Hi, Joseth Moore, here! For my Para-Events Blogs no. 10, there is no Event-entry since it’s a special interview with Jason Faust of Heartland Paranormal–a Paranormal team out of Lincoln, Nebraska (where I’m currently based) that’s kind of a mixture of Paranormal investigations, research, Medium-intervention, and even local fundraiser (worked with ASD Clubhouse–autism nonprofit > http://asdclubhouse.com/event/heartland-paranormal-benefit-event-4-28-2018 , STOMPoutBullying.org , Paranormal Bully Busters, ) Faust is not only the lead-investigator of the Team, but the founding member. Actor Corkey Ford (“Platoon,” “Born On The Forth of July,” etc. > IMDb) is a mutual friend of ours and that’s how we were able to meet…
We sat down at a Lincoln cultural institution called The Mill coffee house in Lincoln’s College View neighborhood on Wednesday, May 8, 2019. First of all Faust sees himself as a “field researcher” rather than a Paranormal investigator. He’s been active in the investigative-research field since around 2011, but has been observing the Paranormal subject pretty much all his life, the Big Bang-catalyst being Steven Spielberg’s breakout Thriller movie “Jaws” (1975–Wikipedia).
Faust very much is a man of faith. His family is of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lincoln, and yet, Faust is not big on religious organizations as he is of Belief in the Golden Rule principles and open-mindedness toward others. Indeed, speaking as a Skeptic of the Paranormal, it was refreshing to hear Faust say that he suggests Paranormal true-believers similar to him try to make friends with the Skeptics!
“Jaws” was only the doorway for Faust to step into the Paranormal. He’s read a lot of books on the Paranormal when he was teenager and-on, but a more recent influencer is the father and daughter team Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James’ book, “The Man On the Train” (Scribner; 2017, Google Books > https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Man_from_the_Train.html?id=chppDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false ), storyteller of ghost stories Duane Hutchinson (Amazon, 1987 > https://www.amazon.com/Storytellers-Ghost-Stories-Duane-Hutchinson/dp/0934988323 ), Faust’s own Latvian-American family history… But, ultimately, influencers can only go so far and one must practice one’s craft. And in this case for Jason Faust that meant his research and investigations and the founding of Heartland Paranormal. I was genuinely surprised when Faust told me after a brief hiatus from his residential investigations from December of 2018 to March of 2019, people were clamoring for him to continue–as in several emailed-requests! Safety, when in someone else’s abode and you were behind locked doors, was one of the factors in Faust taking a break from his Paranormal interventions.
Another aspect of Faust’s work in the Paranormal were his over-night stays for investigative research at the famed Villisca Ax Murder House in Villisca, Iowa, > https://www.villiscaiowa.com/history.php , the Malvern Manor of Malvern, Iowa > http://weekinweird.com/2017/01/18/iowa-malvern-manor-haunted/ , and his research at other locales. He said that sometimes in an overnight investigation at a house with alleged Paranormal activities, “not a damn thing” will happen…and as a Paranormal investigator myself, I can say–with the exception of the overnight–that I can definitely relate!
I’d like to end this blog on what I consider an exciting feature to Faust’s Paranormal ecosystem: “Investigator For A Day”! I love the premise of children and their families taking a day and utilizing Critical Thinking and the Scientific Method while being a Paranormal investigator themselves! It’s part of Faust’s stated agenda to “lessen the fear in the field” of the Paranormal. Whatever side you are coming from in the subject of the Paranormal, that can only be a good thing for society!~Joseth Moore; Paranormal Investigator of the Para-Events Blogs. May 11, 2019.
(IMAGES, included BELOW in COMMENTS section by Jason Faust via Facebook)
It’s just two months shy of being a year-and-a-half since I’ve actively started my Paranormal investigative research and work. Friday of January 19, 2018 is when I did my first blog–which I had posted four Events that could be deemed Paranormal (that’s why my blog-counts do not match my Entry (“Events”)-counts). Although this blog, number nine, is only an assessment, I still have all my Para-Events Blogs posted at the bottom of this entry for the Readers to link.
Also, as a reminder, I started this Blogging series with me being transparent to the Readers that I am an Atheist, and, not surprisingly, a Skeptic of the Paranormal, though I am not a Debunker! Without rehashing the premise of my investigative approach, I suggest one read Blog number one (again, linked below).
Ok, my Assessment, thus far, of the Paranormal, as it relates to my investigations…
After one year and four months, I’ve done ten (10) investigations of ‘Events.’ I have actually eleven Events entered, but Para-Event number one (see Blog number 1) was about my younger brother and I when I was around 10 years old and he was about 9, so that was a retro-active posting what I now call “Noted Events” (as I’ve started using in Blog number 8):
—> Of the 11 investigations I conducted,
Seven (7) out of 11 I classified as Unknown–not enough info to Debunk nor Affirm as a genuine Paranormal Event!
Four (4) out of the 11 Events I investigated I was able to Debunk!–> Event no. 3–the Burger King location, Event no. 5–an anonymous fast food restaurant I worked at, Event no. 8–at Nebraska’s State Capitol building {my most popular/read blog of the series based on my dashboard analytics!}, and Event no. 10–at the city park called Antelope Park, in Lincoln, Nebraska… Again, to see my reasons and criterion for Debunking, please read my linked blogs below.
Zero (0) out of the 11 Events I investigated I was able to Affirm.
**As an aside, it is key, in my opinion as a Paranormal investigator, that sites and events that we investigate should cover a wide-range of settings: Three (3) out of the 11 Events I investigated were on public grounds–Nebraska’s State Capitol, the Temple Building (for Drama majors at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln), and the urban Antelope Park…I say this, because if all locations for Paranormal investigations were in/on private property–where an individual(s) or group guards all access to the setting for us, investigators, then such private settings might skew the direction of a Paranormal investigation!
**Two other key notes about my approach in investigating: I make sure to interview several people as much as the situation allows me to, otherwise it’s just my blogging and talking in my own videos–best to get other people’s assessment along side mine, especially when they’re strangers to me! Also, I deliberately let all of my videos record continuous–no breaks or editing, so there’s no question as to whether or not what you Readers/Viewers see is real or not! I know–with my Zero out of 11 Events, nothing to see, huh? And that’s my point…
I don’t know how long I’ll investigate Events that are long-held urban/historic legends or mundane happenings that I, personally, experience–for ghost stories and other Paranormal legends go back, literally, thousands of years! At some point, especially now that I’ve joined the conversation (ie, my own investigations), I have to ask myself: I was already a Skeptic before, but one not just willing, but actually went out to do some transparent investigations (unedited videos for all to see with me), to what end?
And, like I said–mixing anecdotal with some empirical info–4/11 Events I came to Debunk; Unknowns having a certain mysterious appeal to them, but after investigating already and without evidence, like my friend said (see Comments section of Blog no. 1), otherwise we’re just telling ghost stories…
There will probably be some Events that I, as a Paranormal investigator, will simply note an occurrence that barely makes the threshold for what I consider to be unusual enough for me to look into, but not quite significant so that I do a full-inquiry. I’d say my Entry, Blog no. 4 (“QUICK Notations, Documentations”)–about a screw strangely falling on top of the dryer on a quiet, early-Sunday morning when I was seated at my laptop and my wife and her pets were all sleeping–is another good, previous example that shows sometimes a very mundane Event can still warrant a quick blog (found below this blog, with all my other Entries)…
Blog no. 8–para-Event number 11. Yet another worksite for my Para-Events Blogs (name of company will remain anonymous. Someday, I plan to branch out throughout the US with more investigations, plus other Paranormal subjects such as UFOs, Bigfoot, etc). Northwest Lincoln, Nebraska. Friday, April 12, 2019 at approximately 1:15 PM, I had used a motion-sensor hand sink (Sorry, I did not think to get the model and make, nor the brand–but I was at work when this, unexpectedly, occurred!). Approximately one minute, and twenty-seconds later–not long before I was about to leave, I heard the water “turn on” from that very same faucet–the setup being one row of sinks; four total, the one in question at the very left end of the men’s restroom. Also, I estimate the faucet’s run-time around eight-to-ten seconds.
I’ve only been at this worksite for exactly two weeks, but long enough to say I’ve never seen any of the faucets turn on without someone waving a hand in front of any of the faucets. It is possible there is/was a malfunction (eg, problem with the sensor) that had not yet been fixed on that particular faucet and I just happened to be in the bathroom when the water turned on by itself…by the way, Reader, during all this time for Event number 11, no one else was in–nor came into–the men’s restroom while this occurred.
For added measure, later, I looked up on timeanddate.com to see what the city of Lincoln’s weather conditions were like around 1:15 (April 12, 2019)–around 41 degrees Fahrenheit; overcast with humidity hovering between 38-to-35%; while the barometer (could be most relevant since I was examining a motion-sensor tech sink!) was between 29.88 ”Hg and 29.90 ”Hg–so, the pressure had gone up, but only by 2/10th of one percent. More to the point, even if the weather (on the outside, but sometimes affects indoors) had something to do with that sink turning on by itself, why only that one sink out of the four?
Usually, by now, in most of my other investigations I would have made reference to images or videos I had captured. This time I do not…Again, as with a good share of my para-investigative blogs, this took place at a (new!) job of mine and I did not want to risk getting in trouble by taking pics on-site with my smartphone! (Secured location; very different from previous restaurants I worked before–refer to linked blogs below.) Plus, given that our restroom breaks are a bit restricted, I had no time for a detailed investigation…
Under the circumstances I think it’s best to put this “Noted-Event” in the UNKNOWN category for the time being.
I can tell the Reader upfront that I don’t expect Blog number seven of my Paranormal investigations to be very long. Three main reasons: Three sources, Haunted Rooms > https://www.hauntedrooms.com/top-7-haunted-places-lincoln-ne , the Lincoln Journal Star > https://journalstar.com/antelope-park/image_6da74f22-dffc-5523-9018-c8bf1ff75737.html , and Haunted Places > https://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/antelope-park/ all have very short articles on the subject of ghost stories and Antelope park. Lastly–my own, primary-source of investigation I conducted on Wednesday, March 27, 2019. And it’s here where I inform those who are reading and watching my investigations for the first time that I’m a Paranormal investigator out of Lincoln, Nebraska; USA, though I come at my investigations with a Skeptic’s eye. I’ve been an Investigator for a little more than a year…
Event 10) The blurb from Haunted Rooms (in the US and the UK) states that “visitors have reported seeing apparitions that walk all the way across the field before disappearing into the woods on the other side.” The Journal Star also cited from Haunted Rooms, en verbatim. And, as one can tell by going to each link, Haunted Places was, also, pretty sparse in their treatment of the exact same blurb–though Haunted Places used the term Witnesses, versus Visitors, like Haunted Rooms–suggests to me the author of the Haunted Places posting may have been local, visited Antelope Park, or they had at least talked with a local person…but, more importantly, as I scrolled down on the Haunted Places site, I ran across two comments in the Comments-section. Frankly, both seem incongruent–the second one, posted by one- “David,” was posted one day before I went over and conducted my investigation at Antelope Park…there was absolutely no snow in all of Lincoln–frankly, for that week up to that point. The Reader can read both comments in my Comments section–it’s a screenshot. Not a major part of my investigation since it’s a “random” person’s posted comment, but it also does not help buttress the urban legend, either!
As the Reader may have read from the three sources above, they all vaguely state a lot of people seeing some kind of (many–Haunted Places)“apparitions” that were “behind the caretaker’s house.” The structure shown in the Lincoln Journal Star is the amphitheater–even while I was walking around the main, expansive section of Antelope Park, I was not sure which of the nearby houses was considered the caretaker’s house! As one can see in video number two, one house, in particular, seemed very close to the Park’s property and it was well-lit. Before and after conducting my investigation, I still was not sure which house was considered the caretaker’s house!
I will let my videos do most of the talking, as it were. But just so the Reader knows, I utilized the Hertz-method of investigating–where I learned to use a Hertz-emitter (via YouTube) that carried a sound-scale, even 18 Hertz-and below. Based on some of my research (*check the Comments section of Blog no. 1), 18 Hz and under is considered Paranormal since it’s beyond Human’s capacity to hear–hence, I used my Hz-emitter like a dog whistle for alleged-ghosts…and, again as one watches my videos, I utilized the Hertz-method and a couple of phone-apps to help (a spectrogram app and that infrared-simulated app that I decided against in blogs five and six since it could not measure heat–however, came in handy in a very dark Antelope Park when I needed basic visual metrics! The spectrogram was a nice addition to measure sound!)…
In the end, I’d have to say with this tenth Event of my Para-Events Blogs, my sources are very limited in the way of the narration, yet because of that it makes it easier to target what Event I needed to watch for since there were not a lot of moving parts to this alleged ghost legend (refer to my Blog no. 5 of Nebraska’s State Capitol–voice in elevators, falling apparition, stairways, the outside dome…!). I’d say the Antelope Park urban legend is just that, and I consider it DEBUNKED–not having seen any paranormal activity during my investigation–dark, isolated, using instruments, plus in video with four teenagers (my guess, plus two middle-aged people I asked in other video!) it was more of them saying what they’ve heard or read about–not really them experiencing it!
Some readers may have read some or one of my other Blogs and see that sometimes I go back for follow-ups…it’s possible, even likely I’ll do it for Antelope Park.
“Visitors’ Arrival: Book 3 of the Lunar series”; by
scifiguy3553. Smashwords version. @Copyright 2016
Set in 2217; when the solar system-wide government, the Sol Governance, is
confronted with the arrival of aliens that came by Light! Admiral Reshma Shan
is the lead Governance officer in combating the abduction of thousands of
humans by the Visitors! Making her job harder is an ethnic Tellmondonian Respect-official,
Hausa. For he leads his disciples in a movement that worships the Visitors, and
cross a line that puts Humanity at risk!
CHAPTER 1
2217. SOL GOVERNANCE TERRITORY; PLANET-STATE PLUTO. TOMBAUGH MUNICIPAL…
The computer system ran its test
for the fifth time, but there was no mistaking it: the ship was coming in from the Oort at 198,000
miles per second! The record for any
Human sub-light travel was still 172,000 mps.
And even that was set back in the mid-22nd century when a
group of Humans were competing to see who could make it from Erth and fly out
past State Pluto and back again. Humans,
up to that point, had never achieved actual Light Speed since…so, clearly, the
ship could not be Human. Unless—
“Maybe there’s a new competition
going on that the Governance was not aware of,” Sergeant Nesby ventured; not
sounding like he believed it himself.
The young man was craning his posture so he could get a better look at
the image on his own terminal port.
“Why don’t you do a search in
the media and see if you can find any news on that, Sergeant,” Director Morelli
Tuun ordered. He was standing at his own
terminal having trouble even believing the telemetry he was reading! “Whoever that is, they’ve got the fastest front
velocity I’ve ever seen!”
Just to be sure, Tuun walked
over to a nearby window and looked beyond the manicured grounds of State
Pluto’s domed city that served as the headquarters of the Sol Governance on
Pluto. The object was still too far away
to see with the naked eyes, but Director Tuun knew that he would be able to see
it soon—given that the object was traveling faster than the speed of light!
“Sir,” came Corporal Arund’s
voice from the other side of the Governance local facility, “satellites are
picking up secondary object!”
Everyone in the large suite
glanced at one another.
“Still could be a race,
everyone,” Director Tuun said as he walked back to his station and began doing
a search on his terminal.
“Director Tuun, Sir,” Sergeant
Nesby’s voice came back, “that’s a negative on any private space competition anywhere in these parts of the solar
system!”
“And we know the Governance does
not obtain such technological ability to travel that fast, Director,” added his
lieutenant, Ron Ganum. Even though he
was older than Director Tuun by several years, Ganum was Tuun’s right-hand man
in title and in his loyalty.
Tuun gave a long look at Ganum
while the whole crew in the command center awaited the director’s call. “This cannot
be what I think it is!”
“First contact? It certainly looks that way, Director. Not counting the slugs on Callisto, of
course.”
The director rolled his eyes. “Those little bugs might as well be shower
grout!”
Others nearby, including Ganum,
shared a light chuckle. But then
Director Tuun quickly got serious. He
was already going through the official procedures in his head for the legendary
first contact scenario that the Sol
Governance had drilled into each and every officer within the solar system-wide
political body…most of those military officials and political operatives had never thought there would be a time when
The Governance would actually use
those procedures! Without a word,
Director Tuun gave a terse nod to Lieutenant Ganum, and the machine was set to
motion!
“Ok, everyone,” the lieutenant
said as he scanned the entire command center; his voice at a booming level,
“you heard the Director…let’s get those auto-public messages and alarms
going…Corporal, get our soldiers ready and their machines…Communications—alert
headquarters! Something tells me we’re
going to need a little help out here!”
CHAPTER 2
SOL GOVERNANCE’S HEADQUARTERS. PACIFICALIS ISLAND; NORTHEAST OF THE MARSHALL
ISLANDS…
The Pacificalis Island landmass,
itself, was Human-made. It had been around since the mid-2100s. About that same time, when the majority of
Erthen space-powers (both nations and private empires) got together to form the
solar system-wide, governing organization known as the Sol Governance, they all
wanted to build a headquarters that was not
located in an existing nation-state.
They often used as a reference the former United Nations, when it was
based in the United States. Even though
the global organization was meant to work objectively for the majority of
Erth’s nation-states, the fact that it was headquartered in the US meant that
the former Superpower had disproportionate influences in many of the UN’s
votes…hence, The Governance’s artificial island.
The unnaturally-round island was
the size of a large island. Given that
The Governance was a new form of political entity—part nation-state;
part-corporation—the developmental planning was a hodgepodge of environmentally
pleasing landscapes to industrial tracts of lands studded with belching
buildings and horizon-stretching highways!
Pacificalis also had suburban islands that were tethered to the mainland
via high-tech bridges. Indeed, some of
those suburbs were not even “islands” in the proper sense, but looming small cities
on industrial stilts, much like the oil platforms back in the 20th
and 21st centuries so long ago…
The Governance’s main military
complex was deep within Pacificalis’ sprawling Humanity of approximately ten
million. Admiral Reshma Shan was in
charge of running Governance’s military sector on Pacificalis. She was approaching senior status in society
and was looking forward to retirement.
But until those next few years came, Admiral Shan still had a lot on her
plate. In addition to the bite-sized
wars that seemed the norm for modern warfare on planet Erth, she was also the
charge for helping citizens in natural disasters on all the planetary and lunar
bodies of the Sol system. Today, the admiral
would have to take on a lot more duties for humanity.
“Admiral…Admiral,” the young
cadet was calling out to Shan. He was
trotting up to the admiral as she just left a meeting in one of the Governance’s
weekly briefings of high officers.
She turned from her chat with a
couple of other officers and gave them a friendly wave goodbye. But that warm demeanor had melted away upon
seeing the cadet.
“What’s the problem, Grainger?”
He simply held up his
communicator, which was displaying a message from one of the Governance’s outer
provinces. It was Director Tuun’s base,
and it was urgent! The projected info
flashed text and images for references, and the admiral got exactly what the
situation was.
Shan looked around to make sure
no one else could hear them.
“So, no one’s been able to
contact them since,” she whispered.
“Three days…Correct,” Cadet
Grainger simply stated. He was actually
shaking! Shan reasoned that he, perhaps,
had someone special to him in the Pluto settlements.
“And what about Director Graffs
and her people in all this…why didn’t the Charon’s Watch notice this?”
“That’s the other problem,
Admiral…” The cadet entered a command on
his device and the holographic info switched to data on the town-sized base on
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. “Watcher 7
went silent not much longer when Pluto did!”
Admiral Shan thought for a long
moment within the bustling base.
Grainger patiently waited for her next orders.
“Pretty bad when the watchman
goes missing, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am…you want me to
contact Watcher 6 and have them send
over a team, ma’am?”
“Which indicates that Watcher 6
either doesn’t know what happened to their buddies on Watcher 7, or they’re
waiting for my call,” she said with some irritation.
Grainger, slight in build;
young, measured his response. “Frankly,
Admiral, we were having difficulties reaching them, too!”
The towering Shan sharply
twisted her head to face the cadet directly.
“It, it was some kind of
interference, but Watcher 6 is all-go, Admiral.”
“And do you think it’s any
coincidence that 6 is experiencing some interference,
Grainger,” she retorted as she, now, whipped out her own communicator and began
to place lines of communications. “One
by one, Cadet, we seem to be losing our stations in the Kuiper region…” Not wanting to cause panic among the officers
in the immediate area, Admiral Shan furtively shared her contacts with Grainger
and quietly reached one of the commanding officials of a secret status within
Sol Governance’s military…
CHAPTER 3
ABOARD THE JUSTIFIER, SOL GOVERNANCE’S SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT SOLAR CRAFT;
ORBITING NEREID, MOON OF NEPTUNE…
Joden Modune was still in the
process of writing up his list of projects for his crew on his terminal when he
had gotten a call from headquarters. He
was already running late—his medium-size special operations team was finished
running tests and drills and were waiting for Joden’s next orders. But the fact that he was being called from
HQ, versus receiving a message informing him of an upcoming call, there was no
doubt that it was something important!
