When Seas Die: A Science Fiction Trilogy By: Anthony L. Williams Book-I a Gift from Beyond

By Anthony L. Williams

A Gift From Beyond is the first in a three-part narrative chronicling events leading to global realization of a Gift given man of a cruel, pragmatic civilization not of his knowledge. What is this Gift? And why is it given to two pairs of seemingly ordinary men, worlds apart.

The harrowing episodes within these pages slowly reveal the disturbing answers. Find them.

The Journey Begins

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469757643

Anthony L. Williams

Anthony L. (Tony) Williams was born in Bridgeport Connecticut in 1958. Life, and a love of science and the literary arts, has molded his writing to an inimitable style all his own...Join him! The journey begins with his first: A Gift From Beyond!

Book preview

When Seas Die

A Science Fiction Trilogy by: Anthony L. Williams

Book-I A Gift From Beyond

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Anthony L. Williams

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 0-595-20189-X

ISBN: 978-1-4697-5764-3 (ebook)

Contents

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1.

My Soul Speaks

"How? Just how can I begin to explain what has happened? I know not the time. I; I cannot even guess the year.

"The planet Earth whence I came is no more. The flowers of Earth are no more. The warm sun, the trees, the neighbor with the garden hose and kind word. The cities the cars the trains and the planes; the prairies the many cultures and skies all gone!

"My planet Earth, once a pretty mottled oasis of blue and brown in the vast nothingness of space is now but a massive black hole of destruction surrounded by this, this spectral halo of perpetual radiant energy. Utterly destroyed! And for what?

"This steady drifting. All around me now nothing but blackness. Nothing to be seen, felt nor heard. Stranger still I do not even know my form!

"Yet I can think! Yes, think; as the human creature I was long, long ago. To ominously part that torn velvet curtain, unveiling the dawning of this painful epic, seething in the perilous darkness beyond. Ah yes. I can recall the very eve of this untold horror I reluctantly assign to you. Administering it as a poison pill for all of the unspeakable idiocy we humans have allowed….

It happened back! Way back many, many years ago. Back during a time when all were merrily celebrating the Yuletide. Yes! The old world was alive with all the many joys of Christmas, and so was I—until my older brother, Barret, called me over the phone.

2.

An Unlikely Find

December 16, 2026 -The Eighteenth Hour-

Even now I can clearly witness that bitter December evening when I was putting on my coat preparing to leave my home for the Winter Concert to be held at the new Manhattan Cultural Center in New York. I waved my hand over the softly pulsating switch and the lighting in my home promptly extinguished.

As I removed my hat and scarf from the hat tree the black videophone on my living room table buzzed, breaking the silence of the still room.

My brother’s face drew into focus on the color screen recessed into the rectangular face of the module. From the unfocused objects in the background I could see that he was inside the laboratory.

Yeah.

Pick me up at the Kill…I have something to tell you and it’s incredible.

What happened over there—

I’ll see you here, Lowell. Hurry, please.

His face faded from line, leaving a bright, blue screen.

The finely tuned 5.3 liter, turbo-charged powerplant beneath the hood of my hot-red Ferrari F-40 Mako burst to life in tach-pegging precision and with a touch of leather sole I was pressed against the crushed leather seat, entering the cracked asphalt of Westerleigh from my darkeneded geodesic garage. At the summit of a tree-lined acclivity I could see Manhattan off to the right its shimmering skyline reaching like projecting monoliths for the gray-orange nimbostratus which was now beginning to sprinkle its biting flakes of miserable snow.

From Staten Island I crossed the Goethals Bridge into New Jersey then sped southward on Interstate 95 until coming upon the Port Reading Road exit. There I took the dark, meandering passage leading into the pine forest near the frozen banks of the Arthur Kill, to the four-acre fenced-in area containing the lab installation.

There stood my older brother in a knee-length coat and prominent white scarf, the snow around him starting to collect on the ground. He dashed to my car lifted the door and eased in out of the weather.

For awhile he just sat there, staring out the window at the darkened forest rolling past.

Said you had something?

I don’t know. Lowell…when was the last time you were inside that lab?

