Star Bowling E-Book

Fabienne Gschwind

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 335

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A massive super-planet threatens to knock the Earth out of orbit. There is no escape and the planet is evacuated. Young Sera, however, has no intention of moving to the new planet, but signs on as a ship's doctor on a prototype space ship. Of course, everything goes wrong and the ship is flattened and crumpled. Sera, and only a few survivors, wake up in a galactic hospital where they are almost turned to slaves to pay back their debts. To find the missings, Uya - a galactical top travel influencer- is hired. A frantic chase through the different dimensions and universes begins. Not only aggressive ET and dicey space phenomena make the search dangerous. Uya has to constantly entertain her followers to earn a living. Her stream is not allowed to stop for one moment. Star Bowling is a fast-paced space comedy: a hectic storyline and funny characters make the book to an entertaining experience.

Leseprobe

Texts: © Copyright by Fabienne GschwindCover design: © Copyright by Fabienne Gschwind

Publisher:Fabienne GschwindBelgium

Distribution: epubli - a service of neopubli GmbH, Berlin

A massive super-planet threatens to knock the Earth out of orbit. There is no escape and the planet is evacuated.

Young Sera, however, has no intention of moving to the new planet, but signs on as a ship's doctor on a prototype space ship.

Of course, everything goes wrong and the ship is flattened and crumpled. Sera, and only a few survivors, wake up in a galactic hospital where they are almost turned to slaves to pay back their debts.

To find the missings, Uya -a galactical top travel influencer-  is hired. A frantic chase through the different dimensions and universes begins.

Not only aggressive ET and dicey space phenomena make the search dangerous. Uya has to constantly entertain her followers to earn a living. Her stream is not allowed to stop for one moment.

Star Bowling is a fast-paced space comedy: a hectic storyline and funny characters make the book to an entertaining experience.

Earth 2 Dimension

Sera lay in his bed on his sleeping balcony and stared at the constellation of the great ape. There between the stars GRT23 and GRT27 came the annihilation flying in. Not visible to the eye, but with a good telescope one could see the massive super planet hurtling directly towards the solar system.

Nobody expected that the Earth would be destroyed because a huge planet would knock it out of orbit. No matter what military means were used to deflect the super planet, even if it missed the Earth, it's gravity would be enough to throw the orbitals of all the planets into confusion.

After many computer simulations, calculations, playing out the most insane strategies, there was only one thing left to do: "Abandon ship!"

Now fortunately, by this time humanity was much more advanced and had mastered space travel.

The flowering of humanity had begun after the Orbital War. The then ruling nations had fought each other mercilessly over raw materials, especially the newly discovered riches on Jupiter's moon "Europa" had taken their fancy. The people destroyed their earth to get the raw materials they needed to build their ultra-modern spaceships and get even more raw materials from another celestial body. What a folly. Typically human!

The war had been raging for 80 years, the surface of the Earth had already been badly destroyed and because of the constant satellite attacks from orbit, people had to live deep below the Earth's surface.

The war would have gone on forever if the Desinova family had not intervened.

It was small family of highly bred super-intelligent humans. The various nations pursued genetic breeding programmes, not to breed super-strong humans, but over highly intelligent geniuses who could trump any AI with their creativity. The Desinova were one such group of highly bred geniuses. Most of them had spent their lives in heavily guarded research prisons, unaware of what was actually going on. Every nation had its Desinova geniuses who fed them false information and made them believe that they were acting for the good of society.

But the Desinova geniuses saw through the game and contacted each other using hitherto unknown methods of communication.

For years they pretended to be researching the various government projects and acted as if they believed everything they were told, until one day they disappeared without a trace.

Together they had spent years building their new home in the lava caves beneath a remote volcanic island. Of course, with state-of-the-art scientific equipment that they had somehow procured everywhere.

There were not many, maybe about 50 people, all barren. Their goal was to end the war and bring peace to the earth.

Their plan worked.

