Chapter 2: Genesis

Disclaimer: This is the rough draft of “The Terra Project”, a novel in progress. The story, characters, and events are subject to change during the editing process.

Please keep in mind that as a rough draft, the writing style and organization is expected to be poor and or lacking. As quoted by Ernest Hemingway, “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Comments and critique are greatly appreciated, though it is preferred that advanced critiquing be held off until later drafts. Anyone interested in the story or the novel project is encouraged to email me at fishbowlery@gmail.com.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

Night had already begun to fall on Dengris. The sun was sinking low, ready to duck behind the horizon. Already its veiling pale-blue glare on the sky was fading, promising to reveal the stars before too much longer.

“'Ey e'ryone! Alonso 'ere just said from 'is own mouf, 'e did, we'z hittin' the button at 'xactly ten o'clock!”

The crowd cheered loudly.

“What's the time now?” someone else called out.

“Half past eight,” someone else replied. “It will just have turned completely dark by then, and we'll have a good view of the stars, the fireworks, everything!”

The crowd began to holler and cheer. The very energy of the attendees seemed to hum in the ears of Dr. Harrow, compounding the odd intervals of cheering and shouting, the thick buzz of jubilant conversation, and the most unorthodox electronic music he'd ever heard.

He was observing them; shaking hands and storing names, making his way through conversations with an ear out for anything he should know.

Every last conversation seemed brimming with excitement and anticipation. When he heard one that finally wasn't, he instinctively locked onto it.

“I dunno why they still haven't found her.”

“She seemed the poorest little wreck before she vanished.”

Someone plowed into his side, yanking away his concentration.

It was Alonso, swirling a short, wide glass of a golden liquid that was undoubtedly quite spirited.

“Well hello there, Dr. Harrow!” Alonso chirped.

“Hello sir,” Dr. Harrow replied flatly, helping Alonso to stand upright on his own.

“No need to say sir, now, call me Alonso, or Al if you want. Keeps things lighter and more fun around here.”

Dr. Harrow nodded with a hint of appreciation.

“I know you think everyone here is acting like a complete tool, but if only you knew how truly hard every last one of them has worked to see this day, then you'd be just as giddy as they are.”

“I'm withholding any such judgements for now,” Dr. Harrow replied assuringly. “Actually, I was hoping to get to talk to you,” he noted.

“Oh, yes?” Alonso asked.

“I don't think I'd ever heard of TimeSpace technologies before I cam here.”

“Sorry about that, but now you're right here so you can make up for lost time, eh?”

Dr. Harrow gave a polite smile. “What I meant was that if I haven't heard of it, that it's either of little importance or a well-kept secret. Judging by what's happening here, the first one is not true, and the fact that your headquarters is out in the middle of nowhere is good evidence for the latter.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson!” Alonso piped. “Then we simply must be a well-kept secret!”

Dr. Harrow forced another polite smile. “I just hope that there isn't any reason for you to be a well-kept secret.”

“There damn well is!” Alonso replied.

Dr. Harrow raised his eyebrows. “Pray do tell.”

“We're pretty much an off-the-chart country. We grow our own food, fix our own toys, and govern ourselves.”

Dr. Harrow nodded. “But you didn't become a separate country because that would create a lot of unwanted visibility.”

“Precisely.”

“I still fail to see a reason to keep a lid on it.”

“Because we're successful and we don't use money. We have people utilizing their talents to provide for the needs of everyone and all other expendable energies are put towards our projects, such as this,” he said, motioning to the layer cake.

“Communism, I see,” Dr. Harrow summarized. “But how is that a reason to keep it quiet?”

“Because communism does not work on the large scale,” Alonso answered. “In the outside world it only takes one person who wants as much as he can get and the whole thing collapses. It only takes one person who doesn't want to pull his weight and the whole thing collapses. Only one person who'd rather argue and bicker than get out and work an honest day's work with his hands. But here, we're able to select people who aren't looking for the biggest houses or the fanciest cars. Here we're able to select only the people that will pull their weight and then some.”

Alonso stepped back, took a swig of whatever it was in his glass, and waved with his other hand to the layer cake.

“We can pick out the people who want to do great things just for the sake of doing great things.”

Dr. Harrow gazed at the layer cake. Somehow it seemed to be glowing brighter, even though nearly all the light of day had faded. Already a few stars were poking faintly through the vanishing veil of the sky.

