Stars Fell on Trieste

by M. Alan Marr

  Books of the Stars Fell series:

  I

  Stars Fell on Alabama

  II

  STARS FELL ON TRIESTE

  III

  Stars Fell on Seattle

  (landing soon)

  STARS FELL ON TRIESTE

  M. Alan Marr

  PROLOGUE

  Welcome to a larger world

  Chapter 1

  LESSER KNOWN STARS

  ☆ ☆

  The night sky is a tapestry of ancient stories. Some familiar, many lost to time.

  Those heavenly pinpoints are but reminders that the stars are all around us, whether we are conscious of them or not. People reach for the stars, whether by goal or, occasionally, at gunpoint. Stars can be lucky or shining. You might have them in your eyes. A blow to the head may have you seeing them. Some, are of the Hollywood variety. And just like their cosmic counterparts, movie stars can flash and then fade away over time. Stars can be physical or figurative. No matter the kind, one can see them, but rarely ever get near them. Stars can represent ideas, social climbing, aspirations, and the idea that the unattainable is achievable.

  So, there are stars and there are stars. Dev Camelopardalis Caelestis is the latter. Billionaire, bona fide member of the jet set. Swiss bank account holder, a man with a stable of lawyers, black card, real estate, and an amply elevated penthouse. There are many billionaires in the world. Captains of industry, bankers, venture capitalists, with far more assets, and certainly more name recognition than Dev. But despite fanciful notions of visibility and net worth, there is no one on Earth quite like Dev Caelestis. The reason is quite simple: Dev Caelestis is not from Earth.

  ***

  Humankind on Earth is amazing—make that amazingly ignorant—in the ways of the universe. While almost anyone on Earth can look up and identify the familiar fixtures in the night sky, it is a precious few who embrace the idea that someone up there may actually be looking back. Sure, the naysayers wonder why, if that was the case, hasn’t anyone contacted us. The real question is, why would they? All one needs to do is turn on the news to understand why.

  Like most things in life, there is usually more than meets the eye. Oftentimes, just beyond the periphery. Orion, for example, is much more than just Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka (the three stars that secure Orion’s midsection). Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Meissa, and Saiph are all part of that familiar constellation, Orion.

  The Big Dipper (Ursa Major) is another that comfortably inhabits the heavens of the Northern Hemisphere. Lesser known is Ursa’s quiet neighbor, Corona Borealis, hiding in plain sight, right up there in our small corner of the cosmos. Its name translates to Northern Crown.

  Corona Borealis:

  Right Ascension 15 hr: 16 min

  Declination +39.712°

  ‘The Crown,’ as it’s known in some circles, is a constellation made up of seven stars along an angular half-circle. The fifth star, Gemma, is the brightest; the gem of the crown.

  Gemma is a binary blue-white star, two and a half times bigger than Earth’s sun; the companion star, Gemini is a small yellow star. Gemma has a system of planets: Prixa, Dué, Trieste, Triton, Penthar, and Sextan. Each one has its unique qualities. Prixa is close to the star, very hot, with oceans of lava. Dué, with its neon atmosphere, glows in the breeze of the solar wind. Trieste is a large planet with a stable atmosphere. Penthar and Triton are gas giants, similar in nature to Neptune and Jupiter. Sextan was the unlucky one, having broke apart during the system’s formation, and it now lingers on as a partial asteroid belt, held within a narrow region, courtesy of Penthar’s gravitational wake. Trieste and Triton exchange orbits every three or four years as their paths cross in a sort of celestial perpetual motion machine. There’s one more unique feature of Trieste: it is home to billions of Human beings.

  Constellation Oasis is another placeholder on the cosmic map worth mentioning. Located in a somewhat desolate patch of the night sky, Oasis is a small gathering of four stars: Alpha Centauri, Proxima Centauri, Barnard, and Sol; the most notable being Sol, a yellow helium star that nurtures life on a local Human world called Earth.

