To the Future and Beyond

By Peter J. Sell

It is now some time after the time of the first book “The Creator’s Dimensions”

A significant proportion of the world’s human population soon started too emigrated to other habitable planets in the Universe. They reasoned that earth had been contaminated so much that it was easier to start a fresh on a new world. Those left on earth were determined to return the earth back to its former glory, and so set about transforming it with the reintroduction of animals and plant now extinct.

A Sphinx was discovered in the Sahara which in itself was not significant but it was found to be a million years old and had been grown into the shape, not carved. This starts an adventure that eventually leads to the Future and Beyond via the Orphan Planet.

They had to go into the past to discover who and why the Sphinx was grown but inadvertently altered the future which when they came back was our past. Once that was sorted out the Future was now the problem which gives the book it's title.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781291500882

Book preview

To the Future and Beyond

To the Future and Beyond

A Sci-Fi novel in the Creator’s Dimensions trilogy of books.

A Sci-Fi novel

By

Peter J Sell

ISBN 978-1-291-50088-2

Dedications

To my grandson Jenson who sadly lost his fight for life 29 days after he was born.  He had a very rare heart condition for babies (Aortic Stenosis) and after three heart operations two of which were open heart surgeries in which they had the bypass on standby, he sadly survived only a short while.  The last operation was with a donor valve to replace a valve that had been swapped around to replace the faulty valve he was born with.  The odds unfortunately against him were too great and the life support had to be turned off, to end his suffering.

I will remember him for ever, and his name will live on as a character hopefully in the third and last of the trilogy of books in the

Creator’s Dimensions series.

He will in this story however win through in the end and obtain everything, unlike some of the other’s in the story.

To true Sci-Fi fans everywhere who like me are appalled at finding true Sci-Fi books mixed up with Science fantasy and horror books in libraries and book shops.

True Sci-Fi is an art form in its own right.  True Sci-Fi is the fictional stories of the possible within the scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.

That is hopefully what I have written here, and so I dedicate this and my other Sci-Fi books to the Sci-Fi authors who have inspired me.

Preface

This is the second book in the Creator’s Dimensions trilogy of stories.  This book is set in a time a little after the first book and the prophet Hazel has been dead for about a century or so.

It tells the story of three adventurers or was it four who with the help of the Orphan Planet answers questions about the Universe itself, the past and future of the human race.

Imagination has to be nurtured and used, to flourish.  In my case I was an only child and so I had no brothers or sisters to play with, or indeed argue with.  I had lots of friends but inevitably there were many times that I had to amuse myself or get bored.  From a very early age I would disappear into a world of my own, created in my imagination (my wife says that I still do).  My love of true Sci-Fi, from authors such as H G Wells and Jules Verne in my childhood to Arthur C Clarke and Asimov in my teens and twenties, and yes some of us did actually read the articles and short stories in Play Boy that Arthur C Clark wrote (the original short story called the Sentinel published in Play Boy led to the book and the film 2001 a Space Odyssey and then 2010, 2061 & 3001).   My problem was that being dyslexic meant that I had extreme difficulty in putting my ideas down on paper.  This problem has to a large extent been solved with programmes such as spell check (although not completely so, as it doesn’t know the difference between such words as there and their, I suppose that if you stick to one version at least you are right about 50% of the time) so in the autumn of my life I have started to write books.  Please enjoy the journey via my mind into the future.

It is now some time after the Dimensionaut and Prophet Hazel (see the previous book The Creator’s Dimensions) had had her encounter with the Creator and returned to a stunned world.  She has now died after preaching to the world on how to make the perfect Universe, and her non decaying body was interned in the vast mausoleum in the North African desert.

A significant proportion of the world’s human population soon started too emigrated to other habitable planets in the Universe.  They reasoned that earth had been contaminated so much that it was easier to start a fresh on a new world.  This left earth with vast cities and resources abandoned and certainly initially, they were allowed to return back to nature unchecked.  The human population that left earth did so through the aid of wormhole technology, but unfortunately this only allowed them to take virtually what they could carry or wear.  Everything else was left behind and in reality, knowledge was really the only thing that was exported with them.  These pioneers would then transform these other worlds virtually with their bare hands.  Some flourished while others didn’t.

