Ancient Astronauts

The Old Gods

Hans bolted upright in a cold sweat, startling Aly. She looked extremely tired.

"I've been keeping you up, haven't I?"

Aly nodded tiredly, "Yes, but it's ok, what did you dream about this time?"

"I-" Hans shook his head, "I don't remember."

"Hmmm," Aly sighed, leaning tiredly into his shoulder.

Hans reached up a hand and stroked her hair gently, "Did I say anything while I was out?" He asked, "Anything at all that might help me rememb–"

He looked down, Aly had fallen asleep.

Very gingerly, he leaned back so as not to wake her, cradling her stomach to prevent strain. He lay there with Aly's head on his chest staring at the ceiling fiercely begging his mind to remember, but all he got in reply was the burning ache of uncertainty.

The child in Aly's swelling belly kicked, brushing his abdomen with the movement. It was early for kicking, but Hans took it as a sign the kid was strong like his father. He returned the touch by placing a hand on her belly and slowly drifted back to sleep. The nightmare did not trouble him again till morning when he woke with the feeling he had forgotten something important.

Aly was still asleep next to him. The Department of Agriculture that Han's set up to oversee the colony's food supply hadn't put up too much of a fight when he told them to let Aly work from home as her pregnancy progressed.

Military couriers came and went from the house all day securely conveying reports and data back and forth. Hans had also appropriated some of the colony's emergency food supply for her use. It was less and less every day as the farms kicked out larger amounts of food resources, but Hans still felt guilty for that abuse of power. It seemed like human nature was repeating itself on the new planet as he prioritized Alyonna and his baby over the long term needs of the colony.

Hans pushed the dream and guilt from his mind, he'd have to check and see how the computer geeks were doing with getting the small computer components factory up and running. That would make things much easier for the colony as they could risk sending the C12 worker drones into more hazardous areas for resources they needed. But he'd get the same answer he had before.

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"Computers are COMPLICATED, Governor sir. We can't just up and start making them. We have to do it from scratch. That means we need sources of silicon and other raw materials for STARTERS. Then we have to adjust an entire supply chain including all the little machines that make all the other little machines. Get what I'm saying?"

"Yadadada," Hans thought to himself.

Hans sighed. The Astral Ark had come equipped with pretty much everything they needed to set up the supply chains. The idea was to just input raw materials from Proxima-B and spit out finished products on the other end. Life doesn't work that way though. They found a lot of things on Proxima-B that were similar to Earth, but hundreds of one or two percent differences were triggering a landslide of alterations throughout the systems.

"I get it, Squidward, we're going to spend the next half decade building a rudimentary copy of the old world economy, and I need to make sure we don't run out of the high tech stuff from Earth before we do...Easy..."

"Not at all," the skinny young tech entrepreneur replied, "and stop calling me Squidward, if you don't mind. I didn't agree to come on this journey across space and time to be picked on. I did it because I'm one of the few people who volunteered capable of making this happen...and because Kathy wanted to."