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QUARANTINE
BOOK ONE
OF
THE ARCHANGEL-X TRILOGY
WILLIAM HAYASHI
QUARANTINE
BOOK ONE
OF
THE ARCHANGEL-X TRILOGY
WILLIAM HAYASHI
Copyright © 2020 by William Hayashi.
All rights reserved.
Quanrantine: Book 1 of The Archangel-X Trilogy
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.
The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Cosby Media Productions.
Published by Cosby Media Productions.
www.cosbymediaproductions.com
Cover art: Charles Burns
ASIN: B085L1X6W2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Day In The Life
Superstar
Reflections
Way Back Home
Unfinished Business
Moondance
Children Of The Night
Them Changes
Still Waters
Work To Do
Living For The City
Low Rider
The In Crowd
Nitty Gritty
Quiet Storm
25 Miles
Rock Steady
First Light
Voices Inside My Head (Everything Is Everything)
Boogie Wonderland
God Bless The Child
It Was A Very Good Year
Back Stabbers
Don’t Let The Jones Get You Down
All Along The Watchtower
Woke Up This Morning
Too Late To Turn Back Now
Cast Your Fate To The Wind
Time Has Come Today
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You Haven’t Done Nothing
Love’s In Need Of Love Today
Getting To The Good Part
Beachwood 4 - 5789
Why Can’t We Be Friends
Supernatural Thing
Let’s Groove
In The Year 2525
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS FROM
WILLIAM HAYASHI
A Day In The Life
“Will this nonsense ever end?” The President of the United States exclaimed to the empty room in disgust, tossing the Daily Briefing on the desk. Leaning back in her chair, President Lauren Wilcox wondered for the several hundredth time if a male president was handed the same amount of petty crap from the military in the past: always questioning and second-guessing political decisions essentially outside military purview. Now they wanted to send a manned mission into Earth’s orbit, seemingly a suicidal, one-way trip for the mission specialists.
In the last dozen years, the Earth had been reduced to a manageable psychosis over being denied access to outer space. The first victim of the space embargo was the stock market. Technology holdings crashed in investors’ knee-jerk response to their primary business model suddenly disappearing.
Twenty years ago, a colony of technologically advanced beings was discovered secretly living on the backside of the moon. And though the science fiction literature of the past two hundred years foretold about that very possibility, the world was still completely caught off guard.
Most looked upon the discovery in awe, rightfully impressed with the technological capabilities necessary to travel through space to live on the moon, all the while concealing that fact from its closest neighbor. But the rest of humanity viewed it in horror: would this technologically superior group of beings harbor ill will towards Earthly man and attempt to conquer humanity? The best scientific estimates on just how long the beings were secretly living on Earth’s nearest neighbor placed their likely arrival sometime in the early 1960s, well before Neil Armstrong’s visit.
Earth’s military men being what they were, couldn’t help trying to attack what they didn’t understand. After several skirmishes with the American and Russian military, those in space decreed that the people of Earth were to be confined to their planet, essentially forcing Earth to take a child’s time out. It wasn’t lost on anyone that the warnings the Earth received were similar to that Klaatu passed along in the movie, The Day The Earth Stood Still.
During the past dozen years, the United States was consumed with near universal schizophrenia, hating being quarantined on Earth, but coveting the untold riches they imagined those in space possessed. When the aliens were first discovered on the moon, the world held out hope that they would be gifted with new technologies and the means to travel through the solar system and beyond.
President Wilcox activated the intercom. “Nate, you have a minute?”
“Be there in a second,” he replied.
Moments later, Chief of Staff Nathan Slade breezed through the door of the Oval Office, a huge grin on his chocolate brown face as he shut the door behind him.
“I take it you just read the latest request from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs?” he asked, taking a chair across the desk.
“And you know this, how?” Wilcox grinned.
“Educated guess. What do you think about their proposal? Other than the fact that you’re damn tired of them banging their collective heads against the wall.”
“That nothing’s changed since the embargo began,” Wilcox shook her head and tapped her finger on her laptop keyboard. “I’m not going to dignify their latest harebrained proposal with a response. Who the hell in their right mind believes that we can launch a stealth rocket that won’t be detected? Nothing’s caught them by surprise yet, and given their capabilities, the very idea is ridiculous. We must be like so many insects to them,” she paused. “Enough with that nonsense. So, what’s on the docket today?”
“I’ve been sprucing myself up in case I get lucky enough to be the victim of an alien abduction!” he said, laughing at the momentary surprise on Wilcox’s face. “Come on, boss, I’m only kidding!”
