[Book Four] Chapter 40:  Success, suprise, teaching moments

Chapter 40:  Success, suprise, teaching moments

The trials proved to be a resounding success. Everyone was cured, though some as expected lost a bit of their memories in the process but they had been sick for the longest time. In the end it didn’t pose any problem for anyone getting AEND anymore, if it was treated in time there would be no results like that.

The news reached the Milky Way and the council was not happy about it. They demanded his arrest for breaking the law. Rick didn’t even bother to hire a lawyer and simply said that the trial run was done outside council’s space’s jurisdiction. Directly to the news. In the same interview he also announced that he had cured cancer (on the condition that it wasn’t too advanced and beyond healing) by inadvertence while trying to find a solution to AEND and that the price of that would be rather cheap at ten thousand credits. Of course his popularity skyrocketed even further than before and the council got a severe backlash.

To hurt their fragile ego further he sends them privately a message. To leave him alone and know their place. He never got any answer. Perhaps the change of councilor, from the current Dalatrass ruling the Salarian, calmed down the two others? He didn’t know. What he knew was that Lindholm was having fun and she thanked him for that. Not directly of course but through Hannah who told him. 

In any case with the AEND curable, Alec Ryder told the truth to his children about their mother. They had not been happy to hear that all this time she was alive. While his relationship with his son Scott was a bit strained as a result, the one with Sara was badly damaged. Damaged enough that Sara moved into Arianna’s room.
It was a difficult time for the Ryder family. While Ellen was pulled out from her stasis and cured, she was welcomed by a divided family with on one side her children and on the other her husband. She tried to play the mediator between Sara and Alec but it was a hard task. Despite all of that, she was happy to be alive and well again. The news of her daughter’s engagement had surprised her but she had no problem with it and quickly accepted Arianna who she thought was delightful and the calming and more mature influence that her adrenaline junkie daughter needed in her life.

Speaking of engagement, Arianna and Sara were not the only ones talked about. Adam during his last shore leave left for Celeste where he proposed to Laura, his and Sandra’s childhood friend but also Garrus and Chloe’s daughter. That surprised everyone except Sandra of course, who has been aware of the feelings the two had for each other for years.

“It’s a pity Adam is such a good young man. I can’t threaten him by showing him my sniper rifle collection.” the turian lamented.
“I know what you mean. I couldn’t do the same with Sara, she’s such a good influence on Arianna.” sympathized Rick.

Unlike his parents, Adam married within the month. Thankfully it was summer break and very few students were on the Celeste. The wedding happened in the garden and the whole family and close friends were invited. Adam picked JJ and two of his army buddies as witnesses while Laura picked Sandra and two of her closest friends.

Ashley, despite being a Williams (and total badass), couldn’t help but cry both in happiness and sadness that her eldest baby boy was now married. Rick did his very best to comfort her but it was Adam himself that cheered his mother up during the mother-son dance. She did threatened her three other sons however. If they married before thirty they wouldn’t like what she would do to them. She was as serious as can be and they all nodded in agreement out of fear.

“They’re all grown up, that’s not fair.” she whispered in her husband’s ear as they slowly danced.
“No it’s not, it’s life.”
“I should have listened to you back then. Let you stop their growth.”
“They would have hated us for the rest of their lives.”
“So? I would still have my babies.”
“See the bright side of it. You only have to deal with it three more times.”
“How is that a good thing?!”
“I have to endure it ten more times.” he replied with a pained and nervous smile.
“...”
“...”
“You’re an idiot… I don't feel better because you have it worse.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Not even a tiny little bit?”
“... Maybe?”

He chuckled at that and she chuckled with him all the while dancing away without a care in the world.

____________________________________________________________

Very quickly Ashley and Rick received the news that they were going to be grandparents themselves. That was like a slap to the face waking them up and telling them ‘You’re old now’. Rick took it the hardest and was sure to show to all his lovers that he was still young and fresh. None of them complained when they would walk with a noticeable limp in the morning.

“Holy shit! Is your dad a sex machine or what?!”
“Sara!”
“What? It’s been two weeks and everyday at least one person is walking funny in the morning and during the rest of the day! Your own mother couldn’t even walk yesterday! Walk! She had to stay on the couch all day!”
“Sara! Please!”
“Sorry, baby. I forgot you’re sensitive about your dad when it’s about sex.”
“Not my fault! I never laid a hand on Arianna, I swear!” Rick said as he sat at the table facing them.
“DADDY!” Arianna exclaimed both outraged and embarrassed.
“Yes, sweetie?” he replied innocently with a smile.
“... UGH! How the heck does mom and aunties handle you?! I’ll never know.”
“That’s the thing, Arianna. They don’t because they can’t. They had no choice but to get on the insanity train I’m driving and hoped for the best.”

