The Sleeping Saint

By R. G. Oram

The Globes are space stations the size of small planets that house the majority of humanity. When the human race had made it into space, and with the unstoppable rise of the population, they were supposed to be humanity’s salvation. But the few that could, the wealthy few, have taken control of them. For the rest, instead of being places of refuge for humanity, the Globes have become domestic prisons.

Teech Roberts and his companions on their Globe are trying their best to help the residents out. With poverty and sickness at an all-time high, and with no support from the Humanity Government, Teech and his friends do what they can to feed the poor and help the sick. To achieve this, they ransack cargo ships enroute to the Globe which carry food and much-needed essentials.

Then one day on a cargo run, they uncover a forgotten secret. A secret that could have the power to dethrone the Humanity Government and planet owners. A power called "the Deathkiller". This gets them in trouble with the Humanity Government. Teech goes on the run from the Humanity Government Knights – the Humanity Government’s law enforcement group.

Finding refuge at another Globe, Teech tries to work out his next move. But not long after he arrives, he finds out with a new Globe comes new problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781805145851

R. G. Oram

R. G. Oram has always had a love for writing and in 2017 he self-published his first book. Following on from that and having become a Christian, R.G. now focuses his time on writing Christian fiction, sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. R.G. lives in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgements

Log 001

Log 002

Log 003

Log 004

Log 005

Log 006

Log 007

Log 008

Log 009

Log 010

Log 011

Log 012

Log 013

Log 014

Log 015

Log 016

Log 017

Log 018

Log 019

Log 020

Log 021

Log 022

Log 023

Log 024

Log 025

Log 026

Log 027

Log 028

Log 029

Log 030

Log 031

Log 032

Log 033

Log 034

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Log 037

Log 038

Log 039

Log 040

Log 041

Log 042

Log 043

Log 044

Log 045

Log 046

Log 047

Log 048

Log 049

Log 050

Log 051

Log 052

Log 053

Log 054

Log 055

Log 056

Log 057

Log 058

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Many people have provided me with support and encouragement through my writing. There are so many names I could put here, and I wish I could add them all, but I’d run out of space. So, even if your name isn’t here, please read this and know that I want to thank you for your support, and that I am forever grateful for your friendship.

I want to thank all the professional persons involved in the publication of this book. Thank you all for your professionalism and advice throughout the process.

I would like to thank my mum and dad for their support throughout the years. Thank you both for being there for me when I needed advice or encouragement.

Thank you to my Brothers and Sisters in Christ both in Maescanner Chapel and all over, who have been a blessing and encouragement to me through this journey, and God willing, I can continue to have blessed Fellowship with you all.

I would like to give thanks to Gwyon and Helen for the pastoral support you’ve given me all through the years. And I pray the Lord continues to bless your ministry.

Many thanks to Greg, Catherine, Carl, Wendy, Beryl and family. Thank you for your friendship and fellowship in the Gospel. Thank you for being an encouragement and blessing through the years.

Thank you to my secondary school English teacher who gave us that class assignment to write a short story. Thank you for encouraging me to keep writing.

And of course, Praise be to the Lord, who has blessed me with everything noted above, and much, much more. By His Grace alone through the Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be all the Glory.

Log 001

How should I start this? Should I tell you who I am? I guess I’ve already started, so I might as well keep going.

The name’s Teech, and I’m a thief. Yep, I said it. I take what I want, and I make a profit off other people’s stuff. You can judge me. That’s okay. I won’t be offended. The chances are we’ll never meet anyway. You can stop reading this… what should I call it? I suppose I own my own ship, so I’ll call it a captain’s log. If you want to stop reading, you have my permission – I won’t be offended.

If you’re in the mood to read a man of fortune’s story, then sit back and prepare to be disappointed.

I won’t say too much about the ending because I want you to read the whole thing, but don’t expect a good ending. Believe me. I wish I had a feel-good ending too, but there’s no sense in lying. It is what it is.

So if you want an inspiring story where the hero fulfils his purpose at the end, I once again give you the choice to stop reading. This is the last time I will warn you. It’s your choice.

*

Where was I? Right, my less than worthwhile journey; hindsight is the worst friend you could possibly have.

I’ll give you some context. The human race made it to space. I don’t just mean one person made it to space; I mean the entire human race now inhabits different regions of space.

I bet you’re thinking, Which planets are people living on?

Well, the answer is zero, except for maybe the super-rich who own entire planets and rent them out as vacation planets to those who can’t afford to buy a planet but still have enough to pay the planet owners’ holiday prices.

So what does that mean for the rest of us, who can’t afford to reside for even a minute on a planet? We live on Globes.

What are Globes? They’re artificial planets. They are mechanically engineered metal planets slightly bigger than the average moon. These are where people eat, sleep, and work.

The guy who created them was Isaac Globe. Nobody knows much about him except for his Globes and what his biography says. It says the human government commissioned him to create the Globes because humanity was experiencing mass overpopulation. People were living for longer, and fertility was at an all-time high.

