Book four
New GenesisII
Damian stood on the bow of the Liberty, his neck was bent back, his eyes lifted upward towards the sky.
For a long time he was lost in a trance, scanning the heavens for a sign of hope in the form of a pregnant cloud. There was nothing but the same unvarying blanket of mockery that had been hovering above them for six bone dry months.
The beauty of it: the clear blue sky, the gentle breezes; the calm, dark waters, had lulled he and his crew into a false sense of security. None of them ever thought much about the flip-side of enjoying over a year of the most perfect vacationing weather; until they stopped at an Island to replenish their stores and found that the place was dying from drought. They had departed the Island with far more brown and rotting vegetation than fresh green.There were no animals, small or big.
That was two months ago...and there was still no signs of rain in sight or on the horizon.
Suddenly the severity of their situation hit him as it should have long ago. He and his crew were facing starvation. There was no reason to believe that any other land masses on their route is going to be any more fruitful than the last.
Damian lowered his eyes and tried to think of other things--fill his head with less tormenting thoughts. The only memories that could provide him with comfort were of the past. Strength and hope lay within what he had already experienced. He luxuriated in reminding himself that he and his crew have conquered impossible odds before; been dragged from the jaws of death time and time again by fates and powers that none of them could claim to be their own.
His mind began to wander backwards as he plunged deeper into the mental escapism facilitated by the warm pleasant weather.
Six years has passed since a nine hour sustained blast of undiluted U.V. rays broke through the ozone layer and turned the entire earth into one giant swirling ball of death. Heat, Cancer, Floods, Tornadoes, Earthquakes plus an altered atmosphere which eventually became too heavy to breath for lungs that had not adjusted to it.
The species of men and women never had a chance though Damian had worked himself to the edge of insanity in his short career to give at least a significant number of people what they needed to survive. He failed.
Most of the chance was lost when the U.S. attacked Iraq; dropped a bunch of mega-bombs that sent even more heat and particles up into a tattered stratosphere that the world had been trying to chemically bolster since the end of the Second World War. The first rent in the ozone layer was discovered after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. All the explosive nuclear tests over the following years by the governments of the world only served to make the situation impossible to turn around.
A lot of Insiders knew the situation could not be turned around long before Douglas McCloud—Damian’s mentor--who had concentrated his early scientific career on discovering improved ways of food production, did. Planes had been spraying nonstop to slow the deteriorating process of the ozone while the Insiders reserved their spots for their families, servants and protectors in the rapidly expanding underground cities that they knew was the only future left for the inhabitants of the earth.
McCloud had been enraged by the Iraq war, but more than that, he was broken by it. He had been deprived of the time he needed to perfect the artificial ozone spray he had been working on for ten years. He gave up his physical solution and started working full time on his much neglected biological solution. He had to perfect his protective balm but he didn’t think he or anyone else on his 8 person research team would have time to do it. He needed someone who would naturally have more time than his light-skinned crew, who had all been exposed to intense U.V. rays.
He needed the gifted kid who had written that highly acclaimed book on environment and biology. The kid’s name was Damian Marson. McCloud had learned about him from the scientific journals which crowed about the kid’s precocious one hundred page bit of inspiration like it was the Holy Grail. McCloud had cornered a fellow Professor who taught a class on African American history. His research into the boy’s life led him to believe that she could help him win the kid’s commitment. Then the old man caught a flight out to Richmond Virginia to talk to the seventeen year old wunderkind’s mother.
The first few years after the great breach Damian believed he and his little group were the only people left on the surface of the earth. He and his inner circle were scientists who had spent three years together researching and trying to find a way for Mankind to survive the coming calamity. During that time they had learned all that there was to know about what was coming and the best way to try to survive it. What they didn’t discover on their own, was when another major breach was going to occur in the Western Hemisphere, and where they had to go to escape its tumultuous aftereffects.
Damian didn’t think anyone without his group’s expertise and the balm that McCloud had discovered could have made it past the first year above ground after the big breach hit. He was wrong. He was also right.