“Those kind of people are rare,” Alonso said wistfully. “And it's not always so easy for them to do the kind of things they could out in the rest of the world. So we bring all the ones we can find and give them what they need to get to work.”

Dr. Harrow mulled this over for a few seconds in silence.

“We're, of course, going to have to reveal ourselves after tonight. After then it will not be as easy as it has been to get new people. Now we'll have to sort through innumerable waves of people looking for an easy ride or trying to get in looking for what they can get out of it for themselves or screaming for a fight instead of trying to accomplish something.”

The two of them stared at the layer cake as starlight began to glint off of it.

“Are you sure Dr. Kaddix fits into that criteria though?”

Alonso shrugged. “He'll do.”

Dan sat down at the great, rounded table in the dimmed meeting room.

“Mister president,” one of the many advisors in the room began, sounding more professional than should have been humanly possible. “Our satellite images have picked up suspicious information that we now believe is relevant to the current events that have taken place.”

“You are referring to,” Dan began, “if I'm not mistaken, the new planet appearing in our orbit.”

“That is correct, sir.”

Dan chewed the inside of his lip thoughtfully as he looked around the room. There wasn't anything particularly striking about the place or any of the occupants, though two of the advisors caught his eye, one with lemon-blond hair and another with blood red hair, though he couldn't make out their faces in the dark. He shrugged it off. “Have any other updates to this series of events occurred?”

“Only that the new body is visible in the night sky as of now, sir.”

“Oh good, let's go outside and look at it then, shall we?”

“Sir, we thought it would be prudent to show you the satellite images immediately.”

Dan waved his hands. “I'm here, put them on the screen.”

He spun around in his chair slowly as a great screen behind him flickered to life, showing a hazy view of what appeared to be an expanse of desert from directly above with a thin trail of jet black shooting through it.

“Zooming in,” one of the advisors began as the view began to enlarge slowly. “You can clearly see the interstate. At here,” he announced, pulling out a pointer and indicating a gray circle, “You can see this building, and next to it.”

Dan couldn't help but stand up and lean forward at what the advisor pointed to. It was a series of bright golden concentric circles.

“What is that?”

“We don't know sir, but it has been recently brought to our attention as heavily suspicious. We believe that it may be related to the new planet in our orbit.”

The advisor's words were mulled over in Dan's head.

“Recently brought to our attention, you say. Do you mean we've known about this, but we haven't considered looking into it before?” he asked.

“Sir-” the advisor stammered with a look of horror of one hoping a particular question would not be asked only to hear it loud and clear.

“Show me the satellite images of this location exactly one year ago,” Dan ordered firmly.

The screen flickered once and settled on a nearly identical image. The only difference in the area of the circles was that the top few circles had been replaced with a scratchy metallic blue texture.

“Another year ago.”

After a few more seconds the screen flickered again. A few more circles vanished into grainy a grainy blue haze.

“And another.”

Two more layers melted into the choppy blue.

“Another,”

The last layer faded away, leaving a jaggedly-textured circle where the golden rings had been only seconds before.

“One more.”

The blue circle vanished and was replaced a smoothed out area on the sand, surrounded by a thin, barely visible line, indicating the area had been taped off.

“It looks like this had been going on for five years,” Dan announced.

“Well, sir,” one of the advisors stammered.

The advisor with the blood-red hair stood up and cleared his throat loudly. “What he means, Mr. President, is that under previous circumstances there was no need to expend energy or resources scouring over each and every square mile for anything suspicious. With current events transpiring, however, there has risen a need for increased awareness of our surroundings.”

Dan raised an eyebrow. There was something about that particular advisor that he didn't like, but he couldn't put his finger on it. “So all the sudden now that there's a new planet sharing an orbit with us we start looking for golden rings?”

The red-haired advisor seemed to go livid.

“If you're on about looking for anything suspicious, we need to start looking for space stations that have been building up. I want a report of any and all space station activity in...” Dan began to rack his brains for any random country, having no feeling of consequence of wherever he picked. “Say, Russia.”

“NO!”

Everyone turned to the red-haired advisor, who was shaking slightly and had gone visibly white in the face.

“We have absolutely no reason to be spying on Russia at a time like this!” he bellowed. “They are our ally, and if anything was going on, they would let us know first thing!”

