Resurrection World, the Eden Project

By A.G. Kimbrough

Resurrection World, the Eden Project is a pre-Apocalypse science fiction novel about groups of humans who are resurrected on a terraformed world. The Eden Project is an effort by the Federation of Space-Faring Sentient Races to avoid an approaching extinction event to the humans on Earth. The first, and largest group of humans died in London during the Black Plague, and the second group died in the Battle of Gettysburg and on a convict ship that sunk off Australia in the same year. When the third group died in London and Pearl Harbor in December 1941, they were harvested in a final attempt to save the human race from a looming extinction event.

After the Royal Navy's Fleet's secret weapon destroyed the barbarian airship, nothing stands between the fleet and the rebel colony. Bombardment of Bristol City will start at dawn tomorrow. Half of the Royal Marine landing forces have disembarked south of the city, and will attack the defenders from the rear, when the signal rocket shows the bombardment has lifted. That signal will also start the landings by the main Marine forces. No mercy will be shown the rebels, or their barbarian allies.

The American Republic's prototype Battle Cruiser's six guns are now the only thing left to confront the Royal Navy fleet's 480 guns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A.G. Kimbrough
• Release date: Nov 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781386070191

Book preview

Prologue

THE UNIVERSE HAS MANY forms of life, but Sentient Species are rare, and there are only ten members of the Federation of Space-Faring Sentient Races. When the Federation was formed, the members agreed to embark on a search to find other sentient races who had achieved, or were nearing the ability to achieve interplanetary space travel.

After a several million years of launching search probes, only two new members were added to the Federation. Several sentient races were found, but all were unlikely to ever achieve space travel.

When an advanced Sentient Race was found on the third planet from a modest star, it created great excitement throughout the Federation. Just as the civilization was reaching for the stars, an extermination event destroyed it, except for a handful of survivors. Over the centuries the probes discovered that the sun was unstable, and when impacted by large objects, would unleash a burst of radiation that killed any unprotected life in its path. The probes also detected that the orbit of the nearest planet to the sun was unstable and slowly decaying.

In a widely supported decision, the Federation embarked on a project to terraform a planet in a stable system as a refuge to preserve this Sentient Race. The terraforming was completed when the civilization was again destroyed, and many in the Federation feared that this race would never reach space-faring status before the final extermination event. While a minority wanted to have the Federation just transport some of the humans to the new planet, the Federation Charter prohibited any contact until the race was space-faring.

A young scientist came up with a discovery that gave a possibility for saving the race without bypassing the charter restrictions. After studying his proposal, the Council approved the Eden Project.

DECEMBER 7. 1941, 0810:

The bomb was a naval armor-piercing projectile, fitted with tail fins and a delay action fuse. It penetrated through three armored decks before exploding. The 50-pound high explosive charge was small, but it was in the right place, the black powder magazine for the saluting cannon.

The Arizona always was free with the saluting cannon, and the magazine had recently been filled with enough black powder for over 500 salutes. This powder was much faster burning than the powder used by the main battery.

When the bomb exploded, its concussion ignited all of the black powder in the small magazine. The armored decks above the magazine contained the explosion, and all of the energy was focused on a bulkhead of the Turret Two main powder magazine.

The bulkhead was shredded in less than a millisecond, and the burning steel fragments of the bulkhead ignited the powder bags almost simultaneously.

Bill Mullins and the crew inside the handling room of Turret Two were vaporized within 200 milliseconds.

Louis Maldonado died another 100 milliseconds later, as the unfathomable force shredded the entire forward part of the ship.

Lt. Josh Edwards was running forward from the Quarter Deck along the Port side when the blast blew him over the side. He was dead before he hit the water. 

Over 500 crewmen did not survive that first second.

The Doctor was in the closing phase of his long life. There were additional steps he could take, but it didn't seem worthwhile to take them. There has been so much promise, and so many disappointments.

The project meant to be his crowning achievement was a humiliating failure, and with it, no hope for a promising but doomed sentient race. He would be remembered, not for what he accomplished, but the resources that were squandered in his failure.

He was so sure that this time he had solved the elusive combination, but the human drive toward the atomic bomb had sealed his fate. The Federation directive was unequivocal. No further human souls could be captured and resurrected. The human race's fate was now dependent on the time left before the last extermination event.

