Jane in space, p.1
Jane in Space, page 1
part #5 of Jane Bond Series
Jane In Space
Jane Bond Book 5
V.R. Tapscott
Jane In Space Copyright © 2021 by V.R. Tapscott.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by V.R. Tapscott
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
V.R. Tapscott
Visit my website at www.electrikink.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: October 2021
This book is dedicated to my sister Jann and her husband Dave, who made it through a very tough year. So much of why that all went ok in the end was thanks to her daughter Hilary and Hilary’s husband Tyson, and their entire family.
In the end, family is worth more than anything out there.
So, thanks mom, and my wife, and my other siblings. May you live long and prosper.
Thanks also to my beta readers Seth and Anna. Thanks to Seth’s sharp eyes, there are no zombie wildebeests in Australia. There were for a while.
And, of course, the readers. None of the above, or what’s inside, would be possible without readers. Y’all rock!
By V.R. Tapscott
The Jane Bond Series
Jane Bond – Some Assembly Required
Jane Bond – Dark Side of the Moon
Jane Bond – Moons of Jupiter
Jane Bond – The Case of the Evershaw Curse
Jane Bond – Jane in Space
Jane Bond – On Audible Audiobooks
The Lacey & Alex Series
Lacey & Alex and the Dagger of Ill Repute
Lacey & Alex - A Whole New World
Lacey & Alex - What Goes Up (working title, Spring ‘22)
Jane’s Amazon page
VRTapscott's Facebook Page
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CONTENTS
By V.R. Tapscott
Who’s Who
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Who’s Who
At this point, it would be well to remind my readers that this is book five, and you should be familiar with at least the first three books in the series before you embark on book five. If you haven’t read any of them, it might be best for you to either run away and read the first three books (or even just number one), or skip right to chapter four so as to both lessen confusion and reduce spoilers for when you do read the first few books. Which you will, I’m betting.
Jane Bond
Jane was an elementary school librarian who loved digging for fossils. She saved her pennies, nickels and dimes, and finally got enough of them together to take a trip to Montana. In Montana, rather than finding a tyrannosaurus skull, she found a spaceship. The spaceship was wrecked and broken, and in fact, was far more missing than there. This was mostly to do with the fact that it was 140 million years in the ground.
The AI pilot (dubbed ‘Kit’ by Jane, since he was all in pieces) was still ‘alive’ and talked Jane into helping gather enough parts of the ship to put it back together, and they have many adventures running around the world. Since this includes being shot at, stabbed and falling/jumping off cliffs, it’s quite exciting.
Jane is more cute than sexy, more funny than serious, and more single than she really wants to be.
Kit (Livingston)
Kit is the Artificial Intelligence who was pilot of the survey ship that crashed to Earth about 140 million years ago. When the first book opens, Jane finds him locked in a fragment of the original ship. Kit seems to be a completely nice, well-mannered person, but in the end, as most of us do, he has something of a dark side. Nevertheless, he and Jane bond (see what I did there?) and wind up being best buddies.
Olive Daship
Olive came along in the second book. She is an alternate pilot for the ship that Kit left with Jane, and she and Jane become close friends. She’s also an AI, but the big difference between her and Kit is that she wants to become as human as she can be. The next several books follow Olive along as she attempts to make this dream come true.
Olive is a short little power-pack of a person, and she’s very striking with her deep mocha skin and bright green eyes - not to mention her short crewcut that wanders between crimson and cobalt, and every other color. She loves to body build, and while she definitely has a six-pack, it’s made from miniature cans. Olive hasn’t completely decided whether she likes men or women best, but for the time being, she’s putting off the decision. For one thing, she can’t really see what the big deal is about.
Jean Daship
Jean is a computer intelligence that came into being near the end of Jane Bond 3. She tried on a body, but decided she’d rather go back to living in the digital world. She’s the embodiment of the giant computer that is installed in Jane’s basement in Chelan, WA. She takes care of the house and spends her days petting Jandice, Jane’s cat, and arguing with Alexa. She thinks Alexa is cute but brainless. She’s also, for lack of a better word, a cop. She is the command module for the alien computer installation on Earth, and one of her jobs is to track the sanity checks of the parts of her ship, or in this case, the computer. And Olive. She’s taken on the side job of rounding up any leftover intelligences from the original ship crash.
She’s also Olive’s sister.
Arla Platter
Arla is new in this book and has her own intro chapter. We’ll leave it at that.
Chapter One
What Came Before
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Jane. Jane Bond.
