Elise is a crewmember who, as an aid to the exiled Agronomy scientist, is the only non-exile allowed out onto the planet surface. The others stay on the main ship in orbit or on the transport ship that delivered the exiles to do the studies.
Elise’s chip says she’s Marta from Germany but her management decided she’s just another ‘Soggy’ and shun her. This allies her with the exiles even more strongly. ‘Soggy’ is a likely phrase as humans have a history of making caricatures of ‘lesser’ folk with such derogatory language.
Elise’s plan was to make enough money to go home and pay tuition to finish her degree. She is flayed when she hears of the plan to destroy the trees planted and the horticultural bounty the wrecked Dutch ship carried. My mentor told me that such heartrending issues affect people now, the world over, and that it will doubtless occur more often when times get tougher. They really do care about us.
When Elise takes a walk though the planted trees, she finds one she does not recognize and is affronted, that was her major in college! She realizes this is not a tree but an alien. And there are more hiding among the trees. I was told life comes in trillions of forms, most that formed by evolution in their home environments. They have a wide span of development, some simple and some highly advanced.
Elise’s Paraguayan friend dubs the aliens Amigos. As life is in many forms, so are the attitudes and emotions of that life. Tehuti said peace and cooperation is most natural, and there is a strong tendency for civilized folk to recognize peace as beneficial. He’s from the Lyran area of the galaxy and there were folk like him there as well as a civilization that thought the weaker or more self-serving beings should be thinned out. For the Amigos I chose smart, peaceful and honest as attributes. Later, other aliens that threatened Earth for example, were more mechanical and unconcerned about others if there was a technical concern.
Elise convinces the other exiles to help her smuggle the aliens to the next Colony planet instead of allowing them to be destroyed with the trees. Tehuti’s major concern was that we show the poorly treated illegal with mental issues from trauma can lead and make pivotal changes for humanity. She sacrificed her future to save the Amigos and bravely introduced this alien species to the humans of Tenembras. This was my way of stating that real heroes don’t let anything stop them.
Elise, now known as Marta, signs up for a colony supply bus that has an initial science stop. She becomes the aid for an exiled Canadian food distribution master, famed for supplying poor populations. Her best friend is an exiled Pantanal peacekeeper who tried to save the Amazonian ecosystem. They reach the initial planet stop and find a Dutch ship full of trees and plants that had launched with grand fanfare was sabotaged and crashed there. There are no human survivors, however the shipwreck also destroyed the transport for a group of aliens. As word of this questionable shipwreck would incite riots, ship command will destroy the shipwreck and the cargo of plants, flowers, trees as well as the tree they were able to plant on this dim and inhospitable planet.
Space tech is making amazing progress considering where we were a decade of a few ago. I was informed that the ET Entities try to inspire some of the most promising scientists.
When the number of refugees get far too manageable and there’s no place for all the bodies, the US and China compete to colonize planets. Then it becomes a real estate race; who can find and keep the most lucrative planets?
I was urged to read of the current planetary findings by NASA and affiliates. Most at the time while I was writing the stories, the discovered planets appeared to have no atmosphere or water and to be very close to the local sun. Ricky told me that many do have atmospheres and water but are more difficult to detect with current methods. There is much life thriving out there according to the ETs, and they should know!
As did the Dutch, the Canadians will probably use their newly warn northern areas to grow great quantities of food which they, in the story, do charge those who can pay but also donate much to support central African countries in particular as they are working on grass root improvements for all. Having a shipload of grain ruin on the dock under US orders looks very probable. Stopping African nations from cooperating on ways to allow a better life for millions will probably not be acceptable to the autocrats.
Elise ‘known as Marta’ is common now. I worked with such a person with an assumed name 25 years ago. The technology will attempt to thwart this by giving US citizens embedded chips that can be scanned wherever one goes. Does it surprise anyone that there are people who can reprogram the chips?
The main and title character of the Sci-Fi series The Elise t’Hoot Galactic Adventures, is Elise. 100+ years hence, the Dutch folk (her mother in particular) are premier at food production techniques and the construction of strong seawalls (her father’s forte) that protect vulnerable populations. Elise’s world is shattered when the outer barrier wall for the Netherlands is destroyed, allowing a ravaging storm to flood the country. Her father is missing. Her mother and brother are herded to a camp where the crowding is made worse by dead bodies and food is dumped for sport, to watch the refugees fight for it. Her brother is killed that way.
No surprise, the climate will pass critical tipping points without dedicated and effective action. All the entities are very concerned as the Angels are tasked with aiding and caring for us, Jesus is hoping to prevent pain and mass suffering, the Elemental share the planet with us and the ETs, many of which helped start human civilization as gods, want to use their technical expertise to prevent havoc. All of them have leaned to care for us, even when humanity does terrible things.
Any competition to the US hegemony on tech, food, status is in danger. The Netherlands devoted much to assisting others by providing innovative propagation methods and rising sea safety. They, particularly Elise’s father, got too much prestige for that and was allowing upstarts to rival the US in some areas.
Elise and her mother got German help. There will always be caring and loving people who can make the situation better. Unfortunately, it seems these folks will need to be more and more careful of speaking out when the authoritarians come into power.
Making sport of food fights? That happened through history, and these camps are much like concentration camps. The difference is, the citizens are herded together for exile as property proof on barely livable colony planets.
Elise and her mother escape and find a German uncle who has a dying daughter. He gives Elise and her mother the identification of his daughter and wife. They arrive in the US as Germany is a favored Eurussian ally. They live with an aunt in Kentucky that operates a forestry reserve. She attends WKU until her scholarship is revoked for unknown reasons. Perhaps the Botany and Forestry section fell from autocratic favor?
The series covers many current issues that we might use to gain a wider perspective on. The series is still in eBook only, I’m having a darned hard time getting the covers right to send to the publisher. I won’t give up!
How Would You Do It? 