Earth 101: the Hidden Planet

By Steven Fazekas

Humans have been intrigued with the sky and what lies beyond since the beginning of time. They looked at the moon, the stars and the planets while they wished to unlock their secrets. An unexplainable yearning, a strange homesickness guided their attempt, a subconscious one that always suggested that humans may have originated from another celestial object. In other words, earth may have been a stop gap for them, perhaps a temporary stay-over.

Humans have always been amazed by the creatures of this planet: birds, fish, mammals, worms, amphibians, insects . . . how easily they all fit into their natural environment. Humans, on the other hand, are restless and battle endlessly and struggle with earths environment.

In our yearning to belong to a natural environment, we humans had created an idolized and mystified place that we described in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. What if this place actually existed?

This book suggests that humans original home, humans natural environment, does existnot in tales or legends but somewhere out in our planetary system. Read this book and you may agree that it makes sense. You might even conclude that this concept is not (so) far-fetched.

Earth 101: The Hidden Planet explores mankinds ability to extend its domain and attempt to shed its earthly handicaps.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546207511

Steven Fazekas

Steven Fazekas immigrated in the United States of America on 1986. Prior to coming to America, he already lived as an immigrant in Italy, Britain and South Africa. They each had good and bad to offer, but generally they all have his thanks and compliments. Nevertheless, America is the only country that made him feel at home right from the start, perhaps because in here, everyone else is an immigrant. Most came long before he had arrived, but none have more rights or duties than him.

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2017 STEVEN FAZEKAS. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/24/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0752-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0751-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017913826

Print information available on the last page.

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.

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.

CONTENTS

Background/Introduction

Book One

The Satur3n and Beyond

Book Two

Earth 101: The Hidden Planet

Background/Introduction

I n my prior political science fiction book The Epilogue, I wrote of the Third World War (WWIII) and the demise of the United States of America.

The Bern Treaty (2050) at the end of WWIII mandated the partitioning of the United States. What began as a giant social engineering project in the year of 1776 came to a sad end in 2050. The breaking up of such a powerful nation gave way to the rise of the Asian nations, especially that of China. Based on Chinese economic success, liberal capitalism was discarded and state capitalism became the prevailing governing form. War amongst nations was practically eliminated; hence under the United Nation’s auspices, nations of the world were able to concentrate on economic development and space exploration.

Earth 101: The Hidden Planet explores mankind’s ability to extend its domain and attempt to shed its earthly handicaps.

Book One

The Saturn and Beyond

A Political Science Fiction from the 22nd Century

by

Steven Fazekas

O ther than creating a new world order the conclusion of the Third World War also ushered in a new space age. The Bern Treaty had thoroughly revamped the United Nations and in addition to proportional membership dues it had mandated contribution from each nation towards a unified space program. Space exploration by individual nations was replaced by United Nations’ space programs. These programs were managed jointly by various nations under the auspices and supervision of the United Nations. The costs of the programs were financed by the United Nations’ Permanent Space Fund. In order to keep the programs viable each member state were obliged to allocate one percent of their GDP to the fund.

The unified space programs not only did bind nations together it had also reduced the possibility of wars between them. Hence by the end of the 21st century the fund had become immensely wealthy – to the extent that it could easily finance ambitious programs. One of these programs was the ‘Saturn and Beyond’ project with the stated aim of setting up permanent space stations between Saturn’s outer ring and Saturn itself.

Due to unlimited resources and peaceful cooperation between nations the unified space program was an all out success. In the fifty years that followed the Third World War the agency had managed to explore all the inner planets in our solar system. It also succeeded of setting up manned outposts on numerous asteroids.

UNI-SPACE as the agency was known had also maintained a fleet of spaceships and an army of space explorers. These explorers just like ancient sea-farers of the 16th century were brave and adventurous. This time however no national rivalries existed between them since all space-farers subscribed to universal ideas. They all spoke Esperanto: mankind’s universal language. They were also fluent in English that had remained the space-farers lingua-franca. Nevertheless five decades after the Bern Treaty; race, nationality, ethnicity, was irrelevant. National, ethnic and race rivalries by the dawn of the 22nd century were in the dustbin of history. Human desire to colonize space had trumped everything – it reigned universally.

Therefore on the eve of 2113 a Saturn bound spaceship took off with a well diversified crew. It consisted of thirteen space explorers – all veterans with exception of three. Since they were all citizens of not one country but the entire world, their race, nationality and ethnicity was logged down by UNI-SPACE for statistical purposes only. Hence the agency’s registry showed that Captain Ted Ross was an Atlantic American; more specifically he was from Albany the capital city of the Atlantic States of America. His deputy – first mate Ivan Yakov was a native of Moscow. Kurt Heinz the ship’s engineer was born in Germany. Mako Tanaka – navigator/mapper was Japanese, Kin Shun – computer scientist was Chinese, Yvonne Dupree – astrobiologist was French, Dr. Richard Tomkin – medical officer was English, Luis Conti – astrophysicist was Italian, Ari Shapiro – mineralogist/geologist was Izraeli, Elena Santos – botanist was Spanish, Bill Kumalo – zoologist was South African, Ahmed Hamid – linguist was Egyptian and Matma Singh – mathematician was from India.

Terra-Real the spaceship that carried this distinguished crew blasted off from Baikonour exactly at 2:00 a.m. on the first day of the year 2113. It was a third generation Copernicus class spaceship perhaps the most modern of its time. It was equipped with an REC drive capable of traveling at 10-4 of ELY i.e. six hundred million miles a year. Speeds of spaceships since 2090 were expressed in Equivalent Light Years (ELY). The distance that light travels in one year equals approximately 6,000,000,000,000 miles hence 10-4 of a light year equals six hundred million miles a year; an astonishing speed.

