Ok, I know, this is a long one. And get this, it's only a synopsis. It's my idea for, finally, the epic space opera novel I'd been wanting to write. It has some rough edges and needs a lot of TLC, as well as the guts of a plot, but I think I got a pretty interesting foundation. Eh, we'll see.Title: Make Dark The Cobalt Sky
Author: Michael Chausse
Genre: Science Fiction
Synopsis:
Its 1979, an army intelligence soldier monitoring a Soviet sub off the coast of Alaska intercepts a strange radio communication between the sub and an unseen source seemingly buried within a nearby iceberg. Before the private can relay his discovery, he is mysteriously killed and the sub suddenly vanishes.
Flashback to 1947 and the Roswell, NM downing of an unidentified flying object. From the point of view of what appears to be an abducted Earthling on the craft we witness the accident from a whole new perspective and learn what really happened that day as the large-eyed eerie-looking aliens try to prevent the ship's crash.
Flashforward to 1981 and Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. After the ceremony he exits the platform and enters into a small room behind a hidden wall panel inside the Capitol, there he solemnly kneels before an unseen being seated in a throne. We only see the hand of the entity, it looks like one of the aliens called The Greys.
Flashback to Dallas 1963 and the familiar scene of President Kennedy's motorcade on Daley Plaza unfolds. Only this time, we see it through the eyes of Lee Harvey Oswald, who is very much not alone. Another of the Greys is with him, controlling his actions.
Flashforward to 1986 and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. One NASA technician observes that a UFO is seen from a camera that has been knocked askew accidentally. It appears to be hovering in the sky a few miles from the position of the Space Shuttle when it exploded. Before he can alert anyone about his discovery, he suffers a heart attack and dies. The video of the UFO mysteriously disappears.
Flashback to 1969, Neil Armstrong steps on the moon and makes his famous quote to the world. Or does he? In our new view, after he steps onto the surface of the moon, he reaches up, pulls off his helmet and we see it is actually an alien.
After this montage of flashbacks and flashforwards we open to what appears to be present-day and onto the scene of a typical teenage boy's bedroom. His alarm clock is beeping and he sleepily smacks it into snooze mode, plops his head back under his pillow and tries to fall back to sleep as his mother calls up to him from the kitchen below.
We discover that 16-year old Nathan is a B-student who is unsure what he wants to do with his life. He feels out of place and though not out right Goth, has an affinity for the weird and unexplained. He is what one would call a lovable geek. Nate's a huge fan of everything sci-fi, usually with a cheesy bent to it like 50's sci-fi B-movies or hippy UFO stories. He especially is fond of all the conspiracy websites out there and even devotes his blog to his love of reruns of classic geeky and obscure sci-fi TV shows like "In Search Of...", "Nightstalker", and an early local public access sci-fi conspiracy TV show from the 70's called "The Grey Area".
Nate happened to find clips of that last show in the back of a little used storage room at the local FOX-affiliate where he works part-time after school as an intern. He views the old video tapes and see show after show of nothing more than a nerdy guy in glasses at a cheap desk in front of a poorly-made picture of a flying saucer with the words "The Grey Area" in a funky 1970's typeface. He reads from typewritten papers about various noteworthy news events and how they were actually caused or influenced by a race of aliens much used in popular culture...tall, skinny, shiny grey humanoids with big heads and huge black eyes.
At first Nate converts a few of these videos to mpegs and throws them up on his blog, ridiculing them in the captions he writes for them. He leaves out the information as to where they came from since technically he didn't ask anyone at the station if he could have them, so technically, he stole them.
Within a day or two of his posting of the videos, he receives strange comments on his blog from a guy named Aaron who wants to know more about the videos and if Nate knew where the guy in the video could be reached.
Also, around this time, Nate begins to have strange dreams in which he seems to be witness to some of the events mentioned in the videos as well as other infamous world events, many never having been part of the videos and some having taken place years after the videos were made. We discover that the opening montage was actually the same things Nathan saw in his dreams.
Nate tries to ignore both the comments from this guy Aaron and his dreams.
One night, Aaron begins to email Nathan while Nathan is online questions about the videos and he seems more desperate and less friendly with each successive email which comes more and more frequently despite attempts by Nathan to block him. Then Aaron starts to IM him, not on just one IM system but several, even ones that Nathan hasn't ever signed up for.
Suddenly after a rapid succession of ever building IM's and emails and even now Pop-Up Windows (some humorously made to look like the usual spam pop-ups like Male Enhancement drugs and Get Rich Quick schemes) all polluting his computer monitor. As Nathan tries to close down the barrage of windows, his personal webpages like his blog and his Facebook and Myspace page pop up and every bit of text has been replaced by the repeating words: ANSWER ME!
Visibly shaken, Nate shuts down his computer in fear and frustration. As he does so, his room becomes suddenly pitch dark, then, with a startle Nathan jumps in his seat to see that his computer monitor, TV on the other side of the room, iPod, iPhone and even the LED readout on the DVD player, and digital alarm clock have all changed to just two words in all caps, glaring bright green on a black background, blinking violently: ANSWER ME!
Nathan freaks out and runs out of his house, gets in his car and drives away. As he speeds down the suburban street, His car stereo changes from the alternative rock music it was playing to a static and high-pitched whine as if tuning into a weak or far-away transmission. Over the radio, a young woman's voice calmly instructs him to drive to the location indicated on the GPS system screen which has just been activated.
