Star Matters

By David John West

Many people on Earth think that we may have been visited by aliens. Conspiracy theorists believe that governments are aware and refuse to make this information public. These conspiracy theorists are correct.
In ages past the emerging human race on planet Earth came to the attention of race Dawn of Gaya for its spiritual awareness. A small number of Guides were sent to Earth and have lived amongst humans ever since, assisting with every significant technological and philosophical discovery in history. Amily of race Dawn of Gaya, is tasked with discreetly readying the human race on Earth for its promotion to join advanced human races across the galaxy. Born of an Earthly baby and Gayan soul, Amily and her fellow Travellers of Dawn must carefully develop selected academics and political leaders to achieve Gayan enlightenment.
Race Spargar are rivals to Dawn of Gaya in our galactic neighbourhood. Spargar are only concerned with binding emerging human races that can be snared by their own computing and network technology. The exponential rise of Information Technology and the subsequent birth of the Internet on planet Earth makes our world a prime target for Spargar annexation.
As their mission plays out on Earth and across the Galaxy the Travellers of Dawn tutor their specially chosen earthly contacts. They must also counter the grim invasion plans of their Spargar rivals and avoid being hunted down by Spargar agents who pay little heed to the niceties of galactic peace treaties. Let the Star Matters begin...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781545756812

Book preview

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Copyright © 2018 David John West

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

For Kathleen

Contents

Preface

Part One Cambridgeshire, England, Present Day

One

Part Two Silicon Valley, California, 1993

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Part Three United Kingdom, From 1993

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Glossary

Notes

PREFACE

Circa 3000 BC Earth time our local spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy was home to many advanced races of human beings scattered on worlds across hundreds of light years. These races had been seeded by the ancients on fertile blue worlds to evolve and emerge at their own pace. Two of the most advanced races developed warp drive technology that enabled space travel with short journey times. They grew their empires and competed to dominate neighbouring space, harvesting emerging human cultures as they explored new planets.

The race Dawn of Gaya promoted enlightenment across a confederation of allied human races on emerging planets. Their home world is planet Gaya central in the star cluster called the Pleiades (aka Seven Sisters). Their rival was the technological empire controlled by its autarch the Omeyn MuneMei centred on planet Spargan in the Hyades star region. Dawn of Gaya largely sought to influence new races on developing worlds by transferring small numbers of teachers and guides in soul form to these worlds. These Gayan souls inhabited newborn babies to create genius ‘Star People’ in each world that grew up to inculcate civilisation in the Gayan image. In contrast, the Spargar Empire was unconcerned with the early stages of developing primitive human races and merely monitored progress of such worlds until they invented primitive computer technology that could be interfaced to their Mind biological computer system centred in Braganza, the capital city of planet Spargan. When a human culture on a new planet developed adequately, Spargar agents invaded these cultures covertly and supported dictatorial regimes in their own image. Spargar agents infiltrated early computer networks such that their nascent computing capabilities would be compatible with the Mind out in the Spargar galactic network. Many Spargar agents arrived clandestinely in the latter stages of these campaigns to dominate new planets, accompanied by large-scale abductions of the local humans to be assimilated into the Mind to build its strength and knowledge prior to overt annexation by the Spargar empire.

According to the ancient Mayan civilisation on planet Earth the world was created more than five thousand years ago, or thirteen baktuns of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. On this date, August 11th, 3114 BC, two alien guides known as Pointers of Dawn arrived on Earth by spacecraft from planet Gaya. Called Star People by the Mayan kings their counsel dramatically accelerated the development of Mayan culture and technology. When these first tasks of enlightenment were complete these Pointers of Dawn instructed the Mayan royal family that humans on planet Earth would meet their destiny and join with Gaya at the end of thirteen baktuns and then they returned to the stars from whence they came.

Pointers and Guides of Dawn visited planet Earth regularly in small numbers throughout the ensuing thirteen baktuns to enlighten the human race with philosophical developments and technological discoveries in an orderly manner and at an ideally digestible pace. This schedule to Enlightenment is well established in Gayan culture. They achieved the steps along this plan by working as teachers and muses supporting selected visionaries in the local human population to release scientific and cultural discoveries in beneficial order at auspicious moments. These visionaries are the wise ones later to be identified as the geniuses of human history on Earth.

