Soltere 3.1

By Robert DeGrand

It is the second half of the twenty-first century. Climate change has taken its toll on planet Earth. The damage to the atmosphere has long been thought to be irreversible. The ozone has virtually disappeared, as have the polar ice caps. Earth is seemingly doomed. Then a new technology, paired with a new methodology, shows that the deterioration of the atmosphere can be reversed. The wealthy and powerful are given a second chance to acknowledge and address the climate change issue. When they had the chance to solve the issue in the early twenty-first century, they chose to increase their wealth instead of fixing the problem. Would they do the same again?

At this same time, Conner Reed has discovered that man has the capacity to change into an energy-based life-form and live with other like beings, called lumens, in the cosmos. This has become possible because the deteriorating atmosphere allows man to exit the planet through the nonexistent ozone in this new form. Prior to this, healthy Earth atmosphere had been a barrier that prevented it from happening. Lumens have lived in the Community of the Cosmos for millions of years in a utopian setting.

This creates a dilemma for mankind. They have the choice between saving Earth and living a normal life span as man has always or letting the Earth die and evolving into lumens and living virtually forever. The decision is left to corrupt politicians and their wealthy backers in political climate that operates under a new set of rules that allows money to be the driving factor in such decisions.

Congressman Davis Thurbush is responsible for making this final decision with the support of billionaire Lassiter Eich, who will do anything to increase his own wealth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524503611

Robert DeGrand

Robert DeGrand is the proud author of numerous works, which he believed would forever remain unpublished. The joy and the fun were in the writing. Soltere 3.1 became his second published work. His first book was a business book relating to the field of health care. Robert has been married to his wife, inspiration, and best friend, Grace, for forty-six years. His daughter, Michelle, and son, Jeff, have embarked on successful careers. Robert is a retired health-care executive. He is also a proud member of the Bald Eagles Hockey Club in Wisconsin. The Bald Eagles is comprised of some very talented hockey players who are just a bit beyond their prime. The games are generally very spirited but played in slow motion. Robert is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a Yooper, and now lives in northern Illinois. Besides writing, he loves golf, travel, reading, and the craziness of politics. The current political personalities have driven him to drink more wine, and for that, he is eternally grateful to them.

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© 2016 by Robert DeGrand.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2016908363

ISBN:            Hardcover                           978-1-5245-0363-5

                      Softcover                             978-1-5245-0362-8

                      eBook                                  978-1-5245-0361-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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.

Rev. date: 05/26/2016

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Contents

PREFACE

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SOLTERE 3.1

This book is lovingly dedicated to my incredible support

team, consisting of my wife, Grace; my daughter, Michelle;

and my son, Jeff—without whom this may not have been possible.

My sincere appreciation also goes out to the US politicians

and their owners for providing the inspiration that

allowed me to see the need for such a story.

PREFACE

On November 5, 2024, the United States government broke. No, it did not go broke. It simply broke—became dysfunctional, nonoperational.

The US Constitution failed. That brilliant document—born of the cumulative genius of Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, and others in 1787—failed to work in the twenty-first century. The same Constitution that served the republic through the Civil War, through the Great Depression, through two World Wars, and through four tragic presidential assassinations, did not serve us well in the twenty-first century. The fabric of this great nation unraveled.

Political and social battles had been waged. The victors and the vanquished had been determined. In the end, violence itself was the winner; rational discourse was its victim. Conservatives defeated the Progressives; then they became the Regressives and turned on their own comrades in arms and routed the Conservatives. Religion replaced reason; faith was favored over facts. Acrimony and hatred teamed up to beat back civility. The civilization bus did a U-turn on the road to advancement.

Washington, DC, became one enormous shopping mall at this time. Billionaires and groups of billionaires bought their elected representatives, bought their power at this political shopping mall. They bought representatives. They bought senators. They bought presidents. They bought Supreme Court judges, because these judges once said that they could. These buyers could be American billionaires or they could be foreign billionaires. They could be from other countries or other nefarious groups who wanted to shop here for some power.

It became a time when most rights were deemed to be wrongs. Laws granting these rights, therefore, needed to be fixed. The fixing was in the elimination of laws granting those rights. If a group could be defined as a group, it became endangered. If a group had a look, a color, a behavior, a belief, a way of life, or an agreed-upon thought, expressed or otherwise, it could be outlawed—its right to exist equally or to even exist at all nullified. The exception to the rule pertained to groups that had sufficient resources and power to identify other groups as unworthy.

