Chapter 2

The board meeting was essentially the same as one of the Tabor clan’s family forums. The same people were there, only more of them, now that Solar City was fully operational. It lasted almost an hour; plans made several years ago now being put into effect.

Assignments were given to the Femme Fatales and Tomlin Security, which had relocated to Solar City several years ago with the collapse of the Supreme Board of Directors.

The main entrance into the underground community was Tabatha’s new home for the duration. With her ‘time-slip’ shield capabilities, she was the strongest defense for the city’s most vulnerable entry point. Every vehicle entering the city would have to be inspected from now on. Refugees would only be allowed if they had something to contribute – preferably skills, now that the city’s primary source of wealth, raw ore, was becoming redundantly valueless as there was less and less civilization capable of processing it into something useful.

Tanya was ‘backup’, now that Tabatha had a point position at the entrance into the mountain. Béla and Lisa, both capable of independent flight, were assigned reconnaissance. It was their jobs to keep the solar panels and everything outside their mountain stronghold secure.

The security guards provided by Tomlin were more of a military unit, now, and were stationed around the perimeter of the newly constructed launch platform for the space capsules still being tested on the ground. The platform was a two-mile long railed ramp running up the backside of the mountain the city was located beneath. It was completely camouflaged, undetectable by spy-satellites and hard to recognize for what it was even standing next to it on the ground.

Surprisingly few people came into the mountains from Denver. The city didn’t blow up and most people decided it was easier to live together in squalor than to make their way somewhere else. The news from everywhere was bad, so it didn’t seem to make sense to pick up and leave just to discover how much worse off you could become.

The first space capsule was launched two months later. After that, construction of new capsules was proceeding at the rate of one every six months. Once in space, the capsules were attached to each other, creating a space station that would eventually become the ship that would take them all to a better place.

Over the next ten years, a magnetic drive was perfected that would power the orbiting space station-slash-spaceship. During that same period, a ‘transport’ device was developed using alien technology; actually hooking the Praetor up to two ‘cyclotrons’, one on the orbiting station and one in Solar City.

No technology on Earth could compare to a Praetor’s microminiaturized ‘living’ brain to enable personnel to move instantaneously back and forth from the space station to the town. This was the same technology that had been used on the great ship for emergency transporting of personnel. Now, the space capsules only handled items that were too large for the transporter.

By now, there were probably less than a billion people left on earth. The remnants of the coastal cities were flooding as the polar ice caps melted. There were three major areas of civilization still extant, of which Montreal in Canada was the hub on the North American continent. The rest was a wilderness of ruined cities and towns where roving bands of marauders raided and stole what they needed to survive from each other.

The largest of these bands, calling itself the Confederacy, was beginning to establish order in what had been the southern states. It was, from information gleaned from refugees, a harsh, militant group determined to insure the survival of mankind even if they had to kill every last dissident alive. Volunteering in their ever-growing army was a sure way of ensuring that you would be fed and your family would be taken care of. Despite its harsh, militaristic rule, it was very popular, offering itself as the only viable salvation for mankind.

Surprisingly, most of the army was put to use farming and constructing underground shelters. There was no fuel for machinery, so everything was done manually, including plowing and cultivating crops. With the amount of organized manpower involved, it became relatively successful in a dying world.

Unfortunately, there was nothing that Solar City could offer the Confederacy or the Montreal district in exchange for food or produce. There wasn’t enough room on the ship being constructed in orbit to hold more than the population inside their mountain stronghold and with all the abandoned machinery covering the planet, raw, unprocessed ore had no real value.

“IT’S EMPTY!” Jackie yelled, as loud as she could. Empty-empty-mpty-pty-ty-y echoed through the round, twenty-meter-wide cylinders making up this section of the space station. Part of Jackie’s self-created job, along with Béla’s Praetor, was to design the insides of this giant donut of a ship into a habitable cocoon for a town-full of people.

Right in the center, attached to the space station with high-grade steel conduits and causeways, was where the Magnetic Drive would go. In the center of the ship, it would magnetically affect all parts of the ship equally, causing less stress on the ship’s structure during maneuvering. The living quarters would be in the two center sections, with eight sections surrounding them to provide protection from solar radiation.

