Don't Mess With Earth (5 page)

Galileo wasn’t entirely sure the materials
that Michelangelo wanted to use, would work. Galileo know the
Terran authorities were watching him, since he was someone with a
high profile, so he didn’t want to incur their wrath by giving
Michelangelo more advanced materials or an even better designed
plan for a glider, So, he helped the artist to encourage him and
other humans to push the boundaries of known science on Earth. At
the same time, Galileo was trying the patience of the Church with
his heretical ideas about how the universe actually worked, but he
figured someone needed to question established thinking, or nothing
would get done. He supposed he could just go to China, who were
accomplished astronomers and knew Earth orbited the sun, but they
would not trust him. So, he decided to stay in Italy, hoping that
someday a human would listen.

Michelangelo and Galileo worked on the glider
for weeks on end in the workshop, attempting to use materials
currently available on Earth, without using technology from Terra.
Galileo sometimes wondered just how on terra Michelangelo came up
with his plans, because the human seemed somewhat confused on how
to build the glider, as if he hadn’t actually come up with this
creation. Galileo let it go though, since inventing anything new
would confuse anyone. The glider took five months to build, since
some of the parts had to be made by hand. When it was ready,
Michelangelo announced to the powers-that-be, that he wanted to
show them his new invention.

On a sunny, summer day, church and political
leaders in Rome and other cities, and some artists, showed up at
the location Michelangelo would launch himself in the glider. He
chose a cliff overlooking the Adriatic Sea to launch the glider.
Galileo helped the artist set himself up and then pushed the
glider. The glider flew over the water for about five hundred feet,
then Michelangelo steered it back towards land, flying over
everyone’s heads. He flew for fifteen minutes and then glided in
for a landing a hundred yards away from the group. Galileo jogged
over to the glider, greeted Michelangelo, and said in an excitable
voice, “That was wonderful! Everyone was speechless. I think you
made a good impression.”

While the two men were talking, the Pope and
his people walked over. The Pope interrupted their conversation,
pretended he was clapping, and said, “Impressive Michelangelo,
impressive. However, I think if we were meant to fly like the
birds, God would have given us wings. We think you should continue
painting and sculpting the projects we have asked you to work on,
because this contraption is very close to making you look and sound
like a heretic. Are we making ourselves clear, Michelangelo?”

“You have made yourself very clear, Your
Eminence. Thank you for humoring me. I will get to work right away
on all the projects you need me to work on.” said a humbled
Michelangelo.

“You made the right choice, my son. Now,
Galileo, do we need to tell you that all those theories about the
solar system are wrong and go against doctrine? Your life would be
so much easier if you confess your wrongdoing.”

“I’m not wrong about the solar system; you
just don’t want your authority questioned, even though the
Lutherans and Anglicans have already begun to. You can threaten me
all you want, but you have no power over me, so I will not recant.”
argued Galileo.

“You know, that’s too bad. For a person of
your station and one who is intelligent, you seem to have no idea
what kind of trouble you find yourself in,” then turning around to
some of his soldiers, “take him into custody, we’ll deal with him
soon,” then he turned back to Galileo, “I have the power to make
your life a living hell as long as you don’t do as you’re told. So
what say you?”

Galileo responded with obscenities directed
towards the pope, questioning his manhood, and whether his
ancestors were on the lower end of the food chain. With one look by
the Pope, the soldiers took action by beating up Galileo. When the
astronomer couldn’t get up from being in so much pain from being
beaten, the Pope gave Galileo an incredibly hard kick to the side.
The blow from the kick caused Galileo even more pain, so that he
passed out from it. Michelangelo couldn’t do anything to help,
especially when some priests took a lighted torch and lit the
glider on fire. He wanted to stop them, but he found he had no
desire to question such powerful authority or put his life in
danger as Galileo had just done. Besides, he stole the glider plans
from his archrival, Leonardo Da Vinci, so he had some satisfaction
that if history ever recorded this event, Michelangelo would get
the credit for inventing the means to fly. That is, assuming anyone
ever tried again and had the approval of the powers-that-be.

