Sequel to Methuselah

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I've got an idea brewing for a sequel to my "Who Mourns for Methuselah" story.
This one will probably go up on FF.net, but I'm posting the draft for the introduction here. Comments welcome!

Resurrection Planet

This story is a sequel to “Who Mourns for Methuselah” and was inspired by the “River World” stories written by Philip Jose Farmer.

Introduction

Trillions of years in the far distant future the universe has expanded to the point that all of the galaxies are so far apart from each other that they are invisible because even at the speed of light, the distance between them is greater than time between them. Not that that matters, most of the stars in the universe have gone out, having used up their allotment of hydrogen fuel. All of the vast clouds of interstellar hydrogen have been used up in star formation, with none left no new stars are being formed.

Drifting though the void of the darkening universe were billions of brown dwarfs, dense spheres of hydrogen mixed with trace amounts of other elements. These collections of interstellar hydrogen left over from the earlier days of creation never acreeted to a high enough density to ignite the process of fusion. These star 'wannabes' slowly cooled down to near absolute zero and were forgotten by the universe.

Also drifting though the void were countless rocky planet sized bodies ejected from the solar systems they were formed in, never captured by a parent star. Frozen potential homes for life, also forgotten and neglected.

As the universe expanded and cooled the random forces of probability and time itself eventually brought these forgotten bodies together. In one dark corner of the void several brown dwarfs collided and merged, their combined mass now great enough to crush the material they were made of tightly enough generate the frictional heat required to turn them into stars.

The newly formed dwarf star and a frozen rocky body passed close enough to each other for their gravities to intertwine. They accepted each other as parent and child and a miniature solar system was born. The new planet warmed up under the radiation of its new sun and started to thaw. An atmosphere out gassed from the frozen rock, and oceans of water appeared. Frozen molecules of life that had drifted though space and landed on the frozen rock woke up from their long sleep. Evolution began again and life quickly took hold. In a dieing universe, birth still took place. Dwarf stars are very stingy with their fuel, they can live for hundreds of billions of years. With any luck, the new world would have lots of time to perfect itself.

One.

The Lady Jessica watched as the blacksmith pulled the glowing orange hot metal from the furnace with his tongs and brought it to the anvil to hammer it into shape. She admired his muscular arms dripping with sweat, as he lifted the heavy hammer and slammed it repeatedly onto the anvil. As he turned to replace the metal back into the furnace to reheat it, his profile was presented and she could see his bare back, which not covered by the heavy leather apron he wore for protection from the heat. Her eyes feasted on the outline of the well defined muscles under the skin of his hairless back.

Despite the dark goggles that he wore to protect his eyes from the glare of the incandescent metal in the furnace, she could see that he had a cute face. His dark colored hair was cut short, except for two pointy tufts that stuck out at behind from diagonal points on the back of his head. Under the legs of his trousers she could see the bottoms of a well worn pair of red leather boots.

The blacksmith bent over to dunk the horseshoe into a bucket of water to quench the hot metal. He removed his dark goggles and the leather apron, revealing his bare barrel chest. If he was aware of Jessica staring at the 'six pack' of his well developed abdomen muscles, his facial expression did not reveal it.

“I've fixed the shoe, madam,” he said, “I'll go put it on your horse now.”

“Thank you.” the Lady Jessica said.

The blacksmith walked though the doorway that connected his workshop with the stables, the horseshoe in his left hand. He reached into a bushel basket just inside the entrance to the stable and pulled out a large carrot. He slipped the horseshoe into the rear left pocket of his jeans and slowly approached the mare. The large brown horse whinnied when it saw him.

“Take it easy girl,” the smith said, “this won't hurt a bit.” He offered the orange tuber to the equine, which greedily snatched it from his hand. The smith scratched the large animal between its ears with his right hand, forming a bond with his patient. He then slowly bend down and lifted the mare's front leg and removing the shoe from his pocket, lined it up on the horse's hove. It only took him a few minutes to nail the U-shaped iron onto the animal's foot.

The smith patted the mare as he stood up and took hold of the halter rope to lead the animal out of the stable. The mare increased her pace once she saw Jessica waiting just outside the stable. The horse nuzzled the woman's face with its nose.

“You have a way with horses, Atom.” Jessica cooed, reaching into her purse and removing several gold coins. “Will this be enough payment?”

The smith held out his hand as the lady dropped the coins into it. “Yes.” he said, pocketing the money, and helping Jessica up into the saddle. Atom watched as the lady rode away, wiping the dirt and sweat off with a half clean rag.

“She's sweet on you, you know.”

Atom turned to see Cobalt standing behind him. “No, she's just admiring my body,” Atom told his brother, though the look on his face revealed that there was more too it than that.

“I think it goes deeper than that.” Cobalt said, the tone of his voice indicating that he knew what was really going on between his brother and the lady Jessica. “I wish women would be attracted to brains rather than brawn.”

“Jealous?” Atom asked.

“Probably.” Cobalt replied.

"You haven't forgotten our dinner with Titan and Uran tonight have you?" Cobalt added, changing the subject.

