Underneath the Surreal Starshine (The Anomaly Duology Book 1)

Book summary

Underneath the Surreal Starshine follows Robert Emerson, a deeply flawed and angry man who becomes an unlikely key to unraveling a galactic mystery. Decades after Betelgeuse’s supernova leaves a strange anomaly in the sky, Robert is thrust into an interstellar enigma that could alter the universe—and his own fate—forever.

Excerpt from Underneath the Surreal Starshine (The Anomaly Duology Book 1)

Chapter One

An incredibly beautiful young woman captivated the onlookers as she made her way down through a glitzy downtown Cleveland street. She was on her way to an upper-class bar to meet her boyfriend. This coupling outside of a renowned nightclub caught the eye of one such onlooker on the opposite side of the street as they unabashedly embraced and kissed. He was a middle-aged white man but still had a youthful look to him. His name was Robert. He was wearing black leather gloves; the one on his left hand appeared cumbersome. As Robert stared over at this affluent couple of African American origin, rage consumed his heart. He was jealous and begrudged them for how happy they must have felt, and he increasingly came to hate himself for feeling this way. He turned his head away in envy and continued walking down his side of the street until he stumbled on a drunk homeless man who was about a decade and a half his senior. He passed this poor unfortunate individual and then turned his head back to gaze at him with a pair of venomous eyes. “You filthy-arsed, lazy bum! Don’t you have anything better to do than lie there wallowing in your own self-pity and filth?”

The man belched and replied, “Fuck off!”

The homeless man sounded as if he had an Irish accent, and Robert’s ear detected this, so he kicked him in the leg. “Irish, eh? My parents came from Ireland, the good part of Ireland, Ulster, and they worked, unlike you and your Fenian kind.”

He noticed that the Irish man had a bottle of whisky and was imbibing from it. He moved closer to him, took out his penknife, and pointed it at the homeless man’s neck. Robert then grabbed the bottle and forced it into the man’s mouth. “Since you like drowning your sorrows, take on this sorrow for size. My ancestors, being part of the British Empire, spun this great nation. We were white and Protestant, intelligent human beings, not like you. The inferior, like you, have infected this world and exploited this country with your own pathetic cultures. Only Anglo-Saxons should be here.”

The homeless man’s face was turning red. He coughed and vomited all over Robert’s arm.

“You stupid drunk! See what you did!”

The homeless man started choking. Robert became even angrier. “I didn’t tell you to stop!”

He forced the bottle into the homeless man’s mouth as he tried to breathe, breaking one of his teeth in the process. The man tried to move and kick Robert. Robert knew he had had enough. “Just look at you, you glorify drunkenness! You can’t even hold your liquor! You might as well be a junkie gangster! I guess you will keep drinking yourself until you start singing and lamenting about your troubles! You good-for-nothing idiot!” Robert laughed as he yelled into the homeless man’s face.

Hatred enveloped the ominous night air as Robert cleared his throat and made a disgusting noise with his mouth. It sounded as if he was building up saliva, and indeed that’s what he did. He moved over to the homeless man, and the man, realising what was coming, tried frantically to duck but could not. As Robert moved closer to this man’s mouth, he unleashed a pile of dirty spit on the man’s lips. This unsuspecting victim, being too drunk to taste how revolting it was due to his high alcohol intake that evening, tried to wipe the mucus from his mouth as it dripped down to his chin and stared at the unusual shining and sparkling dust in the summer dusky sky. He pondered as he gazed at the remnant of the Betelgeuse star and thought how another human being, like the man before him, could treat someone in such a disdainful manner and self-impose the right to play judge, jury, and executioner all in one go in such a short space of time and inflict decadent punishment like this.

Robert smirked at him and went on his way. He too looked up and thought about how the Betelgeuse star went nova over sixty years ago and how everyone marvelled at the night sky with wonder and caution over this new celestial occurrence. He was not an appreciator of the arts but conceded that it now glowed majestically and had a bright purple effulgence which captivated the minds of people, even those with minimal imagination like him. He then wondered why a strange cloud between the Earth and Mars was simply referred to by the media as the Anomaly. It was too menacing. The fact that he had just degraded a helpless member of society never registered again in his mind. He went to his station wagon and opened the door. He took off the gloves and rubbed his left hand. His left arm was slightly shorter than his right since birth.

This man, Robert Emerson, was a detestable person. Not just for nefarious deeds such as spitting on homeless people but for much worse. He was the type of man who was seemingly chosen by God for some profound act and thus protected by the devil and carried out both of their deeds, good and bad, accordingly, whether he lived his life sacrosanct or nefarious, which constantly paradoxed and contradicted each other, but always in a state of flux. Because he had no moral compass to keep all of this in balance, it fluctuated. Today he was evil.

