Author: Patrick Rieder

Publisher:

Published: 2019-06-04

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9781072217176

Hailey, the sassy AI continued, "Captain Asil, you have been ALIT. ALIT stands for Artificial Learning Implant Technology. You are one of the first humans to be fitted with implants that contain knowledge programs that you will need to command this ship.""Captain of a starship? I barely know my name!" The Earth is in turmoil. A nuclear war has left the atmosphere unstable, and the race is on to find a new home in case this one doesn't make it. 3200 BC; Mali, West Africa; a tribe known as the Dogon record the existence of a second star in the Sirius system. The star Sirius B is not visible to the naked eye. The Dogon tell a tale of extraterrestrial visitation by a race known as the Nommo. The Nommo claim to come from a planet that orbits yet a third star in the Sirius system.Five thousand years later, the existence of Sirius B has been confirmed. In the late twenty-first century, using the moon as a radio telescope, scientists confirm the discovery of the third star--Sirius C and an exoplanet in its "Goldilocks Zone". Asil Silverwood, the quick-thinking and movie-quoting captain of the interstellar ship Alpha, and his crew of scientific geniuses are tasked with an almost impossible mission. Using the most advanced technology of the early twenty-second century, Captain Silverwood will pilot Earth's first interstellar starship to the Sirius system in what may be humankind's last-gasp attempt to save themselves and find a new home for the people of Earth....I opened the hatch and gazed upon this alien world. We had landed on the beach about five hundred meters from the calm water of the bay, and about one kilometer from what we initially thought were tall grasses. The downpour of rain had eased to just falling lightly and persistently....The words of Neil Armstrong and Karique Chang Dubosky entered my mind as they each had been the first to step on the Moon and Mars, respectively. "This is one small step for a human....."...I thought for a moment. I wanted to speak a line that would go down in history, but nothing popped into my head except Hailey's damned old movies, and the fact that this should be Genie's moment, so I said something very Tolkien-ish, "The realm of the human has not ended, for all those who have wandered, are not lost." I stepped firmly onto the sandy beach believing I was the first to ever walk on this planet.