Dark as Daylight Ch. 16

"Can I ask you why?"

"I thought I was too grown up to do it."

"If I was given an opportunity to go inside Callie, and learn from her and her sisters, if I was 100 years old, no, 1000 years old, I would do it. You are never too old to learn."

"I know; I was being too prideful. I will ask Callie if I can go inside her tonight."

"Well, you may not be here tonight. We may still be over at the other ship examining their engine. I want to see how they got that much power out of it, when I was barely able to get it off the ground and get it here to continue working on it. Let's tell your mother where we're going. The last thing I need is her eating my intestines from the inside, because she didn't know exactly where you are. She calls you the invisible 11-year-old girl. You could be standing next to her, and she wouldn't know it."

"Gordon, I working on sound. Using much of what you did many years ago, but you didn't have the alloy for the transmitter. We can send a message to Earth. It will get there in 3 ½ days, but we must put the nuclear power plant up to maximum power for five seconds."

"So what's the problem with that? The safeties for the power plant are well above what the power plant can put out."

"I thought so, I just wanted make sure. The transmitter is too big to put on our spacecraft, and there is no way to shield it, while it's transmitting. We should leave it here."

"What do you want to call it? Please don't call it Sub Space Transmissions, because if that program gets anymore free publicity, I'm going to throw up."

"How about Teddy's Tiny Transmitter?"

"Not good enough. How about Teddy Thyme's Tiny Transmitter Transmissions'?"

"If you do that to my daughter, I'm going to spank you, Gordon."

"Hello sis, do you know what we're talking about here?"

"How could I not know? Her drawings are all over her room, plus she and I are going over the math. She is scaring me Gordon, she is smarter than we are."

"That is the way it's supposed to be. How many times do I have to tell you that? It's all part of Her plan. You were not conceived by accident, and neither was I. Then along comes Newton who crawls around this spacecraft like a spider. If we took this spacecraft the part and laid all the parts and a huge parking lot, that boy could put it back together again. We all find ourselves here for a reason, in today's reason is for us to put together Teddy's transmitter."

"Teddy, I forgot to ask you, how are we sending our message to Earth? How much room do we have on it for the people here to send greetings back home?"

"The message will be sent by green laser. The pulse will be a full 3.1758 seconds long. Everyone on board can send a 30-minute greeting, and we will condense it before the transmission on the green light wave."

"Green? Why not the red it's the fastest laser and as the least distortion."

Delicious said, "I wish you hadn't asked her that, we could be here until morning. Teddy, please give him the shortest answer you can think of, he wants to go next door to the other ship."

"You see, uncle Gordon, mom is getting very smart. She doesn't yell at me anymore; she uses logic to get me to do something."

"You've known this for a long time Teddy. Your mother isn't smart, she's brilliant. She is smarter than your daddy, smarter than your brother, and smarter than me. She got sick, for a little while, when you were younger, so maybe you missed it. However, this ship doesn't move unless your mommy tells it to. Do you remember the day we were supposed to take off, and you counted down to zero?"

"Yes, but we didn't go anywhere."

"Why didn't we go anywhere, Teddy?"

"Mommy didn't push the button."

"That's right, mommy didn't push the button. Everybody did what they were supposed to do, and we were sitting there waiting for mommy to do what?"

"Grandpa yelled at mommy, daddy yelled at mommy, I think everyone yelled at mommy, "Push the button, mommy!"

"Do you see how important your mommy was at the beginning? We couldn't go anywhere until mommy PUSHED THE BUTTON! We would still be in Texas now, if mommy didn't want to push that button."

Teddy said, "I could have gotten out of my seat and pushed the button."

"Was it your job to push that button?"

"No, it was mommy's job."

"Did you ever think that mommy saw something on her display that could have blown up our ship if she pushed that button, and that's why she delayed pushing it?"

"I didn't think about that."

"That's why we trained everyone to do their job, and to do it perfectly. We didn't want the ship to blow up on the launch pad. We didn't want it to blow up ever. We want it to go on to visit the stars as you said yesterday: we may not see them, but our great great grandchildren will."

"I still have a lot to learn."

"I'm happy every time you say that, because you're only 11 years old, and I'd hate to think that you knew everything there was to know in this world and there was nothing else for us to teach you about life, living, and love."

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The End

Dark As Daylight

Chapter 16

by

Prolonged_Debut10

Dear readers and friends:

I apologize for it being so long between chapters. I know this one is not my best work, because of the medications they have me on now. No, the cancer has not returned, the things they did to me in Houston killed all those little suckers, and I am cancer free. However, that cure also left me wide open for a host of other diseases that danced right in and took its place. When I left MD Anderson Hospital, the pills I was taking was to keep my immune system functioning. Apparently, it didn't work, because now I have several interesting diseases that have taken up residence in me that I didn't have before, plus 1 disease I did have before, which is now running around my body as if it's on steroids. Anderson wants me to come back there for treatment, and my son doesn't want me to go there again. So now, it's a choice of Johns Hopkin, NYU, or Mayo. Honestly, at this point I'd rather stay close to home. I want my bed. If I want to raid the refrigerator, I know where it is, and I don't have to call room service. I'll let you know what I decide what I post the next chapter, whenever that may be. Bob

[RJG1]

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