Reunion: Chapter 23

  Three months later…

   

  Aboard Orbital One dignitaries and VIPs of all sorts and from the three colony worlds had gathered for the signing of an historic treaty known simply as ‘The Terran Accords.’  They were gathered in the station’s hastily refurbished former United Nations meeting place, a large semi-circular amphitheatre style room with a large, elevated podium at the front for individuals giving addresses to the convened audience.  As Margaret stepped up to the podium, flanked by Patricia on her right and Kirby to her left, above her heads were the flags of the old United Nations representing Earth anew, alongside the flags of Haven, Kobol, and Roma.

  It had been relatively easy work to restore Orbital One to this point at least after Kathryn, Jaren, and Teresa had issued their final reports to their respective home worlds on the way back to the Solar rift crystal.  A flurry of official communications and daring proposals fluttered back and forth between the three colony worlds, and before the New Horizon could even reach the rift, several engineering teams and support ships had already been dispatched towards the Koboli and Roman suns to begin working on Orbital One.  Whatever negotiations would have to take place as far as what could and should be done with Earth itself, the station itself at least seemed fair game.  An informal agreement was reached which stipulated that responsibility for the station would be shared, an agreement later formalized in the Terran Accords.

  The political leaders of all three worlds met in person for the first time at the station various teams had established a Koboli artificial life support system, bypassing the original network of air recycling arboretums throughout the station.  The New Horizon team had already restored some of the basic systems, but there were still many systems requiring initialization if possible, and replacement with equivalent or superior equipment if not.   The fusion reactors, the wider power systems and data networks, the docking area and the commercial habitat ring, in a sense they had only gotten started on the project.  They had many months if not many years of work ahead of them to fully restore Orbital One to anything near its original glory, but they were well on their way.  They had already rehabilitated the station to the minimal degree necessary for them to host this historic meeting in relative safety.

  Jaren had foreshadowed how his people would in general react to the reality of simulants and Margaret herself.  At first, they were viscerally aghast, taken aback on a nearly primal level at the offence to God.  However, much like Jaren himself, the more they got used to the idea, the more a majority of them at least were able to see past this initial reaction to the value in the technology.  She was completely unlike anything they’d developed themselves and understanding how she worked and was created could advance their science and engineering in any number of ways.  

  The Koboli had originally not seen the value in exploring Earth because they felt that it had nothing to teach them technologically.  Investigating why Earth fell was pointless since for them it was not a mystery at all.  This had turned around for them with the discovery of Margaret.  Simulant technology was now a primary interest for them, something they never would have found if they’d been left to themselves.   They didn’t see the value in pure curiosity driven research, the chance of finding things you’d never think to look for.  Now they had Margaret’s original body and were in ongoing negotiations with Margaret for as much access to her working body for study as possible.

  She was happy to oblige them considering what they’d granted her so far, but with her unfathomable age had a different perspective from them about time, and they were already growing impatient with her.  She was happy to indulge them in exchange for some enhancements she had in mind though, modifications which violated her form’s original intent of merely being a perfect replica of a human being.  

  The Koboli wanted immediate and complete access to her, but she insisted on staying near Earth for the time being and might in some months or years agree to make an extended visit to Kobol and let them have their way with her for a while.   She felt deeply responsible for her ‘children’ and wanted to stay to help them process their new reality.  She fought viciously at times to protect them from what she called ‘colonialism 3.0’.  

  Unburdened of the destruction which billions of modern humans had wrought on the Earth, it had restored itself to an Eden, and she was committed to preserving her people’s rights to the paradise and preventing it from being stolen from them.   She kept her assistance and participation in the study of simulants contingent on maintaining her people’s autonomy.  She took every opportunity to impress upon whoever she could the material from the archives outlining the long terrible history of colonialism on Earth.

