MEGA MAN: GUIDING RAINBOW’S LIGHT

By Eric “Erico” Lawson

Chapter Thirteen: Skylight

“If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” –Arthur C. Clarke

From the Diary of Thomas X. Light

November 27th, 2057 C.E.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s an older quote, but still relevant, especially for the world we live in right now. I’m now 44 years old, as is Albert. He’s lost most of his hair, and has developed a massive bald spot. What’s left, two tufts sticking out to the sides, is graying out considerably, and I’d give it another year and a half before all the black is gone. He doesn’t try to hide it, though; no reason to.

Not when we have bigger fish to fry.

Project SKYLIGHT’s finally getting constructed. They’re putting it in Earth orbit on the far side of the planet. Dr. Flynn’s been working up a storm powering up the fusion engines, and thankfully they’ve recovered enough Tritium from the Moon to make it possible. The finalized schematics place SKYLIGHT at being nearly five kilometers in diameter. Some people laughed at the flower petal array, but it does make a lot of sense, now that we’re actually building the damn thing. They offer a tremendous amount of surface area for the solar panels, and can be folded in or held out during operations. We started work on a few of the petals first, rather than the core. Flynn was still finalizing the fusion drive at the start, and we needed to get the photovoltaics running to power up our operations. The core of SKYLIGHT is going to take the most work…Current estimates are that it’ll be the beginning of next year before we get Dr. Murges’ solar cannon into an operational state.

One of the major reasons we’ve been able to keep to our deadlines and work so efficiently is that it’s not just humans working on this project. LightTech Industries scored a major contract with the Second Rainbow to make space-capable Metools. We’ve even started developing a humanoid robot called a KIF; Kinesthetic Intelligent Foundryman. Other firms have gotten similarly lucrative contracts, like Sennet Robotics and (Though I’m loathe to mention them) U.S. Robotics. The lion’s share of the workload is with the company that Albert and I developed seven years ago.

The fact is, most of the work is being done by robots. With the solar panels up and running, they just have to juice up and rest up every so often before they’re right back and moving in the thick of it again. Not everybody’s particularly happy about that…There’s a lot of organizations and grumbling on the ground below that they’re taking up a lot of work and jobs that could go to humans. And sure, maybe we could have more human workers up in orbit developing this thing…but it would be a lot more work, and cost a lot more money, and it wouldn’t get done as fast. As much as they may not like it, robots can do it faster, cheaper, and better.

Wily doesn’t always enjoy that philosophy, and I can sympathize. It’s one thing to have robots helping us. It’s another to turn them into our slaves. Wily’s afraid of humanity becoming lazy and unmotivated. I’m worried about us becoming smug…beyond reproach. Hubris has been the cause of many disasters in humanity’s development, especially with new technologies. While our robots are very simple-minded and require constant instruction and monitoring from the few human overseers we do have up in the orbital worksite, I do feel a change coming…As though sometime, soon or far away, we will have succeeded in developing AI that has a human or superhuman intelligence. I’m not concerned about a “Skynet” scenario, not with the Core Module and the Asimovian Laws in place…but I am worried that there might come a day where humans force robots to do all their work for them. When that day comes, and the robots have experienced enough to develop sentience…

Will they come to resent us? I see cues of that possible future already with Eddie. He was our very first Fliptop unit, and has been active now for many years, working alongside Al and myself. He has a very dry approach and limited responses…but every now and then, I see him hesitate when we ask him to do something that, were he human, he might disagree with. He always does it, though. The Laws keep him from refusing. I’ve decided to treat Eddie as a person, in spite of Will’s scathing remarks about my anthropomorphizing an it. It may be wishful thinking on my part, or just hopeful thinking, but if Eddie is to one day cross a threshold into a new state of existence, I would rather he see us as friends than masters.

Humans and robots living together in peace…That is my dream.

Even as Skylight is heading into full swing, the United Nations has opted to hedge its bets. Enough people in the Second Rainbow and the larger scientific community disagreed with the orbital defense platform as the sole defense that they’ve added something else. Sennet Robotics, the brainchild of Trenton Corbun, collaborated briefly with Dr. Flynn’s team in the construction of a series of five dual-motored rockets. They launched from Cape Canaveral nearly a year and a half ago.

The plan, as Trenton told me once, is that they’ll fly out on ionic power, and charge up their fusion reactors on the way. The rockets are all programmed with the same level of intelligence as a Metool, and run on the Core Module. These days, everything does, it seems.

The five rockets, which the press has taken to calling “Corbun’s Magic Bullets,” are scheduled to meet up with Epoch in January of 2058, just as Epoch swings by Jupiter. I don’t quite understand the physics of it myself, but what they’re intending to do is “Nudge” Epoch off of its trajectory. The rockets’ fusion drive will break down and use the ice of the comet itself to power the thrusters…and Epoch is a comet. Mauna Kea Observatory has been watching it like a hawk, and it’s started to form the usual vapor tail.

I’m hoping that their plan does work, if only because we can all breathe a sigh of relief and resume our lives and our work after. More pragmatically, the United Nations is hoping Corbun’s “Bullets” work so they can stop funding SKYLIGHT.

The trajectory altering rockets were budgeted at 5 billion dollars each, 25 billion in total. Compared to Skylight, it’s a drop in the bucket.

No matter what happens, the wheel of fate is spinning. Epoch is getting closer, the Bullets are racing to meet it, and SKYLIGHT is slowly growing out from its skeleton.

God willing, we’ll survive this.

University of Tokyo, Mechanical Engineering Department

Tokyo, Japan

November 30th, 2057 C.E.

9:42 A.M.

“The science of robotics is fast transforming itself into an art.”

Dr. Wily stood in front of a room of College students at the University, all of whom were engineers in their own right. All of them also hoped to one day become renowned architects of robotics. He had been invited as a guest speaker, and saw it as a fair trade; Thomas Light had already been signed up as the keynote speaker at winter graduation. Some took notes, copying down the text from their portable audio translators…another invention of his partner’s. Others simply listened, more confident in their English.

“Robots are always built first for their function, but a secondary expectation has developed; appearance in design. People expect today’s modern mechanoids to be personable…non-threatening. This psychological desire manifests itself in the sales reports of several powerhouse companies…LightTech included.”

The wild-haired scientist tucked his hands into the large pockets of his lab coat and swaggered out from behind the podium. “Our top sellers are the various models of Metool…Yes, those squat little hardhats.” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and tapped the top of his head, earning scattered laughter from the nervous audience. “We have developed Metools that can function in every conceivable environment; Underwater, in arid, static-electricity ridden deserts, humid jungles, and even the vacuum of space. The last one I mentioned is making a vital contribution to the construction of Project SKYLIGHT.”

He turned slightly to face a different side of the classroom. “One looks at a Metool and is instantly calmed. Between its nickname’s namesake and the cartoonish face, a Metool is made to be approachable. Even the KIF unit, LightTech’s newest contribution to the growing world of mechanoids, keeps this philosophy in mind.”

Wily paused for a moment, frowning before continuing on. “Robots are performing tasks we once believed could only be accomplished by human hands. They are more efficient, require no renumeration, and do not offer complaint. With the Rules of Robotics in place, they will forever be a friend to humanity. But I would be remiss if I did not caution you of a threat from within…Ourselves.”

This last proclamation caused a murmur of confusion to rattle through the classroom. “As future roboticists, or robotechnicians, or robotologists, as my good friend Dr. Light refers to himself, you have a responsibility to safeguard humanity against its own carelessness…its indifference. There will always be a need for robots, make no mistake. Robotic advancements have helped us to recover and preserve this world over the last decade.” Wily pointed at them. “In the years to come, we will need a new generation of builders. And when that time arrives, build your robots based on what humanity needs…not what it wants.”

“But did not you make your fortunes making popular robots? Like Fliptops?” One student posed suddenly.

Wily tucked his hands back into his lab coat’s pockets and thought about it for a moment.

“LightTech’s early robots, like the EDY series, are generally not as utilitarian as the ubiquitous Metools. The Fliptops were designed to act as more of a walking, semi-intelligent briefcase. In that regard, though they may not be a specific necessity, they do not replace a human worker. My reason for caution was that every robot designed to do the work that a human can makes our species more and more obsolete. Coming out of a terrifying World War and the cleanup that followed, we need every human involved and working possible. Without jobs, we become irate and irresponsible. Protests follow, and then violence. The potential for backlash is tremendous, and as someone who has spent the better part of his life reading the writing on the wall, I have no desire to tempt fate. Heed my advice, and you may one day even be bright enough and seasoned enough to join us in the Second Rainbow.” Stonefaced, Wily rubbed the end of his mustache. “God knows we need all the help we can get.”

There was a pause, and then Wily finally cracked a smile. “Well, that’s it. You can relax now, the old man’s done talking.”

A few scattered laughs were followed by more enthusiastic applause, and the classroom’s professor came over to shake Wily’s hand. A few general words of praise and small talk occurred while the room emptied out, and then Wily made his departure. The man bowed to him as he left.

The corridors of the university held no love for Albert William Wily. It did spark a few old recollections here and there of his own time at Cal Tech before the Wars, but by and large Wily was a man of few friends and few memories.

He glanced through a window and saw some students congregating outside in a courtyard, laughing and talking with their books in their arms. He narrowed his eyes and let off a derisive snort before opening the door. He kept his biting commentary to himself, which worked out well as he passed by a surprised group of students that gave him a large berth.

Wily’s phone went off. He pulled his wireless earpiece out of his pocket and set it over his right earlobe. The ringtone, a brief tidbit of Journey’s “Believing” made him chuckle. He’d meant it to poke fun at his eternally optimistic cohort, but Light had taken it as a source of pride.

“What’s up, Tom?”

“Huh. I didn’t know if you’d be done with your campus visit yet. I thought that the College President had invited you for lunch.”

“You’ve eaten food at one College, you’ve eaten at them all.” Wily rolled his eyes and kept walking. “Besides, I didn’t feel the need to stick around today. No point in it.”

“So how did your presentation go?”

“Oh, I spoke, they listened.” Wily trailed off for a moment as he walked through the dying greenscape of the campus lawn. Winter had come hard, and even without snow on the ground, he saw glimpses of the possible future only three years away. “Whether or not they heard me is another matter.”

“What did you tell them?”

“What they needed to hear, but what they likely didn’t want to.”

“Oh, geez. You hit them up with that “We have to limit robotic development” bit?”

“It’s a valid point of ponderance, Tom.”

“For crying out loud, you only got your hand on that copy of Carl Kapek’s book a month ago. Why have you adopted its precepts so thoroughly, especially given that Kapek’s scenario’s impossible with the Core Module?”

“It wasn’t that many years ago we had robot armies marching across the world, Tom.” Wily reminded his friend darkly. “Where do you think the bulk of U.S. Robotics’ business comes from? They’re still making robots as weapons of war. Where’s their Core Module, hm? They’re built to violate the First Law.”

“…Well, yes, but…”

“I’m not saying robots are bad. Hell, we make our living off of them. They’re playing a vital role. But if we don’t convince today’s kids to remember that they’re not the solution to every problem, we’ll have a bigger crisis on our hands. And this time, it won’t be the fault of religious fanatics and warhawk governments…it’ll be our own lethargy biting us in the ass.”

Wily heard Light sigh. They’d had this argument before, and most days, Light was content to let it drop and change the subject. “Well, if you’re done at the College, swing on back. Dr. Ha’s just arrived, and he brought a sample for us to tinker with.”

“Xuan Ha?” Wily’s interest was perked. “You mean, he’s got bubble lead with him?”

“Well, it is what he’s famous for, isn’t it?” Light jokingly retorted. bubble lead had been a breakthrough alloy in the lastwaning years of the Wars by Dr. Xuan Ha of Vietnam. Heavy in its normal state, underwater it took on a more buoyant nature and flexibility. It had taken several years of tinkering and tweaking within the invention-friendly environment of the Second Rainbow for Ha’s genius to be recognized, and bubble lead had become a vital component in underwater operations involving the transportation of heavy equipment. “He wants us to try and synthesize it.”

Wily scoffed. “We’re going to bump into the same problem, Tom. As effective as the synthesis modules we’ve created are, the matter they create is inherently unstable. That’s why we never took it beyond trying to produce hydrogen for plasma formation.”

“I didn’t say it’d be easy, did I?” Light teased him. “I realize that anything synthesized breaks down within a minute or so. We don’t have to worry about the time constraint here. The fact is, if we can crack this, we’ll be able to have underwater Metools that can synthesize bubble lead for smaller moves. Just imagine it; one Metool could do the work of five in the same time!”

Wily contained the sigh, as much as he wanted to. Once again, Thomas Light knew how to cheer him up and get him moving again.

There was nothing quite like a challenge to brighten the “Mad scientist’s” day.

“I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Start a pot of coffee.”

“Black as sin.” Light laughed. “See you in a bit.”

The phone disconnected, and Wily tucked his earpiece back away. A few minutes later, he walked off the campus and to a bus stop, where his fortunes blossomed with the appearance of an electric bus just two blocks away and coming.

He glanced at his watch as the bus pulled up.

November 30th.

“Two more months.” Wily reminded himself quietly. Two more months before Sennet’s “Magic Bullets” approached Jupiter in an attempt to divert Epoch off course.

The bus pulled up and opened its doors. Ignoring the curious looks from an old woman carrying a sack of groceries beside him, Wily stepped on board, swiped an ID badge over the transport’s reader, and took a seat.

His time at College had been spent in study, hard at work. Somehow, Thomas had been able to live the scholarly life and the plebian life at the same time.

To his credit, Albert Wily was not jealous of his partner’s broader experience…

Though that may have had something to do with the belief, right or wrong, that he had nothing to be jealous of.

Sennet Robotics Incorporated

American Branch Office

Sao Paulo, Brazil

January 20th, 2058 C.E.

“Sennet Robotics has earned a place in the diverse field of robotic engineering by taking the big risks.” Trenton Corbun said, walking backwards as he spoke. A crowd of reporters and cameramen followed the CEO of the world’s third largest robot firm through the bustling complex. They were traveling through a ventilated transparent corridor above the sterile wetworks below, a part of the factory that constructed the motherboards, processing chips, and other vital circuitry Sennet’s robots ran on. “The bulk of U.S. Robotics’ business is through mechanoids developed for military applications. LightTech has made its indelible mark with a growing array of robots made to supplement, and in some cases, replace work forces all over the globe and above it. We dabble in a bit of everything, and do a couple of things the others never got around to.” The man who was forever the believer in crazy ideas and hopeless causes grinned to the camera crews, who ate it up. The brains of LightTech, Doctors Light and Wily were notoriously camera shy, and U.S. Robotics refused to put anybody on the holovids that wasn’t a duly appointed spokesperson. In an age when the world clamored to know who was in charge of creating their robots, Trenton Corbun stood first and alone as the beaming star in the public eye.

More so now.

“Even though we use LightTech’s Core Module to power the positronic matrices of our mechanoids, we have developed product lines that neither of our competitors ever matched. Exploratory robots built for oceanic deployment have helped scientists track the movement of ocean currents for comparison with past years, as well as mapped out sites for underwater mining. Similar robots have been built for deployment in razed disaster areas and uninhabited lands. Seen another way, LightTech makes robots that build. U.S. Robotics focuses on robots that blow things up. Here at Sennet, we’re all about finding things. A recent example?”

He guided them out from above the wetworks rooms to a more normal looking laboratory area, where several models of Sennet robots were on display. He motioned to a massive, goofy-looking metallic fish with red scales. It resembled an anglerfish in appearance, save for it being twenty feet long and easily twelve feet high.

“This is one of the larger robots we’ve made in our first few years. They have a more accurate designation, but I’ve taken to calling them “Big Mouths” for sake of ease.”

That earned some laughs, and Corbun reached inside the thing’s slightly open mouth. He pulled out a smaller mechanoid which resembled a shrimp. “The Big Mouths are a carrier robot with a focus in exploration. Each Big Mouth carries a complement of twenty-four of these smaller “Chums,” which can be launched to chart and scan areas independently. The Big Mouth thrives in an ocean environment; the natural salinity of saltwater helps to power its constantly recharging batteries. The Chums run on a less adaptive ionic power cell, but can return to the Big Mouth and dock for a recharge and data upload. Both types of robot are able to withstand the intense pressures of the ocean depths up to 21,000 feet. It’s one of the robots I’m most proud of here at Sennet…especially because I had a hand in building it.”

“Did you design the self-replenishing battery?” One reporter asked.

Trenton grinned wider. “Nah. I got to pick the color.” The joke at Corbun’s own expense paid off, and the reporters jotted down the anecdote as they chuckled. “We’ve received orders from Mining Consortiums as well as oceanographic institutes for these. A few have shipped out and are in use, and more will follow. There are other kinds of robots we make here at Sennet, as I told you, but I imagine none of you are in the mood to be bored to death by more lectures.”

He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “So! What say we head to our conference hall and tell you about what you really came here for?”

Unseen by the pack of reporters and the omnipresent Trenton Corbun, Oliver Xanthos and Jessica Xanthos took a more leisurely stroll on the opposite suspended wetworks corridor, smiling behind smoked one-way glass. He was dressed in a more conservative long gray and white overcoat because of the season, and Jessica had a lined coat of her own, and wore a scarf over her black hair.

“We could have gone with them, you know.” Jessica mentioned to her husband. The bronze-skinned Grecian smiled at her, full of love as he always was. He may have been seventeen years older than her, but it had never mattered to them. She loved the man, not the legacy.

“Well, yes, we could have.” He acknowledged the remark with a lascivious wink. “But somehow, that just wouldn’t be me. What’s the point in owning 25 percent of the shares in a company if you can’t have a tour of the place whenever you feel like it? Besides, crowds aren’t my style.”

“No, they aren’t.” She agreed quietly. “You’ve always enjoyed your privacy. Don’t you think you can put an end to it, Oliver? Everyone knows who you are now. You’ve reinvented yourself and your fortune.”

The older gentleman, now 56 years old, shrugged sadly. “It’s hard, trying to change who you are. Maybe I’ve spent so much of my life hiding who I really was I still have a hard time taking off the mask.”

“Except for me.” His wife added. Oliver laughed, a sound she didn’t hear enough. It raised her spirits. His levity didn’t last very long, however…she had a misstep and started to slide away.

Oliver caught her quickly, instantly concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She assured him, smiling again…though weaker than before. “I’m just tired from the chemo, is all.”

“Let’s get you back home, then.” Oliver breathed. She tried to put on a brave face for him, but he could always see through it. They had no secrets from each other, and she couldn’t mask the pain she felt any better than he hid his own feelings.

