The Colonists

by Keith Fenwick

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  Cast of characters

  Bruce Harwood - New Zealand farmer. Abducted by aliens from the planet Skid in the first novel of the series.

  Sue Harwood (nee Clark) - Travel agent from Portland, Oregon. Abducted at the same time as Bruce. Bruce and Sue marry at the end of the second novel, then separate early in the third.

  Little Bruce - Immaculately conceived son of Sue. Bruce is probably the real father.

  Transcendents - Indigenous Skidians who have uploaded themselves to a galactic version of the cloud. Bruce is never sure he is in communication with one, or multiple, Transcendents.

  Skidians - Current inhabitants of Skid. Their ancestors, untold generations removed, are human.

  Main Processor Unit or MPU - intermittently unreliable artificial intelligence developed by the Transcendents to look after their interests on Skid once they uploaded.

  Bert - An autonomous sub routine of the MPU.

  Myfair - Skidian security operative and space ship commander involved in Bruce and Sue’s original abduction.

  Arnold Rumbold - Myfair’s brother, previously exiled to Earth. Arnold found fame as an NBL Basketball star before attempting to assassinate President Mitchell, as Mitchell addressed the UN General Assembly. Rumbold disappeared from his cell in a high security Federal jail, fuelling conspiracy theories related to the end of President Mitchell’s presidency.

  Leaf - Skidian security operative now domiciled on Earth and not interested in returning permanently to Skid. Partner of Myfair.

  Lake - Chief Mati of Skid. Appointed by Bruce when Myfair decided to vacate the position.

  Trevor Todd - Former proprietor of a Kiwi ethnic bar in Portland, Oregon. Bruce’s best man, and now love interest for Sue.

  Dick Todd - Trevor’s older brother. App developer and project manager. Part of the team who manage President Chump. Dick knew Bruce before he was abducted and had suggested he visited his brother Trev in Portland where he was reunited with Sue.

  Colonel Wisneski - Former head of security at the US Air Force base where Myfair landed looking for somewhere to wait for a heavy repair crew after a mishap with his space ship.

  Ngaio Tauroa - Bruce’s adolescent love interest and daughter of his father’s best mate and neighbour. Bruce’s future wife.

  General Smith - Originally tasked with protecting the Earth from the killer asteroid headed in the planet’s direction. Now the key figure in the team managing President Chump on a day to day basis.

  Doctor Bill Roach - Civilian leader of the team who initially identified the killer asteroid and brought the information directly to the attention of the Presidential Science Advisor. Current whereabouts unknown.

  Automedon - Originally designated a rogue asteroid by astronomers, with the potential to devastate earth and cause a major extinction event if it hit the planet - Automedon was nudged into orbit about earth by the Transcendents to be used as a staging post to facilitate the uploading of newSkidians to Skid.

  Doctor Shelly Shaw - Assistant to the Presidential Science Advisor. Love interest of Dick Todd

  Mrs Pratt - Elderly neighbour of Sue who becomes a nanny for Little Bruce. Once tried to shoot Bruce believing he was an intruder.

  Mitch - ex President of the United States who dies shortly after the election of President Ronald D Chump.

  Ronald D Chump - Populist President of the United States. Bruce and the Transcendents now have control of American domestic and foreign policy. The team is possession of incriminating personal information which Chump’s minder, General Smith, utilises as a smokescreen to curb Chump’s more extreme campaign promises to strike a more middle of the road approach in US and world politics, without revealing their real source of control.

  Bob Shilling – President Chump’s Vice President.

  Cyril and Mavis Harwood - Bruce’s parents.

  Rangi Tauroa - Father of Ngaio. Neighbour and best mate of Cyril Harwood.

  Fleshies - Derogatory term used by the Transcendents to describe the organic bodies acquired and nurtured for them to download into if required. Unlikely to be utilised unless the end of the universe is nigh, but sometimes used for joy rides. The Transcendents are firm believers in multiple redundancy.

  indoSkidian - Descendants of the original humans uploaded to Skid

  newSkidian - New terminology used to describe the more recent uploads to Skid, a more diplomatic term than ‘fleshie’ originally employed by the Transcendents.

