Star Death. Leo Emmanuel Lochard
factors both natural and human and, since these data were routinely collected for research, development, and purposes of methods improvement, tentative results were to be provided to concerned parties before the new planting season would begin next year.
In many areas of the globe, occurrences called “dry lightning” have been taking place more often than usually expected, which was the direct cause of many forest fires, barring arson or other sources of humanly-caused disasters. Cloud formations have been such that no rain has fallen and hence contributing to the dryness of the forest floors that caught on fire at the slightest hint of ignition. Some electricity generating power plants have reported periodic interruptions of current within their respective grids of transmission with causes not traceable to connected plant operations or to linkable environmental events. There were also transformer blowouts in certain neighborhoods, the causes of which have not been identified for accountability purposes and which required special handling due to their initial classification as “due to unknown causes.”
In fact, the expression “due to unknown causes” has been gaining currency regarding a lot of problems, tragedies, and events on the Earth where human error has been eliminated as a primary or direct causal agent. No pattern of effects has emerged from preliminary investigations that would allow formation of a hypothesis to address all these developments. They appeared to have localized causes but which however have not resulted in definitively proven linkages or connections with specific individuals, groups or institutions. Every nation was taking appropriate steps in local governance, without fundamental alteration of their government systems while simultaneously engaging international organizations that focused on worldwide events for which there could be a global cause. Security was a first priority, but not at the expense of lawful, constructive liberty, especially in the presence of identifiable threats, or detectable dangers, the sources of which were still being investigated.
The incidence of skin cancers in electronic media reporting has increased in a manner that conveyed to the audience that it was widespread in industrialized nations and becoming more common in developing countries where manufacturing processes were formerly, more naturally linked to the environment. But with new economic activity based on enterprises whose business overarched the span of chemical, metallurgical and petroleum industries, smokestack emissions joined with automobile exhausts to engineer urban atmospheres analogous to those of more technologically advanced nations. However, the increases in cancer rates were occurring even in the sparsely populated countryside where the base of “making a living” was still agrarian in nature.
In highly populated mountainous areas of the globe, hospitals were reporting an unexpected increase in cardio-pulmonary disorders, including upper respiratory infections coupled with hardness of breathing or diminished ability to breathe, as if the air itself was becoming “rarefied” or losing Oxygen density. Patients reported making a great muscular effort in trying to breathe, and “taking in” so it seemed, a diminished amount of air that was incommensurate with their effort to breathe. Muscle effort was too much disproportionate to breathing ability—which caused a great influx of worrisome people into surrounding hospitals seeking alleviation of their symptoms.
In some regions of the Earth, unknown for their mild temperatures, like the deserts, a decrease in average daily temperature has been noticed, observable with an ominous absence of rain activity. In fact, from weather system logs, even many desert areas reported milder or less hot temperatures that were outside of seasonal recordings, during the summer, for example; while at the same time finding the emergence of a trend in the data, of hotter temperatures in the winter months that were uncharacteristic of weather patterns in these regions for decades past.
One farmer in Kansas reported, “the strangest thing happened on my farm”—there was a certain deformity in corn grain formations he had never seen before, an occurrence witnessed in whole rows of plant corn, while the rest of the crop stood unaffected by that husk-to-kernel deformation.
In Utah, because it had not rained for so long, the salt-content registered in Salt Lake reached a reading exceeding 50 percent whereas it normally kept steady at 12 to 13 percent salt composition.
In Texas, a rancher reported to have seen “furless mice” being fed by other mice, whose constitution was so fragile as to preclude field hunting with their peers. Another rancher swore to have seen a mature “featherless bird” that was so weak in strength as to have been a tasty meal for a coyote on its hunting foray. What was going on?—“Furless mice”? “Feather-less birds”?
In Florida, the problem was with “sink holes,” the causes of which were also unknown. But then, something else was occurring, trees were sinking too, with their roots and all, with springs of water seeping or gushing out of the holes, flooding streets and unearthing sidewalks. Of course, that peninsula had always received its undeserved share of hurricanes and cyclones each year while other areas had to face tornadoes and other types of storm systems for which they also sought relief. These “forces of nature” appeared to operate all at once or not at all, as if waiting in line to strike in spurts to then remain silent for long periods of time, hence, affording researchers very few indices for putting a hypothesis together.
John Trinklung thought there had to be some kind of connection to link all these “strange” and apparently “disconnected” things happening in the past few years, and continuing into the present. He has been a farmer for nine years now, with a good knowledge of agriculture and combustion mechanics, keeping track of weather conditions, storm systems, and market news, which often required unusual alertness for systems analysis, and attention to detail in remembering seasonal associations for pattern evaluation. He has never seen “such a pattern” of events before, not at the national level, not at the global level, nor at the local level in his own neighborhood.
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3
It was 2:00 pm on a Monday afternoon. Suddenly the whole world “went dark”—literally, meaning, no sun, none at all. It was as if night had suddenly come, bringing with it a “pitch dark” condition all over the Earth.
A semi-truck standing at a red light advancing its bumper ever so slowly towards the tracks—just a “driving habit” of the truck driver who could no longer estimate the distance of the approaching train,—the “blasting horns” of which the truck driver could hear so well, but being not enough to prevent the accident. The inevitable occurred;—it was too late for the semi-truck’s headlights to help; the train conductor could not even see the controls in order to apply the brakes. The surprise of the sun “going dark”! Too little time—things happened too fast, much too fast! They collided!
The truck “jack-knifed,” the trailer separating from the cab, as the driver was ejected from the truck cabin to “find himself,” landing on a flower bed’s bushy shrubs nearby; miraculously he was still conscious, with only a broken leg.
The train’s engine compartment at the front had somehow managed to remain on the tracks due to the angle of impact. The conductor, pushed back a few feet away from the controls and shaken by the shock, succeeded in “feeling his way” to the throttle and the brakes in order to slow the train down to a complete stop. Broken glass had scratched his arms and face as he was slightly bleeding, but not profusely so as to cause hemorrhage. Thankfully, it was a cargo train with not too many passengers on board; therefore, damage to the train was far more preferable than the loss of human lives.
Many people thought that every second ticking without sunlight was like an eternity, wondering how long the sun will remain absent from the skies.
Thirty seconds later—every thing returned to “normal.” So it seemed. The sun “re-appeared” again “in the sky.” It began “shining again.”
But there was something very wrong with the way in which the Earth reacted—in the quickest micro-second following the sun’s return, the Earth experienced the biggest “quake” or “jolt” as if it had temporarily stopped and tried to begin rotating again, or as if it was attempting to balance itself in order to regain its regular angular momentum as it was newly accelerated by solar restoration—“jerk-stop-and-go,” so to speak.
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