Chapter 18

Future Interlude V: A Chat With Dad

Aina time: 6:50 AM day 151 of 1472 H.E.

Mayoni was just stepping out of her morning shower when she heard the phone ring. Kalea had already left the apartment for the University, so Mayoni dashed out of the bathroom naked except for a towel around her shoulders. "Hello?"

"Hi Mayoni. It's dad. How are you?"

"Oh, hi dad! I'm fine. Where are you?"

"In what used to be southern France." There was a pause, and then Mark laughed. "Actually, the Mediterranean looks a lot different now. Maybe this was Spain."

"Find anything interesting?"

"Oh yeah. We've been observing a herd of wooly pigmy rhinos."

"Cool! Friendly?"

Mark laughed again, "No, I wouldn't say so, no. Their ancestors were rather ornery critters if I remember, and the children are just as cranky. We finally had to raise the ship a hundred meters to get some sleep last night, to stop being rammed."

"Sounds fascinating!

"Oh, it is! Being an explorer is the most interesting job in the world. It has to be..." Mayoni heard Mark sigh over the phone. "Something strange happened to Earth Mayoni, and not too recently either. There's so many new species around, and I'm not just talking about the super-foods. And so many of the old animals are gone..."

"Are you thinking about an extinction event?"

"Yeah, maybe. The evidence is still very puzzling..."

"Yeah... Who's with you?" Mayoni ignored the slight chill of being without clothes and sat down and started typing on her laptop. She glanced out the window. Sunrise would be at 9:07 AM this morning, more than two hours away. It was still pitch dark outside.

"Oh, the usual crowd. Your two mothers of course, Kara and Va'an. Anuhea was tied up with Congressional commitments, working on that civil reform proposal. Leon's here, plus Nalani and Ura. We also have nine people from the marriage class, five women and four men. It's a good team."

Mayoni nodded. "I'm bringing up a display of the area now..." She continued typing. "Cross-referenced the ship's transponders on Earth's global sat grid... I have you pin- pointed. I'm getting a real-time picture of your ship... You're using the Galileo, huh?"

"Yeah, it's my favorite research cruiser. The only thing wrong with it is that it's too opulent. We never get a chance to rough it."

Mayoni blinked. "Rough it? You're the only team that stays out. All the other researchers come back to Aina at the end of the work day."

"Yeah, with these new gravity ships... Home is never more than forty minutes away from anywhere on the planet. It does take some of the fun out of the exploration... Ah, I can't complain. Except for the marriage class, everyone here is about seventy years old, Earth years I mean. We could never do this without the opulence... Uh, say Mayoni?"

"Yeah?"

"We got Kalea's message. We'll be cutting our trip short, be back by this evening. We also canceled our schedule for the next month."

"Yeah. Thanks dad. Hiapo will like that. I'm sure he'll love to sit around with you and chat about old times..."

"Yeah... It is sad... How's Kalea taking it?"

Mayoni paused for a moment. "It pains her. Kalea knows she looks exactly like she did when she married Hiapo, back in 1390. Hiapo notices too. He loves us all, but the way he looks at Kalea... Well... It's very touching."

Mark sighed, not saying anything for a moment and then changing the subject. "We saw you and Kalea on the evening news last night, a video of the gravity experiment. Congratulations!"

"Thanks! It's a big deal. It raises the limit for the gravity generators, on Earth and Aina, to a maximum range of 413 to 420 kilometers. Our first priority is to get the improvements into the satellite grids. The increase in stability also creates a maximum limit on Mahina of 197 to 203 kilometers. We can start running a one-hour Aina-Mahina shuttle service, have it running in a month if we had to."

"Great! How would it work?"

"There's really not much to it. Do a half-circle racetrack orbit around Aina at 1300 gravities. That'll take less than a minute and get the speed up to 700 km per second. Take a slingshot ride out and then do the reverse at Mahina. The whole trip should take about an hour. We'll have to nail the entry position on Mahina. Below 150 km, the cruiser would burn up from friction before it could decelerate. Above 200 km, the gravity generators would never engage and the ship would sail into infinity."

"Yikes. Think that'll be a problem?"

"In practice? Oh no. We should be able to nail the entry point to within one kilometer. We plan to do some testing with probes first, but the research cruisers will probably be ready to go to Mahina by the end of the summer. The bio-contamination question is the only real issue left."

"Sounds great. So what's next for you and Kalea?"

"Havika wants to explore multiple dimensional stability control. Currently we're just deforming one spatial dimension of the manifold. There're ten more."

"Wow! The newscast didn't mention... You can do that? How?"

Mayoni laughed. "No idea! We'll need some inspiration. It's not just a development effort. But I don't think the mathematics will be too difficult. If we can deform two dimensions, minimum curvature will drop to 4.86 meters per second squared, 0.79 for three dimensions, 0.015 for four, 0.00002 for five... We can have powered graviton flight anywhere in the galaxy if we elliptically stabilize six of the eleven dimensions."

"I can go anywhere in the galaxy?"

"Well, just under the speed of light. The time dilation could get you across the galaxy in a few days of perceived time. But 50,000 years will have passed on Aina."

