Children of the Sun
Voted a Buffalo News "Best Beach Read" in 2004!
Published by Aventine Press LLC, ISBN: 1-59330-061-1, Pages 280, Retail Price $16.95 Special Summer Beach Read Prices in effect!
"Eerily prohetic." - The Union Sun & Journal
"Up there with Grisham and Patterson." - The Journal-Register
About the Book: In 2022 omniscient technological networks initiated to enforce global security and resource conservation are about to turn murderous due to assaults by ferocious solar storms. When a muzzled astrophysicist posts a dire warning to the Internet, a few cynics take the message seriously, hurriedly disconnecting their homes and businesses from GSAC control systems. The rest of mankind, blissfully ignorant of impending cataclysm, tends its daily affairs -- except for a special few. Forewarned through terrifying visions, confused and as yet alone, these unique individuals stand in the dawning hours of a once inconceivable destiny… survival amid astonishing evolutionary change.
Read the Prologue...
Steve Corwin held his breath as the partial image of a spectacular solar flare slid into a document tray not far from his left elbow. Stunned by its mass, heart racing with fear, his fingers flew across his keyboard, located the imaging program and increased its photographic field by twenty-five percent. With a second uneasy glance at the photo in the tray, he changed that increase to fifty percent, then shouted, "Incoming!"
Within seconds, backing alarms began to beep as five wheeled-chairs zoomed across the floor of the observatory. A college intern had originally installed the alarms, complete with blinking orange hazard lights, as a prank. Funny at the time but, given the sun's escalating upheavals over the past week, speeding chairs had become an actual hazard and the solar researchers had come to rely on them to avoid mid-dome crashes. Upon screeching stops, ten feet slapped to the floor and five wary faces peered over Steve's shoulder.
Seanna, a third year assistant whispered, "Holy shit… Where's the rest of it?"
As a second image slid into the tray — one that filled most of the page — Steve pointed to it, answering, "Right there." The newly calibrated distance measurements aligned at the top and sides of that photo prompted a flurry of awed comments, few fit to repeat in polite society. When those died down, Steve said, "It appears our existing categories just became obsolete. Anyone care to take a stab at classifying this mother?"
Iggie, an Einstein look-alike of forty and Steve's right-hand man, was shakily fingering his bushy mustache as he offered, "At this point, nothing comes to mind except a very famous lizard. If normal flares were geckos, Steve, this one would be Godzilla."
Steve tried to chuckle but was too terrified to make it sound real. He'd worried for the safety of humanity all week, and now he wondered whether the star itself could survive internal upheavals of this magnitude. Were they witnessing the death of the solar system? Knowing his whole staff was way past nervous and jerky, Steve left that question unvoiced. "Seanna, write Iggy's comparison in the margin above the distance measurements and send it off to The Global Security Advisory Committee."
Seanna immediately bent forward and grabbed up the image, but took a second to look Steve in the eye. "You're serious?"
"Sure am," Steve replied. He simply had to find a way to convey the extremity of his concern. These recent solar flares had started off as huge, quickly became enormous and, as of today, were firmly within the realm of hair-raisingly humongous. How else should a monster be categorized? Besides, he was thoroughly frustrated, needed to vent, and figured he'd best aim his temper at the right target. Every day for the past week he'd sent the GSAC dire predictions, backed up by every scrap of hard data he'd been able to compile, and every day for a week he'd received the same stupid reply, "Stand by. Will advise."
Stand by. That's what the rest of the world was doing right before The Suicide War; aptly named as the participating Mid Eastern nations -- and their unfortunate neighbors -- had ceased to exist; in their place a dead zone now only viewable from 30,000 feet aloft. The horror of that minutes-long conflagration had prompted the formation of the GSAC; its current members world leaders, the most intelligent, innovative, security-conscious statesmen to ever walk the planet. So, how could minds of that caliber fail to grasp the facts of this impending cataclysm and act? Steve knew that within days any data stream sent would, upon receipt, resemble something his dumb dog might manage to peck out while slobbering its way across a keyboard strewn with Kibble. He also knew this newly-wired world wouldn't survive the ensuing binary madness! Stand by… He shook his head but couldn't fathom the reasoning behind the ludicrous command.
Steve stared at the fish-eye lens and the microphone on his computer terminal, grimaced at whichever GSAC snoop was currently monitoring the activity inside research center, then announced, "Road trip, Iggy. We need caffeine and sugar."
Out in the parking lot, Steve waved at the flunky who'd been following him around all week. When the guy waved back, he muttered, "Man, they don't make secret agents like they used to."
Iggy slid into Steve's van. "No need. He'll go back to his paperback novel and let the GPS unit track us to and from the donut shop -- just like he did yesterday."
