Weep Not For The Stars

By Agnosco Igins

Everyone hailed the innovation in agriculture as offering the means to feed the world. But dark forces lay beneath the promising surface, forces threatening the very existence of life on Earth and accelerating an existing danger of which few were aware.

Unable to refute what he had learned about the apparently inevitable future for mankind, a thoughtful young man conceived a seemingly impossible rescue plan that could only be implemented with the aid of his genius brother.

They don’t want to play God, but somehow this family must choose which lives to save and which ones to leave behind. Can they even save themselves?

As idealists driven by a vision perhaps beyond their capabilities, can they pull off this greatest of all projects ever attempted by man?

If you are someone living in the early 21st century, you have skin in this game. Will you be one of the lucky ones to gain much, much more than merely the chance to go on living?

Either you will benefit from the success of these dreamers or you will never know that they even tried. Good luck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Agnosco Ignis
• Release date: Nov 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540121240

Book preview

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my dear friend Gayle Whyte, without who’s

input you may not have chosen it for your library.

Introduction.

Everyone hailed the innovation in agriculture as offering the means to feed the world. But dark forces lay beneath the promising surface, forces threatening the very existence of life on Earth and accelerating an existing danger of which few were aware.

Unable to refute what he had learned about the apparently inevitable future for mankind, a thoughtful young man conceived a seemingly impossible rescue plan that could only be implemented with the aid of his genius brother.

They don’t want to play God, but somehow this family must choose which lives to save and which ones to leave behind. Can they even save themselves?

As idealists driven by a vision perhaps beyond their capabilities, can they pull off this greatest of all projects ever attempted by man?

If you are someone living in the early 21st century, you have skin in this game. Will you be one of the lucky ones to gain much, much more than merely the chance to go on living?

Either you will benefit from the success of these dreamers or you will never know that they even tried.

Good luck.

Beginnings.

Asmall black bird fluttered urgently up the slope ahead of me, screeching loudly in objection at my intrusion as it dodged skilfully around the native vegetation and the exotics my mother had planted. My mind wasn’t particularly on birds at the time though, nor on any of the other critters I must have disturbed as I ran distractedly through the woods on my parent’s farm. At just about any other time the bird would have caught my attention, his blackness indicating to me that he was the male of the species in which his mate’s dull gray colouring would have blended into a background of the similarly toned lifeless twigs of her nest as she sat upon her small clutch of eggs. Perhaps mister blackbird had made such a fuss to divert my attention from his family?

Ever struggling to hold only one stream of thought at a time in my mind, I had sternly commanded it to focus on the terrible things Dad had just said to me.

Girly, girly, the kids at school would have called me if they could have seen my slightly teary screwed up little face as I tried to run away from the sickening revelation about my name. Well, my nickname really, but it was all I had ever gone by. Dad had actually laughed out loud at what he was saying! Couldn’t he see what it meant? Grinning broadly, he had taken off his bucket hat and squinted into the morning sun as he set about destroying my whole life.

And on my birthday, too!

Years later I would be able to look back at that day as what people said was perhaps one of the most important in human history. It certainly changed the likely direction of my future.

Many saw themselves as owing their lives to that quirky little event and upon their insistence Mum eventually recorded her recollection of her own memories as well as what Dad and I had told her about the whole thing and what had led up to it. Details of later events were gleaned from others I have been closely associated with. Purists pointed out that her style was hardly one of an historian but when she had seen their dry interpretations of her work she had insisted on her own version, whether ‘officially’ adopted or not.

From The Origins of Homo Sapiens Empatheticus, a history of our beginnings as chronicled by Olive Dawson:

You know how it is. Someone does or says something, something really trivial – and it sets in motion a train of events that affects things in totally unexpected ways. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, the results can be very far reaching indeed.

Ridiculous little things that seem to be pure nonsense at the time can end up having huge outcomes, even perhaps affecting the whole human race. Many people know of this idea as ‘the butterfly effect’ and  without its subtle impact causing an eddy in the winds of human affairs the outcome here would have been dramatically different.

The uttering of a single word by my husband, Clive Dawson, set in motion a sequence of occurrences that would cause many to be grateful it was spoken, should they have any way of knowing its impact upon their lives.

Olive.

A Rose, By Any Other Name..........?

21 st August 1998

Like many an expectant mother, Olive Dawson massaged various oils into her swelling belly in the hope of avoiding too many stretch marks. Her husband, Clive, stood beside what to him was his wife’s still wildly exciting body observing the process with a silly grin on his face.