The redhead grunted in defeat while her fiance laughed. She loved her father dearly more than anyone, perhaps even Sara but ever since she started dating her, he has been unbearable. Despite all the teasing she couldn’t see herself leaving his side. That’s something she had noticed ever since Sara had come to live with them. She wanted her father close. Always.

“And you’re lucky because Sara did not only jump in yours willingly but helps you drive it too.” Rick added, making Sara snort.
“I may drive it more than she does.”
“Good, she became so serious with age. I remember a time when she stole one of my singularity grenade prototypes, modified it with a BLUE and shot it at three ships of hostile mercs attacking. Killed them all! You were what, sweetie, 10 or so?”
“Yes.” replied and embarrassed Arianna.
“Can’t believe you did something crazy like that at ten!” laughed Sara.
“And now, she’s all mature and full of wisdom. I was afraid she’d have gray hair and a beard until you entered her life.”
“Come on, daddy! I wasn’t that serious, besides I had to be the adult between the two of us! The more I grew up, the more childish you became.”
“I just wanted to have more fun with my baby girl before she grew up too cool for her old man.”
“Considering the past two weeks, not that old apparently.” She joked and made both Sara and Rick gasp and smile at the same time. “See? I can be childish too.” she said with a smirk.

Rick simply stood up from his chair, went around the table and picked her up before taking her seat and putting her in his lap and embraced her in a fierce hug.

“Daddy!”
“Just a moment. I won’t be able to do that much anymore.”
“We’ll be living a floor down at best.” shared Sara.
“Oh, really? What about your flat on Ryder?”
“Vacation home. We love it, dad but the Cass for our everyday life is better.”
“Already decided your whole life together? Please don’t make me a grandfather again too soon.”
“Not our whole life but we know what we want eventually. As for any children…”
“Not before ten years.” concluded Sara.
“Well, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask your aunts Jen and Miranda.”
“We already talked to them a few months ago when the Celeste was here. Very informative.” the brunette said.
“And remember, if you have any problem…”
“We’re dealing with it first and if we can’t, the family is there.” answered Arianna.
“Yeah. Sheeesh, I’m so not ready to see you leave the nest. Both of you.”
“Me too?!”
“You’re kind of my adopted daughter now. You only have yourself to blame for that.”
“Well, that’s definitely an upgrade in the dad department.” she muttered.
“Oooh, Sara.” Arianna said softly, reaching for her fiance’s face with her hand.
“Look. Your dad, he did the best for you and your brother considering the circumstances. He was under a lot of stress trying to find a cure for your  mother, being a supportive husband and being a father. He saw his children being heart broken watching their mother slowly die and took what he believed was the best decision for you and Scott. He wanted you to live your life freely without your mother’s sickness and imminent death looming over your head. So he ripped out the bandaid in one go. Was it a good decision? Was it a bad one? Who knows? What we know is that he wanted the best for you because he loves you. Want to know what’s the thought that pops up the most in a dad’s head? ‘Did I fail my kid or not?’. Every time I saw Arianna when she was a baby or a kid or a teenager, I wondered if I didn’t screw up somewhere, somehow and that she was in fact unhappy.”
“Really?” the named young woman exclaimed.
“Yes. When I found out you were a genius like me? Shit turned up to eleven. I was scared shitless that I wouldn’t be able to properly give you the care you needed. I always wondered if one day you wouldn’t come home to yell at me that I was an horrible father and that my decisions in the way I raised you were bad and fucked you and your life up.”
“I was very happy with my childhood. A bit lonely as I didn’t have friends but I understand why that was.”
“Thank you, sweetie. Anyway the point I’m making is… Yes, in yours eyes he fucked up. It wasn’t his objective, he really thought that out of the few options he had that were all bad, it was the best one for you. Dads don't have all the answers, Sara. They’re not omniscient or omnipotent, they’re just humans with their virtues and flaws. Half the time? We’re winging it and hope for the best. Putting Arianna in school early? I had absolutely no proof that it would be good for her but I knew that letting her go to school at her own age was awful. So I hoped for the best. Your dad did the same thing, unfortunately it didn’t turn out as good. He’s probably beating himself up everytime he thinks about you and how to make up for his mistake.”
“...I… never thought being a dad was so hard.”
“It’s even worse. You don’t realize the weight on a dad’s shoulders when he knows that his kid is looking up to him as this perfect being who can do anything and know that he’s not but still has to do his very best to maintain the illusion. All the while working a job, making money, taking care of a wife or partner and possibly other children and so much more.”
“When you say it like that daddy, being a father sucks. Why would anyone become one?”
“That, sweetie, is because Every. Single. Time. our kid is smiling happily at us we’re thinking ‘Fuck yeah, it’s worth it. I’ll do that for a thousand years just for that’.”