They built a kind of never-before-seen weapon that pulverised all spaceships, orbital satellites and anything else floating in space with a huge pulse. The secret of this weapon was never revealed.

That had been a good three centuries ago. It had taken the super-intelligent Desinovas all their lives to round up the remaining humans and build up a minimum of civilisation. The remaining humans had been born into a hate and revenge society for three generations, constantly fed with false information. With psycho-tricks, anger and hatred were fomented and discharged where it was needed. To achieve peace on earth, it was necessary to teach the children to think for themselves from the earliest years of school. Because independent thinking and questioning had been trained out of the earthlings from childhood. The adult humans had been trained to blindly follow their rulers. And it was quite difficult to re-educate them.

The Desinovans were forced to resort to chemical means to dampen the blind rage and hatred. A well-dosed oxytocin derivative in the water supply suddenly changed everything.

Freed from their trained aggressive emotions and equipped with the necessary tools to think clearly, many realised how stupid their wars had been and how they had been betrayed and exploited.

But now they finally wanted to live in peace. The few million who had survived the war gathered as one nation and together they rebuilt civilisation. This time they were eager to learn from the mistakes of history and to make everything better. A breeding programme was needed and after 300 years all the disturbing elements were bred out.

What remained was a highly evolved species that saw its greatest purpose in life as spending its life in endless bliss and, more importantly, ensuring that all its fellow human beings could fully develop and live happily ever after.

These new people brought an unprecedented blossoming to the earth.

But a huge mystery remained:

And it was not realised until a century and a half after the explosion of this mysterious Desinova weapon. The weapon had done far more than just blow spaceships out of orbit. The Earth itself had changed fundamentally. Scientific measurements showed that the Earth was only half as heavy as before. But the gravity remained the same.

Where half the mass had gone and why it had no other effect, no one could explain. An unsolved mystery...

Generations of scientists cut their teeth on the so-called "Desi paradox". To no avail. They shrugged their shoulders and from now on lived with the fact that somehow half the mass of the earth was gone.

In the meantime, the last Desinovan was long dead, but together the people found ways and means to partially recover the raw materials floating in space. Space travel was developed further, Mars was colonised and so were several of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Some pioneers also reached the planet at the nearest star Alpha Centauri and started colonisation.

Faster-Than-Light -FTL- space travel was not really possible and it took a good ten years to reach the nearest planet. Four of those years were spent slowly accelerating to just under the speed of light, two years were spent travelling at full speed and four years were spent decelerating again. At least the people spent the flight in a deep sleep and arrived on the planet in tip-top health without having really aged.

Of course, there were also some prototype ships that ventured into FTL space travel. These ships consisted mainly of fusion engines stacked on top of each other to provide power for the inertial absorbers and propulsion. The extremely cramped conditions inside the ships and the dangerous way of life one inevitably had to adopt when squeezing between fusion reactors day in and day out deterred many space explorers. The FTL programme was not very popular with the general population and no one was really interested in it. Especially not since the last few years, because people were only concerned with evacuation.

These prototype FTL ships were of no use for the evacuation of the Earth, because they could only transport a few people.

They had exactly four years to get 2 billion people off the Earth. Huge space freighters were built and equipped with tens of thousands of stasis chambers, ships flew out daily with their human cargo.

There was no panic, the highly developed, almost perfect humans did everything that was necessary: people with professions that were less important at the time had themselves retrained to help build the ships. The new planet - called Nova - had no civilisation except for a research institute. Many people therefore learned new skills at short notice to be able to lend a hand right away. Old trades were rediscovered with joy, and in the simulation boxes one could learn the skills one needed incredibly quickly.

There was no fighting over places on the ships, everyone wanted to make sure the others were well looked after first.

In short, it was an absolutely perfect situation.

