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by J. F. Elferdink (Author)
Synopsis of Battle of Jericho 2038
The world has changed drastically in two generations. Living conditions of the vast majority of the earth's population have greatly deteriorated. Control of the world's wealth is in the hands of an international banking collaboration, The Bank of the Milky Way (nicknamed CandyLand). Its president, Roman Starke, has used his wealth to develop a space elevator capable of lifting much of the basic foodstuff into a warehouse in outer space. Hoarding food will allow the Candyland Consortium to control the majority of the population. In the process of expanding his power, Starke has unwittingly created an alliance with an evil group led by Leonard Mal. The space elevator quits functioning after less than a year in operation when its tether of single-crystal graphene is severed. To reconnect the tether quickly is very dangerous, and no one with sufficient expertise has yet been found willing to take the risk. With the space elevator out of commission, the cost and speed of bringing food from its warehouse in space tripled.
CandyLand leaders don't realize the growing strength of the gang of rebels who, up to now, have been only an insignificant nuisance. That was before hunger gave them a powerful incentive, and before a new partnership gave them hope. Just as revolution seems imminent, Callie, Roman's elder daughter, announces she is ready to repair the space elevator. She won't listen to her father's objections. In the minutes before ascension, the rebel leader, Camden, rushes up to Callie and gives her a passionate kiss, transferring a virus to her body. He doesn't realize what he's done because his own body has immunities to the viral attack, protection gifted by his grandmother's late lover. Callie realizes that terminating the project would be her salvation, but if the space elevator is not repaired soon people will starve. She completes the repair work but dies soon after. Her estate leaves money to the rebel organization renamed Callie's Collective for their new heroine. Now a part of a supernatural community, Callie helps to direct the Collective to combat her father's terrorizing consortium. Counseled to study CandyLand's bylaws, they read that if a majority of board members renounce their membership, ownership of the consortium's assets are forfeited. This happens as numerous CandyLand leaders choose to use the space elevator to escape the Earth's harmful atmosphere to a space colony. After the forfeiture, Callie's Collective gains ownership of the space elevator with additional funding earned from mining precious metals on a near Earth asteroid.
Researchers with Callie's Collective soon recognize the elevator program's potential for far more than storing grain in low Earth orbits or sending a few astronauts into space; they prove outer space can provide solutions to Earth's most severe problems such as inexpensive electricity. The Collective becomes the primary operators of a program called the Galactic Harbour, using Space Elevators, sometimes coupled with rockets, to become the gateway to the stars that a rare few physicists and science fiction authors had even dreamed possible.