And with those words, Rick got Arianna out of his lap so he could stand up, gave her a kiss then gave one to Sara and left home to his lab.

“Your dad is really amazing.” the brunette said.
“Well, duh! That’s obvious, he made me!” the redhead joked and that lifted her fiance’s mood.
“I really have to thank him for that.” Sara replied with a smile. “I guess… I have to talk with mine.”

Mentally, Arianna fisted the air and thanked her dad a million times.

____________________________________________________________

When Rick sat himself at his desk he immediately pulled up his work on the nanobots. On one hand he was proud of having cured cancer on the other disappointed that he hadn’t thought of that making the results an accident. This time however he was thinking of two other projects with them. One was military related and was to come back to the nanobots recovering abilities. He still wanted to make at least his helmet formed around his head with them. The other was altering the human body to give it back its youth. When he studied the results of his AEND free patients he noticed that the neurons seemed younger than the actual age of the person. He didn’t know how but the nanobots were not only healing but rejuvenating the cells. It was as if the bots were assisting at the creation of a cell and corrected any ‘defect’ that age represented. That was mind blowing and he had absolutely no idea about where to start to figure that out.

Thinking for a bit he chose to go with the first option: military. The second option, he would simply give it to Arianna. Biology was more her speciality than his and the challenge wasn’t appealing to him. Sure it could be a way for humans or anyone else to be young longer or live longer but it flirted with the potentiality of immortality and that, he didn’t want to touch it even with someone else’s ten feet pole from the farthest galaxy from him. To him, Death was as much a gift as life and should not be denied. Especially when the love of his life and their daughter were already waiting on the other side.

He started with doodling what he wanted at first. Clearly the amount of nanobots needed for making a helmet and in the end a complete armor were way past the billion, trillion and quadrillion. Potentially past the quintillion too and reach the sextillion. That was a lot of ‘-illion’ and a lot of nanobots. From that alone he knew that this new batch of bots needed a hive mind with ‘queen’ bots to lead them and tell them what to do. That also implied that he would need to have the bots react to his thoughts, so the work done in the PatLabor and EVA would be useful but only the very basics, he would have to code all of the actions they could do. Then there were the helmet’s features too. Multiple types of vision, scan, target tracking… Plenty of things to be specific about and he wasn’t sure he could do that as for some of them it necessitated specific components and materials. In conclusion a worthy challenge for him.

The programming of a ‘queen’ bot wasn’t difficult. Or at least the basics, meaning telling other bots to do things. The hard thing was making sure it had enough processing power to do that plus reading his thoughts. After three hours of trying he found it impossible. So he explored an alternative avenue. One ‘giga queen’ would read his thoughts and transmit them to ‘smaller’ queens who then would delegate to other bots who would delegate to other bots. That hierarchy made things simpler and allowed him to make specialized bots by making a small group of them.

He tucked the idea of using it for the already existent bots and focused back on the matter at hand. By the end of the day he believed he was done with the core of the code and that all that was left was the specific code regarding a specific action. He was about to test it in a simulation when the door to his lab opened.

Looking up he Sandra stormed in. The door closed then locked. He knew he was in trouble when he heard the door locked. The serious look on his daughter’s face didn’t make things better. With confident and intimidating steps, the ravenette walked towards his desk and went around it to arrived by his side. Turning his chair so he would face her, she spoke with authority.

“I’m going to get down on my knees and suck your cock until I’m satisfied then, I’m going to disrobe and lay on back on your desk where you’re going to fuck me with everything you have until I tell you to stop. Do you understand?”
“Oooookaa…”

He was stopped from talking when Sandra put a finger on his lips.

“Don’t talk, just nod.”
“...”
“NOD.” she repeated with even more authority than before and Rick simply did as ordered. “Good. Now don’t talk unless it’s to tell me how good you feel and how good I am at pleasuring you.”

And with that, his second daughter got on her knees and went under his desk. He didn’t know what went or what was going through his pumpkin’s head but he knew better than to go against her.