  In the grand scheme of things, other Human worlds are nothing new. For most residents of planet Earth, this concept is incomprehensible, either by lack of faith, or because of their faith. But for those who might be interested in the truth of the cosmos, just know this: the horizon is broader than you think.

  One other constellation worthy of mention, Triangulum. Up on the Crown, Triangulum is known as the Gateway to Oasis. Triangulum is made up of three unremarkable stars that just happen to form an arrow pointing toward Earth’s star. Triangulum harbors an aggressive, hostile, and very dangerous species known as the Yeti. The Himalayans are familiar.

  There is a reason people on Earth inherently look to the stars. There are reasons the constellations seem so familiar and have had a place in history since the beginning of, well, history. And if you trace the mythologies back far enough, you may uncover the elements of truth behind some of the things you see every night; in the sky and on the ground: Earth is most definitely not alone.

  Humans from the Crown came to Earth long ago. Need proof? Ask yourself why the jungle people of the Yucatan would build immense mathematically and astronomically correct pyramids? It’s easy to rationalize their demise, but the question remains, who were they, and why did they build structures that stand even to this day? Ask yourself why so many advanced cultures seemed to just vanish without a trace. Ask yourself how archaeological evidence of nuclear fusion could have existed in India thousands of years ago? What happened to all those advanced peoples?

  The short answer is, they were evicted. Kicked out. Run off.

  A long time ago, and far from home, people from the Crown found themselves in an untenable situation on Earth. Faced with a declaration of independence of sorts, from a majority population that, at the time, was mostly comprised of agricultural labor. The Governors—academics, doctors, engineers, teachers, security, administrators, and such—were forced out.

  That’s when the real trouble started. The distance between Earth and the Crown was a major factor. And in those days, transit time was long, uncomfortable, and downright dangerous. Not to mention the Crown (of the day) was a wildly polluted and overpopulated mess. They had not yet learned the lessons that should have been obvious.

  Bloodshed and violence began to take over on Earth, to the point where the surviving Governors had no choice but to abandon their posts and leave the populace to their own devices, exactly as they demanded. The Governors and the Crown were summarily rejected wholesale, in favor of forging a completely new way of life, free of any influence from the Academics.

  Reason had failed. Rallies turned violent. Meetings turned into mobs. Marches turned into riots. The Governors, collectively, were overwhelmed. The only way to avoid further violence was to capitulate. And that meant leaving the planet. Immediately.

  The surviving Governors escaped to the few remaining transports in orbit. Once on board they had little choice but to leave, as provisions would only last so long. And so, with regret, and relief, the Governors left Earth for good. The whole of Earth was now in the hands of a population of agricultural workers. Vital to any society, but just one of many facets that make up a prosperous community. Even today, to some on Earth, the idea of living off the grid sounds great . . . that is, until you desperately need something you don’t have.

  The unforeseen consequence of sudden, total, independence began to manifest when the power systems of the day began shutting down as their fail-safe modes automatically triggered. There were no more energy technicians. One province in India was obliterated in a thermonuclear chain reaction when the locals attempted to
restart and operate their power station.

  Detecting the explosion on their outbound departure course, the Governors turned back to help. That help was declined. The acrimony was so great, no one in the other provinces even believed the calamity in India happened at all. It was then the Governors decided to go in, with force if necessary, to secure and render inert all of the remaining land-based power stations.

  Earth was now shrouded in darkness after every sunset.

  Soon after, the population realized there were no longer any doctors. Farming is physically demanding work. Farm implements tend to be sharp, heavy, dangerous even. Accidents and injuries are inevitable. Medical supplies quickly ran out. Drugs were improperly administered, often making matters worse. Broken bones, improperly set by laypeople, led to lameness. Cuts haphazardly sutured brought about infection, which led to sepsis. Ailments ran unchecked, often worsening, and occasionally even developing into plagues. In a world without doctors, even the simplest malady can be, and usually was, deadly.

