Anomaly

By Raul Aguilar

Astronomers at a U.S. Air Force Research laboratory sponsored telescope at the summit of Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii discover an anomaly in skies above the Atlantic ocean.

A bartender from Texas, a law student from San Francisco and an electronics professor from Chandigarh, India share a common bond that may save the people of earth from extinction. Only the strongest of the trio will survive to negotiate for the future of the planet and discover the real mission of the Starship Razepme Arap and its crew.

Captain Anica and his crew locate the rare earth oxides and move quickly to verify the planet's suitability for mining operations. The elimination of the insect population around the rare earth oxides is essential in evaluating the planet’s suitability for mining operations. The clash of cultures is one-sided and the death of millions is only a side effect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raul Aguilar
• Release date: Oct 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301812615

Raul Aguilar

Raul Aguilar has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 35 years. A degree in Electrical Engineering lead to a career as an Electronic Analog Design Engineer for 10 years and ultimately inspired him to pursue a Juris Doctor degree from the University of San Francisco. Admission to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office diverted his interests temporarily, but ultimately fate led him to pursue a career as an Insurance Regulatory Attorney.Raul has pursued writing short stories as a means to express his interests in travel, 13th Century European History and International Relations. Raul's travels have led him from San Francisco across all the major cities in America to London, Paris, Cote d'Azur, Monaco, Germany, Italy, Rome, Spain, the Cayman Islands, the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. His writings reflect many of the places and cities visited by Raul and his lovely wife Diane.

Book preview

Anomaly

By

Raul Aguilar

Copyright 2013 Raul Aguilar

Smashwords Edition

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Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book to my wife, Diane. A sweet and gentle soul who stood patiently at by my side and unselfishly gave her last measure of love and life in support of all my efforts. Without Diane, nothing would have been possible.

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INDEX

Prologue

Chapter 1 – Overload

Chapter 2 – Visual Anomaly

Chapter 3 – Sandy’s Dreams

Chapter 4 – Visitors

Chapter 5 – Unspecified Concerns

Chapter 6 – Operations

Chapter 7 – Meeting of the Minds

Chapter 8 – Discovery

Chapter 9 – Answers

Chapter 10 – The Anomaly

Chapter 11 – Hubble Results

Chapter 12 – Unbelievable Visions

Chapter 13 – Realignment

Chapter 14 – Minami-Tori-Shima

Chapter 15 – The Aliens

Chapter 16 – Protective Custody

Chapter 17 – Dead and Dying

Chapter 18 – Bad Reaction

Chapter 19 – Disinformation

Chapter 20 – Guests

Chapter 21 – Contamination

Chapter 22 – Chinese Attack

Chapter 23 – Home at Last

Chapter 24 – A New Guardian

Chapter 25 – Balance of Power

Chapter 26 – One-Way Trip

Epilogue

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About the Author

Other Books by Raul Aguilar

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It’s an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sherlock Holmes -The Beryl Coronet.

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Prologue

Guardian Notsob began the calculations to decelerate the RAZEPME ARAP. It began to curve the ship’s trajectory to an orbit around the third planet in the Class IV Star System. It would soon activate the Resuscitation Modules that carefully protected the ship's Captain, Medical Officer and Weapons Officer from the light and sub-light speed stresses on their fragile bodies. The RAZEPME ARAP was a Guardian Class Cruiser capable of light speed travel for an extended period of time. The most modern, well-equipped, heavily armed battleship had survived the third interstellar war between Guardian Notsob's worlds and the invaders from its neighbors in the Veterandorum Star System. The RAZEPME ARAP was modified, equipped and assigned to explore Class IV Star Systems for planets with oxygen-rich atmospheres. Its main directive was to locate and identify the existence of rare earth heavy metals and verify the planet's suitability for mining operations.

Rare earth heavy metal oxides were the basic source of energy that powered the complex high-energy reactors in Guardian Notsob's Star System. After 200 years of searching, Guardian Notsob had detected an abundance of heavy metals in the third planet in the Class IV Star System, Galaxy 2333-C217. After completing its complex calculations, Guardian Notsob ignited the RAZEPME ARAP's plasma propulsion system and the massive star cruiser's fluid armor frame shuttered as it began to decelerate. Guardian Notsob had prepared a spiral flight path that would avoid the massive fifth planet from the sun due to its extraordinary gravity. As the RAZEPME ARAP spiraled pass the fourth planet from the sun, Guardian Notsob activated the three Resuscitation Modules and started to awaken its crew. The resuscitation process would take several months to complete.

