Star Fall: Book 1 of The Planet Perfecters

By Daniel W. Shegrud

He was just a common, homeless, nameless drunk - until they came.

They, the infinitely recombining, seemingly indestructible star creatures, promised the answer to every problem that has ever plagued mankind. In short, they promised perfection, and they asked nothing in return.

Except that it wasn't that easy. It never is. By the time the last answer is given, the last human will have died.

Half the world is ecstatic, thinking they can stop asking questions before the stars come for them and live in perfection with their fellow survivors.

The other half is appalled, knowing perfection is never perfect and that the worth of a human soul far exceeds the worth of a perfect world. They know the stars must be stopped

But how do they stop the unstoppable? The drunk knows, and his weapon is the most common thing known to man.

The Planet Perfecters takes a humorously serious look into the evil potential of governments and the uniting commonness of humanity that is anything BUT common.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel W. Shegrud
• Release date: Aug 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005894672

Daniel W. Shegrud

I'm from Renton, Washington, originally and except for two years in Rexburg Idaho and four months in Kingston, New York, lived there from 1960 (the year I was born) until 2008, when Mary and I moved to Spokane.Here are a few more ridiculously compelling details about me, in case you're interested: I have five sons, one daughter, 8-10 grand kids (it changes periodically) and a miniature poodle named Copper; I am a born-again believer in Jesus Christ; I love cookies; I have read more than two thousands books - novels, texts, tomes, manuscripts, what have you - in the last three decades; I love cooking; I love eating; I love eating other people's cooking; I spent more than two decades driving truck but now work as a Certified Nurse's Aid - it's often messier than driving, but more satisfying at the end of the day.

Book preview

STAR FALL

Book 1

of

THE

PLANET

PERFECTERS

By

Daniel W. Shegrud

STAR FALL

Book 1

of

THE

PLANET

PERFECTERS

ISBN

#9781005894672

Copyright 2016

Daniel W. Shegrud

All rights reserved

TABLE of CONTENTS

A Short Explanation of the Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1, Day 1, Sunday

Chapter 2, Day 2, Monday

Chapter 3, Day 3, Tuesday, Part 1

Chapter 4, Day 3, Tuesday, Part 2

Chapter 5, Day 4, Wednesday, Part 1

Chapter 6, Day 4, Wednesday, Part 2

Chapter 7, Day 4, Wednesday, Part 3

Chapter 8, Day 4, Wednesday, Part 4

Chapter 9, Day 4, Wednesday, Part 5

Chapter 10, Day 8, Sunday, Part 1

Chapter 11, Day 5-8, Thursday-Sunday, Part 1

Chapter 12, Day 5-8, Thursday-Sunday, Part 2

Chapter 13, Day 8, Sunday, Part 2

Chapter 14, Day 8, Sunday, Part 3

Chapter 15, Day 8, Sunday, Part 4

Chapter 16, Day 8, Sunday, Part 5

Chapter 17, Day 8, Sunday, Part 6

Chapter 18, Day 8, Sunday, Part 7

Introducing Daniel

Other Books by Daniel

Contacting Daniel

A SHORT

EXPLANATION

of the

COPYRIGHT

This copy of The Planet Perfecters is for you and you only, which means you can’t copy, republish, tweet, email, resell or in any other way distribute this book or any portion of this book without the express written permission from the author (that would be me).

To be a bit more accurate, you are certainly capable of doing all those things without the express written permission from the author (me again) because you are a highly intelligent and capable individual as evidenced by the fact that you bought this book. However, unless you are doing any of those things for the sake of higher academia or to convince someone else to buy the book, to do so would be a no-no.

It would also be tacky and kind of rude.

If you end up loving this book and can’t live another day without sharing it with your buddies, then buy each of them a copy instead of passing this one around. Better yet, have them buy their own. They all have jobs, right?

Also, if you borrowed or stole this book from a friend, for crying out loud, don’t be so cheap. Go buy your own.

Should you choose to violate this copyright with little regard for my wishes or feelings, I would at least expect you to buy me a pizza. Call it penance. And not a wimpy pizza either. I'm talking about one with all the veggies and meats, including jalapenos and anchovies.

Thank you for respecting the insane number of years it took me to write this book.

