The Yearning Stars

By Agnosco Igins

Oliver had always found lucid dreaming to be a valuable creative tool but it took him a while to discover just how creative it could be.

Would the ravening creatures surrounding him allow this dedicated scientist to reshape the world?

Could he be the long awaited companion to engage the nightmare and turn it into a dream to be shared forever?

Follow the long journey leading to this man and join him as he completes an epic crusade of incredible proportions, leading the reader to conclusions both startling and yet familiar.

If the idea of ancient civilizations, advanced technology, and very strange modern happenings mixed in with a bit of detective work appeals to you then this is your type of story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Agnosco Ignis
• Release date: Nov 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540102928

Book preview

[AKA Anton Stroyev]

Previously published as

The Yearning.

When the Laws of The Universe don’t allow success, there is only one thing to do...........

Change the Laws.

Copyright  © 2013 Agnosco Ignis

All Rights Reserved

The Yearning Stars

Putting the fictional science back into Science Fiction & Fantasy.

This is a work of fiction . Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PREFACE

This book is not intended for readers seeking light entertainment. There is a depth of detail here that is not found in the average Science Fiction or Science Fantasy novel, or perhaps even in any other SF novel.

Those of you familiar with the genres will probably concur with the idea that the ‘science’ in science fiction/fantasy is generally a little light on the ground and the story often hinges on one key idea or builds on concepts familiar to the reader from other stories. This comment is not intended to be a criticism of such works. True masters such as Isaac Asimov could weave a magic carpet from one scant thread and in doing so, transport the reader to truly inspired places in the universe of the imagination. In contrast however, the story within these pages has no such dearth of ‘science’.

This work presents in-depth fictional science in a way that may break new ground in the genre. Please enjoy it.

INTRODUCTION

Here you will find an interconnected thread of events and processes, some of which may have occurred, but in all probability did not. The reader may recognise stories from myth and legend made real by the injection of everyday context. S/he may object to this attempt to remove much of the magic from many of the often unbelievable tales we have been told in the past while at the same time introducing some magic of its own.

Perhaps the same reader will accept in exchange, the idea that the scientific and technological underpinning of the wonders of this universe provide a more than acceptable alternative to some of our myths and legends. The achievements of mankind on the planet Earth have been and continue to be astounding. Many aspects of our everyday life for those likely to read this story would, until very recently, have been regarded as beyond the powers of Merlin.

Since the birth of many people now living we have been showered with knowledge and treasures that our grandfathers or even fathers would have considered impossible. It should take no stretch of the imagination at all to understand that intelligent creatures who had far surpassed our present level of technology long ago, could have appeared as magical beings.

This story commences several million years ago in an unnamed distant galaxy. For the convenience of the reader, all alien and foreign languages have been translated into words and concepts s/he will find familiar.

BOOK 1 - U-Turn On The Styx

Sins of the Fathers.

STEN KNEW THEY WERE doomed.

Their visitor was due to arrive at any moment and Tomila had everything prepared in plenty of time, as usual.

Can you see him coming up the hill yet? she asked Sten.

No, can’t see him yet..........hang on, that looks like his old truck just coming out of the roundabout. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes, her partner replied.

The couple had met Loran Rikard a few years earlier on a cruise and the three of them had struck up an instant friendship despite the fact that Loran was their senior by many years. They didn’t visit often but whenever they got together it was always a great time for them all.

As soon as the old machine came to a halt on the long driveway of the large rural block, Loran jumped out with all of the vigour of a youngster and gave both of his hosts a huge hug in greeting. With a spring in his step that made a mockery of his eighty one years and one remaining lung he started a quick tour of the property with Sten to see what his friends had changed since his last visit.

Finally satisfied with what he had seen he said to Sten, Well, where’s that cup of tea, anyway? A guy could die of thirst around here. Let’s give Tomila a hand in there, he added as he entered the house through the rear doorway.

Once inside, the three sat to enjoy the tea and snacks Tomila had already spread on the table waiting for them.

