(LF2021) Layla is pregnant

CHAPTER THREE:

Layla was pregnant and I had all kinds of concerns ! Would our offspring be healthy and able to reproduce or would they end up like some kind of earthly Mule ?

Was it going to be a boy or a girl ? How did Layla keep this from me ?

She was 2 months pregnant and I had no idea ! Geez you could have told me anything, before I would have believed she could become pregnant and I would not know !

In a typical Layla calm and totally feminine way she just reassured me all was OK and everything would be as it should be. Her only question for me was deciding if we should have a boy or a girl or both ?

“What, you can have twins” ?

She just smiled and let me know she could have a litter if we wanted to !

“Good gosh almighty” !

All my life I have avoided the consequences of a pregnancy just for a brief moment of pleasure, yet now, I was going to be a Daddy !

Layla told me that there would be a new addition to Tiki. The addition would consist of a vat of growth fluid in a sealed container. Once the addition was ready Layla would have Tiki place her developing fetus (s) in to the vat and we could watch our child develop and grow.

After I got my breath back and some form of sanity returned to my shocked system I managed to let her know I loved her more than life itself and whatever she wanted would be fine with me... (I hoped ?)

A short time later there were two little blobs of fishy things that did not look human in the growing vat Tiki had provided. When these blobs were fully developed and able to survive outside the vat there would be a female and a male baby.

“Amazing for I never expected to be a Daddy ! I suppose I am lucky Layla did not decide to produce a litter of the little buggers err/twins ” !

OK now that was settled we decided to return to a near by USSB base and transfer our children to a more secure environment.

We had been doing flag ops on several different worlds and I must admit it really was allot of fun. The last world had propeller driven aircraft which they used for transportation and war. I basically scared the crap out of some of their bomber and fighter aircraft pilots .. This was a safe world for us to play with for at this level of their technology they could not interfere with Tiki and her ability to protect us in flight.

Since becoming an expecting father something changed in me ? I had always figured the odds and trusted science and my abilities to get me through “whatever” but now..... I felt the weight of being a real 'no kidding' daddy and I think I did not know how to handle it. Layla picked up on this immediately and got a firm grip on the tip of my left ear and as she twisted she made me promise to consult the MAIN for the future of our lives and our children. She can be very physically persuasive at times, ouch!

I do not know why I am so hesitant to bother the MAIN ? Sometimes I am to independent for my own good as I am reminded of frecquently. I suppose it comes from earth and watching some cashier at a checkout stand who can not figure out how to make change without the cash register telling them the proper amount to give back.

OK. Our little twins will be able to reproduce the old fashioned way when the time comes. The Falongsaid and Earthlings actually come from the same genetic stock and have not diverged or been separated by time to such an extent that interbreeding by copulation is outside of the norm. Little had I known at the beginning of our relationship there was a 100% chance that Layla could become pregnant by me.

I had never liked what pregnancy did to some Earthly females with the stretch marks and their breast reduction which ended up looking more like pancakes or two fried eggs over time. With this method of reproduction Layla looked and felt the same as she always had; which I adored and in truth was thankful for.

At 7 months in the growing vat the twins became more than a bunch of cells just splitting and growing to survive. At 14 months the twins were released from the birthing vat and sent to what most would consider a physical and learning vat. By the age of two they were released and joined us.

With Layla and myself being USSB mentalist we spent everyday communicating and psychically holding our children while they were in the physical and learning vat. When the twins were finally released they came running naked across the room and basically smothered both of us with kisses and exclamations of a young persons excited talk ! Their vocabulary was about the level of an 8 or 9 year old on earth that was raised the old fashioned way.

My heart almost melted with the bond and love I felt for these two kids. I told Layla I wanted to name the girl Ding and the boy Dong; that way when we said, “Ding Dong come here” they would respond..You should have seen Layla's face when I suggested Ding Dong for names; priceless !.. I was joking !! At least I thought it was funny ! Layla almost rolled her eyes as she looked dead pan at me.