Meanwhile, it was morning and Sera was getting up. He was young and had just started training as a historical medic when the approaching super planet was discovered. Historical physicians were doctors who could still do everything by hand. They could perform operations with scalpel, needle and thread. The real medics were only trained on surgical robots, to be precise, they didn't even see the patient lying in the examination tubes anymore. When Sera had decided on the job, there was no real benefit to it, it was just a matter of not letting a historical profession die out. Now, however, the situation had changed, on Nova, where not all luxuries would be immediately available, historical medics were in high demand. But Sera had to finish his training first. So he was still on Earth, practising 10 hours a day in the simulation boxes available at his institute for medical training. He would be one of the last to fly away...

But instead of going straight to Nova, he had been offered a very interesting job:

The space exploration programme was looking for an on-board doctor for a mission on a prototype FTL spaceship. Sera, who had a slightly adventurous streak, was magically drawn to the mission. Even the job description, which warned of extremely cramped conditions, did not deter him. He had camped and spent the night in the wilderness. He was sure he would be fine with a small bunk. The adventure took shape in his mind and he read the mission description over and over.

The ship's first stop would be the mysterious super planet. Investigate it and also collect precise data on how it would destroy the Earth and mess up the orbital mechanics of the planets. Before they would finally fly over to Nova, while testing the new FTL drives and exploring some more planets. In Nova the mission would change; the prototype spacecraft would serve as a sort of flying ambulance ship, flying to the many sleeper ships to help or evacuate any sick people.

Sera was excited about this mission and could hardly wait to start his job in about a month on the new prototype ship called "Thoria". To pass the time, he read as much as he could about space travel and followed the many training videos he was sent.

But before he could do that, he had to graduate. After he had finished a Mini-10-minute-meditation session, it was time to go to work. Meditations and all sorts of other brainstate altering training methods were in high demand. Of course there were all kinds of fads; the last few years it was self-hypnosis and neuro-feedbacking, nowadays the classic "sitting in a chair and thinking about nothing"...or something like that.

Sera had never really been interested in it, but if you didn't meditate for at least an hour every morning and evening, you were considered careless and unfocused in today's world. So all his life he had always had to pretend to do that while having adventures in his head. And what adventures, as a child and teenager he had sailed seas, climbed mountains or even spacewalked in his fantasy. And soon this dream would come true. At last he could live out his wildest dreams. He was so looking forward to it.

With a simple mechanical bicycle he made his way through the deserted city, because in the meantime almost the entire continent had been evacuated and there were only about one million people left on the entire planet.

He had become accustomed to the creepy feeling of walking alone on the earth. Here, the lessons in hypnosis had come in very handy. And soon he overcame the instinctive fear of being alone. Now he even found it fun.

The medical institute was not only abandoned but half dismantled. All medical facilities had been evacuated and packed onto transport freighters. It was not possible to transport all the people's belongings, but as much as could be taken with them, of course.

The simulation cabinet had been left standing to complete the training of the historical medics. Sera was the last, the others were already trained and on their way to Nova. He climbed into his box and began his work.

When he was on his way home in the evening, exhausted but highly satisfied, his computer rang. In the corner of his eye with the data contact lens, he saw an incoming message projected on his retina. He did not know the sender and stopped his bike because he was too curious. Yes the disadvantage of the good old bicycles...they were not self-driving. He quickly took out his mini-computer. Of course, one could also have small text messages projected on the net skin. But he was one of those people who had a hard time with these data lenses and always saw out of focus when reading. The little mini-computer was much better.

"Hello SRA5288, I am D4I334D -call name Daia- I will also be on the Thoria mission. I'll be travelling near your city tomorrow. Do you have time maybe? Do you want to meet up?"

Sera was pleased, as he hadn't seen real people in over three weeks and only communicated with video messages. He quickly made an appointment with him or her.

In his century, names consisted only of a letter-number combination and a call name could be freely chosen. Most people kept the name their parents gave them, which was the easiest. For the call name, they usually took the letters that were in the combination and made a melodic name out of it.

