Chapter 1

(The Plan)

 

As I stood facing the Apsaras Assembly in our city's main dome, I blurted out, "No Shit! Finally we get to invade Earth!"

Bart, my father and head of the Assembly, quickly countered, "It's not an invasion, it's an immigration. Your English is better than that, and I notice it is becoming somewhat colorful and crude."

Our race's own language had been banned almost two years ago when we made the decision to migrate to Earth. The Assembly decided to establish English as our common language. They said total immersion into English was the best way to learn the language, and if our future was to be on Earth in the United States, this would be necessary. With our obvious physical differences, they believed it would help us to be more easily accepted, or at least tolerated, by the human race if we were at least fluent in their language.

Our explorers, when we still had them, traveled many times to Earth to observe humans and had established a permanent advanced technology communications satellite orbiting Earth. As a result, we had maintained communications through intercepts and in filtered Internet access. We all had been studying English and watching English language movies ever since, and many of us felt that we could blend right in. Well, except for our blueish color, we were after all a different race from any that existed on Earth, although obviously humanoid with common genetic roots.

"Sorry, father." I said, "We've been preparing for so many years, I was just shocked to finally get the Assembly's approval. What made you decide now?"

Bart said, "The situation has changed. Our remaining scientists have been studying the future on Earth with our technology and discovered a looming civilization collapse. They are overpopulated and are going to destroy themselves in the near future. This means our accumulated wealth in advanced technology, gold, silver, platinum, and precious jewels will be useless unless we go before their apocalypse. Unfortunately, the scientists see Earth's civilization end before we can get there. When their civilization falls we can't buy our way into their society or battle our way in with our advances weaponry, because there will be no civilization to negotiate with or sell to. This forces us to rethink and alter our plans."

Oh crap! This changes everything and could quite possibly destroy any hope for our own future survival. Our race is dying. Over the last two hundred years every generation of our people produced even fewer children, and this last generation, my generation, hasn't produced any offspring. The population of our race had been decimated to less than one thousand people, which we concentrated in one last domed city. When father's generation passes we will be only a hundred or so. Our scientists, what's left of them, tell us the only way to save our race, in part anyway, is to inbreed with humans. The influx of new and diverse humanoid DNA might alter and stimulate ours and allow our race to survive. Otherwise, our entire species becomes extinct with my generation. Our explorers traveled the Galaxy in search of other humanoids, and Earth hosted the only race close enough in DNA. Mixing our DNA with the humans of Earth was our only chance for survival.

I said, "So what do we do? How can we survive in a new world in chaos without wealth and friendship? We couldn't even build a facility to live in or feed ourselves."

Bart said, "That's the problem isn't it? Most of the humans on Earth won't survive either for the same reason. Still, if we hope to survive as a race we must go now before they kill themselves off. One suggestion that has been brought up is go there and capture some human males and bring them back here for breeding stock, since our reproductive problem is primarily the extremely low sperm count of our males. This method could work, but we're not sure how they can adapt to living on a water world. Humans have not evolved enough to handle our environment. Another thing to consider: this planet is polluted and dying, so any solution involving remaining on Apsaras would only be a short term solution."

Bart said, "Do you have any suggestions? After I pass you will become the leader of the Assembly, and it will be your problem then."

I said, "I have no immediate ideas. Let me think on it, and we can meet again in a few days." We agreed, and I took off to my own personal dome.

I dove into the water and gave an undulating squeal to alert my escorts and friends. Almost immediately I saw one of my pod's porpoises, Dobe, streaking through the water toward me. My pod was never far from me. Dobe, easily recognizable by the white scars along her left side where she had been burned by red acid algae when she was young, quickly nuzzled against me, and I hugged her. Her mate, Dubs, followed quickly behind her with his own greeting. I squeaked my instructions as I grabbed hold of their top dorsal fins. We kicked off together and streaked through the water toward my resident dome, surrounded by the other pod members.

This family of porpoises was my self-appointed protectors and guardians, which I greatly appreciated due to the predators abundant in these waters. I had grown up with Dobe and Dubs and had helped raise many of the others. I could hold my breath almost as long as a porpoise, and I was a fast swimmer, but not nearly as fast as my friends. Unfortunately, I had little defense against the predators. I mean I carried a laser pistol in a back holster, but by far the best defense was the always watchful eyes and sonar of my protectors. They missed nothing and charged any stealth predator long before I could draw my weapon. The pod would speed toward a predator ramming it with their nose and killing it. As long as they were around, I was never in any real danger.

