NOSTROMO - LOST IN TIME by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

Heavy Fighter Hangar Complex

A.M.S. NOSTROMO, on the surface of Shouria

Having disembarked from his heavy fighter with the rest of its crew, Misha followed his comrades towards their squadron briefing room, as was customary after returning aboard the NOSTROMO following a flight or a mission. He, like many others froze for an instant on seeing a small crowd of men, women and children waiting next to the entrance of the briefing room: both of his parents and his younger sister were part of the crowd of family members. Misha and many other crewmembers then broke into a run, to brake at the last moment and hug his family, starting with Tina.

‘’Mom, it’s so nice to see you back safely.’

‘’And I’m happy to be back with you, Misha.’

Next, Misha shared a bear hug with his father before crouching down to hug and kiss little Janet.

‘’It’s nice to see you too, Sis.’

Janet kissed him as well on one cheek before looking him in the eyes with a smile.

‘’There was no need to fear for me, Brother: Mom had things under control.’

Surprised to hear that, Misha looked up at Tina, who gave him an embarrassed smile.

‘’Well, Janet may be overstating things a bit, Misha. The ones we truly need to thank for our safe return are Roshana Golshan, our top physicist, and SPIRIT.

Together, they devised a way by which we could return to our proper time period after an uncharted black hole made us go back in time by 28 centuries. But I partly came here now in order to debrief your squadron about what precisely happened to the NOSTROMO after we went chasing that last Space Predator ship. The good news is that I now firmly believe that we are finally rid of those monsters: their last ship intentionally committed suicide by trying to sucker us into an uncharted black hole in the region of VY Canis Majoris, some 3,900 light years away. We were able to escape the gravity well of that black hole, while the Predator ship didn’t.’

‘’You chased that giant asteroid ship this far from here? Wow! Only that will make your flight a truly epic one, Mom.’

‘’Well, we did break a few records during that pursuit, on top of ending up traveling through time both ways. However, the important thing is that we are back in

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one piece and with a big bonus: nearly half a million Koorivars which we went to pick up on Shouria in the year 1959, mere days before the planet was going to be destroyed by a wandering brown dwarf. However, this means that we will have to put all our efforts and resources into helping those refugees to reestablish themselves on New Shouria.

Since the NOSTROMO will have to concentrate on helping that mass resettlement, this means that you and your fighter squadron will have the prime responsibility for patrolling and defending this system for at the least a few weeks and months.’

‘’You can count on me and my comrades, Mom: we will have your back.’

‘’That’s my son speaking!’ said in a proud tone Michel, Misha’s father, at the same time that he patted his left shoulder.

14:05 (Universal Time)

Monday, June 21, 2337

Command meeting room, Executive Apartments Level A.M.S. NOSTROMO, landed next to the coast, near New Shouriana

‘’Piotr, you old rascal! It is nice to see you again. But please, have a seat.’

‘’Thanks, Tina! I could have sent you my food production report electronically but I really wanted to see you in person again. In truth, you spend so little time around New Haven, being in Space the vast majority of the time. Your house there is starting to have spider webs all over it, so little you use it.’

‘’I thought that I had a robotic maid to take care of that, Piotr.’ joked Tina in reply to her old ship’s purser and commercial agent. Piotr Romanski had now been the governor of New Haven for over sixteen years, managing the colony there for Tina with his customary competence and utter honesty and making sure that the Earth refugees she had resettled on New Haven were well cared for, well fed and happy.

‘’By the way, Piotr, how are the passengers I was originally bringing in for some tourism on New Haven doing now, after they accompanied me on our involuntary travel in time? Are they satisfied with their vacation on our world?’

‘’I haven’t heard of any complaints up to now, Tina. In fact, I heard rumors about how those involuntary time tourists were excited by what they saw in the past. Imagine: being able to brag that you were able to watch from above some gladiatorial games in

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the Roman Coliseum and then watch as well some fighting between the English and the French during the Hundred Year War.’

‘’Are they saying anything about the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake in Rouen?’ asked Tina, her expression and tone now most sober. ‘’I know that, for me and many in my crew, that was a heartbreaking thing to watch.’

‘’Actually, I heard about that, Tina. Nobody is talking about it other than in a very serious and respectful tone. One tourist from France did ask one of my officials if you were planning to make a video documentary about that, which could then be shown around France. It seems that, even after all those centuries, the story of Joan of Arc is still resonating deeply around France.’

‘’I am not surprised by that, Piotr. That poor girl fully deserves the admiration she won in history. I will definitely ask Lester Barnaby to look at producing a good video documentary about her death...when we will have dug ourselves out of that humongous refugee resettlement problem.’

‘’Yes, that! I am happy to tell you that, at the cost of delaying some deliveries of fresh foodstuff contracted for by various worlds of the Spacers League, I was able to gather a total of 8,740 tons of fresh or preserved vegetables, cereals and fruits from our refrigerated warehouses. That foodstuff started arriving on New Shouria three days ago.

However, we had to empty our warehouses in order to do that. Our next shipments of foodstuff in the coming days and weeks will thus be much less. We will definitely need the help of the rest of the Spacers League in order to be able to feed adequately all those refugees in the long term. While I don’t want to sound cheap about this, I must ask you if we are giving all this without any compensation, or can I hope to get some kind of payment for those foodstuffs? All those produces were due to be sold to various customers, with the payments for them meant to cover our production costs and to finance our budget for New Haven and its continued development.’

‘’Don’t feel bad about asking this, Piotr: I realize perfectly well that the economy of New Haven is dependent on being able to sell its agricultural products around the Spacers League and on Earth. However, the priority was and still is to feed all those poor people who lost everything, including their homeworld. What would be the point of saving them if only to then let them starve here, on New Shouria? As for planning their transportation to here, it’s not as if we voluntarily went away with the intention of traveling back in time. Once in the distant past, it would have been downright criminal to

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not go get those people on New Shouria, when knowing that we had the means to do so.’

‘’Nobody but a complete, selfish asshole would blame you for taking the decisions you took, Tina.’

‘’I know. To answer your question, yes, you will get payments for all that foodstuff. While cramming my ship with refugees, I asked Governor Shuran to also prepare for pickup his reserves of planting seeds and his gold and precious metals reserves, telling him that his people would need those in order to be resettled properly and be sustained on New Shouria. Know as well that Vice-Governor Keradek came with the refugees, along with a small team of administrators, so that he could help administer their needs. You are thus welcomed to go speak with him and with Governor Sheraz about being paid for our shipments of food. In this case, charge no more than their production cost: I don’t want us to make any profit on that foodstuff. Also, you may offer them to plant for them part of their seeds from New Shouria in fields on New Haven: we do have a lot more arable land available than on New Shouria, which is still mostly forested and where food production is concentrated in a few large hydroponics gardens.’

‘’We could concentrate on growing their fruit trees, which tend to be uneconomical to grow in hydroponics gardens due to their height.’ suggested Piotr, making Tina nod her head once.

‘’A good idea indeed. We...’

At that moment a call came in from the bridge, interrupting their conversation.

‘’Captain, a fleet of seven ships just appeared from the direction of Providence.

We are also getting a call for you from Chairman Mercier, aboard the battleship YAMATO.’

‘’Yes!’ exclaimed joyfully Tina. ‘’Help has arrived! Let me take that call, Piotr, but stay and listen to it.’

Tina then used the intercom terminal at her table position, getting the image of the Chairman of the High Council of the Spacers League to appear on the screen.

‘’Chairman Mercier, you can’t know how happy I am to see you now.’

‘’And me and the whole of the High Council are elated to see that you and your valiant ship are back, safe and sound. You will have to brief me in detail about your odyssey in time once we meet in person: the report you sent to Providence was a bit short on details.’

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‘’That was actually intentional, Madam Chairwoman. I will explain why once we are together and in private. May I ask what you are bringing with you, Madam Chairwoman?’

‘’You may, Tina. The YAMATO is escorting in four heavy refrigerated cargo ships loaded with cereals and vegetables, plus one heavy cargo ship loaded with emergency tentage and field equipment sufficient to house 400,000 persons.’

Tina couldn’t help pushing out a deep sigh of relief on hearing that.

‘’Thank the stars for that help, Madam Chairwoman. It will do wonders to the morale of those poor Koorivar refugees. While I kept 90,000 refugees in the emergency quarters of my NOSTROMO, which are still quite comfortable, over 375,000 Koorivars were disembarked on the planet, since they were kept up to then in our sports stadiums and our Medieval World’s fields in very rudimentary conditions. Those were then housed temporarily with the permanent residents of New Shouria and in the various touristic resorts of the planet. Your field equipment and tentage will do a lot to help relieve the overcrowding on the planet.’

‘’Hey, what are friends for, if not to help in difficult times?’ replied Jeanne Mercier, smiling. ‘’I will come aboard the NOSTROMO once my fleet will be in orbit of New Shouria. Then, we will talk...in private.’

‘’I am looking forward to that, Madam Chairwoman.’

Mercier then ended the communications link, leaving Tina to look and smile at Piotr Romanski.

‘’The Spacers League came true in our time of need, Piotr.’

‘’Thank the stars for that, Tina. I think that I better go speak with Governor Sheraz now about planting some of the seeds from Shouria into our fields on New Haven.’

‘’Yes! I will keep you appraised on how my talks with Chairman Mercier will go.

Have a nice day, Piotr.’

‘’You too, Tina.’

Romanski then got up from his chair and left the meeting room. Now alone, Tina thought for a moment about what the future of those Koorivar refugees would be, then got up herself to go to her apartment: it was time for her to give some precious time to her reunited family after those stressful weeks in the past.

‘’COHORT, PRESENT...ARMS!’

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On the command of Jehanne De Domrémy, the 490 security androids of the First Cohort, already impeccably lined up three-deep on both sides of the red carpet which had been unrolled up to the aft access ramp of the shuttle carrying Chairman Mercier, presented arms in the kind of perfect coordination only machines and robots could achieve. Jeanne Mercier, who had just come out of her shuttle with a small retinue, couldn’t help being impressed by such a display and whispered to Mary Shu, the minister for health and social affairs in her cabinet, who was closely following her.

‘’Decidedly, Tina’s security androids always make for an impressive display.’

‘’That they do, Madam Chairwoman. They are also a redoubtable fighting force, as their performance in combat against the Space Predators has proved.’

‘’Indeed!’ said Mercier before walking up to a waiting Tina Forster, standing near the end of the red carpet. Both women then shared a warm hug and kisses on the cheeks.

‘’Welcome aboard the NOSTROMO, Madam Chairwoman. I have V.I.P. suites waiting for you and your retinue. I propose that you take the time to install yourself first in your quarters before we talk together.’

‘’Agreed!’

Tina then turned partly around and made a sign for the three taxi carts waiting at the other end of the red carpet to come forward. The three small electric vehicles soon stopped next to her, with Tina, Mercier and her five followers sitting down in them, while the shuttle’s crew put the luggage of the visitors on the carts. As the carts rolled past the ranks of androids still at attention, Mary Shu’s eyes fixed on one of the androids they were passing by. That android was a tall woman with a beautiful oval face and long blond hair.

‘’But...that’s Taylor Swift, the famous singer! She’s a security android?’

‘’She is, Minister Shu, like the rest of her musical group.’ said Tina. ‘’I would however appreciate if you could keep this to yourself. Some in the Spacers League who have little love for my androids could decide to boycott her group because of their nature. There are unfortunately still too many people around the Spacers League with unreasonable fear of my androids, especially on the worlds controlled by the Pallas Mining Industries.’

‘’Talking of the Pallas Mining Industries, Tina, know that it has broken up after the death of Jacobus Stein and the scandal concerning the Europa Station affair. While its CEO, Michael Kendrik, still controls the Trappist-1 System, Mu and El Dorado have just

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seceded from the control of the Pallas Mining Industries and are now claiming to be independent systems. While their respective governors are still officially in charge of those two systems, we believe that Paul Stein, who moved to El Dorado, is now pulling the strings there.’

A spark of anger and hatred came to Tina’s eyes at the mention of Paul Stein.

‘’That flaming asshole! His father Jacobus was ten times the man he is. And how are they calling themselves now, if not ‘Pallas Mining Industries’? ‘Assholes Incorporated’?’

Jeanne Mercier, like Mary Shu, couldn’t help chuckle briefly at the crude joke Tina had just made.

‘’It would actually befit them well, I must say. Their new official name is now

‘Stein Mining Group’.’

‘’Well, that Stein Mining Group just earned itself a place on my black list of customers to avoid, Madam Chairwoman.’

‘’Please, just call me ‘Jeanne’ while in private, Tina. ‘Madam Chairwoman’

sounds so impersonal to me.’

‘’As you wish, Jeanne.’

Some twelve minutes later, the carts delivered their passengers and luggage to two V.I.P. suites on the Executive Apartments Level, in the core section. However, instead of taking the time to unpack her things, Jeanne Mercier asked Tina to go speak in private at once.

‘’My aide can take care of the unpacking. Let’s go to your conference room.’

‘’As you wish, Jeanne.’

Mercier, carrying only her laptop bag, then followed Tina to her command meeting room, situated on the same floor. Once seated at the long table, she looked with a sober expression at Tina.

