A pair of women sat in the penthouse of the tallest residential building in New Amazon. One had long red hair with a few grey streaks, she was apparently in her thirties. The woman across from her had long black hair some of which was held back by her ears. She had magenta eyes and a youthful face. Eyre held up her glass of red wine and reached forward.

“Happy Birthday hon.”

The other woman leaned forward and clinked her glass. The pair took large drinks of their wine and put their glasses down. The woman with black hair looked down at her glass then back up to her companion.

“You know, I wish I had gotten drunk before all of this, I will never know what that feels like.”

“Well until the sun comes back neither will I.”

The woman with black hair laughed and blushed.

“Sorry.”

“No, Amee, you did what needed to be done. Maria and I supported your in the choice. We still do. How old are you now? Not all of us have the benefit of a computer for a brain.”

“Let me see… its June 2887, so 876 years old.”

“Not bad for a human.”

“How old are you then?”

“Fifteen hundred or so?”

“Old lady.”

“Hey Maria, is almost three thousand years old.”

“She’s a fossil then.”

Eyre laughed.

“You know I envy her. I’ve never left the planet. Here she is, at the furthest reaches of our solar system.”

“I’ve never left Earth either. WTO and System Alliance Board has a strict no space travel policy for senior management.”

“Aurelius board gets pissed at me if I leave New Seattle.”

“Why would you? NAFTA dome is the newest and most comfortable habitation.”

“To see old friends to wish them happy birthday in person?”

“So, we could drink wine that neither of us can get drunk off of? Are we avoiding children?”

“Hah, no, I love my kids, wouldn’t change them for the world.”

“I don’t believe you. Even if I can’t monitor your vitals to tell if you’re lying. Where is Mitena anyway? She usually comes to these.”

“She is in jail.”

“What?”

“She got arrested for hacking BMC’s building hologram to say: ‘We clone and murder people to harvest their organs, then play some footage she stole on a loop.’”

Amee’s eyes went a bit wider.

“Aurelius owns NAFTA dome don’t they?”

Eyre nodded.

“Yes.”

“And the security force arrested the second highest shareholder/CEO’s daughter?”

Eyre nodded.

“Yes.”

Amee laughed.

“So, who is getting fired?”

“No one. She’s almost nine hundred years old, she doesn’t seem to have learned actions have consequences.”

“You probably should have taught her that when she was ten.”

“I probably should have. I honestly have no idea what to do about her. I tried supporting her causes, I tried talking her out of it. She just refuses to listen. She says its not her that needs to change it’s the world. That corporate greed is a disease.”

“Well, she’s not wrong but its what we got. And hey, no one has launched a nuke yet. And besides some skirmishes we haven’t had a war in a hundred years. How many human civilizations can say that?”

“That’s because we built a society that chooses other ways to fight.”

“Exactly. That is why we formed SATA, then the WTO and then the System Alliance.”

“Do you ever feel bad for the conspiracy nuts out there that swear that there is a secret society that rules from the shadows that no one believes?”

“No. They add credence to us not existing because they sound like paranoid idiots.”

“I used to believe if it was worth doing it was worth doing publicly.”

“That didn’t get you far, did it? Or us for that matter.”

“You’re right. You have always been right on that point.”

“I’m glad you agree with me.”

Eyre leaned forward.

“Do you really think they will come?”

“I do.”

“The corporations would revolt if they realized what you had floating in the Kuiper belt.”

“Well, if they did, what could they do?”

“Nothing, you have enough power to glass every single celestial object in the solar system. And with access to the stargate project…you can deploy them in minutes.”

Amee nodded and leaned on her elbow her hand folded against her temple.

“And with the anti-matter generators and bombs Aurelius developed for me, once they are refitted…”

“I pity the alien invaders who look in our direction.”

“I pity us for having to build such things. We should be working on terraforming tech, increasing FTL speeds, scanning for habitable planets so the GAIA crazies could have their pristine natural world and live back in nature.”

Eyre reached over and touched Amee’s thigh.

“Amee, my mother would say, having the power and not needing it, is better then needing it and not having it.”

“Your mother was, and I am going to be as polite I can be, a…warmonger.”

“You know she could level a city on her own, no help, no weapon. She never did, not once. She wasn’t a warmonger. She was a person who did what she needed to do in each circumstance. Just like you.”

Amee sighed. Looking up at Eyre. Hating how right she always was.

“I still question the wisdom bringing a being of that power back into our world. There is a whole bunch of baggage around her. The Christians put her right up there with Jesus now. Hell, half the religious people in the world think the ice age was the rapture and her taking them with her. GAIA says the ice age was punishment for us failing to live up to God’s covenants. I really don’t want the instability her appearing out of thin air would cause.”

Eyre frowned.

“If you could go back and time and save your mother’s life, would you?”

“No. I could go right now. It’s not worth the risk.”

“You and I both know the return trip would kill her.”

“That is beside the point. Your mother sacrificed herself. Let her rest in peace.”

“No, if was in the same position she’d rescue me. The research says she’s stuck on the event horizon for eternity. Not going to let her suffer like that.”

Amee sighed.

“Just maybe, just maybe, she isn’t who you remember she was? It’s been centuries, it’s easy to put on rose colored glasses and was nostalgic. It is never as good as you remember it. Trust me, I remember the twenty-first century like it was yesterday. Global Warming, pandemics, conspiracy nuts, racists, democratic and communist bullshit. Maybe your mother is the same way, best left dead and remembered as a hero?”

Eyre stood up and walked to Amee’s massive wall of armored glass windows. She looked out over New Amazon, the first habitation after humanity crawled out of their holes. She folded her hands behind her back.

“You want the vampires to help you in your war. She is the woman who can make it happen. Regardless of what you think of her.”

“I knew her for all of an hour, we had hot chocolate and left a sixteen-year-old girl to fend for herself. I mean I feel like I know her better, I probably would have gone insane without her videos but still, she is a dinosaur that should have gone extinct long ago. Humanity has…grown since and she will not have had the same experiences we have.”

“Do you want the vampires to help you fight the Silwrath?”

“Yes.”

“Then you want my mother.”

Amee walked up to Eyre and hugged her.

“I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

Eyre embraced Amee patting her back gently.

“Its alright hon. We can disagree you know?”

“I know, but when we do it reminds me of all the fights I had with my mother.”

Eyre laughed and released the embrace.

“I’ll head back to New Seattle and let you sleep. Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you, Eyre.”