[TC: 111, 02]
Our families descend upon our house to meet Candace, and during their visit, I find out that Kathy is just past her first trimester. The father is a boy whose parents run a cattle ranch several kilometers out of town. While Kay is not yet pregnant, she informs me that she is dating a boy who works in the warehouses, and she’s trying to get pregnant, so she doesn’t have to report for insemination. Before you say anything, remember, they’re legally considered to be adults since they are 15.
Kathy has been helping out at the ranch while she works toward a teaching degree, and Kay works at the warehouses while she works toward becoming a biomedical researcher.
As of now, our original 342 colonists have now become a total of 683. 205 of those are baby girls, 136 are baby boys. Slowly, but surely, we’re making this work. Much like in the distant past, men perform most of the work while women mostly take care of the home and children.
[TC: Day 320, year 05]
After a lot of quite heated debate at times, we’ve finally agreed to the Terra’s version of the Bill of Rights. Let’s just say the whole affair was tumultuous, but it’s something that has to be done. The US Constitution was an incredible document, drawn up by amazing people. Unfortunately, those amazing people didn’t foresee the lengths that some would go to to garner power over the people and left some gring avenues for abuse.
Therefore, by unanimous decision, all of us have renounced our US citizenship, swore allegiance to what we have named the Terran Federation. A rather big name for a single city of people as Dad and Colonel Dayton pointed out when they announced that we’d be developing a new system of government. It’ll still be a Representative Republic, even though there will be no states and therefore one set of ws for Terra. There are amendments to safeguard the people, rights, and any abuses by the government and future businesses.
Our Constitution and Terran w is far from completely written, but here is a rough list of what we have so far. As you can see, much of it is heavily based on the US Constitution.
Article One - There shall be no w prohibiting or abridging the free exercise of speech or press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble or petition the government for a redress of grievances. No w shall be established to prohibit the free exercise of religion, whether in public or private, provided said exercise of rights does not infringe on the rights of another.
(This part is specifically written to forestall any religious conflicts in the future.)
Article Two - The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. No tax, fee, or w may be established to limit, restrict, or remove the people’s right to bear arms without the express consent, by registered vote, of the people.
(Article two is intended to be the guarantor of all rights.)
Article Three - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, property, and effects against any search and seizure, shall not be vioted. No warrants shall be issued except upon provable probable cause presented to a three-judge panel - one of which must be a Justice AI. All warrants shall, by name and description, detail the persons, pces, and items to be seized.
(Yes, this kind got moved around, but people will adjust, and more guarantees are included to protect the people. No more of a cop going to a judge who he’s buddies with to get a search warrant with no underlying proof.)
Article Four - No person shall be held to answer for any crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising within the military. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of w; nor shall private property be forfeited without public trial; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without need and verifiable benefit to the people and just compensation issued.
(It’s much the same as originally written with some added protections. It’s going to be quite a while before this comes into py of course, but better to have it than not.)
Article Five - In all prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of their peers. The people shall be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, and given access to all evidence against them; the people have the right to confront all witnesses against them; to have a compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in their favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for their defense. In all suits, both civil and criminal, the right of trial by a jury of their peers shall be preserved.
(In many of our views, all attorneys should be publicly funded, paid simir amounts as the prosecution. This should make trials more even, though the idea will probably require tweaking ter.)
Article Six- Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel punishments inflicted. No bail shall be required except by indictment by a grand jury after all evidence for and against the prosecution has been heard.
(How many times have you heard of someone being arrested and numerous charges stacked on for whatever reason, which makes the person unable to afford bail. With this, unless it’s a capital crime such as murder, they’ll be released on their own recognition. If the grand jury decides the charges are founded they can easily be picked back up. The thought being that it is better for some to wrongly be let free than one innocent to be wrongly held.)
Article Seven - Under penalty of w, no person seeking office, any elected official, or public employee shall, through action, inaction, omission, or misrepresentation of known facts in any manner present falsehoods to the people. Upon articuble reasonable accusation, any person seeking office, elected official, or public employee will be required to answer such accusation through nanoprobe questioning.
