Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Read online

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Introduction

  If I were a poet or possessed of lyrical talent, I might even dismiss this word of introduction and simply title this greeting to the readers of years to come "The Ballad of Buck Rogers." My story actually has the ring of a western saga, and certainly it encompasses many of the characteristics and nature of the heroic figures who tamed America's Wild West.

  I refer to you as the readers of years to come, for by the time this incredible record reaches your hands, I shall be dust, returned, as we all must be, to the very substance from which we were created—the detritus and debris of exploded stars. We are, one and all, mighty and minuscule, intelligent and primitive, friend and alien, made of the dust of stars, and we shall all return to it in the end.

  I never expected to put these words to paper. That is not to say I didn't expect to record my tale for posterity, but, quite literally, to put the words to paper. At the time I write this, neuronic systems are available that are capable of transferring my thoughts directly from my mind to a computer. Living what amounts to two separate lives, more than four hundred years apart, has revealed many such wonders to me.

  However, such a technological aid to storytelling is not for me. I wish to share my story with you, the reader, in a comfortable,

  Buck Rogers

  almost intimate fashion, and this means setting it down in a manner far more famiUar to you than to those of my present day. This is, after all, my own guide, enabling you to sweep with me through unexpected adventures and wonders, to share my journeys through the air in machines both ancient and so technologically advanced as to be incomprehensible to a reader of your present time. Together we shall leap and hurtle through the black, timeless void to nearby worlds and discover aliens from beyond our own galaxy.

  It is a tale of the future, of our land, of our nation, and of the universe. It echoes with the sounds of thunder and battle, for there is little surcease from this most ancient indulgence of man.

  But I indulge myself in philosophy when I should instead share with you the marvelous people, the men and women who bore me into the future, who became my friends and confidants and fellow warriors, and especially the woman who shares my life with me even now.

  This woman is Wilma Deering, whom I would not meet and learn to love until nearly five hundred years from the time I was born. No, there is no mistake in these figures, for my story resembles that of a modern Rip Van Winkle, but without the full beard of that sleepy gentleman of childhood storybooks.

  I have now lived for a total of 128 years. Once such longevity would have been something to marvel at, but even at this advanced age, I am hale and hearty, with the enthusiasm and drive of a man a century younger.

  Let me not confuse you. From 1996 until the year 2429 A.D., I did not exist, at least not in human form. I was born in a small town near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1962. Oshkosh is a teeming aviation center famed throughout the world, and I moved smoothly into that world. At the age of sixteen, I soloed my first aircraft. Less than ten years later, I had been an Air Force fighter pilot, bomber and transport pilot, and had gone on to become an airline captain. I flew everything from ancient First World War biplanes to heavy bombers of the Second World War at air shows throughout the country.

  I was what other pilots called a "natural" behind the controls of an airplane. I flew in small wars throughout Africa and Central and South America—wherever my country needed me. I lived for flying, and when I entered stunt competition, I fell

  Introduction

  wildly in love with a stunning Italian girl, who was also a pilot. Shortly before we were to marry, she saw me crash in a mock combat during an air show. My plane exploded in flames while she watched, helpless and horrified, as the blazing engine tore loose and smashed directly into my chest.

  For the public record, I was officially, medically, legally dead. The proper forms and papers proclaimed it so. According to the wishes expressed in my will, my body was cremated.

  But in truth, I was not dead. Not quite, although in medical terms, I clung to life only by the slimmest of all possible margins, and it required a massive program involving the most advanced medical science to keep me alive. Had I had any say in the matter, I would have pulled the plug myself One eye was ripped out of my skull. I had very few bones that had not been broken; my skin was slashed, scraped, mangled, and burned. My muscles were little more than limp rags; unassisted breathing was impossible and the pain unbearable.

  At the time, I was aware of none of this. By some fantastic stroke of fortune, my tragic accident took place just when a government-funded medical program was seeking a once-healthy human who had been dumped at the doorstep of death.

  I had nothing to do with events except to be barely alive, though this qualified me as a valuable research animal, unable to protest what was going on. Everything in life is a matter of timing. Many times in my long lifetime a split second spelled the difference between life and death. This was no different.

  I lay there, mangled, unconscious, a travesty of a living human being. The best medical treatment in the world was barely able to keep me alive. Even they knew I would never recover. The details of the incredible program that sustained my life will not be told here and now, for they constitute a major element of my story. Suffice it to say that I was the unwitting player in a drama that continues to this very moment, and will continue to do so until the day I finally, actually die.

  As I composed the remarkable narration that follows, I became increasingly aware that I could not hope to tell the whole story without assistance from certain individuals who were directly involved. Obviously I could not repeat conversations in which I did not participate, nor could I know the feelings or sensations or the attitudes of others. These people,

  Buck Rogers

  named and unnamed, have helped to fill in the spaces, flesh out the events, and give meaning to the days, weeks, months, and years of my labor.

  I departed the world of the living in 1996, near the close of the twentieth century. I was returned, willingly or unwillingly, back to pain and consciousness in the year 2429. It was now 433 years since I had been officially declared dead.

