Good Luck Charm

PrologueIn 1947, a flying object unlike anything seen on Terra had crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico. The craft, its occupants, and the technology it contained were considered highly classified, and only the military and certain of the scientific community had access to it. Those scientists made remarkable discoveries, and it was thanks to the technology uncovered that a spaceship was built centuries before mankind’s knowledge would have reached a level to achieve it. And so, late in the twentieth century, while everyone was frantically worrying about 1999 rolling over to the year 2000 and fearing the end of the world—much as humanity had done a millennia before—a party of men and women representing every country on Terra lifted off from the planet of their birth and were ferried to the orbiting spaceship, which would take them on the journey of a lifetime. Called Argos, it was a modern-day ark, carrying not only its human crew, but enough frozen human embryos to eventually populate a small city. Also cryogenically frozen were embryos representing every creature on Terra—except for the interesting ones, the beautiful ones, the lions and tigers and bears, much as they might regret that. The plan was to find a suitable planet orbiting a G-type star and colonize Terra 2. The hope was their great-great-grandchildren’s great-great grandchildren would eventually find a way to return to Terra with word of their findings. While the Argonauts of that day traveled the stars, forgotten by all but a select few in the organization that had sent them out, a new generation of scientists panted with excitement upon learning that Roswell held more than aliens and UFOs. Technology, unimaginable at that point, had been waiting to be discovered and deciphered, a veritable treasure trove of knowledge. Included in all that knowledge were instructions on how to connect with galactic way stations called Portals, something of which the Portal Protection Agency made sure the general population was completely unaware. Now, more than a hundred and fifty years after that alien craft had crashed in the desert of New Mexico, portaling not only made travel to the outreaches of the farthest galaxies possible, but guaranteed a return well within one’s lifetime. However, due to Terra’s diminishing resources, it became more and more difficult for those who journeyed into the void to be safely retrieved. That proved to be immaterial, for those the PPA found to recruit were more than willing to take that chance.