Jessica gently pushed him away after righting herself. “No.” She said firmly. “I’m not going to let this cancer rule my life. I’ll be damned if I let it rule yours. We came out here to take a look around, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Oliver looked to the floor. “I know. I know, but…”

She lifted his chin up with a steady hand and stared him in the eyes. “I’m not dying here today. The doctors are keeping a very close eye on the ovarian cyst, all right? Once they push it back, they’ll take it out. We’ll be done with it. So considering I’m the one it’s going after, the least you can do is cheer the flop up.”

She winked at him. “All right, dear?”

The firm resolve, Jessica’s ceaseless fountain of strength, finally made her husband nod again. “All right.”

“Good.” They resumed their walk, and Jessica checked her watch. “If I remember the schedule correctly, we’re going to meet up with one of Sennet’s up and coming superstar engineers…”

“Oh? What’s their name?”

“Aah…” Jessica frowned and looked up to the ceiling to think. “Cossack, I think.”

“Hm.” Xanthos set a hand in his pocket. “Don’t we have a Yuri Cossack in the Second Rainbow? I think I heard he was working in the bio-weapons cleanup division.”

“Apparently, this is his son.” Jessica smiled. “His estranged son.”

“Heh!” Oliver laughed. “What, daddy didn’t appreciate what his little boy was doing for a living?”

“I suppose.” Jessica shrugged. “You want rumors, talk to someone else. I gave up the cloak and dagger stuff when you fished me out of the ocean.”

“True, true.” Xanthos hummed. “Best catch of my life.” He joked, earning a raised eyebrow and a wry stare from his wife. “Still…It sounds like someone I’d like to meet. Yes, indeed.”

A door up ahead opened out, and a twenty-something red-haired man with glasses and a trimmed pointed beard stepped out. He had a clipboard in one arm, and wore a pressed, antistatic laboratory coat.

The fellow looked over to them, blinked, and then waved as they came closer. “Mr. and Mrs. Xanthos, yes?” He asked in thickly accented English. Russian, as expected given his heritage.

“And you would have to be Yuri Cossack’s son…” Oliver extended his hand. “Mikhail, wasn’t it?”

The engineer shook his hand. “Doctor Mikhail Sergeyivich Cossack…Please, call me Sergei. Everybody does.”

“Sergei it is, then.” Xanthos pulled his hand back, smarting; the engineer had a strong grip. “I thought I’d let you know, I saw your father a week ago over in New Amsterdam. He seemed to be doing well.”

“Is that so?” The robotic engineer mused, clearly unimpressed. “Well, that is good, I suppose.”

“You don’t seem too thrilled with the news.”

“Da. My father and I…we…how you say…not talk very much together these days.” The red-haired Russian shrugged nonchalantly. “He does not like a son who works so closely with machines. I saw no reason to change to please him, so, here I am.”

“You have to do what makes you happy, that’s what I always say.” Oliver agreed with a polite smile and nod.

Sergei Cossack stroked his chin, pleased at the advice. “It is so. Come, then! I have been instructed to give you private tour of facility. We can begin over here, in my department.” He turned about and walked back through the door he’d appeared from.

“We’re all yours…Sergei.” Oliver Xanthos chuckled. He hesitated out in the hall for a moment longer and looked to Jessica, leaning in to whisper. “Something tells me we’ll want to keep an eye on this young man. I think he’ll be going places.”

“Is that the only reason?” Jessica prodded, stepping into the doorway and winking at him. “I would have thought you were interested because he reminded you of yourself.”

She disappeared inside, and Oliver Xanthos rolled his eyes and laughed quietly. He followed after her, quietly nodding.

Jessica had been right once again. The young Dr. Cossack certainly did strike a chord with Xanthos.

Shugoya Treeborg Preserve, Japan

January 22nd, 2058 C.E.

2:52 P.M.

The one good thing about living so far off the beaten path was that it gave Dr. Wily a chance to escape the noise and clutter of metropolitan life, something he had never been truly comfortable with.

The fact that he got to ride a train to get home, and that the train took him miles outside of Tokyo’s suburban edge didn’t hurt one bit at all.

The locomotives they ran were mostly powered by refined steam engines-hydropower-but the old fashioned wheel and rail system had been kept intact along this stretch. The bulk of Japan’s rail system ran on the more updated maglev system, but it took a lot of power to keep that grid charged up. In the age of heightened social conscience and awareness of the balance between the self and the world, conservation was the popular keyword.

Wily put up with the bumps that came with the ride and smiled, keeping one hand on the reusable canvas bag of groceries he’d gone into town for. The train’s wheels began to squeal to a halt, and against the listed regulations, stood up while the cabin was still moving.

He was at the door when the locomotive pulled up to the small station. The cabin’s loudspeaker announced the Shugoya stopoff in Japanese, but Wily tucked it away and got off with a few workers and a few tourists. The tourists gave him odd looks, and the Treeborg specialists who knew their eccentric neighbors didn’t pay him any attention at all. The sight of an American with wild white hair and an equally enormous mustache eventually lost its shock value.

He meandered off of the train, through the station’s exit gate, and down the small dirt road that connected the Treeborg Preserve with the depot. From there, it was only a few minutes’ walk until he reached an even smaller road that led up a slight hill on the edge of the artificial woods to the house he and Thomas Light lived in.

He opened up the door and dropped his keys on the table beside the entrance. “I’m back, Tom.” Wily called out loudly. He kicked the door shut behind him, keeping the groceries balanced in his arms. “I got those Hot Pockets you wanted. Only picked up a few staples besides.”

Wily wandered into the kitchen and started to unload the bag. “After all, we’ll be heading to Vinkus’s place on Hokkaido in a couple of days, so I didn’t see much sense in buying fruit that’d just go bad on us.”

He set out a few cans of condensed milk. Still no answer came. Wily glanced up irritably. “Tom? You here?” The scientist had been here when he left, taking a powernap in the workshop. “You still sleeping?”

Out of the kitchen and down the hall Dr. Wily went, opening the reinforced door that led to their workshop.

He found it empty, and the lights turned out. Wily’s frown darkened as he turned back towards the house proper. “Thomas! Where are you?” He dashed towards Light’s bedroom, and finally found the man.

Light was sitting on the end of his bed, with an old wooden box opened beside him. He was clutching a photograph in his hand, crying as he stared at it.

The gears clicked in Wily’s brain. “Oh, Christ no.” He muttered softly. “It’s January 22nd.”

Dr. Light looked up through red eyes, finally noticing Wily. “Oh, you came back.”

Wily let out a long sigh and drew a hand over his face. “Tom, don’t do this again.”

“Today’s her birthday.” Light went on, as if he’d never heard his partner. “She would have been forty-two years old.” He wiped at his eyes and sniffled. “Forty-two, Albert.”

“You promised me you were going to stop doing this.” Wily begged with him. “Come on. You’re letting this eat you up. You’ve got to stop it! You promised!”

“I know. I know I did.” Light stared back at the picture, and more tears came up. “But when I woke up from my nap, Will…I couldn’t remember her face.” He choked on the words and sobbed harder. “I couldn’t remember!”

Wily shut his eyes. “It’s been nearly 18 years. You’ve kept her memory alive all this time. Longer than the rest of us. There’s no shame in not being able to see her face after two decades.”

Light shrunk in on himself, fast slipping away again.

Wily walked over and sat down beside his friend. He set an arm over Light’s shoulder and shook his head. “You’re going to have to learn to forgive yourself one of these days, Tom. Vanessa can’t do it for you.” He could have taken a sharper tone, as he had in years past…but Light never responded well when he did that. Quiet and gentle it was.

Light reacted to the advice by burying his head in Wily’s chest and crying even louder.

The mad scientist bit his lip and slowly patted Light on the back, putting away his own discomfort for the moment. His friend was hurting, and maybe he was getting soft in his middling years, but Wily saw no reason to do anything but console the man.

Light had never truly gotten over Vanessa’s death. He likely never would. It came like a storm, predictable as the solstice and over just as fast.

Caught in the maelstrom, Light clung to the only rock left in his life.

Wily let him.

Cape Canaveral

Florida, United States

January 30th, 2058 C.E.

4:27 P.M.

A storm had descended on Mission Control, with Trenton Corbun and the brightest of the Second Rainbow’s physicists and astronomers acting in cooperation with, for the first time, a unified global consortium of tech specialists in space exploration.

The buildup had been tremendous. In just over a little more than a year and a half, the Sennet Corporation’s so-called “Magic Bullets” had blazed a straight course towards Jupiter, moving at over 15 kilometers a second in their mad dash to meet the Apocalyptic Epoch comet while it was still in Jupiter’s pull. Only the necessary crew was allowed in Mission Control as the crucial hour of 4:32 approached…the time when the bullets were scheduled to route communications back detailing their initial approach and findings. Everyone else, press and Second Rainbow observers alike, were hoarded into a large observation hall on the second floor, replete with a thick bulletproof window looking down.

Marcel D’Whyste, forever the CNN liaison to the Second Rainbow, had found himself a seat near the massive window on the left side. It allowed him and his cameraman a wide view of Mission Control below and the audience by them. Most were somber at this event, just as Marcel allowed himself to be for the camera’s sake.

It didn’t surprise him in the least, however, to glance back at the rear of the room and see Dr. Light and Dr. Wily, the most unusual if not most famous members of the Second Rainbow, living up the occasion. They were calmly sucking down massive coolers of what he hoped was soda and munching away on a tub of popcorn the size of a backpack set between them, not once breaking their eyes from the massive viewscreens showing the rockets’ approximate location to Jupiter, as well as Epoch’s.

“Just look at them.” He muttered to his cameraman. “You think they take anything seriously?”

His camera operator stopped fiddling with the zoom settings and glanced over his shoulder. The young man chuckled a bit at the sight. “Jesus, they’ve got balls. They’re treating this like they were going to the movies.”

“In a sense, they are.” Marcel mused. “This is a show that the entire world will be watching. Still, you think they would see the occasion more solemnly.”

“Well, boss, you can relax.” His cameraman went on. “This feed, when it goes live, will be solidly pointed at Mission Control. You won’t have to worry about the folks at home getting all bunched up over a couple of eccentric geniuses.”

D’Whyste shook his head. “Good. If I’ve learned anything in my years, it’s that the greatest minds of Second Rainbow are also the most peculiar ones. Highlighting them and trying to point out flaws has only ever resulted in derision and scorn.”

“The moral being, people forgive quirks, but don’t want you digging them up?”

“The moral being, people don’t want to hear about how the men and women of the Second Rainbow spend their time beyond saving the world. Apparently, they prefer their heroes pristine.”

“Oh, you think they’re heroes now, huh?” Marcel’s cameraman wiggled his eyebrows.

Marcel pursed his lips. “Try not to confuse my opinions with the sentiments of the masses. It’ll save you grief in the long run.”

His cameraman reached a hand up to his earpiece. “We’ve got word from the station. We’ll be live in twenty.”

“Good.” Marcel straightened up and made sure his lapel mike was secure. “On me, then.”

“You’re ready.” The camera’s red indicator light flipped on, and Marcel’s associate started ticking down his fingers.

Marcel closed his eyes, counted silently, and took in a deep breath.

Your career was made for moments like these.

His eyes opened.

Two. One.

“Thank you, Bill. Ladies and gentlemen, I am at Cape Canaveral, stationed above Mission Control in the second floor observation lounge. Several notable dignitaries are on hand for the proceedings today, and security is tight. The fate of the world is at stake here today, and the men and women of NASA and the Second Rainbow want absolutely nothing to go wrong.

A year and a half ago, Sennet Robotics announced with much fanfare the creation and launch of five intrastellar rockets, designed to attach to Epoch and guide it off of its earth-destroying course. Each rocket is self-sufficient. They all carry a positronic matrix run on LightTech’s ubiquitous Core Module, which makes them the most advanced space probes ever launched in mankind’s history.

The plan, as you all have undoubtedly been exposed to time and again, is that these five “Magic Bullets” will connect to Epoch as it swings about Jupiter’s gravity well and begins its final approach towards Earth. A primary concern in the planning stages of this mission was the effect of gravitic shear…Just as the moon pulls on the earth to make the tides, Jupiter will also pull on Epoch as it swings about. The Sennet rockets are actually taking the shear into effect. While there will be some stresses on Epoch, the five rockets will work in unison to give the massive ball of ice a smooth ride around Jupiter. Thanks to Dr. Bailey Flynn’s revolutionary work on his fusion process, they will use the ice of the comet itself to power their engines on the final voyage…literally eating the comet to move it away.

Although we cannot hear what is going on inside Mission Control, we can observe and watch. I will do my best to provide as detailed an account of things as they occur.”

Higher up in the lounge, Wily rolled his eyes and threw another piece of popcorn in his mouth. “The man loves to hear himself talk, doesn’t he?”

Light drained the rest of his soda, earning some irritated glances from their closest fellow observers…politicians, undoubtedly. They were the only people alive who felt the need to wear flag pins on their suits. He slurped louder through the straw, smirking, and then finally set it aside. “A lot of people do. We don’t have to worry about him, though.”

“Just everything else.” Wily agreed, and reached for more popcorn.

Mission Control

4:31 P.M.

Director Gene Walworth had been in charge of NASA since 2051, when a re-allocation of resources had finally allowed the Second Rainbow to help the United States remake their famous space program. A veteran pilot, he’d overseen countless satellite captures and fixes in his pre-War missions. Most recently, he’d had his hands busy making sure that all the newest Moon missions, manned and unmanned, went off without a hitch in their search for the precious fusionable materials that were so scarce on Earth.

None of that came close to the magnitude of what they were doing today.

Director Walworth set his hands into the pockets of his waistcoat and cleared his throat. “Put up the latest image.”

His bastion of technicians and experts, NASA and Second Rainbow alike, functioned as a well-oiled machine. They’d had months prior to learn each other’s habits and build up their team efficiency. The calm order was met instantly with a refresh of the image on their main viewscreens…

Jupiter looming in the background, and just over the gas giant’s ring of dust and debris, the Apocalyptic comet that they called Epoch. A long tail of bluish gas fanned out behind it, swirling erratically as Jupiter pulled Epoch’s tail down into its maw.

“Big son of a bitch.” Gene muttered under his breath. Something else that made this different than any other mission he’d been involved in was the sheer amount of distance involved; even at lightspeed, radio signals from the Bullets took more than 35 minutes to reach Earth. That, more than any other reason, was why the Bullets all carried LightTech’s Core Module and the advanced A.I. that came along with it.

They were, as painful as it was for everyone at Mission Control, on their own.

“The newest data is coming in.” Felman Murges glanced up from his panel. He had been put in charge of the station that recorded and reviewed the data taken on Epoch’s composition. Those systems, in idle for eighteen months, had only been reactivated upon entering Jupiter’s gravity well. He looked down at the screen and nodded. “The outer surface of Epoch appears to be solid ice. Water, methane, a little nitrogen, by the spectrographic analysis. The bullets are preparing their deep-ground radar arrays.”

“Good.” Gene nodded, filing that note away. Of course they expected Epoch to be solid ice. It was by its nature, a Kuiper Belt Object…and KBOs were ice balls, able to sustain that buildup of frozen mass due to the extreme distance away from the yellow sun at the heart of the solar system. “Are the Bullets moving into position?”

“Four are closing in. The fifth is holding back for now.” Georges Shaler called out. “It’s good thinking on their part.”

“Yeah, the fifth can give us a wide scan view of this.” Trenton Corbun folded his arms up tight. “I tell you what makes this the most difficult is that we’re looking at things that happened over half an hour ago.”

Gene Walworth smirked, then moved on. “Give me a Bullet update.”

“Bullets are attaching. Crampons launching…crampon penetration successful.” Shaler rattled off the latest. “Fusion reactors are online…feeds are powering up as we speak.”

“Good.” Gene breathed softly. He leaned forward a bit, watching as the video feed from Bullet 5 showed a digitally enhanced and highlighted image of the comparatively smaller bullet probes connecting around Epoch’s outer axes. “Now we get to see what twenty-five billion buys.”

Shaler was the next to speak up twenty seconds later. “Bullets 1 and 3 have activated their feeds. Bullets 2 and 4’s fusion feeds are coming online.”

“Any abnormalities?” Trenton asked, breaking Mission Control’s procedural chain of command out of nervousness. Gene gave him a sidewards glance before looking over to another technician, one of his own men this time.

“Well Rick, how’re the Bullets holding up?”

“No anomalies. No errors. Everything’s running in the green.” The NASA tech glanced up and readjusted his glasses. “These are some pretty sturdy little rockets.”

“Bullets 2 and 4 just locked in the feeds. Matter converters are running at full capacity.” Shaler called out.

What all of that meant, as seen by the watchful sensor package of Bullet 5, was that its four companion spacecraft had flown about the diameter of the mammoth ball of ice and locked on. Sturdy crampons had been fired from the underbelly of the rockets and burrowed in a half kilometer beneath the surface. They could have been retracted and fired again if the first volley hadn’t given them a solid connection, as the Bullets would have to do later on once Epoch lost appreciable mass, but it hadn’t come to that. The connections had all read as solid, and so the Bullets had activated the more flexible drill and hose that would eat away at Epoch’s surface and channel the frozen water and gas to the fusion drive’s “Gas tank.” A quick trip through the matter converter, which was a variant of the synthesis module that Doctors Light and Wily had first tinkered with in 2055, and Dr. Flynn’s patented fusion engines would burn at full power.

In the end, the connected rockets would shift Epoch’s trajectory with the determination of a colony of ants pushing a boulder. It would not be immediately noticed, but even a fraction of a degree in its altered vector would be enough to see Epoch safely pushed out of its collision with Earth. Starting the burn while it was still under the effect of Jupiter would allow the Bullets a cleaner start, and allow them to take advantage of the tugging gravitic shear.

That was the plan, and so far, it was playing out beautifully.

“Give me a burn status. How’re those fusion rockets holding up?” Gene barked out.

Shaler rubbed at his eyes before reading on. “Containment is in the green. All feeds are running normally. Synchro is in place. They’re making one last triangulation for mass calculations…and…” He paused, then smiled, typing in a quick command. On the main viewscreen, a smaller image sent from Shaler’s monitor displayed the stats on all five bullets. 1 through 4 showed fusion booster ignition. “We have a go.”

Cheers erupted in the room, and Gene let it go on for half a minute before waving his hand over his head to settle them down. “This isn’t over yet, people. Let’s stay on track. Shaler, how’s the deep scan coming? I’d like to know just how much ice we’ve got to burn through, and how much of Epoch is pockets of empty space.”