Prior to the end of the auspicious thirteenth baktun, the Gayans accelerated the enlightenment of the people of Earth with more frequent visits of their Teachers and Guides, managed by the Pointers. The resulting explosion of technological advances in the twentieth century inevitably came to the attention of the Omeyn MuneMei in her Spyre headquarters in Braganza city. Omeyn MuneMei, autarch of the race Spargar of planet Spargan, ruled her empire in a totalitarian dictatorship so supreme she considered her subjects more akin to a lower species than subjects of her own race. Omeyn MuneMei considered planet Earth to be a vassal planet from the start due to its proximity in space to planet Spargan. When the internet emerged on Earth with help from her Zarnha operatives, Omeyn MuneMei routinely ordered the incorporation of planet Earth into the race Spargar and her Mind central biological computer system. Zarnha agents were tasked to prepare the people and technology of Earth for subjugation into the Spargar empire. They expected relatively little competition from their enemies Dawn of Gaya as their home world was much more remote in space and the centre of the Spargar Empire lay between Earth and their Gayan rivals. Zarnha agents abducted remarkable numbers of people from Earth for integration into the Mind, in tribute to Spargan. Spargar spacecraft and Zarnha infiltrators were often witnessed and remarked upon as ‘unidentified flying objects’ and ‘alien greys’ despite their cursory efforts at camouflage and dissimulation.

The conclusion of thirteen baktun ages occurred on December 12th, 2012 AD. Confusion over the meaning of the original Mayan legend after five thousand years led to peoples across central America to believe the end of the world was nigh. Modern-day scientists looked for doomsday scenarios involving black holes, solar expansion or planetary collisions. More enlightened Mayan scholars dismissed cataclysmic notions and presaged a spiritual transformation, a new era of enlightenment of men on Earth.

This culmination of the thirteenth baktun on Earth marked the climax of the clandestine campaigns of Dawn and Spargan for enlightenment or subjugation of the emerging culture of human beings on planet Earth. The immediate path for the future of mankind on Earth forked to offer two distinct alternate paths, the stakes monumentally high for the unwitting masses going about their everyday lives across the whole of the blue planet.

PART ONE

CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND,

Present Day

ONE

A heavy mist hung over the old farmhouse near Lakenheath rented by the Griffiths family of San Antonio, Texas. It was the hour after midnight; a time for witching, a time for dire plots to be enacted. The family had enjoyed the adventure of the relocation to the Cambridgeshire countryside from Texas and had fallen in love with the solidly built brick farmhouse, with its grey slate roof, at the end of a short lane. The farm was surrounded by rambling outbuildings leading on to wide lawns with herbaceous borders and tall trees in copses beyond. They were close to the local village with its pub and post office, indeed the whole of England seemed to be a village to the Griffiths family after the wide open spaces around San Antonio. Their new home was almost magical, secluded and full of gentle wildlife like a children’s story, delighting the young American family. Don and his wife Belinda were sleeping under two quilts in the main bedroom against the chill of the East Anglian fall season and the quaint lack of double glazing. The preschool twins, Ethan and Madison, were in single beds in the same room down the hall, similarly covered in downy duvets. Don was on assignment to the local airbase from the US Air Force Intelligence base east of San Antonio. Ethan and Madison were born after in vitro fertilisation procedures. Both these factors, allied to their locality, made the Griffiths family an irresistible target for a particular kind of abduction.

Several slim dark figures lurked round the front door to the farm, barely visible in the gloom of night. It was difficult to distinguish separate arms, legs and bodies as they all wore matt hazmat suits and domed helmets with large teardrop-shaped eye covers lending their heads a disquieting locust appearance. They were introducing their hypnotic nerve gas into the house via the convenient aperture of the letter box cut in the door. A small tool placed against the door lock made the screws on the inner side revolve anticlockwise until they fell out on the mat and the door could be effortlessly swung inwards. The intruders swarmed into the house protected from the nerve gas by filters in their helmets. Their squat delta-wing craft, also stealthy in dark matt material, waited on the long lawn at the rear of the farm buildings.