“So you say. I hate to have to admit that they’re living a dream few enlightened souls would turn down. We know how they feel about us polluting our own solar system, the galaxy even. And even though we can track all their gravity-based ships and space stations, other than the few stationed in lunar orbit, none of them have traveled within millions of miles of Earth. I have to believe they truly couldn’t care less about us.”
“Probably for the best. It’s doubtful we’d fit in with their community; our few similarities won’t outweigh our obvious differences,” Slade said. “By the way, did you look over the draft agreement between Pakistan and India? To me it looks like they’re both sick of allocating resources to their military’s atomic stockpiles. The inspection provisions are ten times more intrusive than I thought they’d be.”
“I already spoke to both leaders, complimenting them on their cooperation. The Joint Chiefs are seething over being forced to have our stockpile eliminated in five years. Is the treaty-signing ceremony still scheduled for Friday?” she asked.
“Yes, you’ll be wheels up by 8 A.M. and the Secretary General has scheduled a meeting with you and the prime ministers of Pakistan and India just prior to the official ceremony. He said it would be a working lunch, with the ceremony to begin at two in the afternoon, local time.”
* * *
Twenty years ago, NASA and the rest of the world watched as an errant ice asteroid made its way toward Earth, probably knocked out of orbit from the solar system’s asteroid belt. Everyone watched as it spiraled toward the inner solar system. Over time the asteroid sligh
tly changed its path, probably the result of the out gassing of the frozen material melting with increased exposure to the heat of the sun.
When its orbit was refined, with the mass of ice and stone expected to impact the moon’s backside, it raised all manner of excitement in the scientific community. NASA readied powerful lasers to aim at the reflectors that several Apollo missions had left behind on the lunar surface. The reflectors facilitated measurement of the moon’s distance from Earth to unprecedented accuracy as well as the study of the internal vibrations of the moon’s core. With such a large mass going to impact the surface, the data collected would greatly add to the understanding of the makeup of the interior of Earth’s nearest neighbor.
Once the collision occurred, scientists wanted to view the impact site to study the materials unearthed and the new crater formation. The United States Air Force, along with scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, quickly built a satellite designed to orbit the moon for several years, taking high resolution photos with better clarity than had been previously collected.
Several weeks after the asteroid crashed into the moon, NASA launched the satellite, taking four days for it to make its way into lunar orbit.
Once the satellite was safely in orbit, it took three complete revolutions before it finally photographed the edge of the impact zone. The media had grabbed hold of the story of the asteroid months before when it was initially discovered. They were completely onboard with broadcasting the satellite images as they were downloaded by NASA. Since the government was anxious to demonstrate how the country’s tax dollars were being spent in the service of expanding understanding of the moon, the pictures were going out live as they arrived. The talking heads on the news channels were narrating the features of each image with almost breathless detail, pointing out areas of interest.
On the third revolution over the impact zone, the entire world went collectively silent. In the lower, right hand corner of the picture were what were clearly vehicle tracks winding along the edge of the icy debris; the next three images showed more tracks. The president put in an emergency call to NASA to discontinue broadcasting the images, causing even more uproar than the revelation of the tracks.
The entire world had seen evidence that there was someone on the moon. NASA hadn’t been to the moon since December of 1972, so speculation ranged from having a secret base on the backside of the moon to little gray aliens keeping tabs on humanity’s technological advancements, trying to figure out what happened to their crashed spacecraft near Roswell.
In response, Navy SEALs were sent on an extremely risky expedition to the moon to try to steal a spacecraft from those living there.
Unfortunately, when the modified shuttle containing the SEALs approached lunar orbit, an entire underground habitat lifted out of the lunar bedrock and sailed out toward the solar system’s asteroid belt, putting it completely out of reach of Earthmen.
Over the next few years, there were a few skirmishes between those in the new colony in space and the U.S. military in their effort to gain access to advanced space technologies. Then the Russians launched forbidden, satellite-based nuclear missiles at one of their spacecrafts to destroy it, bringing things to a head. As a result, no contact was kept between the two civilizations, everyone on Earth was prohibited from leaving the planet.
More than a decade later, the U.S. military never ceased their effort to circumvent the space embargo. Those stationed in orbit around the Earth to prevent man’s excursions into space dealt with all manner of launches originating from Earth with such ease, they treated the world’s best technology like children’s toys. But that failed to blunt the military’s efforts.
* * *
Just before Slade left the Oval Office, President Wilcox muttered, “What’s that they say about doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting to get a different result?”
Slade laughed, “Welcome to the military mind, Madam President.”
“Oh, I’m quite aware of the military’s intellectual shortcomings. I just wish the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs could overlook the fact that I have a vagina and at least respect the office,” she replied. “Besides, what is it about the fact that we’re in an undeclared war with beings who could wipe us out with little thought at all?”
