Chapter No.20 Probability

Luck is an illusion.

We passed Jupiter on our way to find the embryos. Molly's simulation put the probe at the outer edge of the Kuiper belt at 60 to 70 AU just before it would have left the Heliosphere. If it did, the embryos inside it would have become toast from ferocious galactic radiation. The trick was to locate a small object out in a region where there were millions of small rocks floating around as they orbited the sun.

For several hours, Molly kept scanning space for the lost probe without even a blip.

"This is boring," I commented. "It's like watching grass grow."

She turned to smile at me. "I haven't heard that phrase in a long time."

"Yea, grass is something we seldom see these days."

"You must hear a lot of those archaic phrases from watching old television shows."

I chuckled. "I like those old shows. They're from a simpler time when people actually communicated in person. People rely on devices to communicate nowadays."

"Now, you and I can communicate without even talking. I can hear your thoughts."

I laughed. "I pity you. My thoughts are rather weird at times."

"Wait a minute! I think I have it!" she exclaimed without looking away from her screen at the navigation station. "Yes, that's it."

I peered over her shoulder at her screen. "I'll be damned! You were right after all."

"It makes sense. It's the only other way to preserve the human race."

"Now all we have to do is figure out a way to get it onboard," I said. "We have a tractor beam, but it could cause damage to the embryos." I turned to Judy. "Maneuver our vessel right ahead of it and open the shuttle bay door. Have one of the maintenance bots latch a magnetic line to it and pull it in."

"Yes, Jason."

We watched the procedure play out from a video feed in the shuttle bay.

"We'll have to get the container in that probe into our cryogenic storage as soon as possible."

"We will, Jason," Judy assured me.

The probe bounced a few times when it was dragged into the bay. The bots were able to unscrew a hatch and remove the embryo container so that they could rush it to our cryogenic storage unit in engineering.

"Well, now that we have the embryos, all we have to do is find a human female," I said with a satirical tone.

"I guess I had better get busy locating possible habitable planets," Molly said.

"Take us back to Earth," I told Judy. I turned back to Molly. "We can try your virtual mirror from there."

"It will be a big help, assuming that it works as I expected."

"I'm sure it will," I said. "We need something to help us find any humans that still exist."

"What if we can't find any humans?" Molly blurted.

"We still have the embryos. Maybe there's a way to turn them into humans without a female uterus."

That sounded rather creepy, but at least it kept hope alive.

We arrived back in Earth orbit and Molly had the engineering androids deploy her virtual telescope. After several minutes of fiddling with the controls, she had an announcement.

"Wow! This thing has a contrast ratio of a billion to one. I can easily make out planets around bright stars."

"That's fantastic," I reacted. "That calls for a beer celebration. I'll go cook up some ribs on my grill. I should have them ready at 1700 hours."

She aimed a grin at me before turning back to her screen that displayed highly magnified images of star system over a hundred light years away.

Several hours later, she strutted into my quarters and entered the kitchen area.

I turned to smile at her. "Hey! Grab a seat. The ribs should be well done enough." I pasted more sauce on a couple of ribs and then placed them on plates and brought them over to a table where Molly was seated.

"These should be just right," I said. "I'll get us some beers."

I returned from the fridge with two beers and placed them on the table. "How'd it go?"

"Great," she replied. 'I've found at least four possible habitable planets within a hundred light years from Earth, and none of them are on the reptilian intelligent species list."

"That's good news. Maybe we'll get lucky." I gave her a more serious expression. "If we do find a human female, do you know how to impregnate an embryo into her?"

"Yes, it's not all that difficult. All I have to do is determine the perfect time in her menstrual cycle to do it."

I shook my head. "I'm glad that you know about these things. I'm clueless, unless it involves electronic circuits."

She guffawed. "You must know something about the female gender."

"I do. I was married and had two children, but I was only a bystander when it came to the delivery event."

"What happened to your wife?"

"She was lost on a mission to Titan. The both of us had retired from Space Command to teach, but she couldn't resist one last great mission. That's the reason I joined this mission. I figured that I could find a new life."

"Sort of like a reboot," she said with a slight sign of emotion. "I was also married, but my husband died in the African War. We had a child, but I lost her in an industrial accident."

I shook my head again. "Yea, life sucks." I gave her a subtle grin. "It seems that we are both in a reboot."

"At least we understand that," she said.

I realized that she understood our new situation, which was a completely new way of life. There was no possibility of children. We were essentially just two partners on a cosmic mission to preserve human life.