Anno Stellae 2170: RetroStar Chronicles, #1

By R.D. Ginther

Chronicle 18 at last brings a bit of closure to a few of the loose ends generated by the previous chronicles but not without its share of mysteries. It started in Greece where very strange things began to happen. Dionysios will definitely agree to this as his winery began to transform right before his very eyes! Structures and trees began to 'appear' everywhere.  It was as if Ancient Greece was on a collision course with Modern Greece. And this retrogressive phenomenon began to spread throughout the world, felt mostly by the densely populated cities and villages.

 

Karmelita Dinah Aquamarine Tumpo was one of the few new characters introduced into this saga. She became a significant contributor to the revelation of the mysteries shrouding the world. Not to be understated because of her simplistic form of communication, Karmelita was a woman of profound understanding of the times at hand.

 

Chillingsworth had devised a plan to ensure his safety from the rebels using the old magician trick of illusion. However, his plan of illusions, though well thought out, did not last very long as  disasters began to rock London, his home town and subsequently the rest of the world. It seemed to  threaten the very existence of life. Was this his enemies destroying the world in order to get to him? Chillingworth finally puts his next contingency plan in place hoping that he will escape Nilsson and his gang of rebels. But it wasn't Nilsson and his rebels that Chillingsworth needed to worry about, there were greater forces at play here. In the meanwhile Nilsson made an amazing discovery that became his tipping point.

 

This much awaited climax between Chillingsworth and Nilsson is in proper form, exciting to the very end of the book. Chronicle 18 Volume 1 is a sure page turner with 125 pages for your reading pleasure. Stay tune for future Chronicles that will certainly have you  on the edge of your seat, you will not be disappointed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.A.Edwards
• Release date: Mar 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393242765

Book preview

Anno Stellae 2170

RetroStar Chronicles, Volume 1

R.D. Ginther

Published by K.A.Edwards, 2021.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

ANNO STELLAE 2170

First edition. March 26, 2021.

Copyright © 2021 R.D. Ginther.

ISBN: 978-1393242765

Written by R.D. Ginther.

Also by R.D. Ginther

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Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runes Book 4 The Voyage Home

RetroStar Chronicles

Anno Stellae 1912

Vision From Space

Anno Stellae 1918

Anno Stellae 1939

Anno Stellae 1967

AnnoStellae 1969

Anno Stellae 1985 & Anno Stellae 1986

Anno Stellae 1987 & Anno Stellae 1994

Anno Stellae 1996 & Anno Stellae 2024

Anno Stellae 2113, Anno Stellae 2145, Anno Stellae 2146, Anno Stellae 2155, Anno Stellae 2165

Anno Stellae 2170

Anno Stellae 2171, Anno Stellae 2251

Anno Stellae 2382, Anno Stellae 2390-91, Anno Stellae 2392

Anno Stellae 2415, Anno Stellae 2433, Anno Stellae 2444

Ano Stellae 2457

Anno Stellae 2456, Anno Stellae 2460, Anno Stellae 4130, Anno Stellae 4133, Anno Stellae 4146

Chronicle 39 Anno Stellae 5918, Chronicle 40 Anno Stellae 5920, Chronicle 41 Anno Stellae 5923

Chronicle 42

Chronicle 43, Chronicle 44

Chronicle 45, Chronicle 46

Chronicle 47

Chronicle 48, Chronicle 49, Chronicle 50

Anno Stellae 6700, Anno Stellae 7074, Anno Stellae 7504, Anno Stellae 7506

Chronicle 55 Anno Stellae 7537, Chronicle 56 Anno Stellae 8033, Chronicle 57 Anno Stellae 8507

Chronicle 58 Anno Stellae 8732, Chronicle 59 Anno Stellae 10,272

Chronicle 60, Anno Stellae 10,682; Chronicle 61, Anno Stellae 10,999

Chronicle 62

Chronicle Of The Knights Of Axes Of Honor

Anno Stellae 2393

Anno Stellae 4148, Anno Stellae 4149, Anno Stellae 4150, Anno Stellae 5909, Anno Stellae 5913

Standalone

Walk In The Light

Becca The Viking & The Heavenly Runebook Book 5

The Great Divide

Victorian Christmas Ballads

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Also By R.D. Ginther

Anno Stellae 2170 (RetroStar Chronicles, #1)

