Penultimate Summer

Out of the depths of the galactic core, something approaches - something bad for the teeming billions occupying Earth. A few need not worry for an elite and powerful organization known as The Conservancy has a plan. Managed by a handful of wealthy corporate executives and politicians, this group has known about the approaching apocalypse for several years. They've begun to prepare habitats for humanity - not many habitats and those not for much of humanity.The fly in their ointment is...
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Out of the depths of the galactic core, something approaches - something bad for the teeming billions occupying Earth. A few need not worry for an elite and powerful organization known as The Conservancy has a plan. Managed by a handful of wealthy corporate executives and politicians, this group has known about the approaching apocalypse for several years. They've begun to prepare habitats for humanity - not many habitats and those not for much of humanity.The fly in their ointment is a bright young astrophysicist who discovers the impending event and begins to pursue what effects it might have. Melody Lucero is not the first to uncover what's coming. Others have before her but they've been silenced - permanently.The problem for The Conservancy is their plans for Doctor Lucero render her indispensable. They do what they can to silence her by cancelling her projects and research, and when that fails, dismissing her and discrediting her work. And when that fails, seizing her data and tools and threatening her life and those of her friends and siblings. And when that fails, they turn to murder. But not of Melody Lucero for she is still worth billions if kept alive...and silent. Eventually, Melody is forced to run and ends up in Montana where she becomes involved with a rancher named Jack Callahan, placing both their lives in jeopardy. Opposites attract and extreme opposites attract extremely. Chemistry at first sight, but not yet love. That comes later, and then tempered by the fires of adversity and by trials in a world gone mad. In the next to the last summer, the penultimate summer, Jack and Melody manage to get the story out. Chaos reigns and martial law is declared. Agriculture becomes the priority for a new federal entity called Homeland Resources, another Conservancy project. Callahan gears up his ranch for a maximum effort to provide food for the millions headed for federal shelters.But the federal effort is a sham and, as the long winter approaches, it's endgame for The Conservancy, which now begins to eradicate all "unsanctioned" shelters, like the one Jack and Melody have created. At the onset of deep winter, Melody makes a horrifying discovery...one that implies all the planning; including that of The Conservancy might be for naught - and that what's about to happen could become yet another and perhaps the final great extinction.Somewhere in between a meteor striking Earth next week and an ice age approaching in 10,000 years, this story explores what might happen if what was coming in a few months might mean a culling for humanity, the first. Who makes selection decisions and how do they choose? Whom is chosen and why? What are the realities behind genetic "improvements" and human attitudes toward survival of the "fittest"?What might happen if a corporation set the rules for a new Garden of Eden: foremost among them that Eve must die, and that there would be multiple Adams, each paying at least $5 million for every ticket to enter the garden?It's about global cooling and global warming, each occurring when the other might be expected. It's about a new entity called the Directorate of Homeland Resources, about nationalizing agriculture and energy production. And about who makes decisions about who goes where when the end comes.This is character-driven speculative fiction (science fiction). Some believe that plot should trump people in speculative fiction, but this story is an exercise in opposites. (See extreme opposites above). A conservative rancher from Montana meets a progressive-socialist physicist from Seattle. Stuff happens. Fireworks and the end of the world. Almost.