The Doctor looked at the display and took some solace in the arrival of the third and final batch of resurrected humans approaching the planet he named Eden. He had been so sure of success when the first batch of 4000 had been placed on the terraformed planet, some 600 years before. They were placed on a large island with a mild climate, rich soil, and a large variety of compatible plants and animals. It had taken almost a hundred years to confirm that there were defects in the DNA of the resurrected male humans. The defect came in two forms. The most common, was a low intelligence, coupled with a desire to please anyone in authority, and facial characteristics similar to those with Down syndrome. The second form was a high intelligence, coupled with a sociopath personality.

During those first hundred years, the society quickly evolved into a feudal system, with scattered communities under the control of sociopath Lords, who made up 10 percent of the male population. The first group of males with low intelligence were bound to the land. Their nature made them ideal subjects of the Lords, and the communities prospered. Women were considered chattel, with only the most beautiful selected as wives to have the sons of the Lords.

The children of females resulting from unions with the males of the first group always carried the DNA defect, including the Down syndrome facial features. The Lords were quick to consider only wives that had never been tainted by surf-blooded ancestors.

During the second hundred years, the population increased significantly. The problems of inheritance conflicts became severe, with brother fighting brother for control of the family estates. Frequently the loser of those conflicts would take his remaining forces and attack a smaller, non-related community.

Finally, an alliance was formed among the largest and most powerful Lords under a single leader, who became the first King.

In a decree that the alliance enforced, the Law of Inheritance designated that the first born son would receive 80 percent of his father’s estate, including lands, serfs, and other possessions. A royal assessor would determine the entire estates value and distribute 10 percent of that value, in gold, split equally to any other sons. The crown would keep the remaining 10 percent, again in gold. If the estate did not have sufficient gold for these transactions, the oldest son would have to sell estate elements to obtain it.

The younger sons did not have lands, but the gold gave many cash to invest in a wide range of developing businesses.

The bastard sons of Lords became a new and fast growing class of freemen. Without inheritance, they were not tied to the land like serfs, and became solders, sailors, thieves, and businessmen. They were ideal for managing and controlling serfs, in any capacity.

It took another 100 years for the doctor to determine the cause of the DNA defect. The first batch had been harvested during the Black Plague in London. All of the slow-witted resurrected had died slowly from the plague, over a period of days. The quick-witted ones had died violently in less than a half hour.

The second batch or 900 souls were harvested in the 1860s. The women came from a convict ship that capsized in route to Australia, and the men from the Battle of Gettysburg. They were all placed along the barrier islands of the main continent, and did not suffer from the DNA defects.

The final phase of the project would involve implanting a maximum degree of education in many fields into the brains of the people undergoing the resurrection process. That development took another 50 years to complete, and disaster struck just as the final report was being prepared.

Several elements in the Federation had long complained about the project expense and lack of progress. One of the primary dissident elements was The Galactic Investigator, a widely distributed news organization famous for uncovering corruption. They commissioned a probe that was sent to Eden to provide an unbiased report on the human colony there.

The first group from the island had become a seafaring power, searching for new lands to expand the holdings of the ruling class. They had overpowered the second smaller group, making slaves of many and driving the rest up a great river into the inland, away from the fertile coastal barrier islands. The scathing report from The Galactic Investigator called the project an abject failure and recommended that the council halt any more funding.

It took all of the Doctor’s personal resources and those he could beg from friends and colleagues, to make a final harvest of 400 in 1941. The women came from bombing casualties in England, and the men from Pearl Harbor. There had been no funds to prepare or locate a new landing site, so they were again landed on the Barrier Islands.

The Doctor was fearful that they would become slaves, but he had done all that he was capable of. If this foothold of humanity could survive and prosper, then one day they might reach the stars and join the Federation of Sentient Space-faring Races.

Chapter 1 The Colony Expands

THE EXPANSION OF THE Bristol Colony, and the lands beyond the western mountains was limited by a shortage of serfs. Their birth rate was static, and the estate holders on the homeland were reluctant to send manpower along with their youngest and bastard sons to the far west. When the presence of the Barbarians on the northern islands was discovered, it became profitable, and to the best interests of the crown to harvest them and add them to the colony serf population. Because they were not limited in intelligence they were valued well beyond the Down syndrome serfs, and their women were beautiful and untainted with Down syndrome blood.

The harvesting pressure started working from the southern barrier islands and forced the flourishing Barbarian population to retreat northward, and eventually up the big river.

When the first Royal ships ventured up the big river beyond the impassable mangrove swamps, they encountered a fort on a hillside above the river. It had several batteries of cannon that sunk any ship that ventured too far west.

BILL SLOWLY BECAME aware that he was cold and wet.

With a jolt he remembered the clang of something tearing through the armored deck, the flash, then nothing.

