Kogi: Legends Never Die

By Brian Dalton

A thousand years from now, Earth is a disaster. The surface is nearly unlivable outside of domed cities, with the more well-off living in stations and colonies in space. The task of reclaiming Earth is long and hard, even with the available technology. But now an alien armada has arrived to test human society in a game that will decide whether they join interstellar society or are destroyed for the good of the galaxy.

The problem is that no one on Earth has played any sports games in centuries. Fortunately, there is an experimental time travel machine that may allow them to bring forth some sports figures from Earth's past to play the alien game, a game with a few similarities to basketball. A fault in the machine, however, only allows one notable sports figure and his companions to be brought forth, snatched moments before their reported deaths in a helicopter crash.

Now it's up to Kobe Bryant to play the game of his life and save the world and all of humankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662483738

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Kogi

Legends Never Die

Brian Dalton

Copyright © 2022 Brian Dalton

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8362-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8370-7 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8373-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

3012

Chapter 2

Apollo Orbital Station

Chapter 3

Tyco Planecia

Chapter 4

Operations Center Emergency

Chapter 5

Meeting

Chapter 6

Preparations

Chapter 7

Voyage Through Time

Chapter 8

Debriefing

Chapter 9

A New Millennium

Chapter 10

Becoming a Team

Chapter 11

Arrival

Chapter 12

An Alien Tour

Chapter 13

Settling In

Chapter 14

Practice Court

Chapter 15

Pregame Show

Chapter 16

The Game Begins

Chapter 17

Game Point

Chapter 18

Victory

About the Author

Coincidence Or Destiny

Temple of Seti

Carved stone being reused overtime in Egypt, weathered away after thousands of years turned out to have these modern day vehicles somehow left in stone.

First carved in the era of Seti, it read, He who repulses the nine (enemies of Egypt). Then plastered over and corrected by Ramesses II during his era it now reads, He who protects Egypt and overthrows the foreign countries.

Then finally the prophecy being corrected by Mother Nature leaving these images. What I see is a helicopter that has nine heroes on board that will save our Sun and Earth from foreign beings. The ship in the middle looks just like the time machine that is used to extract these nine heroes from the helicopter to save our world in the story of KOGI.

Moving On

Now if you add Kobe's and Gigi's birthday year's and then the year they were both taken away from us, it adds up to a pretty interesting number.

1978 + 2006 + 2020 + 2020 = 8,024

It could have been any number, but why this?

Preface

It took a long time to destroy the world that we know. Centuries of mistreating the land, the environment, and ourselves. Proposed answers to problems both real and imagined only made things worse, doing more to feed greedy wallets than provide solutions. The resulting conflagration of greed, ignorance, and apathy gave rise to environmental disaster, plagues, and, in the end, the final inevitable result in the search for arable land: war.

Now a thousand years hence, the remaining people of the world have finally realized there are problems that need addressing…only it may be far too late.

Chapter 1

3012

The craft looked like a silvery teardrop lying on its side, plain and smooth of texture, absent even of any visible means of propulsion. It shot through the sky a thousand feet above the ground, high over the wreck and ruin of civilization, seen by the starving and sickly hordes hiding among the vine-covered cliff-like monuments to civilization past. Several sets of eyes peered out from the shadows to watch, wondering if today it might land and bring them treats.

It was not the first time they had seen such a craft. Not the first time they jealously marveled at something created by their relatives in the sky.

The craft shot from one horizon to the next in two blinks of an eye, quickly lost to another horizon. Below it, the land passed swiftly on by, soon to be over a sickly green expanse that tossed and threw waves upon a distant shore while dark clouds could be seen swiftly nearing. Somewhere below, a primitive fishing trawler tried to make it home before either the storm might hit or its engine conk out again, while elsewhere on a tiny island, the locals secured themselves deep within their storm bunker, being sure to seal tight all portals against even a drop of the coming acidic rain from entering.

