Hello Readers!

I am happy to announce my new science fiction book "Ordell's Constellation." with a release date TBD.

Here is a teaser and the first chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter I: Ursa Major

Stepping back just far enough to watch the sun illuminate the outline of the palace, Ursa slowly stuck out her right arm and traced each of the facades with the edge of her fingertip. The pale red bricks that curved around the edges of the doors and windows quickly lost their dullness, as they suddenly burst with bright blues, oranges, and yellows, with each flick of her hand. In front of the building lay the barren courtyard. The grains of dirt that once lay cold and still in front, began to shake and dance.
Opening the palm of her hand, she extended her fingers before closing them in her palm, as a towering statue of a bear suddenly ripped its way up into the courtyard's center. Now standing high and mighty, the great bear statue became the centerpiece to an even greater fountain that followed after. Ursa again moved her hand, now as if twisting an imaginary dial, as the water from the fountain abruptly burst its way out and upwards in every direction.
Muttering incantations under her breath, she placed both hands, palms out, and slowly raised them upwards towards the sky. Like the statue and the fountain before, towering skyscrapers of all heights and shapes, split open the earth below as they steadily rose into the air, to form the urban skyline.
“How’s everything going down there Ursa?” A small square screen became visible in the left corner of her view, emitted from the clear display of her eye gazers. In the square, appeared a dark skinned man around middle age. He wore a decorated outfit, and spoke with a calm authority. “Ursa do you read?”
“I read. Just adding some final touches sir,” she spoke, with slight urgency, and gently waved her hand again. This time, details popped out and showed in every nook, edge and cranny of her creations. Signature swirls and colors burst their ways onto the scene. Time sped up as ivy crawled its way up buildings and around window ledges.
The director's voice chimed back in. “How much more time are you going to need? The delivery of synthetics for the planet’s primary colonization phase will be arriving shortly. You will only have an hour before they awaken Ursa. Meaning you should be back to headquarters by then, with time to spare,” his voice spoke again, this time with a heightened insistence.
“I follow. See you back on the ship,” she returned, in hopes she had reassured him, and waited a few seconds, in what felt like forever, for a response. There came a long silence, then finally followed by the director's voice again.
“Roger that. See you back home, Ursa,” he said at last. And as the words vibrated from the radio piece to her eardrum, she was again left in silence. She glanced at the clock's countdown in the right corner of her display. “Tee minus twenty five minutes before synthetics’ arrival,” the computer's voice announced. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she shot back, pretending to ignore the warning.
She laid down the final touches, and finished her work with her unique signature etched on the side of one of the tall buildings. A cup and handle, or dipper, cemented permanently on its side, faint at first, but easy to make out if one knew what they were looking for. She looked on, admiring it all, before finally lifting off from the planet's service. As the ship sailed high into the sky, larger than life crafts the very size of the skyscrapers she created, descended from the planet’s heavens.
“Synthetics touchdown in five, four, three…” the computer voice chimed in. She pushed down on the throttle to enhance the speed of the craft. Before the countdown could reach one, her ship burst its way through the planet's thermospheric layer, and into the exosphere, where it settled into a silent and gentle orbit. She looked out from the flight deck onto the bluish red sphere, and leaned way back in her chair as she patiently waited for the next automated command.
“This will take some time,” Ursa spoke softly to herself, before getting up from the chair and making her way to the ship's living quarters. She flexed and stretched her hands, both sore from a tedious morning of society building. Pressing on a small gem shaped button on the front of her wrist, she released the architectural operating system from her left hand, followed by the one on her right. These brilliantly engineered devices allowed her, and others like her, to create city masterpieces using whatever material or matter was found on the planet’s surface, and only a select few from the Council were allowed to use it.
The Council of Constellations served a universal purpose. Their goal was to analyze and interpret different societies and governments. To discover what drives beings to continue living, despite the difficulty or disadvantages that they might face. They seek to bring to light the key to why we choose to go on existing. And most importantly, to uncover the secret to our purpose and meaning in life.
