“I’m in DC for a few days, Pentagon stuff. So, I thought I would come by and visit. Say, what’s wrong with your phone?”
“Got a new provider. Now, I hardly get any service out here in the sticks. Think I need to switch back.”
“Yeah. I’ve tried calling you several times. At your age, living alone, you need a phone that works all the time.”
“Roger that Major,” The old man gave a half-ass salute to his grandson.
“Pops, you know Mom and I worry about you. Out here alone on the farm.”
“Speaking of my daughter, how’s your Mom doing. I haven’t heard from her in a while.”
“Well, maybe if you had a . . .”
“Don’t be a smart ass to an old man,” Pops cut him off with a twinkle in his eye.
“No seriously, Mom is doing fine. She moved to Florida a while back.”
“She found a new man, yet?” Pops asked.
“I don’t think so. She hasn’t said anything.”
“Ever since your father died, when you were knee high to a grasshopper, I been telling her to find a new man – get married.”
“She would probably be happier,” Snap agreed. “But after all these years, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
The rocking chair squeaked against the uneven floor boards. White paint was peeling across the exterior of the house. Snap knew his grandfather did not have the strength or energy to keep up this house from a bygone era.
“Could I get you something to eat, a sandwich or lemonade?”
“Do you still have that homemade root beer?” Snap asked.
The old man chuckled and said, “I don’t make it myself anymore, but my neighbor brings me some every now and then. Got some in the fridge.”
“I’ll get it,” Snap said as he leapt from the rocking chair. For a moment, Snap felt like he was five years old again. “Do you want one?”
“Sure, I’d love to share a beer with my only grandson.”
Snap walked into the old farmhouse. It was much like he remembered, except messier. How long had it been since grandma died? Was it ten years? Longer? As he rounded into the kitchen, he noticed the dining table was buried beneath hundreds of papers, documents, files, and books. The hand-bottled root beer stood in the old-fashioned refrigerator, ice cold. Snap returned to the porch; a cool breeze pushed through the worn screens. Pops was reading a hand-written leather-bound journal.
“What you got there, Pops?” Snap asked, as he set the brown, glass bottle down on the small table.
Pops leaned back in his chair and took a sip from the bottle. He appeared to be in deep thought. Pops said, “You know I won’t be here much longer.”
“Come on, Pops. You’re in great health,” Snap protested.
“No really, I’m ninety-five; every day I wake up is a surprise. Seriously, I have something important to say. So, listen.”
Snap shrugged and said, “Sure, Pops, anything you want.”
Pops took another sip of the sweet root beer and said, “I’m not the man you think I am. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot. Everything is recorded, right here in this journal. When I die, you need to come back to the farm and retrieve this journal. It will be here, waiting for you.”
“I may not be able to, I could be deployed to the other side of the world.”
“Doesn’t matter. This house will still be here. It’s not in my name; a corporate trust pays the taxes on it. When you get back, the journal will be here, hidden. It won’t be easy to find.”
“Why hide it?”
“When I’m gone, people, lots of people, will be looking for my papers. It will take them a while to find this place; it is well hidden in shell companies. But they will find it, given enough time.”
“What’s in the journal, Pops?”
“All the secrets.” The old man smiled. “I was in the Air Force, in the beginning, when it all started.” The old man smiled as he gently closed the leather-bound journal and patted it with his crippled hand. Snap was sure he saw a twinkle in the old man’s eye.
“So, I hate talking about this, but it’s obviously important to you. How will I find the journal if it’s hidden?”
Pops grinned, “You know how people say, ‘if these walls could talk.’”
“Sure Pops.”
“Well, mine actually do. You still like plinking cans?”
Snap shook his head and laughed. “Of course.”
“Well, why don’t you go set some up under that shade tree,” Pops said, pointing to a tree about sixty-five yards away from the house.
“Just like when I was a kid.”
“Yes sir. Except this time, we don’t have no woman folk to tell us we can’t shoot from the porch.”
When Snap got back from setting up the rusty old tin coffee cans, the leather journal was gone from the table and had been replaced by an old pump-action twenty-two rifle.
The afternoon flew by and Snap had to head back to Washington DC. As he was driving back down the long dirt driveway, he wondered, had just seen his grandfather for the last time?
CHAPTER TWO
Present Day
Milky Way Galaxy
Commander Forte coughed and gasped for air. He tried to focus on the objects in front of him. Slowly, his vison adjusted, and the cold, gray, sterile environment came into focus momentarily. He was shivering, cold, and naked. Hordes of tiny goosebumps lined his body, and he coughed up a pink, slimy, liquid substance; his lungs frantically grasped for air, until the fluid was expelled from his system and he could breathe normally. His thoughts began to sharpen, his legs gave out below him and he fell to the metal floor. He looked up and saw an attractive blond rushing his way.
“Commander, I’m so sorry. We have so much going on; you woke up before I expected.” Forte stood up, twisted his head from side to side, stretched his aching neck, he was not shy about being naked in front of the female medical officer. Standing six-foot-two, with a slightly graying beard, he was well-proportioned and fit. Unfortunately for him, it did not help with the ladies because every member of his crew was genetically predisposed to being nearly perfect.
“No problem, Officer Telnecki, what’s our situation?” Forte asked, as he cleared his throat of the last bit of pink slime.
“We just came out of the time-space bubble a few hours ago; I am working on getting the crew out of LTS mode,” Telnecki responded, turning towards another Long-Term-Sleep unit to release the next crew member.
Forte had entered the coffin-shaped, metallic container 300 days earlier when his last duty had ended. Each of the crew served two-month shifts, monitoring the ship’s functions, before returning to the LTS unit. The journey through space lasted thirty years, but the crew slept through most of the trip, only waking to serve their watch. Forte stretched one more time, listened to his joints crack and pop, and walked into the shower room. The LTS chamber was large, it housed over 100 units standing against the walls facing each other. Medical Officer Telnecki had only opened ten LTS units so far; each LTS unit stood against the wall with a door facing the middle of the room. As Forte walked past the units, he recognized almost all the crewmembers’ sleeping faces.
Passing through the LTS chamber, into the shower room, he noticed two men and one woman showering off the slimy residue in which they had just been submerged. The shower room was one large open space with shower heads protruding from the walls. All three of the crew members in the shower room were tall with blonde hair.