Arrived: A New Novella Entitled Origin: Nella by Tom Maremaa

Available on Amazon in ebook format.now!

The new prequel to the Christopher Reed trilogy

Description:

Origin: Nella is the third volume in the Christopher Reed series that began with Of Gods, Royals & Superman and was later followed by the critically acclaimed Man on the Isle of Jura. This work is a prequel to the other two volumes. 

Here we move back in time to the year 1760, the colonial pre-revolutionary period leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the fight for freedom against King George III and the rulers of the British Empire. In the story, we meet colonists who have been building a version of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia in upstate Novo York. One day an entourage of visitors arrive unexpectedly at the gates of the utopian community with a pair of young twin boys in tow. 

The 13 Colonies

The visitors say nothing about their origins, but as readers, we know they are from the distant planet Nella and are on a mission to seed new life in the New World and pass on the Nellan mutation that has advanced their culture and civilization far beyond that of Earth. The boys are soon taken under the wing of Sir Oliver Reid, who later becomes a delegate from the colony of Connecticut to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. He and his wife Abigail raise the boys to become leaders during the coming Revolutionary War, one a loyalist, the other a patriot - each endowed with superhuman gifts that are destined to transform the course of American history. 

Thomas Jefferson

Writing the Declaration of Independance

In this dazzling narrative of magical realism, historical and science fiction, we follow the fortunes of the young upstart Cristoph Reid, and his struggle to save the lives of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin at the birth of the nascent republic. 

Can Cristoph Reid, the younger of the twins, foil an attempted plot by the British spy and assassin Rollie Benedict to murder the signers of the Declaration? Will Charles the older of the twins survive when he takes sides with the Redcoats against his brother?

Here are some excerpts:

ORIGIN: NELLA

Volume III 

Christopher Reed:  Adventures in the Brave New World  

Part I: The Blue Planet

The man and the boy had last been to the blue planet almost one hundred and fifty years ago. 

The memory of their journey through the British isles from eons ago was one of enlightenment and pure discovery. The Renaissance had transformed the lives of all folk who inhabited the isles as if by the stroke of Shakespeare’s pen or Da Vinci’s paintbrush. They had seen much and learned even more. And now, emerging from the time portal, they had returned, albeit to another land across the Atlantic on a mission to navigate and map the terrain, engage with all manner of local folk, as they had before, and study the customs and politics and mindspace of this new land. Stepping forward out of the portal, the man and the boy pumped their fists triumphantly in the air. They had made it, having braved the harsh elements of interstellar travel and altered dimensions of time and space as they stumbled and wobbled on their feet before planting their transformed bodies on the Terra of the Brave New World.

The portal was marked by an obelisk that rose from the ground in the shape of a large oval with a hole at its center flanked by two smaller ovals with a pyramidal top, no more than a thousand stone in weight and a dozen feet in height. Once outside they looked around to survey the landscape, now covered with huge mounds of snow and ice in all directions. They had emerged, as predicted, in Novo Scotia, or New Scotland, as it was known at the time. At once, the man and the boy began to feel the sensation of cold on the blue planet as their bodies assumed the shape of humans made of flesh and bones and muscle. The trip had taken almost seventeen years during which they had been in a hyperstate of suspended animation, barely alive and breathing. Despite the chill, they began cheering loudly and spontaneously, cries of joy and exhilaration, announcing their arrival in the New World in voices that reverberated through the vast expanse of the northern territory, now snowbound and empty of life, that lay before their eyes. Not a human in sight, they observed. Nor an animal or much of anything in the way of plants and trees. Barren. Forbidding. Desolate.

The mother of the boy had failed to emerge from the portal, much to the surprise and disappointment of the man and the boy. She had borne fifty-seven children on their home planet of Nella and the hope was she would bear more offspring in the New Land, in Novo Britannica, so inhabitants of the blue planet might carry forth her rich genetic makeup and propagate the mutation that had advanced Nellans to their present state of evolution. 

On not seeing the mother of the boy, the man, feeling deep pain and loss, let out a scream in their native language that nearly pierced the boy’s delicate and newly awakened human eardrums. Usually, the man and the boy as well as the mother had spoken to each other telepathically, rarely making an audible sound, only at times a gentle and often beguiling whisper. The man blamed himself for the failure of the mother to emerge from the portal, even though he had had no control of it. Entry into the blue planet’s time portals had probably been more difficult than the origin’s programming system and mathematical algorithms could handle. Or something else had caused her death and failure to emerge, so he figured when surveying the scene and her absence. 