Something about that person was really bothering Dan. He already had a very strong urge to put as much distance between himself and this individual as possible.

“We had no reason to be panning through our own borders, on that note. And did we tell Russia about this right away? Or any of our other allies?”

The advisor dug his fingertips into his forehead and shook his head.

“Just do it, we won't find anything anyway.”

The advisor shook his head and everyone began to lift themselves out of their chairs and shuffle out of the room.

The blond advisor seemed to be in more of a hurry than anyone else.

“Time!” someone called from within the crowd.

Dr. Dro glanced at her watch, then cupped her hands to her mouth and hollered “Nine thirty!”

Her peers yelled out in excited reply.

“You enjoying yourself already?” Buck asked with a bit of a chuckle.

“You bet,” Dr. Tro replied. “Why wouldn't I?”

Buck shrugged, carefully holding a glass in each hand. “I dunno, just that your friends Harrow and Kaddix seem to be a bit slower in figuring out the whole kickin' back thing.”

Dr. Tro laughed and gave Buck a warm smile.

“Here, I got a nice rum and coke for me and a just plain coke for our pilot,” he announced, and offered a glass to Dr. Tro.

She took it and took a deep swig, then her eyes widened visibly.

“Aw shoot, I won't tell if you won't,” and he winked at her as he swapped the glasses. “I always thought the not-a-drop rule was ridiculous myself, thought you might like a good sip before we went.

Dr. Tro swallowed her mouthful of drink and laughed out before taking a sip of her own soda right as Alonso appeared.

“Howdy boss, what can I do fer ya?”

Alonso beamed. “I'm just checking on everyone and making sure the crew is having as good a time as I am.”

“Unless you're the happiest man on the earth right now,” Dr. Tro laughed. “I think you've got it under control.”

“Well then, I'll guess I'll just have to try harder then,” he noted with a wink. “It's just so amazing. This was just a crazy dream of ours many years back. Then all the sudden we've got it figured out, then we're actually building it... and now... here we are...” he mused, barely able to believe his own words. “It's an amazing feeling.”

“Damn right it is!” Buck cheered and held out his glass, which Alonso quickly met with his own to the cheers of several people standing nearby.

Right as the glasses collided a quirky tune began playing from relatively low quality speakers.

“Ah, that'll be my phone,” Alonso mused. “I'll let it ring, it's probably not important at all.”

Samuel ran his fingers through his lemon-blond hair as he paced back and forth behind the administrative building in Washington D.C.

“C'mon Alonso, pick up...”

In his ear, the phone buzzed as the other end rang.

After a few more seconds dragged by, a series of tones buzzed through, indicating that the person on the other end had not picked up and he was patched through to the message recorder.

“Alonso,” he whispered. “I have reason to believe that we've been heavily compromised. I was just in a meeting where they showed the president satellite images of our headquarters and the layer cake. Nobody would have been able to connect the dots or even known where to look unless there's a serious leak. Our whole project could-”

Stiff suit fabric rustled and the phone clattered to the ground as someone began wrestling Samuel from behind, putting him in an improvised arm lock with the end of a cold, metal tube pressed against his temple.

“Tell Al I said hello,” his attacker growled.

The silencer vibrated and Samuel's limp body slumped back into his aggressor's arms.

It started as a single voice chanting. Slowly it spread to those around it, increasing in volume and allowing it to spread further and further still. Like a wildfire it billowed and grew until the chant was repeated by everyone at the gathering except Dr. Harrow, Alonso, and Dr. Kaddix.

“Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!”

Alonso strode out in front of the crowd towards the layer cake.

“Oh fine, if you all insist!” he shouted back.

The crowd cheered loudly.

“Well, let's see. You're all a great bunch of lunatics and maniacs and I'm damn glad of it!” he shouted and raised his glass triumphantly. “If even a single one of you weren't here with us today we would all be missing out on one of the most amazing things the world has ever seen. Tonight you all had better be the damn proudest lunatics on this earth, because when I hit this here button in less than a minute,” he continued, pulling what looked like a remote car door opener from his coat pocket, “You're going to have another world of competition for it!”

His audience began to whoop and holler with excitement. Quickly they all began counting down, with a spreading chant just like the one before. The count was to twenty when they were all calling it out in unison.