Beneath the surface of this sea could be seen the glowing outlines of large fish. Something that looked like a sturgeon of incredible size with a pair of long octopus-like tentacles running off its sides, chasing after the fishing trawler as a possible meal, while a mammoth shark in turn chased after it. Undulating masses made their way beneath the waters, masses that resembled clouds of gelatinous faerie-fire, the remains of past prey stuck suspended within it.

Within the silvery craft sat a man observing this all through a one-way transparency in the wall. He sat back in a single-seater gel-form couch at the center of the small craft's sole room. A room with no controls to be seen, just a circular bank of blank panels awaiting virtual adornment for his convenience. The view before him spanned a section of wall, a window to the outside, while off to the right another display listed out various telemetry data of what he passed on by. The man reached forward with one hand, made a motion in the air as if turning a dial, and watched as the view zoomed in on the glowing gelatinous mass below.

That's a new one, he muttered to himself. Must be another slime mold variant. But salt water? Nine, make a note of it.

Hovering a couple of feet off the floor just to one side, that which he addressed responded with a beep. It was a mechanism, looking much like a flat plate on top of which was fixed what those of times past might describe as a cappuccino machine with a variety of extensible arms, and on top of it a foot-tall cylindrical red glass bulb. As for the man, he looked about thirtyish, with trim brown hair and an ancestry that might combine various parts of Europe with a dash of Hispanic and Pacific Islander for spice.

Another motion of his hand in the air and the view returned to that of the open sea, with a distant shoreline swiftly approaching.

Nine, the man once again addressed the mechanism, open mission log file, start recording.

A couple of indicator lights scattered about the mechanism's body flashed briefly in response as the man ran a tongue across his lips before beginning.

Agent Carlson survey mission log, December seventh, thirty-twelve. My assignment is twofold—perform an environmental survey of ongoing conditions and vet possible candidates for relocation from dirt side to new lives off world. With me is my Ion Industries model one twenty-nine assistance bot, Ion-9. Entry begins… I'm flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to old New York City. The sea hasn't changed, though I've spotted a couple new mutant species. And I spotted an old fishing trawler, though I have no idea what they could be fishing for. Everything down there is either poisonous or too vicious to handle with anything short of a pulse grenade. Just desperate, I guess. There is a storm front coming down from the north, and according to my instruments—Agent Carlson took a glance at the display on the right—its radiation count is down about twelve percent over the expected, though the acid content is up about five percent. Recommend taking another look into our weather models.

The screen in front of him now showed the swift approach of the coast and what remained of a once mighty city—towering skyscrapers rising above jungle-lined streets, here and there a building fallen down from centuries of disrepair or missing a large chunk of itself. There was a harbor, lined now with the rusting hulks of great vessels now acting as home to creatures that scurried and hid from his passage.

Stabbing a finger at the display, Agent Carlson saw that these scurrying figures were human—or at least mostly so. The border between modern human and cave dweller had long ago been crossed. Some wore hand-me-downs a couple centuries old, if they wore anything at all, while others had fur pelts roughly fashioned from descendants of the Central Park Zoo.

Another change of view showed other people crawling around in the streets, hunting what looked like a small herd of bright red deer with clawed hooves. He zoomed the display into one of the people, a man, to see the festering old sores adorning his forearms and face.

It looks like one of the plagues made another mutation, Agent Carlson continued to dictate. It may be as has been hypothesized, that the plagues are genetic and are being supported by the very metabolisms of our unclean mutant relatives down there. In either case, New York City continues to look like a write-off. I will continue on for the Cincinnati Underdome to vet some prospects picked up by orbital scanners. Log entry ends.

Ion-9 responded with a beep, then Agent Carlson reached a hand forward for controls that only he could see from his pilot's seat. Brightly colored holographic controls that sprang up from the blank panels that surrounded him but only viewable from the position of where he sat. To his actions, a new display appeared on the wall to his left, one that panned quickly over the city for a quick summary view of life below, with the word Recording flashing beneath it.

