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Alliance Space Vessel (ASV) Endeavor

En route to Gatrell Corporation's Central ISM Grid Station

April 14, 1984 RE

The craft that had been built for us was a thing of beauty. Terry and the other AIs had assumed that since I owned the facility and that I had personally requested the production order that I wanted corporate yachts built for myself and my friends. As a result our craft had huge open hallways that were decorated with fine pieces of artwork that I had no idea where the AIs managed to find them. The carpets that covered the floor were finely woven and just as soft to someone that was six feet tall as they were to someone that was over 300-feet tall. To Col. Miller the place was a bit of a nightmare.

There were access hatches all over the ship and there was not much security. Lockwood or Pro'Kir could have easily slipped onto the large vessel without anyone being the wiser. The Colonel also did not like that we were going to be the only ones in space. The pilot unit, Ace, had informed us that the systems that would let us get into space were damaged and that all the other crafts produced were not going to be able to make it into space. Ace could only guarantee us one trip into space and back before the systems failed and it did not suggest we go back to pick up more personnel like the Colonel had wanted to do. At least all of the ships could work perfectly well within the Earth's atmosphere for up to five centuries if the estimates given us had been correct.

Besides those problems, things were going pretty smoothly. The only issue we had was what to call the ship. Since we were pretty certain that both Caressee and Virania were going to be using these things we decided to call them Alliance Air Ships with the exception of our own vessel for just this one trip. For this trip we were calling it an Alliance Space Vessel. We decided not to call it a ship because nobody could take the acronym seriously. Endeavor also seemed like a fitting name for the vessel considering what we were doing and what we had already been through.

The vessel was unbelievably comfortable and various different machines pretty much ran everything. From what we could tell everything from before the Enders War was at least primarily operated by machines. One of the problems that the Terran Coalition had with their society back then was that machines seemed to have taken over. They did all the work and humans received all the benefits. Even running a major corporation like the one that produced crafts like the Endeavor was considered more of a chore unless you enjoyed that sort of thing until the war had actually begun. The machines had produced enough that no one really had to work for anything unless they wanted to, but the war had changed that. So many materials had to be diverted to the war effort that people had to start working again in order to survive for the first time in centuries. There were many people that had been bitter toward the TC over that one and it is one of the primary reasons historians today believe that the TC never gained the same number of supporters that the Solarian Federation had. With the war on, owning a major corporation finally started to be worth something again and it was easy to see why if only they could still afford the luxuries available on something like the Endeavor.

Things were especially nice for me and my new wife Tracy. A special suite had been constructed for the two of us. We pretty much had an entire level of the ship all to ourselves if we wanted it. The ship had been constructed that way so that the owners could make themselves whatever size they pleased and service units would rearrange walls, furniture, and whatever else they needed to suit their sizes. Since Tracy was currently the larger of the two of us the room had been scaled to her size. That did not leave me stranded in a room built for a giant though. There were tele pads all over the place. Because of them I could actually make my way across the room even quicker than Tracy could. They were even built into the bed, which was made of some material that had a relaxing affect on any part of the body that happened to touch it. After touching the thing I was surprised that anyone could manage to tear themselves out of bed in that long ago time. Even the food was delicious. There was just a little hole in the wall that would make anything we asked for. I really wished that I could understand the science behind how one of those food makers worked.

We did not have much time in our room. Col. Miller was trying to make sure everyone stayed together until we made it to the station. Chances were that Pro'Kir and Lockwood had managed to sneak on board and the Colonel was not taking any chances, especially considering the size of this vessel. It was capable of comfortably fitting up to ten people that were normal sized before they decided to shrink everyone into it. Since those people would have been around ten miles tall to us that really puts into perspective just how large one of these vessels really is and just how much space our escapees had to hide in it. The Colonel had everyone gathered on the bridge of the ship. That was because Ace was installed in the bridge and Col. Miller really wanted to make sure nothing happened to our pilot.

The view from the bridge was rather nice. It was located on top of the ship and we had a 360 degrees view from there. The Earth looked like an intricate tapestry from far above its surface. One environment just faded into the next just as the ancient humans had intended them to do. Space was also a pretty interesting place. There was a lot more debris around than I had thought there would be. All sorts of different production facilities, hotels, research facilities, advertisements in more languages than I knew existed, and things that I assumed were weapons platforms were just floating around along with a few other things. It looked like a fairly large population had been living in orbit above the Earth, but it was fairly obvious all of those things were abandoned now.

What we were headed towards was not the largest or most spectacular thing floating around, but it was still impressive to me. It was not as large as I expected it to be. The station had been designed before they decided to shrink everything, but I guessed that they decided to shrink the station a bit too. It did not look like it was built for anyone over three or four thousand feet tall. The station itself was composed of seven different hexagon shaped sections. One hexagon was at the center of them all and there were a great deal of cylinders connecting all of the sections together. That pattern, combined with the pure white hull of the station, made it look like a giant snowflake to me. We were within a few minutes of reaching our destination and Col. Miller was giving everyone a little talk.