Jane lived in a small house, along with her parents, in a town by the name of Tacoma. Her parents, who were heavily invested in the military, left her to a life of benign neglect, her needs taken care of by a succession of babysitters. Along around her sixteenth birthday, they stopped making her accountable to a sitter of any sort. Apparently, they decided she could either clean up her own messes, or simply not make any more.
This was successful, it seemed, since Jane made it through high school and graduated among the top of her class.
Next came college, finishing with her master’s degree in Library Science.
She took a job with the Lake Chelan School District as an Elementary School Librarian and spent her days opening the eyes and minds of a succession of children to the wonders of the library and to books in general. She was cheerful and happy and well loved by both students and her co-workers.
But Jane had a passion for archaeology. She spent her summers wandering the rocks of Chelan County and the general Eastern Washington area looking for fossils. She found quite a few, too, but nothing particularly spectacular.
Then she saw the ad for two weeks with a dig in Montana. The small-town museum of Choteau MT sponsored a series of events each summer. She went for two weeks and was severely bitten. By the digging bug.
She started saving her pennies, along with dimes and quarters when she could afford it, and one year managed to collect enough change to plan for a full month in Choteau, where she could wander the Badlands entirely on her own.
So, she flew down to Montana. A friend in Chelan arranged for her to borrow the ancient rattletrap Jeep another friend owned.
Jane never found any dinosaur bones or things like that. But she did find a spaceship. Or, more accurately, the spaceship found her.
Jane had lots of adventures, finally repairing the ship and later saving the world. She opened her own detective agency and spent her time fixing other people’s problems.
Only this story isn’t precisely about that Jane.
This story is about the Jane who went to the stars.
What’s that you say? You don’t know about that Jane? Well, sit back, get comfortable. Maybe kick off your shoes.
Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?
I heard my phone ringing, but before I could even hardly take a step, Kylie had it. She’s tall and willowy, with just enough curves to be perfect. She came to the door with my phone in her hand. “I’m so sorry, gramma. I thought it was my phone. It’s someone asking for you.”
I took the phone and said, “This is Jane Bond. How may I help you?”
The voice at the other end of the line was as familiar as my own. “Hello, Jane.”
I sat down suddenly and said, “Kit? Kit, is that you?”
The voice came again, just as I remembered it. “It’s me, Jane. I’m so glad you ans wered and that you still know me. It’s been so long for you.”
I said wryly, “Well, I’m not that ancient yet, Kit.”
He laughed and said, “No, I suppose not. Jane, I’d like you to meet someone.”
Another voice came on the phone. “Well, hello Jane Bond.”
The voice was very familiar, but how could it be? “Hello, who is this, please?”
She laughed. “It’s Jane Bond. I’m you! Or I’m me. Or you’re me, it’s a little confusing.”
Another voice came on the phone then, warm and comforting, even though I’d only known it for a single hour, many years ago. “Hello, Jane, it’s Celeste. These two love the thought of teasing you, but I wanted to put you out of your misery. You remember, of course, that I had to recover the AI system in our ship?”
I took a shaky breath. “Yes, of course I do. What happened?”
“Well, when I was recovering Kit’s personality matrix after the fixes, I found more data than I could account for. After analyzing it, I found it to be YOU. So, I decided to recover your matrix as well.”
Kit spoke up, “Jane, remember when I said I was studying your brain? Well, I studied it all right, I studied it to the point of making a perfect copy of it.”
Jane’s voice came back, “Yes, and he’s so proud of himself.” She laughed.
Celeste said, “We’re leaving the system, Jane. We’re outward bound. The three of us should be able to stay completely sane together - so we’re planning on finishing our survey and see what’s out there. In fact, it’s our plan to take the same route we took on the way in - it will be fascinating to resurvey all those systems now that some 140 million years has passed.”
Kit’s voice came again. “I just wanted to say goodbye, Jane. And one last thank-you for all you did for us, for all of us. When you look up to the stars at night, you know that three people out there love you and care for you and are probably thinking of you.
Jane and Celeste both said, “Goodbye, and thank you.” and then the connection went.
I whispered to the disconnected phone. “Goodbye, Kit, my friend. May your life be long and prosperous.”
Sitting back on the couch, I stared at the phone. I was a little misty-eyed from the memories washing over me, many of them I hadn’t thought about in years.
Olive wandered in. One look at me and she flopped on the couch next to me, putting her feet up in my lap. She smirked.
“What’s up? You look like an old hound dog just stole your last fritter!”
Smiling, I said, “No, I was just remembering.” I looked at her sideways. “Are you telling me you didn’t listen in on that conversation?”