Yet after nearly twenty thousand years of observing human nature on earth, the results remained inconclusive. Humans were too chaotic, impulsive, and sporadic. They lacked the ability to serve together for any common goal. As a result, governments fell, new ones rose, societies crumbled, others took over. Their planet was on the verge of falling apart, and they needed an answer. If not to save earth and its nearly twenty billion inhabitants, but in hopes to prevent the inevitable demise of future civilizations.
Then there were the synthetics. Engineered to mimic humans in every possible way, genetically copied in both mental, as well as biological functions. They were built as young as infants and as old as centurions. Each one implanted with all the past and memories of a life lived on their host planets. They could breathe, and eat, and drink, and move about freely. They could think critically, and express themselves with a range of human emotions, fall in love, and even reproduce.
They were nearly a complete match to any other human, save one detail. Tucked away deep within their genome was an innate ability to conjure, just the way that Ursa, and others like her could, but without the need of an architectural operating system. A synthetic one day could create or recreate the world around them in any way that they saw fit. To be the masters of their own worlds. Doctor Harold S. Claymore was the mastermind and chief engineer that led the newly designed planetary colonization synthetics project. After two neck breaking decades of dedicated work and the final completion of the project, he disappeared, never to be heard from again. Nearly a century had passed without any word, and there floated around many theories of what may have happened to him.
Some say that he flew back to his home planet to live out the rest of his days. Many thought he had lost all purpose, after finally completing his work, and simply drifted into the void of space, never to be heard from again. Whatever the rumors may have been, what no one knew was what Claymore left in the genetic code of every synthetic. The ability to bring into being new worlds of their own.
Shortly before his disappearance, Claymore, at long last, learned of the Council’s real intentions for his beloved synthetics. They were all to be used in a giant multi-planetary social experiment, given as much free will to choose their own path, as a rat does inside a maze. So in a last minute attempt to provide hope to who he referred to as, his children, he hid inside them the key to their freedom.
With the use of gene silencing, and by introducing an anticode into the synthetics’ gene sequence, the secret remained hidden. Yet Claymore knew that after decades, centuries or millennia of reproducing, and manufacturing synthetics, that there would one day be a synthetic born that would break the code. He soon realized that the only chance they would have, was if this very secret was left with him. So he vanished, never to be seen again.
Reports of Claymore’s disappearance slowly faded over time, and became nothing more than ancient history. The Council of Constellations had already gotten what they wanted. The synthetic’s planetary trials were well under way, with a total of nearly six dozen planets already in operation, with many more being slowly added to that list, including Ursa’s. The first phase of the Council’s plan was under way.
“Synthetics now in position for immediate colonization sequence. Awaiting your command.” The computer’s voice alerted Ursa. Making her way back to the flight deck, she brushed the locks of brown hair away from her deep gray eyes before dropping herself eagerly into the center flight deck command chair. She dialed a few buttons, bringing out a screen in front of her. Displayed was the planet's surface, along with the rolling hills of farmland, small towns, and the towering buildings from cities spread across the land.
It had taken Ursa a single planet’s revolution around its Sun to finish the infrastructure, and would take less than a single day to complete her mission. The final step was approaching, and the importance and attention to the tiniest details was key to the success of the Council's mission. The time had finally arrived.
Ursa’s screen located each of the synthetic’s ships on the surface of the planet, each being illuminated by a small blinking blue dot. There were roughly two hundred fifty ships scattered across both the northern and southern hemispheres of the globe. Moreover, every ship contained around eighty to one hundred thousand synthetics, making up for a total of nearly twenty million total.
Ursa entered the combination sequence for the next command. “Lock and load, and ready to roll,” she encouraged herself, and turned on some late twenty-first century music for a little inspiration. The sounds of the instruments and vocals bounced off the interior walls of the ship. A thousand kilometers below, the synthetic ships began dispersing their cargo.
With the groundwork on the planet’s surface prepared, the synthetics began to roll out. Their lifeless bodies streamlined out of the ships, one by one, filling the homes, apartments, duplexes, triplexes, and townhouses. Each living quarter became occupied. A man, and a woman moved into an apartment. An elderly grandmother and her grandchild into another. A family of five into a home. Then a family of six, seven, and eight. All different varieties of families, both single and living together, each with different or the same colored skin, eyes or hair. They filled the streets, on the sidewalks, in moving vehicles, along the countryside, far and wide, each unique, all with a distinct story of their own, and ready to tell.
