CHAPTER 1

When it showed up, some called it Nibiru; Scientistsreferred to it as Nemesis; everyone else called it TheEnd.

It was late 2012 and the world had been throwninto doomsday fervor. December 21, 2012 was theday the world was supposed to end, after all. TheMayans had predicted it and so had Nostradamus.Yet something different had occurred.

It began early in 2011 when long range surveyorsdetected an anomaly in the Ort Cloud. Somethingwas disturbing the comets and planetary bodiesthat orbited the sun nearly a light year away. Theprimitive instruments, high-tech by the day'sstandards, couldn't detect what it was at the time.It had taken our civilization the better part of twoyears to detect what it was and even then we didn'twant to believe it until we finally sent a probe out tomeet it.

It had turned out to be a rouge planet; a planetabout the size of Mercury that had apparently beenknocked out of the orbit of its parent star andsentenced to wander the cold depths of endlessspace before reaching our doorstep. The date of thisdiscovery: December 21, 2012.

Miraculously, the rouge planet had wandered intoour solar system. It was the equivalent of knockinga bullet out of the air with another bullet whileblindfolded. What was the real miracle was whathappened next.

With the addition of a new planet into our solarsystem, the biggest fear was that it would eithercollide with one of the planets already occupyinglocal space or that it would come close and fling itselfand the local out of its stable orbit. Many feared thatit would be the latter, but neither was to be the case.

Instead; Nibiru, as the common citizens had taken tocalling it, avoided all planetary bodies on its entry.It caused no new comet activity; it didn't sling anyother planet out of orbit; and it certainly didn't collidewith anything.

Instead, it came in precisely on the orbital plane.And as if by intelligent design, caught up with planetEarth and settled into a stable orbit which kept thestability of moon, planet, and planet spin/wobble andall other functions we take for granted.

The Earth had gained a new daughter; Nibiru hadbecome a new moon.

CHAPTER 2

By the time Nibiru had taken on its orbit aroundEarth, nearly one hundred years had alreadyelapsed. A whole generation had grown realizing thattheir demise was nigh. Economies had tanked andrebuilt themselves and superpowers had fallen. Thegreat nation states that were the norm of 2012 hadno place in the world of 2112. In the aftermath ofthe Brink, the great socio-economic collapse whichfollowed the discovery of Nibiru, corporations hadseized control of entire nations. Forging alliances witheach other, there had never before been such a timeof peace and prosperity as the great Reformation ofNations, as it was called.

Corporations were now in control.

Apple had absorbed North and South Americas andthey took control of the British Isles, as well as theformer European Union. Goldman Sachs had takenAustralia, New Zealand, and most of Africa, whileSony-Toshiba conquered Asia Major and Minor, whichincluded the middle-east and the former SovietUnion.

Realizing that Nibiru was on a collision course withEarth, the three great corporations set their sightson the heavenly bodies. Since the moon was inthe Earth system, it was widely acknowledged thatit should be neutral territory. So the Corporationspooled resources, and constructed Doorway Outpost;the stellar doorway, as it was, to the rest of theplanets.

Apple struck out first laying claim to Mars and itstwo moons, Phobos and Deimos. As the only knownplanet in the solar system that had once been ableto support life, Apple began the massive undertakingof terra-forming the planet, pumping trillions of tonsof methane into the atmosphere to raise the planet'stemperature to a more habitable level.

Goldman Sachs followed closely, striking furtheroutward then anyone had ever been in the solarsystem, and staked claim to Europa; the ice bearingmoon of Jupiter. The thought process behind theirclaim: if it has water, it would become the mostvaluable planetary body in the solar system next toEarth.

Sony-Toshiba trailed the other two as they decidedto construct massive shipyards orbiting Luna, Mars,and Europa. These shipyards employed millions ofcitizens and became essential to Earth's space faringempire as they brought in all resources that couldnot be grown or mined from the planets themselves.

As Nibiru closed in on its rendezvous to Earth, therewas a mass exodus. It has been estimated thatnearly sixty-eight percent of the Earth's populationevacuated the planet in order to avoid the oncomingdisaster. The remainder were either unable to affordthe tickets off world or simply resigned to the factthat they were about to meet their end.

Once it was apparent that Nibiru posed no threat tothe human race, it was decided among the Boardsof Directors of the corporations that it would also bedeclared neutral territory.

And this is where I come into the story. My nameis Dr. James Calloway. I have a PH.D in TheoreticalPhysics from Massachusetts Institute of Technologyand I am employed by Apple as the Director ofExtra-Solar Activity. I don't like to brag, but I'm Sol'sforemost expert on Nibiru. In all of humanities fortytrillion number, no one knows more about the rougeplanet than I do.

CHAPTER 3

In the hundred years that Nibiru has been a partof our lives, we have learned a lot about it. Westruggled at first to determine how a rouge planethad managed to survive, completely intact, throughthe cold darkness of interstellar space. It becameapparent when we trained our telescopes on it tostudy it.

Barely being able to see it with the aided eye througha telescope, you could see a slight shimmer to theplanet. Using different remote sensors we wereable to determine that there was an energy shieldin place. As far as we could tell; Nibiru was beingprotected ... but by whom? Instead of the impendingdeath scenario that was playing out for most ofmankind, we were experiencing first contact.

As usual, though, most of academia concocted theirtheories about what it could have been, trying togive it a natural explanation. The theories rangedanywhere from highly radioactive deposits ofuranium reacting from the sudden heat from thesun to the surface being covered in glass due to theconstant bombardment from deep space radiation. Isecretly formed my own theory about it being firstcontact, due to the fact that we had been playingthe "naturally occurring" game for well over the pastcentury. I believe in Ockham's Razor: the simplestanswer is usually the correct one, and nothing getssimpler than just saying aliens did it.

As I stated, I kept my theory to myself. I valuedmy position within Apple. There weren't many otherthirty-three year olds who were able to secure aDirector's position straight out of the Doctorateprogram, let alone retain it for the amount of timethat I have. I couldn't let my employers know what Itruly believed. So I agreed with the general academiaand with more persuasion, was able to persuade myemployers that a mission to the rouge planet wouldbe wise, so that we could lay claim to it before theother corporations did.

This was before Nibiru slowed and became a moon.

Realizing what was happening ceased ourpreparations for a mission. We watched in awe asthe two planets and moon danced for weeks. Wedetected the subtle slowing of Nibiru months...