Book 2: Chapter 7: Back to Work
Riker
July 2171
Sol
I looked at my list of TODOs for the day and sighed. I was a little surprised at how much I was missing my family. Julia and Clan Bob were all aboard Exodus-3, in stasis, heading for Omicron2 Eridani. There would be no contact until they arrived at their destination and were revived. I tried to remind myself that it was an eye-blink at my life scale, but any way I looked at it, I would still have to experience every day of those seventeen years. Twenty-four-hour days, since I didn’t sleep, experienced in millisecond intervals.
This train of thought seemed destined to send me into a deep funk. With an effort of will, I brought myself to task.
The first item, as always, was a status check on colony ship construction. I checked the summary window rather than doing a personal inspection. Unless some significant step was due, I didn’t need to micro-manage.
At that moment, Charles popped into my VR. “Hey, Riker.” One of the first clones I’d made here in the solar system, Charles was still hanging around and helping out. He knew the politics of Earth almost as well as I, and the location of everything in the rest of the system far better. If he ever decided to leave, it would be crippling.
“Charles. What’s up?”
“I wanted to update you on the sabotage.”