Chapter 4

Three days before I was to be released for a vacation following the conclusion of my studies, I met Miss Catherine Larkin for the first time. I had heard she looked young, but I never imagined that the thirty-nine-year-old super-genius was the serious but innocent looking twentyish woman before me.

What was even odder was Miss Thomas’s Android guard’s response to the woman who owned L&S.

“Greetings, Mother,” Boris, Sydney’s bodyguard said upon seeing Catherine Larkin.

Hugging the armed and armored Android, “Hi, Boris, has Syd been treating you well?”

“Yes, Mother. Miss Sydney has been informative. How is Mother and Mother’s Master?”

“Don’t start, Boris.” Miss Thomas interrupted the reunion of the Android and his creator.

Quiet public knowledge was that Catherine Larkin studied under her husband, Smith, as a teen, marrying him shortly after her twenty-first birthday. Except for that single day of her wedding, she publicly referred to her husband only as ‘Master’.

The founding of Larkin and Smith, L&S, was launched before Christmas that same year and skyrocketed to heights beyond what anyone else could imagine in the next two.

“I’ve been swamped, the fusion redesign of the Mars air purifiers is kicking my ass, but He’s been less sucky of late.” Both of them ignored my boss’s warning and continued with their reunion.

Contrary to Miss Thomas’s crisp clear diction, Miss Larkin broke most every informal and unwritten rule of speech around the elvish manipulator with countless ‘yeah’s’, ‘kinda’s’ and other slang derivatives. During their fifteen minute reunion.

I was torn between shock and mirth at the super genius’s speech patterns and Miss Sydney Thomas’s disgust at her boss’s common way of speaking.

I briefly wondered if Mrs. Larkin was the reason behind Miss Thomas’s strict adherence to remove such words as ‘yeah’ from company vocabulary. Not that I was brave enough to ask that aloud.

“Dr. Volkstag, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” My ultimate boss nodded to me in greeting while settling down across from me, once her reunion with Boris ended with a smile and a pat to his chest.

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“Do you think you are ready to head the Legacy Project?”

“As much as I am able. Stellar Navigation is beyond me.”

“Moria has three sets of Bots which will take care of that chore for you. Most of the calculations need a high order computer to run anyway. Syd tells me that you are the one she trusts to captain Mark IV. It’s quite odd, other than my husband, Sydney trusts no one outside her control.”

“Catherine,” warned Miss Thomas. Warned with icicles and promises of pain to be applied in great quantities for eons, if the crisp, razor sharp chill in her speech was any indication of her displeasure.

“Boris, can you take Syd to my office, Master is waiting for her,” Miss Larkin seemingly was immune to Sydney Thomas’ threats.

“Affirmative, Mother.”

“Catherine, I will await you in my office when you are done with Mr. Volkstag. We have much to discuss.” Miss Thomas replied with additional arsenic laced saccharine, yet obediently followed Boris the Android out of the conference room, closing the door behind herself.

Miss Larkin watched her Vice President of Operations exit the small eight-seat conference room, not releasing a sigh until after the door was firmly closed and a count of ten had passed.

“Get comfortable, Geoffrey. I want to test your understanding of the Legacy systems...”

The following twelve-hour grueling question and answer session proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Miss Larkin knew each and every system on board of the Legacy to a degree unobtainable for me. Regardless of how much time I spent in study and practice.

Rumor was that she refused every attempt of Earth’s universities for honorary PhDs. Speculation abounded for why, but no one wanted to say the real reason. Not that she needed the extra letters after her name. There wasn’t a hard science field, outside of the biologies and chemistries, that she had not mastered.

Privately, I believed it would be the same as if a high school physics teacher gave a gold star to the Noble Prize winner. She knew that she was light-years ahead of the other scientists and so did most of those Deans with half a brain. Even if the Administrators just wanted their name associated with Catherine Larkin, no one wanted to feel like a fool.

In a very real way, I felt honored that I was able to spend a few days learning and being questioned about my understanding of Fusion by the woman that invented it. Those three twelve-hour days were the most intense that I ever experienced, intellectually. My own PhD defense was nowhere near as rigorous, but my professors at MIT were not going to be entrusting me with a multi-billion-dollar spacecraft.

We were eating sandwiches after the final question and answer session was mostly over, she asked me, “What do you think about meeting aliens, Geoffrey?”

“I still think I am in way over my head. Communication will be an insurmountable issue, even if both sides find a language that we can pass words back and forth outside of basic binary. Cultural and syntax misunderstandings can lead to unimaginable potholes. Or worse.”

“I don’t agree. Not with the first meeting. Later meetings definitely.”

“Why don’t you agree, Ma’am?”

“Those stations, or Warp Gates, must be set up to deposit the exiting craft in a very specific location. Any intelligent species that wanted to communicate would have primed their border guards not to react to triggers. The warlike ones would have already used the gate to attack Earth. I discount the attackers on the first meeting. Moria agrees with me. Master cautioned that they might be waiting for us to make contact before becoming aggressive, in order to fulfill an abstract set of criteria.”

That name had been bugging me, “Who is Moria?” Sydney Thomas had used it a few times.

“Moria O’Shannan is Lady Strife of Strife International; SI. She is the one building Legacy.”

“Oh, I had only heard of Lady Strife. Not her given name.” I lost a few points with Miss Larkin with that question.

“For the last nine years Moria has mostly remained on Hope with Marissa working on Legacy. Her name is losing recognition on Earth.” I felt forgiven for not correlating the two identities.

“I have viewed the alien recognition program that Jeff made for Syd. I have no idea how you passed. It was too disgusting for me to last five minutes.”

I shrugged, “The first two times were pretty bad.” I was about to elaborate, but suddenly recognized that Miss Larkin didn’t want to actually discuss that issue further.

“Where are you going on vacation?” she changed the subject again. Something, which disconcerted me in the first few hours of my interrogation, was her constant shifting the questions from one subject to another, with no link or connection between the two.

“Scotland, I have always wanted to visit their castles and highlands.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, I have not made any arrangements. No time really, my class schedule had been keeping me too busy for anything other than the occasional mandated recreation.”

“How did you find the pacing of the classes I designed for you?”

I was surprised. I didn’t know that Miss Larkin was the one who designed my classes. I had thought Miss Thomas had a hand in them, but never asked.

“Very intense at first, I needed about three months before I stopped worrying about keeping up. I did feel that the pace slowed near the last two months and in the last month I even had extra time for independent study”

“That was all you, Geoffrey.” She smiled at me in approval. “I set up the class schedule to push you while you were on Earth. I was worried that you would need extra time. Did you have any negative effects from the KWQ or stress?”

“No, Ma’am.” She had to have known that from the reports.

“Good. I’ll make sure that Moria keeps up your training at Hope. If you feel you can accelerate it without issues, let her know.”

“I will.”

“Moria is going to build a colony ship. We’re jointly funding it. Unfortunately for all of us, you seem to be the only one that can scout out the way forward without us building city sized spacecrafts. We plan on building them regardless of your findings and participation. What your efforts can do is save countless lives, time, and resources by finding safe paths.