  I need not now detail the modern miracles that restored me to life. Do not look for a statement to the effect that "they remade me better than new." It was not so, and I doubt it ever will be so in the case of a human being. All this time has taught me that we are truly valuable and wonderful creatures, yet none of us is ever more than a single heartbeat away from oblivion.

  Our road to greatness is on the edge of a very sharp and slippery razor!

  My beloved United States of America was gone. The land was now called Amerigo, after Amerigo Vespucci, who once explored our strange lands and made wonderful maps, including the unknown land that would become America and, eventually, Amerigo in his honor.

  I doubt readers will be surprised to learn that as we passed into the twenty-first century, the world became embroiled in thermonuclear war. The world as we knew it was changed forever, hardly for the better, as toxic wastes, the residue of biological agents, and radiation despoiled the land and the oceans themselves. Finally, near the close of the twenty-first century, a kind of "Stop This Madness!" mentality began to surface. Winning a war by burning down your neighbor's home at the cost of having your own domicile engulfed in flames is a no-win proposition even for the most power-hungry among us.

  Amerigo was forever changed from the old America. Gone are the individual states. Gone is a cohesive national structure. The land is studded with centers of power. The strongest are those of the Federation of Amerigo, the descendant of the land I left.
Amerigo has strategic centers scattered across the land, but far more numerous are the guerrilla bands of great ferocity and power, owing allegiance to none save themselves.

  Introduction

  They do not hate Amerigo, but they seem eternally unforgiving for the madness that afflicted the world. As so many world leaders had long prophesied, the increasingly industrialized population centers of Asia gave rise to a new world order. The Han Empires of China joined forces with a ruthless Mongol force. In the tradition of Genghis Khan, these bands, racing recklessly in the wake of intense nuclear fallout, decimated central Europe and came down through Canada to attack the United States. The latter campaign failed, met by savage defense and attacks on the cities of their homeland.

  The long, terrible battles destroyed many cities, created new ones, and thrust the future into a bewildering standoff of mighty weapons and force fields. Modern Amerigo is a checkerboard of Mongol outposts, guerrilla gangs, and Amerigo itself

  Old power structures are gone forever. The long-threatened holy war by the Arab nations was over almost before it started. Swarms of powerful thermonuclear weapons destroyed the great oil fields, decimated Arab cities, and reduced their armies to inconsequential nomadic bands. The Muslim world should have anticipated, but never did, a new world order in which petroleum was as unnecessary to the postwar world as candles were to light the cities of the late twentieth century.

  Even had the power centers of the Arab world not been smashed and incinerated, their rich oil reserves would have been ignored, superseded by the development of a fantastic new source of power called Inertron. Oil became an antiquated footnote in the annals of history.

  Self-preservation brought about a familiar stance among nations, who soon learned the wisdom of abstaining from the use of weapons of mass destruction.

  Gone forever were the great air fleets. A terrible undersea war consumed international merchant fleets; new powers were born and others faded away. Chile, to everyone's astonishment, sided in the struggle for power not with Amerigo but with the Mongols. Scientists from throughout the world gravitated to that coastal land of South America. In self-defense, Amerigo allied with Central America and the other nations of South America. Latino nations joined together in a self-protective alliance and became the breadbasket for all of North and South America, leaving Europe hungry and in wreckage. Food production across

  Vll

  Buck Rogers

  China, South Asia, and the Rim nations increased tenfold, giving rise to a "green revolution." Nations figuratively circled one another tentatively in nervous standoffs.

  Much to my surprise, my experience and background in flight proved invaluable in skirmishes between Amerigo and the Mongol Empire. I flew not only in powerful Asps with energy-beam and disintegrator ray weaponry, but also in space cruisers of enormous size that could race from Earth to Mars in less than a single day. The ancient dreadnoughts of the oceans, the mighty battleships, were long forgotten, but they saw their successors in space dreadnoughts, built in limited quantities because of their immense cost in money and materials. I found myself in the thick of engagements involving these marvelous machines and was considered a valuable asset to my adopted land.

  I write this journal—call it book or diary or whatever you will—outward bound on an interstellar flight to the distant world of Cydar, where Wilma and I have been invited. Even at many multiples of the speed of light, it will be a long journey.

  But it will never be dull. Consider it to be a honeymoon across fifty thousand years of travel at six trillion miles a year.

  I am 128 years old, the chronological age given me by the science of the twenty-fifth century in which life was returned to me. When these pages are finally read, it is my hope that the people of my time, my original time, the final years of the twentieth century, will be able to hold these pages in their hands and experience some of the same sense of wonder I experienced.

  There is really no rhyme, no reason for why this has all happened. I am content to describe what has transpired with a phrase of my time, when I flew with wings on atmospheric lift and I could join the feathered creatures of my ancient past.

  Aero, ergo, sum.

  I fly. Therefore, I am.

  Anthony "Buck" Rogers

  Vlll

  Chapter 1

  "Transcon Six Three Niner, Chicago Center."