Startled awake, his eyes could only see dark gray. He sat up, and realized he had been lying in damp sand. There was a dull red glow on the horizon to his left.  He knew he was no longer on the Arizona, or anywhere else he had ever been.

As he stood up, Bill could see he was buck-naked. He also  felt very different.

Bill Mullins had rheumatic fever as a baby, and it caused some brain damage. His mental development was slow, and on that fateful December morning he had the mind of a young teenager.

He stood watching a red sun rising on the horizon as it burned away the morning fog, just as the fog that had clouded his mind forever was now gone.

A scream coming from behind him broke his contemplation. Not twenty feet behind him a young woman crouched.  She was in a similar state of undress, and was frantically looking around, screaming and shaking violently.

Bill had never been comfortable with women, except his shipmate’s wives and girlfriends. This lady was in trouble, and she was starting to claw at her face and body. He reached her just as she started running. He caught her, holding her in a tight embrace. She battered his face and arms, ignoring his attempts to comfort and calm her.

In a few minutes, her screams subsided to crying, then later, to a whimper. After an hour, the tears dried and the unlikely couple made their introductions.

Bill told her who he was and his last memories.

Molly Kirkpatrick was a 20-year-old secretary, whose last memory was running toward a London air raid shelter on September 9th, 1941. There was a flash, and nothing. She was engaged to an RAF pilot, who was in India, and a fresh flood of tears came as she realized that she would probably never see him again.

They were both aware of their mutual undress, keeping their eyes directed anywhere but at each other’s bodies. The skin-to-skin embrace had ignited a sexual tension, which neither could ignore. Bill was terrified that his desire would become obvious. Molly secretly hoped it would.

As they started to look around, Molly noticed that there were no footprints in the sand, except their own. There were impressions where their bodies had lain in the sand, along with Bill's footprints over to her.

She remarked, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Bill answered, I don't think we are even on the earth. The sun doesn’t look right, and I’m not the same as I was before. My tattoos are gone, and my mind isn’t clouded like it was all my life.

Molly exclaimed, My glasses! I’ve been blind as a bat without them, and I can see perfectly now, with an obvious glance at Bill's privates.

The sun was still red and had risen during the morning.  Bill suggested that they explore and try to find some food and fresh water. The beach was narrow and they found ripe fruit in the trees at the edge of the beach. Nether of them could identify it and Bill suggested that they only eat a little. If they did not have a negative reaction, then it was probably safe to eat more. It was sweet, and both were tempted.

At the base of a cliff on the largest hill they found a small waterfall that dropped into a pond. The water was cold and satisfying. Molly insisted that she must wash the sand out of her hair and Bill joined her, glad that the chilling water precluded his ardor from rising as she playfully brushed against him.

They followed the edge of the cliff down to the ocean and found a large collection of tide pools.  Bill was able to catch several shellfish and a couple of shrimp-like critters. He suggested they would be edible raw. Molly didn’t agree, and Bill spent the rest of the day getting ready to build a fire.

They discovered a small cave at the base of the cliff and when a late afternoon fog rolled in, moved everything into it.

Bill was cussing about not having a Zippo as he worked the fire bow to try and make an ember.  It was full dark when success finally came. With blistered and bloody hands he carefully fed the fire that would give heat, light, and the ability to cook their food.

Molly had kept out of the way, and when it was going well, she said, Please sit down. I’ll keep it going and cook this stuff.

Bill didn’t argue. He was tired, hungry, and enjoyed watching a naked lady make supper by campfire light.

After a satisfying meal of shellfish, shrimp, and fruit, Bill built up the fire so that he could keep it going by pushing a large log into the coals as the end burned off.

He asked Molly if she knew the difference between an Indian and a white man’s campfire. When she told him she did not, he replied, The difference is, a white man builds a big fire and sits far back, but an Indian builds a little fire and sits up close.

She laughed, and moved close to him.

The fog become heavy and the night air became cool. The fire felt good, and so did her skin against his thigh. Molly had spent the afternoon building a bed on a bamboo frame. When Bill got up to put the end of another large log on the fire, Molly pulled the bed to where they had been sitting, and said, I made this for us to share. We’re never going to be able to get back to the lives we had. I don’t want to be alone here, and I’m falling in love with you.

Bill went to get another log to hid the fact that he was becoming aroused. He turned, and said, Not only am I aroused by you, I am hopelessly in love with you.

The lovemaking went on until the dawn, when they fell asleep in each other’s arms. When they woke, the sun had already burned the fog away, and the