NOSTROMO IN SPACE AND TIME by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

Solar System

Tina was already sitting in her chair,

consulting a datafile on her portable computer, when the first of fifteen persons she had called to this meeting started entering the ship’s command conference room. Actually, only one of those fifteen persons was a Human, professor and head historian Samuel Schmeling, while all the others were androids. However, they were all persons in Tina’s eyes and she cared deeply and equally about all of them. As Schmeling was taking his seat at the conference table, he smiled to Tina and spoke in a knowing tone.

‘’From the composition of the group of people you called in, Tina, I would say that you have a fresh mission for the Project Tempus team, right?’’

‘’Correct, Samuel! Chairwoman Mercier sent me a personal message yesterday, which contained a short wish list of subjects for us to document in the past. I will describe that list as soon as everybody wil be seated.’

Once everybody had had arrived and had taken their seats, Tina flashed a smile to them.

‘’Good evening to all, my friends. As you may have guessed, I received a list from Chairwoman Mercier, asking me to initiate a number of documentary missions in the past. We are also going to prepare for trips to the past meant to capture small herds of animal species which went extinct on Earth and which either the leaders of Asiana or those of the North American Union want to revive in order to populate their new home worlds. However, we will wait until the tests on the compatibility of the newly planted flora on Asiana and on Jamieson’s World with those past Earth species are completed.

There would be no sense in resettling those past species on planets where they would

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not be able to assimilate the plants they will find there. For those reasons, I expect that we won’t be going to capture those past animals for at least another year or two. We wil thus concentrate on historical documentary missions for the time being. The first mission on Chairwoman Mercier’s list will bring you to the England of 1888 and wil have two main goals: first, to document the living conditions of the low-class people of London, compared to those of the aristocratic and affluent classes; then to find out who was in reality the infamous serial kil er named ‘Jack the Ripper’.’’

Her last sentence got her an inquiring look from Samuel Schmeling.

‘’The true identity of Jack the Ripper is effectively one of the most enduring mysteries in History, Tina. It certainly would be worthwhile to find out who he was. For those here who have not heard about the story of Jack the Ripper before, that man was a serial killer who murdered and butchered in a very horrific fashion five prostitutes in the London of 1888. He was never found or identified and basically disappeared from History after his fifth murder. Since then, many theories were floated about who he was but none were ever proven. Furthermore, the list of historical suspects personally struck me as being stained with a strong element of racism, with most of the suspects being foreigners living in London and also being Jewish. Thankfully, the location and time of each of the five murders attributed to Jack the Ripper are well documented, so we will have a fairly easy time to post spy probes in advance. We will thus be able to record Jack the Ripper’s appearance and acts and then follow him around in order to identify him with complete certainty. As for documenting the living conditions of the various social classes in Victorian Era London, that will certainly be a most interesting and worthy job. Too many people who look at History tend to underappreciate the importance of the human factor in the history of Earth.’

‘’Very true, Samuel... Yes, Jehanne?’’

Jehanne de Domrémy, the most senior and also the earliest security android to have been produced for the NOSTROMO’s security force, lowered her hand before speaking.

‘’If I understood well what Professor Schmeling said, that Jack the Ripper sounds like he was a criminal and murderer of the worst kind who escaped justice before disappearing from History. We androids were built with the main goals of protecting our people and to enforce laws and justice. What will we do with that Jack the Ripper once we will find who he is? Are we going to simply let him be and leave the 19th Century or will we be allowed to administer justice on him?‘’

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The other eleven security androids, plus Eve Silisca, whose function was as an advisor and hostess, all nodded their heads in response to Jehanne’s question, with Eve then speaking in turn.

‘’From the story I know about Jack the Ripper, he stopped being active after killing his fifth victim and was never heard of as a serial killer afterwards. Some of the listed suspects then died in the following years or were imprisoned or committed to insane asylums for other reasons. What we will do with him after we identify him and after his fifth murder thus seems to give us many options for us, including executing him in the name of justice. Personally, I don’t think that anybody but the worst hypocrite would shed a tear for that monster.’

Tina had to think for a moment before answering Jehanne, as her question was a very pertinent one. One condition she had insisted on with Jeanne Mercier before accepting to do documentation trips to the past was that nothing would be done that could possibly change the course of History, however small that change could be.

‘’Normally, I would say ‘no’ to punishing that monster, in order to preserve History as we know it. However, if killing that Jack the Ripper after he kills his fifth victim proves to be a non-factor, then I will let you, Eve, decide on what to do with him after you have been able to assess the impact of his death on History.’

The smiles around the table were enough for her to see that her decision was well received.

10:39 (Universal Time)

Sunday, May 08, 2338

Large craft hangar complex, A.M.S. NOSTROMO

In low Earth orbit, Solar System

When the Project Tempus members selected for the mission walked into the individual craft hangar assigned to the command cutter AEGIS, they were accompanied by Tina Forster and by Pieter Nordlung and five-year-old Frida Thorund, who were respectively the husband and adopted daughter of Jehanne de Domrémy. As the other team members entered the cutter via its aft cargo access ramp, Jehanne stopped and crouched in front of Frida to kiss her on the forehead and flash a tender smile to her.

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‘’Don’t worry about me, my little love: I will be with a first-class team and will be back in at most three days. We wil use ‘hidden time’ during our mission, meaning that we may spend months in the past while still returning only days after our departure.’’

‘’I understand, Mother. Stil , be careful.’

‘’I will be, Frida.’’ said Jehanne, who then kissed the little girl again before getting up and kissing her husband on his lips. ‘’Take good care of her while I’m gone Pieter.’

‘’I wil , Jehanne.’’

Tina Forster, who was looking on from a few steps away, mentally wished that more people could see the amount of true affection her androids could show: that would be one possible way to cut the misunderstanding and mistrust, even hostility, that too many people around the Spacers’ League still felt about her androids. From being the first married Human-Android couple on the NOSTROMO, Pieter Nordlung and Jehanne de Domrémy also had been the first to adopt a child, in this case an orphan girl who had lost her family when the Space Predators had attacked and invaded the planet Nordland.

Not long afterwards, more such couples had formed, some of them also adopting orphaned children. Now, some 46 Human-Android couples had officially married, while many more lived together on an informal basis. It had taken quite a lot of legal arguments before those mixed marriages had finally been accepted and officialized by the social authorities of the Spacers’ League but, now that it was done, there was no turning back.

Finally ungluing herself from Pieter, Jehanne then grabbed back her large, old-style canvas bag containing a few changes of clothes, which included a few 19th Century dresses, and climbed the cargo ramp of the sixty-meter-long command cutter. Walking through the cargo bay of the AEGIS, she made her way to the cabin assigned to her at the level of the Hold, where she simply dropped her canvas bag in one corner before going up by one level and going to the operations center of the ship, situated next to its bridge sphere. The original purpose of the AEGIS had been to serve as a command cutter engaged in long-range exploration and mission support. However, a number of significant modifications and improvements had turned it into the dedicated ship of the Project Tempus Team, specializing in missions through time. As such, it was packed with sophisticated sensors and ground mapping and imagery systems, on top of having many stealth features, including a mate black external paint able to absorb radar waves.

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The AEGIS was quite difficult to detect, even by modern, 24th Century sensors, as it had proved when it had flown to El Dorado without being detected last December.

Once inside the operations center, Jehanne sat next to Eve Silisca at one of the sensors stations and smiled to the very beautiful blonde android.

‘’Ready to go, Eve.’’

‘’Then, let’s put this show on the road. Harrison, we are go for departure.’

‘’Good!’’ answered Harrison Ford, the android who was the pilot of the AEGIS.

Like the first 200 security androids designed by Eve and then built at the Avalon Space Yards, Ford’s appearance had been copied on that of a famous person of the past, in this case an American actor of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Its basic programming had also included basic knowledge the real Harrison Ford would have known, including his love of flying. However, despite of that, the present Harrison Ford was first and foremost a security android dedicated to defending the NOSTROMO and the citizens of the Spacers’ League, with a sub-specialty as a craft pilot. He then performed a quick pre-flight check with his copilot, Stacy Keibler, and with his flight engineer, Hedy Lamarr, before contacting by radio the hangar complex senior technician.

‘’Hangar Control, from AEGIS: we are ready for departure. You may open the hangar doors now.’

‘’Hangar doors opening now. Have a good mission, AEGIS.’

‘’Thank you, Hangar Control.’

Piloting manually the big, 9,000-ton craft, Ford flew his command cutter out of its individual hangar, then crossed the wide space of the circulation rotunda before entering one of the two main craft airlocks of the hangar complex, where the airlock depressurized to vacuum-level, before floating into the wide flying in/out tunnel, which had a cross-section of 200 meters by 200 meters. Another twenty seconds and the AEGIS emerged out of the NOSTROMO, to then veer towards the Sun. Using its directional gravity drive, the AEGIS flew to close to the Sun in a mere two hours, positioning itself at a precise distance and angle to the Sun before pausing for a moment.

‘’Golshan Maneuver jump calculated, with intended arrival date of August First, 1888.’ announced their navigator, Christian Bale. ‘’VISION is ready to effect the jump.’’