Unlike the ‘old ones’ great ship, this small tubular station had no artificial gravity plating. The elements needed for gravity plating didn’t exist in this solar system except for whatever might be left in the wreckage of the great ship, wherever it might be drifting, now.

If someone wanted to make gravity plating, they would have to catch a quasar, where most of the anti-gravity, anti-matter elements resided in this universe. The more practical method was simply to duplicate quasar conditions in a laboratory and recreate those elements, which was what the old race had done. But that was far beyond the capabilities of mankind, even with the Praetor’s knowledge of how it could be done. There was simply too large a gap in technological capabilities between the two civilizations.

‘Incoming traffic, ‘ the Praetor announced in the minds of everyone aboard the space station. Several people suddenly appeared on the transport platform, along with pallets of building material and some machinery. Jackie was surprised to see Béla among the people climbing down from the platform.

‘Okay, ‘ Béla thought at the Praetor, loud enough for Jackie to hear, as well. ‘I’ve even done it now, and I still don’t understand it! How did I get here?’

Béla honestly tried, but she was unable to fathom how the Praetor transported solid objects from one point in the physical universe to another. She remembered the first time she ever saw a Praetor transport something. It was such an alien concept that she believed that the person transported had been horribly vaporized at her request.

‘The circuitry is called a ‘Focal Press’, ‘ the Praetor replied, sounding somewhat superior. ‘The theory behind it is that matter is simply energy suspended in space and shaped by tremendous forces acting against it, causing the energy particles to bond with other similar particles gravitationally and electro-magnetically.’

‘I don’t understand, ‘ Béla thought back at it, perplexed. ‘What kind of force can turn energy into matter? And why does it ‘bond’?’

‘The amount of force required is more that can be applied with the physical universe in its present state. However, the theory enabled the construction of the Focal Press, and the device works.’

‘But, ‘ Béla desperately needed to know, ‘HOW does it work?’

‘The Focal Press takes the outermost particles of the object to be transported and collapses them down into a single central point. The rest of the particles follow suite. It is not entirely understood why this occurs, but it has something to do with how particles bond to each other. This ‘single point’ is then transmitted to a distant cyclotron, which fires it against a barrier at the speed of light. The single point containing all the particles of the object passes through the barrier and reconstitutes back into a solid object.’

‘But, why?’ Béla asked. This device was simply beyond her understanding of the physical universe. It simply violated too many natural laws. ‘If I were to take, for example, a pallet of bricks and transport them somewhere, what happens to the mass and weight of all those bricks?’

‘To begin with, ‘ the Praetor stated, and it was definitely being haughty with her, now, ‘a brick doesn’t have enough internal structure to maintain its integrity during transport. It will revert into its original material. Highly refined metals and living tissues are the most resilient materials to transport, maintaining almost one hundred percent integrity.’

‘You mean stuff gets lost during transport?’ Béla asked, incredulous. ‘Somebody could lose a kidney or something?’

‘You may lose a few atoms of material, ‘ the Praetor replied. ‘It is of no consequence. Your question was regarding mass. Do you still require an answer?’

‘Yes, please, ‘ very contrite.

‘Mass has nothing to do with the object being transported, ‘ the Praetor replied. ‘The compressed particle being transmitted doesn’t weigh anything. You can transmit an elephant as easily as you can transmit a feather.’

‘But, ‘ Béla always got confused on this point, ‘where does the mass go?’

‘Unknown, ‘ the Praetor admitted, finally. ‘It has been hypothesized that mass is an illusion of sensory perception. An alternate theory is that ‘mass’ occurred sometime after the creation of the universe, stabilizing the universe forever into its current ‘mass = energy’ status.’

‘What about E=MC squared?’ Béla asked. ‘Some Earther figured that out a couple hundred years ago. Is it right or wrong? Are you talking about the same thing?’

‘Yes, and no, ‘ the Praetor replied. ‘ ‘Velocity Squared’ is not a necessary part of the formula. It works, regardless.’

‘Okay, then, where does the mass go?’ Béla asked, certain of her facts, now.

‘There is no mass in a single point, ‘ the Praetor insisted. ‘All single points weigh the same – nothing.’

Once again, Béla felt defeated. The way she understood how a Focal Press worked was that it simply didn’t follow the natural laws of the universe. It operated outside the physical universe.