He was middle-aged and had been single all his life. In fact, Robert Emerson was a full-blown fascist. He hated everyone that was not white or Protestant, like his father, who hailed from Northern Ireland. This hatred was paradoxical, however, as his mother also originated from there, only she was Catholic, and he had strong affection towards her. Both of his parents had now passed, but their respective influences always instilled separate values in him. His mother was more balanced than his father, but his father’s influence was indeed stronger. She was the person who designed these handmade gloves for him to hide his infirmity. That is why he had such strong affection towards her, even in his memories of her now.

Robert watched an African American activist on the TV called Theodore Brooks on a current affairs show. Brooks was debating the current Black Lives Matter movement. Robert spat on his carpet when Brooks told the host: “We’re all God’s children.” Robert had had an extremely negatively filled day so far. He hated watching the news, but to him, it was unavoidable. He hated watching it because of the cosmopolitan range of presenters it featured, or so he thought. And as the anger infused his blood with rage, he knew one thing, and that was to take down Theodore Brooks. He planned to assassinate him.

The sound of the AM radio band being scanned on a simple portable receiver slightly irritated Robert this sunny morning with its crackle and hum. Robert hurried to his basement to plug in his own assembled radio transmitter. He constantly changed the frequencies and even location of the transmitter to avoid the FCC from tracking him down throughout his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He was a pirate broadcaster spreading hate speech over the airwaves as well as online. There was considerable interference all over the radio nowadays. He did not realise its source, but it was in fact coming from that anomaly near the Earth.

Robert had the new frequency set to 750 KHz. Right away he began to play provocative music and then his daily rant. He spoke derogatorily about Theodore Brooks but didn’t reveal his intention to wipe him out. He decided to assault his character first. As the barrage of castigating comments left Robert’s angry lips, the listeners, if any, could visualise how pissed off this man was. An image of a raging, disgruntled, and envious, crazy, rabid hound must have been conveyed in their minds. This torrential diatribe from Robert Emerson would have even turned away his avid followers due to how uneasy he sounded.

Chapter Two

On this starry night, Robert couldn’t help noticing how menacing the Anomaly looked in the bright sky. His moment of loathing was interrupted when he saw a pretty Asian woman in her thirties walking into the house that the Hendersons had vacated over four months ago. He couldn’t help noticing how attractive she looked but immediately halted any wanting of her because of her race. This made him sad, and this was something that he would never admit to himself. On his way into his house, he heard her mother call her inside. He heard her name; it was Jessica. In his home, Robert had just downed and finished half a bottle of Scotch and hit the bed. He was out cold. He heard someone calling out to him, “Rob, Rob!”

He always hated being called by the shorter version of his name as he believed it to be improper. He got up from the bed and noticed everything was different in his house. For a start, it was clean and tidy, with all his belongings neatly arranged, and there was no sign of that empty bottle of Scotch he had finished hours earlier. As he proceeded to find the person who was calling out to him, he saw a suit in the wardrobe. It appeared expensive, and he knew he could never afford such fancy apparel. Someone was coming up the stairs. Robert quickly went out of the bedroom to see who it was. First, his instincts led him to look for his handgun, only it wasn’t there – he woke up!

“What the fuck was that about?” he asked himself. It was about 7 a.m., and he decided that now he was awake, he would begin his day. He made an unhealthy breakfast consisting of burned bacon and sausages. He was about to close his eyes and yawn when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the table and looked at its display to see who was calling him this early but didn’t recognise the number. He hesitated only because he felt a little braver than yesterday and quickly decided to answer the call.

“Hello?” he asked the caller.

“Is this Robert Emerson?”

“Who wants to know?”

“An inspired new follower. I heard your broadcasts over the last week. You really hit the issues on the head. I want to contribute. Can we meet up?”

Robert took a deep breath and decided to chance it. “You better not be an undercover cop entrapping me or anything, ‘cause I don’t like being fucked with.”

“Trust me. I’m no pig.”

“Good. How about this afternoon?”

“Afternoon’s good. When and where?”

“In St. Matthew’s Park. I take it you already know what I look like from my website?”

“Yes, I do. I’ll be there.”

“What’s your alias?”

“The Exterminator.”

The morning passed without any high drama, considering Robert Emerson was living off the official grid. He cleaned himself up and got into his old station wagon, heading to St. Matthew’s Park. As he made his way there, the journey for him was typical. Typical in regards to how he would watch people who were not like him with disdain and hatred. He would squint his eyes in a manner that portrayed him to others as narrow-minded and irksome. He finally arrived at the park’s entrance and gazed around, scanning the area for any potential dangers. He got out, locked the doors of his station wagon, and proceeded on a walk through the park.