Freedom

G. Rosemary Ludlow’s “Crystal Journals” series stars Susan Sinclair, a 10-year-old central character from Nanaimo, British Columbia. Susan is the Guardian of a magic crystal which transports her in time to situations of imbalance or injustice in history so that she can right the wrong. In the first three novels, Susan time-travelled to New York in the 1860s, to Ancient Egypt and to Medieval Europe. In this fourth novel, Freedom, Susan is in the middle of her eleventh birthday party when the crystal vibrates, signalling that she is going to take another trip.

Susan fades out and awakens in a dark, circular room with stone walls in which something vibrates. She can’t feel her crystal in her pocket, but suddenly it strikes her knuckles, followed by another crystal, a sapphire blue one. A robot appears to her, basically a metal box with an arm, which artist Ken Rolston depicts in a cover illustration showing a beautiful scene from the story. Susan names the robot “Sassy”, for “semi-stealth autonomous storage device.”

Sassy speaks and provides food and drink, served with its mechanical arm. It tells Susan that it has lost a sapphire crystal entrusted to it by the Guardian of the Crystal of the Outer Realm when he died just a few hours earlier. Eventually Susan learns that she is on an asteroid in the year 2256. Environmental disaster on Earth led to a mass migration, known as the “Great Exit”, to colonies on the Moon and Mars. Asteroids are being used for various purposes, such as space ship “freighters” powered by rockets, to transport goods in space. The asteroid on which Susan finds herself has a biosphere created within it.

The vibration in the wall is a voice, known as “Partition”, because it has been partitioned off from the Artificial Intelligence, “AI”, that is running the facility on the asteroid. Telling Sassy and Susan that there is much work to be done, Partition shows them a video-recording of the dying words of Alvion True, the Guardian of the Crystal of the Outer Realm. He was sent to correct an injustice, but, before he could do so, he was shot by “Earthers”, (not by anyone from the domed colonies on the Moon and Mars.)

Alvion True explains that a consortium is creating a biosphere on the asteroid to preserve certain Earth species. A shipment of mammals has arrived via space ship but is being unloaded by a shady looking crew who may have been sent to destroy the biosphere.

Next, on screen, Susan is shown the crew unloading the plastic cages at their cargo bay. They discuss stealing the animals to sell, and then they communicate via a remote device with a couple on Earth, Grenville and Begonia Sutton. They own the Sutton Range Resort, a business with the slogan: “Make your Earth time more than just a gravity experience.” Begonia’s remarks to Grenville make it pretty clear that they secured the contract to create the biosphere primarily to make it fail so it will not compete with their resort on Earth. Susan’s beloved Vancouver Island, much reduced in size because of flooding, is owned by the Suttons and run in a sort of feudal system.

The biosphere, similar in vegetation and climate to the Pacific Northwest, includes a garden for food self-sufficiency. When Susan and Sassy go into the biosphere, Susan looks through the spy holes in the plastic cages and sees most species of the Pacific Northwest represented. Four cages, however, have no spy holes. The cages are timed to release the predators after their prey has been given a head start.

Near Alvion True’s grave is an older one, the last resting place of a biologist, Spruce, who set up the ecosystem, but who died of “the coughing disease”. She preferred to die in the beautiful biosphere rather than on Earth “with all the dust and smoke and forests dying and debt burden”; her only regret was not saying goodbye to her children. When the four cages with no spy holes turn out to contain children, Susan has human beings her own age to help her save the biosphere.

As the cover blurb of Freedom states, “Susan copes with computers, robots, pirates and officials.” She and her readers must also grapple with complicated concepts; for instance, in addition to “AI” that runs the facility, there is another intelligence source at work. The system from which it came was hit by a cosmic ray and put out of commission. It has rebuilt itself, calls itself “Titan”, and has several avatars, including one in the image of Robin Hood. Science fiction fans may understand this section easily; beginners in the genre may not. A glossary would have been helpful.

Fortunately for newcomers to science fiction, the author explains the science behind the fiction in her “Afterword”. The space action adventure in Freedom will captivate some readers while others will sit up and take notice of Ludlow’s depiction of Earth as a dystopia, a state which could well come true if nothing is done to protect what is left of the environment. Susan returns to Earth, glad to get back to her birthday party, reflecting that she will have to get used to the sudden changes involved in crystal travel. Those who are chilled by the author’s vision of a destroyed planet may wish that Susan had returned, firmly resolved to prevent this future by dedicating herself to a campaign to protect the environment.