Earth's Eulogy Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 March 70 AD Texas

  Chapter 2 November AD 70 Mozambique Africa

  Chapter 3 April AD 71 Africa

  Chapter 4 April AD 71 African Villagers

  Chapter 5 May AD 71 Texas Homestead

  Chapter 6 June AD 71 African Villagers

  Chapter 7 June AD 71 Africa Paul’s Shelter

  Chapter 8 June AD 71 African Village

  Chapter 9 June AD 71 African Bride

  Chapter 10 June AD 71 Marriage at first sight

  Chapter 11 September AD 71 African Family

  Chapter 12 October AD 71 Guest in Texas

  Chapter 13 October AD 71 Indian Raid

  Chapter 14 October AD 71 Indian Chief

  Chapter 15 November AD 71 Abilio Returns

  Chapter 16 November AD 71 The Village

  Chapter 17 November AD 71 Planting Festival

  Chapter 18 November AD 71 Responsibility

  Chapter 19 March AD 72 Capturing Bison

  Chapter 20 April 72 AD Chief and Witch Doctor

  Chapter 21 April AD 72 FURY!

  Chapter 22 April AD 72 Becoming Chief

  Chapter 23 April AD 72 Leader

  Chapter 24 October AD 72 Family Problems in Texas

  Chapter 25 November AD 72 A Good Dry Season in Africa

  Chapter 26 November 72 AD Planting Festival

  Chapter 27 January 73 AD African Raid

  Chapter 28 January AD 73 First Conquest

  Chapter 29 February AD 73 School

  Chapter 30 March AD 73 Extra Large Canoe

  Chapter 31 April AD 73 Watchtower

  Chapter 32 August AD 73 Officer Training

  Chapter 33 November AD 73 Planting festival for four villages

  Chapter 34 February 74 AD Finished Boat

  Chapter 35 March AD 74 Uniform

  Chapter 36 April 74 AD Boot Camp

  Chapter 37 May AD 74 Wart Hog

  Chapter 38 May AD 74 Trade

  Chapter 39 June AD 74 A Soldiers Day

  Chapter 40 November AD 74 Planting festival

  Chapter 41 November AD 74 Paul’s Story

  Chapter 42 February AD 75 Nana

  Chapter 43 March AD 75 Growing Pains

  Chapter 44 April AD 75 Walls

  Chapter 45 March AD 75 Witchdoctors Actions

  Prologue

  July AD 2057

  Gandore sighed. His AI just informed him the Wixors had just destroyed 99.999% of the life on Earth.

  He touched his com unit, and his boss answered, “Gandore, what do you need?”

  “Boss the Wixors just destroyed most of the life on earth, there are a few creatures that have developed language left.”

  “Who?”

  “Wixors, the group of animals from sector 13,495,325. A few centuries ago they sent out dozens of probes with the hopes of those probes terraforming planets before their species sends colonists and the Earthians, from the same sector who have launched objects into space for almost a hundred years now. One of the Wixors probes spent a couple of hundred years maneuvering asteroids, meteors, and other space junk toward Earth, and they all hit Earth within the same five-minute window because the probe couldn’t figure out that Earth was already a living planet.”

  “WHAT! Those careless, stupid Wixors, I wish animals like that would show more sense. It's rare for two species to be space-faring that close to each other. Without another close species nearby, it will take them tens of thousands or more years to get to the place where they could be considered a trading partner for us. Stupid waste!”

  “Sir, I think there may be a chance to do a eulogy for the people of earth.”

  Gandore’s boss paused for a minute and then said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes sir, despite the utter devastation that probe caused, there are two Earthians who survived in a seed vault, besides you know those guys in the eulogy department rarely get a new planet to try their experiments on.”

  “Go ahead and do it then. A loss for our trade department will be a victory for the eulogy department.”

  Gandore immediately did something with his com device, and at that moment, a hologram of Gandore appeared on a little Island on Earth called Svalbard, Earth's largest seed vault.

  Gandore appeared before two humans. One jumped 4 feet away and screamed, the other balled his hands into a fist and put them in front of his face and put his feet into some sort of fighting stance.

  Paul, the one who had his hands up, dropped his hands and breathed hard and said: “You scared the crap out of me, and I almost hit you, sorry about that.”

  John, the one who jumped 4 feet, said, “How in the world did you get the vault door open after the earthquake? I figured we would be stuck down here for days.”

  Gandore said, “That wasn’t an earthquake, and I didn’t open up the vault door.”

  John said, “Then how did you get in here, and why are you wearing that mask?”

  Gandore said, “This isn’t a mask; this is my face. I am not actually in here with you. This is a hologram being transmitted from thousands of light-years away. We are talking in real-time, with my AI implant translating for us, and giving me relevant information about your culture. If you don’t believe me feel free to wave your hand through me.”

  Paul boldly walked up to him and slapped him in the back of the head, but his hand went right through it. In shock, he began to wave his hands through the rest of the hologram. Paul yelled out, “What’s going on!”

  Gandore said, “You did not experience an earthquake. What happened is that tens, if not hundreds of thousands of asteroids, meteors, and other space debris hit all over your planet in five minutes. Now you two are the only Earthians left alive.”

