In 2070, Ben Dawson was on the cusp of changing mankind, until mankind intervened. And then, instead of celebrating his crowning achievement of launching the world’s first airborne city, he was fighting for its survival. Threatened with imminent personal and financial ruin, Ben assembles a team that will embark on a mission across Earth and space to save Sky City.
Racing against the takeover of Sky City by The Department of Space, his team finds themselves with an impossible timeline. Forced to accelerate an already insane plan involving space colonies, moon mining and, per the Department of Space, Crimes Against Humanity, they will need all the cunning and grit they possess for their mission to work. But more likely, it will fail, leaving the Dawson family and colleagues with less than nothing.
Ben and his team realize for them to have any chance at success, they will need to rely on each other and learn the fundamental meaning of trust. If they do that, then they could come away with the biggest heist in history.
In 2070, Ben Dawson was on the cusp of changing mankind, until mankind intervened. And then, instead of celebrating his crowning achievement of launching the world’s first airborne city, he was fighting for its survival. Threatened with imminent personal and financial ruin, Ben assembles a team that will embark on a mission across Earth and space to save Sky City.
Racing against the takeover of Sky City by The Department of Space, his team finds themselves with an impossible timeline. Forced to accelerate an already insane plan involving space colonies, moon mining and, per the Department of Space, Crimes Against Humanity, they will need all the cunning and grit they possess for their mission to work. But more likely, it will fail, leaving the Dawson family and colleagues with less than nothing.
Ben and his team realize for them to have any chance at success, they will need to rely on each other and learn the fundamental meaning of trust. If they do that, then they could come away with the biggest heist in history.
Tucson, Arizona
May 13, 2044
The 7A return capsule plunged toward Earth’s outer atmosphere. The heat shield covering the lower half of the tube-shaped module turned a bright yellow. As it continued to race toward the Tucson International Airport, the compression and friction of the air around the heat shield increased its temperature to five thousand degrees Fahrenheit, turning it orange, then red.
As the heat on the capsule subsided, the grid fins extended and maneuvered it above the launch pad. Seventeen hours prior, the robotic arm of the 7A probe had extended its rotary percussive drill with hollow coring bit to extract a pencil thin core sample and place it into the capsule within a capsule, then ejecting both toward Earth. Now, as the return capsule approached the ground, thrusters fired to slow its approach, and the landing fins folded down. One of the three landing fins stuck halfway out and, as the capsule touched down, it toppled over onto its side, hard.
“Oh, no.”
Robert Stewart dropped his binoculars and ran over to the capsule. He saw fluids leaking out onto the platform, and even though the thrusters had shut down, everything was hot. He opened the panel to the control touchscreen. It showed internal damage and temperatures increasing. Switching to the asteroid sample container menu, he entered the sequence to open the panel. It faced toward the ground and opened halfway.
Robert kicked over the capsule onto its other side. The panel jammed and stopped moving. Robert pulled out his multipurpose tool and unscrewed the cover around the jammed panel. He had half of the eight screws out when he saw the smoke. The multi-purpose tool slipped out of his sweaty hands.
“Too many screws!”
Four, five, six screws fell to the ground and then the fire started at the rear of capsule. He looked at the asteroid sample container stuck inside a half-open panel door. The capsule just completed a five hundred thousand-mile round trip journey, the asteroid core was now a less than a foot away, but it might as well still be in space if he could not get the panel door open.
“Come on!”
Robert stripped the seventh screw, and it stuck in place.
“No, no, no, no!”
He took off his wind breaker, wrapped it around his hands, and pulled on the panel, yanking against the last two screws holding it in place. The panel bent, but the screws would not budge; it was built for space travel. He bent the panel as far back as he could and kicked it. The half-open panel door moved a quarter inch and no more. He stared at the container right in front of him, lodged behind two inches of a faulty stainless-steel panel door.
The orange and yellow of a fire flickered over the back of the capsule. It was a matter of seconds before everything went up in flames, or worse, exploded. Robert stabbed the container with the pliers in his multi-purpose tool, shredding the perforated metal wall. He could see the core sample suspended by a rubber clamp.
There was a pop, and then flames moved up from the rear toward him. He wrapped his windbreaker around his left hand and shoved it into the container, pushing the shredded metal inward. He released the windbreaker, feeling for the core sample. His index finger touched it, he tuned his hand up, shoved his arm in as far as it could go, and wrapped his fingers around the metal bar.
“Got it!”