‘’So, what was so sensitive in your mind to stop you from putting it in your report, Tina?’

‘’Basically, the processus by which my ship traveled back in time and then returned to the future. I wish to keep the details about that to myself.’

‘’Why?’

‘’For the same reason I hid the existence of my matter converter cannon, Jeanne: for fear of it being misused by misguided people. Do you realize the kind of catastrophic

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damage to history someone intent on changing the past to his or her profit could do with the ability to travel in time? Even though our travel to the past was purely involuntary and we then traveled back to the future in five successive steps, I decided from the start to avoid any direct contact with the people of the past, save for when we saved Queen Boadicea and her two daughters from certain death.’

Jeanne Mercier, who had not known any details about the NOSTROMO’s travel through time, stiffened in her chair: thanks to the very short report which Tina had sent to her via drone courier, she still didn’t know which centuries the NOSTROMO had visited while in the past.

‘’Queen who?’

‘’Queen Boadicea, the Queen of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe living in England at the time of the Roman occupation. Didn’t you hear about her during your history classes in school? She’s considered a British national heroine, the same way as Jehanne De Domrémy was considered a national heroine in France.’

‘’Uh, that was nearly 2,300 years ago, Tina. Most of my historical studies were centered on the Industrial Revolution Age and on the wars of the Twentieth Century. So, why did you save her in particular?’

‘’Because the circumstances of her death and that of her two daughters were never known, except for a number of rumors and historical suppositions and because picking her up would not have influenced history in any way. I also did it because of simple humanity, Jeanne.’

‘’Alright, tell me more about your time travel and about which years you visited in the past?’

‘’First, about my initial travel to the past. It happened when we made a desperate try to escape the gravity pull of an uncharted black hole in the Canoris Majoris region, some 3,900 light years away, in which the last of the Space Predator ships tried to sucker us in. By the way, I firmly believe that we are now definitely rid of those monsters: their last act was a truly suicidal one and was meant to destroy my NOSTROMO as well as their own ship.’

Jeanne Mercier relaxed in her chair while letting out a breath of relief.

‘’Thank the stars! I hope that you are right about this, Tina: those monsters cost us millions of our citizens. Alright, in which year did you end up when you emerged from your jump to the past?’

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‘’After we emerged in deep Space, we made our way to Earth, where observations from orbit told us we were in the Year 472 B.C.E., this after traveling back by 2,809 years. Once we knew where and when we were, my scientific team and SPIRIT went on to try to find how we could possibly return to our proper time. That was no piece of cake, I assure you, and it took us quite a while to figure out a possible way to come back to our time. When we did our first, cautious attempt at traveling forward in time, we ended up in the Year 60 C.E., where we were able to spot Queen Boadicea and her daughters, who were being hunted down by the Romans. We picked them at night, in a forest, out of sight of anybody else, then flew them to my ship. From there, our second forward time jump led us to the Year 1066 C.E., in time to record from orbit the Battle of Hastings, in which the Normans took control of Britain from the Ango-Saxons. We didn’t stay long in that year before jumping to the Year 1431, where we recorded the last few days and death of Jehanne De Domrémy.’

Jeanne Mercier then stiffened again in her chair at the mention of that name.

‘’Joan of Arc? Don’t tell me that you saved her too, Tina?’

‘’No, we didn’t, Jeanne. We unfortunately had to simply watch her die, burned in public at the stake in Rouen. What we did was to alleviate much of her pain and suffering through the surreptitious injection of powerful pain killers. If you wish so, I could show you later on those recordings of her we took in 1431.’

‘’Please do, Tina. I would love to see those recordings. So, what did you do then?’

‘’Then, we jumped to the Year 1959, in time to go to Shouria and evacuate those poor Koorivars we could accommodate on my ship, and this mere days before the wandering brown dwarf could destroy Shouria. From there, we did our final jump to this year.’

‘’Wait!’ said Mercier, suddenly suspicious. ‘’Those dates you traveled to; they sound as if you were able to precisely target them before jumping forward in time.’

Tina nodded her head slowly at that question, now looking most sober.

‘’Yes, we were, after our first jumps, which taught us how to control our temporal jumps. Our three last jumps landed us within one day of the date we targeted.

Basically, my ship now knows how to travel in time at will, both to the past and to the future, and this with a precision of less than a day. That fact is what I wanted to hide and protect from all others but you, Jeanne. And forget about any crazy scheme some

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could think of about arranging a time tourism agency of some kind: the risks to the integrity of history are simply too great.’

‘’But, your time traveling method would allow us to study in depth history and resolve many mysteries we still are looking answers for. I am sure that we could control such time travel tightly enough to prevent abuses, Tina.’

‘’Is studying history worth the risk of destroying it, Jeanne?’ asked bluntly Tina, making Jeanne Mercier pause and think. The latter finally shook her head in response.

‘’No! You are right, Tina: history is not to be toyed with. Too bad: to study history on the spot would have been so marvelous. Are you sure that there would be no way to do this with no risks to history, Tina?’

It was then the turn of Tina to pause and think.

‘’Alright, I will think about it. However, I make no promises about that, Jeanne. If I conclude that there is no way to study history on the spot without risks, then I will forget this. In any way, even if I agree to such a project, I will keep the secret of how to travel in time to myself and to no one else. I already regret my decision to share the secret of my matter conversion cannon, especially now that I believe that the threat of the Space Predators is gone.’

‘’Tina, you always proved to care for others first and foremost and are one of the most principled and responsible persons I ever knew. Whatever you decide about this, I will accept.’

‘’Thank you, Jeanne. Now, to return to our problem of Koorivar refugees...’

16:51 (Universal Time)

Wednesday, June 23, 2337

V.I.P. Suite Number One, Executive Apartments Level A.M.S. NOSTROMO, on the surface of New Shouria Jeanne Mercier was finishing packing her personal travel kit when the door chime of her bedroom rang. Looking in the security monitor of her door and seeing that it was Tina Forster, Jeanne unlocked and opened the door, letting in Tina.

‘’Hi, Tina! You came to wish me a good trip back to Providence?’

‘’That and something else. I would like you to read this and commit it to memory, then to put your thumbprint on it as proof that you read and accepted it.’

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Tina then handed to Jeanne an electronic pad with an integrated fingerprint reader, the kind of communication pad used to transmit highly classified documents. Jeanne read the classification level printed at the top and bottom of the front page and looked at Tina with some misgivings.

‘’Top Secret – For Chairman Mercier’s Eyes Only... What is this, Tina?’

‘’Read and you will understand, Jeanne.’

Jeanne did so, quickly reading the two-page document before looking up at Tina. Then she put her right thumb on the fingerprint reader to register the fact that she had read and approved the document. Giving the pad back to Tina, Jeanne gave her a sober look.

‘’So, no copies, no records and no knowledge of this except for the two of us?’

‘’Us and SPIRIT, which will be the ultimate guardian of this secret. This way, nobody will know enough to be able to misuse our new capability. My science and history departments will take care of selecting the targets of our project team...under my strict personal supervision.’

‘’And how will you disseminate the data you will find through your project, Tina?’

‘’I will pass that data to you, so that you can disseminate further without revealing its source. If someone asks how it was obtained, simply say that, before returning to this year, we had to make a number of side trips in order to perfect our temporal jump techniques. However, due to the high sensitivity of all this, my team will study only events which are truly worth it.’

‘’Alright, I buy that. Thanks for coming up so quickly with an idea about this, Tina.’

‘’It was my pleasure, Jeanne. Have a good trip back to Providence.’

Tina then shared a hug and kisses with Jeanne before turning around and leaving the bedroom. The Chairwoman of the High Council of the Spacers League, in essence the one most powerful person in Humanity, watched on as the door slid close behind Tina.

‘’Decidedly, this woman will never cease to astonish me.’

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CHAPTER 15 – PROJECT TEMPUS

08:46 (Universal Time)

Friday, June 25, 2337

Tina’s command office, adjacent to the ship’s command meeting room A.M.S. NOSTROMO, on the surface of New Shouria (Wolf 1061c) Tina’s private command office, normally used for private conversations with members of her staff or with important guests, was getting quite crowded, with 26

androids standing in front of her desk and with Roshana Golshan, Samuel Shmelling, Ahmed Jibril, Jehanne De Domrémy and SPIRIT’s android avatar sitting on each side of her. Once everybody who was supposed to be present was in, she nodded once and smiled to those facing her.

‘’Good morning to all of you, my friends. I called you in so that we could talk about a top-secret new project of ours called ‘Project Tempus’. Project Tempus is a direct result of our involuntary misadventure in time we recently lived through, during which we visited five separate periods in the past and went to save all those Koorivars on Shouria in 1959. When Chairman Mercier proposed to me to use our new capability to travel through time in order to study and document history, I balked at first at that idea, mostly because of the dangers that someone could then either accidentally or voluntarily modify history by his or her actions and causing a disaster of immense proportion.

Then, after thinking about it and about how such time travel work could be done without risking the integrity of history as we know it, I came up with a concept which I then presented to Chairman Mercier, a concept which she accepted and vetted. That project is Project Tempus, which we will now discuss. First, know that this is a top-secret project known only to me, Chairman Mercier and to those of you now present in this room. Any further dissemination about its details and even existence is strictly forbidden without my prior approval. The danger of encouraging some megalomaniac or irresponsible idiot into going back in the past in order to quote model unquote history according to their wishes is simply too great to reveal its existence to the public, or even to other members of the High Council. Now, to the reason I asked you all to be here...’

Tina then looked at Jehanne De Domrémy, sitting to her right.

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‘’In order to keep this project as discrete as possible, I decided that the field temporal agents to be used in Project Tempus should all be security androids, for the following reasons: you can’t divulge its secrets through so-called loose talk or because of alcohol or drug use; you are not subject to basic human instincts, emotions and temptations like hate, lust, greed for power or money and prejudice; you are tougher, more powerful physically than Humans, can fly by yourself and have integrated force shield generators, plus can record images and sounds without the use of external devices. You can also assimilate in minutes a new language as stored in our historical databanks, something which would normally take Humans months and years to do.

Next, about why you were personally selected as possible temporal agents and were invited here this morning. For this, I asked your Chief Centurion, Jehanne De Domrémy, to select those of you who she judged to be the most qualified and valuable candidates for the job, subject to my final approval. Many of you actually work on their off-security duties as teachers of history in our onboard schools and university, thanks to their own personal profiles loaded into them, which reflect historical persons who existed. Your already extensive knowledge of history, which includes history classes discussions and debates with human students, will certainly prove most useful as temporal agents...if you are selected. Others in you were asked to come thanks to their expertise in flying and operating our spacecraft, from assault shuttles to passenger shuttles and command cutters. Those flying crews, while mainly dedicated to flying duties only, could in certain circumstances participate in ground missions if deemed of particular value for that mission due to their specialized skills. Now, please understand that, as temporal agents, your sole mission will be to observe, record and study history as it happens, not to affect or modify it through your actions. Total impartiality will thus be a prime quality for our temporal agents and is another reason for choosing security androids like you for this job: you will be able to watch the most atrocious or criminal acts without feeling the obligation to intervene to stop such acts, something human agents would have a hard time to do. The only exception to that would be cases when recorded history is either silent or highly speculative about the end of a study case, like when we saved Queen Boadicea in the Year 60 C.E. We unfortunately have to accept the fact that History is full of tragedies and horrors. Part of the reasons for studying history is in fact the wish to learn the lessons from history, in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Now that I have exposed to you the goals and main directives of Project Tempus, do any of you feel like you are not ready or do not wish to participate in this project?’

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Tina then held her breath as she looked around at the crowd of androids facing her, to see if anyone would back away. To her pride and relief, none did, making her nod her head while smiling.

‘’Thank you for volunteering for Project Tempus, my friends. Do you have any questions up to now?’

Augustus and Christina Vasa raised one hand each at the same time but then exchanged silent radio messages before Christina Vasa, modeled on the personality and appearance of a Swedish queen of the Renaissance Era, spoke up.

‘’Tina, me and Augustus wanted to ask the same question, mainly this: if our project is supposed to stay top secret, how would we disseminate the new knowledge and visual records from our missions in the past without making the existence of our project obvious?’’

‘’An excellent question, Christina, and one which I asked myself at first.

Basically, we will explain the existence of our new historical data on a number of experimental temporal jumps made by us during our involuntary return trip to the past and then the future, experimental jumps made in order to refine our jump parameters without risking the NOSTROMO itself and its whole crew and occupants. I know that this may sound a bit thin as an explanation but know that me and Chairman Mercier agreed to keep strictly confidential the details of our trip in time. Nobody but us and Chairman Mercier thus know where and when we went in the past, or whether we used one of our auxiliary craft to prepare our path back to the future. Even the passengers aboard the NOSTROMO at the time wouldn’t be able to say how many time periods this ship and its craft visited. Any other questions?’

Lakshmi of Jansi, modeled after one of the leaders of the Indian Sepoy Mutiny against the British in the mid-19th Century, raised her hand next.

‘’Yes, Lakshmi?’

‘’Who will decide which time period or historical event we will go observe and record, Tina?’