(Yes, if you run for or hold office, or are a public employee, you are going to be held accountable to the public. No matter how much you might want to do it, you can’t lie under nanoprobe questioning. If you don’t understand the reasoning behind this, I don’t know what to tell you.)
Article Eight - The people, regardless of status, must abide by ws, rules, and regutions equally without any special consideration. Elected officials and public employees shall not enjoy any protections that are not equally provided to the people.
(Again, if you don’t understand the reasoning here, I simply don’t know what to tell you. The immunity ws destroyed the judicial system in the US. We’re not going to allow that to happen here.)Article Nine - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be misconstrued to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article Ten - All powers not specifically delegated to the state by the Constitution, are reserved to, by, and for the people.
(Obviously, this is us tying the hands of the Terran Federation from simply saying, we think we have the power to do this, so we will. Something the US Federal government did far too often.)
Novis’ popution is quickly expanding. There are now 1,709 people that live here and in the surrounding area, of which 1,073 are female and 636 are male. The majority of the popution are well under the age of 15. Athena has 5 children - 3 girls and 2 boys while I have 4 - 2 of each.
[TC: 103, 10]
In the st 5 years, our ws have been finalized with the help of a Justice AI. Crime is retively low, but there have been a couple of major incidents. Specifically, men who attempted or did rape women, and one that murdered someone. True to his word, after their trials, Dad ordered their gender changed, memories wiped, and personalities rewritten. Now, all of them are busy making babies, and are productive members of the colony. They seem to be happy doing it, and take good care of their children.
As things currently stand, there are 2,097 people on Terra with 1141 of the children being female and 614 males. The oldest among them is Emma at 10.
It’s taken 10 long years with Dad sweating every minute of them, but Terra’s ground defenses are fully up and running. Now, the resources that have been dedicated to them have been switched to build orbital defense ptforms. If HOTE shows up now, they’ll lose, but at the same time, we’d lose Novis. In another 5 to 10 years, it’d be highly unlikely any attack they’d want to mount would succeed.
On day 208, my promotion ceremony to Captain is held. Dad tells me how proud he is of me, while Max teases me, saying that I’m a showoff since it took him 13 years real-time to be promoted to Captain.
Kay, along with several other bioscientists, have been researching a means to bring a human baby to term in an exo-uterus. So far, they’ve had no luck, but Kay is optimistic they’ll succeed. I’m hoping they do because it would relieve a lot of pressure on our society, and allow women to take a more active role in helping build our world.
[TC: 308, 15]
This year, we hold a huge celebration because 137 girls now join us as adults. From now on, every single year, more and more will be added to the roles of adults.
Dad announces during the summer solstice festival that a research group has made a breakthrough in the FTL engines. Instead of only 0.3 light years per day, they state we can travel at 5.2 light years per day. Currently, that doesn’t help us as a colony, but we have pns to look for another habitable pnet or, at the very least, one with lots of liquid water that we can geoform in the future.
Max was a little irked when I received my promotion to Major on day 68 st year. Thankfully, he received his on day 261 this year. It isn’t that he doesn’t deserve the promotions, it’s that there are so many more engineers than there are command staff, which I am considered to be.
My traffic control crew and I begin directing the pcement of the first 200 orbital defense ptforms in geosynchronous orbit while my husband leads one of several teams to begin building defense empcements on Lunea, Terra’s moon, and pces the nanos to begin building a fleet base as well. The fleet is on hold for the moment, but Dad is adamant about having it ready when we do build them.
Our popution has exceeded 2,200 people this year. In the st 5 years, 1884 babies were born, 1262 of them female, and 622 males.
[TC: 12, 20]
Our popution has more than doubled in the st 5 years. 2,708 babies were born, along with 507 additional adult females. Year 20 also marks the st year I will be having babies since when I gave birth to Rachel Marie, my 18th baby, something went horribly wrong, and I began hemorrhaging. The nanos saved my life, but they couldn’t save my uterus. You might think I’d have been happy to be freed from giving birth, but you’d be very wrong because I cried for days.