There were others who survived past the first year, topside, but they didn’t make it by sheer luck or numerical odds. They had been specially chosen by powerful interests and they had been helped. Damian met them after he and his group had already lived alone on the earth for two years.
There were the Iowees...two small statured Hominids with green hair and yellow faces. They looked strange, but they had to be the most charismatic and lovable creatures of existence next to Christ. Elite, hardened Killers fell in love them. He met the Iowees at the same time that he met the elite killers—Special Forces soldiers, who were essentially holding the Iowees hostage though they would have died to protect them from harm even as they fought to carry out their orders to breed and enslave the little beings. These soldiers had been so genetically enhanced they all looked perfect in body and face. Damian could easily tell that the beautiful soldiers were as much the work of some lab as the Iowees.
Later Damian met another group of Special Forces soldiers. This group had normal looks and bodies. Damian could tell that their method of survival was more like his own –far less expensive--and more due to knowledge and a protective skin balm than to advanced technology. That told him that there were two different factions who had planted these soldiers on an earth that they had known would be depopulated and open to future planning and manipulation. One of the factions was far less wealthy than the other. Damian later found out from the Commander he had befriended why the opposing groups of Elite Futurists had left their Gunmen to try to take over the earth and steer its reality.
It was the same old slavery/freedom dichotomy that had been struggling for control of the universe from the beginning of time. This time the Iowees were the key to a whole new beginning.
Damian thought McCloud was a brilliant man, but the people he called “Undergrounders” had an army of geniuses working for them. The NASA scientists were just one group.
The reason Damian and his crew were at sea was because of an unsolicited package he had received in the mail with the NASA seal. It contained graphs of the illusive pattern McCloud had not been able to find in 30 years of searching. That pattern showed Damian when to expect the next breach, and where to go to escape it.
Whether he and his crew were also chosen to survive was still debatable in Damian’s mind. There was evidence that McCloud’s spirited recruitment of him was less flattering to his ego than what first appeared. One of the Special Forces Units had the same balm that he thought McCloud had exclusively discovered and himself had perfected. Someone clearly had helped him and only two groups had the ability to do it. Whether it was the elites, or their poorer opposition he wasn’t certain.
There was no question that it was the Elite Undergrounders who had chosen and equipped—genetically, chemically and technically --the Iowees and the lethal troops of Matinee Idols.
It’s possible the Undergrounders were the ones who sent him the computer disc with the pattern on it. They might have tried to seize an opportunity to use him and his companions as breeders like they planned to use the Iowees who were created small, docile, loving and lovable—the perfect, controllable slave. But it couldn’t have been part of the Undergrounders initial planning to help him. For one thing, he and his charges weren’t docile, they were fighters and they had a giant among them. His crew wouldn’t have made the best progenitors of a race of slaves.
Two: if the Undergrounders had him and his crew in their early blueprint, they wouldn’t have allowed their henchmen to try so hard to kill them.
It could be, though, that the Undergrounders have lost all ability to communicate with the surface. The breach destroyed and rearranged the very atomic structure of the earth’s magnetic field. So it’s possible the Undergrounders could be imprisoned in their subterranean cities in more ways than one.
Since the Undergrounders didn’t stay above ground, as he and his crew did, to allow their biological systems to adapt along with the changed earth, they will never be able to resurface—not for long anyway. Any communication devices they have would be as useless as the Liberty’s engines or those elite soldiers’ impressive weapons which emitted nothing but a puff of smoke when fired. Obviously, not even the Undergrounders and all the great minds they employed expected the sun breach to disrupt the very nature of the way the smallest particles reacted to friction.
Something or somebody wanted him to survive. Maybe it was the enemies of the Undergrounders who sent him the disc. Maybe they were still helping him by some technological means he didn’t understand. Maybe that “providence” he was starting to believe in, consisted of a group of men and women who were sending energy signals his way to manipulate things around him. He was certainly starting to feel providential.
Maybe that’s why it took him so long to accept that he and his charges were facing starvation. Providence has gotten them this far. Why would they be abandoned now?