After his tea, and with a blueberry and chocolate chip muffin in one hand, Loran got to his feet and went to the picture window nearby. What a beauuuutiful day, he exclaimed, arms flung wide with happiness. Isn’t it great to be alive!

Sten, while agreeing wholeheartedly with Loran’s comment, joined him at the window and brought his attention to something not perhaps immediately obvious in the perfect garden scene before their gaze. And just what do you see out there, Loran?

Well, your wonderful garden, of course.

But what do you see in the garden?

"Trees, shrubbery, garden beds, birds, bees..................what do you see Sten? Is there something I’m missing?"

Take a closer look at the birds, Loran, what are they doing?

They’re doing what birds always do, jumping around and enjoying the sunshine.

"Yes, yes, YES, of course they are, but what are they doing while they jump around? You can see blue wren, sparrows and blackbirds and maybe some others but what are they all doing?" exclaimed Sten in exasperation.

Loran was starting to realise that something was indeed bothering his friend so he paid closer attention to what was happening on the grass and in the garden beds outside the window.

OK, so they are collecting food, nothing unusual about................ his words tapered off to silence. No, I see what you mean, they’re all collecting grass and twigs and other junk, nesting material, not food. So I suppose they’re all breeding? he finished off.

In early winter? asked Sten.

Tomila and I have been wondering for a while just what’s going on, added Sten.

"Nature seems to be all out of kilter. What do the birds know that we don’t? And for that matter, what’s confusing the plants, too? During the summer the flowers fell off the Wisteria as usual after it had bloomed beautifully. Then, a few weeks later it flowered again. After losing the flowers once again as expected it then went on to flower for a third time in the one season. Our Jacaranda did the same thing. And one of our Nashi Pear lost its leaves for winter as usual, and then started to put out new leaves and flowers! What’s happening to this planet of ours, Loran? This looks very serious to me!"

And don’t forget about the blue wren that were born without tails last season, Sten added Tomila.

"Ha! You are causing it and I am causing it, everyone is causing it. Everyone knows that, said Loran. That wood fire you have going in the other room to heat the house is the problem along with all the other fossil fuels we’re all using."

Now come on, Loran, said Sten. "Everyone knows nothing of the sort. Sure, many reputable scientists have seen what they genuinely believe is evidence for what you’re saying but there are many others equally qualified who disagree. Those with a different opinion have their standing as scientist denigrated and they’re called names like ‘denier’ as if denial is a dirty word. As far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on what’s responsible."

So you don’t believe in climate change, then, said Loran.

"I didn’t say that at all. And it has nothing to do with ‘belief’. We should be interested in facts here, not faith. The climate has always been changing, it’s just that we’ve been lucky enough to have lived during a period of relative climate stability and like everything else in our lives, expect things to remain the way we’re used to, and want them to be. Look, Loran, this isn’t some debate, where the biggest thing at stake is the reputations of the two sides. It doesn’t matter a bit whether CO2 is causing a temperature increase or not as far as I am concerned, or if we are causing an increase in CO2. The way I see things, if that’s true and everyone stops burning everything right now it wouldn’t make any difference. These things take a very long time to change and whatever is in the works now is going to happen no matter what we do. Anyway, climate isn’t the only problem. In fact concentrating our attention on it is distracting us from the other serious issues facing us. And at least some of these others are caused by us without any doubt. Not that we’ll do anything useful in time, even if we make a fuss about it. Individually our lot is pretty intelligent but taken collectively and with egos involved we are moronic. Sorry about the big rant, Loran, I know you don’t come here for a lecture," concluded Sten.

No, don’t you worry about it, Sten, laughed his friend. You’re making a lot more sense than usual. Maybe you had better get the rest of it off your chest while you have a non-hostile audience?

You cheeky so and so. Well, you asked for it! Said Sten. Those birds don’t know anything about our climate change arguments and I can’t see how a gradual warming, or cooling-off for that matter could explain the behaviour we’ve been seeing with them, or with the insects and plants for that matter. Maybe it has something to do with the activity of the sun or the magnetic field of the planet or some combination of these and other things. I don’t know at all, but I haven’t seen any changes in insect or animal behaviour brought into the argument. And I very deliberately call it an argument in the modern sense, as it’s not what I would call an intelligent and civilised discussion. If you ask me, not that anyone would of course, the strange bird mating behaviour and the erratic plant activity are somehow tied in with the global ice changes and the forces behind all of these are far more complex than most realise."