Don Griffiths opened his eyes groggily into a waking nightmare. His consciousness swam as he witnessed dark stick-men figures around his bed in a low grey light, like false dawn. In alarm he tried to rise to confront the invaders but his limbs would not respond, as if the protective cocoon of dream sleep was preventing his body from moving. With heavily bleary eyes he looked beside him to Belinda who had what appeared to his drugged mind to be a grotesque black spider with three heads hanging threateningly over her. Then a similar mass of heads and limbs appeared over him too. He felt clammy under the press of hands and pointy instruments; cold too as the quilts were removed and the dark figures roamed across their prone bodies. Don fought against their motions in his thoughts as they introduced their probes into him but his mental struggles could not penetrate and would not animate his drugged body. After a short period the agents of race Spargar moved back from their captives and first Don and then Belinda rose naked to sit, then stand slowly alongside their bed. They were, without their own volition, led shuffling by their captors through the bedroom door and on to the landing. The low silvery light followed their progress. Don was aware of being taller than the dark bodies of their tormentors with their malevolent large heads; they were about the same height as his wife slumping along behind him. Don’s nightmare was complete when the twins’ bedroom door opened and a second group of black bodies led out the twins, so vulnerable in their jammies and ruffled faces. His precious family was in clearest danger, molested under his very gaze and his limbs remained unresponsive to his anguished commands to save them all.

The Spargar aliens with their slender arms would have struggled to manhandle the large American man but this was unnecessary as the hypnotic drug enabled them to lead the family away conveniently under their own locomotion but under their kidnappers’ control. The family were all conscious but their bodies moved like zombies; alarmed eyes connected the parents with their children as if in thick fog or murky water as they were led out the front door and on between the farm outbuildings in single file, parents first, children to the rear, out towards the low-slung spacecraft on the grassy lawns. The whole group could only bumble along slowly with the family struggling against the will of their captors, seeing the waiting craft that was clearly their destination as it swelled and shimmered like a mirage to the incapacitated senses of the family. As they crossed on to the open space of the lawn Don became aware of a new sensation amongst his captors. They were in consternation; something was amiss. He reached for this hope, grappled with that fact mentally seeking an opportunity to protect his family from this unfolding nightmare. He did not yet know that on this occasion, on this particular kidnap, he was fortunate in a way that the very many other victims were not.

The Spargar kidnap gang released their captives who fell to their knees without the external control of the aliens’ grasp. The Spargar agents had seen a young woman of average size regarding them, coolly blocking the access ramp to their ship. She was earthly in appearance with medium-length blonde hair, wearing skin-tight jeans over high-top trainers. She wore a knitted top against the night chill. Crucially the two Spargar who piloted the craft lay at her feet moving feebly. To her rear were two large cloaked figures carrying shaped staves that almost glowed in the silvery light. These were vorarms, the fighting weapons of choice of the Cavallos of Dawn, the martial arm of their enemies, race Dawn of Gaya. The Spargar spread out to confront the woman and her guards and released more hypnotic gasses in their direction. The Gayans wore no helmets but were completely unaffected by the gas, wearing their protective gumshields against drugs as well as blows. These Spargar had not come across Gayan enemies previously; they had only expected a routine kidnap of defenceless Earth people this night. The Spargar reassured themselves with their superior numbers, but they were unconvinced as they glanced at each other, wishing they had a larger band. Looking beyond their own craft in the lawn centre they could see the upright silvery cigar form of a Gayan starcraft of their enemies, taller than the trees it was standing amongst. The Spargar gang knew their commanders would require them to attack these enemies and carry out their abduction mission as planned. They launched a frenzied rush to reclaim their own craft.

Amily concentrated grimly at the tangle of rapidly approaching Spargar agents.

Today is a very bad day for you. This time we saw you coming and came out to meet you, she exclaimed into her enemies’ rushing advance. Over her shoulder she quickly said to her formidable friends, How I detest these foul kidnap gangs, guys. Rafaello on my right side! Umberto, take left and rear!