And only one day later he saw Daia, she had grabbed an autonomous copter that was standing around everywhere and had flown in the city park. Sera had picked up two food packs at one of the few automatic restaurants still open and they made themselves comfortable on a bench.

"I'm Daia, biologically a woman and I feel like a woman, so you can use the feminine pronoun," Daia introduced herself correctly. "I'm Sera and I'm quite boringly male..." they both laughed.

In fact, this notion was still a primordial tradition born when people predominantly thought in terms of only two genders and excluded all others. In a highly-evolved society, everyone was allowed to express themselves freely and have their own preferences, everyone was accepted as they were. The old-fashioned introduction was mainly for linguistic correctness, because the old standard language still had two genders, but this would disappear in a language upgrade soon. In fact, there had been several attempts to make gender-specific pronouns disappear, as was already common practice in many languages around the world. But somehow they had become entrenched in the standard language and the last upgrade had fallen victim to the approaching super planet. That would be dealt with later. Humanity had more urgent problems on their hands right now. Well, that's why it was still necessary to know how someone wanted to be addressed.

To make matters worse, due to the centuries-long genetic breeding programme, the difference in external characteristics had shrunk considerably, it was almost impossible to distinguish a biological sex. The current fashion also did not allow any conclusion about a perceived gender. Therefore, everything was communicated briefly and clearly.

It quickly became clear that Daia would work with Sera. Daia was a FTL veteran and had already flown dozens of FTL missions. She was the physiotherapist and safety officer on board. She said that she also had good medical training and would serve as Sera's assistant if necessary. Now she was enjoying her shore leave. She was an amateur mountaineer and planned to climb a few more mountains on earth before this one was wiped out.

"You watched the explanatory videos well, didn't you? You know it's awfully cramped in there?"

She asked him to be on the safe side before she climbed back into the copter. She didn't wait for an answer, but flew off.

Sera stared after her, she was somehow very different from the many people he knew. He didn't know why he got this impression.

The last month of training passed and Sera was visited by other members of the Thoria Mission. The 97 year old Furi, came as the second. 97 years might be a proud age, but nowadays one retired at 105 years and the average life expectancy was about 140 years.

"First I worked as an ore freighter pilot and then I raised four children, seven grandchildren and a whole bunch of cuddly great-grandchildren...after that it was finally time to relax! So I joined the FTL programme."

She briefly shared that she had been flying on FTL prototype ships for over 30 years. Was otherwise silent about the missions. In the Thora mission, she was hired as chief pilot. As with Daia, he noticed that Furi moved differently and was simply OTHER than the many people he knew.

A little later he also met Tuk, Gasem and Tama, all machinists who would take care of engines, fusion reactors, life support and everything else that was needed in a spaceship. They, too, were long-time FTL veterans, but revealed nothing else about the mission. Their bodies were pale and sinewy and they didn't have the beautifully shapely bronze-like bodies Sera was used to seeing in humans. On their arms and faces he saw scars. And Tuk had wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth. Wrinkles? Nowadays, when anyone could conjure them away with a regenerator, that was something special. Their hands were rough and calloused. They raved about space, the cold fear that radiated from it and the tingling feeling of adventure. After a drink, they had to leave right away.

"Think this kid's any good?" he heard Tama ask as the three of them climbed into their copter.

Sera wondered if it was life in space that changed the astronauts so much.

Well, he couldn't reveal the secret, but in the evenings after his simulation exercises, he spent a lot of time learning more about the Thoria and especially its crew.

The machinist team was the largest group, with over 35 people they were housed in the stern of the ship. There were three other groups. The science team with a dozen scientists, who would mainly operate the sensors and collect data. Their station was in the bow right by the sensor batteries.

The command team with the mission leader, his assistant, a multifunctional officer and the three pilots, were housed amidships.

Sera was on the "rest" team. He was the ship's doctor, that was easy. Daia would serve as nurse as well as sports instructor and physiotherapist. An older gentleman would serve as the ship's psychologist and would also help out as a nurse in case of emergency. The ship's manifest said he was an expert in claustrophobia. Sera wondered if it wasn't overkill to have a crew member who did nothing but treat claustrophobia?

