Seedvilization: Dawn of the New Beginning

By Nicolas Chai

Nick Swift, a single father and television journalist, is headed to Hawaii to investigate a story on funding fraud allegedly committed by a respected astrophysicist, Professor James Charleston. He brings his daughter, Annabelle, along, hoping to get in some father-daughter time.

When his trip is interrupted by a volcanic eruption that destroys a multibillion-dollar telescope, Nick knows that this will not be an ordinary trip. He goes out to help one of Professor Charleston’s team members, a man trapped in a car—who asks the reporter to deliver a hard drive to the professor in Iceland. Nick soon learns that he has rescued data on an unprecedented discovery that will change the course of human history forever.

In this science fiction novel, a reporter and his daughter find themselves on a roller-coaster journey to deliver world-shaking data to a scientist on the other side of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483449753

Book preview

SEEDVILIZATION

DAWN OF THE NEW BEGINNING

NICOLAS CHAI

Copyright © 2015, 2016 Dong-Yeh Chai.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4974-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4975-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016905692

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/30/2016

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

PROLOGUE

A worn, faint-blue fiberglass fishing boat pounded heavily onto the incoming waves. The fishing boat was thrown up into the air and then repeatedly splashed down onto the pristine ocean water. This long, skinny fishing boat that had set sail from the Chinese coastal fishing village of Tianjin resembled a river canoe, and it was having a hard time riding over the waves in the open sea.

Chen Kuo, a Chinese fisherman in his mid-fifties wearing a stained dark blue shirt and wrinkled, dirty, deep brown cotton jeans, piloted the deeply scratched hull of the fishing boat. He kneeled down at the stern with one hand on the rudder and the other on the shiny, stainless steel cleat on the hull to prevent him from being thrown overboard. The size of the waves in the open sea was too much for a flat-hulled fishing boat to manage, even for a seasoned fisherman like him.

Chen’s partner, who was standing at the bow of the boat, would tell him ahead of time when a big wave was coming. Once in a while, Chen looks back to see if the other Chinese fishing boats, about fifty of them were able to keep up. Chen’s boat was one of the fifty fishing boats that were part of the Patriotic Chinese Fishermen Association (PCFA). All had set sail from Tianjin.

At the bow of the boat was the PCFA leader, a fair-skinned Chinese man, Harry Chen, who was educated at an Ivy League school during his undergraduate years and obtained a graduate degree from Beijing University in political science. He had both hands grabbing onto the stainless steel cleat at the bow and his legs locked underneath the fiberglass bench of the boat. His association was one of the government-sponsored groups who actively proclaimed the Diaoyu Island belonged to the Chinese territories. Harry appeared on Internet, social media, and several TV interviews educating Chinese people about the origin of the Chinese territorial rights to the disputed island. The island had been under Japanese management after the fallout of World War II.

He looked up at the sky to peek at the swarms of dozens of drones hovering over his head. The drones were equipped with cameras that news media organization employs to document the largest fishing boat protest event against Japanese occupation of the disputed island in Chinse history.

Harry, unlike Chen, was wearing a bright yellow marine jacket that allowed him to repel away water despite wave after wave of water splashing overboard as the fishing boat raced through the water. He actually put on khaki pants and new sailing shoes so he would look good on TV, as this fishing boat demonstration had made it onto the country’s headline news ever since the Japanese decided to begin drilling for oil deposits under the seabed in response to China’s South China Sea island expansion projects.

In order to make himself more appealing on TV, Harry, showing confidence, yelled back at Chen at the stern of the boat, I can see land ahead. We are almost there!

Chen squeezed his deeply wrinkled eyelids to focus on the sight of the land. His face turned stone, and his eyes opened wide and responded back to Harry. He pointed his finger toward the distance to acknowledge Harry that he saw the land. However, Chen also pointed feverishly to the front to tell Harry to turn his head, and he quickly put his hand back on the cleats. Chen almost lost his balance for warning Harry.

Harry was all smiles, but once he saw Chen’s arms waving, he quickly turned his head around. When Harry turned his head back, all of his smiles were replaced by a dropped jaw and eyebrows locked in a frown, as he picked up flashes of sunlight coming out from the horizon and quickly disappearing into the waves.

As the boat fought through the choppy waves again and again toward the flashes of light, Harry realized the flashes were from the windows of six Japanese coastguard ships, sailing in formation toward them. Harry waved his arm feverishly toward Chen to signal to cut the power, but the boat kept going toward the ships.

Then Harry stumbled as he raced back to the stern to have a word with Chen. He shouted, The Japanese ships are blocking our path. We are no match with their ships. The Japanese will drive us out. Let’s turn back now!

Despite Harry yelling directly in his ear, Chen, with his darkened skin and deeply wrinkled face, fixated his eyes toward the island behind the fleet of Japanese coastguard. That island belongs to the motherland. They have no right to keep that island. You said it yourself. We have to claim it back for the motherland. We need to take back what belongs to the people! We can’t let the Japanese steal our land! Not after what they have done to my family during World War II!

Chen pushed down on the throttle lever of the fishing boat and steamed ahead toward the Japanese fleet. In respond, the Japanese coastguard ships spread ahead to intersect the fishing boat while speaking in broken Chinese over the PA speaker, You are entering into Japanese territory. Turn your boat around.

With the island insight, Chen ignored warnings from the Japanese coastguard, zigzagging through the fleet of ships while ducking water cannons shooting out from the Japanese ships. Once the boat had gotten past the fleet of Japanese ships, Chen and Harry were all smiles as they approached the coastline of the disputed island on the Pacific Ocean.