The Ship's computer had determined that the heavy oxygen atmosphere of the third planet required its crew to grow four additional layers of body armor. It calculated that an additional two months would be required before their bodies would accept the injections of fluids necessary to reactivate their brains as well as a number of their internal organs. As the RAZEPME ARAP slowly slipped into a synchronous orbit over a vast expanse of hydrogen and oxygen fluid, Guardian Notsob began a detailed scan of the surface of the planet for a variety of minerals hundred of meters beneath the surface. As the ship’s computer, Guardian Notsob understood that its report would be the first thing that the ship's Captain, Guardian Lled Anica, would request.

Chapter 1 - Overload

William Bennett was tired. He had awoken at six in the morning, driven 45 miles to Palo Alto, California, spent eight hours assembling circuit boards for a top-secret avionics processor developed by his employer, Premier Electronics Corporation. Bennett had dropped out of Stanford’s Electronic Engineering program because he had become disillusioned with the abstract nature of the discipline. He had been fortunate enough to secure a highly paid job as an electronic technician with Premier Electronics Corporation before dropping out and he had left management believing that he was still pursuing his studies at Stanford. William Bennett found that he had hours of free time on his hands and on impulse applied to the Golden Gate School of Law in San Francisco. To his surprise, he was accepted into the law school’s freshman class. Initially, his goal was for him to experience new ideas and meet attractive young women pursuing a career in law. After a few months, William Bennett found that he enjoyed the study of law and did not have time for the attractive young women that occupied half of the class.

His schedule required that he start classes at 7 o’clock every evening and spend all of his Saturdays and Sundays studying at the school’s law library. His schedule for the past two years had been waking up at six, eating a breakfast, driving 45 miles to work, putting in eight hours, driving back 45 miles home, going to class at 7 PM and having a snack at 10:30 in the evening. It seemed to him that he was tired all the time and more than once, he wondered why he had given up the abstract sciences supporting electronic engineers to study why the greed and avarice of everyday people, wealthy people, stupid people or intelligent people drove them to break the rules governing a modern society. The law itself was sterile by definition and abstract by application. Clever lawyers would weave the facts to bring their clients actions within the application of the law. If that did not work, they would argue that the law was ambiguous and argue that the law did not apply to the facts. William Bennett preferred the application of nature’s laws to the application of man-made laws. One was pure in form and the other was inherently corrupt.

William Bennett, Bill to the very few close friends that he had, would take his annual vacation from Premier Electronics Corporation to study for his law school exams. He would sit at one of the many tables provided by the law school, review, summarize and outline his notes. Late one morning, shortly before lunch Bill Bennett was reviewing his notes from a corporation’s class where the concept of the creation of an artificial legal entity and its legal rights had been discussed in detail. As he mused about the impact that the suspension of the corporate status would have on a lawsuit against the corporation, he noticed a bright cherry red truck hauling a 30-foot trailer packed with metal I-beams to a construction site near the law school. It was having difficulty maneuvering the 90° turn from one street to the next. The truck’s cab had struck a corner of the building and Bill was already deciding the liability between the parties. He could see that the truck driver was visibly agitated since the shiny bright cherry bumper of the truck’s cab now wore a white ragged scar.

A crowd of students gathered and watched the driver struggle, backing the trailer and the vehicle, interfering with traffic and then trying to make the turn again. After a while, everyone got bored and continued to their original destination. The truck driver, responding to the traffic jam that he had created, backed up a fourth time, placed the truck in low gear and accelerated around the corner. To Bill Bennett time seemed to slow as he watched the cab of the truck hit the curb and tilt precariously, followed by the 30 foot trailer. The momentum of the vehicle and its load pushed the truck and its trailer onto the sidewalk and, just as the cab was starting to right itself, one of the ties holding the I-beams to the trailer snapped. The load shifted and two more, then three more ties snapped and the center of gravity of the trailer shifted twisting the trailer and the cab on its side. Bill Bennett watched as an I-beam smashed the heads of a couple like a ripe watermelon. He felt the bile in his stomach rise to his throat as another beam cut three more horrified students in half.

