00030

“Wooo-ee! Boy, do you look good today!" was how Sheila Bright greeted Osmo when he opened the door of his rooms at Hotel Hope.

He kissed her cheek. "I look good every day. But today I am wearing my Sunday best out of respect for my mother."

"If she can see you when we visit her memorial, she'll be very happy to see how handsome you turned out to be."

He turned back into the room. "Oh, I almost forgot this!" He showed her his small camera. "I want to show my father pics of the place... and, of course, also how good I look today, like I do every other day!"

The two of them enjoyed each other's company on the way. Osmo Martin drove Sheila's truck. He hadn't asked Albert or Jane to join them. Not that he didn't like their company. He valued their friendship. This, however, was such an intimate event for him. He preferred to visit the memorial with only Sheila Bright.

Osmo related to her how Albert had told him he decided to stay on the World of Hope, so Al was going to look for a place to move into, rather than continuing to let Gov. Bright foot the bill for his rooms at Hope Hotel.

“Al was trying to explain to me something about how the greatness of Jesus motivated him to stay. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I think I do- Since Gov. Bright offered me a position with the Security Agents, I begin to get it- being inspired by a great man. Your Uncle is a great man, too, Sheila-"

"I know. I am always the one who tells you that."

"Yes. And it is really true. I think I will like working for him. Between you and him, I can see that there's more to life than just partying. I see that sometimes being responsible can be a good thing, too. I used to think it was stupid. Look what responsibility got my Mom! I loved to live an undisciplined life, doing pretty much what I liked. I suspect it kept me from thinking about my Mother’s tragedy. I was not willing to grow up and face the hard facts of life, although I knew one day I must. That day is today. Today, all that carefree living is behind me."

"It's nice to hear you talk like that, with maturity," she told him. "I, also, these days find myself less inclined to enjoy a good party and to heck with everything and everybody else. Mind you, I never quite mastered that attitude like you did-“

“Well, it’s an art,” Osmo Martin said.

“-but I, unfortunately, had my bad moments, also. But with you, I am expecting better things now. You do this to me, Osmo. Honestly, I don't need that wild living anymore- Maybe once in awhile, I guess. Your company goes a long way to keeping me content. Content in a way my Uncle’s care never could."

Osmo Martin hunted for a decent parking spot. Many tourists came here to the memorial each day, filling the lot with rentals.

The site's guide was giving a lecture in the middle of the plaza, which nestled in the midst of the park. The plaza was situated on leveled ground in a spot of ground that was a four-foot depression with a radius of over fifty feet. Remnants of the destroyed space station, the Peace Lab, sealed in preservation cubes, were placed in a circle in the center of the plaza. Miss Rubble the tour guide stood in the midst of the blocks. And several other blocks dotted the landscape of the park. Beyond the plaza’s border beautiful lawns full of shrubs and flowers stretched far and wide in every direction.

Miss Rubble recited the history behind the ruins of the smashed space station. She tried to keep the story fresh, although she gave the same speech every day, ten times a day, six and a half days a week.

All eyes focused on Miss Rubble or the exhibited pieces of the wreckage. Nobody noticed Osmo Martin, nor realized his kinship with the one whom this place honored- Dr. Hope Martin.

Miss Rubble said:

"More than a dozen years ago, Earth experienced one of its hardest times. Most of you here today can remember all that. Energy shortages. Food shortages. Money shortages. Land shortages. These shortages brought out the worst in our homeworld's nations. Each country tried to acquire at least enough for an adequate supply of necessities for its own population. Territorial disputes quickly escalated into wars. Things looked dire.

“On an international space station, the Peace Lab, as it was called, a team of scientists, which included Dr. Hope Martin, worked tirelessly to find solutions. Some of the experiments conducted were deemed too controversial and dangerous to conduct on Earth, such as creating new hybrids of plants and animals that, if they got loose on the ground, might contaminate and foul the flora and fauna on Earth. Dr. Martin's crew hoped to find a new source of energy, with the prayer that if they did, it might relieve some of the tensions on Earth that caused so much stress over demands from a lacking supply of energy. They wanted to come up with some substitute viable power before a massive world-wide war exploded over the supplies. But if anything, however, went wrong with those experiments conducted aboard the space station way out in the vacuum of space, the world would be safe from a catastrophe. Only the space station and its inhabitants were in danger- so they supposed.

"One such test, to tap the potential energy inherent in the very nature of how our universe exists, produced an unforeseen by-product- a small anomaly, a black hole, formed within the lab of the space station. Quickly, in mere seconds, it grew and grew and grew! Chaotic and unstable, it readied to open into a wormhole, and then-

"Dr. Martin gave the order to abandon the Peace Lab. All the other technicians protested, because Dr. Martin planned to stay behind to deal with the danger. She assured them that she would follow right after them, so they should leave an escape pod for her, but first she had to move the space station as far from the Earth as possible in as short a time as possible. She calculated the wormhole would, in a matter of less than an hour, grow so big it would swallow the world if the Peace Lab stayed in its orbit despite its distance from the planet. If she could move the space station far enough out of range from Earth and the moon, the growing blackhole might not have enough to feed it, and it might stop expanding and instead stabilize at a set size. And Earth might be saved.

