Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (42 page)

Matt looked at his friend, a look of worry on his
face.  If anything happened to her because of whatever his parents were
involved in, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but he wasn’t able to wrap his brain
around the concept, either.  She didn’t deserve to be in danger because of him.

“I’ll go, it’s all right, Matt,” said Jessie,
displaying a calm he himself didn’t feel.  “I’m not sure what’s happening here
either, but I want to know it’s over.  I’m not sure if I should feel concerned
for you or angry that we had to outrun a band of kidnappers.  And if I get
worried something’s going on, I’m going to tell my parents and the police. 
Matt,” she added as she got out.  “Call me tonight.”  She shut the door and
walked quickly up to her front door without looking back.

“Oh well, that’s just awesome,” Matt said so his
parents could hear.  “Not like I have a lot of friends, and you just scared one
of them off, probably for good.”

“This isn’t just about us, Matt,” his father said as
he pulled out onto the street again.  “It concerns our whole family.”

Chapter 3

When they arrived home, his parents told him to wait
in the living room while they took care of a few things.  He had no idea what
that meant, and he didn’t really care too much about it at the moment.  He
tried to take stock of his crumbling life.  His parents were some sort of
fugitives or something, people were after him, and he’d probably alienated his
best friend.  Might as well move to another country and start his life over. 
He heard good things about New Zealand- maybe he could try there.

At least he could call Jessie like she’d asked.  He
dialed her number on his phone and waited for her to pick up.  It rang three,
four, five times.  He supposed he’d deserve to get sent to voicemail if that
happened.  Finally, he heard her voice.

“Matt,” she began flatly.  “You ok?”

Me?
He
thought?  She should be worrying about herself, not me.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  My
parents told me to wait downstairs while they somehow come up with a way to
explain all this.”

“Good luck with that.”

He was about to make a smart reply when his dad walked
into the room carrying what looked like a pair of handguns.  Something was
different, though.  They were shiny, and the end of the barrel looked too small
for an actual bullet to pass through.  Then his mom walked in carrying a tablet
PC he’d never seen before.  Hovering above the screen, though, was a
holographic display of what looked like a galaxy, complete with animated motion
and flaring stars.

“Blehhhh,” was all he managed to say.

“What was that?” Jessie asked over the phone.

His mom motioned to the phone and mouthed the phrase
‘hang up’.  He nodded and let his arm, phone in hand, drop to his side on the
couch next to him. 

“We’re sorry to drop this on you this way,” his dad
began while his mom tapped something onto the surface of the tablet PC, “but
there are a few things you need to know.  Those guys at the mall today were
here for you, Matt, and we’re going to tell you why.”

Matt struggled for words, finding none.  What were his
parents talking about?  He’d always complained his life was a bit too boring,
but every kid his age said that.  Nobody really wanted something crazy like
this to happen.  Maybe it was some sort of weird joke or life lesson they were
trying to teach him.  For all the talk about how he wanted to be treated like
an adult, how he himself felt like he was ready for the responsibility and
authority that came with making those grown up decisions, right now he wanted
nothing more than to be a kid.  Just go upstairs, play some video games, and
worry about something simple, like how he was going to con his parents into
letting him have more than one soda tonight.  It struck him that he really was
not ready for this, whatever
this
actually was.  He swallowed twice,
then tried to put a sentence together that would make sense. 

“Dad, what are those?” he pointed to the weapons his
dad held. 

“Ah, these are for self defense.”  He dad looked at
him, but Matt just stared back, willing his dad to continue.  “They fire a
charged packet of magnetically contained energy, which…”

“They’re blasters, Matt,” his mom said as she walked
over to stand next to his dad.    

This time, the idea was so crazy he was actually able
to come up with a sarcastic comment.  “Yeah, that makes sense, because we live
in a science fiction movie, and they have those there.”

“They have a stun setting…” his dad added quietly.

“Matt, what if I told you we weren’t from anywhere
near here?” his mom asked.

“What, like Canada?”

“No, I mean farther.” A long pause.  “A different
planet.”

Matt licked his lips and stared at them.  They had
obviously gone completely stark raving insane.  His parents were going to be
committed to an asylum, and he had nobody to live with.  He looked at them, his
mouth hanging open, unable to come up with anything to say.  How in the heck
did you respond to something like that?

“You’re going to need to say that again.”

“Our family is from another planet,” his mom said
gently.

“Ok, I’ll play along, I guess,” Matt said, stunned. 
He had no idea where this was going, but they were serious and apparently not
going to let this drop, so he guessed he’d have to see it through in order to
get to the punchline.  “How did that happen?”

“It was an experiment,” his dad said, and gestured to
the tablet PC his mom had set on the end table next to the couch.  “Maybe a
quick history lesson would help.”

His mom tapped the screen twice, and the small
hologram increased in size until it took up most of the living room.  The
galaxy still rotated, stars still twinkled, and he absently reached out to
touch one of the tiny stars.  The hologram changed, and it zoomed in until that
star was about the size of a golf ball, and it now showed planets orbiting it. 
The zoom effect gave him a touch of vertigo, and he closed his eyes for a
second to collect himself.

“How’s your world history coming along?” Asked his
dad.

“I’m getting a B.”

“Good enough, I guess,” he replied.  “This story
starts around the early Middle Ages, in the 11
^th
or 12
^th
century.  Technology was advancing faster than ever, universities were founded,
social development charged ahead.  Everything was great, and the plagues that
later swept the civilized world were over a hundred years off.  This advancement
drew the attention of some people from offworld.”

