Zac sat on cross-legged on the couch, notepad in his lap and his pencil scratching across it wildly. He was the kind of artist who couldn't draw when he told himself 'I'm going to draw today'. He just couldn't. He was one of those people that drew whenever the inspiration struck. Now, today was one of those days that was in between. He sort of had inspiration, and he told himself that he was going to draw, but he just couldn't get started on what he had set out originally to draw. So, deciding that it would be better to let the left side of his brain *the left side controls creativity* and his hand have free reign, he was now drawing with a fervor.
He paused momentarily as he looked it over, biting on the eraser absent-mindedly before going back to drawing. He had managed to block the whole world around him out, so nothing existed but him, the pencil, the paper, and the idea. Finally, with a sigh, he sat back and, brushing a piece of hair out of his face, looked down at the paper. Slowly, when the full realization hit him, his eyes widened, then a smile brightened his face. He'd been trying to perfect that logo forever.
Closing his notebook with a snap, Zac sat back against the couch and took a deep breath. This was one of those rare, calm days in the Hanson household, especially for a Saturday. Diana had sent the younger children outside or down to friends' houses so that she could clean up the house a bit and take a nap before the dinner guest arrived. Zac had managed to stay out of the way once he had gotten back from yet another coldly silent, unsuccessful, waste of one hundred and seventy dollars session with Dr. Anderson. After he had said his initial hello, he hadn't spoken a word until his final good-bye as he left.
"Zac," Diana began, coming into the living room. "Do me a favor, would you?"
He looked up quickly. "Sure. What is it?"
"Could you and Taylor do the dishes for me? Your father will be home soon with the company, and I don't have time," she said, almost apologetically. Taylor, who had been lounging around lazily in the overstuffed armchair stood up.
"Sure. Come on, Zac."
"And I want them really clean! So clean that you can see your reflection in them!" Diana shouted after them as they walked into the kitchen.
"How clean?" she heard Isaac yell sarcastically from upstairs.
"Don't push it, Hanson!" she yelled back, almost warningly.
"Yes, ma'am!"
A couple hours later, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac were sitting around in their room, effectively staying out of their mother's way, and, at the same time, not having to watch any of the younger children, who had returned from wherever they had been earlier. Dinner was in an hour or less, and the oh-so-anticipated guest, along with their father, had yet to arrive. Zac was idly flipping through a magazine, Isaac was reading some science fiction novel, and Taylor was stretched out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling but not really seeing it.
Silence reigned throughout the room, allowing the sounds of their mother working down in the kitchen and watching the siblings who needed to be watched to drift up into the room. The silence wasn't one of those thick, choking ones that everyone is uncomfortable in. It was one of those comfortable, nobody really gives a damn silences. You know, the good kind.
"Hey, Taylor," Isaac began, looking up. No answer. "Hey, Taylor!"
Zac looked up over the edge of the magazine. "Don't bother, Ike. He's in one of his moods."
Isaac looked over at Taylor, and knew exactly what he meant. Taylor was there physically, but his train of thought wasn't. He was long gone, thinking about things that had taken him back to where they had occurred. It was easier to teach a monkey to talk than it was to get him out of those moods. They usually just left him alone, and he came back to reality whenever he happened to feel like it. Zac and Ike both got similar moods like that, but nothing as deep as Taylor, who had always been more of the dreamer in the first place.
They fell back into their comfortable silence, but it was broken a few minutes later when a car pulled up in the driveway.
"Dad's home," Zac commented, noisily turning the page in his magazine. His feet were still kicked up on his desk, and his eyes still scanning the pages. He didn't look like he was going to go downstairs any time soon.
"Along with whoever's coming for dinner," Taylor added, coming out of his trace. He blinked a couple times and glanced over at his brothers before turning back to the ceiling, which must have been pretty interesting.
"Maybe we should go down," Isaac commented, even as he began on the next chapter in the novel he was reading. Zac shrugged.
