Chapter 14: Pre Contact

Four years later.

Time: Friday, July 4, 2053 5:03 AM (circa 1103 BC), home at Porto Santo

Megan's eyes opened as the first golden rays of the new day lit the bedroom. Her husband was still asleep beside her and the house was quiet, which meant that Kelsey also was still asleep. Megan smiled at the memory of decorating the house last night with her daughter. The four-year-old's birthday party would be later this afternoon.

"My daughter is a true American," Megan thought with a grin. "Maybe she's never been there, but she was born on the Fourth of July." She smiled again. "Someday I'll show her how beautiful the West Coast is. And maybe we'll go hiking in the Grand Canyon... Yeah..."

For the last four years, Megan and Alvaro had been on a seasonal rotation, migrating on the first of the month after the solstice and equinox days. They were spending summers and winters at Porto Santo, and springs and autumns at Madeira. They had now been on Porto Santo for three days...

They wondered in the beginning how Kelsey would adjust to all the moves, but now Megan was convinced the schedule was exactly the right decision. Kelsey was growing up with two very diverse sets of experiences and was at home with both the simple farm setting of Porto Santo and the fast, high-tech pace of urban Funchal. Perhaps when Kelsey was ready to start primary school in another two years, they would pick a different schedule, but for now Megan couldn't think of a better or richer way to raise her child.

Megan sighed and took a moment to reflect on her life and her country. Madeira had chosen to remain completely isolated from the rest of the world these last four years. There was high confidence that they had so far succeeded. The new Earth was now orbited by thirty sophisticated low-orbit weather and observation satellites, twenty-seven high-orbit GPS satellites, and six master communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit which were in turn controlled from the Madeiran highlands. New observation satellites were being launched monthly, and so far the rest of the world seemed completely unaware of their presence.

The installation of the satellite network was helped immensely in the autumn of 2049 when the Energy Department's team of researchers finished converting their maximum dark-energy bubble from 163 ms to 326 ms. They built a new dark generator called Topcat, and it was the heart of their single manned space vehicle. With a dark-energy radius over 97 million km, Topcat could lift a total weight of 1690 tons. It could also launch satellites into geosynchronous orbit over any part of the Earth, either by direct placement over the Atlantic area or by slinging the satellite at perigee into a simple transfer orbit and having the satellite do an apogee burn above the desired destination point of the Earth.

Topcat had a dream engine for a space vehicle. It could generate 16.6 mega-Newtons of thrust without the use of reaction mass, sailing the heavens forever on the pulling winds of the universal dark energy. Madeira University had detailed plans for using the shuttle to accelerate probes that would land on the moon and return to high Earth orbit where their lunar rock samples could be retrieved. There were other plans to send probes to the other planets and to launch a massive orbiting telescope that would dwarf anything ever envisioned in their previous timeline. But for now all these ideas were frozen at the design stage, pushed aside by the immediate needs of the society.

Life was not without struggles. The absolute lack of trading partners exposed all the small flaws in their old efforts to become independent. There were long lists of missing products that needed workarounds, and some of the solutions were only marginally satisfactory. What was passing as toilet paper was the butt of many jokes, and one of Madeira's most enduring problems was the lack of raw textiles for new clothing. It had just been so easy to trade with the West African Union for such low-tech staples. They were also no longer trading for wheat, growing it instead as a winter crop. The abundant sea was providing a plentiful diet of fish, but the desire for more farmland had pushed Madeira to colonizing the Azores hundreds of years before their history texts speculated the islands were discovered by Carthaginian sailors.

Madeira's population was slowly and steadily increasing, and had topped 125,000 by the end of 2052. This was in sad contrast to the rest of the world. From extensive analysis of satellite images and mathematical modeling, Madeira's population estimate for the planet (including themselves) was currently 31 million, down from 34 million just after the plague and 49 million before the plague.

Madeira was getting worldwide detailed observations from Coke and the orbiting satellites. The A-strain Satan Bug appeared to have affected the world's population even more severely than Madeira had feared, especially with the children. The global impact appeared similar to the Black Death in the worst regions of Europe, where the bubonic plague killed a third of the population. Madeira's best estimate was that the world's population would stabilize near current levels, and then barring new calamities rise to a new equilibrium of at most 34 million over the next fifty years, provided that another out-of-time plague wasn't released.