Dr. Harrow toned out the counting and began to stare up at the sky. As predicted, every last hint of the light of day had just faded away, leaving a perfectly dark night sky dotted with stars. Away from even the furthest city lights, even the dimmest stars were visible.

He almost didn't look at the new planet until his coworkers had counted down to five. It was half-moon and a very faint color of gray. From so far away it looked like a thin wafer of almost a solid color, though he imagined it looking jagged and lumpy from closer.

“ONE!”

Alonso mashed his thumb firmly into the launch button and the layer cake began to hum and glow brightly.

Immediately the planet in the sky began to shimmer, then the faint lights on it spread until the entire body was a glowing ball of orange.

After a few seconds passed, the entire contraption began to lift itself up as the bottom layer began to pivot upwards with the rest of the device hinged to it at the sides. The layer cake continued to raise itself in this way until the bottom layer was completely vertical. The remaining layers swung to nearly horizontal, pointing directly at the new planet.

A quiet hum began in the newly formed silence and it began to build up slowly in frequency and volume. After a few seconds the tent above them began to ripple, then billow. The hum became a screech that grew into a high-pitched wail.

The sound passed out of the range of hearing for a few seconds until everything calmed briefly for a fraction of a second before the entire layer cake began radiating a bright blue light.

A faint beam of light shot forth straight out of the top layer of the monolithic device, stretching all the way to the new planet.

The orange ball quickly faded to red, then brown, then faintly blue, then a faint teal. It held that color for nearly a minute when everything stopped.

The layer cake dimmed almost instantly, leaving everyone's eyes to adjust to the sudden dark, and it slowly collapsed back down to its original position.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Alonso called out brightly. “The creation portion of our project is now complete!”

The gathered mass of TimeSpace technologies cheered out loudly.

“Now for.... whatever the hell you call this part!”

He thumbed another button on the remote and nearby the desert sand collapsed inward. In its place a metal platform the size of a football field raised up to its level bearing three large ships.

“To the captains,” Alonso boomed. “May I present to you these fine ships. To Dr. Tro, the Aften Stjerne. To Dr. Harrow, the Lovable Dictator. To Dr. Kaddix, Binky.”

Dr. Harrow, Dr. Tro, and Dr. Kaddix all stepped out away from the crowd together towards their ships. Dr. Tro seemed quite smug, given the names of the ships. Dr. Harrow was rather perplexed on the subject, and Dr. Kaddix had a face of both infuriation and horror.

“The ships are equipped for everything you and your crew will need, including living space, food, tools, sanitation, and a computer that you will be expected to use to record your observations and create a log for back home. By that I mean both for us at TimeSpace and for the rest of the world so that they can see what is going on.”

Dr. Kaddix stared at his ship, Binky, for a while.

“Binky?” he repeated.

“Oh, it's named for Death's horse,” Alonso replied reassuringly.

“I'm sure,” Dr. Kaddix muttered.

Dr. Harrow looked from his ship to the new planet. He could faintly make out the oceans and a single continent.

“Have we named the planet yet?” Dr. Harrow asked Alonso.

“No, we haven't, actually,” Alonso noted. “Would you like to name it?”

Dr. Harrow thought for a moment while everyone's gaze fixed on him.

“Did the project have a name?” he asked.

“Yes it did,” Alonso replied. “It's been called the Terra Project.”

“Why didn't you tell us this earlier?” Dr. Harrow asked.

“That's actually a good question,” Alonso began. “Now, the rest of you, all turn towards me, this is very important.”

Dr. Tro whirled around to face Alonso and Dr. Kaddix, still stunned by the naming of his trusty steed, staggered until he was looking at Alonso as well.

“The answer to that,” he said seriously, “Is that you did not ask.”

Dr. Harrow, Dr. Tro, and Dr. Kaddix all exchanged glances with each other.

“I'm serious. Completely serious,” he began. “The reason I hired you at the end of all this was so that your interpretations of what you see would not be affected by what we already know.”

He took a deep breath. “You are, in fact, the best that this world has to offer. There is already much more to the planet than meets the eye. Already so much that we know about its inner workings. We trust that you will discover these in good time and report them to the rest of the world for us. You will be the eyes, ears, and minds for all those back here on Earth. Don't let them down.”

The three of them nodded solemnly.

Dr. Kaddix quietly wondered to himself how he could even begin to consider himself so important or even worth taking seriously with a ship named Binky, but he shrugged it off.

