"Doctor, I've been told we are getting another population bomb." Sheranee spoke up once the others had left.

"Yes dear, don't worry. The Vellamun's main reactor produces more than enough power to keep them frozen ten thousand times over. Especially with the new Vanadium Dioxide heat recyclers installed."

"I'm not worried about the power supply. Aine told me what the new embryos are."

"So?" Maximillian put a hand on her shoulders.

"As it's now, we have three population bombs. That's 2000 Astari and 2000 Imenu embryos to build a human colony, 800 Apua embryos so they all have something to cuddle with and 10000 modern Spartans, designed for war. So we have 14000 human embryos, of which 12000 are male and only 2000 female. That's extremely imbalanced!"

"I know." Maximillian sighed.

"So what am I supposed to do with them?"

"You could make half of them female by exchanging their Y-chromosomes for another X-chromosome."

Sheranee raised an eyebrow at this. Of course a genetic engineer would say something like this. But knowing where these embryos came from, she wondered, "And van Gelda didn't add an automatic self-destruct sequence to his creations in case someone does this?"

Doctor Moreau had to pause for a second. "I did not find one when I revised their codes... but I wouldn't put it beyond him."

Sheranee let out a sigh, cursing the mad Dutchman her creator once called a colleague.

"Don't worry, a solution will present itself." Maximillian tried to encourage her.

"You don't know that."

"Was it not me who created you?"

"That doesn't give you authority over reality."

Doctor Moreau let out a proud laugh, "You are right dear, I don't know what's waiting for you out there. But I know you and I have no doubt you will find a way."

Sheranee smiled as Maximillian hugged her once more. "Did you already plot a course for your exploration of the Nod system?" he asked.

"Didn't we have an entire department for this?"

"Yes, but they were among the first parts of this project to be shut down."

"Dicknanas! Oh well, I wanted to propose a course anyway. Since the wormhole drops us out in Nod-B, I thought it's best to explore this system for a while. Sure, Nod-A might have one, perhaps even two habitable planets, but those might contain diseases we have no immunities against or we might carry diseases the beings there are vulnerable to."

"Did Valentina bring this to your attention?"

"Yes, she doesn't want to destroy an alien biosphere, which we're all onboard with. So I thought, a red dwarf system might be a better place to set up a base. It's much smaller. We could easily travel to other planets if we need certain resources. Traveling from one planet to another inside Nod-A would take months or even years, just like in our own solar system. Inside Nod-B, it would only take days or weeks. Besides, there must be several tidally locked planets in the Nod-B system. A base in the temperate twilight strip of one such planet would benefit from perpetual sunlight and strong winds. If the red dwarf star is not too volatile, we could have a base with a very secure power supply, allowing us to keep the Vellamun's fusion reactor on board and the ship operational."

"Good idea!" Maximillian exclaimed proudly.

"With the Vellamun still available, we can build the colony ship to get our cousins off Earth much faster and it won't have to make the 19-year journey from Nod-A to B either." Sheranee added with a smile.

Maximillian's heart skipped a beat. How good he had taken the Vellamun's crew down to Earth every now and then to visit his other creations.

"Doctor Moreau, may I talk to you for a moment?" Tapeesa interrupted them.

"Of course, dear."

Sheranee left the room. A short moment passed before Tapeesa broke the silence. "I met Doctor Petain today." she whispered.

Immediately, Doctor Moreau knew what happened, "She called you a waste of resources again, because your skin needs more light to produce enough Vitamin D, am I right? We've been through this dear, Doctor Petain is a computer shambling around in roughly human form. If it was up to her we would only send pregnant redheads and frozen embryos into space."

"But what if she is right? I have neither the technical skill of Sheranee or Setanto nor the green thumb of Valentina."

"But you are good at Geology."

"As a subset of Archeology, but..."

Doctor Moreau looked into her big blue eyes with an equally stern and warm look, "You've seen the UFO. There is probably an entire civilization out there for you to dig up."

"What if not?"

"Then you'll be needed even more," Maximillian's voice carried great conviction, "If the aliens out there are still alive, someone needs to decipher their language. You started to speak in complex, never ending sentences even before your first birthday and now learning a new language is as easy to you as learning a new video game is to most people. Even I had no idea you'd be this talented when I wrote your DNA. Such are the miracles I witnessed during my work. As for Vitamin-D, you'll get enough from your diet on the Vellamun."

Maximillian wiped a tear from her eyes and pulled Tapeesa in for a hug. "Besides, you'll never see Doctor Petain again." he encouraged her.

"But I'll never see you and Aine again either."

"Oh no, we'll stay in contact."

"Really?" Tapeesa squealed out happily.

"Yes, dear. I had the Moreau foundation buy an old radio telescope. It is sensitive enough to receive messages from beyond the wormhole. Sure, it will take hours for the signals to travel back and forth, so we won't have real time conversations. But the connection is encrypted and the few who know about it don't care, so we can talk about absolutely everything. With Tacitus managing the ship you can even send and receive messages from inside the virtual reality you'll spend your time in cryosleep in."