Terra-Real and its sister ships (13 of its kind was made by UNI-SPACE so far) achieved this speed by REC. Reverse Energy Conversion (REC) was a process whereby kinetic energy was harnessed, captured and converted back to accumulated/stationary energy. This method was perfected by UNI-SPACE scientists at the end of the 21st century – in theory it was a simple process although its practical application was much more complex. It is based on the fact that as the velocity of any moving object increases the kinetic energy of that moving object also increases. The energy increase is directly proportional with increase in velocity. The challenge is to harness, capture, store and reinitiate/reuse this energy. This is achieved by solid lithium batteries that essentially stores, compacts and condenses the kinetic energy. It works on the principle that energy never get lost it only gets transferred/converted. Lithium the lightest known metal was found to be able to store, absorb and with the right inducement release this energy.

Terra-Real was not the first spaceship equipped with REC technology. Other spaceships had traveled millions of miles in the past two and half decades using REC. Nevertheless Terra-Real was a brand new spaceship – the thirteenth of UNI-SPACE’s fleet – the ‘Saturn and Beyond’ project was to be her maiden voyage.

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F ive days into the journey Terra-Real was cruising towards its destination smoothly. It was traveling at 0.000025 of ELY – approximately at quarter of its maximum velocity. The crew was also on low speed performing mostly routine duties. Captain Ross scheduled a progress meeting to be held at 16:00 hours, now the crew was preparing for that. It was noon – still four hours before the meeting and still three and half hours before Terra-Real would be switched to total instrumental mode. For now Mako Tanaka was at the helm, he was the one who was on the so called drive duty. The instruments he was in charge of already have controlled and operated the spaceship; Tanaka actually was there only in monitoring capacity. As a seasoned and well disciplined officer Tanaka agreed with UNI-SPACE rules that no matter how smoothly the ship moved someone should always be at the controls. Nevertheless while glancing from instruments to instruments he allowed his mind to wonder. He was thinking of his late wife and children. He was a widower, a single father of nineteen year old twins – a boy and a girl. His son Yoki was an excellent student already at the Tokyo Technical University with aspirations of following in his father’s footsteps. He also wanted to be a space explorer. His daughter Shuri however had been giving Tanaka heartache for the past two years. Not interested in further schooling she lived for fashion, fast cars and parties. Tanaka often wondered where he went wrong with her. She was a carbon copy of her deceased mother in look and nature. Tanaka was a graduate of MIT. He lived and studied in the Atlantic States of America for years. He met his wife in Boston when he was studying for his PhD. Beautiful, vivacious and somewhat naughty that was her attraction what Tanaka fell in love with. He married her despite his mother wishes. Being a citizen of the world he entirely ignored his mother’s comments. He knew that his mother was a die-hard Old World women, she was born before the Third World War, a relic of the pre Bern order. Now at eighty and complaining about her granddaughter she was repeating to Tanaka how she told him not to marry that Atlantic woman. Two years prior to the discovery of the antidote for cancer the children were barely five when their mother succumbed to that terrible illness. After her death Tanaka moved back to Tokyo where his mother helped him to raise the children.

Now with the commercial application of REC even the cheapest airline was capable of flying from Tokyo to New York in three hours. Shuri had been taking advantage of shuttle services partying in New York and sleeping it off in Tokyo. Tanaka was definitely open minded he did not mind of his daughter living a dual life. What worried him a lot however was that with the constant commuting Shuri may get into an accident. With the aeronautical adaptation of REC commercial airlines flooded the skies. Flights are proliferated to such extent that only space flights managed to retain some grace and quality. The earth’s atmosphere became so crowded that collisions between aircrafts were frequent.

Tanaka’s thoughts were interrupted by a light touch on his shoulder. It was from Yvonne Dupree the ship’s biologist. She begun with a soft apology then proceeded to ask about the protocol of the progress meeting. Before the blast-off while at Baikonour Captain Ross reiterated that he will run the ship by the book. Being a space rookie Yvonne took the captain’s statement literally – she was determined to follow all his rules. That’s why she was picking Tanaka’s brain now, the friendliest and most approachable of the entire crew. Tanaka was helpful indeed, not least because Yvonne reminded him of his deceased wife. Yvonne had fine features with long eyelashes and warm brown eyes. When she smiled her well shaped lips revealed beautiful teeth and at the same time tiny dimples appeared on her cheeks. Celibate since the death of his wife Tanaka knew that subconsciously he was still attracted to woman of Yvonne’s kind. Yvonne indeed was an elegant woman not only attractive but very well educated. She was a product of Sorbonne where she obtained a Doctorate in biology. She also had a science degree from the European Space Academy. Twenty-nine years old going onto thirty Yvonne was a headstrong daughter of aristocratic French parents. Having been drawn to science since childhood she had always been an excellent student. Her family although apprehensive at first was extremely proud when Yvonne was chosen for the Saturn project. Her beauty however often handicapped her intellect – at first encounter most people concentrated on her physical appearance. Since the first interview with Captain Ross, Yvonne had a gut feeling that Captain Ross may have not taken her intellect seriously. She was determined to do her job well and prove herself to Captain Ross in every respect.

Tanaka went on to explain the importance of the progress meeting and how it was held on every Friday. Captain Ross was a genius – Tanaka said – who besides being one