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(Page 1 of 3) The Ship by David Scholes
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The Ship
Earth
A few scant years in the future
"It looks like they can fight after all," concluded the Head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, looking up at the sky symbolically.
"Did you ever seriously doubt that?" responded the Secretary of State.
* * *
It is said that anyone who is old enough will remember what they were doing on the day President Kennedy died. The same is true, even more so, for the day the alien star ship arrived. There was never any precursor. Suddenly it was there. In high stationary orbit above New York, ____, London, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Rome, __ you name it.
We all thought that it was a large fleet until someone worked out it was only a single star ship. Though nobody quite worked out how it was done. Yet every inhabitant of the Earth could see the ship or some form of optical and radar reflection of it. No matter where they were upon Earth.
The ship made no attempt to contact us. Nor was there any obvious overt interference in our lives.
Except,___from the moment of its arrival___ things just started getting sort of ___ better.
Some hold vivid memories of the ships arrival. Like Jenny Gardner, Chief of Surgery, of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia. She had been performing seemingly impossible heart surgery in a desperate effort to save the life of a young baby. As all seemed lost, as the heart monitor flat lined and as a young life started to slip quietly away the impossible became reality ___. The surgery was a success and a precious young life was saved. When Jenny saw the star ship something deep inside of her soul told her there was a connection. Between the ship and the child's survival.
Pamela Peckham of Southampton, England recalled awakening after the most magnificent dream. A dream that brought back the very fondest memories of her deceased mother. She awoke with a feeling of well being she had not known for a long time. A feeling that did not leave her later that day or the next. On going outside to pick up a newspaper she saw the colossal star ship. For some reason this awe inspiring sight did not seem threatening to her. Not at all. At some unconscious level she knew that all was aright.
Stories that were repeated right across the globe.
Not everyone immediately linked the fortuitous events to the visitors. At least, not straightaway.
It was several days before world health authorities worked out that nobody had died. Leastways not through acts of terrorism, violent crime, cancer, and a myriad of other diseases. Though people did continue to die natural deaths through the normal process of ageing.
Some of the other changes were subtler taking longer to reveal themselves. The emergence of sustained prosperous economic times, of low unemployment, of certain beneficial technological breakthroughs, of no new wars and the cessation of old ones, even of a reversal of unfavourable climate change.
* * *
"It was the thing we feared most," said the President "no one, almost no one surely, could begrudge what they had done for us, how could anyone? but there was an uneasy feeling that it was too good to be true.
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