“Jaimee, I’ve got a comm coming
from Pacificalis,” Joden informed his second-in-command. “I’m going to need you to get everyone geared
up.”
“Right, boss,” she punched out
over the line.
The chiming from communications
was not even registering with Joden. His
mind started to wander off into various scenarios what headquarters wanted this
time around…
“Modune, Ma’am,” he finally said
to Admiral Reshma Shan. She wasn’t even
impatient with him about how long it took for Joden to answer.
“Joe, we’ve got some problems
going on around the Pluto area and it looks like it’s heading your way,” she shot out. The admiral’s eyes were periodically bouncing
up and down and off to the side from various screens that were out of the line
of sight on the broadcast, Joden noticed.
“For some reason no one in the system can get in contact with Pluto, Watch
7, and, now, Watch 6…”
Joden froze in his chair. She was right: The
Justifier was next in line! The
admiral continued.
“We’ve already notified Watcher
5—no sense in telling the other stations until necessary. They have enough to worry about…Director
Nadeem is sending over a squadron from 5 to join up with you all, Joe. By that time, based on the timing that we’ve
lost communications with everyone so far, you and Director Nadeem should be in a
position to carry out whatever tactics and strategies you need to do to
confront whatever it is.”
“Ma’am,” Joden asked with a snap
of his head toward his monitor.
“Honestly, Joe, we don’t
know.” The admiral finally sat back;
looking at Joden straight in the eyes—as it were—over her monitor, her head
shaking for bewilderment. “Cadet
Grainger was the last to talk with Director Furth before Watcher 6 went down…Grainger
lost total contact with 6!”
All that the admiral could do at
that time was shrug. Joden silently
nodded in confirmation.
“Good luck, Joe,” Admiral Shan
said with seemingly sincerity. “Keep me
updated…I’ll let you know if there are any developments.”
“Understood, Ma’am.”
The admiral cut the line; leaving
a blank space where the projected holographic image once levitated. Joden, his dark-set eyes unblinking, stared
at that spot for several more seconds.
The thirty-something captain of the “undeclared
class” solar ship had a passing thought.
“Sentient, give me a map of the
solar region, depicting Uranus and all the way to the Oort cloud…also, input
symbols for all Watcher bases, space stations, and ships in the area in real
time, please.”
In the middle of Captain Modune’s
cabin appeared a large, holographic “textured map.” The region of space that the captain
requested was shown in slightly stylized details with touch-capabilities for
the user to easily move any images depicted.
The map also showed The
Justifier’s location within the representation. Captain Modune’s crew was orbiting just
outside of Nereid; between it and Neptune—which filled most of the vista of the
ship’s windows and monitors displaying the near-space in Justifier’s neighborhood.
Modune maneuvered the room-sized
map with the movement of his hands so that the map showed a close-up of Sol’s
region with Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, the Kuiper Belt, and the Oort cloud… all were iconofied, but realistic enough to
get which planets and moons were at play.
He, then, walked up to the portion of the hologram that displayed a
large swath of the Oort and Kuiper sections—for it seemed whatever was coming
its way to Neptune had originated from there.
If not, then passed through,
perhaps.
Modune thought on the various
articles and media reports he’d read or watched about some of the scientific
projects in both the Belt and the Cloud.
He could not think of any current research project going on in those
regions at that time. Nevertheless…He
addressed his ‘Sentient’ once again.
“Sentient, search for any
scientific research, for any military operations, or any natural, known
occurrences going on in this region of space—“
Captain Modune drew a large, irregular box that framed most of the space
depicting the region.
The Justifier’s computer system took a little longer than
usual before it super-imposed images of boxes, floating telemetry, and its
female voice responded.
“There are currently no activities
of scientific research, or military operations, nor any natural occurrences
transpiring at this time that are outside the usual cycles and schedules.”
“Then what’s that blip you have
there,” Modune refuted, as he walked up to a portion of the holographic
map. “Here—around the 10 to the fourth
power AU?” Modune touched the irregular-shaped
beacon, but no information emitted from the floating shape.
“That, Captain, is one of the
Governance’s distance-markers,” the computer responded; somewhat
condescendingly.
“Damn it, Sentient, I’ve flown
the Sol for years. I know what and where our distance-markers
are! I don’t remember that one in particular.”
“Shall I notify Watcher 5’s
squadron captains of this apparent anomaly, Captain Modune?”
“Please…while you’re at it, tell
the crew to get situated and then fly us out to those coordinates.”
“Yes, Captain. And what of the crews of Pluto State and
station Watchers 7 and 6?”
Modune paused in his tracks;
getting his travel gear ready. “That
squadron from Watcher 5 should catch up with us by the time we get to Pluto,
right?”
“Correct, Captain. But we will by-pass station Watcher 6 and
Pluto’s crew on the course you’ve given…with all the event anomalies going on
in the Pluto-area recently, should we not stop to check on them?”
By this time, Captain Modune had
finished donning his activity jumpsuit.
“I figured the ships from Watcher 5’s squadron should fly over to
Watcher 6 and check on Pluto. They have
enough crew to divide up the task between the base on Pluto and the Watch
station on Charon…How does that compute?
Is my logic sound, Sentient?”
“Indeed. But, may I ask, Captain, why you feel The Justifier should take on the task of
seeking out this apparent anomaly at distance-marker 10 to the fourth power?”
Now, Modune was holding his
personal space-helmet and standing next to the door to his suite. “First of all, Sentient, Justifier’s crew is a nondeclared operation—since that anomaly is
unknown as well as the status of all the stations in the Pluto-area, it would
be better for our team to take it on
instead of Watcher 5’s squadron…should the situation out there turn out to be
dire, Justifier’s crew should quietly
inform Headquarters.
“Secondly, I don’t think that’s
a distance-marker. I think it’s a Trojan
Horse!”
CHAPTER 4
It had been nearly a day later
since Captain Modune’s crew was activated by Admiral Shan for the
Pluto-situation. The Justifier’s young crew of twenty had already passed planetary
Station Watcher 6 and was headed out for Pluto and its moon, Charon, with
Squadron B close behind. Captain
Liz’Beth’s team from that squadron was assigned to Charon’s Watch planetary
gate while Captain Modune’s special ops crew had the biggest assignment in the
planetary station located on Pluto itself.
Modune had gotten word from Captain Lance Ward of Squadron A that he and
his crew had finally reached Watcher 6 station…
“Gone,” Captain Modune heard
himself say a bit louder than he meant to during his communique with Captain
Ward. Modune was in the main cabin area
of The Justifier, so all of his crew
could hear the conversation. “Captain,
when you say, ‘gone’—“
“As in it looks like the
freakin’ Rapture just happened,” the middle-ager said with absolutely no
irony! He was peering at Captain Modune
over his spectacles on the connection while his crew, in the background, could
be seen quickly working on their terminals and scurrying about! “Tables and chairs tipped over; dishes on the
floors; equipment strewn about…”
Modune thought for a moment as
he glanced about his own cabin, seeing what his own, tight-knit crew thought so
far. He was met with shrugs, stares, and
arched brows.
“So,” Modune ventured on; trying
to understand a bit more, “no signs of blood or weapons used?”
“Right…now, Joe, don’t get me
wrong. It looks as if the whole damn
station left in a hurry—like they were trying to catch a shuttle or
something. But I wouldn’t say it looks
like there was a struggle here, as such.”
Now Captain Modune’s team really
looked upon him with incredulity!
“Speaking of shuttle,” Modune
went on, “what about 6’s shuttles and droids?”
“All here,” Captain Ward said
matter of factly. “We just checked their
task records and there’s not a single entry for any of the shuttles, droids—or
emergency pods, for that matter—that were engaged. Hell, even the station’s kitchens are in
decent shape!”
“Food, Captain,” Jaimee Box,
Modune’s second-in-command, asked with a whisper; out of range of Captain
Ward’s sight. “Was anything left
on?” Others in Justifier’s cabin were nodding in consent.
“Was anything left boiling or in
one of the cooking machines, Lance,” Modune tried.
Captain Ward was already shaking
his head. “Nope…not so much as a kettle
of tea was on! Even their Sentients
greeted us upon our arrival as if nothing were wrong! Huh…I think whatever got our people also got
to their Sentients. We went around and
around with them trying to see if they saw anything or recorded whatever
happened.”
“And…?”
“Nothing! It’s like someone wiped the crew’s entire
computer system and re-started them!”
Commander Box made a questioning
face to the response. Others in the
cabin looked away at some corner; trying to make sense of the whole ordeal.
“Well, that pretty much leaves
you with checking their on-board recorders then, Lance,” Joden said after
gauging his crew in the command center.
Captain Ward had leaned back in
his chair with a knowing sigh. “And that, my friend, is when things get even
more interesting…they all stopped!”
“Stopped?” Now Modune’s crew had gone beyond curious
looks to that of concern. Captain Modune
went on. “Every recorder on the
station?”
“Well, that’s what my team has
encountered so far, Joe,” Captain Ward said as he looked off to the side;
verifying with one of his officers.
“We’re still in the process of checking and re-checking those we’ve
already gone through—we get a look at Station 6’s crew from about two days
ago. And…” Ward shrugged at that point; his head shaking
with bewilderment. “Every damn recorder stopped and goes blank at the exact same time! Not just the holographs; even our 2D backups,
Joe!”
“Lance, what do they show the
crew doing just before the records blank out?”
“Well, the ones from Watcher 7’s
command cabin show Director Graffs’ crew positioning themselves at their
stations…I’m not sure I’d say they seemed like they were in distress or
anything—“
“But purposeful,” Captain Modune
interjected with the nod of his head.
“Yeah…as for the other bases,
Joe,” Captain Ward said over the communique with a shrug, “it’s like they
didn’t even see anything coming…What are you thinking, Captain?”
“Trojan Horse,” Captain Modune
said as he brought up his search-history from his personal quarters. He shared the entire search-event with
Captain Ward through their communique.
“Right after Admiral Shan assigned me to this, I did a little research
of the Pluto area…I can’t be exactly sure, Lance, but I have a suspicion about
one of the Governance’s stationary markers out there. I couldn’t bring up any info on it—“
“Distance-marker 10,” Ward said
with a smirk as he leaned back in his command seat.
Joden froze for surprise. “So, you’ve noticed, too?”
“Mmm…I figured it was just
another piece of real estate that we didn’t have logged into our system. Shows that you’re far more observant than I
am, Captain!”
“I’ve got an idea for testing my
hypothesis…” Everyone in Captain Modune’s
command suite shot a look in his direction.
“I’ll contact you whatever the results are.”
Ward nodded and disconnected
their communique.
CHAPTER 5
Admiral Reshma Shan’s basic idea
for the Pluto-area mystery was to have the planetary space station Watcher 5
send over one squadron with Captain Modune’s team and have the squadron divide
up in two—that way there was a team to investigate the situations in station Watcher
number 6; the other half of the squadron go to Watcher number 7, which was on
Pluto’s moon of Charon; and leave the main job of the station on Pluto for Modune and his crew.
Modune and his crew were one of
those special operations assets that military space powers relied on when they
needed a vanguard to check out a situation and to triage whether or not it was
worth said-space powers to expend a more serious presence in the outer region
of the Sol system. Aside from the
government of the Sol Governance, even private space powers had adopted such
philosophies…and the situation that The
Justifier crew had found themselves in, definitely needed some serious
triaging!
Captain Modune had the crew land
Justifier down in Pluto’s craggy
mountainous region nicknamed ‘the Snakeskins.’
Over the years of developing the planetoid of Pluto, the Sol Governance
had learned that the series of mountains were a good hiding place, given that
the region’s surface would often breakup various signals! And if Captain Modune was right about the
house-sized, distance marker in the Kuiper belt region being some kind of
Trojan deception, then Justifier’s
crew would fight fire with fire…he left that task to his second-hand; Commander
Jaimee Box.
In the meantime, the Captain had
to set off with a smaller party to go to the Governance’s Pluto base where
Director Morelli Tuun and the entire Tombaugh Municipal had not been heard from
for several days! Deep down inside,
Captain Modune doubted that Admiral Shan would have approved of him splitting
up an already small special ops team and sending one fraction to the small city
of Tombaugh and the rest hiding in their ship within the Snakeskin mountains—waiting
for Commander Box to spring whatever trap awaited them in the Kuiper belt… but
Joden could not see any other way of tackling the events in the Pluto region.
Captain Modune’s auxiliary
team’s tiny speeder craft, chevroned in shape and flat, sped into the small
city-base of Tombaugh; named after a then-American astronomer whom discovered
Pluto 287 years previously. To call the
municipal a “city” was actually artistic.
Tombaugh was really just a large base comprising of clusters of domes
and roadways…the biggest structure in the town was Tombaugh’s main, towering
dish communications system the size of one of Erth’s high-rise buildings. But of the approximate population of 5,000,
not a single person was in sight; walking around in their space suite, driving
along the utilitarian road system, or otherwise! Captain Modune reminded the 5 others in the
speeder what Captain Ward had said earlier about the recordings of the three
bases. And how the holographic records
simply stopped and station 6 was simply abandoned.
“This is just weird,” Corporal
Eric Esstint commented as Captain Modune piloted the speeder to a landing
platform within Tombaugh.
“Do you think it’s possible they
willingly left,” Sergeant Beatrice Pfilster speculated as she and the others
gathered their gear. The team was
already suited up in their space suits and were filing out of the ship. They were communicating via their suits’ comm
system. “May be some kind of political
dispute? I’ve seen in the media how
there are more independence movements within a lot of these outposts beyond
Mars and the Asteropia Belt!”
“But how would that fit with the
holo-recordings and the 2-D backups all stopping at the same time,”
Lieutenant Nolla Massett, the second-in-command of the auxiliary team, asked
with incredulousness.
“If it were some organized
effort, I could see that,” Sergeant Chris Sheets added, as the whole team stood
and thought things through; yet by the parked speeder. Sheets’ point had resonated with the rest of
the team as they all nodded.
“Alright,” Captain Modune
finally said, after waiting to see if anyone else in the team had any other
input, “since Tombaugh is such a small locale we’ll go ahead and split up in 2
groups…Nolla, why don’t you take Sheets and Esstint. Pfilster; Utan, that leaves the three of us…”
The 2 groups headed in different
directions within the base.
“Everyone’s suit charged up in
case we need to use our jets,” the captain said over the comm as the team went
on with their mission.
“Charged, Sir,” came the unison response over the comm. Joden merely nodded to himself…
A few hours had passed by and
the auxiliary team found nothing of significance, outside of more of the same
abandoned space-ghost town they had already seen: like what Captain Lance Ward’s crew had found
in space station Watcher 6, the base on Pluto had no signs of struggle nor force; civilian items simply left in
place, not dropped or anything; and
yet no people! Even more, all of the
known Governance-issued vehicles were parked in their respective docks or
platforms. Modune’s team were able to
tell this given the solar system-wide government had standard procedures for
stowage of ships and other crafts when they were not in use.
It did not take long for the
auxiliary team’s 2 groups to search the entire outpost, given its size. All 6 were back in the mid-section of the
town, congregated by the towering dish communications structure. Then Captain Modune’s comm chirped. It was Commander Box calling from The Justifier. The rest of Modune’s team glanced about as he
took the call.
“Jaimee,” the captain said; a
bit anxious, “have you started that mission with the distance-marker yet?”
“Yes, Sir…about an hour ago,
actually.” Modune and Box were visually
connected. He was using his com that was
embedded in his space suit on his left forearm.
“I’m patching you all to the live-feed.
It’ll just be a few more minutes before the decoy reaches the
proper-space of the distance-marker…if that’s what it is!”
“Great,” he said as he looked
around at his small team; indicating that they needed to link onto their own
visual com to watch as well. “We got
nothing down here, Jaimee…heard from Ward or Liz’Beth?”
“I heard from them,
Captain. But it was the same as you: still no signs of any of the personnel on
either Watcher 6 nor Charon!”
There was nothing else for them
to do at that point but wait for the secondary mission to proceed. Captain Modune glanced at his team to gauge their unspoken opinions…mostly there
were shrugs. Corporal Thomas Utan was
the only one with a question.
“Decoy, Sir?”
“Yeah, the Commander and I
thought we’d test the waters and see if that marker is a trap—“
“This Trojan Horse you spoke
of?”
“Only, we’re sending something out to check on the ‘Horse’ before us,” Sergeant Pfilster remarked; nodding
her head with approval of the tactic.
“Yep,” Modune said. “We had an exploratory pod to spare, so Box
had Cadet Mohadeen retrofit it with fake life readings…Alright, we’re going to
wait here while we monitor your mission, Justifier;
just in case there’s some kind of action that may implicate Pluto’s base…” Now Modune shook his head; still bewildered
of the situation.
Commander Box was watching The Justifier’s main screen at the head
of the command suite’s room as she spoke.
“The decoy should be entering…now.”
On everyone’s monitor, the live
feed from the decoy-pod displayed the floating, rectangular marker—having 6
sides; which typically were glorified, 5-storied electronic boxes that
displayed information about the local space-region should any space craft had
broken down and lost main, electronic functions. In a word, distance-markers were basically
floating information traffic signs for space-traffic, and served as emergency stations.
They were prevalent in the Sol system’s inner-core region with all of
Humanity’s permanent space-traffic. And they were big enough to house a
small ship of people with nefarious intentions…definitely not big enough to conceal a battle ship, but, again, in the Greek
legend of the Trojan Horse, all it took was a few men to open the gates…
CHAPTER 6
SOL GOVERNANCE’S HEADQUARTERS. PACIFICALIS ISLAND…
“…Admiral,” David Thompson, one
of the other cadets at the Sol Governance’s headquarters, called out to her as
she was about to board her personal craft to attend a global meeting in
continental Europe. She had just stepped
on the platform to board the planetary craft when Thompson had stopped her. She had a very indignant look on her face
when she turned to see who it was.
“Ma’am…you’re definitely going to want to see this! It’s about The Justif—“
“Say no more, Cadet,” she
stopped him. The Justifier crew was never
to be mentioned out in public! Admiral
Shan called over the pilot of the ship, and with a snapping nod of
understanding, the pilot ran back into the craft and disengaged the engine.
Admiral Shan was following Cadet
Thompson back to her personal quarters where it was secured for them to talk. After her door sealed shut, she started to
curse the young one for nearly exposing the non-declared mission before he beat
her to the punch.
“They’re gone, Ma’am!”
She stood in shock, and perhaps
not sure she understood the cadet. “You
mean Justifier’s crew?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Just like the bases out in Pluto’s region…Cadet
Grainger is busy trying to contact them one more time in the secured room after
we got word from space station Watcher 5.
I thought you might want to know before going on your meeting, Ma’am.”
The admiral’s mood went straight
from boiling hot to down-right alarmed!
How does an administrator deal with the fact that their special ops team
sent to survey and secure a situation ends up missing just like those they were meant to help? There was no getting around it…whoever, or whatever, was out there in the outer
regions of the Sol system was very close to checkmating planet Erth at this
rate!
“Ma’am…?”
“Yes, Cadet…I, I think it’s time
we convey an emergency meeting of the Governance at once! We don’t have time for a physical sit-down
right now…have Grainger help you set up the necessary contacts.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Thompson snapped,
and he raced out of her secured quarters.
CHAPTER 7
Even though Admiral Shan was
already in Sol Governance’s headquarters it was no guarantee that the hundreds
of other solar system-wide officials would be there to conveniently meet with
her! Indeed, about half of the several
hundreds of representatives of the Governance’s Erthen, lunar, and space
station sovereigns were in their home-regions, tending to other businesses in other
parts of the Sol system, or just plain old on vacation and it was pretty much
impossible to find them! It made no
matter. One of the cornerstone ordinances
of the Governance was when there was an existential emergency, quorum-rules
were superseded by that
emergency! Whether members physically
attended meetings or whether they met via virtual quorums, the existential
emergency took precedence.
There were a few times in its 91
years of existence that the Sol Governance had to convene due to existential
threats: one time was when an asteroid
clipped one of the moons of Jupiter and caused a “shower” of meteors to
pulverize nearby space stations and lunar settlements that, in total,
represented approximately 10 million solar system citizens! Another time was entirely Human-made… when a
nationalistic resurgence of an ancient lunar culture known as Tellmondo had
sprung up throughout near-Erth space and those of ethnic Tellmondonian lineage
had gone on some bombing sprees; killing tens of thousands of non-Tells. Indeed, some in the solar system had
considered the military battles against the revived Tellmondonian movement as
the Sol system’s first “Solar War!”