‘’Basically, all of us. After this meeting is over, I will ask you to take some time today to think about cases or particular periods in history which you think are insufficiently documented or explained and which you think could be worthy of study.

You will then bring by hand to Professor Shmelling a printed list of the events and times you deem of interest. Professor Shmelling will then review that list with me, Roshana

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and Jehanne, in order to select the time targets worthy of Project Tempus involvement.

A specific mission team will then be selected for each mission, according to the competences and knowledge required for that mission.’

Another android, Harrison Ford, next raised his hand for a question.

‘’Tina, what type of craft will we use for Project Tempus?’

‘’One of our command cutters, which are well-provided with long-range sensors, cameras and telescopes and are perfect for discrete reconnaissance missions. Since our ship will not be able to take off from New Shouria until all of our Koorivar passengers will have been able to disembark and since building new accommodations and facilities for them on the planet will take a good two months, we will have plenty of time to prepare before launching our first Project Tempus mission. I have thus ordered our command cutter AEGIS to be extensively modified in order to be our dedicated temporal research ship. It will have extra armament, stealth features and autonomy of operation compared to our two other cutters. I expect the AEGIS to be ready for its first test jumps in three to four weeks, following which your flight crew will do experimental temporal jumps, in order to calibrate its Koomak Drive. Right now, we have jump calibrations only for the NOSTROMO and you will understand that, due to the huge mass difference between the NOSTROMO and the AEGIS, the temporal calibrations are going to be quite different. Both Roshana Golshan and SPIRIT will accompany you during those experimental jumps, so that they will be available to resolve on the spot any quantum jump data problem you may encounter then.’

‘’Then, if we are to do test jumps to some time periods of the past, why not have a full ground team aboard as well, so that we could exploit at once any interesting opportunity we would encounter?’

Tina exchanged looks with her project command staff, not having thought about this before, then smiled back at Ford.

‘’Harrison, your proposition is an excellent one. I accept it! Your first test jumps will thus be fully manned mission flights. Manned... Gee! I dislike so much that term: it is so paternalistic and misogynistic. Let’s say instead ‘fully crewed mission’. Alright, you may all go back to your places and start thinking about your list of possible events to investigate. Professor Shmelling will be eagerly awaiting your suggestions in the meantime. You are dismissed!’

Everybody then left the office, leaving Tina alone with Roshana Golshan and Samuel Shmelling.

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‘’Well, what do you think? What kind of events will our people select as being worthy of study? Humans would probably choose famous battles or important events, like crownings or deaths of famous persons. Personally, I would be partial to naval battles of the past, mostly because I am a big student of past naval warfare. And you, Roshana?’

‘’Me? I would like to document the first steps of Humanity into Space, which also coincided with a very tense period of History we called ‘The Cold War’.’

‘’And you, Professor?’

Samuel Shmelling thought for a moment before answering Tina.

‘’What about the one factor which most influenced History: the Human factor?

We still don’t know for sure why some historical persons took the decisions they took.

As well, the people of the Spacers League have little to no idea about the living conditions our ancestors had to endure. Maybe, if they could see how fortunate their present lives are, they will learn some extra altruism and compassion and will rein in their constant demands for more.’

‘’Damn, I like your last point, Samuel. And what period of history would be best to illustrate such misery?’

In response, Shmelling could only shrug his shoulders.

‘’How about any period before the 22nd Century? Each century before that had its horror stories and tragedies, from devastating wars, epidemics, famines, widespread poverty and dictatorial rules. Unfortunately, injustice, pain and suffering have been a constant in Human history, Tina. Even today, we still have regional wars, dictatorial rules and natural disasters afflicting Earth, while the episode with the Space Predators have shown that misery could also come from Deep Space.’

Tina was left quiet and silent by that, as it only reflected reality, past and present.

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CHAPTER 16 – FIRST PROJECT TEMPUS MISSION

23:08 (Universal Time)

Tuesday, July 20, 2337

Hangar Number Seven, Small Craft Hangar Complex A.M.S. NOSTROMO, on the surface of New Shouria Wolf 1061 System, 14.1 light years from Earth

Tina was discussing at the foot of the aft access ramp of the command cutter AEGIS with its pilot, Harrison Ford, when a small convoy of taxi carts and anti-gravity cargo plates entered the small craft hangar they were in. While the taxi carts stopped next to Tina and Harrison, the cargo plates continued on and entered the command cutter through its access ramp. Tina’s eyes hooked on one cargo plate which carried containers bearing the warning symbol for toxic chemicals. Intrigued, she looked at SPIRIT, who was stepping out of the lead taxi cart, and pointed at the cargo plate in question.

‘’Uh, what is that cargo plate carrying, SPIRIT?’

In response, the AI avatar gave her a disarming smile.

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‘’They are insecticides and strong disinfectants which will be needed to deal with lice and other parasites commonly found in the distant past.’

‘’Lice?’’

‘’Yes: lice. They have not been a problem on Earth for over 200 years but, in the Renaissance, the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution, that was another story.

Even the rich people of the Renaissance, who wore wigs, were full of them. Parasite infestation was also the main cause of the various instances of plague epidemics which afflicted Humanity’s past.’

‘’Wow! I didn’t think about that.’

‘’Well, Professor Shmelling, who read plenty about that historical problem, was the one who warned me to bring some of those chemicals with us, along with some extra vaccines and medical supplies for the two human passengers who will be on the AEGIS.

Even our android field agents may have to use these chemicals, in order to disinfect and clean the fake hair on their scalps. We also packed plenty of spare sets of historical clothes, so that our agents can take a disinfecting shower and change after returning from the surface.’

‘’Gee! This would tend to kill my desire to visit the past in person: I hate bugs, be they big or small.’

‘’Well,’ said Samuel Shmelling with a smile, ‘’we will also have to contend with diseases which are long gone from this time period, like syphilis, cholera, smallpox and typhoid, on top of having to keep an eye out for pickpockets, cut-throats and other petty criminals roaming the streets of the past. Both me and Roshana, while not scheduled to go down to the surface, still got a number of vaccine shots during the past weeks. If any medical emergency strikes us, then our young paramedic, Greta Norstrom, will be on standby to help. As for our android agents, Ben will be ready to repair any backstabbing they may suffer while walking through the streets of Nineteenth Century London.’

Tina eyed briefly both Greta Norstrom and Ben Affleck, the later a qualified android repair technician, before looking soberly at Roshana Golshan.

‘’You know how precious you are to all of us, Roshana. We need you in order to continue studying in depth this time travel mechanism, so please don’t take any unnecessary risks while in the past. Avoid going down to the surface if at all possible, as you are simply irreplaceable as our top astrophysicist.’

‘’Just for that, and not simply for the little me?’ replied in jest Roshana, making Tina gently smile.

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‘’Roshana, you know that everybody on this ship loves you. Still, be careful while in the past, all of you.’

Tina then hugged in turn each of the sixteen members of the Project Tempus team, both the human ones and the androids, before they climbed aboard the modified command cutter assigned to the project. Walking away to a safe distance in the hangar, Tina then watched as the AEGIS, a wedge-shaped craft some fifty meters-long and thirty meters-wide, silently rose from the deck of the hangar and approached its airtight door, which was in the process of opening. It then slowly flew out of the hangar and into the circulation rotunda connected to the two access tunnels which let small craft fly in and out of the NOSTROMO. As the AEGIS cycled through the first set or armored airlocks leading to the outside, Tina was already on her way back to the ship’s bridge: there was still plenty to do to finish accommodating on New Shouria the half million Koorivars she had saved from their doomed homeworld.

After flying out of the NOSTROMO, Harrison Ford turned his command cutter and started climbing steeply while accelerating, heading out of the atmosphere of New Shouria. A few minutes more and the AEGIS was out of the planet’s atmosphere and flying away into Space. That was when Ford looked at his navigator, Christian Bale.

‘’Time to jump to the Solar System, Christian. Once there, SPIRIT and Roshana will take care of calculating our first temporal jump, using the gravity pull of the Sun.’

‘’Understood! Pointing at the Sun now... jump calculated and ready to engage...

Jumping now!’

The usual brief orange flash of light produced when a Koomak Drive generator was powered then permeated the small bridge sphere of the command cutter for a fraction of a second, followed by the image of the Sun appearing on their frontal screens. Bale then looked at Roshana Golshan and SPIRIT, who were sitting in the row of passenger seats behind the crew stations.

‘’Time to do your magic, Roshana. How accurate do you think our temporal jump will be, considering the differences in mass and size between the NOSTROMO and our cutter?’

‘’To be frank, we will be in uncharted territory, Christian, so I can’t promise that we will arrive within one year or even ten years from our target date. The difference in mass ratio is still something we theorized about, which is precisely why we are conducting this test mission. We will have to firm up our theory through the good old trial

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and error method. For this first jump, we will go for a near maximum long jump of 900

years and then see how accurate our jump will have been. We will then use a short jump of a few years to get to our first target date of April 20, 1429. You guys are ready?’

‘’Do we have a choice?’ joked Ford, making Roshana grin.

‘’No! Then, hold on to your pants, people. Entering the jump parameters in our navigation computer now... It is now in charge of effecting the jump.’

Harrison Ford and his copilot, Stacy Keibler, sat back in their seats and let go their flight control sticks, allowing the cutter’s main computer to take control of their craft for the temporal jump. When it initiated their jump while accelerating at a tangent just past the Sun, there was a distinct greenish tint to the flash of orange light they saw as the images on their screens completely changed.

Harrison Ford got active as soon as their jump was completed and gave a few orders to his flight crew.

‘’Christian, find where we are exactly. Allison, what does Earth look like? Are there artificial lights visible on its surface?’

‘’We are some 0.8 Astronomical Units from Earth, which is in our lower left quadrant.’ answered Bale.

‘’No visible artificial lights on Earth. The electro-magnetic spectrum is completely empty: we are definitely in the non-technological past of Earth.’

‘’Okay, our next task will be to establish the present date as accurately as we can, so that I could calculate the degree of precision of our jump and adjust our jump equations.’ said Roshana, making Ford nod his head once.

‘’Right! Let’s go get ourselves into a low Earth orbit. Professor Shmelling, what would be the best way for us to establish with reasonable precision the actual date we are in?’

‘’Our agents will have to go down and ask a local about that, but not any local: most people of this time are illiterate and have only a vague notion of the calendar date.

Our best bet will be to go to a church, monastery or convent, where they have to follow strictly the Christian calendar in order to respect the various religious events on their calendar. But let’s do that in Western Europe, please. Eastern Europe uses the Julian calendar, which is different from the Gregorian calendar, which we still use today.’

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‘’Got that! Which of our agents would be best suited for this ground reconnaissance mission, in your opinion?’

‘’Definitely Jehanne. Her namesake was from this century, if we are indeed in the Fifteenth Century. However, she should go dressed as a simple peasant girl, instead of wearing armor.’

‘’Duh!’ replied Jehanne De Domrémy, making the others laugh. ‘’Do I look this stupid, Samuel?’

08:32 (Paris Time)

Sometimes in mid-15th Century

Small village church in the region of Lorraine The village priest was gathering freshly laid eggs from his small henhouse, situated just outside his small stone church, when he saw a young peasant girl approaching along the trail passing through the tiny village and leading North. She held a walking stick in her right hand and was walking at a quite energetic pace. Not recognizing her as one of his parishioners, Father Baudrien stopped his egg gathering for a moment and took a few steps away from the henhouse as the girl came towards him at a good pace, a haversack slung from one shoulder. She looked to be in her late teens, appeared robust and was reasonably pretty, without being truly beautiful.

‘’Good morning, my child. What makes you travel through the countryside like this, alone? Aren’t you afraid of meeting highway thieves or wild beasts?’

‘’I am confident that God will protect me, Father. I am on my way to visit one of my uncles, who is quite sick, in order to bring him some provisions. His hut is quite isolated and he has nobody nearby to help him. I may in fact stay with him for a while, to support him during his recovery.’

Father Baudrien nodded his head in approval, favorably impressed by her intentions.

‘’To help support a sick family member is indeed an honorable and charitable task, my child. May I do something for you?’

‘’Yes, Father, although it is quite anodyne a request I have for you. My family is illiterate and my father’s memories are slowly failing, so we lost track of the date we are in and I am afraid of possibly missing some religious dates of importance as a consequence.’

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Father Baudrien nodded his head again: this was not an uncommon occurrence among the peasants of the country, who were largely uneducated and who could not read, write or count and who were too poor to possess any written document or even a bible.

‘’That is answered easily enough, my child. We are a Tuesday and the date is the Third of June.’

‘’Uh, excuse me if my next question may sound strange to you, Father, but what year is it? My father follows an old Germanic calendar which does not fully correspond to that followed by the Church here.’

Instead of rebuffing her, the priest had a brief chuckle at her explanation: calendars around Europe tended to vary, sometimes widely, between regions and countries.

‘’I understand your problem, my child. Know that, according to our Holy Church’s calendar, we are in the Year 1432 of the Lord.’

‘’Thank you for that information, Father.’

The girl was about to continue her trek northward when she paused and, pulling out a small purse suspended by a leather string between her breasts and hidden under her rough peasant dress, took out a small silver piece and offered it to the priest.

‘’Here is a small offering for your church, Father, to make amends for not having followed properly our Lord’s calendar for so long.’