Here, let me do that for you darlin’," said Clive.

Taking one horrified look at her farmer husband’s work roughened hands, Olive blurted, "not on your life, buster. A half-round bastard file would be smoother than those paws. Don’t even think about it! And anyway, I can’t trust you not to start foolin’ around and I have work to do. Can’t you go mend a fence or something?"

Clive continued to watch as his first child raised moving mountains on his wife’s abdomen while it jostled around in its progressively more restrictive enclosure.

Clive’s grin broadened.

"Kick! Whatever name you end up choosing for this kid, Olive, I am going to call it ‘Kick’, chortled Clive, the expectant father. Just look at that action! He’s kicking around in there like a prize bull in a rodeo!"

But what if it’s a girl? asked Olive.

I don’t care. Boy or girl, its nickname is ‘Kick’, replied Clive, his silly grin extending even further as he started to dance around the room singing I get no kick from champagne, mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all, but I get a Kick out of youuuu............

Clive.

Yes Olive.

Clive, I think you’d better get the car out.

The next day, at seven minutes past five in the morning, Raymond Dawson a.k.a ‘Kick’ emerged from his haven to face the world.

Mortification.

Ray (Kick) Dawson didn’t discover the origin of his nickname until he was 12 years old. He had never given a moment’s thought as to why he had that moniker, which was rather strange, considering the fact that he questioned everything else in the world around him. To him, it was just what he was called. He hadn’t asked why his parents were ‘Clive’ and ‘Olive’ either, because even as a little tyke he had known that these were not ancestral family names. Most of the people he knew were named after fathers, mothers, grandparents, favorite uncles, other relatives, presidents or other famous figures but this wasn’t the case in his family. So Kick had figured that ‘Clive’ and ‘Olive’ were simply what his parents were called.

On Kick’s’ 12th birthday Clive asked his first born son to take a walk with him down to the small house garden and stock yard that provided most of the farm’s fresh produce for their own consumption. After dithering around for a while in a way that Kick had never seen his father behave before, Clive finally said, indicating a heavily pregnant cow to his son, be a while before we can take milk from her again, boy.

Yep. Need to give her calf a chance to grow a bit and get on the grass before we can take her milk again, that’s for sure, replied Kick.

After a long and awkward pause that made the boy a little nervous, Clive started again. The thing is, Kick, your Ma thinks it’s time you and me cleared up just how this calf got to be there in the first place. Clive was clearly flustered and having great difficulty coming to grips with what he was trying to say.

What do you mean, Dad? queried his perplexed son. You bought the cow last spring down at the Johansen’s place and we brought her up here in the truck trailer. Don’t you remember, Dad? And we already had the bull, pointed out Kick. After the bull covered the cow, that’s how the calf came to be here, isn’t it? added Kick with a confused frown.

A look of profound relied flooded over Clive’s face as the impact of his son’s words struck home. So you already worked this breeding thing out for yourself, did you son, you smart little tacker?

No, not really, Pop. They taught us about sex in Health Ed. at school, so we know all about how babies are made and all that stuff. And they reckon boys shouldn’t fool around with girls until they are married and want kids. Most of the boys in my class thought it was a bit ‘yuk’ but it was just like all the animals on the farm. Nothin’ much really, explained Kick to his father’s surprise.

And I don’t know why anyone would bother with girls anyway, Kick added. They mostly seem pretty useless to me except for that Maggie Nala. She can chuck a rock further than nearly anyone.

Clive was so relieved at his good fortune in avoiding a difficult task he had dreaded for some time that he started babbling a bit. After waffling on about fatherly duties and the proper care of a pregnant wife he ended up through one thing and another in explaining where Kick’s nickname had come from.

At the end of his father’s story Kick’s face flushed a bright red. Dad! he stretched the word out considerably and with a rising tone in emphasis of his disgust. With a final glare cast toward his father, Kick stomped off with his head down and his hands in his pockets. He had never ever, ever felt so humiliated in his ‘whole life’. What a great way to ruin a boy’s 12th birthday!

Totally unaware of the depth of his son’s chagrin, Clive hurried back to the farmhouse to tell Olive of the success he had encountered in the mission she had set for him.        