He tried to remove his hand slowly, but it got caught on the torn metal, sharp edges pushing into his forearm. He turned his arm, feeling for a clear path to remove his arm. Then his peripheral vision saw the flames coming up the sides. He turned his arm more, and the flames were in front of his face. He yanked his hand out, shredding his wrist, palm, and knuckles.
He stumbled back as the flames shot across the capsule. Robert stood, held his wounded hand against his chest, and ran. He made it halfway back to the hanger door when the capsule exploded and the thrust of the ignited fuel threw him against the door, shattering the upper glass panel and creating a two-inch dent in the lower steel panel. After the glass stopped falling on his head, he found his glasses next to him, put them on, and pushed himself up to sit with his back against the door, watching the flames. Looking down at his bleeding hand, he opened it to stare at the small metal rod.
To anyone else, it would be nothing more than an interesting trinket, maybe even junk. When he heard sirens approaching, he slipped it into his pocket. The capsule fire was dying down, but the heat picked up as the metal hit twenty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit and melted. Nothing but a puddle of molten metal would be left once the fire burned itself out. A series of fire trucks and cars pulled up. Milton Tripp, chief executive officer of Outside Earth Exploration, Inc., jumped out of one and ran over to his chief scientist.
“Robert, you okay?”
“I’m fine.
Robert stared at the remains of his space probe’s final return capsule.
“So, it was a total loss?”
“Unfortunately.”
PART I
How did Earth become covered with floating countries as large as the continents? It began with a small asteroid and a very large earthquake. SkyWorld, Jubilee Celebration (2150)
Chapter 1
Near Yerington, North Nevada
September 9, 2070
The detent escapement’s locking ruby moved 1/96th of an inch, which released the escape wheel. It rotated, forwarding the wheels of the movement, which shifted the hands on the silvered brass dial by one second. The sub-dial second hand moved to point at sixty, the minute hand at twelve, the hour hand at eight. Eight p.m. Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which was also high noon at the watch’s current location in the middle of the North Nevada desert. Routine and unspectacular.
What was spectacular was that the Hamilton model 21 marine chronometer’s mechanisms operated in the same manner for every second of every day, losing virtually no time, just like when aboard U.S. Navy ships crossing the Atlantic and Pacific in World War II. The owner of this precise instrument, Benjamin “Ben” Dawson, wound the chronometer each day at the same time with the same number of turns to keep the main spring and fusee chain powered and the time precise.
“That’s it,” said Ben as he screwed the glass cover back onto the watch face, placed the watch back into its brass cover, and secured the cover to the gimbals in its polished mahogany box. Ben had stared at the inner workings of the chronometer for the past ten minutes with a focus that was either genius or imbecilic, depending on who was asked.
Ben owned and maintained, among other things, the Hamilton model 21, which he had secured onto the desk in his ship’s cabin. There was no practical reason to have a mechanical working chronometer on board. He could more easily identify his longitude with three onboard computerized mapping devices, one of which was on his wrist.
These devices gave longitude and latitude locations down to five decimals of precision, or inside of four feet. But staring at the antique device that kept UTC, which succeeded Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT, was staring into history. This small device, the result of hundreds of thousands of hours of innovation and labor across an army of craftsman, scientists, and engineers, was the solution to a problem that stalled world exploration.
Longitude, scourge of the seventeenth century. Once sailing ships were truly seaworthy in the sixteenth century, trade and discovery became national priorities. The location of these massive ships on the ocean was critical. While latitude was accurately measured for hundreds of years observing astronomical movements with cross staffs, back staffs and, eventually, sextants, a ship’s longitudinal location became a mystery once out of sight of land. A mystery costing thousands of sailors their lives. Accurately measuring longitude became a worldwide obsession and early in the eighteenth century, fortunes were offered by European governments to whomever could solve the problem.
Ben loved that an uneducated, small-town carpenter turned watch maker solved the longitude problem. Although now recognized as a mechanical genius, John Harrison was considered one of the least likely of individuals to prove Sir Isaac Newton and other astronomers wrong by providing precise longitudinal measurement with a timepiece. John Harrison’s various talents in carpentry, mathematics, and mechanics all came together to create the marine chronometer.
A random talent stack provided John Harrison the necessary background to create a clock keeping precise time regardless of temperature, humidity, or the position of the rolling ship it sat on. And like so many obstacles in human history, which drove countless men to madness, once longitudinal measurement was solved, it became commonplace and a forgotten historical footnote.
Ben shut the lid on the chronometer as he looked at the elegant ship’s controls at his desk and the vintage nautical items on his cabin’s walls, not even a measurable fraction of man’s accomplishments, but each with their own fascinating history. It was these inventions and many others that were the foundation of his technological miracle, the Skyboat®.