Let’s roll, replied Rafaello’s baritone voice from the shorter of the two cloaked figures as he moved from behind to Amily’s right and presented his ivory stave in kendo fashion to the oncoming enemy. His taller partner Umberto took a similar stance on the left so that they were either side of Amily in a wedge facing the onrushing Spargar. The Spargar were unarmed having left their weapons on board their craft, only needing their various medical apparatus for incapacitating and kidnapping the sleeping victim family Griffiths. They were not anticipating conflict this night. The three Gayans met the rush with blurring arms and weapons and in a few short seconds the Spargar gang were reduced to groaning, prone figures at the feet of the three Gayans alongside the fallen pilots of the Spargar craft they had dealt with while the kidnappers were at their sinister work in the farmhouse.

The three Gayans moved forward to help the drugged family who were still groggy on hands and knees beyond their collapsed kidnappers. The Gayans took no further notice of the injured Spargar gang that rose erratically and helped each other gingerly back into their craft. A short time later the dock of the Spargar craft closed, edge lights indicated they had powered up and the craft angled up and escaped soundlessly overhead.

Don Griffiths was still intoxicated but had seen the skirmish and that his attackers had returned to their craft and escaped overhead. He was helped to his feet by a young woman who approached him confidently. She was not speaking but clearly helping him. The two monk-like figures looked ominous but they too were helping and picked up Ethan and Madison and carried them as easily as dolls. The taller one was also walking with Belinda who was slumped against him for support, taking faltering steps back towards their house. Amily led Don Griffiths back into their house and up the stairs. It was obvious from the soft toys and small divans which was the twins’ bedroom and she indicated that to the Cavallos who gently deposited the boy and girl back on their beds and covered them up. They then led the parents back to their room and put them back to bed, covering them again with the two quilts against the added cold of the violated farmhouse.

Amily led the two Cavallos, Umberto and Antonio, back out of the house closing the front door behind them. They retraced their steps to their starship among the trees, boarded, powered up and left in the same direction as the Spargar craft, throwing off tiny lime and vermilion sparks as their DMF drive grated the atoms of the still air.

Don and Belinda slept immediately they were laid back in bed, exhausted and still under the influence of the hypnotic drug cocktail from the kidnap gang. It was bright morning when Don woke first, his larger frame working off the drugs faster than his wife. The night’s events presented themselves in a rush as a realistic nightmare, the most convincing nightmare ever, set as it was in their new home. Don needed to expel his demons so he rose, pulled on his robe and went downstairs to make a coffee pot for them both. At the foot of the stairs something made him turn to the front door, which was reassuringly closed. He was turning round to head for the kitchen when a chilling glint on the floor caught his attention. There on the carpet was the brass door lock and flange with a number of long screws scattered around them that last evening were holding the lock securely to the door frame.

PART TWO

SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA,

1993

TWO

Harold Z Martens sat in his executive office of Evrisoft Corporation of Sunnyvale, California wondering what to do with his day. Evrisoft Corporate HQ was a medium-rise building of mirrored glass and reinforced concrete. At seven storeys it was the tallest building he could get approved by the San Jose city planning authorities. The building captured the azure skies and reflected them onto large ornamental pools surrounded by cherry trees. These miniature orchards were a passing nod to the fruit tree farms that previously occupied this part of Silicon Valley before it had spread all the way south from San Francisco to San Jose in the 1970s. The flowering trees were also planted in honour of the investment from Japanese technology investors who originally provided his venture capital and reminded them of cherry blossom time in Tokyo. Harold was a sour man who privately doubted his own capability and covered this with bluff and bluster to his employees and to the public. He could never quite gain sufficient affirmation for his leadership of the IT industry to the extent he would like. He cultivated the image of the software and financial genius who had been the visionary ten years previously seeing that the future of computing was in integrating software applications, networking and data and not in the hardware technologies prevalent at the time. Whatever the truth behind his origins he had indeed been fortunate enough to be starting up the right kind of software business just as the age of the hardware dinosaurs was ending. From that point on he was riding the wave as it gathered momentum and swept the IT industry before it.