It was several miles to my underwater dome, but my friends deftly maneuvered us around floating and hovering clumps of dangerous algae and to clear surfaces for breaths of air. A porpoise's breathing hole, blowhole, is on the top of their head, which means they barely have to break water to breath. Unfortunately, they never understood that I needed more time to raise my head completely out to the water to breath. This meant that I have to constantly struggle to reach clear air and draw a breath before they pulled me back under. I didn't always make it. On more than one occasion they had to push me to the surface to get air.

On long distance swims sometimes I would roll over to swim on my back. This gave me extra time to breath air when I was hitching a ride, but I couldn't see where I was swimming. Our race's ability to internally pinch our nose shut, like closing our eyes, could shut the water out and prevent choking. This ability equated to a porpoise's blowhole. As I thought about this I realized that this trait would look strange to humans. Oh well, a human choking in water would look strange to us.

As we approached the bottom opening of my dome I squealed a "Thank you" and shot up through the opening and landed on my feet on the deck. My mates, Meg and Peg, were anxious to hear why I had been called to an emergency meeting this morning. I told them what was discussed, and understandably, they were both upset and excited. They desperately wanted to have children. These identical twins were considered the most fertile, since they were the only pair of identical twins born to our race in over a century. The Assembly put us together hoping we would produce a son of my lineage to rule after me. We had certainly tried, to no avail. The twins continued to milk my seed during their fertile time, with no success. They wanted me to father their children but were willing to have children, even if the child was half human. Yes, they were eager to leave Apsaras behind and go to Earth.

Sex itself had little interest to either gender of our race, especially males. It actually hurt us. I guess that was the result of the genetic weakening. Our race was ancient with little DNA diversity, maybe too little to continue to reproduce. Still, none of us wanted to see our species extinct and continued to allow ourselves to be milked, a process which the females of our species had perfected through many generations.

Our female's training began at puberty. There was a training ritual that must be perfected by them before they were allowed to milk sperm. The training began with the use of a sea sponge, approximately the size and shape of a male's penis. They were required to develop their internal vagina muscles to the degree of being able to milk (suck) whale milk up through a sea sponge. This training took years to develop, but gave the females the ability to extract sperm directly from a male's testicles, a process designed to assist reproduction. Unfortunately, being milked was painful. As a result the males participated reluctantly and only as necessary, but unfortunately, there were far more females than males. So, each male had to endure multiple milking.

Meg and Peg had prepared fish for our dinner, and we ate, mostly in silence, thinking about any possible solutions for all our needs. We curled up in our hammock net, affectionately cuddled and waited for what we knew would be a troubled sleep. As we cuddled we could see our pod through the circular glass dome circling. They were happy as long as they could see us and know we were safe.

Our closeness to the pod was the major reason we remained in our personal dome and not move into the city. There were abundant living quarters in the dome city, due to the dwindling population, but I did not want to abandon my friends. Many others had, but not us.

I was determined to find a solution to our problem. I knew every one of my generation was counting on me. They always did, and I was not going to fail them. As I usually do with difficult problems, I let my sub-conscious mind work on it during the night. Often I would wake in the morning with a much clearer head and sometimes a solution.

Sometimes I wish I had two brains like my porpoise friends. Well, they really don't have two brains, but they do have two halves that can operate independently of each other, one of which remains conscious at all times, while the other half sleeps. I guess that makes sense, since they must constantly swim to keep from drowning. Still, I sometimes wish I could remain awake all twenty-nine hours of our planet's rotation like my friends.

When I awoke the next cycle I still had no idea how to solve the problem. I was blank.

Meg said, "I see you still haven't found a solution. As your father said, "We can't buy our way in'. But, we still need a partner on the Earth side."

I barked, "Don't you think I know that?" She was telling me the obvious, but I was at a loss as to how to buy or trade an Earth partner into merging and helping us. It would have to be someone wealthy on Earth, and if they were already wealthy, why would they help us? The situation looked impossible.

