Wyatt Earp: and the Boomerang Refugium Read online

  WYATT EARP

  and the Boomerang Refugium - a narrative on survival

  By Jack Sunn

  This a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used factiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  Copyright © 2017 by James A. Elsol.

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD Year 2101

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  Insert by Jacqui Sunn, Year 2043/Year 26

  Recommended Books to Read:

  EPILOGUE Year 2043

  FOREWORD Year 2101

  The year is 2101. My name is Jacky Sunn and I live in modern Brisbane, Australia. My use of the word modern is partly true, and at the same time partly not true. The truthfulness of both statements unfolds in the text following.

  My grandmother, Jacqui Sunn, has for a long time been our family historian. She is now 66 years old and has provided me with a legacy, together with the proviso that I will bring it alive by updating it, by accepting the role of family historian.

  The legacy she has given me is a manuscript that was in the throes of being published in 2017. The manuscript was written by my great grandfather’s late uncle, a person we affectionately refer to as Jack-the-Elder. To us, he has become a man of Noah-like status. He was also a Sunn, hence my surname. Jack, along with his wife Susan, by careful planning, oversaw our continued existence as both a family and a community following ‘the event,’ at a time we now refer to as Year 1. So now we are in 2101 on the old calendar, and Year 84 in the new one.

  What life was like for my great grandparents and generations before them is known to me only by the stories my grandparents have told, and the vast paper library collected by Jack-the-Elder. The Internet as Jack and Susan knew it effectively lived for less than 35 years. I say lived, because by my reading, it seemed to exist everywhere, even in hand-held devices which I can only imagine and never experience. Well that is also not entirely true. I have seen some of these devices in our technology archives, but there is as yet nothing to power them, or provide them with Wi-Fi, or electromagnetic content.

  How things have changed in less than a century. Mind you we live well, as I hope others like the Amish do, if they survived Year 1 without ravishment. But in eastern Australia we now have a thriving network of towns and industry. But regarding the past, one of the biggest legacies left to us by Jack-the-Elder and his contemporaries was their pioneering social reform. We are told that Susan initiated this reform, that it was readily accepted, and we enjoy its fruit today. With population between Bundaberg in Queensland, and Clunes in northern New South Wales numbering in the low hundreds in Year 1, our society redressed the waste of patriarchal dominance over matriarchal equivalence or dominance.

  My grandma Jacqui offers interesting insights in her epilogue to Wyatt Earp written in Year 26 when she took over the role of family historian. Her appended epilogue was written in the hope that Jack-the-Elder’s Wyatt Earp would be printed and become available for us all to read. I feel incredibly honoured to have been asked to contribute this foreword, and I trust that you, my family, are now able to read about Jack-the-Elder’s life, his dreams, and their manifestations as we live and see them today.

  Jacky Sunn.

  Sunnybank (Brisbane). Year 84

  CHAPTER 1

  Day minus 3: The day before, the day before (early 2015).

  “Good afternoon everybody. This is Rebel Pirate Radio Triple Y and we would like to introduce to you one of Australia’s great stand-up comedians, Kitty Flannigan. But, given that she is not here we are unable to introduce her to you. Instead we have Kitty’s sound-alike doppelganger, Miss Kitty Flirtagain.”

  “Hi everybody on this lovely Wednesday afternoon. This is Kitty Flirtagain on Rebel Pirate Radio Triple Y, coming live to you from, well somewhere. We were going to have news followed by the weather, but since the news is quite depressing we will start with the weather. Hmm, that also is somewhat depressing. We ask why, why, why? With recent government funding cuts the weather bureau is chronically under-staffed. However, they advise us of a severe weather warning, sometime in the next few days, very precise they are, with possible thunderstorms, narrowed down to somewhere between the Torres Straight and Van Diemen’s Land. That’s it. Stay tuned for further updates. On the bright side, if the weather clears, expect some wonderfully colourful sunsets following on from the recent volcanic eruptions in Papua New Guinea.

  Now for the news. Recent gallop polls have shown that for the fourth week in a row the Australian public is calling for a double dissolution. Yesterday both houses went into recess, and it is expected that the Prime Minister will make an announcement shortly.

  News flash just to hand. Prime Minister Anthony Birdfeather, not to be confused with another Tony made famous for smuggling small parrots in his swimming trunks, has accepted invitations to visit both India, and the United Nations in Geneva. He is to go jet-about - walkabout tomorrow morning. It appears that Mr Birdfeather is to receive a humanitarian award for fostering economic development in countries other than Australia. Tone has shown how great he is on the global stage by boosting employment in India, where he will address employees of the Australian company Telstra in Hyderabad. It will be a short address not followed by any questions. His advisors have said that questions are to be avoided at all cost, because nobody on his staff can clearly understand what any of them say, and can therefore not provide any sensible answers. Three cheers for the minders. The UN award is in recognition of boosting the economy of the USA by nearly thirty billion dollars through Australian military spending. This money is to be used in the supply of new war planes to allow our air force to defend the ever expanding under-educated, under -employed, poverty-ridden populace of this country which we like to call home. Hmm.