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‘’The ship is yours for our jump, VISION.’ replied Ford, who then got a reply from the artificial intelligence main computer of the ship.

‘’Thank you, Harrison. Accelerating now to our jump speed towards our transition point.’

Harrison could have effected manually that Golshan Maneuver, named after the young genius astrophysicist who had invented it, but he knew that VISION could perform that temporal jump with even more precision than he could. He thus sat back in his seat and let VISION accelerate the cutter towards a precise point very close to the surface of the Sun. Then, it activated their Koomak Drive generator, making it perform a micro jump.

That jump was characterized by a slight green tint to its normal orange flash, denoting a temporal displacement towards the past. When the AEGIS reemerged into normal Space, it now had the Sun at its back, two light-seconds or 600,000 kilometers behind.

Harrison then turned his craft towards Earth, visible in the distance as a tiny blue ball.

‘’Allison, confirm that the system is electronically silent and that we indeed jumped to pre-Space technology era.’

Allison Stokke, their sensors officer, answered him after half a minute.

‘’I confirm that there are no radio or radar emissions detected across the system.

We have gone back in time.’’

‘’Let’s see how accurate our temporal jump was. I will now make a spatial micro jump to get near to Earth. If we are indeed in the late 19th Century, then we will be able to see some city lights, although at a much lower level compared to the 20th Century.’

This time, Harrison did a manually-controlled micro jump, with the blue orb of Earth nearly filling the viewing screens when they reemerged into normal Space. As they put themselves in low orbit, Allison spoke up a couple of minutes later, once they started overfly the night side of Earth.

‘’I can see artificial lights from cities along the American East Coast.’

‘’Good! We wil now fly to a position above London, then wil send down a spy probe in order to confirm the date we are in today.’

‘’Understood! Am preparing one stealth probe for a fly-out. By the way, I am now seeing the lights of a few ships in transit across the Atlantic but I stil don’t detect any radio or radar emissions.’

‘’Sounds like we are at least within ballpark range of our target date. Let’s go see if it rains over London today.’

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William Windsor, their communications officer, smiled at that barb aimed at him. He was the avatar of a British royalty of the early 21st Century, with detailed information in his electronic databanks about Great Britain and its geography and history. He however didn’t reply and stayed quiet at his bridge station as the AEGIS flew down from low Earth orbit towards the British Isles.

In the operations center of the AEGIS, adjacent to the bridge sphere, Eve, Jehanne and Samuel watched their displays as the command cutter flew across the Atlantic, then took a geostationary position some eighty kilometers above the city of London. Shortly after that, a reconnaissance probe, carrying dozens of micro spy probes, flew out of the AEGIS and flew down towards London, to then come to a hover at an altitude of 10,000 meters, way too high to be visible from the ground. One micro spy probe, a tiny sphere with a diameter of a mere three centimeters, flew out of the reconnaissance, guided by Al ison Stokke, and headed towards the celebrated ‘Big Ben’

clock tower of the British Parliament. Once in clear view of the clock, it gave the crew of the AEGIS the first clue about the time they were in.

‘’Four fifty in the morning.’’ said Samuel Schmeling while looking at the image retransmitted by the micro camera of the spy probe. ‘’Al ison, fly down to near ground level and find the nearest newspaper vendor around the Parliament Building: it will give us the date we are in today.’

‘’Got it!’ replied Al ison via her intercom before making her spy probe go much lower while heading towards the nearest major street corner. It wasn’t long before the crew saw via the spy probe a young boy untying one of the two packs of copies of the London Time newspaper dropped by a horse cart on the sidewalk beside him. The tiny probe then got just above the boy, with its camera zooming on the newspaper on top of one pile.

‘’Thursday, August 21, 1888. Perfect! We are at the date we wanted to be.’’ said Schmeling after reading the date printed on the front page of the newspaper copy.

‘’Time to prepare our ground exploration teams. Jehanne, Fritjof, Greta, Ben, Maria, let’s go prepare our 19th Century kit. We will land in London after nightfall, past nine in the evening. That will give time to our crew to explore and film Victorian London with our spy probes.’’

The historian and the five security androids designated as field agents for this mission then got up from their seats and went next door to a compartment used as an historical

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clothes and accessories cloakroom. Samuel Schmeling, like his three android companions, had already selected in advance the clothes and items he would either wear or pack in his Victorian style canvas bag. He thus only needed to pack his spare clothes in his canvas bag and to hang his intended 19th Century outfit on a clothes rack.

Next, he opened a steel cabinet and took

out a selection of counterfeit British gold, silver and copper coins, plus a thick wad of

black and white banknotes, which were printed only on one side, as per the

banknotes used at this time in England. As

he distributed the banknotes and coins, he

gave some counsels to his field team members.

‘’Remember, people: we are not going to a safe city of the Spacers’ League but to a crime-ridden old city where rank poverty and pickpockets are rampant. Don’t flash money needlessly and keep an eye out for pickpockets, many of whom will be young preteen children.’

‘’And what do we do if we catch one of those pickpockets while they try to rob us, Samuel?’’ asked Greta Norstrom, who was due to team up with Fritjof Nansen while masquerading as a visiting couple from Norway. Samuel answered her with a gentle smile.

‘’You stop them, gently, then tell them to fuck off...in a polite way. However, if a thief takes out a knife or some other weapon on you, then disarm him and confiscate their weapon. I doubt that any such thief will then insist after seeing how fast your reactions are.’’

‘’And where do you plan for us to land in London after nightfall, Samuel?’’

‘’Near the Charing Cross train station, next to the Thames and to Trafalgar Square. We will then pretend to be a group of European and American tourists who has just arrive by train from Dover. From there, we will go take rooms at a nearby hotel of good quality before starting our mission proper. Hell, I really am impatient to visit the old London! This will be my first time when I will be on the ground and in the past, instead of just watching images from probes aboard the AEGIS.’

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21:06 (London Time)

Tuesday, August 21, 1888

The Strand, next to Charing Cross Station

London, Great Britain

Samuel Schmeling broke into a big grin as he pointed the big multi-story building made of beige stones facing him from across the street.

‘’The historical y famous Charing Cross Hotel, my friends. Built some 23 years ago, it is one of the more luxurious hotels in today’s London. There is only one drawback to it: it doesn’t have electricity. In fact, no hotel in London has electricity. The first one to have it, the Savoy Hotel, wil only open next year.’

‘’And what does it use then for heating and lighting?’’ asked Jehanne de Domrémy, who was masquerading as the wife of their ‘French’ couple.

‘’Coal, steam and lamp oil, like the rest of London. However, it is supposed to have flush toilets and running water.’

‘’Supposed to?’ said the statuesque Maria Sharapova, whose athletic body stood a full 188 centimeters, barely shorter than Ben Affleck, with whom she was playing the part of a couple of American tourists. ‘’Imagine the reactions of tourists from the Spacers’ League to this.’

‘’But WE ARE Spacers’ League tourists, Maria.’ replied a smiling Samuel. ‘’We just came while ready to adapt to this time, at least temporarily. In fact, showing the living conditions of the Londoners of the Victoria era is one of the main goals of making a documentary about this time period.’

‘’At least, this stupid fashion of

crinoline cage dresses is in the process of dying down.’’ added Greta Norstrom. ‘’How

could anyone invent such an impractical

garment, and a dangerous one at that?’’

‘’In fact, one of the reasons why

crinolines are falling out of fashion is the risk of it catching fire if a woman wearing it approaches a source of fire, like a fireplace or an oven. There were also the arguments about how it made some movements and actions, like going up a staircase, difficult and tricky. However, that’s fashion for you, my dear Greta.’

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‘’Where is my security officer’s shipboard outfit when I want it?’’ said Greta with a sigh, making Samuel grin with amusement.

‘’On the AEGIS, Greta. If you would be wearing it here and now, you would either create a scandal or panic. But let’s play the good 1880s tourists and let’s go take rooms at the Charing Cross Hotel.’

The group of one Human and five androids, all wearing contemporary Victorian outfits and carrying large suitcases made of either leather or canvas, then crossed the street, careful about the horse-drawn carts and coaches rolling up and down the street.

As they were about to get to the opposite sidewalk, Samuel involuntarily stepped on a piece of horse dropping.

‘’Shit! I am starting to understand why internal combustion engines and cars took over so quickly from horse-drawn vehicles.’’

‘’Indeed!’’ added Ben Affleck. ‘’There is also the rather pungent olfactive factor linked to animal-drawn vehicles. My olfactive nose sensors are nearly overwhelmed by the smell of urine and feces permeating this area.’

‘’Actual y, you should start recording those olfactive levels and compositions, Ben: that would be another way to show to our citizens of the Spacers’ League how different life was in the 19th Century.’

‘’A good point, Samuel. I will thus sniff my way around 1888 London.’

Once on the sidewalk, Samuel took a few seconds to scrape off as best he could the excrement clinging to his left shoe before continuing towards the entrance of the Charing Cross Hotel. A few paces before the entrance, the group met two small children, one boy and one girl, who were sitting on low stools along the alleyway, with buckets of water and large brushes in their hands. The older child, a boy of about ten, smiled up to Samuel while showing him his hard brush.