The guy was a genius. He first started off in the automotive industry and created the first electric self-driving car; not long after that, he started his own racing company, and his driver always finished first.

After that, he started his own airline. Instead of planes, he used rockets and took people all over Earth. It would take only two hours to get to the other side of the planet!

Then he went quiet. Nobody saw or heard from him for years, and that’s when things on Earth started to go sideways.

With the number of daily births increasing and the number of daily deaths decreasing, the planet’s resources were quickly being depleted. Farmers couldn’t keep up with consumer demand, and the cost of living was going up so much that working double time would barely make ends meet. There were wars on every continent as neighbouring countries fought for other’s resources out of desperation. The governments had locked themselves away from their citizens because of the endless rioting. And those that didn’t riot – those that worked those long, restless hours – never went outside because every street was a warzone. If you managed to survive the daily rioting, then you’d start your double shift, and if you made it home alive, then you’d start the whole cycle again the next day – without a day off until you either didn’t make it to work or back home or…

I don’t think I need to explain the other scenario.

The earth was a mess. That’s what the history of the Earth tells us anyway. It was an endless cycle of despair. Then one day, during all this carnage, objects appeared in the sky, and yes, you could call them UFOs (unidentified flying objects) because no one had ever seen anything like them before.

I’ve seen a picture of them in one of the history books they forced us to read in class. These objects were spherical in shape, like the Globes we now live in, but smaller, enough to fit the population of a small town. One landed on every country on the planet.

When every UFO had landed, everyone on the planet heard the same voice speak from them, a voice they had not heard for a while. You’ve probably already guessed who it was.

Isaac Globe spoke through these objects. There wasn’t one person on the planet who didn’t know who he was. Globe told the people that the reason they hadn’t heard from him for some time was because he’d been working secretly in collaboration with Earth’s governments to solve the overpopulation problem. He told them he’d been in space the entire time building new Earths, and these objects were there to take them to their new Earths.

He then told all the inhabitants of Earth that every government had agreed that it was now a crime to reside on the planet. Anyone who refused to get into these objects would be arrested and taken to a separate new Earth that housed all lawbreakers.

Nobody knows for sure how many resisted and how many agreed and left Earth quietly, but I can tell you that the Globe prison, Locked, that Isaac Globe spoke about, is the same size as Earth – and it’s close to full capacity.

When all of Earth was empty and the people were taken to the Globes, they were told that they’d be given a job suited to their skills and a place of their own to live. Returning to Earth or visiting other planets required a fee paid and permission granted. What Isaac Globe and the new Humanity Government failed to mention was that the fee to travel to a real planet would cost comparable to a mansion and that the planets were now owned by individuals who had significant material worth.

So that’s the basic history of humanity’s current state. The one percent own the planets, and the ninety-nine percent live on Globes, where the price of living is exceptionally high and basic necessities are overpriced. We are enslaved, I mean governed, by the Humanity Government and its donors.

So, yeah, everything’s all just and fair where I live and work.

I forgot to mention that nobody knows how many Globes there are. It’ll cost you a couple of limbs just to travel to one.

*

If you’re still here after that long, dull history lesson, then kudos to you. Let’s see… where should I go next? Why don’t I talk a little more about me?

Like I said, I’m a thief – but only part time. My legal job is as a waiter and an occasional space debris retriever. The Globe I live on is called Gnosis. In short, it’s a place you can be whoever and whatever you want. Even if it defies all reason and logic, you’ll still be told you’re right. This is the typical Gnosis crowd.

I live with my sister and dad in an apartment that needs constant repairs and has super-thin walls. My sister stays at the apartment and does all the housework and necessary daily repairs. My dad… we’ll not go into him yet… maybe later.

Now, if you still haven’t given up reading, then read the next log, and I’ll finally get to the reason I started this Captain’s Log – unless I lose my train of thought and go off on a tangent.

Log 002

When I think back to that moment, one thing comes to mind: don’t let strangers into your home.

I was getting ready for my shift at the restaurant, and I was looking all over the apartment, moving all the furniture and opening every drawer.

‘Where is it?’ I kept asking while looking in every square foot of the place.

‘Have you found it yet?’ she shouted from somewhere.

‘Of course not! Can’t you still hear me moving things?’

‘Hey! Watch it, or I’ll stop helping!’

That was my sister by the way. Her name is June. She came into the living room with an iron in one hand and a spanner in the other.

‘Where’d you last see it?’

‘In my room.’

‘Have you checked there?’ June asked me.

‘Of course I have! That’s the first place I looked!’

‘It’s just a question, stupid!’

‘Name calling isn’t helping!’ I shouted.

‘Neither’s arguing, genius!’

I gave up looking in the living room and tried the laundry room… again. I looked through all the laundry I’d thrown on the floor earlier, and I still couldn’t find it.

‘Found it!’ June shouted from the living room. I sprinted to her.

‘Where was it?’ I asked her.

My heart sank when I saw what she had in her hand. It wasn’t my waistcoat that I needed for work. It was a lock nut.

