Soul of the Universe: A Novel of Intrigue, Self Will, and Survival

By Trafford Publishing

Trinity was an immense space ship by any standards. A full biosphere design, Trinity was self sustaining and capable of WARP V speed between galaxies. Her travels had been prompted by slowing of the Earth's rotation, a fact well known in the twenty first century. Trinity has begun its historic journey, nearly two decades before, when the Earth was beginning to experience the severe disastrous effects of the tremendous storms and droughts brought on by the rotational slowing. Earth was dying and the need for a place for humanity to settle was critical.

How did the Trinity'S inhabitants communicate with Earth over the astronomical distances of the far flung Universe? What mission did the Space Commission really envision when they created the Trinity?

Learn the wonderment and the intense dangers encountered by the Trinity and the lessons learned by the crew.

Learn as well about the challenges to the ship's mission from within and from without and hidden agenda held by both one of the crew and one form Earth. Their own interests were placed ahead of the safety of the crew, the ship and the mission. Yet, as you will see, their actions were not unreasonable, are defensible to an extent may not results you anticipate nor desire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 9, 2008
• ISBN: 9781490748559

Book preview

SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE

A Novel of Adventure, Intrigue and Soul Searching Curiosity

Why did Earth send a space ship out from the galaxy to explore the Universe?

How did they communicate with the space ship named Trinity over the astronomical distances of the far flung Universe?

What mission did the space commission really envision when they created the Trinity"

Learn the wonderment and the intense dangers encountered by the Trinity and the lessons learned by the crew.

Learn as well about the challenges to the ship’s mission from within and from without and the hidden agenda held by both one of the crew and one from the Earth. Their own interests were placed ahead of the safety of the crew, the ship and the mission. Yet, as you will see, their actions were not unreasonable, are defensible to an extent, and very much held today by many of the inhabitants of Earth.

The very survival of Earth as a society and as a human race is at stake, yet the answers you will find in this adventure may not be the results you anticipate, nor desire.

Frank Ingels

SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE

This is a work of fiction and hence names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts of thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permissions. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher and author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. For information contact the author or publisher at the publisher’s address.

Copyright © 2007 by Frank Ingels

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The cover design was by Kelsey Moran, a graphic artist hailing from the south! She has a special interest in drawing and ceramics, in both of which she explores human emotion and its ties to material possessions. Kelsey has captured the feelings of the story and the majesty of space in her cover and has her own design company, [e-mail].

Technical assistance and the space ship design were by Marc Poole. Marc is an Artist Member in the American Society of Aviation Artists, has done many automotive art projects for Mercedes-Benz and other companies. He is currently an instructor in the Art Department of Mississippi State University and will be directing the graphics department of an industry on the Gulf Coast.

Cover background picture from ESA of the CYGNUS LOOP.

Grateful appreciation to Kaki Ingels who has been my support in life and my best friend as well as my wife.

Always in remembrance of Mom and Dad who gave me the tools to live life and who live yet in my memories.

"Only Nothing lasts forever, save the Souls of God. *

SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE

PROLOGUE

Trinity was immense by any standards. It had taken over twenty years to construct the three armed starship, its metallic, graphite and trinium structure a marvel of man’s ingenuity. As it grew in size, its shadow from space was discernable on earth and its effects on the human population below ranged from awe of the technological accomplishments to a superstitious fear that mankind was exceeding its authority.

Miles in size from arm to arm of its open triangular shape, the center of Trinity’s dissecting diagonals contained the power plants and the ship’s control center. It is here that the giant ship, a marvelous space glider in actuality, would be guided in its journey through the Universe from galaxy to galaxy, from star system to star system, in a desperate hunt for the future of mankind.

Trinity had begun its historic journey, nearly two decades before, in the later years of the twenty second century. At that traumatic time the disastrous effects of the inexorable slowing of Earth’s rotation, an undisputable scientific fact, a phenomena reported even in the late twentieth century, was little understood by the general population. By now, in the early twenty third century, the dying of the planet was a physical phenomena that struck fear in the hearts of all Earth’s inhabitants as they struggled in a world of increasing physical disasters of intense storms, rising ocean levels, earthquakes and increased global warming.

The increased diurnal cycle was changing the composition of the atmosphere and the lingering sun was creating floods reminiscent of biblical times as Earth’s average temperature increased. Trinity, with a design life span of three decades, plus whatever else could be eked from her sparse, somewhat flimsy but space worthy structure, by evolving technology, was sent to find a home for Earth settlers. She was a tremendous ship, covering over 12 miles of space. She was flimsy, yes, but the structure had only to serve as a holding vehicle to sustain life as an innovative magnetic gravitational (mag-grav) shield served to protect her from the debris of space. She glided through the Universe riding the magnetic wave structures of galaxies and star fields as if on a surfboard. Thus her mag-grav shield served to protect and also to propel the ship at intergalactic speeds up to WARP V.

