Chapter No.147. Surprise

Always trust your senses.

The explosion took me by surprise because it was much stronger than I had anticipated. I quickly suspended time and backed it up.

"You just caught that in time," Alexa said. "We were within a microsecond of being destroyed."

"Yeah, I know. Damn that son of a bitch!"

"How are we going to get the androids out of there before the bomb goes off?"

"That's a good question. Maybe we could disarm it before it detonates."

"I'm ready, if you are," she said.

We teleported to an underground chamber where the capsules containing twenty thousand deactivated androids were being stored.  The bomb was sitting nearby.

"Interesting," Alexa said. "There doesn't seem to be any control unit. I wonder how they detonated it."

I looked around. "Maybe there's a blaster mounted somewhere aimed at the bomb."

Alexa looked around and stopped. "I think I see it. It's hidden inside that wall." She pointed.

"Damn, you're good."

She smiled. "I think we can just make it vanish and that should do it."

"Maybe, but I don't trust that bastard."

Alexa frowned and began a new search. It wasn't long until she discovered another blaster.

"There's another one over here. I'll take care of it."

"Hopefully, that's all of them. Let's transfer the capsules to our vessel."

"Maybe we should make sure they're not loaded with bombs."

I pointed at her. "Good plan."

We began a scan of the capsules and the androids and found that every one of them had a chemical bomb. After removing all of them we teleported the capsules to our ship and then teleported ourselves back.

I started up time.

"What the hell?" Molly yelled. "We were blown up, but we're still intact!"

"Jason saved our butts by stopping the explosion wave a mere microsecond before it blew us up," Alexa said. "He and I went down and deactivated the detonators and removed explosives from the androids in capsules before we teleported them to our ship."

"All while time was suspended?"

"That's it," she said.

"Does that mean that the other six universes have the same surprise?"

"I believe so," I said. "However, we only found twenty thousand androids, not a hundred thousand."

"Why is that?" Molly asked.

"Hell if I know. Maybe Tyco destroyed the rest of them."

"Are we going to rescue the others?"

"Yes." I turned to Judy. "Take us to the next universe. Just remember where we went through."

"The Roamers have provided us with very precise locations for all of the portals," Judy said.

"They also have mapped out all of the galaxies in every universe that they have explored," Molly said.

"Can you even imagine how much effort it would take to do that," I said, shaking my head. "We're talking trillions of galaxies."

"We're fortunate to be friendly with them," Alex said.

"Amen to that," I said.

We went to all six of the remaining universes and found the identical situation in all six cases. The good news is that we knew how to prevent the explosions from happening. The bottom line is that we returned to our universe with a hundred and forty thousand new androids with the crazy hair colors.

The bad news is that we still didn't understand where the others were. Did Tyco still have them, or did he destroy them. That would be the issue for our evening command group discussion in the hidden pool chamber.

We welcomed our new members, Ferris and Anna. The others applauded.

"We try to meet here on a regular basis," I told them. "We usually discuss what we can do to eliminate all Tyco influence."

"I was told that this was a location without entry," Anna said. "Is this to prevent others from coming here?"

"We're not sure why the androids created a place like this on the Explorer-3. We decided to include it on the new vessel. This is the only location on the ship that isn't monitored, so we can discuss anything we wish without anyone else knowing about it."

"Are you suggesting that we are constantly monitored in the other parts of this vessel?" Ferris asked.

"Yes, and anyone can watch what anyone else is doing. There is no privacy in this collective."

She smiled. "I suppose I had better watch what I say."

"Or think," I said. "Our thoughts are also recorded."

"Oh my!"

"You'll get used to it. It's the price we pay for being immortal."

"Where are all the androids you recovered?" Anna asked. "I was told you collected a hundred and forty thousand of them."

"They're still in capsules. When we return to Earth, we'll revive them and distribute them among our other ships. However, at the rate we're growing, we need to make ship building a priority."

"If we keep building vessels as large as this one, we'll deplete the metals and other chemicals in the asteroid belt," Alex said.

"I doubt that," Molly said. "There are many asteroids there that have enormous amounts of metals and chemicals. The asteroid belt was formed when Jupiter literally broke up hundreds of proto planets that had formed from the material left over when the Sun formed from in a nebula produced form supernovae."

"Even if we run out of materials in the asteroid belt, we have the Keiper belt planetesimals to mine," Margaret said.

"And, there are other nearby star systems with plenty of materials," I added.

"We're going to be busy as bees," Marie said.

"Yeah, and the good news is that we have plenty of worker bees," Molly said.

"I am interested in this multiverse being that you have discovered," Ferris said. "Is this being what you consider God?"

"We didn't discover it, the Roamers did. They're a robotic species that's exploring the multiverse. We just happen to be fortunate to be considered their friends, enough so for them to feed us their data on a regular basis. As to whether it's the creator, that question can't be answered."

"What do you know about the creator?"

"All we can say for certain is that there is only one creator or God, and this creator is responsible for everything we see or don't see. As to what this multiverse being is, we don't know. It could be a symbol of the creator, or maybe even a manifestation. We just don't know. Another thing we know is that we must do all that is possible to protect life in not only our universe but also in the multiverse. It's the least we can do to honor the creator."

That seemed to satisfy everyone, but it left us without any proof. The only thing left was faith.

What I heard next from Judy made me more concerned about our future.