‘Very good, child, ‘ the Praetor responded. ‘That is correct.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Béla thought, disgusted with the whole subject.

“It can’t be that bad, can it?” Jackie asked, walking up to Béla.

“It’s frustrating!” Béla replied. “I don’t understand it!”

“Well,” Jacked laughed, “You haven’t managed to teach me how to teleport, either. But I would like to make a comparison to, maybe, demonstrate a hypothesis regarding your question about mass.”

“Okay,” Béla replied, closing her eyes in expectation of a mental image.

“Ahem,” Jackie cleared her throat, attracting Béla’s attention again. “I was just going to mention my views on the subject.”

“Oh,” Béla murmured, a little embarrassed.

“Perhaps your trouble with understanding the concepts behind the ‘Focal Press’ and my inability to learn how to teleport have a common area of, um ... understanding? Misunderstanding? Whichever...

“Anyway,” Jackie continued, “I can easily see how the Focal Press works, and you can easily see how to teleport. Both techniques accomplish the same function – instantaneous movement of an object from one location to another.

“When you teleport,” she continued, “you basically ignore the physical universe laws regarding time and distance, although those factors determine how much mass is lost during teleportation. Now, when the Focal Press transmits a person or a thing, physical universe laws regarding ‘mass’ are ignored, and distance is basically determined by the wattage of the transmitted signal, which is, as far as anyone can tell, unaffected by the mass of the object or person being transmitted.”

Béla stood there getting glassy-eyed as she tried to hold her weary gaze on Jackie’s forehead where her brows furrowed together – a valiant but doomed attempt to grasp the strange concepts swimming around in her mind.

“Yeah...” Béla replied, doing her very best to pay attention through the weariness surrounding her.

“What I’m getting at,” Jackie was saying, “is that both methods ignore different physical laws of nature. But that doesn’t mean that they both don’t work...”

“Stop!” Béla cried weakly. “I can’t listen to this! You’re crushing my brain with all these empty words...” Realizing she was probably insulting Jackie terribly, Béla turned away, nearly losing her balance in her anxious attempt to escape. Reaching into the teleportation zone, she mentally pulled herself in and shoved herself out onto her bed in Solar City. The omnipresent teleportation zone was something she understood and was comfortable with. It existed everywhere and nowhere at the same time – a contradiction, perhaps. But at least she knew how it worked.

Jackie sighed, truly frustrated, then turned and went back to work.

“Heads up!” Jake called out, throwing a biscuit across the bed to his lifemate.

It disappeared in mid-air.

“Delicious,” Béla said, dully. “Another?”

“Wow! Hard day, huh?” Jake ventured.

He handed her the next biscuit. She physically ate that one, a bite at a time. After a moment, she burped out the air from the first biscuit.

“Jackie’s designing a whole spaceship,” Béla complained. “What if she’s wrong and something happens? There are so many limitations to your technology. Everything has to be put together by hand. My father’s ships weren’t built that way. They had machines that could build whatever you could think of.”

Jake laughed. “I’ve seen your images of the inside of Deimos. It didn’t look very creative to me.”

“Deimos was made by hand,” Béla declared. “The machines don’t exist here. They probably don’t exist anywhere, now. And hundreds of lives were lost trying to build that sanctuary for my father’s people.” She was referring, of course, to the failed Phobos project, the first sanctuary. Shortly after the Phobos shell had been completed and ice glaciers were melted inside it to provide an atmosphere, the artificial moon was struck by an asteroid, collapsing half of its exterior shell and venting its internal atmosphere into space. Several hundred of the old race died that day, their bodies never recovered from the depths of space. The skeletal frame of Phobos was still evident, even visible through the now-defunct Earth telescopes.

The second sanctuary, Deimos, was constructed after that. It was much larger and, like Phobos, was purposely designed to look like an asteroid, just in case the Arcadians ever came looking for them. The first two hollow moon projects were good practice for the construction of New Eden, which was actually constructed by the great ship, using energy particle emitters and tractor beams. Each piece had to be connected manually, but the ship did all the heavy work, including moving thousands of ice glaciers from beyond Pluto into the hollow moon to provide an atmosphere.

