Read Chapter 9 “The Trap”
In 2447 it was common knowledge across many Galaxies that time travel was as real as space travel was. Unfortunately, it was often used as part of the warfare tactic against anyone who disagreed with the current cosmic state of affairs.
The reality of time travel wasn’t as glamorous as perceived by many; it was both mentally and physically exhausting for the traveller. It wasn’t easy to come back and often the travellers got lost in the past. Some of the nasty, full of hate, rough travellers used the time travel to disturb the Galactic co-existence of many species, as well as the progress of many planets and eco-systems. For the Galactic leaders, it was impossible to find those groups and punish them accordingly. With time, a lot of those groups would disappear somewhere amongst the time tunnels and time zones ending up somewhere, where they surely didn’t belong.
Some of those travelling tribes coming from the future were able to use sophisticated and advanced technologies to manipulate the less evolved species into complete obedience and, this way, altering the future. In 2447 no one could check what has been changed and what stayed the same. Time-travelling was getting out of control and slowly becoming a major security threat.
The group of rough travellers that captured Maggie and Patrick had only one aim; to go back to the moment the time travel was discovered and manipulate the events in such a way that wouldn’t allow for the time travel to be uncovered. Jenny, the leader of the group, believed that time loops and time travel was destroying the Galactic order and influenced the future in too many negative ways.
Jenny, a young woman barely in her 20’s, was born into slavery on Earth to two human parents. When she was still very young, her father managed to escape to Aqua Moons with her and her older brother on one of the old-fashioned Ecotopian space shuttles. However, her mother wasn’t as lucky and died during the escape, sacrificing her life to protect the three of them.
Jenny has never forgiven her father for not trying to save her mum. After the Galactic trial against her family was brought to the Aqua Moons court Jenny and her brother were allowed to stay on Aqua Moons. However, the judge ruled that her father had to be deported back to Earth and back to slavery.
After the ruling, Jenny became angrier with each passing day, until her whole life was consumed by revenge.
When she couldn’t contain her anger any longer, she left the secure and stable life that Aqua Moons offered. She was only 17 when vengeance became her path. She finally got beautiful retaliation on the people who killed her mother and caused so much suffering to her family. The revenge Jenny was pursuing her whole life didn’t have the sweet taste she was hoping for. It felt bitter.
While Jenny was pursuing a career as a Galactic criminal, her bother became a Galactic politician. For the sake of his political career, Jenny chose to break all ties with him. Of course, in moments of lonliness, she longed to see him at least one more time, but luckily those moments of sadness never lasted long enough for her wish to somehow materialize. Jenny cared very little for her own life and was always willing to sacrifice it if that meant getting what she wanted. However, she cared for her brother deeply and would never do anything intentionaly to endanger him.
Each act of violence she committed, hooked her more on spilling the blood. However, the darkness of violence that become her legacy was creating more unhappiness in her life then she could handle. The emptiness and dissatisfaction started to overtake her mind, her spirit, and her body. In her destructive state of existence, which quickly turn into her everyday reality, she was prone to mistakes that were lethal to many of her companions.
She was undoubtedly spiralling down when on one of the routine checks on Earth, she stumbled upon an old book with the Ecotopian markings on the cover. Markings that she remembered very well from her childhood and from all the books her mother had given them before she died. The book spoke about the history of the world from the moment the Ecotopian Society was created until they left the planet. Jenny found it fascinating and easily connected in an authentic way to those stories.
The book devoted one chapter to Maggie and her team, responsible for discovering the Time Loop for the first time changing the course of the whole Galaxy. It depicted Maggie as a fearless warrior of the Ecotopian society who went back to 1999 with one goal in mind, to build the space carrier that would allow Ecotopians to leave Earth when it came to that. After reading the chapter about Maggie a few times, Jenny convinced herself that her true calling was to stop Maggie meddling in the past and allow Earth to run its, course even if it meant total Ecological catastrophe.
When the Old World’s Corporate Government discovered the reason behind Ecotopians sudden departure it was too late to make significant changes towards saving the depleting natural resources. By then, most of the resources were gone already and the Corporate Government retreated to their safe heavens up Above allowing the rebels to take over whatever was left of the dying planet.
By the time Jenny was born, a few families who had access to water were able to enslave the 99% of the reminding population.
Fortunately, a few Ecotopians stayed behind on Earth to monitor the journey of the spaceships through the Galaxy and to make sure that the Ecotopians would and could reach the New Earth.
Since the Ecotopians feared that the Old World was going to follow in their footsteps to the New Earth, everything that had to do with their technological advantages was to be destroyed by the remaining Ecotopians.
However, one of the scientists, who stayed behind, had a change of heart and decided that some parts of the Ecotopian culture and knowledge needed to be preserved. She hid several Ecotopian spacecrafts all over the Earth, together with the instructions on how to use them and how to get to the outer space to continue towards the New Earth.
During her travels across the world, she met a Freedom Fighter with whom she had a child. He never lived to see his daughter grow up as he died battling bandits that were roaming whatever was left on Earth. But Sarah kept on travelling, continuing her mission to leave the knowledge of the Ecotopian culture for the future generations to discover and use.
Sarah taught her daughter everything she knew about engineering and passed the Ecotopian values and ethos onto her daughter, who later in life passed it all onto her daughter.
Jenny always felt that she was much more than a mere slave born to human parents and now she had a proof that everything her mother protected so dearly over the years was connected to the Ecotopian heritage and that very blood was part of Jenny’s inheritance.