His start-up had originally been a services company that had hired a number of disgruntled software engineers who wrote utilities that enhanced the operating systems of the major hardware suppliers. In the 1970s, the major revenues and profits were in the big iron hardware that bulked up the datacentres of the world’s largest corporations and were mainly developed in the laboratories around him in Silicon Valley. Harold cornered the market in the unlauded software engineers who essentially made these big Silicon beasts work together for the world’s largest corporate customers. He could hire these engineers out of the big hardware players for higher salaries and then charge them back to the same organisations at double the price. This was fine as the market was growing exponentially and the bigger companies always needed more skills than they could develop themselves. He soon noticed that these same engineers could be encouraged to come forward with good ideas that streamlined then revolutionised the applications of these large corporate customers. Harold started patenting these pieces and assembling them into the essential parts of much more complex systems. His patents included extensions to turn flat data files into relational databases, metadata that described where real data resided in a network, enabling cloud computing and distributed storage and applications later exploited by the internet.

He was also fortunate in that soon after his business began expanding three confident and attractive women had walked into his tiny office in downtown San Jose and propositioned Harold for a job. Not only were they offering substantial investment from a Japanese multinational that had identified Harold’s tiny business as a beneficiary of the next big wave in IT but they were really hot in an oriental way to Harold’s mind and he started fantasising about the potential for physical rather than professional relationships with all three. Harold was subconsciously aware that he was not a physically attractive man, floppy lank hair of nondescript sandy colouration curling around his jowls and his loose body contours taking their cue from this bad start. This just made him more aggressive in his attitude to both female and male employees. He was arrogant enough to believe the massive improvement in his financial circumstances was his just deserts and that this alone made him an attractive celebrity that transcended normal social mores. He was totally cool that these new Japanese ladies brought not only financial gain but also added the kind of glamour to his life that he deserved so well. He was later to find that they were also brilliant software engineers and capable of architecting software that actually worked in a reliable and scalable way that really was a double bonus that he no doubt well deserved.

The fledgling Evrisoft Corporation soon became the only supplier large corporate customers could go to for the database and networking software systems that increasingly controlled their business applications and exploited the ever more powerful hardware developed elsewhere in Silicon Valley. Within two years Evrisoft Corporation had moved out of its first tiny office to its first campus and grown to nearly a thousand software developers sourced from the best software minds around the world that gravitated to Evrisoft Corporation. Harold’s recruitment people in the Human Resources department were very close to the USA Immigration and Naturalisation Service and could easily obtain the visas necessary to bring in coding talents from across Europe and Asia. These immigrant workers were overwhelmed by the pay and conditions Harold offered them and they worked long hours slavishly to complete their work and be able to send pay home to their families back in their home countries. Two more years of stratospheric growth after that and Evrisoft enjoyed a spectacular Initial Public stock Offering. They soon moved to their current premises and had grown to nearly four thousand staff. Despite the company’s growth and size Harold kept middle management to a minimum and famously tried to interfere in every department believing that his inspirational direction was essential to the firm’s remarkable success. Despite this, Evrisoft was dramatically profitable; its products were uniquely software so their only costs were development and support unlike the ageing hardware companies with their factories overheads and pedestrian gross margins. Harold was a multi billionaire within six years of the fateful day the three beguiling women arrived at his office and so convincingly blew their smoke up his spreading behind.

The rumour was that Harold Z Martens surrounded himself only with female managers in executive positions so that he would be the undisputed alpha male in the upper echelons of his own domain. Harold had never seen any reason to get married. When he was poor he could not get attractive women to notice him. Now he was rich he believed he could have any woman he wanted by indulging their career aspirations and gracing them with his smallest consideration. Pop culture exterior to Evrisoft said that his female senior management team was also where he chose his lovers and that the executive team was regularly changed around to suit Harold’s baser instincts. The executive team were all slender and athletic in build in contrast to Harold who was tall but had become increasingly fleshy in proportion to his business success. His burgeoning success and penchant for the luxuries that afforded allowed little time for healthier pursuits. Harold had not been interested in progressing young fit men in his senior management as that ran increasingly counter to his self belief that his mental powers were the source of attraction for him in his female staff. He saw little reason for the competition of the presence of attractive men at executive levels. In essence Evrisoft ran an unwritten policy of reverse glass ceiling; only women could aspire to the very top positions.