  John’s face went white as he said: “You must be joking, I have a wife and kids back home in Texas, they can’t be dead I just talked with them last night.”

  Gandore not wanting to waste time convincing these Earthians of what happened just showed a hologram showing the destruction of Earth and said, “Do you need to see the death of your family to believe me? If its any consolation, they would have died instantly.”

  John just collapsed and started weeping. Paul ran over to him and held him. Paul lost both his parents years ago and knew that there are no words that can help a grieving person, but human contact can help. Unlike John, Paul, wasn’t married and he didn’t have any kids or close family members, he had a degree in biochemical engineering, and his job was to travel all over the world and develop pesticides for local conditions. He never had the chance to get close to anyone. He was numb from watching Earth get flattened in Gandor’s hologram, but John was broken.

  Gandore knew this was going to take a while, so he began to play a game on his AI interface, at least he was getting overtime. He wasn’t sure if he was happy about the overtime or irritated that the grief these animals were showing was going to keep him at work for much longer than usual. He finally decided he needed the overtime and to let them take as much time as they needed, and perhaps drag his feet a little bit.

  When John finally fell asleep, Paul asked Gandore, “Why are you here?”

  Gandore said, “I am here for Earth’s eulogy.”

  “Eulogy?”

  “Yes, Earth’s story. What are the things that led to Earthians being able to develop space flight? You didn’t do that in a generation, Earth has a story, and you have a story, I would like to hear it.”

  “Is this going into Earth’s eulogy?”

  Gandore answered, “Yes, everything is. I would love to hear more about you and why you are here on this desolate island.”

  Paul said, “I am a biochemist. That’s what I majored in in college, and I minored in agriculture. Pretty much everyone involved in the world seed bank project is involved in agriculture in some way. My specialty in biochemistry is finding plants that are insect resistant and using them to develop better pesticides. That’s why I am here, this is the world’s largest seed bank, and I wanted to get my hands on some very hard to find seed samples to see if any of them have insect repellent or insect destroying properties not already in use in other products.”

  Paul Continued, “My job has meant that I travel the world a lot, and I rarely live in a place more than a year. Traveling all over the world has led me to master my real love, martial arts. I have taken eight distinct styles and am a black belt in 3 of them. I started martial arts training when I was 8.” With that, Paul began to tell Gandore his life story. Paul just figured that if there was going to be a record of humanity on some alien planet, it might as well include him and his life.

  A few hours later, Paul finished telling his story and went to sleep, and John woke up. Gandore went to him and asked, “Would you please tell me about your wife and kids.”

  John needed to talk, so he spent the day telling Gandore how he met his wife how she was so wonderful and amazing. John told Gandore all about his daughter and son, and how he and his wife chose to build a homestead to raise their children like John was raised. This way, they could be free and do what they wanted to do. John was on this island specifically to deposit some special hybrids he had developed, and he figured that since they were helping him by storing his seeds, he ought to help them with maintaining the seed vault. He then began to tell Gandore about how he had always loved to work with his hands and build things and that on a farm, it was important to be able to use your hands because a lot of tools and equipment were necessary to grow crops.

  About this time, Paul
woke up and Gandore asked the men to tell him about their world as a whole and the history of it. They figured that this would end up on some alien database and may be taught in some alien school somewhere, so they figured they might as well tell him the most detailed history of the world that they could.

  After several more days, Paul said, “Gandore I think that’s everything we know about the history of our world, thank you for listening, I hope that’s everything you need to give your people a eulogy for Earth.”

  Gandore said, “I am not taking anything you said back to my people, I listened because the longer I stay on Earth, the more over time I get. The more overtime I get, the sooner I get promoted. I am grateful to you two for prattling on and on about your insignificant backwater world, but that has nothing to do with the Eulogy. The Eulogy is where a decimated planet has few survivors, and we send them back in time to see what changes take place. We call it a Eulogy because you are taking all the history, beliefs, and knowledge with you back to your people.”

  Gandore continued, “For the last few thousand years we have been experimenting with time travel, as several high order races can affect time. We have learned enough to defend our race against someone going back and time and changing things, but time travel is extremely difficult and energy-consuming in most instances unless the world is dead. It turns out that if you go back in time, it will change the present, and thus the further you go back in time, the more things you change, and thus if you go back far enough, everything living in the present will die and be replaced. For some reason, the life energy on a world will interfere with the ability to time travel. Before your world died, the energy it would take to send you back in time is an equivalent of half the suns in the galaxy going supernova. But since your world is dead now, it only takes the equivalent of about half a supernova to send you back in time.”

  John and Paul began to realize how little this alien cared about them and their world, and John asked, “So you are sending us back in time just as an experiment?”

  Gandore answered, “Oh, no. I do not work for the eulogy research department. I work for the resource department. Simply put, there is a race much more powerful than us that no longer allows us to make stars go supernova to get to their cores, so we must interact with younger races and trade with them when they do so until that race makes them stop. Your race is extremely close to another race in a very similar position as you, only 25 light-years away. You are both in the space age. If the other race had not wiped you out, you two would have become rivals, and your two races would have likely forced each other to develop more quickly, thus getting to faster than light speed travel and supernova weapons that much sooner. But since they wiped you out, they will likely go at a snail’s pace, and we want trading partners as soon as possible. My hope is to send you two back in time so that your race can get to space sooner so your two races can compete with one another.”

