Taking Space 2

- CHOICE -

Stephanie casually walk through a forest on the female prison planet enjoying the beautiful rainbow array of colors the sun made through the ice barrier as it began to set. She sighed, sat down against a tree, and leaned back letting the sun's light caress her face.

Her heart churned in turmoil. In their brief stent as acting Lionhearted they had saved lives and made a difference, but they had also inadvertently caused deaths, innocent deaths. Now David Kell's ghost was asking them to permanently and irrevocably take on this role where lives would officially be in their hands on a daily basis. With the power of this new space station the entire galaxy would be their territory. Not only would they see wickedness on a whole new level as her father pointed out they would also be in charge of trying to find honest good people that they could recruit to help them and doing that alone could end up putting their lives at risk.

She had never been much of a people person but from having watched her father's ministry throughout the years she knew that even the people you thought you could trust the most often turned out to be snakes in the grass. How in the world were they supposed to find and recruit people worthy enough of becoming part of the Lionhearted without everything blowing up in their face?

But that wasn't the worst of it. Thanks to the lack of their resources and dire circumstances Alf had allowed them to bend the rules on numerous occasions without them even realizing it now however that would all be over. Once David Kell and the other ghost erased themselves their androids would be destroyed according to Lionhearted protocol and no more would be allowed to be made. Also to adhere to Lionhearted regulations XRenia's android would also be destroyed along with any fictitious identity.

Her and her brothers and sister in law would become the new official faces of the Lionhearted revealing their identities. No longer would they be controlling androids of figures from the past they would be controlling androids as representatives of themselves.

Up into this point even though it had cost them their home and thousands of hours is still somehow if she were to be honest felt more like a game than reality. With this new choice that faced them that buffer that ethereal mental wall that protected them would now be gone. This really would be who they were their whole entire reality.

Yet even with all that weighing against the choice the immense amount of good they could do with what David Kell was suggesting was staggering. Every part of her wanted to say no that this was a ridiculous idea something that only Daniel would imagine but was that just her fear and selfishness speaking? Was she wrong for thinking about everything that could go so horribly bad? Or should she seriously be considering this?

"Oh God what am I supposed to do?" She asked tears building in her eyes.

***

Daniel and Catherine sat in their quarters aboard Alf thinking over what David Kell had suggested.

Catherine laid on the bed staring unseeingly down a tablet while Daniel sat in a chair at his desk looking down at the floor. Cool moist air and the sound of birds flowed into the room through a dimensional door open to a beach on the female prison planet.

"I'm okay with it if you are," Catherine quietly said at long last.

Daniel looked up. "That's just it I don't know. Besides what my dad mentioned this would be in its truest form might makes right. And that very rarely ends well. Like my dad said it makes great comic books and games but how does it really end in history?"

Catherine nodded. "True. It's not talked about much but the Lionhearted were hunted down to the last man and their families murdered."

"Oh," Daniel said his face souring. "I hadn't thought about that. I was thinking more along the lines of power corrupts. But I guess what you're saying is also valid point."