About Embargo by Michael Tavis
Five thousand years ago, Quake$, the captain of a leased trader, and its other five crew members discovered Earth. Through a fortunate accident, one of its crew members, Pataxis (a Gingco), found the precursor to a comfortable and long-lasting mattress that became the most valuable commodity found in the last million years. The Beltron Cooperative, the owner of the trade ship, and the Local trade group embargoed Earth illegally to prevent other races from discovering it and the expensive commodity. With the aid of the Gingcos, they placed battle stations in the solar system Kuiper Belt to prevent other races from entering Earth’s solar system and prevent humans from leaving or emitting electromagnetic radiation that would reach other races.
Beltron forced Pataxis to become the sole galactic trade commissioner collecting that valuable commodity and preparing it for shipment every 100 years. The threat of mind wipe and living out his life on a prison planet convinced him to take that position. Gingcos are very long-lived with a life span greater than 30000 years; thus, his internment of 5000 years was a small but significant fraction of his life. He was very bored until he met John Sum Lang.
John Sum Lang was young, 13 going on 14, and very smart with an IQ of 193. He was working on his third Ph.D. (Chemistry) at Caltech. His other two were in Biophysics and Physics. Like many young men of his age, he had difficulty concentrating on his studies because of a sex-induced attention deficit. Today he had tried meditation to allow concentration on his thesis. Arriving in the Santa Monica Mountains, the antics of a pigeon distracted him. He saw the pigeon captured, and his curiosity piqued, damaged a bird capture device placed there by Pataxis. Eventually, he captured Pataxis, got use of his interplanetary vehicle, and discovered an ancient interstellar vehicle.
Using that vehicle he changed everything
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Author Bio:
I am 80 and still working part time in the Aerospace industry. I am married, have 2 children, and six grandchildren. I have worked on the book off and on over the last 6 years.