All Purpose Bees
All Purpose Bees is an incomplete novel set in Stapleton, California in the year 2042.
The novel focuses on three Central Valley almond producing families who are neighbors, the Nezerjian, Ortega and Wilson clans as they try to manage their operations against a backdrop of climate and generational change. The three neighboring families are among the last of the independent operators in the area, and face an uncertain future as both the supply of pollinating bee colonies dwindles and the current generation of operators approaches retirement age.
Only Part One of the novel was produced. The author, Damien Dojoz, was in the act of writing All Purpose Bees when the Second Moon event occurred. Like billions of others, news reports alerted him to the presence of a large dark red second moon looming in the night sky behind our moon. Dojoz looked out his window in awe, realizing that the world had changed forever and no one would have any interest in reading a Steinbeck inspired meditation on change in farming communities.
Placing this real world event into the novel, Dojoz writes the last scene of All Purpose Bees from the perspective of Almond Al Nezerjian discovering the second moon for himself. The work was left unfinished. In the ensuing crisis, Dojoz was called back from retirement and returned to the aerospace industry as a logistics manager. In the chaotic years after the Second Moon revealed itself, little is recorded of Dojoz.
The characters, families and events in APB correspond with real world names, places and events provided by years of gossip to Dojoz from his sister, a resident of Stapleton. It is believed that later drafts intended to obscure their true origins and that work was never carried out due to the appearance of the Second Moon.
Importance
All Purpose Bees was discovered and published once word got out that it was a lightly fictionalized account of the Wilson and Ortega clans in the run up to the Second Moon event. While never addressed in the novel, the Wilsons are owners of the private space firm Octus and recruited Eddie Ortega, an MIT trained guidance system engineer, to develop the tracking and navigation systems for the Space Yacht line of consumer spaceships which now prowl the solar system in search of wormhole energy blasted into space.
Tamara Wilson and Eddie Ortega were married in 2043 and took over management of Octus Spacecraft Corporation from her grandfather Carl Wilson. The duo oversaw the redesign of their flagship model the Octus 11 from a luxury space yacht to a craft suited for the retrieval of wormhole energy that the aliens began blasting into the solar system.
The term Space Yachters, referring to the pioneering homesteaders who took up the call in the great space energy grab of the 2050s, was derived from the Octus 11's original design.
Table of Contents
Editor's Note: All Purpose Bees abruptly ends in Chapter Four with the appearance of the Second Moon. The author Damien Dojoz was writing that chapter when the Second Moon appeared to him at his writing desk for the first time. Like many other efforts, the book was abandoned upon its appearance.