‘’May we clean the soles of your shoes, sir? It’s only one pence.’

‘’With pleasure, boy! Go right ahead.’’ replied Samuel before smiling to his comrades. ‘’You see? They have a handy solution to that problem about horse droppings. Let’s all have our shoes cleaned before entering the hotel. It wil give as well some needed money to these kids.’’

Jehanne de Domrémy went to the small girl and put up one of her shoes on the wooden block in front of the girl, letting her start brushing the sole of her shoe with her wet brush.

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Jehanne examined the girl’s face, then the boy’s face, before asking the girl a question in English.

‘’How old are you, girl?’’

‘’Eight, miss.’

‘’And is this your brother?’’

‘’Yes, miss: he is ten.’

‘’And your parents let you work this late at night, away from home?’

The girl stopped brushing for a moment, time to look up at Jehanne with a nearly empty expression.

‘’Our parents are dead, miss, and we don’t have a home, just the streets.’

The child then resumed her brushing as the members of the field team looked at each other, with Samuel in particular appearing to be both shocked and saddened. Jehanne then spoke in Latin to Samuel, a language all of them understood.

‘’Street orphans! And I am sure that there are tens of thousands more such orphans in London.’’

‘’Unfortunately, you are most probably right about that, Jehanne. Those two will probably end up like too many other children of this era: impoverished, uneducated, ignored and forgotten by History.’

Samuel’s words brought a sad expression on Greta’s face. Contrary to what too many citizens of the Spacers’ League thought, the security androids of the NOSTROMO were not merely faking facial expressions: they actually showed what the androids thought at the time, unless they set their reactions to ‘emotionless mode’.

‘’Yet, we are presently profiting from their work and wil then forget about them afterwards. That’s unjust!’

‘’I know, Greta, but what are we supposed to do? Save every street orphan in today’s London?’’

‘’Not all of them, of course, but what about those two? Jehanne is raising a small girl who was orphaned in the attack by Space Predators on Nordland. Other members of our legion who are married to Human partners also adopted orphans and are raising them as their own. Can’t we at least help those two poor kids? You know what? I’m going to call Eve about this and seek her counsel.’

Letting the others in her group go ahead of her to have their shoes cleaned, Greta took two steps away, then opened a radio link to the AEGIS, using the silent mode of communication. The two children brushing shoes thus had no inkling of what was

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happening, with Greta’s android companions listening in on her radio conversation with Eve and with them also jumping in in order to give their own opinions. With the typical lightning speed at which androids could analyze a problem or situation, the group and Eve came to a consensus within seconds, with Greta then informing Samuel of the result, using Latin.

‘’Eve agrees with us about saving these two children from their destiny of misery.

We will bring them to our rooms, will clean them, then will fly them discreetly to the AEGIS, which is now starting to come down to low altitude. Anastasia has agreed to temporarily take care of them once they are aboard.’’

Samuel eyed Greta, visibly touched, before speaking to her.

‘’Greta, the humanity of you and of your android comrades will never cease to surprise and humble me.’’

‘’You shouldn’t be, Samuel. Tina has considered us, and justly, as being a new sentient race for quite a few years already. We have been growing our mental sophistication while watching and cohabitating with the Humans aboard the NOSTROMO, refining our emotions processing along the way. While I could have reacted in a purely logical, cold way to the plight of those two children, I chose not to do so, and so did my companions in this group. We want to help them, and we will do so.’’

Greta Norstrom then switched to English and addressed the two children, who were still brushing the shoes of Ben and Maria.

‘’Kids, we would like to help you too, and not only by paying you for your services. We would like to bring you to the rooms we will be renting in that hotel, so that you could clean up and eat a decent meal. I will also check you out: I am a registered nurse. Wil you accept to follow us up to our rooms?’’

The boy and girl hesitated for a moment, taken completely by surprise by such an unusual offer. The boy finally replied with a question of his own.

‘’Why would you do that for us, miss? Nobody has cared one bit about us up to now. For most of the people around, we are just young laborers to be exploited on the cheap.’

‘’Because we are caring people, boy. What is your name?’

‘’Stephen, miss.’

‘’And your sister’s name is?’’

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‘’Her name is Samantha, miss. What about our buckets, brushes and stools?

We can’t leave them here: somebody wil then steal them and we will need them to continue working and earning a living.’

‘’Once you are finished cleaning our shoes and will be paid by us, simply empty your buckets and put your things in them: we will carry them for you up to our rooms.’

Understanding that Greta was serious, the two children then finished their cleaning work and took the pennies given to them by the group, then emptied of water their buckets through the nearest sewage cover grill before following the field team inside the luxurious entrance lobby of the Charing Cross Hotel.

Their entrance attracted quite a few looks, and not only because they had the two young shoe cleaners with them. Maria Sharapova and Greta Norstrom in particular attracted the eyes of many because of their uncommon height for women, while more than a few of the Victorian women present in the lobby eyed with obvious appreciation the 189-centimeter-tall Ben Affleck. The male receptionist in his late thirties who greeted them at the reception counter gave a surprised look at the two orphans before smiling to Samuel Schmeling.

‘’Welcome to the Charing Cross Hotel, sir! May I help you?’’

‘’You may, good sir. Our group just arrived by train from Dover, where we disembarked from a ship from Calais, and we would like to take three of your rooms. If you would have communicating rooms, then the better.’

‘’And for how long would you like to rent those rooms, sir?’’

‘’For at least a month and maybe more, sir: we are due to attend a history symposium that will last for the whole of September. We may then visit a number of sites in and around London.’

Obviously pleased by this, the receptionist opened his room reservation book and readied a feather pen and an ink bottle before looking back and smiling at Samuel.

‘’Our rooms go from twelve shil ings per night for the standard ones to up to one pound per night for our best rooms. Which ones would you like to have, sir?’’

‘’We wil go for your best rooms.’ replied Samuel, to the mounting satisfaction of the receptionist.

‘’I can give you a royal suite with three bedrooms, one large lounge, a private dining room and two bathrooms, for the cost of four pounds per night. This includes the breakfast, served in your suite, sir.’

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‘’That would be perfect, sir. We wil pay in advance for a sixty-day stay, with an option for a few more weeks after that if need be.’

Little Stephen and Samantha opened their eyes and mouths on seeing the thick wad of British pound banknotes that Samuel then took out from an inside pocket of his vest, to count a total of 240 pounds for the happy receptionist, who took the banknotes and put them in his cash drawer.

‘’And may I have your names and nationalities of you and of your friends, sir?’’

‘’With pleasure, sir. My name is Samuel Schmeling and my wife here is named Jeanne. We are French citizens. Do you need to see our passports?’’

‘’If you have passports, then I will note down their serial numbers, sir.’

Samuel nodded his head once and took out and unfolded a large, one-page velum document held in a leather holder, before presenting it to the receptionist. The latter noted down the name and passport number in his register as the other members of the group also took out in advance their own passports. After recording their names in his register, the receptionist went to a large key press and grabbed three sets of keys, then returned to the counter and gave them to Samuel. That was when the receptionist hesitated and looked down at the two children standing near Greta.

‘’Uh, are these two children with your group, sir? I recognize them as local children who regularly clean the shoes of our customers outside of our entrance.’’

‘’You did correctly recognize them, sir. If you would not mind, we wish to bring them to our rooms, to give them a good bath and a decent bed for one night. Would it be possible as well to have a light meal served at our suite in the next hour? We haven’t had a chance to eat a decent supper since arriving by ship in Dover.’

The receptionist was apparently touched by that gesture of charity from Samuel and nodded his head while looking at the children.

‘’I see no objections to this, Mister Schmeling. I must thank you personally for your kindness shown to those two children. I will have a meal delivered to your suite within the hour.’

Samuel then put down on the counter a large silver coin and pushed it towards the receptionist.

‘’This is for the meal, sir. While keeping it light, could you have a chocolate cake added to it?’’

‘’I wil take care of that, sir. A porter wil now help you carry your bags to your suite, which is on the third floor. We do have a steam-powered baggage lift at the end of

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the lobby. PORTER! PLEASE GUIDE THOSE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN TO SUITE

NUMBER 301.’’

As a porter came with a baggage cart and put the group’s luggage on it, Stephen timidly touched Samuel’s right sleeve.

‘’Thank you so much for your kindness, sir. I and Samantha don’t know how to thank you properly for all this.’

In response, Samuel smiled gently down to the boy and girl.

‘’To make you happy will be our reward, Stephen. On arriving in our suite, we will give you and Samantha a good hot bath, so that we could wash away all that dirt and grime. We will also wash your clothes and will let them dry during the night. You will then eat after your baths.’’

Conquered by all these promises of things they haven’t experienced in a long time, Stephen and Samantha eagerly followed the field team to the third floor, where the porter guided them to a large door bearing the number 301 and unlocked it before pushing it wide open.

‘’Your suite, ladies and gentlemen.’

The group entered a large lounge, followed by the porter and his cart, before Samuel gave the young man a gold Sovereign1 once the bags were off the cart. The porter looked joyfully at the gold coin, which easily represented over a week of salary for him, before grinning to Samuel.

‘’Thank you so much, sir. Have a nice stay at the Charing Cross Hotel, sir.’