The stated reason of the mission to the general population of Earth was the exploration of the Universe to find a habitable world. The unstated purpose of Trinity’s mission was singular and known only to a precious few. Now, in this latest confrontation with the forces of nature, it was not certain that Trinity would accomplish her missions, her very survival was at risk.

The crew had been led by insidious forces to enter a strange, exotic and darkly threatening star system. Its siren-like call had turned to shrieking agony as the ship became trapped in an accelerating spiral field, one which threatened Trinity with destruction. Her crew now stood transfixed in the gray and chrome control center of the ship surrounded by consoles of molecular based electronics that normally created excitement and awe by their capabilities. Now however they were filled with fear by dazzling displays of colors as the ship’s protective shields were punctured by crashing bolts of white hot energy. The tail of the comet they’d tried to negotiate was more than the ship could handle and she shuddered and trembled in her agony as her young, but ingenious navigator, Johan Stroud, worked feverishly to plot an exit course. It was a fruitless effort as Trinity’s energy stores were slipping below the critical maintenance level for the shields.

I can’t hold her, Captain. The shields are going down, moaned Commander Luppinetti, the ship’s senior engineer. He held his voice down, but the worry on the Spaniard’s dark and frowning face was all too evident to those on the elevated, chromium like, trinium platform which housed the controls to the spaceship.

On Trinity’s bridge the Captain, Commander Coronado de Emanuel, stood quietly, a stoic figure exuding calm in the midst of a raging storm. He quietly nodded in answer to his senior engineer’s comment. In an even tone he replied, Your concern is duly noted, Commander. However we have no alternative at this point, you must do with what you have. The statement was an order beyond doubt, issued in a calm manner, but an order no doubt.

Aye, Captain. And what else could Commander Luppinetti have said? He turned his attention to the monitors. Shift the shields to the starboard wing, we’ll stem the worst of it and tend to damage later, if there is a later he prayed in silence. He grimaced, flinching as thunderous noise and sheets of colored lightning announced yet another wave of magnetic storms.

Leaning close to his navigator he uttered words of encouragement and of challenge, Lieutenantjohan Stroud, if ever you should pull your weight aboard this ship, now is the time, urged Luppinetti through his clenched teeth. The Captain is firm in his belief the ship can weather the maelstrom until you decide on a course to wiggle our way out of this mess in which you have put us. Commander Luppinetti grimaced as he referred to Johan’s insistence on exploring the left spiral galaxy. Luppinetti peered over Stroud’s shoulders, I’m not as cocksure as the Captain, Lieutenant, and some evidence, small as it may be, of your navigational magic would no doubt be appreciated by the crew, as well as myself I might add. This last Luppinetti had to shout to overcome the shrieking, tortuous protests of the ship’s metallic structure at the onslaught of the storms within this perilous, spiral nebula of the galaxy.

Lieutenantjohan Stroud, Trinity’s navigator, ignored his fear as he frantically redoubled his efforts to find an escape. "Trinity mustn’t die, he muttered. For Kit’s sake if nothing else." Despite the increasing cold droplets of sweat were beading under his shirt, he looked at his friend, Lieutenant Nicholas Younan, Luppinetti’s assistant engineering officer, his brown eyes pleading for help, knowing there was no possibility, yetjohan continued to alter both the energy shields and the ship’s trajectory, searching for a miracle, for an escape from the tortuous hellfire that surrounded them.

SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE

CHAPTER 1

The young man, a tallish, rugged type with fair skin, light brown hair and brown eyes, was walking slowly through the starship’s communal area with his friend Nicholas. Johan deftly dodged the children at play on Trinity’s damp grass as his mind reeled with his newly awakened awareness of the reason for being of himself, of his kindjohan Stroud was a child of the second generation on the starship Trinity, from the domain of Pinta, one of Trinity’s three nodes for family habitants. Johan had been told all his life that Trinity was merely an extension of the planet called Earth, that they were exploring the Universe, acting as Earth’s eyes. Never had this seemed unusual to Johan, after all, it seemed logical to his young mind. Now however, he was fully aware of the true mission of the starship Trinity and of his own special calling. Finally he started to speak, the emotions clouding his voice.

The revelation we’ve just been told was startling, perhaps even more so, it was frightening to me, Nicholas, confided Johan to his dark eyed, swarthy friend whose heritage was from a linage of the mideastern civilizations of Earth. He didn’t look at Nicholas, rather he felt detached, almost lonely, despite the accompaniment of his friend.