"Oh yeah, it is tonight isn't it. I guess I'd better clean myself up." Atom laughed.

He grabbed a clean pair of trousers, a shirt and a towel and some soap and ran off toward the river to bathe.
After he dried himself off and dressed, he was spotted by Jessica, who had brought her horse to the river to cool off.
She dismounted from her mare and smiled as she approached Atom.

"Hello, lover!" she laughed throwing herself at him. They locked lips for quite some time, rolling around in the grass.
Finally Atom pushed himself away from her, smiling.

"As much as I'd like to stay here with you, I have a diner engagement with my siblings tonight." he said. "I wish we didn't have to keep meeting like this."

"Me too." Jessica said, "But my social standing won't allow me to be seen in polite company with a common blacksmith."

They gave each other a final kiss and went their separate ways.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Here is the draft of the next part. I've edited the first section to add some material I left out. The version posted here on ABOL will be an edited version as the one eventually to be posted on FF.NET will be rated "M" for some adult content.

Resurrection Planet

Two.

It had been a little over a year since the four of them had awakened in the upper meadow above the valley where the village was located. Each of them had been resurrected in flesh and blood human form, though they each somewhat resembled their former robotic selves, and even had a few of the same traits.

Atom for all intents was a young man in his early twenties. He was moderately short in stature at about 155cm tall. His narrow frame, and barrel chest disguised his powerful body. Stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of black briefs, revealed his well developed abdominal muscles, and a pair of very well developed arms. He could beat any man in the village arm wrestling, and he could bench press at least 180kg. Running, he was a swift as a deer; his eyesight was a sharp as an owl's and he could see in the dark just about as well. On a quiet day, his sensitive hearing could identify the call of a bird clear on the other side of the large meadow.

Cobalt was a good head taller than his brother. Though he lacked Atom's strength and agility, he was no weakling. His IQ was where he excelled. Ever since they had arrived, Cobalt had devoted himself to resurrecting what he could of the late 21st century science and technology that he had left behind. He'd set up a huge science laboratory in the outskirts of the village, and along with it a school where he was the head professor. He'd been accepted as the local genius, and many of the inventions that he'd recreated were now part of the local culture.

Uran's special talents included strong ESP abilities, and empathy with most animals. She quickly set herself up as the town veterinarian, mostly caring for horses and cattle. In most conversations with her siblings, she very often would complete their sentences before they could blurt them out, so strong was her ESP connections with them.

Titan had a little bit of each of his siblings abilities. While he could not mind meld with animals as Uran could, he did have some telepathic abilities with humans. He was almost as strong as Atom, though he lacked his brother's sensitive ears and sharp vision. His IQ was high enough to understand almost everything that Cobalt was doing, to the extent that he was serving as his brother's assistant in the laboratory.

Cobalt had managed to construct a crude, but functional electron microscope, and a gas chromatography device. He'd just recently put together the apparatus required to examine strands of DNA, and had mapped his own sequences along with those of his siblings. What he'd discovered wasn't too much of a surprise to him. He and Atom were almost perfect twins, having the least variance between their DNA. Uran's DNA was a close enough match to clearly identify her as a true sister to both of them. Titan however had much less in common with either of them. His DNA identified him as no closer than a second or third cousin to Uran, Atom and himself. That discovery delighted both Uran and Titan, who were still deeply infatuated with each other, and now had no guilt in becoming husband and wife. They had been married just a few days ago, and this dinner party would be their first as a couple.

Atom knocked on the door to the cottage, and was immediately greeted by Titan. “Welcome cousin” he said. It had taken Atom a while to accept the idea of losing a brother and gaining a cousin, but he knew that it made Titan and Uran feel more comfortable, so he quickly got used to the idea. Besides, genetics didn't lie.

“Sorry I'm late,” Atom said, “I ran into a friend and was detained.”

Cobalt bit his tongue and kept quiet, he knew damn well what had detained his brother.

“Don't worry about it,” Titan said, “You're actually right on time. Uran's ESP must have
told her exactly when you'd arrive and she timed dinner perfectly.”

Atom joined Cobalt who was already siting at the diner table. Titan helped his wife bring the food to the table. They started with a garden salad consisting of fresh greens, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and green onions, all grown in the community gardens that Uran and Titan helped cultivate. The main course was a roast duckling, one of the foul that the couple were raising on the acres of land that they farmed. For desert, Uran had baked a huge apple spice pie.

Though each of them had been able to enjoy food in their previous lives, they still hadn't gotten used to the sensations of taste, texture, and smell that their new bodies enabled them to perceive. Every meal was an adventure, they ate slowly so as to enjoy every everything to the maximum extent.

They finished the meal off with large cups of green tea. As soon as the last of them had drained his or her glass, Atom and Cobalt helped to gather the dishes and bring them into the kitchen to be washed.

With the after dinner chores completed, they settled down for some conversation.

“I still can't believe what a strange society this is.” Cobalt began. “In some ways, it's a throwback to the middle ages, but with a large dash of steampunk technology thrown in for good measure. I've been trying to resurrect as much of the science from the late 21st century as possible, but it will probably take me a lifetime to complete the task.”