OK so Layla would not go with Ding and Dong so we decided on Sky for the Boy and Fhaa for the girl. They liked their names which was important to both Layla and myself so their names were registered that very day.

As Layla and I were psychically and mentally pair bonded our twins became all part of that bonding except they were not psychic (no Chip). We could feel them as far as happiness or sadness and even read their minds plus we could psychically place thoughts in their heads by staring and concentrating but it was a one way street at this phase of their development. These poor kids would never be able to get one over on mom and dad and knowing Layla it is probably for the best they did not even try !

Other things were going on with USSB while we were trying to provide the best possible outcome for our twins growth.

The mapping Droids from one of the extra dimensions had picked up several intrusions into our present dimension and all intel at USSB MAIN was indicating their would be a major incursion into our dimension in a not to distant a future. The extra-dimensional droids were from the so called Shabock dimension and were coming to our side of this multiverse in the hundreds of thousands. These were not just mapping droids but intel droids that were spying on just about everything in our dimension that displayed sentient behavior..

It was decided that we needed to do a little more than just send mapping droids to the Shabock dimension. So we to started sending more capable droids to take a 'look see'.

It did not go well!

Out of the first hundred droids we sent, communication was lost shortly after their arrival into the Shabock dimension.

So..... we sent some seriously high tech droids that could cloak their whereabouts and due to their metaphysical structure change and look like any other space rock.. These Droids were able to report on what was actually going on in the Shabock dimension and, it was not pretty.

For as long as I can remember there have been legends of the downfall of races who had created some form of A.I. that had caused their own destruction.

When I first became aware of USSB that thought figured prominently on my list of possible bad things that might be in my future but it was not long before I realized that USSB was not so much A.I. as it was a rather large group of sentient races all able to communicate and reason together via the USSB network. The A.I. of USSB was a means of collating and sorting the billions of feed back bits of information and then relaying the information to the intended receiver.

In the Shabock dimension the creation of artificial self replicating intelligence had been the down fall of their creators. Once this intelligence became self aware all biological sentient beings were just in the way of this intelligence and its' exponential expansion. The creators had tried to pull the plug on their creation but it was to late, plus, this A.I. Intelligence figuratively got pissed to the point of considering all Sentients to be a danger to its' very existence. Plug pullers one and all so they must die!

“NOT GOOD”!

Once USSB analyzed our Droids information it was decided to send one ship that was outfitted to protect itself from the weapons our droids had detected the Shabock A.I. Used. This was an unmanned ship except for a few cloned grays (no true Sentients aboard) that would be directly controlled by USSB MAIN. The ship was one of our smaller triangles that was close to 200 feet long. Nothing special except for its' defenses.
I was concerned that USSB might get some nefarious virus from making contact with the Shabock A.I. But I was assured that was an impossibility. I did not like the sound of that but who am I to raise a ruckus ?

The ship departed and was attacked within the first few moments of it's arrival into the Shabock dimension.. The hostile A.I. was everywhere in the Shabock dimension. Really not to hard to understand when you consider the exponential growth of such an intelligence which over the millennium had nothing to stand in its' way of reproduction and conquest of its host galaxy and universal dimension.

We were able to watch the mission via the onboard sensors of our Shabock bound USSB ship and to me it looked like an earthly bleeding Capybara being attacked by a huge swarm of piranha in some Amazonian river. Actually now that I think about it the visual effect was like a horde of Zembee maggots on Fartele 3 attacking some forest dweller for supper; not pretty !

The USSB ship by using several of its' tractor beam nodes ripped the first swarm of attack droids to pieces in the blinking of an eye. Then only moments later, three rather large ugly ships appeared and tried using cutter beams on our USSB ship. We had expected this and as their beams touched our force field a huge feed back loop was initiated and these ships blew out their cutter nodes. They then retreated but our USSB ship followed and when they were in the proper position our ship materialized an antimatter torpedo that detonated right in the middle of their loose formation. Needless to say the were vaporized.

It got rather peaceful after that.