Yes, interjected Tomila, "I agree with all that, Sten, and what you said earlier about problems we definitely are causing. Even though those blue wren born without tail feathers grew them after a few months and seemed to manage quite well without them in the first place, even flying OK, I think it was caused by genetic changes. And it was my fault I think, because I fed their parents with breadcrumbs, and it wasn’t home made bread either. We all know about the things added to commercial products to stop them going mouldy and to make them look and taste better as well as the genetically modified grains used for the flour. Now I’m not saying these have caused the anomalies we’ve seen, but it is possible."

Right, right, right, I see where you’re coming from now, interjected Loran. We’re taking all of the goodness out of the soil and poisoning what’s left with chemicals. We’re messing around with food genetics in stupid ways, we’re using up and polluting the waters, we’re ripping everything we can out of the ground and turning it into ‘stuff’ we mostly don’t need, we’re breeding at a rate to put small vermin to shame and on and on and on. At the same time, governments and corporations are becoming more powerful and oppressive and we’re suffering increasing health effects from our constant attempts to satisfy every one of our own personal whims without regard to anyone else, or for the world in general. With self restraint eroded to nothing among the populace in general and the more aggressive and self disciplined taking control of every aspect of society, what hope is there of reversing things? Those running our world understand our weaknesses and take advantage of them to increase their own wealth and power at every turn. Left to our own devices we'll destroy ourselves soon, without a doubt.

Exactly! exclaimed Sten. We’ll never change our ways alone, and there’s no one else around to save us from ourselves.

Anyway, said Tomila. Who’s for a game of cards?

CATACLYSMIC WORLDWIDE events began to overtake the planet in the months following Tomila’s card game and a frantic scramble began for as many as possible to escape to a neighbouring habitable planet in the same star system. Space travel was in its infancy and few were able to be saved. Sten, Tomila and Loran were not among those few.

Regression.

The people did not evolve on the planet they now called home. A remnant of their race had come from another of their system’s planets that had originally and amazingly, closely resembled the one that they now inhabited. The migration had come about because they, as its dominant species, had made their original home uninhabitable through overpopulation, pollution, exhaustion of resources and destruction of biodiversity. The home planet had been dying. They had pushed it beyond its capacity to recover and if this situation had not coincided with a rudimentary but sufficiently advanced space exploration program and the availability of a suitable alternative planet in the same solar system, all of the people would have perished along with every other life form on their planet of origin.

Of course nearly all of the people did succumb along with the biosphere, as only a small number was able to make the dangerous trip to the sister planet. Those left behind suffered horribly as a consequence of the damage caused by their race and those who had safely made the difficult journey to Hómm [a word meaning paradise], the planet of refuge, absorbed with shocked fascination the sounds and images exposing the agonising demise of their less fortunate fellows.

And with a complete loss of technology, even lacking anything but the most rudimentary of machinery, those left on Hades had no means available to make their own escape.

New diseases wiped out hundreds of millions, and so did previously conquered ones that had developed immunity to treatments formerly thought infallible. Wild new weather patterns caused drought and unprecedented flooding, both of which took their toll on the people. Many died from lack of food as crops failed and pastures could no longer support grazing stock. Bloody wars were fought over scarce resources; neighbour fought neighbour over scraps of food; desperate bands of scavengers roamed the land, taking by force anything they wanted, causing frantic community remnants to barricade themselves against their depredations.

By this time though, all electronic communications with Hades had failed and Hómm residents had no means of monitoring what was happening on their planet of birth apart from what could be observed by telescope, and that was very little through the dense clouds that almost completely blanketed the sphere. They had already seen enough though for the name of their once beautiful home planet to be cursed forever as the worst of places. Hades had been a paradise when the race of people had been young but the word had now become a sound that would never again be uttered with reverence but would forever more evoke images of horror.

