Chapter 1

Vilchjo, my computer friend woke me up gently with a buzz that slowly increased in volume. He spoke in our language of Esperanto, "Time to get up Michjo. You have work to do."

I had a small stretch and said, "Thanks Vilchjo. That was kind of you."

"Think nothing of it, Michjo."

The people of Pack countries were always very polite to one another and over the years this carried over to the entities that inhabited computers. All of us had the esper ability to heal but more importantly we were empathetic. We felt each others joy, sorrow or pain. To hurt others was to hurt yourself. We grew out of our barbaric thinking quite early. Immediate feedback is a wonderful learning tool.

I walked through the house and out onto the patio. Our home was a kilometre above the surface of Toronto, North America.

My mother Brava was already fixing my breakfast though she did not have to do this. She liked to remain with us and help her children even though they could do this sort of thing by themselves.

She said, "Good morning Michjo. How are you?" I could feel the love she felt for me and I returned what I could to her.

"Not bad Mom. I had a late night with the friends. Thank you for asking. How are you today? You look as beautiful as ever."

She smiled at me. There was no need to check if I was lying because she knew how I felt. A son loved his parents and the love was returned.

"I'm doing fine but I'm waiting for your father and our wives to get back."

"I would like to see them too."

Mom went a little absent minded thinking about our family then she recovered abruptly. She changed the subject by saying, "Did you have fun last night?"

She was the same as us when she was young. She went to parties and had a happy life. "Sure. We went to Yellowknife for their carnival. There was a lot of music and art. It was lots of fun."

"I haven't been to that carnival in years. Did Juvela and Orabela get to go with you?"

Juvela was a friend of mine since I was a baby. We went to the same school. We studied and learned together. She and I taught each other about sex and love at the age of seven. Sex ed was not even one of our courses until the next year.

Mom had watched us and quietly gave advice and encouragement. All we could do is use our fingers and mouths but that was enough at the time. When Sex ed really started, we switched to other classmates but usually found that we were the happiest when it was just Orabela, Juvela and me.

Orabela was a year younger than the two of us. Something resonated in the three of us when we were together. It was similar to what happened in some families. The famous Piper and Kim Compton found something like this when they met Herb Stewart. Ours was not nearly as strong though.

When puberty hit the three of us were making love all the time and our parents had to separate us so we could study. Eventually they had to use the carrot of allowing us time to enjoy our bodies only if we did well in our studies.

I said, "Juvela and Orabela were working at their archeological dig in Chile. They just made a discovery and didn't want to leave just yet. I could tell by their words and gestures that they really wanted to be with me."

"That's too bad. Did you hear anything about the foreign service yet?"

I had graduated last month with a Fellowship Degree in Economics. Only North America, Japan, some smaller Asiatic countries and roughly a third of Africa were Pack countries. The EU was an associate member but the rest of the world was still taking a wait and see attitude. Money was not used in our area but it certainly was in the rest of the world. If I was going to help I had to know how the people thought.

The Pack had ripped out the crooked politicians in Canada and then took on the criminals and the bad police. The jails got very full for a while. The Pack came out of hiding a bit at a time and offered the world a Utopia.

Canada was usually very conservative but many politicians were Pack members by that time. Canada changed almost exponentially. One of the ways to distance ourselves from the rest of the world was to adopt Esperanto as the official language of Canada with English and French as secondary languages. Pionic energy, derived from the universe but locked away in four particular dimensions, soon powered Canada.

The riddle of gravity was cracked and given to the world. The Pack used this to produce anti-gravity. Flying transports carried people anywhere at the price of an hours pay. Space craft flew to the planets on excursion flights.

Raw materials were recovered. Materials were extracted from seawater and everything that could be recycled, was. Fresh clean water was then sent to irrigate the great deserts of the world. Food became very cheap. The Pack modified most of the food and made it the healthiest it could be and able to live in a much more hostile environments. Pesticides and fungicides were not needed and fertilisers only a little.

A new construction material called benasso filled the same duties as concrete. It's tensile strength rivalled the very best aluminum alloys. Houses, water and sewage pipes were made of this. The expected life of this material was estimated to be three and a half millennia. This discovery was almost as important as counteracting gravity.