"Then I'll send you pictures from the Dreamlands." Tapeesa slowly nodded. Doctor Moreau held his wonderful creation for a moment. A tear fell from his eyes as he let her go.

Setanto entered as Tapeesa left the room. A sorrowful expression on his face and no fluffy Apuas on his arms. Valentina must have snatched Funi and Vini away.

"How is your training going, son?"

"Quite... well." Setanto hesitated, "Sheranee often joins in and I'm a bit worried..."

"Worried she might beat you?" Maximillian grinned.

"Of course not! I'm not losing to a dwarf," Setanto spat mildly offended, "But... she might hurt herself. I'm trying to be careful, but still."

"I know you will be careful. If Sheranee wants to spar with you, that's good. She will kick your butt if you ever get lazy."

"Of course she will." Setanto chuckled, a soft smile spreading on his face. But a bit of confusion shone through as well as an old question resurfaced. A moment of silence followed.

"Doctor Moreau?"

"Yes."

"Why am I in this program?"

"Why would you ask such a question?"

"I still remember the day you brought me here," Setanto explained with a deceptive nonchalance, "Doctor Petain was really mad at you. She said, as a boy, I was a waste of resources, because I eat more and can't bear children."

"Never let anyone call you a waste of resources, you are not!"

"But from a purely rational point of view she is right."

"Only if you ignore the fact that mass producing babies is not particularly child friendly. After all, you need to take care of the little ones too," Maximillian scoffed, "We are human beings, not robots. Few things about us are rational."

"And why did you design me to eventually grow two meters tall, with eight times the bone density of normal human beings and like seven times higher muscle density? I eat as much as Valentina and Tapeesa combined. If you just wanted a male companion for the girls, you could have designed me to be more like a short, scrawny nerd who doesn't eat much."

"Well, I originally had to design you as a superhuman soldier," Maximillian sighed, remembering something which should never have happened, "You were supposed to be my contribution to this insane program. But, well, the brass and I had different ideas of what made the ideal warrior. You didn't turn out the way they expected."

"And then you brought me here, I know. But why take me all the way to the moon and introduce me to a top secret interstellar exploration project when I could have just lived with the Astari or Imenu?"

Doctor Moreau remembered the day Setanto got introduced to project Vellamun. He had been called at eight in the morning to come to Area 7734, the site keeping all the prototype super soldiers. He already knew the way, since he had regularly visited Setanto there. Something which made the other prototypes envy him. Their creators never came to visit.

---

As Doctor Moreau walked through the facility's cold walls only decorated with red white and blue flags and propaganda posters, the base Commander told him about everything wrong with his prototype, "I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again, just so your Eurobrain finally gets it. Your prototype is an utter disgrace! He left his unit without authorization and once the drill sergeant found him, got into a fight with another cadet, breaking his arm. You know why he did all this? Because he wanted to save some stupid animal from getting run over by a tank and to top it all off. He even lied to his superiors to hide the damn thing!"

Maximillian could only smile as he heard this. The boy developed just as he had hoped. He would have been more worried if Setanto lived up to the expectations of the psychopaths in charge here.

"So I suppose you don't want him in your unit anymore?"

"I would be grateful if you could rid me of this disobedient troublemaker," the base Commander explained, "Don't get me wrong, physically he is superior to his peers and the other cadets respect him for it more than they should. But this crybaby doesn't fit into my unit!"

Then they arrived in Setanto's quarters to find a six year old boy, sitting on a bunk inside a cold room the size of a broom closet with only a single box to store various supplies. Close to his chest, he held a little bird with a broken wing. He had made a bracer for the little bird's wing from toothpicks and duct tape and fed it worms.

"By the way, he vandalized the rose garden of the officer's casino to get those worms." the base Commander added with audible frustration.

The boy did not react. Not when the door opened, not when the base Commander spoke. Only when the Commander left and the door closed again did he look up to Doctor Moreau. Maximillian felt a sting in his chest as he saw his boy in tears with a black eye, bruises and dried up blood below his nose and left ear.

He sat down next to Setanto, pulling him for a tight hug. "I've heard what happened," the Doctor said in a soft tone, "You did the right thing! How are you?"

"I- I'm fine," little Setanto sobbed, "But the bird needs help."

At this moment, Doctor Moreau knew Setanto was just who his crew needed. They left the base within the hour, getting the injured bird to a veterinarian who nursed it back to health. Doctor Moreau and Setanto however flew somewhere else, to Pirene station.

"Setanto, I need you to watch over Sheranee, Tapeesa and Valentina. Don't ever let anything happen to them!" Doctor Moreau told the boy the day he first met the girls.

---

"But it doesn't stop there, you also told Mister Hellström to continue my combat training," Setanto added, "Don't get me wrong Doctor, I am very grateful to be here. Sheranee, Tapeesa and Valentina are the most beautiful girls of all humanity, on the outside and the inside. And I had great fun learning to kick Mister Hellström's butt in training. You said I am Sheranee's, Tapeesa's and Valentina's protector, but you never told me what I am supposed to protect them from."