Like many inventors before him, Ben was unremarkable in appearance, walking down the street unnoticed until his Skyboats became famous, and him along with it. Looks and charm matter only to inventors when fundraising, even if they must paint it onto themselves, which is frequently the case. Not that Ben was void of those qualities, they just showed up at the edges of his personality, like his autism, while his relentless drive sat front and center.
A natural problem solver, nothing excited Ben more than a mystery, especially if it involved technology. Early in his career, he made technical discoveries with incredible potential. Growing up in a small city, he believed in supportive and collaborative relationships, but after being cheated out of his first inventions, always the case when fortunes are involved, it hardened him. Over time, Ben pursued dreams only if he was in control. Complete control. Then, did it matter if he wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and years of his life pursuing fantasies like flying a sailboat in the sky? No, because it was his time and his money. So what if it all burned to ash? It was his ash. And that sort of conviction resulted in the generational breakthrough happening today.
Ben turned around, walked up the stairs leading out of the small cabin to the front of the open cockpit. He looked at the other Level Five Skyboats behind him. The highest and smallest level of Sky City began with Ben’s Blue Darter, a forty-foot cruiser-racer and the first working Skyboat. Except for Firefly, center of Level Five and a seventy-eight-foot cruiser flown by his wife Paige, the other Skyboats were the same size as Blue Darter. His son, Jason, was to the right of Paige in Sky Dancer, his daughter Angie, left of Paige in Freedom. Ben’s mentor, Daniel Nguyen, sat behind Paige in Serenity. They all looked for Ben to signal the launch.
Instead, Ben turned and walked out to the front deck, putting his hands on the railings, admiring the view. A perfect late summer day in the desert with crystal clear blue skies and a warm breeze. Ben looked at the expansive desert floor in front of him, various shades of light brown, running between Yerington and Walker Lake. The nearly thousand Skyboats and Skyships spread out for miles across the desert, sometimes interrupted by dried-up rivers leading to nowhere or scattered mesas covered with dirt, sagebrush, and creosote bush. It was an odd sight. Hundreds of Skyboats sitting on the desert floor.
Anyone flying over would think a lake had dried up overnight, leaving these boats stranded. He looked at the Skyboats waiting to launch, all designed by him. That is, after he taught himself sailing, shipbuilding, aeronautics, aerodynamics, propulsion, robotics, nuclear power, miniaturization, the flight of birds, and a hint of interior design. Paige said the last one was a fail.
Along with the Skyboats, there was the massive stage concluding a weeklong concert and thousands of spectators walking around or in front of the stage. A viewing platform built beside the stage was filled with VIPs in their air-conditioned rooms, along with dozens of decked out trailers and RVs behind it. Many had come for the spectacle, less interested in the actual launch. But after of a week of endless promotion, all had become groupies and now awaited the launch with tense excitement. Media from Earth, space stations, the moon, and even Mars (time delayed), watched.
Ben could see the superstructure of Horizon, an eleven-hundred-foot-long cruise Skyship that would be the center of Level One and the hub of Sky City. It was the location of Command, as well as thousands of passengers and crew, including Ben’s parents. Command was where the captain of his fleet, Roger Sinclair, stood at the wheel, prepared to launch nine-hundred fifteen Skyboats into one cohesive body. The nostalgia of the marine chronometer faded away, replaced with the urgency of the launch. Ben spoke in a tone recognized by his earpiece.
“Here we go. Roger, you ready?” said Ben, using his earpiece, printed with a color match to his skin, sitting below both ears and held in place with a thin support behind his neck. Ben was connected to the captain’s earpiece using voice recognition software so familiar no one thought about it anymore, like longitude, electricity, or Wi-Fi. But, for some reason, even in 2070, cell phone coverage was still spotty.
“Yes, sir. Are you ready?” said Roger.
“That’s my question to you.”
“I was ready hours ago. Just waiting for your signal.”
“Right. Well, then, let’s,”
“Hey, Dad,” said Jason, “are you sure you don’t want to make another speech? You’ve only had three today.”
“Jason, this is serious, we’re launching,” said Ben.
“So rude,” said Angie.
“Why are either of you interrupting my launch sequence? We talked about this.”
“It’s just that it’s such a big day,” said Jason.
“Such a big day,” said Angie.
“I mean, can you ever have enough speeches?” said Jason.
“And you don’t want to miss out on memorializing this historical moment for mankind,” said Angie.
