Chapter 23. Revelation.

Charles decided to visit Alice one evening. She was lounging in her living area studying a paper on evolution. She glanced at him as he sat down next to her.

"This must be important," she told him. "You never come to my quarters."

"True, but I wanted to discuss our situation."

She turned to him with a concerned expression. "What do you mean?"

"I believe it's time to recognize the truth that we are a team. We are the unofficial leaders, but we don't act like it."

She stared at him with her beautiful blue eyes for a few moments before replying. "I sense that this is an invitation for a more serious relationship."

"In a way, yes. We should project a relationship that's more amenable. We want the crew to trust our ability to command."

"Why the change?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's because I kind of miss the feminine touch."

"Aren't you afraid that it will lead to complaints about us taking advantage of our status."

"I don't think so. I believe they realize that we've had more, should I say, amorous incidents."

She smiled. "I'm game."

He smiled. "Thanks. I appreciate that."

She watched him walk out of her quarters. Was he actually serious or just pranking her? Only time would tell.

The next day, Alice was occupying the pilot's chair scanning for trouble while Hilary was checking out the telescopes to make sure they were working correctly.

When Charles came on the deck with Carl, he stood behind Alice. "Find any new habitable systems?"

"Not really. I was scanning for nasty robot alien ships."

Suddenly, the main screen lit up with the image of their robot buddy, startling them.

Charles decided it was time to ask the big question, "What caused the total cleansing of Earth?"

"We will explain."

Suddenly, Charles was enveloped in a bright light before he vanished.

"What in the hell!" Carl yelled.

"They must have transporter capability," Hilary said, her eyes wide with excitement.

Both Alice and Carl looked at her as if she had gone bonkers.

Charles found himself in a totally metal domed room. Several robots stood at stations around the room. His robot buddy looked at him without emotion. Right then he realized that he was dealing with cyborgs, not robots.

"When the rift opened it blasted out a powerful microwave beam that contained oxygen atoms that have more neutrons. When they collide with oxygen atoms at near the speed of light in atmospheres it causes fission that elevates temperatures many thousands of degrees. The fission is enhanced if there is carbon dioxide."

Charles smiled. "Ah, now that makes sense why we weren't affected. Our ship's atmosphere doesn't have carbon dioxide." He paused. "How often do these rifts occur?"

"Not often."

He assumed that that meant that he and his crew experienced a rare event that changed everything.

"We will be going out again soon," he said.

"We will accompany."

Suddenly, he appeared on the Proxima B's command deck, startling everyone.

"I assume you went to our robot buddy's ship," Alice said.

"Turns out they're not robots. They're cyborgs."

"That makes sense," Carl said. "I'll bet their enemies are robots."

"Yes." Charles said. "That's why they're protecting us on our voyages to possible habitable planets. They realize that their enemies are going to try to attack us, giving them the opportunity to destroy them. I would be willing to bet that this is an ancient conflict."

"I'd like to know how they transported you," Alice said.

"I don't think it involves taking all my atoms apart and the putting then back together. My guess it's some sort of localized phase shift in space-time. That might account for how we were projected to the Kuiper belt when the blackout occurred."

"All this is beginning to make sense, although it looks like we've been caught up in a forever war."

"Maybe it was meant for us to be the reason that it could be concluded."

He stood up. "Find some new destinations. I'm going to go see if we can figure out a way to protect this ship from weapon damage."

Carl, Dave and Robert stood up and followed him to the elevator.

"We might be able to extend a shield around the ship that would act as a deflector," Dave said.

"That's a possibility, but we would need to install projectors all around this ship," Charles replied.

Carl smiled. "We can program the maintenance robots to do that job."

Charles smiled. "Yep."

When they arrived on the engineering deck, they went to work trying to figure out a way to make a deflector. After some time, Carl smiled. "You're not going to believe this, but there already is a deflector system."

Charles looked at him as if he was kidding. "Really?"

"Yes. It's under the subject of Defense. It appears to use strong energy fields to prevent damage."

Charles leaned back in his chair. "We'll, I didn't expect that, but maybe Space Command was aware of this conflict."

"Evidently, the designers assumed that this vessel would come under attack," Robert said.

"Yes," Charles said. "It also shows how much we don't know about this ship or what it's real capabilities are."

"The question is," Dave said. "How good is this system?"

"Hopefully, we won't have to use it," Charles said.

All three of his buddies agreed.

On the command deck, the women were discussing a different situation.

"So, you and our leader are combining to make a command duo," Hilary said to Alice.

"Yeah, but it's not anything that complicated," Alice replied. "What it means is that we women will have a say in what we do."

"Does that permit us to socialize with the men?" Beverly asked.

"Sure, long as it doesn't become permanent. The last thing we want is for us to be fighting over them," Alice said before she turned back to her station. "I think we had better find a new destination before the guys come back up here. They might decide to discipline us."

"I think I'd love to have them discipline me," Hilary said with an ornery grin.

"I'll bet you would," Judy said.

They giggled.

After a period of silence, Judy turned to Alice. "I've located a star that appears to be much like our sun, but it's over a thousand light years away."

"Do you think it has any planets?"

"It does, but I don't know if any of them are Earth-like. The reason I like this system is that the star is very much the same as ours age wise, metal content and luminosity."

Just then, Charles came on the command deck and sat down next to Alice. "Any luck finding a new destination?"

"Judy found a star that's very similar to our sun, but it's a thousand light years away."

"It doesn't matter. It'll just take a little longer to get there."

Alice stared at him for moment with a blank expression before she turned to her control module and entered a command. "Ok, we're on our way."

"Good." Charles watched the screen show that they had gone to faster than light before he turned back to Alice. "We found that there is a weapons defense system built into this ship."

She turned to give him a surprised look. "Really?"

"Yes. It's just another aspect of this ship that we were not aware of. We're learning on the fly, so to speak."

"Everything about this Proxima B mission is like that," Alice said. "We're completely clueless about what we were getting involved in when we agreed to go on this mission."

"Yes, but another way to look at it is that our foolhardy decision to go on the mission saved our lives."

She smiled. "Yes, you're right. It's called dumb luck."

"Dumb luck is better than no luck."

Everyone could agree with that assessment.

Later that evening, Alice visited Charles' quarters. She found him sitting in his living area looking over what appeared to be a math session. His cat lay nearby as if surveying the situation.

"What's that?" she asked before she sat down next to him.

He glanced at her before turning back to the screen. "I was trying to see if information theory could be used to understand how our robot buddy was able to transmit me from our ship to his and back."

"Are you thinking that it would involve sending you there as information and then back again?"

"Something like that would be possible in our situation because the entropy is minimal."

"Why would entropy be different now if we're still in our universe?"

"The universe is the same, but we're not."

"So, what you're saying is that our physical existence has been altered to be nearly perfect."

"Yes, and that would explain their transporter system."

"You're assuming that they realized that we're perfect."

"Yes. They apparently can know everything about us."

She made a face. "I'm not sure I like that."

"Think of them as being our big brothers," he said with a smile.

She smiled, but she wasn't totally on board that explanation.