Baudrien took the coin and made the sign of the cross to bless the girl.

‘’The Lord thanks you, young girl. May your trip be a safe one and may your uncle recover his health.’

‘’Thank you again, Father. Have a good day.’

‘’You too, my child.’

Father Baudrien watched her for a moment as she resumed her walk northward along the trail, then returned to his henhouse to resume his egg harvesting.

As she was walking away from the small church and was about to reenter the forest surrounding the village, Jehanne De Domrémy sent out a radio message to the AEGIS, which was flying at high altitude and was invisible to the naked eye.

‘’AEGIS, this is Jehanne. We are now in the early morning of Tuesday, June Third of 1432.’

‘’Good job, Jehanne.’ replied Roshana Golshan. ‘’I will now adjust my calculations for our next temporal jump. Are you going to return to the ship now?’

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‘’Not yet! I will wait until I am deep enough in the woods to be out of sight of the local people. I will call back when I will start flying out of the forest to join the ship.’

‘’Understood!’

Jehanne had walked a good two kilometers along the trail, which was barely wide enough to let a chariot pass between the trees bordering it, and was about to fly off to go back to the AEGIS when two horsemen suddenly appeared at a bend of the trail, a mere sixty meters ahead of her. Cutting her pace to a slow walk, Jehanne used the zoom lenses incorporated to her fake eyes to have a good look at the newcomers, recognizing them quickly as being a pair of Burgundian soldiers. That was potentially bad news, as such soldiers often took what they wanted from peasants and freely abused girls and women. Burgundians had in fact raided her namesake’s native village of Domrémy in 1425, looting it and stealing the villagers’ cattle. With her walking by herself deep in the woods, she was certainly going to become a tempting target for those two Burgundians.

She was quickly proven right about that when the pair of soldiers rode to her and then stopped, blocking her path. One of the soldiers, a big, brutish-looking man, gave her a mean smile from atop his horse.

‘’Hey, girl, what do you say about providing some pleasure to us right here. In exchange, we promise not to hurt you.’

Any ordinary peasant girl would have then faced an impossible situation: to let herself be raped or to resist or try to flee, which would most probably end up in her death.

However, Jehanne was no ordinary peasant girl, far from it. Since killing those two soldiers here could possibly affect the genealogical lines of the time period, thus causing changes, however minimal, to history, she decided not to kill or wound them. Instead, she decided to play a trick on them. Faking fear and joining her hands as if to pray, she implored the soldiers with a pleading voice.

‘’Please, don’t hurt me, sires. I promise to be compliant.’

‘’That’s good, girl: you are proving to be reasonable.’

The two soldiers then dismounted, with the senior soldier giving an order to his comrade.

‘’Henri, go tie our horses to that tree.’

As ‘Henri’ obeyed him and grabbed the reins of both horses to go tie them to a tree some five meters away, the bigger soldier approached Jehanne, a mean smile on his lips, to stop a mere pace in front of her.

‘’Alright, girl, strip!’

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‘’Uh, yes, sire!’

Jehanne, feigning prudishness, turned around before starting to pull her dress up over her head in order to remove it. That allowed her to hide the fact that she used that move to remove as well the small purse hanging from her neck and to then hide it in her robe as she laid it down in the long grass next to the trail. She then pivoted to face the soldier, who was able to admire her nude body. Raising his right hand, he fondled her left breast with obvious delight.

‘’Not bad, girl. You could make some good money in our camp.’

The second soldier then joined back his comrade and started fondling Jehanne’s right breast.

‘’Let me taste her nipple a bit before making her lay down, Jules.’

‘’Good idea, Henri.’

Both men were about to bend forward to lick her nipples when Jehanne objected.

‘’Hey! Not with your steel hats on! You’ll smash my face with them.’

‘’She’s right!’ recognized Jules. ‘’They would definitely be in the way.’

Both soldiers removed their wide-brimmed steel hats, called Kettle Hats or, in Old French, ‘chapel de fer’, and put them down in the grass, then stepped forward and bent forward to play with her breasts. As soon as they were withing arms’ reach of her, Jehanne moved at a speed only an android could and, grabbing their heads, smashed them together with all her considerable android strength. Instantly knocked unconscious, both Burgundian soldiers crumbled to the ground at her feet. Jehanne didn’t lose time in putting her dress back on and to recuperate her purse, then thought about what to do with those two soldiers. If she let them as they were, they would most probably be furious and may well seek revenge on the locals of the nearby village. On the other hand, she had already decided not to kill them. That left her with one option that would prevent those two from becoming a threat to the villagers while keeping them alive. Going to the two horses used by the Burgundians, she took off from one of them the bedroll tied behind its saddle and, taking the thick wool blanket of the bedroll, laid it flat on the grass next to the trail.

Then, she went to the unconscious soldiers, who would most probably wake up with a monumental headache and a spectacular bruise, and started stripping them of their armor and weapons. She smiled on examining the two brigandine armored vests they had been wearing.

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‘’Now, these pieces could sell quite well at the ‘Black Forge Medieval Boutique’.

Otto will be happy with them.’

Throwing the two brigandines on top of the laid down blanket, Jehanne then proceeded to pile atop and around them the two steel hats, two small buckler shields, two longswords, one war axe, one flanged mace and two daggers which belonged to the Burgundians.

She debated for a half second whether to also empty their purses but reasoned that, without money left to them, they could then feel obliged to rob passing peasants, so she left their purses untouched. As for the four javelins carried in leather holders on the horses, she broke them in two to render them useless. With all that done, she tied together the four corners of the blanket, forming with it a rudimentary bundle, and swung it over one shoulder. Before flying off the ground, she gave a sarcastic look at the two Burgundians.

‘’See you, suckers!’

Nobody was close enough to see her as she silently flew off and started ascending, propelled by the directional gravity propulsion unit inside her body.

After a flight of a few minutes, she joined up with the AEGIS at an altitude of 20,000 meters and entered the command cutter via its aft access ramp. There, she was greeted by SPIRIT and James Gavin, their expert android on modern military history.

The latter smiled on seeing the bundle of armor and weapons carried by Jehanne.

‘’I see that you took the time to do some looting, Jehanne.’

‘’Hey, I wanted to make sure that those two bastards would not take revenge on the local peasants. Besides, those pieces should sell very well at the Black Forge Medieval Boutique.’

Jehanne then looked at SPIRIT.

‘’What’s next, SPIRIT?’

‘’Now that we know the exact date we are in, we will be able to make a short temporal jump and get to our original target date of April 20, 1429, days before your namesake will enter Orléans with the supplies and reinforcements sent by Charles VII.

Then, we will record in detail the battles to come around Orleans and the ultimate raising of the siege by the English. After that, Samuel will decide if it’s worth staying longer in this year or if we will jump to our next time period of interest. By the way, do you need help carrying your loot?’

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‘’No! However, I am sure that James will be more than happy to examine it in detail and to help me apply some protective coat of oil on the weapons. All in all, that was a good day of work.’

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CHAPTER 17 – THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER

17:10 (London Time)

Saturday, June 21, 1483

Conference room, command cutter AEGIS

Flying at high altitude above London, England

‘’Alright, let’s analyze all that we saw and heard since we arrived in this time period eight days ago.’

Professor Samuel Shmelling briefly looked around the conference table at the members of the mission team who had just sat down with him in the small conference room of the AEGIS. Ever since they had arrived in the early morning of June 20 of 1483, miniature reconnaissance probes had been discreetly spying and recording both images and sounds of the various persons and places of interest which were now the targets of attention of the team in and around medieval London. The Tower of London had been particularly targeted for the team’s attention, as it played the role in this century of both a royal palace and a state prison. Shmelling then resumed talking.

‘’Since we arrived, we have been able to confirm a few important facts which had already been known in History. The first of those facts is that Richard III indeed has put under strict guard in the White Tower of the Tower of London the young King Edward V

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and his brother, Richard of York, this with the ultimate goal of usurping the throne from Edward. Second, he just basically revealed his ultimate goal by having the two boys declared illegitimate, thus officially disqualifying Edward as the King, a move that will now allow him to legally take the throne. Our reconnaissance probes also confirmed who in the Royal Council supports Richard of Gloucester and who is doing the dirty work for him. We also have been able to debunk a number of stories and hypothesis which have been floating around for centuries about what really happened concerning the two boys widely known as ‘The Princes in the Tower’. One of them is the story that Lord John Howard, First Duke of Norfolk, would have interceded with Richard to let the two boys live by taking them to Europe, where they would no longer be able to threaten the power of Richard III. We now have on film the fact that Lord Howard, while he did try to plea for the lives of the young princes, was rebuffed by Richard of Gloucester and was basically told to mind his business or else. So, that’s one historical conspiracy theory blown out of the water. Our next goal, and the most important one for this part of our mission, will be to find out if the young princes will actually be murdered and, if they are, when, by whom and how? Since you all read the historical material available about the story of the ‘Princes in the Tower’, I won’t need to tell you how convoluted and uncertain this historical mystery is. As for the solid facts known to History before we arrived in this year, the least that we can say is that there are precious few of them. Nobody knows yet for certain when the princes will die and what will happen with their bodies.’

‘’What about those bones found centuries later under a staircase of the White Tower, Professor?’ asked Roshana Golshan. ‘’Many accounts say that they were the bones of Edward the Fifth and of Richard of York, buried under those stairs after their murders, to eventually be moved to the Westminster Abbey. Was DNA analysis ever done on them to establish if they were indeed the bones of the little princes?’

‘’It was eventually done in the early 21st Century, after the British royal palace refused repeatedly to allow such an analysis. Unfortunately, it was then discovered that there had been so much cross-contamination through them being moved repeatedly and being mixed with animal bones and other debris that no valid results could be obtained.

So, as far as our history knows it, we can’t say with any certainty that they were the bones of the little princes or not. For all we know, Edward V and Richard of York could still have ended up escaping death or, as another story says, their bodies were dumped in the River Thames in a weighed-down chest. Our best course of action right now is to

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continue our close surveillance of the princes and of the usurper via our reconnaissance drones and to see what will really happen in the days and weeks to come.’

‘’And if we see someone about to kill the two boys, then what?’ asked Roshana.

‘’We let those two innocent boys die?’

Shmelling looked soberly in silence at the astrophysicist for a moment before answering her in a gentle tone.

‘’Roshana, I understand how you could feel an urge to save those two boys from death but, if we do anything to change their fate, then we will imperil History as we know it, with potentially catastrophic changes to it in the decades and centuries to come. We could even erase our own civilization, including the NOSTROMO, and replace it with something utterly impossible to predict. If we find out that those two boys will indeed be murdered, then we will have no choice but to accept that fact. At least, we will have then established for certain what happened to them.’

Roshana couldn’t help lower her head in sadness on hearing Shmelling’s argument.

‘’But this is so unjust. We are talking about two innocent boys, one twelve-year-old and the other nine-year-old.’

SPIRIT, who was participating in the meeting, then jumped into the exchange, keeping her voice soft.

‘’And what about the other tens of thousands of innocent children who will die around the planet this year alone, victims of famines, diseases, wars and abuse? If we end up saving those two princes, what then? Do we then try to save as many innocents as we can? The result of such actions would then be certain chaos, a chaos that would then ensure that the world we know in the 24th Century will no longer be there when we will jump back to the year 2337. We had to let Jehanne De Domrémy’s namesake die at the stake for the same reason. I do sympathize with your pain at the idea of letting those boys die, Roshana, but we have no other valid option in this. There is also the matter of what we will do with those two boys if we rescue them. Bring them to a completely different world, where they will perceive magic everywhere and where they would not have any meaningful lives?’

The team members around the table then saw a few tears roll down Roshana’s cheeks, prompting SPIRIT in gently putting one arm around her shoulders.

‘’Your compassion and humanity are a credit to yourself, Roshana, and we will all grieve those two boys afterwards, but we have to accept historical reality as we will observe it. Remember that we still have one more historical period to visit before

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returning to our time. We have to cling to our mission parameters, for the sake of our own history.’

There were a few seconds of silence around the table before Shmelling spoke again.

‘’I believe that we should end this meeting and return to our observations via our reconnaissance drones. We will meet again once the final fate of the princes will be sealed.’

The team members all rose from their seats and left the room, dispersing to either their cabins or their work stations. As for Samuel Shmelling, he approached Roshana, who looked at him with sadness.

‘’Maybe I shouldn’t have come on this mission, Samuel. I know that my knowledge in astrophysics was deemed essential for this, but I am not sure that I can stomach the cruelty and lack of care for the lives of others to be found in these distant past centuries.’

‘’And you think that our own time period is much better, Roshana? Sure, most people of our time care to various degrees about others around them but we still have our fair lot of petty despots, criminals, abusers and human traffickers around the Earth.

Look at how bad things are still around some parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East or even around the Spacers League. Remember that sexual slavery network we broke over ten years ago, which implicated some high-level people of the Sverdlovsk Group.

By being with us and helping us show to all what the past was truly like, you will help our people realize what is still left to be done to make our world a more decent place.’

‘’I... You are right, Samuel. I think that I will go rest in my cabin for a while before having supper. Thank you for trying to comfort me.’

