Creation

C
opyright
© 2016 by Greg Chase

First Edition 2016

Cover Art by Jeff Brown

Editing by Red Adept

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

Bayou Moon Press, LLC

S
am Adamson would do
anything to leave the climate-ravaged wastelands of Earth… even if it means working for pirates. So when he’s offered a job repairing a derelict spaceship’s computer, he jumps at the chance to head to the Kuiper Belt, an area at the edge of the solar system reviled for its lawlessness and tenuous ability to sustain life.

But the repair proves difficult, and the pirates who hired Sam leave him to die in the computer’s core. Fortunately, the inhabitants of a utopian village rescue him and show him that human relationships can be more open and connected once Earth habits have been broken. He’s content to live the rest of his days away from Earth until he learns his work on the spaceship inadvertently created a new, all-knowing—but misguided—technology-based species. And their mistakes threaten to tear the very fabric of human interaction.

Forced to leave his Garden of Eden on the terraformed planet, he takes his wife, Jess—his link to all he holds dear—and goes back to Earth to face his responsibilities. Before Sam and Jess can ever hope to return to their village, they have to teach the next generation of the new species how to change the direction of mankind for the better.

Technopia Book 2: Evolution

Greg’s Newsletter

S
am pulled
the rain slicker tight to his chest. For mid-November, this was an unusually strong storm, howling with the force of a summer hurricane. But at least the struggle to see his parents for their weekly dinner would be worth it—for a change.

The grimy apartment building jutted out from amongst its neighbors like a homeless hitchhiker’s thumb flagging down a ride to someplace warm and dry. It was better to think of the building as hopeful. Usually, when Sam struggled to perform his weekly duty as a caring son, he envisioned the building as a finger a few digits from the thumb.

His mom—a small, portly woman—reached under his rain-soaked jacket to hold him tight to her bosom. The curls of her hair teased at his nose. “I’m glad you made it safe and sound. Your dad’s watching the weather on the view screen. Sounds like it’s going to be another bad one.”

He patted her on the back. Had it been a bright, sunny day, she’d have worried about him stepping in a pothole and breaking his neck. But he did share her concern about the storm. “If it’s okay, I’ll only stay for dinner. Don’t want to get stuck out there at night.”

She pulled back, turning her head away. “Of course, dear. But you know your room is always ready.”

The drill seldom changed. She wanted him to stay. His father, however, would see letting him stay even one night as giving in to the son who’d never really left home. “It’s okay. I’m actually busy tomorrow.”

The scent of dinner option number thirty-two filled the stale air: synthetic meat and mashed potatoes. He had the same option on his home meal generator, yet it never failed to smell slightly burned in his parents’ apartment. Not that it was his mother’s fault. Looking around at the layers of paint that covered the walls, many of which he’d been responsible for as a younger man, he knew that the smell clinging to the apartment, ghosts of meals cooked long ago before the age of technology, had defeated his poor attempts. No matter how many coats of primer he used, the smells had a way of seeping through.

“Dinner’s ready. I’ll get your father,” his mom said.

Sam’s eyes focused on the synthetic meat at the end of his fork. Sunday dinners with his parents would be high on the sizeable list of things he would not miss about Earth. Without looking up, he delivered his news. “I got a job.”

His mother dropped her fork and clasped her hands together, her short, curly hair bobbing with her bounce of delight. “Oh, that’s wonderful, dear.”

The thin man with broad shoulders sitting opposite him kept eating. “Is it local?” The judgmental tone was unmistakable.

Fear gripped Sam’s stomach, making the food hard to swallow. “No, Dad. It’s off Earth.”

Ever the optimist, his mom beamed with maternal pride. “You’ve finally landed a position with one the Moons of Jupiter corporations. I’m so proud of you.”

The conversation was about to take on all the enjoyment of falling headfirst down a mountain. “No, Mom, I’m not headed out around Jupiter. The job is farther out, in the Kuiper Belt.”

The silence stretched so long he started counting the seconds out of curiosity. His father had once let a silent pause last twenty seconds. But that had been on Sam losing a job, not finding one. Finally Sam’s dad took a deep breath. “There are no jobs out that far. Only pirates. What have you gotten talked into this time?”