"Yeah... I think I love my home too much for that. Let's leave exploring the galaxy to the probes."

"Yes, I agree dad. They will be gifts of knowledge to our children."

"Yeah... Well, speaking of the quest for knowledge, I should get back to work. We'll see you this evening Mayoni. I love you."

"I love you too. * Me * ke * aloha! * "

Earth time: Sunday, 8:30 AM, September 12, 2010 Central Daylight Savings Time

Cindy had been lying by Jim's side for several minutes, each enjoying the intimacy of the quiet moment. But then Cindy rolled her body on top of Jim's, wiggling in a delightfully sexy manner and offering to kiss. Jim gladly accepted the offer, and spent the next several minutes kissing Cindy and feeling himself get erect. He was pressing into her pubic area through her nightgown, and she didn't seem to mind at all.

Jim floated in the tender sexiness, caressing the back of her thighs and her butt until her nightgown rode up to her waist. Jim felt an intense wave of pleasure as he petted her bare butt and thighs. Her bare skin felt so soft and warm and wonderful. Aroused with desire, his fingers started exploring and caressing the soft flesh of her inner thighs... until his fingers felt an unexpected string. "Oops... Sorry!"

Cindy laughed. "For what? Would you like to unplug me?"

"Huh?!"

"You heard me! I'm in the mood for something a little larger than a tampon!"

Jim couldn't help it. His hips thrust up into Cindy's groin as he realized what she had said. A few minutes later, their positions were reversed. Cindy's nightgown and tampon were gone, and she was lying on her back, her long hair to one side, her legs raised to give Jim an easy angle for coupling. She wiggled her hips lewdly, begging Jim to fuck her.

Jim was poised above her, feeling her breasts and hard nipples brushing across his chest, his penis sliding in the folds of Cindy's labia. It felt so incredibly moist and sexy. His penis was wet with her desire and menstrual flow. They were both panting heavily.

Jim was lost in his love for this darling and most precious creature beneath him. He was thrusting up and down along Cindy's slippery labia. She timed his thrusting and lifted her legs high and wide just before his downstroke, raising her vagina up and pointing her toes, opening herself in invitation. Jim felt his sliding penis catch Cindy's vaginal entrance and he started to slide into her. His penis head was engulfed in something hot and slippery and infinitely desirable. Though an intense burst of will, he stopped himself from a quick deep hip-thrust into her.

"Cindy... Cindy... ?"

Cindy kissed him and whispered in his ear, "I love you Jim, now and forever. I want you, want you now and forever. Take me... Please?"

Jim shivered and gently linked with Cindy's mind. The emotional intensity was so great that they both lost their ability to form words. They began exchanging vows of commitment using only pure emotional constructs. The boundary between self and mate disappeared. When they were done, they pulled back slightly from the compound mind they had created, and shared their first kiss as husband and wife. Together they felt the eager penis sheath itself into the depths of the moist and silky smooth vagina. They spent the next timeless moments thrusting with each other and weeping to each other in gratitude.

Cindy's mind became filled with such adoration and praise that Jim became embarrassed, feeling unworthy of such love. He quietly slipped back into his own mind, and then felt a primal wave of sexual desire wash over him like a mighty river. He started a vigorous thrust rhythm into Cindy, driven by an animal need to orgasm. Cindy cooed and wrapped her legs and hands around his butt, carried away with emotions as she felt the fast pulses of his strokes. Her mind swirled around the tempo of the hip thrusts, feeling the strong clenching of Jim's butt muscles as he plunged into her depths. The pleasure was so intense it was almost unbearable.

Cindy cried out loudly and arched her back, the intensity of her orgasm spasming her legs and pelvis. Jim's penis was suddenly held in a super tight grip, and he made one last major hip thrust before depositing his seed high and tight into his bride, straining himself against her far back walls and cervix. Their orgasms were explosive, and seemed to last forever. Jim finally collapsed on top of Cindy, delirious with pleasure and love and possessiveness for his new mate. Still coupled, they held each other and drifted...

Earth time: Unknown, Early pre-dawn light, autumn solar cycle, lost in a maze of corn...

A'moth's breathing was calm and steady, her body motionless, her mind and muscles on a hair-trigger to spring into action. The thing in the corn was an expert hunter, slowly weaving to close the distance in almost perfect silence. It was right on the edge of A'moth ability to detect it with her acute senses. She was in a semi-trace, letting her instincts take over the critical fight-flight-wait response matrix. She had two thin throwing knives in her backpack. They were exquisitely balanced and A'moth was an expert thrower, but in the past five-thousand years her jumping ability had been a perfect defense mechanism. She had gotten careless about always keeping the knives in immediate reach.

She heard the soft whoosh of something being hurled, and her body snap-rolled away without need of conscious thought. She tumbled into a fighting stance, low and perfectly balanced, a straight vertical backbone, her arms and legs positioned in one of her favorite defensive postures, her eyes scanning into the dim pre-dawn light. A spear was imbedded in the ground where she was lying a second ago, and another was flying right towards her. A'moth crouched and deflected the spear with a lightning-fast arm block. There was a swift rustle in the corn, and then what A'moth thought was a pigmy charged her with a third spear.