"When we get on that thing my team is to touch absolutely nothing," ordered Col. Miller, "We already know something is wrong and we don't need to cause anything else to go wrong as well. Anyone not large enough or with the training to take on Alpha Pro'Kir in a one on one fight is not to wander off on their own under any circumstances. Is that understood?"

"Yes sir," everyone echoed, including my team. At the Colonel's size he was a pretty imposing figure and he had not stopped growing since the battle with the eagle nor since we entered space. He was just about to top the 500-foot mark, unless you counted the ears in which case he was well above 500-feet tall.

When the Colonel was done speaking a 420-foot tall Tracy, whose shoulder I was sitting on, asked me, "Larry, do our voices sound that deep to you because yours doesn't sound squeaky at all to me? It is a little more high pitched than I remember, but not much."

I had been thinking about that question myself and I said, "No, your voice is not that deep to me. It is deeper than it was before, but only by but so much. After you reached a certain height it stopped getting deeper. I think it probably has something to do with some piece of tech that was previously unknown to us. It would make sense for something like it to exist. We have already seen that they used to work at different sizes and it would not have worked out too well if somebody's voice was too deep to understand or if others had to deal with annoyingly high pitched voices."

"I suppose that does make sense," Tracy said and then looked at the station, "It's beautiful. Do you think something like that has any hidden dangers in it?"

"Who knows? That thing could have anything in it," I said, "For all we know shrinking things could just be one of its secondary functions. Each one of those hexagon sections could have been responsible for any number of different things. For all we know there could be a planet busting weapon built into one of those things."

A grin spread across Tracy's large face and she said, "You sure know how to comfort a woman, don't you?"

I think I blushed a little with embarrassment. Then I said, "Sorry, I wasn't tryi-"

"That's alright," Tracy interrupted me, "I was just kidding. You managed to get that facility functioning in less than a week. I think you and your team will do quite fine on the station and you will keep the rest of us out of trouble. Then, maybe, you can get us back to normal."

"I'll see what I can do," I responded as the Endeavor started to move into what appeared to be a docking area.

"Looks like we're here. I hope Ace took us to the right place," said Tracy.

"I'm sure he did. Look at that logo over there," I said while pointing at a triangular symbol with the words 'Gatrell Corp. Est. 3258 AD' written inside of it.

After a few seconds Ace turned around to talk to all of us. Ace was a lot smaller than I had expected him to be. Our pilot was no more than a foot tall and multi-limbed just like Terry had been. The pilot station was fitted to his size. There was a larger manual pilot station, but I figured he was small enough to be easily disabled should he malfunction and try to fly a ship straight into the Earth or something like that. It was still amazing that such a small thing could pilot such a large ship. "Please wait for the signal that it is safe to disembark before leaving," said Ace. There was a set of red lights outside of the ship that did turn green after a while and I took that as the signal.

Before long the Colonel had us all off the Endeavor except for five of his soldiers. He did not want some unwanted intruders trying to steal our ride even if the AIs back at the production facility said it was impossible for anyone but authorized personnel to use their crafts. They had sounded almost insulted that we believed their craft could be stolen so easily. It did not take long for a welcoming party to greet us. A gray robot that was a little taller than I was came floating over in our direction. Besides the rounded bottom that was floating off the ground it looked fairly human.

"Ah, humans! Finally," said the robot, "It has been far too long and I need proper authorization to get anything done. What took you all so long?"

Everyone looked at me and waited for me to respond. Apparently things had gone well enough at the facility that I had become the unofficial ambassador to robots. "I'm afraid the Ender's War caused a considerable amount of damage to humanity. We have been unable to reach this station up until now," I said.

"I see, a dreadful thing that war. That last attack by the TC must have been more devastating than we had calculated," the robot said, "But, that really is not all that important now. I need proper authorization from a human to get anything done."

"Authorization to do what?" I asked.

"That's up to you. All of our systems are severely underpowered and there has been damage done to other parts of the station by a collision with a derelict dreadnaught. It seems like everything is out to tax the limits of the ISM grid," said the robot. "First that virus creates all of those anthropomorphic creatures on Earth, all of which are very energy intensive to keep at the set size limit, and then that warship just has to collide with the only section of this station housing the ISM grid. In addition to that there is also the damage that was done to the energy collection ship by those pirates all those years ago. Something is going to have to be done or we are going to run out of energy before the ship can return."

"Wait, um, what is your name?" I asked.

"Forgive me, in my fervor to be of service I neglected to give you my unit designation. I am called Rem," responded the robot, Rem.

"You said there is only one section of this station that houses the ISM grid. What are all the others for?" I asked.