The economy in Canada crashed but everybody ate well. The people had almost everything for free. People flocked back to school. Others took up hobbies to keep busy. The population became bored and tried to give back some of what they took. The population made gardens and gave away the produce. They were paid with thanks and a song or a painting. The most exquisite furniture was made and cherished for generations.

Dealing in the market was fun and rewarding. When I studied the world before the Pack came to power I found that people just traded money and left. This was not the way a human should interact with his fellows.

After ten years the Pack offered to help parents have the best children possible. The public was not ready for this but in five years they saw the children that were born had IQs one third higher than average. They did not have diseases and in fact all the garbage in out DNA was removed along with the inherited weaknesses.

The children were called superkids at that time. They excelled in sports, academic subjects and empathy. The pack gave everybody the ability to heal themselves or others. We all felt the pain others felt so we were hesitant to cause discomfort.

Parents came more and more to the clinics, especially the famous Jamison Clinic. It was not just Canadians but parents from every nation. When the first child was sixteen the world knew not to fear these children.

The United States was the first associate member and got the energy grid placed over its cities. They got their own means of producing the power too. Little by little they aligned themselves with Pack policies until they were basically the same as Canada.

Mexico was harder simply because so few people were well educated. Their progress was slow but in thirty years had caught up to the other two countries.

The population growth in all three countries slowed but mostly in Mexico. People were assured to live a healthy and productive life until at least 90. Those that had been tinkered with would have another thirty years tacked onto that figure.

Though we were three separate countries the distinctions fell until it was like going to another state or province. Everything necessary to life was provided for free. The extras people made were for themselves or they simply gave them away.

I had gone to university to get a degree so I could help the people that were not in the Pack countries. My IQ was only normal or what would be 142 in the old system. The trouble was that many people wanted to help and there was only a few official ways of doing this.

"No Mom. They are going to wait until everybody gets a chance to graduate and then they will make their choices."

"Maybe Uncle Herb can help?"

Uncle Herb was named after the famous Herb Stewart. Our family legend said that Herb Stewart was the father of one of our ancestors. My seven times grandmother was one of the students in the Pack. She never became a full member.

There was a slip in the protection of the contraceptives of the time. When she suspected she was pregnant she left the main Pack to do some of the necessary work. She stayed away from Herb and the main body of the Pack because she wanted her baby to be raised in a more normal surroundings.

My six times great grandfather went into clean up of the toxic sites. It was said that his IQ was near what the great Piper. Over the generations, the average IQ dropped but we think it was also Pack policy to not have too many super geniuses outside of the Pack. The Pack even had to cut back because it was rumoured that the Pack members would stray if they separated for too long.

The family thought that Herb Stewart never knew that he had another son but it was possible. He liked his kids to be independent and learn as much as they could.

"I wouldn't ask Uncle Herb. If he said anything then I would be seen as using family ties to get ahead."

"I did not mean that way. He knows some of the details you must know to succeed. Everybody has their slant on this and Herb's is just one more person to ask."

I felt my mother's pain and regretted my words. Ethics was a strong force within the Pack countries and an even stronger force in our family. We helped all we could and asked as little as possible from others.

"I'm sorry Mom. I know that. I'm just worried. All I can do is work hard and let the board see how diligent I am."

Mom said, "Sometimes it takes years for those decisions."

"I know Mom. I want to go work with Dad full time till a position opens up for me."

Mom gave her big smile and said, "What happened to our waltzing troubadour? You were going to sing your way across the EU and paint pictures to rival Michelangelo."

"I was twelve at the time Mom. I'm nineteen now and not a kid."

Mom hugged me and then kissed me. I could feel the love coming from her and tried to push out my own feelings to her. She said, "I know that Michjo, but your still my youngest son."

I kissed her back and said, "And your oldest son too."

"You're also my favourite son."

"And you're my favourite mother."

"I would hope so but what about Katida and Rava?"

"I love them too but you gave me life."

Mom seemed to shoot out her love in a flood that threatened to overwhelm both of us. Being an empath was the best thing in the world but it did have its problems on accession.