  Technology left behind on Earth ultimately failed with no one left qualified to make repairs. Eventually, the lands had to be harvested by hand-drawn sickle. It became too much for the manpower available. As lands became overgrown and over-farmed, crops often rotted on the vine before they could be harvested. Unable to turn over the crops, the lands soon became starved of essential nutrients making the growing of anything more and more problematic. Blight struck with vengeance, making the quest for viable land the driving force. Some were reduced to a nomadic existence. Others banded together. Who to trust became an issue.

  Groups, who separated themselves into ethnic enclaves, found themselves alone in their corner of the world. Humanity on Earth quickly fell into an unrecorded dark ages. Average life expectancy plummeted. Survival rates of newborns were abysmal at best.

  Generations later, when people from the Crown eventually returned, they found Earth residents were now little more than cave dwellers. The strongest had survived, but at a terrible price. Worse yet, the combination of attrition and passage of time left no one on Earth with living memory of their true origins.

  You can imagine there were mixed reactions from retrograde-Humans seeing ships descending from the sky: wonder, fright, even insanity. The overriding reaction was terror. The savagery on Earth had grown to such an extreme, there was simply no hope of reconciliation. Earth residents were prehistoric examples of little more than Human man-beasts.

  With no other viable option, it was decided to leave Earth alone, once again, and return when, and if, its residents ever grew up. Would these retrograde-Humans advance to the point where their brains would re-formulate language? Would that language be something entirely new, or was the ancient tongue of their forebears somehow intrinsically preserved and coded in their DNA? Likewise, for the ineffable qualities of logic, emotion, and imagination. Time would tell.

  The Extra-Sociologic Disaster that was Earth became a multi-century study. To that point, and for centuries since, the Crown has sent observers to gauge the progress of their less-fortunate kinsmen in hopes of eventually mending ties. It was widely thought no one at all on Earth would survive the ordeal, but Humans—even retrograde Humans—are resilient and resourceful by nature. Survive they did. And thrive . . . well, that’s subjective. Humanity on Earth began a long cyclic of rises and falls. The hope has always been that Earth residents would reach a point of sustainable enlightenment.

  It took time. And despite their many faults, Earth residents began making progress. The Dawn of Civilization showed the first great promise. Philosophy and mathematics had taken root. But, as in most times in Earth history, any advance is usually met by advances in barbarism. And the introduction of space-faring observers impacted normal life as well. The unintended consequence being the locals had to figure out a way to quantify and make sense of it.

  The Greeks did so by deifying these observers, and though perhaps appearing god-like, their ‘titans’ were just ordinary men and women possessing extraordinary knowledge and technologies. The same thing happened with the Romans. But as had happened before, cultures fell prey to war and were ultimately undone.

  Much later, the Industrial Revolution was indicative of a society on the verge of greatness. It was at this point in its history Earth began conforming to mathematical models of technical advance. Following that model, the Crown could expect Earth residents to achieve an order of magnitude about every thirty years. As such, a thirty-year interval of observation was established.

  The most recent observation mission took place in 1985. Big hair and the beginning of a computational age that would ultimately change life on Earth. Fast-forward to the very early hours of the equinox on March 20, 2015, when the current Observer, Flight Commander Dev Caelestis, arrived in Alabama to begin his year-long mission to Earth.

  Dev discovered straightaway key societal components: iPhones, Internet, GPS, global news, social media, and breakthroughs like never before. He also discovered the dysfunction of the US Congress, racial and theological biases, and internal threats that very nearly rival the outside threats to this world no one on Earth is aware of.

  Earth’s economies have long presented complications for Observers from the Crown. Piecemeal bartering and trade of precious metals for currency, lodgings, and goods worked well in the past, but the post-Industrial Revolution world rendered that practice outmoded.

  Dev’s grandfather, an Observer in the 1920s, solved the currency problem once and for all by depositing a sizable shipment of gold into a Swiss bank. The California Gold Rush was recent enough and served as a perfect cover story. The gold actually originated from Constellation Hercules. Earth’s financial system’s practice of compounding interest made that deposit worth over a billion dollars as of today.