“Dr. Harrow, would you still like to name the new world?”

Dr. Harrow nodded. “You said the project was the Terra Project?”

“I did,” Alonso confirmed.

“I shall christen it Terros.”

The party cheered loudly and Dr. Harrow felt his face go fairly red.

“Alright, everyone that's heading to Terros get on your ships. You all know what ship you're going on already, except for Mr. Chase Rodram, you get to pick whichever ship you like most.”

Dan stared in disbelief out the white house window.

“No way....”

His wild speculations were interrupted suddenly when an urgent knocking began to pound at his door.

“Mr. President! Sir!” called the voice of one of his officials. “We have news of the utmost urgency and importance! Mr. President!”

Dan hastily slung on some decent clothes and threw on a jacket before bursting out of his room.

“Sir, there's been a major update to the whole planet situation.”

“I've seen it.”

“The observatory called in only a few minutes ago. They have a recording of the planet melting, then cooling just as suddenly, then sprouting life.”

“What kind of recording?” Dan asked as the two of them began to stride fervantly towards one of the meeting rooms.

“They've had the planet on constant surveillance. A telescope has been focused on it with one of the highest quality cameras constantly filming it at highest resolution a highest frame rate available with current technology and resources.”

“Good to know.”

“We'll have the footage ready for you and the your advisors to watch in the meeting room within minutes. They're all being summoned there now to meet with you to discuss the situation and any courses of action that need to be taken.”

Dr. Tro sat down at her seat in the Aften Stjerne's cockpit. Buck sidled in and plopped down in the seat next to her.

“'Ello again, miss.”

“I was hoping you'd be on my ship,” Dr. Tro greeted with a warm smile.

“Oh now you're making me blush,” Buck chuckled. “Glad to honor miss with my presence and aide, then. What can I do for you?”

“First things first, show me how to get this bird off the ground.”

“Usually we make you learn how to land first,” Buck began with a hearty laugh. “But since you asked nicely,”

He reached forward and prodded one of the many buttons on the dashboard. The engines began to whir loudly.

“Any fancy system things I should worry about?” Dr. Tro asked. “Like looking out for engine temperature, oil gages, and so on?”

“Nope, the ship pretty much runs and monitors itself in that respect,” Buck noted.

“Fuel?” Dr. Tro asked.

“Cold fusion.”

“How does it propel itself?” she asked.

“Got a particle bank,” Buck began. “Stores up particles from the air and shoots them out at ultrahigh velocities. Can store enough for a trip from one planet to the other and back right away. Stores at a rate of one fiftieth of time in use when in a pressure of one atmosphere. You can see how much is stored here,” he noted, pointing to a bar that was currently completely full.

“And fuel for the cold fusion?”

“Shit, I dunno,” Buck said. “But that shouldn't be a problem while we're down there. Should be enough for a month or so at minimum. Run time, even. And I think we got reserves anyway.”

“Alright, so far so good, anything I'm forgetting?”

“To actually start the trip?” Buck suggested. Ahead of them out the cockpit window the Lovable Dictator and Binky were already cruising forward into the night sky towards Terros.

“Oh, right, how do I do that?”

“Auto pilot to do that right here,”

Dr. Tro mashed the button that he had indicated and the ship began to suddenly lift itself off of the ground. A few more seconds and it lurched forward into the sky, zooming towards Terros.

Dr. Tro watched out the cockpit at the ground as it grew farther away and smaller, then vanished behind the cockpit and out of view.

“So, do I have to do any fancy flying on the way?” she asked.

“Nope,” Buck replied. “Completely automatic.”

“Good. How long is the trip, then?”

“Well, let's see,” Buck began. “It's nearly forty million kilometers. That's about twenty four point four million miles... that's about the distance the earth travels in a little over two weeks. We'll be there in an hour.”

Dr. Tro looked at him incredulously. “How the hell did you people manage that?”

“We didn't get our company name for nothing, ma'am.”

Back down on Dengris, the employees that were remaining on the earth were all shuffling back to their rooms, most of them addled with booze.

Some of them turned to look at the layer cake to see it emit three faint flashes of blue light before they meandered off to their rooms for the night.

Dr. Kaddix stared out ahead through the huge cockpit window out into the starry expanse.

“Lovely view, isn't it?” Kyme asked cheerfully.

“I guess,” Dr. Kaddix muttered quietly.

