On the Horizon

By Lee Willard

Until now the people of Reddend do not know they had been brought here by a gateship four thousand years ago, because that civilization has since collapsed. They know they first appeared on the planet at a place called Mount Ararat on the isle called Armenia and believe that all history before that has been lost. They do believe that science and the Bible pretty much agree. When Bainee reads some information retrieved from an ancient magic crystal that says the stars seen from the dark side are all suns and Reddend is a tiny backwater world beneath notice by the galaxy, it triggers a lot of thought about their place in the universe and their place in God's eye. It kindles a new desire on her part to reconcile the teachings of Jesus and the works of Brancettrabble.

It is my sincere hope that the dilemma Bainee faces will be faced by us all in the relatively near future, so this may be on our horizon. It probably won't take the same form since the Species Immunity Complex is probably a much greater feat of genetic engineering than prolonging youth thru pills. But any technological preservation of youth is going to bring about religious problems. Even if we are not using sex as conjugation, as was required to explain the 'free love' aspect of the hippies, we will still find it difficult to stay with the same person century after century, and we will easily get to the point where we forget if we were ever married or not, as one of the characters in this story does.

This story occurs in the years 9211 and 9212, the latest I’ve done so far. There is considerable sexuality in it but I don’t feel it is so explicit as to warrant an ‘adult’ warning. This story is completely free of violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Willard
• Release date: Mar 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005114763

Lee Willard

I am a retired embedded systems engineer and sci-fi hobbyist from Hartford. Most of my stories concern Kassidor, 'The planet the hippies came from' which I have used to examine subjects like: What would it take to make the hippy lifestyle real? How would extended lifespans affect society? What could happen if we outlive our memories? How can murder be committed when violence is impossible?I have recently discovered that someone new to science fiction should start their exploration of Kassidor with the Second Expedition trilogy. To the mainstream fiction reader the alien names of people, places and things can be confusing. This series has a little more explanation of the differences between Kassidor and Earth. In all of the Kassidor stories you will notice the people do not act like ordinary humans but like flower children from the 60's. It is not until Zhlindu that the actual modifications made to human nature to make them act that way are spelled out. To aide that understanding I've made The Second Expedition free.I am not a fan of violence and dystopia. I believe that sci-fi does not just predict the future, but helps create the future because we sci-fi writers show our readers what the future will be and the readers go out and create it. I believe that the current fad of constant dystopia and mega-violence in sci-fi today is helping to create that world, and I mention that often in reviews and comments on the books I read. I also believe that the characters in those stories who are completely free of any affection are at least as unnatural as the modified humans of Kassidor.In my reviews, * = couldn't finish it. ** = Don't bother with it. *** = good story worth reading. **** = great and memorable story. ***** = Worth a Hugo.

Book preview

On

The

Horizon

Copyright 2020 Lee Willard

Smashwords edition Copyright 2021 Lee Willard

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real people places or things is purely coincidental and very unlikely.

The language in use is derived from English the way English is derived from Sanskrit, so translation was necessary. We’ve tried to keep the tone the same as much as is possible.

Cover photography by Mabel Amber, Sabine Lower and Enrique Lopez Garre, all via Pixabay.com. Cover Art by Lee Willard.

Table of Contents

First Reading

One’s religion is where one hopes to find truth. At times the truth must be bent to fit with religion. At other times religion must be bent to fit the ground truth. One thing is certain, when all is known, religion and science must agree.

The planet Reddend was colonized by a few bands of Christians from both Earth and Kassidor. The holy Bible has come from Earth, but the Species Immunity Complex, which preserves youth for those who have a variety of sex partners, has come from Kassidor. This has caused a greater moral dilemma than eternal youth via pills would have, but no one on Reddend knows that was once possible. Gametes to preserve youth can be transferred artificially at this time, but few choose to go thru that trouble, even if it is more in line with scripture.

On Reddend there is no natural marker of time, no day, no year, no month. Astronomers trekking to the dark side of the planet have recently discovered a ‘year’ of ninety nine hours, that Reddend orbits Red, and seventy-odd thousand years that Red orbits Faye.

A Library, more like a university, had recently discovered how to interpret information recorded in silicon crystals by the civilization that terraformed and colonized Reddend, four thousand years ago. That data gave one individual a lot to think about.

By the Shore

I thought over all I’d read as I walked toward the bridge. If those old records were true, human history goes back much farther than scripture. There are worlds without air, worlds where the sun moves in the sky, worlds where the sun is orange or yellow or even white. There are worlds where most of the surface can be walked by people in street clothes.

Reddend had less than ten million square miles of land one could walk unprotected. There are fifty million square miles of ice, twenty five million square miles of frozen ground and nearly forty million square miles of steaming ocean with scattered outcroppings of blistered rock under attack by thermophiles as big as barnacles. There’s three million square miles of ocean people could sail in an open boat and a few million more on the dark side that can be sailed in an enclosed boat.

I stopped and stared at the sun where the bridge almost seems to come out of it. It was an interesting concept, a sun that moved. Red does not move in Reddend’s sky. This concept makes clearer a lot of things in the Bible that I’d had a hard time picturing. Day and Night, evening, morning, sun rise, sun set, all those would describe the position of the sun at the time. As I thought more, the Bible seems to imply an orderly progression of the sun across the sky. From the east where the sun rises, toward the west where it sets. That meant it took a consistent path. People in the Bible used the sun to navigate, which always made me think it was fixed like Red. It wasn’t. I was now sure that the Bible was written on a world where the sun moved in the sky, in a regular pattern.

There was some scientific evidence that the creation of the sea might have taken as long as a thousand years, but everything else appeared to have come at once, separated by a few hundred hours or less, probably the days of creation as related in the Bible. The Bible was correct on the location, as determined by modern science, Mount Ararat on the isle of Armenia. If there was an antediluvian civilization, all evidence was lost in the flood. All the oldest human remains, and almost all other species, spreads around the planet from Mount Ararat. Within a thousand years of The Flood there was human settlement everywhere around the habitable ring of Reddend and trade among them all.

The first two thousand years of the world was the age of magic, but about two thousand years ago there was seemingly a war of magic and since then no magic would work. Today we have science instead of magic. Today we also understand that any sufficiently advanced science would look like magic to someone from a culture that didn’t know that science, including ours today. That means the magic of the ancients could have been science also, scripture doesn’t have anything to say on that subject.

I stopped at a natural area where there is a group of rocks along the shore between the beach and the harbor. I sat on a rock and looked at Red, the star that gave us life. It is always the rock solid signpost of where you are. Life is comfortable on Reddend almost everywhere Red is on the horizon. Where Red breaks free of the horizon, it is usually too hot. Where Red is completely below the horizon it is too dark for crops. If it’s high above sea level, it is also bitter cold.

Red is almost above the horizon in Muubungga, the city where I live. My home’s on the far side of the triple arch bridge and the center of town, almost ten blocks farther, out near the sun side farms of the city. It’s an area of gentle wind that can easily be captured by sail or windwheel and I own three and they supply my power needs. I wondered if I should go straight home. I have a row of plants, mainly tomato and pepper trees but that was just because I couldn’t see wasting the sunlight, they and the row crops I have around them provide me with half my table produce.

I was ready to eat something. I’d slept twice since I’d sat down to a substantial meal. I had forty pence on me. That would buy dinner for me and my mother at the fish place she loved, even with my mother’s penchant for wine. Of course my mother was nowhere around these days, so I could save over half of it.

I was between housemates at this time. I wasn’t as happy with that as I once was. I have the urge to make love often and don’t like doing it with strangers. I also don’t like coming between couples among my neighbors. There are plenty of single males among my neighbors but they were each single for a good reason, not always the same reason, but there was none I could accept for more than a quick and shallow encounter more than once a year. That meant I was going to have to meet a stranger.

As I thought about that, an interesting one came by. Actually there were a few walking by on this path all the time, but this one was paying some attention to me and was riding a shining black stallion. I looked up. He waved, I waved back. This is when someone has to say the first word and I’m not good at that. Thankfully he did.

Tired of walking? he asked.

Not really, I answered as I looked him over. After that I thought I should have said ‘yes,’