Destiny's Choice is an original work of fiction, a science fiction thriller of novel length with uber qualities. The plot is layered with romance, political intrigue, sex, and violence. At times the drama can be intense. Enjoy. Once completed I hope to find a publisher. I appreciate comments good and bad, especially if they are constructive.
Destiny's Choice
Chapter 6: The Symphony
A polite, subdued applause and a bright circle
of light greeted Dr. Miranda as he strolled to the podium. Rubbing her hands
together, Hayley lost sight of him in the enormous glare of the spot. Her knees
wobbled like two over-cooked noodles. Her heart pounded. The rumblings of timpani
resonated within her bowels. Her hands shook and a clammy sweat covered her
palms.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like
to welcome you to the sixth in this year's series of Professor Book Talks."
Lightheaded, Hayley thought she might hyperventilate.
What if I faint? How embarrassing! She fought the panic welling up inside.
"So I present the successor to the mantel worn so
well by her beloved grandmother, the late Dr. Hayley Karolek. Ladies and gentlemen,
the author of the critically acclaimed Where No Man Has Gone Before,
Dr. Hayley Genetti."
The dean extended his hand.
Her cue.
The audience applauded politely.
Hayley's afflictions immediately increased. The shaking,
loss of breath, wobbly legs, dizziness, and nausea, all plotted to humiliate
her. Fighting the morbid anxiety and its accompanying hypochondria, Hayley took
a deep breath and stepped through the opening. A spotlight caught her face.
For a moment, it blinded her. In the bright beam, she felt naked, on display.
Forcing herself to proceed, she could see the dean's stocky outline in the light's
aura. He was surreal, almost ghostly. She extended her hand. Likewise, he reached
out, and taking it, gave her a genteel welcome.
Going to the podium, Hayley took the wand from its holder
and reactivated the VAS display. The first of her notes immediately appeared
on the podium's idiot screen and the yellowish hue on the display screen hanging
over her left shoulder blipped.
Hayley looked down to avoid the blinding spotlight and
took a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she exhaled. She read the monitor on the
podium's idiot screen. Hello and welcome, Hayley recognized the notes
to her introduction. Painstakingly crafted and scrutinized since Miranda had
first convinced her that she should deliver a book talk; the speech was some
of her best work, or so she had believed. Now, she wasn't sure. She wanted to
beg the audience's pardon and ask them to resume their normal Saturday afternoon
activities. She had neglected to prepare. The words on the screen were not her
own. No, not her own. They looked foreign.
"Hello and welcome," she spoke. A shock. She
had actually opened her lips and spoke. Hello and welcome. Three simple
words. Okay, ask for forgiveness and run.
Hayley looked ahead into the powerful spot. Blinded,
she could see nothing. Squinting a little, she could detect the outlined silhouettes
seated in the first two rows. Actually, the first three rows. The first row
was empty.
The outlined forms in the second row
gave her pause. Her family she guessed. Who else would want to sit that close?
Perhaps they were the only ones present, she thought.
She remembered the applause. Polite, it had, nonetheless, had volume. How many
pairs of eyes were watching her? She didn't know.
She continued on, "I'm Dr. Hayley Genetti."
That was smart. Dr. Miranda had already told the audience her name. She plowed
on. "˜And you heard correctly. The book that I have been asked to discuss
this afternoon is Where No Man Has Gone Before. If you thought that this
might be one of those Star Trek-Science Fiction confabs that were so popular
two hundred years ago, I'm sorry to say you are mistaken. I understand the Martian
Science Fiction Guild will be holding their convention next week, or perhaps,
it was next month˜I wish I could remember. You know, I've always had such a
bad memory for dates."
She allowed a well-rehearsed grin to
slip. Carol had suggested she start with a joke, perhaps one of her awful puns.
Hayley had debated. Would a pun be appropriate? There!
She had done it. Hayley grimaced and shrugged, almost apologetically. Surprisingly,
she heard a light smattering of chuckles. Probably some of her students she
guessed. Not all of them of course. Carol was busting their butts instead of
standing in the wing. Damn you Carol. Tanner, next time keep your mouth shut.
No orders. No nothing. Still, others from her classes had read the notices.
They were there, somewhere in the audience. They would understand. They were
use to her style and had probably expected at least one poorly phrased pun.
"But this is no convention and definitely not a
discourse on fiction, science or otherwise." With the transitional bridge
completed, she glanced down at the monitor.
She found her place. "When Dr. Miranda," she
gestured to where the pudgy dean had said he would sit, "asked if I would
deliver a talk on Where No Man Has Gone Before, I was hesitant. As a
native Martian, I have had the pleasure of sitting in the seats you now occupy
many, many times and I wondered what I would have to offer."