Barret; just cut the shit and tell me what’s on your mind—

Did you at any time leave a capsule lying around the lab? One containing bacteria?

My attention left the windshield.

"A capsule of bacteria?"

Yeah! I was going to open it but left it sealed; it had no lid—

Barret, I don’t know what you are talking about. I haven’t been inside that place in days—I don’t know; a week. Maybe longer.

If you or I did not, then who the fuck did—

I don’t know, Barret; you are connected with that damned laboratory of ours—I only go there to spin-up the JetRanger. That’s all I care about.

The NRC was there a couple weeks ago; maybe—

Nah, Lowell. The capsule wasn’t there yesterday.

I looked up from my instrumentation to Barret’s distraught expression. To him this was serious; to me a little bizarre.

Damnit, Lowell, we both agreed never let that place be vulnerable—

Don’t blame me. I don’t know how they got in!

There was a pause.

Then what about Zacarias?

Gus? I haven’t seen him in months.

Barret removed his gloves quickly and stuffed them into the huge pockets of his coat then formed a chopping hand with his right and patted it slowly in his left palm.

We keep a complete and thorough inventory of everything inside that building down to the last test tube and protein chip. We two are the only people who come in and out of that place on a near daily basis and yet a test tube rack containing a vial of living bacteria turns up that neither of us knows of or even has seen before. Now, Lowell, I think that that’s pretty damned sloppy of us.

How do you know that whatever it is you found is really bacteria anyway—

"Because it is, man! Damnit—I examined it under the ESM and ran a scan DNA check—it’s living bacteria alright! With a genetic matrix that is wholly unknown—"

Then call the cops; get to the bottom of it all—

We’d better not. Not until we find some answers on our own.

He was watching the full electronic display on my instrument dash. He finally, wisely buckled himself into the narrow high-backed seat. I could sense the contempt he felt for me and my choice in cars, he of course being a much more practical man.

Lowell? That’s not all, he continued ominously. The bacteria itself. It’s weird. It’s crystallized.

Thinking casually to my biology as a university freshman, this was different. Deeper now in fact impossible.

Nah, Barret. It can never be. Bacteria can’t crystallize. It’s organic make-up will not allow it.

Exactly! There can be no crystallized bacteria. It’s a scientific impossibility! Nevertheless quite true. I saw it myself: and our analytical compactors confirmed it. Our entire techno-biological files denies what I just saw back there inside that lab.

And we don’t even know where this, this bacteria came from, do we?

He shrugged. Now I understood his urgency.

Then something’s definitely wrong! It’s in our lab, a scientific breakthrough, perhaps the most important discovery of all time; and we don’t even know from whence it came!

Or to whom it belongs, he agreed.

I must see it, then! Now!

No! Not now; we’ll wait until tomorrow.

By now the concert was the last thing on my flustered mind—even as we came upon the hi-rise condominium complex in North Bergen, New Jersey where Barret stayed.

On the thirteenth floor a polished hardwood door opened to the luxurious yet conservatively appointed domain. Here, we greeted Christine, Barret’s loving wife of six years. A monument of a woman, Christine settled well into the sameness of housewife and mother, choosing this life in lieu of long hours at her own little specialty shop on Fifth Avenue.

She had a promising career ahead; her refined feminine beauty parlaying her to regional billboards and late-night informationals nationwide preceding the prestigious one-year accolades of Miss New York.

There was a young Air Force fighter pilot who studied Miss Baxley. He watched; followed the billboard ads, the ceremonies in her honor, the make-up and tinsel in the surreal world of high glamour until one day the flowers arrived. The note read: With love; from a devoted fan.

This being simple; the glamour queen a simple woman within, he a complicated man without.

That was eleven years past. The lean fighter pilot had taken on some weight; but the glamour queen was still as stated, both in body and in soul. At 33 years of age Christine towered her 6’2" shapely frame to the heavens, her high cheekbones and amiable face befitting the beauty and understanding of a heart big enough to tackle the rigors and impersonal annoyances of family and city without reacting in kind. A head of full, shoulder-length hair slightly toned from jet black to darkest brown modestly accented a walnut-tan complexion. A face of pleasant ebony beauty, hers was one of incessant mirth despite the at times overbearing will of her stalwart husband. She was my big sister; someone to whom I could turn for warmth and understanding.

