Click on image to enlarge.

Category: Science Fiction
Description: "Humans are no longer one species," Ryl continued, idly rolling the wine in her glass. "Some of us regressed a million years and leaped into a future that might have been, becoming Metas. On Earth, the Rhesus plague deleted a huge chunk of genetic diversity in humans, taking with it a very special gene. As you reach out to the stars, to explore new worlds, to seek the sanctuary planet, Gaia, you will meet other species and situations that telepaths cannot deal with. A dangerous toy, Dim5 travel, for it opens you to predation. As a small gift to help you on your journey, to warn you when the path to be trodden is perhaps not the safest one, twenty-five men and women from the twentieth century were taken, adjusted slightly and delivered to you. These are the C20s." "All right, Meta, you called them gifts. Why gift them to us?" Captain Jassom asked. "They're early warning devices," Ryl replied. She downed the last of her wine and meeting his eyes, added grimly, "Believe me, you're going to need them." Welcome to a world where humanity's deadliest enemy is not a plague or warmongering alien species, but an insidious adversary that attacks from within. Welcome to the Ark Ship.
eBook Publisher: Double Dragon Publishing/Double Dragon eBooks, 2004 DDP
eBookwise Release Date: January 2005

10 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [612 KB]
Words: 131446
Reading time: 375-525 min.

"Humans are no longer one species," Ryl continued, idly rolling the wine in her glass. "Some of us regressed a million years and leaped into a future that might have been, becoming Metas. On Earth, the Rhesus plague deleted a huge chunk of genetic diversity in humans, taking with it a very special gene. As you reach out to the stars, to explore new worlds, to seek the sanctuary planet, Gaia, you will meet other species and situations that telepaths cannot deal with. A dangerous toy, Dim5 travel, for it opens you to predation. As a small gift to help you on your journey, to warn you when the path to be trodden is perhaps not the safest one, twenty-five men and women from the twentieth century were taken, adjusted slightly and delivered to you. These are the C20s."

"All right, Meta, you called them gifts. Why gift them to us?" Captain Jassom asked.

"They're early warning devices," Ryl replied. She downed the last of her wine and meeting his eyes, added grimly, "Believe me, you're going to need them."

"Then the different flood came, as humanity reached its first billion and passed it-the flood that seemed to need no stemming. That flood, as it surged ever higher, extinguished old freedoms. What replaced them was not new freedom, but license, an arrogant assumption that no title to a place was valid unless written in a newly invented language by one of the most recent arrivals on the planet. For this new flood there was no new Ark. It is already too late for a hoard of splendid creatures-and for how many lesser ones we never knew?-to find sanctuary."

-David Bower, Founder Friends of the Earth

Part 1: Katyl

--Chapter One--

December 05, 2499

Avalon Davo sat alone in the ark ship's darkened atrium, her mind catching the cobwebs of space. She sensed the oily darkness of the Others lurking amidst the minds of the VIPs, but there was no danger to the ship so she ignored them-for now. Eagle's captain was not expecting her aboard until they entered Dim5 in three hours and she wanted to say goodbye to Earth from this unique perspective. After all these years, being back in space was as breathtaking as her first time, almost three hundred years before. And as always, leaving Earth was painful.

As the C20 bonded to the Viking class ark ship, Avalon had expected to be pulled aboard eighteen months earlier, when Eagle tested its Dim5 engines. Ryl, her daughter, was not surprised when it didn't happen. Neither engine tests, said the Meta, nor fifth dimension jumping completed Eagle's life-force. Only life, sentient life, could do that.

Avalon felt that life-force grow as a million humans immigrated from Earth to their new home, adding to the billions of creatures, great and small, that made Eagle a living machine.

Then the official launch day arrived. Dignitaries and politicians sipped flat champagne in micro-gravity, and made tedious speeches thanking the alien Kwilloys and Dwins. Again. And they muttered disappointment at the C20s' absence. Again. Custom, convention, protocol, it was all necessary, Avalon knew, but not for her. Though it wished otherwise, the NASA Gaia Corporation-NGC-had no jurisdiction over C20s, so she stayed in character and ignored all invitations. Her bonding to the great spheroid ark ship was an experience of the mind and soul, one too intimate to be shared.

Now, a month later, Eagle was about to leave its Spacedock cradle and depart on her maiden voyage.

Avalon looked out through the transparent laminated diaglass-LD-hull of the ark ship and smiled. She had been granted such a fortunate life. Time to help in Earth's restoration, time to explore the galaxy, time to love and raise children. Time to grieve. And now, time for an achingly familiar life to begin again.

From Eagle's orbit around Mars, Earth appeared little more than a blue-white pinprick of light, barely distinguishable from countless other lights in the vast inky blackness of space. Although she had been gone less than an hour, Earth tugged at her, begging her to come home. Just a year she promised, just a goodwill tour before the ten-year voyage to find Gaia. We're not going to abandon you, but we need to find the Great Ones and through them, offer the lesser cousins a place on our journey. And more importantly, to ask if they might one day consider returning to you and to forgive us our sins.

My sins, for was I not amongst those that almost destroyed you?