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Month: December 2020

A Vignette

A Vignette

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Another piece of the Introduction for the Human Destiny sourcebook I’m writing. I intended to include a short fictional vignette, but rather than write a new piece I decided to just grab the first page or so of “Pilgrimage,” a novelette I’ve already published in that universe. Hey, it’s my copyrighted material, I can use it if I want to.

“Pilgrimage” is available at this link on Amazon.

Aminata Ndoye emerged from a taxi outside the front gate of her home, in the arondissement of Mermoz-Sacré-Cœur, on a quiet street not far from the sea. As the taxi chirped and drove itself away, she looked carefully up and down the street. Sure enough, she spotted the first of her admirers, in a little park across the street and about half a block away. Three men, standing in the shade of an acacia tree, doing their best not to be too obvious about watching her.

She turned a cold shoulder to the men, waved a hand at the gate to unlock it, and hurried inside.

“Hello, little bird.”

Aminata glanced up, surprised.

A man sat at ease in the shade of the front porch, a cup of coffee in his hand. He was big, not tall but powerfully built, still resembling the wrestler he had been in his youth. His face was long, narrow, and very dark, with close-cropped black hair and a neatly trimmed beard that had just started to show a little silver. He wore a kaftan in deep blue, and a white kufi cap. He rose when he saw Aminata, setting his coffee down on a side table.

“Father!” Aminata hurried forward to greet him. “We weren’t expecting you home for weeks. Is everything all right?”

“Fine, fine,” said Ibrahim Ndoye. He returned Aminata’s embrace and gave her a warm smile. “Everything is in place for the rainy season, and Dr. Guèye has the reserve well in hand. I decided to give myself a few days off, and Supervisor Veshati agreed, so here I am.”

“I’m glad.” Aminata sobered. “Something has happened. I only learned about it an hour ago. I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with it with only Mother’s help.”

“Oh?”

Aminata hesitated. “It’s not something that we should discuss outdoors, Father.”

Ibrahim cocked an eyebrow at his daughter. “Very mysterious. Let’s go inside, then.”

They stepped up and through the door of their house, into the cool peace of the front hallway, where Ibrahim took off his kufi and set it on a side table. Aminata found words had abandoned her. She simply opened her tablet, called up the pertinent message, and handed the device to her father. Ibrahim read it with grave attention, giving no sign of surprise except for a sudden leap of his eyebrows.

“Truly?” he murmured when he had finished, handing the tablet back to Aminata. “A gold card?”

She only nodded, overwhelmed for a moment.

Immediately after Aminata’s sixteenth birthday, her primary education finished, she had undergone a week-long battery of assessments. A genetic assay. A rather invasive medical examination. Trials of her strength, speed, and coordination. Tests of cognitive ability and academic achievement. Extensive psychological evaluations, some of them under stress.

Every human on Earth went through the same process, as he or she approached adulthood. The stakes were very high. Nine out of ten humans spent their entire lives subsisting on the austere comforts of the Citizen’s Allowance. Nine out of ten of the rest might find work, but only under the direct supervision of foreigners. Only one in a thousand would ever earn gold-card citizenship: the elite of conquered humanity.

The process had other implications as well, which Aminata took very personally.

“A gold card,” she said at last. “Our benevolent lords and masters have decreed that I may have as many as five children. Now I’ll have men following me everywhere. I think there are some outside even now, watching the house. Not to mention that I’ve already gotten dozens of messages from complete strangers.”

“Some of them will be men of good family,” Ibrahim pointed out. “Men with worthwhile jobs and real status. You’ll get the chance to pick and choose.”

“That’s not at the top of my priority list, Father.”

Ibrahim cocked a skeptical eyebrow at her. “You don’t want a family of your own? Children?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “Someday. After I’ve seen and done something that will be worth passing on to them.”

He nodded gravely, pleased. “That’s very sensible, little bird. Perhaps it’s one reason why the Hegemony assigned you gold-card status to begin with.”

“Who knows what the khedai value in humans?”

“We can make a few guesses, based on the content of the examinations. Sound genes and healthy bodies. Intelligence. Sanity. The ability to live and work with beings who look different, have different customs, even think differently.” Ibrahim smiled. “All of which you have. Your mother and I never doubted you would do well.”

“They’re breeding us to be good subjects for their empire,” said Aminata, a trace of bitterness in her voice. “Like cattle, who never get to leave the field and see anything of the real world.”

For the first time, Ibrahim gave his daughter a look of disapproval. “They aren’t bad rulers. We saw much worse before the Conquest.”

“At least then, our rulers were human.”

The Elevator Pitch

The Elevator Pitch

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Here’s a chunk of the growing draft for the Human Destiny Sourcebook. This is a piece of the Introduction, an “elevator pitch” for the book and the setting it will describe.

In the middle of the Twenty-First Century, the age-old question of “are we alone in the universe?” got a sudden and very emphatic answer.

Earth was in bad shape at the time. Global depression, ecological collapse, runaway climate change, and half a dozen regional wars – one of them nuclear – had thrown the world into chaos. Civilization seemed to be on the brink of total failure, and many wondered whether the human species itself would survive.

Then the khedai came.

The khedai were the overlords of a vast interstellar empire, the Hegemony: tens of thousands of worlds, trillions of sentient beings, all living in relative peace and prosperity. They first became aware of Earth just after the turn of the century. At once, they began planning to intervene before we humans could finish rendering our home world uninhabitable. They sent a fleet to Sol and began building the infrastructure they would need.

Thirty years later, just as a few humans were becoming aware that something strange was happening in the outer solar system, the Hegemony finally made its move. The invasion of Earth began in September of 2044, and it was over in less than six months. The khedai called it the Fifth Rimward Intervention, and they considered it a minor skirmish on the frontiers of their empire. Humans called it simply the Conquest.

The khedai were certainly imperialists, but they turned out to be surprisingly benevolent overlords. The resources of Earth and the solar system were not plundered. In fact, the Hegemony worked to rebuild shattered ecosystems, restoring much of Earth’s natural beauty and health. Humans were not enslaved. In fact, most humans found themselves enjoying a higher standard of living than ever before, without having to work for any of it. The Hegemony enforced a system of laws that most humans found reasonable, and they did so with majestic impartiality.

The khedai have always claimed that they came to Earth only to save humanity from its self-destructive nature. They claim to mean us no harm, and they express a wish to see us someday become mature citizens of the galaxy.

Even so, for two hundred years many humans have resented the Hegemony. They feel that the human species has been forced to give up its freedom and its ambitions in exchange for a false security – the life of animals on exhibit in a zoo. Dissent and passive resistance continue to the present day.

In recent years, however, there are signs that the Hegemony’s policy toward humans may be about to change. More humans have been elevated to positions of authority in the cities of Earth. More humans have been encouraged to move to the colonies on Luna, on Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system. More humans have been permitted to travel to other stars. A few humans have been selected to serve aboard Hegemony starships, as crewmen and even as officers.

It is the middle of the Twenty-Third Century on Conquered Earth, and you are one of those exceptional humans. You stand out in a crowd. You have dreams and aspirations that can’t be denied. Whether it’s a quest for a meaningful life on Earth, a career of hard work in the colonies, or a vision of exploring the stars, you have only to step up to the challenge.

The galaxy doesn’t belong to humans, but that doesn’t mean you can’t earn a place in it.