"Or we could just wait till someone calls us. The company's never interesting."
"But then we'd seem rude," Taylor remarked, his voice bereft of any emotion but boredom. Zac let out a snort of laughter and glanced up briefly, just long enough to comment.
"There's a lot of things that are a lot more rude than not going downstairs when company arrives."
Isaac nodded. "He's got a point there."
"I was simply saying that we would seem rude. I never said that I cared if we did," Taylor explained to them, his voice still flat and bored. They heard the front door open, and their mother's greeting to her husband, and the guest. The younger children had suddenly gone silent as they were introduced. It was only a matter of time before Diana called to them from the bottom of the stairs.
"Boys! Come on downstairs and say hello!"
None of them moved, and not a one of them answered. They'd come down eventually, when they happened to figure out what the word 'motion' meant.
"Maybe we ought to go down," said Isaac, turning the page in his book.
"Yeah, Mom could get pissed," Zac agreed with a nod as he continued reading whatever article in the magazine it was that he was reading. They fell back into silence and forgot about it.
Their mother, on the other hand, didn't.
"Boys! Come on downstairs!"
No answer, and no movement from within the room of the realm of Hanson. There was some consulting voices downstairs, then someone cleared their throat.
"HANSON! DOWNSTAIRS NOW OR YOU'LL BE ON BATHROOM DUTY FOR A WEEK!" The person, who sounded all too familiar, yelled up the stairs smartly in that military sort of way.
They were all surprised. Taylor jumped noticeably before scrambling off the bed. Zac dropped his magazine in unexpected surprise before bringing his feet down off the desk and jumping up from his chair. Isaac was way ahead of them. He was on his feet and on his way out the door by that time.
"What the hell is he doing here?" Zac hissed to Taylor, though not meanly, as they made their way down the stairs. Taylor shrugged.
"I have no idea. Maybe…" he trailed off in thought as they reached the bottom landing and froze facing the six foot five, sandy haired, dark eyed man standing there in front of them.
"UD1 officers always listen to their mother the first time around! Am I understood?" he demanded, though there was a laughing twinkle in his eyes.
"Sir, yes, Sir!"
Diana and Walker shared a surprised look at the way all three boys answered back in unison the smart and crisp reply. They said nothing, however, and just passed it off to luck or too much TV.
"Boys, this is a friend of ours, Ernest Tucker," Diana began. "These are our boys, Isaac, Taylor, and Zac."
Zac was coughing as if he had choked on his saliva, Taylor was silently laughing, and Isaac had buried his face in his hands to muffle any sort of chuckle, but his shoulders were shaking in a tell-tale sign.
"Ernest," Zac whispered. "Never would've guessed."
"All those years of wondering," Taylor mumbled. "And his name turns out to be Ernest!"
"Hello is a nice conversation opener," Walker informed them slowly, seeing as to how they weren't saying anything.
"Um…hello?" Zac tried, as if it sounded foreign to him.
"Ah, Zac Hanson, the bane of my existence," Tucker commented with a laughing smile. "How ya doin'?"
Suddenly, like a slap across the face, the boys came out of their daze. A broad smile crossed Taylor's face while Zac laughed and shrugged impishly. Isaac just shook his head.
"You've all met?" Walker asked in slight confusion, but no one answered.
"What's going on? The government finally done debriefing you?"
"You finally drug your lazy, good for nothing ass out of Huntsville!"
"Should we even be talking about this? Didn't the government ban it to keep it under wraps?"
All this was said at once, and Tucker laughed.
"No, no. Slowly but surely, the governments coming clean and admitting that they know more than they've told the public about outer space and alien races and you know, all that stuff. So, since you haven't heard, a couple people have come forward demanding that the veterans of the Hermes-sector war get some recognition and some support, since we're getting exactly zip from the government at the moment," he told them. The boys nodded in complete understanding, but their parents, and younger siblings for that matter, were completely confused.