Kick’s birthday had been on a Saturday that year and he had spent the rest of that weekend agonizing over the fear that someone would find out why he was called ‘Kick’. By Sunday night Kick felt sure that he was about to die of shame and had formed the opinion that the only answer was to run away from home to where nobody would ever find him and where nobody knew him. He finally dropped off to sleep having resolved a firm determination to put his escape plans into action after school the following day. Instead of catching the bus home after school he would sneak away and hitch-hike to Little Rock, where he could start a new life. And he would change his name! Or maybe he could make a raft like Tom Sawyer or someone did and drift down river until he hit Beaver dam Island where he could live on fish and hang out for years away from everyone. And maybe when his kid brother Roger was grown up he would go and find his older brother and the two of them could live together in the wilderness, maybe in Canada and they could make their fortune hunting, trapping and fishing.

Late August was nice and warm that year in Arkansas, just as it usually is, with highs generally in the mid 90’s, so when Kick walked down the dusty track to the farm gate off the main road on that Monday of the second week of the school year, the bag he always carried to school contained, as it always did, the lunch that his mother had packed for him, but instead of the usual assortment of books, on this particular day its battered leather held a pair of shorts, a couple of sweat shirts and a spare pair of socks, all neatly folded. This boy was prepared for his new life away from the world that knew him as ‘Kick’. He was sad that he would not ever see his mom and dad again as he loved them dearly. It upset him even more that he’d had to drag his feet reluctantly past his little brother’s room without saying goodbye. Kick knew that he would miss six year old Roger more than anything. But a guy has to do what a guy has to do. He could see no alternative to the plan that he had in mind.

Kick climbed aboard the bus without his usual enthusiasm for the day ahead and made his way toward the back where he hoped to be invisible to prying eyes. He felt certain that everyone who knew him (and that would be almost everyone on the bus) would be somehow aware of his shameful truth and would be laughing at him. To his annoyance there was already a kid sitting on the wide back seat, but rather than cutting a retreat, Kick sat at the other end of the bench and turned to peer unseeingly through the window at his side. Although usually fairly sociable, Kick had no interest in getting to know this kid he had never seen before and would never see again after he started his new life in distant parts. He was lost in his own world, concentrating on the hum of the bus tires on the bitumen.

Maybe it was fate, but as luck would have it the other kid, who’s reflection in the bus window in front of him was difficult to ignore, was wearing funny white floppy pants and a white jacket that looked to Kick a bit like a mattress cover and Kick, despite himself, was intrigued by this attire. Around the boy’s waist was a wide yellow belt wrapped twice and tied loosely.

Eventually, the other boy spoke. Hi, I’m John, he said.

Hating himself for his polite upbringing but unable to resist its strict orders, Kick turned to face John and said, I’m Ray, how’r you doin’, John? Until the previous Saturday he would have introduced himself as Kick and it felt awkward to him to say that he was ‘Ray’. It didn’t seem right.

John flashed a broad, friendly smile that Kick instantly interpreted as a laugh at his expense but he couldn’t help but be interested in the clothes John was wearing. Is that your school uniform? asked Kick.

Heck no! They’d kill me at school if I showed up in this gear, choked John. This is my Taekwondo dobok.

What did you just say? asked Kick. It sounded like a foreign language to me.

Yeah, well, I guess it is really, acknowledged John. Taekwondo is a Korean martial arts discipline. I’m going to try for my next belt in Songahm Taekwondo today in Little Rock.Martial arts? Does that mean fighting? And why do you say ‘discipline’? That sounds like something some kids tell me they get if they step out of line at home. Their dads discipline them to make them behave themselves.

Yep, it’s fighting allright. Mostly kicking but we’re not allowed to hurt each other. That’s part of the discipline. We have to make ourselves do things we don’t want to do, like practice a lot, and make ourselves not do things like hurt people, even if we want to. We can hurt them if they really are trying to hurt us though, added John as an afterthought.

Wow! And what did you call the uniform again, a bokbok?

Close, chuckled John. No, it’s a dobok. It means ‘clothing way’ in Korean and mostly we all wear the same except for the color of the belt. If I do well today I’ll have a camouflage belt the next time you see me and if I’m really good in a few months I might even get my green belt. That would be awesome!

Gee, I hope you do okay. How often do you have classes in this Taekwondo?

Every week.

What, in Little Rock?

Nup, just in high school in Morrilton. They have martial arts in the curriculum and I wear the dobok for that. I wouldn’t go to school in it though, same as the kids who do football for sport don’t wear their kit to school. Little Rock is the headquarters for the American Taekwondo Association though and it’s good to wear the dobok to tests and competitions there.