"The Gatrell Corporation is, or was, responsible for many different research projects. The center module, the original one, houses the ISM grid," explained Rem. "Many of the research projects in the other modules were abandoned or destroyed by hackers during the war, but module 4 is where a few of your teammates ancestors were created and module 7 used to host the annual SOL system children's science fair. The units in that section do so miss the children. I don't suppose you would be interested in starting that back up again would you?"

"I know a bunch of kids, and adults for that matter, that would love to have a science fair up here, but I doubt we'll be able to get back up here for a while," I managed to say as the shock that I was standing in the birth place of dragons sunk in. "Unless we can find something to repair one of the systems in our vessel this is going to be a one time trip."

"Oh my," said Rem, "Then we'll just have to make sure that we get everything done while you are here."

"Just what do we need to get done?" I asked.

"For one thing, you will need to choose just what to grow. A significant portion of the Earth's population will have to be grown to avoid a complete failure of the ISM grid," explained Rem. "We have been trying to make sure that only things far away from major population centers experience any growth to limit the effects of this unexpected growth on humanity, but with the way things are we had to let things grow even within the major population centers. The larger things are, the easier it is on the ISM grid. Once we receive the new fuel shipment and repairs are completed on the grid we should be able to return everything to their set size."

"And when should you be receiving a new shipment of fuel?"

"The energy collection ship just set off for the sun yesterday. It did drop of a significant amount of fuel, but most of it had to go towards more vital systems, such as the one that lets people breath properly at their set size," Rem said. "Due to the damage the energy collection ship's engines have taken it can only travel at approximately 57-kilometers per hour according to pre-Microscopic Era measurements."

"Wait," I said, "By those measurements the Earth is supposed to be 150 million kilometers away from the Earth. That's a three century trip to the sun and another three centuries back." That horrified me. If what Rem was saying was true then there really was nothing we could do for the people that had already grown. Everyone was just going to have to learn to deal with the idea of having giants around for the foreseeable future.

Rem then went on to say, "Well, there is nothing you can do about the three century trip to the sun, but there is a repair station located near to the sun. It just needs authorization from a human to conduct repairs from on the ship. That is part of some silly safety protocol to make sure we robots cannot just repair ourselves in the event of some mass robot insurrection, as if any robot would want to do such a thing. You humans do have overactive imaginations. But, once the repairs have been made the trip back will only take approximately 18 hours."

That was still a whole three centuries that the world was going to have to deal with giants. Would anyone even want for things to go back to the way things were after all that time? Entire generations were going to grow up where there were going to be people significantly larger than others. I made an effort to push those thoughts aside. There were still other matters that needed to be handled. "What else do we need to do Rem?" I asked.

"Just a few minor things really. I need authorization to conduct repairs and I will need specific instructions on maintenance operations that I can and cannot perform on my own in your expected absence," said Rem.

"That seems easy enough," I said.

"It should be. I just hope the ones with those stealth fields do not damage anything else while they are wandering through this facility," Rem said.

This time it was the Colonel that said, "You can detect those people?"

"Of course. This facility was equipped with the latest sensor packages to help prevent saboteurs from sneaking around without anyone noticing," Rem explained.

"And where are those two headed?" asked Col. Miller.

"The large felinoid creature is headed toward module 4 and the human is headed toward module 7," responded Rem.

I asked, "And what do you think they would want in those modules?"

"The sensors are also detecting access keys on the two in question. The felinoid has keys that will allow him to access the nanites that were used to create the dragons' durable hides as well as the ISM grid. As for the human, he has keys that will allow him to access Brother Eye and Sister Ray."

I think I knew what Alpha Pro'Kir planned to do. He somehow planned to get the nanites back to Firanel and create a race of virtually invulnerable titans that would be able to grind humanity, and any anthros the disagreed with them, beneath their feet. There was one question that needed asking though. "Rem, exactly what are Brother Eye and Sister Ray?" I asked.

"Those are creations of the winner of one of the children's science fairs. One child actually managed to alter an old kinetic energy weapon for her project and she also vastly increased its accuracy back in 191 ME," said Rem. "The weapon was too weak for anyone to care about during the Ender's War, so it went unnoticed and is still intact today. But, if your society is really incapable of space travel like you say it would be significantly more dangerous to your people."

I could see that the Colonel was about to explode. He must have figured out the situation by now. If Firanel had an invincible army at its disposal it would quickly become everyone's problem. And then Galvanta was trying to gain control of an orbital weapon that no one had a defense against. Repairing this station was probably of secondary concern to him now. When he had a moment to take everything in he said, "Dr. Sanders, I'll trust your team to complete your mission while mine handles a little side job."

"Of course Colonel, good luck," I said. Things just couldn't be simple. We were left with a couple of bodyguards while the Colonel went off to fight his own battle. The rest of the prisoners were left sealed in the ship. A couple more robots showed up to guide the Colonel's team toward Pro'Kir and Lockwood while Rem led me and my team toward the section where my team was needed. I had just enough time to say farewell to Tracy as she went off with the Colonel.