1  Convergence in Greece

2  Marching Trees

3  Workin’ for the Man

4  First the foie gras, then...

5  Old is In, New is Out!

6  Another Dome-craft Scratched

7  Homecoming to Chillingsworth-opolis!

8  A Mongolian Interruption

9  Bisbee on Alert!

10  Chillingsworth’s Zombie

11  Crisis Control at the Olde Guildhall

12  Sorry, Folks,  No Tube Today!

13  Visions and Portents

14  Last Breakfast at the Chillingsworths

15  Fleeing Birds, Floundering Fishes

16  Chillingsworth’s Contingency Plan

17  Chillingsworth’s Personal Test

18  Black Death II?

19  Our Lady of the Angels—Vacancy

20  Palms,  More Palms,  and Fire Jaguars

21  What, has the plumbing been hit too?

22  Hull bloody world’s fallin’ apart!

23  Final ESCape

24  19.9999999999999.....Chthonic  Complications

25  The Arctic Fox

26  Seemingly Doomed

27  Death of the Rose?

28  Counterclockwise

29  The Birdman of  Our Lady of the Angels

30  Cause:  Unknown

Author’s Summary

R.D. Ginther’s Bio

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Also By R.D. Ginther

C H R O N I C L E  18

A N N O  S T E L L A E  2 1 7 0

1  Convergence in Greece

If  you intend to destroy a world,  you don’t need to eliminate the people directly and all at once.  You won’t get them all, and they will wise up and fight back against their perceived enemy.  Rather,  it is more effective to covertly attack the infrastructure supporting its inhabitants.  The alien,  with plenty of time on its playing board, had finally come to doing just that.  Whether it derived inspiration  from humanity’s  Nano technologists,  an exotic breed of  molecule manipulators, or whether the attack was a natural outgrowth of its own makeup,  no one would be able to say unless somehow you were privy to the secret workings of a star-stone jewel. 

Why start up the Final Solution—the fourth, world-wide Pandemic—in Greece, a backwater in the World Union?  Then again, why not?  If  the fatal thrust had come in a high-profile world center,  everyone would have become alarmed right away by the reporting media and papers and demanded the authorities do something quick and decisive to counteract it.  No,  give some time for people to adjust,  obfuscate, and confuse the true nature of  what is happening.  That is human nature to muddy the waters, and it is going to happen every time in any crisis if there is time to react.  Then you are far more likely to achieve your nefarious aims. 

Where Chillingsworth and his World Union were concerned, Norway may have had its imps,  trolls, and worse, the nationalistic, world-government refusers, the  Ibsenites of the White Rose.

Jupiter too,  with the loss of the flagship  JGRTC1-GF  gas reduction plant,  had become fatally infested and proved there was no safe place left in the Solar System for the First Citizen,  however majestic and  divine  toadying sycophants acclaimed him. 

But poor, backward Greece?  Surely, it was as safe and dull as any such place could be.  So to Greece Dr. Chillingsworth would go, to collect yet another award to add to his bulging portfolio of trophies.  It was one of the less attractive duties of his station in life, to see to the provinces and keep them in line.  He would rather stay holed up in his publishing company offices high up in a London tower, safe and secure as he could possibly be from anyone he disliked coming near to him.  To reach him with manuscripts, any writer had to go through numerous and possibly fatal security checks.  A few out of the hundreds seeking his company’s backing got as far as submitting their books.  But were they ever published?  Only one book succeeded, and it was one in progress, the Tennison bibliography.  But people did not know this publishing house was just a front.  He used it only to escape the official duties that had rendered him so conspicuous and vulnerable a target, and it worked excellently for that purpose, so far. 

Seriphos was the spot of the first fatal outbreak.  A spot, indeed, scarcely warranting ink on a map,  it was  located in the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, in a region of a little over 75,000 kilometers south of Kythnos and northwest of Sifnos.  The governing unit it was in had a population of less than 2,000 in an early 21st century census and had increased only by 410 by the time of  Chillingsworth’s ascension to power. 

That gained Seriphos more peace and seclusion than any of its few inhabitants could ever wish as a curse upon themselves.  But what could their discontent do about it.  Geography, and the gods thereof, had doomed Seriphos to perpetual obscurity.

Yet they were fated by the Spinning Sisters to be woven into a much greater destiny than they might have wanted for themselves.  A final thread was pulled through the fabric exactly at  the isle’s location, and Seriphos’s and the world’s destinies were joined and sealed.

4:09 a.m., August 9.  Every other inhabitant might rest easy in a warm bed, but Old Dionysios the founder of the thriving Mount Pegasus winery could not sleep a wink.

And it wasn’t news of troubles in Oslo and Bangkok and other such places—for at his age he didn’t care to follow world events anymore.  No, lately he had been having trouble with a terrible infestation of mysterious, prankish beings that tunneled up from deep in the Earth. 

Called imps, they were supposed to show up only at Christmas,  pull a lot of dirty tricks on people, then leave when festivities ended.  But this year they had stayed on long after Christmas,  evidently liking it too much aboveground.

Though ordinarily no more superstitious than the next fellow, he could not think of any other cause the rash of  recent, unexplained, vexing break-downs of his expensive, imported equipment.  If only he catch the little foxy Turks in the act!  He’d cane them back to their holes with such a beating they’d never dare come back! 

