Guest Stars (eBook)

Christopher Pleatsikas (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
344 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-7128-6 (ISBN)

Infos

'Guest Stars' is a story about peaceful, technologically advanced aliens who seek refuge on Earth after a catastrophe on their planet. Humans first speculate that the new arrivals might help humanity solve global problems like war and poverty. As humans and aliens strive to coexist, their good intentions clash with unforeseen consequences, challenging their perceptions and raising stakes for both civilizations. This gripping tale explores cultural and evolutionary differences, leading to a dramatic and unexpected outcome. As tensions rise and misunderstandings escalate, readers are left wondering if humanity and its alien guests can find common ground-or if their differences will lead to disaster. Suspense builds, with a chilling twist at the end.

Christopher (Chris) Pleatsikas grew up in northern New England. Having learned how to read before attending kindergarten, he was bored in primary school. Sensing he needed a more challenging academic environment than the local schools could provide, his father sent Chris to boarding school at the age of 13. There he immersed himself in the school library's science fiction collection. Ultimately, Chris obtained a Ph.D. in Economics and settled into the life of an economic consultant, sporadically teaching at the college level and writing law journal articles. He still occasionally reads and watches science fiction and, ultimately, decided to add his contribution to the genre. He currently lives in Northern California and dreams of publishing the dark comedy he has written about his childhood.

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The alien invasion genre has been the subject of many science fiction tales. While a few, like "e;E.T.: The Extraterrestrial,"e; included benign, friendly aliens, the vast majority have featured aliens who wanted to conquer the Earth and/or lay waste to it. Even "e;The Day the Earth Stood Still,"e; which featured an alien who wished the human race well, carried ominous warnings that mankind would be destroyed if we could not restrain our violent tendencies and our weapons. But how realistic are any of these stories? None of them deal with the challenges of benign contact with an alien race and the economic and geopolitical challenges that would ensue. "e;Guest Stars"e; is a science fiction novel that chronicles the arrival of peaceful, technologically advanced aliens on Earth, seeking refuge after an environmental disaster on their planet. They hope to provides benefits to humanity. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, life is never simple. The narrator, who joins a new Presidential Administration, becomes entangled in the political, economic and national security ramifications of first contact and the aliens' arrival. As the aliens introduce their advanced technology, they inadvertently disrupt global economies, exacerbating existing geopolitical tensions and economic disparities. Misunderstandings and cultural clashes arise, as humans and aliens struggle to understand each other's actions and intentions. Prejudice and fear spread, dividing humanity into factions that either support or oppose the aliens. The narrative explores these tensions, with people and nations navigating shifting alliances and evolving political landscapes. As the situation intensifies, the protagonist's personal and professional life is turned upside down, mirroring the broader societal upheaval. "e;Guest Stars"e; combines elements of a political and geopolitical thriller with a thoughtful examination of human and alien nature. It challenges readers to consider the implications of contact with an advanced alien species, raising questions about coexistence, trust, and the potential for misunderstanding. The story concludes with high stakes and an uncertain future, leaving readers to ponder the lasting impact of this unprecedented encounter.

Textauszug

Chapter 1:
Who Am I?

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself, even though the events I am going to try my best to recount were thoroughly unexpected and, on numerous occasions, alarming or just weird. As bizarrely as things began, the subsequent twists and turns that occurred seemingly kept seesawing between the real and the surreal.

Since I am going to narrate this story, a little background about me might be useful for the reader. My name is William Swanson. Will. Swan to some. Nobody calls me William or Bill. Or Willy? No way!

I grew up in San Rafael, California. My father was a middle manager at a big bank and my mother was a schoolteacher – fifth grade. I had a sister and a brother, both older. My parents took a hands-off approach to rearing their children. Their parenting included no helicopters and no snowplows. Maybe “benign neglect” is a better descriptor. While they weren’t exactly uninvolved, it was clear that whatever interests they had were almost orthogonal to engaged childrearing.

I’ve never been able to imagine how my mother was able to deal with the children in her classroom. Maybe she was as distant and uninvolved with them as she was with me and my siblings. Thankfully, she taught at a different school than the one I attended. I never had to take her class or even deal with her students. Instead of taking an active role in his children’s lives, my Dad seemed to prefer long hours at work that contradicted the stereotype of people in his profession working “banker’s hours.”

My brother and sister, both unmarried to this day, have never given any indication that they have had any serious romantic relationships at any time in their lives. As far as I remember, neither went to their proms or even had a date in high school. At least I went to my prom, although my date was a friend, not really a girlfriend.

I was always a good student, much more so than my siblings. This meant that my parents never needed to bug me about my homework. I did it with no muss, no fuss.

I was tall, taller than most of my classmates from an early age. My height led the sports coaches at schools, from primary school onward, to press me to play basketball. I never liked the game. Intentional incompetence was my strategy towards it. My half-hearted efforts and poor results eventually convinced coaches that I wasn’t really suited to playing hoops.

Instead, I gravitated to soccer and loved playing goal. And I was pretty good – or at least I thought so. Through high school I was the starting goaltender and hoped to play in college. I even hoped for a scholarship. It didn’t happen.