About a decade after the government broke, the powers that were decided to fix it. So these purchased and paid-for politicians convened a constitutional convention to draft a totally new Constitution for the country. Since the politicians were all bought but not necessarily all bright, the billionaires watched over them and gave them a few ideas to consider. The end result was not a Constitution that provided a blueprint for the government of the future, but rather a document that merely legitimized all the broken practices of the current day.

The rest of the world then examined the new Constitution of the USA and deemed it good. Many saw this as a foundation for establishing lower expectations and no accountability. Governments all over the world adopted it, and they too were then broken as well.

Fortunately, this would not last long, for these same bought politicians ignored scientists for decades regarding global warming. The Earth passed the point in time where the coming greenhouse effect was now irreversible. The Earth was doomed. It would go to its doom led by incompetents who were owned by the arrogant rich, doing irrational deeds.

Alas, Planet Earth.

America—where convincing people that man-made pollutants

could possibly affect the Earth’s climate by a degree or two

is exceedingly more difficult than convincing them that an

all-knowing man in the sky created a globally catastrophic flood.

—Jeffrey DeGrand, 2015

1

Conner Reed woke up in a different place. Yet everything was as familiar to him as his own image in the mirror. The Earth had spun to a new place. The planet had orbited farther on its path around the sun. The Solar System had moved within the Milky Way. The Milky Way had continued on its course in the expanding universe. Yes, Conner Reed indeed awoke in a very different place.

Conner Reed woke up in a different time. He awoke in a time like no other. Gone were the seconds and minutes and hours and other measures of times past. These were now new seconds, new minutes, and so forth, he was experiencing. Although different, it seemed to be so similar to times experienced in his previous thirty-six years on Planet Earth. But, indeed, Connor Reed awoke in a different time.

Conner Reed woke up as a different person. His composition as an organism had changed. Cells died; new cells were reproduced in their place. Were they identical to their predecessors? Likely not identical. Were they at least similar? Hopefully so, he thought. He liked his previous composition, though he was well aware that what he was thirty-six years ago was no longer what he was now. He was indeed a very different set of chemicals and cells.

Conner Reed wasn’t sure he wanted to rise to confront the newness that he faced, but the covers came off and his day began. The newness closely resembled the oldness that had preceded it. What is it, he thought, that is making me feel that something is different? That something is new?

Conner contemplated his new world and its new time and location. It was different, but he could not put his finger on how or why it was different this day. Little things told him it was different. While he had started his day with coffee every day for the past couple of decades, he had no desire or need for his caffeine jolt on this day. His back spasms, which had been tormenting him for the past several days, had mercifully departed and left him feeling as good physically as he had felt in months. Yet some things were the same. He noticed Barkley, his beloved basset hound, scratching at the back door, needing to find relief outside in this new world.

He opened the door, and there he felt a palpable lightness that he had not felt before. He had never noticed or thought about the heaviness of the air before. But now that he felt it to be lighter, he presumed that it had then been heavier. Just logical, he thought. But why? How?

2

Congressman Davis Thurbush woke up to his ever-unchanging world. Ah, he thought, my world and welcome to it. He arose to exist through another day. He looked out the same window to see the same sunrise brighten the same manicured landscape of his immense estate. All was well.

As for the last thirty-seven years, his morning routine then started. Three stretches, seven push-ups, six sit-ups, and then a hygiene break of brushing the teeth for forty-five seconds—no more, no less. Then back to the exercises: up and down the stairs four times, eleven toe touches (or, these days, approximate toe touches), finished off with facial exercises, alternating between severe frowns and beaming smiles. He liked to think of these as facial push-ups. A day without his normal routine was a day not worth living, he maintained.

It would be an important day for Davis, this day. It would be a rewarding day, with him being rewarded for the fruits of legislation well constructed to suit the needs of the needy people he served. And he served the neediest of the needy, and he did it better than anyone. It gave him a warm feeling all over when he thought of the good that he did . . . and the rewards that it brought him.

Davis was first elected to the House as a relatively young man in the milestone elections of 2024, when the capital was still Washington, DC. In the three-plus decades since, he rose through the ranks to be a prominent and nationally recognized legislator. He was second to none as a campaigner and a fund-raiser, both for himself and for his backers. Though he had been presented with opportunities to advance beyond the House to more powerful positions, he felt he could do the most for his backers from where he was now.

His funding levels allowed him to be on several key and influential House committees. The most prestigious for him was being the chair of the Planetary Laissez-Faire Committee, overseeing the efforts to minimize progress toward an environmentally sound planet. Under his leadership, the committee had been enormously successful in delivering value for his funding base. They in turn saw that he had many resources and much comfort in all aspects of his life.