Tall plant leaves brushed his face with green tenderness as he walked down the narrow garden path towards the spaceship’s freedom area. The distinctive cinnamon aroma pleased him and yet he looked at these common plants with appreciation. In these last hours Johan had become even more aware of the extreme, tenuous and artificial existence humans lived on Trinity and it reinforced the role these ordinary plants played in their fragile life. His instinctive, careful handling of the leaves, instilled by rigorous training from birth in all Trinitans, had been reinforced since birth by the knowledge that without plants they would quickly perish. Trinity was constructed with three main spherical nodes, each of a 2 mile diameter. Each node contained features unique to Earth and crucial to the sustaining of life for her inhabitants. Plant life abounded, the hills that rose through the tunnels that connected the three nodes to the control center high about them were moderate, but tall enough to challenge and to give relief to the pseudo terrain. Soil and water was Earth’s gift to the ship and all was recycled. The ship was a true biosphere as well as a technological achievement that still amazed, even in this the twenty third century and beginning of the fourth decade of their exploration odyssey. Long tubes connected each node providing more living area and maintenance facilities. That the ship was self sustaining was evident after the three decades already experienced.

Johan’s senses, his inborn self-protective mechanisms, were sharpened to a point of near insanity by the revelations of the past hour. Johan, struggling to cope with his new knowledge, had begun to climb to the precipice of the freedom area’s sacred mountain-a mountain he knew was artificial, yet so comforting. Nicholas, his closest friend on Trinity, matched his stride step for step and it comforted Johan.

Nicholas responded with an almost silent grunt, I was shocked as well by the morning briefing, Johan. But we’ve known all along that we were different and perhaps a member of a chosen few. He searched Johan’s fair skinned face, now glistening lightly with the effort of the climb, and found the emotional sensitivity that must be part of a celestial navigator’s make up. Perhaps my own persona is too logical, but what we heard was not as much a shock to me as to you. He paused to take a few deep breaths as they started up the steeper climbing hill. To me it seems quite apropos, we are out here, millions, nay billions, of light years from Earth, we are expendable from Earth’s viewpoint, but from our perspective, we are pursuing a normal life, the only life we’ve ever known.

The pathway of fine, moist, dark brown soil gave way only by fractions of depth under their brown hiking boots as they strode steadily upward through the lowland vegetation, through the aspen grove, and finally to the top of the tree line. The air was clear and crisp, containing only a few fleecy white clouds, and they marveled at the blue sky that seemed to sparkle. Winded, his skin moist with exertion, Johan turned to look at the wooded route they’d just climbed. Even though Johan knew the truth about their enormous spacecraft world of Trinity, he could only comprehend all this as real. And didn’t his senses know this as real? He panted, his muscles were tired, his eyes, ears, and nose all saw, heard, and smelled the nature, the spore of animals, the brilliant yellow aspen in the fall. It was as real as a human need have it. No wonder the inhabitants of Trinity never dwelled upon the truth.

Born to parents whose lineage originated from the high, windswept foot hills of Earth’s Mt. Kilimanjaro, Johan Stroud was brown eyed, tall, and strong in build, gifted with athletic coordination and a mind far better than average. And nowjohan knew he was gifted in another way, just as many of Kilimanjaro’s others whose heritage originally stemmed from the highest countries of Earth: Peru, Tibet, Africa and the others.

Reaching the rocky precipice and feeling the chill of the late evening wind sweeping up from the floor of the lower valley, Johan looked up through Trinity’s transparent dome and saw the first early evening stars begin to glimmer. He sat quietly, in lonely meditation, thinking about the responsibilities he and Nicholas and the others had just accepted as new members in Trinity’s small clan of mentapaths, those who could communicate mentally over vast distances at an instant, and therefore could communicate over the intergalactic distances to Earth.

Nicholas, we’ve been throughly trained in our own specialities of running this spaceship we call home. And now we’ve been totally indoctrinated in the craft, the art actually, of our mental telepathic gift. He paused and looked out over the terrain from their vantage point of height. But I am overwhelmed at the revelation that the Captain and Commander Luppinetti feel that you and I must take the lead at plotting the next series of moves to explore this new star system.

But you do understand their rational don’t you, Johan? asked Nicholas, his fingers toying with a blade of grass as they sat cooling in the light breeze created by Trinity’s environmental system. "There has been no experience in spiral galaxies by Trinity, ever before. And you and I have the benefit of new studies, new analytical techniques. They have no exposure to these topics we’ve mastered. The knowledge was not developed until recently." Nicholas turned to his friend and thought how similar, yet how different they were.

You know, Johan, your thinking processes are split nearly evenly between logic and artistic license. That makes you most ideal for universal celestial navigation. We all acknowledge the statistical basis but also the tremendous variance of the laws of mechanics from one star system to another and also that you have mastered these analytical arts best of all of us.