Shaler nodded. “They’re synchronizing their deep scans to form a composite image of Epoch’s interior…it’s taking a bit more time than usual. All we’re getting now is a reminder that they’re crunching the data, but I expect they’ll have it done in the next minute or so.”

Director Walworth nodded and waited, breaking his silence only to acknowledge other up to date reports as they came in.

A minute and a half later, he looked to Dr. Shaler again. “Well? Do we have an image yet?” He paused at the end when he saw the man frowning deeply.

Shaler shook his head. “No…not yet. The Bullets just initialized a secondary deep scan.”

Gene frowned. “A secondary scan?” He glanced over to Trenton Corbun. “What gives, Corbun?”

Trenton’s mind flew through the scenarios, and he quickly realized that the reason that the Flight Director and the rest of Mission Control were so on edge was because a secondary scan hadn’t been practiced in their simulations. “Well…There’s a couple of reasons it might be doing a second deep radar scan. One of the Bullets’ penetrating radar arrays might have a glitch.”

“Negative.” The NASA technician called Rick spoke up with a shake of his head. “All systems are green. Diagnostics show no errors.”

“Barring mechanical failure, there’s only one other reason they’d be doing this.” Trenton murmured uneasily. He didn’t bother waiting for someone to ask the inevitable why. “The Bullets are getting a second opinion. They weren’t sure the first time.”

“Not sure? How can they not be sure?” Georges Shaler scoffed.

Corbun shook his head. “I wish I knew. All we can do…is wait.”

Another two minutes passed with the Bullets burning on, doing exactly what they had been programmed to do; take Epoch for a ride. Finally, the smaller display on the viewscreen from Murges’ station showed results.

“Data compile complete. The bullets reached consensus on Epoch’s interior composition.” Felman glanced over to Gene. “I’ll put up a key with the image when it comes in.”

“Good.” Gene turned back to the screen. “This’ll be our first good look at Epoch. Go ahead and use the full screen.”

“Roger.” Dr. Murges typed in another few quick commands. “Coming in…Okay, I’m putting it up.”

A massive three-dimensional image of Epoch replaced everything else on Mission Control’s main viewscreen, complete with a Color Key to identify things.

Empty space would be black. Water ice would be blue, while ice from other gases like nitrogen and methane would take hues of green.

They expected a solid mass of blues and greens, with pockets of darkness here and there.

What they saw instead resembled an abstract painting, with reds and browns and spiderweb cracks of gray thrown in, swirling with blue and green into a chaotic mess. Only the outer mile was fully ice.

“Holy mother of…” Gene breathed in sharply.

Everybody else just stared, looking to the color key for the unexpected presences.

Reds were iron and nickel deposits.

Browns were carbon…rock.

And gray was identified transition zones. Fault lines.

“It’s a fucking dirty ice ball!” The NASA tech called Rick exploded.

Gene swallowed. “Issue a stand-down signal.”

Trenton looked over, stunned at the announcement. “A wha…Why?”

“The situation’s changed, Doctor Corbun.” Gene snapped at the man. “These Bullets of yours were designed to move a more stable comet. This makes it a whole new ball game. We have to pull them back until we figure out the best way to move this ticking time bomb.”

“Signal issued.” Georges Shaler called out shakily. “Madre de dios…Eet ees too late to do any good!” He slipped back into his Castilian accent.

“Too late? What do you mean too late?” Trenton demanded. Fear leeched away at what was once unwavering confidence.

“At this distance, there’s a 37 minute delay between when things happen out there and when we receive the radio signal of it occurring. Thirty-seven minutes ago, those Bullets figured out what Epoch was made of.” Felman answered the man with an unusual amount of calm clarity. He glanced at his data. “And they’re still continuing on as normal.”

Trenton stared back at the screen, and the full weight of it hit him.

“They weren’t built to handle something this…this unstable. They’re just going to keep on burning, seeing that as the best solution, and…”

“The gravitic shear we were counting on to help tug at Epoch is going to do its job too well, combined with the force those rockets are putting on it.” Georges continued. He shut his eyes. “It’s going to rip that thing apart.”

Trenton Corbun sank to his knees and looked up at the viewscreen. The image from Bullet 5 came back up, showing Epoch in the foreground of Jupiter. All he could do was stare.

Gene Walworth reached to the red phone sitting on his desk, punched in a single call button, and set the receiver to his ear.

He clenched his jaw for a moment as it connected. “We have a situation.” He said.

Up above in the observation room, a murmur was slowly gaining power.

“Something’s happening, ladies and gentlemen.” Marcel said, with the camera still rolling beside him and looking down into Mission Control below. “Trenton Corbun, the founder of Sennet Robotics looks as though he’s troubled deeply by something, and the room has taken on a definite somber cast.”

“Something’s wrong.” Wily muttered to Light, pushing the bucket of popcorn solidly in the Santa Claus lookalike’s lap.

“You think the Bullets are having technical difficulties?” Light whispered back.

“No, no. They brought up a diagnostic panel earlier. I couldn’t read the letters or numbers, but the schematics came up green.” Wily narrowed his eyes. “They started to react after they saw the composition of Epoch.”

“What was wrong with it?”

“Hell if I know, Tom. I don’t work for Sennet Robotics.” Wily berated his friend.

“Maybe they found something they weren’t expecting.”

“Hm. Could be.”

The pagers on their comms went off. The two scientists shared a surprised expression, and then noticed that others in the small audience had also been paged.

Light brought his up and read the screen.

Priority One. Report to NASA Briefing Room Four.

“Looks like they’re calling us in.” Light stood up and rested the popcorn bucket in the crook of his arm. “I guess we’ll be finding out what went wrong.”

Before Wily could reply, Marcel D’Whyste was on top of them, his cameraman shoving the lens into Light’s face. The CNN reporter for a change, looked as though he was viewing his job as more important than simple posturing.

“Doctor Light, would you care to comment? Do you have any idea what’s happening, as you’ve apparently been summoned?”

The white bearded man blinked for a second as Wily sidled up beside him, and glanced down through the thick transparent window to Mission Control’s main viewscreen.

He looked just in time to see Epoch suddenly begin to break apart.

Face darkening, Light grabbed the cameraman by the shoulder and turned him around so he, and the camera, could see the chaos unfolding.

“Chances are good it’s got something to do with that.” Light growled. “If you’ll excuse us, we’ve got work to do.”

He and Wily quickly exited, followed by the other Second Rainbow members who had been watching.

For a rare time in his life, Marcel D’Whyste found himself in the midst of an unfolding tragedy, a true human drama. The moment he had waited for all his life had come at last, as the live feed to CNN showed Epoch shattering apart, turning a single large rock into a storm of murderous debris.

All he could say, quietly repeating it, was, “My God.”

Cape Canaveral

Briefing Room 4

5:27 P.M.

The assembled scientists of the Second Rainbow sat about the long Treeborg wood table, muttering quietly to themselves as they idled the waiting time away. Light’s empty popcorn bucket lay on its side at the far end, having made a full rotation about earlier. The Second Rainbow, apparently, was composed of nervous eaters.

Georges Shaler checked his watch. “How much longer do they expect us to wait?” The Spaniard asked aloud. He drummed his fingers on the artificial wood and sighed. “I could be doing something inside Mission Control, but they summoned me out here.”

“They probably waited until the stand-down signal reached the Bullets before putting together their status report.” Felman answered quietly. “At least, that’s how I would do it.”

Dr. Flynn, who’d been up in the observation lounge along with Light and Wily, glanced about and shook his head. “Where’s Corbun? I would have thought he’d be here by now.”

“It was his spacecraft that failed in their primary objective. I’d put betting odds that he’s either trying to clean up the mess…or still lost in his own private world of hurt.” Wily surmised.

The door to the room opened up, and the twenty sets of eyes in the room turned towards it. A very frazzled looking Director Walworth strolled in, flatscreen laptop in hand.

“Everybody here?” Gene asked curtly. Nobody said anything, so he nodded and grabbed his seat at the end of the table. “The situation is this: The Bullets identified the interior composition of Epoch too late for it to do any good for us. While it’s still a KBO, and should be nothing but an ice ball, it ended up being something closer to a slush of a dirty asteroid mixed in with outer solar system remnants.”

“Unlikely, but not impossible.” Murges agreed, adding to the briefing. Director Walworth glanced over, and Murges shook his head. “The bulk of the heavier elements would have been drawn into the interior of the solar system’s accretion disc during planetary formation, but astronomers have never been able to completely dismiss the idea that the Kuiper Belt might have had some rocky stragglers.”

“Well, we found one.” Director Walworth snapped. “Or rather, it found us.” He punched in a button, and a holographic projector descended from the ceiling. A rotating three-dimensional image, formed of well-ordered photons appeared over the center of the table. The lights dimmed down, and Walworth went on. “Here’s the interior deep radar scan that the Bullets gave us an hour ago. As you can see, it’s haphazard and chaotic in construction. Rock, metal, and water and gas ice was spread about inside with little order. To make it worse, the nature of Epoch’s composition made it seismically unstable. The combination of gravitic shear from Jupiter and the Bullets acted as the fulcrum to snap its spine.”

The image expanded, and steadily, the mighty comet began to fracture and break apart.

“At this time, Epoch has fragmented into close to 924 pieces. Bullet 5 has indicated that only a few of the outer pieces have been pulled away. The other four Bullets made a consensus decision to reattach to the largest section, a twenty-seven kilometer slice, and shove it out of the way. That still leaves close to 75 percent of Epoch’s original mass on a collision course with Earth. And to make matters worse, the Bullets actually increased Epoch’s speed. They were designed to do that, but with moving it off course as well. Now, we’ve sped it up and aimed it at where Earth is going to be earlier in its solar revolution. We’ve rescheduled doomsday from August 2060 to May.”

“And the bullets can’t handle 900 plus objects.” Wily gripped at some of his remaining hair and pulled on it, just hard enough to tug a few strands out of his scalp. “Perfect. So now what?”

“Only one choice left.” Director Walworth pointed at Felman Murges. “We finish SKYLIGHT and blast that meteor storm out of the sky.”

All eyes turned to the Swede, who dry swallowed and finally nodded. “We’ll get it working. This just really puts the pressure on us, is all.”

“You’re not behind schedule, are you?” Dr. Flynn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“The core of SKYLIGHT is still in the early stages of construction. The solar cannon and plasma buster array are going to take the most work, and we haven’t even started assembly on the second, much less start to crunch the numbers for the targeting system.” Murges exhaled loudly and ran a hand through his hair. “The panels still need a lot of work, and we haven’t started interlinking the power systems. Right now, SKYLIGHT is little more than a skeleton. It’s missing the skin, the heart, the muscles, and the brains.” Murges glanced around the table and read the crestfallen faces there. “We were moving on schedule for the resources allocated, but the fact is, we planned for a deadline of June, 2060.”

Somebody dropped their pen, and the noise echoed around in the room.

Murges took in a deep breath, removed his glasses, and rubbed at his eyes. “This changes everything. I don’t want to build this thing fast and dangerous. We want to keep any chance of a gremlin from happening, and advancing the construction by a few months is going to make that a very hard proposition.”

“We’ll have to make do with the time we have.” Georges Shaler announced. He folded his hands together and glanced over to Dr. Flynn. “And that means all of us are going to have to commit ourselves fully to SKYLIGHT. We have two years, barely.”

“Two years to prevent the end of the world.” Wily sighed. “It sounded hard enough when we had five.”

“Let’s keep the cynicism out of this, doctor.” Director Walworth reprimanded the German American. “We already have enough religious nuts saying that we’re operating against Divine Edict by trying to save our hides, let’s not make things worse.” Walworth looked to Felman. “All right, Murges. We have to get Skylight running by April of 2060, two months ahead of schedule. What’s it going to take to get it done?”

“Everything.” Murges shook his head. “More workers. More number crunchers. More equipment and more supplies. I mean, everything we have. Launches with raw materials on a biweekly basis, if we can swing it, to start with. And we’ll need to advance our construction start dates on the weapons systems. The solar cannon needs to happen first; it won’t help redirecting sunlight against those metal and mineral deposits, but we can at least burn away more of the ice mass before it gets close. After that, we’re going to have to put our faith in the plasma buster that,” He pointed to Light and Wily, “you two are working on. It’s got the punch to do the trick.”

“Just not the range.” Wily reminded him with a careful shake of his head. “We’ve sustained a plasma toroid up to a distance of ten meters in laboratory settings, and that’s a small one. Given the technology as it stands, that would equate to us being able to shoot a SKYLIGHT sized plasma bullet halfway to the Moon before the shot loses cohesion.”

Wily stood up and leaned in closer to the holographic display. He pointed at the splintered storm of comet fragments. “Do we have an estimate on how much larger the diameter of this meteor swarm will be when it reaches Earth?”

“Multiply it by a factor of one and a half, at the lowest.” Murges advised him.

Wily’s eyes narrowed, and he looked over to Light.

Light shook his head.

“It’s going to take more power and focus and size to vaporize that storm than we expected.” Wily curled his mustache. “I don’t like saying it, but we’re going to need some help with the numbers on this one.”

“You sound as though you don’t approve of the idea of getting help.” Director Walworth surmised.

“No, you think?” Wily scoffed bitterly. “We’re only talking about increasing our knowledge of a technology that could be used for warfare. All peaceful ends aside, that’s knowledge that Tom and I have tried desperately to keep out of the hands of others. Go ahead, talk to the people at U.S. Robotics. They’ve been trying to duplicate our work since we got started on it. Plasma weaponry is the next arms race, and the more people we bring on board, the faster you’ll have idiots putting them on jets and tanks and God knows what else!”

The rant earned a knowing sympathetic nod from the whole of the Second Rainbow’s members in the room, scowls from the NASA technicians with military backgrounds.

Director Walworth lived up to his oath of office by taking the middle ground. “I don’t want to cause an arms race any more than you do, doctor…But the fact is, we need to get this “Buster cannon” of yours built, quicker and with increased specs. That’s something you and Dr. Light can’t do on your own, and that means you’re going to have to play nice with the others. We don’t have the luxury of good intentions and beliefs anymore. It’s survival or death.”

Wily closed his eyes, and his fists clenched up again. “So war es.” He muttered in German. “Wie gute Absichten uns führen zu ruinieren.” He opened his eyes and switched back to English. “All right, we’re playing the devil’s game now.”

Director Walworth shut down the holographic display and stood up, letting the lights come back on.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us.” He told them. “I’ll let you get to it.”

Kriljarne Hospital

New Amsterdam, Netherlands

April 21st, 2058 C.E.

1:42 P.M.

Jessica Xanthos had woken up only ten minutes earlier, and feeling nauseous, she had refused the toast that a passing nurse had offered. It was with some effort that she turned her hairless head as another knock at the door sounded. “Yes?”

Dr. Albert William Wily poked his head in. “Hey there.”

Jessica smiled. “Hey there yourself. What are you doing here?”

“Well, Tom and I are in town to go over some number crunching with Felman, and I thought the least I could do was pop in and say hello.” Wily came all the way into the room and produced a bouquet of flowers. “Supposedly, it’s tradition to bring these when you call on a patient. I don’t see the point in it myself.”

“Hm.” She did her best to ignore the IV in her arm and folded her hands in her lap. “Why are you really here?”

“Because I enjoy seeing you in a hospital gown?” Wily joked. She didn’t smile, and he sobered up. “Look. Oliver asked me to check in on you, since he couldn’t himself.”

“The man still has an empire to run.” Jessica admitted. “Though, I wish he was here.”

“Yeah. You don’t exactly look too good.” Wily set the flowers down on the room’s dresser, then dragged a chair over to her bedside. “I thought they only had you on chemo. What’s with the prison shave?”

“The cancer spread to my bones.” Jessica said. “They’re throwing everything at it now, radiation therapy included.”

“A damn shame.” Wily sighed. “That long black hair of yours will take forever to grow back out.”

“Right now, I’m more worried about whether or not I’ll be able to eat again.” Jessica said jokingly. “I’m throwing up Jell-O. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is?”

“Sort of.” Wily pursed his lips. “Look, the fact is, I’m not any good at this sort of sensitive stuff.”

“So how come you came, and Dr. Light didn’t?”

“Easy.” Wily scratched at his chin. “I told him to stay and finish the calculations. Seeing you like this would have caused him to sink back into depression. He lost his fiancée at the very beginning of the war. It’s been eating him ever since. And you, well…” Wily frowned and trailed off, realizing the territory he was stumbling into.

Jessica finished the thought, looking him straight in the eyes. “I look like I’ve already got one foot in the grave.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all right, you can say it.” Jessica took in a breath and looked up to the ceiling for a moment. “Hell, it’s probably true.”

“I don’t want it to be true.” Wily replied, more forcefully than he’d intended. He softened his tone and pressed on. “Look, I’ve got one friend who lost out on love. Oliver needs you.”

“I know.” Jessica agreed. She reached a hand up and rubbed at her eyes. “I’ll put up the good fight. This hasn’t beaten me yet.” She sank into the covers of the rolling bed and blinked out for a moment before refocusing. “So…how goes your fight?”

“The idea behind our plasma buster’s pretty sound. It works on a smaller scale, but we keep running into problems trying to enlarge the size to the scale…and range…SKYLIGHT will need.”

“How so?”

Wily scratched his nose. “Think of it like this. A human’s a certain size. If you enlarged a person to gigantic proportions, their bones would shatter under the stress. There’s a limit to how big we can get. It’s the same thing here…after we pass a certain threshold, the shot keeps destabilizing. It can’t hold its mass. The longest we’ve been able to make a shot fly is ten meters.”

“In other words, you can make a bullet, but you can’t power up a supershot?” Jessica asked.

“Bingo.” Wily crossed one leg over the other and folded his arms with a frown. “It’s flummoxing me to no end. But there’s got to be some way around it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s a way around everything.” Wily insisted. “Bees fly, despite what early flight mechanics insisted on. Gyroscopes spin. Fusion’s a reality. This challenge is no different. I just have to figure out the gimmick, the shortcut.”

“You’ll get there.” Jessica promised him. “I have faith in you.”

“Yes, you and everyone else.” Wily looked down at the floor. “Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose.”

“How exactly did a stone cold fox like you end up with Oliver Xanthos?” Wily drummed his fingers on his knee and looked up again. “I mean, someone who can shoot like you can, fight like you can, and knows as much about security as you do? Even if he did used to be a black market tycoon, it’s not like there’s some catalogue he picked you out of.”

