Chapter 17

Future Interlude IV: Reflections At Home

Aina time: 2:43 PM day 150 of 1472 H.E.

Kalea came in first to the apartment she shared with Mayoni. She kicked off her shoes and sat in one of the plush lounge chairs in front of the bay windows. The view was due west, and sunset would be at 2:51 PM. The scenes of the snow capped mountains in the setting sun were spectacular.

About ten minutes later Mayoni came in carrying a piece of paper. She joined Kalea, discarding her shoes and jumping into an adjacent lounge chair. Neither said anything for several minutes as they both watched the setting sun.

"I'll never get over it," Mayoni said quietly. "How beautiful it is..."

Kalea remained silent for a few moments, and then asked, "Did you tell Hiapo the good news?"

"He was asleep. He left us a note." Mayoni handed her sister a folded slip of paper.

Kalea opened the note and read it out loud: "I knew it would work. Congratulations to us all! Love, Hiapo." Kalea slowly refolded the paper and sighed. "How did he look?"

"He was sleeping peacefully. I don't think he was in any pain at all."

Kalea sighed. "Thank the Spirit for that..." She grimaced. "These last two years... We lost so many people! Jennifer, Lois, Tal... Tal! She was always so full of life! I thought she was indestructible... And now Hiapo..."

Mayoni stared at her sister. "I saw you talking with Dr. Ort. Is there no hope?"

Kalea shook her head. "It's a matter of weeks..."

Mayoni let out a long sigh. "Dr. Ort told you this?"

Kalea nodded. "He still remembers me as Hiapo's wife. With Lois and Tal gone, well... All the radiation exposure, the years they were on Earth... Dr. Ort also suspects they were exposed to early versions of the WFM's bio-weapons. He's found trace signatures of a primitive carcinogen initiator in Hiapo's blood."

Mayoni didn't say anything for a while. She got up and stood behind Kalea's chair. She started massaging her sister's neck and shoulders.

Kalea broke down into tears. "I was hoping, these last few years... that I would get my memories back while Hiapo was still alive. That he would get a chance to talk to me, talk to me as his first wife again. He'll never get the chance..."

"Oh Kalea..." Mayoni bent down and kissed her sister's head. She thought about saying more, but decided against it. She continued to caress her weeping sister.

When Kalea calmed down, Mayoni finally spoke. "I spoke with Marcus this morning. His guess from a week ago was correct. The new bio-code from the solar tower does refer to our memory blocks."

"And?"

"We should recover our memories very soon after reaching eighteen years of age."

Kalea blinked. "What?! We'll both be twenty-two in less than two months!"

Mayoni nodded. "That was my first thought too. But Marcus reminded me the Blue Ring tends to quote time in Earth years. In Earth years, we've just turned seventeen."

Kalea was silent for a moment. "So... next year's Red Bird Festival?"

"Yes, late winter or early spring next year, right around the Red Bird Festival... Marcus says the coding suggests it'll happen very rapidly, a cascade failure of the memory blocks. We'll get back everything, probably within a single day, maybe within a single moment..."

Kalea did not reply. The two sisters returned to watching the sunset. The sun had just disappeared, and the sky was full of bands of orange and purple clouds. Mayoni finally broke the silence. "Want to have dinner in the Olympus common room tonight?"

"Uh... Sure... I guess... Pet me for a while?"

Mayoni returned to massaging Kalea's shoulders. After a while she got a comb and starting combing her sister's hair.

Kalea felt herself relaxing in the love from her sister. "I've got some news for you too, Mayoni."

"Oh?"

"I finished my research in the library archives. I have absolute proof. I've committed plagiarism. At least, my former self did."

"Kalea, we've been through this before. You're being much too hard on yourself."

"Mayoni! It was the core of the slip bubble formalism. It was lifted right out of three key research papers from Oxford Press. Lois was sending them to Kalea, to me, during the portage of Jumpstart in 2009..."

"Kalea! It was a primitive society back then! The concept of plagiarism probably didn't even exist! And then they were in the middle of a war with the WFM. Your former you had better things to do than worry about footnotes..."

"Well... Legally Anuhea agrees with you. I've talked this over with her. She says I've got nothing to worry about. But I'm still going to post a confession on the web..."

Mayoni finished combing Kalea's hair. She gave her sister one last kiss and returned to sitting by her side. "I've read the papers Kalea. They are brilliant. I wonder what ever happened to the author?"

"Oh, I looked it up. It was very sad. He was killed in a car accident, something about a gasoline tanker explosion, in Omaha, Nebraska, a few months before the plague broke out. He was only eighteen at the time..."

Earth time: Saturday, 8 PM, September 11, 2010 Central Daylight Savings Time

Day 3 of the Paleo invasion...

Jim link-thought to Cindy in the underground machine shop, "I count thirteen here, right outside the windows. They're just standing there, growling at me. Ah, here comes another rock. Thank goodness these windows aren't made of glass... Cindy, are you sure this is all of them?"

"Uh... Yeah." Cindy shielded her doubts from the mind link.

"Then you're clear to jump. Please be careful!"

Ten seconds later Jim felt Cindy's mind re-connect. "Wow! Cindy, I'm impressed! Two five-second jumps!"

"Yeah, I'm getting good at this. I'm on the peninsula, right at the tip. If you stared with the binoculars, you could see me waving at you. Don't do it though! I'm deploying the sensor package. It's cold out here Jim! I would guess about 15F..." Cindy was quiet for about a minute. "Package deployed. Wait a minute... There's something I want to check out..."

Jim waited anxiously for about a minute for Cindy to link-think again.

"Uh, Jim?"

"Hi! You okay?"

"I'm okay... Jim... I... I miscounted. There's another body out here. It looks... well... I think he was beaten to death."

"Ah..."

"I'm guessing it happened when they first got here, when they were chasing me down the peninsula. They were probably assuming they had me, and then started taking out their frustrations when they came up empty handed."