Fan Fiction ❯ Titan ❯ Geneta and Ceres ( Chapter 2 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

A warm wind caressed the trees in the orchard. A man was standing on a small mound nearby feeding the chickens that were clucking and pecking by his feet. He was tall and rather lanky and he wore a white full body outfit. The only apparent opening was at the neck and no matter how much dust or dirt got in the air around him, the suit somehow seemed to stay clean. His head was the only thing exposed, but he wore a pair of rather stylish dark glasses. He had a thin face and scruffy, black hair. The man stared out over the rolling green plains beyond his farm and sat down on the ground. The chickens, realising that there wasn't going to be any more food, waddled off to their coop to see if they could find any nourishment from the ground. The farm is a small place. There is a little house on a hill, only one floor, with a window either side of the door. The door however was a pair of white panels with a crenelated division down the middle. The house was a white dome with a large, thin spire off to one side. Atop the spire was an explosion of instruments and radar dishes. On the other side of the building was a patch of ground plated with a checkerboard of metal squares suspended a foot off the floor. A large, white, rectangular building was directly behind the house. The double doors had retracted into the walls and a cow stood in a small fenced off field grazing on the luscious grass. In front of the small house was the apple orchard and the chicken coops. Five fat hens stared at the man from near their little home. A rooster was perched on top of the coop, glancing lazily down at his harem below. The whole farm was fenced off but unlike the other structures, this was just plain wood. The man went out of the gate and sat on top of his car. He was looking lovingly at the distant fields of unusual, lime green grass. The landscape was uneven with the occasional red boulder protruding from the ground. The sky was a wonderful blue, with a small blue green planet just showing through. At night the view of that planet was fantastic. In the distance were the giant domes of the first cities. The magistrate and councils wanted to remove the domes now that they were no longer needed, but they were significant historical landmarks and it wasn't like they needed the metal. The mines on Mercury were bringing a new found wealth to the colonists there and providing the other worlds with a lot of minerals that would last for several decades to come. He sat there for a long while, then jumped off the car and glided down to the ground. The man walked through the gates and back into his house. There was only one room and this was cluttered. On one side was a bed and a chair, both of which were piled high with holo-cards and books. A particle shower was next to the bed with its door half open and a damp towel lolling half in half out of it. Papers littered the floor and the filing cabinet was overflowing. A small kitchen was at the back of the building, the work-surface had several holo-cards on it, a plate with a half eaten sandwich on it, a fossilised on the drainer and a book in the dried up sink. The other side of the building was a dining room with just enough space on the table for a dirty plate wedged between a book and a small but very efficient looking laptop. The man picked up the plate, fished the book out of the sink which he placed on top of the shower and dropped the plate into it. He pushed a button and the sink began to clean the plate automatically. He opened the book and picked up the fossil in his other hand. He flipped through the pages for a while and then put both the objects on a shelf. A small beeping made him look around. His laptop was projecting the word 'EMAIL' in big, red letters. He walked over to the computer and clicked on 'new messages'. A picture of a short fat man wearing a dark blue business suit and a beard appeared from the laptops holo-screen. He had a large, wide brimmed hat and a pair of circular sunglasses.
"Good morning doctor." said the hologram in a cheerful voice.
"Morning councilor." answered the man and smiled broadly.
"How is the farm coming along?"
"Good, good. Keeping busy?"
"Immensely. Listen doctor, we councilors and magistrate Hathorn are having a very profitable meeting at midday on wednesday.We want you to be there. Check in at the front desk, they'll tell you where to go. Goodbye doctor, see you wednesday."
The image disappeared leaving the words 'MESSAGE ENDED'.
"Well that was quick." he said to himself. He moved some documents off a chair and sat down. He was planning to have a day out on wednesday. But if this was ordered by the council then he had to be there. He would much rather the councilor had told him what was going on, but Mr Griffin was very focused on keeping people in the dark and he was not the most sociable of men. The man stood up and went to feed the cow. Soon he was going to buy a bull and breed cows. The man was named Arthur and he was a colonial scientist.