Central Park was ground zero of the New York jungle, home to mutants both animal and plant and a couple of warring tribes of once-humans. The view zoomed briefly on one of them, a leader waving about an old microphone stand like it was a spear as he pumped up his people with words of war. At the other end of the park, another was doing something similar with his own people, only the spear he held looked like it was taken from an old crankshaft of a small car.

Agent Carlson shook his head in disgust.

"Back down to stone knives and bear skins, and they're still finding reasons to fight one another. Or maybe I should say drive shafts and Armani loincloths."

The city ended abruptly at its western edge, where a large blast crater had long since become a lake, though one filled more with black sludge than anything that could be called real water. A lake in which nothing moved, nothing lived. Beyond that lay a land long since made barren, not even the ruins of old houses to punctuate the bleak desert. Just blackened soil—no trees, no scrub brush.

Agent Carlson glanced over at the left display and then wrapped a knuckle against Ion-9.

"Addendum to log. I'm passing over the blight just outside New York City. Still nothing to speak of, but I am getting a faint microbe reading near that sludge pile some call a lake. Too early to tell what it might evolve into, but it's there."

He gave another wrap of his knuckle, to which the floating bot replied with another beep.

The old Land Wars didn't leave much, he muttered to himself. Though at least the radiation killed off most of the plagues…the ones it didn't mutate, that is.

Ion-9 interjected with a beep and a flashing light, to which Agent Carlson shot a sour look.

No, that's not part of the log. Just me spouting off an opinion. I'll tell you when it's a log entry. Now alter course for a scenic tour before we hit Cincinnati. Administrator Hessen wants her annual overview of how the reclamation attempts are coming along. She wants to know if it's worth our time and effort to build another oxygen factory.

Ion-9 responded with a couple of flashing lights as the craft swooped through the skies on a slightly altered course. It was not long before Agent Carlson was flying over an endless prairie of death, dried-up river and lake beds, through drifting brown clouds, and skirting around one tornado formation right in the middle of what would have once been Buffalo, New York. In swift time, the craft came within sight of a lake that stretched to the horizon, nearly all of it covered in black tar that burned and bubbled.

Log note, Agent Carlson recited, the Lake Erie fire shows no sign of abating. From the amount of fuel available to it, it could be decades before it slows down. Recommend a snuff bomb if you want to end that mess.

From Lake Erie, the craft turned westward and a little south, following the coastline for a bit. With a wave of his hand, Agent Carlson created a new view screen, this one aimed northward, across the border into Canada. It showed him nothing but large craters as far as he could see. Agent Carlson sadly shook his head.

Just stupid. They got so desperate for farmable land that they ended up destroying the very thing they needed. Well, no one said that war was for the sane.

When he came to Lake Superior, he ran into a thick fog bank that hovered over nearly the entire lake. Too thick to easily see through.

A blessing, really, he muttered. This way I can't see what's beneath me.

A southward turn into Lake Michigan showed the bulk of the lake frozen over, icy sculptures in the shapes of piers, ships, and lighthouses, ice that crawled glacially over the coastline and up some of the lower floors of the nearby buildings.

"Looks normal enough… Of course, this is June."

A couple miles south of Lake Michigan's southernmost tip, past the ruins of Old Chicago, stood the one operational structure to be seen—a factory a square mile in size and twenty stories high, with dozens of large smokestacks. The difference here between this and any normal factory is that instead of toxic smoke, these smokestacks spewed out fresh oxygen. Additionally, into one end of the mammoth factory hovered a line of drone cargo haulers waiting to enter, each floating five feet off the ground and loaded with a few tons of collected refuse as taken from the nearby ruins of Chicago. The end product of the processing of such trash was a neatly stack pile of large metal ingots being loaded by robotic haulers onto a nearby waiting shuttle about fifty times larger than Agent Carlson's own craft.

Log note: The Chicago reclamation center is going strong, though the oxygen output is still a little feeble compared to what we're working against. The supply shuttle looks like it will be taking up another fully loaded cargo module for the orbital factories sometime later on today. All in all, from what I can see, things look to be on schedule for full cleanup of Old Chicago. Should be about another fifty years.