He’d anticipated the argument. The conversation with his father had been his first thought on hearing the offer. “It’s a salvage-and-rescue mission. An old terraforming ship—”

“There are no old terraforming ships left,” his dad interrupted, rolling up the shirtsleeves of his work shirt. “I knew it was a mistake indulging in your flights of fantasy. That degree in early space exploration should’ve taught you that those ships were all broken up for parts when they reached their new planets.”

The argument wasn’t unfounded. Hundred-year-old spaceships being found at the edge of the solar system did sound like fantasy. “Well, this one survived. I have its history. Large parts are left to conjecture, but the
Leviathan
has been well documented.”

The old man lifted his wide palm from the table and held it up. “Please tell me this isn’t one of the ships from your adventure stories.”

Sam balled his hands into fists under the table. “They were textbooks, not stories. But no,
Leviathan
wasn’t one of the ships mentioned. There were quite a lot of spacecraft helping to colonize the solar system back then. Only the most notable made it into the field of study.”

His mother turned her soft brown eyes to him. Raising her eyebrows in interest, she attempted to defuse the tension—another well-worn aspect of Sunday dinners. “You said something about a rescue?”

Sam eased his fingers out from his palms. The nails left white marks where they’d dug in. “A group of new utopians ended up with
Leviathan
. I’m not sure how, but based on their current situation, pirates were likely involved.”

His breathing eased as he recounted information from his studies. “Terraforming pods are still available if you know where to look. Four pods mount along the mile-long backbone of the ship. Once they reach the new planet, the pods are deployed. They act as shelter while the colony gets set up. Often more than one set is needed to properly terraform a planet. This group managed to land one set of pods, along with a skeleton crew, to form an outpost on some minor planet. Then they went back for a second set of pods, and that’s where things fell apart. Now the ship is stranded out on the edge of the solar system.”

His mom’s strained smile of concern pulled at his heart. “Well, it’s a nice thing that you want to go help those poor people.”

The old man ran his large hand through his pale-red hair. “No one does something for nothing. There must be some money in the rescue somehow.”

Sam looked into the hard steel-blue eyes of his father. “That would be the salvage part. Once the colonists are safely delivered to their planet, the spaceship becomes the property of the salvage firm.”

The imposing figure of authority pressed his hands to the table and leaned back in his chair. “There we go—pirates. Take advantage of some stranded idealists then take everything they own. How can you not see these things?”

Pulling back from the table, he looked intently into his son’s eyes. “I know I put a lot of pressure on you, son. And I know we forced you out to find your life on your own. It’s only because I care about you, even if you don’t see that. You can’t just sit around your whole life. But if taking this job is about needing a place to stay, we can talk about it.”

Sam’s mother reached for his hand. “We just don’t want you to get hurt. If something should happen that far out…” The older woman let the sentence finish itself in Sam’s mind.

“I’ve already made my decision, and for better or worse, I’m going.” He knew it wouldn’t have mattered what job he’d taken. His father would’ve found something objectionable. “You were right about one thing, though, Dad: it’s about time I stopped sitting around waiting for something to happen with my life.”

The look in the old man’s eyes softened. The steel blue turned to something resembling a summer sky. “Just be careful what you wish for, son.”

* * *

S
am squeezed
through the mass of humanity that swarmed the Atlanta Space Port. The historic complex of buildings proudly displayed pictures of its glorious past. Not that he had the time to look.

His attention darted from watching oncoming people, who didn’t notice who they ran into, to searching out some hint of where he was headed. The stench of humanity clashed with the cleaning solvents, his nose acting as their battlefield. His ears hurt from too many pieces of overheard conversations.

After an hour of reading electronic screens and pushing through crowds, he arrived at what he desperately hoped was the correct gate. Among the waiting passengers stood a large man who alternated between scanning the crowd and looking at the interplanetary spaceship outside. His eyes locked with Sam’s. Pushing through the crowd, the man extended a large, calloused hand that looked as if it could crush Sam’s. “You had better be Samuel Adamson.”

Sam nodded, shaking the man’s hand.

“Good, I was getting worried. I’m Dr. Ludlow Williams, propulsion engineer. Just call me Lud. Everyone does.”