In lieu of any other reasonable solutions I started checking out "Prepper" websites on Earth's Internet. These consisted of people that already believed Earth's civilization was going to collapse, and they were preparing for survival. I figured they wanted the same thing as we did. I found the postings, some anyway, fairly accurate according to reports from our scientists. One in particular got my attentions. He predicted the fall and described it in fairly accurate detail. His post read:

I am convinced that a catastrophe (from nature or more likely man-made) of some sort will happen in the near future. Our society is delicately balanced and it only takes a small shove to upset the balance. The "Domino Effect" will take it all down once it starts. It could be something as simple as the economy fails, the electric grid fails, war, civil strife, etc. I believe that the average person is totally unprepared and ignorant in the basic skills of "survival".  I'm thinking the flow of events would happen something like this:

·       Catastrophe happens - panic, fear, uncertainty, loss of hope

·       Infrastructure collapses - communication, electricity, water stop,... stores stripped clean, looting, the strong/bully segment emerge.

·       Average person huddles in their home/apartment hoping that everything will somehow "come back" to normal (or at least for as long as their personal resources last).

·       After about 3 days to a week of no food, the layer of "civilized man" begins to crack and people begin to do anything necessary to acquire what they feel are the essentials.

·       The initial grouping would be at the church/family/close friends level because of inherent trust.

·       People begin to  carefully group to gain the protection of numbers... Groups will battle each other for available resources or power.

·       Areas more remote and miles from metropolitan cities should be in better shape, because in many cases these are ranchers/farmers and as such have a better understanding of living off the land... plus, they stand a much better chance that what they have will not be ravaged by roaming gangs from the cities because of the distances.

·       The folks in these remote areas may very well have the opportunity to come together (as neighbors which have helped each other in the past) and form a protective group of their own which is charged with defending their homeland.

·       The gangs will grow larger and canvas further out, and no one or group will be safe.

·       As food becomes more scarce, without the existence of law enforcement or organized armies the gangs will kill to take what they want and become primitive. Civilization ceases to exist.

 

I was amazed to see just how accurate he described the fall. It was almost identical to the description our scientists saw in Earth's demise when they looked into the future.

In other posts he even described how he and a select group hoped to survive, what to stock in supplies, what training these survivors would need. He even provided a sketch of the building he wanted to construct for protection and survival. It was a good basic plan, and I knew we needed a human partner like him.

I clicked on his profile information and discovered his name was Mike Brannon, and he lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I quickly logged on to Google Earth to find Oklahoma, then Muskogee. Muskogee was located in eastern Oklahoma in what was described as "Green Country". The area was mostly rural and had many lakes, which would serve our purpose well. I still didn't see any way to entice him to help us, but I sent him an e-mail agreeing with his prediction and complimenting him on his plans. I also bluntly ask him if he had started, and if not, why?

My message transmitted to our communication satellite in geostationary orbit above Apsaras then transmitted out to our satellite above Earth. This transmission wasn't instantaneous between the light years separating our planets, but it was damn close. Actually, the slowest part of the entire network was the Earth-side Internet. Our technology was far better and faster. It had been created by scientists and engineers in our ancient past, but unfortunately, none remained of our race that understood how it worked; it just did. Fortunately most of our existing technology was extremely reliable. In point of fact, none could remember any of our technology ever failing. We even still traveled in space in our saucers built by our ancient engineers, and we have no idea how this technology works, either. They were simple to operate, however, and my mates Meg and Peg have been trained to fly them. I didn't know how long it would take for him to receive the message and reply, assuming he would. So I went about my life and waited.

It was nearing evening as I was swimming with my friends when my mates nuzzled up to me. We had just collected a nice fish for our late meal, a big, sleek white fish, my favorite. Meg motioned for us to surface. I knew it must be something important, so we surfaced. Meg knew I had been waiting for a response from Earth and was anxious.

When we surfaced Meg said, "That response you have been waiting for from Earth came in. I thought you would want to know as soon as possible."

I said, "You're right about that. I've already got our dinner and was just playing. We can head back in now." Peg, usually quiet, nodded affirmative and we submerged, racing through the water back to our dome. The porpoises got excited at our burst of speed and raced ahead of us, even circling us, as if to say, "You might be fast, but we are faster." Soon we burst out of the water to land standing on our deck inside the dome.