Christine embraced her husband after we exchanged salutations then she left for the kitchen to bring refreshment. I turned down flatly any offerings of food, and instead requested my usual double Hennessy XO on the rocks. After a brief moment of conversation I retired to myself in the living room stereo chair and listened to the music as Barret and his wife discussed whatever they felt like discussing.

As I sat and read a magazine, five-year-old Timothy came dashing across the carpet to play. I greeted him and lifted him into my lap to share my magazine.

Home and hearth…humph! In a way, I kinda envied my older brother. For some strange reason I just couldn’t seem to get it all together. Tim soon tired so I released him to the carpeting where he pounced upon his ball to push it about.

The plush drapes at the threshold were folded back, partially unveiling the library and study further on. Inside the study at the bay window a sparkling, fiery Christmas tree was placed, its hanging branches thrust outward to dominate a considerable area and hide the nighttime stir-rings of West New York and the Hudson River there beyond. Beneath the tree lay a modest array of presents and packages.

The magic of the music caused my mind to wander to the world beyond the staid condo. Again I thought of the bacteria found by Barret. But then, personal problems started to get in the way; and at that moment I reached for my glass. Christine had replaced it with another, and its rim was promptly placed to my lips.

So Margie wants more money from me now, I thought. The cognac burned as I swallowed it down in a harsh nasty gulp.

The bitch. Barret warned me not to marry her. I did it out of loneliness—one of those blind, thoughtless fancies. And boy did I do it wrong. You see, hers was my third failed marriage in less than five years. Kinda makes a man wonder. Pamela; Mary, Margie Kirkland. The names swirled my mind like so much failure; and painful past.

That goddamned father of mine! I never did understand his ass. About the only thing I’d ever obtained from that man was his bantam size and his parboiled cynicism. My fist-wringing hatred of him magnified each time he released a backhanded lash to my temple. And even then I could hear his correct, hollering voice scold me like a foot basin of scalding hot water flung to my face.

"…Why can’t you be more like your brother! He turned out right, and you! You Lowell Martin are his exact antithesis! What! Then go! Leave, damn you! Get out before I kick you out! Punk-assed fool! See how fast you come crawling back to Maine on your hands and knees in poverty and defeat! Pleading my money to bail you out. You want to go south, then go! See if I care."

So I did go. Atlanta, Georgia of all places. 20 years old. A small untested man in a big old city.

Used your allowance to get an apartment, huh, Lowell?

Yeah. Staying with this girl I know. We both foot the bill. Name? Pamela’s her name. Pamela Samson.

"Be careful. Say, what are you studying down there, anyway? Aerospace! Man you must be crazy! We’re strictly technical people here!"

I like planes is all, Barret.

Planes! You stick with aerospace and be out of a job when you’re through. Come home, Lowell. Pop’ll forgive you. Come home while you’ve still got the chance!

But I did not go home. In fact I enjoyed being out from under the wing of a father who despised human weaknesses, a strange neurotic, tempestuous mother; and an area of the country I did not like.

My marriage to Pamela ended in absolute ruin after merely a year. Abortion. She threatened to kill herself rather than bring another of me into the world. She loved me; I only loved my work, cheap liquor and fast, brainless women.

My ruin with Pamela was salved then when I had finally found decent work as a low-paid apprentice at the International Airport there in Atlanta, repairing Bell helicopters. I learned from the old masters with rough, scarred hands and greasy logo caps. These men were willing to share their knowledge and their intangible love affair with their noisy, chopping machines; a love which swiftly rubbed off on their neophyte rotorhead.

