The Final Sunset Read online

  THE FINAL SUNSET

  TREVOR HERRON

  AuthorHouse™ UK

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

  www.authorhouse.co.uk

  Phone: 0800.197.4150

  © 2016 Trevor Herron. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  Published by AuthorHouse 07/31/2017

  ISBN: 978-1-5246-3356-1 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5246-3354-7 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-5246-3355-4 (e)

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

  and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: The First Generation

  Chapter 2: The Second Generation

  Chapter 3: The Third Generation

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  He walked on two legs but he was hairy, his visage was that of an ape but he was not an ape. For one thing he looked up at the night sky quizzically and he recognized the rotation of the stars. He looked down and then up again and he wanted to get closer to whatever those things were that lit up the darkness so he climbed a tree until the branches creaked under the strain of his weight.

  Holding tightly on with his toes he raised his arms to those marvellous twinkling objects calling on them to take him up to them or come down to him but then the branch broke and he tumbled down thirty metres or more. Lucky for him there were growths of different ages and thick underbrush that broke his fall at different stages on the way down; all the same he hit the ground very hard.

  He sat up dazed and shook his head to clear it. The little objects were still there. Early man had begun discovering his universe. He observed and he learned. He remained stationary while the objects circled around him while they were on show therefore he must be the centre of all creation.

  The lights circled around him paying him homage. This he told his children with the limited vocabulary he had and they told their children with an improving vocabulary and an expanding brain.

  Not only his brain expanded but he developed an ability to project and with projection came an id and an ego that would change his character all together and eventually lead to him lying on a psychiatrist’s couch.

  He became angry with the objects for staying aloofly where they were and he screeched his frustration at them. He would make them do what he wanted them to do and his screech echoed down the centuries and millennia. He beat his breast with his fists and the hollow drum-like noise sound had him dancing to its rhythm and proclaiming. I am man, man, man.

  ###

  Time went by and man no longer thought the stars worshipped him but came to worship the heavenly bodies instead. There were the stars that told of events to come in the shapes they took on and in the changing relationships to each other and how their celestial domiciles travelled through the heavens.

  Aries the ram, Sagittarius the Archer, Aquarius the water carrier and others. From afar they had many functions but stayed away from the domains of the all- powerful sun and the beguiling moon. In the eons that followed man stepping out of the primeval soup and coming down from the trees he learned much by looking up. The only animal to do so.

  He no longer only looked at the stars but created documents that recorded their exact positions and routes they took through the skies. Eventually he invented instruments to bring the stars visually closer.

  Now more than ever man wanted to confront the stars. Who are you to be so arrogant? Where do you go during the day when I need you to show me the way beyond the mountains? Man walked on his moon, he walked on the planets closest to him, he burst out from his own solar system but alas, he never was able to overcome time.

  ###

  In the vastness of space and time and in the passing millennia man became man but he had yet to meet any fellows in space. The complication of interstellar space travel lay not in lacking a vehicle to travel in but in failing to realise that they already possessed the ideal vehicle. The planet upon which they lived.

  Traveling to the stars in their living accommodation would be the sensible thing to do but getting back to where they came from? Why? Relativity was no answer it only increased the disparity between virtual age and real time age that developed between traveller and home. For a star traveller travelling under those circumstances the question of when real time handed over to virtual time, as in in the theory of relativity, was an application in futility unless the space traveller and home base were fully in sync with each other but the disparity only increased exponentially with time.

  All it would need was a change in thinking, then the difference in time experienced by travellers and base need not be a cause for concern. That was a question homo sapiens felt God either refused to answer or could not answer Himself.

  The unrecognised Space ship, Earth sped on its predestined route dictated by unseen lines of mechanical force and magnetism that made space travel more of a rail road-trip than an ocean cruise. Space was not empty, Space contained space dust, space debris, invisible attractive forces of gravity, attractive and repulsive magnetism, lineal forces and centrifugal forces, but not the least of which were temperatures so low or so high that known metals could crystalize and shatter and under different circumstances heat a ship up far beyond melting point.

  The only apparent solution was for eons thought an impossibility, take your home with you like a tortoise but could the tortoise leave its predestined lines of force that kept it connected to the universe in relative harmony rather than as a rebel upsetting the universal movements with collisions and warps.

  When it became obvious that Earth was facing its worst catastrophe of all time man’s attitude changed with evolving technology. Even so, in the political arena he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Altar of Unity even while he knew that in unity lay strength, to be divided was to be conquered but then he had not yet come up against any race that could pose a threat so why surrender independence?

  Humans on Earth and Mars combined with the humanoids on Venus and Uranus and later with Titan when the satellite was incorporated into the first loose confederation.

