Chapter 22

Earth time: 4:48:54 PM Thursday, January 10, 2013

Aina time: 6:27:42 PM day 253 of 1410 second day of spring Makua, 1 hour 20 minutes before sunset

"Time marked!" shouted Kalea.

"Council, this is the Blue Spirit first-contact team! The Path has opened!" All eyes for a moment stared at the speakerphone on the center of the table at the transfer station's conference room.

"Excellent!" said Kikapua after a moment. "First contact team, proceed with your mission!"

After acknowledging the order, the team began entering the spiral tunnel and laying out the Ethernet wire. The council expected a fifteen minute delay before they were contacted again.

Kalea reached over and gently held Lois's hand. "Nervous, dear wife?"

"Ha! I still haven't gotten used to you calling me that! Hiapo yes, you no... Not that I want you to stop... I guess I am nervous... For a thousand different reasons..."

"I understand completely... I feel it too! In front of us lies the great unknown. Behind us is the shelter of the tribe..."

"You're right, dear Kalea. I'm not going home, I'm leaving home. Aina is my home now... It feels like it's always been my home..."

At the expected time, the speakerphone sprang to life. "Kikapua! We are outside the tunnel on Earth. All five of the portage team and Tom and Ellen are here. I will let Tom speak."

" * Kikapua! * Greetings! * Are * you * the * ruler * now? * " sang Tom.

"Ha! I think you sing better than I do! Yes. Greetings. I hear you are by the Path entrance."

"Yes. There is much to discuss. I was wondering if Ellen and I could come through to talk with you. The plague is still here, and the Path is still unknown to Earth. But there's still much to talk about."

"Yes! Come! It will be our great honor to have you."

"Kikapua, this is Kaimi. I suggest the transfer teams begin at once. The tunnel is packed with gifts from Tom and Ellen. The other four porters have already begun to work. It is questionable whether everything can be transferred in a day!"

An hour later Tom and Ellen were re-united with their three children and their many spouses. After many brief hugs and introductions, they all sat down and Kikapua called the meeting to order.

Ellen spoke first. "Perhaps it would be best to start by giving you a history of what's been happening on Earth. There's been no progress at all in treating the plague. After a worldwide intensive effort, most people now believe it was NOT caused by a virus, at least not by anything we would recognize as a virus. The ideas are still somewhat fantastic, but there is a growing suspicion that the DNA of all women on Earth has been recoded. How this was done is a complete mystery. There's a massive search underway to re-examine the human genome, and search for the modifications..."

"If modifications are found," added Tom, "Many people will treat the plague as an attack from outer space. There's common agreement that such recoding abilities are many, many thousands of years beyond current human ability."

"And as for Earth," continued Ellen, "the race continues for the cure. With all the wars going on across the planet, the annual death rate has been around 22 deaths per thousand for the last couple of years. As of now, January 2013, three years into the plague, the current world population is estimated to be 6.3 billion, about what it was ten years ago."

"The age profiles are almost unchanged, except for the total absence of the youngest children," said Tom. "With the historical growth rates of the world's population, the age group counts without the plague would be growing, as more people age into each group than age out of them. But the wars are taking their toll. There's genocide in Africa, religious wars in the Middle East, the Gulf, Turkey, and in Central Asia. And a few months ago there was a nuclear exchange on the Korean peninsula."

"WHAT?!" shouted Kara. "Oh! Sorry! Forgive me!"

Ellen smiled kindly. "Kara, there's nothing to forgive. The news was just as shocking to us when we heard it. A North Korean ship was intercepted in the Mediterranean. It was headed for Yemen, carrying Afghanistan opium and six nuclear warheads. The opium was headed for Europe... We think the warheads were headed to Islamic extremist groups... The U.N. responded by blockading North Korea. North Korea then responded by launching nuclear missiles at the U.S., Japan, and South Korea..."

"My God..." whispered Mark. "... When did this happen?"

"Five months ago... Last summer... The missiles against the U.S. were intercepted. The missiles against Japan were partially intercepted. The U.S. and Japan were using an experimental shield of electromagnetic pulses to disable the electronics... The missiles failed to detonate properly... They had less than a kiloton of TNT yield... People compared it to halfway between an atomic bomb and a dirty bomb... Kyoto suffered the worst... Beautiful Kyoto..."

Tom spoke up. "But South Korea wasn't as fortunate. There wasn't time to activate the shields. They lost their major cities... And then North Korea was obliterated by a U.S. retaliatory strike... The world lost more than forty million people that day... about half the population of the Korean peninsula..."

"What's it like now?" asked Leon quietly.

"It's very difficult to know," Ellen replied. "Civil war broke out in North Korea after the strikes. The U.S. bombs targeted the North Korean military, sparing many millions of women in the cities... The women finally rebelled against all the insanity... Went to war against the remaining males... A gender war! The first one in recorded history... There was mass slaughter of the males, and then the war spread to South Korea... The males were killed there too... Things have been quiet for about two months now... The Korean government is very isolationist... They won't even talk to anybody who isn't a woman... South Korea had some very advanced genetic research going on before the war. We think most of it survived intact. But we don't know what the new leaders are doing with it..."

"Mom, Dad..." said Lois. "Why don't you just stay here on Aina?"

"It's tempting daughter," said Tom. "Especially when I think it'll be more than three years before the Path opens again. But there's still a hell of a lot of good we can do for you from Earth..."

"Tom... Ellen..." said Kikapua. "The tribe is extremely grateful for all your help. But when you want to come to stay here, come to stay. Anytime. Even now."

"We understand. Thank you," said Ellen.

"The reason we wanted to meet with you now," said Tom, "is that there's a very interesting opportunity now on Earth, in the U.S.A. The era of free migration is drawing to a close. No one is letting their younger population go. Anybody who looks under forty years of age... Earth years... in the U.S. can apply for instant citizenship. You don't even have to declare where you came from. The U.S would rather not know! There are lots of claims from countries demanding their young people back. It's Thursday evening on Earth now. At 8 AM tomorrow, the regional registration office opens in Sweet Briar, West Virginia. We have the opportunity to register dozens of people as U.S. citizens. It might prove useful in the future..."

"Yes! Thank you!" said Lois. "Mom, Dad, we have so much to tell you from this side too. There are seven people who want to stay on Earth, if that's okay with you. We would need your monetary support. I've married, to a man named Hiapo. Kalea is now my sister wife. There's also a Paleo woman named Tal who's a part of our marriage. All four of us would like to stay on Earth, me to study the plague, and my other partners to study the Blue Ring. Mayoni would like to go the Earth and study genetic engineering. And there are two more people, Kiana and Kahoku, who want to study mechanical engineering..."