Before the crowd of students could get out of the way, the rest of the truckload of I-beams slid off the truck like large pencils, then crushed and mangled the bodies in the crowd. Bill Bennett watched as arms, legs, torsos, heads were scattered across the plaza. Blood, brain matter, pieces of flesh were thrown through the air and splattered against Bill Bennett as a warm, wet ooze. The horror that unfolded before him was accented when a round ball bounced a few times landing on his lap covering his corporation notes with a bright red fluid. Bill Bennett’s last conscious thought was that the woman’s head in his lap had a surprised look on her face and that her eyes were still blinking. Bill Bennett’s heart stopped and the blood flow to his brain stopped. A feeling of euphoria came over him and he felt himself float gently above his body. He could see that his eyes had rolled into his head and he watched the woman’s head fall out of his lap and roll out of sight. I think I’m dead, he said to himself feeling peaceful and content. He watched as ambulances arrived and paramedics tried to help some of the injured. He could feel a bright light beckoning to him. He turned and he saw a white path leading into the bright light. Everything else was dark. He started walking toward the lights when he heard in the distance, This one is not dead... Stand back... The bright light disappeared.

This patient is a 22-year-old male. He has been in a catatonic state for 94 days. The patient displays surges of highly synchronized brain activity associated with consciousness and visual activation that exceed electronic patterns seen during a normal awake state. Does anyone have any opinions or diagnosis? asked Dr. Peterson, the resident neurosurgeon and Chief of Staff of the San Francisco Medical College. The EEG reflects fluctuations in the brain and suggests that many of the neurons in his brain are firing all at once. That would account for the surges of brain activity, said one of the interns. I believe that the spike in brain activity is simply a shock to the system response by the brain cells to a major change in the brain’s physiology, said another. You are both correct, the brain signatures suggest conscious processing, but could also be attributable to heighten communications among the different parts of the brain. I believe that there are 10 levels of brain activity and any one of them could alone or in combination with the others account for the EEG pattern that the patient is displaying, said Dr. Peterson impressing his students with his command of the abstract and unknown functions of the brain.

The patient in the next room is suffering from…, Dr. Peterson started to explain when Bob Bennett let out a blood-curling scream. They’re dead. They are all dead. I’m dead. I’m blind, where the hell am I, he yelled in a voice hoarse from inactivity. Dr. Peterson and his interns were visibly startled but no one said anything until a female intern yelled, Nurse, we need a sedative, STAT. By the time the nurse had arrived, Bill Bennett had slumped back into his hospital bed, exhausted from his feeble effort to regain consciousness. Over the next 48 hours, a team of doctors and nurses monitored his vital signs and waited for him to regain consciousness. It took another three months before Bill Bennett could discuss the horror of the events that he had seen almost a year before. I’m blind. I can’t see anything. Will my vision return? he asked. The trauma to your brain was horrific. You have made steady progress and I believe that over time your eyesight will return. I know it’s easy for me to say, but your eyesight will return, said Dr. Peterson sympathetically.

I know that I’m blind Doctor but I see visions. It is almost as if I am looking through someone else’s eyes. Sometimes I am in a bar, serving drinks to customers. Other times, I am looking at circuit diagrams and walking through an office somewhere in India, said Bill Bennett, frustrated that he could not more accurately describe the visions. The brain is a very complex organ. It is made up of billions of neurons and synapses that communicate with each other in ways that we do not totally understand. Different parts of your brain perform different functions and, as is often the case, when you lose one sense your brain compensates by amplifying the others, replied Dr. Peterson. The images aren’t always there, they come and go and I have no control over them, said Bill Bennett listening for the doctor’s response. The trauma which you experienced overloaded your brain’s sensory receptors, your eyes, your feeling, your ability to smell, your taste buds. Over the past few months, all of them have returned or have started to return to normal. Your vision will eventually return to normal. Right now your brain is trying to heal itself, replied Dr. Peterson.

