KENDALL of ERTEKON:  The beginning

Greetings Sci-fyians!  I once read that “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep, because that’s when reality is far better than your dreams”. It would be absolutely incredible to live in your dreams, continuously on a roller-coaster ride of adventurous escapades… 

Well, you can – as long as you are reading this, I will make every effort to draw you into my worlds, and promise you an insight into behind-the-scenes of my story-telling.

My much loved character is a young man of 27 years, in the year 2055:

“I am Kendall, the unsung hero of a distant planet called Ertekon.  Born on Earth, to live amongst the stars, I came to Ertekon when I was just 7 years old, an innocent but gifted child.  My dad is a preacher and my mother a counsellor, giving them the perfect backing to raise a precocious whit like me.  We were part of a group that settled on this unbelievably stark, cold desert of a planet, just outside of Jupiter.  Ertekon had absolutely nothing, no vegetation, no life forms, just miles and miles of dust, apart from a treasury of ice and water way beneath the surface.  The powers that be, had built a self-sustaining colony on this barren planet, and it took decades to finish. 

In 2035, the first colonists arrive on Ertekon, not realizing the destruction that would literally explode into this new world.  Something to do with another planet appearing in our orbit.  Well, blow me down with a feather, did I react or what?!  Uh… I forgot to tell you, I’m psychic.  That’s one of the reasons Pa and Ma took this venture;   it seems little me couldn’t play nice with the other kids, something about being a “Freaky geek”.  Yes, that’s one of the milder terms they used to call me, also “The Stoner” for when I used to zone out while having visions;  now I’m not going to tell you what else, it’s virtually unprintable, but you can imagine.

So, this is the story of my journey from a ‘wonderful’ childhood, through to the present: 

I started out as a nondescript infant, blessed (or cursed) with the wondrous powers endowed on me at 5 years old;  torn from the Earth that I embraced but refused to embrace me.  On Ertekon,during a freakish solar phenonemon, I mutated temporarily, into a being never before witnessed;  scary stuff.  And then I grew up.  Big.  And buff.  No jokes, being in a different gravitational pull other than Earth seemed to agree with me;  not like the other colonists, they were already adults, and I was the only child amongst them.  And then I met this girl, who seemed to radiate a surreal presence in my world.  This person threw my normal inner calm into agitation at times, causing me to question my sanity.  We eventually tolerated each other, forming a necessary bond to the point of saving the world as it were.

The problem with saving the world is that you don’t get the thanks that you deserve.  I did it once when this  unchartered planet entered Ertekon’s orbit in 2035, and everyone was scared of me for years after that.  Only when my ma died, did they eventually accept my humanity.

So now, with the strange planet orbiting again 20 years later, and having gone through my transformation once again, I know who I am, and I like it.  I am now a full Professor, having studied with the best that NASA has employed in this space-station I call home, but not quite.  We have a large intake of students in the college section, that I take pleasure in lording over.  I still have the odd vision, not something I can really control, don’t even talk about the nightmares!   As for happiness, I’d sell my right kidney to retain the bubbles of contentment that burst over me from time to time, as would any non-mutated human. "

"One thing I know for sure, is that I’m going home.  Somewhere, somehow, and it’s not Earth.”

PLANET ERTEKON

A few decades into the 21^st century, Ertekon was discovered by a Russian Astronomer;  thus the unusual name.

Postion:    Sixth Planet from the Sun, halfway between Jupiter and Saturn

Distance from Sun:    1187.70 million kilometres

Distance from Earth:      1009.5 million kilometres

Travelling time from Earth:      Just over two years

Orbital period around Sun:      22.45 years (compared to Earth’s 365 days)

Rotation period:     16 hours (equivalent to 1 Earth day:  +- 8 hours daylight and +-8 hours night)

Surface temperature:    10 degrees Celsius

Diameter of Planet:        2524 kilometres