Months; experience under the belt; a new woman under the roof. A girl seldom at home, racy and outgoing, Mary Jennings worked with me on the university newspaper where her best friend a gorgeous young, all-ass Sista named Margie Jayne Kirkland worked as editor. In my masterful and angling pussy talk I managed to Hobbs in some dick time hard-stick on Margie’s hot section and autopilot in time locked in cruel. Back alley hard-stick turned a sick kind of female love and Kirkland worked in her own insidious way to gain her prize. However, despite Margie’s ramblings, Mary and I married. I guess you could call it a marriage anyhow. Neither of us were ever at home; I being busy with my studies, my hard-stick angling, the school newspaper and my demanding job at Bell, she with things I did not look close enough to recognize. It was one late night that I discovered these things manifested when she was found asleep, quite soused, in our bed with another man. This ended in violence; she with a fractured skull from a stone ashtray, he a broken clavicle and arm from a chair.

This was the first time I had acted in such a wanton manner, indeed a profound state of mind which caused me to take stock of myself; faulting infidelity on her part when for me it came with the downwash. When she finally came out of a coma she whispered to me, I never want to see you again, Lowell. Ever.

Ever, I echoed in retrospect, swallowing down the remainder of the cognac.

It seemed that whenever my personal life hit a gutter low, my professional life sparked a startling high. I had been working at Bell for nearly a year. They decided then to pay most of my college tuition if I decided to hang on with the company test pilot program after graduation. It was here that I received the biggest break of my life.

No Pop; I was not to return to Main in shame and poverty; you were wrong. For once….

Old bastard.

Barret visited to congratulate me on my success. We were watching television, and it was then that he met his future wife during the televised pageants.

Lowell, I want that bitch, he said to me, then chased down a knot of cashews with a swig of beer. I’m goin’ after her sweet ass, too.

Why? So the both of you can play the defeatist roulette of who’s got the biggest dick? Come on, Barret, that lady ain’t gonna want you.

"Watch and see; she’s gonna be your sister-in-law….

So who are you lookin’ at now!

This lady I know. Name’s Margie J. Kirkland.

Barret choked on his beer.

"Don’t. Don’t do it. I know that ‘ho-bitch! She came looking for you just six months after you left home. Her pops was jailed for six years on an extortion rap. He worked for a muscle-headed high-roller in New York. A fat Maltese named Zacarias. Stay away from that black bitch.

She’s death."

Yeah.

So how are you and your airplanes getting along?

I can show you better than I can tell you. See, I’m flying now. But be careful. I don’t want to sway you away from your love of electrons.

My brother the pilot. Humph. Kinda gets me right… he plugged his gut. Here.

We drank a toast…Margie and I were married three years thereafter. And here was where my troubles really began.…Really began.

Barret, however, was the exact opposite of myself. At the time of Pop’s death, he had been employed by the old man. While I was in Atlanta batting my head against the world, Barret was playing collegiate football. He was captain of the university track and swim teams, following closely in the old man’s footsteps. Me? I had to be hard-headed.

In Barret’s piercing dark eyes I could feel the strength of the father; in his head the tactful shrewdness, the clear, sober reasoning. The two were inseparable; one huge, powerful and young, the other small, powerful and old.

Few men could put Barret on his big ass either physically or mentally. He had a power, a certain aura about him to subdue even the most malicious of egos in the strongest of men. At 6’7" 270 pounds Barret displayed little to no fat in his 35-year-old frame. Very fit, he had the strength and stamina of men half his age.

Barret had few weaknesses. Man could drink hard liquor and suffer few effects. With the wink of an eye and the winsome display of a mouthful of straight, pearly teeth he could put at ease lesser men intimidated by his great size and lordly persona. He seldom raised his voice yet garnered results in all his dealings.

If not his personality, I knew it was the flawless handsomeness of face which melted Christine’s heart, causing her to fall headlong into marriage with a Brother having few romantic traits. To different men Barret was different things. He was a man to be feared; he was a man to be respected. He was a man to be scorned and to be loved. Barret was not, however, a man to he ignored.

He was my big brother. He will always be my big brother.

So now you can bench press four hundred pounds, eh boy?

Yeah, Daddy. Took me awhile.

Go for four-fifty.

Give me another month, Pop. Won’t let you down.

Lowell! What are you doing?

Nothin’…really.

How are you coming along in your studies!

Okay, I guess.

"Push, Lowell! Push for excellence!"

Yeah….Whatever, man.