"Trying an unheard of scheme, using some of the equipment from another experiment, she managed to trap the anomaly temporarily in the lab in a gravity bubble. She also managed to coax the navigation system to budge the space station out of its orbit, away from Earth. She somehow estimated she had just enough time. Or she just prayed and hoped she did. No one knows for sure.

"Her estimates turned out to be correct- The gravity trap slowed its growth enough for her to move it via the space station, but then it finally fed on the gravity trap itself, and, in another spurt, expanded again, breaching the hull of the Peace Lab and sucking in the space station itself, into the opening wormhole, breaking the Peace Lab to pieces. Poor, heroic Dr. Martin had no time to escape, only time to turn on the SOS beacon. With nothing else to feed on, the anomaly stabilized, the wormhole opened wide but not wide enough to swallow the Earth, and the other end of the space tunnel opened into this galaxy, above this world we are now standing upon.

"She gave her life to save Earth.

"The SOS beacon continued to broadcast throughout the entire ordeal, its signal traveling through the wormhole and Earth picking it up. But they received no personal transmissions from Mrs. Martin, unfortunately. They didn't know if she was alive or not.

"A few probes were sent into the wormhole, but before any conclusions could be reached about how safe it was on this side of the space tunnel, a daring rescue squad fearlessly embarked on a journey to find out what had happened to the brave heroine. Their rocket headed into space; the brave astronauts sett their bearings for the wormhole far above the our motherworld. Without hesitation, they ventured into the wormhole and followed the distress beacon all the way to the other side, to here, to our small but wonderful little planet.

"It didn't take long for them to locate the smashed space station by following the signal. It led the rescuers to this very spot. Sadly, very sadly, they could not find Dr. Martin. Not a trace. Undoubtedly her body had disintegrated upon entering the atmosphere. They also discovered thriving, growing plants around this crash site and even about this globe. Over the few months between the Peace Lab crashing and the arrival of the rescue squad, experimental plants from the space station, surviving the crash, grew thanks to new innovative accelerants that were made to promote rapid growth. Not only that, several groups of hybrid animals had managed to survive the crashlanding and escaped, prowling the new world. The rescue team excitedly realized that this place could become habitable, and if it could be made into a place where humans can live, then that would take some of the pressures off the people of Earth for more living space. And so came the idea of colonizing this planet.

"Most of the scientists from the Peace Lab had survived the disaster in their life pods to Earth because of the courage of Dr. Hope Martin. To honor her sacrifice, Mr. Gunther Martin began a project to develop this world, and he named the world after his lost wife.

“This is her crash-site. It became a special place on our World of Hope. Many of the original plants that had sprung up on their own were cultivated into the beautiful gardens you see at this memorial. And over time, Sparkle City sprang up also around this site. And this land where we stand, right from the start this place was marked off as land for honoring Dr. Martin.

"Early pioneers to our world engineered a more terrestrial-like environment, and over the years they have expanded the more livable zones.

“When explorers had discovered this world is so full of fuel ore, and that the ore could save Earth from further energy shortages, then it was like a euphoria broke out on Earth. This ore find helped to promote international co-operation and goodwill on massive scales all over again."

After the lecture, the tourists moved on, splitting into small groups, admiring the landscaping, the park buildings such as the chic restaurant, the gardens, the display of Dr. Martin’s key life events, one scene being of she and her young family- her husband and her newborn son.

Osmo Martin stayed in the plaza after the lecture, staring at the preserved wreckage of the space station. It had been too scattered to find all the remains, but enough of it had been found right here, along with the distress beacon. This, then, was his Mother’s crash-site.

Sheila silently reached down and took his hand. He looked over at her. "Do you think this world and its fuel ore is the reason the countries on Earth started to co-operate with each other again, because of less shortages and things like that?"

"From what I gather, the threat level for major wars has dropped since finding this world, making the world-governance of Earth more of a reality. What are your thoughts on the causes of the surge in international co-operation, Osmo?"

He replied, "Albert and Jane suspect that, for the majority of those who were our Leaders on Earth, it was often about power, about who has the most power, who stayed in high positions of control to run the Earth the way each Leader thought best. The shortages are just an excuse to try to grab more power, only most of the people don't even realize it." After a moment, Osmo Martin added, "I don't know what I think about it. I think Al thinks too much."

"Well, if he's correct, at least now with the discovery of the fuel ore, they have one less excuse to wage a war, I suppose. I guess that’s why tensions had eased back on Earth.” She kissed him and he spouted no more philosophy.”

(c) 2011 drk