Chapter 1: The Journey

Jim had just finished saying "Engage", when Annette tapped the preprogrammed virtual 'execute' button on her LCD monitor.

It took just over 2 shakes, before the Warp Coil generated the field around the 90-foot length of the orbiting ship. On board, it was as though nothing had happened. The anti-grav generator was synched to the warp coil. It compensated for the sudden burst in acceleration, as if it were an inertial damper. As crude as it was, it worked well enough to keep them from becoming paint on the wall behind them.

They accelerated to warp 7 in just 3 shakes. The ships flat panel plasma display screen was being used as a view screen. The scene was reminiscent of that space cowboy TV show from the late 1960's.

Jim thought for a moment, then said, "Gene, what have you done to my ideas?"

Annette and Jennifer laughed for a moment at the reference to their grandfather. It was an ongoing joke in the family.

Annette said, "I seem to remember you called him Ray, way back when we first met you."

Jim replied, "Ray? I thought I said 'Rod something-or-other'."

"You said Ray," Jennifer said. "I don't know how you could get Ray out of my maiden name."

"Hey, Roddenberry is still my last name! At least until they get that stupid law changed," Annette said.

"Sorry, my loves. I should have waited until I could legally marry you both at the same time," Jim replied.

"Oh, you're so sweet," Annette said, "but we had to do something after the cellular regeneration took place."

"Yes, you are correct. It would have been rather difficult for me to conduct business as an octogenarian, when my body was that of a twenty-one year old man."

"I like you even better like this."

"Yes, he does have a commanding presence," Annette said.

"Hum... Yes," Jennifer replied. "And he is looking more and more like a Captain every day."

"Ok, Ok. That's enough," Jim said. "I can't take anymore of the references. It's bad enough that the kids watch the reruns all the time. Why did you have to get them to name the ship Enterprise?"

"That's DVDs, love, not reruns," Jennifer said.

Annette added, "Well, at least you aren't the first captain with the name Jim to fly a space ship called Enterprise."

"Is that what did it?"

"No," Jennifer said with a smile. "It was you and your raised eyebrow that influenced that other actor, that did it."

"Well, at least I approved of the cool logic of that alien."

"Is that why we sometimes catch you watching the DVDs with the kids?" Annette asked.

"How can I avoid it?" he said. "It's either that, or sit and watch that 'companion' junk."

"I like that stuff, I grew up on it."

"Well, it could have been worse," Jim said.

"Yes, it could have been," Jennifer said. "I could have been forced to perform calculus at the age of seven, like you have done to our kids."

Jim looked her in the face for a long moment, before he raised just one eyebrow.

The kids choose that moment to run back into the bridge area. They had decided to play their favorite game, 'Hunt the Bug-eyed Monsters', and they just had to see if Dad would play it with them. Jim had taught them the game after a trip to Disney World. He had gotten the idea from one of the rides there. He also loved to poke fun at the big-eyed space cadets. Thus he named the game 'Hunt the Bug-eyed Monsters'.

Jim looked over his children. Leah was the oldest at 10. She was only a month older than Jason, who was also 10. Jim then looked into 8-year-old Amber's eyes and then to Wendy, who also 8, but three days younger. The youngest were Tim and John, at the age of 7. The wives had called a halt to more kids, after they were born within seconds of each other. Jim remembered that it was awfully hard to run from room to room at the time, but at least they were in the same hospital.

Jim said, "Yes, of course we can play." He looked at his wives and added, "The women have the bridge."

He was out the door, and quickly into the ship's living area. When he settled down on a couch, all of the kids found seats around him. They started up their imaginary space ship, and headed out on their hunt. Jim thought wistfully, that he wished this ship were as big as the TV Enterprise was supposed to have been. Right now, they could use all that room.

'And, ' he thought, 'a holo deck to play this game on. Lord, the kids could get into that.'

Everything was going normally in the game, then Jim threw the kids a curve.

"Scanners are down, Jason. Look into it."

Jason said, "Aye-Aye, Captain. I will get them fixed straight away."

Leah said, "We should just pulse the warp's coil wave out the nav's radar array. That would give us a long range picture."

Jim stopped dead in his tracks at hearing this.

'Damn, ' he thought.

Just now he wished he had one of those communicator thingies, to use to call the wives.

"Did you suggest that for the game, or for the ship?" Jim asked.

"Both."

"How would that work for the real ship?"

Leah went into a lengthy explanation, which Jason eventually interrupted by announcing, "I am a miracle worker! The scanners are fixed!"

The game resumed, and the 7 of them destroyed hundreds of imaginary bug eyed monsters in the next couple of hours.

Later, back on the bridge of the ship, Jim turned to his daughter.

"Leah, will you please explain to your mothers and I, your idea for a long range sensor array?"

"Of course, Daddy."

Leah spent the next two hours explaining how she believed one of the wave forms generated in the warp's core field, could be redirected so that it worked much like sonar. She explained that the data returns would penetrate, and pass though objects, and the partial returns would have different values for different materials or things that were encountered. The best part, would be that it would function at an unknown, but very large multiple of their maximum warp speed. The mothers went bonkers, and Jim just glowed with pride.

Jason said, "Cool! If that works, we can work on the 'flux capacitor', next."

"Flux Capacitor?" Jim asked.

"Oh, who cares about time travel?" Leah said flippantly.

Jim did not understand the reference. He had, after all, been far too engrossed in his work for the first 80 years of his life. Normally, he didn't even to watch TV, much less go to movies.

Annette said, "Well, I don't think we should monkey with that; though I would love to hear your theories on that subject. In the meantime, it should only take a few hours to set up a test of Leah's scanner theory."

"Yes," Jennifer said, "I would feel better if we had something like that available to us."

"Leah, help your mothers set that up."

"What about me?" Jason asked.

"You have to stay here and be the helmsman, so that I have someone to give orders to," Jim said.

Jason was beaming. He was actually going to get to sit at the navigation console.

The ship's bridge was set up similarly to the bridge on the original TV version's Enterprise. Navigation was to the right of the command chair. Radar, and the optical navigation telescope station, was to the left. The communications console was behind the command chair.

He thought about it, and decided there was room for science and engineering stations to be placed in here, also.

He thought about it some more, and realized that other than giving orders, there really wasn't anything for him to do. He could watch the light-shift effect on the main screen, but the view was not all that special.

'Gene, you got that part all wrong, ' Jim thought to himself. Then he added, 'Good! I hope you where wrong about a lot of things. I would hate to be the first to make 'first contact'. Unless, of course, it's with the Vulcans.' A smile played across his face.

Leah and her moms had completed rerouting an optical cable feed to the nav-radar unit. The input could be switched between standard radar, and the new waveform array. All that was left to do was to test it and calibrate it, so the computer could identify the 'returns' (reflections from an object encountered by the pulsed waveform).