or to another website. Of course, most office buildings have those connections available. This equipment also has enough capacity to support close to a thousand users.”

Mary said to the four of us, “In one of the former owner’s lifelines, he started a special effects company to support the film industry. He was quite successful. He may have planned to do the same thing in this timeline, but died before he could assemble all of the equipment he needed to create the business.”

I thought, “Thanks, Mary.” I had finally reached the point where I didn’t need to subvocalize my thoughts when speaking to Mary if other people were around. I still did it when it was just the four of us.

I didn’t know how much speed and storage capacity a special effects business would require, but I knew it was a lot more than a typical business.

Looking to Vert and Relpt, I asked, “Will you put the lids back on the crates so we can restack them?”

While they and three of Mike’s soldiers started that, I noticed the remaining soldier climb into the driver’s seat of the forklift. I nodded to him, and I started to address the second reason for us coming to Building 3.

I removed the tape measure from my belt, and said, “Let’s get the measurements of the floor space, so we can create a floor plan for our office.”

As I read off the measurements of the interior width and depth of the building, and the minimum and maximum roof height at the walls of the building, Alicia recorded the values on the notepad she had brought for that purpose. After making a quick sketch of the building, we added measurements for the locations of the current circuit breaker box, windows, and doors. While we were doing that, I noticed Vert and Relpt were flirting with the four soldiers. I hadn’t been listening to what was being said, but the soldiers seemed to be very interested in the two women.

Once we finished what had to be done in the building, I locked Building 3 and went to put away the tools in Building 1. Mike’s soldiers headed back to their area, and after I locked Building 1, the rest of us headed to the house; it was getting close to lunch time. Phyllis said they needed to fix lunch, and I noticed Relpt and Vert go into the kitchen with my three ladies.

Simon, Paul, Aaron, Mike, and I made ourselves comfortable in the living room. Paul asked me what I intended to do with the weapons and computer equipment. I told him I had no plans for the weapons, but my ladies and I had been talking about setting up a temporary office for the businesses we planned to start. That, of course, led to me explaining the businesses we had in mind. I didn’t go into any of the details about the properties Minnus Enterprises was buying; I just said it was a realty investment firm. While we talked, we could hear laughter coming from the kitchen.

We had anticipated guests for lunch, so my ladies had decided to fix a large pot of Hamburger Soup in our ten-quart Instant Pot. They had sautéed some extra lean hamburger this morning and poured off the grease. They also peeled and cubed a couple of potatoes covering them with water. Carrots, green beans, and onions were washed and chopped before being added to the bowl with the potatoes. All they had to do was add the hamburger, carrots, green beans, onions, kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, seasonings, V-8 juice, and water to the Instant Pot. While the pressure in the Instant Pot was still bleeding off, the ladies set the table and put out lettuce, sliced tomatoes, pickles, onions, condiments, and an assortment of different breads, meats, and cheeses. I really like soup and sandwiches for lunch, and Hamburger Soup is one of my favorites.

During lunch, Alicia said, “Colonel Tanat, we ladies were talking while we were fixing lunch. We were comparing the sexual practices of Altair and Earth; it was quite educational and enlightening.

“I asked Relpt and Vert about the men they were talking to today. According to them, they found the four men of interest. Mary informed Phyllis, Madge, and me that they weren’t allowed to start a relationship with the men and why. We agree that avoiding a personal relationship is a good idea until the people of Earth and Altair get to know each other better.

“However, I was wondering if Ship Commander Shimlt had plans for relaxing the restrictions on sexual relations between the people of Altair and Earth. As a Facilitator, it seems to me that relations between our two planets should be explored on all levels to include personal relationships.”

Simon said, “I am not aware of any plans for Ship Commander Shimlt to change her orders. She will be back in a little over a week from now, and you can ask her then.”

Phyllis said, “That is odd, Simon. I was talking with Mark about the trip The Seeker had to make back to Altair and he told me that they would go to Minnus first then to Altair. If they were instructed to return here, they would have to go back to Minnus before coming here. According to Mark, the transit time to Minnus was around four weeks of ship time and another two weeks to Altair. How is it Ship Commander Shimlt is going to return in about a week when the total transit time is close to twelve weeks?”

