Chapter 2

In 2014 I found myself suddenly idle and rich due to the successful results of my energetic efforts a few years earlier. After 15 years in the frenetic computer business of the 1980s through the new millennium, I had built a small software development business into a company that was worth quite a bit in the real world, many times that in the delirious inflation of high technology companies in the years preceding CWII. So I sold it and was prepared to retire before 40, which was due to arrive in 2015. unfortunately, CWII arrived in the same year.

CWII, is of course, the second Civil War (Civil War II). Despite the economic prosperity of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, the chronic problems of corruption and ineptitude on the part of the federal government coupled with increasing erosion of liberty and interference in the lives of the American people continued until it was too late to fix it. Then the president who had just failed to win reelection decided he was not going to leave.

The revolution began as a series of unrelated actions in various parts of the country, but as the factions and their objectives became clear, the rebel organizations began to work together and a full scale war was underway. But this time there was no north and south, no states choosing sides. Instead the rebel organizations held large areas of largely rural territory, while the urban areas were held by the Federals, as we called them. We being the rebels, or the partisans as we called ourselves, after the freedom fighters in Europe in WWII. My retirement estate in northeast Arkansas ended up in the middle of a stronghold of the Southern Militia, which comprised the forces drawn from several deep south states.

The Federals held on for over five years, but in the end we won. I persuaded the militia to leave my property intact by performing some services, which included behind the lines operations that almost got me killed more than once, and brought me into contact with Glenn Miller, Captain, U.S. Air Force. Status AWOL, or perhaps deserter by then. Over three fourths of the armed forces deserted when they they were ordered by a president who they knew despised them to kill their fellow citizens, so Miller had plenty of company.

As the Federals' position progressed from bad to hopeless, the would-be president-for-life tried to flee the country, with his wife and a lot of cash, gold, and other valuable stuff. We had a man inside who gave us everything including the flight plan, so we decided to change their itinerary. Miller and another renegade Air Force pilot used their F-27s to force Air Force One into rebel-controlled airspace while my force of partisans secured the airport long enough to land the aircraft and remove the passengers. The hapless pair were our prisoners for another eight months, until a group of partisans, speculating that the impending cease-fire and likely peace treaty would involve release of all prisoners, executed them. Although Miller and I had nothing to do with it, and in fact did not know about it until it was too late, our participation in their capture, along with our other wartime exploits got us a lot of notoriety, as well as invitations (to use the term loosely) to post-war inquiries and investigations, and eventually more interesting revelations.

When the federal government was completely disassembled and rebuilt by a bunch of outsiders, as was the case after CWII, one result was that all kinds of the most closely guarded secrets spilled out all over the place. Everything from polictical scandals that were successfully covered up for years to the truth behind assassinations and wars, not to mention the aliens.

Of course the rumors and allegations that proof of alien visitors was in the hands of the government had been around for years. And like most issues the government and the social elitists who were in a position to influence public opinion considered too hot to touch, anyone making claims regarding such matters was ridiculed, labeled as crackpots, and "debunked" by the ubiquitous experts. But when the conspiracy was broken there was no longer a way to hide the truth.

They were not in Hangar 18 in Arizona or at Area 51, though. They were stashed in cold war era bunkers in Virginia, close to the people who wanted to keep an eye on them. And there were not any live aliens. Not any more. But there had been.

It was during our time in DC that we met Dr. Hamblin, the old scientist who had studied the the alien material we had for many years. A crashed ship here and there, intercepted communications decoded and analyzed, the results of decades of research in the search for extra-terrestrial life. It was all here, and Dr. Hamblin knew it all. He also knew Miller, or at least his family. Miller's father had ranked high in the intelligence and diplomatic community, and knew Hamblin well. When he recruited us for the project he had dreamed of for years, he told us the whole story.

Most of it was becoming public knowledge anyway, under the new government's policies. What we got were details, technical details that were too long and boring for televison news or even newspapers. How the two aliens who survived a collision with a missile test firing over twenty years earlier. They and their shuttle were interned for years under the Virginia hills while scientists learned to communicate with them and understand their technology. In hopes of being able to return home, the aliens cooperated. But they were never able to build a new ship, or some say, were never allowed to succeed. They eventually died, but we had learned enough.

We learned the construction of the shuttles, their propulsion and navigation systems, and the bases from which they were launched. And we learned of the massive interstellar ships they used to reach our solar system, and of the hibernation system they used to spend most of their time asleep on the lengthy trips. And we learned much about the universe we lived in. Of course we already knew there was other life, we had two live specimens. They were somewhat humanoid in form, but shape was about as far as it went. And they were explorers, looking for worlds with life, colonizing some of them but apparently benign towards existing intelligent life. They had studied us for many years, but had strict orders (apparently not always obeyed) not to interfere in our affairs. Their cooperation with us was born of a desperate desire to return home and not die in a strange place, but it started us on our way to the stars.

In the months, and eventually years, that followed Miller and I, having volunteered for and been accepted into the program, learned the alien technology and what they knew (or had shared with us) about the universe outside our solar system. We took one of the first operational shuttles out to the base in the asteriod belt (in fact inside an asteroid). We saw the massive ship being carved from one of the rocks, over a mile long and a quarter mile wide, over a thousand feet high. Having been roughly shaped into a slab of rock in these dimensions, the massive engines built into one end, the control facitilites and cargo areas into the other. We learned how the ship would eventually hurtle through space at nearly half the speed of light, the computers doing all the navigation, occasionally waking up a few of the passengers to keep them company. The massive particle beam projectors that could vaporize a small planet if a collision could not be avoided. The hibernation pods that used a combination of drugs and computer software through nerve control implants that could effectively place a human being into a safe hibernation for months or years, allowing long periods of time to pass without the subject aging more than a few days. All the technology to travel to the stars had been handed to us years, decades ago and we had buried it. I often wondered why.

Then came departure day. Miller and I travelled out to the big ship with a small group of fellow travellers. We said goodbye to our friends forever, and to Dr. Hamblin. The old gentleman wanted so badly to be going with us he could not stand it, but he was far too old. Even if he slept the entire trip, he would still be almost eighty when we got to wherever we were going, unacceptable given the uncertain conditions awaiting us. We stowed our property and joined the others for the beginning of the trip. We would all be awake for the beginning, to take one last look at Earth and our solar system. As the days passed, the hibernation program would send us to our hibernation pods at intervals, where the control system would connect its control and monitoring devices and make us go to sleep until it decided we needed to wake up. Eventually we all would be asleep, except for just a few awake an any one time, only for a few weeks, then back into hibernation. As the ship progressed on its journey, it would scan any planets found along the way. If they seemed environmentally hospitable, a shuttle crew would be awakened to take a trip to investigate. That was the theory, anyway.

We were trusting the star maps the aliens had provided. We still didn't quite understand their computer technology, or at least what served them as computers. But we did manage extract data from it, and from that we got their maps of the part of the galaxy they were familiar with. It was this information that our ship would use to find a world suitable for human habitation, and perhaps one day find its way back to Earth. But by that time, if it ever came, those who sent it on its way would be long gone.

And that is how I came to be walking around inside an enormous rock hurtling through space at unimaginable velocity, in the year... what year was it anyway? Wherever I was.