Science Bible - The Baby's Manger: Science Bible, #2

By Roy Jackaman

Book 2 of 3 This is a metaphysical sci-fi story.

There is a thread going through humanity, well, this is what the Professor thinks.  The thread is nothing to do with the human genome; that is not the link.  It is an external influence, a foreign presence.

Sylvia, George's historical love, may have been committed to a mental asylum but she isn't mad.  Not mad, but rather an offbeat soothsayer who knows about a monumental ominous happening before it materialises.  As for George, he was not without passion himself especially about evolutionary ideas.  In fact, he is on the cusp of something big.

Meanwhile, the Professor has finally accepted that his organisation should stand fast against happenings in a biblical war.  Will it be the time for his reincarnated Illuminati mindset to kick into action?

While all this is happening, Ralton is in the middle of his new career.  Surely, it must be the only reason he lands himself an assignment in the middle of an evolutionary bloodbath in the Middle East.

This book is written in UK English.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Excelsior
• Release date: May 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386467878

Roy Jackaman

The author has earned degrees in mathematics, has a substantial career as an IT Specialist and is a member of MENSA. He has lived in many parts of the world. The objective of his writing is to tell a story from a technical idea and to present it in a readable form. He enjoys writing about complex fictional issues and abstract notions.  

Book preview

Memories

Amemory is a mental impression , which will stick to a host’s brain until it is required.  Sometimes, a memory appears discarded, but, magically, lingers on.  When the host dies then the entrapped memories are lost; humans believe they are lost forever. 

Drago and Molly

Date: 2048 

Of course, both he and Molly, who he had managed to coerce along to Hawaii, were not thinking about the physical makeup of memories; they were just busy making them.  After all, they were staying in the Sheraton hotel in Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  They were a stone’s throw from the beach.  For the Professor it was time to think but not specifically about memories, he was just using them.  It was a chance for him to reassess how things were going with both himself and his organization, Vedere.  However, he couldn’t avoid memories, they had snuck in, ever eager to take over his thoughts.

When he had left the hallowed corridors of academia, he had told himself, My final declaration of independence! 

Now he was declaring his independence.  Unfortunately, his thoughts irretrievably shackled him.  The memories deep within his mind just took control whenever they so wished.

The large number of absences he had taken in the final few months of work with the university had annoyed his colleagues and had left his students disowned.  With the ivory towers of education looming in his mind, he wasn’t exactly sure, he was not clear for how long he would leave.  He was not sure whether he would ever return.  He had told his colleagues half-truths as to the reasons of his departure.  Because of that, he had found it strange, almost incongruous, that he had received kind words from most of them.  He also had his detractors.  For those, the kind words had turned into a more acerbic narrative, but only behind his back.  His temper and peculiar style had not sat well with everyone; there was plenty of resentment.  Although to the Professor, all this dissent was inconsequential, it meant nothing.

However, the Professor was not totally devoid of being insecure and he wanted Molly along precisely because she was something permanent, in his rather fractious life.  His thoughts and the eccentricities, which had crept into his life had made it unreal even to himself.  Molly, uncluttered Molly, smoothed over the peculiarities and made his life a more harmonious place to be.  Molly, oh yes Molly, his thoughts of magnanimity towards his personal assistant’s pacifying gifts were not the only thoughts that he possessed.  If he hadn’t yet explored the contours of her body, it was the thought that accompanied the last minutes as he went to sleep at night.  Did that mean there was still space for romance or lust in the rather impersonal thoughts of the man?  Should there be a moment for an irrepressible sceptic and realist to become a romantic?  He was or had been a Professor of Literature; there must be some stirrings, in his bones, for romance and intrigue. 

However, he was, now, here on this lovely island.  It was not only romance which cluttered his mind.  It was a chance to think freely in the warm and airy feel of the island and think he did.  Thinking freely did not stop him from labouring under the strain of regret, however.  He still carried the baggage of previous times.

HE COULD HEAR THE THRASHING of the waves on the shore as he sat on the veranda of the hotel.

Yes I love you, the words echoed in the Professor’s mind.  Then, Daddy, as if he had just heard the whisper of the young voice.

The voice was clear but the image obscure.  The barely remembered images for his thought lingered, fleetingly.  He fought to be free of them.  The spindly legs of his son dangling from a swing in the garden then the soft but harsh words from his daughter as she tenderly, but firmly, scolded her brother for a foolish thought.

Yes I love you, they were the words in his daydream but words nevertheless, irreconcilable, finished. 

His children were now only a dream.  Neatly vanished, leaving just the obstinate memory in this taunting thought.  Alas, the memories were unreal.  It had been such a long time. 

I will arise from the ashes of my despair.  I will be free.  The Professor gently gripped his throat with his right hand.  His habitual refrain softly said but cruelly implied was no less the menace than it ever had been.  

They were four and six, small children with the power of gods over him.  That was the reason he was as he was, why he could show anger but more importantly, why he was alive.  In the futile desire to right a wrong, correct a crime when he had no power to change anything, he had started to carry a weapon.  Now in Hawaii, he felt his illegal revolver in his right cargo short pocket, one of many he had carried over the years.  It was his rebellion against what had happened; it was his tool of freedom.  He had never used it for the purpose he had originally intended, only for other situations.  However, it gave him a sense of equality against the self-righteous mire of the law.  As long as he had one foot in the camp of the oppressed, he would have the revolver in his pocket to reserve the right to construct the final solution.