THE

PLANET

PERFECTERS

is dedicated to all

The common heroes

of this great nation who

possess the courage

and the will to stand

against the tyranny of a

government that wants to

take care of us

CHAPTER 1

Day 1

Sunday

Scene 1

It was a bright and beautiful Sunday morning with butterflies flittering and fluttering through the creamy caress of light sifting down through the piney boughs at the edge of the velvety meadow.

Or at least it would have been a bright and beautiful Sunday morning with butterflies flittering and fluttering through the creamy caress of light sifting down through the piney boughs at the edge of the velvety meadow if, indeed, it had been morning, which it was not, and if the sun had actually been shining, which it also was not, and if there had been a single piney bough in evidence, which again there was not.

Though it was, in all actuality, Sunday, it was a little after four in the afternoon, the sky was slug belly grey, and a soggy drizzle filtered down through a screen of midday mist. Though the occasional fly made its presence known from time to time, no butterflies flittered or fluttered through the light in the meadow because no meadow existed in the dingy back alley of the tiny industrial district where this delusion occurred.

To the bedraggled flop of humanity snoozing under packing blankets and plastic tarps on top of a soiled mattress which lay smack dab flat on the floor of a ramshackle old tool shed without benefit of box spring or frame, this mattered not a whit because a little after four in the afternoon was the closest thing to morning he had seen in many a long and groggy year.

The sad little shack with its sad little occupant sat just off to the side of a small court yard about half way down the alley behind an abandoned warehouse in the scenic mountain hamlet of Mule Elk.

Serving as a gateway between the east and west parts of the state, and looking to the logging industry and tourism for its sustenance, Mule Elk sat nestled in forested foothills bordered by lofty alpine peaks, and played host to single folks, families, retirees, and pretty much anyone else who wanted to live up close and personal with nature.

All through the year, Mule Elk invited travelers to sample its scenic beauty. Every spring, young lovers and the young at heart drove up for romantic getaways. Summer brought the fit and agile to trek up, over and around its surrounding tors. Come autumn, when the weather cooled somewhat, the older folks flocked in to view the breath-taking foliage. In the winter, skiers filled up the motels, jammed the restaurants and crowded the slopes. Year around, creative types from all over the world traveled there to capture it in oil, watercolor, tempura, chalk, ink, pencil, clay, charcoal, film, gelatin, finger paint, food coloring and any other medium that raged in the trendy pop-culture bastions of the moment.

Through every seasonal invasion, and despite the chaotic clash of cultures that unsettled more than a few of the long-term residents, Mule Elk remained a warm and welcoming place. To prove it, the town even claimed its own homeless drunk.

Scene 2

Years earlier, the shed in which the drunk slept housed bags of fertilizer, that substance so beneficial to the prosperity of yards and gardens, and yet so offensive to the sensibilities of esophaguses and sinuses. Devoid of its fertilizer bags and their accompanying stench, as well as a door and most of its windows, the only smelly thing housed by the shed was the societal dreg who called it home.

The societal dreg in question lay staring up at the ceiling, contemplating the pressing necessity of post-slumber drainage. At least he would have been staring up at the ceiling contemplating post-slumber drainage if there had indeed been a ceiling, which again there wasn’t. He was sure that one had existed… probably… but that had been long before he shambled down the back-alley and found this doorless, roofless, tenantless one-room manor. It still had ceiling rafters here and there, tied loosely together by the occasional warped plank, but work had not yet re-progressed to the point of re-covering them with much of anything.

The re-roofing of one’s home is a serious endeavor and, to the drunk’s way of thinking, a task not to be accomplished in a cavalier manner. One does not simply snatch up the first available roof one finds discarded on the side of the road and slap it into place atop one’s well-weathered rafters with a fine fare-thee-well and a saucy dusting of the Wells-Lamonts. No, the materials must be just right and their installation precise. Anything less would be unbefitting a home of such grandeur. Too, the materials must be cost effective and readily accessible, so the work was, of necessity, done quite slowly.