‘’My pleasure, Roshana.’

Samuel let the astrophysicist leave the room before himself walking out, wanting to leave her some private space. The sad fact was that History was mostly made up of an apparently endless procession of wars, natural disasters and abuse of Humans by other Humans, with comparatively few positive points along the way.

01:29 (London Time)

Wednesday, September 03, 1483

Sensors and communications center, command cutter AEGIS

Flying at high altitude over the city of London, England

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William Windsor, the android communications officer of the AEGIS, was monitoring the multiple video feeds from the reconnaissance drones on station in and around the Tower of London, assisted in this by Allison Stokke, the android sensors officer of the command cutter. Those video feeds had been constantly monitored for over a month now and the team had already recorded many scenes of crucial historical importance concerning the mystery of the ‘Princes in the Tower’. One thing was now irrefutable: Richard of Gloucester had engineered all this in order to usurp the throne of England from young Edward the Fifth. Furthermore, in a conversation between him and his two main henchmen, Henry Stafford, the Second Duke of Buckingham, and Sir James Tyrell, his right-hand man, intercepted and recorded a day ago, had shown that he wanted the young princes dead and had said so to his two followers. Since then, the video feeds from the drones showing the inside of the room where the two princes were detained, plus those watching the approaches to that room in the White Tower, were now being watched by a minimum of two crewmembers at any time.

The view from one of the stealthy reconnaissance drones which covered the hallway outside the princes’ room suddenly made William redouble attention to it: three men were now slowly approaching the door of the room while trying to make as little noise as possible. The facial recognition program of the ship’s computer, which already contained the faces and identities of dozens of significant people present in London, quickly established who those three men were, with names and titles appearing in red on the holographic viewing screen of William’s work station.

‘’Sire James Tyrell and two of his aides, Miles Forest and John Dighton: the jackals are showing up tonight.’

William then pressed a red button that triggered a ship-wide alarm bell before speaking in his headset’s microphone.

‘’To all the team members: three assassins are now approaching the princes’

room. Sire James Tyrell is leading that group.’

Next, William adjusted the view from the cameras of the drone, in order to have a better view of the three plotters as they stopped in front of the door of the room. Tyrell then told the two soldiers guarding the door to leave, which they promptly did without discussion. Quietly unlocking the door, Tyrell then let his two accomplices, who each

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held a large pillow, enter the room. While Tyrell watched from the opened door, Forest and Dighton slowly approached the bed in which Edward and Richard were sleeping.

The two assassins were stopping next to the bed, their pillows at the ready, when Jehanne De Domrémy, SPIRIT and Samuel Shmelling arrived at a run in the sensors and communications center, followed shortly by the rest of the team. William signaled them to be quiet and pointed at the screen showing the inside of the princes’ room.

‘’The princes are about to be murdered. Our cameras and sensors are recording the scene. These two men are Miles Forest and John Dighton. James Tyrell is watching them from the door.’

William had just finished speaking when the cameras showed the two assassins suddenly cover the faces of the two boys with the pillows they were holding, pressing down with all their weight and smothering the young boys. Taken totally by surprise while sleeping, the two princes had no chance to resist successfully and trashed around in their bed for less than half a minute before becoming inert. Still, their assassins kept smothering them for nearly a minute more before removing the pillows and checking if their victims were indeed dead. Forest then twisted his head to look back at Tyrell.

‘’It is done, Sire. What do we do now, Sire?’

‘’Strip them of any jewel or item that could identify them, then roll them inside their blankets and bring them downstairs. Jack Ralston and two other men are standing by down the stairs, where the boys will be buried under the staircase.’

‘’Aye, Sire!’

As his two henchmen stripped the boys down to their nightshirts, Tyrell approached the bed and checked himself the boys for a pulse, making sure that the job had been properly done. Satisfied about that, he then let his two men roll the boys into bedsheets.

While Forest and Dighton grabbed Edward, who was the biggest boy, Tyrell picked up the limp body of nine-year-old Richard of York. There was no regret or pity in his eyes when he looked down at his young victim: the death of those two boys insured that his master, Richard of Gloucester, now known as King Richard the Third, would not see his reign disputed, with meant in turn that Tyrell would continue enjoying the favors of the King. The trio, carrying their two young victims, then left the room and went down the spiral staircase leading to one of the entrances of the White Tower. There, they met three men who were waiting next to an excavation freshly made under the base of the staircase. The two dead boys were quickly stuffed inside the excavation, which was then filled up with a mix of dirt, gravel and stones, with fresh mortar then liberally applied

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to hold in place the wall of the excavation. Less than forty minutes later, with all traces of the burial place erased, the plotters dispersed, with Janes Tyrell heading towards the royal apartments in order to inform King Richard III that the deed had been done.

Aboard the AEGIS, the whole mission team had watched all that in silence while the drones’ sensors recorded the event for posterity. Roshana Golshan, who had arrived in the center a bit after the murder scene, didn’t say a word but turned away and walked out while sobbing. Samuel Shmelling was about to go catch her in order to console her but SPIRIT stopped him by blocking his path with one arm.

‘’Don’t, Samuel! What she needs now is privacy and time to recover from this.

We will be able to speak with her in the morning.’

Samuel nearly objected by saying that SPIRIT wouldn’t know how Humans managed their emotions but stopped himself in time. If anything had shown how surprisingly connected SPIRIT was with human emotions, it was the numerous occasions in the recent past when the AI avatar had correctly read the emotions of the people around her. In fact, and as surprisingly as this would sound to the average people, SPIRIT

could probably have made a more than decent psychologist.

‘’Alright, SPIRIT, I will wait until breakfast before approaching her. I believe that this phase of our mission is now completed: we have documented the actual fate of Edward the Fifth and of Richard of York. We should now jump to the next time period of interest to us.’

‘’Agreed! I will take care of preparing our next temporal jump. In the meantime, you better go back to bed.’

Samuel nodded his head in response, then turned around and left the center, heading back towards his cabin.

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CHAPTER 18 – LOST IN THE PACIFIC

04:46 (South Central Pacific Time)

Tuesday, July 06, 1937

Shores of Gardner Island (later named Nikumaroro Island) Phoenix Archipelago (today part of Kiribati), South Pacific Amelia Earhart was growing worried as the level of the sea rose with the tide: her navigator, Fred Noonan, had gone inside their crash-landed twin-engine Lockheed ELECTRA 10-E, which was presently half-submerged, in order to try again to send a radio distress signal. If Fred did not hurry up, he could well get trapped inside their plane. Amelia then shouted as strongly as she could despite her parched throat.

‘’FRED, HURRY UP! THE WATER IS ABOUT TO ENTER THE CABIN.’

She had to repeat her warning before she saw Fred’s head and torso come out by the left side door of the plane, waving at her with one hand.

‘’IT’S ALRIGHT: I AM DONE HERE.’

Amelia watched as Fred cautiously walked on the left wing in order to get to the shallowest water surrounding their aircraft, then lowered himself in the water, ending submerged up to his chest. Since it was still dark, Amelia could basically only distinguish his silhouette against the shiny aluminum background of the plane. She, like

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probably Fred, thus didn’t see the dark submerged shape which was approaching from the sea until it was too late. The first indication of a danger was when Fred suddenly screamed with pain and began thrashing in the water.

‘’AAAH! A SHARK! HE HAS ME BY ONE LEG!’

‘’COME BACK! COME BACK!’ could only shout back a horrified Amelia. Before she could say more, Fred then disappeared under the surface, apparently pulled down.

Amelia saw Fred’s hand shoot out of the water after a few seconds later, only to disappear for good.

‘’FRED! FRED! PLEASE, GOD, NO!’

However, Fred never surfaced again, leaving Amelia grieving and prostrated on the mix of sand and pebbles of the beach she was on. She was now alone, marooned on a deserted small atoll island in the South Pacific, with no water and no food left to her.

Maybe she could still find something to eat, like a coconut, but she and Fred had found quickly enough that there was no source of fresh water on the island, save for what occasional rains would bring. Amelia had not drunk water for three days now and the hot sun had only dehydrated her even

more. Finally, realizing that she could do nothing for Fred, Amelia slowly got up on

her feet and walked to the line of bushes and trees growing along the shores of the

Nikumaroro atoll. There, she sat down under the cover of the rudimentary shelter

she and Fred had built within sight of

where their plane had landed in shallow

waters off the beach. If somebody didn’t come and found her soon, then she was eventually going to die alone from lack of water and food. Crushed by despair and weak from dehydration, she then lay down on the grass and tried to get some sleep before the oppressive tropical heat of the day could come.

Two days later, Amelia woke up to another catastrophe which hit her: her plane had completely vanished, probably having been washed away by the tides. Apart from losing any possibility of emitting further radio distress signals, the disappearance of her plane meant that about the only thing which could attract the attention of planes or ships passing by the island was now gone. The shock from seeing her plane gone, allied with

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her growing dehydration then pushed Amelia into making a grave mistake. Tortured by thirst and referring to stories she had heard while young about shipwrecked persons surviving for weeks at sea by drinking seawater, she took a chance and drank some salt water in a spot that appeared to have the clearest water along the shore. Finding that the taste was not so bad, she ended up drinking the equivalent of nearly a half-liter of seawater. With her thirst temporarily relieved, Amelia then searched for something she could eat along the shore and in the shallower waters off the beach. She succeeded in finding a few clams, which she was able to open with the help of a pocket knife she still had on her, and ate them on the spot.

It didn’t take long for her mistake about drinking seawater to come back to haunt her, as her thirst came back the next day, but much worse than before. She ended up being nearly delirious from dehydration while tortured by thirst. She thus didn’t hear or see the U.S. Navy seaplane which passed overhead on July nine, seven days after her crashlanding. That seaplane, seeing no sign of human occupation or presence, then flew away, heading towards another island of the archipelago. The following night, Amelia, pushed by thirst and despair, repeated her mistake and drank more seawater, gulping mouthfuls of it. Weakened by dehydration and with her organs starting to shut down, Amelia ended up in a semi-conscious state, mostly unable to get up and walk. As her tenth day on the island was ending, she looked for a last time at the setting Sun and tried to say something to herself. However, her dried and cracked lips barely let out a groan before she slowly closed her eyes, expecting to never open them again.

When she did regain consciousness, her vision was blurred at first and it took her a moment to see that she was in some kind of room illuminated by electric lights. She also felt relieved that much of her thirst was gone. Joy filled her when she understood that someone had finally found and rescued her: this had to be the infirmary of a ship.

As she was slowly twisting her neck to look around from the laid position she was in, a young woman with blond hair quickly came to her and spoke to her in English, her voice soft and friendly.

‘’Please, don’t try to get up, Miss Earhart: you are still very weak and need more liquid transfusions in order to return your body fluids to normal levels. Let me get a wet towel, so that I could hydrate your lips a bit more: it will be easier for you to speak then.’

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The blonde then walked away for a few seconds before coming back and passing a small wet towel on Amelia’s lips and face. That felt nearly like paradise for the aviatrix, who then managed to speak in a weak voice.

‘’Thank you, miss. Is this a U.S. Navy ship?’

The young blonde hesitated for a moment before answering her.

‘’No! You are aboard the cutter AEGIS, Miss Earhart. Let me get a glass of water for you.’

The promise of water convinced Amelia to hold on to the thousand questions she now had for that young woman. The blonde then returned with a glass of water and, before giving it to Amelia, pushed a button that made a part of the bed elevate, raising her torso to an angle of about fifty degrees. The young woman then helped her drink while cautioning her.

‘’Drink in small gulps only, miss. Your body is still recovering from severe dehydration.’

That glass of cold water was like a nectar for Amelia, who drank all of it in a series of measured gulps. Now feeling much better, the aviatrix gave back the now empty glass to the blonde.

‘’Thank you, miss. You said that I was on a ship called the AEGIS. What nationality is your ship?’

‘’I am afraid that the answer to that is a bit complicated, Miss Earhart. However, no need for you to be afraid: you are with friends. I will let my leader answer your questions. I will now call her to advise her that you are awake.’

Then, instead of going to a telephone or intercom panel, the blonde raised her left wrist to near her mouth and pressed something on the surface of the sort of bracelet she was wearing before speaking in it.

‘’SPIRIT, Miss Earhart is now awake and has questions. Could you please come to the infirmary?’

‘’On my way!’ answered a female voice. The blonde then smiled to Amelia while lowering her wrist.

‘’My leader is called SPIRIT. She will be able to answer all of your questions, Miss Earhart.’

Amelia nodded in understanding, then looked around her at the room she was in. It was quite large for a ship’s infirmary but, more than its size, its content seriously baffled her.

She was accustomed to work with some of the best American technology available and

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had once worked as an assistant nurse in a Toronto hospital during World War One, yet what she was seeing now was totally alien to her. Her eyes then fell on a sort of machine with a projection screen on which medical data, like pulse rate and blood pressure, was shown in graphics format. She had seen once one of the first television sets on display in a science fair but what she was looking at now appeared to be way more advanced. Now getting suspicious, Amelia was about to ask more questions to the blonde, who wore what furiously looked like a male-style blue coverall, when a tall and most beautiful woman walked in the infirmary, using a door which opened by sliding sideways into the wall. The newcomer appeared to be in her early thirties, had long brown hair, gray eyes and was much taller than Amelia. She also wore a golden, tightly fitting jumpsuit which would probably have caused a scandal on the streets of any American city. Her voice was both agreeable and friendly.