New Genesis BookII )
Damian stood on the bow of the Liberty, his neck was bent back, his eyes lifted upward towards the sky.
For a long time he was lost in a trance, scanning the heavens for a sign of hope in the form of a pregnant cloud. There was nothing but the same unvarying blanket of mockery that had been hovering above them for six bone dry months.
The beauty of it: the clear blue sky, the gentle breezes; the calm, dark waters, had lulled he and his crew into a false sense of security. None of them ever thought much about the flip-side of enjoying over a year of the most perfect vacationing weather; until they stopped at an Island to replenish their stores and found that the place was dying from drought. They had departed the Island with far more brown and rotting vegetation than fresh green.There were no animals, small or big.
That was two months ago...and there was still no signs of rain in sight or on the horizon.
Suddenly the severity of their situation hit him as it should have long ago. He and his crew were facing starvation. There was no reason to believe that any other land masses on their route is going to be any more fruitful than the last.
Damian lowered his eyes and tried to think of other things--fill his head with less tormenting thoughts. The only memories that could provide him with comfort were of the past. Strength and hope lay within what he had already experienced. He luxuriated in reminding himself that he and his crew have conquered impossible odds before; been dragged from the jaws of death time and time again by fates and powers that none of them could claim to be their own.
His mind began to wander backwards as he plunged deeper into the mental escapism facilitated by the warm pleasant weather.
Six years has passed since a nine hour sustained blast of undiluted U.V. rays broke through the ozone layer and turned the entire earth into one giant swirling ball of death. Heat, Cancer, Floods, Tornadoes, Earthquakes plus an altered atmosphere which eventually became too heavy to breath for lungs that had not adjusted to it.
The species of men and women never had a chance though Damian had worked himself to the edge of insanity in his short career to give at least a significant number of people what they needed to survive. He failed.
Most of the chance was lost when the U.S. attacked Iraq; dropped a bunch of mega-bombs that sent even more heat and particles up into a tattered stratosphere that the world had been trying to chemically bolster since the end of the Second World War. The first rent in the ozone layer was discovered after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. All the explosive nuclear tests over the following years by the governments of the world only served to make the situation impossible to turn around.
A lot of Insiders knew the situation could not be turned around long before Douglas McCloud—Damian’s mentor--who had concentrated his early scientific career on discovering improved ways of food production, did. Planes had been spraying nonstop to slow the deteriorating process of the ozone while the Insiders reserved their spots for their families, servants and protectors in the rapidly expanding underground cities that they knew was the only future left for the inhabitants of the earth.
McCloud had been enraged by the Iraq war, but more than that, he was broken by it. He had been deprived of the time he needed to perfect the artificial ozone spray he had been working on for ten years. He gave up his physical solution and started working full time on his much neglected biological solution. He had to perfect his protective balm but he didn’t think he or anyone else on his 8 person research team would have time to do it. He needed someone who would naturally have more time than his light-skinned crew, who had all been exposed to intense U.V. rays.
He needed the gifted kid who had written that highly acclaimed book on environment and biology. The kid’s name was Damian Marson. McCloud had learned about him from the scientific journals which crowed about the kid’s precocious one hundred page bit of inspiration like it was the Holy Grail. McCloud had cornered a fellow Professor who taught a class on African American history. His research into the boy’s life led him to believe that she could help him win the kid’s commitment. Then the old man caught a flight out to Richmond Virginia to talk to the seventeen year old wunderkind’s mother.
The first few years after the great breach Damian believed he and his little group were the only people left on the surface of the earth. He and his inner circle were scientists who had spent three years together researching and trying to find a way for Mankind to survive the coming calamity. During that time they had learned all that there was to know about what was coming and the best way to try to survive it. What they didn’t discover on their own, was when another major breach was going to occur in the Western Hemisphere, and where they had to go to escape its tumultuous aftereffects.
Damian didn’t think anyone without his group’s expertise and the balm that McCloud had discovered could have made it past the first year above ground after the big breach hit. He was wrong. He was also right.
