Welcome to the Galaxy

Paris 2400 AD

The city was light up with light tubes. This was a cultured city. It was rich in history too. It was the Capital of the planet now. All the nations of the world sent representatives to the governing body here. Many wars had led to this creation. The Paris Peace Accord of 2389 was signed after the ninth world war. Three billion people had died during that war. This body was setup in an attempt to avoid any more world wars.

The world was still trying to recover for the loss of the last one. It had been elven years since hat happened. Large sections of the world were uninhabitable. Some had been poisoned by chemical weapons and others blasted with nuclear radiation. It wasn’t just from this war, many other wars had dwindled the useable tracts of land too.

Helion saw the world map. Areas that were uninhabitable made up fifty percent of the worlds old surfaces. A new continent had emerged in the Pacific Ocean. The trauma inflicted to the world had unlocked the core volcanoes along the ring of fire and a ring of new islands were created. The worlds oceans rose and covered the low lying coast around the world.

The area where Helion had been trapped was covered by the lands destroyed in WWI. Chemical weapons had been used to dire effect. Things had become so bad both Arctic regions had been populated.

Helion had his patent idea. He could create scrubbers that would pull the radiation out of those areas. He could turn it into fuel too. There would be more than he could use. Of course they could be weaponized but they were defensive weapons. The chemical wastelands were harder to cleanup. They wouldn’t provide him anything he wanted or could use either. Just the scrubbers should get him anything and everything he could want.

It would require him to make metals that capture radiation. They were not likely discovered on this planet yet. Helion was not sure where anything was yet. There were pamphlets around to find important sites. He searched for a library. He had not yet seen any written documents on this planet but reading them would be no problem. His memory had been trained to decode languages in school. That was how he knew the language as soon as he came out of he womb.

He took the pamphlet and jumped on a bus. The public transit system was free. He would have to switch routes four times to get to the library but free was a price he could afford. He arrived at the library two hours later. It was called the Global Peace Research Library. It was a public research center. 

When Helion entered the library he was given a pass card. It allowed him to use the digital library and had access to all the books. There were copies of every language and written work ever discovered on the planet. Many that had not been translated were available to view.

Science history was the topic he chose to search. He focused it down to the periodic chart. They had discovered a fair amount of base elements but most that he knew about were unknown. The one he needed was not. It was as he expected. He would have to create it but he could use the know materials. When they were used together they would create it and it would cleanse the radiation from the air. Containment canisters could store it for use as fuel.

He spent a week designing his schematic. His time was spent between the library and a homeless shelter. Helga served the meals and ate there. She was sleeping there too. It was divided into four sections women, men, family’s and open. She stayed in the women’s section. 

Helga submitted the patent on the scrubber system for radiation cleanup. In less than a week she was moved into the best suite in the most expensive hotel in the city. The patent had been purchased and the contract details were being discussed. She had been paid a billion world dollars just for the idea. Actually building it was another matter. A working prototype would yield more pay and rewards.

The containment cylinders were not part of the original design on purpose. Helga had that one in work and was planning on submitting it for patent the next day. One was useless without the other. Helga was designing the spaceship to run off the radiation too but those plans were well hidden.

Helga made a list of supplies needed for making all the components of the ship. Everything they needed to build in order to build the ship would have to be able to for into the ship too. It was all too advanced to be left behind. The billion world dollars would not get him all of it. It would get them close.

The design had to be modified over and over again as Helion though of new machines he would need. The chemical area where his cave was would be safe enough to build it. Getting the supplies there would be a trick. 

The town that had been destroyed twice had been called Liberte the second time. Helga decided to have the supplies delivered there while chemical suits. She claimed, she would work on developing a cleaner to deal with chemical contamination there. With her recent patents for the scrubber and the containment tanks she was awarded a contract. The available funds attached to the account filled the gap in material costs. There was enough left over to actually build a scrubber system for the lands affected by the chemicals in WWI.

Before everything was in place, four months had passed. The labor pains began. It was the worse pain imaginable. It happened over and over again. Helga insisted on a natural at home birth. She wanted to given birth the same way her mother had. It was a way she could connect with her past and the family she had abandoned. She suffered in silence through most of it. The tears flowed freely though. The physical pain was nothing compared with the emotional pain when she longed for her mother.

Helion was there inside her mind comforting her the whole way. Their connection deepened during the shared experience. Helion felt her pain and emotional torment as if it was his own and realized just how strong she was. He was amazed by her strength.

It took a full day before the baby came into the world. She gave birth to a girl and named her Emma after her mother.