“Both of you, stop it,” said Paige. “This is serious. Roger, ignore them.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will,” said Roger with no attempt to hide the irritation in his voice at the lack of discipline with the Dawson children. Thousands of people waiting on their signal and Ben Dawson cannot control his kids, again. Roger did not have that problem. Both of his children were well-disciplined. Even though he did not get as much time with them as he liked due to his career choice, the time he had with Steve and Cindy instilled the values of politeness, discipline, and observation. He missed them and his wife Sandy. After this launch, Roger would take a break and get back to Eureka for some quality time with the family.
“Roger, please go ahead with the launch sequence,” said Ben.
“Initiating launch,” said Roger as he clicked onto the broadcast channel. “Everyone, the launch sequence is now beginning with Level Five.”
“Launch the penthouse!” Jason said with a laugh Angie joined.
“It’s Level Five,” said Ben.
“No one calls it that,” said Jason.
“I do,” said Ben.
Roger clicked back to Ben. “Sir, at your leisure.”
“Thank you, Roger.”
Ben clicked onto the broadcast channel, preparing to make another set of comments on the history of the day, and the many firsts being accomplished, and how great it was, and how exciting to have not only the Sky City participants but so many distinguished guests here as well. Then Ben thought about Jason and Angie’s comments and how many other people were involved besides him, and how it was getting a little much to hear his own voice. He turned off the broadcast channel.
“Okay, everyone,” Ben said to Paige, Jason, Angie, and Daniel as he fired up Blue Darter’s nuclear engine. “Like we practiced. This is it!”
Ben grabbed his wheel and lifted Blue Darter off the dusty ground. The Skyboat rose, clearing the masts around him. From below, when fully extended, Ben’s boat would resemble a bird, specifically a cooper’s hawk. Growing up, staring at cooper’s hawks flying overhead, he was fascinated with their wide wingspans and aerial attacks. Ben placed pine trees in the center of Horizon’s main deck to nest cooper’s hawks, so his invention’s inspiration would live and fly among them. The cooper’s hawk dimensions outlined his Skyboat design.
After designing the cooper’s hawk frame, he placed vertical jets, powered by a sixty-megawatt micro-nuclear reactor, at the location of the hawk’s claws. Landing gear was placed in front of the jets. The stern had a single, large jet pointing straight back. Below it was a bird; from above, a sailboat. A sailboat with a sixty-foot mast and eighteen-foot boom, along with a mainsail and Genoa jib furled for takeoff.
Built to mimic the feel of a classic blue water cruiser, Ben built Blue Darter with stainless-steel railings and fittings, secured onto a teak deck and white gelcoat polyvinyl chloride (pvc) foam-cored hull, which surrounded an open pushbutton cockpit and oversized steering wheel.
Ben double checked he was clear of any airborne objects and began the wing build out. Beginning ten feet from the bow of the forty foot long hull and extending to five feet from the stern, a six inch slit opened along either side of Blue Darter. At the bow end of the slit, on both sides of the Skyboat, a three and a quarter inch long mini robot rolled on its four magnetized ball bearings to the edge of the hull and clamped itself to the side. Another two mini robots rolled over the first pair and clamped themselves down. Then seventeen hundred skeletal mini robots repeated this process forming the wing frames.
Seven thousand quarter sized feather skeleton mini robots rolled out, filling in the wing structure as thirty thousand honeycomb-shaped drones flew over the wing skeletons and attached themselves to the frame and each other using smart hook and loop systems along their edges. A tail wing, twenty-five feet long simultaneously emerged from the back with a thousand skeletal mini robots and four-thousand feather drones, spreading into a fan shape. The entire process was completed in three minutes.
“Okay,” said Ben, “come on up.”
Paige, Jason, Angie, and Daniel launched their Skyboats, extended their wings, and lined up just as they had sat on the ground, Firefly in the center. Paige looked at each Skyboat, checking alignment.
“We’re good,” Paige said to Ben.
“Level Five connecting,” said Ben, initiating the connection protocol. More skeletal mini robots came out of the sides of each Skyboat, rolling to the ends of their wings and clamping together. Once connected, additional skeletal mini robots rolled out creating walkways and increasing stability. The five boats floated together in the shape of a diamond.
“We’re up and secured,” said Ben over the broadcast channel.