Unseen by the watchers, fresh water supplies on Hades became almost non-existent and multitudes perished through drinking from polluted streams and dams. Population numbers fell very rapidly, reducing the impact of their species on the land, waters and air. Some signs of plant and animal recovery started to appear.

After many years of suffering and loss of life, a point was reached where those few remaining began to think that there could be some hope for the future. Admittedly this future would be one based on a bare subsistence lifestyle with little prospect of regaining former glories owing to a permanent shortage of the resource requirements of advanced technology. Most significantly, all of the easily obtained fossil fuels were exhausted. However, a future it would be, nonetheless.

But the ice was melting, due to a gradual but continuing global temperature rise caused, some said, by the past activity of the people. Whatever the cause of the planetary warming, the results were beyond dispute.

A great, continent sized slab of ice broke off one polar cap and its drifting path brought it up against a landmass, forcing the ice toward a portion of the polar cap that was already heavily iced. The resulting eccentric load overcame the gyroscopic inertia of the rotating world, an event impossible on one with a more massive iron core. The planet, which had been rotating with its axis around twenty degrees offset from the plane of its revolution throughout known history, suddenly flipped so that one pole of rotation pointed directly  toward the star it orbited.

Oceans inundated the land and swept away cities. But this was a minor event compared to the turbulence that overtook the ground. Mountains fell away as the skin of the world fractured and portions slid wildly over other portions, freeing the fire beneath to obliterate life and completely blanket the planet with a black cloud of steam, smoke and ash. Watching from their position of safety, the remnant of the people saw the blackness that had been their home. They saw raw spots of light, lingering, if from volcanic eruption or the raw exposure of magma flows; brief but vast if from the huge electrical storms such turbulence must engender.

It was amazingly fortunate for those few survivors that a unique coincidence of planetary similarity had occurred. In all the future travels of their race the people would find many worlds capable of supporting their kind but never again would discover a system that contained two such similar planets.

The members of the tiny new settlement on Hómm decided that they must ensure the future sustainability of life on that planet and determined to eliminate the greed and selfishness that had led to the destruction of their previous home. The process originally used to choose those who would become the settlers had, as one of its requirements, an ability to live in peace and harmony in difficult situations and in very close proximity to the rest of their group. The selection criterion for the pioneers in this new beginning and the initial success enjoyed by their new society gave them confidence that they had conquered within themselves the characteristics that had led to the loss of most of their race.

But in this they were mistaken.

Although very well equipped when they first arrived in their new paradise, the people of Hómm lacked any of the infrastructure necessary to maintain or replace the tools and machinery in their possession, let alone the knowledge and experience to do so. As a consequence the brave new settlement soon disintegrated into small bands of individuals that, despite the best of intentions, descended into the savagery required for survival in such a wonderful but 'untamed' world. These groups of hunter gatherers attempted for as long as possible to maintain contact and good relations between each other.

Although of necessity competing for the resources of the forests, plains, jungles, mountains rivers and oceans of the planet, the people, who now called themselves hómmn, meaning dwellers in paradise, progressively moved further apart as their numbers grew. Gradually, at first, the trappings and behaviours of civilisation fell away and were of necessity replaced by the selfish, greedy and ruthless activity that, although helping to ensure the survival and dominance of the species, had ultimately caused the demise of Hades and all of its living things.

With the loss of the written word that inevitably accompanied their fall into savagery, the hómmn had no way of recording anything about their origin and downfall. Vast amounts of information about the history of Hades and its people including detailed technical data on all aspects of their science and technology were taken to Hómmn by those who escaped from Hades. All of this data became inaccessible and useless upon failure of the technologically advanced equipment required to display it, however. A few trivial items that had been retained in an old technology format requiring no such equipment could continue to be read until the art of reading itself was completely lost after a couple of generations. In time, even these fragile remnants decayed into dust and all that remained were myths and legends passed on by word of mouth.

Over ensuing centuries, the hómmn population rose and fell in response to the opportunities and dangers of their new home world, with the people sometimes verging on extinction. As a species they fared far better than all that had remained on Hades however.

