Quantum Times

Bill Diffenderffer

Description

Quantum Times is a 'hard' Syfy novel about the good and the bad that can come to our planet over the next thirty years as our technology innovations are realized. Its story lines are written from the headlines of our world's newspapers showcasing global terrorism, rogue nation states and political and economic inequality. It projects a world at risk of destroying itself with its ever more powerful technology flowing down to increasingly dangerous nihilistic leaders. Borrowing from the 'Many Worlds' theoretical physics theory, in Quantum Times our Earth is visited by "aliens" from three other worlds - all of which turn out to be 'Other Earths'. Yet these Earths are different from ours: their histories developed differently. These Other Earths are more technologically advanced than ours, particularly in their understanding of how to manipulate reality through understanding the latent power of "consciousness". They arrive just after North and South Korea have destroyed each other with an exchange of nuclear missiles. Our world is on edge. These Other Earths each have their own reasons for coming. One comes to help us avoid our potential for destruction, one comes like a pirate to first create chaos and then feed off of the opportunities presented, and one comes to further its own empire building dreams across all the Earths. What isn't clear to our political leaders is which is which. Each claims to come to help us. As the story develops, one of the Other Earths arms our Earth's terrorist groups with more powerful weapons. These are used to destroy the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and threaten the Capitol in Washington. Powerful bombs are set off in London and New York City and there is an escalation of terrorist acts everywhere.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 25 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622879755
• Langue: English

Extrait

First Edition Design Publishing
Quantum Times
Copyright ©2015 Bill Diffenderffer


ISBN 978-1622-879-74-8 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-879-75-5 EBOOK

LCCN 2015946447

July 2015

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
This Book is dedicated to Sarah
For so many reasons!
“Quantum mechanics is stunningly successful. Not a single prediction of the theory has ever been wrong….However, quantum mechanics also displays an enigma. It tells us that physical reality is created by observation, and it has ‘spooky actions’ instantaneously influencing events far from each other – without any physical force involved. Seen from a human perspective, quantum mechanics has physics encountering consciousness.” *

*From Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner (Physics professors at the University of California)
Written By
Bill Diffenderffer
PART ONE

Time: Soon
PROLOGUE

All of a sudden, there it was. Huge and gleaming in the sky. The size of a twelve story Manhattan office building. But a building that seemed to have no straight lines anywhere in its design; it was all flowing curves. And it shone, particularly in the night sky, as if its surface was all metallic and rigorously polished.
It was high up, about 20,000 feet higher than the usual airline traffic, and could be seen in the daytime without a telescope and at night it could be tracked by anyone looking up at the sky on a clear night. One had to believe it wanted to be seen for rather than some standard orbit it followed a meandering path that ensured at some point each day it was overhead all the population centers of the Earth.
Its path was unusual for another reason. When the technologically advanced countries of the world trained their earthbound and satellite based sensor arrays upon it, as they did almost instantly, they could detect no apparent thrust engines or the use of energy of any sort for the many course adjustments and its occasional acceleration and deceleration. It quietly, for it was quiet too, travelled about ignoring the laws of physics.
Perhaps in less trying times the wiser advisors to the Heads of State of the world’s powers would have successfully advised their leaders to stay calm and just observe this strange new thing that had just appeared in the sky overhead. But these were not normal times. Based on the event that had just transpired a few days earlier, the militaries of all the major powers were on full Red Alert, all at battle stations, all with weapons at the ready, fingers on triggers, nerves frayed, fear and anxiety paramount. Days earlier millions of people had been incinerated and it still wasn’t clear why or what had happened there. Though that event was clearly the result of earthbound actions, nothing seemed certain. So these were very trying times.
Nothing at all happened during the first twenty four hours following its arrival. It just meandered over the population centers silently, threatening only by virtue of its sudden existence, communicating nothing. Yet this silence was more unnerving than if it had screamed hostile intent.
So as it approached for a second time the western border of China, while it was still over Russian airspace, the Chinese leaders watched it intently, watched it with eyes that hadn’t slept since it first appeared in the sky and had had very little sleep in the week before. Watched it with minds dulled and frayed by recent disaster. And at that moment in time, that huge unidentifiable object did suddenly increase its speed and drop down in altitude. So the Chinese reacted. The missiles armed with nuclear warheads that they had kept lined up on The Object (as everyone was calling it) since they had first observed it, were fired. And as they streaked to their target, the Russians who had prepared for just such a potential action, fired their missiles at it as well. The Americans, armed and ready of course, did not react. They had computed the trajectories and knew they were not then at risk. They just watched. But their protocols had all been raced through and their fingers were poised over the proverbial buttons.
Radar systems belonging to all the advanced countries all over the world tracked the flight of the two sets of missiles. Seconds passed like hours. The destruction of The Object seemed certain. Huge in the sky though it was, it was just office building size – no match for multiple nuclear warheads. The missiles inexorably closed in on their target, visible on the radar screens and their contrails visible to the naked eye to those near enough and looking skyward.
As they approached to the last mile of separation, the blips that were the missiles on the radar screens disappeared. The contrails that were visible suddenly ceased. More seconds passed and nothing happened. Minutes passed and the silence continued. No explosions occurred. The Object maintained its charted course as if oblivious to the danger it had been in. It passed over Beijing and then veered northward on its way to passing over Tokyo. It took no other action. It completely seemed to be ignoring the destruction that it had been threatened with.
But after a couple of hours, electronic devices all over the world had their screens commandeered. Whether the devices were huge Pentagon computers, office desktops or the billions of smartphones belonging to ordinary people, they all showed the same message. It began with visual images of the missiles fired at the object and the missiles were tracked in their course and as they neared their target they were all shown to just disappear – to just pop out of existence. And those images were then followed by a single line of text – text that was in whatever language that the particular device on which it was appearing favored.
The text was in all caps: DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN. PLEASE!