"What are you talking about?" Diana wondered, looking back and forth from her sons to Tucker with wide, confused eyes. Once more, they're ignored.
"So you mean that we can actually talk about it now?" Zac asked, his eyes growing wide with excitement. Tucker nodded.
"Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. Six and a half years on that damned ship aren't going to go for nothing!"
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" Walker suddenly demanded in a loud shout, finally forcing them to pay attention to him and his wife, who were utterly confused.
"The Hermes-sector war-" Zac began.
"Aboard the Universal Destiny One-" Taylor began at the same time.
"Avanti," Isaac finished simply with a shrug.
Tucker sighed. "Look, I suppose that you should know, but this whole thing is so confusing that I recommend we all sit down, preferably at the kitchen table. Find a couple good bottles of wine, a good couple hours, and we can get started. This whole story is a long, confusing, and nearly science-fiction novel type stuff…in fact, I believe that this story will tell you exactly why there was a sudden change in your sons' behavior."
Diana mumbled something about some Chardonnay in the cabinet and walked into the kitchen while Walker followed her in and dropped down into a chair. Isaac, Taylor, and Zac followed at a more leisurely pace, dropping into their chairs with calm ease. The younger members of the family took positions at the table as well, quietly. Tucker, who had also seated himself, cleared his throat as Diana sat down, two bottles of wine now on the table. Tucker poured himself a glass, and, after taking a small sip, began.
"The governments of the world know much more about space than you, the public, could ever dream," he said. "They have explored, mapped, and traveled most of the known universe, which expands much farther beyond what is on those puny, out-of-date star charts that everyone has. Many people in the government don't even know how expansive the area is that we have searched and mapped, along with the help of other planets. There are other inhabitants of the universe; we were stupid to think that we were actually the only ones here. In fact, we've known that there were other inhabitants of this universe for at least fifty years. They aren't very different from us, in all reality, except for slight differences, like one less joint in a finger, or webbed feet, to help them adapt to their environment. We have been communicating, working, traveling, trading, and exchanging ideas and technology with those races from the very beginning."
He paused for a moment to take a drink, and, as he did so, the younger children and Diana and Walker stared at him, almost in disbelief. However, Zac was fiddling with a plastic knife that had been left on the table, Taylor had zoned out, and Isaac was sighing impatiently. They already knew all this.
"Now, Earth's position is such that it is well within the boundaries of a sector of space known as the Hermes-sector. This sector encompasses several solar systems, and is right smack dab in the middle of the known universe. There are busy trade-routes and travel-ways that crisscross, meet, and basically make-up this whole area. So, naturally, the planets within the boundaries of the Hermes-sector are getting wealthy from running these routes, and running them well. Now, there is a race known as the Avanti. Their home planets are just a few hundred miles outside of the Hermes-sector boundaries, so, unfortunately, they aren't making any money off of these routes. So, 'recently', they tried to take over the whole of the Hermes-sector by taking over small portions of it at a time. Hell, honestly, they were doing a pretty good job of it, well, until the Nephilians, who were taking the brunt of it by protecting several smaller planets, called on us and the Mdjkini to help them out, since we're pretty powerful. We all agreed to help out, and the government began drafting people, mostly teenagers who would be more adept at technology and at learning new technological advances, and we went up to help fight back the Avanti. Six and a half years later we succeeded, and they have been cowed pretty good…haven't heard a mutter from them, except from through the satellites from all the planets that are now circling their home planets so that we know what's going on out there. That's just the basics, but they're important."
There was silence around the table as everyone digested this new and startling news. Finally, Diana cleared her throat as she reached for the wine bottle.
"Okay, Tucker, but what does this have to do with my boys?"
After a moment's slight hesitation, she got her answer. "They were drafted. They went up and fought."
Zac nodded. "Yep, I remember the day, or night rather, that we got picked up…"