Since such upheavals, the Sol system
had been relatively quiet. Until now…
“…Admiral Shan, I consider this
a betrayal,” privateer real estate owner, Vornan Huntworth, scolded over the
virtual link for the Governance emergency meeting. Admiral Shan had simply conducted the meeting
from her personal quarters since it was of high-quality security and the lack
of time for all of them to travel. The
suite was hers, personally, and she paid for the higher cost for being in “the
nice neighborhood” within the many halls of Governance headquarters. The meeting had been going on for
approximately thirty minutes. “Everyone
knows I own several space stations out by station Watcher 5…my people that work
those space stations and the stations
themselves are next in line of whatever this is that’s coming our way! You should have informed me the second you
knew about this situation!”
Shan knew it was not logical,
but she wanted to strike the tiny holographic image of the middle-aged man for
being so narrow-minded at such a time.
“Mr. Huntworth, I suggest that you focus on helping the Council find out
what, exactly, it is that we’re even dealing with! Look, I told you I sent out a special
operations team to get a handle on the events before we reacted—“
“And how’s that going for ya,”
the wealthy real estate owner said sarcastically.
There was a thud in the virtual
meeting from the Council’s chair, Xi Zehan; one of the Governance’s youngest
chair, being in her 30s. “Members,
please, we do not have time for this bickering…” Chair Xi’s holo-image turned to look upon
Admiral Shan—from Shan’s point of view.
“Admiral, I have to admit, Member Huntworth has a valid point. Had the Council been aware of these events,
we would have been days in advanced on working with you on this problem…is
there anything else you can tell us about the Justifier mission that might help us speed this along?”
The admiral was already shaking
her head. “No more than what I’ve
already told the Council…like I said, the last transmission we got from Justifier’s crew was of them sending
some kind of probe to an uncharted distance-marker that they, I guess, had some
kind of suspicion about.”
The hundreds of holograms of the
representatives, arranged in tight-rectangles in a grid-fashion with each
respective Member in front of Shan as she sat at her desk, was all evenly projected
as a wall of tiny faces with telemetry floating about. Each user of the virtual interfacer had the
option of enlarging, highlighting, and other editing features of these
meetings. The chair, whomever it was at
any time, controlled who got to speak and they were known to simply cut any Member’s
transmitted image if that Member went on too long, or became too hostile!
“A distance-marker,” Alexandr
Tulman, the president of Israel and another younger Member, asked
incredulously.
“I know, Member Tulman,” Admiral
Shan acknowledged. “My people and I
didn’t understand why they were so fixated on a space-marker when all these
events were going on. But Captain
Modune’s team kept referring to the Trojan Horse legend…” She shrugged as others in the meeting voiced
concerns, questions, and criticisms.
Again, that ancient sound of a
block of wood being struck by a wooden gavel.
Chair Xi went on. “I think we
should send special ops to every
marker in the solar system!”
Now, there was an uncomfortable
silence until Member Veronica Peters, the CEO of Peters’ Bank—Sol, spoke
up. “Every
distance-marker, Chair Xi? In the
whole of the Governance? Ma’am, do you
know how many thousands of
space-markers there are?”
Admiral Shan began rubbing her
face out of frustration from the arguing in the meeting! She said nothing.
“I do,” Chair Xi responded. “And I know we have enough personnel to
investigate each and every one of those markers! If it’s true what Admiral Shan said about Justifier’s crew believing a
distance-marker as being some kind of decoy, then, what about the thousands of other markers in the Sol system? Or, at least, some pretending to be the Governance’s markers!”
By then, the virtual meeting
erupted with jeers from most of the Members in the Council. And, again, the gavel was rapping against its
block.
“Based on the timing of events,
fellow Members,” Chair Xi informed
the Council, “I move that I emplace emergency codifications of the Sol
Governance’s Constitution and assume emergency powers…Guards,” she exclaimed as
she summoned them, whom were out of visual range, “assemble my staff at my
office—drag them there if you must. We
are now officially under Existential Emergency Codification…you all must go
through your constitutional procedures appropriately…” At that point, Chair Xi returned her gaze to
her own holographic wall of representatives.
“My fellow Members, we all know the procedures on our end. Some of you are new
to your positions. I suggest that you
consult your top staff and refer to
your manuals.”
No one else in the virtual
assembly said a word. Indeed, many of
the Council’s Members were solemn or nearly at tears! Chair Xi Zehan looked directly at Admiral
Reshma Shan; no emotion that Shan could see.
“Admiral…despite your poor judgement
in delaying to contact the Council, I commend you for bringing this to our
attention.” The admiral silently nodded
back a ‘thank you.’ Xi went on to say to
the admiral, “You’ll have to send reinforcements to space station Watcher 5,
Admiral. Coordinate with Director Nadeem
and see what they all need out there.”
“Yes, Chair Xi.”
Chair Xi once again looked upon
the hundreds of thumbnail-holos silently looking directly at her. “Alright, Members…So, now, we need to
redeploy some of our forces to monitor any
false space-markers we may have in the whole solar system!”
CHAPTER 8
Hours had gone by since Admiral
Reshma Shan convened the Sol Governance’s emergency meeting, and there was
still no sign of not only the Justifier’s
crew, but nothing from Director Dian Graffs’ crew from lunar station Watcher 7,
nor Director Heather Furth’s people in Watcher 6, and the same went with the
Planet-State Pluto base under Director Morelli Tuun…it had now been days since anyone from the Governance
had heard from those soldiers! And at
some point, whatever the phenomenon was, it was heading straight for Erth!
Admiral Shan needed time to
brainstorm. She let her staff take over
for her in the command center as she bunkered down in her command suite. She pulled up all her terminal capabilities
to game out possibilities of various, unlikely-to-likely invasions within the
solar system. Her personal Sentient swatted
down most of the hypotheses—from cult-terrorist organizations connected to the
Tellmondonians, to Sentient programs that had gone rogue and were scheming to
obliterate the Human race!
But there was one possible
scenario that the admiral’s Sentient kept going back to with every model she
threw at it…
“…I’m sorry, Sentient, but
Humans have heard about the threat of alien invasions for hundreds of years
now! The only other beings we know about
outside of Erth are the Callistonian slugs!”
“I know,” her Sentient
responded; a bit pompous, “and you Humans were so disappointed in them since
they weren’t your 20th century, little green men…that is, until you
started harvesting the poor species for your super-speed space travels!”
“Ok, Sentient…one of the last
things I need to hear right now is a lecture from a computer about how its masters are imperfect!”
“Ouch…”
Shan got up from her seat and
began to pace. “So, you really don’t see
any of the political groups in the outer parts of the solar system even having
the capability to build ships to go this fast?”
“No, Admiral. Not based on current media reports. Only wealthy citizens within Sol’s core worlds currently have such abilities. And, as of now, based on governmental reports
and cultural media, there are no indications any of those wealthy citizens have
a hand in this. Besides the near-light
speed abilities, who else of the Human race would have the ability to disable all of the Governance’s Sentients without having to stop, and then tinker with all those systems? To say nothing of the mass abductions at each space station!
“With each model that we game,
as you put it, Admiral, the likelihood always comes down to some alien agency.”
Admiral Shan went silent for a
long while as she thought on every morsel of information she had gotten between
the Governance’s emergency meeting and the one she, currently, was in with her
Sentient. She continued to pace;
glancing at telemetry floating at various terminal sites…
“You know,” she finally said,
“it’s a damn shame that we, Humans, feel this way of the possibility of an
alien encounter. Long ago, there was a
time when we relished the idea of even seeing
one with one of those old rovers Humans used to send to other planets! But now…”
She solemnly shook her head; finding a place to rest her hands on as she
stopped her pacing.
The Sentient’s chime-indicator
rang. “Admiral, Doctor Franks is at your
door, Ma’am.”
She straightened up from her
slouched position. “Thanks, Sentient…let
her in, please.”
The door to the admiral’s
quarters slid opened and the tall, slender woman—elderly—wasted no time as she
plowed in. She wore a modern-day robe
attire; a style that was heavily influenced by the old Tellmondonian ways. It was rumored by some at the Governance’s
headquarters that, perhaps, she was a Tell’ descendent. She was one of many Governance’s scientists
that belonged to the semi-autonomous institution called the Physical Universities. Indeed, the Universities employed many
Tellmondonians and other cultural movements and political-thoughts that often
served more as a counter-balance to the military powers within the solar
system-wide Governance body than they served as the Governance’s scientists! “Reshma, have you heard what they’re doing?”
The admiral looked at her friend
and colleague with confusion.
Dr. Franks tsked, rolled her
eyes up toward the ceiling and spoke to the Sentient. “Sentient, please show the admiral the news of
today from the Governance’s Members!”
Immediately, a holographic
sphere appeared in the center of Admiral Shan’s quarters. It was a recorded news-feed from various
sources throughout the solar system. It
was news that happened since the admiral’s meeting with the Governance’s Members…
The media report showed recorded
events of Sol Governance military soldiers from various branches of the solar
government lining up in large hangars throughout the solar system. Most of the soldiers were already boarding
massive battle spaceships, apparently all sparked by the alarming
disappearances of space bases further out in the solar system! But
it was this phenomenon that the admiral could not share with anyone outside the
Governance’s Members-institution.
“Is this the Members,” Dr.
Franks tersely put to her friend and colleague.
“Yes,” Admiral Shan responded
directly. She did not even try to do the
usual elusive replies that government officials often do when addressing a
difficult subject. “Look, Urla, I know
how the Governance’s scientists feel about first uses of military force, but it
should tell you that it must be something so serious that the Members ordered a
massing of troops without warning! Urla,
things are so serious that I can’t even risk telling you right now!”
The elderly woman flinched out
of surprise. She looked upon the admiral
with incredulous eyes. “Is this a First
Contact scenario, Reshma?”
“Urla…” Admiral Shan gave her a warning look.
The scientist nodded; giving up
her protest. “What can we, at the
Universities, do to help, Admiral?”
“Just—please, keep an eye out
for anything highly unusual…” The scientist made a confused looked with her
face, but Admiral Shan kept her focus. “I
really can’t say much more, Urla. If any
of the scientists, staff, or even the students see highly irregular things
going on you’ve got to tell one of us from the Governance.”
Dr. Franks was obviously caught
off guard with such vague—yet, aggressively serious—remarks by her friend, that
she almost felt that their friendship was being tested. Dr. Franks turned to leave the admiral’s
suite; feeling dejected.
“Don’t fly near any
distance-markers…”
Admiral Shan’s whispered warning
stopped Dr. Franks. She turned to face
her long-time friend. Understanding what
the admiral was trying to do, Franks silently nodded a ‘thanks’ to her, and
left the admiral’s suite.
CHAPTER 9
Hours later, Admiral Reshma
Shan’s suite…
When she got out of bed to
answer the call it was just after 2 in the morning. She still had her uniform on from the
previous day!
Shan glanced at the interface to
see who it was and to scan any news-flashes she might need to know about. She engaged the comm and it brought up Cadet
Shawn Grainger’s young face. “Report,
Cadet…”
“Ma’am, Communications just got
the best lead of what’s happened to Justifier’s
crew!”
Well, that caused the admiral to
shoot straight up from her bed! She
listened on.
“It’s footage from a private
automaton that works for TQF Kuiper. It
was working on a mining project for its company on Pluto…now, it was several
miles away from Tombaugh municipal, where Captain Modune and some of his
officers were located at the time, but the recording is good enough to give us
a clue what happened!”
The admiral merely nodded; waiting
for the cadet to patch the recording to her comm…
The footage was a bit shaky and
slightly out of focus. Given that the
autonomous mining-droid was one of several robotic droids working at a quarry
when it captured the footage, it was no surprise to Admiral Shan. Indeed, she had a thought, upon seeing some
of the other auto-miners in the recording.
“Grainger, how far did this
recording go?”
“As in, was it able to function
when the recordings at the other sites all simultaneously stopped?”
By this time, Admiral Shan was
walking over to her terminal. “Exactly.”
“The recording goes on for
several more minutes—really, a lot
longer. We just extracted the footage
relevant to our investigation.”
At that point, the recording was
still of nothing more than of a landscape on Pluto with the township of
Tombaugh in the distance with all its lights and a few of the other auto-miners
working.
“I still wonder why those automatons were not affected by the
blackout, like what happened at our bases,” she said out loud; more to herself
than to the cadet.
Both had gone silent as they
watched and listened to the recording…
The icy and rocky placid scene on
Pluto with town-Tombaugh in the distance and the autonomous drones digging
suddenly flashed brightly—as if a star had exploded! The flashing pulsated, but unevenly, and
within seven seconds the landscape went right back to the mostly-dark setting
it was before. Even the modular-town’s
lights were still on…
Via his comm, Cadet Grainger
could see the admiral’s face freeze for a few seconds, then the inevitable confused
look. “What the hell just happened,
Cadet?”
He waited before responding; the
slightest sardonic smile on his face. “That,
Admiral Shan, was our Visitors…”
She sat frozen. Cadet Grainger took advantage of the
silence. He began working the shared
recording that was linked to both of their comms. He manipulated the recording to go to a
moment of the brilliant flashes—where even the shadows of the township’s bulbous
buildings were stretched out by several yards, due to those flashes of
lights! He then let the still image
slowly play back…indeed, so slow, that Admiral Shan could finally see several
structures within the lights!
“My word,” was all that she
said; her eyes wide-opened.
“We wouldn’t have discovered
them without the station’s Sentient. It
tried to tighten up the vid, so we could get a better understanding of the
objects, but they were simply too fast and the light too brilliant…Sentient
clocked them at 198,000 miles a second—“
“That’s the same reading that
Director Tuun’s team had measured on one of the recordings we viewed…right
before they all vanished and the recordings blanked out!”
“Exactly, Ma’am…”
Admiral Shan took a few seconds
to do a little calculating. “Well, you
know what that means, Cadet Grainger:
first of all, given what our Sentient has discovered for us, it’s safe
to say that these phenomena are not
natural. And given our Visitors are traveling a bit faster than light-speed—“
“It means they are strategically
hitting us at certain points…otherwise, at the rate they were traveling they
would’ve made it to Erth several days ago!”
“Right…” She was nodding at that point; deep into the
sciences that the Sol Governance had taught all
its political officials. “That would
make sense why that automaton was
able to record all this, and for them to even continue to function at all!”
“Well, in that case, Admiral, it shows a weakness
on the Visitors’ end…given that we know
they disrupt all recordings while
they abducted our people, it stands to reason they should have taken out all those automatons on Pluto near Tombaugh;
since they also have visual recording!”
Admiral Shan was nodding
excitedly at that point; glad to see the Governance had some kind of
advantage…in the old days, it was called ‘home field advantage.’
Now Admiral Shan’s eyes
inquisitively looked upon Cadet Grainger’s image on her comm. “All the same, have you all continued to try
to reach Justifier?”
“Yes, Ma’am. We tried several times with no results.”
She simply nodded in turn. They both sat quietly; looking at the
looped-recording of that scene the cadet had shown to the admiral.
“Cadet,” Shan finally said after
their long, pensive thoughts, “excellent work!
Now I’m going to need you and whoever’s available to help set up another emergency meeting with the
Members!”
“Ma’am!”
And the link was disconnected.
CHAPTER 10
Hours after Admiral Reshma Shan
had her meeting via comm-link with Cadet Shawn Grainger, she met with the Sol
Governance’s Members once again. This time, with the information Cadet
Grainger had revealed to her, the meeting went a lot better for the Admiral
about ‘the Visitors’—a nomenclature that simply stuck in all the discourse
among the Governance’s officials and its ranks.
Indeed, between those two meetings
of the Members and each Member’s respective agencies or companies, the
Governance was able to come up with a working plan to combat that FTL-tech
enemy.
With the newly-installed
garrisons at every distance-markers
in the Sol system, the Governance Council would “deputize” Members’ citizens
and company workers in the region within
Saturn, Jupiter, and the Asteropia asteroid belt, so that every individual had
the legal authority to carry weapons on their person at all times, with the
understanding that such enactment by the Governance was temporary. The deputization would end when the threat of
the Visitors was over, or close to ending, at best. Given the movements of the Visitors was just
beyond that region, having citizens give succor to the Governance’s military
was like doubling the Governance’s defense forces for free. There were objections by several Members of
the Governance’s body, but given the situation with the Visitors there was not
enough time to debate the deputization plan…at least, that’s what the
Governance’s Council Chair, Xi Zehan, said
was the reason. It was well-known that
she, and many other Members of the body, had always been biased for ‘weaponizing’ Sol’s citizenry as a
whole! Other presented plans by Xi for
legislating such policy were defeated several times in the Council’s procedures
in time past. But now, given the threat from the Visitors, most had anticipated
success of her deputization bill.
There was nothing like the
threat of a foreign or alien
aggressor to galvanize such nationalistic legislation in a government’s body…
Also, the Governance would
deploy a relatively new weapon designed by its scientists a few decades prior. The Centralized Collider was based on the
principles of the old atom-smasher technology of the 20th and 21st
centuries. Generally speaking, the only
main difference was instead of needing nearly 20 miles of a small tunnel to
sling atomic particles around and crashing them together to get energy and
information, the Centralized Collider was able to do that from a single output…the particles were shot out of a nozzle
that had several nano-outputs and were all concentrated into a single spot and
the same collision would occur as an
atom-smasher! Governance scientists were
able to adjust the size of the collision from that of a tiny firecracker to the
obscene scale of a nuclear bomb! The
Governance, however, tightly controlled and legislated what institutions were
able to use the Colliders at that
magnitude! Indeed, it was illegal in all
of Sol system for individuals not
associated with an institution to even use a Centralized Collider.
Given that the Governance
already had existing Colliders stationed throughout Sol, it was the hopes of
the Council that such weapons redeployed—quickly!—throughout the Sol system
from Saturn to Erth-proper space would at the very least slow down the
encroaching Visitors…
It had been several days since
Admiral Shan had a virtual-meeting with the Council Members of the Governance
board, and there was, literally, no news regarding the Visitors coming from the
outer regions of the Sol system. The
island of Pacificalis was placed on emergency status, along with the
headquarters of the Governance, itself.
All of the capitals, major metropolitan regions, and military facilities
on planet Erth were, also, locked into emergency mode, thanks to the myriad of Council
Members of the Governance.
Admiral Shan and her team
finally got a lead on the Visitors and
got backing from the solar system-wide government, and the Visitors had now decided to go ‘radio silent,’ as
that very old phrase went. It was
suspicious to the admiral. As if someone
had told the Visitors that Humanity had finally built up a defense against them
and they decided to hold back from invading the rest of Sol system! Shan decided to contact her old friend,
Doctor Urla Franks, and see if she could help her from a more scientific
approach.
The two women decided to meet at
one of Pacificalis’ Physical Universities.
With Dr. Franks’ connections as one of Governance’s scientists, she was
able to secure an entire auditorium for them.
Given that the whole Island was in a state of emergency, there weren’t
many students around the University to get in the way. Those few around were given special
exception, most likely because they were affiliated with Governance’s military
or University structures in some way. There,
they began to use the classroom’s media kiosk to further investigate the
situation with the Visitors.
“I don’t like it,” the admiral said
as she blew out a sigh. She had slumped
into a nearby seat in the audience front row section of the auditorium. Like Dr. Franks, she had a beat-up cup with
coffee in it. Compliments of a
merchant-friend with a café near the University grounds. “Maybe they were monitoring our
communications and found out our plans?”
Dr. Franks gave a tacit nod; her
lined face pinching. “Given their
advanced technological abilities, it would be irresponsible to not consider that…” The scientist thought more on their little
meeting, which had gone on for over an hour at that point. She couldn’t help but notice from the corner
of her eyes that Shan was staring at her.
“What’s on your mind, Admiral? I
haven’t seen you look at me like that since we first met!”
That, of course, caused Admiral
Shan to look away. She thought for a few
more seconds. “I just noticed your robe…”
Dr. Franks sat still, waiting to
hear more from the middle-aged woman, whom was a little more than ten years her
junior. “And,” she said with a laugh.
“And…honestly, it reminded me
that there are rumors that you are of Tellmondonian heritage.”
At that point, Franks sighed
impatiently. Now she, also, took a seat
on the front row; two seats over from her friend. “Reshma…look, I’ve been dealing with this
issue of my ethnicity since before you were born, young lady!” They both laughed. For young,
the admiral was not! “Honestly, I’m not
completely sure myself. My family has a
lot more pictures of robed relatives from time past compared to other people’s
families, I’ll grant you that. But…”
Dr. Franks’ eyes drifted toward
the kiosk, with all its projected telemetry, images, and winking lights. “Reshma, it’s been about a hundred years
since many of the Tellmondonians had migrated to the asteroid field and
re-established their colony out there!