  That concludes this afternoon’s uplifting news. Next is an in-depth forum on rural suicide, followed by a talk-back program discussing how religious choice can affect the degree of poverty experienced in this great country of ours.

  That is all for now from Kitty Flirtagain on Rebel Pirate Radio YYY until the same time tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned and I hope you will enjoy the rest of the show. Right now, ‘Suicide Blond’ by INXS from 1990 to take you into the next segment.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Day Minus 2: The day before, on board USS Navajo east of the Philippines somewhere in the Mariana Trench. In the Commanding Officer’s stateroom, Commander Rod Wheeler removes his orders from the CO’s safe. Captain’s eyes only, and only after diving to 500 feet…

  ---------- />
  ABC News on-line: Unseasonal late but severe thunderstorms yesterday afternoon wreaked havoc in many communities of south-east Queensland. Power supply was disrupted, with thousands of households blacked out for up to fourteen hours. Some areas remain without power. Electricity authorities are continuing to work tirelessly to reconnect those without power, however, full restoration of supply is not expected until sometime tomorrow. The Bureau of Meteorology advises the low-pressure system will continue to generate rain in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales for the next few days, leading to a wet Easter.

  CHAPTER 3

  Just another day. Big Bang, or BIG no Bang. THE DAY. Like with the flick of a switch, when the power grid no longer issued electricity, the traffic lights simply went out.

  And like a clogged drain, the road traffic stopped. I was at Market Square, a popular shopping precinct of Sunnybank on the south side of Brisbane, well known for Asian groceries and more than fifty Asian restaurants. It was early afternoon, a popular time for shopping and eating lunch. The temperature outside was bearable, but the sky was clear and the temperature was still rising. The car park was full as per normal. But now the roads were congested with numerous stationary cars, all amazingly quiet. The restaurants’ lights were out. The air conditioners no longer worked and shops and restaurants were now warm and silent, becoming hotter and clammy with each passing minute.

  Was this really happening? Simple, check my watch. An electronic watch but it was still working. Check my phone - no service. Damn.

  I thought of how things can change so quickly and certainly in the last few years stealthy but rapid change had been the norm. At the nearby intersection, once known as the bamboo corners of Sunnybank because of the tiger bamboo that once flourished there for decades, there was now a widened bitumen road, a pedestrian overpass, and a mixture of stationary and mobile cars and trucks, all with what appeared to be frustrated occupants. Across to the adjacent corner of the intersection in front of the Sunnybank Hotel drive-through there once stood tall and majestic Albizzia trees, but now they are also long gone.

  Checklist. I was prepared for this, or so I believed. No way of driving home. Not all cars had stopped, but with the congestion resulting from failed traffic lights, attempting to drive home would be futile for some hours to come, if ever. First get out of the crowd before something unpredictably undesirable happens; highly likely with the day’s heat and rising frustrations. I was fortunate. I was only several kilometres from home and a safe haven.

  What to do next? Tick Box 1. On the move. The next hour was uneventful, as I returned home with only a few conservations along the way.

  Tick Box 2. Home. Wait. Take a moment to think. Was what had just happened the return of something like the Carrington event of 1859, when a massive solar super storm resulted in a coronal mass ejection from the sun that ‘flooded’ the earth in less than 18 hours? I had read about this only recently. The effect then was to short-out the telegraph systems of the world, and produce widely displaced aurora borealis, even visible in Queensland. Christ – what would it do these days, or even today, with our near total reliance on electricity and computers?

  Was the possibility of a super storm from the sun today realistic? Certainly, there had been recent glancing blows to the earth such as in January 2012, and a fairly major event in 1989 that resulted in large chunks of Quebec losing electricity.

  Without radio or television working because of lack of electricity, or a working mobile phone to check, what next? I had both a car GPS system, stored at home, and a battery powered camping GPS. Damn. They both turned on alright, but neither showed any satellite signal. Normally the camping GPS had reception of up to 11 satellites but now it showed a total of zero. This was not looking good.

  If what I was thinking had occurred not only here but worldwide – major civilisation chaos was imminent. If a glancing blow, then chances of ‘normality’ returning were good. A bit like re-establishment of normal order after major cyclone damage. Major disruption none-the-less. Time will hopefully tell, and the sooner the better. But no satellite reception - stop thinking and start doing.

  Tick Box 3. Time to get Mr and Mrs Chung. This amazing Japanese couple lived five streets away from me in a moderate rental house. Two years previous they had escaped from a tsunami ravaged village in Japan with little by way of possessions or money.