AS QUICKLY AS THE THOUGHTS of melancholy descended upon him that day, they lifted.  He drank a sip of his Kona coffee, as he came back to the real world.  He picked up the international paper, which was lying on the glass table in front of him.

It had been such a long time since the advent of the digital age.  With the promise of a paperless society, the devotees of computerised media had raced down the highway of technology tripping over themselves.  Then the superstratum emerged.  Standing on the shoulders of the digital age social media surfaced; it reached an ignominious crescendo a few decades later when the need for privacy amongst individuals hit the fore.  Then human inventiveness cranked up.  In 2031, the allure of psychic networking revived the momentum followed by a whole host of crackpot fads.  However, all this subsequently quietened and, in some cases, the faddism reverted to its respective roots.  It seemed almost to regress.  Then again, it could have been as simple as nostalgia raising its romantic head.  

Whatever had been the cause it did not stop the eventuality that there would be a retrograde step.  That there would be a revival in organic vehicles for the transportation of news, that paper with its conveniently foldable property would return to the scene.  It was the next stage in a master plan.  It was a natural progression into a different scenario, one freer of stress, a simpler time, where you could grab the contents of the news and hold it in your two hands.  It was a physical and human feeling of substance, one devoid of electricity or computing.  It was paganism once again, a reversion to a bygone age where the consumption of news using paper, was as natural as a cup of Assam tea with milk and sugar.  Reading information from a piece of paper filled with words printed in ink.  In a way, it was obvious that the Professor would be an earlier adopter of the revived practice.  He was such a mix of the new and the old, he was just unusual in that way.  Who better to embrace the rituals from the past than an intellectual oddity?  He looked at the front page of his newspaper.

The Professor turned the pages of the newspaper as he located a section, which caught his eye.  Then after the luxury of reading and understanding the section, he closed the paper so that he could once again look at the heading on the front page. 

THE GLOBAL TRIBUNE  Global news in the form you prefer.

There was something, he remembered, which had caught his eye.

He questioned himself, Where was it now?

There had been a revival for some of the ‘old things’ after the fall from grace of digital news, views, and social interaction.  The Global Tribune touted the slogan - Where you can read with the assurance that your privacy is secure.  All that was very true, there was no way that anyone knew what data you were reading as they could on the extended internet.  Unless, of course, you could imagine an alien presence, directing waves of interrogation into the very minds of every individual on the planet, but that could not possibly be the case it was far too difficult a proposition.  Even though the Professor, as head of Vedere, was in charge of some very dubious and controversial projects, even he did not, at that precise moment, fall for the idea that mankind was completely at the behest of some alien master race. 

The Professor dismissed all complex thoughts from his mind and got down to the task, that of reading a few sheets of paper with ink on them.  He was looking for something.  For the Professor this exercise was cathartic and as he read all other problems that he had in his mind diminished.  It was a chance to relax, just like in the old days when the Professor did not consider relaxing a sin.  He was now a rebel and a reactionary rolled up into one.  It was a break from his normal role with Vedere.  It was almost like a holiday.

He adjusted himself into the very comfortable seat in the opulently furnished veranda of the hotel. 

The Professor had messed with the newspaper, browsing forward then backwards, the header page, the sports page.  This was the luxury for, which he was due.  He praised himself for the spot he had chosen to take a short holiday break.

Pacify, soothing, luxury, as random words flitted in and out of his consciousness.

He again flicked forward some pages then something caught his eye.  Yes, it was the article, for which he had been searching.  In the science and technology section, amidst the talk of Mars landings and colonisations, there was an article - 3D printing of human organs.

...replacing body parts... printed on a machine.  For years... medical researchers have been reproducing human cells in laboratories by hand... to create blood vessels... engineering full organs, with their complicated cell structures...  

At the bottom, there was the credit.

An article by Ray Gillespie...

Suddenly something interrupted his concentration.  The wind off the shore and with it a fragrance, a scent he knew, not crass, not overpowering.  It was no scent at all actually; it was the smell of a freshly showered body. 

Molly sauntered up to him wrapped in a sarong.

Professor, Molly said as a form of greeting.

Hello dear heart, the Professor thought.  

He may have been thinking it but it was something he could not or would not say as Molly came nearer.  He didn’t even know what it really meant in all honesty, it was old urban street talk.  He remembered one of his students, Rocko, using the phrase, That baby go sweet dear heart.  Go, go! 

The fact that Anthony Drago had not really understood what the student had said did not take away the attraction of using the expression.  He would guarantee that Molly had a sweet dear heart in any case.  The Professor couldn’t imagine her having anything less.  The Professor retraced the origins of his last thought.  The Professor hadn’t heard anything more from Rocko.

He’s probably in jail, the Professor thought thinking back to some of the near-criminal antics with which Rocko was involved.

Whatever Rocko was doing now didn’t alter the fact that his