Podnovel - The Life of Riley

Podnovel - The Life of Riley

What is the best book you've ever read?

Well, try this one for size. In The Beginning - by David J Baldwin.

The first book in the Trilogy, The Last Prophet

Synopsis of In The Beginning

In The Beginning – By David J Baldwin

The book begins, just before Christmas 2004, with two simultaneous events that on the face of it seem unconnected. One is a mundane trip to the Post Office, the other the arrival on Earth of three, extremely fit, muscle bound giants from the planet Prometheus.

OLIVER LOCKSPRING, the hero of the novel, having posted his Christmas Cards is riding back to his family, through the snow and hills of the Brecon Beacons in Wales. He begins to reminisce about his past and the events that have brought him to this station in his life. He is happy, contented and loved; but it had not always been that way.

The story flashes back to his childhood in the wilds of rural Surrey and the rest of the novel charts his development. It begins in 1976 as Oliver prepares to go to University. After university he is recruited into a secret department of the MOD. Along the way to the final conclusion, where the two opening events come together, he experiences many adventures. Death and near death episodes; juvenile escapades with a herd of cows; he concocts a plethora of mad, but highly advanced, inventions; suffers constant rejection by narrow-minded, ethical and moral guardians who cannot see the brilliance of his work; lives in fear of a couple of Russian Secret Service agents out to get him; and falls in love.

Throughout his highly eventful life there is one constant. Oliver never feels he belongs. His greatest wish is to be a part of a large and extended network of family and friends, like his best mate Jasper who is in the army, and his wife Rachael, who is loved by everyone. But, maybe because of his unconcealed intelligence or his inability to suffer fools, or his strong political and religious antipathy, he only succeeds in alienating just about everyone he comes into contact with. It isn't until he abandons it all and goes to live in the reclusive setting of Manger Farm on the edge of the Brecon Beacons that he finally finds the contentment he has searched for all his life.

This peace, however, is about to be shattered by the arrival of the three Nibirians as Oliver discovers that his whole life has been a lie.

In The Beginning is the first book in a Trilogy entitled THE LAST PROPHET. It is a story of achievement and disappointment; fortune and fate; love and hate; intrigue and imagination; life and death, all set against a backdrop of Genetic Modification. Oliver doesn't know it, he finds out right at the end, but the reason he is so different to everyone else on this planet and the reason he finds it so hard to endear himself to others, is because he is the product of a million years of Genetic Modification. He is, according to the rules of evolution and genetics, the ultimate human being. Everything in his past has engineered him to be perfect. He doesn't fit in the imperfect world we experience everyday. He is a misfit. But, in his world, it is all of us who are misfits. Oliver is not your usual hero that everyone instantly likes, but in the tradition of all good ‘fairy’ stories, especially ‘The Ugly Duckling’, it all ends happily ever after. Until the aliens arrive!

In The Beginning begins with Oliver's education. He breezes through the academic life of a Cambridge graduate but suffers with the ‘coming of age’ aspects of his journey into adulthood. After winning the 1977 Varsity Boat Race, almost single-handedly, Oliver meets and falls in love with the Cox from the Oxford crew (Kay). He stumbles through his first sexual experiences, and becomes completely besotted. After a summer of love, Kay announces that she is pregnant! Oliver battles with his emotions for and against becoming a dad. They decide to keep the baby and go out and get drunk to celebrate. Kay and Oliver end the evening by taking part in a punt race on the river. This is where we first encounter interference from aliens, who are, for some reason, keeping a very close eye on Oliver. The aliens produce a thunderstorm in an attempt to help Oliver win, however, a stray thunderbolt strikes a tree beside the river; the tree falls onto the punt and kills Kay and their unborn baby. Oliver is distraught.

For his post-graduate thesis he intends to study Astro-Physics and hopes to become an astronaut. However, just as he is about to begin, his father falls gravely ill with Chronic Renal Failure (CRF). Riley changes tack and does a PhD in Bio-Genetics instead. He develops a novel organ from pluripotential stem cells, which he hopes will rescue his father. To test his theories he injects his untried genetic soup into a herd of cows who have become, not only his experimental laboratory animals, but also his surrogate friends.

The cattle are ‘liberated’ from his lab’ by a gang of Animal Rights protesters and are taken to a dingy, disease ridden hide-away in South Wales. Oliver tracks them down and attempts to free them but he is prevented by an Animal Rights thug called Douglas Jones. A fight for his life ensues and after he is bitten on the leg by Jones’s dog he starts bleeding to death. Jones continues trying to kill him. Just as Oliver is about to die, the cows stampede and kill his attacker. He manages to stagger to the sanctuary of a pub where the regulars patch him up, and he ends up in Ducaponddi Royal Infirmary. Whilst in hospital he is arrested and charged with the murder of Douglas Jones.

Things do not look good until his mother and father arrive at the prison in which he is being held, at the eleventh hour, with a lawyer (Alex Baddcock). Alex’s unconventional courtroom manner; at one point bringing in one of the cows as a witness; and his overt, down-to-earth charm, saves the day. Oliver is exonerated and returns to Cambridge to continue his work. But then he discovers that the Ethics committee are preventing him whilst they investigate the strange experimentation Oliver had carried out on his cows. Oliver is desperate to carry on but he cannot get back into his laboratory.