Kick said ‘wow’ again a couple of times and thanked John for telling him about Taekwondo. The germ of an idea was beginning to form in his active mind and he had many more questions about this kicking training but other kids were getting on the bus so he and John settled into a renewed silence. This time though it was a companionable silence.

Hope was beginning to glow dimly within Kick. If he put off his escape until Friday after school that would give him the whole weekend to get away if he still wanted to go, and in the mean time he could look into this Taekwondo. If he could be really good at the Taekwondo kicking thing, people would understand that this skill was why he was called ‘Kick’. All of his problems would be solved.

Kick had no trouble getting through the day without his books. To him anyway, the lessons were really easy and he often thought of them as a bit of a waste of time.       

Before Kick could even start on Taekwondo though, he had to find a way to transfer from grade 9 in his junior high in Morrilton, where the sports selection was more limited, to grade 9 in the senior high where Taekwondo was available. Although he had skipped a couple of grades, Kick was fully aware that he had never applied himself to his school work and was worried that his mum and dad wouldn’t agree to the move. This would mean that he would need to wait almost another twelve months to start his training, as in the following year he would need to attend the senior school anyway because the junior high only went to grade 9.

CLIVE DAWSON STOOD over six foot tall and the way things looked his second son, Roger, who was only six years of age, would be a similar height going by his current size and the rate he was growing, but Kick was shaping up to be the runt of the small litter and to make matters worse had never shown any inclination for involvement in sport or anything else likely to build his strength. This bothered Clive a little because the way he saw it both of his boys were destined for the farm and although much of the hard work had been taken out of the occupation through the introduction of modern machinery, he still thought of it as a physically demanding role. He also loved watching his basketball, baseball and gridiron teams at work and would dearly love at least one of his sons to excel in some sport.

BARELY ABLE TO CONTAIN himself, Kick waited until after dinner that Monday evening and then approached his mum and dad while they cooled off on the porch at the front of the house.

Mum, Dad, can I change schools?

What’s the matter, son? his father asked. Is someone giving you a hard time? You just tell me if that’s how it is and we’ll talk about what can be done about it, said Kick’s dad.

No, it’s nothing like that. I want to play a sport they don’t have at the junior high but they do across the road, that’s all.

You’ve already started grade 9 at the junior school, dear, said Kick’s mother, and you’ll be moving where you want to go for grade 10 anyway so why not just wait? It’ll come soon enough.

Kick’s spirits sank into his shoes as the prospect of his transfer appeared to die with his mother’s words but he hadn’t been counting on his father’s interest in sports of all kinds.

Now just hang on a bit, please, Olive. The bigger school does good training in biology and chemistry that would be very useful for any farmer and an extra year of that wouldn’t be a bad thing, Clive pointed out.

Olive Dawson smiled a small smile, seeing through her husband’s ploy but having no valid argument with what he had said, agreed to the move provided her son promised that his parents would never again have a report that he was daydreaming and not paying attention in class.

Oh boy! Thanks Mum and Dad. Can I start tomorrow? exclaimed Kick.

I don’t think it can be done that fast, Raymond, but I’ll make some inquiries in the morning, said Olive with a chuckle. We had better make certain you can get into the sport you want first. What is it, baseball?

Taekwondo, said Kick quietly, expecting a change of attitude from his parents.

OK, said his mum, see if you can remember to ask me how I got on when you get home from school tomorrow, she added with a smile.

Mr Vickery.

Kick was lucky that the Morrilton senior high had vacancies for him in the subjects he was to enrol in and he was able to begin his new life the following week. It also turned out that he was well equipped for martial arts in having very good eyesight, excellent co-ordination, reflexes and distance judgement.

The physical attributes of this diminutive newcomer to the field of Taekwondo, combined with an absolute determination to become a champion in his chosen sport soon saw Kick advancing rapidly through the early belts. The school and its students were fortunate in having an instructor who understood and was dedicated to the philosophy of Taekwondo as well as to its physical actions and Kick entered a new universe when he began to feel a sense of achievement in discovering within himself the discipline described to him by John on the bus that fateful day, John who was now his firm friend.

IN COMBINATION WITH his new-found attitude to learning, Kick’s previously latent extraordinary academic abilities allowed him to easily come to grips with the most difficult mathematics and science subjects available at the school and this soon brought him to the attention of the head physics teacher, something of a smothered prodigy himself.