There were others who survived past the first year, topside, but they didn’t make it by sheer luck or numerical odds. They had been specially chosen by powerful interests and they had been helped. Damian met them after he and his group had already lived alone on the earth for two years.
There were the Iowees...two small statured Hominids with green hair and yellow faces. They looked strange, but they had to be the most charismatic and lovable creatures of existence next to Christ. Elite, hardened Killers fell in love them. He met the Iowees at the same time that he met the elite killers—Special Forces soldiers, who were essentially holding the Iowees hostage though they would have died to protect them from harm even as they fought to carry out their orders to breed and enslave the little beings. These soldiers had been so genetically enhanced they all looked perfect in body and face. Damian could easily tell that the beautiful soldiers were as much the work of some lab as the Iowees.
Later Damian met another group of Special Forces soldiers. This group had normal looks and bodies. Damian could tell that their method of survival was more like his own –far less expensive--and more due to knowledge and a protective skin balm than to advanced technology. That told him that there were two different factions who had planted these soldiers on an earth that they had known would be depopulated and open to future planning and manipulation. One of the factions was far less wealthy than the other. Damian later found out from the Commander he had befriended why the opposing groups of Elite Futurists had left their Gunmen to try to take over the earth and steer its reality.
It was the same old slavery/freedom dichotomy that had been struggling for control of the universe from the beginning of time. This time the Iowees were the key to a whole new beginning.
Damian thought McCloud was a brilliant man, but the people he called “Undergrounders” had an army of geniuses working for them. The NASA scientists were just one group.
The reason Damian and his crew were at sea was because of an unsolicited package he had received in the mail with the NASA seal. It contained graphs of the illusive pattern McCloud had not been able to find in 30 years of searching. That pattern showed Damian when to expect the next breach, and where to go to escape it.
Whether he and his crew were also chosen to survive was still debatable in Damian’s mind. There was evidence that McCloud’s spirited recruitment of him was less flattering to his ego than what first appeared. One of the Special Forces Units had the same balm that he thought McCloud had exclusively discovered and himself had perfected. Someone clearly had helped him and only two groups had the ability to do it. Whether it was the elites, or their poorer opposition he wasn’t certain.
There was no question that it was the Elite Undergrounders who had chosen and equipped—genetically, chemically and technically --the Iowees and the lethal troops of Matinee Idols.
It’s possible the Undergrounders were the ones who sent him the computer disc with the pattern on it. They might have tried to seize an opportunity to use him and his companions as breeders like they planned to use the Iowees who were created small, docile, loving and lovable—the perfect, controllable slave. But it couldn’t have been part of the Undergrounders initial planning to help him. For one thing, he and his charges weren’t docile, they were fighters and they had a giant among them. His crew wouldn’t have made the best progenitors of a race of slaves.
Two: if the Undergrounders had him and his crew in their early blueprint, they wouldn’t have allowed their henchmen to try so hard to kill them.
It could be, though, that the Undergrounders have lost all ability to communicate with the surface. The breach destroyed and rearranged the very atomic structure of the earth’s magnetic field. So it’s possible the Undergrounders could be imprisoned in their subterranean cities in more ways than one.
Since the Undergrounders didn’t stay above ground, as he and his crew did, to allow their biological systems to adapt along with the changed earth, they will never be able to resurface—not for long anyway. Any communication devices they have would be as useless as the Liberty’s engines or those elite soldiers’ impressive weapons which emitted nothing but a puff of smoke when fired. Obviously, not even the Undergrounders and all the great minds they employed expected the sun breach to disrupt the very nature of the way the smallest particles reacted to friction.
Something or somebody wanted him to survive. Maybe it was the enemies of the Undergrounders who sent him the disc. Maybe they were still helping him by some technological means he didn’t understand. Maybe that “providence” he was starting to believe in, consisted of a group of men and women who were sending energy signals his way to manipulate things around him. He was certainly starting to feel providential.
Maybe that’s why it took him so long to accept that he and his charges were facing starvation. Providence has gotten them this far. Why would they be abandoned now?