“Indeed.” Atom agreed. “While most of the homes are illuminated by late 19th century style Edison electric light powered by the hydroelectric generator where the river is dammed, transportation is still mostly horse and buggy style. There are some primitive electric vehicles, but with the old style lead acid batteries they are rather slow, and short ranged.”

“There is radio communication in this society.” Titan added, “though it's all DeForest style vacuum tube electronics in use. Computer technology is non-existent, except for some limited use of some Babbage style machines.”

“At least there is very little burning of fossil style fuels,” Uran noted. “The climate here is on the warmer side, but the cottages do need some heating in the winter. Mostly this is electric heat, the hydroelectric and wind generators provide most of the power needed. Most of the homes are equipped to burn coal for heat in an emergency, and candles made from vegetable fat are also common. The good thing is that this society is nothing like the dirty early industrial age back on old Earth.”

“One thing that really puzzles me,” Atom added, “Is that we remember so much of our former lives. All of us have noticed that many of the people living in the village resemble those that we knew back when we were still robotic children. I've already bumped into Tamao, Kenichi, and Tawashi. They however, have no memory of me, why do we have this gift?”

“Is it a gift, or a curse?” Titan asked. “It may be because we were once robots, only the humans seem to have been resurrected without their former memories.”

“That's assuming that everyone on this planet has actually been resurrected.” Cobalt added. “We still don't know how or why we are here.”


Eventually the hour grew late. Atom and Cobalt said their goodbyes and walked outside into the cool night air.

“You're welcome to spend the night at my place.” Cobalt told his brother. “It's a lot more comfortable than that dirty room of yours in back of the blacksmith shop.”

“Thanks,” Atom said, “I think I'll take you up on that.”

It was about a twenty minute walk from Titan's house to the University complex where Cobalt had his flat. Before they started out, Cobalt looked up at the night sky. Besides the two moons, each about half the size of the one that had orbited the old Earth, there were only a handful of dim red stars visible. The moons orbited in slightly different paths, each one taking a bit longer than a week to make one circuit of the planet. They exhibited the same phases as Earth's old moon had once done. On rare occasions, the two moons would occupy nearly the same position in the sky, and could find themselves at just the right position to be in between the dwarf star that served as this worlds sun and the planet to cause a brief solar eclipse.

“I've trained my telescope on the sky at night, and I don't see much more with it than we can with our naked eyes.” Cobalt sighed. “I'm working on building a much larger instrument, but I fear that we are completely alone in the universe. I'm still trying to get readings on the cosmic background count, but its probably expanded into the VLF or even the SLF spectrum by now. Maybe one day I will figure out exactly just how long ago our former lives were.”

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I've been working on fleshing out the first two chapters of this story that will go up on Fan Fiction dot net. I don't know if I will be allowed to post a link to the story here, because it will be rated "M" with some explicit sexual content. Mind you I am not writing a pornographic story here, nor do I think that such content should be added to a story unless it serves a purpose, and I think that it does here.

As I've said this story will be a sequel to "Who Mourns for Methuselah". If you haven't read that story, the premise was that it is many years into the future from the canon. Astro and his siblings were given the ability to grow and age. Astro was also give the ability to father children. (Using Tobio Tenma's DNA preserved in the form of frozen tissue taken from the boys body while he lay in a coma in the hospital.) The story took place just after the funeral of Astro's human wife, and ended with Astro, Uran, and Titan (Chi-tin) lost in space after saving the world (yet again), this time from a rouge comet. In the Epiloge, the four of them (including Cobalt), are resurrected in the far future on a strange planet. This is where the new story picks up, about a year after they first arrived.

Now as far as the reason for the mature content ....
click for spoilerAtom has been resurrected as a human in his early 20's. He has a very athletic body with powerful muscles, and is very attractive to the opposite sex. He has taken the job of a Blacksmith in the village/town where he and his siblings live. He has gotten involved with an important woman who is much further up the social ladder than he is, such that they can't be seen together in polite society. Because of that, they are having an affair on the sly. While there may be a romantic attraction between them, it is quite clear that the lady is mostly attracted to Atom for the great sex she is having with him. At least one example of which is described.

Meanwhile .... Uran and Titan are still infatuated with each other. No longer robots, they can now enjoy a full fledged love affair. Cobalt, using laboratory equipment that he has managed to put together, has mapped the DNA of himself and his siblings and has determined that genetically, Uran and Titan are no closer than second or third cousins. They are happy to hear this and are wed. Neither of them have any idea about physical love, and one night they finally discover it. Something that just HAS to be described. (Remember the Blue Lagoon?)...

So anyway, I'm still going through the delicate process of fine tuning the "M" content. I don't want it to be too much "in the gutter", if you get my drift. (any one want to proof read it and give me an opinion? Fauna?)
I will probably just give enough of a hint as to how to find it on FF.NET, if a direct link to it isn't allowed here. That way no search engine will link to the story via ABOL, which should keep the moderators happy.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I've posted the first two chapters with their full adult content up on on the Tezuka in English forum, under the 18+ section. So if you can access that, enjoy.