  Paul thought about what Gandore said for a moment and then said, “If we get to space and develop supernova weapons, won't one of our species still be wiped out?”

  Gandore said, “Who cares, it’s not like either one of your races is intelligent. All that matters is that we get the resources we desire more quickly.”

  Paul got upset with that and said, “What do you mean we are not intelligent, we build skyscrapers, planes, spacecraft, and we can talk and communicate with each other and with you.”

  Gandore looked bored and said, “The only races that are considered intelligent are races who have faster than light travel. I am sure you have bugs that build things, many creatures that can fly, and pets you talk to who follow your commands. Until your race has faster than light travel, you are little more than a pet grade animal.”

  Paul's eyes started turning red and yelled: “If that is true, then why hasn’t another race colonized our world yet!?”

  Gandore said, “Why would they?”

  Paul looked confused for a second and said with uncertainty, “Our world is pristine, it is full of life, and minerals a great place to live.”

  Gandore laughed at that “Planets are dirty mud balls that like to surprise you, and kill you with random things like weather, floods, earthquakes, and so many uncontrolled variables. Only youths are foolish enough to try having an adventure on a planet, and only for a short while. Planets are so large it’s hard to make it pristine for your species. Unlike a spaceship that can have the optimal temperature, gravity, air mix, and many other things your species problem does not even realize is valuable for life. “

  Gandore continued explaining, “Heck, the Wixors destroyed your world because several hundred years ago they thought they were going to colonize it. But as their space habitats got better and better, they forgot about the probes they sent to terraform worlds around other stars. One of these days, if the Eulogy does not stop this planet from being destroyed some Wixor will ignore the signal from the probe that destroyed your world that says it completed its job of sending space debris to try to terraform it.”

  “As for resources, planets are awful places to find resources unless you crack it open and mine its core, until then asteroids, and meteors are much better places to mine. Well, until you find out how to make a star go supernova, then your race will be able to mine that for hundreds of thousands of years. Well, until you find out how to use the really great stuff in the middle that there is a very limited amount of.”

  “The reality is that until your race has faster than light speed travel, wiping you out is very easy. It is not uncommon for a race to colonize several stars, grow complacent and die on poorly managed space stations and ships. That doesn’t happen to races with FTL as they can very quickly come to each other’s aid. A race without FTL can die from infighting. But if a race has FTL it is very easy for the losing party to get very far away, even if the other party is much stronger, it’s only a loss of resources to the weaker species, not an extinction event. A race without FTL can die by ticking off a race that does have FTL. “

  Paul and John were stunned silent and looked bitter, and Gandore realized he said too much and continued by saying, “Look, I don’t want to see your species die like this. I have a vested interest in your success, so I am going to send you back in time so that you can change the history of your world so that the Wixor’s probe doesn’t kill everything on the planet again.”

  John asked, “Can you send me back in time to be with my family? I should be there when the end comes.”

  Gandore knew he could do that, but it didn’t help his plan, so he lied. “The earliest I can send you back to is 100 years ago, and if your family was born after you arrive, they will never be born because you showed up.”

  John started to weep again, and bitterly ask, “Does it even matter where you send us back to?”

  Gandore honestly said, “To a certain extent no. Let’s say I send you back 100 years. Then Immediately, you're killed by tripping over something and falling on a sharp stick. As your body rots, a bug that was going to irritate someone doesn’t because it's attracted to your corpse. That man goes home has sex with his wife. He releases several million sperm into her. That one change, that bug not irritating him leads to a different sperm fertilizing an egg, leading to a new human being conceived and born than was conceived in your previous lifetime. Each person that change effects will lead to a new person being conceived from that point on. That effect will engulf the entire world in a few years. Simply put, sending nearly anything back in time will kill everyone who ever lived from that point onward, by making sure different people are conceived and born, but that doesn’t matter at this point since they are already dead.”

  John said, “If my children are going to be killed by me going back in time, then why should I go?”

  “I need you two to understand this, everyone who has ever lived on planet earth is dead beside you two. This process is called a eulogy because you are bringing the history, knowledge, and beliefs of the dead to new people. Going back in time does not bring the dead back to life. Going back in time starts a new generation of people.”

  Gandore continued, “My AI says that your people have a saying, that you stand on the shoulder of giants. Paul, John, you are standing on the shoulders of Isaac Newton, Henry Ford, Jesus Christ, Your parents, grandparents, teachers, and strangers whom you have never met or heard of but have effected your knowledge, your beliefs, and how you act. When you are sent back in time, your job is to help the new generation that is born to stand on the shoulder of those giants. Perhaps, just perhaps, if you do a good job of helping people stand on the shoulder of giants, a generation will save Earth from the Wixors. But one thing is for sure; the dead are dead, so help the next generation stand on the shoulders of your giants.”