The traffic control group directs the st of the geosynchronous orbital ptforms this year, in addition to the st of the defense empcements on Lunea being completed st year. So Dad, with city council approval has redirected the resources from them to build orbital shipyards. Not only to begin building the fleet, but Avalon is in serious need of a refit.
I’ve also been badgering Dad about our uniforms. We still wear the USSF and Marine uniforms just with a different patch. I feel that since we’re members of the Terran Federation Armed Forces, we should have our own uniforms. Finally, he agrees to let me present him with options to consider, which I’ve already done, considering that he has a hard time telling me no. I transfer the files to him, hug and kiss him on the cheek, and sashay my little butt out of there before he realizes he’s been had.
It takes a while since Dad is always busy, but in the end, he likes the uniforms I designed. The holograms I had the computer make and add to the file helped. The day uniform remains much the same, except the skirts are pleated to allow for more freedom of movement and we’d wear loafers instead of heels. Our dress uniform adds a tie, bzer, and heeled pumps. I designed them to look professional, yet be comfortable daily.
For pilots and fleet crew, I designed a white and color-trimmed shipsuit as their duty uniform. The color of the trim denotes their section; red for command, blue for engineering, green for medical, etc… The one for the Marines is bck with gray-trim, and with the add-on armor, it can also double as the Marine’s battlesuit.
If you’re not current with military tech, a shipsuit has a computer incorporated, and it also amplifies the wearer's normal strength by up to five times. That means they can carry heavier loads, weapons, etc…Additionally, it maintains the wearers temperature. The back pte holds a small supply of emergency medical nanos, which can administer pain-killers and perform stop-gap medical procedures, and with the addition of the helmet and gloves, it is a bio and space suit. The helmet is unlike what you see for a biosuit since the facepte is transparent battle steel. After all, they are weak points. The computer also projects a 360° view of their surroundings along with all the information a modern warrior needs to fight.
[TC 169, 22]
On the same day that I receive my promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, I’m relieved of command of the traffic control group, and transferred to Lunea as the vice-commander of the base there. There isn’t much to command since it only houses a couple of hundred ground personnel and pilots for the fighters that are stationed there. I find it’s lonely without Athena, Max and my kids, but orders are orders.
[TC: 389, 25]
Tonight, there’ll be lots of partying across the city, and we have a lot to celebrate. The popution of Terra now stands at over 10,000 people. That’s a far cry from the 342 from just 25 years ago. The scientists also say that we’ve reached the tipping point and our popution will begin to rapidly grow.
A group of NanoTechnologists also inform Dad and the city council that they developed what they term as Live Medical Nanos. The concept is as easy as it is complex. Unfortunately, at the present time, only those who have completely gone through puberty, are not pregnant, and aren’t receiving some kind of medical attention can take them. From what I understand, they feed your genetic profile to the AI, along with a highly detailed scan, and the medical nanos maintain that snapshot of you.
Don’t ask me much about it, I’m just an officer in the Terran Federation Armed Forces.
[TC: 264, 30]
Our popution exceeds 26,000 this year, and a 7-person Federation Council is set up as an interim stand in for the Terran government. They decide with the growth of our popution, it’s time to begin another city. There’s some grumbling by people when they are picked by Apollo, an AI that will eventually help govern Terra. I expected as much, but there was far less than I assumed there would be.
I’m also relieved of my duty station this year. I had hoped that I’d get to go home, but Dad seems to have other ideas as he transmits my orders to take command of our first frigate, the TFS Spear. I should say it’s our first and only for the moment, but we’ll have others soon enough.
In a conversation with Dad, he says that now Federation Councilman Dayton and Dad have been talking, and they want to fast track me for fleet command.
[TC: 97, 35]
It's been five years since I took command of the TFS Spear, and in that time, our fleet has grown to include six more frigates and hundreds of fighters. This year, I step down as Captain of the Spear and turn command over to Major Reynolds, who will be receiving a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel while I've been promoted to Colonel and given command of the TFS Shield, our first destroyer. It's a bittersweet moment as I say goodbye to my crew on the Spear, but I'm excited for the challenges ahead.
Back on Terra, our popution has exploded to over 60,000. Another other city, Viel Hills, has been established and is thriving with a popution of about 5,000 people.