The happy porter then left, with Samuel locking the door behind him before smiling to Stephen and Samantha.

‘’Well, time for a good bath for you, kids. My wife Jeanne and Greta will help you clean up while I and Maria will wash your clothes. Let’s get to work, people.’

While they bathed the two children, Greta took the time to discreetly examine the boy and girl for traces of past wounds or diseases. While both children proved to be reasonably healthy, they did prove to have lice in their hair. Thankfully, the team had included in their luggage strong anti-lice shampoo and soap. Still, it took two good wash and rinse cycles to get rid of the more resistant parasites. As for the dirt-encrusted 1 Sovereign: Old British gold coin worth 21 shillings. One Pound is worth 20 shillings, or 240

pence, while a Shilling is worth twelve pence. A Farthing was worth a quarter of a pence.

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clothes of the two children, they were vigorously washed, rubbed and rinsed by Samuel and Maria, then put to dry on top of the steam radiators used by the hotel to heat its rooms. When Stephen and Samantha stepped out of their bathtub, Jehanne and Greta dried them out before wrapping towels around their little nude bodies, in time to greet the delivery of a cart full of food and pushed by a steward. That was when one fairly recent modification made to the security androids of the NOSTROMO proved useful. Before that modification had been done on them, security androids could only ingest small quantities of liquids or solids when wanting to appear normal among Humans and had then to vomit back those afterwards. Now, all the security androids possessed a sort of basic replica of the Human digestive system, one that allowed them to ingest normal portions of food and drinks and then eliminate them by using a toilet, like Humans did.

As a practical point, that had eliminated one way by which Humans hostile to androids could identify them among a group of people. As the two small children started to wolf down the meal served to the suite, all the android members of the field team also started eating, albeit in measured quantities, pretexting that they had eaten a snack earlier on, while Samuel Schmeling did honor to the excellent food brought in by the steward.

However, the team members let the two children serve themselves the major portion of the chocolate cake that was part of the meal.

Finally succumbing to the late hour and their full stomach, Stephen and Samantha fell asleep soon after finishing to eat and were then gently tucked into bed by Jehanne and Greta. Retreating back into the lounge of the suite, the two female androids joined up with the four other members of the team to discuss in low voices their next move concerning the children. Jehanne, the android who had by far the most experience in dealing with a small child, thanks to her raising little Frida Thorund as her adopted daughter, nearly immediately objected to a plan by Samuel to fly them up to the AEGIS while they slept.

‘’Samuel, that could end up making them panic and think that we helped them only to then kidnap them for some nefarious reasons, like child sexual trafficking. They should be awake when we will transfer them to the AEGIS, with us explaining to them what is happening before we fly them out. That way, the shock they will still feel will be a lot diminished.’’

As the other androids nodded at that, Samuel realized that Jehanne was right and gave in to her argument.

36

‘’Very well. Their clothes should be dry in a few hours, when it will stil be dark.

We will then wake them up, talk to them a bit and then have an air scooter come and pick them up at, say, about three in the morning. At that time, the chances that other customers of the hotel or passersby would see our scooter will be minimal.’’

‘’I can buy that, Samuel. By the way, you should go to sleep yourself now if you want to be in shape to start our mission tomorrow morning. We androids don’t need to sleep but you do.’

‘’Touché!’ replied the historian, seeing the common sense in that counsel. ‘’But what will you guys do during the night, if not sleep?’

‘’We will play poker.’ answered at once a grinning Fritjof Nansen. ‘’You may not know this but us androids have found card-playing between ourselves to be an excellent and effective pastime. Since the random covert distribution of cards and the bluffing factor brings a nearly infinite variation to the possible outcomes of a card game, even us can’t predict fully what hand other androids hold.’’

‘’Oh! And what if you play cards against an expert Human card player?’’

‘’Then, that Human player will lose his or her shirt in no time, Samuel. We could go play poker in the most rough and tumble saloon of the American Far West and clean up the place...until some of the Human players would accuse us of cheating and starts a fight.’

‘’Ouch! I suppose that you could give a new meaning to the expression ‘poker face’.’

‘’Exactly!’ replied Ben Affleck, grinning.

03:10 (London Time)

Wednesday, August 22, 1888

Suite # 301, Charing Cross Hotel

London, Great Britain

‘’Samantha, Stephen, wake up.’

Greta Norstrom had to repeat a number of times in a soft tone her call before the two Victorian children started waking up, so deeply asleep they had been. The first to open his eyes was Stephen, who looked groggily at Greta, who held a lit oil lamp in the obscure bedroom.

‘’Uh, what time is it, miss? The room is stil dark.’

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‘’It is ten past three in the morning, Stephen. Your clothes are now dry and it is now time for you and your sister to leave the hotel.’

‘’Why so early? I could have slept for another three to four hours more.’’

‘’Why? Because we want to give to both of you a chance at a brand-new life, a life where you will not experience hunger, poverty and neglect. Here are your clothes, Stephen. Put them on, then we will go talk further in the lounge of the suite.’’

‘’Uh, okay, miss.’

As Stephen put on his now clean clothes, Greta helped little Samantha to get dressed, then brought both children into the suite’s lounge, where they found the five other adults sitting around a low tea table next to the large windows of the room, with a pair of patio doors giving access to a balcony. Outside, the streets were still dark, except for the limited light emitted by street lamps. Samuel gave a gentle smile to the two children and pointed at Greta and Jehanne.

‘’Please, sit next to my wife and Greta: I have something important to tell you, something that wil change your lives for the better.’

Both intrigued and a bit suspicious, Stephen nonetheless sat next to Greta and encouraged his sister to do the same before looking at Samuel.

‘’What do you want to tell us, sir?’’

‘’Stephen, what I am about to say will most assuredly sound like utter craziness to you but I assure you that I am completely serious. Besides, I can prove to you that I am telling the truth. Basically, me and my friends came to London in order to find and identify a dangerous serial killer who is targeting prostitutes of the Whitechapel and Spitafields Districts.’

‘’You are policemen?’’ asked Stephen, a bit shocked.

‘’We are...in a way. The way we met you and Samantha was completely fortuitous and had nothing to do with our investigative mission. However, you conquered our hearts the moment we met you and your sister and we then decided to help you before we start our investigation in London. To make a long story short, we would like to adopt you and take you to a better place than this, a place where you will be well taken care for and wil be loved.’

Samuel saw from the expressions which appeared on the faces of the two children that his offer was a very tempting one for them. He thus continued on in the same soft tone of voice.

38

‘’Both me, Jeanne and Greta are ready to adopt you, something we intend to formally do once our investigation in London is completed. Now, would you and Samantha be wil ing to be adopted by us, Stephen?’

That was when tears appeared on the boy’s face.

‘’You were the first to show kindness to us in many years, sir, while I realize that our lives in London will mean nothing but hunger and misery. Yes, I would love for you to adopt me, sir.’

‘’And you, Samantha?’’

‘’I want that too, sir.’ answered the girl in her tiny voice. The children then saw in turn Samuel and Jehanne shed silent tears, something that convinced Stephen that their offer was a genuine and well-intended one. Samuel wiped away his tears before speaking further.

‘’Stephen, Samantha, here is the tough part to swallow for you about us: yes, we are indeed investigators who came to London to find a serial murderer, but we are not from this time period. We are in reality time travelers from a distant future. What we would like to do is to bring you with us to the future once our mission will be completed.’’

‘’Time travelers? Is this a joke, sir?’’

‘’No, it is not a joke, Stephen. In fact, I am very serious right now. I also have a way to prove to you and Samantha that I say the truth.’

Samuel then picked up on the low tea table what Stephen had taken to be a portrait frame turned down and laid it at the vertical, using a sort of support at its rear to keep it up on the table. The front surface of that ‘portrait’ was revealed to be something which looked like a mirror. The problem was that what he now saw in that ‘mirror’ was not his reflection but rather the head and torso of a very beautiful young woman, who looked at Stephen and smiled to him.

‘’Hello, Stephen! Hello, Samantha! My name is Eve, Eve Silisca, and I am the leader of the team of investigators you met yesterday evening. I am presently aboard a flying ship positioned above London, while a much smaller flying ship is ready to pick you up from the hotel suite you are presently in. However, before we pick you up, I want to know if you and Samantha are freely consenting to come and live with us in the future.’’

‘’But, how could I see you like this, if you are flying over London, miss?’’

‘’That is one of the innumerable things you will learn at school on our ship, if you accept our offer. So, do you wish to come and live with us in the future?’

39

Still in shock from Samuel’s revelation and from seeing this incredible moving portrait, Stephen exchanged a long look with his sister, who spoke softly in a nearly pleading tone.

‘’I want to go with these people, Stephen. I don’t want to stay here and be beaten and abused again by Mister Rickerts.’

With a big lump in his throat, the boy then looked down at the talking portrait and nodded once.

‘’Yes! We want to go with you, miss.’

‘’Thank you, Stephen and Samantha. I assure you that you wil not regret your decision. The small flying craft I mentioned before is already near your hotel suite and will now come down on the balcony of your suite. Two women will be aboard that craft: they will fly you to our ship and will take care of you while our team does its investigation in London.’

