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a shooing motion, but he was grinning when
he went back to his attempts to resuscitate their dinner.
    Laughing, Michael closed the distance between the barbeque
and the tables. By the time he got there, though, his smile faded.
    His humor never lasted long these days.
    After Alex Manez made his miraculous return from Centauri,
Michael had returned to Quantum Resources as a consultant to help coordinate the Quanta trials. For reasons the technicians could never adequately
explain, none of the test pilots who were exposed to the Kinemetic radiation
had fully developed the electropathic ability that Alex had. Without that
control, they were unable to return the ships to normal space once they were
quantized as light. Several of those who volunteered died during the initial Kinemetic
irradiation.
    Failure after failure caught up to the corporations, both
financially—each ship cost in excess of seventeen billion dollars—and from a
public relations perspective. Coupled with the continued economic instabilities
as more country corporations went into bankruptcy on a global basis, USA, Inc.
had decided to mothball most of their experimental sub-companies, including
Quantum Resources, which they sold to Canada Corp. at a bargain basement price.
    Rather than relocate to Canada Station Three and administer
a team of theorists, Michael decided to let them release him from his contract.
Although Alliras Rainier had offered him his old position with the Space Mining
Division, Michael and his wife opted for retirement. He had enough savings for
him and Melanie to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
    But what Michael hadn’t expected was that the rest of
Melanie’s life was cut short a year ago when a city autobus’s brake line failed
and slammed into her one-seater automobile while she was out on a shopping
excursion. She had died instantly. A day did not go by that Michael didn’t miss
her fiercely.
    Over the following months, Michael fell into a deep
depression, let his beard grow out, and spent most of his days wandering from
room to room in his empty apartment. The only times he ever emerged was for the
monthly family dinners his brother held.
    No wife, no job, no purpose.
    The only thing that held Michael together was the weekly
call he placed to Alex Manez; but it was getting harder and harder for Michael
to maintain his hope that something would be done to help the boy and his
deteriorating health. Without his political contacts, Michael was helpless to
prod the medical staff on Canada Station Three to figure out a cure for Alex’s
condition.
    During their conversations, Alex invariably told Michael not
to worry; that it would all work out in the end.
    “Are you all right?” a voice said, breaking Michael out of
his reverie.
    He looked up to see Andrea, David’s wife, fixing him with
two very concerned blue eyes. She was a slender woman with smile lines at the
corner of her mouth and eyes. Streaks of silver had begun to flow through her
raven-black hair.
    Andrea and Melanie had been very close friends, and once in
a while she would drop over to Michael’s apartment and look in on him, do his
laundry and try to clean up the place.
    Michael realized he had just been standing in front of the
picnic table with a stack of disposable plates in his hand.
    He gave her a smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Just lost in
thought.”
    Turning around, he brought the plates over to the barbeque.
    In addition to David and Andrea, Michael’s two nephews, and their
wives and kids, were also in attendance. Andrea’s sister and her family were also
there. David’s son was out of town, but his daughter-in-law Debbie and her two children
were spending the weekend. All told, David Sanderson’s backyard held over
twenty people.
    Michael was grateful for the crowd. Not just for the company,
but because, with so much hustle and bustle, he could blend into the background
and not have to interact. He loved his family, but lately he had