They had landed hundreds of miles north of Novo Britannica—far beyond where the King’s colonies had been founded several centuries before. One hundred and fifty years earlier the man and the boy had entered the blue planet through the time portal near Stonehenge, and were privileged to spend several dozen years exploring the villages and towns of England during the late Renaissance. Now their directive was to do the same in the Brave New World. Explore. Discover. Map the terrain. As it happened, Stonehenge had been built by the man’s ancestors more than five thousand years ago, if one calculated the period by means of blue planet time instrumentation. Stonehenge had been useful as a time portal and now it was hoped the portal in Novo Scotia would serve a similar purpose for Nellans coming to explore the continents of the blue planet. 

The man and the boy struggled now to adjust to the biorhythms of life on the blue planet. For one thing, time on their home planet of Nella ran at a different clock rate, but simple math would enable one to easily measure the difference. By all indications Nella was at least one hundred thousand years older than the blue planet, and much further advanced in its evolution, even though both planets had seeded human life around the same time. The blue planet was primitive by Nellan standards, backward in its science, riddled with religious beliefs that throttled progress, unable to handle the anger and rage of clashing and competing civilizations without resorting to war and mass destruction, a planet bent on ultimately destroying itself. The man and boy, along with the mother, if she had lived, were there to do their part to nudge the inhabitants to change their ways, their attitudes, their arcane belief systems. And if possible, populate the land with new life and blood from Nella. They were also to prospect for gold and other precious metals wherever they could find them, either in the East or the West of the New Land. So it had been decreed in the directives Nella’s elders had outlined for the man and his family before their long and precarious journey to the blue planet. 

°  °  °

 The portal had closed now. The man, stretching his arms and legs and taking his first long strides in the thick snowpack, looked at the boy and said,

—I can feel it like you do, son.

—It hurts and is deeper than I can imagine. 

—We both had great love for your mother. She was the pillar of our lives on Nella but now we’re here and must do what we can to fulfill our directive. Agreed?

—Yes.

—We need to get moving and complete unloading of the material that came with us through the portal.

—I’m seeing boxes and containers. Hope it’s all there.

—We’ll see, said the man.

°  °  °

  During their seventeen-year journey through space to the blue planet neither the man nor the boy had aged. Not even a bit. They had been in a state of suspended animation in a pod coming through the portal. Previous explorers who had travelled in ships had reported that the planets and their moons in the solar system were breathtaking in their stark, unparalleled beauty: the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the mountainous red dust on the red planet. The man and the boy shared those reflections telepathically and wished they had had the opportunity to experience what earlier Nellans had. A wistful sense of historical nostalgia came over them as they felt the cold air bite into their lungs when they took deep breaths and exhaled. Their mission, they reminded each other, was to create new life on the third planet from the sun. 

—To seed life, said the man, if possible and expand the consciousness of the native populations as well as the people who had crossed the oceans on ships and settled in the thirteen colonies of Novo Britannica. 

Now with the boy’s mother gone, it would be difficult. Both the boy and the man might be able to procreate with a woman on the blue planet but it would’ve been much better if the boy’s mother had not died, so they reasoned. She could’ve borne other children, as many as several dozen, if not more, in her time on the planet, and in so doing, she would’ve added to the gene pool and ensured the advancement of the human race, as the traits of the Nellans would be passed on and carried forward. She had been looking ahead, so the man recalled, to studying life on the new planet, walking across the continent with her husband and son and exploring the virgin land. All three had images of maps, precisely detailed and radiant in four brilliant dimensions of time and space imprinted in memory banks of consciousness, which they could retrieve at a moment’s notice and observe for navigation on the rugged terrain ahead and through the ice and snow-covered forests and across the lakes and rivers. I

Another excerpt: Part II

A man and a boy have arrived at the front gates of our Utopia, so I am being hastily summoned hence and forthwith to meet the new arrivals. Doubtless they are seeking food and shelter from the last days of our most bitter of winters. I understand the needs of the hungry all too well, having endured many winters in Novo Britannica depleted of food and supplies and having, even, been driven to the very brink of starvation. Our Utopia is at once a military fortress and a haven for colonists opposed to the ruling armies of Redcoats and their leaders who have taxed us to death, exploited the fruits of our labors, and denied us our God-given rights and freedoms. 