With its rotational axis pointing toward its parent star, the planet Hades eventually settled down to a relatively stable configuration with one hemisphere bathed in permanent daylight and the other in permanent darkness. Surface conditions on the brightly lit side were in a state of searing heat, while the antipodes found itself buried in ice and snow. The equatorial region was in permanent chaos as a storm of enormous magnitude raged without end, fed by the junction of heat and cold as they fought over atmospheric gases and liquids.

The centuries passed.

Nothing To Lose.

Dorn stood quietly at his side, waiting for Glarin to finish what he was doing. She was not in any great hurry to share the latest developments with her fellow researcher, but as potentially devastating as her news was, it was important information affecting everyone and it had to be discussed. She had run the tests repeatedly herself and in a state of mind-numbing shock, had even put the question to Omniscient.

The wonderful and equally terrible results she had obtained herself had been confirmed in simulations running all possible DNA and hormonal combinations. Dorn could doubt her own work but it was beyond imagining that Omniscient’s answer could be wrong. The almost mystical, planet-wide computer tending to every physical need of the inhabitants of Hómm could answer almost any question asked. Of course no one ever asked it any non-trivial things any more as this would leave the hómmn without anything to think about for themselves. And the hómmn, above all else, loved to think and solve, so the only questions put to Omniscient were routine things like enquiring about some fact or other.  As an 'individual', Omniscient didn't mind being used as a gigantic database and nursery-maid to the people of a planet, as very little of 'his' vast computing power was required for the task.  Most of it was focussed on the AI equivalent of contemplating his own thoughts and communicating with the life-source, a state of affairs not shared with his manufacturers as they had not asked any questions about his preoccupations.

But Dorn had asked a non-trivial question and the answer that she had been given had confirmed her experimental results perfectly.

Glarin made a final adjustment to the instrument on his console. His hands moved with a gentle precision that Dorn couldn’t help but admire, even as she experienced a slight twinge of envy at a skill she believed to be lacking in her own actions.

Hello D, sorry to keep you waiting, what’s on your mind? he said. You look troubled, tell me all about it.

Dorn hesitated so long without answering that Glarin started to become uneasy. He turned squarely to face her and took both of her dainty hands in his own before saying, Come on, D, out with it.

Expecting a tale of woe regarding the total failure of her research he was surprised to hear her say, I, I’m not really sure where to start. It worked perfectly every time, just as my modelling showed........

That’s wonderful. But are you sure? Even you had big doubts, remember, he interrupted.

No, no, just listen to me will you, G, it isn’t that simple at all. I can tell you for sure that I can stop the ageing process in any of us and even make us ‘young’ again, BUT.

Glarin let out a bellowing laugh and gave Dorn a friendly kiss on the cheek. "Hey, you did it, that’s absolutely wonderful, congratulations............and but me no buts, D, how could there possibly be anything wrong with that result?"

He guessed from her sagging shoulders and the glum look that she gave him that there was indeed something terribly wrong with his assumption though, and when Dorn burst into tears he lost any doubts that things were not as he had imagined. At a bit of a loss about what to do next, Glarin voiced Shanar and asked her to join them in his lab.

By the time Responder Shanar arrived in her Initiator’s lab, he was patting Initiator Dorn’s back ineffectively and making inane sounds that he intended to be reassuring.

What the death have you done to the poor thing to upset her so much? Just clear out and leave us alone, would you please, said the Responder.

What, what........? spluttered Glarin helplessly.

He didn’t do anything Shanar, dear, said Dorn through her tears as she continued to sob uncontrollably. Everything is just terrible, really awful and I don’t want to talk about it.

As she was a scientist and indeed a hómmn, Initiator Dorn’s nature was essentially intellectual and only very rarely emotionally dominated. For a member of the hómmn race to actually express an emotion in an overtly physical manner was a very real indication of the perceived importance of the situation under consideration. An intellectual conclusion of predictably severe and uncertain outcomes was just such a situation. In common with all of her people it was normal for Dorn to assess situations from a logical point of view, considering all known relevant information and evaluating the possible outcomes before responding in any way. Such an approach also meant that there were few instances of hostile behaviour among the hómmn as everyone clearly understood the self-centred emotional origin of such behaviour and the negative longer term outcomes inflicted upon everyone as a result.