The remaining earth population was determined to return the earth back to its former glory, and so set about transforming places such as Africa back into the dark continent of early mid second millennium.  The rain forests of the Amazon were replanted, as was all the other forests throughout the world, and even the forests of the British Isle were starting to return to their former glory that they were before the Romans came.  The country side of England was allowed to revert back to forest and any small villages or houses of importance were taken down brick by brick and rebuilt to form idealised villages in small agreed centres.  Only about a hundred or so villages are now in existence with the rest completely erased from the country side.  These villages were linked by a vast underground road network (the roads that transported people and goods were the type that had a carpet like floor that people just stepped on and the bristles would lift them up and move them alone effortlessly at high speed) so as not to spoil the country side.

It was decreed by the world government that all non indigenous species should be eradicated on all continents.  Wherever possible they were repatriated, but inevitably a large proportion of them were just wiped out.  So the Brazilian pepper tree that was the scourge of Florida was eradicated in that and other southern state of America.  The North American Grey Squirrel that had so successfully wiped out the native Red Squirrel of the British Isles in most places was now wiped out itself in Britain.  Even the camels of Australia have been relocated back in Arabia. The extinct species of animals, plants and insect could now be cloned and reintroduced back into this emerging virgin environment. The mass extinction that had occurred in the early twenty first century could now be reversed and each country / continent had virtually a blank canvas to work with.

The technology existed to reintroduce any creature that the human population wanted, so long as there was some part of it to clone from its DNA.  Even those creatures that had long since cease to exist, even millions of years ago could in theory be reintroduced if wanted, however it was decided to limit the reintroduction to those that dated to not much more than a thousand years or so since their extinction.  This was because there could be creatures living side by side that were not meant to be together.  Nature proved to be more difficult than man had anticipated and it was a very delicate balancing act.  Other creatures had now filled the niches left by the recently extinct creatures and great battles for supremacy ensued in the first experimental reintroductions.

These battles for supremacy proved to be initially disasters as nature was far more complicated than man had ever realised.  The human population therefore set up the equivalent of game wardens that would monitor and control what went on in their designated area.  The idea was to reintroduce the species slowly and once the ecosystem was stable then nature could be allowed to take its course.  The game wardens were assisted by android helpers.

Everybody had a job within the new earth order and the earth population enjoyed a renaissance of education and community spirit.  The mass migration of most of the human race had the unexpected result of starting to turn the earth into the perfect planet.  The first experiments in the reintroduction of extinct animals was a disaster because the scientist had forgotten that nature also requires nurture.  The cloned lions for example had the killer instincts but lacked the tracking and ambush skills that would have normally been taught to them from their father or mother.  So the first batch of lions and lionesses just became scavengers.  They would have scavenged in the past when times were hard but fresh meal was their proper food.  Scavenging was obviously not their proper place in the food chain, so the authorities simply killed them off.  A new batch was reintroduced that had been trained to hunt as their ancestors had.  Once a pride of lions was successful then the offspring would be educated by their parents and Mother Nature had both nature and nurture working in harmony.

With only a few million people in the human population of the world instead of the several billion that used to inhabit it, those cities that had to be rebuilt were done so as floating cities.  With the disastrous sea level rises most cities had simply flooded and were now abandoned.  Most cities in the past were situated on bodies of water such as ocean front or large river estuaries.  London, New York to name but a few was now under water and only the tallest buildings were poking above the water.  Most of the new cites had only about fifteen thousand people in them on average.  The advantage of being a floating city and modular, was that if a group of people or even the whole city decided that they wanted to move to another part of the world then that is what they did.  The city just detached from its moorings and moved.  That is all the living quarters and the required infrastructure just moved from say Miami in North America to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa.

There was now no need to put aside vast areas of land for the mono cultivation of food crops.  With a vast army of virtually redundant androids at their disposal the million or so human inhabitants of earth would feast on wild rice and fresh wild hog with true wild Atlantic salmon as starters.  If it took ten androids all day to pick enough fruit to make one meal then that is what happened.  The androids would work day and night without a break save for a ten minute stop to change their power cells every day or so.  Android surgeons would not blink an eye at operating on a human for days at a time if that was what it took to save the humans life.

This then was earth in the mid third millennium.  Life was good but not perfect as not everybody thought that this was the correct way for the human race to conduct itself.