“Jealous?” Jessica teased him. “It was simple. I was working in my first job after College. I was on a boat at sea which capsized and sank. All the rest of the crew died, and Oliver found me half-dead and clinging to a bit of driftwood in the middle of the Aegean. He nursed me back to health, and after I found out that I’d been pronounced dead, I decided to work for him.”

Wily blinked. “It’s that simple?”

“Yeah.”

Wily stared at her. “Jessica isn’t your real name, is it?”

The tired woman shrugged. “Why would it matter?”

“Just a thought.” Wily mused. “You’ve always carried yourself more like a soldier than a secretary. If your story’s true, then I’d bet good money you weren’t too keen on having people find out about you.”

“We all have our secrets.” Jessica said warningly. “Why try to dredge mine up?”

“I hate unsolved mysteries?” Wily shrugged. “Look. I don’t mean any harm by it. You saved our lives. That’s a favor I’ll never be able to forget. I’ve just always wondered about you, was all. What did you do before?”

Jessica stared at him, and even through her pained, drugged state, Wily felt intimidated. He coughed nervously, stood up, and nodded. “I’ll tell Oliver you’re doing all right. He also wanted me to tell you he’d be flying in later tonight.”

“Thanks.” Jessica looked to the window. “For stopping by.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” Wily walked to the doorway.

“Oh, and your question?” Jessica blurted out, making the man stop. Wily turned his head half around and glanced back. “I worked for the Company.”

“What company?” Wily asked.

“Out of Langley.” Jessica said softly.

Wily thought about it for a moment, then let his eyes go wide as he realized the implication.

CIA.

Jessica’s cool green eyes stared out unwaveringly. “Now get going. You’ve got a world to save.”

Following orders, Wily did just that.

LightTech Industries Regional Headquarters

New Amsterdam

“Try it now.” Felman Murges finished the latest adjustments to the focusing array’s parameters and nodded.

Standing behind a thick shield, Dr. Light activated the model buster cannon. It powered up quickly, there came the momentary pause and flash of light, and then an amorphous glob of superheated plasma streaked from the end towards the target on the far side of the testing range.

The shot collapsed and dissipated after only clearing a third of the distance.

Light tore off his welder’s goggles. “Shit!”

“Easy, Tom. Easy.” Felman cautioned the man. “So that variation didn’t work. We’ll try another.”

“And the fact that that was our 423rd attempt doesn’t faze you?”

“Not really.” Felman smiled genially. “I’ve only been witness to twenty-three of them.”

Light walked away from the test cannon, smiling at the small joke in spite of his irritation. “Smartass. Fine. I need a break, though.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.” Felman apologized. “I’ve been preoccupied.”

“Yeah. You’ve got the busiest job of us all, at the end of the day.” Light moseyed over to the back of the room, where a row of vending machines waited. He passed by the coffee dispenser and food cooler and pressed his finger on the reader of the soda machine. It clunked out a biodegradable plastic bottle of Coca-Cola, and Light quickly downed half of it.

He let out a sigh and smiled. “Some days, I miss the crisp snap you got with aluminum cans…but it does get rid of the metallic taste.”

“You silly Americans.” Felman chuckled. He folded his arms as Light swallowed some more. “When I was very young, glass bottles were coming back into vogue. You haven’t lived until you’ve drank from a glass bottle, but these new ones come close. You should enjoy it, not complain.”

“Well, do you want one?” Light asked him.

Murges considered it. “I really shouldn’t…”

“It’s a soda, not a beer. One won’t kill you, despite what people try to say about the sugar.”

“Well, I’m not getting any younger, I suppose.”

Light punched his thumb on the reader again, and the machine clunked out another bottle. “Here ya go, then.” He tossed it over to Murges, and the older gentleman fumbled it for a bit before securing it. Thankfully, it didn’t spray carbon dioxide foam all over when he opened it.

“Small miracles.” Murges smiled, taking a drink. “Hmm, not quite as fizzy as I’d like. There is a difference between a fountain drink and one that comes pre-bottled, my rotund friend.”

“So they tell me.” Light chuckled. “I guess there’s a reason it always tasted better in a restaurant.”

Murges swallowed his second mouthful and checked his watch. “When did you say that Dr. Wily was going to be back?”

“Well, considering he was checking up on Jessica Xanthos, and the hospital’s on the other side of the city…it might be a while.” Light glanced up at the wall clock. “Probably another hour, we’ll see him, if he doesn’t call by then.”

“Hm. Good. Perhaps he’ll have an idea of how to proceed. A fresh mind always helps.”

“You were supposed to be the fresh source of wisdom, Felman.”

“Sorry to disappoint, but despite the convention that a mind diverted from its usual task finds results, I might not have been the best person to consult on building a better gun.” Felman lifted the bottle to his lips and blew across the top of it, producing a pitched toot.

The sound caught Light off guard. “What are you doing?”

Felman blew again. “Bottle whistling. You’ve never done it?”

Light shook his head. “No…Never saw anyone else do that, either. I can whistle the normal way, though.”

“Well, you’re missing out then.” Felman took another swig, swallowed, and blew again. The pitch deepened. “Bottle whistling used to be a favorite pastime of my father’s. He was quite good at it. See, the pitch changes depending on how deep the bottle is, and how much liquid is inside of it.”

“There are easier ways to modulate a pitch, you know.” Light joked.

“True, but this is less expensive than rubbing your finger on the edge of a wine glass. Less dangerous, too. You cause enough vibrations, the crystal shatters.”

Light blinked. “Like an opera singer able to sing high enough to break glass?”

“Same idea, yeah.”

“Huh.” Light scratched at his beard. “Wasn’t there a bridge that got destroyed because of that idea? Galloping Gertie?”

“No, the winds made it shake and vibrate until it shook itself apart.” Dr. Murges drank some more of his soda. “It’s not really my area of expertise…you’d want to talk to a structural engineer…but I think it was something about the winds caused the bridge to reach the right frequency.”

“Huh.” Light pursed his lips. “That’s kind of cool, actually.”

“There’s a reason armies broke step when they crossed bridges.” Felman concluded with a grin. He blew across his bottle, earning the lowest tone yet.

Light started to comment again, then cut himself off. He made a strange face and seemed to mutter something to himself. Felman frowned.

“Something wrong, Doctor Light?”

“No, no…I just…Had a…” Light trailed off, then quickly turned and dashed away. “Go ahead and take a break!” He shouted out behind him.

1 Hour Later

Wily knocked on the door of the room that Light had disappeared into. “Hey, Tom? You in there?”

“Yeah, come on in!” Came the muffled reply. Wily glanced over to Dr. Murges, who glanced up from his datapadd. The elder astronomer had been reviewing the latest data from SKYLIGHT’s construction crews.

“You sure you don’t know what he was thinking?”

“Sadly, no.” Felman shrugged. “One moment we were talking about bottle whistling, the next he goes running off back there like a lunatic.”

Wily turned back around and opened the door.

The room Light had run into was a storage room for older equipment, and Wily made his way through the crowded shelves of spare parts and rustic gear before finding Light at the back, fiddling with a small scanner.

“Now what in the devil got into you?” Wily sighed.

Light looked up at him, smiled, and turned the scanner about so Wily could see the monitor. “Sing something.”

Wily blinked. “What?”

“Just sing something!”

“I don’t sing, Tom.” Wily raised his hand to silence the man’s protests. “I also don’t whistle, hum, or drawl like I was at a hoedown.”

“Fine, be a spoilsport. But watch this.” Tom whistled a single clear note, and a flat green line running in the middle of the scanner’s monitor suddenly bounced and became a series of waves.

Wily stared at it. “It’s a wavelength detector. So?”

“So?” Light exclaimed. “So this means that we’ve found the frequency at which I whistle! The optimal frequency, even!”

“You’re losing me, Tom.”

“It came to me when Felman and I had a couple of Cokes.” Light went on, walking past Wily and out of the storage room. He kept the scanner tucked under his arm. “Wavelength and frequency touches everything. Light from the sun has a wavelength, our voices have a wavelength, Hell, even the wind blowing through a canyon has an auditory wavelength!”

Wily looked over to Felman for explanation, and the man shrugged again. “You mind making sense? What does any of this have to do with our current problem?”

“This!” Light stepped next to the scale model buster cannon and patted the top of it. “Every time we try to fire a shot, it fizzles and dissipates after it goes for so much of a distance. We were wrong about why, Al. It’s not a matter of too much power, or too little…The shot is shaking itself to pieces. All that plasma, roiling, burning? It’s unstable. You want it unstable when it impacts, but until that point, you need it solid and running hot so it can cover the distance.”

Wily twirled his mustache. “Okay…You’re starting to make a little more sense now. So what’s the solution, if this is what’s causing it? I say if because we don’t have any solid evidence that this…frequency disruption…is what’s causing it.”

“Then we find it.” Light beamed. “By God, Will, we find it. Once we figure out the frequency that this synthesized plasma is most stable at, and what frequency it’s at right now, we can do something, build something. Maybe a harmonic filter, something to make sure the shot doesn’t rattle apart.”

“I’d say you were giving us more work, but considering the challenge…” Wily looked skyward. “Aah, what the Hell. So much for getting drunk tonight.”

“I’ll start up the coffee.” Light walked towards the facility’s nearest kitchenette.

Murges pocketed his device. “Gentlemen, it’s been fun working with you, but I really do have to get back to work on my own…”

“It’s all right.” Wily nodded to the man. “Thanks for keeping Thomas company while I was gone. I hope we can work together sometime.”

“You have your hands full with this plasma buster of yours.” Felman smiled. “Leave the solar cannon to myself and that troupe of younger go-getters I have waiting for me. Still, just one question…why coffee? You two planning on pulling an all-nighter?”

“No.” Dr. Wily answered, waving goodbye. “We probably won’t get any sleep in for the next three days or so.”

Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL)

San Gabriel Valley, California

April 23rd, 2058 C.E.

10:32 A.M.

Nearly every major metropolitan area in the United States had suffered some degree of damage. Thankfully, Los Angeles hadn’t been victim to the far more long-lasting biological and chemical attacks. Radiation cleanup had taken a great deal of time for the surroundings, and even with cleanup robots working nonstop to clear away the rubble too heavily irradiated for existing purifying technologies, there would still be a lingering skeletal wasteland where downtown once stood. At least for another decade, so the estimates went. Work on that had slackened off some, with the storm of Epoch’s debris fast incoming. It did make a bit of sense; Why work to rebuild when cometary fragments would wipe out everything?

On the other hand, Georges Shaler thought as he reviewed the latest computer model of the SKYLIGHT blueprints…It was pretty cowardly. It didn’t show much faith if they were willing to throw in the towel.

His phone went off, and picked up automatically. He’d set it to speakerphone mode beside his keyboard, so the caller’s voice came up loud and clear. “Georges, it’s Bailey.”

“Dr. Flynn, yes.” Georges rotated the 3-D schematic. “I was just reviewing your data. The simulations indicate that your fusion engine will only reach 25 million degrees.”

“You worried about that?”

“No, I just thought that fusion required a somewhat higher temperature to sustain.”

Dr. Flynn laughed. “I was wondering if you’d notice that. 200 million degrees used to be the benchmark to aim for, in fusion technology’s fledgling days. Thanks to refinements in the magnetic containment fields, and some data shared from Dr. Light and Wily’s own plasma experiments, my team was able to lower it down to the same temperature our sun fuses hydrogen at.”

“More miracles every day.” Shaler smiled. “Well, it apparently helped you out with size and shielding.”

“Give me another 10 years or so, and I’ll be able to miniaturize a fusion engine enough to support mobile systems. Sort of a…well, microfusion generator, I guess you could call it.”

“Dare to dream, my friend. Always dare to dream.” Shaler tapped the keyboard and brought up another screen. “In the meantime, I’ve been knocking some heads together with LightTech and Sennet Robotics. Micrometeoroids and space debris are already making their presence known, ruining some of the photovoltaics on the solar panels.”

“You had an idea, then?”

“Well…” Georges began.

It was all he got out before a massive explosion ripped through the JPL compound and brought the ceiling down on top of him.

That morning, people had come and gone as they often did. There were the employees, the usual visitors, the unusual high-profile visitors, and a handful of newcomers and tourists. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, rebuilt in a section of land that still clung tenuously to life between a natural desert and a radioactive one, maintained its role as a place of high interest, and more importantly, education. Epoch had driven everything even remotely connected to the Second Rainbow’s work into high focus, and of all the places out there, the JPL was one of the most interesting.

That same reason also made it one of the most easily infiltrated locations.

The explosion in question had been set off by one quiet, middle-aged man with a warped mind. A little on the fat side, he’d made his way into the complex posing as a transfer employee from another worksite. It wasn’t hard, considering that he had been a Physics student before the Wars. Harder to fake was the paper trail, electronic information, and ID badge…But then, new employees were easily replaced, and photo IDs could be, with care and caution, altered with a different photograph.

“Dustin Phillips” had checked in at the front desk at 10:31 P.M. and made small talk for exactly 107 seconds. Afterwards, he had been directed to the department he had been assigned to. 68 seconds later, he arrived at his location; the Propellant Division of JPL, which oversaw the mixing and synthesis of the complex rocket fuels that were used to lift spacecraft into orbit for the SKYLIGHT project.

24 seconds later, somebody finally got anxious enough with the man walking about with a dreamy expression on his face to go up and ask who he was. The man identified himself, but as misfortune had it, the fellow who asked his identity happened to remember the real Dustin Phillips; he’d sat in on the conference call where Dustin was hired.

At 10:34 and 48 seconds, the peaceful tranquility of the Propellant Division was shattered by a shout to summon security.

At 10:35 and 50 seconds, the man impersonating the long dead Dustin Phillips pressed a hidden trigger within his sleeve, which was wired to a series of Thermite-enhanced explosive charges wrapped around his body.

The important thing to remember about rocket fuel, is that there are several varieties, ranging from stable to highly unstable. The Thermite charges ended up being a case of overkill, as the main propellant additive being worked on that day was Hydrazine…a highly unstable compound that required very little energy to begin its exothermic reaction.

At 10:35 and 52 seconds, the initial explosion finally reached a critical point in the narrow surroundings.

At 10:35 and 53 seconds, the JPL laboratories shuddered as the secondary explosion blew a tremendous fireball in all directions and collapsed the walls and roof.

On the other side of the building, Georges Shaler’s call was interrupted by a loss of power, and was followed shortly thereafter by a collapse of the building on top of him. The force of the collapse shoved him under the heavy metal table and created a pocket around him as the Castilian satellite expert was knocked unconscious.

He was one of the lucky ones.

Second Rainbow Headquarters

Ewan Lake, Alaska

April 23rd, 2058 C.E.

3:22 P.M.

“God-DAMNIT!” Darwin Vinkus screamed, throwing his phone across the room hard enough to shatter it on the wall.

Paul Van Hostick sat behind his desk in his office, flinched at the display, and went for the calm approach. “I don’t think we can replace phones destroyed in violent rages.”

“Slag the phone, and slag you.” Vinkus collapsed into his chair and rested his head in his hands. “We just got the death toll in. 126 dead, another 74 injured. That explosion took out nearly all of the JPL. All the assets we had in place there are gone.”

Hostick pressed his fingertips together. “You mentioned earlier that there was suspicion of foul play?”

“Yeah.” Vinkus tossed his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve had a couple of my errand boys on site since Dr. Flynn lost connection with Georges. The Fire Marshal centered the flashpoint in the Propellant Division. There were traces of Thermite.”

“Which means…”

Vinkus let out a long breath. “You really did keep your hands clean during the Wars, didn’t you? Thermite’s an explosive catalyst; it burns hot, fast, and hard. People use Thermite when they want to make sure something blows up. We’re reviewing internal security data…what’s left of it…but right now all we’ve got are a couple of eyewitness accounts saying that barely three minutes before the blast, a new transfer hire came in. Somebody shouted for security, and two seconds later…boom.”

Hostick drew in a breath. “Suicide bomber?”

“Looks that way.” Vinkus tilted his head down to stare at Hostick. “We don’t know who, or why, or even how for that matter. But we’re by God going to figure it out. In the meantime, I’d suggest you start circling the wagons. JPL was one of our highest profile worksites. If a nut with a bomb could get in there, other nuts can get elsewhere. Get security, troops, whatever. I don’t like using military authority, but…”

“I read you.” Director Hostick cut him off and shook his head. “I’ll get on it.” He winced and reached under his desk. “Damnit. I think I’m starting to develop an ulcer.” He pulled out a bottle of antacid and popped it open. “It took me more than half a decade, but I’m finally beginning to understand why you were so eager to pass this position on to someone else. Any chance you’d take it back?”

“Paul, I’m younger than you and I look like I’m in my late 50’s.” Darwin remarked, lifting an eyebrow. “What do you think I’ll say?”

“Never hurts to ask.” Paul downed half of the bottle, and Darwin watched his adam’s apple bounce from the constant swallowing. The SRHQ Director set the Antacid aside and drummed his fingers. “I’ll bolster security. Just…tell me something.”

“If I know it.”

Paul shut his eyes. “Georges Shaler…Did he make it?”

“Depends.” Darwin muttered, staring at the fragments of his phone. “They dragged him out of the rubble an hour ago. I got upset at the status report. He hasn’t regained consciousness, and his vitals indicate he won’t for a very long time…if ever.”

“Coma?”

“Yeah.”

Paul Van Hostick shut his eyes even harder. “That Kuksugarne.”

“Yeah.” Darwin got up and grabbed his coat. “That’s what I hate most about suicide bombers. There’s nobody to punish afterwards. With Shaler out of the mix, we’re in for a world of hurt.”

“We’re not through yet.” Director Hostick promised, pulling on newfound fire. “We don’t have a choice. We have to pick up where he left off. You and I, and everyone else in the Second Rainbow’s going to have to get their hands dirty. Even if we’re just running numbers.”

“Thought you might say that.” Darwin nodded. “I’d tell you a joke about how it was getting boring around here, but…I just don’t feel like it.” He bid one last farewell and headed out the door.

Director Hostick sat quietly for a moment before beginning the E-Mail that would bolster security around every Second Rainbow worksite on the planet.

Nobody would be making any jokes for a very long time.

LightTech Industries Regional HQ

New Amsterdam

April 25th, 2058 C.E.

7:46 A.M.

“…have finally obtained evidence that positively identifies the terrorist responsible for the blast at Jet Propulsion Laboratories in California. In a video taken from his home, Walter Markham…”

Light came to with a snort. He blinked several times before realizing there was a napkin stuck to the side of his head. He pulled it off and looked around through half-opened eyelids. “Whu time is it?”