  She intended to take a good long while exploring Earth, meeting and making peaceful relations with whatever populations she could.  She intended to eventually do the same with Haven, Kobol, and Roma as well.  From her perspective, despite the Koboli’s impatience, she had all the time in the world, especially with her shiny new body.  She felt young again despite both the advanced true age of her intellect and the apparent age of her form.  Where before the New Horizon arrived every new day for her felt like one narrowly stolen from the unforgiving jaws of death, now she felt like she easily had at least another half century in her.  She had lived so long in a black empty night, and now the sun had finally risen again for her, and she could see an unexpected dawn stretching forth in front of her, streaked with bold and vibrant colour.

  The Romans were happy for the Koboli having discovered such an interest in Earth by way of the simulants but had never been lacking any such interest themselves.   They had also been unaware of the existence of simulants but were less intent on studying Margaret herself.   Like other areas of technology, they resisted being simply handed the technology without having earned the discovery of it for themselves.  They still feared that failing to develop a technology for themselves would impede the required respect for the powers such technology granted and believed that being given a technology instead of developing it for themselves robbed them of a certain pride and dignity.

  Haven’s President Sato was the most enthusiastic organizer of the summit and the most forceful advocate for the Terran Accords, to the point that from time to time she irritated the other leaders with her sense that her people were the truest descendants of Earth.  She became fascinated with the New Commonwealth which had constructed and operated the station, and for months had been reading everything she could find about it in the archives.  It sometimes felt to the others too much like she was personally trying to bring them all back into the human family.  This person who only made contact with the rest of them so recently assumed so much when from their perspective her civilization was still somewhat infantile in its level of development.

  Nonetheless all three worlds had come together, and although in broad strokes there was agreement about how everything in the Solar System should be managed, they were still in the process of hammering out all the minute details before the eventual signing of the treaty.  Some differences in philosophical disposition as to what rights the current inhabitants of Earth had, and to what degree the ruins should be preserved in the face of a desire to rebuild the planet to its former glory still persisted.  To guide them, Margaret had taken the stand to give a public address.

  Patricia in what had become clear was her favourite immaculate white dress with pink flower print, and Kirby now adorned in a well-tailored animal skin outfit, had hardly left her side since Margaret had found herself in her new body.  They were dubious at first, but before long they’d accepted her in her new form completely.  Before the New Horizon left the Earth, they had been kind enough to drop her and her people back at their village where she was able to spend time with her people in an intimate kind of way, she’d been unable to for so long while trapped by circumstance down in the bowels of the dam.  She was no longer angry or bitter at her predicament and having the chance to live among them for several months until the off-worlders returned did much to heal her spirit after being spirited into a new form.   She fell in love with her people anew and found herself immensely proud of how had survived and thrived, finding new respect for who they were today instead of merely lament in everything she’d known them to lose.

  She stood up to the podium, but at first did not speak.  As the voices murmured down to a whisper and eventually to a pressing silence, she surveyed the crowd slowly, still operating on a different sense of time from the rest of them.  Her aides also surveyed the crowd but had a more vigilant look of sternness than Margaret’s look of pride and appreciation of the moment.  Finally, as the crowd was beginning to wonder if something was wrong, she spoke.

   

  “Who speaks for Earth?” she asked.   She looked around as some murmurs could be heard in response to her question as though she might have actually expected an answer.

  “I ask because Earth clearly needs someone to speak for it.  I have listened to you all for a week now, to your scheming and planning for how you can exploit the Earth, how you can reshape into a form which suits you.  However, I am also heartened to hear some voices calling for respect of what Earth has become instead of what it might have been in the past.

  “I cannot speak for Earth, but I can speak for its past and present for I have lived in both.   The Earth of old was a masterpiece of high technology and engineering, a gleaming utopia of social justice and progressive ideals.  It was also only brought to that point in response to nuclear war and a global mass extinction due to our deforestation, destruction of natural spaces, and reckless climate change.  It was a world of mixed merits, and as beautiful as it once was, before the fall it was already showing the signs of a possible decline back into the greed and recklessness which had already brought us to the brink before our second renaissance.