  That Swiss account allows Dev the freedom to operate in the world as he sees fit. Wealth, he realized, also offers a sort of insulation to many cultural idioms he’s unfamiliar with. For some reason, Earth residents seem to associate wealth with formality and even eccentricity. Dev can actually operate on the formal level easier than the informal, due to his lack of understanding of slang and catchy buzzwords that seem to prevail in current society. Eccentricity is somewhat of a given for him as well.

  Present-day metropolitan Earth is also an expensive place to live. Money buys security and opportunity. The freedom to travel at will is an important part of his mission, and Dev quickly discovers the private jet is his preferred mode of travel.

  Though Dev’s mission initially landed him in Alabama, he concealed his mission vessel in a lake on privately owned property. The owners of that lake resided in Atlanta. Dev relocated and was eventually able to secure the purchase the Alabama property, ensuring his ship would be safe and secure for the duration of his mission.

  It was in Atlanta that Dev formed a friendship with Chaz Ronaldi, a Triad Airlines 767 pilot and former Naval Aviator. They bonded quickly and spent a lot of time with each other. Chaz mistook something Dev said early on, making the incorrect assumption that Dev was Canadian. That served as good cover for Dev who, to this day, has trouble with the colloquialisms and slang unique to Earth. Dev, being ‘Canadian,’ further insulates him from unique American customs and verbiage.

  Their friendship grew, and Chaz partook in Dev’s travels, but there was an underlying dissonance arising from the fact that Dev is wealthy and Chaz, comparably, was not. Dev, in a moment of questionable judgment, used his advanced technology to influence the Thrillions! lottery system, fixing the results in Chaz’s favor. In short order, Chaz found himself sole winner of a four hundred million dollar jackpot.

  All told, life on Earth was far more enjoyable for Dev than he imagined. His mission proceeded well, especially with Chaz on hand providing local context. The lottery winnings (two hundred twenty-seven million after taxes) meant Chaz could take some much-needed time off from the airline business and actually enjoy himself. It also meant he was on more equal financial footing with Dev, who thinks nothi
ng of chartering large private jets and occupying the upper floors of hotels, to say nothing of the penthouse he purchased for his stay in Atlanta.

  ***

  Six months into his mission, Dev was suddenly recalled. This unwelcome and startling development was disturbing, mainly for Chaz, who witnessed Dev’s reaction to the news. Dev tried using the guise of a failed line of computer code as the reason for his shock, but Chaz knew it had to be something far more serious. When, in the middle of all this, Dev suddenly said he had to go to his lake in Alabama, Chaz feared the worst. None of it made any sense. For cosmopolitan jet setter Dev to suddenly drop everything and drive four hours to a rural and vacant lake property in Alabama, something had to be seriously wrong. Chaz intervened and went with him, causing another stressful situation beyond Dev’s control.

  But it was an untimely bear attack that forever changed Chaz’s understanding of his friend, and the cosmos . . .

  Dev pulling a gun was not the issue. The issue was that Dev’s handgun turned out to be a high-energy x-ray weapon that vaporized the advancing bear completely, and only a few inches away from Chaz. Later that same night, Dev tried explaining everything to Chaz. Yet, despite Dev’s energy weapon, the entire topic of conversation still rang totally unbelievable. It wasn’t until Dev’s ship rose out of the lake that Chaz fully believed his story.

  Further complications ensued. The x-ray discharge from Dev’s weapon registered on a US defense satellite, and two Army helicopters were dispatched from a nearby base to investigate. Dev had exactly seven minutes to get out of there. That’s how Chaz found himself on the adventure of a lifetime. An adventure with very real consequences, a very real threat to Earth, and a very unorthodox solution to the problem.

  The entire series of events are chronicled in book one of the series, Stars Fell on Alabama.