It helped that he was such a light sleeper;  if he ever did drop off, he’d hear whatever was stirring about.  Had he heard something?  The vintner found himself standing beside his cot on the porch.  He couldn’t say, but, just the same, he decided to check on things. 

Instead of  the ultraviolet-screening jumper and helmet provided, Old Dionysios stepped into baggy, patched trousers.  His shoes—crushed down at the heel to make them easier to slip on.  His comfortable,  well-heeled family  hated old clothes and shabbiness and said it was a shame against the family name to go around like he did.  He looked like a  rag huckster or a Gypsy,  they said, meaning he looked like the average village Greek in the street. 

Who cares what I look like? he had challenged them.  And this old hide can take the sun!  The important thing is the winery and keeping it up to date!

How he hated to think of Greece’s perennial poverty and backwardness.  He couldn’t do anything about the country or the weather—the lowering temperatures had nearly destroyed Greek agriculture—but at least he could do something about his own inch of  the world.

Abandoning any slope that faced north,  his south-facing strategy gained the critical warmth and light his vines needed to ripen and produce.  He added large, over-head Lucite panels to ward off chill winds and also intensify the Sun’s rays.  He even ran cables through the ground to heat the soil.  So far he was succeeding where the experts advised the people to give up.

Because of  his persistence and hard work and special equipment, he had not only raised grapes but  consistently beaten his competitors,  even the newfangled, algae-based wineries flying above his head.  When tradition (like bottling wine in glass) made monetary sense, it was preserved.  When science dictated a change,  the change was made and the old was thrown out.  That was how he had not only survived but thrived in a half-frozen Greece.

A hand reached out and gripped a stick as gnarled as itself and  he was ready to go.  If he caught an imp,  he intended to crack its skull with that stick, then show everyone the proof that he was right about the cause of the crazy break-downs.

He took a lift he had imported from Joy Luck City (known as  Hong Kong before the transfer to China and its final crackdown that came with a name change) and installed to replace a nearly vertical old goat path.  It ran continuously both ways, depending on which end you started on.  No rep from the company that sold it to him had ever succeeded in explaining how it worked.  It worked, that is all he liked about it.  Other than that, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to use.  He disliked having to step into thin air and then riding the same thin air to the top, or the bottom, whichever way he was going.  No, a proper Greek like himself preferred solid ground.  It would always be that way with him.  He was Old School, in some things that would never change; anything else was up for grabs, precisely where it involved increased profits or greater survival.

He stepped past a sensor and the UP’  mode hummed into action.  It was expensive but necessary, he thought.  One slip from the old path the Joy Luck two-way escalator had replaced and there was a thousand foot drop to where the headland's cliffs sank in white-frothed waves.  Still, his wife had been strongly against the idea of incorporating such state-of-the-art machinery just to go up and down on the vineyard..  She thought the path good enough—particularly since she never had to climb up to the cellar cave, being too busy with her household duties," as she like to call her laziness (in her husband’s view, that is). 

She would drop a knitting basket and hold her fat sides and laugh at his mention of the need to modernize some aspect or other of the winery's operation.  And he had married what he thought was a good working woman!  Oh, she liked to carry yarn and an automatic knitting needle around, but she never completed a thing for him and the grandchildren!  It was just for show and he suspected she unraveled at night every stitch done during the day, just like Odysseus’s wife Penelope had done, so she wouldn't have to finish something and be married to one of the suitors come to marry a rich widow!

Well, he knew the old tale as any proper Greek would, and he wasn’t about to go off wandering like Odysseus and put his wife in such a quandary, so why was she playing that part anyway, he wondered, day after day, year after year.  She had no such suitors,  he wasn’t about to make her a rich widow, so why didn’t she just shake a leg and do something useful around the place?

Only a certain, good-for-nothing grandson, Ero, was maybe lazier.  Imagine!  Preferring to run along the country roads like a stray dog in search of a bone rather than stay home and do a real man's work!

The two-way wizard thing had almost got him to the end of its run when it stopped suddenly and  jerked him back and forth, as if trying to buck him off the cliff.  He grabbed hard at the rail and would have fallen otherwise.  What?  he cried.  Holding tight to the  rail, he held on  as  he was again reversed, this time so violently he was nearly  pitched headlong.  He couldn’t have held himself back for long, but  the fool Joy Luck system finally ground to a halt with a last series of jolts and wheezes. 

The old man climbed up as quickly as he could on the rocky bed of the path beneath it and got off with a sigh of relief.  The machine was well within the warranty period, fortunately, being so new.  He would have a son call the company that very morning. 

Shaking his grizzled head over this latest evidence of  imps on the loose, the master vintner hobbled to the entrance of the winery,  a big door with a voice activated box. 

Before he finished his voice command, it buzzed and the  door flew open and hit the wall so hard