“Having never served, Madam President, I can’t say with any specificity, but no one can claim that our military isn’t dogged and relentless,” replied Slade. “Something else the chairman doesn’t take into account is that we have no idea what’s motivating his adversaries. We don’t know what kind of community they have; we have no idea the command structure in their society, and we for damn sure have no idea exactly how they feel about us after those two Russian attacks. Do they consider everyone on Earth the same? Or do they recognize differences between the various countries and their governments? We’re really missing out, not being able to communicate with them; we can’t make effective policy in a vacuum.”
“Voters still expect us to come up with the same technologies and advancements. Gravity-based propulsion, a space habitat bigger than many neighborhoods here on Earth and whatever else living in space has given them. I can’t help but imagine what this country would be like if we had access to the kinds of technology they have in that huge space station,” Wilcox said, shaking her head.
The hardest fact to swallow about the technologically superior beings holding the world’s space programs and military at bay, was that the creative minds behind the huge underground city built under the moon’s surface, now in orbit out by the asteroid belt, who had conquered the very force of gravity, bending it to their will, were all descendants of American slaves.
Superstar
Christopher Benjamin Wright, the man who made the extraordinary discovery in controlling the force of gravity and the Defacto head of the space colony, strolled into the colony’s operations center.
“Hey, I know Roger stayed at the L4 station for a double shift, but is Peanut copping a ride back with him at the end of the week when he does return?” he asked.
“No idea, Chris. Last communique, he was all excited about the beefed up capabilities of the station. He said they could even land the damn thing anywhere on Earth without a care in the world with the newly upgraded shields installed,” the comm tech replied.
“Figures, Peanut’s been like that ever since I met him,” Christopher replied. “Thanks.”
Once he left Ops, Christopher said out loud, “Genesis?”
“Yes, Christopher. How may I be of assistance?” the colony’s A.I. responded.
“Voice message to Peanut, to go out immediately.”
“Recording.”
“Dude, when are you heading back? I don’t want you to miss your boy’s birthday. Not to worry if you don’t make it though, he’s got half a dozen Dutch uncles to dote on him. But it would be great if you can be here; let me know. Chris, out.”
“Is there anything else I may assist you with, Christopher?”
“No thank you, Genesis. That will be all.”
Christopher hurried home, not wanting to be late for dinner with his family. When he arrived, his wife Patricia was putting the finishing touches on a large bowl of salad while his son Benjamin set the table.
“Hi, Hon. Just finishing up. How was your day?” Patricia asked, accepting Christopher’s kiss on the cheek.
“Not bad. Plowing through the interdimensional probe’s data with Genesis. How’s the packing going, Ben?” he asked.
Benjamin hugged his father, “I have everything boxed up, and even got my bedroom already set up at my new place. I was going to get Samuel and Joy to help haul the rest of my stuff there after dinner, then spend my first night.”
Patricia faked a sniff and wiped a pretend tear from her eye, “Our little boy is all grown up! What will we do around here without him?”
“I’m going to get washed up, back in a flash,” Christopher promised, chuckling a little.
“No law here against me drinking before my eighteenth birthday. After all, it’s just a few days off,” he replied.
“Have you decided what you’d like to do for your birthday?” Christopher said as he returned to the dining room.
“Aw, dad. It’s really no big deal. I might go to Sherman’s for dinner with some friends, but I really don’t want to make a big deal about it.”
“Whatever you want, dear,” said Patricia as she took her seat. Once everyone was seated, they passed the food around and dug in.
Benjamin was the couple’s only child, named after Christopher’s father. Early on, like many boys, he become obsessed with spaceships from movies brought from Earth, constantly fed by the fact that all the people he knew lived and worked in outer space. He spent a lot of his time growing up with his “uncles,” most were some of the earliest recruits to the lunar colony, including two of the three remaining Originals, as they were generally called. The fact that his own father was the primary reason the colony existed in the first place played no small role in influencing Benjamin’s interests.
Charles “Chuck” Perkins and Horace “Peanut” Billings, both Christopher’s closest friends from high school, along with Riley Sykes who died in a tragic accident on the moon, made up the original four of the colony’s creators. At first, they had dreamed of building their own community somewhere on Earth before Christopher’s discovery, where they could live without the influence of white America. Growing up black in a 1950s America was more than enough provocation for a black teen to resent the racist forces arrayed against nonwhite citizens of the country. Of course, they daydreamed about creating their own Fortress of Solitude, or Undersea Atlantis, but the reality of knowing that nowhere on the planet would they be able to live unaffected by American culture, kept their musings just that: speculative daydreams.
Confrontation
Quarantine