William Bennett understood and accepted that his brain had overloaded when the big rig and its trailer attempting to maneuver around the corner, struck the side of the building and fell over on its side. The dozens of young men and women who had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time were crushed by the truck directly in front of William Bennett. He had come to grips with the fact that before his brain shut down, his books, his notes, his face, his hands were all drenched with blood, pieces of flesh and brain matter as he watched in slow motion the truck crash their bodies. The doctors had told him that his brain could not accept the horror of the event and to protect itself, it shut itself down and as a consequence he had a near-death experience. Bill Bennett could not remember that he had been in a coma for over three months when he could not hear, see or speak. He could not accept the fact that even though he was blind he was starting to see visions, in his deafness, he began to hear words and eventually he was able to communicate to the doctors the hallucinations he was having.

The brain is made up of numerous levels of consciousness. When one breaks down, the other levels of consciousness try to make up for the loss. I believe there are 10 levels of consciousness and that in your blindness you are tapping into all of them. It will take time, but you will be fine, was Dr. Peterson’s standard explanation. Bill Bennett felt that he was getting better. He could think clearly, he could communicate with the doctors, but his eyesight had still not returned. They kept him at the hospital for an extended period of time so they could study his loss of eyesight. The doctors could find no physical reason for his blindness and concluded that eventually, when the brain healed, his eyesight would return. Bill would try to explain to his doctor that the visions had become crystal-clear and that he was now starting to hear voices and sounds associated with the visions. Your brain is manufacturing those visions, along with the sounds. It is trying to reconnect to your optic nerve. You are having a dream while you are wide-awake. When your sight returns, those visions will disappear, was their constant explanation. One afternoon after being spoon-fed his lunch by a pleasant sounding nurse, William had a vision that he was in a hospital room and someone had turned on the television. It took him several minutes before he realized that his vision had returned.

Dr. Peterson and his interns spent several weeks running tests and all eventually concluded that after almost a year in the hospital he might be ready to be sent home. The only problem that Dr. Peterson could not resolve was Bill Bennett’s reoccurring visions. They would appear randomly, sometimes in his sleep and sometimes when he was wide-awake. As long as Bill Bennett continued to have these hallucinations, Dr. Peterson was not inclined to release him and treat him on an outpatient basis. The fact that you are having these hallucinations tells me that your brain has not totally healed. We cannot find any physical basis for those hallucinations. If they continue, I may refer you to one of our psychiatrists, said Dr. Peterson responding to Bill Bennett’s repeated requests to be discharged from the hospital. The visions are not always clear. Sometimes I feel that I am looking through a fish tank. Another way of saying it is that it is if I am underwater looking at a flat wall with lights blinking on and off, he said trying to downplay the frequency of the occurrences. Bill Bennett had decided that they would not let him out until he stopped having hallucinations or visions and over a period of weeks started downplaying their occurrence.

Eventually, Bill Bennett did not mention the visions anymore. All of your tests are coming up negative Bill. I am inclined to discharge you from the hospital, but only if you agree to stop by for a checkup every three months or if these hallucinations start up again, said Dr. Peterson with a smile on his face. Thank you Doctor, that’s the best news I’ve had in months. When do I get out? asked Bill Bennett anxiously. I will start the paperwork today and we should be able to discharge you tomorrow morning. Will you have someone to drive you home? asked Dr. Peterson. Bill Bennett had anticipated this question as he had watched others in the hospital floor discharged. Yes, my best friend Richard Allen will pick me up and drive me home, he replied. The following morning the Charge Nurse came by with a bag containing Bill Bennett’s clothes. They had been laundered, neatly folded, his shoes had been cleaned and even his wallet had apparently been disinfected. When he arrived, he had been drenched in blood, brain matter and pieces of flesh. For a second the memory of that moment caused his stomach to constrict, but disappeared as quickly as it had come. The Charge Nurse walked Bill to the waiting area at the entrance to the hospital and anxiously looked at her watch. Thank you nurse. I will just sit here and wait for my friend Richard. You don’t have to wait, he said with a smile. I guess that’ll be okay, but wait until he walks out with you. You’re still not that steady on your feet, she said and walked back to the elevator.

Chapter 2 - Visual Anomaly

Dr. Clearwater if you will examine the photographs you will see that the images are no longer clear, but rather distorted, said Dr. Laura Chen, astrophysicist and part-time astronomy instructor at the University of Hawaii. "I have seen something like this before. The photograph could have been taken through the exhaust trail of a jet aircraft or it could