The three oriental lady executives were particularly effective at pumping Harold’s ego and in the rarefied atmosphere of Evrisoft’s executive suite there were no challenging voices asserting that this particular emperor wore very scant executive clothing indeed. Harold was serenely unaware that the three women who had arrived in such surprising circumstances, who made his company the fastest growing company in the Valley, were actually Zarnha agents of the race Spargar attracted to Evrisoft as an ideal crucible to produce the technology needed to integrate later to their Mind system under the control of the Spargar empire across a host of earth-like planets. Equally Harold Z Marten was the perfect stooge to play the earth-born puppet that could be subordinated by Zarnha agents surrounding his executive management. The oriental lady executives that really ran the Evrisoft Corporation were born of race Spargar from planet Spargan in the Hyades star cluster in the constellation of Taurus. Within Spargar the Zarnha agents are responsible for the campaigns that drive the political success of Spargar across worlds with freshly emerging human civilisations. On developed worlds the Zarnha managed their assimilation to Spargar as dictators enforcing Spargar rule. In the case of the infiltration of Evrisoft they had been sent to planet Earth to further the covert goal that this newly technological human race would soon be ripe to be assimilated into Spargar technology and be subservient to their leader, the part-human, part-computer, Omeyn MuneMei.

The three women led day-to-day software development at Evrisoft with remarkable insight, there were no product failures on their watch and their programs, databases and networks led the market to such a great extent that they soon came to be de facto standards in the market for enterprise class business systems. Harold sat atop this empire and to the business community and media it was he who was the dark genius that masterminded the giant of the Information Technology market that was Evrisoft Corporation. It was easy for the Zarnha agents to stand quietly in the background pandering to race and gender stereotyping in this industry in the infancy of its technological age. Meanwhile Evrisoft continued to attract the brightest talents not just for the high salaries and small fortunes that spun off in company stock options as the stock price rose, split and then rose again but also because working at Evrisoft meant that you were at the hub of the Information Technology world that all others were measured against.

In addition to the three Zarnha Senior Vice Presidents who ran the three main product divisions, Harold’s most senior management team also included the female Chief Finance Officer and another female Senior Vice President of Human Resources. Harold had much more spare time than he pretended and whimsically took pleasure in summoning individual junior staff members to his office if he took exception to their ideas or decisions. He would lose his temper with them on these occasions and his features would swell and redden in a genuinely scary way, if only for the magnitude of his blood pressure. He was known to throw items across the room if he was piqued. He would occasionally summarily fire one of his senior managers in such ‘meetings’ without recourse to Human Resources department rules and regulations. This would bring the long-suffering lady Senior Vice President of Human Resources running to calm him down and find a way to paper over the busted regulations to which the unfortunate employee was entitled while simultaneously smoothing Harold’s indignant ruffled feathers. In truth these excesses of behaviour from Harold were a neat cover for his heightened sensitivity to an advanced persecution complex. He perceived enemies both businesswise and personal that were seeking to reduce him to the nervous individual he had been in the early days. The ‘Foxy Veeps’ as he thought of the lady senior vice presidents had fuelled his fears by telling him that there were indeed others who wanted to see him fail and were working every day to do him down. Harold became increasingly persecuted by thoughts of secret agents sent to topple him from his position and he saw shades of these threats in the scared faces of his employees and all he came into contact with on rare excursions into public view.

As comprehensively understood by all the most exquisitely persecuted some of Harold’s darkest fears were indeed true and forces were moving in the cosmos to oppose both him and the threat of the Evrisoft technology monopoly. Darryl and Robert, young men born of the fusion of Gayan souls with earthly infants and educated at Stanford University, were opposed to the progress of the unholy alliance of Harold Z Marten and his Zarnha agents to dominate the entire software industry. Known on planet Gaya as Keeran and Alron, they were Pointers of Dawn, who led campaigns of enlightenment within human races on developing worlds. They had been sent to California and reborn as Darryl and Robert to counter Zarnha plans to enslave humans on Earth with newly emerging software technologies that could be incorporated into their Spargar central Mind system. Zarnha agents of Spargar would often be found at the dawn of the technological age on a newly developing human world. They would be found dictating the nature of the computer and military systems that would ultimately grow to interface into the Spargar system hosted on their home planet Spargan and thereby bind new races of humans to the Spargar Empire.