Things got very quiet at the table. I could see Vert and Relpt looking at Simon, and Simon seemed to be upset.

Simon finally said, “I am not allowed to discuss certain aspects of our spacecraft and navigation. You will have to ask Ship Commander Shimlt that question.”

Our conversation was not as animated as normal during the rest of lunch. Phyllis apologized to Simon after lunch for putting him in a difficult position. Our Altairian guests then returned to their shuttles. For the rest of the afternoon, Alicia, Phyllis, and I continued our work on an agenda for the second meeting.

Madge started printing out property description sheets for the properties that weren’t on the market. She added the new properties to our worksheet. When Madge had requested the descriptions for properties, she entered our farm’s address as the customer’s workplace. That field was normally used to compute the distance between a customer’s workplace and the properties they were considering for purchase. We used those distances as our distances from where we planned to locate the Altairian embassy to the properties we were interested in buying. Those distances were part of the information entered into the worksheet for the properties.

After Madge added the property information for the properties not on the market to the spreadsheet. She used the distance to the properties and whether the properties were listed for sale as her sort fields for sorting the properties we were interested in and she continued preparing offer letters for the properties that were on the market that we waned to buy. She would prepare the offers for the properties not on the market once the offers for the available properties had been dropped off at the sellers’ agents. Our initial offer for a property was ten percent below the fair market value of the properties in most cases.

When we were preparing to go to bed, Mary linked with us. She thought, “Phyllis, you placed Simon in a very difficult position with your question. He wanted to explain things to you, but the crew members of The Seeker are under orders to not discuss the ship’s ability to move forward and backward through the Time Continuum. It is a very sensitive topic when the Empire encounters a new planet’s people.”

I asked, “Are you saying the Altairians are time travelers?”

“Yes. Time Distortion is an ability available to the member worlds of the Empire, but it is limited to each member world’s Exploration Force spaceships.”

Alicia asked, “Why is it limited?”

“Time Distortion is dangerous, Alicia. The ship’s computer has to track the time periods in which the crew has existed. If they insert into the Time Continuum too close to a period when a crew member previously existed or if they leave too late relative to a time when the crew member was previously in the Time Continuum, the Time Continuum can be disrupted.”

Madge asked, “Is that like a person being at two places at the same time?”

“No, not exactly. Your scientific community believes that is true because they don’t understand the Time Continuum. It is you entering and leaving the Time Continuum without an adequate amount of time between another period of time in which you existed in the Time Continuum that creates the problem.”

I said, “I assume disrupting the Time Continuum is a bad thing. What happens and why does it happen?”

Mary said, “I don’t know if it is a bad thing.

“What you need to understand is, Zldats are consulted before a spacecraft makes a potentially hazardous Time Distortion jump to determine if inserting at a particular time in the Time Continuum will create a problem. There is always a possibility that an insertion will not happen at the specified time or the insertion lasts longer than expected, but the Zldat evaluating the jump ignores that set of possibilities in determining if the parameters of a specific Time Distortion mission will create a problem. If the trip is approved, then inserting at the appropriate time and not staying longer than a maximum time specified by the Zldat will not cause a problem.

“Let us assume you insert too early and create a Time Distortion anomaly. The future timelines of everyone involved in the anomaly will change. The timelines of the people not involved in the insertion whose timelines are close to your timelines will also be changed. The changes may be good or bad, and once the change occurs, there is no way to determine if the change was good or bad, if you weren’t aware of a specific person’s predicted future.”

Madge asked, “What did you mean by the timelines of people whose timelines are close to someone else’s timeline will change?”

“Think of your timeline as a thread, Madge. The thread begins at your birth and stretches forward in time until it ends with your death. Every time you make a significant decision, one or more diverging threads are created. These threads represent possible futures and each of your timeline’s threads has additional threads, and the subsequent threads will also create branch threads. Your timeline’s threads are adjacent to and often linked to the threads of other peoples’ timelines.