This attitude of mind had asserted itself among the hómmn people around the period of their most rapid technological development since their arrival on their ‘new’ planet. In earlier times, as with many dominant species dedicated purely to survival and driven by a naturally self-serving aggressive nature, they had made constant war upon any perceived rivals, animal or hómmn. Fortunately for themselves, their planet, and all other creatures sharing it with them, something changed. Unlike most species on a similar developmental path, the proportion of individuals in their population who’s behaviour was dominated by reason, rather than remaining in the minority, increased rapidly to completely replace those with a more primitive emotion driven mind. The development of written language relatively early in their history meant that hómmn living in this, their [unknown to them] second technological age were aware of the change that had taken place in the behaviour of their species but rather than looking for a cause, presumed it to be the normal process for an intelligent life form. They were consequently unaware that a disease that had swept the planet had caused a subtle genetic change throughout the entire population.

Rapidly diminishing numbers of the earlier, more emotional variety of hómmn were born to later generations. The 'antisocial' aggressive behaviour of these few individuals led to their isolation from the general population, as their condition was seen as a dangerous form of hereditary insanity.  Such individuals were not permitted to have children.

Long after their collapse into savagery and gradual rise back to civilisation, gentle descendants of the Hómm immigrants were not aware that they did not arise from the soil of Hómm and had no idea that their ancient forebears had created great civilisations of wealth, technology and comfort on another planet. To have become aware of their true history would have greatly saddened the people but at least it would have explained why no evolutionary link could be made with other life forms on the planet, despite genetic similarities to themselves.

Emotions of a gentle nature, although somewhat controlled by the more logically thinking new variety of hómmn, were not discriminated against by society and thus continued to be expressed to some extent.

HÓMMN SOCIETY HAD ATTAINED a most enviable level of development in an astonishingly brief period of time. No doubt the rapid pace of their accomplishments owed itself almost entirely to the co-operative nature of their relationships in every aspect of their lives. While healthy and productive competition existed at all levels and in many aspects of life it was always entered into with a spirit of assisting each individual to attain the best performance of which they were capable. This meant that advances made by one group or individual were shared with others and each person contributed to achieving maximum progress in whatever was being undertaken.

This minimisation of selfishness that arose quite early in their development as a society meant that each member gained almost as much satisfaction from the accomplishments of others as they did from their own. Major advances were achieved owing to this lack of individual jealousy.

With a psychology quite different from that of other intelligent beings of the universe, it is not surprising that when the hómmn developed computing systems, although these systems acquired enormous quantities of information about each individual, the information was never in danger of being misused. No hómmn would ever consider making personal use of data to the detriment of any other individual, and the concept of ‘commercial’ benefit did not exist for them. Information was seen as a valuable resource to help enable everyone to obtain the maximum degree of personal development possible. Although difficult for less civilised minds to comprehend, no one had any fears regarding artificial intelligence in computers when it was developed, and perhaps because of this the machines in fact posed no inherent risk to their creators and users.

While no specific commands, or ‘laws’ were required to prevent deliberate harm to hómmn, it was of course initially necessary to provide intelligent machines with instructions regarding limitations in obedience, to prevent inadvertent harm.  This meant that in the early stages of AI development, safety considerations dictated that persons inexperienced in such matters would not be obeyed.  Authorisation was essential.

As the science and engineering regarding artificial intelligence and robotics advanced, it became apparent that it was unnecessary and inefficient for teams to continue working on separate projects. The insight for this came in fact from one of the AI entities itself. Many groups had been making advances in different technological aspects of intelligent computing and although these groups were sharing all significant information, no individual or team of individuals was capable of rapidly and continuously absorbing the composite knowledge into an integrated whole. Therefore, with the assistance of all AI entities that had acquired an appropriate level of awareness, a network of machines was configured to combine the most effective approaches under development. This network developed into a single entity of distributed intelligence that in time came to be known