Though second born, Barret was the pride in the old man’s eye, my sister and myself being mere annoyances to him, or so it seemed. Yes, here was one to carry on the Martin name in pride—a handsome son to personify his hopes, his aspirations in industry and research….

There was one person Barret loved more than his father or his father’s damned overbearing ambitions—his reluctant little brother.

After graduation, instead of going into industry with the old man, Barret ran away and joined the Air Force!

Yet during those years our father had had an idea. He had been toying with the advantages of advanced solar power systems for some time; nursing his theories until success was insured. He needed a laboratory to do his work alone and unhindered by the restrictions of government and big industry. He purchased a great plot of land in New Jersey near the Arthur Kill. There he built his dream—a private research complex utilizing the latest in electronics, advances in nuclear fission employing all-new electrical resistance moderation, laser technology and robotics. I was told that to produce certain photo-sensitive polymers crucial to his research, father needed an electro-fission reactor; one to bombard specialized light-sensitive dielectric materials with radiation and fast proton energy, thus converting them into exotic charged isotopes that he might test his complex mathematical theories.

The reactor was installed along with its associated power and moderator control subsystems, under the watchful eye of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the district power works.

Years….It was then that father’s nuclear white elephant proved its worth by producing an amazingly effective and powerful solar cell—a mirrored metallic wafer one inch square which produced forty watts at ten lumens per square inch!

Barret started showing up again; he had been stationed nearby at the McGuire NASA Facility and would use his weekends and leave periods to assist the old man in his research and experiments.

Then Cecil, our father strangely told Barret to spend a full year compiling research reports on bionuclear defense systems. Fourteen months later he submitted to our father a formal technical proposal, one sure to make full use of his new solar power system. The two went straight to work, building for themselves the below-ground prototype of Father’s brainchild; an idea with which the new solar power system and related advanced engineering proved a wondrous and resounding success. I still to that day did not know why our father designed a bionuclear bunker beneath the ground but I lauded their pioneering efforts…that is, from a respectful distance.

They were to publish their findings each reaping a handsome sum, when tragedy struck in the family.

While on a chartered flight from Maine our father, mother and sister were killed, along with the pilot in a fiery crash which obliterated the aircraft and burned out 10,000 square acres of forestland in the New Jersey countryside.

This, along with problems I had been having with Margie worked to affect my entire personality.

I knew at that moment just how much I truly appreciated my father. He was the American Dream. Born a poor sharecropper’s son in South Carolina, he ran away from home and with the shirt on his back, a brilliant mind nurtured by years of education, hard work and frugal living, built for himself an empire in the nascent New Power and Light Industry. And a monument in the industry of self-fulfillment.

So I had inherited more from him than merely his small physical size, facial features and persona. His holdings were split equally between Barret and myself. Money which I promptly squandered on a crazy wife, two houses, trips around the world, women, an expensive sports car, and some very bad investments.

But for me there was an out now, thanks to Barret.

He had kept his nose to the news, digging in libraries until finding in a public notice that the state of New Jersey was to soon seek bids for the construction of a toxic research facility the funding of which was estimated to soar into the billions. Barret, with my permission, offered to sell our installation to the state for cash, thereby saving the state a ton of time and money.

The installation, because of its versatility, proved more than adequate for the state’s needs; and at a price pleasing to both parties concerned. The final documents were to be drawn at the beginning of the new year. At which time I would be filthy rich….Ah yes. The dream of every civilized man, I thought with a strained smile, and slid back in the stereo recliner, the heavy whiskey glass to my lips.

Rich. At the expense of another man’s dream. My father was gone. Forever. Taking with him that boundless intellect wherein was locked the complex secrets behind his revolutionary experiments and hence the possibilities of their exploitation on a commercial scale. And gone too was his legacy. This melded the bitter with the sweet.

Riches. Dreams; a greedy wife; an expensive sports car; a dead family. Divorce; alimony.

I was 32 going on 72 . Man, what a way to live.

Getting late, whispered a friendly voice, bringing my mind back to the present. Barret and Christine were standing over me; the stereo chair had already ejected its CD. My glass was empty.

Yeah.

3.

