Don't Mess With Earth

by

Cliff Ball

Smashords Edition

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PUBLISHED BY

Cliff Ball on Smashwords

Don’t Mess With Earth

Copyright© 2010 by Cliff Ball

All rights reserved. Without limiting the
rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the
prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author
acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various
products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used
without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not
authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark
owners.

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The President was not looking forward to his
first press conference, especially in the White House Press Room in
front of all those scowling reporters. He had wanted to do it in
the comfort of the Oval Office, sitting behind his desk, with no
one around but the TV people and the Secret Service. In the end, he
felt it was necessary and the right thing to do to give this press
conference in person, because he was the one who ordered the strike
and he was confident he did the right thing when it was ordered.
What he was about to tell the people of not only the United States,
but also the rest of the world, filled him with trepidation, only
because it could anger enough of the right people to get him
impeached and kicked out of office. The United States government
had kept this secret now for more than sixty years, and now was
time to tell the world. He himself had not known about it until
scientists had finally figured out the technology to do what he had
just ordered the military to do. The previous administration was
informed, but that particular president, since he was leaving
office, wanted to pass the buck, and let the new administration
deal with it. So, here he was, a new president with less than one
month in office and he was walking into the Press Room as his press
secretary was introducing him, feeling as if the whole world was on
his shoulders.

He stationed himself behind the podium,
looked around the room, took a deep breath, composed himself, and
began, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Press and those
of you at home watching on TV or the Internet. I am here to inform
you of an action we, the United States, have taken no other
government on Earth would have known about until shortly before
this press conference. I suggest all of you sit back, relax, and
listen to the whole story, because this may take a while, and if it
takes longer than that, I’ll have the story broken up over a period
of three or four days. Well, it all started a few thousand years
ago...."

The world had become chaotic, there seemed to
be no order or no morals among most of the population. There was a
tiny nation in a remote part of the planet that had been
progressing technologically faster than anywhere else in the world,
their ancestors had found this land a thousand years earlier, saw
the direction morally that humanity was going, settled on that
land, and quietly worked on technological advancements for the
betterment of their people. They were currently experimenting with
jet propulsion to see how fast an aircraft could fly, and were also
working to see if anything could escape Earth orbit using crude
missile technology, but the missile technology was mostly used to
defend their country if the need arose. They had already invented
the means for flight, the combustion engine, and radio, among other
technologies. They had no desire to share their technology with
anyone. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was in the first stages of
an industrial revolution, beginning with the construction of steam
engines, factories for mass production, trains, and the telegraph.
The Terrans, as they were known, wanted to leave the planet and
search out one in which they could live peacefully, away from all
these primitives. Humans as a whole were living upwards of six
hundred years, so the same people who were planning, developing,
and working on a technology could continue to do so until the tech
came into being. One day, a messenger from the region later known
as Asia Minor, came to Terra City to inform them of some
interesting news going on in the area around Asia Minor. The leader
of the Terrans received the messenger, who asked of the traveler,
“What news do you bring that is so urgent?”

“I come from Assyria and there is a man in
that region who claims that his God, Jehovah, is going to bring
something called rain and flood the Earth with water. He says that
his God is angry with mankind and wants to start over. The man,
whose name is Noah, is supposed to be the godliest on Earth, so
that is why he was chosen to build an ark and gather two of every
kind of animal. I was sent by my leader to ask for your help in
case this Noah is right about God wanting to start over.”

“Sorry, but you will have to inform your
leader that we will not help you or anyone else. We know of Noah,
since we have spies everywhere, so we’ve decided to leave this
planet and find a new home elsewhere in the galaxy just in case he
is right. We’re building a generational starship to do just that,
because we have many families going. I know you probably don’t
understand what I’m saying, so just inform your leaders that we say
no.”

The messenger went back and informed the rest
of the leaders of the Terrans refusal to help. The Terrans
continued to work on their technology, mostly inventions that would
let them leave Earth, and managed to create computers, rocket
engines fueled with hydrogen, life support, and other technologies
essential for successful space travel. The Terrans worked on
getting the preliminary stages of space travel working correctly,
while making plenty of mistakes along the way, like launching
rockets and seeing them blow up right off the launch pad and then
working out the bugs for the next rockets to achieve lift-off and
orbit the Earth, sending people into orbit and some of them coming
back worse for the wear, and some space walks that didn’t always
work out the first time. A temporary space station was built in
orbit, so that the generational starship that was going to be built
in orbit could carry families away from Earth, without using up all
the fuel to launch from the ground. The other nations eventually
forgot about the Terrans, since the Terrans had cut off diplomatic
relations over one hundred and fifty years earlier.