“Think of a Time Distortion anomaly as a small explosion that severs the threads of your timeline and the timelines of the people whose timelines are within the radius of the eruption. Your current thread and those adjacent to it are severed, which means you won’t follow the path of the severed threads. You will create new threads that will take your life along a different path. The same thing will happen to the threads of the people involved in the abnormality. Since you won’t meet the people you would have met in the severed threads, their timelines will also be affected.”

Phyllis said, “If I understand you, Mary, you could go to a time before the anomaly and follow a person’s timeline and you wouldn’t be able to tell if the person’s possible futures changed after the point where the anomaly occurred. Is that right?”

“Yes. I can sometimes detect that an anomaly occurred, but not what caused the anomaly or how it affected the person’s future. However, if I had previously viewed the person’s timeline, I would be aware of the differences between their old and the new timelines.”

I said, “That still doesn’t explain what a Time Distortion anomaly does to cause the timeline disruption.

Mary said, “I don’t know, Jeb. I asked our scientists that question and they offered to explain it to me. However, they also said I didn’t know enough about Time Distortion theory and they told me I would need more than ten years of schooling to understand their answer. At the time, I had better things to do.

“All I really know about Time Distortion is that a spacecraft has three engines. One engine is used for faster than light propulsion, the second engine is used to move at sub-light speeds, and the third engine is used to propel the spacecraft forward and backward through the Time Continuum. The engines aren’t used at the same time for they will interact, which can cause navigation problems and problems in controlling the magnitude of a time jump. People also don’t like using Time Distortion because it makes most people nauseous, and the greater the time jump, the greater the nausea. Fortunately for me, I’m not a biological being and don’t get nauseous.

“The spacecraft moving through the Time Continuum is why the travel time between Earth and the Empire has no bearing on when The Seeker will return to its orbit around Earth.”

Three weeks and five days after departing Earth, The Seeker arrived in Minnus’s solar system and proceeded in-system to Minnus. Tim Xlau, personal advisor to the Supreme Royal Zldat, made contact with Jules Tight, the Supreme Royal Zldat, before Ship Commander Shimlt put the ship into orbit around Minnus.

Tim linked with Jules and thought, “Jules, I just arrived in-system and I have good news. Mary has spent most of the past two hundred and fifty solar revolutions of Earth examining the Time Continuum and updating her predictions. She refused to leave the planet, but she did give Sean and me her updated predictions.”

“That is good news, but why did my daughter refuse to return to Minnus?”

“She told me, the people of Earth are very violent and not suited to joining the Empire at this time. However, they do have qualities that are important to the Empire. She informed us that there was a very high probability that Earth may become vital to the Empire’s survival if they can learn to control their tendencies toward violence. She started a breeding program to change the Earthlings’ tendency to use violence as the main solution to their problems. She just started the program and currently has only four people involved in her program, but she has plans to expand the program.

“Unfortunately, Ship Commander Shimlt was required to implement Directive 1495. Mary is using the four Earthlings who are in her breeding program as Facilitators in order to negotiate an alliance agreement between the Earth and the Empire. Shortly before we left Earth orbit, Ship Commander Shimlt sent her representatives down to the surface to meet with the Facilitators. Sean and I remained on the ship at Mary’s insistence and we guided Ship Commander Shimlt’s representatives through the initial contact meeting with the Facilitators.

“Before the meeting, Mary told her Facilitators about Directive 1495, and they explained it to a few of their associates. So far, the Earthlings seem to be willing to sit down and talk about an agreement.”

“What is your assessment of the Earthlings, Tim?”

“Their history shows they are a violent group of people, Jules. I did some research into why they are so violent. I need to do more research, but the little I found suggests that their civilization is very new and violence seemed to be the only way the humans could survive the environment that formed them. Their leaders also seem to be very intelligent, rational people who are just starting to gain control of their emotional responses to problems.

“According to Mary, Earth’s culture is already evolving toward a less violent way of life, which I think will be accelerated by the agreement. The Time Continuum indicates her breeding program will be successful. Between their natural evolution and Mary’s program, it will take at least another four hundred of their years for the people of Earth to evolve to the point where Directive 1495 will no longer apply.