From articles I’ve read about them and
the few Tell’s I’ve actually met, it’s safe to say that the majority of
Tellmondonians are in the Asteropia development!”
“Doesn’t mean you are not Tell’, though.”
“True…I admit, when I’ve seen my
older relatives when I was much younger, most of them always wore robes, had
long hair, and a lot of them tended to have that lanky body-type that Tell’s
often have.”
“Because of the lower-gravity
from Asteropia’s artificial gravity in their cities,” Admiral Shan input as she
straightened up in her seat.
“That’s it…I find it interesting
and ironic at the same time, that at some point, most of those who traverse the
solar system have either gone through, or stayed at Asteropia’s asteroids. Given Humanity’s complex history of conflicts
between different cultures, I’m guessing there are a lot more Governance
citizens with Tellmondonian blood
than they’d like to admit!”
Now it was Admiral Shan’s turn
to subtly nod. “Well, you know I don’t care about such things. But of all the years I’ve known you, I don’t
remember ever asking you.”
“Let’s face it; the Tell’s
haven’t been the kindest whenever I’ve visited the asteroid field and some of
the Tell’s’ cities. We’ve all heard
complaints about their attitudes toward Governance citizens…and I look Tellmondonian!”
Both laughed. Shan took a gulp of her coffee. Neither said anything for a while. Partially taking a break from their intense
brainstorming session to deal with the Visitors; partially because the subject
of Tellmondonians was still controversial
for Sol citizens, even in the 23rd century! Most Sol citizens—especially those on
Erth—yet blamed the ancestors of the Tell’s for leaving Erth back in the 1990s
and secretly setting up an underground colony of millions on the Moon! It was complicated enough that the Tell’s had
colonized Erth’s moon clandestinely, given the various governmental and private
space-powers of the 21st century, back then, had run-ins with the
Tellmondonians. But most importantly, scientists
of the day had discovered that all the human development on such a small,
astronomical body as Erth’s moon had corroded its geological structure and
caused the Moon to actually recede
toward Erth!
Given the pull of Erth’s gravity
on such a ‘hollowed out’ moon, it was the absolute worse environmental
catastrophe Humanity had ever experienced!
Fortunately, the space-powers of Erth of the mid-21st century
had gotten their scientists together with those of Tellmondo, and they were
able to stop the Moon’s recession
toward Erth…it took about 20 years, and millions upon millions of metric tons
of mined erth shipped out to the Moon for patching, but the Lunar Recovery
Project worked! Even during the days of
Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks of the early-23rd century, Erth’s moon
was about one-third the distance it was from Erth before the Lunar Recession!
The Moon loomed larger in the sky than what the Human species had
evolved to know it—even during the mornings!
And Humanity had strictly banned any
development on the Moon perpetually.
It was this deep space history
that had worked against Tellmondonians in the Governance’s solar government of
2217. And for Dr. Urla Franks,
specifically.
“When was the last time you’ve
been to Asteropia anyway,” Admiral Shan asked as she drank the last of her
coffee.
Dr. Franks had to think for a
moment. “Seven…maybe eight years ago?”
“My goodness! Why so long?”
A shrug from the elder
woman. “I’ve gotten older…to travel so
far out from Erth anymore is harder for me, despite our record-speed vehicles
over the past few decades. Plus, ever
since Chustin died, it’s not quite the same.”
At that point, the admiral felt
guilty for asking her last question.
“Do you think they’re examining
them,” Dr. Franks asked; jolting Shan back to the business at hand.
This time it was the admiral that
needed time to think. “With the limited
information we have on the Visitors at this stage, impossible to tell. As bad as this might sound, I hope that’s the worst it!”
The scientist made a wincing
face. “You know, Reshma, I’ve never been comfortable with that name
we’ve been calling them: Visitors! So benign…”
By that point, Admiral Shan had
gotten up and tossed her empty coffee cup into the recycler in the
auditorium. She walked up to the looming
kiosk; looking at one of the looping-images they had of the Visitors, taken
from one of those mining automatons on Pluto.
The replaying recording showed some hidden craft cloaked in flashes of
light. “Well, none of us have exactly
had a social with them and found out what they preferred to be called. So…”
“I suppose aliens would be a bit too clichéd, then,” Dr. Franks put to her
sardonically.
CHAPTER 11
ABOARD THE PLANETARY WATCH
STATION, NUMBER 2; THE ASTEROPIA REGION…
“…This is not a practice-run…Watcher 2 personnel, man your stations…This
is not a practice-run…Watcher 2 personnel, man your stations…”
The automated alarm of Watcher 2
turned the whole interior of the asteroid-sized station into a blaring red
facility! After so many minutes, the masculine
auto-voice stopped, but inside the entire station the red lighting remained the
duration of whatever emergency the station faced. This was a standard operation aboard all
seven of Sol system’s planetary watch-guards; even Watcher 7, which was based
on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. The
hexagonal, planetoid-like station also flashed red on the outside, should, for
whatever reason, the soldiers stationed on nearby asteroids or those flying in
their tactical ships missed the transmitted alarm!
“Sentient,” Director Robert
Baptise addressed the station’s computer nerve-center as he rushed to his own
station, “make sure all of this is recorded!
Bosses at Pacificalis made it a point to ensure that we get better
images of our enemy…we can’t know how to defend ourselves from them if we don’t
know who and what we’re dealing with!”
“Yes, Director Baptise,” the
Sentient responded; the same voice as that of the alarm.
Director Baptise quickly looked
around the command suite, making sure everyone was stationed at their
position. Standing at his terminal, he,
then, engaged its telemetry. The command
chamber was filled with officers relaying information to each other and to the
director on the trajectory of the Visitors, how many troops were available for
the battle, and how many of the space-issued Centralized Colliders were at the
director’s fingertips.
“Director,” one of the officers
in the communications section called out amid the flurry, “Commander Assan from
the Asteropian auxiliary base is on-comm!”
“Open,” Director Baptise
commanded while bringing up relevant data on the situation.
The projected image of the commander
of the Governance’s headquartered-base within the Asteropian asteroids was
small. The contact was meant only for
Director Baptise.
“Robert,” the young woman said
perfunctory; her head swiveling as she talked, due to her base’s own activities, “they’ve already taken
out half our Colliders!”
A few officers working close to
Baptise’s station glanced at one another with absolute fear!
“Bloody hell,” the director
responded; freezing on the spot for a few seconds.
“They just flashed into
Asteropia out of nowhere and broke off into what I can only call teams,”
Commander Assan stated as she gestured commands to her officers that were out
of the line of sight.
“That’s what the first report on
them out of Pluto said they did. I’m
activating the whole damn field troops, Etnah…and Etnah—both of our teams will have to throw the whole house at them, and
if that doesn’t work, we’ll go ol’
Morning Glory on them…you got that?”
“Understood, Sir,” the commander
said; her voice clearly not sounding enthusiastic about the likelihood of
having to self-destruct her base! The
comm-line was then cut.
Those same officers working
nearby Director Baptise were also not
thrilled about the ‘Glory’ option, either.
Baptise could see it out of the corner of his eyes, but he had a job to
do.
“Cornwell,” the director called
out to his second-in-command; whom was at the weapons bank, “all those
Colliders set?”
“Already synchronized and
tracking those bastards, Sir!”
Baptise snapped his head out of
approval. He, then, punched into his
communications to broadcast to the entire planetary Watch station. “All personnel manning Colliders are to
strike Visitors upon immediate detection…should our defensive posture not work
Watcher 2 will engage Morning Glory option…Baptise out!”
As soon as the director closed
off his communications-link to the entire station, the sounds of high-powered
guns were heard loading photonic-missiles!
Even in the heat of battle,
everyone in the command chamber froze.
And all eyes were on Director Baptise…two of those officers that worked
adjacent to the director, whom showed disapproval in his commands, each had
those guns trained right on his head from behind!
During the complete silence, the
comm-system still blurted out other soldiers’ communications within Watcher 2
and those out in the field inside their fighter spaceships. Some were awaiting a response from Director
Baptise. He slowly turned around to see
who was causing the confusion.
“Tauch, Voltma,” he said after a
sigh of disappointment. “Come on,
guys…you see what we’re up against!
Look, when we all signed up to join Governance’s military we all knew
that the Glory option was—“
“We are acting on behalf of
Respect Hausa,” Commander Marcus Voltma threw out to him.
There were reactions of gasps
and disgust throughout the command center.
For a ‘Respect’ was a person of the highest authority within the
Tellmondonian culture! Plus, Respect
Hausa’s politics were well-known throughout Governance-space and they were
antithetical to the solar system-wide government! In a word, Lieutenant Claudia Tauch and
Commander Marcus Voltma were old-fashioned spies
for a very old enemy in the
chess-game of solar system-wide politics!
“Why are you Governance people
so anxious to risk blowing up parts of the asteroid field and send a storm of
debris that would kill hundreds of
thousands of our people? For that matter, thousands of Governance
citizens, too, since we’re so close to Mars!”
“Commander Voltma,” Director
Baptise came in, forcefully, “or whoever the hell you really are, do you understand the magnitude of our enemy?”
“The Respects of Advisory and their scientists have also been tracking the Visitors,
Director Baptise,” Voltma informed. It had,
in fact, caught all the Governance officers off-guard! “And so far, the only thing we know for
certain about Them is they have not
killed a single person up to this point!
Not your people in the Pluto
region; not your special ops crew
from The Justifier; and they won’t
kill us now…”
Despite themselves, the Watcher
2 station officers and Director
Baptise seemed to be coming around to the spies’ point! Indeed, the reports filed by the Governance
officials did not officially list the
Governance personnel as deceased. Just
missing!
This time, Lieutenant Tauch came
in; lowering her gun slightly; her face bright in countenance. “Look, there’s no need for Commander Assan
and her people in the auxiliary base—nor you—to
kill yourselves over the blessed Visitors because you don’t understand them!”
Many of the officers in the
command chamber glanced at one another with alarm!
“Excuse me,” Director Baptise
said tersely.
Voltma, apparently the one in
control between the two—even though Tauch had a higher position within the
Governance’s structure—held out a hand.
“We don’t have time to explain this to them, my Sister…Director Baptise;
I’m asking you to please tell Commander Assan to stand down. I promise you, you’ll see you have nothing to
fear.”
The director looked around the
command center at his crew as the comm-link went wild with Governance soldiers
trying to figure out why they could not reach their leader! Some in the chamber shrugged; some were a bit
more apprehensive.
Voltma looked at Tauch, gave a
quick nod with a smile, and they both dropped their guns and held up their
hands in surrender. Director Baptise
took a few more seconds of thought, then nodded to his communications team to
contact Commander Assan. At first, she protested,
but then relented upon hearing Baptise, himself, assuring it was true.
There still were voices coming
over the comm-line. Most of them, now,
were cursing due to the change in course!
“The Visitors will be here
soon,” Tauch warned as she looked between the director and her cohort.
The director decided to put out
the fire before it spread. “Open comm,
Burke…station-wide!”
The young cadet pushed a couple
of buttons. “Comm’s yours, Director.”
“Baptise, here…we’ve had
unexpected information come our way…be advised and stand by…all ships, hold
your positions…all personnel manning Colliders, stand down—from what we’ve
heard in the office, they don’t seem to do any good against the Visitors,
anyway…await my orders. Baptise out.”
CHAPTER 12
SOL GOVERNANCE’S
HEADQUARTERS. PACIFICALIS ISLAND…
The emergency situation with the
Visitors meant that Admiral Shan was pretty much grounded on the island of
Pacificalis. Several days ago she was
scheduled to be on the continent of Europe for a conference on global economics
and its ties to the solar system-wide politics of the Governance. Such a heady subject also included the
military, given how a populace adversely behaves when that population does not
have basic needs. But before that, she
had just finished a weekly meeting for Governance top officers…that was when she first learned of the
Visitors from Cadet Grainger. Her life,
indeed, the entire solar system, was never the same after that.
Director Morelli Tuun and his crew
out on Pluto; Captain Joden Modune and his elite team from The Justifier, in the municipal base of Tombaugh on Pluto; and, now, Director Robert Baptise and his
crew out on station Watcher 2—the closest abductions to Mars and Erth by the
Visitors yet! There had been, yet,
another virtual meeting of the Governance’s Members after Director Baptise’s
and his people suffered the same fate as the two other Governance groups. The abduction of the 90-thousand-plus military installation of Watcher 2 was
all-together different from the others! Even
by 2217, humans had not settled the region of space around Pluto that
much. The watch station, Number 7, on
Pluto’s moon Charon, was staffed with only a few thousand personnel for the
very reason of Pluto’s neighborhood being sparsely populated and extremely
distant from Sol’s core. But an entire asteroid-sized
base, with a crew of nearly 100-thousand?
And all abducted in,
literally, a matter of seconds…?
But there was something a bit different in the Watcher 2 abductions besides
the population size…the space station’s Sentient recordings went blank like the
other abduction-events, but before they did, the vids throughout the station
showed that Watcher 2 was in battle-mode!
Director Tuun’s crew in the land station on Charon were the first
abducted, and, hence, the team’s posture in the vids suggested that they were
not in battle-mode. As for Captain
Modune’s non-declared mission aboard The
Justifier—sent to scout out Tuun’s situation—their recordings showed them in a more investigative posture. Of course, the vids also had the audio and
telemetry to go with the images, so it went beyond mere guess-work. But when all the recording instruments blank
out simultaneously throughout a whole base, it was still hard to construct
exactly the context of events.
Indeed, another difference with
space station Watcher 2 was its own records.
The vids did have Watcher 2’s crew called to station-wide alert, but
this time the records were “cut,” versus a simultaneous blanking out like the
situation with Watcher 6 on Pluto and the Justifier’s
crew! In the last meeting Admiral Shan
was in, they had come to the conclusion that someone had manually disengaged the recordings in station Watcher 2. Someone with knowledge of the asteroid-sized
space station’s comm-systems and artificial neural-network…the records had stopped up to the time that Director
Baptise had been contacted by Commander Assan of the branch-base on one of The
Asteropia’s asteroids. Even the 2D
records had abruptly stopped. Later,
both holographic and 2D records blanked out as one continued watching.
It was a change in the patterns,
in regards to the Visitors phenomenon.
To Admiral Shan, that could either be a good sign, in that the Sol
Governance’s defenses were working against the Visitors. Or,
perhaps, they were simply adapting to the Governance’s fight against them…
The admiral was going from one
meeting to another. She decided to grab
a snack from one of the food-kiosks when she got a call from Cadet Lisa Watson.
“Cadet Watson,” Admiral Shan responded
tautly as she unsheathed her snack and looked at the device; walking through a
crowded lobby and toward a floor-lift, “make it quick…I’m about to meet with—“
“Respect Hausa wants to speak
with you,” the young woman said, almost furtively. “And you,
only, Admiral!”
By that time, the admiral had
stopped in the lobby. She thought for a
long time as she chewed her snack. “Why
the hell does he even want to meet with Governance people at all? He still
thinks of the Governance as one big, solar system octopus with Erth as its
head!”
The cadet was shaking her
head. “Don’t know, Ma’am…he said he’s on
the Island.”
That caused Shan to jerk with
surprise! “You mean, on Pacificalis…now?”
“Yes, Ma’am! In fact, I have him on-wait for you…I
figured, it must’ve been important enough!”
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, the
admiral thought as she quickly swallowed the last of her snack. “Well, where is he?”
“I’m sorry, Admiral, I didn’t—“
“It’s ok, Watson…patch him through,
but I want you to tag our conversation before
you disconnect from the line…just in case.”
“Understood, Ma’am.”
The monitor of Admiral Shan’s
device winked from the young cadet to an image of an old man, around his
seventies; his face etched with time, and his hair cut short, but for a very
long braid that was decorated with beads and wrapped around the Respect’s thin
neck…the nationalistic Tellmondonian that Respect Hausa was, he kept with the
cultural traditions of the Tell’s from Erth’s moon from more than 220 years
since its inception in the early days. A
time when several of Erth’s counter-cultures had banded together with their
wealth and resources to clandestinely build a brand new world deep under Luna’s
regolith.
“Dayshine, indeed, Admiral
Shan,” came the voice of a cultured man, despite his tribal look. It came across as contrived, especially given
his conflicting history with the Governance.
The greeting was from the time of near-ancient space age travels; when
the society of Tellmondo was founded deep within the surface of Erth’s
moon. Back then, Tellmondo’s citizens
stumbled into the habit of the salutation, upon periodically going to the
Moon’s surface and seeing natural sunlight.
The cultural practice continued, long after the Tell’s established
permanent lighting in the city-sized, underground cave.
“Respect Hausa,” she replied
professionally, despite herself. “This
is highly unexpected…I can only assume you are contacting me because it has
something to do with the Visitors—“
“Ahh, yes…our blessed Visitors.” He said this with no irony. Word had gotten around the solar system that most of the Tellmondonians had favorably viewed the arrival of the
Visitors! Indeed, some had seen them as
deities; others had seen the Visitors as messengers from a god or gods…a few of
the Tell’s were a bit more agnostic in the whole phenomenon.
“Forgive me for pulling you away
from your tasks, Admiral,” he went on.
“But, as is the case for most things political, you are the person in
position who acts upon the Governance’s policies. Time is of the essence, and I did not want to
waste time in contacting the more senior Members of the Council.”
“Well, I can certainly
understand that…I was told you are on Pacificalis,” the admiral said as she
scooted herself to the side of the lobby; getting out of the way of running
cadets and officers and others in walking-meetings in the lobby.
“Indeed…the spaceport. As you have guessed, my business, here, is
vital and I think will be helpful in dealing with our blessed Visitors.”
Admiral Shan had a thought. “You couldn’t simply had called me on a
secured communique?”
The Respect shrugged a bit as he
made a face. “I suppose I could
have. But what I was given can only be
appreciated in person, dear Admiral.”
Admiral Shan froze. “Respect…were you given something by the
Visitors?”
“Yes…” She waited to hear more information from
him. But the elderly man gestured with
the jutting of his chin that there were others with him off-vid. “I think it would be best if you came and met
us out here, Admiral Shan.”
She thought for a bit. Respect Hausa had a reputation in the solar
system for being a bit odd in personality, but everyone knew him to be a
no-nonsense kind of person. He would not
have trekked all the way from the asteroid field to Erth if he had not felt it
was necessary.
“Where in the spaceport are
you,” she finally said; regretting that she would have to re-arrange, yet,
another meeting due to something else coming up.
“One of the private hangars,
closer to the outer perimeter…nine-point-four.”
She was nodding her head. “Ok, I’ll have to do a bit of arranging
first. And I don’t want people to
recognize me. The public and other officers
might get panicked if they see an admiral rushing about in the spaceport!”
“That would be wise, Admiral
Shan…until then.”
After his image blinked from her
comm-device, Admiral Shan called up Cadet Watson. “Cadet, did you record my conversation with
the Respect?”
The admiral could see the young
woman refer to a terminal bank to her side, then look back up. “We got it, Admiral.”
“Good. Share it with all of the Council Members—I
don’t want to get chewed out for not getting them involved soon enough, like
the first time with the Visitors! Then have
First Lieutenant Hu contact me…I want her to assemble a small team and meet me
at our main hangar. And, Watson…tell Hu
and the others to dress in their street clothes.”
Shan could tell the cadet wanted
to ask why, but she was trained enough to simply confirm the order and contact
Cadet Grainger.
CHAPTER 13
PACIFICALIS SPACEPORT; HANGAR
9.4…
Like most spaceports of the 23rd
century, Pacificalis’ port was right on the edge of the city-island, and most
of the lanes, runways for the planetary skyporters, and landing-pads for the
spaceships wrapped around the entire city itself! It was a fundamental change from the old days
of sky-flight of the 20th and 21st centuries when most
airports were built on the outskirts of a metropolis. Modern day designers assigned different
segments of the ringed-spaceports to various destinations, that way skyporters
and spaceships were in far less of a chance in crashing into each other or
causing too much of a traffic jam.
Admiral Shan, First Lieutenant
Tanya Hu, Lieutenant Fred Greyson, and Cadets Marla Pointe and Shawn Grainger,
all donning civilian clothes typical of a tropical environment setting, walked
quickly from the rented civilian land vehicle that was automatically stowed
within one of the spaceport’s hangar transport facility. Hangar 9.4 was in a section of Pacificalis’
spaceport system that was more for industrial clients—various Erthen
governments, private corporations, and such.