I went immediately to my computer and opened the e-mail. It was from Mike Brannon and read:

"Hello Brin,

Thanks for your nice note. Yeah, I worry about this pending collapse of civilization. I see it coming, but, sadly, there is little I can do about it. I don't have the kind of money it would take to activate my plans. So, unless I win the Lottery, all I can do is dream up plans and worry.

Mike,"

I immediately began grinning, because he had just solved our problem with that statement, at least I think he just solved our problem. I would have to check with our scientists to see if this was possible. The technology that allowed them to look into the future was unreliable in that the scientists couldn't precisely choose the exact time. Their ability to view the future was dependent upon the technology itself. Once it was probably controllable, but, as with all our technology, our scientists had lost their understanding of how it worked. The vast level of engineering and physics knowledge it had taken to design and build our inventions had been decimated as our race died off faster than we could educate new scientists and engineers. Actually, our so called scientists now were no more than moderately educated technicians...operators. Still, I was positive that the existing technology could find the answers I was seeking...if asked the right questions or given the right instructions. We had to try.

Meg and Peg were looking over my shoulder at the visual display, reading the same message and coming to the same conclusion I reached. We looked at each other, smiling. I immediately called a meeting of the Assembly, but before we left I worded a response e-mail.

"Hello Mike,

If I help you get the funds you need will you partner with my group and build your survival group and activate your plans? I will await your response.

Brin"

This time Meg and Peg went with me to the Assembly. This affected them, so they weren't about to be left out, besides, they were excited with the possibilities of a potential solution.

Dobe and Dubs sensed that we were excited about something as soon as we dove in the water. The pod gathered around us to allow us to hitch a ride on their fins. I squeaked our destination, and we were off at a fast pace.

Communications with them by formal sounds was limited, but they were gifted with a strong sense of reading emotions. I could often sense their emotions as well, and today they were agitated by something. I quickly realized what it was when they took us off far to the left of our normal path. They knew or sensed a major predator in the area and were taking us around the danger. I saw nothing to indicate danger to warrant this extra caution, but I trusted their instincts.

We arrived at the main dome platform without incident and shot up through the opening. As we stood to allow the water to repel from our snug main body wraps and skin, we noticed the Assembly already seated around the center dais ... waiting. Meg and Peg knew the dais was reserved for me alone and took seats in the gallery, while I took the center position.

Bart said, seeming somewhat annoyed, "Well, you called this meeting. Get to it."

I'm sure my face wrinkled with annoyance at my father's bluntness, but said, "All right. I may have found a solution to our problem." I just let that settle in.

Bart's attitude changed immediately, and he continued, "Oh really? This is good. What is the solution?"

I said, "I may have found an Earth partner to build facilities prior to us reaching Earth, and I may have found a method of financing the entire project with Earth's own money. Of course this all assumes our scientists can deliver information on Earth's future." I had the total attention and tentative respect of the Assembly and my father, which made me smile. I proceeded to lay out my plan and detailed needs I required. When I finished I simply waited for their response, which of course I already knew would be favorable.

The Assembly consisted of elders from many of our previous world governments. As our population dwindled, these leaders and their people joined with us, the once largest floating city. They tended to be arrogant and demanding, accustomed to being catered and listened to; but since our entire population of Apsaras was now only around a thousand people, mostly old like them, their importance and worth had greatly diminished. Still, they remained our leaders ... for now.

The Assembly talked among themselves and agreed with my plan. Bart said, "We will devote all the time of our scientists toward trying to find answers to the questions you pose. In the mean time I suggest you and your generation devote your time towards preparing for the journey. Stock the 'Bright One', our largest space saucer, with supplies and equipment for your survival when you arrive on Earth."

I didn't know if I was understanding him right and said, "You are using words like 'You' and 'Your'. Don't you mean 'Us' and 'Our'?"

Bart said, "No. We have discussed it and decided that this journey is for the young. We are old. Your generation is young, and you have a better chance of survival without us. We would just be a burden to you all on Earth. You are now in charge of this adventure and our future as a race. Take anything you need from us. The Assembly's last order is: Go with our blessing and keep our race alive."