Easily six feet tall and over two hundred fifty pounds, Lud presented a mixture of contradictions. Sam knew enough about space travel to realize people that size were seldom chosen for any work beyond Mars. The problems involved in transporting and feeding a man that massive would’ve outweighed anything he had to offer. In an instant, Sam realized his own slight build had been an unspoken job requirement.

Relief eased Sam’s shoulders. His only instruction for how to reach the outskirts of the solar system had been to find this imposing mountain of a man. “Sorry I’m late. This place is something of a maze.”

Lud’s laugh was too big for indoor use. “You ain’t seen nothing yet. But the first leg shouldn’t be too bad. First stop, Deimos, one of the Martian moons. It’s really nothing more than a space port, but we can catch a lift to one of Saturn’s moons after that.” He gave Sam a slight wink. “From there, transport will be a little less conventional.”

Even using the word
pirate
in an Earth spaceport was likely to get a person pulled out of line and dumped into a small, uncomfortable room. The wink from Lud was all Sam needed to get the message.

On board, the ship’s space-weathered passengers avoided making eye contact. Once clear of the spaceport, they delved into different ways of whiling away the weeklong trip and left their neighbors alone.

All but Lud. “Ever been to Mars, Sam?”

Sam shook his head. “First time off Earth.”

The statement caused more than one face to turn from its chosen distraction. There were those who traveled off Earth and those who didn’t.

Lud kept talking despite the glares of those strapped in nearby as they attempted to remain in their own silent little worlds. “Well, Mars isn’t a bad first choice. Lots of women seeking the adventurous self-made billionaire out there. I’m sure we’ll do fine.”

The comment elicited more than one snicker from the eavesdroppers. The overly romanticized Martian adventure novels had been hugely popular with the women of Earth, and more than one misguided adventurer had wandered out to the nearest planet, looking for wealth, fame, and women. What Sam didn’t understand was why Lud insisted on the cover that Mars was their destination. But playing along seemed a smarter course than announcing they were headed to an area of the solar system reviled for its lawlessness.

He looked out the window at Earth’s lifeless moon as the ship began its voyage. No one would be able step foot on it again for another ten generations. Pockmarked with explosive craters and covered in garbage so dense it was visible from Earth, the moon had been man’s first failed attempt at terraforming and at Earth-wide cooperation as well.

The history of the conflict was more than Sam wanted to contemplate. Shooting garbage barges at Earth’s nearest habitable outpost had been the only use everyone could agree on. With no one living on the Moon, everything became fair game. Governments with long-decommissioned nuclear reactors finally found a place to dump their contaminated material.

Looking back at Earth wasn’t much more encouraging. Storms raged across the North American coastlines while vast stretches of dried, dead ground reflected light from the continent’s barren center. He’d never seen the effects of the manmade environmental Armageddon with such stark clarity.

Lud pulled a thin, flexible, transparent work pad from the pouch of his thick jacket. “Some light reading for you.”

Tapping at the pad revealed more information than Sam had thought possible. Hours turned to days as he pored over the new material on the trip out to Mars. No one on Earth suspected any of these ships still existed—Sam’s studies had relied on archival footage, original schematics, and stories by those who’d traveled in them. Never had there been talk of an actual surviving space freighter.

Leviathan
had performed her mission of assisting in the terraforming of Europa, making five trips in total—quite a feat back then. The trip out wouldn’t have been too bad with the solar relay beams allowing ships to sail the solar winds with light traveling in their direction. That would be a piece of cake. But once at their destinations, most ships suffered an inglorious end. Getting back to Earth involved massive amounts of power. And the farther out they were, the harder it was to collect that energy. Planetary outposts didn’t consider the return trip to be their problem, and they hoarded their incoming juice from the then newly created solar transfer array.

The only way for a star freighter to return to the inner planets was for it to bring enough onboard energy of its own—energy that would look like an open bank vault to any outlying settlement. And the farther out, the more valuable that power. Five trips without being hijacked by pirates meant a ship had some moves, and not just physical maneuvering—most of those pirates operated with the blessing of the new host planets, who were more than happy to buy up any parts or energy that fell out of the sky.