Drinking to excess to ease his anxiety, he is approached in the pub by a pair of Russian Secret Service Agents who promise him all the facilities he needs if he is willing to come with them to Russia. The Russians are not the only people who are keeping tabs on our Genius. MI5 have also got an agent looking out for him. Capt. Piggy Gultton acts fast and whisks Oliver away from the clutches of the Russians. This puts his life in danger again. Oliver is taken to a safe house where he meets Alex again; this time in his covert identity of an MI5 spy.

To help protect him from the Russians and to take advantage of Oliver's enormous brain power, MI5 send him to darkest Hampshire to head up a new ‘secret’ department, the Department of General, Strategic and Heavy Infantry Tactics (DoGSHIT or the DoG’s for short). His brief is to invent novel and effective weapons in the fight against global terrorism. His first battle at the DoG’s is to overcome the antipathy and prejudice of the other members of the team all of whom are much older, wiser and more experienced than the young sprog who has been sent to be their leader.

With a series of bizarre and extremely politically incorrect inventions, which show the team how brilliant he is, Oliver eventually wins their admiration. Meanwhile, his only childhood friend, Jasper, has joined the army and at the same time as Oliver is battling for control of the DoG’s, Jasper is battling for his life in the Falkland Islands.

By the mid-eighties Oliver's inventions have become legendary. He produces a plethora of counter terrorist devices far in advance of conventional thinking and technology. The mandarins at the MOD steadfastly reject them all. One man, in charge of the MOD, Charlie Singh, appears to have a personal vendetta against Oliver which seems dates back to Oliver's schooldays when he was a classmate of Singh’s son Gurdeep.

The aliens interfere again and send Oliver a pocket sized device for splitting atoms, recombining them and producing novel elements and compounds. Oliver uses the device to develop his greatest invention yet. Alutex is a flexible, rigid, hyper-strength compound designed to protect buildings and vehicles from bomb blasts and direct attack from missiles. He labours long and hard to produce just the right combination of elements and eventually comes up with what he thinks will be something the MOD just cannot reject. He sets up an experimental explosion in an old Nissan hut to test the compound. When he goes forward to inspect the results, the hut begins to creak, weakened by the explosion. The whole building collapses onto him and a large steel girder crashes down onto his head. He is flown by helicopter to the Cambridge Military Hospital (CMH) in Aldershot, where he is inspected by Gurdeep Singh, now a Doctor in the Army. He is diagnosed as Brain Dead and transferred to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, where he comes under the care of Dr. Rachael Keith.

Rachael is a young doctor whose life is dedicated to Jesus Christ. Oliver is her project for her thesis on brain stem death and patients with permanent vegetative state. Something about Oliver touches her deeply and she is convinced that he is not dead. She prays to Jesus and he tells her that her patient will be born again. She cannot bring herself to turn off his life support machine, despite protestation from her boss and agreement from Oliver's parents. Finally her heart breaks and she pours it all out to her unresponsive patient. She rips out all of his tubes, takes him in her arms and kisses him with a volcanic passion. Oliver is unmoved. She takes this as a sign that Jesus has told her to switch off his machine. After she leaves his room for the last time, vowing to turn him off in the morning, Oliver stirs into life. When Rachael, her boss and Oliver's parents come in the next day he is sitting up in bed wondering where he is. He has lost his memory but otherwise he is physically perfect.

Oliver goes back home to his parents and tries to relearn all that he has forgotten. He doesn't know who he is and he doesn't believe the stories that his parents are telling him about his life before his accident. Rachael comes to visit him regularly under the pretext of continuing her thesis, but secretly she has fallen completely and hopelessly in love with him. On the night of the Great Storm (Oct 1987) she comes to see him, knowing his parents have gone away. She is dressed to kill. She cooks him a meal and they play a game of Scrabble. Oliver gets aroused by Rachael’s perfume and pecks her on the cheek. She leaps on him like a sex craved animal and as the storm outside rises in intensity, so does the animalistic love scene. Oliver wakes with a start as the storm still rages outside. He remembers a dream from his dim and distant past, his first wet dream as a teenager in which a beautiful, sex-craved girl shows him all the joys of sex. She had no face, but when he looks over at the sleeping Rachael it all starts to come back. His memory returns, with every thunderbolt from the storm outside he receives a new image of his past. His final image is of Kay, beckoning to him from the lake and telling him that Rachael is the woman for him. He walks back from the lake and Rachael is waiting for him on the patio, naked and dripping wet, they embrace and suddenly everything becomes clear. He falls in love with her.

Oliver wants to get back to work, Rachael wants to protect him. He wins. Back at the DoG’s he discovers that the invention which nearly killed him has been rejected. He gets very angry and writes a curt letter to Charlie Singh.