The sound of ceramic hitting the metallic counter focused his attention, and he turned his head about. Wily pulled his hand away from another cup of coffee and shrugged. “Almost eight in the morning.”

Light groaned, starting to come to. “Damnit, didn’t I tell you to wake me up after four hours?!” He asked, louder than he needed to. Wily stared at him, and Light sighed. “Fudge it all.”

“You looked like you needed the sleep.”

“I always need the sleep. It’s just a question of whether or not we can afford it.” Light dragged himself up. “You got a cup for me?”

Wily slid a second mug over to him. Without thinking, Light tossed it back and downed the entire thing, realizing too late the voluminous steam coming off of it. Through sheer force of will, he finished the entire cup, and then set the ceramug mug down, gasping for air.

“You all right?” Wily raised an eyebrow.

“No, no, my own fault.” Light wheezed, tears in his eyes. “I’m awake now, at least.” He quickly went over and poured himself a glass of cool water. Wily rolled his eyes and looked back to the TV.

“…for God has SPOKEN to us! We, the unclean, the unworthy, were condemned to our deaths. We destroyed ourselves by His will, and we should have all perished. Instead, we have struggled on for years, trying to live again in defiance of His edict. God sent fire from the heavens to destroy us, and AGAIN foolish scientists and foolish governments tried to ignore their fate. Now God has given his ultimate truth, with Epoch broken apart into an unstoppable storm! We have been sentenced to death, and to disobey His wishes is human folly of the worst kind! Now, I will do what those cowards in Gehenna’s End refused to. I will strike a blow against the so-called Second Rainbow’s hubris. I will put a stop to it all, and when I do, I will be welcomed into hea…”

“What’s this bullhockey?” Light grumbled.

Wily didn’t look up. “A video they took from the house of the guy who blew up the JPL. Apparently he was a religious nut too extreme for that Gehenna’s End movement.”

Light snorted angrily. “What a waste. I’ll never understand those bastards. If they’re so guilty about surviving, they can just go jump off a cliff and leave the rest of us alone.”

“Amen.” Wily turned the TV off and took another sip of java. “Still, I don’t know whether I feel safer by having a squad of U.N. troopers guarding our facility here or not. I’ve never liked soldiers much.”

“The directive came down from Hostick. You really want to tell him to stuff his protection when Shaler’s comatose?”

“I’m crazy, Tom, but I’m not stupid.” Wily got up and walked over to their workstation. “So how much more did you get done after I crashed?” He stared down at a strange little metallic ring they’d designed to fit on the end of their buster cannon model.

“I finished it.” Light explained, following after him.

Wily shook his head, having spent too many years now with Light to be amazed at the round fellow’s tenacity. He could still disapprove of his even sillier sleeping habits, of course. “Some days, I wonder if you haven’t resorted to caffeine pills.”

“What, and risk a train wreck?” Light clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s face it, Al. At our age, that’d be asking for a heart attack.”

“For you, maybe.” Wily teased him. “How many egg rolls did you have last night? I lost count after the fifth one.”

“You do the same thing with burritos, you know.”

“Burritos don’t have cabbage.” Wily pointed out, wiggling his thick eyebrows. “As the smell in the bathroom could attest.”

“Touché, you dink.” Light picked up the ring and stared at it. It glittered with glowing diodes and sensors, almost like a doughnut with glow in the dark sprinkles. “Now come on. Let’s plug this baby in and see what it does.”

“You decide on a name for it?” Wily asked, walking towards the shooting range.

“Well, I thought about calling it the Krispier Kreme at first…” Light waited for Wily to give him his usual glare, then continued, “…but I settled on ‘harmonic filter.”

It took the two of them fifteen minutes to install, after which they both came to the conclusion that it would be a lot easier if the harmonic filter had been a standardized component to begin with. They tucked the nugget away for future reference and powered it up again.

Wily and Light stood behind the blast shield again, their tinted, protective goggles on. Wily had his thumb over the remote control’s trigger.

“Cameras ready?” Wily asked.

“Rolling on your say-so.” Light replied, lifting up his goggles just enough to make out the display of his handheld systems panel.

“Diagnostics?”

“Green.”

“Tracking sensors and targeting sensors?”

Light smiled; though they would be destroyed, they had affixed a series of thermal and pressure sensors on the target three foot cube of cement at the far end of the range, a full twenty meters away; double the range of their best previous attempt. They would transmit their data wirelessly until the shot hit and vaporized them, providing a microsecond of vital data. “Ready.”

“All right, then.” Wily nodded. “Start up the cameras. This one’s for posterity. The very first “buster shot” fired with a harmonic filter.”

Light hit his switch, and Wily hit his.

The scale model buster cannon powered up, creating a diffident hum in the air. The mechanics behind this buster cannon worked on a far different scale. A plasma ‘bullet’ had a certain size, shape, and dimension. Their early experiments had shown that plasma released in such a manner preferred to take on an ovoid form, with measurements similar to that of a clenched human fist. Powerful, but in comparison to what they had to accomplish, too weak to do the job.

The “Buster cannon” was the second phase; an attempt to enlarge the plasma toroid with even more stored and focused superheated, supercharged hydrogen gas.

The hum increased to a dull whine, then picked up in frequency until it seemed to proudly wail at its coming.

Light’s diagnostics display began to beep furiously at him. “The capacitors are overloading!” He shouted over the noise. “It’s redlining!”

“Good enough!” Wily screamed back, and hit the switch again. The shot, which had been charging the entire span of eleven seconds and had created a blinding locus of light at the ‘business end’ finally released its power.

A brilliant flash and a roar of noise accompanied the smell of burning ozone and several pieces of flaming scrap metal flying in all directions. The two scientists cringed behind their blast shield as it was pelted with debris, and a different sound rang out.

Exploding dust. By the time they looked up again, the air was thick with chalky clouds, like a volcanic eruption had cast a fog of ash over them.

Light tucked his face into his shirt and breathed through the fabric to avoid choking. “Sweet buttery Jesus, what in the HELL happened?”

Slower to react, Wily coughed several times before he found a pair of facemasks and put one on. The other he handed over before wheezing, “You tell me.”

“I would if I could see anything!” Light snapped his own breathing mask on and stepped around the blast wall. “Something must have gone wrong!”

Wily stood in silence as the concrete dust began to settle to the floor, and only spoke when he could finally take in the damage.

“Much the opposite.” He managed to tell Dr. Light with a shaky voice. Light turned and followed to where Wily was pointing, and stared.

The target block at twenty meters down the firing range had been obliterated. The shot had also vaporized the stand it had been sitting on and a few centimeters of the floor was scorched as well. That wasn’t what Wily was staring at, though.

He was looking at the gaping hole in the outer wall fifteen meters farther on, and the rubble of concrete and brick and charred insulation lying at its base.

Light’s face went as white as the dust on his lab coat. “Kusaaaa….”

“Scheisse.” Wily repeated the sentiment quietly. He stumbled over to the building’s newfound exit and looked out into the parking lot. Thankfully, the destruction had stopped there, but all the same… “Tom, your harmonic filter more than tripled the range.”

“It didn’t do too bad a job upping the damage, either.” Light walked back over to the cannon—or what was left of it—and shook his head. “Unfortunately, I think we gave it a little too much gas.”

“A Buster overload, eh?” Wily took his goggles off and rubbed the end of his dusty mustache. “Any chance we can get a better capacitor to prevent blowout?”

Light shook his head. “Not at this size. On a larger scale…yeah. Probably.” He picked up the now slagged harmonic filter, which was little more than a melted ring of metal. “At least we know this thing works. Now we just have to keep it from exploding.”

“Agreed.” Wily smirked through his dust mask. “The way things are going, I don’t think that Dr. Murges and the SKYLIGHT core team would be at all pleased if our contribution ruined their defender of the skies after a single blast.”

“Probably not.” Light took his own goggles off and looked around. “I’m hungry. You wanna go grab a bagel?”

“…We probably should eat. But what are we going to do about this mess?”

As if on cue, an entire league of security guards that had been sent to protect the two scientists and their laboratory flooded in through the ruined outer wall, guns drawn. After a few moments of harried shouting, they quieted down after realizing that the two scientists were very much alone, unharmed…and standing next to what seemed to be another one of their nearly trademark explosive failed experiments.

“Are you two all right?” The chief of the squad asked gruffly, stowing his pistol.

“Oh, fine, fine.” Wily replied disinterestedly. “Nothing to worry about. We just had another breakthrough, is all.”

Light snorted. “Bad joke, Albert.”

The mad scientist smiled briefly, then resumed his calm expression. “Dr. Light and I are heading out to grab a bit of breakfast. I imagine you all will want to get that hole patched up in the wall as soon as possible.”

“That depends.” The chief called after them, as they walked towards the test range’s regular entrance. “You firing that thing off again today?!”

Project SKYLIGHT

17,423 Miles Above Earth, Far Side

June 5th, 2058 C.E.

The project heads had quibbled for a very long time on where in earth’s orbit to put SKYLIGHT. Most had agreed that Low-Earth Orbit—LEO—was probably not a very good choice, considering the amount of space debris left from countless missions, satellites, and God knows what else. It would also drag on the atmosphere, requiring more frequent adjustments. High altitude was appealing for its offering of a geostationary orbit, but it would make it that much harder and more costly to ferry up supplies, equipment, materials…and workers. In the end, they’d settled on the middle ground of Medium Earth Orbit, compromising between proximity and freedom.

None of that mattered to the space capable Metool calmly floating by a section of solar panels. Its designation was RD-224; Repair and Development. Some of its active cycles, RD-224 would hover about inside his thruster-equipped Plasteel bubble and help with construction, along with all the other Metools and myriad mechanoids that had been specially designed to work in the vacuum of space. Like its fellow “Hardhats”, as it had heard some of the human overseers refer to them via radiolink, RD-224 was capable of staying on the job for spans of hours at a time without need of a recharge and a RAM-refreshing stasis nap. There was always work to do, and always orders to follow. The world that RD-224 lived in was this behemoth of metal in a massive black darkness.

It hovered closer to the wing beneath it and latched onto the outstretched arm of SKYLIGHT with a claw arm from the bubble cockpit’s “Foot.” It was an easy enough matter afterwards to position its plasma arc welder and secure the replacement solar panels.

Even though man-made debris was not as much of an issue this high above the Earth, micrometeoroids still played a Hellish tune on the photovoltaics. Every so often, a repair crew would have to come out, detach the damaged panels for repair, and install new or repaired ones in their place. It was a tedious job, but tedium, as the human overlords could point out, was not an ailment that affected robots.

RD-224 used the other mechanical arm from its transport’s Foot to hold the damaged panel and keep it from floating away. Caution in the loss of materials was a permanent order, and the Third Law made it so every action or thought that RD-224 had or did had to first clear all other directives, that one included. It turned about and radioed a pickup crew of Metools jetting about the worksite with a massive ‘waste’ container that it had an item for retrieval.

After that, RD-224 could have waited in silence for the garbage robots. It could have, but opted not to.

The decision violated none of its pre-existing directives, or the Laws. No humans were being harmed, it was not harming itself, and it was still keeping the solar panel from floating away. Given all that, RD-224 turned towards a very peculiar stimulus that had become a focus in what little downtime between tasks it had.

The obvious choice was to stare at the brilliant glowing sphere of light, countless millions of kilometers away. Instead, RD-224 stared at the closer, and by distance alone, larger blue and green sphere.

A human would stare down and recognize it as Earth. Recognize it as home. Might even feel that they had the sensation of hovering above it, or falling towards it.

RD-224 focused its optics on the sight and pondered what the jutting sections of brown meant, jumbling up what would otherwise be a perfect blue sphere. It wondered that question, and that alone for several seconds. For it to focus so intently on so bizarre and irrelevant a question was an abnormality, one that RD-224 should have reported.

But, since it had never been ordered to report curiosities of the blue sphere nearby in the blackness to the humans overseeing it, RD-224 merely contemplated that question with the full weight of its very brilliantly constructed ‘brain.’

The garbage retrieval team arrived in silence and radioed a quick message in binary. We are ready to receive the waste items. Disposal or repair?

Repair, RD-224 answered in equally quick binary code. The Metool flying the storage container maneuvered the craft’s pincer arms down and took the damaged solar panel away from RD-224. Without another statement, which would have been both irrelevant and unnecessary, the garbage team flew away.

RD-224 turned his optics back on the blue sphere below and pondered it for exactly 2.46 seconds more. It came to a conclusion thereafter.

This blue sphere must have been of great importance, because its human overseers often looked at it and spoke reverently, or callously. A word stood out, and as RD-224 detached from SKYLIGHT, then turned itself about to fly back towards another guided container full of repaired solar panels for its next job, the Metool conceded that the word was likely the blue sphere’s designation. It would have to research it, the next time it ventured into SKYLIGHT for stasis recharge.

The designation in question, RD-224 decided…

Was Earth.

SRHQ

Ewan Lake, Alaska

August 24th, 2058 C.E.

9:40 A.M.

“You want us to what?” Light repeated back dubiously.

Director Van Hostick pressed his fingertips together. “This “Buster cannon” of yours is highly experimental and volatile technology. One of you is going to have to fly up to SKYLIGHT and act as a project manager while it is being installed.”

“Oh, come off it.” Wily scoffed. “Neither of us are in peak physical condition anymore. We’re coming up on our fifties now.”

“As if you ever let that stop you before?” Director Van Hostick mused with a small smile. He resumed his more serious expression. “Look, the fact is you two have earned a reputation as a pair of mad scientists with a penchant for blowing things up. There was your infamous escape in 2052, your house three years later, and most recently, your prototype cannon blew a hole in the wall of your regional facility in Northern Europe not more than three months ago.”

“Good things come in threes?” Light suggested, earning a confused look from Wily. The Santa-Claus lookalike shrugged. “It’s something I’ve heard Oliver mumble from time to time.”

“The fact of the matter is, nobody is willing to work on this Buster Cannon of yours unless you two “Mad Genuises” goes up into space and makes sure that nothing goes wrong.”

“Look, we can’t leave.” Dr. Light insisted. “There’s too much work to be done back here! We’re still performing our plasma toroidal experiments, not to mention we have the latest performance data from the SKYLIGHT Metool workforce to evaluate, and…”

“One of you, then.” The Director insisted. “That’s non-negotiable. Nobody else knows more about this plasma weapons technology as you do. And as much as you’ve belly-ached, Dr. Wily, I’m not about to suggest that you two train someone else up to your level of expertise. God knows you’d think they would run off to U.S. Robotics and sell your secrets as soon as time allowed.”

“Well, they would.” Wily snapped. “I’ll have you know that even as we speak, the idiots at USR are fiddling with it. Thankfully, they haven’t been able to figure out how to stabilize a toroid.”

“Something you two apparently have.” The Director mused. “How did you achieve that anyhow?”

“Doughnuts.” Dr. Light answered with a smile. Even Wily chuckled at the joking, but obvious explanation.

The Director of the SRHQ shook his head. “All right. So who’s going up?”

“Now?” Wily asked.

“No, not now. You won’t be ready by the next crew launch in September. Whoever’s going is going to be put through an astronaut ‘crash course’ by some of NASA’s best remaining troupers. Launch would be in January, with work on the Buster Cannon to begin immediately after. The latest data from Dr. Murges says the core’s framework will be built up enough by then for construction to start on your secondary weapon.”

“Yes, I heard they got the solar cannon operational just last week.” Light tugged on his beard. “How’s it working so far?”

“It’ll take months before any appreciable change is felt, but estimates say they’ll be able to burn away another 22 percent of the remaining mass—all ice—by the time it passes Mars.”

“So, again.” Director Van Hostick reoriented the conversation. “Which one of you is going?”

Light and Wily looked at each other, and the rounder scientist shook his head. “I get sick going in the air. Space would be worse, I’m sure.”

“Well, I guess that means I’m going.” Wily sighed.

“Oh, don’t act so disappointed.” Light criticized his friend with a smile. “I know for a fact you love the Hell out of flying.”

“You expect me to tell you that being an astronaut has been a longtime dream of mine, or some such rot?”

“I don’t expect you to tell me, but I can read between the lines.”

“Good.” Paul rose up, effectively ending the meeting. “You’ll leave for Fort Lauderdale tomorrow, Doctor Wily. Good luck.”

Hospital de Bellvitge

Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain)

September 4th, 2058 C.E.

8:42 P.M.

A slowly beeping monitor at his bedside had tracked Georges Shaler’s condition for months, ever since he had recovered enough to be transferred from the United States to his home country. His coma, however, had endured.

Heart rate, blood pressure, and low neurological activity had stayed constant. Nearly five months of living on an IV drip and a food tube with pasty liquid nourishment had eaten away at the Castilian’s once impressive physique. He had gone from an attractive older gentleman to a more withered husk one would expect from somebody his age.

Like every night that had preceded it for countless weeks, 34 year old nurse Francesca Domaria walked into his room, picked up his chart, glanced at his monitor, and wrote down the numbers without thinking. A simple comparison to the data from the last week would have told her that something was different; namely, his mental activity had picked up. His heart rate was also slightly elevated, no longer that of someone asleep.

She set the chart back where she found it and turned to head for her other duties. It was then that something changed.

A dry, raspy voice broke the silence of the room and the steady heartbeat’s beeps.

“Where am I?”

Nurse Domaria froze and turned about. Georges Shaler, his body still unmoving, cracked open an eye. He had trouble turning his head to look around. “Where am I?” He repeated, a little louder this time.

Nurse Domaria ran over to his bedside and hit the emergency call button before speaking to him. “You’re at a hospital in Catalonia.”

“The Bellvitge?” Shaler asked, managing to crane his neck ever so slightly towards the warm voice. “Why?”

“You don’t remem…” She cut herself off and shook her head. “Dr. Shaler, there was a terrible explosion. Many people were died or hurt in the building you were at. You’ve been in a coma now for close to five months.”

Georges opened both eyes now. “Five months? Es verdad?”

She bit her lip and nodded. Georges exhaled weakly. “Madre de dios. Then it would be…” He tried to think, but struggled with the date.

“September. 2058.” She explained.

Another nurse barged into the room. “What’s the emergency?”

Nurse Domaria didn’t bother looking back. “He is awake. Alert the doctor.”

“Forget the doctor.” Georges grunted, and he tried to get up. In his weakened state, he only made it four inches off his pillow before he collapsed back, panting for breath. “Get me a pen and paper.”

“But…”

“Now, woman!” Georges shouted.