Snapping his head towards the balcony of the suite, the two children were stunned to see a sort of small, black flying and wheelless cart with a window top slowly come down from its hiding place under the balcony on the next floor up. Two women were sitting in the machine, smiling and making hand gestures to invite them to come to them. Greta and Jehanne then helped them by gently escorting them to the balcony, opening the large double set of patio doors and showing them the two empty padded seats situated between the two women sitting inside.

‘’You may now climb aboard our flying scooter, children.’ said Greta. ‘’Hedy Lamarr and Anastasia Romanova will fly you to our ship and will take care of you while we fulfill our mission in London.’’

Both children hesitated again, until little Samantha took the lead and climbed aboard the scooter, helped by Greta. Stephen then followed suit, helped aboard by Jehanne, who planted a kiss on his forehead and that of Samantha.

‘’Goodbye, my dear children. One last thing before you go: who is that Mister Rickerts and where could we find him?’’

‘’Mister Sam Rickerts is the one who sends us on various jobs around London, miss.’ answered Stephen. ‘’He takes our money when we come back and often beats us when we don’t bring back enough money to his taste. He also abused once Samantha in a most vile way. He lives at number 26 Dorset Street, in the Spitafields District.’

‘’Thanks, Stephen: we wil certainly pay him a visit in the days to come.’’

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Jehanne then closed the canopy door of the scooter, allowing Hedy to fly off the balcony and then climb into the dark sky. The members of the field team all went on the balcony to watch it disappear in the night.

‘’That’s one good thing done.’’ said Jehanne de Domrémy. ‘’Let’s now concentrate on another good thing to do: finding that Jack the Ripper bastard.’

17:06 (London Time)

Dorset Street, Spitafields District

London, England

Ben

Affleck

and

Maria

Sharapova were walking slowly down

Dorset Street, a narrow, paved but

also definitely smelly street inside the Spitafields District in East London, in order to familiarize themselves with one of the areas where Jack the Ripper was going to commit his crimes during the next two months. What they were seeing screamed of utter poverty and despair, while the people walking around or sitting on the sidewalks wore dirty, ragged clothes. Ben and Maria’s uncommon height and good quality clothes in turn attracted a lot of stares to them, mostly curious ones but also a few depredatory or hostile ones.

‘’The olfactive readings in this district are definitely worth recording, Maria. What an awful place to live in. They must suffer often from diseases and even epidemics, with all that garbage and human waste lying around like this.’

‘’I see a sign announcing a ‘common lodging house’ over there. Samuel didn’t mention this to us in our historical review of this era and place.’

‘’I am not too surprise if we didn’t see documentation about that term, Maria: a lot of historical archives and documents got lost in the more than 400 years before our time, especially if you count the destruction to London caused by two World wars. That is actually one reason why we are here and now: to better document this place and time.

Let’s go check it out and ask questions to some of the women with children sitting in front of that address.’

The three women of varied ages sitting or standing on the sidewalk and taking care of two toddlers watched with curiosity the couple approach, admiring with envy their

41

high-quality clothes and shoes. The older woman, who was in her forties, then tried to make fun of them.

‘’Look at that fancy dandy and his tall lass2! They sure never had to sleep in a common lodging house before.’

‘’I sure never saw a woman as tall as that blonde.’ said another woman, who had a toddler sitting in her lap. ‘’They must be foreigners.’

‘’I sure wouldn’t mind picking through their wallets or purses, foreigners or not.’

added the third woman shortly before the couple stopped in front of them, with the man then addressing the older woman in an English tainted by a distinct accent.

‘’Excuse me, madam, but we are American tourists and we were intrigued by that sign saying ‘common lodging house, two pence a night’. What is a common lodging house, if I may ask?’’

‘’You don’t have common lodging houses in your country, sir?’’

‘’Er, not where I live, madam. We are from Texas, in the United States. This is our first visit to England.’’

‘’Well, a common lodging house, also known here as a ‘doss house’, is a place where poor people like us who don’t have a house or rented place of our own come to sleep at night, in exchange for a low price. There are actually two types of doss houses accommodations: a ‘lean-to’ lodging house, which cost two pennies a night to use; and a

‘coffin bed’ house which costs four pennies a night. This here is a lean-to lodging house.’

‘’A lean-to house and a coffin bed

house?’’ repeated Ben Affleck, truly

confused. ‘’I don’t understand.’’

‘’If you would show yourself to be

generous, sir, I could show you inside what a lean-to lodging house, also known as a

‘hang-over rope’ lodging house, is.’

Having expected a request for money, Ben took out of one pocket of his vest three silver coins, then gave one to each of the three women, making them smile and quickly grab the coins. He also sent at the same time a silent radio message up to the AEGIS as he was about to follow the woman inside.

2 Lass: Term commonly used in Great Britain to describe a woman. A man would be called in turn a ‘lad’ or a ‘laddie’.

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‘’Allison, make sure to record what me and Maria are going to visit. We are about to enter a place cal ed a ‘common lodging house’, where poor people can sleep on

‘lean-tos’ for two pence a night.’

‘’I am ready, Ben.’

With Maria following close behind him, Ben entered a large ground-level room lined with rows of rough wooden benches and wooden pillars. Thick ropes attached at both ends to hooks sunk into the walls were stretched in front of the benches at a height of about seventy centimeters. The room was nearly empty, except for an old woman who was busy sweeping the floor with a primitive broom. Looking around the place and still not getting it, Ben looked down at the woman who had led him inside.

‘’Uh, I stil don’t get it, madam: I don’t see any beds here.’

‘’You won’t find beds here, sir. When the people come to sleep here, they sit on one of the benches and then lean forward, resting their chest against the ropes laid in front of the benches. Let me show you.’

The mature woman sat down on one bench, then leaned forward while folding her arms in front of her and resting her arms and chest on the rope laid just in front of her bench.

‘’Once you are leaning over the rope, you can then go to sleep, sir.’

‘’But that’s inhumane! How could people be forced to endure such conditions?’’

‘’How, sir? By being paid a pittance for their work while their employers get rich at their expense, sir.’

Ben and Maria looked around the place for another couple of seconds, their faces reflecting disbelief, before exchanging a look. Next, Ben looked back at the woman who had guided them in.

‘’You said that there was another type of common lodging house, madam. Can you show us one of them here on this street?’’

As a way to insist on that subject, Ben threw another silver coin at the mature woman, who caught it quickly and nodded her head.

‘’There is one coffin bed lodging house a mere three doors down the street, sir.

Fol ow me!’’

After leaving the house with the benches and ropes, the trio walked maybe twenty steps down the sidewalk before entering another dilapidated-looking building, in front of which a number of idle men wearing old, dirty clothes, stood or sat. Those men

43

all looked with curiosity mixed with suspicion at the tall, elegantly dressed couple following close behind a local woman, with Maria Sharapova attracting most of the attention. Ben and Maria again entered a large, dirty room where the only furniture was tightly-lined up rows of simple rectangular wooden boxes resembling coffins without their covers. Two of those boxes contained a sleeping man, their knees bent to fit inside the box. Ben and Maria couldn’t see any mattress, pil ow or blanket inside the boxes, including in the two occupied ones. A man in his forties then approached the couple, obviously surprised to see such apparently wealthy people show up in his establishment.

‘’May I do something for you, sir?’’

‘’Uh, maybe, mister. We are American tourists and we never heard of or seen a common lodging house before and we were curious to see what they were. This is called a ‘coffin bed lodging house’, sir?’’

‘’Correct, sir. The cost per night for using one of these coffin beds is four pennies.’’

‘’And what other amenities do your customers

get for that price, mister?’

‘’They get a dry place to sleep when it rains and a warm place in Winter. It they wish to get some food, we can serve hot soup, some bread and tea for an extra pence.

By the way, this house is reserved for single men without children. Common lodging houses are segregated by sex, in order to preserve public decency, of course.’’

‘’Of course!’’ replied Ben, not saying what he real y thought of such false

‘decency’. ‘’And what if young children, including orphans, want to sleep here?’

‘’I wil accept boys coming alone or with their fathers, sir. However, most orphans can’t afford the four pennies a night cost of my establishment. Most of them thus live either in public or private orphanage, like the ones run by the Barnado’s Vision Foundation, or stay at the places where their masters make them work.’

‘’Their masters?’’

‘’Yes! Homeless orphans in London nearly all work menial jobs under the direction of men or women who also provide them a place to sleep and some food. I know such a man nearby who is employing over a dozen small boys and girls in a variety of tasks. To be frank, I am not in good terms with that man, who is named Sam Rickerts: he is a bully of the worst kind and he treats his orphans very badly.

Unfortunately, his business and ways are allowed by the law and there is nothing I can

44

do about his excesses. I myself wishes that I could help better those poor kids he is mistreating but I make little profit while running this common lodging house, so I don’t have the means to shelter those kids.’

The man’s words left Ben and Maria silent for a moment, reflecting on the reality painted by his declarations. Then, Ben took out of a pocket ten silver coins totaling one Pound Sterling and handed them to the disbelieving man.

‘’All this misery and poverty truly breaks my heart, mister. Here is something to help you serve better meals to your tenants, at least for a day or two. And where can I find this Sam Rickerts, sir?’’