The GPS recorded voice asks the user to state the destination. The voice on the radio glibly addresses the GPS voice and tells her she's got it, honey! The GPS woman answers that she doesn't understand that location...soon the two are "talking" back and forth with the radio woman's voice, obviously not automated and pre-recorded like the GPS system becomes frustrated and even sounds a bit jealous of the GPS woman's voice.
Nathan is totally confused as to what the hell is going on and can hardly believe his ears! Finally, he tells the radio lady "Alright! Alright already I'll go wherever you want, just shut up already!"
The radio girl answers huffily, "Well alright Nathan, but really, is that any way to treat me during our first real conversation with one another? I think I deserve a little respect. After all, I am your fiancee!"
Nate screeches the car to a halt and exclaims, "My what?!" "Listen Nate, we'll explain the whole thing once you come in, I can't get into it over the air. Just follow the prompts on the GPS display."
When Nate gets to the location, it appears to be a boarded-up old abandoned mine, but as a doorway opens and an intense bright light pours out into the night, illuminating his way, Nate cautiously walks through the entrance and into his destiny.
Over the course of the rest of the story, we find out that Nathan is actually Naton the exiled young prince to race of humans who live on another planet much like Earth. In fact, almost exactly like Earth.
The planet is a sister of Earth, in the same orbit, also possessing a single moon the same size as ours, directly on the opposite side of the Sun. A planet named Nastralia for the ancient kingdom which has ruled this world for millennia.
Due to slightly varying ratios of land mass and ocean, only continental drift over the ages has made the two planets look different, otherwise, they have the same mass and size.
It's because of this astronomical rarity that has existed from the earliest days of the solar system's formation that an immensely ancient and highly-technological species of beings, who's name has been lost to the mists of the eons of time, found our twin planets to be the perfect proving grounds for studying the effects of similar, yet separate planets on the evolution and development of a proto-sentient species of hominid...namely us. The Forgotten Ones, as they're known, found Homo sapiens on Earth and transported thousands of them to Nastralia.
They established monitoring stations on both planets and charted human progress for tens of thousands of years. But as suddenly as they had come, for some unknown reason, they had left, abandoning all the monitoring posts and leaving them to be buried or destroyed by the elements. Perhaps a great disaster or war had befallen their home world, or, perhaps they just grew tired of their "pets"? We may never know.
So for thousands of years the two human planets fostered the rise of our species but because of the geologic stability on Nastralia and the lack thereof on Earth, coupled with the discovery of one of the ruins of a Forgotten Ones outpost on the former planet, the two civilizations developed at a much different pace.
Within an estimated 89,000 years of divergence between the two, the human population of Nastralia prospered greatly, developed their own technology at a rapidly-advancing and less-chaotic rate, discovered and adapted ancient Forgotten One ideas and inventions and by what would be known as the beginning of Earth's 17th Century AD, was a space-faring race which had to their astonishment, discovered a planet sharing its orbit, much like its own, populated with a backwards and archaic version of their own species.
Nathan/Naton is told all this and of course is in utter shock. And to find out that he is in fact the sole heir to the throne of this world, well, he finds it a bit too much to believe.
But with patience and demonstration, the beautiful teen-aged girl Aianna, the voice on his car stereo who brought him to this hidden underground locale, explains that he was abducted from the Nastralian royal place, Melanacrastian Citadel, for his own safety by his uncle Kevon when he was just a baby.
Secretly brought to Earth, just before the good king is slain by the greedy, naive and misguided Archduke Alaic of Certa-Biala. The death of King Vairnet, Naton's real father, was made to look like an accident, and though Archduke Alaic had planned for Naton to also be killed, he proclaimed to the people that Naton had also died in the same accident.
With no other heirs, Alaic was next in line for the throne and amidst sadness, was quietly crowned King of Nastralia. But before long, Alaic had round up any potential rivals and secured absolute power over the government. He abandoned the People's Congress and built up a fascist oppressor state, ostensibly for "global security" against the meddling of the well-known alien race called The Greys.
But actually, Alaic was in league with the Greys and allowed them unpresidented access to all aspects of Nastralia's infra-structure. Within a decade, The Greys had risen to such power that they had no reason to hide anymore. They killed Alaic and the head of the army of Greys on Nastralia, K' Jix-Ur, seated himself as Emperor of the Grey-Occupied planet.
His counter part on Earth had also made terrifying gains into the inner-sanctum of that world's governments, but because of the fractured and disordered nature of Earth politics, it was more difficult.
Impatient, K' Jix-Ur announced that he would enslave the humans of Nastralia to build a fleet of ships so that Earth could forgo the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Greys and instead, be subjected to outright conquest. It is said K' Jix-Ur boasted he would blanket the whole Earth with his heavily-armed starships to "...make dark the cobalt sky".
Ainna, Princess of Algeon Island, who had been betrothed as an infant to Naton while they were merely a few days old by their respective royal parents, had also been secured away to Earth years ago by her parents, members of a group of Nastralians who suspected Alaic's true motivations were under the control of the Greys.
Here on Earth, they hid-out in this vast underground facility disguised to look from the outside like an abandoned mine.
They watched the Greys on Earth, monitored their transmissions and bided their time until they could return to Nastralia, overthrow K' Jix-Ur, defeat the Greys, reinstate Naton to his rightful place on the throne and save both human planets. But how they'd do this before Earth was conquered was unknown and fiercely debated.
That is until Nathan posted those videos on the Internet. Then, suddenly, and hopefully just in time, everything came into place.