I went to college at Berkeley. It was so liberating to move away from home, even though I had to borrow money so I could afford to live on campus.

I’ve always been kind of nerdy. When I was in middle school, I memorized the seating capacity of every professional baseball and football team’s stadiums in North America, adding the capacity of all Division I collegiate football stadiums to my set of facts for good measure. It should be no surprise that I studied economics at college. It allowed me to marshal and analyze often obscure facts and use them to find out something interesting about the world. At least it was interesting to me.

I tried out for Berkeley’s soccer team and slowly made my way up to third-string goaltender by my Junior year. So, I was stuck on the bench. And only for home games, as the traveling team carried only two goalies.

Then came my big break. At the end of my Junior year, the local second division professional team lost its starting and backup goaltenders in quick succession. Their third-stringer would be starting, and the team needed an emergency backup. We had a strong team at Berkeley, and the pro team asked the university to lend them a goaltender for a few games. Not wanting to risk the eligibility of our team’s better goaltenders, the Berkeley Athletics Department offered me up and got special dispensation from the NCAA for me to play. I never played in a professional game, but sitting on the bench and participating in practice was fun. Plus, it gave me my one claim to athletic fame. I tell people I was the world’s lowest paid professional athlete. I was paid nothing, which I acknowledge was exactly what I was worth. It’s kind of an economics joke. There are lots of jokes about economics and economists. Most are just as lame as that one. My favorite one, sometimes mistakenly attributed to Ronald Reagan, is that if you put economists in charge of the Sahara Desert, within ten years there would be a shortage of sand. I can tell you’re not laughing. I guess economics jokes are an acquired taste.

As an undergraduate, I wasn’t a good enough athlete to attract many women, and my personality was never going to make up the difference. Not that I was a complete washout socially. But it generally puzzled me when a woman I found attractive expressed interest. Not surprisingly, my relationships in college tended to be short-lived.

After Berkeley, I worked at an economic consulting firm in San Francisco for two years. My salary there allowed me to pay off my college loans and even put away some money. During my second year there, I applied to grad school in Economics, fully intending to get my Ph.D. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do with it, but I was sure I wanted to get it. I got into a couple of really good programs and chose Penn, partly because it was very far from home.

Anyway, that’s some background. I hope it helps. But the real story – the one you want to hear at any rate – begins a bit more than four years ago, in late November. It was a Presidential Election Year. The incumbent was a lame duck, just waiting to see who would replace him. At the time, I had begun my third year as a grad student in Economics at Penn. That’s the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. You know, the one that is part of the Ivy League. Not Penn State, as I often had to remind people. The other university was the one with the football team that everyone knew. Penn had a football team, but nobody really noticed.

The Presidential election earlier that month had been a bit of a surprise. While the election was expected to be close, Senator Benton, a so-called “moderate” Republican from Kentucky, had been the underdog throughout the campaign. His moderation was mainly discernible against some of the ultra-conservatives in his party, but he seemed mostly reasonable in terms of social and economic policy, at least to an economist. When Benton was declared the winner the Thursday after election day, after narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, it was a bit of a shock to many people, including some of his supporters.

My Ph.D. advisor, Professor Edward Wang had been the Senator’s chief economic advisor during the campaign. Professor Wang, I think, had expected the Senator to lose, although he never specifically admitted that, so he had anticipated a quiet return to academia after the excitement of the campaign. He had been an Economics Professor at Penn for nearly 20 years, recognized as one of the leading lights in the field of government economic regulation and policy. But now Professor Wang would be going to Washington. President-elect Benton announced that he was nominating Ed Wang to be the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, known by its abbreviation, CEA.

I was envious. Frankly, I was a bit bored at this point in graduate school. I had really enjoyed my two years at the economic consulting firm. And my aptitude as an applied economist had been recognized and appreciated by my employer. I missed the time pressures and the intellectual challenge of figuring out how best to analyze real world problems. I missed the financial rewards as well. I am an economist, after all. Two and a bit years into the graduate economics program, living like a student again, trying to watch pennies in order to keep to a strict budget, was definitely not my idea of fun. I longed to get back out into the real world and have a bit of spare cash in my pocket. At least for a time.

I figured I could always come back to Penn and finish up. I had already taken all my required classes and actually begun my research. I believed I could easily return to the research after putting it aside for a year or two. If I stayed, I would just be teaching introductory econ courses to undergrads and trying to turn my academic research into three publishable papers to get my Ph.D. That just didn’t seem all that exciting right now, although a doctorate still was definitely my ultimate goal.

I needed a plan. And Ed Wang was the perfect instrument to spring that plan into action. I had spent the entire time at graduate school cultivating my relationship with him. His research interests had dovetailed almost perfectly with mine. If I stayed at Penn, I was faced with the need to somehow switch my allegiance to someone else in the department. Frankly, I had no idea who to approach. It was not so much that I had developed no relationships with other members of the department, although my relationships with the other professors were pretty tenuous. In any case, Ed would likely only be gone a year or two. I just could not see him giving up his cushy...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.11.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-7128-6 / 9798350971286