Family Letters
Copyright© 2014 by Allan Joyal
Chapter 104
Dear Willow and Family,
I've been told I must keep this note short so I shall endeavor to do so. I would say that my job has given me a proctologist's view of the exercise of concubinage as practiced in the diaspora. I know that we, Marissa and I, have worked hard at becoming a family. I know that whenever a sponsor is willing to approach me on the issue of failed compatibility I always tell them that the concubine is their family member now, and that while the idea of marriage may have been degraded by the Confederacy I haven't noticed that people have stopped having families.
So I take it that everyone is wondering just how we ended up off track as we did. I honestly don't know. The AI insists that we encountered an uncharted space-time anomaly. But it won't tell us what type of anomaly, it only insists that we don't have the foundational knowledge to understand what has happened. GRR! I'm pursuing all the courses in physics that are available through the sleep-trainer. Then I'm looking into the ones on cosmology. One or the other ought to help me gain the 'foundational knowledge' the AI is certain that I lack!
We made enough survey drones to explore the area around us for about a light-year and that is what we have done, or rather we've sent the drones on their way and they should be reporting back soon. In the meantime we seem to have exited hyperspace (if that is where we were traveling) about half a light year outside a system containing a binary star. The main star is about the same spectrum as Sol, while the second is a massive super giant planet or possibly a brown dwarf orbiting about in the track and area where Uranus orbits Sol.
So we have been proceeding that directions for no other reason than that it is the nearest solar object to our exit point. We're moving on what Ensign O'Mally terms 'impulse power' though he says he isn't sure that it is analogous to what the creators of Star Trek imagined. Still the term is good enough to use in this case. That is we are accelerating and moving purposefully in a particular direction at speeds and powers less than necessary to make a hyperspace jump.
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