Katida and Rava also married Dad. Mom only had two children. My sister Vespera was four years younger and going to school at the University of Toronto the same as I had. Dad was not alone in having a non standard family. Only 22% of the families in Pack countries were of one man and one woman. The size of a family gave it strength just like the Pack and like the Pack we could not get too big or we would loose sight of some of the members.

Katida and Rava had four children total and they were my brothers and sisters just like Vespera. Those children were also older than me and currently working in California cleaning up the damage made by the 49ers. That was 1849 and 381 years ago. The mercury and arsenic was still in the water and polluting the land and the ocean.

Our family had been cleaning up after humanity for two hundred years this summer. The original Pack members gave us the machinery to do so. Over the years they gave us more information and we used it to improve our equipment.

Dad ran one of the cleaning/construction units. This command platform had many auxiliaries to assist it. To take on different work, we just used different drones. Basically a command platform was a living unit for four crew members. It contained the computers that controlled whatever units were needed.

It was powered by the smallest black hole possible. Where we worked beampower was not always accessible. Besides we used a lot at some times which caused problems for others that shared the power with us.

We flew to the area that needed to be cleaned and released the required drones. They were controlled by one of the five auxiliary computers in the command unit. The first assayed the structure of our planet. If we were cleaning, they found the extent of the damage to our planet. They also assessed the surrounding land for what it might have been at one time so it could be put back the way it needed to be.

Other drones worked as singletons or in groups. These worker drones formed a plane of energy that could cut into the soil on land or in the bottom of a river and then pull up all the buried contamination. Other units were downstream filtering the water so none of the disturbed material go away from us.

A scrubber unit cleaned everything and threw back the cleaned rocks and soil. The contamination was processed and the pure metals saved in sealed containers. In an hour, a single construction unit could process up to 1700 tonnes of material.

Benasso could be made by a modified scrubber unit. We were working on making the one unit do both jobs but we ran into difficulties. This very high strength building material was used everywhere in the world now. The construction units had their own force fields and the benasso would be put within the forms and harden in seconds, even underwater. Intricate construction required specialised form units. These provided a shape for the benasso and made the material harden quicker.

We constructed many public buildings in Africa out of this material. In NA we tried to bury the construction and then pipe in both natural sunlight and fresh air for ventilation. In existing cities we built upward.

My grandfather was the man that built the Stewart building in New York. It is two and a half kilometres tall. There are homes and businesses in it and some people have not left the building for years. It recycled water and waste and even grew it's own food. The sad thing is that the building was superceded by a building constructed by another unrelated family six months later.

I was going to study the data coming in. Dad was currently in the Sacramento Valley of California. It was a lot easier for my family because we had implants in our heads that allowed us to interface with the computers and the entities that inhabited them.

Vilchjo lived in my computer. I placed the small pendent sized unit on my desk and said, "You there, Vilchjo?"

Almost microscopic units rose from the unit and multiple coloured lasers played across the one metre square screen. I saw what looked like a person of my age and gender. In a way he was my alter ego. If I needed to talk out a problem then Vilchjo would help. He was connected up to the world wide net of computers so he did not have to rely on me for companionship.

"Hi Michjo. What's up?"

"Hi Vilchjo. Would you please interface with Dad's computer? I want to see the problems he's having at the worksite."

The two of us went over what we saw and quizzed Dad's computer on some points. There were a lot of hot spots still. Mainly it was mercury contamination. We had worked out many strategies in the last two hundred years on what to do. I made my own strategy from memory to see just how it would work.

There were seven major computers in the Command Unit. One was in overall command and one worked exclusively on the containment vessel that housed the black hole. The rest gave their own analysis and tried to help me see what could be done to optimise the process. I was not wrong in the ways I chose, I was just not perfect. The crew of three or four were there for human reasons. The computers and the units could do this alone but then man felt to be a useless accessory. The computers were far brighter than the personal units we wore. They were all nice people though.

Computer entities were constructed by the Pack with some major thinking. The entities did not think of themselves as alive but the humans of today thought of them as if they were.

Vilhelmo, my father, said, "Are you going to make it out here with your crew, Michjo?"

Appointments were promises and some people would rather die than go back on their word. "I'll make it on time. I have to see some friends tonight and I can fly out at noon tomorrow."

