Creative Destruction
by Bill Kowaleski
Creative Destruction is a sequel to the novel Brighter Than the Stars, in which Earthlings meet technologically advanced space aliens. The Cygnians come only to do business, but their schemes to sell fusion-powered generators become contentious and competitive.
Many human and alien characters return from the previous novel, including Jim McDermott and his team, who try to reduce the risk of societal upheaval that the new technologies threaten. Meanwhile, many different groups are either plotting to steal the technical advances for their own purposes or trying to destroy it and drive the Cygnians off of Earth.
| Cast of Characters and Species | Table of Contents |
Chapter 9: The Manifesto
PROTECT OUR FUTURE: A MANIFESTO
We live in a time where each one of us must make a decision. Are we content to turn our planet over to alien creatures from another world? Are we willing to trade our freedom, our future for the empty promise of cheap, abundant energy? The powers that be tell us that these aliens are friendly, all they want for these unimaginably powerful fusion generators are some minerals. Can we believe that? Can we believe that these creatures just want to be our friends? Does that make any sense?
Consider another possibility: that they put these reactors here so that once they are all in place they can threaten to destroy us all if we do not become their slaves, so that they can pillage our planet, take everything of value away, even the air and the water and leave us to die. Doesn’t that seem a far more likely reason for their coming here? We are human beings, we MUST control our own destiny, not let aliens tell us what to do.
They bring a new technology that we do not understand, and they give it to us for practically nothing.
This technology is not safe. Was Three Mile Island safe? Was Chernobyl safe? Was Fukushima safe? NO!!! Why would these reactors, bigger and more powerful than any reactor ever made, be any better? Scientists warn that these reactors could turn the Earth into nothing more than a swarm of molecules, that they could literally make everything tear apart. Do YOU want to take that risk?
And so, people of Earth, people of AMERICA, tell your Congressman, tell your Senator, tell the President:
ALIENS OUT NOW!!
BULLDOSE THESE DANGEROUS FUSION POWER PLANTS NOW!!
IMPRISON THE COLLABORATORS WHO WORKED WITH THESE ALIENS NOW!!
Save our country, save our future! Only YOU can do it.
She’d rewritten it a little at Miles’ urging. He’d wanted the part about contacting the various government officials and was quite insistent on the list of demands at the end. She had to admit that it gave the manifesto more of a spark, that it had become something that made people want to DO something.
Miles had been right. The manifesto generated tremendous interest, in fact, too much. In less than a week her Facebook page collected thousands of messages from people who wanted to do something. She had no idea how to organize all the people who wanted to act. It was totally overwhelming.
But Miles stepped in. He brought in some people who knew how to organize, to turn anger into action. He said they were political operatives, people you could hire to organize anger, outrage or fear into political action. They had already shoved her in front of the press twice, where she’d dutifully explained the terrible threat the aliens and their nuclear reactors posed, and were pulling together a march on Washington, just two weeks away. Miles believed that a million people might show up.
One of the political organizers had come up with a catchy name for the organization: Aliens Out. He had even convinced a commentator on Fox News to take up the cause, and now Jerrod Hanrahan ranted nightly about aliens threatening America’s freedom, fusion power destroying the Earth, and how human free enterprise was threatened by alien socialists living in herds.
Alien socialists living in herds? Maria Schoenbrun let it go; the ends justified the means.
Copyright © 2019 by Bill Kowaleski