The sector lacked the show-biz of the main parts of a typical passenger spaceport
or skyport, with all their vendors, cultural attractions, and knots of people
traversing or lounging around…
Admiral Shan, with a large-rim
hat obscuring most of her head, craned her neck to find the right
building. She saw a couple of young men,
dressed in typical Erthen civilian-ware, walk up to them from another vehicle stowage
building. One of them nodded at Shan’s
team, and the two began to walk in another direction. Shan’s small team glanced at one another for
apprehension, but followed, nevertheless.
The two men led the Governance
team to the back area of an older structure of the spaceport, where spare parts
for spaceships and sky-vehicles were stored.
And there was something else in the midst of those old pieces of
equipment…something that was casting long, stretching shadows in the old,
darkened facility, with light so bright, it still hurt to look upon it even with sunglasses on! Which all five of the Governance operatives
had on, anyway, given the sunny climate of the region near the Marshall
Islands.
Respect Hausa was standing about
seven feet from it when Admiral Shan’s team walked up to the large chamber of
the facility, but all five halted at the doorway upon fully seeing the Object! The two young men joined the Respect and
stood next to him—guards, most likely.
All three men shimmered in the exuding light! The loosely-spherical, shifting glow had
alternated, and its luminosity slightly pulsated…there were swarms of dust-like
particulates whizzing about the whole phenomenon, but looked something like
air-borne ember; as if from a campfire!
The core of the phenomenon was around five feet off the floor of the
chamber. The very center of the event
was so bright, one had to shield their eyes from it—again, even with sunglasses
on! There was actually the smallest of
some audible sound coming from It.
Almost more like the feel of a
percussion, versus the sound of it!
“It’s safe, dear Admiral,” the
Respect called out. “Trust me…we,
Tell’s, have been studying the Visitors longer
than the Governance has! The worst
anyone has ever gotten from it is a serious tan!”
The two young men accompanying
Respect Hausa laughed.
“Yeah,” Admiral Shan came back
sardonically, as her team looked on, “and if one is not careful with suntans,
they could turn out cancerous! Do you
think it’s such a good idea to be so close to that Thing?”
At that point, Respect Hausa
simply walked over to the Object, slowly reached out with one of his thin, wiry
arms while his hand was in a pinching motion—and the whole phenomenon was
gone! And along with the living light,
its accompanying “feeling!”
He, then, carefully turned to
face the Governance crew while he safely maintained his hold on something. “All that…was generated from this tiny piece of technology, about the
size of an apple seed!”
By that time, the Governance
team had joined the Respect and his two companions in the chamber. For the longest time, no one from Shan’s team
said anything. They just looked at the
elliptical Object between the elder’s forefinger and thumb. A couple of the Governance crew had the
slightest of smiles, but the other three were stoic; including Admiral Shan.
“So, what happened to our
people,” the admiral finally asked, crossing her arms.
Respect Hausa seemed
disappointed with the Governance team’s reaction. After sighing, he turned to the two young men
behind him. One of them had produced a
reinforced container a mere few inches in size.
It was opened and the Respect placed the alien Object into the padded
interior of the container, and the guard shut it and walked off to place the
Object somewhere out of Shan’s sight.
Hausa then turned to face the admiral.
“All these millennia that
Humanity had wondered if there were not only other life in the universe besides
Erth—but intelligent life! You
finally see something apart of that intelligent life-force, and what do you
do? You reduce the experience to some
damned checklist from a military exercise!”
“None of this matters if the
Visitors abducts our people, Respect!”
Both voices had echoed in the
chamber. Indeed, that same “percussion”
feeling had washed over all eight humans in the chamber right after Admiral
Shan’s elevated sentence had ended! Where
ever Respect Hausa’s guard put the fortified container with the Seed, it had
not mattered; everyone had felt the
Seed’s “displeasure.” That caused all
five of the Governance crew to freeze and stare at one another with widened
eyes! Their eyes, then, went back onto
Respect Hausa. Whom was laughing at this
point, and his two guardians smiled.
“Yes, our blessed Visitors know when we, humans, are being
aggressive, and I don’t think they rather like it!”
“Permission to speak, Admiral
Shan,” Cadet Grainger said excitedly. He
and First Lieutenant Tanya Hu were the two Governance crew who seemed to
appreciate the Object more than the others.
Admiral Shan thought for a few
seconds. Cadet Grainger had always been
a faithful, and very effective soldier.
She gave him a firm nod.
Grainger, then, turned to face the Respect, and pointed toward where the
other guard had come back from when he moved the Object.
“Is that one of Them, Sir?”
“No…actually, the best that Tellmondonian
scientists can guess at this stage is, apparently, these Seeds seem to act as
some kind of probe for the Visitors! Almost like the way we, humans, had sent our
own probes throughout the solar system.
And, much like humans’ planetary probes with Artificial Sentience, our
scientists speculate that what these Seeds also do is act as ambassadors!”
There were snickers and
sarcastic blows from the Governance crew.
Even Cadet Grainger seemed to have found that a bit much to swallow.
The Respect sadly shook his head.
He had always felt that Erthens from Sol’s core region had lacked
imagination and the ability to project possibilities.
“Listen, my friends…from what my
subordinates in political offices have told me, Tellmondonians have been
abducted by the Visitors weeks before
your people out on Pluto were taken!”
“What,” exclaimed Admiral Shan.
Even Respect Hausa’s guards were
silently nodding at his point. “Yes,
Admiral. Given the Governance’s and
Tellmondonians’ adversarial relationship over the past two centuries, I would
say it makes it hard for Tell’ scientists to share discoveries with our old
enemies!”
The Governance team shared
silent glances at one another. But the
Respect thought more on his words.
“But,” Hausa said more
cheerfully as he slapped his thin, sinewy hands together and rubbed them, “we
are now, literally, in the days of
enlightenment! For our blessed Visitors
have arrived and have already began to show us the way to a brighter form of conscientiousness…even
I admit, I must work on my proclivity to hardline politics! I cannot lead if I do not follow the
Visitors’ way! So, no need to recount
the skirmishes and wars between Erthen governments and the Tell’s, huh?”
He then laughed and patted his
guards on a shoulder.
Again, the Governance crew
looked at one another, but this time with confusion and uncertainty.
“Uh, Respect,” the admiral came
in; carefully choosing her words, “how do you know what the Visitors want when they’re aliens that, apparently, use a
very different means of communication from us?
And, quite frankly, Respect Hausa, I hope you’re not implying that the
rest of Humanity start to follow you
just because your own government was the first to…”
The old man was giving her a
devilish smile.
“Oh, blazes,” the admiral
exclaimed. She was thinking things
through. “Respect…when you said
Tellmondonian scientists had been observing the Visitors before the
Governance…”
She whipped around to look at
her crew of four. She could see it on
Cadet Grainger’s face—that he, too, understood what was going on! The others were still working on the problem
in their heads. Admiral Shan whipped
back around to look at the Respect. “Respect,
please tell me you did not steal that
Seed from your own government! Is that why you are here? Hiding from the Respects’ Advisory Council?”
The Respect was already
motioning before he even spoke. “Dear
Admiral…it is not stealing when it
involves aliens! What my fellow Respects
were doing to the Seeds were an absolute blasphemy to the foundation of
ancient-Tellmondo’s belief structure! We
do not put our faiths in governments nor corporations, Admiral—“
“You abducted them first,”
Cadet Marla Pointe spoke out of protocol.
Though the Governance crew were in civilian clothes to conceal their
meeting with the Tellmondonian Respect, they were still on official Governance duty!
“Mind your mind, Cadet,” the
second officer of the small team, First Lieutenant Hu, scolded Cadet Pointe!
But Admiral Shan held up one of
her hands without a word and nodded her approval. Cadet Pointe continued.
“That’s why the Visitors are
here in our solar system…at some point, Tell’ scientists had discovered this
Seed and the Respect Council agreed to quietly take the Seed—I’m guessing for
good ol’ fashioned experimentation!”
“And I’ll bet you,” Cadet
Grainger, now, came in; after a nod from the admiral, “that the Seed had sent a
distress signal! Maybe your scientists
knew about it, maybe they didn’t. And, now, the blessed Visitors have come to Sol to get their own Seed back!”
“And in the process,” the
admiral, now, finished up, “the Visitors took our own ‘seeds.’ As in, our
fellow Governance people…is that what all this is about, Respect Hausa?”
The Respect and his two guards
were not smiling at that point anymore.
In the silence, Admiral Shan noticed Cadet Grainger mulling something
over.
“We’re pretty much on at-ease
now, Grainger!”
The cadet thought, yet, even
more before speaking. “The only problem
with our thought-process is the Seed itself, Admiral…Ma’am, I just don’t see
the Visitors going through all this trouble for a supposed probe!”
Admiral Shan’s eyes drifted away
as she, too, thought further on the guess-work.
Then…“You bastards abducted one of the Visitors’ children, didn’t you? That
isn’t a probe at all! It’s some version
of an infant—or, maybe even a fetus!”
Those in the Governance team
that did not understand were, now, wide-eyed and slowly looked upon the Respect
as if he were an alien himself!
“Oh, my god,” Lieutenant Greyson
said slowly; his head craned in the direction where one of Respect Hausa’s
guards had hidden the Seed.
Respect Hausa peered at his two
aides. They looked dejected. Apparently there was no rebuttal to the
Governance’s operatives…apparently.
“Very good, dear Admiral,” the
Respect finally admitted. He tilted his
head in the direction of the hidden Seed.
“But there’s only one problem with your deduction…that is not the only Seed!”
CHAPTER 14
The revelation that Respect
Hausa of Asteropia had abducted, as it turned out, over a hundred of the
Visitors’ Seeds had completely changed everything about how the Council of the
Governance would approach the Phenomenon, as it was often called, of the
arrival of the Visitors! Of course,
Admiral Shan would have to quickly set up another virtual meeting with the
Members as soon as she and her small incognito crew made it back to
Headquarters.
But before the admiral could
worry about the meeting, she had to place Respect Hausa and his two guards,
Astro’hope and Sahurell, under arrest!
Her crew of four simply whipped out their hand-sized guns they had been
hiding on their person, and commandeered the Respect and his guards with their guns that they, also, had hidden
on them! The Governance operatives were
legally obligated to arrest the three based on a few Governance laws, along
with non-binding agreements with the Tell’ society. Since there was no official political relationship between the Sol Governance and the
Tellmondonians of Asteropia’s asteroid field, the two societies got around that
with unsigned, but witnessed,
agreements…in the case of the arrest of Respect Hausa, it was based on the fact
that ‘Governance personnel with knowledge
and the witness of the offender(s) with the illegal ascertainment of persons,
and/or item(s) of significance...’
As the Governance crew stripped
the Tell’s’ guns from them, Admiral Shan made sure to document the whole
episode. For the animosity between the
Governance’s Erth-based culture and the Tellmondonians living mostly in the
asteroid field ran deep and long. She
did not want to start an intra-solar war between the two sides, should Respect
Hausa’s arrest be interpreted as something of an infringement on Tellmondonian
sovereignty! After all, Hausa was a Respect. Despite Tellmondo’s societal philosophy of
every citizen being on par with one another, the Respects of the Advisory
Council still held a higher level of
concern when it came to intra-solar conflicts.
And, then, there was the
Visitors’ Seed… Admiral Shan made sure she took care of transporting the
reinforced case that contained the tiny, hard-surfaced Object! Shan had First Lieutenant Hu record her
taking official Governance custody of the Seed as Shan recited legal codes
while doing so. She had always felt
funny doing that part of the job. She
was not a particularly religious or spiritual person, but she had visited
several theist institutions where they would chant as they part-took in
ceremonial rituals. When she did the
codified readings based on Governance’s laws throughout her career, she always
thought of those theist institutions.
After the admiral’s team
inconspicuously walked Respect Hausa and the two young Tell’s through the
industrial section of Pacificalis’ spaceport, they placed the three men into
the back of their land vehicle and drove back to Governance’s headquarters. Just before the ride, Admiral Shan, taking
Cadet Pointe with her for backup, hopped into the back of the large vehicle
with the Tell’s so she could convince the Respect or one of his guards to tell
them where the rest of the Seeds were. The old man and his aides politely refused to disclose the
location. That made Shan’s job a lot
harder. For, now, based on those same non-binding
agreements between the Governance and the Tellmondonians, she had to contact the Advisory Council on
Asteropia!
All this, while Admiral Shan had
to worry about when the Visitors
would strike next…
“Admiral,” one of the cadets
from the command suite informed her in one of Governance’s headquarters-halls,
“the Prime Governor is here for the meeting.”
“Thank you, Cadet Krickens,”
Admiral Shan said; exhaustion beginning to show on her face. She straightened her posture and made sure
her dark uniform was in place. Prime
Governor Henrick Valerio may have been a civilian and young enough to be Shan’s
son, but he was the chief of the entire Governance government!
Tall, slender, and dressed in
traditional business attire, Prime Governor Valerio approached Admiral Shan as
she stood next to the door of her official quarters so they could join the
on-going virtual meeting with the Advisory body of the Tellmondonian Respects. He was flanked by five body guards. One handed Valerio a briefcase; the Prime
Governor nodded a Thanks to him. Those same five guards took positions right
in front of the admiral’s quarters, which was in a section of the Governance’s
headquarters where the halls were wide and posh…a reflection of the higher
ranking Governance officials in that section of the base.
Admiral Shan and the prime
governor shook hands and went right into her suite. During such emergency virtual meetings, it
was against policy to have any aides
amid the proceedings. So the hard work
of keeping notes, working out logistics, and other practical things were incumbent
upon each official attending.
The projected patch-work of
tiny, three-dimensional head-shots of most of the several hundreds of
Governance Members in the checkered format was up and running already. What was different was whenever there were
guest-speakers in an official meeting with
the Members, those guests’ images were shown several inches off to the side from the large, holographic table that
was projected a couple of feet off of the admiral’s desk…that way, it was easy
for the Members and said-guests to keep track whom they were speaking to.
Normally, Reshma just sat in her
chair to conduct her meetings with the other Members. But Prime Governor Valerio just stood before
the admiral’s machine that transmitted their images before the others in the
meeting. Not wanting to look
lazy—especially as an older
Member!—Admiral Shan, also, stood.
Automatically, the machine transmitted Valerio’s and Shan’s faces within
the projected, checkered tables of the Members and several Respects.
“Ahh, I see the prime governor
has joined us,” one of the Respects, Utopian’s Rocks, announced; though
unnecessary since the Sentient that ran the machine’s program always alerted
the other Members whenever someone else had joined in the conversation.
Several within the multi-boxed
projection greeted Valerio. He,
graciously, nodded back.
“Before you left to usher the
prime governor in,” Council Chair Xi Zehan, said, as she picked up the
business, “Admiral Shan, you said that you and your people were not able to get
any further leads to the location of the other Seeds from Respect Hausa…”
“That’s correct, Chair Xi…I
thought, perhaps, one of the distinguished Respects could help out in this
regard. I’ve got a feeling that Respect
Hausa would be more receptive if another
Respect were to talk with him. It would
save a lot of time…time, which we all need to prepare for another round of abductions or strike from the Visitors!” She gave a shrug, and the prime governor gave
an approving nod.
“But, Admiral, he is no
nationalist; he’s simply a deeply spiritual man with a big following that’s
taken things too far,” Respect Hannah’mondo informed. In her mid-fifties, she was one of the youngest of the Respects! “He has disciples all over the solar system;
some are even non-Tellmondonians! These people have been colluding with him in
kidnapping these Seeds! That last
situation you all spoke of earlier, on your space station Number 2? There was word among Tell’s that there were several of Respect Hausa’s people that
had infiltrated your station and had something to do with Watcher 2’s
abductions!”
“Considered that confirmed, by way of my several sources,” Yavon Baker, prime
minister of the United Kingdom, contributed.
“Ok,” Admiral Shan said, “we
know that Respect Hausa has disciples all over Sol, whom are willing to risk other humans’ lives at the hand of the
Visitors; all so he and his followers can abduct the Visitors’ babies…” She shrugged again. “And do what
with them? Trust me, fellow Members, my
team and I went round and round with Respect Hausa and his guards. But they
just sit there, in their separate
cells…talking about the blessed Visitors
and smile!”
For the first time, the entire
grid of solar system powers actually fell silent!
“Admiral,” this time it was the
prime governor that contributed, “what did you do with the Seed that Respect
Hausa had?”
All eyes in that giant, floating
grid fell on her. She turned to address
him directly. “Given the special
circumstances of the Seed’s status as both a political situation and a scientific one, I ordered for it
to be placed into Governance’s laboratory vault.”
The prime governor and many of
the Governance’s Members were nodding in agreement with her choice. But the Respects, most scattered about the
solar system just as the Members were, began to stir.
“With respect, Admiral,” Respect
Mores came in, “but you placed an alieninfant in a vault?”
She smiled. “It’s a vault designed to withstand a nuclear
or fissionary bomb blast…without giving too much away, Respect, it was designed
when the island of Pacificalis was first constructed nearly 70 years ago.” Admiral Shan noticed that Prime Governor
Valerio gave her a cautious look! “And
that’s about all I can tell you…”
“What if we took it out of the
Vault and shipped it to open space and just let the Visitors take it,” President
Julio Raposa of Chile suggested.
There were boisterous agreements
to Raposa’s words. Council Chair Xi
rapped her gavel!
“It would at least get them out
of the region of space between Mars and Erth,” Vornan Huntworth, the real
estate tycoon with space station properties and other estates throughout the
solar system, commented.
Again, more loud consent! And, again, more pounding from Chair Xi’s
gavel!
“Even if that were true,”
Admiral Shan came back in, “what about the rest of the Seeds we can’t locate at
this moment? I’ve got a feeling that the
Governance giving one infant to the
Visitors just won’t satisfy them when there are at least a hundred more they’re
looking for!”
There were more tacit agreements
on Shan’s point.
“Well, we can’t do nothing,” the prime minister of Nigeria,
Alkana Omalade, said. “If we cannot get
the information of the whereabouts of the rest of the Visitors’ children from
Respect Hausa, then, perhaps we ought to conduct raids on his disciples and take
the Seeds from the followers and give them back to the Visitors so we can all
go back to our own lives!”
Absolute pandemonium…The
Respects visiting in the virtual meeting had heard of the legendary Governance
proceedings, but this was the first time for most of them to have sat in on
one! They gave very uncomfortable looks
over the grid projection.
As Chair Xi continuously beat
her gavel in a fruitless attempt to bring order to the Council’s meeting, Prime
Governor Valerio looked at Admiral Shan with a questioning face; wondering if
Prime Minister Omalade had a good point, especially with so many of the other
Members in agreement. She, in turn, gave
a defeated shrug.
“Prime Governor,” came the
strong voice of Chair Xi after she had gotten order back into the meeting,
“what is your opinion on this, Sir?”
He glanced back at Admiral Shan,
then back at the holographic wall with the hundreds of faces looking right at
him…
“I absolutely agree with Prime
Minister Omalade, that we simply cannot
suffer paralysis! Not when we could get
hit with another round of abductions by the Visitors; and we cannot let Respect
Hausa’s disciples make things worse for all of us in the solar system by their
careless actions! I say we vote on
Member Omalade’s motion!”
In the old days of governing on
Erth, a system called Robert’s Rules of Order was the given language of the
day. The Sol Governance political
machine was so vast, with the majority of Erth’s governments being affiliated
with it, the majority of the thousands
of independent space habitats and stations affiliated as well, the various
colonies on Mars and on several moons of other planets were a part of it, and
pretty much all of human settlements scattered all the way out to the Pluto
region… Such sprawling, meta-bureaucracy required
a system of governing that was fluid!
Hence, since the founding days
of the Sol Governance in the mid-22nd century, a more flexible
version of Roberts Rules was adopted:
once a Member simply stated an
opinion on an issue, it was considered “a motion.” After the prime governor’s statement—by new Robert’s Rules standards, a second
of her motion—he called for the Council’s Sentient to conduct the vote. And by a wide majority, the Sol Governance’s
Council voted on Prime Minister Omalade’s motion and passed it.
The Governance’s solar
system-wide raids on Respect Hausa’s disciples would begin, contingent upon the
Governance’s military officials’ discretion.
This was where Admiral Reshma Shan took control of
that machinery of the solar system-wide government…
CHAPTER 15
With the Governance Council’s
authorization for the solar system-wide raids on any group or individuals associated with Respect Hausa, Admiral
Shan, finally, had the legal and practical powers to go after Tellmondonians and non-Tell’s that were always on the
fringe of Sol society. They often came
from the more intellectual quarters—the Physical Universities, the downtown
cafés in the cities throughout Erth, many of the artificial habitats that
freely floated between the zones controlled by Mars’ space-powers and the
regions of space close to the Asteropian asteroid field.