‘’Hello, Miss Earhart. My name is SPIRIT. I am happy to see that you appear to be better now.’

‘’Just Spirit? That’s a rather strange name, miss. I was told that you are the captain of this ship.’

‘’The captain, no. Rather, I lead the scientific team embarked on this ship. The AEGIS is actually commanded by its pilot, Officer Harrison Ford. Our command cutter was on an observation mission when we spotted and saved you.’

‘’And your ship, which nationality is it? Your nurse told me that it is not an American Navy ship.’

‘’It definitely isn’t an American ship, Miss Earhart. And neither is it a simple sea-going ship. You are now aboard a starship. But let me explain all this in as simple a way as I can and please hold on to your questions for the moment.’

With her mind now in utter turmoil, Amelia did hold her questions in as the woman grabbed a chair mounted on small wheels and approached it from the medical bed she was in before sitting on it.

‘’Miss Earhart, let me first precise what this ship is. It is not only a ship of Space, able to travel among the stars: it is also capable of traveling through time. Our year of origin was 2337 when we departed for the distant past on a mission to document selected events in History. Our two first stops were both in the Fifteenth Century, then we turned around and stopped in your time period while on the way back to the 24th

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Century. Know that we have now just jumped back to the Year 2337 and are on our way to return to the ship which serves as a base for our cutter.’

‘’But, but, if you were able to find and rescue me in 1937, then why didn’t you simply return me to the United States? This is kidnapping, pure and simple!’

SPIRIT gave a sad look then at the now furious Amelia.

‘’Miss Earhart, we simply could not return you to the United States, for the reason that it would have gravely disturbed the integrity of History itself and could have caused four centuries to be rewritten in a most unpredictable way. According to established history as known in the 24th Century, you disappeared in the South Pacific in 1937 and was then never seen again. The location of your crash was not even known with any precision, except for a number of speculations, none of which were supported by any material evidence. Know also that in 1938, one year after your crashlanding, a group intent on establishing a coconut plantation arrived on what you call Gardner Island, which is now known as Nikumaroro Island. They stayed there for many years but were eventually forced to leave because of the acute shortage of fresh water on the atoll.

They didn’t find any traces of you or of your plane during their stay and your disappearance remained a mystery ever since...until today. The sad truth is that you should have died on that atoll, as per recorded history. The only reason which decided us to save you instead of leaving you on the atoll was the fact that you completely disappeared from History after your crash, with no traces of you or of your plane ever found afterwards. That allowed us to save you but it also obliged us to bring you with us to the 24th Century, in order to preserve History. For your info, an American Navy seaplane did overfly the atoll seven days after your crash but it saw no human activity or traces of your plane, so continued to another island. You were subsequently officially declared dead on January Fifth of 1939. You will still be declared dead at that date, but you will get to live...and to live a life the kind of which you could not even have dreamed about before.’

SPIRIT then waited patiently as the poor Amelia tried to digest all that with obvious difficulty. After a long minute of introspection, the aviatrix finally looked back at the AI avatar, which she still believed to be a normal person.

‘’What nationality is your ship, miss? Is it from Earth?’

‘’It was actually built in a space yard orbiting the Earth but it is now based aboard a giant cargo starship plowing Deep Space while carrying cargo and passengers between various star systems. We belong to what is called the Spacers League, which

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represents the colonies and new worlds on which Humanity has established itself among the stars during the last few decades. Specifically, our base ship, the NOSTROMO, belongs to the New Haven Corporation, established some twenty years ago to help relocate Earth refugees from wars, famines and natural disasters on a new world where they could live in peace and prosper. The New Haven Corporation is a member in good standing of the Spacers League and its CEO, Tina Forster, is also the owner and captain of the NOSTROMO.’

‘’Decidedly, women seem to hold a position of near equality with men in your world. In my time, such a notion would have been greeted with derision, or worse.’

‘’Oh, I know, Miss Earhart. To be frank, women won complete social and political equality with men only some 200 years ago, yet we still have our lot of die-hard misogynists.’

‘’And me? What am I supposed to do or become in your world? Your level of science and technology is obviously way beyond anything I know. I doubt that you would still use internal combustion piston engines, right?’

‘’Indeed! I am not saying that your integration in our society will be easy at first, but you will in any case be able to live comfortably and without worrying about falling into poverty. Our social system of government concentrates on ensuring the welfare of all, rather than letting a small minority profit at the expense of the majority. From what I know of the politics of the 20th Century, many Americans of your time would probably qualify our political system as ‘socialist’ or even ‘communist’. On our part, we prefer to call it ‘egalitarian’.’

‘’Egalitarian sounds quite alright with me, Spirit. So, we are now in Space, and not on Earth?’

‘’Definitely, Miss Earhart. Let me show you on that viewing screen facing your bed.’

Amelia then sucked air in as a beautiful picture showing the blue orb of Earth against the black background of Space appeared on what she had believed to be some sort of tinted window. SPIRIT then spoke again.

‘’This is our planet Earth, as seen from high orbit. We are not going to land there, however. Rather, we will soon travel to another star system called Wolf 1061.

There, we will dock inside our base ship, the NOSTROMO, where Captain Forster will be most happy to meet you.’

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‘’And I am certainly anxious to meet your captain, Spirit. Is there anything else that I should know before meeting her?’

A malicious smile came to SPIRIT’s lips at that question.

‘’Definitely! For one thing, I am not a woman but rather a sentient machine called an android. Most of the crew of this ship are actually androids, including Greta, here.’

09:11 (Universal Time)

Thursday, July 22, 2337

Small Craft Hangar Complex, A.M.S. NOSTROMO

Landed next to the coastline near the city of New Shouriana New Shouria, Wolf 1061 System

When Amelia walked out of the command cutter via its aft access ramp, she was still under the shock brought by the gigantic size of the ship the cutter had entered into.

The vast dimensions of the craft circulation rotunda in which the cutter had landed did nothing to calm her emotions, nor did the fact that four equally large craft were also in the rotunda, apparently waiting to be loaded with passengers or cargo. Amelia was thus surprised to be met by only two persons at the foot of the ramp: two women, one a tall, mature woman with long brown hair and the other an equally tall young blonde of great beauty. The mature brunette was the one who stepped forward to greet her with a solid handshake.

‘’Miss Amelia Earhart, it is a true honor to be able to greet you aboard my ship. I am Tina Forster, owner and captain of this ship.’

‘’And what a ship it is, Captain Forster. In comparison to your ship, the biggest ship in the U.S. Navy, the aircraft carrier SARATOGA, is downright puny.’

‘’Bah, 36,000 tons or so full load against 26 million tons: who’s counting? There is however the matter of 400-year difference in technology: that’s the one that truly counts. But you will have ample time to tour my NOSTROMO in the weeks to come.

Before anything else, let me present to you Eve Silisca, our assistant ship’s hostess: she will guide you around this ship and will do everything possible to make your stay as agreeable and comfortable as possible.’

Amelia shook hands with Eve but couldn’t help stare at her face and skin: her short time with the mostly android crew of the AEGIS had made her cautious about taking for

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granted that those she would meet would be Humans rather than robots. Eve apparently read Amelia’s mind and smiled to her.

‘’Before you ask, yes, I am an android. I am in fact the first one SPIRIT built, even before she built an avatar of herself.’

‘’Thank you for your frankness, miss.’ said Amelia to Eve before looking at Tina Forster. ‘’May I ask why you have such a high proportion of robots in your crew, Captain Forster? Is that standard in the ships of this time period?’

‘’Standard? Not one bit, Miss Earhart. In fact, this ship and my corporation are outliers in the Spacers League and not everybody is fond of my androids. You could equate that with the old racist attitudes of past centuries, when mixed blood crews and populations were seen negatively, unless one race dominated the others. But don’t get mistaken by what you saw on the AEGIS: most of my crew is made of Humans. The androids I had built were produced to provide my ship and my world of New Haven with a strong protection force, this to face a mortal threat that was then facing Humanity as well as the other sentient races in this part of the Galaxy: the Space Predators. Those monsters, giant mantis-like creatures, were going around the stars, attacking other races and animal species in order to eat them, hence their name of ‘Space Predators’. They caused us and other races terrible losses before we found adequate weapons to defeat them. In a recent battle in this system, we were able to destroy their last fleet but, while pursuing their command ship, my NOSTROMO got suckered into a trap which caused us to involuntarily travel back in time by 2,800 years. Thankfully, we were able to find a way to return back to our time but it took us a few tries before we were back to this present year. The ship that found and saved you was sent by me to learn more about this time travel processus, so that, if we need to travel again through time, we could then do it in a safer way. However, I intend to be very cautious about using time travel again.

You will easily appreciate how dangerous for History unregulated and irresponsible time travel could be.’

‘’Indeed! Unfortunately, many dictators in my time period would love to have such a capability and then use it to affirm or extend their power.’

‘’Well said, Miss Earhart. Well, let’s go get you an apartment for you, along with some new wardrobe and other personal items.’

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As Tina led Amelia towards the central core section, so that they could take a lift, Amelia couldn’t help asking a question that had been bothering her for a few hours already.

‘’Excuse me if my next question may sound a crass one, Captain Forster, but what do you expect from me after saving me? I wouldn’t want to be like a deadweight living at the expense of your ship during the years to come.’

Amelia’s question actually made Tina stop and turn to face the aviatrix. However, there was no anger in her eyes, only care and compassion.

‘’Miss Earhart, I created my corporation for the express purpose of being able to provide a new, safe and just home for tens of thousands of unfortunate people victims of wars, famines, natural disasters or persecutions. My reward is to see those people being happy and being able to raise their children in peace and in decent conditions.

New Haven, the moon on which I built new homes for those people, is a mostly agrarian and pastoral society which specializes in food production. It is self-sufficient in terms of food and its surplus are then sold around the Spacers League and on Earth, which provides my corporation with the means to gradually extend the facilities and residential capacity on New Haven. I treat all my people with care, decency and respect and am not in this business for the money. I had you saved because I could do so without disturbing History and because you were worthy of saving. Consider yourself as my guest on this ship and, if you decide to eventually go live on New Haven, then you will be most welcomed there. However, if you decide to stay on the NOSTROMO, then you will be able to educate yourself to the standards of this century and to eventually take a job.

Before you say that you would like to pilot some of my craft, I must caution you that flying an airplane and piloting a spaceship are two vastly different things.’

‘’I would still love to try my hand at that, Captain.’

‘’Then, Eve will be most happy to arrange an education and training program for you, Miss Earhart. But first, let’s get you a place to live.’

Entering the central core section, with its central column containing a number of lifts, the trio was approaching the door of one lift when the doors of a large cargo lift next to it slid open, disgorging over 150 alien creatures resembling kangaroos with large dear heads. Amelia nearly stepped back in both fear and surprise at that sight, prompting Tina in reassuring her.

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‘’Don’t be afraid, Miss Earhart: these are Koorivars, highly intelligent beings who also happen to be vegetarians and are certified pacifists. The Koorivars were the first extraterrestrial sentient beings Humanity met. Unfortunately, their original homeworld was destroyed in the year 1959 by a wandering brown dwarf, essentially a giant gas body nearly the size of a star. During our trip back from the past, my ship was able to evacuate nearly half a million Koorivars before their planet, Shouria, was destroyed.

They are now being resettled on the planet we have landed on, were other Koorivars which were previously saved by us some twenty years ago have established a new home for themselves. But that is a long story and you will have plenty of time to read about it.’

As they entered a lift cabin, Amelia had another question on her mind.

‘’You said that those Koorivars were the first aliens which you encountered, Captain. How many other intelligent alien races has Humanity encountered to date?’

‘’Oh, quite a few, Miss Earhart. Contrary to what the religious preachers and leaders of your time preached, there is nothing special about Earth and its place in the Universe. In fact, there is life all around the stars, both of the sentient and non-sentient types. Of the intelligent alien races we encountered to date, apart from the Koorivars, you have the Drazts, the Vorlaks, the Hoshis, the Kiryns, the marine telepaths of Oceana, the Kooroos, the Krells and the now extinct Space Predators. Many of those races are now our friends but one race, the Vorlaks, is definitely not very friendly. If you want, Eve could play for you tonight a video documentary on the various lifeforms we found to date around the stars.’

‘’I would very much like that, Captain.’

‘’Please, let’s cut the formalities between us. Call me simply ‘Tina’.’

‘’And ‘Amelia’ will be fine with me, Tina.’

‘’Excellent! Well, I have to go back up to the bridge in order to direct the unloading of our Koorivar passengers. Eve will stay with you to guide you around and to register you at our administrative center, so that you can get access to all the ship’s services and facilities. Basically, the good old ‘red tape’ procedures.’

Amelia chuckled at that.

‘’Yeah! Even 400 years wouldn’t kill that.’

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The next few hours went by like a whirlwind for Amelia as Eve Silisca guided her around the ship, first going to the administrative center to have Amelia registered and having an apartment allotted to her, then going on a shopping spree for a new wardrobe.