Noah was building his ark, collecting animals
two by two, and warning the people of what was to come. Everyone
criticized and made fun of him, no water had ever fallen from the
sky, such a thing was impossible, and so he was considered a nut
case. Noah continued onward though the bullying and the criticism,
and when his ship was finally finished, Noah and his family began
to have the animals come on board, two by two. The Terrans, at
around the same time, had their designated families on board the
last rocket taking off for orbit, when the sky did something it had
never done before, began clouding up with dark, ominous clouds,
then the rain began falling, causing everyone on Earth to panic.
The Terrans immediately set the countdown to launch for the rocket,
not knowing anything about weather since Earth never had any kind
of bad weather, or even rain, at this point in history. As that
last rocket was leaving Earth’s atmosphere, a massive tidal wave
appeared and came crashing down on Terra City, destroying the city
and killing the inhabitants who had stayed behind. The last Terrans
made it safely out into space and boarded the starship, making its
heading directed towards the next star system, Alpha Centauri. The
trip would take hundreds of years since the star system was four
light years from Earth, from all the information that had been
gathered from the probes sent out in that direction. As they were
leaving Earth’s gravitational pull, the Terrans watched from
monitors all over the ship as the planet became completely engulfed
in water, since it took almost a year just to reach Mars. They
vowed that someday, they would return.

Two hundred years later, the Terrans arrived
in the Alpha Centauri star system. During the two hundred years,
the Terran scientists developed a sophisticated sensor system for
the ship, which was necessary to avoid all the hazards in open
space, shields to keep the ship from being destroyed by all those
hazards in space, faster, more efficient computers, and an ion
engine. Once the ship stopped, a sensor sweep was conducted on all
the planets. The fourth one in the system, which was bigger than
Earth, but had a similar orbit, seemed to support human life. A
group of scientists went down to the planet in a shuttle to
determine if there was humanoid life of any kind and what kind of
animal or plant life the planet contained. After a week, they
determined the planet was safe for the Terrans, who numbered in the
thousands on their generational ship from the few hundred who had
boarded the ship two hundred years earlier. A location similar to
one on Earth was chosen for a settlement, and once everything was
off-loaded from the ship, they immediately began to build their new
civilization. They also chose a name for their new planet, calling
it Terra.

Once the Terrans were firmly established on
their new home, they built probes and sent them out to explore the
rest of the galaxy, to see if any life existed elsewhere besides
Earth and Terra; the probes though, wouldn’t be sent to Earth,
since scouts would be sent later to determine what happened to the
remaining humans after the flood. One probe had been in space for
ten years when the probe sent a signal to the Terrans informing
them it had come across an alien civilization. A few minutes later
though, the probe suddenly stopped sending data in the middle of
the transmission, making the Terrans fear the worst. They decided
to build weapons to defend themselves, along with a full military
just in case the aliens found out where Terra was and attacked the
planet. Their space program researched a satellite defense system,
and began developing a fleet of star-faring warships, with a few to
be utilized as explorers. The satellite defense network became
active five years later, the military was active and ready for an
invasion, and six starships had been built. One other probe had
picked up signals from another alien civilization, but the probe
had gone unimpeded further into space. Three of the starships were
sent on exploratory missions, these ships were capable of sub-light
speed and equipped with the latest in Terran technology.

The aliens who had destroyed the first probe
never seemed to appear in the Alpha Centauri system, or at least
that’s what the Terrans thought. These hostile aliens had cloaking
technology for their ships, so one was dispatched to Terra to find
out about these new star-faring aliens. The ship stayed outside the
sensor range of the satellite defense network, while the aliens,
who were called the Ragnor, got through the primitive shield with a
small shuttle and three scientists on board. Their intent was to
study these new aliens known as the Terrans, even experiment on
them, so that the Ragnor could understand these new neighbors in
the galactic neighborhood. Mysterious abductions began happening
all over Terra, then the people who were abducted earlier from one
location, returned to the same location a few hours later, most of
whom couldn’t remember what had happened, but a small number
complained of a massive government conspiracy. Enough Terrans
complained about some sort of government cover-up, that some of the
Terran movies began having plots about aliens and abductions, even
going so far as to claim that the government shot down an alien
ship in the desert and were conducting experiments of their own on
the aliens. Unfortunately for those involved, the government had no
clue as to what was happening, but they did begin to suspect aliens
were involved when they met another alien culture two years after
sending out the explorer ships.