The second coming, p.1
The Second Coming, page 1
part #2 of The Skidian Chronicles Series
The Second Coming
Part 2 of the Skid Chronicles
Written by Keith Fenwick
Copyright Keith Fenwick 2013
All rights reserved
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any other language or computer language, in any form or by any means, whether it be electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without the prior written consent of Keith Fenwick.
Email: k.fenwickk@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/Keithfenwick11
PO Box 90312
Auckland
New Zealand
Also by Keith Fenwick in the Skidian Chronicles series
Skid – available on Kindle or hard copy
The Lifeboat - available on Kindle or hard copy
The Colonists - available on Kindle or hard copy
Once again thanks to Joyce for the support and encouragement.
Synopsis – The Second Coming
Welcome to Skid – the most technically sophisticated and powerful civilisation in the known universe.
The Second Coming is the second novel in the Skidian Chronicles series and follows on from the first novel where our unlikely protagonists were kidnapped by a desperate food research team from the Planet Skid. The researchers were on a mission to locate expertise to assist them in developing organic food sources to feed their people as their planet’s synthetic food production systems had begun to fail for some inexplicable reason.
The Skidian team had selected a team of experts at random without really understanding the expertise that they required to achieve their objectives. However, more by good luck than good management, they stumbled on someone who could generate new food production systems in the form of New Zild style grasslands based cattle farm, station or ranch.
Despite this stroke of good fortune the planned enterprise ultimately failed simply because not enough Skidians wanted to get their hands dirty in making things grow. The old earthly adage; ‘you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink,’ was particularly fitting as a famine of unheard of proportions unfolded on Skid.
Since the inception of modern Skid as it was at that point in time – the most sophisticated and powerful civilisation in the known universe – the concept of having to actually do anything remotely connected to work, for most Skidians was unknown and hundreds of millions of them had been governed by a small group of hereditary rulers who didn’t brook any change to the status quo for generations.
The alternative systems developed by the offworld experts would inevitably lead to the transformation of Skid as it was known and the fracturing of Skidian society. Faced with a choice between maintaining the Skidian Way and perhaps saving a good number of Skidians from certain death, the hereditary rulers chose the former and hoped for a miracle to deliver them from mass starvation and the end of the Skid as they knew it.
To make matters worse the artificial intelligence that unknown to those rulers or perhaps unacknowledged by them in many respects monitored and controlled all the systems that kept the population fed, housed, and watered was experiencing its own difficulties.
The second novel deals with the aftermath of the breakdown in food supplies. The offworlders have been returned home after undergoing a partially successful memory wipe and Skid is slowly recovering from the disaster that; not for the first time has all but destroyed the most powerful and sophisticated civilisation known in the known universe. But all is not lost and not all is as it seems.
Part one
Return to Earth
The patrol craft lifted off. It hovered for a moment 10 metres or so above the ground as if it were gathering itself and then gracefully swooped up into the sky above the busy spaceport and was quickly lost from sight as it began its long journey. To the casual observer it would have looked uncannily similar to a frisbee being casually tossed across a park for dog to retrieve.
Though the passengers and crew were not to know it at the time, the patrol craft left behind a planet soon to be thrown into complete chaos. Those on-board knew the situation was dire but just not how desperate the crisis really was. They simply assumed, as was the way of Skidians that the Skidian Way would eventually triumph and none of the dire predictions would come to pass.
Months before, when it had become apparent that the synthetic food production plants that supplied food for the inhabitants of the planet’s vast cities were failing, an expedition had been sent to a far off and primitive planet to find experts in organic food production techniques. It was hoped that these experts would develop a system of organic food production that could then be used to feed the people of the planet if and when the synfood plants either completely failed or their production fell below a level necessary to sustain the population.
While those involved in the expedition had a less than vague idea of exactly what organic food production systems entailed, the offworld organic experts had successfully developed a grasslands based farm out on the vast plains of the planet and they, the offworld experts that is, had managed to more or less comfortably live there on the food that they grew and nurtured which proved that the organic processes would work on Skid.
Unfortunately, as far as the Skidian technocracy went, the experiment with organic food production techniques hadn’t been regarded as a great success. It wasn't as if the program had failed completely, it would stutter along and in the coming months would support a few hardy Skidian souls who would manage to make it work and feed themselves while everyone else went hungry and probably starved to death.
However, it couldn’t be denied that this grand experiment had ultimately failed. Not because organic food could not be produced, but because there was an institutional lack of willingness for any Skidian of any status in Skidian society to get their hands dirty and get directly involved in the project. They were too used to having other Skidians or a wide variety of technology to do their bidding. The concept of actually having to be physically involved in a project was at once beyond their ability to conceive and unthinkable in practice.
