Earth, page 1
Books in the COLONY Series
QUANT
ARCADIA
GALACTIC SURVEY
SILK ROAD
LOST COLONY
EARTH
Books in the EMPIRE Series
EMPIRE: Reformer
EMPIRE: Usurper
EMPIRE: Tyrant
EMPIRE: Commander
EMPIRE: Warlord
EMPIRE: Conqueror
by Stephanie Osborn:
EMPIRE: Imperial Police
EMPIRE: Imperial Detective
EMPIRE: Imperial Inspector
EMPIRE: Section Six
by Richard F. Weyand:
EMPIRE: Intervention
EMPIRE: Investigation
EMPIRE: Succession
EMPIRE: Renewal
EMPIRE: Resistance
EMPIRE: Resurgence
Books in the Childers Universe
by Richard F. Weyand:
Childers
Childers: Absurd Proposals
Galactic Mail: Revolution
A Charter For The Commonwealth
Campbell: The Problem With Bliss
by Stephanie Osborn:
Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident
EARTH
A Colony Story
by
RICHARD F. WEYAND
Copyright 2022 by Richard F. Weyand
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-1-954903-07-4
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Credits
Cover Art: Paola Giari and Luca Oleastri,
www.rotwangstudio.com
Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk
Many thanks to
王睿
for verifying Chinese cultural accuracy.
Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
January 2022
CONTENTS
The Road To Power
Assessment
Mission Plan
Mission Approval
The Plan Gets Under Way
Deployment
Disaster
Data From Earth
Second Testing
Departure
Endeavour
The Chairman
Earthfall
Meetings
Making A Run For It
Emergency
After-Action Reviews
Homecoming
Worldview
Intermezzo
The Search
Assault On Arcadia
Arcadia Responds
Doubling Down
Good Cop, Bad Cop
Reaction And Farewell
Getting Started
Arrival At Earth
Settling In
A Radical Proposal
Terraforming
Nearing Retirement
Transition
New Colonies
Requiem
Author’s Afterword
Notes: The Players And The Colonies
The Road To Power
Jonathan David Wilson had not had a promising start in life, all the more surprising given where he ended up. Born Anup Patel, he had grown up on the streets, in the slums of Kolkata in the Bengal administrative region. His one overriding goal had been to get out of the slums and leave them behind forever.
The best way out of the slums started with schooling. The problem with that was that the best schooling was virtual, for which Patel needed a communicator with a heads-up display. Cheap communicators were available, but they were marginal at best for schooling, and even the price of the cheap ones was more than he had or could imagine having.
The easiest way to money for a youngster in Kolkata was theft. While most transactions – and all big transactions – were done virtually, cash was still used for small items. Patel became adept at picking pockets, snatching purses, and otherwise victimizing the unwary and unvigilant. The one thing he couldn’t steal was a communicator itself. Once configured, they were unalterable, making a stolen one worthless.
Patel saved what he stole, concealing his growing stash. When he had enough money to buy a communicator with the features needed for the best education experience, he bought it.
When initially configuring the device, it asked him to enter his name. He had given a lot of thought to this step. Anup Patel was not a name that was going places. Light-complected because of his mixed ancestry, he chose a name that was not too pretentious, but was not an Indian name at all.
When it asked him to enter his age, Patel again lied, entering a value four years older than he actually was.
And so Anup Patel, age eight, became Jonathan David Wilson, age twelve, and plunged into his schooling.
The second item on Wilson’s agenda was to get out of the Bengal administrative region. Too many people, and not enough to go around. Not enough for him, anyway. If you wanted to get out of the slums permanently, go to where there were no slums.
Affording passage was another matter entirely. At the age of twelve – but with a records age of sixteen – Wilson became a cook’s boy on a small local freighter. The ship worked both sides of the Bay of Bengal, the west coast of the Indian peninsula and the east coast of Burma and Thailand in the Southeast Asia administrative region. The lie was believed because Wilson was big for his age, and had studied how the older boys carried themselves. Besides, age requirements in this part of the world were honored more in the breach than in fact.
When the ship once made port in Kuala Lumpur, three years into his employment, Wilson left the ship. With his earnings he upgraded his wardrobe, lied about his experience, and secured a berth as third officer of a larger freighter working the South China Sea, including Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and China itself. This ship wasn’t a tramp freighter, though, it was part of a larger company.
Throughout this period, in the long hours of boredom on ship, Wilson continued his education. Motivated and bright, he sailed through the K-12 curriculum – in English – and began his college work at the records age of eighteen, though he was in truth but fourteen years old.
Wilson began his degree in public administration, because he’d never seen anyone in government who was poor.