  “Earth of today is less sophisticated, it is true.  But it is a world of natural beauty and environmental reclamation.   Mighty cities which stood impervious to nature for centuries can now hardly even be noticed, reclaimed now by the wilds which preceded them.  It is a world of natural beauty which its current inhabitants now live with harmoniously.”  She slowly looked to Patricia, then to Kirby.  “By necessity and lack of other options to be sure, but in harmony nonetheless.

  “There is beauty in what Earth once was, but it had a darkly destructive and exploitative edge.  And although it has its challenges, there is likewise also beauty in the Earth that exists today which you mustn’t fail to appreciate.  I cannot speak for Earth in totality, but I can speak for its past as well as its present.  I can be a bridge to both if you allow me to be.  I can offer you my insights into the past as well as the present, help you build a future here which serves both what Earth was and what it is today, as well as what it could be tomorrow.

  “Yes, do the research!  Yes do your excavations of the old cities!  But also have respect for the ecology which has since taken their place.   Also have respect for the people and wilds which exist there today, and take care not to damage or disrupt what you find.   The urge to rebuild is understandable, but do not destroy what exists to salvage what existed.  Select only a few sites across the world which can be developed with minimal impact and be satisfied with that.  Leave the rest of the planet unto itself in peace.  You are a multi system civilization now, each with your own worlds; you don’t require any more than this.  

  Yes, aid the current inhabitants of Earth!  But respect the people they have become and the ways of life they have developed on their own in your absence.  Have a standing invitation to any inhabitants of Earth to come to your cities, to learn your ways and live as you do, to bring of your modernity what they would like to back to their own communities, but respect those who decline and remain content to continue to live in their own ways.  Respect the value of their culture on its own terms and resist the urge to judge their way of life by your own standards.

  “Lastly, I’d like to speak of reunion.  Sadly, the history of Earth is largely a history of war.  I can see already how you are all too quick to antagonism, to measure the interests of the other worlds against your own.  You are too quick to it, too ready to see each other as different from yourselves.  You are all ultimately of Earth.  You are all children of the Earth and are here in an exercise of peace, to draft and sign this treaty.  This is a moment of singular importance, a more profound moment in the history of humanity than each of your individual missions which left Earth so long ago.  Every daughter civilization, even Earth itself now, are critical sub-plots to the larger and greater narrative of humanity, finally rejoined into a grander epic.

  “You are one species.  Divided too long, now finally reunited at last.  May the spirit of kinship and cooperation which carries this day never leave your hearts.”

   

  Kathryn switched off the transmission as the applause was reaching its crescendo.  

  “Good speech,” Jaren offered as he slowly popped one of the Koboli breaded crustacean delicacies into his mouth, playfully letting it linger in zero gravity flight towards his mouth before snatching it out of the air.

  “Yes, very moving…  I hope we can live up to everything she said.  It certainly never occurred to me that we might wind up going to war.”

  Jaren laughed.   “No, me neither…  Besides, we’d crush you,” he said with a wink.  “I liked what she said about how we approach research and development on Earth, very responsible.”

  The two were alone in a private yacht Jaren had rented for their honeymoon.  Since leaving Earth orbit and no longer keeping away from each other, they’d been quite inseparable.  They had sometimes stolen themselves away to their suite together for days at a time on the weeks long journey back through the Escher Rift from Earth to Kobol.  They had married immediately upon arrival back on Kobol in what Jaren swore was a modest ceremony, but still felt embarrassingly extravagant to Kathryn.

  She sometimes doubted herself for taking up with Jaren so quickly, but she kept thinking about Margaret’s words to her, about not wasting any time, about trusting her instincts and going with what felt right.  Besides, the more time she spent with Jaren, the more it felt right to be with him.  He only ever seemed to become more compatible with her.  She’d never experienced that before.  She could tell that he not only loved her deeply as a woman, but that he also had profound respected for her as a professional and as a human being, and she appreciated that more than she expected to.  It struck her one day that her general disinterest in men was likely rooted in not feeling this from most of them.