Darryl and Robert, with their earthly bodies and Gayan souls, were two of the most potent forces in all the worlds of men, named as human leopards by their Zarnha enemies for their stealth and power. They had been sent to California at this time as it was the clear centre for technological development on Earth. They were reborn and grew up in Silicon Valley, indistinguishable from the local population, so that they could discover and counter Zarnha activity. In this way they could promote Gayan values of enlightenment and discovery with the ultimate goal of this new human race becoming the long-term ally of Dawn of Gaya and not being assimilated to the Spargar empire. In these latest incarnations Keeran had been named Darryl by his natural earthly parents and Alron was called Robert. Darryl and Robert had been raised in Palo Alto before attending Stanford together during the years Evrisoft had emerged to dominate the software industry. The two friends and colleagues had founded their own organisation to promote open and free software standards with the quirky title Pengey Corporation. Pengey sounded more approachable than the big corporate titles and attracted free-thinking individuals from the technology space that would not conform to the major corporates such as Evrisoft. They were working with this small group of like-minded IT professionals to generate alternative solutions to compete with the major Evrisoft products. These new solutions were open, which meant that developers worldwide on the web could add their own software patches in their own time and at their own expense. This allowed Pengey systems to grow much quicker than traditional methods. In return Darryl and Roberts’ small group at Pengey provided the overall architectural design framework for the software developed by the open developer community and obtained some funding for marketing the project. This gave the new Pengey company the basics required to establish a business but it was the worldwide development community that provided the bulk of the software programming. This caught the imagination of programmers worldwide and because so many were engaged then it could grow swiftly and the usual delays in testing and releasing products were short-circuited by the sheer numbers of enthusiastic developers giving their time for free. Darryl and Roberts’ product direction was unerringly accurate as, like the lady vice presidents over at Evrisoft, they had the unfair advantage of having seen this development stage played out many times in their cosmic experience.

It came as no great surprise to Darryl that Harold Z Marten’s office at Evrisoft called him one morning. Their activities were guaranteed to come to the attention of the software giant at some stage. It was in Evrisoft’s nature to research all new competitors and remove their threat by buying them or hounding them out of business. In this particular situation Darryl was also fully aware that there must be Zarnha operatives controlling the running of Evrisoft at the highest level and they were bound to be checking continually for threats to their ongoing success. It was Harold Z Marten’s executive assistant on the line requesting a meeting with Darryl and Robert at his office to discuss potential synergies between the software giant and the start-up open systems Pengey organisation. It was clear to Darryl that this would be a fairly one-way conversation as their nascent open systems offerings were a small but potentially serious threat to Evrisoft’s proprietary and very expensive products. Evrisoft’s best strategy would be to buy and kill off the fledgling competitor with its innovative funding model and potential for speedy growth. On the other hand it was reasonable to accept the invitation as Pengey’s ethos was to cooperate with all potential stakeholders that wanted to participate in their offerings and that ease of access and this welcoming attitude was its greatest strength. It was in this business spirit Darryl and Robert agreed to go to the meeting. Their secondary purpose was to meet the infamous leader of the software giant and his close acolytes to check for Zarnha infiltration and measure their capacity as a vehicle for the ambitions of Spargar on Earth.

They arrived at Evrisoft in Robert’s old silver Porsche 911. Down the aeons Alron had always been the flamboyant one of the two Gayans and he saw little reason not to enjoy the many delights of the beautiful worlds he had lived and worked on where human races had emerged across the galaxy. After all, that was the fundamental reason for their lives’ work so why not participate in the best features of those cultures as you went along? At this specific point Alron, now he was reincarnated as Robert, was neither wealthy nor famous but he definitely lived in a beautiful part of a most well-resourced part of this world and he meant to enjoy it. His little sports car was certainly not new and surprisingly affordable but gave him considerable pleasure compared to most transport systems he had seen elsewhere. Evrisoft’s visitors’ parking was laid out in a white-painted herringbone close to the atrium main entrance and Robert’s veteran coupe slid in next to the shiny new sedans in executive slots on the other side of the entrance.