*****

FIVE DAYS EARLIER
Experts believed it began with a purge by the Supreme Leader of several of his most senior advisors and military leaders in the now non-existent country of North Korea. The ones purged were deemed by outsiders to be more conservative and experienced and reasonable than the Supreme Leader was himself – that is to say they weren’t irrational and egomaniacal. The purge itself was dramatic, irreversible and undeniable: the six purgees were executed by firing squad on national television. In that ill-fated country senior leadership positions carried certain risks; risks that increased geometrically with any disagreeing with the will of the Supreme Leader who was obviously all-knowing and all-powerful, at least in his own mind.
Then things happened quickly. North Korea fired three missiles at a South Korean military installation on an offshore island that was the subject of a territorial dispute. The North Koreans had done this before and had been warned not to repeat that behavior. They had chosen to disregard that warning and this time the South Koreans fired back, aiming at the launch site of the missiles. The South Korean missiles hit their target and destroyed it.
In moments, North Korea launched more rockets, this time targeting military bases in South Korea. South Korea retaliated. The Supreme Leader did not hesitate. To his mind, what was the point of having nuclear weapons if you never used them? He was all powerful! Glorious victory over the hated mercantilists of South Korea would be his. He would be respected and revered by all! The South Koreans had tied themselves to the weak-minded and impotent Western Powers. They would respond with economic sanctions – so what! He ordered the use of nuclear weapons against Seoul. He smiled as he witnessed on his monitors the mushroom shaped cloud over that despised metropolis.
Unfortunately for the Supreme Leader he saw no more after that. A similar mushroom shaped cloud now hovered over Pyongyang, his capital city where he and many millions of his citizens instantly perished. North Korea and South Korea now no longer existed for all practical purposes.
The people of the two Koreas were not the only ones to die of course. Unlucky people from all the countries in the world who happened to be there suffered the same fate. More importantly from a geopolitical standpoint, soldiers and statesmen from China and the United States were also lost. For many tense hours following the nuclear holocaust, they glared menacingly at each other since China had been allied with the North and the US was allied with the South. But wise enough leaders did control things at the two superpowers and neither exacerbated the situation. Both were scared and in shock. Both had their military poised and ready but no aggressive orders were issued. But it was a near thing.
Over the next few days all the world leaders communicated with each other. All claimed to be horrified and that this sort of thing must never happen again. All claimed to have had nothing to do with the events that had just occurred. All were innocent and none had any culpability. All claimed to be equally shocked and appalled. All promised their deep and lasting commitment to world peace. All volunteered to help the survivors and deal with the fall-out: the economic fall-out, the political fall-out, and, of course, the radioactive fall-out. But all the communications were just words words and more words. Truth and lies blended together so seamlessly that lines of delineation disappeared,