He had once found a few proper roofing materials piled on the perimeter of a construction site just down the road. Coincidentally, at the precise moment of discovery he had also found, cowering beneath his personal ennui, a dash of inclination lying next to a smidgen of energy, both of which he had carelessly overlooked in his last self-purging. That tri-fold bit of serendipity had resulted in an unusual gust of initiative, allowing him to secure a couple sheets of plywood, lug them home, and heft them up and over one corner of the rafters. The plywood sheets were old, warped and stained, but they had been squarely within his price range, and they had multiple nails sticking out of them, which solved that problem as well. The tool he used to drive the nails, thereby affixing the plywood sheets to the rafters, was a large rock found beside a freshly dredged culvert. The drunk wasn’t a thief by nature, but no one had ever come asking for the boards and the rock, so he felt justified in claiming them.

Once installed, the plywood kept the floor directly underneath reasonably dry whenever the rain fell without aid of contrary wind. Mule Elk is a windy place, and quite often the wind took pleasure in its contrariness. On rare occasion, however, the rain adapted an agreeable attitude and fell straight down, affording the affixed plywood sheets the honor of protecting that half of the mattress directly under them.

The discerning observer may well have opined that the mattress would be drier were it placed completely under the plywood where it would have enjoyed slightly better protection. Certainly, such a move would have seemed logical to even the dimmest bulb. As it happens, the dim bulb on the mattress was of the same opinion, and not a rainy or snowy morning went by that he did not regret not moving the mattress when the beguiling spirit of labor had been upon him. He often thought about moving it, but the act of putting up the plywood had so depleted his reserves that he was not mentally or morally capable of undertaking such a daunting chore. It was just too much to expect of one man; he could only reach so far; he could only give so much; he was only human. So, day after drizzly day, the mattress stayed where it was in testament to and condemnation of the human sponge that slept upon it.

Being human, he was, as noted earlier, seriously contemplating a PSD (the aforementioned post-slumber drainage). It was the whole drainage-need thing that had awakened him in the first place. He considered, with some annoyance, the niggling for a PSD as his personal alarm. He would have preferred a cute little clock in the shape of a gnome with a digital read out, six AM and twelve FM programmable radio stations, a nine-minute snooze and fade-in/fade-out capabilities, but that would have required electricity and, goodness-for-hopscotch-certain, his home was a long ways away from that foolish extravagance. No, the PSD urge was more than sufficient for his needs and, being a man of high and refined qualities, most days he responded to its call.

Scene 3

About the eighth or tenth or seventeenth time his bladder cramped, he threw off his coverings and rolled to the edge of his mattress. Thrilling at the continuity of movement, he kept rolling until he floomped onto the floor. Fortunately for him, he still had a floor upon which he could floomp.

Unlike the roof, which wasn’t there yet, or there again depending on your perspective, the floor was still in place and showed no sign of getting up and leaving any time soon. This fact, though reassuring on many levels, caused a small degree of disgruntlement to the man, for if the floor had decided to get up and leave out while he was sitting on it, it would have saved him the trouble, at least once, of walking all the way to the window to perform the perfunctory PSD. But there it sat, as fixed and stubborn as a barnacle, giving nothing but support to four walls, a mattress and an old storage crate, which served quadruple duty as closet, chair, table and personal valet.

He would not have blamed the floor if it had taken off, for the charitable act of holding his sop-saddened carcass year after sullen year had to be depressing even to a well-mannered tongue-in-groove masterpiece as itself. Yet it did not leave, as the willy-nilly roof had done, for it was a loyal floor, dedicated to the hallowed calling of its genre, and gladly accepted every thoughtless burden set upon it.

Staring once again at the non-existent roof, he found himself grateful for the little bit of reassurance provided by the constancy of the dependable floor.

He could not count on the walls, for they could be blown down by any serious wind that bothered to notice them. He could not count on the roof because it wasn’t even there again yet. He could not count on his mattress because some poor sluggard more pitiful than he could steal it whenever he wasn’t on it – or even while he was on it, for that matter. He could not count on the wine, which he drank to excess as often as he could, because it required money. He could not count on the money because it required finding sufficient bottles and cans to recycle. He could not count on sufficient bottles and cans to recycle because that required him to get out of bed and go look for them. He could not count on himself to get out of bed because…well, just because. The only thing in his life he could truly count on was his floor, upon which he was still floomped.

Gripping the handle on the side of his personal valet, which sat on the trusty floor within arm’s reach of the mattress, he hoisted himself to a reasonable approximation of sitting. This was always a fascinating moment in his day, for while the room spun in languid circles when he lay supine, it whirled at full tilt when he sat up.

Some days, the precarious