A map suddenly appeared in the right-hand display, showing Ohio and a blinking dot coming down from the north to a location labeled as Cincinnati.

Log note: Arriving in Cincinnati Under-dome in approximately two minutes. I have the list of candidates our long-range scanners picked out, now to see how many of them are viable. Log out.

*****

Aboveground, the city of Cincinnati looked almost as bad as New York, just minus the jungles. It did have one distinguishing feature that had been added a few centuries ago, and that was a dome—completely black, a hundred feet high, covering a swath of land ten miles across. The top of the dome was flattened in the center, specifically for receiving such craft as his own, and it was to that which Agent Carlson flew. Ion-9 brought him down dead center, the landing legs coming out to hook into the grapples, and then Agent Carlson waited.

He felt the slight lurch as the landing pad began to lower down into the dome. His central screen now showed a view of the inside of the large elevator as he was taken down the shaft, the roof above closing up tight, the lights coming on. A short time later, he stopped, then the phrase Atmospheric Cycling Engaged appeared across his central viewer. He waited patiently as the process finished, and only when the message disappeared did he dispel all displays with a wave of his hand and got up to his feet.

The gel-form couch melted into the floor to drain away, while Ion-9 rose up another foot and fell in alongside Agent Carlson as he faced the rear of his small chamber and proceeded to step forward. The bank of panels before him parted, withdrawing into themselves, the wall behind them melting away like ice on a griddle to reveal a set of steps now forming from out of the base of the craft. Agent Carlson stepped down on them, out onto the landing dock with Ion-9 on his heels.

Before him stood a man dressed in silken robes, a pair of armed retainers to either side, a few yards behind them an open archway in the wall that led off to the interior of the under-dome. The man had a gleefully officious look, with a smile that bragged of his gleaming ceramic-composite teeth, and a perfect hairline to beguile any attempt at estimating his age. He looked to be as fit as money could buy, with a faintly predatory look. The retainer on the left was obviously both genetically and mechanically enhanced, as evidenced by his excessive bulk of muscles and the metal claws of his fingernails. The one on the right was a boy, no more than about thirteen, with one eye replaced with an implant and set of sleeved overalls hiding what Agent Carlson knew must be a multitude of abusive sins; in one hand, the boy held a data pad, and on his face the expression of a broken dead soul.

Agent Carlson, the rich man greeted him with a wide smile and open arms, "welcome to Cincinnati Under-dome. I was told of your pending arrival. I'm Karl Ursin, Mayor Karl Ursin."

Before the Mayor could actually wrap his arms around Agent Carlson in greeting, Ion-9 intervened by floating up between them.

No touching, Agent Carlson blandly warned. I already have to go through decontamination after this trip as it is.

I meant no harm. I can assure you that I am clean of any diseased defects.

Allow me to not take your word for it.

The man withdrew with a shrug, Ion-9 then floating back to Agent Carlson's side as he stepped forward. They were in a large docking bay, no doubt the target of any number of hidden weaponry and other quaint devices.

Ion-9, he addressed the bot, engage personal security protocols.

Immediately something beeped on the boy's data pad, to which he tapped a finger to the small screen and then showed it to Mayor Ursin.

You turned off the security perimeter? But that could allow—

Only regards myself and my bot. Now let's get this tour over with. I'll be blunt by saying that I don't like being dirtside any longer than I absolutely have to.

Oh, understandable, of course. I myself have hopes to make it off world quite soon.

Agent Carlson took one look at him, gave him a snort for an answer, and marched straight past him to the open archway behind him, the others falling in behind.

The archway turned out to be a large elevator to one side of the doors inside a panel of buttons. The mayor waited until all had entered and then pressed one of the buttons. The door slid swiftly closed, and then the motion of descending was felt.

So, the mayor began, just how many openings are there?

Ten thousand for those with skills, Agent Carlson replied. None for politicians that use kids as their personal slaves.

What, him? The mayor gestured to the boy with the data pad and even managed an offended look. That's just Toy. I found him as an infant, poor thing, on the streets. I can assure you that he is far better off than he would have been.

