Evascension The Journey from Instincts to Intellect: Evascension

By Ray Cloninger

The story is fiction, but relevant to critical tipping points our civilization faces today. What is happening on Earth may be the reason we have not detected signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Failure to resolve our problems in the next decade may seal our fate as another failed attempt for intellect to prevail over instincts. The Journey from Instincts to Intellect is set on one of two twin planets orbiting a point between them in a solar system twenty-five light years from Earth. Both planets have habitats that support life, and a human civilization on Terra is in an era technologically equivalent to Earth's in the nineteen sixties. Ruben Munstar is a narcissistic despot far more powerful than anyone who has ever ruled on Earth, but he is a puppet master, controlling the most powerful country on Terra from the shadows. Everyone aware of Ruben Munstar's power either works for him or is fighting a losing war against him. He controls his country's politicians, the military, the military industrial complex, most of the planet's fossil fuel resources, the financial system, religious leaders, and the legal system. He is untouchable. Everyone knows of him, but few know how powerful he is. Dollar Chastain's deceased father had been an illegal immigrant living under an assumed name, hiding from Ruben until his mother died in an automobile accident on Dollar's seventh birthday. During the accident investigation, the police discovered his father's real identity and informed Ruben. Upon realizing the conditions under which Derrick and his family had been living for almost eight years, Ruben decided to allow Derrick to live out his life as a destitute, illegal immigrant and single father responsible for raising two children rather than killing him. To make it worse, Ruben made sure he was charged with driving while intoxicated, causing his wife's death, ordered a local drug dealer to get him addicted to illegal drugs, and to make sure he suffered until he died of natural causes. He also ordered the drug dealer to keep tabs on his sons.The story begins three years after Dollar graduated from high school. A day after a catastrophic industrial accident Dollar witnessed from his front porch, Ruben's helicopter lands near Dollar and his younger brother while they are waiting for a shuttle bus to take them to their assigned work area as volunteers in the disaster zone. When Ruben gets out of his helicopter, he walks directly over to Dollar and introduces himself. The brothers are shocked to discover the wealthiest man on the planet knows their names and a lot more about them. The reason he gives for knowing who they are is based on a factual event that occurred after his father's death. Two days after meeting Ruben, Dollar finds a small black disc on the bottom of a lake by his house that had been drained by firetrucks fighting fires caused by the disaster. The following day, he discovers Ruben had been searching for the object since a plane crashed near the lake on his sixth birthday. Ruben's business partner was killed in the crash. Dollar eventually discovers the black disc is potentially more valuable than everything Ruben owns. Greed, wealth, ego, and the struggle for power and control dominate every aspect of Ruben's life. He has become aware of the potential deadly threat fossil fuel pollution represents to life on Terra, but rather than worry about it, he begins hiring scientists to discredit all concerns related to it. Like all budding civilizations in the Universe, the rise of intellect in a world previously ruled by instincts is rushing toward tipping points that will determine the future destiny or fate of the humans on Terra. Ruben's level of power has made him capable of damaging Terra's habitat sufficiently to start an irreversible mass extinction. Dollar's black disc is the key to secrets that can allow him to dethrone Ruben and save Terra's habitat.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1980665745
• ISBN13: 9781980665748
• Release Date: April 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.9" x 6.0"