Prestor

Exercise is encouraged via the use of automatic exercise machines that descend with greater frequency as the child ages. Failure to partake in an exercise will result in a small shock. TV is used giving the child a view of a past life all aided with visual effects instilling knowledge of the past life that never occurred. When a child reaches an age where the reasoning facilities come into play the TV learning is discontinued and preschool lessons begin. At the age of ten all knowledge of this procedure is erased from the memory, the child put into a deep trance and then awoken, greeters standing by in order to reassure the child, the process repeated until the clone reaches prime.

The air is chill. He digs at the furrow using the wooden mattock in an unhurried manner.

"Been here long" asks Ken out of the side of his mouth.

"Seems like forever, can’t tell time properly any more any how".

"How come."

He stands upright and adjusted the sweatband around his forehead pointing towards the sky.

"That’s why, ever since they put me through the time machine the sun has been double, take a look, it’s the damn same for every one."

Ken looked up. Sure enough the sun was double, a thing he had not noticed on their travels where the forest canopy hid the sky. "Sure is funny at first, getting up at six in the morning, working all day and then going to bed when the sun is high in the sky."

Life at Santa Clara had changed. There was an atmosphere that wasn’t there before. For starters the guards where all identical clones, each having aboriginal features and the same short muscular stature giving the prisoners an uneasy feeling.

"Where the fuck are we," Caldwell asked in desperation.

"In Santa Clara goof, where did you think you where going to go when you signed those papers, to heaven?"

Delaney watched the planet Akenhaton as it passed under the skirt of the SSTO .The red light cast an eerie glow upon the circle of sloping windows. There is a click of static from the overhead speaker. "Laser beam contacting receptors". The voice wafted mechanically about the interior continually updating the locations of the operating ground based laser emitter stations. The commander gave a grunt.

"Light the rim thrusters"

Delaney reached for the bank of switches above his head with his left hand and then meticulously flipped all eight. There is a muffled bark and then a staccato stutter as the laser light enters into the combustion chambers causing combustion in a pulsed fashion in all eight-rim thrusters. Another hiss of static:

"GBL 24 for SSTO 4, we can give you power for the laser reflecting weapons for time slot 0124 hours."

The commander consulted the sheet of paper, placed it in the ‘read’ slot of the SQUADRON ROUTINE ORDERS box and then, after he glanced over the contents, placed it again in the slot this time reading the document in a more thought full manner. He inclined his head to the right of the headrest.

"Well Jim we will have laser power all the way down, make sure you fry any stations that so much as put a search tendril on us. All of the Alliance forces have our position and will not be cluttering up the sensors."

"Sure thing skip" answered the weapons officer in a confident tone that he did not feel.

Delaney began to feel the pressure on the soles of his feet as the gravity of Akenhaten began to take effect.