There were still three people working in "upkeep". They would take care of the food in the stasis chamber, the sanitary facilities and also supervise the small army of cleaning robots.

That was the total crew of the Thoria.

When Sera had finally completed his last simulation and could now call himself a real historical doctor, only one mystery remained to be solved. Who was the mission leader aka "captain"?

The ship's manifest only said that no decision had been made yet.

Full of curiosity, Sera got ready for departure.

He didn't have to worry about his clothes, the crew would be provided with clothes suitable for space travel. Months ago he had already tested his clothes to indicate possible changes. The clothes were made of a kind of leather and well padded at the elbows and knees. He wondered what that was for. He had also already filled out his food list. It was far too cramped in the spaceship to have a kitchen. All crew members had therefore indicated in advance their favourite dishes that had been cooked and put into stasis. This was all very clear, as the fashion nowadays was to eat only once a day, or even to fast for several days and then eat more in one go. This was because they wanted to simulate the primitive life of the first Homo species.

There was enough food on board for more than five years, so there was plenty of room for manoeuvre should something unforeseen happen.

Sera stowed his belongings in a large suitcase and arranged for a copter to fly to the training centre.

The newcomers, those who had never taken part in a FTL- mission before, had to go through two weeks of training. After that, he had another couple days of leave, during which he planned to visit some places on Earth one last time. After that before there were a few more days of preparations before they would go together to the Thoria, which was located in an orbital shipyard.

The training centre was located on a beautiful Caribbean island. He and a dozen other newcomers were given a crash course in space travel. In fact, a second FTL prototype ship called "Thario" flew off. Sera and four other newcomers would fly on the Thoria, the others with the Thario.

All had studied the videos and books and assimilated the knowledge. The training camp was all about practical training. There were simulation cabinets and also real parts of the spaceship. The main focus was on the many safety aspects on board. From evacuation, behaviour in case of fire, behaviour with hull breaches and more. Secretly, Sera was disappointed that they were only practising in scenery and would not visit the spaceship at all. But the days were exhausting enough as it was. Sera couldn't remember the last time his muscles had been so sore. Of course, like everyone, he used electrical impulse training sessions to get his body fit, but his muscles were still aching. Consolation: the other newcomers seemed to feel the same.

Then it was time for the well-deserved last holiday. Sera spent it alone, feeling nostalgic as he visited his favourite places for the last time. He did not know such a feeling. Like all of us, he had been trained from childhood to see the positive in the negative, and he knew many exercises to create good emotions. He loudly thanked everyone for allowing him to experience such happy moments here, and quickly felt happy again.

And who knew for sure if the earth would not survive somehow and one could come back here later?

Earth 1 Dimension

Sola sat at the wheel of a large camper and parked it cleverly between two trees. So that it was in the shade and would not get too warm. For today was a summery day and although Sola was in Norway, the temperatures were about to climb to 30 degrees.

The strong woman grabbed her hip belt and got out, quickly spotting a boulder that seemed ideal. Without further ado, she climbed up and sat down. Just as expected, she had a spectacular view over the fjord. Below her was a small half-ruined village called Nesflaten. Sola picked up her binoculars  and in the old fashioned way she looked for her teammates. After all, she was here as a safety officer and paid to protect her colleagues. Well, nothing really exciting had happened during the two weeks they had been together and Sola had mainly served as driver and chef. And of course to set up the tents of her colleagues and to supervise the small camp they were setting up every evening.

She quickly located Mix and Leya. The two sat on a tree trunk and discussed with each other while they made notes and drew plans.

Sola heard a whirring sound and looked up, it was Jeo's drone scanning the area. Jeo himself was standing further up the road. He had seen Sola and called out loudly to her: "That look good, there's quite a few resources here that could be mined."

