KETTY'S SUBDIVISION Wattys2017

Chapter 5-Part IV

"Sizy, we move out two hours before dawn. I want all the supplies loaded onto a sled, we'll have to drag them, understood?" She nodded, and Ketty knew it would be handled.

Another case in the pile was unfamiliar. She pulled it from the bottom and brushed at the ornate gilding that decorated the outside. A small label read Ketty, and it opened with a finger print lock. On top were two silver plated pistols, with chest holsters and a spare power supply. There was a piece of paper with a note in handwriting.

"To my darling daughter, in the unlikely event of our death, here are a few things to help you. As always, we have taught you well. Your mother and I have no doubt you will thrive on your own. Trust in Deity, trust in yourself. Love, dad and mom."

She knew she couldn't look through everything, it would be too emotional. She went to her bedroom and tore the dress off, changing into a more practical camisole and cargo pants. Despite the red dust in her hair, she looked ok. She wiped her face clean with a shirt and tried brushing her hair as she cried silently. The bots didn't need to see her like this, so she kept the pain inside. She wondered if she would ever recover, and did she even want to?

She tore random clothing from her drawer and stuffed them into a bag, in a desperate frenzy to escape. Was this all a dream? There was too much to process, but for now she was done crying.

She strapped the pistols around her chest, adjusting the buckle so it slid between the swell of her breasts. The harness made an X and she had one pistol available for each hand. It felt good that her dad had thought of her, and the power it gave her. She realized, even though her bots couldn't kill a human, she was prepared to put someone down if they interfered with her plan.

What plan?

Suddenly she realized a plan had formed, and it all came into crystal clarity in that instant. John-mark's voice echoed in her mind, the last thing he said to her as he deployed on the Quantum Boat.

"We are deploying to Outpost Iridani 876. That is where I will be stationed." She had to get to him, it was the only choice she had. She closed the case and saved the rest of the contents for later. But she had to see if any of her friends had survived. First, the Salazar estate, then the city and on to the Fault-line station, where she would try to reach Outpost Iridani. It was a long shot, as she rummaged through her kitchen, trying each of the smart appliances. The lights still worked, but the toaster was inoperative. The fridge, which used to control the kitchen, still held cold air but the smart screen that ordered groceries and monitored the rest of the house was dead. So far, the only things that survived had been protected by wood. The weapons had been in a wooden chest at the foot of her parent's bed. The door in the shed had saved her, Rayjack, Sizy, and Bromide. That left Boondock, who was an anomaly in and of himself.

Then it hit her. Boondock's desk! He had insisted on using an ancient wooden desk from a century old class room. He had been hiding under it when the attacked had occurred, thus he had survived.

Was it an attack, or some freak natural disaster? Were they being invaded by an unknown alien species, or were the Gort now trying to take over? The Gort were the meanest of several alien species living in harmony with humans. How did she know if the red dust wouldn't kill her in a day, or perhaps it had lasting side effects that would lead to a slow death? She knew they were at peace with the neighboring species, but one could never tell.

"What do you think, Sizy?" The young lady robot had an intellectual side that might help Ketty figure out what was going on. She was created as an attractive twenty something, most likely slated for a rich bachelor who had pre-ordered her.

"As you well know, Ketty, nine thousand years ago, humans uncovered the first Fault-line running at an odd angle through the Alpha Centauri solar system. Now the true colonization of the Milky Way began as people made a mass exodus for the stars, implementing a thousand different strategies to ensure human proliferation. But our Subdivision chose to become segregated, closing off outside contact and shutting the borders to the free ranging tech companies who demanded exorbitant taxes and subscription fees for every product, patent and invention they ever touched. They were, after all, responsible for the technology which allowed us to reach ninety nine percent of light speed today. Gone were the days of open architecture and file sharing, so our government collaborated with other Subdivisions in the local star groups and closed our borders, opening a free market society which prospered for thousands of years to the present.

"Tell me the rest of the story, before we made it from Old Earth to the nearest star," said Ketty through half closed eyes.

"During the age of social media, people had to be content with living on a planet that was slowly dying to the onslaught of pollution, overpopulation and resource depletion. Technology had progressed, but mankind's ultimate dream of space travel had fallen by the wayside. It was placed on a shelf as pointless, since you could never exceed a paltry ten thousand miles per second. Why bother spending all that money? Spaceships were too heavy, and there was not enough power to propel their mass to the speeds necessary to make a generational ship viable. Humans would never leave their solar system.

The few ships sent towards Alpha Centauri were never recovered to this day, and legend has it they were sucked into a black hole or encountered a time rift. But eventually the Intellectual era began when a global company known as Apple invented the first wireless internet adapter which didn't utilize invasive technology like implants or heavy head gear. It was quite brilliant," Sizy paused for effect and ensuring Ketty was still awake, "Apple utilized the ninety percent of the human brain that lies dormant as a flash memory point. It was a simple matter of utilizing proprietary nano-biotic programming to initialize synaptic firing of the brain's neurons."

"What about the spaceships?" Ketty asked as she rolled over to get more comfortable on the hard ground.

"That was a collaboration of several companies under one roof. Once the Mind-pod, as it was initially called, was available to the general public, it was the quintessential design tool in all aspects of engineering and development. Tech giant Dominex continued its acquisition of startup companies well into the twenty second century, including the top space company and the largest software developer, which imploded under the weight of its own burgeoning empire. The Theory Division of Dominex began using the Mind-pod in conjunction with genetic engineering to breed its own batch of employee/theorists to continue Einstein's Unified Field Theory. Si-mean-warvian was the renowned theorist who finally made a breakthrough in gravity manipulation, but I won't bore you with the sordid details now. He invented the first infinite gyroscope which could effectively bend gravity in a local field and change the mass of a star ship."

"But the power?" Ketty yawned, "Where did the power come from?"

"That is a crucial piece of the puzzle and Collapse-core technology was the last hurdle. It trumped the now common nuclear fusion back on Old Earth and sealed Dominex as the galaxy ruling force to this day. It was actually an accidental discovery during the trial runs of the first infinite gyroscope. A not so well known physicist noticed pools of protons grouping at the bearing points of the infinite gyroscope. Where the super dense wheel spun, protons would pack together, and once she found a suitable containment cell, it was easy enough to capture them and the first Collapse-core was born."

"You didn't tell me why Dominex isn't here in our home system?"

"With great power comes great responsibility, and what started as the most ethically responsible company on the planet inevitably transformed into a force unrivaled in known history. When the first migration took place, Dominex found virgin ground to incorporate entire solar systems under its business structure. CEO's found themselves in the position of a world leader and soon politics and business were inseparable. Not utopian, but close to social dictatorships. It didn't sit well with some and lines had to be drawn in the sand. Those truths which humans once found self-evident eroded into the quagmire of a political business model that threatened to encompass the entire galaxy.

"Sizy, I love you," Ketty drawled like a drunken sailor. She was coming down from adrenaline shock and about to pass out. "That's when the first humans arrived here, right"

"Yes," Sizy said. "A Young Star Cluster. One hundred thousand stars gathered so tight, they almost touch each other. When you gaze towards the Galactic core, a human is nearly blinded by the night sky. Fortunately, our Subdivision is on the outskirts of the cluster so were not susceptible to the intense radiation found closer to the central black hole. But in order to break off from the dominance of the free ranging tech companies, we had to form an allegiance with other races we found here."

"Those are the Gort, and the Millerene, right? Life forms who have their own bloody history, not unlike humans. I have to get some rest before morning, good night Sizy." As she drifted into a sea of nightmares, Bromide was loading the supplies on a small gravity sled. Then, she slept.

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