Béla grunted her pleasure as Jake began massaging her shoulders and neck. He always seemed to know what she needed. “Everything will be fine,” Jake assured her as he worked his fingers into her shoulders. “The Praetor knows what it’s doing and it knows the limitations of what we can do. Everything that can be done, will be done. You know that.” He kissed the nape of her neck, sending chills down her spine. She grinned, gritting her teeth as she shivered.

“You feel up to checking out the changes Lisa and I made to the maze?” he asked brightly.

The maze was his son’s idea – a training module to keep Tomlin Security’s Femme Fatales in tip-top condition. It had very lethal traps in it that were supposed to be detected and avoided. To date, every girl triggered every trap in the maze every time they entered. From a training point of view, it was a complete failure. As a carnival ride for an immortal, sex-crazed female, it was great fun!

Jake Hedron abandoned the ‘maze’ after several years of forcing himself to watch recordings of the girls – his own wife, especially – getting mutilated and repeatedly murdered by the insidious and often lethal devices placed within its confines. Now, the girls themselves, along with Frank Tabor and Jake Pestova, came up with ideas for upgrading it, often surprising each other with some new, insidious torture.

“I could use some diversion,” Béla smiled up at him. “Anyone else in there?”

“Tanya was helping Lisa make some final adjustments,” Jake informed her. Béla raised her eyebrows. ‘Tanya and Lisa together? I hope I don’t get decapitated... ‘ Jake heard his wife think.

‘No, not decapitated, ‘ Jake thought back at her, then verbally, “They were playing with an old wire trap that Frank bought for her years ago. They even trapped me in it.”

“Really!” Béla exclaimed. She knew Jake wasn’t ever remotely interested in being on the receiving end of any kind of torture. Receiving sensation seemed to be more of a ‘female’ issue. Men preferred to dish it out, instead, and watch the fun rather than take it in the gut or wherever the limited male imagination could deliver it.

“Yeah!” Jake replied, sounding really disgusted. “That barbed wire gouged the hell out of me!”

Béla was immediately much more cheerful. “Did it leave scars? Can I see?” She hopped up and pulled at Jake’s shirt. She got it up around his chest, excitedly checking out his torso. There wasn’t even a scratch on him. “Phooey!” Béla grumbled, and flopped back down.

Jake stared at her, his mouth wide open. “What the hell was that?” he yelled, still staring at her. “You act like you wanted to see me all ripped to hell and back! Are you nuts?”

Now it was Béla’s turn to stare. She kept quiet, having absolutely no idea what to say. She’d acted purely on impulse, expecting him to respond favorably, like he always did when they played games together. She finally shut her mouth and looked away. “I guess,” she finally admitted.

The thought of running her hands over his bleeding chest while she was madly riding his hard cock really turned her on. She dared to project that image to Jake. Stunned, Jake sat down, almost missing his chair.

He looked at her for a moment. Béla’s mind was open to him, letting him see her thoughts as easily as she could see his. In all the time they’d known each other, neither of them had ever thought of reversing their roles like that. Jake could see that she was entranced by the idea, now that it occurred to her. Béla knew he would do anything to please her, but she also knew that he wouldn’t enjoy this.

“Alright,” he said, finally. He got up and left. A moment later, he returned from the kitchen with a steak knife. He handed it to her and lifted up his shirt, again. “How do you want to do this?” Jake asked, staring at her and waiting.

Béla stood in front of him, knife in hand, totally uncertain of her next move. After a moment, she raised the knife up and laid the blade against his left pectoral. She stared at the shape edge of the blade, mesmerized as she touched it to his flesh. She hesitated, unable to continue.

“I ... I can’t...” she murmured finally, backing away and shaking her head. “I can’t do that to you. I can’t deliberately hurt you.” Raising her head, she nervously met his gaze. He seemed relieved, but there was something upsetting him, deeper inside.

“I do it to you all the time,” he told her. “Sometimes even in my sleep I dream about carving on your sweet flesh.”

Béla grinned at him. “I dream about you doing that to me, too.” she laughed nervously. “But, I’ve never wanted to do that to you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.”

Jake laughed right in her face. “You beat the crap out of me every chance you get! What do you mean...”

“Only when I’m mad,” Béla interrupted, raising her voice, “and only when you need to be taught a lesson!” She moved toward him threateningly with the knife. Jake was bright enough to flinch back. Instantly, Béla stopped and glared down at the little knife in her hand. Then, snarling at it, she threw it down on the couch.