Hayley forced her eyes away from the prompter and into
the light of the blinding nova. She released her grip on the podium's edge.
"I am honored Dr. Miranda asked me to share with
you a theory I call the Law of Mobility. An extension on the fundamentals found
in Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis of 1890, the Law of Mobility attempts to
define mankind's galactic destiny; that is our place˜mankind's role˜not only
on Earth, but on the moon, Mars, throughout this solar system, and consequently
within the galaxy and beyond. Over the years, as I collected and synthesized
the volumes of data required in the proof, and in light of recent discussions
that have begun to dominate the political arena, I have come to recognize the
importance of presenting a logical sequencing and justification for the current
policies of the United Galactic Confederation."
She paused, half-expecting to hear the uncomfortable
rustle of seats or the nervous clearing of throats. Instead, only silence greeted
her and the soft shimmer of what she guessed were eyes.
"The Law of Mobility, simply defined, says that:
one: humans are innate transitory creatures who have a genetic predisposition
to explore; and two, that our current age of discovery, our desire to catalogue
and move out into the stars, is an extension of forces that have been at work
since the beginning of history.
She pressed the video display button on the wand. Immediately
a brilliant shot of the African continent taken from space filled the expanse
of the stage. She glanced over her shoulder. The luminescent Earth, reflecting
the startling blues of the expansive Indian and Atlantic oceans and the wisps
of clouds, looked like a jewel against the black of the velvety night sky of
space. "To understand the Law of Mobility, we need to take a journey, a
journey back in time to the beginning." The screen changed into a series
dissolves bringing the audience from the generic shot of the Earth to Africa,
to Eastern Africa and the Red Sea, to the arid hills Oldivai Gorge, and the
preserves of once expansive grasslands, the final a computer simulation she
had discovered in the archives replicating the appearance, gait, and lifestyleof
humankind's earliest ancestors.
"From the earliest hominids. Humankind has been
on the move. First from the trees, in search of sustenance, they ranged over
the extensive, expanding grasslands in search of water and food. Thus began
man's first journey˜from the trees to the grasslands. For the next two thousand
millennia, our proto-human forebears would continue to flourish and evolve on
those plains, but they did not remain sedentary. Instead, they and their human
descendants became great wanderers˜from Africa to Eurasia, and then eventually,
during the last great ice age, across the land bridges to Australia and the
Americas."
As Hayley explored the most recent statistical studies
on early human migration patterns and reviewed the maps that went with each
new revelation, the audience became less evident. Caught up in her own fascination
with the data and the insights they provided, she wove the great stories only
her encyclopedic mind could.
"Just as the evolutionary process gave humankind
its current physical shape and intelligence, so it also gave us our basic psychology,
a rudimentary desire and need to never remain static. Indeed, humankind seems
to possess a nature that is transient, if not transitory. Whether it be nomads
following game and seasonal crops, or the desire for precious metals and resources,
trading outlets, or outright domination, humans seem to have a pressing need
to move and expand."
The spot followed Hayley as she crossed the stage. Her
voice echoed from the auditoriums digital speakers. Low, not quite an alto in
timbre, she noticed an uncharacteristic authoritative quality in her soft delivery.
Was this how she sounded in the classroom?
Except for one loud percussive sneeze and a couple of
people clearing their throats with brief, shy coughs, the audience was quiet;
and Hayley hoped, attentive. Looking out, she saw the owl-like reflection of
eyes. At least some had not fallen asleep, and as she progressed in her narrative
describing the great migratory epochs in Earth's history, she noticed the eyes
followed as she retraced her route across the stage and with the ease of a magician
teased her story.
"With changes in technology, the evolution of new
economic and politic systems, especially the development of the European nation-states
and mercantilism, this mobile tendency, for better or for worse, took on global
proportions. The new mobility began around 1000 AD, following the Carolingian
Renaissance and the reign of Charlemagne. Now I don't mean we should overlook
the achievements and scientific advancement of those empires and civilizations
outside of Western Europe. The Islamic empires of Africa and the Middle East
created an impressive library of knowledge in the areas of science, medicine,
mathematics, and navigation. Besides these vast stores of information, the emerging
European nation-states would also have to thank the Islamic nations and people
for maintaining the various east-west trade routes. These, theEuropeans would
rediscover once they awoke from their hibernation and began their scramble for
the treasures that lay before them. Still, it is important to remember, it was
the Europeans and the use of the knowledge they obtained from their Islamic
neighbors during the Crusades that allowed them to sweep over the globe."
Hayley described the First Age of Exploration,
a name given to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by twenty-first and then
again by twenty-third century historians, and its parallels to the present age.
