The Kessler Syndrome

 

Tax accountant Raymond Phillips has just taken over his father’s firm, but his life is about to change dramatically when he is mistaken for aerospace scientist, Timothy Walker, a spy selling Defense Satellite secrets to China.

An elusive spy ring dubbed the China Connection by the CIA has delivered our latest space technology to China and Walker is suspected of being the inside man. When Walker is found dead, a plan to use Walker to export a package of data that will shut down the China Connection has to be terminated, that is unless they can convince, look alike, Raymond Phillips to deliver the package.

What was supposed to be a simple operation goes terribly wrong when China decides to take Phillips and undercover agent Lora Gains hostage. The president must give the word to destroy the plane on which Phillips and Gains are being transported, or risk losing the control of the worlds communication to China. The stakes are raised when it is found the data they are delivering may innitiate the Kessler Syndrome, destroying our ability to put a satellites into orbit for decades to come.

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MY DOG JIGGS

I wasn’t expecting a puppy for my fifth birthday. I wasn’t expecting anything. Things were really tough in those days and I wasn’t even thinking about it being my birthday, no one mentioned it.

My best friend Billy had leukemia and had passed away that windy November day. I was sad at the news and had been sleeping in my upstairs room when I heard my mother call. “Larry, it’s time for dinner.”

I got up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I noticed it was dark outside. And I turned on the bedroom light.

“Hurry, Larry,” I heard my sister call.

I wandered down stairs. The kitchen was lit up and the room filled with balloons. In the center of the table was a cake with candles burning. My dad was standing behind my mother and my sister was jumping up and down with a big smile on her face.

“Happy birthday,” they yelled as I came through the door.

“Wow! I forgot it was my birthday,” I said.

“Make a wish,” my sister said.

I made my wish and climbed up on a chair and blew out the candles.

My dad came from behind my mother and held out my present, a brown and white puppy with floppy ears and big brown eyes. I took the puppy, unable to speak in my excitement. I had always wanted a puppy, but my mother told me she didn’t want a dog in the house. I looked down at the little thing in my arms and couldn’t believe it was true. It looked up at me and licked me in the face.

“Look!” I exclaimed, “Jiggs likes me.”

“Jiggs,” my dad said. “What kind of a name is that for a dog?”

I looked at my dad. “He’s my dog and I like the name Jiggs,” I said.

“Then Jiggs it is,” Dad said. “Who wants ice cream with birthday cake?”

We all had birthday cake before dinner that day. The day I lost my best friend Billy, I gained a puppy that would be a bitter sweet story in itself. 

Several months after my birthday, my parents separated and got a divorce. By that time Jiggs had grown into a mischievous teenager, chasing cars and getting injured on more than one occasion. Jiggs didn’t seem to realize chasing cars was dangerous, but he survived the scrapes with the moving vehicles.

It was during the divorce that my two sisters and I were taken to live with an aunt an uncle in Patton Valley, a tiny community in Oregon, not far from the town where I was born. We arrived at the farm of my aunt and uncle, but my dog Jiggs was nowhere to be seen. My uncle said Jiggs jumped out of the pickup truck somewhere between Sheridan and Patton Valley. That should have been the end of the story of Jiggs, but the story takes up again nearly ten years later.

I was a teenager starting my junior year in high school. My sisters and I were living with my father in McMinnville, Oregon. My father had a sewing machine store and was on the road several days a week demonstrating the features of the latest sewing machines. On a Friday afternoon he came home with a story that to this day I am certain was something not too short of a miracle.

“I think I found Jiggs,” my father said at the supper table. “He was your dog Larry, and I think he might still remember you.”

“Where? When can I see him?”

“I checked with the people and they say we can see him tomorrow morning. They were just as surprised as I was that this may be Jiggs. They renamed him, but he answers to Jiggs and seemed to know me. The people found him nearly ten years ago at their front door in Hillsboro, a town Uncle Ray passed through on his way home to Patton Valley. The time frame fits and the area fits, and get this, the dog chased cars until it got seriously injured and nearly had to be put down. After that accident he never chased a car again.”

The next day we visited the people we believed had Jiggs. When I called Jiggs, the dog, now old and slow, immediately came up to me and jumped up. I petted him and my dad, the people and I talked about what we should do. The people with the dog had a boy who had known the dog as his own from the time he was two years old, when Jiggs had shown up on their doorstep.  I couldn’t imagine taking the dog from him, they were so close, like Jiggs and I were so many years earlier. We went home to McMinnville and I, somewhat saddened by the event, was moved by the experience. I may never have remembered Jiggs the way I have, had not that day later in my life happened. Jiggs came into my life at a sad time. I had lost my best friend and then my parents went through a divorce and we three kids were placed in a strange home with an aunt and uncle. I could have remembered Jiggs for those sad days in my life, but that all changed that day, when I found Jiggs in a home with another boy. Now, Jiggs reminds me of those things we don’t have control over in our lives, and regardless of how bad we think things are, there is always a greater purpose at work. Jiggs took my mind off the loss of my best friend and filled my days with joy for several months, then went on to another home, to lift the spirit in another young boy.  

Jiggs reminds me today that there are many things we don’t understand and there are things we don’t need to understand. We need to count our blessings today and not worry, for tomorrow will take care of itself.  

Inspiration is nothing without Verisimilitude

The other day I was telling a friend about my latest novel. He looked at me and with wonderment in his voice asked, “Where do you come up with these ideas?”

To be truthful, I had never considered the question of inspiration before. Things happen in life, and almost anything can be an inspiration for a story, but only if  you can write it with verisimilitude. If you can make a story believable, no matter what the subject, science fiction or real life, set in the past or the future; if the story is presented in a believable manner, the reader will buy into the premise. If you haven’t set up the story with verisimilitude you have failed before the first word was written. I remember reading the late Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and, on a dark and lonely night, looking outside to see if there were any velociraptors wandering about the neighborhood. Crichton made an unlikely event believable by introducing the reader to the science of cloning and Chaos Theory. I was hooked from the start.

When I was in the seventh grade my class was given the task of writing a short story. At twelve years of age, I wanted to write a story that would inspire. My story had tragedy, a unique setting and a fulfilling ending, but I hadn’t done my homework and I placed the story fifty years before it could have happened. The tragedy, an automobile accident, could never have taken place at the time I set the story. After reading the story to the class, the teacher said, “You know, Larry, the automobile wasn’t around in 1850.” I was crushed. I went back to my seat, embarrassed and humiliated. In reflection, I learned a valuable lesson. If you are going to write about something, make sure you do your home work. Your writing needs to have verisimilitude.

If I think I can write a story with verisimilitude, then I am inspired to write it. It’s that simple. It doesn’t matter what the subject, what the setting, or how fantastic the plot is, if it’s not believable the story will flop. Be inspired to write your story, but do your research. I learned a valuable lesson in the seventh grade. Verisimilitude, verisimilitude, verisimilitude.