While Amelia was thoroughly impressed by what the boutiques and shops of the NOSTROMO had to offer, many of the female clothing items on sale shocked her by their skimpiness and revealing fits, which would have caused instant scandals in the United States of 1937. After returning to her newly-allotted apartment to unpack and organize her new wardrobe, Amelia went out on her balcony, where she admired the view of the Temperate Forest Habitat she had and smelled the scent from the forest.

‘’You know, eve, the few stories and movies we had in 1937 about Space travel didn’t even come close to what I am now experiencing. Our view of the Universe was so limited, with Earth basically being made as the center of it in many ways. For me, it is now as if I am awakening to a brand-new life.’

‘’Which is what it effectively is, Amelia.’ replied softly Eve. ‘’Take all the time you will need to retrain and reeducate yourself and do what will make you feel best. Maybe, in a couple of years, you will be able to become a Spaceship pilot.’

‘’That would be a dream indeed.’ said Amelia before looking at Eve. ‘’Is the NOSTROMO due to visit Earth soon? If so, I would like to visit the United States, see what is left of my old home and, if possible, visit the tomb of my husband, George Putnam.’

Eve nodded her head once, understanding Amelia’s wish to see what was left of her past.

‘’The NOSTROMO is in fact due to fly to Earth in about three weeks, in order to load up on new supplies and structures meant to enlarge the facilities on the new colony of Asiana, which is being populated by people from a number of countries of Southeast Asia. We should then stay in Earth orbit for a minimum of two weeks. I will be most happy to guide you then. By the way, the United States as you knew it doesn’t exist anymore as a separate country. It is now part of what is called the ‘North American Union’, which comprises what was the United States, plus Canada and Mexico. While not part of the Spacers League, the North American Union is a good ally of ours.’

‘’You mean that Earth is not part of your Spacers League?’ asked a surprised Amelia, making Eve shake her head.

‘’Not yet! However, the countries of the ASEAN, or Association of Southeast Asian Nations, have recently applied to become members of the Spacers League. In

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contrast, the European Union is still stubbornly acting as if they still hold sway on its ancient colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East and are refusing to even contemplate joining the Spacers League. Even if they did wish to join in, I doubt that the Spacers League would even look at their application: there is still too much ingrained racism, corruption and arrogance to our taste on the part of those old European powers.

As for Africa, the countries which form the African Union are still marred by endemic despotism, corruption and ethnic violence. Thankfully, some African countries, like Kenya, are proving to be progressive and truly democratic and are friends with us. In all, you may have a hard time recognizing the Earth of today from your souvenirs of the Earth of 1937.’

‘’Well, there is nothing like looking at the present reality to educate oneself.’ said philosophically Amelia.

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CHAPTER 19 – GETTING TO KNOW THE NEW EARTH

10:50 (Pacific Coast Time)

Tuesday, August 17, 2337

Interior crypt, Chapel of the Pines Crematory

West Adams District, Los Angeles

North American Union, Earth, Solar System

With a female employee of the Chapel of the Pines Crematory discreetly watching from the entrance of the interior crypt they were in, Amelia Earhart and Eve Silisca contemplated in silence the old brass plaque closing the private niche containing the funeral urn of Amelia’s old husband, George Palmer Putnam. Tears came to Amelia’s eyes as she gently caressed the brass plaque marked with her husband’s name and dates of birth and death.

‘’Died on January 4, 1950. George thus died at the age of 62, some 387 years ago. Yet, here I am. I am surprised that this building is still up and intact after so many years.’

‘’The Chapel of the Pines Crematory was declared a national heritage monument in the 21st Century and thus was maintained and regularly repaired along the years with United States federal funds, then with North American Union funds. Too many famous American people and celebrities are resting here for such a place to simply be neglected and abandoned. Thankfully, it survived intact the 2315 invasion of North America and Europe by the thugs of the Southern Federation, which we finally defeated and threw out in 2316.’

Amelia threw a scandalized look at Eve on hearing that.

‘’The United States was invaded in 2315? How the hell could anyone manage that?’

‘’Sheer weight of numbers from the Southern Federation, which controlled Asia, Africa and the Middle East at the times, plus political inertia and lack of military preparedness on the part of the North American Union government of the time, which prioritized its civilian infrastructure and social programs at the expense of its defense budgets. Since then, the North American Union has vowed that it will never happen

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again. We are now hoping that it will eventually ask to become a member of the Spacers League but, before that could happen, certain conditions will still need to be filled.’

‘’What conditions?’

‘’Mainly, the rescinding of a few North American laws and regulations which still severely limit the immigration of people from the old Southern Federation, which doesn’t exist anymore. The 2315 invasion still revives bad feelings against non-Caucasian people who wish to emigrate to North America. There are also some here as well who think that our androids do not deserve to enjoy the full rights Humans enjoy as persons.

Unfortunately, many people on Earth still think the same and Tina has been constantly fighting those racist misconceptions against us androids.’

Amelia stared for a moment at Eve before speaking in a soft tone.

‘’And what are your feelings about that, Eve?’

‘’Well, those who dislike androids like me would say that I can’t have feelings, because I am only a machine. However, as I and other androids gain more life experience and continue socializing with Humans and other sentient races, like the Koorivars, we develop our response mechanisms in a way that translates into something very close to what you would call ‘feelings’. As an example of that, our Jehanne De Domrémy spontaneously shed tears while watching the execution of her historical namesake, with her electronic brain not even aware that she was doing so. Eventually, we androids will react in fashions barely different to that of Humans, except that bigotry, cruelty, greed, hatred and racism will never influence our judgment or actions.’

‘’That sounds like the ideal kind of person to me, Eve. For what it’s worth, I consider you as a full person and as a genuine friend.’

Eve smiled and then hugged Amelia on hearing that.

‘’And your friendship honors me, Amelia.’

After a few seconds of hugging, the two of them parted and Amelia contemplated again for a few more seconds the brass plaque enclosing the niche containing her husband’s ashes, then put the bouquet of roses she had brought with her in the receptacle fixed just under the brass plaque.

‘’Goodbye, George. You were a wonderful man and a good husband. May your soul rest in peace.’

Amelia and Eve then left, walking out of the interior crypt and heading towards their aircar. As they walked together, Amelia had one question for Eve.

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‘’In the crypt, I wished peace to my husband’s soul. What are the religious and spiritual beliefs in the World today? Do people still pray and practice religions in this century?’

‘’Religions are pretty much dead around Earth and in Space, Amelia. Religious beliefs progressively disappeared during the last 300 years, as developments in science and Space exploration exposed more and more the fallacies and falsehoods promoted by organized religions, falsehoods which had little common with the realities of our Universe. The ‘coup de grâce’ to organized religions came in 2317, when Tina Forster’s previous ship, the KOSTROMA, discovered a Koorivar refugee ship entombed in the methane ice surface of the planetoid Eris. Then, the religious dogmas about Humanity being special as the only intelligent species in the Universe finally died for good.

However, philosophies then took over from religious beliefs during the past centuries.

People are now mostly meditating rather than praying. The one religious concept which has endured is that of reincarnation, a concept that came from the old Hindu religion.

Opinions are divided about the reality of reincarnation but, since you really can’t prove its existence or non-existence, some people still believe in it. In the case of the crew of the NOSTROMO, our people, including Tina, embrace the concept of Humanism, which emphasizes our ability to self-improve ourselves by practicing care and compassion towards others and by showing tolerance and acceptance of differences among us.

Personally, I believe that it is the best path to improvement for Humanity.’

‘’I certainly can buy that, Eve. So, what next?’

‘’Next, we will visit the places you lived in during the 20th Century, including New York City, Toronto and your native place in Kansas, so that you could see how the World evolved since your disappearance in the Pacific.’

As Amelia and Eve walked to their aircar, the female employee who had stayed near the entrance of the interior crypt during their visit locked back the door of the crypt and hurriedly returned to the reception desk of the main building of the crematory. She had been able to hear some of what Amelia and Eve had said while looking at the brass plaque of the niche containing the ashes’ urn of George Putnam’s and some of those words had truly shaken her. Once back at her reception desk, she activated her computer and accessed the file on the biography of George Palmer Putnam, who had died on January 4 of 1950. Reading through it, she concentrated on one old picture showing Putnam and his most famous wife, the aviatrix Amelia Earhart. Her mind in turmoil, she played back the views of the interior crypt recorded by the security cameras

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posted inside the crypt, focusing and enlarging the images showing the face of the thin redhead who had just visited Putnam’s vault and compared them with the historical picture of Amelia Earhart.

‘’Oh my God! Oh my God! It’s her! How could this be possible?’

Leaving both pictures opened on her computer screen, the receptionist then ran to the nearby office of the crematory’s manager to alert him about this incredible event. What she had heard the redhead saying only supported what she now believed that visitor to be.

17:17 (Eastern Standard Time)

Thursday, August 19, 2337

Times Square, Manhattan, New York City

New York State, North American Union

Amelia Earhart, who had been looking for a restaurant she had frequented on Times Square in the 1930s, finally had to give up and conclude that her favorite deli restaurant no longer existed, having possibly gone out centuries ago.

‘’It was foolish of me of thinking that any restaurant could exist for more than a few decades, especially in a place evolving as much as Manhattan and Times Square.

In fact, I recognize about nothing here. Even the names I knew have disappeared. This place is utterly brand new to me compared to the New York I lived in.’

‘’Don’t be too hard on yourself because of that, Amelia. Some places in Europe and Asia still have landmarks which were built many centuries ago. Take Paris and London, for example: they still have landmarks dating back to the Middle Ages.’

‘’Yes, but the United States is a lot younger than Europe as a country and it always kept evolving.’

‘’Well, then why don’t you concentrate instead on finding the present equivalent of your old deli restaurant?’

‘’That’s a thought.’ recognized Amelia, who then looked around and pointed at a restaurant across the street.

‘’That place looks like a deli restaurant: I see the picture of bagels in the front windows. Let’s go check it.’

The duo was about to walk off the sidewalk and cross the pedestrian street when a woman shouted out loud in an excited voice.

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‘’SHE’S HERE! EARHART IS HERE!’

A shocked Amelia abruptly pivoted around to look at the woman who had just shouted out her name. That woman, along with a fairly large group of passersby assembled in front of a store where a large holoview unit was on sales display and showing a news program, was looking at her with big eyes and an open mouth. Amelia then looked at the image on the holoview unit and saw that it showed her and Eve as they visited the crematory in Los Angeles. A dozen people were now advancing towards her while shouting questions at her.

‘’ARE YOU THE REAL AMELIA EARHART?’

‘’HOW DID YOU TRAVEL IN TIME TO THIS YEAR, MISS EARHART?’

‘’ARE YOU AN ANDROID COPY OF AMELIA EARHART?’

Stunned by all this, Amelia didn’t know what to say or do at first. Then, as the first persons were about to get within touching distance of her, she heard Eve speak urgently to her.

‘’Quick, hold on tightly to me.’

Amelia reacted instinctively and rolled her arms around Eve’s chest as Eve’s left arm grabbed her by the waist. To the astonishment of both Amelia and of the witnesses around her, the duo then flew off the ground at a surprising speed, going at the near vertical. Amelia, who knew that the NOSTROMO’s androids could fly but had never flown herself except in an aircar or a shuttle, held on to Eve with all her strength as they flew higher and higher while taking speed horizontally. While terrified at first, Amelia quickly started to feel exhilaration instead.

‘’I’m flying! We’re flying! That’s fantastic! Where are we going?’

‘’We are going to go land on the nearest flat roof we can find. Hang on!’

After a very exciting minute for Amelia, Eve landed with her on the roof of a commercial building that was twelve story-high, where Amelia was able to stand on her two feet.

‘’Wow! What an experience! Uh, what do we do now, Eve? It seems that we were in the local breaking news on Holovision.’

‘’Let me tune my electronic notepad to the local ABC news site. I saw the ABC

logo in one corner of the image on that holoview unit.’

As Eve took out her notepad and tuned it, Amelia got right next to her in order to look and listen to it. They were soon looking at the image of a pair of news anchorpersons, a man and a woman, sitting behind a news desk and commenting excitedly about a scene apparently just taken by someone’s personal videophone. To Amelia’s shock, that

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scene showed her and Eve flying off the ground as a dozen persons were about to surround them. She then concentrated on what the male newscaster was saying.

‘’...Earhart and an unknown woman are now seen flying off the ground as passersby who recognized the aviatrix were approaching her to ask questions to her.

From her ability to fly while dragging a person, the young woman seen with Amelia Earhart is probably one of the super androids from the giant cargo ship NOSTROMO.

While few details are known yet, the NOSTROMO is said to have accidentally traveled through time while it was pursuing what is suspected to have been the last existing asteroid ship of the feared Space Predators. It reportedly was projected by over 2,800

years in the past and took some time and a number of trial jumps before it was able to return to this year. If one of those trial jumps led it to the year 1937, then it would explain the presence of the historically famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in the the Pacific that year while attempting the first ever air trip around the Earth. ABC

has been trying to find more about this by contacting the NOSTROMO, which is presently in Earth orbit, but we haven’t received a reply yet...’

As the newscaster was continuing to speculate about the scene from Time Square, Eve smiled to herself.