Sola gave a thumbs-up sign, as she couldn't shout so loudly, and sat down comfortably. Time to take a break.

Raw materials, metals, oil, natural gas, minerals - these were the biggest plague of this century, or should we say "shortage".

Since the orbital war couple of centuries, these valuable raw materials had been floating around somewhere between Earth and Mars - as finely dispersed dust that could hardly be recaptured.

The reason for this had been the last war of mankind, the largest nations had seen themselves as the sole rulers of the Earth out of an ultra-rights mania and everyone wanted to claim the valuable resources that had been discovered in Jupiter's moon Europa for themselves. The whole thing mixed with a little religious fanaticism, patriotic delusion, poor distribution of food and everyday goods and all the ingredients that have always been needed to start a war. An arms race like no other accompanies mankind, and all the raw materials and valuable metals that can be extracted in any way are packed into computer boards, electronics, weapons technology and superalloys. Most of the battles took place above ground. The war had been raging for 80 years, the surface of the earth was already badly destroyed and because of the constant satellite attacks from orbit, people had to live deep below the earth's surface.

The war would have gone on forever if the Desinova family had not intervened.

It was small family of highly bred super-intelligent test subjects. The various nations pursued genetic breeding programmes, not to breed super-strong humans, but over highly intelligent creative geniuses who could trump any AI with their creativity. The Desinova were one such group of highly bred geniuses. Most of them had spent their lives in heavily guarded research prisons, unaware of what was actually going on. Every nation had its geniuses who fed them false information and made them believe that they were acting for the good of society.

But the Desinova geniuses spread around the world saw through the game and contacted each other using previously unknown methods of communication.

For years they pretended to research the various government projects and acted as if they believed everything they were told, until one day they disappeared without a trace.

Together they had spent years building their new home in the lava caves beneath a remote volcanic island, of course with state-of-the-art scientific equipment that they had somehow procured from all over.

There were not many, maybe about 50 people, all barren. Their goal was to end the war and bring peace to the earth.

Their plan did not work.

They built some kind of never-before-seen weapon that pulverised all spaceships, orbital satellites and everything floating in space with a huge pulse. In the process, however, the Desinovans were killed and their plan to bring peace to Earth came to nothing.

Because as we know from human history: people never learn from history.

The nations formed again with hatred for each other. But since no one had any real weapons or enough raw materials to build such weapons, they agreed on a kind of non-aggression pack.

The survivors of the various nations drew precise boundaries as to which territory belonged to whom, and it was forbidden to cross these boundaries. Live and let live, each to his own. That was the motto.

The few resources that remained on earth made it difficult for everyone. Everyone tried to rebuild their cities and infrastructure somehow. Some nations were a little more skilful than others. But the level of development reached was roughly that of the 20th century. Interspersed with the technologies from the 24th century that still remained. Sola had to steer the big electric camper herself, while Jeo's drone was equipped with superior sensors that could guide EDX measurements through the ground.

The nation they belonged to was the North Nation, which included Scandinavia, the former Greenland and a large  part of former Russia. They owned the North Pole, under whose ice there was still a little raw material, enough to equip the huge, sparsely populated country with high-speed trains. And exactly, that was the job of Sola's team.

They were on a kind of road trip through the great empire, looking for the best strategic spots where to build more railway stations. Well, at the moment the route went from Oslo to Voss, then to Kiruna and to Oulu. From there to Kiya and once through the Russian tundra to Norilsk. The route was not touristy, but connected towns where there were still mines and valuable ores.

So the focus of the team was to find undiscovered ore deposits, too.

Jeo was the oldest. He was a space geologist and had spent almost 30 years in cobbled-together spaceships trying to collect the metal dusts that were around the orbit of the Earth. The project was not really successful, but Jeo had quit because he was now suffering the strong side effect of long stays in space. Osteoporosis and a bowel cancer, but just under control, were two of his problems. Space sickness was the third.  But he was incredibly valuable to the team and his expertise was enormous. Sola liked him a lot, he was like a dear uncle and she quickly bonded with him.

