SImp

One-hundred years cooped up with those you love? Anyway, you look at it, it was going to be a long time. So, what do you do to make it possible?

Our prime objective was to be a battleship, so everyone had to learn military discipline. As Serina was expert in the Imperial methods that was her task. She was planning on setting up tests to see where everyone fit. Then drills to make it perfect. Bit was planning virtual environments to practice in.

Serina and I were teaching the martial arts, and everyone had to attend at least a session a week. Boredom drove them to the classes.

Classes on everything! We had a wide range of experiences from chefs to ballet. That I participated in all the dance classes and after seeing me avoid Serina's attacks with some dance type movements they turned into a big deal. All the girls loved to cook as did I. This made the cooking classes a big deal as it gave everyone a chance to hang out with the leaders. The courses on Imperial life and history was a huge attention grabber. Serina and I hoped that by the time we arrived everyone would be ready for being in the modern world.

The real pleasure was our children. Teaching them, playing with them, loving them. And as practicing to make them seemed to be high on the things to do list, I expected a lot more of them….

We had every movie that we could find, and Imp had downloaded the congressional library, or at least everything that had been digitized. And as one of the investments that our company had made was to back an effort to scan the whole library it was pretty complete.

Games from chess to hide and seek. Lots of games. Especially if we could tie learning to it. Our kids may be getting spoiled, but they were learning along the way.

Then there were chores. The hydroponics had to be taken care of. Cleaning, laundry, scrubbing, and all of that stuff. When the kids saw me on my hands and knees scrubbing floors, they quit complaining and started doing.

I had asked Bit to crank up the gravity fields a whisper per day. Over time we would get to three gravities. Enough to give everyone a strength and speed edge. But the control of things falling three times faster than what you expected caused a reaction speed increase as well.

As far as how this trip was possible it was all because of Bit, his self-repair capability allowed us to duplicate the devices Bit used for propulsion so that we could generate the thrust needed to get us up to a good percent of C, or the speed of light. They were sort of a plasma jet device, that being the closest to what was available on earth when we left it. Bit also could use his ability to sort of grab hold of space and pull us which when coupled with the plasma jets combined to make the trip possible.

All those fusion devices that we had put in the nacelles provided the power for thrust as well as the fields that created the ship. We had enough power to get us going fast enough to start collecting hydrogen from space. At that point, we would be self-sustaining. We would refill the tanks during the trip so that we could slow down on the other side.

The ship was like nothing that the Imperial forces had, there was just no need for battlewagons when you could port where ever you needed to be. But like a kid with a toy I had to make the Enterprise bigger, stronger, and nastier just because I could. As the trip progressed, we could enlarge the ship if we needed the space. That was one nice thing about fields.

I could regale you with tales of all the cute things the children did, or some of the more humorous incidents during martial arts training. But I expect you can imagine them yourself. Just think of men and women in close quarters, stir in the typical antics of children the universe-wide and you will have a good picture of the circus onboard. All of that is without considering that Serina and I's intent was to acclimate everyone to the mores and customs of Imperial life. The crew had not been scared to death by a virus like our civilization had. Touch was accepted in the twentieth century but looking was forbidden. In imperial culture, a casual touch on the shoulder or a handshake was not tolerated. But, in general with specific area exceptions, out sunbathing in the park nude? Go ahead. Traumatic events like the core team had experienced simply did not happen in the Imperium. And if they did the odds were that the perpetrator would not survive to pass on their genes. But considering the customs of what we had left behind, adjusting to these new customs created some hilarious moments.

There were some adjustments as relationships failed. Not many as we had some very talented therapist/counselors onboard. But enough that new relationships were able to be formed. Some of them mimicked the core teams' structure, others stayed as couples.

We accelerated smoothly until we reached the point at which Bit's swift reaction time and his sensor range matched our speed. Our magnetic fields that collected hydrogen were much smaller than the design of a Bussard ramjet, so we did not have the issue where the force cost of collecting hydrogen balanced the thrust generated. Eventually, we reached a time dilation that matched our goals to arrive before I blew that base to dust.

Quoting Bessie Anderson Stanley's 1904 poem:

He achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;

Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;

Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;

Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;

Who has left the world better than he found it, Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;

Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;

Whose life was an inspiration;

Whose memory a benediction.

[end quote]

All that was left for the next hundred years was to Live, Laugh and Love.