Darryl and Robert were duly impressed by the scale and futuristic material of the atrium as they crossed the white marble floor to the reception desk. Two smartly dressed young women in Evrisoft royal blue dresses checked them in and issued them with passes. The two colleagues had dressed up marginally more formally than usual for the call; ‘business casual’ meant chinos, open-neck shirts and sport coats. The sun was very bright but not too hot yet in early spring. The vintage cherry trees were in full blossom in the landscaped grounds hemming the ornamental pools. Darryl and Robert carried no bags or cases; a folded piece of A4 and a Cross ballpoint was all they required. They were expecting an introductory rather than a meaningful business meeting. They took a seat in low-slung Scandinavian chairs in aluminium and black leather and settled in to wait and enjoy the spring view.

They were not surprised to find that they were greeted by Harold’s executive assistant fifteen minutes or so after the stated time of the meeting. At this point she appeared with a whoosh of the elevator doors to the executive suite that emerged right next to Reception. She was smiling brightly, smartly dressed and coiffed as she checked with the reception desk who indicated the seated Darryl and Robert with a sweep of her arm. She then tripped over to where they were seated and confirmed their names.

I am so sorry you had a little wait there but Mr Martens is ready to see you now, they were informed and she turned on her heels as they stood to follow. She stood silently in the elevator flashing on a thin smile just once very briefly about halfway up to the executive eighth floor in a way she imagined was elegant yet welcoming. The lift doors opened out into a large area carpeted in lightest beige with panels of redwood burl veneer, presumably real, lining the walls between the smoked glass doors to the executive offices and internal facing windows. Several executive secretaries sat at overlarge desks one for each large office, each occupied by a highly polished Queen Bee personal assistant maintaining her territory with little diversionary tasks relating to the importance of her boss. They each had nameplates centrally in their large desks stating the identity of the executive they looked after, rather than their own names.

Harold Z Marten was waiting by his office door at the far end of the open area affecting a relaxed calm. Leaning against the door frame his stomach unfortunately sagged sideways to overlap the frame somewhat. On closer inspection he appeared tanned but unhealthy under the tan, maybe it had come from a bottle. He exchanged overly firm handshakes with Darryl and Robert displaying exaggerated bonhomie towards the kind of men he deliberately excluded from his own management team. From his office door it was a long walk either to his desk at the rear or comfortable chairs arrayed around a large redwood coffee table nearer the window. Harold despatched Martha (they discovered his PA’s name at last) for coffee and they had the distinct impression she would in turn send a more junior secretary to actually make the coffee and assemble the tray for Martha to then bring in to the office. Harold made for the long glass-top coffee table and sat himself down at the highest chair at the head of the table so that his huge desk framed him some distance away at the rear. Darryl and Robert were left to sort out their own seating so Darryl sat down lower than expected in the couch facing the long axis of the table with insufficient room for his uncomfortably bent-over knees. Robert took the chair at the opposite narrow end of the table from Harold but had the same low seating position.

Well thank you, guys, for coming round to see us at our place, welcomed Harold with a broad smile, spreading his arms to embrace the executive space of Evrisoft as if he were putting it at their disposal. He too was without necktie but his ‘business casual’ looked like each item was selected from the thousand-dollar-plus section at the recommendation of his personal shop assistant at Nordstrom’s.

You must both be wondering why you got the call from the Big Dog? Harold was warming to his larger-than-life persona. We like to keep our eyes open for bright emerging businesses like you guys if they have anything that we could work with and we all get along. That usually means guys like yourselves make out very well if we decide to acquire your little start-up. His smile elongated a little more unpleasantly as he completed the sentence. We can see that working with Pengey as a subsidiary or even business partner could help Evrisoft reach out to the lower price end of the market and at the same time make us a bit more approachable, a bit more human if you know what I mean? We can appear a bit too corporate, a bit scary sometimes for the smaller customers.

Darryl reacted to this opener by saying he didn’t think that the people who contributed to Pengey would stick