‘I lost it when I was doing some repairs the other day.’ She smiled, not noticing my dejected face.

I sat myself down on the patchy couch, my sister still smiling and jumping as if she’d just hit the jackpot and me in my dumps knowing that I couldn’t start my shift unless I had my complete uniform on. Then I looked to the empty dog basket not far from the eating table.

‘Where’s It?’ I asked June.

She looked at me confused; then we both drew our eyes to the front door. Standing in front of the door was a chocolate-coated dog with two mechanical front legs and two natural ones at the back. His ears were pointed and never fell from their position, even when he was sleeping.

I thought it had been strange that he’d been so quiet that day, and then I found out why. In It’s slobbery mouth I saw my soaked waistcoat.

Like I said, don’t let strangers into your home, or more specifically, don’t let your sister bring strange dogs back to the apartment.

*

Well, after prying open the jaws of death and retrieving my waistcoat, I was finally able to leave for work. I’d washed my waistcoat the best I could. As I was leaving, June, with It in her arms, said goodbye to me – her usual goodbye.

‘Straighten that tie. Tuck in your shirt. And do those buttons up.’

She got my usual response: ‘Sure, whatever.’

When I left the apartment, I smelled the typical aroma of burning ash and stale body odour. The corridors were filled with people on a downer. Most of them didn’t have jobs or even homes, and since Gnosis’s authorities had given up trying to help them, they just lingered around the corridors.

A few of them had come up to me and asked me if I could spare a few Tals – short for Talents; they’re the currency on Globe’s Gnosis. I told them I couldn’t spare any. They then went back to either kicking a can or lying down on their beds on the hard, metallic ground.

To mask the smell of dog slobber and the street, I pulled out a packet of lollipops. Opening the packet, I saw my stock was running low.

‘Only one left? I’m sure I bought this new pack only yesterday.’

I might have a sugar problem. I admit it.

The restaurant was near the top of the Globe and I lived not far from the bottom, so it took me close to an hour just to get there by elevator; then there was security. Since I wasn’t a resident of the Upper Ward of the Gnosis Globe, I had to go through countless security checks to prove I wasn’t a threat, even though I’d been working there for years.

It’s a job though, right? You take what you can get.

*

As soon as I walked into work, my manager complained that I smelt like a factory. He wasn’t wrong. The lower levels of the Globes were comprised entirely of factories; that’s where all the life support systems were anyway, so that was the best place for the craftsmen and engineers to be. The problem was, there were so few skilled people left, and more were dying off because of the fumes down there; healthcare was another limb-sacrificing expense in the Globe.

‘And why are there holes in your waistcoat?’ my manager asked me.

Regardless, I worked the tables through the night. I put on my smile and greeted the prestigious guests, even if they neglected to say thank you or they happened to be out of Talents.

There were four of us on the waiting team. We all worked together well because we all had different skill sets and trusted one another.

Reed was the drinks expert. He could uncork or unscrew a bottle with both his hands and feet. All it would take him was a second to open a bottle. He was so good that he earned quick tips by challenging the guests to something called Reed’s Cork Challenge. If he knocked the cork out of the bottle in one strike, he’d win and pocket the Talents. He also held senior statuses in several martial arts disciplines.

Then there was Bony; she was the juggler of our team. Since I’d been working there, she’d never dropped a plate. She could cover the entire restaurant with plates on both of her arms and not drop or spill a thing.

The third was Clyde. I’m not exaggerating when I say he was a perfectionist. As soon as the guests finished their drinks and placed their glass or cup back on the table, he was already there ready to refill it. We’d barely see him during the shift. He had a hiding place where nobody could see him, but he could see everything. We knew he’d watch every table from his place. He’d barely speak; by the time he’d refilled the guests’ drinks, he’d disappear, back to his overseeing lair.

That’s three. I feel like I forgot somebody… oh yeah… me.

I’m the retriever. I clear the tables of any unwanted debris. Whenever a guest finishes their meal, I take their plates and glasses – from the ceiling. I got my genius sister to make me a grappling hook that connects to my wrist. I’d just point with the inside of my wrist, use my index finger to trigger the hook’s release mechanism, then aim and shoot. The restaurant I worked in had a high ceiling so I could swing really low without crashing into any of the tables and grab the plates and glasses without the guests ever realising it.

We were a cohesive team. The only downside to the shift… the people – especially one.

He spoke like this: ‘Hello! I’ve finished my meal!’

If that wasn’t bad enough, he said it really loudly and in a weird accent that was clearly meant to make him sound important. I was swinging in the air and saw his arm with a spoon waving in his hand. His name was Octavius. He came to the restaurant every day… every day.

I took the plate from the table and snatched the spoon from his hand.

‘My, my, how quick!’ he said. ‘Oh, waiter!’ Octavius motioned his hand to call me back.

I was halfway back to the kitchen when I turned back and landed at Octavius’s table, where he was sitting with his friends.

‘How was your meal, Octavius?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, splendid! I wish I could cook like that. Give my