Agent Carlson took one glance at the boy's dead expression.

"And what exactly do you use him for? Besides the official reasons, that is."

Oh, quite a number of things actually. He's quite the handy little assistant. Also good for when I need to…relax.

"Of that, Mister Ursin, I have no doubt. The child looks well past any sort of feeling."

"And that's Mayor Ursin, if you don't mind."

Agent Carlson ignored the correction and waited for the door to open again, doing his best to maintain his bland expression.

When the elevator finally came to a stop, the mayor was in the midst of a brief recitation of facts and figures of his city as they stepped out the door onto a balcony overlooking a surge of humanity and dimly lit underground promenades.

"The entire exterior roof, of course, is one big solar panel array, though we could use an extra nuclear reactor. We also get some energy from geothermal sources, as well our water supply. We're far enough down underground that the water sources aren't too polluted, though we still filter everything, of course. Everything we eat comes from hydroponics, with the meat substitute coming from the algae vats. All very healthy, I assure you. I do my utmost to see that my citizenry is clean and healthy, while I'm the healthiest one of all, if I do say so. Perfect material, for, say, more off world duties?"

From what Agent Carlson could see from the balcony, the main promenade below looked like someone had taken a wide swath of old Cincinnati and moved it down into a concrete and plastic-lined cave. There were public service electric cars, robots much like Ion-9, floating along to one task or another, one monorail that he could see, and streets that ended in distant tunnels and the far reaches of the under-dome.

The public service cars were only being used by the wealthy and healthier-looking citizens, the robots likewise in service to ones of similar attitude as the good mayor, while the monorail was overcrowded with diseased and weakly peasants and looked like it was well past due for a repair or two. Then there was the smell, a hundred thousand people in the under-dome, and it smelled like the air filters hadn't been changed in years.

Agent Carlson wrinkled his nose in disgust while the mayor motioned him further down the balcony.

Come, it is far more pleasant in my office. There you can look through the public records in comfort to see who might qualify to be taken off world. Come.

The mayor wore a pleasant smile, but one glance at the boy by his side was all the reminder that Agent Carlson needed.

"Mister Ursin, I'll be blunt. And please don't try and correct me on your title, since we both know that no one stays in office for seventy years without bribing someone. I am here to confirm for myself who may qualify based on the initial assessments given by the latest survey of our orbital scanners. I am not here to go through your list of rich friends who paid you money to be on that list. Nor do I care to be wined and dined with whatever living pleasure toy you've engineered for me from the available peasantry. I find you to be a disgusting individual and what they used to call a creep before the wave of political correctness a few centuries back altered everyone's ability to object. Now if you don't mind, I have a few of your street people to vet. In person."

Agent Carlson! The mayor's face turned red, his voice rising, while his muscle-bound bodyguard flexed his metal claws and took a step forward. I will not be insulted like this, and I can assure you that everyone on my list—

Are probably completely lacking in usable skills, Agent Carlson completed for him. "The last batch of people we took up came about ninety percent from people you look down upon for the simple fact that they have something useful to contribute, unlike politicians and the idle rich. Now if you don't mind, you're between me and my job."

As Agent Carlson started to take a step forward, the mayor's bodyguard reached out as if to lunge at him, but before he could take another step, a flexible tube swiftly uncoiled from Nine's midsection housing and shot something out. A red dot appeared in the middle of the bodyguard's forehead, paralyzing him as he stood, but there was more. His body shook and trembled, his eyes rolled up in the back of his head, then as his mouth dropped open, steam started to escape and through his ears. When the shaking stopped, the body dropped back stiff as a board, leaving the mayor struck with shock.

You'll find the man's brain has been boiled completely away, which means there'll be no bringing him back with whatever overpriced surgery you'd care to use. So while you're finding yourself a new bodyguard, I'll be getting on with my mission.

Agent Carlson walked away, leaving the mayor alone and speechless, the boy by his side still devoid of expression or sign of emotional life.