Two years into his employment with the shipping line, Wilson was promoted to second officer. A year later, he was transferred to a bigger ship that made the Pacific crossing, running from Hong Kong in the Guangdong administrative region to Seattle in the Washington administrative region.
Wilson terminated his employment with the shipping line upon arrival in Seattle. Always frugal – in the way only someone who was once poor can be – he had built up a nice savings.
Wilson upgraded his wardrobe again, buying clothes that matched those of upwardly mobile people he studied in the financial and business district of the capital of the Washington administrative region. He then applied for a position with the World Authority Police, which was hiring officer candidates.
With his college degree in public administration and his experience in supervising crew on board ship, Wilson was accepted as an officer candidate. He was transferred to the World Authority Police Academy in Geneva, Switzerland, in the Central Europe administrative region.
Wilson graduated the year-long program with excellent scores. He was assigned to the protection detail on the home of a senior World Authority Council member, Gunter Mannheim, in Frankfurt, Germany, Central Europe administrative region.
Wilson had finally made it. Gotten out of the slums and guaranteed he would never go back. He didn’t back off, however. Having been so aggressive in his career and education, it had become a part of who he was.
Wilson began studying for his graduate degree, a doctorate in history.
Gunter Mannheim had the habit of talking to himself when considering a problem. He would mutter the facts of the scenario as he checked back and forth in the documentation, ask himself questions – ‘And what are we to do about this, then?’ – as he considered the problem.
All of the police who stood watch in his office and living spaces were aware of the issue. For that matter, Mannheim was as well, which is why all the police assigned to his protection detail were double- and triple-checked as security threats. One had to have people one could trust, because they would hear much of what was going on.
The police, of course, never said anything, either to Mannheim as he considered or to anyone else after. His business was his business, pure and simple. They simply stood watch. Sometimes they were amused by his continuous soliloquy, but they kept carefully detached.
Except for Jonathan David Wilson, that is.
The young lieutenant also stood watch, the detail being chronically understaffed. And after his shift, he would research any issue he had heard Mannheim considering.
One day, when Mannheim revisited an issue Wilson had researched, Wilson did the unthinkable.
He spoke.
“What are we to make of this? How must we respond?” the fifty-three-year-old member of the World Authority Council asked himself absently.
Of course, he had spoken aloud, and Wilson took it as an opportunity.
“The best course may be to not respond at all, sir.”
“What? What’s that?” Mannheim asked as he looked around for the source of the answer.
“Here, sir,” Wilson said, stepping forward from the shadow in the corner. “The best course may be to not respond at all.”
“How do you figure that?”
“There is evidence the nationalist movement in South America is dying, sir. Membership is down. Collection of dues is way down. This provocation may be the leadership’s last gasp to get attention. If you respond, they’ll say, ‘See! See! We’re being oppressed.’ You will actually boost their credibility.”
“This article is pretty incendiary,” Mannheim said. “You’re saying to ignore it? Then what happens?”
“They may scream even louder, sir. And more shrilly. They will shed followers even faster. Their message is just not getting traction.”
“Hmpf.”
Mannheim looked down to the article again. Pro-nationalism, anti-World Authority, in about the shrillest terms he’d seen. Could that be the sign of a dying movement?
Could his security guard be right? Mannheim squinted at the name on his uniform. Lieut. J. D. Wilson. Ah, yes. The tanned American. The one working on his history degree.
“You think they’re dying out, Wilson?”
“Yes, sir. If they were growing, they would be more confident, more assured. Not shriller. Not more provocative.”
Mannheim nodded.
“You may very well be right.”
Mannheim looked up at Wilson.
“So we ignore them?”
“For now, sir. Let them get shriller yet, their movement smaller yet. Then arrest the small core of hardliners later, once they’ve stepped over the line and run off their own more moderate elements.”
Mannheim nodded, then set the article aside.
“You’re getting your degree in history, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir. I already have my college degree, in public administration. I am working on the doctorate in history now.”
Mannheim squinted again.
“How old are you, Wilson?”
“I just turned twenty-four, sir.”
That was the recorded age of Jonathan David Wilson. In fact, Anup Patel was barely twenty.
“Why did you never go into politics? That seems a natural for you.”
“Entry into politics is harder without a patron, sir. And the World Authority Police were hiring.”
“I see,” Mannheim said.
Mannheim did understand. He himself had had a patron. Perhaps it was time to repay the favor. It was good karma if nothing else.
“Wilson, I’m going to ask if I can get you detached for a time from the police and make you an adviser on my staff. We’ll see how that works out.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Mannheim nodded.