Oddly, those same educated
citizens had followed Respect Hausa as if he were a cult figure! The movement saw the Visitors as near-divine
beings that would bring Humanity to a level of Aquarius; where Tellmondonians and other humans throughout the solar
system that were not ethnically Tell’
could all co-exist. That was the good
aspect of Respect Hausa’s movement. As
for the abduction of the Visitors’ Seeds…
That very same day, after the Governance’s
Prime Governor Valerio showed up for the Members’ virtual meeting with him and
the Respects of Asteropia, Admiral Shan had convened a meeting with her core
officers of the Governance. They already
had been monitoring those very same Tell’s and their sympathizers for
years. So it was relatively easy, then,
to connect which groups of them and individuals were actual disciples of Respect Hausa and which
groups and individuals were simply sympathizers
that did not take it as far as abducting the Visitors’ Seeds…
Indeed, over the next several
days that passed since the Members voted for the Sol-wide raids, the Visitors
had struck again! That time, it was on a few of the developed asteroids within the Asteropian
belt. Along with the accompanying
pyrotechnics of the arrival of the Visitors, Hundreds of Tellmondonians had flashed
out of Asteropia’s cities and towns located within several asteroids! Admiral Shan’s crew had guessed that the
Visitors began to zero-in onto those who had kidnapped the Visitors’ Seeds, and
it was their turn, again, to grab
from the humans! But, in the end,
without any kind of context to the situation with the Visitors flashing about
the Sol system, it was still just guesswork.
For that matter, Admiral Shan
was still not completely sure about
concluding that what they called “Seeds” really were the Visitors’ offspring or
not! The irony was it was her—Reshma Shan—during her
reconnaissance to meet Respect Hausa at one of Pacificalis’ spaceport’s
section, that had jumped to the conclusion that the tiny piece of metal-like
object that the Respect had was a living being!
Back then, it seemed like, to the admiral, that Respect Hausa was lying
about the Seed, actually, being some probe sent by the Visitors. Lied, so he could trick Admiral Shan to
believing that the Seed was just a probe?
That elusive question kept
coming back to her: what did it profit
Respect Hausa and his followers by abducting the Seeds? Whether or not the minute Objects were
infants of the Visitors or, perhaps, some device? What was so important to the Respect and his
‘Hausanite’ disciples about the Visitors that they were all willing to get
abducted by the Visitors or put into
Governance prison for several years?
And, of course, since none of
them were talking to Governance authorities throughout the solar system, that
made the system-wide raids necessary.
At least, to most non-Tellmondonians.
The raids were done quickly,
relative to space-travel. Partially due
to 23rd century high-speed ships; partially due to the redeployment
of tens of thousands of Governance troops to most of those distance-markers
scattered throughout Sol after Captain Modune of The Justifier and his team had zeroed-in on one of those markers,
believing it to be some decoy of what
Sol citizens later called the Visitors.
The redeployment of so many troops as a blanket strategy was, at first,
a controversial move by the Governance’s Council chair, Xi Zehan. The monetary cost, the perception by many Sol
citizens that those same troops could had been used for more day-to-day
practical conflicts throughout the solar system…but with the new policy of the
raids on Respect Hausa’s disciples, the politics of that redeployment played
well for Chair Xi, and there was talk of her, possibly, running to replace
current prime governor, Henrick Valerio!
With the on-going raids of the
Hausanites throughout Sol for over a week, by then, Admiral Shan was assigned a
top-class war ship—Gravity’s Pull! Or, colloquially, Gravity. It was one of the
Governance’s special space liners that were designed to virtually explode to its
top speed in, literally, three seconds! So fast were those liners, the ships were
able to escape any of Sol’s planetary
gravity wells in those three seconds…hence, Gravity’s
Pull.
The ship’s thick anterior was
one big blunt instrument that extended back about a thousand feet until the
ship’s backend sharply narrowed into a virtual sword! Such design was more for those occasions when
Gravity traversed in the densest planets
of the solar system, and aerodynamics were more of an issue.
Up to that point in the
implementation of the Raid policy, Governance troops had recovered over 50 of
the 100 or so Seeds. In just over a
week’s effort, executed throughout the entire solar system, the on-going policy
was considered a success! But none of
that mattered until Admiral Shan and the Governance government found out a way
to contact the Visitors and return their offspring back to them!
That line of thought had opened
up questions as to how Respect Hausa
and his disciples captured the Visitors’ Seedlings to begin with! Of course, after the admiral had arrested
Respect Hausa over a week ago on Pacificalis Island, she had already asked him
that very question…he had either responded with a polite, ‘I can’t answer that,’
or go into some speech about how the Visitors would impart their advanced
societal ways upon Humanity! Hausa’s two
young body guards, Sahurell and Astro’hope, merely followed his lead. Admiral Shan had figured that the Respect and
his Hausanites must have had some doctrine of action, because of the many
disciples the Governance troops had detained in Sol, almost every one of them
responded the exact same way that Respect Hausa and his two guards did when the
admiral interrogated them at Headquarters!
Almost all of the disciples…
“She’s who,” Shan said,
surprised that such an elderly man would even have a girlfriend at all, much
less one in her twenties! The admiral
was doing a daily check of the Gravity,
making her rounds at each level. She had
taken the 2D call on her comm as she kept her stride; looking about her crew
and their ship.
“Respect Hausa’s girlfriend, Ma’am,” First Lieutenant
Tanya Hu repeated furtively over the comm.
The admiral had requested First Lieutenant Hu to be reassigned from
Headquarters to work with her on Gravity’s
Pull since she was one of the closest staff to her. “And, Admiral…she’s not even Tellmondonian!”
Admiral Shan shrugged to
herself; yet walking her rounds of the ship.
“That doesn’t surprise me…isn’t that what Hausa’s all about: the brotherhood of Humanity and oneness with
the blessed Visitors and all that…between you and I, Tanya, I’m actually
sympathetic to his ideals! I just don’t
think humans should worship the damn things.”
“No arguments from me on that
point, Admiral!”
“Which team detained her,”
Admiral Shan asked while taking herself out of the main traffic area of the
ship’s walkway she was on.
“Cadet Jordan Tye, was the
arresting soldier, Ma’am.”
Shan thought for a second. “Isn’t he from our ship?”
“That’s the beauty of it,
Admiral…she’s in Gravity’s detainment
hall and she was just processed!”
They both shared a smile after
First Lieutenant Hu linked an official Governance arrest picture of the young
woman. She was disheveled from battling
Governance troops from apprehending her.
The telemetry identified her as Mary Brushwell; student at one of Mars’
Physical Universities; from a middle-class background, her family originally
from New York City back on Erth.
“Pretty,” Shan said
absent-mindedly. “How do we know she’s
telling the truth about being Hausa’s primer?”
A shrug from Hu. “One of the other disciples detained told
Cadet Tye, from what he told me…I
suppose we could verify that during the interrogation phase. Ma’am, you’d be surprised how our team—“
“No,” the admiral cut in after a
thought. “I think I want to have a try
at her…and I think I have just the friend to help back me up.”
CHAPTER 16
ABOARD THE WAR-CLASS LINER GRAVITY’S PULL; NEAR-ERTH REGIONAL
SPACE…
Doctor Urla Franks had gotten
the call from her old friend, Admiral Reshma Shan, about voluntarily helping
out with the interrogation of the Hausanite disciple Mary Brushwell. After the admiral had explained the situation
of the detainment of Brushwell, and the University student’s connection to
Respect Hausa and his movement of abducting the Visitors’ Seeds, Dr. Franks
jumped at the opportunity! For she was
one of those Governance citizens that was apprehensive about the arrival of the
Visitors. She saw the aiding of
Brushwell’s interrogation as a chance for her to help fight against the aliens
that had swept across the Sol system and abducted over a hundred-thousand
humans!
In their communique, Admiral
Shan was not shy to admit that she thought of Dr. Franks because of her
reputation throughout the Physical Universities’ solar system-wide network of
intellectuals…Shan figured, the educated disciple of Respect Hausa, that came
from the University of the physical properties of the universe, would find it a
lot easier to talk with Dr. Franks than with her—an admiral, yes. But one
of those practical people that did well at following orders and came up with
some good ideas on her own from time to time…
The guard held up an index finger
by the reinforced door’s identifier. The
single paneled door swooshed opened and the guard let the medium-height Mary
Brushwell walk into the interrogation room.
The door shut after Mary had cleared it.
At the center of the decent-sized room were Reshma Shan and Dr.
Franks. They sat next to each other at
the sundry table; opposite of the empty chair that Brushwell would eventually
sit.
“Hi, Ms. Brushwell,” Shan started
with a smile and an info devise in front of her, “I’m Admiral Reshma Shan of the
Sol Governance military headquarters on Pacificalis Island.” She gestured to Franks, next to her. “This is Dr.—“
“Urla Franks,” the young woman
said; her voice sauntering, “chief scientist of the energy conversion ratio of
the Dark Matter Department…Erth-side.”
Dr. Franks and Admiral Shan
shared glances. Brushwell
continued. “I attended a couple of your
lectures on Mars, Dr. Franks.”
That caused the scientist to
finally smile. “Well, I hope you learned
something…Mars is turning into one of the destination spots for the application
of dark matter energies!”
“Yeah, it was one of my earlier
course. But I ended up specializing in
Modern Terraforming.” Brushwell shrugged
her small shoulders. “I figured, with
those new programs that the Tellmondonians were offering students on Mars to
help terraform some of their asteroids…why not?”
“Is that how you met Respect
Hausa,” Dr. Franks asked; poignant, yet soft enough as a conversation-piece.
Even Mary’s laugh was
young—almost like a little girl’s giggle, in the ears of the older women. She pointed at the scientist as she
nodded. “You’re good, Dr. Franks…maybe you should be the cop here?”
The admiral and the scientist
shared a genuine laugh.
“Ms. Brushwell,” Shan came back
in; voice accommodating, “I’m sure you understand the situation the whole solar
system is in right now… As I understand
it, you have a close relationship with Respect Hausa?”
The student was already
nodding. “Yes…”
“Ok,” Admiral Shan continued,
“the way I see it, Ms. Brushwell, you have the opportunity to utilize your
unique position in all of this, so people all around the solar system can get
our family and friends back.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral, but I think
you have the wrong person in your interrogation chamber for that,” Mary stated;
direct but not terse.
The two older women shared
concerned looks.
“Oh, no,” Brushwell clarified,
“I don’t want to give you the wrong impression—“
“And what would that be, Ms.
Brushwell,” Admiral Shan said with a hint of anger.
“Well, that you and the Governance
would think I would not be cooperative with you, in regards to our blessed
Visitors’ Seedlings!”
Admiral Shan was a bit agnostic
on the Visitors’ arrival to Sol. But Dr.
Franks, the scientist, had even less patience with the Hausanite
disciples’ deification of the aliens!
Dr. Franks had to catch herself before she came across as condescending
to Brushwell. She glanced at the admiral
for permission. “Ms. Brushwell…what did
you mean when you said we were interrogating the wrong person?”
Before answering, Brushwell
sighed. “I know that Respect Hausa has a
bit of an eccentric personality. I
suppose it doesn’t help when people see me
with him out in public—especially the non-Tellmondonians
from Erth, where there are still a lot of conservative people. I sometimes think because of those cultural
differences, a lot of Erthens, in particular, are so biased against him…”
Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks
glanced at each other; each with arched brows.
“Ms. Brushwell,” Admiral Shan
said, struggling to remain diplomatic, “I’m sorry, but we don’t understand what
you are getting at!”
“Hausa…” the student was slowly shaking her head, “he
was not abducting the Visitors’
Seedlings. He was protecting them from the
Respects of the Advisory Board! He was
only trying to hide the Visitors’
Seeds!”
Just then, Admiral Shan
remembered when she had arrested the Respect on Pacificalis Island, in one of
the Island’s spaceport divisions…just before she detained him, Respect Hausa
had said something about how his fellow Respects and their scientists had
committed a blasphemy against Tell’ ethics with that one Seed!
Dr. Franks and Mary Brushwell
both noticed how the admiral froze!
Franks gave her friend an askance look.
“I have to admit,” Admiral Shan
said slowly, “Respect Hausa did say
something about that…but…” Admiral Shan
began to get a sick, sinking feeling in her stomach. Was the
Governance raiding the wrong group of people throughout the whole solar system? “I thought the Respect was just trying to
justify stealing the Seed from the Advisory Board!”
Brushwell gave the admiral a
hardened look. “Like I said…biased
against him!”
“Now wait a minute,” Dr. Franks
came back in; more defensive, “it’s not like your fellow disciples and your
boyfriend worked with Admiral Shan and the other officers of the Governance! From what I’ve heard in the media and prime
sources, they simply would shut up; sing songs devoted to the Visitors…anything
but answer the authorities!”
“That’s because my brothers and
my sisters felt it was our calling to
protect the blessed Seedlings,” Mary shot back.
“I told you already: Respect
Hausa gave his explanation to Admiral Shan; she had already made a judgement against him, and now, the blessed Seedlings have lost their protectors! And our blessed Visitors may be losing
patience with Humanity!”
Admiral Shan snapped out of her
dread of realizing the possibility of a very
large injustice she may have been responsible for. “Ms. Brushwell…what do you mean, the Visitors
may be losing patience with Humanity?”
Right in front of Admiral Shan
and Dr. Franks, the University student seemed to have shrunk into a little
girl…she fidgeted with her fingers as she looked at them. “Respect Hausa senses it…he told us, during some of our gatherings on Asteropia’s
asteroids…he warned us, after some of the Tellmondonian scientists had
discovered some tiny, metallic Seeds out in the Kuiper belt region several
months ago…Respect Hausa had warned the Tellmondonian Board to leave the
Seeds where they were! But…”
Mary had started to endlessly
shake her head.
“Oh, my god,” Dr. Franks said
with a very low, and worried voice. She
said, nor did, anything else, except stared into a corner of the chamber.
Admiral Shan retrieved her
communications device and called up her comms section of Gravity’s Pull. “Sentient;
Communications Center, this is Admiral Shan…I’m going to need a top emergency meeting with the prime
governor and the Governance Council.”
“You mean to tell me that all
those disciple freaks are Protectors
of the Visitors’ Seedlings,” Prime Governor Henrick Valerio said with
incredulity. He was met with the nodding
of Admiral Shan’s and Dr. Franks’ heads.
Dr. Franks was standing next to the admiral during the virtual emergency
Council meeting.
Admiral Shan responded. “‘Protectors of the Seeds,’ is what they call themselves. We’ve been calling them Hausanite disciples,
but…” She shrugged. “Anyway, we were able to confirm Ms.
Brushwell’s story with several other Protectors’ stories. With the way we kept the detainees separated
from one another, and how we did some
story-switching to check for over-laps, I think it’s safe to say what Ms.
Brushwell is telling us is true.”
There was a stirring among that
rectangular honeycomb of the projected faces of the Governance Council. This time around, there were no Tellmondonian
Respect guests for the meeting. Though
it, certainly, pertained to them and
their scientists!
Dr. Franks came in. “From what we’re told—and it’s the best we
have to go on, right now—the Tell’ scientists must have encountered something
akin to the Visitors’ nursery out in
the Kuiper belt…one of those extremely distant planetoids floating about out
there, where humans have probably never chartered from our scopes yet!”
“So,” privateer space miner,
Gustan Furvor, came in over the holographic grid, “those Respects we had in our
meeting some time ago…were they
responsible for all this trouble with the Visitors?”
“All those attending that meeting,” Admiral Shan said as she
nodded, “yes! Except one: Respect Aurora. From those same detainees we spoke with
today, they all said, separately,
that she was not in the faction of
Respects that insisted on abducting the Seeds!”
“But she also wasn’t on Respect
Hausa’s side, either,” Prime Governor Valerio stated bluntly.
Shan’s head snapped to the side
as she thought on his statement.
“Doesn’t seem that way…but, the fact that she was not with the Respects for the Seed abductions is a plus, in my
book!”
There were some voices of
consent in the meeting.
“So,” came Council Chair Xi,
“what’s the bottom line to all this,
Admiral; Doctor? How do we give the
Seeds back to the Visitors before they do, indeed, lose their
patience with Humanity? Given their
technological abilities to just to abduct
over 90-thousand people from space station Watcher 2 in mereseconds, I’d hate
to see their weapons capabilities!”
Now the meeting had erupted into
chaos! Xi, due to her own words, had to gavel the attendees
back to order! At that point, Admiral
Shan and Doctor Franks looked at each other rather dubiously. That was not lost on the prime governor!
“Ladies…?”
Admiral Shan sighed and lightly
clasped her hands together before speaking.
“Now, for what it’s worth, Members, it’s a suggestion from Respect
Hausa’s primer, Mary Brushwell—whom is, I might remind you, a student at one of
Mars’ Physical Universities! So, I
suggest we, at least, listen to her… Perhaps we ought to utilize what is
already in place? As the ancient saying
goes: Why re-invent the wheel?
“Since Respect Hausa and his
Protectors of the Seeds disciples have been adept at caring for the Visitors’ Seedlings, maybe we should place Respect
Hausa in charge of a Governance-mandated agency?”
By that time, there already were
voices of opposition within the Council!
But not everyone.
“An agency,” the admiral
continued, ignoring those voices, “with the charge of collecting however many
more Seeds are at-large. May I remind
you, the Governance’s Raid policy has taken valuable time, given that the
Hausanite disciples are not
cooperative! Placing the very person
that those disciples follow—with their lives,
I might add, it might make sense to let Respect Hausa be the face of the
replacement of the Visitors’ Seeds…”
Still some disagreement from
others in the Governance Council, but it had faded a bit! Admiral Shan had never stopped making the
case…
“Upon collecting those
Seedlings, have Respect Hausa’s deputized disciples re-locate all the Seeds back to the Kuiper belt region, where the Tell’ scientists had
stolen them from to begin with!”
Volleys of consent seemed to
over-power those opposing the admiral’s proposal. Which meant, in the lexicon of the Governance
Council’s system of legislating, a motion to enact Admiral Reshma Shan’s
concept…oddly enough, which, also
meant that the Council would vote, indirectly, for the suggestion put by
University student, Mary Brushwell!
But given the further gravity of
the Phenomenon of the Visitors, yet, abducting hundreds or thousands of
humans at a time, with the added sense that those blessed Lighted Ones had limited patience to get their offspring
back, the Council voted to implement the ‘Brushwell-Shan Policy!’ Indeed, while the Governance’s Sentient
program conducted the voting, Chair Xi Zehan instructed the Governance Council
to, also, vote on whether to rescind the Raid policy. Given that the policy had given powers to
Governance military to enter and extract Respect Hausa’s followers without need for a writ, the Council thought
it counterproductive to maintain the ruling.
A large percentage of the majority of the Governance Council voted to
rescind the Raid policy. Effective
immediately.
Indeed, the irony of humans enacting a law that gave powers
to their military to abduct their own fellow citizens, while trying to fight
off the abduction of humans from an alien
civilization was well-observed by the solar system’s media.
CHAPTER 18
ABOARD GRAVITY’S PULL…
It took a couple of days before
Respect Hausa finally made it to Gravity’s
Pull from Governance headquarters on Erth.
After the Governance’s historic vote to rescind the Raid policy on
Respect Hausa’s disciples scattered throughout the solar system, the elder cult
figure and his followers were all,
now, considered legally absolved of the abduction of the Visitors’
Seedlings! When news had gotten out via
the solar system-wide professional media and
the citizenry-based media, brief political rallies were held in major cities on
Erth and Mars, and even on some of the independent space stations that were
culturally aligned with Respect Hausa’s philosophy.
There were, however, some legal
backlash to the now-defunct Raid policy.
Several Tellmondonian citizens on Asteropia felt it was bad enough that
many of their ethnic brothers and sisters of Tell’ heritage, were apprehended
on Erth, Mars, and the myriad of space stations and habitats throughout
Sol. But when a few Governance
military-grade spaceships had actually crossed
into the asteroid field—the entire belt legally
claimed by the ancestors of the current Tell’s, of a movement during the early
22nd century lead by a neo-Respect PunJon—that was at a political
level of crossing Tellmondonian sovereignty!
It would take a while, given the attention of the whole solar system on
trying to placate the Visitors, but the Sol Governance had legally been sued by
many of those Tellmondonian activists and many Tell’ organizations that were
generally antithetical to the Erth-based Governance to begin with…
After the small transporter had
docked with Gravity, Respect Hausa
emerged from the docking door; beaming as he walked his way to Mary Brushwell,
whom was waiting for him in the main lobby of the ship. Indeed, Gravity’s
lobby was full of Tellmondonians and even some non-Tell’s from Erth, Mars, and
various stations! Like what had happened
throughout the Sol system, they were all waiting for their specially arranged
flight back to those very same locations in which the Governance had detained
them…all being arranged by the Governance, of course. Prime Governor Valerio signed the special
enactment for the arrangement.