"I bet he's reading Nixon, The Man for the tenth time."
"Probably. And speaking of paranoia, are you sure this van isn't bugged?"
"Yes, I checked it out. So let's talk about the global situation first. We're in deep shit, Iggy. Thanks to a twenty-two-year-old war on terrorism the entire planet is wired. Computers monitor and control everything from how much oil comes out of the ground to the temperature inside our homes and apartments." He pointed toward the sky and said, "Satellites, launched into the highest geosynchronous orbits possible for security reasons, collect and relay all that information from one computer system to another, collate it, analyze it and make adjustments to keep all us human-types safe, comfy and well-behaved. But you and I know what's going to happen when this solar storm hits earth."
"Yeah. Three days from now, if those satellites fry and manage to stay in orbit, the data streams we've put so must trust in will turn to garble. Binary madness will spread throughout our computer systems creating uncontrollable chaos. If the satellites don't stay in orbit, the data streams will cease entirely and our ground-based computer systems may interpret that as a security threat and take defensive action. Put plainly, our manmade systems turn into weapons of mass destruction -- if those don't also fry first. The last if part would be a blessing."
Steve shuddered at the possibilities. The sun, essentially a nuclear blast furnace, was suffering a terrible case of indigestion. During any active solar cycle a single solar belch, or flare, generates energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs going off at once. Those energized atomic particles hurtle through space at one and one half million miles per hour and when they smash into the earth's magnetic field immeasurable amps of electricity and high levels of radiation play hell with man's inventions. As if that weren't enough, a pressure pulse filled with killer electrons and even more destructive X-rays follows. "God only knows what an unholy mess our Godzilla will make, Iggy. The dazzling technological advances made in this millennium may turn around and bite us in the ass."
Iggy's voice rose with skepticism as he asked, "You think that issue is still in doubt?"
"No," Steve sighed. "Like Seanna, I was whistling in the dark."
"I just hope our fearless leaders aren't doing the same thing. We can prove that a cloud of destruction more than thirty-million-miles thick is tearing toward earth and we have empirical evidence that it will cause chaos throughout these shiny new systems. Yet, they're still up and running. I can't understand why the GSAC hasn't shut them down."
Steve shook his head and fought panic as he admitted, "Know what I think, Iggy? I think the systems are too sophisticated to be shut down on short notice. It's the paranoia thing again: Redundancies and heavily encrypted codes were built into every one of them to guard against malicious tampering and inadvertent error." His voice dripped sarcasm as he added, "After all, our lives depend on them."
Iggy hung his head. "Sweet Jesus, we're gonna get creamed."
Yes we are, Steve thought. He then wondered whether there would ever come a time for blame. If so, would his head be on the chopping block? As late as last week, words like elated and honored would have described Steve's feelings regarding his appointment as head of a major solar research facility -- after all, in astrophysicist-years he was a pup at only thirty-two. But now other words like patsy, scapegoat and fall guy were ringing truer and Steve came to a new conclusion. He'd gladly give the damn job away.
He pulled into the donut shop parking area, shut off the engine and turned to face his friend. "Iggy, I'm not going to sit around the dome patiently waiting for this solar storm to impact, and I won't stand idly by and watch my wife and my kids turn into crispy-fried former-human beings. I'm going to get them out of harm's way. My dad left me a big hunting lodge up in the mountains of
He reached into his pocket and gave Iggy a crumpled, overstuffed envelope. "I made maps for you and the rest of the crew. Once you leave the highway you'll be on old logging trails so you'll need to follow landmarks. You're all welcome to stay as long as it takes."
Iggy's brow wrinkled making him look ages older. "Steve, you're being followed, your phone is tapped, there are GPS units in each one of our cars and surveillance cameras on every street corner. It's impossible to disappear these days, so none of us will be fooling the GSAC agents, particularly you."
"Open the envelope." Steve had also included instructions on how to disable the GPS units. As far as the surveillance cameras went, well, he figured the old ways were best; grease, crud or mud on their license plates would work long enough to get into the mountains -- and out sight.
"I didn't know a GPS unit had a backup battery," Iggy commented absently.
"I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to. Just make sure you don't remove it until after you've cut the power to the car battery or the damned thing will send up a distress signal."
"Hard to miss that part, it's written in bold letters." Iggy fidgeted as he looked up from Steve's instruction sheet and asked, "Do you really think it's right to leave? I mean, who's going to operate the equipment at the dome in case these coronal mass ejections get worse?"
"If those internal upheavals get any worse, I don't think we'll have a sun to worry about, Iggy. Game over."
"Knock that shit off, Steve. You're creeping me out."
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