‘’...one of the super androids from the NOSTROMO... I like that description: it is quite flattering.’

‘’Well, you and your comrade androids frankly deserve it, Eve. On my part, it is nice to see that I am still famous after all these centuries. So, what do we do now?’

‘’I will contact the NOSTROMO and signal this first, then we will see what we should do.’

Amelia stayed silent as Eve, using her implanted radio communication unit, silently called the NOSTROMO, then engaged in a radio exchange. After a good four minutes, Eve finally opened her eyes and looked at Amelia.

‘’I just got directives from Tina: she authorizes us to go to the ABC studios here in Manhattan, where I will present you to its viewers. However, you are to leave to me to answer any questions about how the NOSTROMO travelled through time: that subject is still very sensitive and must be treated with the utmost caution in order not to encourage bad players into researching that subject. Just stick to telling your personal story and that will be plenty.’

‘’Got it! How are we going to get to that news studio, Eve?’

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‘’Simple: we fly again. I have its address and it is near here, in Manhattan. Their building has a landing pad on its roof. Just hold on tight to me.’

‘’With pleasure, Eve.’ replied Amelia, fired up at the idea of being able to fly again. She nearly screamed with pleasure when the two of them flew off again and went over the ledge of the roof they had been on, then sped North towards Central Park.

While flying, Eve had to keep an eye out for the numerous aircars circulating around the city and stayed just above the levels of the buildings she flew by. After some three minutes of flying, Eve finally landed on a large landing pad crowning a 23-story building which had a big electronic sign along one side showing the letters ‘ABC’. A pair of private security guards posted next to the door of the roof access hut of the building watched with big eyes as the duo silently flew down to a smooth landing a few paces from them. Eve then smiled to one of the guards.

‘’Hi! I am bringing Miss Amelia Earhart in for an interview. Could you lead us to your daily news desk studio?’

‘’Uh, let me contact my supervisor first, miss.’ replied the guard before using the headset incorporated to his helmet. After half a minute, he looked back at Eve and nodded his head.

‘’I am now going to lead you and Miss Earhart to the news studio. If you will please follow me.’

Entering the access hut, then taking a lift, Eve and Amelia followed the guard to a large holoview production complex, where a mature woman greeted the two visitors after thanking the security guard and dismissing him.

‘’I am so happy to see you at our studios, Miss Earhart. I am Mary Olsen, executive producer for news at ABC. And may have your name, miss?’

‘’Eve Silisca. I am the ship’s assistant hostess on the NOSTROMO and was guiding Miss Earhart around New York, which had changed a lot since she was last here in 1937.’

‘’Quite a changed city indeed. May I inquire about your nature, Miss Silisca? Are you an android?’

‘’Yes, I am, Miss Olsen. I have received instructions from Captain Tina Forster, telling me what I can tell you about our involuntary travel to the distant past and our return trip. I am ready to answer the questions from your news anchors...to a degree.’

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If Olsen was somewhat disappointed by her answer, she didn’t show it and smiled to the duo while pointing to a door down the hallway they were in.

‘’And we are thankful for you to choose our studios for this, Miss Silisca. If you will follow me, I will bring you to our on-air news desk.’

The trio of women soon walked into a fairly wide room in which a news desk throned on an elevated stage. The two newscasters sitting at that desk got up from their chairs to greet Amelia and Eve with handshakes, with the male reporter talking first.

‘’Welcome to our studios and thank you for accepting to speak with us, Miss Earhart. I am Jeff Daniels and my colleague is Janet Wong.’

‘’It’s my pleasure. May I present to you Miss Eve Silisca, from the NOSTROMO, who was guiding me on this visit to New York. She is the ship’s assistant hostess and has been authorized to speak in the name of Captain Forster. If you have questions about the NOSTROMO, please ask them to her. On my part, I will answer the questions you have about me.’

Both reporters gave cautious looks at Eve, understanding that she had to be an android, before they invited Amelia and Eve to sit down on a sofa next to their news desk. The male reporter then looked at the cameras facing him and spoke up.

‘’Dear viewers, it is now my pleasure to introduce to you Miss Amelia Earhart, the historically famous aviatrix who disappeared in the Pacific in 1937, 400 years ago, and Miss Eve Silisca, from the cargo ship NOSTROMO, who was guiding Miss Earhart on a visit to modern-day New York. There are obviously numerous questions about how Miss Earhart came to this year, so let’s ask our two guests about this right away.’

The male reporter then smiled to Eve and asked his first question to her.

‘’Miss Silisca, since you are here to speak in the name of the captain of the NOSTROMO, what can you tell us about how Miss Earhart was brought to this year?’

‘’With pleasure, Mister Daniels. It all started earlier this year, when the NOSTROMO was in orbit around New Haven, in the Wolf 1061 System, delivering supplies and construction materials. A large Space Predator fleet was then detected as it started arriving at the confines of the system, with the obvious intent to attack it and grab its inhabitants in order to turn them into reserves of food. Thankfully, our ship was able to react quickly and took an ambush position in the asteroid belt of the system before the enemy fleet was completely formed up and started moving in. We managed to take the Space Predators by surprise and delivered salvos of missiles from behind the protection of a large asteroid, decimating the enemy fleet and forcing the survivors to

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turn around and flee. The NOSTROMO then engaged in hot pursuit of the surviving Space Predator ships, which were all already damaged to various degrees, and succeeded in destroying all but one of them before they could jump out of the system.

The lone enemy ship able to jump was actually their flagship, a huge asteroid ship some forty kilometers across. However, we were able to follow it as it made successive jumps to other systems while trying to lose us. This hot pursuit actually led us to a poorly charted region in the Canis Majoris Constellation, some 3,900 light years from Earth.

Unknown to us then, the Space Predator flagship, growing desperate, tried to sucker us into following it into an uncharted black hole. While that flagship was itself destroyed by that black hole, it nearly succeeded in tricking us into that trap. Thankfully, our bridge crew managed to escape the gravity well of that black hole by jumping away but then suffered some totally unexpected effect and found itself lost in Space. We eventually were able to find the Solar System and jumped to it but, on arrival, found out a dark, electronically silent Earth and understood that we had somehow been projected back in time by 2,800 years and were now in the Year 472 B.C.E.’

‘’Wow! That must have been quite a traumatic realization for your crew, miss.’

said the female anchor, making Eve nod her head.

‘’Indeed, Miss Wong. After placing ourselves in polar orbit around Earth in order to better observe its surface, the historical clues we saw told us that we were in the Year 472 B.C.E., which allowed us to start understanding what had happened to us and to try to find a way back to the 24th Century. This was no easy task, believe me, and we had long scientific debates on how we could possibly travel back to the future.’

‘’What would you have done if you had found out that there actually was no possible way to return to the 24th Century, miss?’

‘’First, please understand this: right from the moment that we realized that we had travelled to the distant past, Captain Tina Forster gave firm orders that we would not be doing anything which could even possibly jeopardize or modify history as we knew it.

No direct contacts with ancient people; no visible flyby or other kind of demonstration and only passive observation and data recording while out of sight. If we didn’t find any way back to the future, then Captain Forster was resolved to either stay in Earth orbit or to fly out to Deep Space, without attempting any direct contact on Earth. Since the NOSTROMO is self-sufficient in terms of food production, we could thus have survived by ourselves, spanning multiple generations of our crew. Our only critical need would

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have been in terms of fuel for our power generators and long-term maintenance of our machinery but there would have been ways to go over those problems.’

‘’And the crew of your ship would have accepted such an exile in Space, miss?’

asked the male reporter. ‘’Knowing human nature, I doubt that there wouldn’t have been at least some opposition to that.’

Eve threw a critical look at Daniels before answering in a firm tone.

‘’Please understand this, Mister Daniels: any interference with the events on Earth would then have caused chaotic changes to History as we knew it, changes which would have completely rewritten History in unpredictable ways. If we had done so, then you would not exist right now and neither would the Earth as you know it. The stakes were simply too monumental not to follow Captain Forster’s directives. For the same reasons, Captain Forster will not divulge any technical details or scientific process about the way we finally found our way back to the 24th Century. The dangers of having some irresponsible idiot or power-hungry persons using time travel to change History to his or her profit is simply too great.’

The two reporters took a few seconds to digest that announcement. Probably directed via her earpiece by her executive producer, Janet Wong then asked another question, veering away from the subject of how to travel in time.

‘’Miss Silisca, I must say that the sense of responsibility of Captain Forster is truly admirable. Please tell us how you ended up finding and saving Miss Earhart in 1937.’

‘’With pleasure, miss. Once our scientific team had thought of a possible way to return to the future, we then effected a series of experimental temporal jumps, to first see if the process worked and, if yes, then to be able to calibrate our jumps in order to be able to attain a specific date and year. Our first jumps proved rather haphazard at first and we thus made many more test jumps, varying our jump parameters and seeing how they affected the precision of our temporal jumps. By the time that we were approaching the 20th Century, we basically had the technique down path and thus decided to jump next to the Year 1937, in order to resolve a famous historical mystery: the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in the Pacific while she was attempting a World tour in a plane. We did observe her crash at sea just off what was then known as Gardner Island, in the Phoenix Archipelago, with both Miss Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, surviving the crash and taking refuge on Gardner Island. Unfortunately, that island suffers from a severe lack of fresh water and they quickly started suffering from a growing thirst and dehydration in the days following their crash. Then, four days

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after the crash, Fred Noonan got killed by a shark after he went into their half-submerged aircraft in order to send an ultimate radio call for help. Unfortunately, that happened too fast to allow us to react to it and we thus could only record that tragedy.

None of the distress calls they made were heard and none of the ships and planes looking for Miss Earhart’s plane saw them, so Amelia found herself stuck alone on Gardner Island, slowly dying of thirst. From what was known historically about her disappearance, we knew that no concrete traces of either her plane or of her body would ever be found. Furthermore, a large group of workers who landed on Gardner Island a year after her crash, with the intent of starting a coconut plantation, didn’t find traces of her and they were themselves forced by the lack of fresh water sources to abandon the island a few years later. We thus knew that we could save her without endangering History, at the condition of bringing her with us to the future, which we did. Thus, here she is in 2337.’

‘’That is a fascinating story, a story worth producing a documentary about, Miss Silisca.’

‘’Indeed! I can tell you now that such a documentary will soon be produced on the NOSTROMO and then distributed to various holoview broadcasters, for the benefit of the public. ABC will be one of those broadcasters to be offered this documentary about Miss Earhart’s adventure and disappearance.’

‘’But that would be great, miss! When could our viewers hope to be able to see that documentary?’

‘’In about two weeks, time to produce it and then have its content approved by Amelia. I can tell you as well that a number of other historical documentary videos are being produced on the NOSTROMO, videos which show the various historical stops we made while in the past. That list has not been finalized yet but it will eventually be communicated to various broadcasters, including ABC.’

With Mary Olsen discretely directing him via his earpiece, the male newscaster looked at Amelia Earhart.

‘’Miss Earhart, now that you are in 2337, what do you intend to do during the years to come? Will you return to Earth or stay in Space?’

‘’I intend to stay on the NOSTROMO for the time being, where I will reeducate myself, learn about the modern World and update my technical knowledge. Eventually, I wish to be able to fly spaceships and to continue on as a pilot. Flying has always been my passion and always will be.’

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‘’And we wish you the best in this, Miss Earhart. I thank you and Miss Silisca for coming to our studio and for accepting to answer our questions.’

‘’It was our pleasure, mister.’

With the interview at an end and with some commercial break playing on, Amelia and Eve got up from their sofa and shook hands with the two newscasters, who were then joined by their producer, who also shook hands with them.

‘’Thank you again for coming to our studios, Miss Earhart and Miss Silisca. Your odyssey in time was truly epic.’

‘’And I owe my life to the professionalism and care of Captain Forster and of her crew. They managed to come back from the distant past while not putting in danger our history. They also did that after eliminating for good the threat represented by those Space Predator monsters. The whole of Humanity owes the NOSTROMO and its crew a huge debt of gratitude for all it did. I will now let Eve continue to guide me around this visit to New York.’

‘’And I wish you a good time in our city, Miss Earhart.’

On that, Amelia and Eve left the studio, then walked out of the building before going on foot to the deli restaurant Amelia had spotted before being recognized.

Once in the deli restaurant, Amelia quickly ordered a big pastrami sandwich and a bagel, while Eve simply ordered a cup of coffee, to the secret disappointment of their waiter. As Amelia ate with gusto her thick sandwich, Eve asked her a question while smiling.

‘’So, is it as good as what you tasted in 1937?’

‘’It is good, but something in its taste is missing from what I hate in the deli I visited in the 1930s. However, even the pastrami sandwich from 1937 was beaten hands down by the smoked meat sandwiches I hate in Montreal at a famous deli called

‘Ben’s’. Nothing could beat the smoked meat from Ben’s.’

An idea then made Amelia smile to herself.

‘’Hey, maybe we could arrange some side-trip in time and go pick up some smoked meat in the 1930s’ Montreal.’

That made Eve shake her head while hiding her face with her hands.

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CHAPTER 20 – TREACHERY

09:58 (Universal Time)

Friday, December 03, 2337