Galileo was thrown into the deepest, darkest
dungeon that could be found in Rome. The Pope complained, “You know
Galileo, if I could, I would re-use the Coliseum and make heretics
like you fight off lions and tigers or fight a gladiator to the
death, like the Romans did during the days of the Empire.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, everything is just too
civilized. Torture can and will be used, and I’m sure the men
torturing you will take great pleasure in your pain. If you don’t
recant your absurd ideas, the trial will find you guilty of all
sorts of crimes against church and state. Your punishment for your
guilt will be execution, and not just any kind of execution; it
will be the drawn and quartered kind. Do you wish to recant?”

Galileo kept his silence. The Pope responded
by giving the scientist a backhanded slap, leaving a mark on
Galileo’s cheek from the massive ring the Pope was wearing. The
next day, the torture began.

Word reached Terra two months later that one
of their premiere astronomers was in major trouble on Earth, and he
could be executed at any moment. The head of the government’s
science administration rushed into the President of Terra’s office
and said, “Mr. President, I have some bad news. The corrupt Church
authorities on Earth have captured Professor Galileo. They plan on
putting him to death for espousing heretical ideas about the way
the universe works. I need to ask the government for permission to
extract Galileo from his impending death at the hands of this
corrupt group of humans,”

The President sighed, “Earth had been nothing
but trouble for us; however, I will authorize a mission for the
Marines to send in their best covert ops team to extract Galileo.
Provide me all the details of where Galileo is imprisoned and I
will have the Marine Chief of Staff go over the details of how to
get the scientist out of prison and back to Terra. Don’t worry; he
will be back on Terra before we know it.”

The Terran Marine Special Forces, called
Centauri Berets, were activated, given their orders, and the plans
of the building that Galileo was imprisoned in. They practiced
extracting Galileo on their base, and studied the plans shortly
before leaving and while on their way to Earth. Their orders were
to go in and extract the scientist by any means necessary,
including killing humans if need be. Bring Galileo back to Terra as
soon as possible.

The covert team arrived on Earth four hours
later and waited until it was past midnight in Rome before making
their move. Human guards were stationed at the entrance, so the
covert team utilized stun grenades to put the guards out of action
for a while. Two of the covert ops soldiers replaced the two
guards, while the rest went inside. Everything was quiet, since the
building was part of the Church administrative compound, but it
could turn chaotic if someone saw the covert team and then warned
others. The team made their way to the dungeon, where the stench
was overwhelming, and there were groans of pain and agony coming
from everywhere. The guard on duty was killed before he knew what
was happening, and the Terrans began to search for where Galileo
was chained. The team found Galileo ten minutes later, he was a
bruised, bloody mess, and when the scientist saw the covert team,
his mood brightened considerably. They released Galileo from his
shackles and hustled him out of the building, while the men who
were part of the demolitions team, placed explosive charges all
over the building.

Once they were all a safe distance from the
building, one of them pushed a button on a control to set off all
the charges. The resulting explosion and its fireball shook the
ground, lit up the night sky, and could be seen for miles. Everyone
who was asleep was now outside, trying to put out the resulting
fires with buckets of water, while trying to avoid the intense heat
coming from the fires. The covert team and Galileo watched as the
compound and the neighborhood near the compound catch fire and
quickly spread. They watched for nearly four hours as building
after building was consumed, destroying nearly half of Rome. The
Terrans then left Earth and headed back to Terra.