Davis was a lifelong bachelor and prided himself as quite the ladies’ man. He did whatever he could within the confines of good taste to perpetuate that image, so long as it did not create issues with his funders. The press often played it up big time—the liberal side in an unfair and sinful way; the regressive side in a fair, light, and appropriate fashion, to his enjoyment. He loved seeing press releases of him with a lovely young thing on his arm at an elegant affair.

He wished for two closely related things. As the conservative that he was politically and otherwise, he wished that things would remain—or be conserved—as they were at the present time. Or better still, as the closet regressive that he really was, wouldn’t it be great, he thought, to move backward in time to an even more conservative time when his kind were even more idolized and rewarded?

His gaze out the window on the beautiful day that was dawning brought him back to the present and to the need for him to get moving. He selected a colorful bow tie—one that would distinguish him from the ordinary—and headed out for another day on God’s good earth.

3

As Barkley took care of his business, Conner glanced skyward. The morning was clear and sunlit. So clear was it that he could see stars twinkling in the blue sky—hundreds, even thousands, of little stars. He was struck by the thought that, even though this should be considered an odd phenomenon, it was not odd to him at this time, in this place. It must be the way things are in this different place, at this different time.

He looked at the rising sun—normally not a smart thing to do. But on this day, he felt compelled to do it. Amazingly, when he looked directly at the sun, he saw Sol in all its nuclear glory. He was seeing nuclear fusion happening before his very eyes. He saw solar flares and sunspots and coronal ejections. He was not blinded by the intense brightness or even made uncomfortable by it. His eyeballs did not melt. He was seeing what he was looking at in great and amazing detail.

There was no moon visible at this time. It was somewhere on the other side of the Earth. But Conner knew exactly where on the other side of the Earth. He could feel an ever-so-slight pull that was Luna’s gravitational contribution to the benefit of the Earth. If he were able to see through the Earth, he knew that the moon would be located just north of Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa. But how did he know that?

It was a time for thinking, and Conner had always been a thinker, a contemplator. If he heard something (a name, a phrase, a country—anything that he wasn’t familiar with), he would look it up and educate himself on the matter. He was always inquisitive. It got him in trouble at times.

Conner grew up in a neighborhood that aspired to be blue-collar. His father struggled to stay employed, not very successfully so. He was a truck driver, usually part-time, sometimes unemployed. He was a good father and a good person. Others knew they could depend on George Reed to pitch in as he was willing and able. What he pitched in was usually a helping hand, something that did not have to come out of a wallet.

What George Reed thought was a father’s primary responsibility to his son was sage advice. He wanted ever so fervently to impart to Conner some words of wisdom as Conner ventured out into the unforgiving world. He had none. For so long, he came up empty in this regard. Then his philosophical lightbulb lit as Conner prepared to leave home for college.

With white wine, he advised his son, the first drink is the crispest and most satisfying—each subsequent sip, less so. With red wine, son, the first taste, however flavorful, is the least enjoyed. Each sip thereafter only gets better and better.

He extended his arms, grasped Conner by the shoulders, looked him in the eye, and advised solemnly, Be the red wine, Conner. Be the red wine. It was perhaps the proudest moment of George Reed’s life.

What he said and the manner in which he said it could indeed be very profound and deeply philosophical—or quite inane. Regardless, it occupied Conner’s mind off and on from that point forward. It was a meaningful thought in that it compelled Conner to contemplate which of these it was. George Reed had been successful in that regard. Conner ventured into the unforgiving world intent on being the red wine.

While Conner’s surname camouflaged his maternal heritage, his thick, dark hair and Roman nose did not. In his neighborhood, Conner, like virtually everyone else, was Italian and Catholic. He attended parochial schools from first grade through high school, enduring the teachings and the physical and psychological torment from the Dominican Sisters and the Christian Brothers. He truly embraced the religion in all aspects. He even considered the seminary and becoming a priest, but with the way that that vocation had been irreparably tarnished, he quickly dismissed the idea. He did not want to bring shame to his family.

As the inquisitive youth that he was, Conner did more research than was required in religion class. The Catholics are not known for their Bible reading, unlike many of the other Christian denominations. Yes, there were occasional biblical passages read at mass on Sundays, but there was no real, heavy devotion to the Bible as such. Except for Conner, who immersed himself in biblical study to learn what was really there. He took it upon himself to be educated on the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. So he dove in. When he came up for air, he knew there was a problem. He vividly recalls his thoughts at the time. What he read, he did not believe was factually accurate. How could it be the word of God if it was simply wrong? He had erred in that he thought too much about what he read. He was only supposed to accept it as the truth.

With the recent definitive discovery that there was life on several of the exoplanets, the biblical representations of the Earth and its place in the vast universe were simply wrong