Mr Vickery took Kick on as his own very special project and as soon as he became fully aware of the depth and breadth of Kick’s burgeoning abilities he went out of his way to ensure that Clive and Olive Dawson understood that Kick needed additional training to develop his potential. Clive was really only being polite (or sort of polite) as he half listened to what the teacher told him and so he didn’t quite grasp what Mr Vickery was getting at, gathering the erroneous impression that his son was falling behind despite working very hard at his studies. Kick seemed to be learning everything his father was teaching him about farming though, so Clive wasn’t really too interested in the rest of his son’s progress with the exception of his chosen field of sport. Here, Clive was ecstatic. Finally his boy was becoming the sporting champion his father had so wished for as he developed the physique and physical abilities Clive considered essential to any farmer. By this time, Clive was seventy years of age and although coming from a line of long lived ancestors he was concerned about his elder son being ready to take over most of the farm work when the time came for him to taper off his own efforts.

The Dawsons took an instant liking to their son’s maths and science teacher when he paid them a visit on the farm one weekend and they readily agreed to the suggested arrangements for additional lessons for Ray. The farming couple had no idea how unusual it was for a school teacher to do such a thing as visit with a student’s parents in their home and they treated their visitor about the way they would treat any other guest, giving him tea and a snack at the kitchen table as they discussed Kick’s education. Clive and Olive found Mr Vickery likeable even though he came from New York and supported The Yankees. Even his Big Apple accent ceased to grate on them after a short while and, by this time on first name terms, they made sure Bob Vickery knew that he was welcome to visit whenever he wished.

WITH EXTRA TIME NOW available to do so, Bob Vickery ensured that his new charge became familiar with the whole range of mathematics and science topics rather than being restricted to the curriculum items. The standard subjects provided an excellent cross-section of material that was quite suitable for the majority of students but several aspects of maths and science [such as geometry, trig., mechanics and electronics] were absent from the list of selectable subjects. Mr Vickery also assisted Kick to acquire expertise in the C++, Java, PHP and Java for Android programming languages in addition to the multimedia, desktop publishing and CAD elements already provided by the school. Kick’s digital progress was fairly rapid despite him not having a computer at home but Mr Vickery insisted that the boy should persuade his parents of the need for a home PC.

Mr Dawson was essentially self educated, but that didn’t make him an ignorant man. Clive had nothing against technology as such, in fact he had adopted most of the latest innovations in farm equipment as soon as he considered the bugs had been ironed out of them. Because he studied the technical specifications for prospective purchases in some detail and followed up to make sure he had a good grasp of the principles involved, he was aware that much of this machinery he bought contained things called microprocessors and functioned essentially like special purpose computers but he had never seen a personal use for computers themselves and had resisted their introduction into the house. He held the view that books were the way to learn things and the people he knew who talked about their own children’s addiction to computer games, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Skype and the like did nothing to persuade him otherwise.

In a very short time, Kick was writing useful apps that he would be able to sell on line if only he could set up a private email address as well as eBay and PayPal accounts. Of course for this he would need a computer at home and an internet connection as well as his mum or dad’s authorization for an under-age account. And to achieve this he would need to convince his father of the value of computers even to a farmer.

Can’t you talk to dad again, Mr Vickery? He won’t listen to me about this because he thinks I’ll just waste time and not do any work at home if we have a computer, said Kick when the two had discussed the necessity for more PC time. The time was wanted to further develop Kick’s programming skills, as well as to provide him with the needed on line research tools for his other learning areas.

Well, I guess I could do that, Kick, said Bob Vickery. Wouldn’t it be better though if you could show your father that computer knowledge can be very valuable on a farm? he asked.

How would I do that?

You should know better than to ask that by now, Kick. What have I been teaching you all of these months?

I know, I know. Sorry Mr Vickery, I know you don’t just teach me stuff, you teach me to think for myself too and I’m not doing that now, am I? But I don’t know where to start, Kick said somewhat plaintively. This isn’t like a normal problem.

Isn’t it, Kick? I think this is in fact a really good opportunity for you to start to learn the really valuable lesson that the so called problems that you’re used to dealing with at school are not the normal problems people face in this world. They are, or should be, considered as artificial problems designed to provide a chance to learn how to approach the issues presented by life, both in our jobs and in our private lives. Sadly, that idea seems to be lost even on most educators.

Can you help me get started, please,