The offworld experts had shown that organic food could be produced. Or, more accurately, food could be harvested and was available in abundance for the taking. Unfortunately as it would turn out for the average Skidian on the street, without the support and involvement of the locals to develop the required infrastructure to process and distribute the food to the general populace there would be no widespread development of the organic systems. The offworld experts were frustrated in their efforts and left wondering what would happen to them when it became evident the Skidians had apparently lost interest in the project.
The long and the short of it was that the patrol craft was leaving behind a society in crisis. A society that rightfully considered itself the most technologically advanced and sophisticated society that the universe had ever known was, for the first time in millennia, in danger of almost complete collapse as the planet’s synthetic food production systems gradually ground to a halt. Though they didn’t know it, even though they were already experiencing unprecedented and unexplained shortages of some basic commodities, most of the Skidian population would be lucky to survive the next few months despite the efforts of the experts from Earth.
In the wake of an attempted coup that Inel the supreme ruler of Skid had ruthlessly put down with the assistance of the offworlders he had (in a fit of unusual benevolence - an emotion no doubt brought on by the imminent return to more primitive times when superstition and primeval instincts as much as common sense and science ruled the minds of all Skidians), decided to return them to their planet of origin. This was an unusual show of magnanimity given that simply doing away with them would be his usual response when he wanted to get rid of a troublesome loose end.
So the offworld experts, who had imagined they had been consigned to a life far away from their homes for the rest of their lifetimes, were suddenly being dispatched back to their home planet aboard the patrol craft.
They were drugged as they slept off a drunken binge and bundled aboard the patrol craft piloted by the ruler’s favourite son and heir. A son who Inel sought to protect from the coming chaos by sending him on a lengthy mission that included returning the offworld experts to their home planet.
Skid would need all of its limited supply of technocrats and hereditary leaders, however limited their real abilities were, if any part of this mighty culture was to survive the approaching calamity. Myfair might not be one of the best of them, however as long as he survived his present mission he could at least provide a symbolic rallying point for any survivors when he returned to assume his hereditary leadership role over what was left of Skid.
Aboard the spacecraft events were going more or less to plan as was the Skidian Way. On board, along with the two offworlders and the pilot Myfair, were several social engineers whose task it was to supervise the offworlders and the process of giving them a memory wipe and therefore removing any trace of Skid and their time on the plant from their minds in preparation for their return to their previous existences.
Not only would it be unwise to allow any knowledge of Skid’s existence to excite the already vivid imaginations of the inhabitants of the offworld planet, but knowledge of Skid’s present vulnerability would be tantamount to admitting that Skid was not as sophisticated and powerful as Skidians had always believed it
If that wasn’t enough, even though the leaders of Skid wouldn’t admit it even to themselves, they were terrified by the discovery, after observing the offworlders at close quarters for a time, that there was another sentient race in the universe with abilities that closely matched, if not exceeded, their own. Once these offworlders developed reliable long distance space flight capabilities and started to explore the universe, began to extend their territorial boundaries, there would be no stopping them. No matter how powerful Skid presently was, Skidian society would always be vulnerable when competing with a race that was more energetic and determined than themselves.
“Fuck!” Bruce grunted, as he woke to find himself in the nightmare that has existed at the edge of his consciousness all this time. The nightmare where he had been dreading, expecting, to find himself awake and it wasn't all just a bad dream... He struggled to sit up and free his arms, and found they were firmly strapped to the frame of the couch he lay on.
The couch was just like one that any dentist might have in his surgery. As he unsuccessfully tried to move his arms Bruce discovered that something heavy was pressing against his forehead like a cool metallic sweatband.
Wrestling to free his hands from the restraints that held them and remove the band that was uncomfortably settled around his head, almost over his eyes, he twisted around and caught sight of a woman strapped to a similar chair alongside him.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” They asked each other simultaneously as their eyes met and locked together.
Bruce thought the woman looked faintly ridiculous wearing some sort of weird shiny metallic headband that was wound around her head like a top hat without a lid. A crazy bird's nest of brightly coloured wire filled the gap in the top and was drawn backwards like a pony tail until it formed into a thick laminated cable that disappeared into the wall behind her.
The sight would not have disgraced some crazy inventor’s lab from a 1960's science fiction film he decided with a hint of humour that he didn't really feel.
Bruce assumed that he wore a similar piece of equipment himself judging by the pressure on his own forehead and wondered what it meant and where he was and he also assumed that he had the same wild look in his eyes that the woman had. Despite feeling as if he was awake and he should know where he was, he wasn't sure of anything and while sure he was living a recent nightmare, he felt completely disoriented. This wasn't anywhere he recognized, this wasn't his bedroom, he wasn't in his grotty old farm cottage, it didn't look like any hospital room he'd ever seen: it was like nothing he had even dreamt about let alone been. The walls were dazzlingly white and totally bare of any equipment bar the two reclining chairs and the wiring looms that disappeared into the wall behind them.
