The Trek: Darwin's World, Book II (The Darwin's World Series 2)
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Authors: Jack L Knapp
The Trek
Book Two, the Darwin’s World Series
By Jack L. Knapp
COPYRIGHT
The Trek
Book Two, The Darwin’s World Series
Copyright © 2013 by Jack L Knapp
Edited by Warren Stewart.
Cover Photo by Jack L Knapp
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Disclaimer: The persons and events depicted in this novel were created by the author’s imagination; no resemblance to actual persons or events is intended.
Product names, brands, and other trademarks referred to within this book are the property of the respective trademark holders. Unless otherwise specified, no association between the author and any trademark holder is expressed or implied. Nor does the use of such trademarks indicate an endorsement of the products, trademarks, or trademark holders unless so stated. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, registered trademark, or service mark.
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT
2
Dedication
5
Preface
6
Prologue
9
Chapter 1
12
Chapter 2
17
Chapter 3
22
Chapter 4
26
Chapter 5
30
Chapter 6
35
Chapter 7
40
Chapter 8
44
Chapter 9
48
Chapter 10
53
Chapter 11
59
Chapter 12
64
Chapter 13
69
Chapter 14
74
Chapter 15
80
Chapter 16
84
Chapter 17
90
Chapter 18
95
Chapter 19
101
Chapter 20
107
Chapter 21
112
Chapter 22
117
Chapter 23
121
Chapter 24
125
Chapter 25
130
Chapter 26
135
Chapter 27
140
Chapter 28
144
Chapter 29
149
Chapter 30
154
Chapter 31
159
Chapter 32
163
Chapter 33
167
Chapter 34
171
Chapter 35
176
Chapter 36
180
Chapter 37
186
Chapter 38
191
Chapter 39
195
Combat Wizard, an Excerpt: Chapter 1
200
Books by the author:
208
About the Author:
209
Dedication
For Sharon and Ronnie, two of my favorite people
Preface
This is book two of a series, Darwin’s World, Darwin's World II: The Trek, and Darwin's World III: Home. There are other books planned for the series. All will be set on Darwin’s World, but different characters will be featured. Matt’s story will be complete at the end of Home.
Darwin’s World introduces a number of concepts and characters.
The Futurists, ‘downtimers’ are from the 22nd Century or even later. There may be one group of them or there may be several different groups, and it’s not certain that they are working together. Some of the Futurists may have motives that differ from the motives of the others.
Human civilization of the future is dying. Science has advanced until there are no worlds left to explore or conquer. Disease and the genetic tendency for cell death have been eradicated. As a result, human life spans have been extended indefinitely.
But this is no utopia. People have become bored; lacking challenge, life has lost its meaning. Few children are being born. The population is shrinking, not because of natural death but from boredom. Simply put, people become tired of living and end their lives.
A few Futurists are visionary enough to understand that something has been lost from the human character. They hope to use technology to reintroduce what’s missing and save their civilization from extinction.
The technology of crossing into parallel dimensions has been available for some time. All such crossings lead to versions of Planet Earth. As well as crossing dimensional lines, the technology also permits limited travel in time; the Futurists can visit parallel Earths in the past, but not in the future. It has proved impossible to visit a future in advance of their timeline, whether on Earth Prime or a parallel Earth.
One of the dimensions contains a version of Earth in which humans did not survive; proto-humans died out before they could begin the long evolutionary journey that resulted in Cro-Magnon man. This Earth dimension has been selected for an experiment, harvesting humans from the 20th and 21st Centuries and transplanting them to this parallel Earth.
In order not to affect downtime history, only persons in the final stages of life are harvested. They are treated using modern medical science; a number of changes at the genetic level cause their bodies to be changed so extensively as to be ‘reconstituted’. The harvested persons retain their memories and skills, plus they also receive a suite of implanted memories that will help them survive after transplanting.
The experimental subjects, the transplants, receive a young, healthy body but little else; tools and weapons are limited in number and muscle-powered only, and men aren’t provided with projectile weapons. Individual Futurists have varying protocols for transplanting, although it appears some practices are common to all. Some, perhaps all, of the women are transplanted in groups of three and given a shelter and a crossbow; men are always transplanted singly, with no one to rely on but themselves.
Men have a knife and a camp-axe, slightly larger than a hatchet but smaller than a woodsman’s axe. Those two items, and the clothing they wear, are the only advantages they have when they arrive. Their memories and implanted knowledge may eventually be of help, but first they must survive as best they can.
They will receive no further assistance from the Futurists.
It is understood that most will likely not survive, but those who do will have the qualities that Futurist civilization has lost. The few activists of that distant time hope that the descendants of such transplants will have a more-developed survival instinct, as well as the curiosity and ambition that mankind has lost. The conditions on Darwin’s World are such that only those with those qualities are likely to survive. The planet acts as a selection mechanism.
The Futurists decided, before beginning their project, not to simply pick specimens from an earlier time and transplant them directly to their own society. Too much was unknown, there was too great a danger than a megalomaniac might be loosed into a society that couldn’t cope. But the descendants of the transplants
could
be tracked and their character assessed.
#
The experimental subjects are made aware of what has happened to them. They understand that they are responsible for their own survival. This is ultimate freedom; live or die, succeed or fail.
The transplanted persons are placed into a time that corresponds to the late Pleistocene of Earth Prime, at selected spots within a zone lying between the 45th degrees of north and south latitude. The climate is temperate, and transplantings occur in late spring or early summer.
The Pleistocene of Darwin’s World resembles that of the Futurists’ Earth in that the ice sheets have retreated. Glaciers still exist, so temperatures tend to be cooler. Animals are plentiful and many are huge; mammoth, mastodon, giant ground sloth, and stag-moose are representative. Smaller animals, similar to those found in the 20th and 21st Centuries downtime, also flourish.
There are predators too, and some of them have evolved to prey primarily on the megafauna: saber-toothed cats, giant short-faced bears, dire wolves. There are also lions, American cheetahs, grizzlies, and coyotes. All of these exist on the continents where transplanting takes place.
Humans lived and flourished in such conditions uptime on Earth Prime. They had the ability to use stone, bone, and antler to fashion tools and weapons, and they possessed a brain superior to other animals of that time.
That brain enabled them to find substitutes for what nature had failed to provide. Blades of flaked stone replaced claws and teeth. Like wolves and lions, they organized and hunted in packs. Numbers and organization substituted for the speed and strength they lacked, compared to the larger animals.