Julius looked on impassively as the last of the cargo was moved ontho the
ship. He thanked the station's governing intelligence and instructed his
neural crystonics to send his confirmation code to the records database.
All according to the plan...
Except for his missing pilot.
Looking his ship, Julius' eyes focused on the window that would normally
have shown his pilot going through his pre-launch proceedures. He growled
in frustration at the empty glass and muttered an oft-repeated curse.
+Late again, Cap'n?+ his cargo master resonated.
Respeating the curse, Julius resonated back +Aye, might as well toss the
flight plan...we're off to take the hero somewhere.+
+Too bad we can't get one of those AI's.+ The cargo master's resonance was
somewhat resigned. +But the Galaxy Police haven't let that secret get out
for millenia.+
*At least I don't have to pay him,* Julius thought to himself.
***
It was one of those unfortunate truths of the universe. If you wanted to
bypass the speed of light, you needed to use some sort of hyperspace. Yet
hyperspace was too...DIFFERENT for the normal being to tolerate in a
conscious state, let alone to pilot in. It required something more,
something special.
The Gift.
So rare that a given civilation was lucky to have a couple of people with
the Gift for each planet, it was impossible to rely on for any sort of real
interstellar travel or commerce. Whole centuries could pass without a
single Gifted showing up, so other methods had to be arranged.
Jurai's treeships were discovered to have the knack, but they were so
carefully controlled that they were unavailable to other people throughout
the galaxy. The Galaxy Police's greatest secret were their ship AIs, which
were able to traverse hyperspace without any problems...other than a
fundamental instability.
But then, the GP themselves weren't considered the most stable group of
people in the galaxy.
Other methods had been discovered, but they were only marginally less
reliable than the Gifted and unacceptably acceptable. It was this, more
than anything, that made Jurai the power it was. It was easy to control the
cosmos when you controlled most of the travel.
And then Earth entered the Galactic arena, causing a revolution in the realm
of interstellar travel only rivaled by the upheaval caused by the great
power of its rulers.
Earth was packed with Gifted. Where one world was lucky to have one Gifted
for every trillion people, Earth had dozens per billion.
There was a small problem with that. The Gifted were known by other names:
Heroes...and Villians. That peculiar ability that made the Gifted able to
travel the void of hyperspcae and remain sane is what made them more than
normal beings. They were the Champions of their races, the example for
others to follow, the monsters that hunted them, the demons they hated.
No one was really quite sure whether Earth's peculiarity was a good or a bad
thing...
***
Julius was sure. It was a curse.
After all, who would know better than Julius Quinn, the brother of The
Mighty Quinn?
******************
Coming...when I can do it, damnit...
The Gift
A Turn the Page Insert
and after that...
Turn the Page: Prologue...REWRITE.
(No, The Mighty Quinn isn't a Rush song...I don't care. It's not like I
could come up with someone from their songs..By-Tor? The Necromancer? Tom
Sawyer? Analog Kid? Digital Man? BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHumbug.)
--
Christopher Angel
c_j_angel@hotmail.com
http://angel.megami.net