Chapter 1: Introduction

This is a sequel of "A Better World" and "A Better World II." Many of the characters in this story come from those two novels. While this work stands on its own, reading "A Better World" then "A Better World II" would provide useful background to this story.

I am Tag Savage, the son of Tiger and Squeaker. I will tell you the story of "The Hospital of Bangalore."

Twenty five years have passed since my dad and Tom Savage captured the Karg space ship and crew and drastically changed Earth history. The Karg were ruled by a military artificial intelligence. They became a war like race and solved competition for planetary space by bombarding the competing planets with asteroids. They had done this to twenty other civilizations. The Burma asteroid was the beginning of the Karg attack on Earth.

My dad, mom, Tom and Cynthia were on asteroid patrol when dad spotted the Karg ship attached to an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth. They captured the ship. The Karg were not expecting a counter attack. After mom, dad and the patrol redirected the asteroid to an orbit of Earth they took the alien ship to the Moon base. Our engineers reverse engineered the ship. Earth got translight drive, artificial gravity, trans-light communication, rudimentary transporter function, and a practical antimatter reactor. We took the WE to Karg and eliminated the Karg AI. The Karg were free for the first time in fifty centuries.

The asteroid that hit Burma killed two billion humans. The sad thing was the survivors near the hit. Many were so badly injured; they needed special reconstructive surgery and years of rehabilitation. There were fifty million patients. The UN took an unpopulated M class moon of a J class planet in the Tau Ceti system. The UN teraformed the moon called Bangalore. They set up a reconstructive/rehab hospital on the moon. They put the patients in stasis and transported them to Bangalore. The hospital was equipped with the best equipment and staff from Earth. Then the staff all disappeared.

I am getting ahead of myself. Did I tell you that there are five sentient species on Earth? There are of course humans. There are the WE, the artificial intelligence which was created by James Savage. Dolphins, they were infested by the WE and became able to communicate with humans. They had always been sentient. There were the Octopi in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Someone was doing an experiment on nonmammalian intelligence. They got loose. That really shook up the rednecks.

Then there are the Smart Cats. Nancy Savage was responsible for their creation. A smart cat is a cat that stands erect, has a hand with an opposing thumb, is five feet six inches tall, and has an IQ of 140. Mom and dad were the first smart cats. There are now approximately 60,000 smart cats. My mate Sushi and I are smart cats. For their participation in the Karg war, mom and dad were granted permission to have two kittens. The WE control the population of all sentient species on Earth. This is necessary due to the virtual immortality achieved because of the WE. The Earth still had eight billion humans. Only couples that volunteered to resettle on other planets were allowed to have children. The one exception was those who fought in the Karg War. They were allowed two offspring.

Most of the Smart Cats came from Sonoma County. The UN discussion of Other Races was started in Graton. They gave all sentient species on Earth citizenship. This included the Smart Cats.

I grew up on the Savage homestead in Graton, CA. Dad and Marsha Savage helped me get into medical school. I went to the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco.