Preserving Perfection: Self-obsessing with body augmentation has left the entire planet of Ramos without children. But to acquire children means interstellar war! (Veiled Destiny Book 2) Read online

  PRESERVING PERFECTION

  VEILED DESTINY Series

  Book 2

  Self-obsessing with body augmentation has left the entire planet of Ramos without children. But to acquire children means interstellar war!

  by JASON BOURN

  Copyright © 2019 by Jason Bourn

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Table of Contents

  PRESERVING PERFECTION

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1 – RAMOS

  CHAPTER 2 – EARTH

  CHAPTER 3 – TORVAL

  CHAPTER 4 – DESTRUCTION

  CHAPTER 5 – WINDS OF WAR

  CHAPTER 6 – WAR

  CHAPTER 7 – NO RESISTANCE

  CHAPTER 8 – FIRST BATTLE

  CHAPTER 9 – GROUND GAME

  CHAPTER 10 – ESCALATION

  CHAPTER 11 – TORVAL 2 WAR PREPARATIONS

  CHAPTER 12 – BATTLE AT TORVAL 2

  CHAPTER 13 – BATTLE REACTION

  CHAPTER 14 – NEW BATTLE LINES DRAWN

  CHAPTER 15 – THE LONG HAUL

  CHAPTER 16 – SOPHIE’S CHOICE

  CHAPTER 17 – KINGDOM COME

  CHAPTER 18 – JUMP SPEED

  CHAPTER 19 – EARTH BOUND

  CHAPTER 20 – FINDING RAMOS

  CHAPTER 21 – RETURN TO RAMOS

  CHAPTER 22 – CHILDREN MEETINGS

  CHAPTER 23 – CHILDREN DECISION

  CHAPTER 24 – RETREAT FROM RAMOS

  CHAPTER 25 – BACK TO TORVAL 2

  CHAPTER 26 – BUILDING SMALL

  CHAPTER 27 – KADAR ENCORE

  CHAPTER 28 – PERIPHERY

  CHAPTER 29 – VOLANTE

  CHAPTER 30 – LIES AND DECEIT

  CHAPTER 31 – TORVAL 2

  CHAPTER 32 – ELECTION

  CHAPTER 33 – COUP D’ETAT

  MORE JASON BOURN

  PROLOGUE

  The far-away world of Torval was thriving, whereas the equally far away world of Ramos was in chaos.

  Two ships had been dispatched from Earth, each taking their long journeys, but in opposite directions. Opposite both literally and figuratively. The humans on the ship to Torval had set up a society having an almost religious loathing, bordering on disgust, for both Virtual Reality and embedded technology. The humans on the ship to Ramos had set up a society with the same disgust for Virtual Reality, however they had fully embraced embedded technology.

  Earth had become an empty-looking world, with almost everyone going into Virtual Reality. The lure was great. The technology perfected, each person inside their virtual suit inside a virtual room, all five senses were perfectly fooled into believing the body was in a real-world setting. This enabled the wearer to be any place, doing anything, as if they were really there. Only one’s imagination limited what could be done. While many just used this utopian situation to play unlimited, ever more complex games, some used this capability individually, or in collaboration with others, to produce unimaginable art and technological feats, able to complete them much faster and with far more complexity than would ever have been possible with “real world” limitations.

  However, submitting to the virtual world came with a price. The longer one stayed in the virtual world the harder it was to exit back to the real world. With this perfected technology, while it was possible to have children in virtual reality – after all it was just a fluid transfer like the ubiquitous automatic feeding and removal of bodily wastes – there were fewer and fewer that actually chose to have children. And the few children that were born were automatically encased in their own virtual suits that grew with them, with no realistic possibility of ever escaping the suits. Every generation, there were fewer and fewer children. In short, the humans on the great world of Earth were literally dying out, and, as if in readiness for their destiny, they were already ensconced in their high-tech tombs.

  One man had foreseen this mighty fall. Elijah Toriato, on par with Einstein in intelligence and creative thinking, had created artificial intelligence software to generate future predictions with amazing precision. He had foreseen the virtual reality trap and had seen to the creation of two giant space crafts to save mankind from the death spiral of virtual reality. Each ship had gone in opposite directions in the galaxy, since their cargo was so different.

  The ship heading to Ramos contained those who had rejected virtual reality, but had embraced embedded technologies. Once accepted, embedded technology was, as predicted, just as addictive as virtual reality. At first, implants improved just vision and hearing, but as technology improved, there was almost no end to the improvements to the human body that were possible. Every joint could be enhanced, every neuron improved to be faster and integrated into an enhanced processing unit like never before. In short, once embraced, embedded technology was used to enhance every aspect of the body, which gave each person superhuman powers and extended their longevity far beyond their forefathers’.

  And yet, the civilization on Ramos was near the point of collapse. With the sole focus of trying to obtain the most and best embedded tech, there were almost no babies being born. The intensely personal focus of embedded tech almost precluded the desire for progeny. The number of natural-born children born in the last one hundred years could be counted on one hand. Artificial “test tube” babies had been grown, but since no one wanted to care for the babies, they had grown up extremely narcissistic – not able to function in the real world. And so, their civilization was on the verge of extermination. Those adults that were left were almost superhuman, but once they were gone, there would be nothing left.

  The ship heading to Torval, on the other hand, contained those who had rejected both virtual reality and embedded technologies. Everyone selected for the ship to Torval had firmly rejected both of these addictive traps. These “normal” humans, with all the strengths and weaknesses that had made Earth men and women great, had thrived on Torval.

  Torval’s inhabitants worked hard, forcing the new planet to bend to the will of mankind. Not being nearly as strong as their faraway superhuman cousins on Ramos, nor as productive and creative as their ancestors back on Earth imprisoned in VR, the humans on Torval managed to prosper with a drive that reminded some of the old American colonial spirit. With little patience for obtrusive government, these people were simple and stubborn – and proliferant. They prided themselves on their prodigious fertility rate, which was a good thing when there was an entire world to fill.

  Each of these three worlds, Earth, Torval and Ramos, and their inhabitants, was unique – but now it was time for them to meet and determine the future of the human race.

  CHAPTER 1 – RAMOS

  The five all met in a single room, which was rare for those from Ramos. The five would never have been recognized by their ancestors from Earth, even their parents wouldn’t have recognized them. For they were far more machinery and electronics than flesh and bones, having fully embraced embedded technology,
more commonly known as body augmentation.

  Normally these five council leaders would be alone, utilizing and building up even more of their enhanced selves, the way every inhabitant from Ramos preferred it. However, this was an emergency – at least they could all agree on that.

  Dorial Anton, the elected Head of the Leadership Council, started the meeting off. “Thank you all for coming together for this meeting today. I know what kind of a sacrifice it is to meet together in person, but you are all aware that we cannot continue in the manner of the past.” He did not let on that he had engineered this meeting – they may or may not find that out.

  Markus Pullran, by far the most cynical of the group, volunteered: “Dorial, it is just like you to use a disaster to further your latest campaign. But in this case, I do agree that this forces us to action.”

  He, of course, was referring to the destruction of the lone artificial reproduction facility on Ramos. This had really been their last hope to save their civilization, but its destruction hadn’t really mattered since the babies produced by the facility had turned out to be far too neurotic and narcissistic to be useful in their society. This wasn’t really the facility’s fault, which could have been corrected. Unfortunately, the blame lay on the inability of Ramos’ inhabitants to perform even the basics of parenting. No one could spare time from their favorite pursuit of acquiring and using body augmentation. All five knew that body augmentation was addictive. Even though they were the five council leaders, their pervasive use of embedded tech mirrored everyone on Ramos.

  Rheana Hintz said thoughtfully, “I suppose it really doesn’t matter in the long run. We haven’t had a successful outcome in twenty years.” She couldn’t help taking a quick look over at Delile Rozen.

  Delile was by far the youngest of the group, at age twenty. No one knew what to expect from her. Her father had been the Head of the Leadership Council for many years, until his death, and had pushed hard to get Delile into the leadership ranks. However, even he could not justify her becoming the next Head, due to her troubled nature. Delile merely sat there silently, staring hostilely at each of the other leaders.

  Of the group, Dorial was the oldest and therefore had the least amount of body augmentation. As the technology improved, each person could acquire more and more tech at a younger and younger age. Dorial was seventy percent embedded tech – meaning that he was far more machine and electronics than original human flesh and bones. And yet even Dorial’s tech allowed him to far outlive his forebears, with a life expectancy of well over four hundred years. The younger leaders were expected to live close to five hundred years.

  This longevity was all well and good, but without progeny it didn’t matter how long one lived – the real issue was that this current generation was going to be the last generation unless something drastic could be done.

  Dorial wanted to focus the meeting on the main objective, so he continued, “I am over 350 years old now and have lived a life unlike any before me. I wouldn’t trade what I have for the world. However, I think we can all agree that with less than five successful children reared on Ramos over that entire time,” he forced himself not to look over at Delile, “I believe it is now time to contemplate what to do about it.”

  Markus muttered quietly, just loud enough that everyone could hear him, “Rather ironic that our parents told us not to screw around because we might get pregnant and have kids, but now that is the thing we want most.” The group actually felt the same way, but no one was going to tell Markus that.

  Dorial went on, “Does anyone have any ideas that might help this situation? We are literally talking life or death here. We cannot continue the way we have been and I, for one, am going to be too old soon to do anything about it.” He knew he had had to do something to break this group out of its lethargy. The only thing that he could think of that might be successful was to destroy the one thing that they had all counted on, but had failed them – the artificial reproduction facility. It had been ridiculously easy to do – those poor souls were doomed to self-obsessed lives that had all crumbled into neurotic behavior and psychological mental disease where they needed twenty-four-hour care that no one was available to provide. They each literally went crazy and killed themselves by the time they were sixteen years old. Dorial had only hastened the inevitable.

  As the silence stretched out, the last member of the council, Grecian Apopov, finally spoke up. “I know that you all find me too impetuous for your tastes, but since no one has volunteered anything to help save our people and our way of life, I’ll throw up a suggestion that I know you won’t like.” He paused for effect, “If we can’t raise our own children, then we need to get children that have been raised by someone else.”

  Everyone looked around, but no one met Grecian’s eyes. He waited, but no one wanted to be associated with this idea, even though it was the only one offered. Continuing, he said, “To be clear, we need to acquire children that have already reached an age that they have acquired a sense of self, a sense of their own worth. A child needs to be nurtured full time until they reach about two years old. At that point they start to see the world as more than a series of images and perceptions and they start putting two and two together to start understanding things. By the time they reach four years old they already have a value system and start making decisions by themselves. This continues for the rest of their lives, but their value system is locked in by seven years of age. Therefore, if we could acquire fifty or more children of each sex in the four- to six-year-old range, we should be able to have them lead normal lives and still have time to adapt to body augmentation. This is the only way that I see us able to perpetuate our society and culture.”

  Still nobody spoke. The silence was made more ominous due to the many unnatural sounds produced by the myriad of augmented machinery. These sounds were so much a part of their hosts’ everyday lives that they were not registered by the individual host. However, the foreign sounds of the others, in the unfamiliar live setting, registered as a cacophony in the silence – especially to bodies that each had all manner of audible enhancements.

  Finally, Markus spoke, not being able to stand the silence. “What do you expect to do? Do you think that Earth will give away or sell their kids? I don’t think so.”

  There was more silence as each of them was lost in their own thoughts.

  Dorial finally spoke, wearily scratching his head by activating his augmented hand servos, “Surely there must be another approach. That is why I called us all together. We must be able to come up with something better.”

  Again, silence filled the room except for the odd mix of mechanical augmentation.

  In a last attempt, Dorial said, “Let’s go around the room and maybe we can get some other thoughts and build on them. Rheana, how about you.”

  Rheana said, “I agree with your assessment that we are the last generation unless we do something proactively. Delile is the only child that has managed to live beyond eighteen years old. The others all committed suicide. We cannot rely on our progeny. We must get new blood soon or our society will quietly die away.”

  Dorial had been trying to find an alternative that was more palatable, so he hurriedly said, “Grecian, how about you?”

  Grecian shook his head and said, “I agree on the problem, but I have nothing more for a solution. We could easily build warships that integrate with our embedded tech. If it does come down to it, with our total integration, body and ship, and with our augmented neural networks, we should be able to easily outperform anything that any adversary throws our way.”

  Dorian had hoped that additional thoughts would emerge, but everything seemed to be coming back to the one idea that no one really wanted. “Markus.”

  Markus’ cynicism won out over his thoughtfulness, “I think we should go and take what we need. I’m sure they won’t mind us taking a bunch of their kids.” He paused, then said, “Seriously, I don’t know what else to do. Nothing we have tried here has worked and w
e have exhausted all our ideas here on Ramos. I’d love to offer you something else, but I can’t think of anything.”

  Dorial hesitated, then said, “Delile.”

  Delile looked about, then smiled sweetly, “I think we should just let our society continue until it dies a natural death. We are obviously evolutionary dead ends.”

  Nobody responded to Delile’s statement. Her thoughts were just too close to home and no one wanted to contemplate the end of everything that they stood for.

  Everyone just sat there, waiting for other ideas that would not come.

  After waiting for almost five minutes, finally even Dorial knew that either they pursue this path or put off action. He knew that if they put off action now, it was very likely that Delile’s prophesy would come to pass. He knew that he was getting older and would not be able to take any kind of real action in not too many years. He fully believed that if something was not done now, then the others would also get too old and any hope of saving their culture would be lost.

  Dorial said, “OK, let’s put together the logistics of sending the five of us to Earth.” He intentionally did not say what they would do there. “I think that no one really wants to do this, but doing something is better than doing nothing. Our hands are tied. Let’s target a launch date of two years from now.”

  With that they started down a course that would have been previously unthinkable. It appeared that desperate men would do just about anything when survival was at stake.