Chapter No.68 Decision

Logic is sometimes tricky.

Back in Earth orbit, Molly and I had some decisions to make. One of the most important was where to put all of these new humans.

"I'm not sure it's a good idea to keep putting them onto Hawaii. What if something happens, like a giant typhoon, or a small meteor hit? We could end up losing all of them."

"What about America?" Molly said. "It's huge and would allow them room to spread out, alleviating the risk factors."

"There has to be food sources available. We haven't looked at America for quite some time. Maybe this would be a better job for Margaret and Alexa."

"Yes, they should be able to determine if there are viable locations in the Americas."

The answer to my idea waited until the traditional evening routine of dinner and relaxation in my quarters when Margaret, Marie and Alexa joined Molly and me for a discussion about our plan.

"We've evaluated several possible locations in the Americas," Margaret said. "We believe the best choice is California, or what was once California."

"That's an odd choice," I said. "California is split by the San Andreas fault and it's subject to severe weather variations."

"That doesn't seem to be the case now," Margaret retorted. "Evidently, the asteroid collision must have altered the Earth's plate tectonics and its climate. The overall global temperature has returned to what it was in the period before Europeans invaded the Americas. California is no longer a threat to life."

Alexa added to that. "We also found that the San Joaquin Valley is replete with many of the agricultural plants that were once cultivated there, like fruits, vegetables, peanuts, tomatoes, Kiwis, as well as many other food crops, some of it obviously introduced there by birds from other locations."

"What's really great about that location is that its climate is similar to what was common in the Mediterranean locations," Margaret said.

I raised my hand. "Okay, you've convinced me. In a way, it's probably a good location because it will give these people a lot of room to expand."

We also found something else we didn't expect," Margaret said. "Evidently, some animal species survived the collision event. We saw rabbits, squirrels, and wild hogs there."

"That is unexpected," I said. "It gives the new humans a proper diet." I turned to Alice and Ellen, who were standing nearby. "This operation to insert these humans on Earth is going to require many things, such as clothing, tools, huts, and other implements, to make their transition more efficient."

"We will activate more of us to accomplish your goal," Alice said.

"Thank you," I replied with a smile.

Neither Alice nor Ellen moved. They simply passed my ideas off to the collective intelligence center and it was immediately implemented.

The next day, the androids began the task of awakening the humans in stasis. This would require many androids to assist them in the process of preparing to go down to their new home.

Molly, Margaret, Marie, Alexa and I went down to the location of their settlement. The androids had already begun installing huts and stone walkways. Other androids began creating a water supply system from the river that flowed through the valley.

"What if this area suffers an earthquake?" Marie asked.

"The effect would be nominal. These people are not going to be living in tall buildings. These huts could withstand a 7.0 or 8.0 earthquake without damage."

"Eventually, they might try to build skyscrapers," she said.

"We can't control what they might do. Our only task is to see that they are given the things necessary to survive, not build an empire."

"What about the future?" Alexa said. "What will this be like in a million years from now?"

"We need to plan for that. We had begun searching for a future Earth-like planet that could survive in the distant future, but we got diverted by the Scath."

"We are trying to locate moons around gas giants in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star," Molly said. "However, they present a different kind of problem because red dwarf stars emit a lot of powerful flares that could easily blast the atmosphere off of a planet orbiting it."

"What's the deal with red dwarf stars?" Alexa asked.

"They last for a very long time . . . trillions of years," Molly said. "Our G-class star will end its life in about four billion years."

"That seems so crazy," Alexa said. "Thinking about living billions of years."

"I agree," I said. "It's hard to imagine that we could still be around for that long."

"We'll probably die from boredom," Marie said.

"That won't happen anytime soon. We've only scratched the surface of the exploration of this galaxy, let alone the trillions of galaxies in this universe."

"I don't know if exploring other galaxies is a good idea," Margaret said. "We could run into an android or robotic species that is much more advanced than we are."

"That's what makes it interesting," I said. "Challenges are the elixir of life, or in our case, death."

"It's hard to comprehend that we're dead," Alexa said. "I don't feel dead."

"It's a philosophical quandary that can't be fully understood," I said. "It's lost in the quantum world." I turned to Molly. "Maybe you could come up with the math to explain it."

"Yes, and pigs fly!" she blurted.

We laughed.

"Seriously, we should continue the search for a new home world for humans," I said. "The future has a nasty habit of coming around sooner than we think."

"What about this new threat?" Margaret asked.

"You mean the Myst," I said. "Yes, we know very little about them, other than they're another robotic species. Like the Scath, they might not have a home planet, which means that we're going to have one hell of a time finding them."

"We might be able to trace them through their unusual homing signal," Molly said.

My left eyebrow shot up. "Homing signal?"

"Yes, I detected it during our last encounter with them. It might be a way to detect their presence before they appear out of empty space."

"Yes, that could be an edge. We'll have to explore that idea more thoroughly."

That seemed to satisfy everyone, but I was skeptical that the Myst would be stupid enough to announce their presence that way.