Frowning slightlyjohan acquiesced, Yes, yes, I’ve been hammered with these facts for years. Still it comes down to relying on nothing more tangible than gut feelings at times, whereas your field is based more on logical deduction, plus a healthy dose of creative intuition, of course.

Nicholas laughed and playfully jabbed his friend’s arm. "You stinker, you love to cast my work into the rigid frame of computer like precision. You, of all, know how often there are no answers based upon the old principles of physics; we are continually evolving new answers, new techniques for the semi-ancient structure of Trinity upon which our lives depend."

Johan teased his friend, Yes, you think with seventy percent logic and thirty percent guess work, but I’ll admit you keep things together and you manage to continually evolve the magnetic shield technology. He bowed slightly toward Nicholas in mock homage, Even Commander Luppinetti praises your innovation, grudgingly and sparingly, of course.

They both laughed and sat on the precipice in quiet solitude, each searching within themselves for that confidence they know they must find while below them Trinity’s inhabitants went about the activities necessary to sustain their massive, artificial, planet-like home that sailed the Universe.

They’d been picked for the Society of Mentapaths because they had lived a life that had adopted and held fast to the principles that the Society held dear and also because they had the innate ability of mental telepathy. Johan had taken the Oath of the Code of Consent without really understanding why something so obvious, so seemingly fundamental, had to be sworn to in a conscious act of thought. He’d felt the probing of the Council as he mouthed the words. Almost frightened by this first ever conscious invasion of his emotional and mental self, he was immediately reassured from within as the Council tested and then accepted him. Johan had sworn to the Code of Consent without hesitation and in all sincerity. He saw it yet in his mind:

CODE OF CONSENT

THESE PRINCIPLES OF THE COUNCIL MEMBERS ARE TO BE HELD FAST AND TRUE FOR ALL ETERNITY:

1. Respect for all peoples in every regard.

2. Members shall only use their facilities, their gifts, for the collective benefit of all humankind.

3. Members shall only act in concert with the Council membership in totality.

These lofty phrases swam before him, their meaning more intense than ever before. Pulling his jacket about him, he looked out past Trinity’s transparent encapsulation, out towards the chilling, darkened night and the twinkling, exotic, faraway galaxies that surrounded the ship. A small spark of excitement began building within him and he uttered a request for strength to measure up, strength for whatever was there, wherever they found it. For Johan now knew of their true mission and the innate yet unknown dangers it held.

------- - -------

On Earth at the Interstellar Fleet Academy, Professorjohn Paul Nelson stood quietly at his podium for several moments, his white, closely trimmed bearded face stern and imposing, his hazel eyes burning with dedication. The impact of his previous statement, which was really more of a short lecture, was made all the more stark in its revelation by the extended silence as he searched the faces before him for their understanding.

The lecture room seemed to shrink and the young mentapath cadets, the chosen few, began to squirm in their seats. Despite the unwritten rule against talking during one of his lectures, Kathleen Joiner leaned to her left and whispered a bit too loudly, Maria, can you really believe it? The Professor looked her way quizzically, and the slender, dark

haired girl with the iridescent green eyes promptly straightened up, knowing full and well it was too late to escape detection.

Cadet Joiner, you have a comment? Nelson’s question was innocently asked, but a command for her to answer.

Kit looked straight at the Professor, swallowing nervously. I can hardly believe it, Professor, she managed to say. I mean, I don’t doubt it, but it is a surprise to say the least. She stopped, her bright green eyes dancing, the short cropped, raven hair slowing to a stop as she finished.

Nelson stood tall at the lectern, his presence imposing as an Admiral (Retired) should be. Obviously, the class was over for the day. He knew of the shock of what they’d just been told, and he knew it would take them time to assimilate the knowledge and to accept it emotionally. Nelson’s steel grey eyes probed the girl, swept across the class and then back to Kit, Believe it. You must, and with no hesitancy. It was more order than suggestion. Nelson put the light pointer down upon the video desk. It is imperative that all of you in the Interstellar Fleet come to grips with the facts before our next meeting. He strode from the room with strong, purposeful steps knowing they would sort things out for themselves. These new mentapath cadets were more introspective than past classes he thought to himself. It’s a double edged trait, but perhaps it was time for a new guard. He and his were approaching their limits.

The cadet’s common room of the Earth’s Interstellar Training Academy was filled with cadets dressed in navy blue cotton twill, a uniform reminiscent of the America’s navy of the twentieth century. As Kit entered the noisy lounge with its colorful, neon plastic-like decor, she glanced across the space to their table. Relieved to see her closest allies, Michael and Maria, holding the fort, she wound