Admiral Shan watched across the
lobby as the elder Respect embraced the young student from the Martian
University. Doctor Franks remained on
Gravity, even after her help with the interrogation of Brushwell. It was by Admiral Shan’s request. The scientist was being extra-compensated by
the Governance for her work with the admiral, and, again, truth be told, the
educated Hausanite disciples were more likely to listen to her than to an admiral within the Governance machinery.
“Ok, boss,” Dr. Franks quipped
as she and the admiral looked on as the couple hugged in the midst of a cluster
of Respect Hausa’s followers, “what now?”
Admiral Shan thought for a bit
as she watched Gravity’s lobby being
taken over by Hausa’s tribalistic people.
Many of Admiral Shan’s officers and cadets were, also, looking on with some trepidation! She, then, glanced at her tall, thin friend
from the Physical University and wondered within herself how they could have
even been friends! For Dr. Franks looked as if she were one of the
Protectors of the Seeds disciples that were just released from the Raid
detention! But Reshma Shan knew that she
could never have a better friend than Dr. Franks, despite their cultural
differences.
“Let’s give them a few minutes,”
Shan said; a bit irritated. “And then
have both of them meet me in my
quarters…now’s the time for them to
play their part with the Visitors!”
Dr. Franks firmly nodded her
head. “Agreed, Admiral.”
As it turned out, it took about
an hour before the elderly Respect and his young student primer to show up in
Admiral Shan’s private quarters. They
were escorted by two Governance guards…there still was a trust factor with
Respect Hausa. Indeed, the guards walked
right into Admiral Shan’s quarters, behind Respect Hausa and Mary Brushwell, at
their surprise! Dr. Franks was seated at a posh chair not far
from the admiral’s large desk, where Shan was seated behind. The two guards took standing positions on
opposite ends of Admiral Shan’s quarters.
Respect Hausa lightly laughed as
he and Mary took their respective seats.
“I see you still don’t trust
me, my dear Admiral…”
Shan thought for a bit. “Ok, Respect Hausa, let’s face it; you won!
You were right about your fellow Respects and some of Asteropia’s
scientists experimenting on the Visitors’ Seeds. Based on the communication technique I felt
that one Seed did while at the spaceport on Pacificalis, I’m guessing all the
Seeds that Asteropia’s scientists experimented on had sent out some distress
signal out to the Visitors!”
“You are correct about that,
Admiral,” he said from his chair. “It
took a little while before the Visitors came for their young…frankly, a little
longer than what Asteropian scientists had expected.”
Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks
looked at each other with surprised faces.
“So,” Admiral Shan tried
clarifying, “you knew that the
Visitors would come for Humanity after the Asteropian scientists abducted their
Seedling?” Shan then glanced at
Mary. “Respect, I had the impression
that you were against the taking of
the Seeds from the Kuiper belt!”
“And that is still true! When I heard about it, as Mary told you, I’m
sure, I tried to convince the Respects’ Board not to go through with taking the Seeds, but my fellow Respects got
greedy, dear Admiral…they were so anxious to be the first to obtain an alien
life-force at the very edge of our solar system, they voted to let the
Asteropian scientists to gather up some of the seeds!”
“On a planetoid,” Dr. Franks ask
earnestly.
The Respect was nodding. “That is correct, Dr. Franks. But…” He looked at Mary, whom had greeted him with
a knowing smile. Respect Hausa returned
his eyes to Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks.
“Our blessed Visitors did not come from
the Kuiper belt. They came from much
farther out…they came from the Oort cloud!”
Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks
looked at each other with surprised faces again, but this time their eyes were
wide-opened! A thought occurred to the
admiral.
“Now that I think of it, with
the first abductions of Governance
people, our Director Morelli Tuun’s crew had said in the last of their
recording that some objects were coming from the Oort section!”
The Respect nodded; his face,
along with Mary, beaming. “Today, we call
it abducting what the Asteropian
scientists did with the Seeds several months ago. But it did not start off as an alien
abduction—the aliens being humans, in this case!” He shrugged as he recalled the
situation. “At first, none of us knew
what those little, metal bits of technology were! Our scientists knew they were, obviously,
alien—till this day, even Governance’s records show that no known Sol-core
societies had made it out as far as the Kuiper belt section since that one
operation by that industrialist over 200 years ago—“
“Sigmund Cartwright,” Dr. Franks
threw in.
“That’s it, Doctor…Cartwright,
whom was also a Representative of what was then
the governing Erth Industrial Alliance, had built an operation only on asteroid Quaoar. Our
Asteropian scientists had discovered the Seeds on one of the smaller
asteroids—at a much farther orbit
than Quaoar! Actually, very close to the Oort cloud!”
“Highly unlikely that a private
space entity of the 22nd century could make it that far out with the technology of their day,” Mary interjected.
Both Admiral Shan and Dr. Franks
nodded at her point. They let Respect
Hausa continue.
“It was only after the scientists made it back to
Asteropia from the Kuiper belt did we notice that the Seeds started
to…communicate; vibrate; sing…Asteropian scientists are still not sure what to call what the Seeds do when they
communicate!”
“That’s when you deduced that
the Seedlings were sending out a distress signal,” Admiral Shan guessed.
“Correct again, Admiral…those
reinforced containers that Governance forces found them in during those
Raids? Those cases weren’t just to keep
the Seeds dry!”
Then, Mary came in, “The cases
are specifically built by Asteropian scientists to block the Seeds’ signals…especially when some of the Tellmondonian
scientists in Asteropia started experimenting with the Seeds!”
“And,” the admiral speculated,
the pieces beginning to click together for her, “somehow, one or a few of the
Seeds got their signals out…which made it to the Visitors way out in the Oort
cloud, and now we’re in the mess we’re in!”
Dr. Franks looked at Admiral
Shan with a weary look. The admiral
leaned back in her seat with a sigh before speaking. “Wish you had told me this at the spaceport
on Pacificalis, Respect!”
“Would you have believed
me? I’m sorry I lied about saying the
Seed was a probe, Admiral Shan. But I
was trying to use the Governance’s power as a shield from my own brethren and
sisters of Tellmondo! They discovered
where I was at that time, and, well, I don’t think you and the Governance body
would’ve taken my side! With my
eccentric personality known throughout Sol, and with some Tellmondonians in
power who are not quite as open-minded as my followers and I about being one
with all humans throughout the solar system, the Tell’ Advisory Board would
have simply built a story around me to convince the Governance that I was a
fugitive of Asteropia, who’d stolen some alien beings!”
The admiral and the elder
scientist shared a long look. Admiral
Shan, then, dismissed the two guards that were standing in her quarters. She waited for them to leave and the door to
her quarters shut before she got up from her desk and walked over to where the
odd couple sat. Shan leaned back on her
desk.
“Ok…you’ve convinced me,
Respect. This meeting with Dr. Franks
and I was actually meant as the last wall, to make sure we were on the same
page, before I hand you your position for collecting those Seeds!”
Mary reached out and grasped
Respect Hausa’s hand. He simply
smiled. The admiral went on.
“Now, this is your turn, Respect, to help us out in
getting those Seedlings back to the
Visitors! Mary did a good job in warning
us that we only have so much time before the Visitors start making things
uncomfortable for us…let’s get you and Mary processed with a ship! I’ll assign my people to work with you on
recruiting from your disciples to help you.”
Respect Hausa and Mary looked at
one another. Mary pointed a thumb in the
direction of the door to Admiral Shan’s quarters. “Probably should catch all of his followers
out in your lobby before they scatter
throughout the solar system!”
CHAPTER 19
THREE WEEKS LATER. ABOARD THE SOL GOVERNANCE RECONNAISSANCE
SHIP, #081; APPROACHING THE OUTER REGION OF THE KUIPER BELT…
“There’s been another mass-abduction,
Respect,” Tellmondonian Hausa disciple AdamEve informed. He was at the ship’s comm system, monitoring
the news throughout the solar system.
The elder Respect winced for
sadness and disappointment. He was at
#081’s command chair. “Where?”
“A grouping of space habitats
near The Asteropia!”
“Is it me, or does it seem like
the Visitors are abducting more Tell’s lately,” Olith, a middle-aged Hausanite,
said from her station.
“Where the hell do the Visitors keep all our people,” Lau’reign, in her
thirties, asked as she walked over to another station in the ship’s command
suite. “What are we up to now? Over four-hundred thousand that the Visitors have
snatched?”
“Now, now, my brothers and
sisters,” Respect Hausa lightly admonished from his command station. “Let’s not forget to respect our Visitors
from Sol’s rim! Remember, they did not instigate this conflict.”
Many of the Hausanite crew in
the command suite glanced at one another.
It was clear that some of Respect Hausa’s followers were beginning to
lose their adoration for the Visitors!
After weeks of the Protectors of the Seeds quickly spreading out in
large groups of teams throughout Sol to gather the remaining Seedlings that
were still in the hands of other Hausanite disciples, they were finally near
the Kuiper section of the solar system!
Scores of similar ships, issued
by the Sol Governance, were following #081.
Just as Mary Brushwell and Admiral Reshma Shan—whom was back on
Pacificalis Island on Erth—had planned, the Hausanite followers from all over
Sol had voluntarily handed over the
Seeds they were protecting to Respect Hausa’s Governance-created agency, “The
Protectors’ Return.” The Protectors’
fleet was on its last leg of returning those very Seeds that the Asteropian
scientists had harvested from a very distant region in the Kuiper belt. But the Visitors’ abduction of groups of
humans throughout Sol were only getting larger in scope, and occurring more
often!
“At least we’re finally less
than a day from the Kuiper belt,” the Respect reminded his command crew, trying
to encourage them.
‘Yes, Respect,’ came the uniform
response from the whole command crew in the suite. The only two people that did not return the chant were Officers Daren
Hopkins and Chase Tuuk. They were the required two Governance officers aboard
#081, and each and every ship of The Protectors’ Return fleet. That
was one of the few prerequisites that Prime Governor Valerio had pushed, after
the Governance Council voted to let Respect Hausa and his followers form their
own mission.
Mary was commanding another
Governance Reconnaissance ship, #271.
Her team was in the midst of The Protectors’ Return fleet…and it was
from that ship that Respect Hausa had
gotten an emergency contact from!
“Respect Hausa,” the ship’s
Sentient said over a series of alarms as the interior lights switched to
bright-red, “a series of the fleet’s ships are in immediate danger of being
targeted by the Visitors!”
Before the Respect even had time
to respond, there was a direct comm from Mary.
Respect Hausa answered as his command crew of Hausanite disciples were,
now, working more like Governance officers!
“Hausa—!”
“I know, I know,” he yelled back
over the comm! “I’m switching to
fleet-wide communique, Mary…Ok, Followers, remember we planned this out just in
case, so let’s be calm and implement what we practiced! We only have a few seconds, so we’ve got to
make this count!”
Respect Hausa cut the open-comm
and looked over at Lau’reign. “All the Seeds
loaded?”
“Yes, Respect,” she responded
after a quick glance in her instruments.
Respect Hausa began another
series of command until #081’s Sentient interrupted.
“Respect…the Visitors’ approach
has halted!”
Everyone in the command suite
froze! The communications of the other
commanders of each Reconnaissance ship could be heard in the moment of silence.
By approximately two miles, what
was one enormously bright ball of light had undergone a mitosis split by
several other balls of light, though those subsequent structures were smaller
than the prototype. Given it was space,
there was no sound. However, like the
tiny Seeds that were apprehended by humans throughout Sol, there were degrees
of vibrations felt by everyone in every ship of The Protectors’ Return fleet! Even some of the equipment aboard every ship
had rattled or dropped to the floor, with the artificial gravity at work!
The spheres shimmered a tiny
bit, and there was even some pulsing to them.
The several spheres were spread out by miles between each one, and the
largest ball was equidistantly in the center of that configuration. The Hausanite Protectors might as well had
been near a small sun—but, without the heat!
There was a cry from everyone in
#081! For no one had anticipated the
Visitors’ presence to be such an awe!
Many in the ship whispered to themselves some form of prayer. Some were shocked into utter silence! All had to shield their eyes with their
hands, due to the brilliance of the Visitors…and that was with each, respective
Reconnaissance ships’ sun-blocker!
“All ships, hold off on the
ejection! Repeat, hold off on ejection,”
Respect Hausa finally said into the fleet-wide comm. “And make sure your ship’s sun-protector is
in working condition…it’s no joke when I say we could all get some form of
radiation sickness from the Visitors’ very presence!”
“With respect, Sir,” one of the
scores of commanders, Darkened Energy, said over the comm, “but shouldn’t we
simply give them the Seeds now? That’s what both sides are here for!”
“And what if they misinterpret
our ejecting a multitude of Seeds as a mass
of sorties,” Respect Hausa shot back.
His response, indeed, cooled down the explosion of voices over the
fleet’s comm.
“What are we doing, Respect
Hausa,” Mary put to him softly, but with enough urgency and formality to
indicate to him it was time to make a decision!
Governance Officers Hopkins and
Tuuk, from their respective stations, gave the Respect a questioning look…as
per that required two Governance officers per Protectors’ ship, the two
Governance military troopers were to, physically, take over the command of the
vessel should the situation get too hot for whomever was in command of the
ship. Or, should Respect Hausa or any of
his commanding disciples become incapacitated.
But the Respect waved them off with one of his thin hands with a firm
nod that he was ok.
He connected to the fleet-wide
channel again. “Respect Hausa, here…like
I said, we’re going to hold off on launching the Seeds toward the
Visitors. I don’t want them to mistake
our actions as an assault! From what some
of our scientists told me back on Asteropia, with their technological
superiority to humans, the Visitors may, possibly, have the ability to
obliterate Erth with one bomb!
“So, I’m not going to risk
Humanity’s existence on one rash move! I’m
going to eject one of the Seedlings
we have on #081…let them see our intentions, and what we have.” The Respect cut the comm.
The Respect looked around the
command suite, verifying one more time with the crew’s reaction, that what he
was planning was even plausible.
“Sentient…”
“Yes, Respect, I attentively
listened to your statements…I am releasing one of the cases containing one,
singular Seedling now.”
It all seemed so anticlimactic. There was no thud or shaking of #081.
“Have we been recording our
encounter, Sentient,” Respect Hausa asked during the quiet time, just as the
tiny case being ejected out into open space finally showed up on the ship’s
monitors. “Should something go wrong I
want you to make sure this event’s recording is sent to Sol-core…in case Humanity
could glean something from this. I just
hope our blessed Visitors are as—”
CHAPTER 20
SOL GOVERNANCE HEADQUARTERS;
PACIFICALIS ISLAND…
“What,” Admiral Shan exclaimed
from her personal transporter. The image
of Dr. Urla Franks was jerky and the audio was being drown out by other
people’s excited voices! “Urla, can you
go to a quiet area where I can hear you?”
“They’re back…they’re back,
Reshma…every damn one of them…!”
It was so loud where ever her
good friend was, that Admiral Shan simply chose to close the call and got out
of her personal vehicle that she had just parked as she arrived at one of the
parking structures in the Governance headquarters facility. She jumped upon hearing loud bangs of
fireworks further away, toward the downtown area of Pacificalis Island. Several more popping and splashing of
colorful lights were seen seconds later.
She frowned to herself…was today some holiday she had forgotten about?
Just then, her communicator had
gone wild with calls! While the admiral
was looking at her screen to see the identification of the several callers,
another section of her communicator had a portion of the monitor devoted to
news…and that’s when she saw the unbelievable news of the returned humans from
the Visitors!
Admiral Shan found herself
screaming for joy! A small group of
Governance officers, also in the parking structure, saw her and ran to Admiral
Shan; thinking she was under attack!
Then she explained to them the news.
While she was uncontrollably telling the young group the news of the
Visitors releasing all
4oo-thousand-plus humans that they had abducted, the young officers, also,
started to get calls on their own communicators!
This went on for about
thirty-minutes around the admiral.
Various officers and cadets ran up to her and her constantly growing
entourage! For they knew that she was the Governance’s military
official in charge of handling the Phenomenon with the Visitors!
By the time the large crowd
around Admiral Shan made it to the main area of Headquarters, it was absolute
mayhem! The news had long gotten to the
Governance’s home base before Shan had gotten back from, yet, another meeting
across the Island!
Someone had requested to the
base’s Sentient to bring up one of the official news media’s report on the Visitors…by
the time a projected news cast was pulled up by the Sentient, a hush came over
the large crowd in Headquarters’ lobby.
The report showed a myriad of
shaky images and vids of the Visitors taken by people throughout the several
months of the Phenomenon. The media
report also showed shots of every location where humans had been abducted by
the Visitors: the Pluto area; the
special class ship The Justifier; space
station Watcher 2; the asteroid field of Asteropia; various space stations and
habitats; Respect Hausa and his Hausanite disciples of the Protectors’ Return
fleet…
But then that same media had
showed a sea of Humanity—it was every person that was abducted by the
Visitors. As the media report played on,
it was slowly becoming clear that something was strange about how and where
they were shown in the report…how strange all the Returned faces were blank; as
if they were some automatons, standing rod-straight.
And as the vid of the Returned
panned out from that sea of Humanity, where
they were, was becoming more clear: they
were out in a field of tall grass.
Somewhere in the United States, in its Great Plains region, perhaps…
And that report’s image of the
Returned kept panning out, until the pattern that was made with the standing,
silent bodies was clear: the Returned were
configured in such a way that they formed a stylized mock-up of the Sol
system! To the left, a representation of
Sol, and as one looked all the way to the right of that crude model of the
solar system, it extended as far as Pluto.
But, in that simple icon of the Sol system, made with the
forever-silenced Returned, instead of a circle to represent Erth, there was a
big, stylized ‘X’!
A little warning from those who came for a visit from the edge of the solar system…
The Temple Building has been an established institution of Nebraska’s flagship university since 1907 and is most famous for two things: famous alumni and comedian, Johnny Carson and haunted stories! Do a Google-search and the Reader will find more on “hauntings” than basic scholastic articles! And the Temple Building is my Blog number six of my Para-Events investigations. And it’s here where I remind or inform the Readers I’m a Paranormal investigator with a skeptical view that documents with actual objects and/or locales, plus some basic Paranormal research.
EVENT 9) I’ve been over to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s (UNL) Temple Building for my Para-Events research about five times now, and that includes my first walkabout there–February of 2018; a few days over a year since I’ve done so. So, one could say it’s been a year of the making for this Entry (looked at my “details” or my first video on my older, ZTE phone)! Since that year has gone by, I’ve done a lot of Paranormal research and investigations (LINKS to all my other Entries found below) and learned a bit about some of the pseudo- to real science applied when researchers do Paranormal investigations–such as the Hertz-levels.
For me, that was the biggest takeaway for Blog number six: though I’m a Skeptic when it comes to most things Paranormal (especially when the subject overlaps into the Supernatural–ghosts, demons, etc), at least with the measuring with Hertz, Kilohertz, and/or insane-levels of THz (one-trillionth of a hertz!–Fuel Your Pipeline Faster – TechTarget, Michael Victory via Quora)–at least we’re able to measure by some kind of metric in the Paranormal field, rather than just the ancient-held gut-feelings, clairvoyance, or some divining stick. And, by the way, 18 Hertz-and-under is considered by many Paranormal investigators and researchers as paranormal-levels: beyond humans to hear.
Bottom-lining it: I utilized a Hertz emitter via YouTube while doing my walkabout in the Temple Building like one would try to blow a dog-whistle to get the attention of a dog–though the sound that the dog can hear is out of human-range! Not to provoke whatever entity(ies) that could’ve been there, mind you. That was the premise, based on what Believers of the Paranormal might think. Specifically, I did this in the Howell Theatre–on the lower, main-level and especially on the balcony’s right side–where urban legends have it that a former “head-master” instructor for theatre (as one of the five students I interviewed put it–three young women seated in Video number one, below) had a favorite spot for his seat during plays. It’s said that in 1987, a student was practicing his tap-dancing when he heard disembodied applause from one person, though the student could not find anyone else in the Theatre upon his searching for the source of the claps (The Daily Nebraskan; “Ghost Stories of Lincoln Unraveled” by Anna Jo Bratton, Oct. 31, 2001)!
Also, in that same interview, the young woman to the left in the video said, late at night, one could hear footsteps in the fourth floor–though no one was “supposed” to be up there. So, of course that meant I had to do my investigation on the fourth floor–captured in Video three–mind you, I had a technical limit with my smartphone, so I had to resort to utilizing my older phone as backup!
