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“Translation,” Julian echoed. “Is this where we come in?”

“Apparently so,” Calvin nodded. “Dr. Silver has used the principle of altering the alpha of
all of Verdant
... and its immediate surroundings, judging by the fact that the fighters are still with us. When she did that, we were translated from Earth orbit... to here.

“And, unfortunately,” Calvin concluded, “my expertise ends right here. I now know that Dr. Silver used a series of nine gigacapacitors to generate the frightening amount of power needed to operate her… translation system, and move an entire satellite. But how that system managed to affect every particle on Verdant at once, or put us conveniently in orbit of another planet, is way beyond me.”

Julian looked at Dr. Silver. “Did he describe the process accurately, Doctor?”

Dr. Silver looked at Calvin and smiled. “Accurately and eloquently. My complements. The last part, how the system affected everything at once, is essentially due to the tuned light emitters we used to alter the alpha being focused through a heavily-doped crystal that evenly disperses the alpha throughout Verdant. Naturally, there’s more to it than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.”

“I may understand it,” Reya pointed out, “but I still don’t like being put through this damned science experiment of yours, without warning. I’m probably sterile now—not that that’s a loss in the big scheme of things, I suppose. But there’s still one other little detail that must be discussed.” Reya finally pushed off from the far wall and approached the table, leaning on it with both hands and bending forward, so that she was as close as she could get across the table to Dr. Silver.

She paused for emphasis, making sure the room was silent and waiting for her next words.

Then she shrilled, “
We’re not over Earth!
”

Word was beginning to spread throughout Verdant:
Something had happened to the Earth.

This word was prompted by the complete and utter cessation of com traffic from Earth, including newsfeeds, commercial traffic, and whatever personal communications that had managed to get through the strangled com network. There were also a few video sources of the outside, and some quickly confirmed that Earth was no longer there. Others paradoxically reported it was there, but something terrible had happened to it.

A few particularly frightened people claimed that the planet they were orbiting was, in fact, Mars. None of them were being taken seriously, however.
How could they possibly be over Mars?
And before long, all publicly-accessible outside video was cut off by CnC, citing inaccurate data causing malfunctions, and the need to recalibrate systems.

That, at least, turned out to be true, though it had taken a few of Dr. Silver’s engineers to realize it, and begin passing the word. Much of Verdant’s systems, monitored and passed through the GLIS, depended on time and orientation signals that were received from Earth coms, or from visual observation of the Earth, Moon, Sun and stars. Once Verdant was no longer in Earth orbit, those systems went into utter confusion, and in the face of an impossible error in observed data, many of them simply shut down, causing cascading failures in many other systems that depended on their time- and orientation-based data to function.

Dr. Silver’s response to the unexpected chaos was indifferent: “We didn’t expect to have to do this on such short notice, you know.”

Frighteningly enough, the list of crashed equipment included a few of the workstations that Dr. Silver’s team had used for Verdant’s translation… a fact that, when revealed, turned out to be just one more of a litany of Reya Luis’ loud and virulent complaints regarding the unauthorized and unconsidered actions of Dr. Silver’s team, and of the intelligence, sanity, and parenting of Jacqueline Silver herself.

This information was passed to CnC first, along with guidelines on how to recover the systems; and armed with that new information, many of the CnC workstations that had either crashed, or seemed to have crashed, were brought fully or partially back online. Julian finally had to remove Reya from the conference room, partially to prevent her from physically assaulting Dr. Silver in blind rage, and after spending an extensive amount of time calming down his Executive Officer, set her to the task of supervising the reprogramming of the GLIS to be able to make sense of the new sensory information and automatically reset itself, followed by the restarting of their systems, and the subsequent communicating to the rest of the satellite to get other systems back online.

All during the process, Reya was continually asked by CnC staff and the people they contacted throughout Verdant, what had happened. To each of them, Reya responded: “Three things in life never change: Death; taxes; and mad scientists.”

~

In the first hour after Verdant’s systems began to come back online, Calvin’s com buzzed.