Chapter 1 A good life in Africa

It was very early in the morning on a mid African savannah and Harold Dobroski was surrounded by his faithful androids awaiting the sun to rise.  It was already light enough to see as dawn gave enough light to see the drama playing out on the African plain. Being near the equator it goes from night to day in about a quarter of an hour, almost quicker than the eye can adjust.  A pride of lions were stalking a small herd of wilder beasts.  The lead lioness had singled out a baby wilder breast who had inadvertently wondered away from the protection of the herd.  The male lion was lying down on a small mound surveying the scene and you could just imagine that he was thinking to himself

I’m hungry so don’t mess this up or I’ll give you a hard time

It was of course beneath a lion to do any hunting, it was the job of his pride of female lionesses.  His job was to fight for the right to mate with the females and to keep the pride safe from other lions who wanted to usurp him.

Harold was not really interested in the outcome of the lions except on a curiosity basis whether they were going to get their meal or not, he was interested in the newly introduced giraffe’s that had been extinct for over a hundred years.  At the height of global warming there was an extinction rate of species that was comparable to the time of the dinosaur’s extinction.  Enlightened scientist had had the forethought to take samples of the species DNA and other defining characteristics.  Now the technology existed where the species could be recreated and eventually reintroduced back into the wild.  Most of the higher species had suffered badly due to global warming.  It had only been a few decades since lions had been successfully reintroduced back into Africa.  It is impossible to just reintroduce all the extinct creatures at once and so Harold’s job was to manage the situation.

Harold had several hundred square kilometres of African savannah to manage by himself along with his faithful androids.  His job was to slowly reintroduce the old species and redress the balance of nature.  Nature was already balanced because nature will always find a way.  Some species that was down trodden in the past had exploited the situation and were now at, or near the top of the food chain.  Because of this any new competitor reintroduced would soon be wiped out even though in the past they were not threatened.  Harold’s job was therefore to manage the natural environment until it could be left alone and go down the route that nature really wanted.

It was a couple of hundred years since the prophet Hazel had died, and her mausoleum was still being visited by the population of Earth and indeed by the populations of other planets in the Universe. The pyramid was still giving up secrets and still answering questions that were important to the human race. The whole Universe has now been populated by humans, and some say polluted by humans but there is so many habitats available that the human race is very thinly spread throughout the Universe.  Wormhole travel is now very well established and the various star systems have their own governing bodies but all the Universal alliances are still governed or rather administrated by the old United Nations of the World.

The title has now been changed to the United Nations of Worlds and therefore has the same initials as before, the UNW.  The UNW head quarters was now situated in Cheyenne Mountain that used to be the head quarters of NORAD the old United States defence organisation.  The original UN building was destroyed along with a good part of New York by religious extremists even before it was flooded due to global warming.  It was felt prudent to move the UNW to a more secure venue and as the abandoned Cheyenne mountain facility was available all concerned soon agreed.  The mountain facility was originally designed to withstand a nuclear attack and therefore given enough security, no religious terrorists could harm it or the organisation.  Most of Manhattan had to be abandoned anyway due to the rising sea level that was the result of global warming.

Earth has been depopulated because of the mass migration to the stars and now only about a million people now live on the Earth.  Vast areas of the Earth have been returned to wilderness and so; most of the Earth is now one big nature reserve. The population of the seas and oceans have also recovered and the planet now has a nearly clean bill of health.

Coming out of the rising sun Harold could just make out an obvious short range hover craft.  The roads still exists and most still use them for relatively short range journeys.  Their sizes however have been drastically reduced to accommodate the nature reserves.  When they go through the parks they tend to be placed underground and only emerge at interesting vista points, and these tend to be at high level so as not to disturb the wild life.

The hover craft came into land about a hundred metres away with dust being blown about from the craft.  The hover craft did not use a reaction system such as the old fashioned helicopters or heli jets but used a newly introduced anti-gravity system given to the human race by the Orphan planet.  It could not be used in space and was only useful where there was a strong gravitational field and objects close to each other such as the surface of a planet.  Locally it would blow up dust from the resulting anti-gravity field as it came into land and could only work at relatively low altitude.  Given these draw backs it was a efficient form of transport but expensive and only government officials could justify the cost.