A cheer erupted from the other Skyboats and thousands of spectators. The event was more ceremonial than operational as over ninety-nine percent of Sky City was still on the ground and the other levels were more complex than Level Five. Level Four was made up of one-hundred nine Skyboats with a center Skyboat twice the size of Firefly. Each Level’s center Skyboat was twice the size of the center Skyboat above it, and those in front or behind the center Skyboat were three-fourths the center. The starboard and port Skyboats ran two-thirds the size of the center. This decline in size continued until the outer boats were at least one percent the size of Horizon, the largest Skyship in Sky City.
“Level Four, begin your launch,” said Roger.
The Level Four Skyboats fired up. One by one, they launched and aligned themselves. Visual confirmation was not possible to initiate connection protocol. Instead, each Skyboat had a leveling program, adjusting and confirming its position relative to the others. Once the leveling programs all went green, the connecting mini robots rolled out and built the Level Four platform.
“Level Four and Five connect,” said Roger after getting confirmation Level Four was stable.
Ben maneuvered Level Five above Level Four positioning Firefly directly above Kapani, center Skyboat of Level Four and back-up Command for Sky City. Drones flew out to view above, alongside, and below the two levels. The alignment program made minor adjustments, and then mini robots rolled out to secure the two levels with a series of angled struts and ladders. Level Five and Four floated together in the air, a small diamond sitting above a larger diamond.
“We’re connected,” said Ben.
Another cheer emerged across the desert.
“Level Three, begin your launch,” said Roger.
As the one-hundred seventy-seven Level Three Skyboats launched, a small earthquake occurred, which would later be registered as a 4.0 magnitude foreshock. The Sky City launch area between Yerington and Walker Lake had over three hundred earthquakes annually, most less than a 2.0 magnitude. Press coverage focused on the frequency of earthquakes as proof of a careless choice for launching from Ben Dawson’s home state of North Nevada instead of a safer location, like the middle of West Kansas.
Ben argued most of the quakes were not perceptible, and the media focused on the wrong point. Also, there were challenges launching anywhere. Tornadoes in the Midwest, hurricanes in the South, New Yorkers in the Northeast. And local and federal governments would not allow Sky City to launch near populated areas, anyway, making the middle of the desert a terrific choice. Thus, all the arguments and mudslinging between the Ben Dawson and the journalists, who never liked Ben and his no-nonsense style, ended with an agree to disagree détente, especially once the readership tired of the discussion. The media moved on to how many celebrity sightings they could make during launch week.
“What was that?” said Ben as he saw the masts move on several Skyboats still on the ground.
“Earthquake, sir,” said Roger.
“How big?”
Roger spoke to his crew. After a few seconds of waiting, which Roger criticized loud enough to make sure Ben heard, he came back on the line.
“Registering approximately 3.0 magnitude. Correction, 4.0.”
“Get everyone up,” said Ben. “Now!”
The year is 2070, and Ben has a vision. It's grandiose, yet achievable, and he has the technical skills and brains to make it happen. A city in the sky; a floating mass, above the earth, made up of thousands of 'skyboats'. They can interlock and become stable, allowing people to walk between the individual boats with stability. He's built a multi-million dollar business up from scratch, Skyboat Industries, and so has the money to back his vision. If it all goes wrong, he reasons, it won't matter because it's his money that he's lost.
As they're launching the Skyboats that will interconnect to form Sky City in the middle of the Nevada desert, the ground becomes unstable. The very earth is tearing itself apart as a super massive earth quake rips through North America. While the government is quick to place the blame on Bed and Skyboat Industries, the actual truth was that 'anti earth quake measures' along the San Andreas Fault had failed spectacularly and had somehow triggered this world shattering natural disaster. Now, Ben, his family and allies must somehow prove that they weren't responsible for the mega quake, and keep the business and fledgling Sky City out of the Department of Space's hands.
As far as near-future Sci-Fi goes, The Skyworld Sage - Foundation is a fun take on technology, natural resources and how the world may go. Priest alludes to the United States being a nation divided, with States themselves declaring independence from each other and splitting apart. There's regular mentions of colonies on the moon and on Mars, and references to the Department of Space having lost control of them. It's why they're so determined to gain control of Ben's businesses and Sky City. It makes for an interesting narrative and also provides many fun, if completely and utterly inept characters from the government department.
My only problem is that the conversations, while often hilarious, were somewhat static. The conversations are often laid out as "Ben said," "Adam said", "Martin said". A little variation for the utterances would have been nice (as flat as that sounds in itself). It means that, as rich as one's imagination may be, it's difficult to visualise a funny remark being delivered in the correct way if it's followed by [character] 'said'.
Over all, though, this was a fun read. And I'm looking forward to further instalments in the Skyworld Saga.
S. A