Patterns of Chaos: Book One - The First War

Under a week later, the delegates arrived back in New York harbor, all visibly affected by the trip they had taken. Mueller was the first to hold a press conference, describing the initial trip to the moon aboard a “diamond-shaped” vessel, and that the Chancel was still a work in progress, from the outside resembling a floating city under construction.

The orbiting city featured towers, skyscrapers that were described as being constructed in a modular fashion, allowing reconstruction or expansion if ever required. The intertwined Greek letters of psi and omega featured prominently upon the hull, leaving little question of who had constructed this eerily beautiful edifice in the stars.

The population were happy, well treated, and while there was a certain uneasiness about how they virtually worshipped Paul Stragdoc, he personally had no objection to the conditions there. Everyone had a job to do, but there was plenty of leisure time as well. Mueller resisted the urge to call it akin to a Utopia, but he secretly wanted to emigrate there himself one day, if only to live out a boyhood dream of being a space explorer.

The other delegates reported similar experiences, and all agreed that they would encourage their governments to open diplomatic relations with the vessel. The Americans reacted with outrage, threatening trade embargoes against them if they did so. Morsalis returned from Germany, stating that her hosts had treated her most generously, and that her one regret about returning to space was that “There really is no comparison to German sausage made fresh in Germany.”

The one thing all delegates found disappointing was that they did not meet with Stragdoc himself. He had made excuses that at the moment his attention was claimed with a delicate construction effort to establish a full hydroponic system to feed the populace, utilizing stellar radiation to stimulate photosynthesis.

The Americans made good on their threats and cut off any nation trading with the Alphites. Canada and Mexico were less willing to isolate themselves from world trade, merely issuing statements denouncing the trade with an admitted criminal.

In lunar orbit, Stragdoc smiled as a fresh wave of chaos spread on the planet, for, as always, that was his goal. Yes, he desired trade with the Earth, if only to gain access to resources he needed to complete the Chancel, but keeping the world unstable would make manipulating events that much easier.

Within six months of these events, the American government formally withdrew from the United Nations, and requested that the global body relocate their headquarters elsewhere, simultaneously ejecting any ambassadors who belonged to nations that were trading with the new Empire. Mueller was re-assigned as ambassador to the Chancel on behalf of the European Union. Psi-Omegan technology began to reappear on Earth as trade began in earnest, with a proper embassy opening in London to facilitate trade and emigration.

Then one of the automated trade ships returning to the Chancel exploded.

Nations trading with the Psi-Omegans were outraged when it became clear that the explosion was not due to equipment failure, but sabotage. Security footage showed an unidentified blonde woman near the shuttle, presumably tampering with it. The Europeans accused the Americans, who in turn accused the Alphites of deliberately sabotaging their own vessel in order to cast blame on the leader of the holdout nations. The Psi-Omegans locked down all travel to and from Earth.

Nevertheless, Stragdoc knew it was not the Americans...the Europeans...any of the Asiatic nations...no, he knew exactly who was behind the blast. But like how he turned the Midwestern shootings a decade before to his advantage, he now turned his thoughts to how precisely he could turn this situation into personal gain.

It quickly became apparent that he did not have to do a damned thing. The back-and-forth accusations caused those nations allied with him to begin strengthening ties and issuing dark threats against his detractors. He quickly relaxed the travel restrictions and issued a statement that the Empire would begin its own investigation into the explosion and promised to seek retribution against whatever nation had supported the attack.

Then the other statement arrived at several news media outlets around the world. A woman’s voice stated that she alone was responsible for the blast, and that it was a wakeup call for the world, an attempt to alert them that while the Alphites were just like everyone else, Stragdoc himself was blackly evil. It advised people to look more closely at his past, stating that before the incorporation of Psi-Omega, there was no record of Paul Stragdoc.

While most news organizations dismissed them as insane ramblings, a few journalists tried to track down some history on him, and found that the woman was right, there was a total blank regarding his past prior to 2036. At that time, his age had been estimated at his early thirties - young looking early thirties - so digging for the most part had stopped at around the early 2000’s.

Therefore, they went back further.

And the absence of information began to leave a strange hole. A small town near the Canadian-American border seemed to be the focal point. In 1999, a school had exploded following a hostage crisis. Who the hostage takers were had been removed from news archives as well as official police reports. Two years before that, a husband and wife had been killed in a car accident, leaving one son. Again, the names were either omitted or deleted at some later point. Nine years prior to that, there was a news article about a young man who had been injured in a bullying incident, injured to the point of death…but had miraculously recovered. Names again were missing. However, six months after that article was dated, there was another article about a different young man who had been paralyzed from the neck down in some sort of schoolyard incident.

At the same school that the other incident had occurred at.

As they began to connect the dots, one article was passed by about a young girl named Jennifer Safyo who had recovered from thyroid cancer at the same hospital that the boy had recovered at. It was dismissed as inconsequential.