*****

While life in the under-dome was better than any he'd seen aboveground, it was still bad enough to have him moving about as quickly as he could. He took a private transport tube direct into the heart of the city, then took out a small handheld device as he searched the crowds.

There were no mutants down here, though the bulk of the people looked like they hadn't had a solid meal in their lives. They at least wore serviceable-enough clothing, manufactured in the under-dome facilities, though not as rich-looking as what the mayor and other well-off wore—a fact which puzzled Agent Carlson as he walked the metal streets.

"Considering they have the production facilities down here to make a silk robe as easily as a sackcloth dress, there's no reason why any of them shouldn't be dressed far better than this. Unless that overprivileged mayor set some sort of law dictating that everyone has to look their station. I guess lacking any usable skillset, some people will do anything to make themselves feel superior."

From what he could see, about twenty percent of the populace was of the rich and well-off, and they employed the bulk of the rest like indentured servants. Most of them looked healthy enough, except being underfed, though even some of the gentry bore scars from past diseases, but nothing that he could see of the more obvious mutations. When he came to the entry down into the Utilities Support section, he knew where the mutants were kept.

Even from where the corridor turned into the Utilities section, he caught a glimpse of a few of the workers. Some were missing fingers, others with a couple too many, distorted facial features, ears looking like they were ready to melt and drip off, one leg longer than the other. The Utilities sector would be where the city's geothermal generators, life support, and sanitation facilities were kept, where the food vats were housed that fed the entire under-dome. Important, yes, but no time to waste nothing but mutants down here.

They made their way up to the healthier levels and into a busy marketplace section. The lighting was better in here, this section catering to various medical procedures. One all-white aging edifice sported holographic signage that proclaimed newly grown replacement organs for a hefty price, while another rundown-looking affair promised the same thing but for suspiciously cheaper prices. New livers, kidneys, hearts—they had it all here on this street, with one animated sign even proclaiming complete body replacements.

Our replicant bodies are the best in the business. We electronically transfer your soul, all memories and personality, into the new body, which will then begin taking on the facial features and bodily appearance of your original body. What could be simpler? And our bodies are guaranteed for at least two hundred years.

I'm happy with my own, thank you very much, Agent Carlson remarked to himself. "It's been reliable the last few decades and still has about a century more on it. Not to mention I wouldn't trust any of these guys down here to so much as treat a cut."

Making his way down the street, he took out his little hand scanner once again, with a word to Ion-9.

Better chance of spotting someone viable in an area like this, so keep your scanners peeled, Nine.

The bot responded by popping its cylindrical red bulb up an inch higher and then a moment later pointing an arm servo toward someone in the crowds.

I see him, Nine.

He hurried over to where a rich-looking man and his wife were just coming out of one of the ritzier medical buildings—though ‘ritzy' here was closer to being something inspired by someone's quick look at an old yellowed black-and-white photo of a hotel palace from the fading glory of the 1920s, a step behind them a boy in his preteens dressed in the bland colors of a servant. Agent Carlson walked up without saying a word, aimed his scanner at the puzzled boy, and then gave a nod.

Genetically pure, no disease traces we can't handle, and young enough to still be educated and trained. Nine, tag him.

From the floating bot, something shot out and hit the boy in the shoulder—a flat plastic disc half an inch across. No harm done to him, though the man and woman looked understandably perturbed.

"Just what do you think you are doing to our servant!"

Of all the effrontery, the woman huffed.

To their angry objections, Agent Carlson replied with a bland delivery.

"The lad has been approved and tagged for off-planet transfer where he will have a bright new life on another world a lot cleaner than this one."

You can't just take him, the man objected. I paid his parents good money for him.

The man reached out an arm toward the tag on the boy's arm, but before he could grab and rip it off, Agent Carlson continued in the same bland tone.

Any attempt to remove the tag or prevent those chosen from being transferred off world earns a death penalty to be carried out immediately.

To which Nine now leveled the same flexible tube at the man with which he had killed the mayor's bodyguard, while Agent Carlson maintained his same bored look. The man very carefully backed away.

"Will I, uh, at least get