Mix and Leya were also involved in geology, glaciology, biology and geo-engineering. Mix also had training as a paramedic and looked after the others as a kind of "ship's doctor".

Sola herself had no real profession, she had started and never completed training in all possible fields. From mountain guide, train mechanic, programmer and naval diver. But at least she had some completed certificates. Wilderness and hiking guide, survival expert and industrial climber. Her parents were wildlife photographers and made documentaries. So Sola had grown up in the wilderness and liked to call herself an adventurer. Although her biggest adventure so far was only a ski crossing of the Lofoten Islands in winter. But at least this job was her first permanent job and so far she had a lot of fun. Just like her parents, who sadly passed away too soon, she also made small films and videos of her adventures and hoped to one day experience something worthy of a documentary film.

"Sola, Jeo, where are you?" they heard shouting on the radio. It was Mix and Leya, the two others on the team.

"Let's go back to the car and get some lunch. I think there's a storm cloud coming up anyway."

Sure enough, Sola looked in amazement at a wall of black cloud behind the mountain peaks. Where had this come from?

Surely she had thoroughly scanned the horizon for danger?

The four of them gathered on the old road.

"I parked the camper back there under the trees," Sola explained, pointing to the bend in the road.

Mix pointed back to the cloud wall, "Sola, what do you think? Have you ever seen a storm cloud like that?”

Everyone was now looking at the storm cloud that almost covered the entire horizon....

"I've never seen that, nor in movies or photos or anywhere...what is it? Lightning? No...??"

No, it wasn't lightning. Suddenly thousands of multiple tornadoes came shooting out of the cloud and reached down to the ground. It looked like they were dropping something and then quickly retreating.

"There."

Leya pointed to a spot a hundred metres in front of them. The mini-tornado had deposited a group of creatures.

"Those are huge spiders or insects!" Leya exclaimed.

“No… yes, they are monkeys!" said Jeo perplexed.

Mix and Sola said at the same time, "What is that????"

For another minute everyone stared transfixed at the creatures, no one knew what to think or say.

"Hallucinations, perhaps? The Equator Nation used to have toxins pumping in the atmosphere 20 years ago, didn't they?"

"Aliens. They're aliens. They're invading Earth!!!" said Mix in a panicked tone.

"And there's more of them." Leya pointed with her arm down to the valley where small groups could be seen everywhere.

"Shit we're screwed! Don't turn around, there's a group right behind us..." whispered Jeo shakily. Of course, no one could resist and they all magically turned to look at the creatures standing not two metres down the road behind them.

They were ape-like figures with insect limbs.

"Are they friendly? If not, I hope they kill us quickly and painlessly...." Sola muttered softly. Beside her, Mix slumped in a swoon and fell like a wet flannel in the grass of the meadow. The creatures looked at them, someone pointing a gun or scanner at them. Then they turned away and continued walking along the road.

Leya too dropped to the ground: "they didn't kill us, we're still alive" she kept muttering.

Sola stared after the figures and seriously wondered if she hadn't fallen down earlier and hit her head on a stone. They had to be hallucinations!

Finally Jeo was the first to shake everyone out of their stupor. "Come on back to the camper...let's hide."

Minutes later they were at their camper, which served as both mobile office and caravan, and got in.

"Are they just here or everywhere...who are they? Maybe we're wrong and it's a trick from one of the other nations? Hallucinogens? Psychopharmaceuticals? Who knows..."

But this train of thought was quickly shattered when Jeo switched on the big smart display. The same message blared out on all news portals and video platforms: Earth had been overrun by aliens!

Literally, there were millions and millions of them. Thousands of videos showed how they skirmished with the military, police or other fighters. The largest barracks and military posts were blown up in the first seconds of the attack. The aliens also shot a kind of red tornado at the attacking people, who then crumbled to dust. And if someone attacked them, they would shoot at any other humans they found for hours afterwards. They avenged their deaths a hundredfold. Just as many videos showed how they completely ignored people if they did not attack them.