  I first saw the couple outside Yuen’s supermarket – a great source of Asian foods. They were leaving laden down with groceries when suddenly Mrs Chung lurched forward having stepped awkwardly on uneven ground. Being what I thought was an elderly couple I ran to offer assistance. I had been behind Mr Chung who was behind and to the left of Mrs Chung. Expecting a collapse on concrete I was shocked to see the ‘old’ man at one moment behind his wife, to being in the next instant in front of her preventing her incurring major injury. What I saw was extraordinary dexterity and superb foot manoeuvring on his part. I went to assist but to no avail – thankyou, we be fine, followed by a short bow. Several days later at a nearby park I saw them both engaged in early morning exercise. A normal feature in parts of China, but in Australia, not so. Maybe not so surprising in Sunnybank given the large Chinese population. I stopped and watched them from a distance. The lady was performing a slow-moving Chi Kung exercise, while the man was walking the circle. Outstanding. What looked like a Japanese man - his clothes looked like what could be seen in rural Japan -engaged in a baguazhang form, a relatively modern Chinese martial discipline, but infused with the traditions of an age-old culture, was for me a strange sight in Sunnybank. I waited not wanting to intrude. When they had finished, and were sipping tea I walked over and introduced myself. As expected they reacted with caution, but when I started asking about their arts, friendly conversation followed. It happened that they were of Chinese heritage. Their families had moved to Japan respectively two and three generations ago. Chi Kung is not unknown in Japan, but bagua? I enquired about this and he said his father had learned from a Mr Yang of Taiwan, during the time of three of Mr Yang’s seven years in Japan.

  Back to the present, on my push bike I hurried over to their place to find Mr and Mrs Chung in their back garden. They had not been away from their home today so knew nothing of the massive traffic stall that was only a few streets away. They were thinking that there had only been a temporary power outage and so were outside under the shade of a tree. After all, there had been violent storms in South-east Queensland recently, and even a minor wind now was enough to drop a branch on any one of the multitude of overhead power lines, and subsequently disrupt power supply further. I quickly explained to the contrary what I thought had happened, and said that it was important to get together their essential belongings and cold food and take it to my place. I said that I was not one hundred percent sure of what happened, but that they may have only a day at most before the streets become unsafe or difficult to traverse with impunity. Mr Chung had been to my place before so knew the hidden entrance-way to gain access. I explained to Mrs Chung that a six tatami-mat room was available. Having escaped unthinkable damage and tragedy only a few years ago in Japan, they quickly accepted the plan to relocate. I said I would be back as soon as possible to help them move. Later that afternoon Mr Chung and I padlocked their front door and ‘junk mailed’ the letter box. Done. They were out.

  As fate or coincidence would have it, the daughter of the United States Secretary of the Navy was in town, staying at a motel several kilometres away. Her name is Julie Everson. I knew this because Secretary Everson was a client of the organisation I work for. The previous day he flew to Townsville on business, leaving his daughter in Brisbane. Whilst studying in Sydney some years previous, Julie had made a close friend in Carol Wagner and had invited her to Brisbane for a few days sightseeing.

  Though I did not need reminding, I was reminded by my nephew Ray when he returned home from work that the Secretary’s daughter was staying close-by. Ray naturally takes a keen interest in young wom
en. Discussion between Ray and myself followed and it was decided that we try to contact them as soon as possible. After settling in our Japanese guests as best we could, Ray and I ventured out to the motel where Julie was staying. By now it was late afternoon and there was a good chance guests who had adequate transportation would have returned to their rooms before engaging in evening dining or seeking entertainment. Not that that was going to happen anytime soon with the power still out. I knew the manager of their motel, sought him out and asked if Miss Everson was in. He said yes. I then gave him my business card and asked if he would take it to Miss Everson with the intention of my meeting with her. Within a few minutes, Ray and I introduced ourselves to Julie and were seated in her suite, illumined only by candle light. She appeared confident, but also apprehensive. Carol was also present. Julie explained her father was not there and had not heard from him.

  I explained to Julie that I had worked with her father, and that it was entirely normal that she had not met me previously. Because she was technically a client, I proceeded to outline what I believed had happened, and extended an offer of accommodation to her and Carol. I explained the type of work we do for clients and the extent of the organisation we work for, the TaSMAN Group. She explained that she had seen reference to the TaSMAN Group in her father’s schedule on many occasions.

  We suggested a pickup tomorrow afternoon if power was not restored by then, or, leave right now. After all, we had under the current circumstances more resources than the motel had on offer. Ray politely explained who else was staying with us and briefly described the facilities we had available. He also said that he had grown up understanding the unique capabilities the TaSMAN group has with its widespread but deep resources. He said that in his perspective, if things did not change soon, desperate circumstances were likely to follow. He showed the two women some photos of our Sunnybank home that he had brought along.