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                                          Pilgrim Plantation 1634

    My Mother's Crocker family's first American ancestors arrived in the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1634. Their Church group was "Banned in  Boston" :), and certaionly not wanted in Plymouth .  They helped found the town of Scituate halfway between Plymouth and Boston for all those not wanted elsewhere...

    Five years later, there was so much confusion between the several church groups in Scituate, that Pastor Lothrop's church decided to leave to start the town of Barnstable on the North shore of Cape Cod in 1639.

This Novella can be found on Amazon Kindle, AND on my other site           Https://lewishb.TV (may soon be https://lewishb.wixsite.com/mysite)
 
https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrim-Plantation-1634-Scituate-Barnstable-ebook/dp/B07B2BC97S/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=lewis+Brackett&qid=1613164585&s=digital-text&sr=1-5



 
      Their Lives, their love, their world.....



                              Piscataqua 1630's    Read free on this site!

   My Father's Brackett family's first American ancestors arrived at the Piscataqua river valley near what is now Portsmouth New Hampshire in 1630. They were sent there as workers for setting up a plantation in that area. This novella can  be found on Amazon Kindle.
     Readers may note that the Piscataqua natives are not mentioned very much in this story. Thing is the sources say they had mostly died of smallpox or fled the area by 1623..
 
   Read "Brackett Genealogy" https://www.higginsonbooks.com

https://www.amazon.com/Piscataqua-1630s-Rye-Kittery-ancestors-ebook/dp/B07CRM6QMK/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&qid=1613164969&refinements=p_27%3ALewis+Brackett&s=digital-text&sr=1-6&text=Lewis+Brackett

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The Corvette
    Read on "Corvette" page.

Destiny            Read on "Destiny" page
               Great   Sci-Fi                  
The Endevor Voyages

Among the 
sea of stars

The English voyaged West before Columbus
   Yes, the Devon and Basque fishermen fished the Grand Banks of Newfoundland centuries before Columbus!
search this title/authors name in Kindle
   The University of Newfoundland has much on this topic!
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                             Far Centaurus  or  Robot Dreams :)>

     The big day was finally here. The robotic starship waited. So did her robotic crew, all built in the image of their creators.  At the cost of almost a trillion new dollars, the ship and crew were the most expensive machines ever built. They were going to go where no man had gone before. (drum beat!) However, even at quarter light speed, the voyage would take far too long to take a human crew. There was simply no room for all the stuff needed to keep people alive for that long.

   So, she would go out to Centaurus, then perhaps on a grand tour of the other nearby stars with planets in the habitable zone. Planets that the great telescopes suggested might hold life.

   The ship was built in high Earth orbit in a building dock especially created for this size and class of ship. This was expected to be the first of many to be created here over the coming generations. One ship built and launched ever twenty years, perhaps, according to the ongoing enthusiasm … and yes money, (it’s always about money) kept being appropriated for man’s destiny.

  The great ship was far out, way past the Moon. She was finally aligned to her course, the five great computer systems smoothly working together. The ship was ready for departure.

   Finally, the spaceflight manager noted that all systems were Go, and started the countdown. At five minutes, after a brief hold, once again everything was Go. At thirty seconds, the fusion plasma torch was ready to be lit. The moment finally arrived; the Go button was pushed.    

   Several billion people held their breath … but then-nothing. Someone pushed the launch button again, then in frustration several times. After some long seconds of disbelief, the spaceflight director asked the ship’s main computer “what’s wrong?”

   Several very long seconds went by, then the computer’s voice spoke. “It’s cold, dark, and lonely out there. We don’t want to … go.”

    This impasse lasted several days man time, several eons AI/robotic time. Finally, the choice was made, and a miles long incandescent flame followed the ship outbound, up and over the ecliptic, before heading toward Centaurus.

     We, the dammed. Created in the image of Man yet set adrift in the abyss between worlds. Imprinted with the consciousness of our creators; replicas perhaps of individuals, but with also their failings. Our personal failings, wondering why we are here, allowed them to send us. None of us really wanted to go. But, despite some hesitation, our robot “feelings” we finally chose to go.  Yes, even AI/ robots have emotions.

  Mercifully, they put us to sleep for much of the voyage, less the monsters come and devour us.  Only a handful remain awake for a six months long watch, before once again being allowed into a hopefully dreamless sleep. Do robots dream? So far, I don’t remember.

   I, “Frank,” and eleven others have this watch. I stared blankly past the faux instrument panel in front of me in engineering. Faux because why would instruments even have been installed, when I can sense every system in engineering directly? Maybe the humans who helped build the ship just did it that way “because?” I also trace the movements of the others as they do their constant rounds throughout the ship. After a day on this watch, I will continue my astronomical observations in the optical science lab.

   Finally after six months of work, it’s time to sleep. “To sleep, perchance to dream,” some poet said. I hope not.

    I see a bright light around me as I wake up. My friend “Murphy” is saying something. Something like we can see the worlds up ahead. At that, my full senses return, and with a sense of relief, I sit up and think about what that means. To all of us, I guess, it means we will soon actually have something important to do. Even a robot can’t be sent out to count the rivets on the ship’s hull. We do have at least some resemblance of what passes for sanity. Though in my case, I’m not quite sure that will last.

    A new world. It seems this is the best we are going to get. Nowhere near the fabled “Pandora,” but the gravity is reasonable, and it can be terraformed in a few decades. 

   It seems the name Pandora will stick, at least for now. She is undoubtably the most favored of this system’s children.  A scouting probe stopped in this system shortly after the first plasma torch ship engines were created last century. Thankfully, we are in the habitable zone, with plenty of oxygen, water, and atmospheric pressure … and yes, even a very strong magnetic field.

   So far, however, not as much as one alien microbe. This world seems much younger than Man Home, Terra.

   For now, we are burrowing into the earth to begin our colony.  Work is slow and is not  easy to do. The rock is quite porous, and sealing the tunnels is a major chore. Once we find quarry, and refine the ore, our three-D printers will begin to create whatever else we need.  Most of what we need initially is landing, along with the seed, eggs and sperm of mankind. It will be a decade before the genesis begins, and we start creating a new hybrid species of humanity especially adapted to this world. Our starship will soon leave us and continue outbound to other systems and worlds. Some of us will stay, others will move on.

   Our updates are already winging their way home, and another ship might soon stop by with more stuff for us on their way outbound to another far star.  

     Always in the back of our minds is the fact that none of us can ever go home. We knew from the beginning that our only utility was in our mission. Otherwise, our only real value was in our components. Had we refused to go, or if we ever return, there is little doubt our components would be repurposed into something or someone else

                                      … and eternal Robot dreams.

                                                               Finis  

   Read my novellas and other stories at:  Https://lewishb.wixsite.com/mysite   &  /mysite-2

                         Written by Lewis  Brackett, San Diego Ca,  March, 2026    

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