Taking Space 2

- A Glimmer of Hope -

"In Jesus name amen," Michael finishing praying.

The others murmured amen after him, and they all sat there in silence.

After several seconds Michael opened his eyes and looked around at the others to see them just sitting there not knowing exactly what to do now.

He leaned back in his chair knowing full well what happened next was his call. He wanted to believe God would show them a way not to have to destroy Zion and flee but the sad fact was if God really did have a way he wasn't entirely certain he be able to hear it. He felt dirty inside more like a wretch than he'd ever felt in his entire life.

For several hours straight, he had been manipulating a man and lying straight to his face and even though he couldn't and wouldn't admit it to the others it made him sick. Of course, he knew that there wasn't really a choice in the matter they had needed the food supplies, and the medical machinery or people were going to die, people in his care.

Oh, who was he kidding what they were doing to Derrick was wrong no matter how many lives were on the line. "Father, please forgive me," he muttered to himself raising his hand to his face.

"Guy's, I hate to say it, but the longer we wait, the less will be able to scrap from Zion," Steven said.

Michael sat up lowered his hand and took a deep breath. "You're ri—," Michael started but cut himself off as something Steven had said several minutes before hit him. "Wait, you said you are building the full-size Dynovamator because it turned out to be easier that way. How long will it take to finish it?"

Steven glanced at the holograms in front of him then look back at Michael. "A week maybe two. Time, we don't have," he answered.

"Oh," Michael muttered his plan falling apart even before it got off the floor.

"Wait," Lord Maddog spoke up from where he had been leaning against the wall quietly for some time. "Why would it take so long? The hardest part about a Dynovamator besides the resources is how small and delicate the internals are. Usually, it takes an extremely special factory to build the nanoscopic systems but at this size, even the construction arms of one of our millenarians should be able to construct them, and it shouldn't take no week."

"The construction is not the problem," Steven answered. "The sun material is, a Dynovamator this size literally takes tons of sun material, and our Sun harvester can only gather several hundred pounds at a time. Even if we had twelve of them, it would still take longer than the time we have."

"Tons?" Stephanie asked.

"Yes," Steven answered. "The material that makes up a star is the densest matter known to mankind."

"Well, that's easy to solve," Daniel exclaimed. "Just make a miniature dimensional door, wrap it in sun armor, and drop it into the harvester's hand-sized cargo bay. We will be swimming in the stuff by midnight."

Steven turned and stared at Daniel. "You are both an idiot and a genius at the same time," Steven said his tone and mixture of scorn and awe.

"So, I take it that will work?" Michael asked.

"Probably," Steven said looking over at Catherine, and she nodded. "Ya, I mean we have been able to create a stable spatial fold as long as it's not larger than twelve inches in diameter and this won't be. The problem I was running into before was that I had to have a dimensional door a great distance away from the star we are harvesting before it was stable enough for the harvester to pass through. If this works, it won't even need to leave the inner atmosphere of the sun as it harvests."