“And we’ll see how your advice works out on this separatist group.”
Wilson’s advice did work out, on that and many other things over the years. After several years, he became Mannheim’s chief of staff. When Mannheim was made Vice Chairman of the World Authority at age sixty-three, he proposed that the thirty-four-year-old Wilson replace him on the World Authority Council.
And when Mannheim stepped up to Chairman of the World Authority at the age of seventy-five, he made forty-six-year-old Jonathan David Wilson his Vice Chairman and heir apparent.
World Authority Chairman was nominally an elected position, and always had been. But the limited terms of Bernd Decker’s day were gone. Once elected, the World Authority Chairman was effectively dictator for life over all of Earth. He could be removed by a supermajority of the Council, but that had never happened.
At the age of eighty-six, after eleven years as chairman, Gunter Mannheim died. Jonathan David Wilson became Chairman of the World Authority – the outright dictator of Earth – at the recorded age of fifty-seven.
Wilson took office the same year that, three thousand light-years away on Arcadia, Chen JieMin and Chen ChaoLi became Chen Zufu and Chen Zumu of the Chen-Jasic family.
That was in 2391 on Arcadia, and 2397 on Earth, due to the longer day on Arcadia and both planets simply counting their unequal days along the same calendar.
It had been one hundred fifty-two Earth years since Janice Quant had transported two million four hundred thousand colonists from Earth to the twenty-four different colonies of the colony project.
Assessment
Jonathan David Wilson, nee Anup Patel, the new World Authority Chairman and dictator on Earth, did not take power ignorant of what Gunter Mannheim had been up to. As Vice Chairman the last eleven years, he had been closely involved with Mannheim’s thought processes and decision making. As the former chairman aged, Wilson had become gradually more involved.
Even so, on taking power, with the decision-making authority now his, Wilson undertook a reassessment of activities and priorities within the planetary government.
One thing Wilson took another look at was the hyperspace project.
One thing the chairmen of the World Authority always took good care of was themselves. The World Authority Chairman’s residence – more of a palace, really – was located on Chira Island in the Colorado Gulf of Costa Rica in the Central American administrative region. The World Authority had taken over the entire ten-square-mile island for the chairman’s residence.
The site was selected because it had the world’s best climate. Travel was possible from the island’s airport/shuttleport, but the World Authority Chairman seldom if ever went anywhere. All meetings of the World Authority Council had been virtual, attended by avatar, for two centuries.
Medical care on the island was not an issue. Doctor visits were easy – they were brought to the island as required. There was an elaborate and well-stocked hospital ward in the residence. There were also guest houses on the island the visiting medical personnel could use during their stay.
Because it was an island, security was also not a difficult issue. The biggest security hole was the security people themselves. But Wilson had been in the World Authority Police himself, and personally knew people he could trust. There was no danger of a Praetorian Guard situation there.
Loneliness could be an issue, however. While the World Authority Chairman could contact just about anyone on Earth virtually, there was something about actual human contact that could not be simulated. There was plenty of household staff and security, of course, and that met some of the need for everyday human contact.
For more personal contact, there were beautiful young local women who enjoyed staying on the island in return for being accessible to the chairman. Never a family man, Wilson found them friendly and amenable enough to his needs.
When he had moved into the chairman’s residence and things had settled down a bit from the initial transfer, Wilson brought up the hyperspace project with his chief of staff. It was a virtual meeting, of course, as the chairman’s staff was not located on the island.
“Did you look into the current status of the hyperspace project as I asked, Tony?” Wilson asked.
“Yes, sir,” Antonio Braida said. “The mathematicians have been hard at it the last ten years, and they’re closing on a formalism that suggests how transition can be made between normal space and hyperspace.”
“Do they think faster-than-light travel will be possible in hyperspace?”
“Yes, sir. The current thinking is they should be able to get something like twenty or thirty thousand times light speed.”
“Put that in light-years for me, Tony,” Wilson said.
“Between two and four light-years per hour, sir.”
“So Alpha Centauri in a couple of hours.”
“Yes, sir,” Braida said.
“Perfect. And what kind of timeframe are we talking about?”
“Maybe two years to a working device, sir. Another two years before they have a design for a spaceship of some kind.”
“Excellent.”
Wilson thought about it a moment. He looked out his office window toward the pool. A couple of local women were tanning nude on the pool deck, while three others were in the water. But his thoughts were light-years away.
Wilson turned back to the three-dimensional display where Braida waited patiently.
“See if there’s anything they need or could use to speed things up. I want to get this done.”
“Yes, sir,” Braida said. “My impression is that the prior chairman didn’t see this as a hot issue.”