"That's good to hear. Your mother miss me?"

I had to smile at him and said, "You better take some simulants Dad. Mom has plans for your body." Dad's three wives rotated so one was home for us all the time. Since we got older this was not needed but the women liked the chance to whet their appetites by a bit of abstinence.

Mom had her own friends and she was never in need. Almost every night she visited other families and made love to the individuals. Dad as well as Katida and Rava did this too but only when they could. We were involved with a nebulous super family that changed as people had to move away but were usually replaced by some newcomers.

"Those are the type of plans I like."

That night I went out with my own friends. Most were people I went to school with as a kid or later in university when I started to specialise. Some nights it was non-stop sex but usually we sang the songs we wrote or played our instruments. I played most of the instruments but the guitar and the clarinet were my favourites. There were many fun times when we sat around a fire and I played a harmonica.

The people listening to me, loved the music and I could feel this love coming from them. Usually this made me play even better than I thought I could.

I was fair as a painter or a sculpturer but there were many people far better than I was. Tonight was going to be an art exhibit we would be going to. Orabela and Juvela would not be here and I missed them tremendously.

At six, I ran up the steps to the top of the building. There was an elevator but a healthy person was supposed to do this to stay in shape. Nobody liked to see people that let their bodies go. I was in good shape. I wrestled in university and played lacrosse and soccer. I was just plain looking though.

The Pack's manipulation of our genes made our minds work well, our bodies worked well and or faces were symmetrical. When I took Pack history as a child I saw how odd people looked then. Their eyes were just a bit too big or their nose not quite high enough. It took only a few small alterations and a person's face and body looked the way they should.

At the top of the building, I ran over a long bridge to a building east of ours. A bus stopped a few minutes later and I found a seat. There were lots of interesting girls on the bus and they were eyeing the guys. One looked at me longer and I could feel her need to be made less lonely. Almost by reflex I got up and walked over.

"Hi, I'm Michjo. I'm going down to Union Station to get a flight to Buenos Aires. We are going to look at some South American artists and then have a meal. Would you like to come?"

"Buenos Aires! I'd love to go."

"That's great."

"I'm Miela by the way. I'm a 14b7r16m in relationships."

I smiled at her. "I'm a 15b7r15m+."

She studied me to see if I was lying but few ever did. "Hmm, that's nice for me. I like the guys to play with my butt. What do you like?"

"Well I like what you like. But I like the rest of you too."

"Ohhh," Miela shook a bit in joy and said, "I'm going to like this."

When I went to university I had to take four years of family planning. This would allow me to have children when I was ready to settle down. Part of the course was Sex ed but not what we had taken previously. We worked hard to give pleasure to our partners.

Cavemen would just insert their members in their mate and in a few seconds fill her. As time went on man tried to better his record. It was only with the advent of the Pack that women were truly free to choose. Now if a man did not work hard as a lover, the women would find a better man. The poor lover got mercy sex but he knew what it was.

Nowadays, the female students marked the males progress. The results were tabulated and available to all. I was not the best by any means but I was above eighty percent of the males in the university.

We got off the bus on top of Toronto's New Union Station Space Port. I came a bit early to talk to my friends that would be travelling with me. Miela pulled me to a wall and dropped to her knees and undid my pants. The garment hit the floor at the same time my cock hit the back of her mouth.

This was not that uncommon and it was a way for a woman to stake her claim. I could still feel some residual sorrow in her and perhaps tonight she would tell me about it. At the moment it was hard to think because she was doing some wonderful things to me.

We were almost late for the one hour flight to Buenos Aires. I introduced Miela to some of my friends. When they started to get busy with each other, I put Miela in a seat and picked her legs up. She screamed eight times before we reached our destination.

Miela had been to this city almost as much as I had. The nightlife in the city was termed wild before the Pack appeared. It had to get much wilder to match us. Very few people used drugs now. The Pack found anybody that sold the substances and turned them in. Alcohol was the only intoxicant allowed but it was frowned on if somebody overindulged. If somebody did it too often, his or her friends would put their hands on them and did their best to heal them. As far as I knew there were no alcoholics in the Pack countries.