  Strange as it seems it often takes a catastrophe for reality to strike home.

  ###

  Space travel, as the idea existed then was a catch 22 situation. A pilot could be despatched into space and before he was even meters from his ship the principle of relativity was already taking effect. When he returned after only a few months in space he found that time elapsed for those left behind was many times greater than those who journeyed into space.

  The result was that the star traveller was either a forgotten entity or his people and their civilisation no longer existed. A problem of this nature was best handed over to the humanoids.

  Within a short time, the humanoids on Uranus had developed a ship that could make the trip to the nearest star and back. They simply kept the axial rotation of the ship in phase with that of the home planet and sped up the lineal speed accordingly. The only restrictions being that a star ship had a maximum
warp speed of twenty-times light and constant adjustments to the axial rotation had to be made to remain in phase with earth.

  Communication remained a problem in that a point was reached where it took too long for the necessary cross pollination of information to be acted upon.

  So deep space travel in a separate vehicle remained a toy to be dusted off by the huge industrialists every now and again as a tax loop hole and the serious experimentation was left in the hands of the Uranians. They already realised that the only way true interstellar travel was going to be realised would be to travel with the useful parts of the would be travellers Solar System.

  Politically Venus, Earth, Mars, Titan and The Uranian Belt formed a commonwealth of worlds and a new idea of Space ship Earth taking off into Space independently changed to Space Ship Solaria travelling in space as an entity.

  Still there was no incentive for either schools of thought, space ship Earth or space ship Solaria, to start modifying their worlds into Star-Ships. Solaria concentrated on inner and localised space travel and over a period of a thousand years or so they annexed Mars and Titan (which was no planet, but the largest Satellite of Saturn), Venus and Uranus together with the larger pieces of rock debris in the Kuiper and Asteroid Belts.

  ###

  Uranus and the Kuiper Belt offered untold opportunities for mega industry and manufacturing. Titan opened sources of energy never before thought of and many of Jupiter’s moons held materials yet to be discovered.

  Venus was hot and humid. Only bacterial and fungil levels of life developed on that planet but it was those very levels of bacterial and fungil life that Solaria found particularly useful; they were the most effective anti-biotics ever discovered. With their help nearly every disease known to man and robot could be cured even though a little genetic engineering on some of the poisonous varieties was needed to correct the molecular structures and so obtain the best function.

  In light of these discoveries Earth happily annexed all the planets in the Solar System. Why not there was no one to compete with them? Mars, second in development to Earth was originally an empty world that had been colonised from Earth.

  History should have taught Earthlings the lesson that settlements only remain colonies until their dependence on the motherland starts stifling them.

  Remote rule and taxation were always recipes for disaster and after several rebellions and one major war of Independence Mars became a Sovereign Planet. Mainly because Mars needed a market for her products and Earth needed a product for her markets. The discovery of the medical value of Venus almost led to another war. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and Venus was introduced as a Sovereign Planet of the Federated Tri-worlds under rule of Humanoids because of its surface temperatures and inhospitable conditions. Uranus preferred to remain a subordinate colony of Earth.

  A loose federation proved to be a drawback. Old fashioned ideas of Trade rules and Excise prevailed and led to continual bickering over finances. So a tighter alliance was needed and the three planets of Solaria formed into a Federation not needing complicated methods of calculating tax and excise duties for the raising of necessary revenues. Taxes were simply paid by skimming them directly off the top of annual profits. Deciding the capitals of the new worlds also proved a problem, the two most powerful states of the original independent cities both vied for capital status. Eventually Beijing was declared the Administrative Capital and New York the Constitutional Capital and without question The Hague became the Judicial Capital.

  It was the perfect alliance, companies and research became a marketable product. Research opened the way for new products that in turn led to greater profits and it all became a ride on an endless carousel with the Tri-Planets of Solaria making fantastic scientific, technological and astronomical advances while remaining in a comparatively isolated and remote section of the Five Constellations.

  Solaria lived to advance technology and invent different ways of improving life. Strange as it may seem Solaria used their powers to break the boredom, the sameness of the isolation forced upon them by distance of time and space. Had they lived in a busier part of the Five Constellations they would have been a warlike civilization.

  Isolation, curiosity and boredom drove them to explore, within reason of course. As far as they could travel they only discovered dry and frozen desserts. But a frozen dessert was only useful if it was water, proper H20 that the frozen surface held.

  Everything changed when the Solarologists submitted reports to show that the sun was entering a Super Nova phase. Ten years in space could mean thousands of years on Earth so to set off on a mission to find another planet on which to live was purely an exercise in futility.

