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Molokai Middle School, Molokai, Hawaii, Earth
August 28th, 2036
Monday was a lot of fun at school, especially science. The Hawaii school district had paid to get access to the Galactic Union’s version of the internet, called the GalNet, and the science class spent an entire hour wandering through it. The interface they used, something called the Aethernet, had a built in translator. However, it was slow and seemed to struggle on some things. The teacher, Mr. Finch, kept it to astrophysics, making it mainly a lesson about hyperspace.
“I know this stuff is mostly math,” Mr. Finch said, pushing his old-fashioned glasses back up onto his nose, “but the basics are pretty fascinating.” The class’s big display showed a graphic representation of hyperspace, strange lines and calculations surrounding an almost comical- appearing ship. “Ships are shunted into another dimension via the stargates and pulled to their destination via their hyperspace navigational computer. It’s apparently very old technology, and little of it is explained. Fascinating.”
“Every trip, no matter how far you travel, takes exactly 170 hours. A strange coincidence.”
For the last fifteen minutes of the class, students were allowed to use their tablets to access the GalNet. Terry tried looking up scuba diving and found they didn’t have a direct analogue. However, he found the respirators Doc, Yui, and he had tested. They’d been developed by a race called the Selroth, who reminded him of an old movie called Creature from the Black Lagoon. Yuck!
Yui held up her tablet, showing an alien that looked like a squirrel with a huge pistol; a Flatar. “Cute!” she said. Terry had his doubts an alien with a huge gun would like to be called cute. He looked it up himself. Flatar—a mercenary race usually partnered with Tortantula. Looking up the latter, he gasped. A wasp crossed with a spider. Holy crap! He almost held it up for Yui to see, just for the shock factor, then decided against it.
The rest of the day went by without anything nearly as interesting. He said goodbye to Yui and fired his bike up, heading toward the inter-island shuttle. His dad had given him a pass just after he got back, and he regularly rode the high-speed boat to Honolulu to visit his mom. He hadn’t gone that weekend because he’d gone diving, and now he felt guilty.
He was lucky; the boat was just finishing loading. He swiped the pass and walked his bike onboard. By the time he’d gotten a seat, the boat was leaving the harbor and already climbing onto its hydrofoils.
“We’ll arrive in Honolulu in 15 minutes,” the announcer said.
Just enough time, Terry thought, and went to the onboard snack bar. Back in his seat, he munched the obligatory hotdog and Coke as the ocean raced past at 120 kph.
Honolulu had all kinds of ridiculous rules against riding powered bicycles like his on the sidewalks, and even more rules against riding them on the roads. What they didn’t have was a way of stopping him. He always grinned as he zipped along the sidewalk, ignoring the annoyed pedestrians and the occasional yell from a cop. He got to Queen’s Medical Center 10 minutes after the boat docked, less than half an hour after leaving school.
“Personal record,” he said as he locked the bike into a space on the rack outside the main entrance. A woman walking past looked askance at him, and he smiled back, which didn’t help. Bike secured, he swung his backpack off the bike frame onto his shoulder and headed inside.
The receptionist barely looked up when he walked past. When he got to the elevator, he swiped the pass they’d given him, giving him access to the 29th floor, where the coma-care ward was, and where his mom had been transferred after she’d been pronounced stable.
When the doors opened, he immediately noticed a commotion by the nurse’s station. An orderly looked up at him and back to the tumult. Terry wasn’t sure he’d seen the man before. Figuring it didn’t have anything to do with him, he walked to the “Restricted Access” door and used the pass again. It slid aside with a slight buzz, and he walked in.
Terry took out his tablet and began calling up saved images. He’d kept captures of the aliens they’d seen, along with a few other things like mask-camera footage from their last dive. He planned to talk about it with his mom. He also had a book he’d been reading on the tablet as well. He was busy scrolling through pictures when he pushed the door open to her room, so he didn’t see her immediately.
“Terry?”
His tablet and backpack clattered to the floor when he looked up and saw her sitting up in bed looking at him.
“Mom?!” he gasped.
“Hi, Baby.”
Terry nearly launched himself into her arms, and once again found himself crying. She wrapped him in the most awesome hug he could ever remember having.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here!” someone snapped from the door.
“This is my son,” his mom said. “He most certainly belongs in here.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Clark,” the man, a doctor, said. “I meant we’re still evaluating your suddenly changed status.”
Terry pulled back and looked at her. The bandages that used to cover her head were gone, and he could see a little scar just above her right eye where they’d operated a week ago. It looked completely healed. How was that even possible?
“I’m fine enough to visit my boy while you do your tests,” she said.
“What happened?” Terry wondered. “The doctors were talking about surgery to maybe relieve pressure, or something?”
“Nobody knows,” she said. “I woke up this morning like any other morning. I feel great!”
“Do you remember the accident?”
She squinted and made a face. “Sort of. I know we were trying to talk to that big humpback bull when Matthew played something he’d recorded, and the whale...”
“It hit the submarine,” Terry said.
She put a hand to her mouth. “Are the crew okay? What about your father?”
“Dad’s fine,” he said. “The crew were killed.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “That’s horrible.” She looked outside at the sunny Honolulu afternoon. “How long have I been here? What’s the date?”
“You were hurt August 2nd,” he said. “Today’s the 23rd.”
“I’ve been in here three weeks?” He nodded. “Where’s your dad?” She looked past him at the doctor.
“We tried calling him at your work number. They said he was in Seattle. Something about a television commercial?”
His mom looked at the doctor, uncomprehending. “A commercial? For the institute?” The man shrugged. “I need to figure out what’s going on. Where’s my computer?”
“Your husband has all your personal goods.”
“Damnit,” she said.
“Here, Mom,” Terry said, and handed her his tablet.
She took the computer and looked at it. “Yeah, this should work.” She signed into the internet and logged into the institute’s server. Two passwords later, she was into her personal account and reading emails, as well as institute messages. Over the next few minutes, her expression went from curious, to confused, then straight into anger.
Uh, oh, Terry thought.
* * * * *