The two nurses looked at one another, and the second one took off to get the doctor. Nurse Domaria acquiesced, and dug up a paper pad and a pen from the desk at his bedside. “Here.” She snapped, dropping it in his lap.

Looking down as best as he could, Dr. Shaler wrote a shaky sequence of numbers and letters…a complex mathematical formula of some kind she couldn’t place.

“What’s that?” She asked, after he pulled the pen back a minute later.

Georges exhaled in relief and smiled. “Something from a dream.” At ease once more, he turned to look at her. “Mmm, my, you are very attractive, j’es?”

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard that before, Doctor. From many patients.”

“Oh, I am sure. But if I have been in a coma for five months, this explains how I am so weak. And yet, seeing you, I am made strong again.” He flashed a rakish grin at her. “Tell me, perhaps you would like to have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

“I don’t think you’ll be out of here tomorrow night, Doctor.” She let him down easily. “And besides, I don’t date patients old enough to be my father.”

“Hm.” Georges kept his smile intact. “Then all I need to do is be released from this hospital.”

“What makes you think I would want to date an older man?”

“Pity?” He posed cheerfully. In spite of herself, Nurse Domaria laughed.

“Let’s get you healthy again first, then we’ll see. Is there anything I can give you?”

“A sponge bath?”

She laughed again.

Cape Canaveral, Florida

September 6th, 2058 C.E.

1:20 P.M.

Whatever Dr. Murges was being told was incredibly good news; the man was smiling broadly on his phone.

“I see. Well, I’ll be sure to let everyone know. Thank you for calling, Oliver.” He clicked the phone’s receiver shut and beamed to the rest of his immediate team. “It seems that Dr. Shaler has come out of his coma.” This earned some cheers, which only deepened after Felman pressed on. “Also, Dr. Shaler will be reporting for duty holographically until his doctor okays him out of physical therapy…and Mr. Xanthos has informed me that he had a bit of a brainstorm while he was under.”

Hiding in the back, on furlough from the beginnings of his rigorous “Astronaut training” in Fort Lauderdale, Dr. Albert Wily folded his arms and lifted a thick gray eyebrow.

“Any idea what his brainstorm was about, or are you going to keep us in suspense until we get a projector hooked up to the conference room here?”

“Supposedly, it’s got something to do with materials recovery from Lower Earth Orbit. Satellite harvesting, he called it.” Murges shrugged. “It’s not my specialty, so I’ll trust him on it. Meantime, we all have our own projects to do. Wily, how are you and Light progressing with the Buster Cannon?”

“I’m not actively involved in the process since I got dragged down here, but the latest update from Tom said that they’re trying to bolster capacitor resilience.” Wily smirked at SKYLIGHT’s creator. “It wouldn’t do to make a cannon that only fires once before overloading and blowing out.”

“I see. Any problems with that capacitor fix?”

“Some.” Wily gave his head a shake. “No matter how much we try, there’s going to be a limit to how much power, and thus, how huge of a shot, we can sustain before we suffer cascade failure. The term we came up with for it was “Buster overload”, and it’s a very real threat.”

“You can’t overcome it?”

“Not in two years.” The mad scientist scratched at the ever larger bald spot on his head. “The technology’s just not there. Twenty years, maybe fifteen, we’d be able to come up with something able to handle that kind of variable power load. But we’re not licked yet. We’ll come up with something, and Light’s got plenty of people crunching the numbers for him at the SRHQ. I’m sure that somebody will find a solution to this.”

“Let’s hope so.” Murges rumbled gravely. “In the meantime, how goes your astronaut training?”

“Oh, fine, fine.” Wily smiled. “That centrifuge is a pain, but weightlessness is an absolute riot. You know, they have these big jetliners that plummet to earth and give you about thirty seconds of free-floating? It’s invigorating.”

“You’re pretty spry for a fellow pushing towards fifty.” Dr. Flynn remarked.

“I’m 45.” Wily corrected the Irishman. “And I’m not so sure about that. I’ve got a couple of bruises which are still pretty sore. Don’t worry, though. Come launch date, I’ll be ready to go.”

“And hopefully,” Murges added poignantly, “So will your Buster cannon.”

SRHQ

Ewan Lake, Alaska

November 16th, 2058 C.E.

11:47 P.M.

In spite of being a bustling center of activity, and the home site of the world’s brightest minds, The Headquarters of the Second Rainbow still had its quiet moments and places.

At midnight, the main building’s cafeteria was one such place. Only a third of the lights were turned on to conserve power, which allowed Light to make his way about with relative ease, but without burning his eyesight out on fluorescents at the same time.

The cook staff put most of the food away at night, but they were understanding enough to leave out a few items, like the odd piece of fruit and a host of day old bagels and room temperature spreads. Of course, the drink machines were always running.

Dr. Light balanced a plate with a strawberry jelly-covered bagel in one hand and frowned next to the drink dispenser. His glass wavered between lemonade and iced tea.

“Normally, I’d tell you to mix the two. It’s not a bad concoction.” The voice of Darwin Vinkus broke Light from his reverie, and the robotics engineer looked over his shoulder. The older-looking, but younger by age diplomat and liaison smiled back at him. “Of course, given how late it is, I’d skip the tea entirely. You’d never get to sleep.”

“You’re underestimating my tolerance for caffeine.” Light grumbled, though his glass pressed against the spigot for the lemonade as though it had always been bound for it.

“So I hear.” Vinkus held up a rather massive roast beef sandwich. “You want half?”

“Where’d you get lunchmeat at this time of night?” Light pulled his glass back when it reached half-full.

“I snuck back into the cooler and took some.” Vinkus waved the sandwich again tantalizingly.

Light shook his head and walked for the nearest table. “Nah, you go ahead and eat it. I’ll stick to the bagel for now.”

“Your loss, friend.” Vinkus followed after him, and the two sat down in unison. They each took a massive bite of their midnight snack, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. Vinkus pressed the conversation first. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“We’re living on borrowed time, Dar.” Light told his friend and confidant. “With Epoch coming closer all the time, why would I want to waste it sleeping?”

“You didn’t answer my question, you know.” Darwin countered. He reached for a knife and cut his partially eaten sandwich into two more manageable halves. “I consider that a yes.”

Light shrugged. “It’s been a weird day. I was dead on my feet at 4 this afternoon, and now I’m wide awake. It’s kind of pissing me off, actually.”

“You had a weird day?” Vinkus rolled his eyes. “I was on a conference call with the United Nations general meeting today, and for some odd reason, the Turkish representative and the Egyptian one got into a scuffle over who deserved more attention with their desalination plants.”

“Desalination? Isn’t that Marth Fezhim’s specialty?” Light raised an eyebrow. Fezhim was Turkish, and that had likely contributed to the flareup.

“Yeah.” Vinkus rubbed at his forehead. “I’m glad I’m not running this place anymore, Tom. It drives me up a wall trying to tell countries that we have a list of priorities, and their pet projects aren’t on them. I explain it nicely, they get belligerent. I yell at them, they get defensive. And they always want more. Christ. I’ll leave this place to Van Hostick. The United Nations is headache enough.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Light cheered him up. “You didn’t do too bad of a job, I thought. Nothing blew up.”

“No, we just had to weather the ozone crisis.” Vinkus pointed to his head. “And you wonder why my hair’s gray? Success or not, the world was screaming bloody murder back then. We were able to keep the Second Rainbow’s brains pretty well insulated from all of that, so you wouldn’t know how dicey things were for a while.”

“That bad?”

“This asteroid’s just the latest in a long string of disasters.” Vinkus explained. “So far, we’ve struggled to survive a world war where nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons were used. We’ve had to fix an ailing ozone layer, de-irradiate vast swaths of territory, make potable water wherever we can find it, and restore food crops from a stone age state. Even with all of that, we’ve still only tacked on another ten million people to the global population since our census was taken, and we’ve still got spots of the world which won’t be safe for humanity to live in for decades…Maybe even centuries.”

“Yeah, but we still try. We have to live, Dar. The alternative’s much worse.”

“True.” Darwin agreed. He brooded over his sandwich and swallowed down another bite. “That group…Gehenna’s End.”

“The nuts who believe that Judgment Day has come and gone, and we’re all wasting our time trying to survive?”

“Yeah, them.” Darwin sighed. He bit his lip for a minute and looked at Light. “Do you ever think that maybe they’re right?”

Light felt his brain clunk on the suggestion. “What?”

“I mean, look at it.” Darwin suggested. “Sixty percent of the population died between 2040 and 2047. Since then, at least three different sorts of ecological disasters have hedged us in. We’ve beaten them back, but they just kept popping up, one after the other. This asteroid’s almost overkill, but I can understand the symbolism.”

“I leave symbolism for the symbol-minded.” Light cut in, using an old double entendre. The remark made Darwin crack a smile through his tired appearance. “I look at it like this, Vink. If God wanted to kill us, he’d use something quicker than an asteroid we detected three years ago. This isn’t a judgment. It’s a test.”

“A test?” Vinkus smiled and took another bite of his sandwich, chewing for a bit before speaking through the meat and bread. “Y’mean, ifth we survive, we pathd the testh?”

“Yeah.” Light drank some more lemonade. “It’s something my father used to say when I was a kid. God gives us challenges. He leaves it to us to succeed or fail.”

Vinkus swallowed the last bite of the first half of his sandwich. “That’s a pretty good thought. Was your father a minister?”

“No.” Light smiled. “He was a landscape architect.”

Vinkus laughed again. “I never would have guessed that.” He raised the second half of his sandwich. “To loved ones long gone, who always knew better than we did.”

“And to the challenges yet ahead.” Tom added to the sentiment, and lifted his glass to the toast.

Inner Solar System

December 30th, 2058 C.E.

The storm had passed slightly above the solar system’s planar axis when it passed through the asteroid field. The course steered it clear of the field of rocky debris that stood between Mars and Jupiter, and kept the Epoch Storm intact.

About 14,000 kilometers away from the main mass center of the storm, four of the Sennet “Magic Bullets” were firmly latched onto the largest section of Epoch’s remains. It had taken the four, working in tandem, almost a full year to make this much progress, but it was progress well worth it. As Bullet 5 could verify, still holding position above the rest of the Epoch Storm, the largest fragment was now skewed off of its collision with Earth. Its new course would take it farther into the inner solar system, where it would eventually be picked up and drawn in by the sun. The rest, however, would not be so easily redirected.

This far in, the ice was beginning to sublimate at an increased rate. Bullet 5 gave some of the most magnificent shots of the sight, though telescopes on Earth were beginning to home in on the approaching cosmic menace. It had gained an unearthly blue and white glow about it, a long tail of gas and vapor that shimmered in the void.

Strange that the worst threat to the earth was also the most beautiful.

Project SKYLIGHT

January 2nd, 2059 C.E.

Cosmonaut Grigori Kechmenov had celebrated New Year’s with the rest of SKYLIGHT’s human skeleton crew, and nobody had faulted them the celebration.

Unfortunately, the following day came as it had to, and there was no chance for rest. Sporting a slight hangover (Anything more than slight and the flight surgeon would have grounded him in the station’s living quarters), “Greg” as his American and Chinese counterparts had jokingly begun to call him made his way out of the airlock in his pressurized suit. Magnetic locking clamps in his boots kept him walking along the surface of SKYLIGHT’s core exterior with little difficulty.

“Guhk. I do not care what you Americans believe. Vodka was not meant for vacuum sealed drinking pouches.” He muttered over the commlink.

Astronaut and engineer Jonas Anchorford chuckled back from his own place on SKYLIGHT’s deck, towards the ‘northern’ satellite arm. “And glass bottles weren’t meant for space, believe me. Just be glad we were able to get any up here at all, Greg.”

“Da. But work goes on.” Grigori stepped out a bit farther and shook his head at the sight. Spacefaring Metools, the most common robot that worked on SKYLIGHT flew about him with only momentary attention. To the Russian, they seemed almost like yellow butterflies encased in traveling glass domes. They weren’t terrible to look at, seen in that light.

“I am always amazed, comrade, that these strange little Metools work and work and work without end.”

“What’s the matter, Grigori? Jealous?”

“No.” The Russian lifted up his sunglare visor ever so slightly for a better view. “But I cannot help thinking what it is we are doing here. They do not need us.”

“We’re here to supervise…and in case something goes wrong.”

“Do you expect something to go wrong?” The Cosmonaut pressed.

“Nope. But the Second Rainbow likes to be prepared.”

Grigori laughed. “You silly Westerners. One hundred years ago, your country spent thousands and thousands of dollars making a pen that would write in the zero gravity of space. My country? We used a pencil. Such waste.”

Jonas echoed his jocularity. “Well, you’ve got me there. But I don’t think these Metools run under the same concept. They’re pretty damn efficient, and that’s not saying anything about those new SU-Z models…”

Grigori blinked, and had to take a moment to think on that particular robot. SU-Z: Spatial Uniform Zoomers. Another LightTech Industries robot, the red-chassis “Suzy” featured monocular vision and thrusters on all sides of its body. While it didn’t have any ability to move equipment, the so-called “Eye bots” were perfect due to their control for observation and monitoring. A single Suzy was small enough to get into places a human couldn’t. A Suzy robot had warned them of a faulty power conduit moments before they’d powered up another wing section two weeks before; if it hadn’t, the damage would have taken a week and a half to repair, versus the fifteen minutes for a squadron of Metools to cut out and replace the subpar wiring.

“Hey, you awake, Grigori? Your oxygen intermix a little low?”

The Cosmonaut brought himself out of his trance. “Da, I am fine. Just thinking, is all.”

“You think too much. Come on out and give me a hand here on these panels. We’ve got to start on the rest of the core’s docking bays next. Word is, we’re getting some new people up here to help us out in a couple of weeks.”

“Engineers?” Grigori asked, already starting his spacewalk. “Second Rainbow?”

“Well, Second Rainbow, all right…and I suppose you could call him an engineer…But you might know him as the most famous roboticist on Earth. Dr. Wily?”

Grigori had heard of the man. The co-founder of LightTech Industries, a nuts and bolts man who made sense out of wild dreams. Rumor had it that more than one robot was entirely his design, though it was his partner whose name was slapped on them.

“He is coming up here?”

“Yeah. They’re going to start making that second cannon.”

“Ah, that one.” Grigori rolled his eyes, and boosted out farther. A Metool in its control dome boosted alongside him, apparently headed for the same destination. “They are bringing up all those nuclear warheads from Earth, all those missiles…we are installing laser point defense grids and active radars, and they ask to make a super cannon as well. I am just glad that they are programming this station to not point backwards.”

“You and me both. The last thing we need is some idiot holding the world hostage with this weapons defense platform.”

“Da.” Grigori slowed down to make a turn, and was surprised to find that the Metool was not only keeping pace with him…it seemed to also be listening in on his communicator frequency. The Russian frowned. “You, robot!”

The Metool beeped over the radio inquisitively and blinked its massive optics. Grigori pointed back. “Don’t you have something else you need to work on? Report for duty at the assignments station.”

The Metool beeped, turned, and flew off to follow the instruction that had been given to it. Grigori shook his head inside of his helmet, flipped down the sunglare visor, and jetted off on a compressed stream of oxygen towards his waiting astronaut comrade Jonas.

A hundred yards behind him, RD-224 went off to fulfill Grigori’s order. That didn’t stop him from considering Earth again.

He had been barred from accessing a datalink to any database on Earth that could have answered his question. The only one he could connect to was LightTech’s monitoring station, and that did little except make periodic checks on the status of his positronics. Left without a resource, RD-224 had taken to listening in on the conversations his human overseers had with one another.

The astronaut designated “Greg” by the other human had spoken of earth with a sense of familiarity and belonging. RD-224 didn’t have the faculties to detect any emotional component to any of it, but clearly, Earth was an important place to these humans. SKYLIGHT was being built to protect it, after all.

On this rare day, RD-224 had a breakthrough, and shattered a paradigm in the field of robotics.

Today, a Metool with no prior experience made a leap of faith in thinking…

And determined that the reason these humans were trying to protect Earth was because they were from Earth.

And if that were true, then it stood to reason there were more humans on Earth.

First Law: A Robot cannot harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

It was a far cry from the kind of self-awareness that countless scholars and science fiction writers had dreaded a hundred years before. The Metool designated RD-224 had merely realized the origin of its masters. The First Law took over after that.

To keep a human being…or several, if its thinking about Earth was correct…from coming to harm, SKYLIGHT must be finished.

It would be some weeks before one of the station’s technical experts compiled the Metool performance data and realized that unit RD-224 was surpassing its fellow in cumulative work hours and job efficiency.

Unaware of the cause, he would record it merely as a harmless anomaly.

The breakthrough went undiscovered.

Dr. Light’s House

Shugoya Treeborg Reserve, Japan

January 24th, 2059 C.E.

8:10 A.M.

“Good morning, good morning!” Light called out gaily, amidst the hiss of bubbling pancake batter and the smell of vanilla and sugar. “Or as everyone else in this country says it, ohayou!”

A fuzzy-headed Trenton Corbun made his way out of the living quarters, dressed and ready for the day, but still bleary-eyed in spite of his shower. “The only thing good about this morning is the fact that you’re making breakfast, and it’s usually artery-clogging good.” He sat down at the already prepared table and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

“True enough, that.” Light hummed to himself. He plopped another stack of pancakes inside Eddie’s head and nodded to the robot. “All right, Ed. That should be enough to start with. Go load up some plates.”

The iconic prototype of the EDY series beeped and shut the lid on his squat cylindrical torso head. The armless robot waddled his way across the kitchen counter to a small platform with wheels and a control board on the top surface. Once aboard, Eddie maneuvered his way to the kitchen table by foot presses alone on the large buttons, leaning his body left, right, and forward to guide the gyroscopic descendant of the famed Segway scooter. Another button press lowered the platform to table level, and Eddie calmly stepped off. He gauged his aim, chirped a confirmation tone once, and flipped his lid…literally. A powerful blast of compressed air launched a stack of five pancakes into the air, reaching an apex of two and a half feet above the table, and then finally slammed to rest only slightly off center on Trenton’s plate.

The owner of Sennet Robotics smiled at the sight and shook his head. “You know, Tom, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another EDY unit with the kind of functionality that this little fellow has.”

“Blame Albert for that.” Light called over his shoulder, pouring more batter on the hot griddle for another stack. “Once he modified Eddie to launch cold beer cans, all bets were off. Versatility’s just a matter of spending the time putting together add-ons. Eddie, and the Metools which followed him, are very adaptable little suckers.” He waved his spatula in the air. “Go ahead, talk to him.”

“Uh.” Trenton furrowed his eyebrows and looked at the condiments. Butter and maple syrup were already out on the table, but… “Eddie, would you happen to have any blueberry syrup?”