He removed it from his pocket, and when he looked at the readout on its screen, he got a shock: He hadn’t realized it was almost two in the morning! Then he got his second shock, when he saw the party identified at the other end as “North Twelve Hospital.” He keyed the com quickly. “Hello?”

“Dr. Rios? This is Dr. Adam Jervis at North Twelve Hospital. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours—”

“I know, the coms problem,” Calvin cut him off. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“We have Maria Rios here, Doctor.”

Calvin thought his own heart skipped a beat for a moment. When he’d spoken to Erin, hours ago, he’d told her to stay home until Maria returned. He hadn’t heard from either, and he realized only then that he had assumed it was because Maria had come home, and the two of them had been at home waiting for him to return. And he’d been so busy with…

“Is… is she okay? What happened?”

“Mrs. Rios apparently suffered a mild heart arrhythmia while Verdant was under attack,”
the doctor reported.
“She was discovered on a park bench, where she could not be revived, and brought here.”

“Oh, God,” Calvin moaned.

“She’s fine now, Dr. Rios,”
Dr. Jervis told him quickly.
“We found her medical data about her irregular heartbeat, and we kept her stable until it resumed a normal rhythm. It really sapped her energy, though, so she’s resting now. We have her on an IV to get her strength back up. Doctor, do you know why she was out when she had her arrhythmia?”

“Erin,” Calvin croaked. He found he was on the verge of hyperventilating.
Erin. She’s all alone…
“She wanted to get her out of school, but she couldn’t reach her. I’d told her to stay home…”

“I understand,”
Dr. Jervis replied.
“So she most likely got too excited, and that probably set off her heart rate. We’ll ask her when she wakes up, of course, but for the moment, I’d guess that’s what happened.”

“I… I agree,” Calvin said. “If she wakes up, please call me, and tell her to stay there until I can get there. Listen, I need to call my daughter…”

“Of course,”
Dr. Jervis said. “
You have my contact info, now. We’ll call with any new news.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Calvin said, and hung up. Then he called his home.

“Daddy?”
Erin’s voice was a combination of grogginess and concern… understandable, considering the hour.

“Yeah, honey. I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to get home… I only just found out that your mother wasn’t home yet.”

“Is Mom okay?”

“Yes,” Calvin told her, “but she suffered one of her heart irregularities, while she was out looking for you. They took her to North Twelve Hospital, and she’s there now.”

“She’s in the hospital? Because she was looking for me?”

“Now, Honey, don’t be that way, it’s not your fault. Anyway, I spoke to the doctor, and she’s fine… she’s resting, and her heart is normal now. I wanted you to know.”

“Oh… okay,”
Erin responded.
“Are you coming home soon, Daddy?”

“I… don’t know, yet,” Calvin replied honestly. “You know all Hell’s broke loose around here. I’m still at CnC, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get out. But as soon as I can, I’ll be there.”

“Daddy, what happened to Earth? Everyone I talk to thinks it was nuked or something!”

“It wasn’t nuked,” Calvin replied quickly. “I’m pretty sure Earth is fine. But the situation is… complicated. Hopefully, there will be an explanation for everyone soon. I may even be part of it. But try not to worry about it: For now, Verdant isn’t under attack, and that’s a good place to be. If anyone asks, tell them I said so.”

“What about Mom? Should I go see her?”

“Well, she’s sleeping now, so there’s no need,” Calvin said. “Maybe in the morning. In the meantime, go on back to sleep, and don’t worry about us. We’ll all be back together soon.”

“O-okay. Thank you for calling. I love you, Daddy!”

“I love you two, honey. Good night.” Calvin closed the circuit, and as he turned around, realized that Julian was standing nearby. “Oh… hi.”

“Is your wife going to be all right?” Julian asked. “I couldn’t help but overhear.”

Calvin nodded. “Sounds like it. She’s had that irregular heart since I’ve known her. It can be tough on her, it gets her adrenaline going, takes all her energy, and wears her out quickly. On the other hand, she delivered Erin through it, and came out fine. She’s tough. She’ll be okay.”

“Good.” Julian put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry our problem has kept you from your family. But we need to discuss some important matters.”