It had been an extremely challenging four years for the society, first to accept their situation and then to decide on their priorities. The government had semi-collapsed and reformed several times. Madeira's absolute first priority was to safeguard their critical technologies from accidental or even wanton destruction. Any lost technical ability could no longer be reestablished through trading.

Laws were passed that all critical hardware had to be backed up in the high mountains of Madeira, lest they be lost through a calamity at Funchal. People worried about a possible tsunami, and the threat was not zero. They were living in the modern solar system of the 2050's and had no historical data for when or where the next meteor would hit. Driven both by the safety of geographic diversity and the need for more farmland, the Madeirans were planning settlements on all nine of the largest islands of the Azores. They already had a pilot colony of two thousand settlers on the closest island of Santa Maria and expeditions on several others.

The nation of Madeira now had twenty integrated dark power / matter conversion units ranging in size from 168 ms to 193 ms. There was one in the Azores at Santa Maria, a second at Porto Santo, and the rest at the main island of Madeira. Their power output was scaled back to still meet Madeira's self-imposed limit of all dark generators combined staying below the 1% threshold of the background fluctuations of the universal dark energy density.

Madeira now had an almost unlimited supply of all stable isotopes. Supported by the new generators, the society was in the fourth year of an ambitious five-year plan to build the Alvise Cadamosto shipyard and foundry, complete with a dry dock large enough to hold Discovery. The complex was designed to become the nation's primary center for all heavy construction and transportation equipment.

The frigate Discovery had its dark radius increased to 280 ms providing twelve mega-Newtons of thrust. The Bombardier jet's generator was 237 ms, and Coke had been separated from its flashlight and given a new dark radius of 120 ms. It was now serving as a unique worldwide surveillance tool. Warrant Officer Megan Lopes was an expert in Coke's operations.

Megan cocked her head. She heard the agile patter of young feet on the hardwood floors, and seconds later Kelsey jumped up onto the bed with a joyful laugh and landed on top of her still father. Alvaro gave a sleepy grunt and then hugged his daughter. The new day had begun.

Later that evening.

Time: July 4, 2053 9:19 PM

"Mommy, when's daddy coming home?"

Megan smiled as she sat on her daughter's bed and closed the storybook. Megan had let Kelsey stay up an hour past her usual bedtime, partially because it was her birthday but also because Megan knew how much Kelsey looked forward to her bedtime stories with her father. But now it was two hours after sunset and Megan was tucking Kelsey in for the night.

"I don't know Kelsey. Do you remember the last time we talked how all people work together?"

"The government," yawned Kelsey. "I remember."

"That's right. Your daddy has a very important job with the government. Lots of people want to know how he thinks about different things. That's why he sometimes gets called away."

Kelsey nodded and yawned again. "Will daddy tuck me in?"

"Yes, I'm sure he will."

"Even if I'm asleep?"

"Yes. Your daddy never breaks a promise."

Kelsey nodded and closed her eyes. "I love you mommy, and daddy too."

Megan bent down and kissed her child. "And we love you, very, very much. Go to sleep little one." After one last hug and return kiss, Megan went to the living room to read a book and wait for her husband.

Alvaro finally came home about an hour later. True to his word, he went to tuck in his daughter before coming back to talk with Megan.

"Is she still awake?" Megan asked as she sipped her tea. Alvaro sat on the couch next to her.

"No, out like a light. The party really wore her out. I still had to tuck her in though."

Megan smiled. "She'll never know."

"Sure she will. I position Fluffy in a certain way. Kelsey sleeps more easily once I do. You never noticed?"

Alvaro was referring to Kelsey's favorite stuffed animal. Megan shook her head. "No. You'll have to show me sometime. So..." She sighed. "So what was the big emergency?"

Alvaro gave a small humph. "Seriously, the military's first thought was to summon you, not me. But the issue isn't immediate, and Captain Mendes didn't want to drag you away from Kelsey's birthday party."

"Me? Does Captain Mendes want me to report in? Alvaro, what's going on?"

"Just after dawn this morning, three Phoenician round boats sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic Ocean."

"Ah. Well, we've seen that happen before. An adventurous people, you have to give them that."

"Oh yeah. But these three boats are not like the others. They're not hugging the African coastline. We had another satellite flyby pick them up mid afternoon. They're sailing a course almost due west. They traveled over fifty kilometers in less than ten hours."

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