Jeremiah Aldrich
“Are you sure this is working properly, Aaron?” Jeremiah Aldrich stared at a control panel on his office wall and wondered at the chill he felt in his bones. Barely two days had passed since the conclusion of his record breaking spell in cryogenic suspension and now the heating in his office didn't seem to go high enough. “I think so, Sir, but I can call maintenance if you'd like?” Aaron Jenkins VII dutifully ignored his own sweat soaked back. He was a textbook-functionary who knew pretence was often favourable to the truth but some concern still escaped his passive features. “No, that won't be necessary.” Aldrich rubbed his temples with fatigue. “Perhaps I'm still a little unwell but I'll be fine.” A bit of a chill seemed a small price to pay for five-hundred-and-seven years of frozen sleep. Medical experts told him that it was inadvisable to even be walking at this point but he was completely focussed on regaining control of Aldrich Interplanetary. “Of course, Sir.” Aaron was too tired for his usual nervous hovering and leaned heavily upon his employer's mahogany desk. At some point the stress of day had burned into the fatigue of night and he desperately wanted some sleep. “Talk to me about death, Aaron.” Jeremiah's old, ice-blue, eyes suddenly came alive but there was a great effort behind the pretence. He could still taste the bitter alkaloids of the preservative chemicals in his blood and his long limbs ached with every word. “How many people have died in my absence?” “I don't know but I can certainly attain that information for you, Mr Aldrich. Is there anything else you'll be requiring this evening?” He eyed the door hopefully. “Anything else?! My word man, has initiative been entirely stripped from the universe in the five-hundred years I've slumbered?!” He was genuinely surprised by the question. “How about the statistics on births too? I'm not the grim reaper, you know?! I'm trying to ascertain the state of the galactic balance here.” “Apologies, Sir.” Staring past his employers anger, Aaron suddenly got a sense of looking at a warmed over corpse. Physically Aldrich seemed well preserved. His grey hair was receding but remained excessively thick where it rooted and though lines marked his face, there were surprisingly few wrinkles. All the lifelessness issued from the hollow emptiness of his eyes. “Apologies are something I don't have time for! When I napped out ...OVER HALF A MILLENIA AGO ...the wolves were at the door for the entire human race.” His tone shifted from anger to sadness in the sweeping of a sentence. “The second century of the galactic expansion calendar was proving to be a difficult one for humanity and I didn't know if I'd ever be woken up. Even with the HAL financial protocols as comfort, I still had to trust that my government would honour the cryo-alarm, let alone the return of my estate.” The Halted Ancestry Law, or HAL, was put in place to ensure that people were only kept in cryopreservation for as long as they were solvent. Pushed through amongst fears that an already failing economy could be crippled, first by the loss of too many citizens, and then by their late return, the legislation set out the conditions under which an individual would be allowed to enter cryogenic suspension. Ultimately the whole proposition came down to wealth and trust in a series of financial programmes intended to secure a continuing pecuniary benefit. “Few believed that we would endure against our enemies at all. I feel fortunate to be here and I want to ask about the innovations that I've missed. About the politics and plays ...but the hows and whys of life can wait. I must focus on business instead.” “I do have some other business that needs to be brought to your attention.” Aaron reasoned that he might as well get bad news out of the way while Aldrich was already in a mood. “I wasn't anticipating you to be so ...vigorous today, Sir, so I thought it could wait but ...” “I tell you what, Aaron, how about you develop an intense stammer to make the delivery of this news more protracted!” Jeremiah grimaced painfully, believing his aide had anticipated his train of thought. “Well ...” For a minute he struggled for words, aware that being anything other than concise would tip his employer over the edge. “...there were unforeseen difficulties in exterminating the Demont lineage.” “Difficulties, as in failure?” This news wasn't what he had been expecting but it was important enough to catch his attention. “Unfortunately, Arrianne Demont escaped and ...and started a cult dedicated to your death.” He blurted out the last words as though he were evacuating toxins from his mouth. “What?!” This was beyond unexpected. “Five-hundred years is enough time to let a tree die of old age!” “Yes, I know but the good news is that we believe we're close to locating the last surviving member of the cult.” “The good news? I'd be careful about your choice