A delegation got out of the hovercraft and started to walk towards Harold.  The lead delegate was wearing adaptive clothes as were all the other delegates but the lead one had his set on the formal attire of the council of the UNW.  The others were in the process of changing theirs because of the heat and humidity of the African savannah.  One just couldn’t make up her mind as to what clothes to wear and her suit was changing from every conceivable colour and style of attire.  The lead delegate looked annoyingly at her and she settled on the type of clothes that the majority were now wearing.

Harold put his hand out to greet the leader who by his clothes was obviously a very important man.

Welcome how can I help you?

"We are on a mission to bring Harold Dobroski to the UNW head quarters in Cheyenne Mountain in North America.  He is required for a very important mission that could be life or death for the human race.  I don’t have to ask as our sensors are indicating that you are Harold Dobroski" replied the lead delegate.

Do I have a choice in this?

Of course you do but I am told that after you protest for a little while, you will accompany me to Nairobi for a sub-orbital flight to central North America and then on to Cheyenne mountain.

Why me? protested Harold.

I don’t know but I am informed that you are the only one in the Universe who can apparently carry out this mission

But normally there is a competition to select people to go on dangerous missions, why not now? And anyway I am happy with my life as it is, so I’m not going

The lead delegate started to hand a slip of paper to Harold.  What is this asked Harold.  Its paper with writing on it.  You can read can’t you? replied the leader of the delegation.  Yes of course I can read, but why are you using paper? I haven’t seen paper for years and then it was in a museum The UNW still use paper as a backup for past records, and it’s a specially developed paper that looks exactly like the old fashioned paper but its completely impervious to everything except fire.  The paper can be stored under water for hundreds of years without any degradation.  Indeed that is how it’s used for backup in the UNW.  It’s stored in flooded caves beneath Cheyenne Mountain.  We use it now because of the religious dissidences last use of a nuclear devise in an attack on the UNW head quarters.  They obviously did no harm to Cheyenne Mountain as it was created to withstand a direct hit by the twentieth century nuclear weapons however the electro magnetic pulse wiped out the memories of our storage devises.  Hence we now transfer all records to paper for archiving.  It is easy to then just scan the records back if they are required.  In the circumstances that we are now in, paper is the perfect medium as it can’t be changed without leaving a tell tale record of that change and it will convince you of something as you will soon find out said the lead delegate who was now handing Harold a number of sheets of paper.

Harold took the paper and on it there was a transcript of the conversation that they had just had.  It was word for word and continued with exactly what Harold was thinking at that time.  Each time the page of writing finished Harold turned over and it continued with his thoughts.  The part that finally convinced Harold was when he turned over the page and the text described precisely what was transpiring on the savannah.  It described in detail where the animals were and only when he turned over a page did the lions attack as described.

Harold stopped and didn’t turn over the page as he was very shocked at what was happening.  He deliberately waited for a few minutes before he turn over the last page.  At the top of the page it described that Harold had waited before he turned over the page and that this would finally convince him to go.

How did you do that? Are you reading my mind? Is this paper somehow adaptive so that one or other of you is entering on it what’s happening?

I have done nothing except come for you I was given these pieces of paper yesterday and read them and signed and dated them as you can see on the back replied the Delegate.

Harold turned over the last page and sure enough there was a signature and yesterdays date on it.

"You have 1 hour to hand over to your androids what you want them to do until a replacement human is assigned to this nature reserve.

Harold called over all his androids and started to give them instructions.

Just maintain the balance at its present levels and only allow the levels to fluctuate between acceptable numbers.

But by what percentage should we interfere with the habitat? asked one of the androids.

Just use your common sense.  Some things require your immediate intervention while others can be left along.  You will just have to use your judgment replied Harold very frustratingly to the android asking the questions.

The androids continued to ask more and more questions through just one android as they all were connected so all of their thoughts were known to that one spokesman android.  Suddenly Harold put his hand up and shouted.

STOP, this is precisely why we don’t leave androids in charge of anything without human supervision.  I can’t go now until I have given the androids very precise instructions or they will just mess up the eco system.  I just

The lead delegate smiled and handed Harold yet another piece of paper interrupting his protest and on the paper it stated that this was precisely what would happen and in the delegation was Harold’s temporary replacement.