Mobile robotic delivery arms dispatched each and every synthetic to its prospective destination. One after the other, after the other, after the other. Until each and every one of the two hundred fifty ships were emptied. The synthetics were now all in place. Some were sitting at the dinner table, others were frozen in the morning sun mid walk. Each and every one precisely were they needed to be.
Nearly sixteen hours passed since the first ship opened its doors. When the last synthetic finally was put into place, it would take three more hours for all the robotic delivery arms to make their way back onto the ships. And as quickly as they had landed, they at last left. Immediately making their way back to the Council’s headquarters, many light years away.
Back in the exosphere, Ursa worked tirelessly. Monitoring each and every one of the millions of synthetics that were put in place. Mistakes had happened before. A Synth, as they often were referred to, may have been placed in the wrong home. They would awaken confused and scared, wondering how in the world they had gotten there. This would have required the planet’s Maker, like Ursa, to come back to the planet in secret, dressed as a commoner, and guide the Synth back home. Luckily for her, this was not the case.
Everything was going seamlessly. Ursa watched in anticipation through the viewport as the Synthetic delivery ships burst, with astonishing speed, one after the other, until they were out of sight. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road. Mama’s gonna need a nap,” she spoke aloud, and entered the final command sequence into the ship's computer.
The computer’s voice came back on. “All systems ready. Awaiting your order.” Three dots appeared on the screen, and blinked in sequence. Ursa inhaled a long deep breath in, before finally speaking. “Project Ursa Major commence now,” she spoke, and threw her body back in her chair with a feeling of both pride and utter exhaustion.
The ship was again silent, save the scattered dings and bleeps that echoed throughout its interior. Ursa switched on the music again, this time, a classical instrumental piece with a slow and steadily growing crescendo. The planet below followed the sound of the music as all the synthetics began to awake.
In every place and part of Ursa’s creation the Synths arose from their slumber. A family of Synths came to life at the dinner table, continuing on with a conversation that they never even started in the first place. A taxi driver opened her eyes and continued on with her route, while a teenage passenger carried on talking with their friends in the back seat. A baby burst into tears reaching for a rattle that he never dropped in the first place. Two lovers embrace on the floor of an apartment, staring into each other's eyes, even though it was the first time ever really seeing each other. And on it went.
The once barren and desolate world was now teeming with activity. Within minutes, the planet became as fully functioning and self sustaining as any other place in the universe that supported life. A visitor from afar would have had great difficulty being able to discover the truth of what was really happening here. Thinking that this was no different than the hundreds of millions of years of evolution and natural selection that occurred anywhere else in the cosmos.
Yet how the world was to be run, was the most important piece of the Council’s mission. How it was to be run was different for every planet depending on its location, and corresponding constellation relevant to Earth. Some planets provided no system, no structure, nor governmental rule. The Synths on these planets may be living pre-industrial, or nomadic lifestyles, or be completely anarchist in nature. Some planets exhibit democratic structures, where most take part in working to better their worlds. Others could be ruled by a small elite or a single individual, being totalitarian in nature, and controlling the distribution of goods and the flow of the beings living on the planet. There were utopian planets, and planets of luxury. There were planets with all females, and ones with all males. There were planets of only children, and ones with no children at all.
Each and every variety of government, society, or otherwise were part of the Council’s experiment. The variations differed slightly or majorly, and with each one, data was always collected. Information on the overall health of the Synths, their emotional well being, fluctuations in population, their desires, their struggles, social satisfaction, contentment, and the list went on.
All the figures and details were collected by the Makers, who oversaw their planets, and reported their findings back to base. They would usually have to report down to the planet, where they would take a sample from the population. Sometimes this was easier said than done, depending on the planet.
For Ursa, her planet was ruled by a government that controlled everything. They controlled all properties, industries, agriculture, transportation, communication, hospitals, and schools. Everyone is said to be treated equally and no one owns anything. On Ursa’s planet, everyone Synth worked together for both the betterment of themselves and of society. It would take many sun revolutions of observations and collecting data to truly learn from this system. Only time would tell.