"Let's hope you will never have to protect the girls from anything. But I was not willing to take this risk... not after seeing the UFO."

"It spooked me too. Valentina had nightmares for an entire week after seeing it. But aside from being creepy and alien, there was nothing special about this UFO. The Tyson space telescope found zero signs of civilization on the other side of the wormhole. At least no living civilization."

"You're right," Maximillian shrugged, "But the day I saw this vessel, I somehow knew something terrible had happened wherever it came from. It was the same feeling I had when visiting the soldier's graves of Verdun. I don't know what's waiting on the other side either, but I hope it's nothing dangerous."

"I understand. If there's nothing bad on the other side, I'll just be a human pillow."

Maximillian raised his eyebrows and grinned, "Would this be such a bad outcome?"

"Of course not!"

Maximillian smiled. "By the way, the Vellamun's interior fittings are still partially incomplete. I made sure they put the materials you asked for on the ship."

Setanto immediately knew what this meant. "Tapeesa always wanted a hot tub instead of boring showers, Valentina prefers sleeping in zero gravity over her bed in the habitat ring and Sheranee said the command center could use a couch so we can watch movies on the big screen. I'll get to work on all those once the girls are in cryosleep."

"Why the government refused to finance a hot tub in space is beyond me."

Setanto and Maximillian chuckled. A short silence followed. Then Doctor Moreau pulled him in for a hug, "Be careful out there!"

"Don't worry, if any slimy ugly alien dares to look at the girls the wrong way, I'm gonna cook the thing with its own death ray!"

Eventually, Maximillian released him. Only then did he notice Valentina stood in the doorway. "Doctor Moreau, where are you? We're waiting!" she pouted.

"I'll join you soon."

Setanto went ahead to join Aine and the others. But just as Maximillian wanted to follow, Valentina took his hand, holding him a moment until Setanto left.

"What are you afraid of, Doctor?"

"What should I be afraid of, dear? The World Government? I was never scared of politicians and bureaucrats."

"Of course you are not afraid of them. But Sheranee told me yesterday that our new radar- and radio telescope modules are military surplus. Kane modified them substantially, but they still have a beam mode for use as microwave cannons. Then there is Setanto. From day one you said he'd be our protector and Security Chief Hellström told me you ordered him to move his weapons over to the Vellamun. What are you afraid of?"

Doctor Moreau let out a light chuckle. Why did he even bother trying to hide anything from Valentina?

"I am afraid my dreams might come true. They have this habit. The name of your ship and its shuttles, as well as parts of your DNA came to me in dreams. Without these, you would not have these purple eyes."

"Purple is not a naturally occurring human eye color. I've heard thousands of genetic engineers tried to create a gene for purple eyes, but all failed. Then, out of nowhere, you came up with a genetic sequence which produced perfect purple eyes and nobody understood how."

"I don't really understand it either. The genetic sequence interacts in such an odd way with other genes, it is physically impossible to have both red hair and purple, ruby or golden eyes. I don't remember much, but I do recall having seen this genetic sequence in a dream and I have no idea where it came from."

"And when this program began, you had a nightmare?"

"No, it was the night after I first saw the UFO. Years before I even wrote your genetic code. I dreamed of a race of Titans, fair, wise and powerful. They tried to rid themselves of all evil and cast it out never to be seen again. The result was terrible monsters, which destroyed them."

A short silence followed. Then Doctor Moreau chuckled, "You probably find this very silly..."

"No, not at all! This thing gave everyone nightmares. And don't worry, if there's a monster out there, Setanto will slay it."

"Yes," Doctor Moreau chuckled, "It's better to have a sword and not need it than to need a sword and not have it. Speaking of Setanto, watch out for him. Unfortunately, I couldn't get another boy into the crew. Lacking a male peer could be very hard for him."

"Don't worry, he'll always have Sheranee to scuffle with," Valentina giggled, "She really likes it when he tosses her around."

Doctor Moreau chuckled, "By the way, I made sure the Vellamun's wardrobe is filled with your stuff instead of the standard uniforms. Nobody cares what you wear millions of kilometers anyways. Sheranee, Tapeesa and Setanto will be your dress up dolls even in outer space."

"Thank you," Valentina hugged him, "Those standard uniforms feel like trash bags."

Maximillian gently patted her on the back, "Now, let's go before Setanto eats all the ice cream."

---

Aine and Maximillian Moreau and the Vellamun's crew spent their last day together eating the last ice cream on Pirene Station. They sat on a couch in the otherwise empty lounge of the station, looking out into space.

Sun and Earth were hidden behind the moon. With their bright light gone, all the stars came out. Like a glowing silk band lined with the most precious gems the milky way dominated the sky.

But eventually, the day came to an end. Joy and laughter fading as the pain of having to say goodbye took over. But deep down Doctor Moreau knew, separation was a mere illusion. An illusion dreams could overcome. Part of him would always be with his four little star dragons.