  Captain Anthony Rogers glanced at the global position system display before him. Glowing letters and numbers told him with that brief glance his altitude, heading, speed, and estimated arrival time at his destination: Wittman Field, just outside the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A combination of space satellite relays and the advanced computers of the huge Boeing 747 worked near-miracles with their speed and accuracy. Guesswork was a thing of the past. Sometimes it almost seemed he was watching a computerized video game instead of flying a four-hundred-ton winged giant more than eight miles above the earth.

  From his right, the copilot heard a barely audible sigh. Tim Hawkings glanced at Rogers and grinned. "You still don't care for all the computers, do you?"

  Rogers shrugged. "It keeps the bean counters happy. Tough to fault the front office for wanting maximum efficiency."

  "I know, I know," Hawkings answered. It was a subject they'd discussed many times. Their craft was an advanced state-of-the-art jetliner. It was equipped with what they called a glass cockpit, and contained none of the old-fashioned instruments with which Anthony Rogers had learned to fly. Almost everything before him was electronic. What he saw was a whole passel of television-

  Buck Rogers

  screen readouts, right down to a miniature video airplane representing themselves crossing the ground. But the bean counters who managed the costs of running Transcon Airlines knew what they were doing. A man couldn't begin to rival the computerized flight systems for operating with the best possible fuel efficiency. Even before they left the ground on a flight, everything had been figured into the electronic brains—aircraft weight, fuel weight and burn, temperature, dew point, humidity, and traffic control calls from Chicago Center or any other major hub airport from where they operated.

  Hawkings said aloud what they both were thinking. "The name of the game is super-efficiency. Maximum effort for minimum cost, right?"

  "Uh-huh," Rogers said, occupied with his own thoughts. Tim was right. The airlines in the jet age were driven by cost. Passengers really didn't care what kind of airplane carried them from one place to another. In the old days, they cared. They even specified the type of airliner they wanted for their flights. Not anymore. The single most-asked question in today's marketplace cut right to the quick: "How much does my ticket cost?"

  That was reality. You had to operate with the lowest cost possible. If you didn't, then the competition would drive you right into the ground. And no one flew for an airline that went out of business.

  Rogers listened to Tim answering the call from Chicago Center. "Chicago, Six Three Niner with you."

  There wasn't any need even to listen to the exchange. As fast as the controller spoke, his words appeared on a glowing screen and paper slid out from the same computer with their descent instructions printed out for immediate or future reference if needed. Rogers watched the screen. "SIX THREE NINER HEAVY CLEARED OUT OF FLIGHT LEVEL FOUR THREE TO LEVEL ONE SIX, HOLD ONE SIX, MAINTAIN HEADING ZERO FIVE ZERO, EXPECT CLEARANCE CHICAGO APPROACH DIRECT WITTMAN."

  Neat and to the point. They were cleared to descend from 43,000 feet down to 16,000 thousand, continue their heading of 50°, and wait for a call from the approach controller handling Chicago traffic inbound to Steve Wittman Field at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

  A Life in the Future

  Rogers's fingers moved in a blur across a computer keyboard on the console between the two pilots, punching in the movements to descend and stay smack on the numbers called out by Chicago Center. As if by magic, the power levers came back to start their descent, the computers adjusted their trim and flew the heavy Boeing downstairs
as if it glided on rails. But at 21,000 feet, the smooth descent back to earth changed. The best computers ever made couldn't prevent turbulence. At only four miles high, the heat from the summer sun reflected up from the baked ground with some stiff punches in the shimmering haze and smog surrounding Chicago in every direction. Back in the huge cabin, the flight attendants would be reminding their passengers—all four hundred and ninety-seven of them!—to fasten their seat belts and move their seats to the upright position and raise their tray tables back into the safe locked compartment.

  They took a sudden sharp blow that caught them by surprise, probably from another heavy jet crossing their own descent at a right angle. The big jetliners left behind tornadolike winds, long funnels of rotating air, as they descended at reduced speed and the wing flaps came down.

  "Bumps and grinds," Tim said casually. "Gonna be a fun ride."

  Rogers made a sudden decision. He hated sitting at the controls of a giant airplane—or a small one, for that matter—with his thumbs twiddling uselessly while some crazy bunch of black boxes and silicon chips flew his airplane. He brought his left hand up to grip the control yoke before him; his right hand went comfortably around the four power levers. Briefly he lamented the fact that they didn't even call them throttles anymore.

  "I assume," Tim said with a grin creasing his face, "you are dismissing the autopilot and you are now reverting to the primitive act of hand-flying this whale?"

  "Primitive? That's what you call it?"

  "Natch," Tim jabbed right back. "But you do look sort of like Lindbergh. Not like Fats Molloy, though. You remember old 'Super Suet'?"

  "Never mind groveling in memories," Rogers chided him gently. "Chicago is three seconds late in getting back to us. Prod them a bit." Tim Hawkings didn't need to say a word. The electronic displays flashed, and the printed words issued forth from the computer slot like a super-thin tongue with change of radio frequencies