All he could see were the three dogs and the two chairs. And…. But….? For some reason he conjured up a vision of an extremely obese woman staring down at him with a disgusted looking frown and then lost it again.
Bruce decided the woman on the reclining chair beside him looked vaguely, almost agonisingly familiar. He imagined, rather than felt, a huge erection in his pants. He was sure he knew her, should have been able to address her by name but he couldn't. Although he was struggling to work out where she fitted into the scheme of things Bruce was sure she fitted into his life somewhere, somehow. However, she certainly wasn't quite as familiar to him as the dogs who were zonked out on the floor their heads adorned with mini versions of the weird electronic headdress that he and the woman across from him wore.
“Where are we?” The woman asked in a voice that echoed Bruce's own lack of surprise and fear, as if she also had been expecting something of this nature to happen to her.
“Aren't we…?” Bruce did know, or thought he did. But as he tried to articulate the thought it seemed to slip away from him like sand through an hourglass as soon as he attempted to form a mental image of the place he thought he was at. Home on the farm. Home on a farm somewhere that wasn't - a home away from home. As soon as he remembered that fact, he immediately forgot it.
“Umm. I dunno,” he found himself admitting at last. Though it must have been a matter of seconds before he recalled with some confusion he couldn't remember where he was and while he felt as if his life was slipping away from him somehow it didn’t worry him.
The idea that his life was slipping away was a pretty apt description, although he couldn’t know it. His recent memories were in the process of being siphoned away to be stored in a small storage capsule in the unlikely event they were required again at some time in the future. If all went according to plan he would retain no memory of Skid and life, his life would carry on as normal.
Bruce searched backwards in his memory and conjured himself up an image of himself stomping purposefully across the back paddock on the farm towards a mob of cattle trailed by his three dogs. Then he recalled the gut wrenching sensation as something like a sky hook grabbed him by the collar of his swandri and yanked him skyward.
“I think we're…. the last thing I remember….” Bruce's voice faltered and he slipped back into unconsciousness. He dreamt that his recent thoughts and memories were being drawn at an ever increasing rate to the back of his brain and then down the cable that ran from the back of his head and through the wall. Then there was nothing as if a switch had been flicked off leaving only an empty blackness and he slipped into unconsciousness.
One
Myfair lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling, wondering what was happening back on his home planet of Skid and, more importantly, wondered when he would get the recall order to return home. At that moment it was an order that he would have gratefully received and acted on.
“Inel should have long since contacted me,” Myfair muttered to himself. It would never occur to him under any circumstances to disobey the vague orders his father had given him when he departed. If he had been given an order to fly into a centre of a star he would have done so without question. In fact, part of his present concern was that the orders he was following at present were not explicit enough and he wasn’t used to having to think for himself.
However the communications channels had remained stubbornly silent ever since they had left Skid, as if he had been completely forgotten, cut off and left adrift in space. The implications of this worrying state of affairs were beginning to loom large in Myfair's increasingly troubled mind. Had Inel simply forgotten about him and his mission, or had something happened to him? And if something had happened, and he couldn’t even begin to imagine what could possibly have happened to his father, why hadn’t someone else recalled him?
After depositing the two offworlders back on their home world more or less at the right point in time, Myfair and the crew of the patrol craft had gone on an aimless, uneventful, joyride around the known universe. They sampled the severely straitened delights of Candour. A Candour that for some inexplicable reason was suffering unheard of shortages of the luxury food and consumer items that the resort planet was famous for. They tarried on the planet Guide where time stood still for them for who knows how long? A few days, a few years, a century or two? Too long? Then they did a beat up of Celsius B.
Myfair didn’t for one moment consider landing on Celsius B, infamous as the most backward planet in the known universe. Far more backward than the offworlders home planet even. He didn't want to be swamped by the locals wanting food and other commodities as the primitive and ignorant Celcions would most probably mistake his patrol craft for one of the heavy bellied freighters that called on a regular basis to doll out food and simple consumer goods. There was nothing of interest to see on Celsius B anyway, just a whole lot of short, swarthy, people dressed in dirty rags, who spent their lives waiting around the spaceport for the next freighter from Skid to land and disgorge its load of goodies.
Besides it was far more fun to pretend to make a landing approach and then veer away at the last moment and laugh at the stunned looks on the faces of the Celcions when they realized they were not going to land and dispense the usual largesse.