The next afternoon, once the fires burned
out, the Pope, his priests, and his Swiss military contingent,
inspected the burnt-out remains of the prison Galileo was being
held in. Two guards reported that they must’ve been jumped because
they woke up some yards away from the building when it exploded.
Everyone went down into what was left of the dungeon, but found no
evidence of human remains, at least none they could identify as
human. The Pope was beyond furious, since he suspected that Galileo
somehow broke out, because there was just no way that these
buildings could explode the way they did for no reason. He ordered
a search for Galileo by any means necessary, leave no stone
unturned, and have people executed if it leads to recapturing
Galileo. The Pope also tried to use the opportunity to root out
more subversives and heretics, and made sure the locals also were
much more afraid of the Church than they ever were before. Luther,
Calvin, Anabaptists, and others who were never part of the Church
to begin with, were put on a most wanted list for being heretics
and teaching Biblical ideas that were not Church doctrine. Nobody
in Europe even attempted to go after the church leaders or smaller
sects, even when the Pope offered up gold from the New World; he
remained furious for the next few years, losing one’s total power
tends to do that. After a year of searching for Galileo, including
sending soldiers to the lands of the New World, the search for the
heretic was given up.

In the meantime, Galileo was recovering in a
Terran hospital from all the injuries he had received at the hands
of the humans. Four months after being returned to Terra, he left
the hospital and was soon summoned by the Oversight of Earth
Committee to explain how he ended up in such a bad situation that
he needed to be rescued by the best covert ops team on Terra.
Originally, the Oversight Committee also tried and convicted
Terrans for interfering, but that proved to be a lot more than the
Committee could handle, so the local courts conducted the trials
and convictions. Once Galileo was in front of the Committee, they
began grilling him, “Galileo Galilei, you are here to answer for
why you tried to interfere with human development by showing one
particular human how he could build and fly a glider. We think you
should’ve known that the Church authorities in that part of Earth
would be not too crazy about the idea of flying or even the idea of
Earth revolving around their sun, since they wanted to control
human advancement and wanted no one to question their set ideas of
how things worked. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I thought by just helping Michelangelo
develop the glider, everyone on Earth would be able to see what
they could do, and aim to keep inventing stuff like gliders,
instead of letting a bunch of corrupt Church officials tell them
what to do. I thought encouraging one person to question authority
would set the seed for them one day being free of such overwhelming
government and religious control. That is my reasoning for doing
what I did, sirs.” explained the scientist.

Other Committee members, after talking a
little amongst themselves, explained to Galileo, “It really isn’t
up to you to push for human advancement, they have to do it on
their own, even if it takes another thousand years for them to
become as advanced as our civilization. As far as encouraging
rebelliousness against authority in Europe, it began before you
arrived there, and will continue long after you are dead; you don’t
need to be the sole reason for anarchy on that planet. The
government of our planet also feels that the Ragnor aren’t that big
of a threat to Terra for you or anyone else to interfere in the
technological advancement of humanity. You know that you may have
catastrophically interfered with the natural progression of human
history by helping someone who may or may not have invented gliders
and the means to fly if you were not there to help? Galileo, you
are hereby ordered to stay on Terra and will never be able to
return to Earth. You are discouraged from ever talking about your
experiences, and you shall not encourage others to follow your
lead. Do you understand the gravity of your situation?”

Galileo did understand and had no problem
with the Committee orders to stay on Terra and not talk to anyone
about his experiences, which would only encourage more Terrans to
mess up the natural progression of history on Earth. After the
beating he took at the hands of those humans, he really didn’t want
to go back to Earth anyway.

While certain Terrans were busy with
manipulating the humans of Earth, the Ragnor were still attacking
starships of the various space-going species in the galaxy. The
Ragnor ships were still cloaked and sometimes impossible to fight
against. The Terrans had improved the cloak detector to detect a
ship a few million miles from a planet, but with space phenomenon,
detecting Ragnor ships was still incredibly difficult. The Ragnor
also began noticing many Terran ships heading off in a direction
that the Ragnor had never gone before, so with their curiosity
piqued, their cloaked ships followed the Terrans to a solar system
with nine planets. The Terrans stopped at the third, a planet that
was mostly blue. The Ragnor also detected radio signals coming from
the fourth planet, so they now knew where the Terrans had set up a
planetary base. A scan of the blue planet was conducted, and the
Ragnor were surprised to learn this planet had humans living on it,
albeit a bit on the primitive side. Since these humans probably had
no idea about aliens in general, the Ragnor decided to start
conducting more experiments, figuring there would be no reprisals
from these humans.