"Shit, now that we've almost rebuilt our country, it's all over. I guess that's it for us humans."

Jeo said laconically and sat down on a seat.

Earth 2 Dimension

"Soon we will have to say goodbye to our beautiful Earth," sighed Horo, the elderly on-board psychologist. At 105 years old, he was the oldest on board, but it was precisely because of his long life experience that he had been hired.

Sera was back at the base and there was a kind of "garden party" for those who wanted to attend. A large part of the crew of the Thoria had joined, but not all. Sera would have liked to meet Darel.

Darel was the youngest, he was only eighteen. Sera is the second youngest at twenty.

In fact, Sera had wondered why they had hired him so young and not looked for a seasoned doctor. He must have been thinking out loud, because someone answered him.

The answer came from an older lady behind him: "Don't fool yourself Junior, people are anything but adventure-seekers these days. They stay in their "bliss zone" and just don't leave their comfort zone.... or didn't you gulp when you saw how cramped and crowded it will be...with shared toilets and showers? Where nowadays every house has to have at least three toilets, showers, sauna, Turkish bath and what else?  We are a very special bunch here."

In fact, Sera had been hired because no other medic had signed up, the lady explained to him.

She smiled and left Sera to greet someone else.

Sera knew this, his family had always been a bit more "adventurous". It was just very small things: Hikes with overnight stays under the stars, raft trips on homemade rafts without safety flying robots. Of course, no one frowned or made any remarks about it, because everyone should live as they saw fit. But friends rarely came along and most of the time Sera stayed alone with his two fathers and his sister on these more dangerous trips. Of course he could tell his friends about his fun in nature, they all nodded and were happy for him. But they probably did not understand him.

And now he found himself with a whole crew that ticked like him; what a fun time it would be.

Two days later he saw the mysterious lady again and again, she was walking back and forth busily and seemed to have an important position inside. Several times, however, he doubted whether it was a woman and not a man. And twice he was sure he saw her in one place and minutes later in another.

The mystery was cleared up at the last dinner.

That same evening at dinner, he met the elderly lady or gentleman who had approached him.

Furi, the chief pilot, stood next to Sera and enlightened him, "This is Kol, by the way, the captain and mission leader."

The usual clauses were quickly exchanged, the mission leader pretending to be gender neutral and indicating that he could be addressed with male pronouns. Female would be fine too, of course.

"Nice to meet you Kol, we met briefly at the garden party a few days ago" Sera said but stopped when Kol frowned in confusion and then laughed.

"Oh, that my twin clone... Sheia-Darling come over here..." he called across the room.

For a moment Sera found herself facing two Kols. "This is Sheia my twin clone. For distinction: she is more on the feminine side and wears her hair differently, I have a little tummy..." he laughed again.

Suddenly the scales fell from Sera's eyes, these were THE clones!!!

"Oh, I thought you had died years ago!" he exclaimed surprised.

In fact, the clones Kol and Sheia were world famous. Cloning was forbidden, but their "producers" had cloned them illegally. Why and for what purpose remained unknown. The "producers" committed suicide when their hiding place was discovered, and it was also clear that they were not the real producers, it was not the same DNA.

When the illegal clone children were freed from their hiding place, of course they could not be killed or punished and they were brought into an adoptive family and raised with lots of love. Basically, they could have lived a normal happy life.

But Sheia and Kol happened to be the world's best scientists Earth had seen since the Desinovans. For 60 years, they had been developing faster-than-light space travel on their own. Without their sophisticated inertia absorbers and their contribution in deep sleep technology, the evacuation could not have taken place in this smooth form. It was rumoured that the two clones had been grown from frozen Desinovan DNA.

Kol began to explain why everyone thought he was dead:

"Yeah well, the accident five years ago. Me and my team were stuck on a forested moon for two