I will let the Reader let my videos ‘speak’ more of Event number 9 for me. As for me, I cannot say that any of the students’ claims–from hearing footsteps on the fourth floor, or an elevator’s doors opening up late at night when no one else is around (from a Heather and Conor; but not videoed), to “rafters moving”–a point which two of the students admitted it could’ve been the result of a very old structure with a breeze going through (Video one)…none of these claims, especially when added with my year’s work of returning to the Temple Building and conducting my investigation–none of it convinces me of any Paranormal Events on any level. Though, I have to admit, just looking at Video number three of the fourth floor, it is a bit spooky to be up there!
At this point, unlike my investigation at the State Capitol of Nebraska (blog linked below), I do not have info to fully-Debunk the ghost stories of the Temple Building (eg, the elevator door with no pedestrian traffic late at night opening up “by itself”–student Heather), so I’ll place it in the UNKNOWN category for now…
Ok, the Monday after “Glass” movie’s release so I can do my review now. And of course, for those who’ve not yet seen it, SPOILER disclaimer here…As I’ve recently learned–and perhaps some of the Readers–M. Night Shyamalan’s two other movies, “Unbreakable” and “Split,” are all three part of a three-part series (Split, though I’d seen it, was a surprise for me). Here are the respective links if one needs reminding, thanks to Wikipedia: Unbreakable > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbreakable_(film) , and Split > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_(2016_American_film) .
As I’ve mentioned in my “Logan” movie review (my other movie reviews’ links found below), Shyamalan’s entire series is of the Strip-Down sub-genre–no flashy superhero-abilities such as the ability of flight, nor time-skipping, nor anything approaching pyrotechnical such as Marvel’s character’s Storm and DC’s Superman’s wide-range of suite of powers that he has (flight, x-ray vision, laser-eyes, etc). Think, more like DC’s Batman–a superhero who does not have any meta-abilities; just damned disciplined in action and/or well-stocked with tools… But Shyamalan’s characters in Glass, it was even more fundamental–even existential!–than Batman or Logan. In those movies, getting a bit Fourth-Wall here, the audience knew the premise was that Batman and Logan were superheroes and that the storytelling was either non-meta in approach (Batman), or Strip-Down in sub-genre (Logan/Wolverine). In Glass, we have good ol’ Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychologist gathering up our three antagonists-protagonists; having built a career on bursting the bubble-idea that certain clients had of them being superheroes! At least, from our protagonists’ point of view…
Mr. Glass (Elijah Price–Samuel L Jackson); was he really a master-mind super-villain or was he simply a really smart dude with osteogenesis imperfecta who had a bit more time on hand, sitting in his wheelchair, and therefore had time to scheme plots through and justify his perceived puppet-mastery of murderer(s)? Dr. Staple sure made him question his own biography!
And what about David Dunn (Bruce Willis)? A security guard for sporting events that, what; has some power to detect other people’s past and/or secrets (Psychometry) by touching them? On top of that, even though he may be well-intentioned to intervene while innocent citizens are being harassed or worse, perhaps he’s just a vigilante that builds his own stories about others based on what he sees about them and unlawfully acts with violence?
Then there’s poor Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy–whom, by the way, has done one of the best psychological-characters in the movies since Anthony Hopkins in the “Silence of The Lambs” series!)… Basically a boy that was very physically abused by his mother and grew up with what’s known as dissociative identity disorder; having 23 “personalities” stuffed into his young life. He’d, eventually, kidnapped young women and held them captive and falls in love with one of the girls–Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy). So, did Crumb really turn into a monster (“the Beast”), when he was able to climb walls and flip cars on the side, or was he simply a split-personality patient that ended up being influenced by the evil mind of another patient–Mr. Glass; whom eventually would be key to all three of our anti-heroes getting out of the institution, but, also, would eventually lead them into the hands of a secret society that actively works against both superheroes and meta-villains!
And, those sub-plots–the questioning of the reality of meta-humans and the society of humans that wars against them–are the two main reasons why I really enjoyed Glass!
Stripped-Down style is not as simple as it seems, speaking as a SciFi author myself. One has to balance real science and other conventional paradigms while writing creatively enough to, yet, make the audience/readers question what Reality is…even in Fiction. I say M. Night Shyamalan (whom written and directed Glass), all the actors/actresses, and the rest of the crew balanced this storytelling and the sub-genre of Stripped-Down with excellence!
Finally got a chance to get into the State Capitol, here, in Lincoln, Nebraska and did some recording for my Para-Events series! And, as always, I like to remind the Readers I’m a Para-Investigator with a skeptical view that documents with actual objects and/or locales, plus some basic Paranormal research. Also, to note, it’s approximately one month shy of a year since I’ve started my Paranormal investigations. Linked references to my other blogs are found below this article…
EVENT 8) This so-called Event (my basic classification of alleged and even documented events) will be my eighth entry, though given my smartphone’s space is limited, the video I recorded at the State Capitol for this entry could not all be uploaded online…so, from time to time, I plan on uploading segments of my video (It seems I have to wait several hours; perhaps my phone provider’s limiting customers’ usage?).
Anyway, I’ve grown up in Lincoln, Nebraska my entire life (stint in Birmingham, Alabama when I was around four, but our family moved back), and having been a former state worker downtown, I’ve been to the Capitol countless times and I’ve never seen nor heard any Paranormal activities. I’ll get to the stated Para-Events that are said to have and still occur at the Capitol in a bit…
With that said, there still is history and other people’s accounts (beliefs?). I’m using the online source Haunted Attractions –Real Hauntings and Attractions as a springboard source, though I reference other sources. Haunted Houses did this really good article on the said-haunting of Nebraska’s state capitol: Read HERE >> https://ghost.hauntedhouses.com/nebraska_lincoln_nebraska_state_capitol#
They did a good job of listing said-Events and summarize historical accounts. What’s relevant for my Para-research are the reported (though vaguely-referenced) Native-American historical claims to the plot of land the Capitol looms over and the six accidental deaths that are said to have happened there.
Starting with the Indian historical part: Below, in the Comments section, there’s a map of Native-American “tribal lands in Nebraska,” as this map from Casey Dunn using the US Census from 2010, puts it. For Lincoln, it’s the Ponca Federal Land Trust (see it all the time; central-Lincoln). Doing a quick Wikipedia search, plus some common knowledge that most Nebraskans acquire, Lincoln used to be the town of Lancaster before becoming Lincoln, and by 1867 Nebraska became part of the United States…before Europeans / European-Americans came and staked claim in Lancaster county–some searching for salt for preserving hunting-meat in what is now the Salt Creek area, the Ponca and most likely other Tribes (Indian-Nations) had their own established society here. So that puts more flesh on that aspect of the research. I, personally, have not heard nor read any account of a Ponca’s Paranormal presence anywhere in the Capitol as a result of Nebraskans constructing the Tower atop of their homeland. And, as I’ve stated, I’ve grown up here and usually one would’ve heard something in the form of urban legends locals usually propagate. But that’s not to say there aren’t any legends of said-hauntings. Plus, in my research (at this stage), I did not run across any articles about such subject.
As for the six accidental deaths…I mentioned to my wife about my investigative research at the Capitol and told her about the six fatal accidents I read about. Told her one pretty much verifies what I heard since I was a tweenager; that a worker accidentally fell to his death from the Capitol’s dome–some approximately 400 feet down! That was probably the second death listed in the Haunted Houses article; the employee doing maintenance who slipped and fell to his death.
The purported (I’m sorry, but remember I’m a Skeptic) haunted manifestations cited in the article range from a male’s voice heard crying in the elevator, some dark misty form as one walks the stairwells / stairs, to an apparition “free-falling” from the 12th floor of the Capitol, but vanish before impact (article linked above)! Well, decades before I even had interest in the Paranormal, and even yesterday when I videoed, I heard no voices nor anyone crying on my elevator-rides in the Capitol; I saw no misty figures falling or otherwise–REFER TO MY VIDEOS IN COMMENTS SECTION.
Now, given that we are talking the Paranormal, I’ve learned, as with any other sub-culture, one needs to speak the colloquial language if one wants to be more effective at understanding and reaching out to said-community. In point, a Believer would likely point out that I went during the daytime (just after 3PM Central). Plus, as one could see in my videos, there were several tourists in the chamber and sections of the Capitol I was in–traditionally, for whatever reason, it seems in Paranormal legends ghosts, spirits, demons, and other entities seem shy of revealing themselves in crowds in the daytime!
Finally, a key note for this Blog, number 5 (Para-Event 8), this was more of a Research than an actual Investigation… I gathered info with my recorder on my smartphone and my personal observation. Investigation would’ve involved more of me testing and comparing various aspects of the Event and/or locale… So, with that said, I’m not even going to file this particular Event! I usually end with classifying my blogs with the Unknown or the Debunk files, but it’s kind of hard to do a traditional investigation when you are in a state capitol with live-cameras on you and guards and cops tucked away in that edifice!
Below, screenshot of map of Native-American “tribal lands in Nebraska,” via Casey Dunn using the US Census from 2010; & MY VIEDOES (by Joseth Moore )
(image: “Capitol in the Mist” by Zuiun)
++PS: The non-descript, windowless doors in the videos you saw were all locked! I made sure to try to open them, for investigative purposes.
!! ADDENDUM: OFFICIAL DEUBUNKMENT: I had gone back to the Capitol over a month after I had videoed and written my Para-Events Blogs no. 5 in Dec. of 2018. Today, I was taking pics with an app that SIMULATED infrared (the same with the Howell Theatre at UNL’s Temple Building, but that’s for Blog no. 6)! Later in the day, I decided AGAINST using the app since it was ONLY a simulation–as the app OPENLY disclosed (pic below). In other words, the app had NO abilities to measure heat and, therefore, was not a “thermal radiation thermometer(s)” (Wikipedia). Due to my personal ethics in Paranormal investigations, I decided not to use the simulated-infrared pics (one, of the Capitol, is below for reference).
The way I see it, and I mean no controversy with other Paranormal investigators, such superficial instruments are used far too often in many investigations (something that reads in the kilohertz, at the very least, would have some kind of significance– reference “Why Use An EMF Reader When Ghost Hunting?”; scroll way down in Comments section of my Para-Events Blog no. 1).
This was my THIRD trip to the Capitol for this investigation–so that means:~~a lot of time I’ve spent with leg-work in this project, including my original work captured in Blog no. 5 above. ~~my second time, running into Tourism Supervisor Roxanne Smith (video below)–whom not only is an official within the tourism office at the Capitol, but had done her own research and, according to her, she found nothing about the state of Nebraska government hiring a prison inmate (at all!), especially for putting up Christmas lights at the Capitol (urban legends of him falling high from Capitol; therefore his “ghost”…and, as the Reader may have seen in the 4th video, Smith sarcastically discredited the alleged voices / man sobbing in the elevator…~~while at the Capitol today, I ran across several tourists and I cold-spot asked them if they’ve heard or seen anything “out of the ordinary,” or strange… A) Including a bride and a groom, there was a knot of people from a wedding: apprx 8 people. B) One middle-age man, who told me he was born and lived in Lincoln and visited the Capitol a myriad of time. C) Apprx 7 teenage boys going into that very same elevator the Reader may have seen me use in videoes 1 and 2 (remember the alleged male-voice weeping or moaning in the elevator(s)? D) An extremely knowledgeable, young historian-by education, Jessica, told me one or two more alleged ghost stories that she admitted she did not observe nor believed. E) And when you throw in Supervisor Smith from my second visit, that makes approximately 18 to 20 people at the Capitol I’ve asked if they’ve witnessed, in any form, anything unusual and they’ve all said No!
Note that I did tell them I’m a Paranormal investigator–sometimes before asking if they’ve seen any para-activities, and sometimes I told them what I was after asking if they’ve observed any strange happenings–a bit of variant in a study to demonstrate the outcome is the same is good to do!
So, there you have it, Readers. Based on my above experience and my investigation–with the help of tourists and a couple of guides and my springboard-source HauntedHouses.com–I’ve officially classified, any and all ghost stories (to the best of my knowledge) of the State Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska DEBUNKED. (Joseth Moore ; Saturday, January 26, 2019)
This is just a short entry for my Para-Events Blogs, the seventh Event. As I remind some of the readers, I’m a Para-Investigator with a skeptical view that documents with actual objects and/or locales, plus some basic Paranormal research…
EVENT 7) Of all place, the house where my wife and I live! I will not give out our address, but will say we live in the Near South neighborhood in Lincoln, Nebraska. Our house is one of those (near-) hundred-year old houses you see so often in Near South, and that could be very relevant. Approximate time, 4:35 AM. As I am blogging this about 25 minutes after Event, the local climate according to one of Lincoln’s local media online site, is 0% precipitation, 85% humidity, and 4 miles per hour wind outdoors, though said-Event occurred indoors…
I was on my laptop at said-time, with my headphones on while listening/watching a political video from a news source when I heard a metallic clank! At said-time, my wife was asleep on a couch in the living room, and, importantly, both of her pets–a cat and a dog–were both also sleeping adjacent to her (I double checked). I say important, because at the time I heard the single, sharp metallic clank no one in the house was walking around–myself included as I was reading/watching news on my laptop; seated at our dining room table…
…so how the hell did a (pictured) screw (not a nail, that was hammered in years ago; but screwed into place!) simply drop from the basement ceiling and onto our dryer? And the real kicker, as the Reader can see from my two pics, the screw is broken at the shaft-end!
Now, as anyone who’s been to the Near South barrio, it has a fair amount of vehicle traffic–especially during the morning times. But this was around 4:35 AM! Very light, to-no vehicle traffic on our adjacent street at that time for any street vibrations to dislodge that screw (I’ve felt our house shake due to large trucks during high-traffic times in the daytime; this was not one of those cases!)
As I went to the basement (refer to 2 pics) I documented actual, said-Object, as is key for my Para-Events Blogs series. Plus I checked the basement ceiling directly above the dryer–where the screw had landed, and found nothing out of place nor shaking due to any constant vibration or any types of movement. Plus, a bit later, I opened the doors to relevant rooms directly above that basement section of the house–while my wife yet slept and the pets remained in their positions–for extra confirmation. Obviously, no one else–and nothing else–was walking around that I could see should have caused the broken screw to fall from the basement ceiling.
There is one, and very unlikely, scenario I can see could’ve caused the screw to drop: Marking at 5:23AM exactly, our house’s central-heater kicked on and it’s fairly loud. Which has the potential to translate into vibrations throughout the house. However, I do not remember the heater running at approximate time of 4:35 AM, much less kicking on. Besides, of the 4 years and 8 months we’ve lived here, I do not recall hearing any other objects dropping from the basement ceiling due to the heating system (nor the air conditioner!) kicking on, even if it did that around 4:35 AM during said-, Para-Event…
And, though I’m a Skeptic, I feel it is relevant to stipulate that I know of no ghost stories or rumors associated with this house.
I’m filing this in the UNKNOWN category.
**PS: Something just occurred to me while finishing this blog, and I’m very leery to point this out given that I’m not just a Skeptic, but an Atheist: When one writes today’s date in numeric expression, it’s 11-11-18 (Sunday)…Those of a more “Believing” view might assign some kind of connection to today’s Para-Event to today’s date (Numerology)!
(From my original Facebook page >> https://www.facebook.com/notes/joseth-moore/progressives-we-must-recalibrate-our-views-on-self-defense-pacifism/1902739673142717/ )
Joseth Moore·Sunday, October 28, 2018
President John F Kennedy (November 22, 1963), Martin Luther King Jr (April 4, 1968), Bobby Kennedy (June 5, 1968)… This past week, the racist, registered-Republican Floridian Cesar Sayoc could have added to this list of assassinated American Progressive politicians to potentially 14 more when he mailed up to 14 (what I’ve read to-date) bombs this week. The targeted Progressives ranged from former President Barack Obama and his former secretary of state, also former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to two Progressive non-politicians, actor Robert De Niro and billionaire Tom Steyer.
Again, just staying with this week: as of yesterday, October 27, 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the anti-Semite, bigot and murderous Robert Bowers burst through the doors of the Tree of Life synagogue and massacred 11 people–police apprehended the monster.
This is in addition to your run-of-the-mill, daily hate crimes that happen in the US, as referenced in Time magazine with Melisa Chan in November 14, 2016 (up to 5,400 in 2014–I always, only go by the Obama administration for more recent Department of Justice figures since I do not trust the DOJ under Trump). And, contrary to the Right Wing media and their mouth pieces, White assailants are always the majority instigators of most hate crimes (I remember reading the DOJ’s tables and columns even under the GW Bush administration about this! Readers should access DOJ’s figures from GW Bush and Obama administrations. Back in both administrations, I remember reading the average, annual hate crimes stats hovering around 7,000 to 8,000). Frankly and personally, I don’t give a shit about the race of a terrorist or murderer, in the end they’ve killed people. But it is always relevant and good to be statistically accurate, plus the politics of Race in America, we Progressives must be on our intellectual toes!
So now that we’ve got a bit of numbers to go on and not mere emotions and anecdotes, this is the main thrust of this blog: Given that the Trump regime is encouraging, if not complicit to, violent, racist acts in the US post-2016 election against racial / ethnic minorities, LGBTQ (reference Trump’s reaction after the Charolottesville Unite The Right rally where a White nationalist murdered a young woman after plowing his car into protesting-Progressives!), etc, how should we Progressives in America protect ourselves from Right Wing domestic terrorists and lone wolves?
Frankly, I’ve heard more than enough about holding vigils, prayers, and encouraging speeches. Those are needed by some of my Progressive sisters and brothers, so I’ll respect that for them. But all those activities do not prevent White nationalists from engaging in lethal acts against us! I’m not suggesting all violent acts of any sort can all be prevented, but we are able to prevent some with legislation (we do it all the time with laws against all sorts of crimes), obviously–as Progressive–I support gun control legislation… But those acts don’t directly protect us, Progressive citizens during the violent acts!
This is the controversial aspect to this blog and where it gets to what type of philosophical angle we, Progressives, want to have in this Trump-America (remember, the Republicans control all levers of government as of today; from the state legislatures to both chambers of Congress, and, of course, the Supreme Court and the White House!). Political experts suggest, as of today, Sunday October 28, 2018, we Democrats might likely re-take the House of Representatives but not likely the Senate… aside from issuing subpoenas to our enemies (that’s what the GOP is these days, we must embrace this) in the House–if we Democrats take it back–and hold theatrical hearings, if the GOP control the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court (as backup!), none of that will matter! We’d have to have, at least, both chambers of Congress to truly contain Trump. So, Trump and the GOP have no incentive to reign in their violent constituents!
We Progressives need to get comfortable taking up self-defense classes, packing instruments of self-defense–including lethal-grade!, and doing all this legally so Right Wingers won’t have a legal and constitutional reason to arrest us!
We can take a page from the original Black Panthers: “…The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense…” (The original Black Panther Party, via Marxist History: USA: Black Panther Party) We, Progressives, in general, should heed the Panthers’ call for legal self-defense in Trump-era America. Not just African-Americans–which I am one, by the way. I, strongly, suggest for those that have legal or practical reasons where they cannot legally obtain firearms that they consider self-defensive daggers, batons (nightsticks), etc. The Reader can refer to my other blog on self-defense, “ANTIFA, Pacifism, & Where I Fit In,” linked at the bottom of this blog.
We Progressives are split on the issue of armed self-defense. We still have a lot of Pacifists from the 60s era, both in terms of citizens themselves and such philosophy picked up by some of the Gex-Xers and Millennials. Some who have read my other political blogs know about my mother growing up and living in the Jim Crow days in Birmingham, Alabama (you can see a pic of her in my up-coming blog). I mentioned about her witnessing the aftermath of the KKK’s bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, September 15, 1963. Four young African-American women were murdered by the Klan that day, and my mother told me how she, being across the street when the bombing happened, saw the gaping hole in the church! You can read about my account of this from my “The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rally–Lincoln, Nebraska, 2018: North America Blogs Edition” blog, linked below with my other linked blogs… That was my mother that had first-hand witness of the result of White nationalism’s violent and murderous work.
Today, in Trump-America, I feel as though the US has become one of those SciFi Dystopian societies. Unfortunately, fellow Progressives, this is a real dystopia we, now, find ourselves in and we must protect ourselves from that system’s rulers and their constituents!
**BELOW, my other political blogs for references…
~~ “ANTIFA, Pacifism, & Where I Fit In” >> https://www.facebook.com/notes/joseth-moore/antifa-pacifism-where-i-fit-in/1429695777113778/
~~ “The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rally–Lincoln, Nebraska, 2018: North America Blogs Edition” >> https://www.facebook.com/notes/joseth-moore/the-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-rally-lincoln-nebraska-2018-north-america-blogs-edi/1548585411891480/
~~ “A Call For Progressives to Secede FROM the United States of America” >> https://www.facebook.com/notes/joseth-moore/a-call-for-progressives-to-secede-from-the-united-states-of-america/899785720104789/
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