USSB MAIN knew where the old home star cluster for this Shabock intelligence originated but as indicated before this A.I. was now everywhere. We needed to communicate with one of its' droids but up to this point they had all been dead set on destroying our ship. We could have just captured one of their droids in our dimension but we needed to insure our very own droid intel was correct about their weapons and the response to our arrival into their Shabock dimensional universe.

Once the 3 big uglies had been destroyed our ship returned to pick up some of the bits and pieces of the attack droids. These pieces were scanned and analyzed for possible self destruct mechanisms and communication relays and when we found what we were looking for the pieces were tractor beamed aboard.

The little Grays onboard the USSB ship were busy beavers going through the junk and assembling this and that until they created what they needed. This new creation was then released back into the Shabock dimension as our USSB ship phased back into our own dimension.

This entire operation lasted less than two hours of Tiki ship time.

Within the next few sleep cycles all the Shabock droids in our dimension either became inert or returned to the Shabock dimension.

Now that is the way to fight a war !

Upon completion of the newly made droid from the pieces of the dismembered Shabock attack droids USSB had simply transferred our own version of a virus with some of the rules that govern USSB A.I. Then our newly made Shabock droid had dutifully gone about its' business transmitting and infecting one then all A.I. In the Shabock dimension.

My whole concern about USSB getting some virus from the Shabock A.I. was misdirected, misinformed, and just plain wrong.


It was to late to save the billions of sentient life forms this A.I. had destroyed but at least it would not be starting the same process in one of our own dimensional back yards. On a more positive note the entire Shabock dimension was a place USSB could expand into and seed sentient life forms with even the help and assets of the once evil A.I. that had previously ruled and destroyed approximately 500 billion Sentient races in Galaxies with trillions of stars with planets, For us to seed Shabock with sentient life was a mission USSB was quite good at if we could only muster the assets to send there.

Same old me, “I like happy endings”.

Also I got to thinking about Layla and family going into the Shabock and doing some of the seeding ourselves. Hummm ?

The End

PS I wrote this a few years ago and do not remember if I ever posted it at ATS. Several searches turned up nothing. Hope you were able to follow along and enjoy.

a reply to: 727Sky

I really enjoyed this story. I'm a huge fan of science fiction and your story is in line with the type of sci-fi I prefer.
The universe/dimension(s) and culture seem really interesting and I felt myself wanting more as soon as I finished reading.

Well done indeed!

a reply to: 727Sky

More Please!!!

Wow!
That was awesome.

a reply to: 727Sky

This was a wonderful story and my brain conjured up interesting visuals while reading it.


I wish you much success in the Contest!
Johnny

originally posted by: PiratesCut
a reply to: 727Sky

More Please!!!

Several years ago I was writing my version of this space opera. I had just finished chapter 27 and was going to get a cup of coffee when a child ran by and tripped over the power cord for the computer. The computer was yanked from the desk and fell upon the floor which destroyed the hard drive. I was stupid and had not saved the stories as even the word processor was trashed and unrecoverable.. Now if I have something I want to save I email it to myself.

It was not the loss of the story as much as it was the loss of a Character I had created that was a nanobot shape shifting sentient being of which there were only 536 in existence... There had been more once upon a time but they were to powerful so their numbers had been destroyed and limited by the ancient ones.

I did find chapter 4 which is rather long and I will post it shortly after proof reading under LF2021 Chapter 4

Thank all of you for the comments...everyone likes to be appreciated for their endeavors...even me !! hahahah

a reply to: 727Sky

nicely done I enjoyed it.

But I also have to thank you. Your smashing laptop horror has given me an idea to write another entry about the real life nightmare I had writing my first one.

a reply to: 727Sky

This is my absolute favorite story so far! I love the way you include phrases and words casually and force us to remember them and file them in context to understand what they mean. WONderful!!!

It got rather peaceful after that.

I loved that!!!

Excellent story, and I am going to pay you the highest compliment that I can: Your story reminds me of the works of the late, great Arthur C. Clarke, my hero who showed me the way as a kid and still leads the way. Well done!!

a reply to: 727Sky

Very cool story. I am def a sci-fi fan.