The Centauri Conspiracy

by G Russell Peterman

Prologue

  A Fourth Millennium Remembrance Commission Project:

  How did humans scatter over the distant planets people ask? How did it happen that humans today stand on other planets many light years apart and call different stars “the Sun?” Most people are fascinated by these two questions and the first humans' story. Hundreds of historians and government-contract writers have written about these same questions in great detail and retold the story many times.

  The Fourth Millennium Commission asked me in May of 4229 to write again the old Bakman story. I declined . . . said I was too busy.

  The next month I was ordered to retell the Bakman story. The order was in pursuant to an official United Nations Council request dated June 11th of 4230. How could I refuse?

  My retelling is to be part of a Fourth Millennium Remembrance Collection, a free computer use source. This donated public domain story will be housed in the Central U.N. City Library Computer under five titles: (1) Bakman and the Theft of New Horizons, (2) The Original Deep Seed Project, (3) The Centauri Conspiracy, (4) The OpDyke-Bakman Conspiracy, and simply (5) A or A.

  I agreed to this order if I could tell it using Bakman family resources. How could I refuse such a request?

  Yet, it is another rare Bakman family honor to be allowed to tell our family’s story and have it available for free public use. The order required me to use one of the five titles on their list and I understood why each one was chosen. I used title number three.

  Chronicler Report Part one: History

  Now, I ask for your patience with my poor efforts at retelling this very old story. A story everyone knows. My primary sources are Bakman family documents, U.N. records, and official documents of the city government of New Dallas. All others sources were considered secondary sources. I only use secondary sources if several sources agreed and do not contradict primary sources.

  I hope you will forgive an old historian’s transgressions. Summarizing seems to be our occupational curse.

  It is common knowledge that our Modern World came into being after the Middle Age finally ended. The Middle Age of History was an unusually long destructive two thousand years—a time of wars, iron, steel, pollution, aluminum, plastics, electricity, and fossil fuels. Our new age, the Modern Age, had its first tiny beginnings after the Agreement of 2336. It punished by total isolation any warring actions by a city or nation or region. In 2336 eleven of the strongest nations agreed to join into a single unit and bring order to a chaotic world. Their successful efforts were an expensive and destructive five hundred years, an age somewhat like the dark ages that started the Middle Ages.

  Our Modern Age officially started in 2883 when all nations agreed that the United Nations was the one and only world government and all would use a common official language, money, and laws. The only religion practices allowed where those not disruptive to the general order. These early years were a time of peace, of rapid population increases, and of persistent food shortages.

  Bramlich Kerstin solved the food problem. Kerstin believed, “If all the people in the old United States had lived in skyscrapers, as tall buildings were then called. Then, all their people could have lived in just one state, and their food and fiber could have been grown in the rest—the other forty-nine. He also pointed out how inefficient private land ownership was with its many building sites and small fenced field. Bramlich often claimed we had more than enough fencerow-land to make-up more than three average sized states.”

  Numerous heated arguments, detailed statistics, and scientific studies about this new radical idea proved Kerstin partially wrong, but did lead to cities of tall building. Each tall building was as large as an old city-block, none shorter than twenty levels or taller than thirty-three, according to U.N. directives. All of these wide and tall buildings were designed to be connected on every third level by bridged roadways called "Causeways." This new and radical construction style did improve traffic flow problems and reduced fire dangers in high-rise buildings.

  When completed people from the surrounding areas moved into these new cities of tall buildings, the old concept of individual land ownership ended on the planet. Owning a copyright, trademark, patent, licensed process, building, business office space, business vehicles, or apartment were the only individual or corporate ownership allowed. In the vacated areas all old roads, bridges, rail lines, energy lines, airports, suburbs, farm buildings, villages, towns, remains in cemeteries were cremated and ashes scattered, and old cities were leveled and/or removed. All asphalt, plastics, and metals used were reclaimed where practicable. Huge canyons, depressions, and gullies were filled to level agricultural use again. The only form of land transportation allowed was hydrogen, solar, or battery powered magnetic field (anti-gravity) hovercrafts of all sizes and shapes.

  All land suitable for agriculture, all mineral resources, and timber areas were controlled by U.N. Unit and Area Managers. All labor in these productive areas was preformed by mechanicals. Any and all unused areas were allowed to return to nature and wild life restocking effort was undertaken.

  Exciting new medical breakthroughs helped correct most genetic birth defects. To reduce population pressures, a worldwide order was issued by the U.N. that a woman could have only one child without a license. Order 1112A-98321 had a penalty: a two year imprisonment term for both parents of a second child and their children given out for adoption to childless couples. The law did help ease population pressure in two generations. The order to limit births gave rise to an increase in illegal births and a lucrative unlawful adoption market to the childless.

  At first this criminal market was dominated by surrogate implantation of embryo. These early attempts were too easy for the state to find, punish, and control. Embryonic scientists and laboratories failed efforts led to the development of Pach Wilber Jent’s Artificial Cloning Chamber—an artificial womb. It was first used on animals legally—then illegally adapted for humans.

  Tissue-clones, exact copies, only lived half as long. Tissue cloning gradually fell out of favor. Many men and women began harvesting their eggs and sperm for all sorts of legal reasons in licensed fertility laboratories. Individuals argued for collection and preservation. It was allowed because a person might due to declining health have a need for his or her own.

  Besides fully legal personal reasons there was one other—an illegal sale. Both egg and sperm commanded high prices on the illegal clone market as did an illegal black market trade in U.N. Computer birth certificate entries. In 2976 the U. N. declared all illegal (unlicensed) births to be clones.

  During those early years of our new world of tall buildings and open spaces we made considerable use of a mechanical workforce. Mechanicals labored everywhere in cities, in private living areas, and on production projects. Some writers wrote that the planet’s largest business was the construction of, making parts for, transportation of, and repair of mechanicals. Many say that it is still so.

  It was in this time that the first off-planet scattering of humans outside of our solar system took place. The U.N officially labeled it "Deep Seed." Most historians called it "The Centauri Conspiracy" or "The OpDyke-Bakman Conspiracy" for the unsanctioned plan to place humans on planets in a solar system other than our own. Other popular writers just called it "New Horizons" after the name of the first spaceship. However, most average people conversing on causeways or shops will simply say “Bakman” to mean off-planet populations. Or, to convey while texting the thought of going to Cen A, Alpha Centauri, use a single underlined capital letter "A" or just "A."

  Many serious people want our calendar reset at a new zero. A declining number of writers advocate for zero being the beginning of U.N. rule in 2883. Most serious writers of planetary history generally agree on a starting time of the original Deep Seed Operation of colonizing another planet. They all agree on the second or third decade of the second century after 3000. The largest group wants our new calendar started in 3233 with the flight of New Horizons as zero.

  A
nother growing group, including a long list of historians and politicians, want a nice easy to remember number as the starting date for zero. Members of this group argue amongst themselves for a renumbering of time forward and back by placing zero at the random date of January 1, 3220 or 3230. In these last two groups individuals do shift back and forth between these two dates. Yet, taken as one they seem to be winning the argument at the present.

  This writer, however, would not recommend and vote for a renumbering on either of these suggested January dates. Unlike the growing split group, I choose Friday at 10:18 in the morning on the third day of March 3217 in New Dallas as the beginning—as year zero. I choose the moment of Bakman’s first arrest; it is where I start my retelling of his story.