The Fliptop chirped in the affirmative, popped his lid open again, and fired a small container of purplish goo up above the table. Trenton yelped and caught it with a quick grab, then stared wonderingly at it. “Wow. That’s pretty fantastic.” On reflex, he smiled and nodded to the helpful robot. “Thanks, Eddie.”

His lid still open, a viewscreen on the underside flashed a message back at him. You are welcome, Dr. Corbun.

“Where’s everyone else?” Light asked.

“Your friend Titus was just finishing getting dressed when I headed out, and…”

“Mornin, everyone!” Titus Grant, the Australian Second Rainbow member employed at LightTech marched into the kitchen and dining room, grinning wide in a rustic shirt, vest, and set of khaki shorts. He took one look over to Light and chuckled. “Pancakes again? Crikey, Thomas. You could do with a quiche every now and then.”

“Ugh, quiche.” Trenton made a face. “Eggs run right through me. I’ll pass, thanks.”

Grant shrugged and dropped into a seat. “Morning, Eddie. You got a stack all set to go for me, you little bugger?”

The little red robot bobbed its head and fired out another fivestack, aiming true for the plate in front of Titus.

“Aah, that’s the ticket.” Without pouring any syrup on it, Titus carved off a piece and shoved it into his mouth, letting the sugar and vanilla in the mix do the work for him. “Yeah, that’s a good’n there, all right.”

Corbun chuckled and took a sip of his juice. “The others coming?”

“Well, that Brazilian lout, Pellero…”

“Enrique Pell-iero.” Light corrected him. “Don’t forget the lilt.”

“Right, whatever…” Titus swallowed and went on. “He’s stuck on the crapper. I guess those Thai chilies did a number on his poor old digestive tract. He’ll be a while yet, I imagine. And the other fellow, the Indian Samas?”

“Ren Samas, yes.” Trenton nodded. “What about him?”

“Out like a bloody light.” Grant speared a mighty chunk of his pancakes and shoved them in his mouth. “Ah well, moah f’me, eh? A fat lot uh good he’s been, anyhow. They don’t build weapons.”

“And it wasn’t until recently that I did, either, Titus.” Light reminded his old friend. “But since Pellero is the reigning authority on the converting of nuclear waste and Samas is the go-to guy for memory alloys, the fields aren’t entirely unrelated.” He whistled over to Eddie, who dutifully climbed back on his wheeled card and made for the counter. “More importantly, they’re gentlemen who aren’t about to go off and use plasma toroid technology to start another arms race.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Corbun joked lightheartedly. Light chuckled and pointed with his flipper on afterthought.

“Yes, and that goes for Corbun, too. I have to say, Trent, I’m rather impressed at your dedication to peacetime robotics given the competition.”

“Sennet Robotics had two business models to follow…LightTech and U.S. Robotics.” The inventor and businessman pulled out his datapad and brought up his morning’s messages. “Your company made a commitment to inventing robots to benefit humanity and preserve the world. U.S. Robotics kept in the tradition of the GAIDN series…robots for “Defense”, but really with the purpose for war. Robots haven’t been put to wartime use since then, so now they’re even branching out into civilian models…”

“Lawbots.” Light said the word distastefully. “Put a gun on them, make them without the Core Module so they can blast away anything that moves. Real smart.”

“So relax.” Corbun went on, scanning the third message in his inbox. “I like the robots Sennet makes, and…”

His voice trailed off. Light dropped another stack of flatcakes into Eddie’s open head when the robot plopped down next to the griddle, then unplugged the old fashioned piece of cookware.

“Something wrong, mate?” Titus asked. Trenton’s good cheer had vanished in a moment for a very pensive and distant stare.

Trenton Corbun calmly pressed a few buttons on his datapad and set it aside. “Just grumblings from my shareholders, is all. Fears that Sennet’s doomed for bankruptcy after the Bullets’ so-called failure.”

“They didn’t fail, though.” Titus remarked. “They still managed to shove off the biggest piece. Nobody could have predicted it’d break up on ya.”

Corbun chuckled weakly. “Funny how the important little details like that are meaningless when death’s still headed our way.” He gave his head a shake and put on a brave smile. “But that was then, and this is now. What do you say we go ahead and keep our eyes on making the best damn Buster Cannon possible?”

“I’ll eat to that.” Light picked up Eddie, walked over to the table, and sat the robot down next to his own plate. “All right, Eddie. Load me up with a stack!”

The robot beeped once, and fired off a single pancake onto the portly scientist’s plate. His lid’s monitor displayed the reasoning to Light’s curious eyes.

Given your physical dimensions and relative height to weight Body Mass Index, a limited portion will be of greater health benefit than a large one.

Light tried to stab his fork into the pancakes waiting inside Eddie’s head, but the robot slammed his lid shut before Light could put his utensil anywhere near them. The tines bounced off Eddie’s head harmlessly. “Damnit, Eddie, give me a few more! That’s an order!”

I cannot comply at this time, in the interests of preventing harm to your cardiovascular system. First Law Precedence. Might I suggest the mussmelon?

Glumly, Light used his slightly bent fork to carve off a very small piece of pancake. He intended to make it last. “This is what happens when I make a weight scale smart enough to converse with people. My own robots conspire against me to make me lose weight.”

Everyone at the table got a good chuckle out of it, and Titus pushed some of his own pancakes onto Light’s plate to make up for the deficit. “Relax, mate. Have some of mine.”

Light speared some of Titus’s pancakes and shoved them in his mouth, chewing noisily and keeping his eyes locked defiantly on Eddie. The small red robot watched him emotionlessly with his large cartoonish optics until Light swallowed.

Almost in a huff, Eddie opened his lid and launched the rest of his stored pancakes all over Light’s face. The surprise attack done with, Eddie waddled off the side of the table, dropped to the floor, righted himself, and kept on marching out of the kitchen. Everybody at the table, even the pancaked Light, laughed at the sight of the robot marching off. Pellero came in right as Eddie stepped out, and looked between the table and the disappearing Eddie.

“What did I miss?”

“Oh, just a little food fight.” Trenton Corbun cackled, taking another long draw of his juice.

Cape Canaveral, Florida

January 26th, 2059 C.E.

7:42 A.M.

The conversation he’d had with Light the night before still echoed in Dr. Wily’s head as the launch crew prepared for their shot.

“I’m telling you, Al, he was arguing with me!”

“Tom, that doesn’t make any sense. These robots aren’t smart enough to argue. Not even Eddie. And don’t start with that “It’s been online long enough to…”

“He, Al. He.”

“For God’s sakes…”

“Look, I’m serious. You can call other robots it, but what Eddie did with those pancakes is beyond anything I could have predicted for him! He was exerting authority. He was being belligerent.”

“It…he…was looking out for your health. First Law Precedence.”

“Maybe, but I have this sneaking feeling he was using it as a smokescreen…”

“So what are you saying, Tom? That Eddie was able to violate one of the Rules of Robotics? That’s impossible!”

“Not violate it, Al. He worked around it. He didn’t want to give me more pancakes, so he didn’t, and found a viable reason in the Core Module protocols to support it. Don’t you get it? That was Eddie’s first argument. He argued the only way he could…Through the Laws.”

“If it was an argument, it was one he lost. That’s why he gave up all the rest of the pancakes afterwards. It was a moot point, seeing as you were going to stuff yourself no matter what he tried. And since he did try…through action...His thought pathways were valid by the Laws.”

“He didn’t give up those pancakes because it was a moot point. He threw them at me because he was angry. Angry, Albert! Think about it. Eddie was showing real emotion!”

“I’ve warned you about personifying robotic characteristics. I’m not buying it. Just stop worrying about it, will you? There’s nothing in Eddie’s actions that can’t be explained through nominal Law interaction.”

After a full night’s rest, however, that seed of doubt and curiosity Light had planted was finally starting to lay roots in Wily’s mind. The possibilities, if Light’s suspicions were correct, were astonishing…

But still, the bulk of everything Wily was railed against it as mere science fiction and wishful thinking.

Robots could not feel. Robots did not have emotions. And robots, while capable of thought, did not think in human terms.

That was all it was, he repeated it to himself uneasily.

Wishful thinking.

“Dr. Wily?”

The co-founder of LightTech glanced up. One of the shuttle crewmembers was looking down at him. “We’re all systems green for launch. Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Wily remarked, double checking to make sure his harness was cinched in. “Are you sure that we don’t need spacesuits for this?”

The crewman, a fellow in his early thirties, grinned at the question. “Not unless you were planning on doing some spacewalking before we hit orbit.”

“Sorry. With all that training they put me through, I expected to be put on a rocket and launched the old fashioned way.”

“Sorry, doctor. It wasn’t cost effective…especially given that the explosion at the JPL knocked out the bulk of the U.N. Space Program’s rocket fuel stores. Besides, the magneto-thrust catapult’s the best way to put ships into orbit. Safer, too.”

“Oh, yes. Safe.” Wily nodded halfheartedly as the man went off to man his own station and strap himself in. He glanced over to the passenger compartment’s other rider, an electrical engineer assigned from Japan to help oversee the construction of SKYLIGHT’s protective ionization field. “As if launching ourselves into space at a little over eleven kilometers a second is at all safe.”

The engineer shrugged. “Hai, so desu.”

Wily lightened up at the short, but easygoing retort. “Well, if you say so. I just didn’t expect to go up on a speed ramp.”

A speed ramp was a very good way to describe the magneto-thrust catapult, but its informal nickname was even better; Magnetic Launcher. Wily was somewhat familiar with the technology, which held its foundations in repulsorcraft technology, and the more familiar maglev monorails.

In effect, the ramp generated a very powerful electrical charge. The ship also produced the same charge, with the same precise polarity. The ramp was divided into sections for takeoff, going from a comparatively slow pulse to more intense ones; the shuttle leapfrogged from one pulse to the next, picking up speed all along the seven kilometer stretch of track. It sloped upwards the farther along it went, steadily aiming the launch shuttle upwards.

Wily had been trained to handle the stresses of launch, but knowing what to expect and experiencing it were two different things. Going from zero to 25,000 miles per hour over a stretch of twenty-three seconds was certainly nothing to see as routine.

“Attention, passengers. This is Captain Marcus Holloway, your pilot for today’s flight aboard the shuttle Horizon. As we’re carrying both passengers and a very large cargo complement bound for SKYLIGHT, the ride’s going to be a bit bumpier to begin with. Once the Magnetic Launcher has brought us up to speed, however, things will be smooth sailing. Remember your training, and once we achieve weightlessness, vomit bags are located in the storage compartments under your seats.”

Wily rolled his eyes. “Christ, just get it over with.”

“Launching in three, two…”

Wily braced himself and leaned back into his seat. The increases in speed would push him there anyhow.

The shuttle started down the ramp under its own power; its engines blazed and belched fire behind them to get them going from their dead stop.

Anytime, Wily knew, they would be ready for the first boost, and…

Wham.

In spite of all his training, the first pushing pulse caught him off guard and knocked the wind out of him. Eyes watering, he tried to draw in a breath for the next one…

Wham!

That did him little good. The pushes were coming faster now; stresses were easily clearing three to four G’s.

Wham. Wham.

Wily clenched his arms and legs as he’d been taught, forcing the blood in his body to stay firmly rooted in his torso and head. If he didn’t he’d risk blackout, and this would be the worst possible moment to…

WhamwhamwhamwhamWHAM

Wily was momentarily aware of a lurch in the shuttlecraft’s position, and then suddenly he felt as though he were falling backwards. His vision grew dark off to the sides, and a sense of tunnel vision set in.

It was all just an effect of the incredible forces being exerted on him. Rapid acceleration…

A single pulse wave hadn’t been feasible in the Magnetic Launcher’s construction. The power required for it would have been astronomical. Using a series of more focused and varying magnetic pulse waves generated the necessary assisting thrust while still keeping the power load at a feasible and realistic…

WHAM!!

Wily’s eyes shot open, heedless of the force and the threat of blackout.

“That’s it.” He grunted out in a short breath.

The sounds of rapid acceleration had ceased; they were rocketing up and out towards space at their full breakaway speed. The tension eased on his body, and Wily drew in a heavy breath of air before screaming it aloud. “That’s IT!”

The woozy engineer beside him looked over weakly. “Nani?” The air outside grew a deeper and deeper blue, before finally giving way to black.

Wily reached for his pocket. “I have to tell them…It’s so simple, I can’t believe we didn’t think of it…” He flipped it out, checked the screen, and then swore. “No signal. Of course there’s no signal…” He tucked it away and pressed his call switch. “Hey, whoever’s flying this crate…I need to make a call to Earth. Can you set me up with a direct line?”

“Doctor Wily?” Another voice besides the captain’s asked incredulously. “Right now?”

“Priority One.” Wily clarified sternly. “Second Rainbow business!”

“ We haven’t even cleared Earth’s atmosphere yet. You’re going to have to wait. We’re another minute out before you can unstrap. We’ll send somebody back to help you route a signal down.”

Weightlessness settled in, and Wily felt his body begin to drift away from the seat. Only his harness held him in place.

The Japanese engineer suddenly reached underneath his seat, but the move came too late. A prodigious amount of vomit came out and floated into a very distinct splatter pattern. Wily winced and held his own cookies in check with more than his fair share of smugness…

He had always been meant for flying. Now he was an astronaut, and even that didn’t faze his cast iron stomach.

“One other thing.” Wily told the crewman on the vox. “You’ll need to send back a vacuum as well. The other traveler left you a nice little present.”

Dr. Light’s House

Shugoya Treeborg Preserve, Japan

3 hours later

“All right, people. Listen up, because we’re in a whole new ball game now!” Light stormed into the workshop, Eddie hot on his heels. Titus, Dr. Samas, and Professor Pellero perked their heads up from the monitor displaying the results of another failed Buster simulation.

“New, mate?” Titus frowned. “We’re still makin’ a plasma cannon, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but our dear friend Albert has come up with an idea so crazy it just might work.” Light picked up Eddie and set him down next to the room’s holographic projector. “Eddie, hook up and display the current Buster Cannon schematics.”

The red Fliptop bobbed its head, and then the projector flared to life, a tiny sensor light indicating that a wireless connection had been established. It took a few moments for the photonic projectors to kick in, but soon enough, a faint blue holographic model of SKYLIGHT hovered above the table. The others in the room came over to watch.

Light counted heads and frowned. “Hey, where did Trent go?”

“He got another message.” Ren Samas shook his head. “It must have not been a good one, because he said he needed to go out for some air. A walk in the park, I think?”

“Well, the Preserve’s a wonderful place to go for a walk.” Light admitted. “We’ll fill him in later.” He pointed to the hologram, which highlighted the central core of SKYLIGHT in red and then dissolved the rest of the image for the Buster Cannon. It zoomed in once the ‘screen’ was clear. “As Eddie’s showing us, the current model we’ve been following is to try and make a massive Buster Cannon, which charges up a toroid to astronomical size and strength and then fires it off. The problem is, of course, that no matter what we’ve tried, current capacitor technology just isn’t up to snuff. Every simulation we’ve run, every scale model test ends up causing a blowout, or “Buster Overload” as my partner in crime coined the term.”

The hologram showed the Cannon firing off a shot, then exploding into scrap. A crude mockup, but effective at getting the point across. “We’ve been striving to develop a more resilient storage bank, one able to hold and sustain the power required to charge up synthesized hydrogen to plasma level intensity and generate an EM field large enough to contain it without collapsing. It hasn’t been working, and every route we’ve tried so far has led to a dead end.”

“And this idea that Dr. Wily came up with?” Pellero asked.

Light smiled. “Why build one very large, unstable cannon, when you can build eight smaller, more manageable ones and reconfigure the barrel to supercharge the blasts along the way?”

Eddie blinked his optics, and the hologram of the Buster Cannon altered, ever so slightly. The barrel remained unchanged, by and large, though it did gain a series of spiraling rings that pointed at the muzzle’s end.

Pellero and Samas stared blankly at the new schematic. Titus stroked his chin. “Ehh, beggin’ yer pardon, Tom, but that looks sorta like the rifling grooves on a thirty-aught six.”

“Precisely.” Light smiled. “Wily took that new Magnetic Launcher up into space, and how that works is it uses a series of smaller, variable charged ‘booster’ sections in the ramp to push the launching spacecraft to higher speeds. Slow at first, then it picks up. I think he’s on to something with this idea. Instead of trying to supercharge one overly large toroid, we take several, and accelerate them in a focused stream before firing.”

“Theoretically, it could work.” Samas slowly began to see the possibilities. “Considering the decreased power over time load, we should be able to manage the hyper-charging. The problem we were running into was that we could not sustain a powerful charge for any extended period of time. If these rings are powered up in sequence, and only have to maintain their charges for a second or less, we should be able to avoid this so-called Buster Overload.”

“More’n that, mate.” Titus guffawed, slapping Light on the back. “Crikey, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. Hell, I’ve got a hunting rifle at home that uses the same principle.” He pointed at the spiraling ring sections. “Right here. Rifling in a gun makes the shot spin as it fires; keeps it going straight, and makes it go farther in the process. If I’m betting what Wily was thinking, he’s killed two birds with one stone here.”

“All of this is still very theoretical.” Pellero pointed out, acting as the voice of reason for the small gathering. “In layman’s terms, you’re trying to make a rifle out of a shotgun. We haven’t even run a simulation on the numbers yet.”

“Then we’d better get to it.” Light concluded. “Wily’s already on board SKYLIGHT, and he’s frozen construction of the Buster Cannon in its early stages. If we’re going to change the game plan this much, he’s going to need some solid proof…Both simulated and real…to keep Murges from flipping a gasket over the project delays.”

Their task set, the small band, minus a sorely missed Trenton Corbun, powered up their computers and started putting in the new variables for a multi-shot Buster Cannon.

Shugoya Treeborg Preserve

Kazaku Memorial Park

Treeborgs were a terrific invention; they absorbed carbon dioxide, they made oxygen, and they did all this without complaint. To anyone who strolled through a swath of Treeborgs expecting a grove that might have stood before the war, however, disappointment would be theirs for the taking. No real tree would have had a diagnostics panel in the side of the bark, or have exposed conduits where the artificial bark had been worn away by the elements. Most importantly, Treeborgs didn’t smell like real trees.

Not even the realistic looking leaves. Oak leaves. In January.