His dad paused, tapping the tablet PC, which changed
the holographic image to that of a different solar system.  Matt saw that here,
there were even little spaceships zooming around the system between planets. 
“There was a race of beings called that called themselves Clariens.  They were
very advanced; they were thinkers, scientists, that sort.  There was one, named
Enneb, who led the greatest experiment they had ever devised.  They wanted to
run a nature versus nurture experiment on a planetary scale.  They wondered
what would happen if a civilization was gently guided and allowed to advance at
it’s own fastest pace with the goal of bettering itself, free of wars,
inequality, crime.  There would be no prejudice, no crooked CEOs.  They wanted
to find a people who were new, free of outside contact, and give them the tools
they’d need like schools and shelter, and see how fast they’d advance compared
to the baseline.”

“So they came to Earth roughly a thousand years ago. 
They took, voluntarily so the records claim, tens of thousands of people from
all over the planet over a period of a few decades, enough to ensure genetic
diversity.  They took them to a new planet far away, which they had named Haven.
 There, the people were allowed to develop on their own with minimal contact
from the Clariens.  They had little or no fighting, corruption, disease,
because every person on the planet was focused from the earliest age on the
idea of furthering their civilization.  They already had the basics like food
and shelter, so they were free to spend their time learning and growing. 
Imagine what people could accomplish if they could spend their years striving
to better themselves instead of worrying about the things that drag us down.”

His father paused to look at Matt and check his
reaction.  “Yes,” Matt said, “that’s great.  You should try to sell that script
to Hollywood.”

“So the people of Haven eventually passed up Earth by
over four hundred years of development,” Matt’s father pressed on.  “Think of
how many times Earth had its development slowed.  Plagues, famines, witchhunts,
wars, that sort of thing always slows down the development of a people.  We
didn’t have that on Haven.  Life, frankly, was pretty good.

“Then, a hundred years ago, another bunch came to the
party.  They called themselves the Vorlins.  They had some sort of grudge
against the Clariens, and after a few decades of sparring, they destroyed
them.”

“What,” Matt asked, “like took over their planet or
something?”

“No, I mean destroyed.  They wiped out their planets
and hunted down every last one they could find.  There are no more Clariens
anywhere in this galaxy that anyone knows of.”

“Bummer for them,” was Matt’s reply, but it was a
little more thoughtful than his last response.  His parents noticed that he
seemed to at least be thinking about the situation they were describing and
trying to understand.

“Then the Vorlins realized we were in the picture. 
They decided to get rid of the humans as well.  Problem was, we had heard about
their attacks from the Clariens, and we fought better than they’d expected. 
They had an edge in technology, but we countered with something they couldn’t
possess- genetics.”

“Because we’re just more awesome, right?”

“Sometimes, I don’t think you take us seriously,” said
his mom.

“The Vorlins are able to disrupt almost any electronic
or light signal.  This causes problems while fighting in space, because we
couldn’t communicate with our ships, captains, bases, anything.  Our datalinks
couldn’t work, and if the distances involved were too great, we couldn’t even
get real time information on where our ships were, much less coordinate our
efforts.  The Vorlins were forcing us to fight individually, and they were
wiping us out.

“Here’s where everything changed.  Our scientists,
through research that had nothing to do with the war, found something
remarkable.  There was a very small percentage of the population that had a
gene that had a unique function- it gave the person a sort of sixth sense, an
ability to see and organize and multitask, to hold a number of things in the
front of their attention and make sense of it all.  It’s basically an enhanced
version of the common ability to multitask, though genetically it serves no useful
purpose since only with a computer datalink can this ability be tapped.  On
Earth, the people with this extremely rare gene are the people that can play a
videogame, talk on the phone, order a pizza, and solve a puzzle all at the same
time.  They can assemble one computer while testing another and carry on an
intelligent conversation and not screw anything up.”  His dad paused looking
squarely at Matt, waiting for him to make the connection.

Finally, it was there.  “Wait, you mean me?”  Matt
replied with doubt.  “So what?  I can do a couple things at a time.  There are
other people who are good at that.”

“There are, you’re right.  But only people with this
gene can do what is needed to coordinate a battle.  With training and the right
equipment, you could become a command center for an entire army.  You could
talk to, visualize, and order around fleets with a thought, using less
bandwidth than our computers take to say
hello
to each other.  With
enough people like you in the fighting ships, it would make an entire fleet act
like one perfectly organized unit.” 

“And why on Earth would anyone think I could be this
magic sorcerer?”

“Because we were,” replied his dad.  “Your mom and I
both served as Combat Coordinators.  It’s extremely rare, can’t be done artificially,
and often it’s genetic, so you most likely possess the same gene we do.”

Matt had finally reached the breaking point.  His day
had started off so gleefully normal, and now, after watching two strangers
fight over him, get chased out of the mall, a high speed drive home, and the
most insane speech ever delivered by parents to a kid, his mind was on the
verge of shutting down.  He just didn’t know where to go with all of this, and
it must have showed, because his parents stopped their presentation and watched
him, looks of concern on their faces.

Silence hung in the air.  Finally, someone spoke.

“You’re from space!!!” They heard Jessie’s voice
scream from Matt’s cell phone lying by his side.  “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh. Crap.”  Matt whispered softly, closed his eyes,
and slumped back into the couch as the air left his lungs. 

His mom and dad just looked at each other.  His dad
seemed to be holding back some sort of comment, and his mom just looked at the
phone in his hand, which he had obviously forgotten to shut off when he stopped
talking.

There was a sudden noise at the back door and it burst
open.  His parents both turned to the door and had their weapons raised in a
two handed firing stance in an instant, a practiced move that made Matt nervous
because they seemed to be so comfortable with it.  Jessie stood at the door,
one hand still on the handle and gasping for breath, since it seemed like she
had run the few blocks to the Falken house at a full sprint. 

She stopped panting for just long enough to look at
his parents and say, “I hope those are set to stun.”