In the year 2023 humans were growing rapidly and Earth was becoming cramped rather quickly. They decided to set up a lunar colony to rid the planet of some of its inhabitants until a better and more permanent solution could be found. By 2030 the UN had set up a large protected dome on the moon and shifted 10% of the planets population offworld. The program was a complete success, the moons colonists had to live inside domes at all times but were able to genetically engineer a crop that could survive the low gravity and minute atmosphere. The moons colonists were initially run by a magistrate but once settled, a council was formed to give a more overall say on how Luna should be run. By 2036, Luna became totally self sufficient and sprouted the leading company in genetic engineering, Geneta Corporation, who became rich and powerful in a relatively short period of time. Soon, Earth realised the financial benefits of moving offworld and attempted to move to Mars in 2038. Some small domes were originally constructed but the inhabitants soon found it difficult to expand. Almost having to abandon their new home and return to Earth, Mars was saved by a new invention from Geneta. The Luna company created a type of grass that could create an artificial atmosphere for Mars. With an atmosphere Mars would warm up and become a miniature Earth. By 2041 Mars was terraformed into an inhabitable planet. Their fortune was made by solving a problem for Earth. Again, Earth was becoming over crowded and no longer had anywhere to send its immediate surplus population. So Mars offered to provide Earth with food so that its surplus population could live on the farmland it had used previously for produce. Mars became a farm world, a planet designed for the production and distribution of food throughout the populated solar system. Mercury was soon to follow. Earths top scientists created colonies capable of withstanding the devastating heat and radiation of Mercury's surface. The domes provided the population with shelter against the raging firestorms outside. The inhabitants could use the massive heat to power their machines and could beam the energy through space as power for other planets. A nice profit would come from the intense solar energy alone. Then the population of mercury could focus on mining the mineral rich planet and making even more cash. Moons of Mars and Jupiter were also colonised by colonists from Earth and Mars. In 2047 the United Planets was formed with representatives from Earth, Mars, Deimos, Luna, Mercury and Io. In 2051 the Vesta Science Station was created to orbit in the opposite direction to the inner asteroid belt so it can study astronomical bodies in more detail then ever before. The station was designed to run primarily off solar energy and the occasional radiation purchased from Mercury. When material was needed then the station was equipped with transport and mining vessels for mineral extraction from the asteroids themselves. The station was funded by the UP initially but the inhabitants have bought themselves off by selling on scientific advances to the other inhabited worlds.
On the 16th July 2054 Arthur Croft was born in the First City Hospital of Mars. By 2059 he was recognised as having an unusually high learning ability. He was requested an audience from Geneta who studied him and found that he was genetically superior to other humans. Arthur's brain was 2% larger than normal and it was found that 10% of his brain that should have been used for creativity was actually stimulated by logical thought. Geneta immediately gave him an apprenticeship at the company. At the age of 13 he was given a low paying job as a lab assistant. By 16 he was a fully fledged xenobiologist and by 2072 he was transferred to a group of top biologists called the 'Ceres Division'. The members of Ceres were hired to study the rare fossil specimens discovered on Mars. Geneta intended the members of Ceres to be fully prepared to take immediate control when and if extra-terrestrial lifeforms were discovered. Only five men and women were ever deemed good enough to be on the team. By 2079 Ceres had disbanded from any major projects and now shared any new information on a private database but all members were required to keep up to date in preparation for the day when aliens were found. The five separate members had been permitted to pursue whatever lifestyle attracted them. The oldest member Benjamin Bradford was born in 1989 making him 90 years old when he joined the Martian council. He gave up his position on the Ceres team due to his age and instead has been appointed to the post of team manager. He no longer participates in fieldwork but organises the group and takes control of research and information posting. Jane Harrington was next to join. She was born in 2011 and died from double diphtheria, a particularly virulent strain of diphtheria which causes double vision before finally suffocating the host. It eventually killed her at the age of 57. She was sorely missed by her companions. Daniel Port was born in 2051 and was assigned to the team in 2074. He was the only member not born on Mars, he instead originated as one of the first births at the Vesta station. By the age of 12 he had lost the station a lot of money by hacking into several important files. When he was released from the Earth based UP prison for hacking into the pentagons files he was immediately sent for by Geneta who put him in charge of system protection for Ceres and was trained as pilot for their personal transport ship. He then joined the Martian Army and trained as a drop-ship engineer. Elizabeth Kane was born in 2059 and was hired by Geneta as a low level employee at the age of 15. Her father ran a fruit farm and she dabbled in the genetics until she created a type of orange that could resist several forms of bacteria that no one previously had been able to cure. Geneta immediately noticed her talent but found she was unable to even change the colour of a fruit fly. This puzzled them until she proved adept at selectively breeding plants and they discovered she had a degree in botany. Elizabeth was trained since birth to grow plants and that is what she did. She is a leading botanist for Geneta and stayed on to train others after the groups separation. And then there is Arthur. He bought a farm.