Legacy

If anyone could understand orphans and their need it was the kindly Donald R. Dodson, Director of the  El Paso, Texas  Schuster’s Home for  parentless children.  It was so named after Molly Schuster, a philanthropist who had left enough in her will to build and provide such a facility. It had a capacity of two hundred and ten.

Donald R. Dodson  had a route he took each day from his home to  his office at the private orphanage.  About mid route he would turn at a corner that had a large older semi Victorian style house.  It had a for sale sign on it for some time and Donald had occasional mused to him self that it might work out as a satellite space to expand  the orphanage into as more space could always be used.

Then one morning as he passed by he noted the For Sale sign was gone.  Well so much for his idea he thought and went on his way to his duties for the day.  About two weeks later  as he went by that house on his morning trip to the office he noted  that there appeared to be about a half dozen adults sitting at various places around the outside of the house in lawn chairs, and a couple more of them on the front porch.

Being the friendly sort Donald would wave, but never get a response.  Odd he thought.  Then the next morning the same thing with the addition of a school type bus sitting out front and a parade of about forty children exiting the house and boarding the bus.  They appeared to be of Mexican descent which was not unusual for the south Texas town of El Paso.  There were a few however with blond or red hair.  Odd Donald thought, but probably simply children of a mixed parentage.

On the way home that night he of course passed the house and noted the bus was there just sitting.  Private bus apparently thought Donald, no big deal.  But still odd the half a dozen people who also looked to be of Mexican descent were still in their chairs and still unresponsive to friendly waves.

Donald thought maybe they are some sort of security guards, but that was no reason to be unfriendly and ignore waves.  Kind of snobbish on their part thought Donald who was trying hard not to take offense.

Donald observed everything for a couple of weeks and was getting rather perplexed.  For one thing those people in their chairs never seemed to move or even twitch.  Also each mornings batch of children boarding the bus seemed to be other than the same ones each day. Very hard to reconcile in Donald’s mind.  That day at the office Donald was preoccupied thinking about what was the deal at that house.

That evening on his way home Donald decided he was going to investigate and find out what was going on.  He had noted that most of the children were in the three to five year old range; except for an odd obviously baby that one of the children appeared to be carrying.  That also bugged Donald, but then he thought, could be just high grade dolls.

The thing however that was starting to gnaw away at Donald was the idea that he might have just accidentally stumbled into a massive smuggling operation involving the children of illegal’s, somehow. Just how was another puzzle as nothing really made sense.

Donald pulled up on the other side of the street across from the bus.  Then he went up on the front porch to talk with the two people sitting there.  He got as close as politely possible and tried to engage them in conversation.  No response. Now Donald was getting a bit irate and said to them if need be he would call the police.  Still no response.

Donald was a peaceable loving man, but even so, enough was enough.  Donald went to grab one of the men by the collar with the idea of hoisting him to his feet and forcing a response, even a hostile one would be better than none though Donald. Now Donald just about lost it and gasped and stepped back, because when he grabbed the man all he got a hold of was an hand full of air.

Whoa! As Donald got over his shock, he realized all these people who appeared to be like security guards were no more than some sort of hologram.  Now Donald knew more investigating was in order so he just went into the house to see what’s up.

Now the fat was in the fire, a man and a women appearing also to be of Mexican descent immediately spotted him and it was almost a combination of panic on their part with a dose of chaos possible.

Well obviously some sort of cat was out of the bag.  Donald not being blind could not help but notice that every few minutes a child would appear in a booth and step out and be ushered to another part of the house by more adults, who also noticed Donald. Donald thought that looked like Star Trek technology at work, like in beam me up Scotty.

However Donald could not reconcile in his mind that technology being anything beyond science fiction at this point in earth’s technological development. It turns out that was a correct supposition, but.  The two adults, a man and a women asked Donald to please sit down and they would explain it all to him.  Donald complied as what did he have to lose by listening.

As the explanation went it turns out that they were from a planet  they called Artina.  It was in a solar system in the outer fringes of the galaxy we call the Milky Way, the one our solar system was also in.  Their sun as well as their planet was smaller than ours.  Their sun was dying and would become dead in just a few more months of earth time.  Making it impossible for Artina to support life.  They knew that most of their population would be lost.  They had developed the ability for space travel, as well as the ability to place one person at a time in a transport booth and send them to another location at the speed of light.

Of course the sending station reduced the person down to free floating atoms that constituted the signal that would be sent and reassembled on the other end with no harm to the person, a sense of passing through bright colored lights for a few minutes was the only sensation the transported person would experience.

Then it was obvious that a receiving station had to be built on earth to make it all work. So one of the few existing space ships that took years to construct was used to send four adults ahead with the material to construct the receiving station.  It took six earth years for the space ship to make the journey.  But only minutes by the individual transport sender/receiver devices.  The adults had six years to monitor the earth through earths TV and radio broadcasts.

That is how our culture was studied and how it was determined the United States would be the most desirable place to relocate to, especially our Southwest where the Arterians whose skin was light brown would best blend in.

They farther explained there was no shortage of Gold on their home planet and they were aware that it was  valuable anywhere and accepted anywhere as it were the coin of the realm.  They brought a bit with them and that’s how they bought the house and other land.  Each child would arrive with about an earth pound of gold in their pockets.

It was also explained to Donald that ninety percent of the individual coming through the transport device were very young children and a few babies.  Much land had been bought and housing and schools and small medical facilities were built as part of each complex.  So far they had built about eight complexes and figured about two more would be adequate to house those that could make it through before their sun became completely dead turning their home planet into one big ice ball.

They went onto say that any child more than two years old was given a mind wipe and new assorted memories implanted.  That was to eliminate the pain of remembering the loss of their parents and to allow them to grow up thinking they were earthlings, and be able to assimilate into earth society.  It was farther explained that they were biologically identical to earthlings except for the fact that all Arterians were brown skinned.  Their home planet did not have skin color variance.

Donald took it all in and was doing his best to understand and digest all he’d heard.  He also had to decide what to do with this sudden wealth of knowledge, they knew and so did Donald that they were at his mercy.

Being sympathetic and leaning towards being helpful to them.  Donald assured them their secret was safe with him.  He advised them that he understood the guard holograms were to keep nosy people away, but that such was having an opposite effect as it created too much curiosity.  So lose them.  They did.

Then Donald, bless his heart, being an orphanage director to start with had a big  heart and  surprised them with some facts and solutions.  He said sooner or later someone would bumble into one complex or another, get overly nosy and then the government would get a little too interested.

So Donald being in the business he was, found a way to make their complexes an extension of the Schuster Orphanage System, thus getting all the proper permits, license’s, and so forth in place so that everyone’s hind flank was covered so to speak. True, Donald was culpable of the biggest fraud ever committed in the United States, but I think history would judge Donald well.

While these complexes were somewhat scattered around southwest Texas, Donald managed to visit each one at least once a year.  He was always very well received.

It should be noted that altogether around three thousand Arterians were saved.  Not many against the number lost.  But those that stayed behind were very glad for those of their children that made it.