Have you any more pieces of paper and when do we leave? replied Harold with inevitability in his voice.

The delegate smiled and directed Harold to the waiting hover craft.  Only two delegates got on the hover craft with Harold and the leader.  It was explained to Harold that the others were not of sufficient security clearance for the journey as certain information was going to be divulged to Harold.  The remaining would be picked up by ground transport in the next few hours.

The hover craft could not fly very high so they flew around Mount Kilimanjaro which already was starting to have snow on its peak.  This had not happened for a hundred of years or so after global warming but as the world was now coming yet again back into balance the tropical mountain was returning to its normal environment.

Chapter 2 Meeting in Nairobi

The hover craft came into land at a facility of the African Alliance head quarters near Nairobi.  The now small delegation was met by a very heavily armed guard of about 20 soldiers and androids and everybody was rushed into the building.  Harold now out of breath was starting to protest at his treatment but nobody was listening.  They were escorted into a room that was completely bare.  Harold by this time was really starting to get annoyed and shouted.

That’s it I’ve had enough I want to know what’s going on?

The Lead delegate put his finger up to his lips to indicate that Harold should keep quite.

Please bear with us.  All will be revealed once the room is secure.

With that the walls of the room seemed to dissolve and become transparent.  Harold felt himself being lifted up very slightly as the bristles built into the floor poked through slightly.  They were in a holographic room but one that was completely secure from the outside.

Just give it a moment for the room to block out every wavelength and then we can talk said the only person in the room with Harold the lead delegate.

Now we can talk safely.  My name is Peter Strut and I am the chief aid to the President of the UNW council Herr Stabla.  Conrad Stabla is the only one who knows all of what is going on.  I have not been briefed except for what has happened on Earth.  I am authorised to tell you everything I know.  Before I do that however I must tell you that whatever you are told and shown in this room must not be repeated outside of it to anyone except myself and / or Conrad Stabla of course said Peter Strut very solemnly.

The walls of the room went very fuzzy and then cleared to reveal a desert.  Immediately the temperature rose to above 40º C and it was a very dry heat.  Peter Strut immediately moved his arm out and with his hand raised, slowly moved his hand to the left in an arc.  As he did this the temperature noticeably lowered to a more comfortable level.

That’s better; we don’t want to die of heat exhaustion at the beginning of this adventure do we?

Where are we supposed to be asked Harold.

We are in the deepest central Saharan Desert, well off the beaten track and nowhere near any camel trails.

About a year ago there was a discovery in the Sahara Desert of something like a Sphinx continued Peter Strut

So there are lots of statues like that in north Africa, after all the ancient Egyptians built them all over the place including pyramids said Harold rather frustratingly.

Yes but this one is different.  It’s a million years old, almost to the day

How do you know that? You can’t date worked stone, except for the original date of the creation of the stone, be it as an igneous, metamorphosed or sedimentary rock.

This Sphinx is not made of stone it’s made of petrified wood and we have dated it using carbon dating and the tree rings to get a more precise date.  Its about 20 metres high and about a hundred metres long and it’s been grown in the shape of a four legged animal laying down with its head up proudly just like a Sphinx.  The head on this one is of a jackal or rather it looks like the Egyptian god of Anubis and not human like it is on the sphinx near the pyramid of Khufu said Peter.

The head has a slightly over sized brain box and the front paws are not paws but are hands with fingers and an opposing thumb.  If however the hands were clenched as if in a fist then there are claws coming out of the knuckles.  Apart from the front paws the body is like any other four legged animal such as a dog or lion.  With the fists clench the creature would be able to run just like any other four legged creature with its clenched fist acting as the front paws.

Harold was still standing there with his mouth open in surprise, unable to formulate any questions.

If you look at this small holographic projector it will be easier to see what I’m trying to convey to you said Peter producing a flat object similar to a tray.  Projected above the tray was a scene similar to what they could see all around them but in miniature.  The advantage with the smaller projection is that the object displayed could be handled.

You will observe that the statue is very detailed and if I remove the sand from the scene you can see the tree roots Peter passed his hand over the holographic projector and the sand disappeared revealing the sphinx like creature hovering in thin air above the tray like projector. Below the obviously laying dog like creature there were thick tree roots going about the same distance down as the sphinx was high.  The