Corbun sank onto a park bench and let out a long sigh. The bad news kept pouring in, and the latest had shaken him so badly that he’d had to excuse himself. The U.S. Navy had suddenly reneged on the Big Mouths contract. Two hundred units had been developed specifically for their charting and recovery program, worth a boatload. All of it…gone, in a flash. The word from his corporate flunkies was that Admiral McAllister didn’t want anything in his department that was robotic, especially after the Bullets’ so-called failure.

“You look as though you’re having a rough day.” A voice, distinctly American, remarked. The startled Corbun got up to his feet just as the voice’s owner rounded the hidden corner of the walking path. The man was bundled up in a thick parka and had his hands jammed into the pockets, but without a hat, Corbun knew him instantly. It paid to know ones’ competition, and the President of U.S. Robotics was certainly competition.

“Steve Wilcox.” Trenton narrowed his eyes. “What in blazes are you doing here?”

“Hey, can’t a fella go for a walk halfway around the world in a grove of Treeborgs without getting the riot act?” Wilcox asked innocently. Corbun glared at him. “Really, I’m hurt. I come out all this way to cheer you up, and I’m getting the cold shoulder. In January, no less.”

“And the fact that we’re less than a mile from Dr. Light’s house has nothing to do with your visit.”

“Well, it might.” Wilcox shrugged. He dropped the fake charmer’s act and cleared his throat. “Look, everybody knows that Light, Wily, and their specially selected “Team” are working on plasma weaponry. That’s a technology that certain interested parties have been trying to get their hands on for years now, ever since they showed off the Metool back in 2052.”

“Plasma weaponry only as it applies to keeping the Earth safe.” Corbun snapped back.

“Oh, and so now making robots to keep the peace is suddenly not keeping the earth safe?” Wilcox posed. “The fact is, a robot’s more durable, does his duty without complaint, and can’t be threatened by some drugged-up lunatic with a knife or a gun. They’re not war machines, they’re peacekeepers.”

“Right.” Corbun rolled his eyes. “That’s why your most lucrative contracts are to the U.S. Armed Forces. Excuse me, I’ve got work to do.” Trenton turned about and headed back in the direction of Light’s cottage.

Steve’s voice chased after him. “From what I’ve heard, there’s very little work that Sennet has going on right now.”

Trenton froze and turned, lifting an eyebrow incredulously. “What?”

Wilcox shrugged, and his snakelike smile returned. “You don’t think I know these things? A guy like me, Trent, has a lot of friends. It pays to have friends. And right now, I’m thinking you need a friend. Because after all...” He approached Corbun again, still smiling, “…friends help each other.”

“If you’re trying to blackmail me, it’s not going to happen.” Corbun snarled. “I won’t betray the trust I gave Light and Wily when they asked me to join their project team!”

“Who said anything about blackmail?” Wilcox held up his hands palms out innocently. “Did I say anything about blackmail? Noo. I was talking about helping. You know. Friends help. Your company’s been drifting towards the red ever since those Bullets failed a year ago. People have lost confidence in Sennet Robotics. But I know that you’re not going down without a fight. You’re a go-getter. In the old world, you would’ve been a shark of a corporate CEO. There’s nothing with you or Sennet. The rules just changed on you overnight.”

Steve brought his hand up to Trenton’s shoulder consolingly, and the founder of Sennet recoiled as though he’d been burned. If Wilcox was offended, he didn’t show any signs of it.

“Who cares what some stuffy Two-Star thinks, huh? Those Big Mouths of yours are a very good product. The Navy needs them. And remember what I said about friends? I’ve got plenty in the government. People who owe me favors. I’d be willing to call in a few of them to get that sales contract of yours back on track again. Because, friends…”

“Help each other.” Corbun finished lowly. “In exchange for what? Plasma technology? Something I’ve promised that I wouldn’t share the secrets of?”

“Now, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that went against your moral fiber.” Steve reassured him. “A tiger can’t change its spots, after all, and I wouldn’t want you to try. But I believe that plasma technology can be used to help protect the earth down here, on the surface of it as well. I believe in it passionately. I’d never convince Light or Wily, and I feel bad about that: They were dealt a bum rap. I’m glad that all the guilty parties in that little conspiracy with the GAIDNs were all dealt with. No, I’m not asking you to betray their trust. I’m just asking you to be a little more open-minded. You can keep the secrets of it locked in your hands, that’s fine. But I was thinking…wouldn’t it be great if two of the three robotic powerhouses came together to make something truly meaningful?”

Corbun stared, and Wilcox went on, becoming more animated. “Think about it! Peacekeeping robots with the power of the sun! Able to blow holes through walls without the mess of explosives! Able to melt away steel like butter to rescue trapped people in rubble after an earthquake! And Sennet and U.S. Robotics, making them hand in hand. A cooperative effort. We can give something to the world that Light and Wily never dreamed of. They have a lack of vision.” Wilcox pulled a business card out of his parka and handed it over. “Vision is something you and I have in spades. Think about it.” Corbun opened his mouth to speak, and Steve cut him off. “Now, now. Don’t tell me your answer today. Give it some time. Let it roll around in there. Finish SKYLIGHT. Get the thing built. Save Earth. I’m all for it. But afterwards, when the dust settles? Sennet and U.S. Robotics can work hand in hand. Just agree to it, and I can rescue that contract for you. Bring Sennet back into the light of day.”

Corbun blinked twice, and posed one last question as Steve Wilcox turned and waved farewell. “Who’s to say you didn’t kill my contract yourself?!”

“Be serious, Trenton.” Steve chided him, disappearing around the corner again. “Why would I kill a project where I have no assets of my own to build in competition?”

Face burning red with rage, Corbun ripped the business card in half and dropped it to the ground. “That snake-oiled bastard.” He muttered under his breath.

His phone went off again. Corbun flipped it open and read the message.

Stock dropped 2 points this morning over the contract news.

“Damn.” Corbun shut his eyes tight and squeezed the phone. When he opened them again, he found himself staring at the torn business card on the ground.

Hesitantly, he reached for the pieces. Stopped, then reached again.

Timidly, he tucked the pieces away in his pocket and made his own way back home.

It wasn’t a betrayal to carry around a destroyed business card, after all…

Corbun shuffled back into the warm confines of the expansive house and laboratory owned by Dr. Light and Dr. Wily. Right as he was hanging his coat on the rack, a loud chorus of cheers rose up from the direction of the lab where Corbun had left them all earlier.

By the time he walked into the entryway, Dr. Light and the rest of the Buster Development Team had started slapping each other across the backs and calling for drinks.

“Did I miss something big?” Corbun asked warily.

The team looked up at him, and both Titus and Light voiced the same remark. “Corbunnn!”

“Y—Yes, that’s my name…”

“To answer you, yes, we’ve had ourselves a breakthrough.” Light tapped his PC monitor and chuckled. “Or rather, Wily did and passed it along.”

Corbun’s heart leapt, pushing away every other thought for exhilaration. “You’ve solved the Buster Overload problem?”

“Nope. We sidestepped it entirely.” Light beamed like a second sun. “Come on over, you’ve gotta see these numbers. Of course, we still have to put together a physical scale model for testing, but everything seems to indicate that this is going to work.”

“Sure.” Corbun nodded, and came closer.

“I gotta tell you, Light, it’s a good thing you’re keeping this so hush hush.” Titus applauded his friend, as Corbun began to look over the modifications of the holographic blueprints. “The way we’re building it now, it’s almost worse.”

“Certainly.” Light rolled his eyes. “The last thing I’d want to see is if that jackhole Wilcox got his hands on these. Eddie, you disconnected the house server’s uplinks, right?” The robot beeped an affirmative.

Corbun must have grown pale at the remark, because he felt sick enough to merit it. The presence of the torn business card in his pants pocket was damning even now. He didn’t get much time to beat himself up over it before Titus nudged his shoulder.

“Oi, you all right, mate?”

Corbun collected himself. “Yes, I’m fine. Just fine. Why?”

“Well, you didn’t look too good, right then.”

“It’s nothing.” Corbun smiled to reassure the man. “I just got a little cold during my walk, was all.”

Titus nodded and let the issue drop, his momentary concern overridden with thoughts of how they would turn Wily’s modifications into reality.

Corbun locked his guilt away in a box, set it in a dark corner of his heart, and turned the lights out. He had work to do, and Wilcox could take his offer and stuff it.

Project SKYLIGHT

January 29th, 2059 C.E.

Wily waited anxiously as Dr. Murges looked over the blueprints. He may have been thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface while Murges was down below, but that didn’t make the tension in the air any less palpable, even over a dedicated transmission circuit.

The European astronomer and physicist rubbed at his chin and glanced towards the camera lens in his laboratory. “This doesn’t quite match the original specs. How much of a build delay are we looking at?”

“Negligible.” Wily quickly answered. “I just got done checking with Kechmenov, and the work force has only started work on the outer shell of the Buster Cannon. We can add the new components and refit the barrel to the new specifications without much difficulty.”

Murges rubbed at his forehead and slouched back in his chair, something that Wily was beginning to miss in the zero gravity of space. “All right…What about complexity? As many shots as this thing’s going to muster, doesn’t that make the possibility of a breakdown more likely?”

“We’re building a plasma cannon in space.” Wily snorted. “It’s all complex. Yes, there’s more parts to work on, but the fact is, with this build, we get a plasma shotgun that focuses the spread in a concentrated cone of fire. If we lose one or two or even half of the emitters, we’ll still have a viable weapon during a repair cycle. Redundancy’s the selling point here, Felman…That, and this is the only model that will allow us to get the Buster Cannon operational. This is the limit of current technology. This is our best shot.”

Murges pursed his lips. “And you can get this thing built in time?”

“Light’s sending up another shipment of Mets and Suzys to help out, but yes.” Wily nodded firmly. “This cannon will be ready in time.”

“And you’ve done testing to make sure it’s viable?”

“Light and the rest of our in-house build team finished the simulations days ago. They got a scale working model to work exactly as planned just today.”

“Nice of you to wait until you had proof.” Dr. Murges chuckled. He sat his hands in his lap and sighed. “All right, you have a go.”

Wily grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet.” Murges pointed at Wily. “I’m also trusting you to keep that solar cannon operational in the meantime.”

“Has it been having problems?”

“Something in the wiring, I’m not sure. It works, but every so often the beam ‘flakes out.’ Hell if I know what’s going on. Maybe we’ve got gremlins in space.”

“I’ll take care of it. You just keep things moving down there, and finish the rest of the design elements…say, for instance, that artificial gravity module Shaler promised us?”

Murges laughed. “You know how that Spanish peacock is. I think he finished up with the “Sweeper” program. I’ll make sure he gets on it. Good luck, Dr. Wily.”

“Same to you, Murges.”

The connection cut out, and Wily pushed himself away from the communications screen. Dressed in a black jumpsuit (Made especially for him, as the others wore his most hated color of blue), he spun about and cackled.

“Time to get busy.”

SRHQ

Ewan Lake, Alaska

April 20th, 2059 C.E.

11:58 A.M.

“Artificial gravity.” Shaler scoffed. The man who was the foremost satellite expert within the Second Rainbow now found himself tinkering with a circuit board on a standing metallic wall, and Dr. Thomas Light calmly watched the Castilian work. “I must have been crazy to suggest it.”

“We’re all crazy.” Light answered, taking a drink from his coffee mug. “I’m just surprised that the idea came to you. Hell, I’m sure that more than a few of our 3rd Division counterparts are intensely jealous right now.”

“Doctor Light, one cannot blame the muse of inspiration for striking whenever and whoever she sees fit.” Georges pulled his soldering bit away from the board, and a faint whiff of ozone drifted to Light’s nose. “Still, I should have known better. As quickly as I moved to record the equations when I came out of my coma, I lost so many details.” He slipped the soldering iron back into its wire loop sheath and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Trying to find the missing pieces is like putting in the last piece of a puzzle when it is mixed in with another.”

“Hang on.” Light raised an eyebrow. “I thought you had the idea for your satellite “Harvesters” in your coma.”

“What, a man cannot have two thoughts at the same time now?” Shaler checked the diagnostics panel on the board one last time, then slipped the covering tile back over the slot. “The Sweepers was an easy idea. I know enough about orbital patterns and the LEO debris field that I could have done it in my sleep…Which I did. No, the formula which should make artificial gravity both a reality and an affordable one is far more difficult. It is more than erecting a repulsive electromagnetic field. If this works, I will have warped spacetime itself in a limited region…nullified all other sources of gravity, making it possible for me to walk right up this wall.” He tapped the standing barrier with his knuckles for good measure.

“Sounds good. And if it doesn’t work?”

“Well, it will either do nothing, as it did the first ten times, short itself out, which was the last seven times…or it will leave a permanent scar in the fabric of spacetime in this region and eventually destroy the earth through unstable tidal shear.”

Light blinked for a moment, then shook it off. “Scientists said that nuclear weapons would ignite the atmosphere and leave the world a charred husk.”

“Considering what radioactive fallout did to the ozone layer, I am inclined to think that the doomsayers were wise beyond their years.” Georges stepped back and gave Light a quick nod. “Well, I am as ready as I will ever be. Are you ready for the next test?”

“I just came for a visit.”

“Well, for the 18th trial, you are my official witness.”

“If you say so.” Light smiled. “So what do you need me to do?”

Shaler tossed him a remote. “Power it up when I tell you to, and be ready to power it down if the thing starts to spark and smoke again.” Shaler got closer to the wall and took one last glance at it. “Electromagnets look good. Okay.”

“Okay.” Light repeated, hitting the button. Shaler whirled about, stunned.

“Wait!” The cry came too late to do him any good, and the wall’s mechanics began to hum. Around the wall, a synthesized gravitational boundary took hold, the ‘dip’ in spacetime that had been Shaler’s greatest idea. Less than a second after Shaler shouted his warning, the wall drew him in with the same level of gravity as the Earth itself.

It was like falling against the floor. Light winced as Shaler whipped his head to the side just in time to avoid the worst of a good smushing. “Oh, geez! Georges, you all right?”

The Spanish scientist pushed himself off of the surface and got to his feet. “I feel like a fly that just got a little squashed, but…yes, I’m fine.” He gave his head a shake and dusted himself off. “My goodness, that thing didn’t take long to kick in.” Shaler looked over to Light and frowned; the American was standing up sideways. “Thomas, why are you jumbled up?”

Dr. Light smiled and pointed back at him. “I’m not jumbled up. You’re standing on the wall.”

Shaler took a look down and realized that he was indeed parallel to the surface of the Earth, standing on the wall panel as if it was solid ground. He ran a hand through his hair and chuckled. “So I am. Now the people aboard SKYLIGHT will be particularly pleased.”

At that moment, all the power in the room fluctuated, and the lights snapped off. In the darkness, Light heard Shaler cry out, and then let out an oomph as he hit the floor straight on his back.

Light blinked. “Georges? You all right?”

“New plan.” Shaler called back weakly. “We need to work on the power drain.”

CNN News Brief

June 18th, 2059 C.E.

Attn: Broadcast HQ

From: Marcel D’Whyste, SRHQ On-Site Reporter

Subject: SKYLIGHT Progress

Dr. Shaler has finished work on his breakthrough “artificial gravity” technology. Though he refused to provide any specific details, research on the next major Canaveral transport launch indicates that the necessary modules, as well as construction blueprints for SKYLIGHT’s work crews, will likely be airborne within two weeks’ time. The possibilities for this technology are something out of science fiction…Though, most things the Second Rainbow comes up with have been science fiction made real.

SKYLIGHT has been dominating the workloads of everybody at SRHQ. Even Dr. Yuri Cossack, a chemist whose work has been spent cleaning up biochemical weapons residue in areas of light pollution has been involved. The level of cooperation I’ve seen at work here is absolutely phenomenal. The saying used to be, “Those that can’t do, teach.” It’s not the case here. Those who don’t have the expertise to be directly involved in SKYLIGHT’s construction spend a part of their day double and triple checking numbers; Altitude and navigational commands, programming code for the station’s operations and targeting array, and even something as simple as making sure that the recycling equipment’s working. There’s plenty of equations, mathematics, schematics, and power loads to review. Dr. Flynn is especially driven. He keeps a program constantly monitoring the power fluctuations from the station’s solar circuits and the fusion engines. The solar circuits are good for running the bulk of the station’s retro technology; navigation, communications, and the like. But everything new that the Rainbow’s come up with…

The solar cannon, the “Buster Cannon,” the matter synthesis modules…

All of that absolutely demands a strong source of energy. Fusion is the best available.

Speaking of the Buster Cannon, even though Dr. Wily is above SKYLIGHT and thus, unavailable for comment, I managed to corner Light. Anybody in LightTech’s so-called “Inner Circle” is tough to hear from, but Light remains the most visible member of the team constructing the plasma weapon that will keep Earth safe. Supposedly. They’ve been doing everything possible to keep the plans from falling out of their hands, so much so that I’ve even heard a rumor that Director Van Hostick got on Light’s case for keeping back vital information. What I was able to glean from Light before he got away from me was that they’re very close to being done with the groundwork. Official press releases I’ve received have already announced that they began construction on the core weapon.

SKYLIGHT is built like a veritable fortress in space. It bristles with power and technology. Lasers, missiles, magnetic railguns, and more bizarre and frightening weapons, the likes of which we’ve never seen before…perhaps we will never see again. All of it is for naught if this plasma cannon doesn’t work.

It’s being installed in the heart of SKYLIGHT; The Core, as it were. The station resembles a flower in bloom, almost; solar panels outstretched or drawn in, like petals reaching for the light. This flower is the deadliest weapon ever made by the hands of man.

I thank God above that SKYLIGHT has an auto-shutdown code hardwired into the navigational controls. Its face, the mighty twin cannons of solar radiation and plasma, will never point at Earth.

Here on Earth, extremist cults continue to cry out that humanity is doomed, that what comes our way is a mandate from heaven, the final judgment for our sins.

Among us, the best and brightest press on with everything they have to make sure that the Epoch Storm doesn’t cause it.

And above us, SKYLIGHT slowly comes to life. A silent guardian, forever watching the stars.

Inner Solar System

July 21st, 2059 C.E.

Mars was a quarter of its revolution away from Epoch’s remnants when the meteor storm blazed across its orbital track. Were anyone on Mars, it could be only a slightly glowing dot, blue and green and faint in the Martian night sky, with a hint of a tail following behind it. A telescope would reveal that the unique comet storm was flying towards a similarly hued pale blue dot, a speck in the universe of small to nil notice, save for one important detail:

That pale blue dot was home to a species struggling to climb back up on its feet. That pale blue dot was a planet where life was once sustainable, and could be again. The Epoch storm took little notice, and flew on as gravity and velocity demanded.

Its date with Earth was now ten months away.