of words here, Aaron. Remember that you've just told me that a threat to my life exists which should have faded in the sands of time.” “I'm sorry to say that this threat has been passed through the generations, Sir, but we have the identity of the last remaining descendant. Their name is Pleo Nastic and we have every immigration station within five sectors looking for them.” “Make it ten ...or a head on a plate.” Jeremiah was more surprised and angered than he was scared. He had always been a hard man to kill and doubted anyone would really get close to it. “I'll make the arrangements at my earliest opportunity, Sir.” “Indeed.” He nodded curtly. “I have to say that I thought this news was going to be much more grave.” An uncharacteristic anxiety coated the back of his throat as he prepared to ask the most important question of all. If the answer was different than he hoped for then the entire five-hundred years would have been in vain. “Put me out of my misery, Aaron! Tell me about our wondering planet. I assume gravity is still functioning properly but ...” “Actually, there have been some quite interesting innovations in the field of gravity manipulation in the last five-hundred years.” “And, as I said, caring for them is a luxury I don't have at the moment.” Jeremiah just wanted answers. “Has the treaty remained in place and does the planetoid Zenclonus now sit within our jurisdiction?” Zenclonus was a perplexing world which spent most of its time in the territory of the Sha'Darn, an evolved and peaceful race of beings who tended to remain politically neutral. Every thousand years Zenclonus crossed into humanities territories and remained there for roughly a century. The Sha'Darn magnanimously surrendered ownership of Zenclonus even though it was an inhabited world. At first they had hoped that some of the spiritual leaders from their indigenous tribes might be allowed to remain but humanities galactic expansion had made them paranoid. “Yes, Mr Aldrich, Zenclonus is now on lease to us until it exits our borders.” “Aaron, you've just made my millennia.” He laughed out loud with the release of it all. Planning. Hoping. Chancing. Gambling. All of it had paid off. “Unfortunately the Sha'Darn have very portable and easily deployed home bases, so the surface of Zenclonus is baron. Before the transition they pulled all of their city structures up into space and orbited them around one of their home planets. We'll have to start from scratch.” “Details, details!” His mood was too buoyant to be sunk by such petty concerns as erecting a few buildings. “Well, unless you have any other matters you'd like to draw to my attention, that will be all.” “Well ...” Aaron shifted nervously. “Well ...?” “It's about your nephew, Sir. We've received a communication requesting the release of finances which require your approval.” “Oh, I'd forgotten about Tyrus.” When Aldrich had entered his cryopod all those years ago, he had taken one family member with him. Tyrus was an idiot nephew but a fond reminder of Jeremiah's dead older brother. “I assume that by asking me, you're suggesting that the request is an unreasonable one? Is the sum of money really so great?” “Almost the opposite, Sir, the sum is comparatively very modest. In fact, I approximate that it's the sort of sum a bad gambler could run up by riding a losing streak until dawn.” Tyrus had emerged from stasis several years earlier than Jeremiah Aldrich, supposedly to prepare everything for his return but this arrangement had always made Aaron uneasy. “Very well, send the money with a message that all further funding will be withdrawn until I catch up to him in person ...which will be very soon.” Jeremiah was in a good mood and so he let the generosity of an uncle triumph over his natural cupidity. “Well, about that, Sir. Since he left over a month ago, we've been having great difficulty tracking his movements. We think he might have been spoofing his message I.D's to hide his involvement with organised crime.” There was a heavy tone of disapproval accompanying his words. “I'm led to believe that the war with the Vengalae continues to provide smugglers with endless opportunities.” “Opportunities such as arms smuggling?” He was mildly intrigued. “Arms. Medical supplies. Minerals. Narcotics. Slaves. I hear that none of the sectors on the fringe of our territories are being policed. Only military patrols operate there and they face hostile engagements far too frequently to bother every little ship.” “So you're telling me that a young man who's in line to inherit a substantial interest in Aldrich Interplanetary, one of the biggest legitimate arms dealers in the sector, is wasting his time messing about with small cargo runners.” “That appears to be essentially correct, Sir.” “Well, at least he's got a hobby.” With that, Jeremiah fell into a roar of laughter which didn't stop until after Aaron had excused himself from the room.
