Chapter 138

Dear Sister-in-law,

Well your panties may have been the only things he was interested in exploring outside of math and science texts while he was living at home, but since he went of on a minimal danger mission to retrieve orphaned concubines who had been willed to people who are stationed here at Atlantis-at and so far he has managed to stumble over one sort of trouble after another. Though I suppose that I should really be blaming Ensign O'Mally for not having a map of his route, or maybe the Darjee or whoever decided that we could have a colony in the middle of a cluster of star-gates!

Ah well as near as we can tell these gates were supposed to have been shut down before the Confederacy was much more than a glimmer in some alien's eye, or at least that's our working hypothesis. What the truth is, we may never know. What it seems to be is the remnants of a civilization that retired from star travel to live in nearly hermetically sealed constructs that entirely surround a star that has been significantly altered so that it will never become a red giant. At least the AI's that have been analyzing the data that has been sent back by the Aer Lingus seem to be leaning that direction, if I understand what they're saying.

Not that I can pretend to understand what AIs talk about when they get terribly technical. At least when what they have to say is outside of my area of expertise I don't understand them. Of course there are times when even in my area of expertise that I'm left feeling like they are explaining things to someone that they consider slow at best. But I shouldn't complain too much because the fact is that if it wasn't for what has happened to Will, we still wouldn't have any clue of what happened to Katy. While both ships are fairly certain that they aren't in the same Dyson's sphere, at least they (the spheres) seem to be relaying messages that are on the same frequency so that we can send and receive letters from Katy via Will, as Katy's tug simply didn't have a transmitter that was powerful enough to breach the 'hull' of the sphere that she was swept into. Even her emergency locator beacon, which broadcasts at a much higher power barely had enough power to create an 'echo' that can be heard when we tune a fairly large radio telescope on any of the spheres that we can see in our neighborhood.

You might tell your 'professors' that eventually everything that we are learning about the Dyson's spheres and star-gates will be published. The reason will be, if for no other cause to implement hazard avoidance protocols. I suspect that information, how to detect and avoid the spheres at least, will become as widely known as the AIs can make it without causing a panic. That of course, what will cause a panic among the 'sheep', will always be debated among the various power brokers that hope to rule humans and separate them into sheepdogs and sheep so that they don't disturb the populations of the already sheepified members of the Confederacy.

Some people (or creatures) it seems, will trade almost anything for the illusion of peace and nonviolence. They will be vegans because they are horrified at the idea of harming animal life, yet can they entirely prove that the vegetables they eat feel no distress at being harvested? Or even that whatever forms proteins in a replicator has no feeling of being exploited in the bargain that put it to work there rather than as a free range 'bug'. I can see I'm getting a bit cynical and weary so I should wait for another day to continue this letter.

You mention, either to me or to Will that the concubines bond to you very strongly. I'm guessing that you do know (even if you don't admit it) that at least part of the reason for that is that the nanites that the Confederacy has injected them with (or maybe it is infected) are programed to increase the release of endorphins in their system when they are in your presence. They are literally being addicted to your presence by the use of confederacy technology. Thus they long for your return and to touch you and to have sex with you, almost to the point of being a danger to themselves if they have been absent (or you've been deployed) for a long time. Indeed, we fear that we'll need to pop Katy into the sleep-trainer, if not the med-tube, when she returns from her long absence, lest she injure herself in attempting to prove that she has retained her loyalty to me.

There is something that goes on between the concubines themselves that may also be part of the whole artificial bonding thing that the AIs and nanites do for a concubine toward a sponsor. Or it may be simply that they essentially form a mutual protection society in the face of the horrid unknown that a sponsor sometimes represents. At least that is the opinion of some of the Civil Service Officers that I've gotten to know. That is that at least part of the bonding that occurs among the concubines of a family so that they can have an anchor against the tearing agony of a sponsor who may never return from any mission he undertakes, even ones that seem like they ought to be 'milk runs'.

Every time I think of that, I find one of the members of my family to hug and kiss on. "Lily, come here and get a hug!"

"Yeah I miss Will too. Why do you think I want to give you hugs? 'Cause I want you to know for absolute certain that I love you and would never willingly leave you of course. Silly girl! Let me kiss you where it feels the best!"