Bang! Suddenly a loud, crashing sound exploded in the air, and the fishing boat rammed into the rock near shallow waters of the disputed island, tossing the two passengers into the air as it came to a full stop. Harry was catapulted forward and splashed down into the sea. Chens tumbled forward into the boat and collided with canisters that were loaded with diesel fuel.

Harry, who went overboard, had landed in the sea and hit a rock, and he was knocked unconscious. Chen, who had gotten himself up and banged his body in the midst of the fuel canisters, was drenched in diesel fuel and looking for his comrade. He failed to find him on the boat but he saw the drones were busy hovering overhead by about fifty feet away from him.

When Chen looked down below where the drones were, he saw the bright yellow jacket worn by Harry was floating on the water. He wanted to help, but his body was too banged up to swim. Just as he was getting desperate, a crisp and sharp engine sound came from his rear. Chen turned around and saw the rubber boat full of men with uniforms bearing the Japanese flag coming toward him. He grabbed a fishing pool near him and prepared to fight, but the Japanese bypassed him and went straight toward Harry’s location to rescue him out of the water.

The aerial drones captured all of these actions over the pacific and live streams video images to news reporting media all over the world.

CHAPTER

1

The international news media had documented the territorial dispute over the Pacific for weeks, ever since the Japanese oil companies had begun setting up oil rigs. China had openly stated its sovereignty over the disputed island in numerous international meetings, using historical claims that dated back to the Qing Dynasty. The sovereignty over the disputed island chain was never clear-cut since the island was ceded to Japan after the Qing Dynasty, following the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki when China was defeated during the Sino-Japanese War in 1895.

The treaty allowed Japan territorial rights to the island of Taiwan and its surrounding island chain. However, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally to the United States after losing World War II. The disputed island chain, which was not formally mentioned in the original content of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, was assumed to be handed over to the United States. In an act of goodwill, the United States agreed to have Japan’s government manage the disputed islands for the time being.

China desperately needed to keep up its economic growth to feed its hungry 1.5 billion people, as a decade of recession since 2015 due to aggressive overexpansion in the early 2000s had hit the economy hard. Economic analysts on Wall Street had forecast that the addition of the oil reserve would spring China away from its recession. However, the political analysts from Ivy League university professor believed the political leaders in Beijing were thinking of using this rich oilfield to thrust China into the world’s largest economy, surpassing the United States, a longtime coveted political goldmine for the Beijing government.

The blockade formed by the superior Japanese coastguard ships, along with the fifty or so Chinese fishing boats, was a dramatic contrast that drew attention from all over the world. News media-deployed UAV drones were sent to cover the action further enhanced media’s ability to maintain coverage of events over the Western Pacific. It had become the biggest story since the invasion of Iraq. Advances in aerial robotic technologies were making it cheaper and easier to send cameras to places that were difficult for human reporters to reach. Now reporters could send drones into the air and make live news reports by watching monitors on the ground. This gave news media companies brand-new access to cover stories in a live data stream form.

With events over the Western Pacific, CNN West Coast headquarters in LA was used as temporary coverage headquarters for all Western digital news media. The lobby of CNN’s building, once a reception area had turned into a temporary flea market of news reporters alongside with folding tables and chairs laid out row after row to allow international reporters to work on the developing story.

The noise from the chatter of keyboards, phone calls, voices, and music all created a loud background static as Nick Swift stood at the security counter watching the TV reports from his smartphone, while waiting for confirmation from the secretary of his chief editor for a meeting. Nick, a Caucasian male in his mid-forties, wore a casual, untucked Old Navy shirt, wrinkled khaki pants, and dusty Timberland boots. He walked to the elevator after having been granted a short meeting with Jack, the chief editor of the international news division.

Nick offered a quick and sincere smile to the employee at the reception desk and waved hello to the secretary as he passed her desk before opening the door marked with a name plaque indicating chief editor. He closed the door slowly as the fifty-year-old Caucasian male was talking on his cellphone. Nick signaled to the him that he wanted to talk. However, Jack, who dressed in a blue striped shirt while sitting behind an oak-trimmed office desk, waved him off with a ferocious face and signaled for him to get out.

Unmoved by his gesture, Nick remained in the office, patiently waiting for Jack to finish the phone conversation. Nick checked his iPhone schedule, which indicated that he needed to pick up his daughter from school today at 1430.The phone showed the current time as 1421.

The chief editor finally hung up his phone and looked at Nick. He said impatiently, Get out of my office. I don’t have time for you. Just deliver stories that I can print before I fire your ass!

Unmoved by the threat of losing his job, Nick replied, I got a sold creditable lead this time from my college friend that can be a potentially great story, but I need to fly to Hawaii to further investigate the source.

What? Jack reacted in disbelief. That must be some kind of bullshit you are giving me to get you a free ticket to Hawaii! An enraged Jack continued, I need more than just a tip from you. You have to tell me more; otherwise I won’t sign off on the ticket, and you’ll have to pay for yourself.

Nick looked desperate after hearing Jack’s comment, as he believed this could get him back to permanent employment instead of contract work with the company. He walked up to Jack’s desk and placed both hands on it.

He stared into his boss’s eyes and spoke in a calm, assured voice, "My college roommate, who works at a local bank/accounting firm, said his client, who was his college professor, has a bank account that doesn’t seem to go along with what college professors are getting paid these days. He Googled the name of the professor and found out that he was one of the top astrophysicists for NASA and holds a consulting position for ESO to oversee project on a Chilean mountain. And we are