‘’Oh, he is not far, sir: his workshop is just down the street, at Number 26.

Everybody in the neighborhood hates him.’’

‘’Thank you for the information, mister. I am sorry if I unduly took your time.’’

‘’Your visit was most welcomed, sir, and thank you for the money. I will be able to add some meat in the soup I will serve tonight, along with fresh vegetables.’’

‘’That’s the spirit, sir!’ said Ben, who then shook hands with the house manager before leaving with Maria. The woman who had guided them in looked at the coins in the manager’s hand, then smiled.

‘’Maybe I should follow them from a distance, to see how their meeting with that Rickerts bastard goes.’

‘’A good idea! Please tell me about that afterwards, Madam Lewis.’

Ben and Maria didn’t have to walk far before stopping in front of the entrance of Number 26, Dorset Street, a decrepit-looking sort of three-story brick building which appeared to be some sort of workshop. The two androids exchanged a look and a silent radio exchange before entering the building and stepping inside a small lobby area with a wooden staircase and two doors. One of the doors was opened, giving a view of a fairly large workshop where a dozen small boys and girls were busy washing, scrubbing and drying clothes, all under the supervision of a big man holding a long cane. That man was actual y ‘busy’ beating a boy with his cane. Keeping a neutral expression, Ben approached the man, who turned around to face him as he got close.

‘’Excuse me, sir: we are looking for a Sam Rickerts. He is said to run this shop.’’

‘’That’s me!’’ the man replied in a none-too-friendly voice. ‘’What do you want, mister?’’

45

‘’We came to bring you a message from Stephen and Samantha: they will not be working for you anymore.’

‘’WHAT?! WHERE ARE THESE LITTLE BRATS?’

‘’In our care, mister.’ answered Ben just before delivering a powerful punch to the man’s nose, breaking it and making the man pedal backwards before tripping and crashing down on his back. Before he could recover from the surprise and pain, Maria took four quick steps, then kicked him hard in the ribs, making the man scream with pain.

‘’That was one extra as a gift from Samantha, bastard. And here is an extra from me personally.’

This time, Maria delivered a downward kick on the man’s right knee, breaking it and making the man scream hideously. Next, she looked at the children who had been working in the shop and who were now watching the scene with disbelief.

‘’Stop working and go out in the street, kids. We wil join you there in a minute.’’

The orphans did not have to be told twice and went out at a near run, leaving Rickerts alone with the two androids. Next, Maria Sharapova put her left shoe between the man’s legs, ready to press on his crotch, and eyed him with a cold, merciless expression.

‘’Listen up and listen well, you bastard! Don’t even try to find and grab back those kids, or we will pay you another visit. Consider your laundry shop closed for good as of today and find another place to live from now on.’

‘’But...where wil I go?’ barely managed to say Rickerts between moans of pain.

‘’That’s your problem! If you are stil here tomorrow, then we will give you a further incentive to leave. Do you understand?’

As the man did not answer her at once, Maria then pressed with her high-heel shoe on his testicles, making him squeal with pain.

‘’Do you understand?’

‘’YES! YES! I WILL LEAVE TOMORROW MORNING.’

‘’Good!’’ said Maria before leaving the shop with Ben, joining the dozen orphans in the streets and finding Madam Lewis watching from a few paces away, both curious and gleeful. The oldest of the children, a girl of about twelve, then came to Ben and Maria, obviously anxious.

‘’What are we going to do now, sir? We have no place to stay and we don’t have a job anymore.’

46

‘’You will temporarily go to a common lodging house we just visited, where you will take refuge for the next few hours. We will come back once night will have fallen, in order to lead you to a safer place.’

Ben next looked at Madam Lewis and smiled to her.

‘’Madam, could I ask you to guide my wife to the nearest food market, so that she could go buy some food for those children’s supper. In the meantime, I will be leading those poor kids to that coffin bed house you showed us. By the way, do you know the name of the owner?’’

‘’I sure do, sir: Herbert Burns is well known in the district and he is a good, decent man, despite what one could think of him about him running a common lodging house.’

‘’And would you be ready to help him care temporarily for those kids until later tonight, madam?’’

‘’Uh, I would but the question is more like: will he accept me and these kids into his lodging house?’’

‘’Do not worry about that, madam: I have enough money to convince him to help.

By the way, here is a little advance for your help.’’

Madam Lewis happily took the five-shilling silver coin Ben gave him, mentally thanking her luck in meeting such generous foreign tourists.

‘’There is a street market some two streets away. I should be back with your wife in less than one hour.’

‘’Excellent! Fol ow me, kids!’’

As he led the group of young children towards the coffin bed common lodging house he had visited, Ben opened a radio datalink with Eve on the AEGIS in order to discuss a plan of action concerning the orphans. By the time he arrived at Herbert Burns’ lodging house, a plan was already decided on and in preparation.

10:28 (London Time)

Friday, August 24,1888

Common lodging house at Number 42, Dorset Street Spitafields District, London

47

Herbert Burns was supervising his two cleaning maids as they swept the floors of his common lodging house when he saw a well-dressed man in his thirties enter his establishment, two Metropolitan Police constables following close behind him. That fact instantly put him on his guards, as he could easily guess why they had come. Still, he went to the trio and gave a welcoming smile to the man in a suit.

‘’Good morning, gentlemen! May I help you?’’

‘’You may, sir. I am Detective Inspector George Berwick, of the Metropolitan Police’s Spitafields Division. We received a complaint from a Sam Rickerts, whose workshop was situated at Number 26 of this street, about being attacked and seriously wounded two days ago by two persons, a man and a woman. He also complained that those two persons went away with the thirteen children who had been working for him.

Would you know anything about this by chance, sir?’’

Herbert Burns had to repress a smile on hearing that question but managed to answer with a straight face and a neutral voice.

‘’I do, Inspector Berwick. A couple of American tourists showed up here around supper time on Wednesday. They were curious about what a common lodging house was, since they said that such houses did not exist in their place in the United States. I showed them around, then they asked me if I knew a man called Sam Rickerts. I said

‘yes’ and directed them to his workshop down the street. About twenty minutes later, they came back while escorting thirteen young children and asked me to shelter them on a temporary basis. Since they gave me money for that and also bought a large quantity of food for those children and for my tenants, I accepted and lodged those children for the night. I must say that these two Americans were most generous and seemed to care a lot for those children, who were orphans working under awful conditions in Mister Rickerts’ workshop. You should know that Rickerts treated very badly those poor children and was widely detested around this neighborhood, as he is a bully of the worst kind.’’

‘’I see! And are these children still here in this house, sir?’’

‘’No, Inspector! A cart showed up the next morning and carried away the children, who seemed most upbeat about leaving this neighborhood. However, don’t ask me where they went: I don’t have a clue about that.’

‘’Hum! Can you describe to me those two American tourists, sir?’’

Burns nodded his head before answering Berwick.

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‘’Both of them were very tall, easily over six-foot-tall, looked to be in their late twenties and were well dressed. They also were well-to-do people and were very generous towards those children and my tenants. I haven’t seen them since the kids left my lodging house yesterday morning.’

‘’The woman in that couple was also six-foot-tall, sir?’’ asked Berwick, a bit surprised.

‘’Yes, Inspector. She was a very pretty blonde but she also seemed very athletic and quite strong. As for the man, he had short black hair and would probably fit well in a rugby team. May I ask what happened to this Rickerts bastard?’’

‘’You may, sir: he told us that the man attacked him without provocation and broke his nose. Then the woman kicked him in the ribs and smashed his right knee. He is now in a hospital, from where he made a complaint for assault and kidnapping against that couple.’’

Herbert Burns couldn’t help scoff at the word ‘kidnapping’.

‘’Those Americans didn’t kidnap those orphans if you ask me, Inspector. What they did was to free them from the yoke of a sadistic, abusive man who abused and mistreated them constantly while feeding them a near starvation diet. The government should regulate more strictly the businesses of men like this Rickerts, sir.’

‘’I am fully aware about those kinds of cases of abuse of orphaned children, Mister Burns. Unfortunately, I don’t make the laws: I only enforce them. So, to resume what you said, you don’t know where those children are now and also don’t know the identity of those two Americans, correct?’’

‘’Correct! The only thing that I can say is that they were obviously well-to-do people and were well-dressed. They also spoke with a very distinct accent.’

Berwick noted that on his pocket notepad, then smile and shook hands with Burns.

‘’Thank you for your cooperation, sir. You were quite helpful.’

‘’Uh, can I ask what will happen next with your case, Inspector?’’

Berwick paused for a moment, then nodded his head once.

‘’Since we don’t know where those orphans are now and since we don’t have names for those two Americans, I expect that this case will soon be classified and closed. To be frank, there are plenty of much more serious criminal cases on our books right now.’

What Berwick couldn’t know then was that his caseload was soon going to become a lot more serious.