  Cop, Can, and Punch - Bruce’s team of working dogs.

  Mars for You Foundation - The original foundation was developed to send people to colonise Mars funded by a reality television program. Later exposed as a fraud and Ponzi scheme. The MFY concept is resurrected by Bruce and the Transcendent as a front to provide humans to re-populate Skid.

  Mars for You (MFY) Program - revitalised program with a mission to send humans to Mars.

  Martian Reality Show - Reality TV show developed to provide funding for the MFY program.

  Mars for You candidates or MFYers. Pool of candidates for the MFY missions. Most MFYers believe they had little chance of joining a colonization mission to Mars or the moon but are keen to be involved in the selection process and then move on with their lives after an all-expenses paid holiday in the South Australian desert. Most candidates don’t read the fine print in their contracts.

  Morris Thwaites - one of the first MFYers to set foot on Skid. Uploaded ahead of almost everyone else when he broke through the conditioning the MPU had imposed on all the MFYers at the Woomera MFY facility. Thwaites had begun to question whether the program had the capability to lift people into space and develop a colony on Mars.

  Janice Chang - English astronaut. Part of the first crew of MFYers to be uploaded to the Martian colony settlements. Janice was to be one of the first humans to set foot on another planet since the last Apollo mission in 1972 - Apollo 17 (after Bruce, Sue, Ngaio, Little Bruce, and Wisneski). She had been a real trainee astronaut in a British program cut through lack of funding after Brexit.

  Robert Cameron - Janice’s boyfriend and fellow crew member.

  Bill Sugden - Another member of the first MFY crew to land on Mars.

  Muhammad Issa Alomar - a member of Isis, posing as a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, who infiltrated a group of asylum seekers and ended up in a Greek refugee camp via Turkey. He had been processed as an asylum seeker due to his service in the Syrian Army, and his refusal to participate in attacks on fellow Syrians. He is awaiting transport to a western European country who has accepted him.

  Zarif Khan - Economic migrant from North Africa. Left his homeland in search of a better life after his family was killed by a bomb explosion.

  Mahmoud Jibril - From the same village as Zarif Khan. Married with a teenage daughter and son. Formerly ran the village café. More by accident than design ends up in the Skidian senate, becomes a senator and eventually Lake, the Chief Mati’s deputy. He represents newSkidians.

  Lieutenant Marco Zanzini - Captain of the Italian Coast Guard Patrol ship the Sirio, who locates the empty hull of a people smuggler ship after it has capsized. Zanzini is initially and unfairly branded as incompetent and accused of dispatching the crew and passengers by gunfire when no bodies are located. Arrested on charges of arranging a massacre, he is released once the crew of the Sirio’s helicopter release unofficial helmet cam footage of their initial pass over the shipwreck, showing there were no people in the water when they arrived.

  Omar Ali - trouble maker and wannabe terrorist who has the distinction of being the fir
st refugee rejected by the Transcendents autonomous selection system in the processing centre built inside Automedon. From the same village as Zarif and Mahmoud.

  Skidian User Guide (SKUG) - User Guide developed for all newSkidians by Janice Chang, Morris Thwaites, and others to help the newSkidians to integrate into Skidian society. Intended to be developed into an app and read off a Book supplied to all newSkidians. The SKUG is never complete and there are many critical components missing. There is little thought given to version control and the supply of tablets is initially compromised.

  Stig Blomquist - MFY software architect who along with Bill Frisk attempts to hack into part of the MPU’s network infrastructure with the aim of returning to earth. Later enlisted by Bruce to set up better security systems for the MPU.

  Bill Frisk - Stig’s former team leader who assisted with the hacking of the MPU. Thinks he knows everything.

  Skidian population post upload - Two thousand odd adult indoSkidians, fifty thousand and thirty-nine migrant uploads and a similar number of MFYers.