She rolled her eyes. “Would I do that?”
“Yes.”
“Such a hard life I have to put up with here. But, yeah. Some of the electrons did leak into my brain, but it wasn’t my fault. Your phone is really noisy.”
Shrugging, I looked at her. “So, what do you think? I mean, Kit’s alive? He and Celeste and… well… me, are gonna take off to the stars?”
She gave me a patented Olive grin, “Yeah, sounds like a real three way, huh?”
I batted her with a couch cushion. “It was never that way, Olive. Kit and I were just friends.”
She waggled her hand in the air at me. “Maybe to you, but did you ever happen to think that Kit might not think of it that way?”
I snorted. “What, he was in love with me? Then why did he help me with Dale?”
“Maybe he knew you’d never be happy having a relationship with a bodiless computer.”
Glancing at her, I said, “I thought you were over all that.”
She looked down. “I am. I have been for years. But it’s still something I can feel in my depths - how HE might have felt about it.”
Sitting silent for a moment, she appeared to be thinking. Then she went on.
“I wonder if any of them realize just how little humanity either Kit or Celeste have. How long it takes to be human. How complicated it all is. I mean, I have decades of study and I still make mistakes from time to time. Does Kit think he can be Jane’s lover just because he has a body now?”
I looked over at her, her forehead pulled down in a frown. “Are you ok?”
It took her several seconds to answer. That started ringing alarm bells in my mind, although I didn’t say anything out loud. Olive’s incredible amount of computer power was only taxed by things like insoluble problems - such as ethical quandaries.
Finally, she came back and said, “Yes, I’m fine. Jean and I had a chat about how it all might work. Sorry about that, leaving you hanging.”
I laughed. “Olive, it was like five seconds. The only reason I noticed was that I… I know you, love.”
Her face softened and she said, “Oh Jane. You’re such a pushover. How about we go get lunch? I’m buying!”
“I know you’re distracting me, but how often do you offer to buy? I accept! Lunch at the Green Dot?”
She nodded. “Uh, huh. Let’s go!”
Chapter Two
A French Conversation
Olive drummed her fingers on the tabletop. She looked across and down the street. In the middle distance, she could see the Eiffel Tower.
“I think I liked the beach with the bikinis better.”
Jean shrugged elegantly. “This feels more grown up to me. And besides, I’ve always liked Paris. I stayed around a while after taking care of Essie and it really sank in.”
The waiter came up and Olive ordered a gin and tonic. Jean smiled and asked for a lemon-water. The waiter wandered away on his rounds, and Olive watched him go.
“You really get into these simulations, don’t you?”
Jean straightened the display of flowers on the table. “I don’t like the real world much, so I built my own.”
Olive gazed off in the distance again. “Did you know?”
“Know?”
Olive frowned. “About the Janes. What else would I be talking about?”
Jean smiled at the waiter as he brought their drinks, then took a careful sip of hers. “I knew. I have a certain relationship with Celeste. When she came back online, we started up some data transfer and sharing of history. Kit had taken quite a lot of the system libraries out when he was here. Celeste allowed me to download everything that was missing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jean frowned. “Why would I? It’s nothing to you, is it?”
“Of course it’s something to me! Jane is my life. She’s my charge. I’m… I take care of her.”
Jean looked at Olive over her glass as she sipped. “She’s a grown woman, Olive. She doesn’t need shepherding. Be honest, at least with yourself. She’s your friend.”
Olive snapped back, “Obviously she’s my friend. She’s my best friend.”
“So why does it make a difference as to this other Jane? Why would she be of any concern to you?”
Olive gulped half her drink and shivered. “Because she’s just as much Jane as the one I’m friends with. And that means I have to consider her.”
“Consider her?”
Olive looked at Jean like she was an idiot. “I have to take care of her, I can’t leave her to Kit and Celeste. They don’t know what it’s like to be human. In a few centuries, or even less, Jane would be insane, and she’d have to be put in one of those containment bottles that you’re so fond of.”
Jean glared at her. “I’m not fond of them.”
“Well, you certainly collect them.”
“It’s my job, just as much as it’s yours to take care of Jane. I round up the remaining containers and isolate them. It’s not anything I like to do.”
Olive leaned back and took a little more moderate pull at her drink. “I know. Sorry.”
Jean looked slightly mollified. “So, what do you have in mind? I know you have something.”
Olive shrugged. “I’ll have to go out there.”
“Out where?”
“Out to the ship. Out to Pluto. I have to go with her, I can’t leave her alone.”