"At this point I do not want to debate the ramifications
and ethics of western domination. Instead, I prefer to discuss the legitimacy
of the migratory nature that preceded these rapid deployments˜and I say rapid
in lieu of the more leisurely way humankind had originally populated
the planet. In contrast to the thousands, if not millions, of years it took
for humanity to sweep over the globe, it would take just under four hundred
years for Europeans and their western philosophical ideas to do the same.
"So what does that have to do with us or the current
migration of humans into our solar system, and beyond? I say that the past is
immutably linked to the present and, therefore, our future. Human nature, which
began to develop when the first proto-humans left the safety of their trees
and walked upright across the savannas of Africa, an event repeated figuratively
over and over in history, is in need of finding satisfaction and fruition. Humankind's
destiny is a transient one. We are creatures that must keep moving, growing,
learning, and achieving. This is the psychological and philosophical root of
humanity's existence. So naturally, as Earth's population grew, it was not unthinkable
that humans would gaze their eyes upward to the stars and ponder: Why not?
"Some historians have labeled the early explorations
of space the Second Age of Exploration." Hayley described the more
famous and lesser- known highlights of the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second
century ventures into space, linking each: First Sputnik, Explorer, Mercury,
Gemini, Apollo, the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, the missions
to Mars, Europa, Titan, and Io, and the establishment of the first colonies.
Quickly, her tale progressed to the present time.
"Just as with the First Age of Exploration,
the beginnings of this, the Second Age of Exploration, has taken a long time
in coming. Though the early manned space flights came at a furious pace in the
1960s and the United States triumphantly sent several manned missions
to the moon and the former Soviet Union maintained a series of space stations,
the successes thereafter came at an increasingly slower rate. I certainly would
have shared the frustrations of many living in the closing decades of the twentieth
century. In Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, humans had already
come to occupy the moon and had prepared for the first manned expedition to
Jupiter. The famed Star Trek series, which I honored with my book's title,
depicted a federation of planets engaged in the peaceful exploration of the
galaxy by the twenty-second century. Yet, obviously, here we are, the twnty-third
century.
"The year is 2254 and the dreams
of these literary visionaries has not yet been fully realized though many of
the technologies advanced by these futurists have existed for more than a century.
Why so slow? The lack of sound fiscal planning, chaos, fractionalization, the
bastardization of the educational system by politicians, fundamentalists, Luddites,
and business interests, who knew little about cognitive processes and successful
teaching practices and only sought their own political and economic considerations;
the endless cut backs in funding, political squabbles, reactionary thinking
dominated by those with parochial visions, and a host of other roadblocks put
a damper on those enthusiasts who looked forward to the stars.
"So instead of bases on the moon and space stations circling the Earth
in 2001, the Earth bound saw only NASA Space Shuttle missions, the occasional
interplanetary probe, unmanned of course, and continued debates and squabbles
about costs, designs, and need. It wouldn't be until the United States, Russia, the EEC, and Japan came together
in the 1990s that the first international spacestation finally orbited the Earth.
It wasn't until 2051, before a consortium of countries working through the United
Nations formed the United Space Exploration and Colonization Cooperative for
the purpose of establishing a lunar colony, Tranquility City. Another decade
passed before the monetary and political might of the United Mining Consortium
and other conglomerates with extraterrestrial visions sent adventurers, including
my descendants, Carl Genetti on my father's side and Colonel Armstrong Karolek,
to physically explore the mysteries of Mars's rich geologicl bounty and establish
of a colony.
"I pity Ray Bradbury, Ben Bova,
Carl Sagan, Kim Stanley Robinson, Myra Novachek, Miguel Rodriguez, Scott Craemer,
Patricia Grand, Robert Rojakowski, and the other Martian visionaries. They were
long dead, and though the technology existed when they walked the Earth and
gazed upward, they never saw their dreams of a Martian colony come to fruition.
Instead, they watched helplessly as the Terran power structures killed their
dreams.
"What would have happened if Marco Polo had been
too frightened to travel the unknown trails to China or if Prince Henry the
Navigator of Portugal had kept his fleet home and refused to fund the exploration
of the African coast, or if Columbus had decided the Atlantic Ocean was
filled with monsters or the world flat? What if the European monarchs had refused
to back the explorers of the First Age of Discovery? What if John F. Kennedy
had refused to chase the Soviet Union's lead into space? Where was the courage
and vision of Earth's Lost Generation of Space Exploration? What took the leaders
of our great-great-
Hayley extended her hands, and like a politician in search
of votes, an action she had seen her mother, sister, and brother-in-law perform
countless numbers times, she paused. It was then, a thunderous ovation erupted,
and the audience came to its feet.