Chapter 4: Rebirth

Bets reached up and touched the face of her love, with a shaking hand.

"Well, I should say so honey. All is well and you've come home." Her eyes were misty for a few seconds as the love of her life leaned in and hugged her to him.

"Now help me off this damn contraption, please," she mumbled against his shoulder.

Tom picked her up in his strong arms and kissed her before putting her on her feet again.

"Hello, my mossy little girl. It's good to see you again," he said, his own voice breaking a little as he spoke.

Bets felt another set of arms grab her from behind, and heard her boy say, "Wow, Mom, you're a hottie!"

"Easy there, boy, this ones taken, already," Tom said, with a stern voice that didn't carry into his bright shining eyes.

Bets looked at her son. He didn't really look any different except maybe a tiny bit taller than before.

"I'm still me, Mom, but you ... I mean you and Dad are like ... wow!" the excited boy said.

He eyed the two adults that had been his 'old' parents. Now they looked more like his uncle and aunt, than his mom and dad.

Bets grew excited, seeing her husband.

"Where's a mirror?" She said.

Dregg pushed one into her hand. Her hand! She looked at it closely wrapped around the handle of the mirror. The age spots from too much sun were gone. The skin was smooth and screamed vitality and youthfulness. Slowly she raised the mirror and beheld the girl Tom had nicknamed Mossy Girl, way back then in the bar. Clear blue striking eyes looked back at her, with no more white spots from cataracts. No gray hair, just a deep flowing thick and full head of red hair met her gaze in the mirror.

"Wow!" She stammered in awe.

Dregg chuckled at the now young woman, "I told you not to worry. You'll put wrinkles back in my work of art."

Tom grinned at his beautiful wife, "I do love my hot sexy redhead, and boy do you get my motor running!"

"Dad! Geeze! Get a room before you start on that stuff, you perv," exclaimed a disgusted Tommy.

Just the image of his parents going at it, made his stomach turn.

"Hey, Dregg, I don't feel any different at all. What did you do to me?" Tommy asked finally after borrowing the mirror from his mom.

"Well, I didn't change your appearance much, but I did a lot of inner work on your body. You will age normally, until you are twenty-five. Then your body's aging will almost come to a complete stop."

"You mean he will be immortal?" Tom asked, surprised.

"No, you all will continue to age, just at a much, much slower rate than before," Dregg answered.

"How much slower?" Bets asked warily.

Dregg did the calculations in his head. Every species was different and this was the first time he had tried the procedure on humans.

"I'd estimate about fifty human years for one of your newly enhanced years," he finally stated.

"Holy shit! Sorry, Mom, but that's that's like damned forever!" declared Tommy.

"No, not really," cautioned Dregg. "Say an average lifespan of a human is what eighty years? I set both of you two to twenty-five years old again. So you should live about 2750 years, give or take a few," Dregg clarified for the three humans.

"Oh my! That may not seem like forever to someone like you ... but damn, that's a long time," Bets croaked out.

Dregg smiled at the three, "You will need that much time to start a new civilization. Where you are going, there are only small bands of people, and no organizational skills have shown up inside the groups, as yet. In fact, we have determined that the few people who live there now, will soon cease to exist, if their thinking does not change. It will take time, patience, and killing some of the more aggressive hardheads before human life can flourish and become a true dominant species on that planet," he added sternly.

Tom caught that last part and it shook him a little, "You mean it's survival of the fittest, right now, and the idiots kill anything weaker or different than themselves, right?"

"You hit the nail on the head, so to speak," Dregg answered him.

Bets sighed and then put on her thinking cap. What was the most urgent thing they needed to help them decide on what to bring with them? Her face lit up with the answer.

"Dregg, do you have information on this planet we are going to? I mean, real information ... What type of animal species, what type of plant life is available there now, and what will grow from our world?" she asked.

"Of course I do! What kind of production manager would I be if I didn't have such simple information onboard my ship?" he answered gruffly.

"What kind of information do you have, and in what format is it? Books, video etc?" asked Tom, deducing what his wife was looking for.

They would need as much recon of the place as possible. This was a mission, after all, and good intelligence was a major requirement of any successful mission.

"Well, I don't have books on the planet, but I do have video. And, of course, live action cameras are covering the entire planet, right now," Dregg answered, his large black eyes narrowing. "Why do you ask? None of the other humans have ever asked for information about the places I have put them down on," he questioned the two adult humans.

"Well, maybe that is what the problem has been, Dreggy. Hell, even I know that you don't walk in the pasture without first looking for cowpies to avoid," Tommy said, rolling his eyes.