“Oh, come on!” Kyme prodded. “Nobody else is getting to see the planet like this. And very few people before us have gotten to see Earth from up here!”

Dr. Kaddix through on this for a few seconds. “So, we have a rear window I can look back at the earth through?”

Kyme bit her lip. “Um, no, actually,”

“So I don't actually get this amazing once-in-a-lifetime view of earth, then?” Dr. Kaddix growled.

“You will on the way back!” Kyme replied optimistically.

“That can't come soon enough,” Dr. Kaddix sighed.

“If you look at it that way,” Kyme huffed, “Then it'll take forever.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?” he grumbled.

“At least make an effort to enjoy yourself. Who knows, you might even like it there.”

Dr. Kaddix grunted and reclined his seat back as far as it would go. “What are we supposed to do in here until we get there?”

“We could try having a conversation,” Kyme suggested. “Have you ever had one? They're amazing.”

Dr. Kaddix made a grumbling noise.

“We could talk about anything you want,” she said.

“Unless you want to talk about beer, rocks, football, or women,” Dr. Kaddix grunted again as he hoisted himself onto his feet and began trodding sullenly toward the rear deck of Binky, “Then I probably won't have much interest.”

“Actually,” she said quickly as he vanished around the corner, “I'd love to talk about.... rocks.”

After a few seconds she pouted and focused her gaze back out the windshield, deciding to assume that he simply hadn't heard her.

Dr. Harrow bit the inside of his cheek as he maintained his gaze straight ahead.

“Bueno,” his co-pilot began. “La compania olvido de dar nosotros algo para pasar el tiempo con.”

“Fascinating,” Dr. Harrow replied.

His co-pilot paused. “Mi nombre es Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez. Pero a la compania, me llaman Taco.”

“Yes, Tuco to Taco, I can see how that would happen,” Dr. Harrow noted.

“Si, pero yo no se si ese nombre es apropiado,” he added with a shrug.

Dr. Harrow turned to Taco. He was of obvious Hispanic descent and was wearing a nearly stereotypical sombrero, but oddly enough, the rest of his attire seemed much more akin to the Gothic subculture of the earlier part of the decade known as the “twenty o's”; baggy clothing of the darkest black color with flowing chains swarming around the legs. His face was painted with sheet white makeup except for two pitch-black diamonds centered over his eyes.

“No, not really fitting at all,” Dr. Harrow commented.

Taco chuckled. “Tampoco el 'Lovable Dictator' o 'Binky',” he added. The breaks in his accent as he pronounced the English names amidst his Spanish was extremely blatant.

“I do find an admiration for the creativity of the naming,” Dr. Harrow replied.

“Bueno, pero tenemos mucho mas de hablar de,” Taco shrugged. “Debemos hablar, tu y yo, y conocer uno a otro para pasar el tiempo antes de llegamos.”

Dr. Harrow thought hard. Taco had motioned to him and then to himself casually, then looked at his watch arm as he had spoke.

“Well, I'm sure we could talk to each other, but that would be very difficult, I see.”

“Por que?” Taco asked.

“Because I don't speak a word of Spanish.”

Taco blinked incredulously. “Como es eso posible?”

“Cognates and cues, my friend,” Dr. Harrow noted. “No chance you'd be willing to speak English, seeing as how you're quite good at listening to it?”

“No,” Taco replied with a shrug.

“That was no in Spanish, wasn't it?”

“Si.”

“Damn.”

“Pero si quieres...” Taco began, reaching a hand out towards Dr. Harrow.

“So, tell me about yourself,” Dr. Tro began as she reclined back comfortably in her seat.

“Well, m'names Buck, as you already know,” he said. “Got a brother, Dusty. We're twins. 'Xactly alike on the outside.”

“But opposites upstairs?” she asked.

“Well,” Buck mused. “I wouldn't say opposite. We have a fair bit in common and we get along fine enough I guess. But you talk to us and you can tell us apart easy enough.”

“How so?” Dr. Tro inquired.

“Well, I try to be polite and gentlemanly, while he is a bit more rambunctious and bold.”

“I see,” Dr. Tro chuckled. “I'll take a gentleman any day.”

Buck went faintly red at that. “And also, we've got different kinda booksmarts. And different aptitudes with nanobot controllers.”

“Ooh, nanobots?” Dr. Tro asked.