It is shortly before noon and the sunlight has warmed the ramparts and buildings in the main areas of the compound. I hurry to bundle myself in a jacket of sheepskin, my hands still chilled by snow on top of my log cabin, my mood soured by a night of restless sleep. Abigail, my wife, was restless too, lying in bed braving the cold, perhaps sensing in her dreams the imminent arrival of strangers at our front gates, wondering if they are friend or foe, and what has brought them here. The inevitable why of all human actions. Since our founding some years ago my responsibilities have grown by leaps and bounds: the protection of the lives of the folk in our little colony, the assurance of survival in the wake of a poor harvest, the mediation of conflict as it arises among our citizens, not to speak of the necessary preparations for invasion or war in times of peace. Too much to think of, certainly, at the moment.

At the gate I step forward and command the guards to open up the doors. I study the faces of the new arrivals: they are not familiar to me, appearing unmarked, glinting in the sunlight, gleaming as polished metal or glass, faces without expression or affect. 

Strange, indeed.

Under each arm the man is carrying a small child, no older than a year and a half, or just shy of two, in all probability, from what I can observe. Both children appear to be fast asleep, eyes shut tight, wrapped in blankets of white fur. Their ruddy faces, cute and chubby and adorable by any standard, appear to be the spitting image of each other: identical, for, as I surmise, they must be twins. What brings them all here beyond the need for food and shelter? Abigail and my three daughters have taught me the importance of always questioning, probing, and prodding whomever steps in front of me, looking as deeply as possible into the dark of recesses of their eyes and heart, always seeking the truth of Man’s motives in this new and dangerous world. We are a land to be taken, often by force, by armies of the night, by gunpowder and acts of unspeakable barbarism. Vigilance being the order of the day, I insist to all folk living in our Utopia.

The man asks for me by name, with a certain air of studied formality: “Pray tell, may we speak to sir Reid?”

One of the guards points in my direction.

“And if possible,” adds the man, “may we also speak to Sir More, whom we understand to be the builder and creator of this utopian community, about whom we have heard so much, always in encomiums of praise, always spoken of with great respect among folk residing in the colonies of Novo Britannica?”

On meeting the entourage, I am hesitant to answer directly and cannot make out their accents: their speech sounds hollow to me, mechanical, yet precise. Syllables and consonants roll out from the tips of their tongues in flattened tones that are close to whispers. I am, for all intents and purposes, accustomed to men raising their voices in my presence, shouting and demanding to be heard, never whispering meekly under their breaths like old women or beggars. I dare say, it’s all rather odd and perhaps more than a bit disconcerting. 

They are accompanied by a woman with dark hair and eyes. Could she perhaps be the mother of the twins, if my observations are correct, although I am not sure nor do I know the truth? Another woman with a baby, pale in complexion with carrot-red hair; and a younger boy, perhaps six or seven years in age, who is black and appears to be agitated for some reason. The mother of the baby is holding the infant tenderly, endearingly in her arms, cradling it with a look of love in her eyes, bright and beaming, as she rocks it back and forth on her heels, while singing a sweet lullaby I have never heard before. Or could this woman be the mother of the adorable twin boys? I have no idea! Good folk, is my first impression in any case. To be trusted. Yet quite an entourage, nonetheless.

“Sir Oliver Reid?” says the man, stepping forward with the boy at his side, as one of the twins begins to awaken and lift his chin, looking at me with an intense gaze.

“Aye.”

“Will you kindly take us in?”

“How do you know my name?”

“We’ve heard many things about you, good sir. Word travels far and fast.”

“Where you men from?” I demand, my voice gruff and commanding.

“The North. The far north territories, Novo Scotland and the frontiers of French Canada.”

“And what brings you here?”

The question is plain, direct, simple and to the point. I have grown accustomed to a certain bluntness in my exchanges with strangers coming to the outpost.

“Many reasons, far too many to discuss this casually at the gate of your utopia. To begin, may we humbly ask you for food. Whatever you can afford. Our women are hungry, so is the younger boy. My son and I can go without, although our twin boys will need milk if you can spare it.”

“We have food,” I say, “which we can share, but for which you must work. One of the rules of our community.”

“That we can do, good sir.”

“So you are travelers? Far and wide, I presume?”

“Over a year, if not longer on the road, heading south.”

Are they nomads? Barbarians? Primitives? The outpost, I wish to tell them, is intolerant of outsiders, despite all my efforts to the contrary, but do not say a word.

“We are not barbarians,” says the man, as if reading my thoughts. “Hardly.”