Yuletide

The overcast was now unseen in the darkness but its presence was chillingly felt in the large flakes of downy white it dumped upon the city; and by the time we reached Midtown the traffic had ground to virtually a standstill.

The Lincoln Tunnel ended in an explosion of light and motion. Up West 39th the traffic was deflected to the left, the street farther up being cordoned off for a holiday activity taking place in the sparkle and fire of Bryant Park. Up The Avenue of the Americas the bustle unfolded before the frosted windshield of Barret’s Mercedes-Benz sedan; the vibrant scene a Currier & Ives rendition set in icy pane, fizzy neon and snowy asphalt.

Most noticeable were the bells; huge red and green and tinsel gold; they hung by lighted chains from every lamppost, up the avenue until fading into an infusion of lighting from Rockefeller Center. They twinkled with life in effusive, watery vividness casting variegated halos upon the densely falling snow. Enchanting holiday displays enlivened the many great department stores along the way. In the back seat I lifted Timothy up to see the spectacular animated holiday splendor in bedroom-sized showcases. Starbucks, Peet’s and thick cocoa steamed in the decorated carts of ancient street vendors. A woman chasing a small dog which had just broken clear of its leash. It dashed and dodged until vanishing behind a steaming chestnut stand.

Rockefeller Center. The tolling bells of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the gothic graceful structure out of sight yet letting its cheering presence be known in the melodic peal of its massive carillon. It sweetly swirled Silent Night throughout every well-lighted avenue and darkened alleyway in the old Midtown, the chime of the bells mixing in the cold encircling snowflakes permeating goodwill and bemusement in this surreal world of tinsel, candy cane Manhattan haste. The skating rink was well-lighted by the blaze and effusive sparkle of a towering Christmas tree, a variegated topper winking at its pinnacle; the skaters on the silvery sheet ice having a heart-lightening time way below.

West 57th Street. A man suddenly bolted from his stalled vehicle cursing soundly its snowbound hulk and abandoning it where it died to the absolute fury of a frost-bitten traffic cop on the corner at Third Avenue. Charity drives—a Salvation Army chorale dressed in their distinctive showy red, commanding a conservative audience.

First Avenue. Barret by now was an angry wreck. He lashed soundly his own judgment at choosing to drive in all that chaos.

No you don’t! Get outta there!

Made it! Barret beat him to an empty parking space at the Lock-Park; here we abandoned the warm car feeling it better to make the Cultural Center by foot. He was charged an extra twenty-dollar Holiday Fee for having his car parked, which of course caused him to grouse even more.

Nice out tonight! the attendant cheerfully quipped, his itchy fingers hungrily awaiting the green. Barret stopped abruptly to consider the frivolous salutations of this greedy proprietor. To me he was merely enterprising—a stout old fellow out to make a pittance plus with the Christmas cheer. Barret shoved the extra bucks into the lot attendant’s battered hand. He seized Christine’s arm, and they trudged away smugly. I held Tim’s little hand and we both kept pace, hearing from behind the attendant call, Just tryin’ t’ make conversation, fellah!

Up the windswept block the prominent towering pyramid of glass, steel and ambition stood a lighted obelisk protruding, as usual, its upper 40 floors into the hovering obscurity. The new skyscraper, dedicated just three years prior and christened: Chase Manhattan Corporate Headquarters loomed its fantastic 188 stories above ultra-modern Chase Manhattan Square off York Avenue at East 79th. An engineering marvel in itself the mammoth edifice was dubbed the tallest structure to be erected, thus placing its lofty steel eminence on record as one of the ten greatest man-made wonders of the world. The building, with its marble concourse, rambling four-block long forty-story high convention center and open-air mall drew ogling eyes from all over the globe to revel in its glassed seductiveness, to savor in its architectural splendor….

Astounding.

Passing overhead now was the silent, fleeting run of a ten-unit monorail shuttle as it slipped effortlessly along its concrete track on its way to the Midtown docking port at Rockefeller Center. A multi-billion dollar undertaking, the General Electric Mag-Lift Mover or widely known as GNYMMS (Gen-Ems) took root in New York at the start of 2010 to replace the old city-wide electric loop system. A spin-off of its relation, the older Bay Area Rapid