  The craft they enjoyed was rented from a facility in orbit around Kobol; it was fast and had living space for up to six people if they didn’t mind being cramped, but with just the two of them it felt lavishly spacious.  It had a rotating arm with bulbs on either end, at the ends of which were things like sleeping quarters and the kitchen and bathroom.   Meanwhile the vessel’s large central section allowed them to stretch out comfortably in zero gravity and housed the forward control area complete with a large half globe fishbowl viewing window in the cockpit.

  They were enjoying the view out the window as they orbited Saturn, coasting just a couple dozen meters above the majestic rings.  They marveled at how brightly the sun reflecting off of the rings lit up their cabin, especially when combined with the light being reflected off of the massive planet’s atmosphere to their left.

  “There it is,” Kathryn pointed out.  “See that orange body out there?

  “Uh, oh sure yeah, I see it.  That’s where we’re going?” Jaren asked.

  “Yup, according to the archives it’s a moon called Titan, and before the fall there was an orbital research and commerce outpost attached to it by something they called a space elevator.”

  “And you want to check it out.”  She’d learned to read him much better and now recognized his deadpan dismissiveness for what it was.

  “Un hunh,” she smiled.

   “Alright my dear,” Jaren laughed.  “When I said we could go anywhere and do anything you wanted for our honeymoon I didn’t anticipate exploring ruins but knowing you I suppose I really should have!   Sounds interesting.”

  “There you go, that’s the spirit!” she encouraged him.  “We’ll make an explorer out of you yet.”

  He gave her a playfully annoyed look and rolled his eyes.  “Titan it is then,” he granted.

  A control panel to Kathryn’s right started blinking and softly buzzing, and she reached over to access the panel and bring up whatever it wished to inform her of.   She experienced a brief moment of horrifying existential dread before in the blink of an eye it was replaced with a growing warmth radiating from her deepest depths.

  “What is it?” he asked, noticing her expression.

  Kathryn snickered a little, then as casually as possible shrugged: “I’m pregnant.”

  “Really!?” Jaren replied with surprise.

  “Yeah,” she laughed.  “The health monitoring system built into the waste system was cued by elevated hormone levels and did further testing to diagnose me,” she said, smiling mirthfully at the thought of being ‘diagnosed’ with pregnancy.

  “Oh that’s wonderful!” Jaren said as he floated over and embraced her in great bear hug which led them to softly bump against the large forward glass fishbowl.   As they slowly floated back in the opposite direction after bouncing off of the glass, he gave her a lingering, emotional kiss.  Kathryn couldn’t stop smiling.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking about what Margaret said, about reunion.  As far as we know this is the first interplanetary pregnancy.  It’s a physical manifestation of our reunion as a species.”

  “So it is,” Jaren smiled.  “What a delightful distinction for it to carry…  It begs the question though, where do we raise it?  Kobol or Haven?”

  “Neither,” Kathryn answered, turning to look out the window and back towards the sun.   “Earth of course.  We were both already planning to stay long term at the new Terran Research Institute they’re building on the surface, and I see no reason to change our plans.  I still want to dedicate myself to researching and developing Earth and I… I hope you still do to.” she stated with her first hint of nervousness over how this now might all play out.

  “Of course,” Jaren softly reassured her.  “Of course I still want to be a part of that with you.  I can’t think of a better place to raise the first child born of two child civilizations of Earth than Earth itself.  The manifestation returns to the source, it’s almost… poetic.”

  “Yes, poetic…” Kathryn repeated.

  “I just hope we can visit our home worlds often enough,” Jaren said.  “Not only would we miss them of course, but I also wouldn’t want to deprive our little ones of knowing them either.”

  “Ones?” she balked.  “Plural?”

  “One can only hope,” Jaren suggested playfully.

  “Well,” Kathryn laughed, “let’s just see how things go with one first, alright?”

  “Of course,” he smiled.

  “But you’re right… we should visit the other worlds as often as we can.  I want to show it everything, all of the beauty and wonder which all of our worlds have to offer.  We will raise it on Earth, but we will show it the worlds and make it feel at home on all of them, the first true citizen of the cosmos.”