  ###

  CHAPTER 1

  THE FIRST GENERATION

  The first solar flares gave warning shortly after Hola’s Grandparent’s death they were the foremost Solarologists in the solar system. The major warnings were not isolated incidences they came in groups like shots from a machine gun, a burst of radiant heat pockets with Earth luckily just out of range but not so far out of range as to entirely escape the effects. Hola’s Grandparents were carrying out tests in space and recording residual heat readings when a rogue heat pocket over-took their ship. They never had a chance.

  “Oh! Sweet Jesus,” the old man said softly but loud enough to get Hola’s grandmother to look up and out the port hole.

  There was no escape, the flare stretched all the way back to the sun, a long tapering ribbon defining its twisting and curling and ever nearing shape in speeding reflexions against space dust; wanting to wrap them in a comforter of death. The old lady said nothing, she merely kissed the old man and held him tight.

  “This is what we have worked for,” he said, “Perhaps they’ll believe us now.”

  Venus hid itself in an orange, red and yellow glow. They had an instant when the light inside their lab-capsule glowed in the cleansing colours of fire and then they too were space dust.

  ###

  Solarology had the effect of making weather predicting into an exact science giving absolute meaning to all weather patterns and taking it out of the realms of psychic fortune telling. Weather forecasting had been a discipline whose methods of information gathering had changed little over the centuries so Hola’s grandparents were the darlings of the farmers, seafarers, airmen and freight carriers of any sort. The population loved them; enough to erect statues to them, but not enough to react to their dire warnings until the first catastrophe struck.

  The old folks had studied and mapped the sun for years; they had made the formulae that calculated and plotted the band widths and distances travelled by the major heat pockets and logged the shifting densities of fissionable gases and fussionable materials contained in those heat pockets.

  Their idea had been to construct reflectors in space across the critical radiance-free million kilometre line. Within that area even a relatively weak radiance flare had enough encapsulated heat to cause major damage on Earth.

  A million kilometres was the critical distance; any closer and the Earth could be incinerated. The rapid rise in Earth’s surface temperature and subsequent meltings already had many coastal towns and cities swamped and world travel, already in chaos now relied almost exclusively on inaccurate old fashioned methods of position fixing. A magnetic compass, a map, a scale rule, a sextant and a pair of dividers were more reliable than any GPS.

  Solar flares played havoc with electronic instruments and a rush to get experimental protonic pulsating instruments on the market meant that often sub-standard equipment was installed and safety compromised. Rising waters had altered the maps so much that the electronic navigation instruments were totally confused.

  Minor radiants followed one another in rapid succession over a number of years and seasons became confused; summer, winter, autumn and spring and the allocated calendar times for the seasons no longer applied. But nature is about
survival; not necessarily of the fittest but of the most useful, and does not wait for decisions from a committee before acting. But act she does and humans are not necessarily on top of her agenda.

  Mother Nature blatantly showed who she considered the most important species and who would contradict her. The first species to show evolutionary changes were the bees. Giant bees at least five times as big as the ordinary bumble bee appeared. Bees on Steroids people joked but it was no joke to be stung by one.

  The amount of pollen available for collection doubled or even trebled as flowers opened wider and bloomed earlier and were more colourful. Mother nature had made her choice and she knew what she was doing; for what species did more to disseminate non-destructive life than the bee?

  Had she chosen Homo Sapiens it’s a foregone conclusion that the flowers would have shut up shop and never bloomed again. Many others would have lodged their objections by either going into anger mode or not doing what they were designed for. Man couldn’t help wondering if most of the species on Earth were hoping for human life to go into a sulk mode and do nothing.

  In warm periods the plants flowered rapidly, from bud, to leaf, to flower which stayed open longer and when they dropped their seed the cycle repeated itself almost immediately. The cycle of plant life and giant bee proved just right.

  A pity that only a few scientists took the chance to record in an unbiased manner evolution running in overdrive. Most were chasing their own tails pumping out endless papers on hasty irrelevancies; trying to boost their own egos by getting already named species which showed the smallest change renamed after themselves. The rush was on to go down as the discoverer of the discovered

  ###

  The major flare ups had a dragon’s tongue of heat licking to within the million kilometre parameter of Earth. Mercury and Venus were engulphed by a flare hot enough to glassify most of the surface of Mercury and dry out the swamps of Venus in one massive evaporation leaving a baked brick-hard surface behind where once there had been mud of red and blue and yellow and swamps and water and algae and moss and other plant life beautiful in the spread of their colours and reflections. So mirror perfect with no ripples in the dark water that one was almost afraid to move. With movement the ripples shattered the images in the water like a mirror blasphemously splintering in a barroom brawl.