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02:59 (London Time)

Friday, August 31, 1888

Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, London

Mary Ann Nichols was still a bit drunk as she slowly walked down the narrow Buck’s Row, in Whitechapel district, in search of a customer for her services as a prostitute. At age 43, she was a relatively short woman, was a bit pudgy and could not claim to be really pretty. However, having lost in succession a number of jobs as a part-time cleaning lady, or charwoman, due to her alcoholism, she was now down mostly to prostitution in order to earn money that would pay for her stay in a common lodging house in Whitechapel. Unfortunately, she kept drinking away the little money she had earned tonight and was now getting desperate to find a new customer, so that she could finally pay the rent she owed to her lodging house.

She was approaching the gated entrance of a stable along Buck’s Row when she saw a man approaching on the same sidewalk she was on. The man was of medium height, wore a dark cape and a top hat and was walking rather casually. His face was hard to distinguish, as the poor street lighting and late hour prevented Mary from detailing him. Stopping her walk and resting her back against the frame of the stable’s gate, she flashed an inviting smile to the man as he got a few feet from her.

‘’Hello, good sir! Would you like some fun with me tonight?’’

The man stopped a mere step in front of her and looked her up and down before smiling to her.

‘’Sure! I indeed need some fun tonight, miss.’

Then, not giving time to Mary to react, the man’s left hand forcibly covered her mouth and pushed, making her head slam against the gate’s frame and preventing her from screaming. At the same time, the man produced a long knife, with which he furiously slashed her throat open, cutting it down to the vertebras. Mary’s attacker then slashed her throat again, killing her nearly instantly. Letting the unfortunate woman’s body slide down against the gate, the man then pulled up her skirt before stabbing twice her

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vagina, following up with numerous knife slashes across her abdomen that made Mary’s bowels protrude through the wounds.

‘’Here, you bloody whore! You won’t be able to pass your diseases to other men now.’

The man then pul ed down Mary’s skirt and wiped his knife clean on it before getting up on his feet. Looking left and right to make sure that nobody had seen him murder Mary, the man then quickly walked away after hiding back his knife.

Some forty minutes later, a man named Charles Allen Cross, a cart man who was walking to his place of employment, saw what he thought at first to be a tarp covering some long object lying in front of a stable’s gate. Suddenly curious, he approached that ‘tarp’, only to realize that it was in reality the body of a woman. He was looking down at the body when a man who was also going down Buck’s Row shouted to him.

‘’HEY! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?’’

Looking up at that man, Cross pointed at the body while shouting back.

‘’IT’S A WOMAN! SOMEBODY CUT HER THROAT OPEN.’

‘’WHAT?!’ replied the other man before walking quickly to Cross and then looking down at Mary’s inert body.

‘’Is she dead or just unconscious?’’

‘’Uh, I don’t know! Let’s see if she has a pulse.’

On checking the woman’s body, the two men found no pulse.

‘’Her face is warm but her hands are cold. We better go get a constable, and quickly.’ said the second man, called Robert Paul. Charles agreed with him and went with him in search of a Metropolitan Police constable. They finally found one at the corner of Hansbury Street and Baker’s Row and ran to him while shouting out.

‘’CONSTABLE! CONSTABLE! WE FOUND A WOMAN ON BUCK’S ROW: HER

THROAT WAS CUT OPEN.’

Police Constable Jonas Mizen reacted at once to that, taking out his truncheon and illuminating the faces of the two cart men with his oil lantern.

‘’Show me where you found her.’

At about the same time Cross and Paul found Mizen, another police constable named John Neil found Mary’s body on Buck’s Row. Using his portable oil lantern, he

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quickly examined the woman’s body before blowing his police alarm whistle. That whistle in turn attracted another constable, John Thain. As Thain was approaching at a run, Neil shouted to him.

‘’A WOMAN WAS MURDERED. GO GET DOCTOR LLEWELLYN AT THE OLD

MONTAGUE STREET MORTUARY!’

Thain braked to a halt and then reversed direction, with Neil watching over Mary’s body as Mizen approached at a run. None of them could possibly see the three tiny spy probes floating silently around the crime scene, filming it and retransmitting their images to the AEGIS.

In the operations center of the AEGIS, Allison Stokke exchanged a look with Eve Silisca, both of whom had just witnessed Mary Ann Nichols’ murder via the spy probes.

‘’Well, we now have a face for the kil er and soon should have an address to go with that.’

‘’And we have as well a possible motive, based on what that bastard said after killing that poor woman. He may be taking revenge on prostitutes for having caught some kind of venereal disease from a prostitute in the past.’

‘’How frequent were those venereal diseases in this time, Eve? In the Spacers’

League, they have all but disappeared and, if you caught one, they are easily treated with antibiotics.’’

‘’They were quite widespread during the 19th Century, along with many other viral diseases like cholera, typhoid, smallpox and the plague. Furthermore, syphilis strains in this century were extremely potent and, once caught, were a near-certain road to slow mental degeneration and death, on top of being easily transmitted via sexual activity. If that was what this man caught, then he must now know that his future is not a rosy one, which would explain his wish to take revenge on prostitutes at large. Let’s make sure now that our spy probes won’t lose the trail of that bastard.’’

‘’No chances of that happening, Eve: those spy probes are nearly impossible to decoy, unless you have a pretty powerful jamming system, something that doesn’t exist in this century.’

Their patience was rewarded some fifteen minutes later, when the probes followed the killer to an apartment in a residential building on Middlesex Street, in Whitechapel. While two of the probes waited outside the building, watching the front and

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back doors of the building, one probe entered the apartment of the killer via a partially opened window and filmed the killer as he undressed and washed himself, using a large basin full of water. He then changed to a clean outfit comprised of a pair of grey trousers, a white shirt and a dark grey jacket and overcoat, completed with a melon hat.

The man final y grabbed what furiously looked like a doctor’s leather bag before leaving the apartment, locking the door behind him. The probe was however able to zoom its camera on inscriptions visible on the leather bag.

‘’...Henry Walker, assistant mortician.’ read Al ison on her display screen showing what the camera saw. ‘’We now know who that murderer is. I wil now correlate that name with those of the suspects listed in the historical information we have on the case of Jack the Ripper.’

To her surprise and that of Eve, that name didn’t fit with the names they had as suspects in their historical file, nor did the kil er’s face correspond to any photograph in that same file.

‘’This guy does not appear at all on the list of suspects compiled by the British police during their 19th Century investigation of Jack the Ripper. Could Jack the Ripper be another man than this Henry Walker, with the murder of Mary Ann Nichols wrongly attributed to Jack the Ripper?’’

‘’That’s very possible, Al ison. The criminal investigation methods of this time were very rudimentary compared to what we have in the Spacers’ League. I also suspect that racism and xenophobia played a big role in how that list of suspects was compiled by Scotland Yard in 1889.’

‘’What do you mean, Eve?’

‘’Look at the list of suspects who were eventual y investigated by the British police, Allison. Four of the five top suspects were either foreigners or Jewish, or both.

As for the secondary suspects, who were nearly all what I would call of ‘British Christian’

stock, they were only investigated in a rather cursory way before being let go. The local newspapers which covered the Jack the Ripper murders also kept insinuating that the killer had to be a Jew or a foreigner, based on what was little more than pure speculations. Unfortunately, much of what was known about the police investigation and findings was lost during the German bombings of London during World War 2, something that only made this whole case more nebulous. We are in fact doing our own investigation in time on this because of that lack of historical information.’

‘’And how are we going to know if this ‘Henry Walker’ is Jack the Ripper or not?’’

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A grim smirk then appeared on Eve’s face at that question.

‘’There is only one way to know the answer to that, Allison: we will have to watch all five murders attributed to Jack the Ripper and see if that Henry Walker did them.’

05:13 (London Time)

Saturday, September 08, 1888

29, Hanbury Street, Spitafields District

London, England

Three spy probes were in position, covering

all the angles of the area around Number 29, Hanbury Street, the recorded location of the second murder attributed to Jack the Ripper. Allison and Eve, with the field team watching via remote datalink, were thus able to see the man who approached 47-year-old Annie Chapman, who was standing in front of the door of the narrow passageway between the entrances of 27 and 29 Hanbury Street, in the impoverished Spitafields District. Annie had by now been standing there in the cold and damp night for nearly half an hour, waiting for a possible customer for her sexual services.

Al ison’s expression hardened when she was able to detail the face of the man approaching Annie.

‘’Henry Walker, again! He thus may well be the one we are after.’

‘’It is indeed a strong probability now, Allison.’ said Eve. ‘’I wish that we could now take this monster out but that would completely disturb history if we cut the strings of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper now. We unfortunately will have to let this poor woman die today.’

‘’To think of all the people we could save in this time period...if we were not concerned about preserving the integrity of History.’

‘’But that’s the main point: to preserve the integrity of History while documenting it. We certainly don’t want to do anything that could possibly erase and rewrite History as we know it, along with possibly the NOSTROMO. Saving those thirteen kids abused by Rickerts and placing them in a good orphanage run by the Barnado’s Vision Foundation was already a bit risky, but bringing them here, aboard the AEGIS, would have been a lot riskier in terms of the preservation of history.’’