Rachael plans their wedding as Oliver invents a mind-bending weapon of mass indifference called the Psychotron B. (Don’t ask what happened to the Psychotron A!). To test the weapon he enlists Rachael’s help. She introduces him to Prof. Osmotherley a psychotherapist (AKA: Psycho the Rapist), who supplies him with a patient suffering from terminal arachnophobia. The Psychotron B is a success and finally the MOD are interested. They want a full demonstration so the team set one up at a football match between Charlton Athletic and Millwall at the old Den. Charlie Singh is there.

Oliver and Rachael get married in a grand wedding at Guildford Cathedral. At the wedding reception he meets Rachael’s family for the first time. Rachael’s father, a devout Catholic, gives Oliver a bible. Oliver declines the gift explaining that he is an atheist. Father-in-law goes mad, he tries to drag Rachael out of the house and take her home to Scotland. Jasper intervenes and takes Rachael’s father outside to cool down. He gives him a bottle of whisky. Father drinks the whisky then wanders off around the lake. Kay’s tree attacks him and he falls into the lake. Oliver rushes to rescue him and dives in. Six minutes elapse and Rachael is distraught. After all she had come through to win Oliver, she can't bear to see it all get snatched away so cruelly on the happiest day of her life. Finally Oliver emerges on the far bank, dragging his father in law behind him.

One of the guests at the reception is Oliver's Uncle Stuart. Oliver had never seen his uncle before. He works for the Diplomatic Corps and has been abroad all of Oliver's life. Stuart is coming home, to take up the post of Permanent Under Secretary to the new Defence Minister, Charlie Singh! Oliver likes his uncle and he looks forward to working with him.

The DoG’s relocates to Whitehall and Stuart encourages Oliver to install a new piece of technology, the internet, into the MOD HQ. Ostensibly to help make communications more secure, but also to try and find out what Singh has on Oliver and the team at the DoG’s that prevents any of his brilliant inventions getting past the committee stage.

Then one day, Oliver gets a call from Alex to say that he was on board the Helicopter that went down on the Mull of Kintyre. The MOD are blaming pilot error, but Alex tells Oliver it was a terrorist attack. He had survived and managed to get himself back to England but he is sure that he is being followed. Oliver tells him to hide out at Manger Farm, the place in Wales where his cows had killed Douglas Jones. Oliver had bought the farm after his trial as a permanent reminder of the cows that gave their life to save his. He hadn't used it since the day he bought it but he has great plans for the place.

Riley goes to see Alex in his hideout. Alex’s wife, who until this moment didn’t know that he was a spy, persuades Rachael to come with her. They follow Oliver and find out what is going on. They have a big confrontation. Rachael points out that if someone is after Alex they can’t stay there. If two women could find them so easily, the IRA should have no bother. On the way back to London, to Prof. Osmotherley’s flat, they are tailed by two suspicious looking men wearing turbans. They manage to give them the slip. Oliver and Alex stay at Prof. Osmotherley’s flat while Rachael goes home to get him some clothes. She calls him later that evening, sobbing and distraught. Oliver's parents have been murdered. Oliver and Alex dash back to Surrey, to find Rachael sitting beside the bodies of Oliver's parents and a large pool of blood. They put two and two together and decided, with the Sikh connection, that Charlie Singh is behind it all. They go and pay him a visit.

As they are interrogating Singh, Uncle Stuart bursts in accompanied by the two turban headed gents. It transpires that Stuart has lived the life of a double agent, working for the Russians since he left Cambridge. Stuart was the sixth man in the Burgess and Mclean spy ring. He had instigated the murder of Singh’s brother, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale at the Golden Temple of Amritsar back in the eighties and had hoped to pin the blame on Alex. Alex had been there as a young subaltern, but had gone back to England before the Sikh could vent their revenge. Bent of avenging the death of their brother Sant Jarnail Singh, the Sikhs had a problem. They were scared of Alex, and the eternal damnation they would suffer if they killed him because of his daughter, Nikki. Nikki is the image of the Hindu goddess Chandi and the Sikh believe that she is the goddess re-incarnated. But the two ‘Sikh’ with Stuart were prepared to do the deed, and kill Alex in exchange for Oliver . The two men, unravel their turbans to reveal who they really are. They are the two Russians who have been trying to get Oliver for as many years as he could remember. Oliver rushes forward to confront them. His uncle shoots him in the leg. Stuart sadistically explains all about Oliver's past, how he had smuggled him out of Russia when he was a baby and got his brother to adopt him. How he hoped one day to recruit Oliver into his spy ring, but Oliver had never played the game. Stuart explained that Oliver and Alex (real name Alexei Bakhramov) were brothers and that their mother, Melody, was the power behind the Stalinist throne and a lover of Josef Stalin himself. Just as they are all about to be killed, Charlie Singh’s wife pulls the rug from under the feet of their attackers; Alex jumps on the Russians and breaks their necks. Charlie Singh, hits Uncle Stuart with an old Shillelagh milliseconds before he releases a shot to kill Oliver .

It all ends happily ever after… Oliver retires from the DoG’s and they move down to Wales, just in time for the birth of their first son. Oliver becomes a popular member of the local community and just plays all day with his farm, his children and his inventions. He wishes he’d known Alex when they were growing up, but is happy that now, eventually, he has a family.

Then the Nibirians arrive and turn his idyllic existence on its head once more…

But that’s another story.