“Yep. An earlier project from a closely related company. We've got several different kinds of nanobots that we use, all thanks to them. Let's see what all we got... there's antiviral bots, zygomorphs, kinetic bots, detonators, language bots, cellmod bots, AI bots, and perception bots. And those are just the ones that we'll be using.”

“What are all those?” Dr. Tro asked, obviously impressed.

“They're different bots specialized for different things. I'm only any good with the detonators. Buck's good with the kinetic bots. We happen to have an expert for each, and they're the only people good with anything. Well, the active ones at least.”

“Active ones?”

“Yep,” Buck began. “Zygomorphs, AI bots, and antiviral bots are kinda passive. They operate without controllers. The antiviral bots work by spreading between organisms like an airborne virus, but instead of being a disease it prevents those diseases that work by shocking the system with something it's never seen. Send out the basic antibodies and such. Basically prevent things what happened with Christopher Columbus spreading smallpox to the natives. It was only so dangerous because it was radically different to anything their bodies had fought, the antiviral bots simply remove that factor.”

“That's fascinating,” Dr. Tro said. “I'm amazed, TimeSpace did remember everything. I would have completely forgotten about that if it had been me.”

Buck bowed a bit. “We did what we could, ma'am.”

Dr. Tro leaned forward, propping her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her palm. “So, you said there's an expert for each on the trip?”

Buck nodded. “Yup. Me and Dusty you already know. Dusty is on Dr. Kaddix's ship. Taco is on the Lovable Dictator, he's the expert with the language bots. Zant is on our ship, he's the perception bot guy. Last is Alex with the cellmod bots, on the Lovable Dictator.” Buck gave a lout snort.

“What's so funny?”

“Just thought, Dr. Harrow is going to be having a lot of fun with him. Her. It.”

Dr. Harrow reeled as Taco's hand touched his head.

“Calmate!” Taco shouted as Dr. Harrow fell off his seat and struggled frantically on the cockpit floor. “Todo esta bien!”

Dr. Harrow froze suddenly and looked directly at Taco.

“I speak Spanish...” he whispered, unable to believe his own words. “Hablo espanol.”

Taco bowed his head. “Felicitationes,” he congratulated.

A figure sprinted up from the rear decks to where Dr. Harrow was lying on the ground with Taco kneeled over him.

“Is anyone hurt?” the person asked. “Is everyone okay?”

“We're all fine,” Dr. Harrow said quietly. He eased himself shakily to his feet. “Taco, how did you do that?”

“Puedo explicar a un otro tiempo,” Taco said quickly.

Dr. Harrow nodded, accepting that it would be explained to him later, and turned toward the new person. When he finally took in the person's appearance he nearly fell back down.

“What in the bloody hell?”

The reason for his outburst was the fact that the other person had the typical hairy arms of a man, a chin dotted with thick, coarse stubble, but was wearing a uniform skirt showing feminine legs and a shirt that showed the obvious shape of women's breasts.

“Hi, I'm Alex, nice to meet you too.”

“No offense meant,” Dr. Harrow said firmly. “It's just that I've never, in all my years, met anyone who has achieved the same effect that you have with your appearance.”

Alex gave a feminine giggle and brushed hir fingers through hir short-cropped hair. Then, in a fairly deep, masculine voice, replied, “I strike most people the same way, but people get used to it. I've yet to meet anyone who truly manages to be an asshole about it once the shock goes away and they get to know me. I can tell you're not the kind of person to be the first.”

“I try, I try,” Dr. Harrow sighed as he calmed himself. “I'm curious as to two things, though, is it an apathy for any sense of normal that you people have, or a severe dislike of it? And are you a sir or a ma'am?”

Alex thought on this for a second. “I'm pretty sure it's an apathy. A dislike of what is considered normal simply because it is normal is unhealthy, I think. Personal judgment should be free of stigmas and all one's own. As for my gender, I think today I'm leaning towards a ma'am.”

“I have to admire your view on normality,” Dr. Harrow noted with a slight bow of his head. “But your gender, you said 'today'? Do you change?”

“Whenever I want to,” Alex said with a nod. “For now, just know that I can and do. I prefer to think of gender as an outfit. I just happen to like to mix and match my outfits in that respect.”

Dr. Harrow considered this. “Do you have a preference for pronouns, then?”

“Hir with an I, and ze.”