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Allison and Eve then returned their full attention to the pictures sent back by the three spy probes. When she saw that Annie Chapman and Henry Walker entered the narrow enclosed passageway between Hanbury Street and the backyard of Number 29, Allison repositioned one of the spy probes so that it could film that backyard area. Then, things went fairly quickly, with Walker clapping his left hand over Chapman’s mouth once they were out of the building and in the backyard, pushing the woman’s head against the brick wall of the building. At the same time, Walker grabbed a knife with his right hand and, in a violent move, cut the woman’s throat wide open in a left to right slash. He then made a second, deep cut, his left hand stil covering Chapman’s mouth. Now dead, the poor woman’s body slid down against the brick wal , to end up on its back over the old wood planks covering that part of the backyard. Henry Walker then seemed to become mad with hatred and started slashing open the groin and abdomen of his victim. Allison watched with a hard expression as Walker disemboweled Chapman.

‘’This is even more sadistic than the first murder. What a monster!’

Walker was done with his grisly work after a mere two minutes, then wiped his blade on the woman’s dress before hurrying out of the backyard, returning to Hanbury Street via the enclosed passageway. As he was quickly walking away, Allison assigned one of the spy probes to follow him, while keeping the two other probes on their present spots in order for them to film the persons who would find Annie Chapman’s body and alert the police. Eve slowly shook her head as she eyed on her display screen Annie’s mutilated body.

‘’Poor woman! She didn’t deserve such a horrible death. She was just a poor woman with an alcoholism problem and who was simply trying to survive this uncaring period in London’s history. I dread the moment we wil have to watch the three next murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.’

Knowing that the next two murders to be attributed to Jack the Ripper would occur in only three weeks, the field team then spent its time in London on two main goals: to document as much as possible who this Henry Walker was and his daily activities, to make sure that he didn’t murder other women in the meantime; and to document life around the London of the time, covering all the classes of the British society of the time. That second goal also implied numerous trips outside of the London

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area, in order to document the social climate and daily life in other parts of Great Britain.

By the time that the end of September arrived, Samuel Schmeling knew he had enough visual recordings to produce a good documentary about life in England near the end of the 19th Century.

The two next murders committed by Jack the Ripper, who was now known to the field team to be Henry Walker, an assistant mortician working at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, happened in quick succession in the very early morning of Sunday, September 30.

First to die was Elizabeth Stride, a 44-year-old woman who had emigrated from Sweden in 1866 and had married an Englishman three years after her arrival in Great Britain. However, that marriage fell apart a few years later and Elizabeth’s husband died of tuberculosis in 1884. Now without support, Elizabeth fell back to prostitution, which she had practiced while still in Sweden, living out of common lodging houses in the Whitechapel District. That life however ended shortly after midnight, on September 30, in a small yard off Berner Street, in Whitechapel. Again, the spy probes posted by Allison and Eve showed the murderer to be Henry Walker. This time, however, Walker did not have time to mutilate the body of his latest victim, the approach of a cart which was about to enter the yard forcing him to hide and then run away. Probably frustrated by his inability to butcher the body of his latest victim, Walker then stalked and attacked a second woman that night, killing Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, just inside the territory of The City, the central district of London next to Whitechapel District. That time, Walker had enough time to horribly mutilate the body of her victim, including slashing her face extensively, before walking away along the dark streets.

Forced to watch those two murders while not allowed to react other than by filming them, Allison threw a murderous look at the image of Henry Walker as he was being followed by a spy probe.

‘’Please tell me that we will be allowed to administer justice to this monster after he will have committed his fifth and last canonical murder, Eve.’’

Eve Silisca, who was also looking at the pictures of a fleeing Walker, nodded her head.

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‘’Don’t worry, Al ison: the question is not ‘if’ we wil punish him but ‘how’. The important thing will be to make sure that Walker disappears from History, without us leaving behind indications of our intervention which could change History.’

03:02 (London Time)

Friday, November 09, 1888

13 Miller’s Court, Spitafields District

London, England

Two of the three spy probes watching the location of the fifth and last canonical murder by Jack the Ripper managed to slip in unnoticed inside the small, single-room flat in Spitafields District when 25-year-old Mary Jane Kelly and Henry Walker entered it. The room, containing only a bed, a small table, three chairs, a small fireplace and a wash basin made of tin, was quite obscure and the young prostitute quickly lit a candle to provide some illumination to it.

Once that was done, she took off her hat, coat, dress and shoes before going to lay on the small bed occupying one corner of the small room and signaling to the man to join her.

‘’Come on! Don’t be shy, sir.’

Her customer, who had watched her undress, then took off his hat, coat and vest before approaching the bed. Mary was surprised by the fact that he didn’t pul down his pants and was about to ask him about that when Walker suddenly knelt on top of her, pinning her down in her bed, then grabbed her by her curly black hair with his left hand, while his right hand took the knife hidden in his back.

‘’Hey! What are...’

Mary didn’t have time to finish her question before Henry Walker slashed her throat wide open with his knife. He then did a second slash to make sure to kill her. He had a mean smile as he contemplated the nearly naked body of the young woman: contrary to his four previous murders, he was now in a closed private flat and could do what he wished and take his time about it. While filmed from two angles by the spy probes, he then proceeded to butcher in detail the prostitute, destroying her face with multiple slashes and opening her belly and torso, cutting off in the process both breasts and skinning off

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her groin and legs. Being sure that nobody would disturb him here, Walker took his time and left the room after nearly two hours of sadistic work.

Once out of the flat, Henry Walker went back on Dorset Street and started walking quickly while keeping his head down, using his hat to hide his face. Hearing footsteps, he looked quickly behind him and saw the silhouette of a big man who was apparently following him from a distance of about twenty paces. Suddenly nervous about that, Walker accelerated his pace, only to see his follower also quicken his step.

Now getting frankly scared, Walker hurried to get to the entrance of a narrow alley he was approaching. That was when his follower spoke up in a mocking tone.

‘’You can run but you can’t hide, Jack.’

Now knowing that the man was after him, Henry Walker broke into a run and started turning the corner of the narrow alley. That was when someone grabbed him by the collar of his coat and swung him around, making him slam hard face-first against a brick wall. Half knocked out, he was not able to get his knife before his attacker pulled it out and pocketed it, then made him face his assailant nose-to-nose. Walker’s eyes opened wide with surprise and disbelief when he saw that his attacker was a very tall woman with blond hair and blue eyes who was staring at him with utter disgust and hatred.

‘’Your days of kil ing innocent women is over, Henry Walker. It is now time for you to pay for your crimes.’

‘’How...how do you know my name?’

The woman didn’t answer him, as the man who had been following Walker joined her and grabbed his left arm in a steely grip. The woman then grabbed Walker’s right arm with one hand and clamped her other hand over his mouth, while the man used his free hand to hold Walker’s head, making it impossible for him to shout. Then, to his utter surprise and terror, the trio started flying up, silently climbing vertically out of the alley.

Walker’s eyes rolled wildly as he soon found himself climbing quickly in London’s dark night sky, stil held solidly by the man and woman. The woman’s hand uncovered his mouth only once they were a good 3,000 meters above the city and heading towards the nearby River Thames. However, the trio kept climbing higher and higher, making it harder and harder for Walker to breathe as the oxygen in the atmosphere became rarer.

The woman waited until they were at an altitude of 10,000 meters before speaking to the serial murderer, who was about to pass out due to low oxygen content at this altitude.

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‘’You will soon die and you wil then disappear from History, Walker. You won’t get to live and feel some sick pride at evading justice. You will only be remembered as the worst British man to have ever lived.’

‘’Who...who are you? How can you fly like this?’’ asked Walker in a halting voice, his effort at talking cutting what little breath he had.

‘’We came for you from the future, you sadistic bastard. Now, shut up and die!’’

Maria Sharapova and Ben Affleck then continued their ascension, with Henry Walker soon losing consciousness from lack of oxygen. Finally stopping their climb at an altitude of 15,000 meters, the two androids checked that Walker had died from asphyxiation and found him to have no pulse. Ben then exchanged a look with Maria.

‘’You have his knife, Maria?’’

‘’I do! Let’s empty his pockets, so that nobody could find who he is.’

Searching the dead man from both sides, they quickly found and pocketed Walker’s wallet and the keys to his flat on Middlesex Street. Of a common accord, they then let go the dead man, who fell down towards the waters of the Thames, some 15,000 meters below. The two androids watched Walker fall while themselves flying down back to a lower altitude. Ben nodded his head when Walker’s body hit the surface of the river with an impact that would have killed him if he would have still been alive.

‘’Justice is done. Let’s go back to our hotel now. We wil be able to record for the next couple of weeks the public reactions to his latest murder, then will be free to return to our time period and the NOSTROMO.’

‘’Ben, I would also like to have a chance to put flowers on the tombs of these poor five women. They may have been living sordid lives but they didn’t deserve to die at the hands of that monster.’

‘’I concur with you on that, Maria. We wil also go pay a last visit to the orphans we saved from the grip of that Sam Rickerts.’

‘’I wonder how the documentary we will produce about Jack the Ripper wil be received in the 24th Century.’

‘’We wil know soon enough about that, Ben. I am personally more anxious to see how little Stephen and Samantha wil adapt to their new lives in the future.’

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16:11 (Universal Time)

Tuesday, May 10, 2338

Hangar of command cutter AEGIS, large craft hangar complex A.M.S. NOSTROMO, in low Earth Orbit