“Of course,” Calvin said, and allowed himself to be led back into the conference room.

Inside, Dr. Silver was still seated in the same chair, but she had been joined by Mr. Chiu, seated next to her. Aaron Hardy was also there, and Reya Luis was conspicuously absent. Calvin considered that was probably a good thing, considering how badly she had reacted to the news of their “translation.” Kris Fawkes was also there, watching everyone carefully but showing no inclination to participate in the conversation.

As they entered, Julian started speaking. “All right, we are in a unique situation here, as it was so colorfully pointed out by my Eo.” He gave Dr. Silver a glance that indicated that Reya’s feelings were at least partially shared by him. “Verdant is a satellite dependent on supplies and materials from Earth to survive… and we are no longer in orbit above Earth. Aaron, how long do we have before we are going to need our basic supplies replenished, or risk loss of sustainability?”

“Well, the good news is, we have at least three months at level three conditions, which we are already on,” Aaron replied, consulting a datapad. “Water might be an issue in three months. Our oxygen quality will hold out for at least four months. It’ll be the chemicals we need to sustain our agrosystems that will go first, though, so before the water gets scarce or the air gets thin, we’ll be getting mighty hungry.”

“The last time we talked about this,” Julian said, “we had five months at level three conditions.”

“That was before we moved an additional eighty million kilometers from the Sun. A lot of our power is supplied by external solar panels, including most of the power used for air and water filtration … but at this new distance from the sun, the photovoltaics are already registering a seventy percent drop in input. That may necessitate our going to level two power conservation measures, to optimize available power for environmental maintenance.”

“Seventy percent!” Julian exhaled heavily. He turned to Dr. Silver. “I don’t suppose you gave that much thought when you moved us out here, Doctor?” She started to respond, when Julian added, “Excuse me…
translated
.” Silver reconsidered her response, and stayed quiet. “At any rate,” Julian continued, “it’s clear that we can’t stay here. We can go back if we want to, right, Doctor?”

“Yes, we can,” Dr. Silver replied immediately. “Lin tells me that other than the timestamp-related shutdowns, all our equipment came through translation in one hundred percent condition. We can reset our system to translate us back to Earth at any time.”

“Does that mean we’re going right back?” Calvin asked. “Just to remind everyone, we were about to be boarded when we left.”

“Right,” Julian nodded. “So, for obvious reasons, we’re not going right back. But as we’re going to have to go back eventually, we need to begin the process of diffusing this situation, to make it safe to go back. The first thing we’ll need to do is contact Earth, to let them know we’re alive.”

“We’ll have to borrow some of the long-distance com equipment from research,” Aaron stated. “Most of our com equipment is short-distance, not suited to get a signal all the way back to Earth from here. But it’s do-able.” He considered a moment. “What do we say?”

“Hello, this is Verdant,” Silver said matter-of-factly. “The reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Julian grinned, perhaps for the first time in hours. “Droll, but otherwise, well-put. We have to assure them that we are alive, and that we plan to return to Earth and re-establish trade and relations.”

“But maybe before we do that,” Calvin suggested, “we should try to get some guarantees that we won’t be attacked when we return?”

“With all due respect,” Dr. Silver stated, “I doubt their situation will be any less dire when we return. So any ‘guarantee’ they give us won’t be worth its weight in aerogel. That… for the record… is why I took the steps I took. We can no longer trust in Earth to leave its hands off of us, even if it is obvious that it will mean our ruination as well as theirs. That much is evident, now, isn’t it?”

After a moment, Julian nodded. “Yes, it is.” He paced the room for a moment, while the others looked to him. When he lifted his head, it was to look across the room. “Do you have any suggestions, Miss Fawkes?”

Everyone turned to look at Kris, who seemed surprised to have had a question directed at her… or maybe she’d hoped she had become invisible to the participants. Either way, she seemed to collect herself quickly, and she looked at Julian directly. “I agree that we can’t trust the superpowers. However, ultimately, we have to go back to Earth for supplies, and they will know that. They will know that they can withhold supplies, and force us to do their bidding. We have very few effective bargaining chips. In fact, I can only think of one: This new drive system.”