Beaking Hevn: Book Two
Domains of Opposition
PART ONE
Day One—Minus One
The Riven
Day 1 minus 1
•
The Riven
•
LocUS
•
Adventures in the
Non-local
Quantum Hologram
Day 1
•
LocUS
•
Interstice
That Was Now; This Is Then
•
•
What The Watcher Saw
Tall wooden walls, stark white and unadorned, mark out a simple quadrangle under an open-beam ceiling. Late morning sun leaks into the space through narrow horizontal windows set high up in the eaves. Lower down, a couple panes of ...
Read
Guardian
Brin is awake without perceptible transition, lying on a stone shelf with Narregan behind her. One of his arms is draped, sheltering her in his sleep. His breath stirs the small hairs on her neck. The dreamless suspension that ...
Read
The Bones of It
Her nav signals its disconnect from the trac pattern and glides the vehicle onto a well-maintained surface road. She resumes manual and squints into the middle distance ahead for a glimpse of something she’s never actually seen before. It’s ...
Read
Crows Come Around
Cast your gaze down here, if you will, and see the lone figure whose trail leads him through rolling treelined corridors. He remembers the smell of this damp earth. He’s been in this country before, at least two lifetimes ...
Read
Small Worlds Collide
Recumbent in the van’s open side panel, a cushion between her back and the door post, Ruby is content to wait for the next scene in the unfolding mystery story her life has become. To go out seeking pieces ...
Read
A Warrior’s Perspective
When first I am awakened from that dreamless torpor to which we had abandoned ourselves, I sense time has passed, but not how much of it, and that beyond the stony vault sheltering us, the world has changed. It ...
Read
Tradition & Obligation
Jonas watches the uniformed man return to his sleek, metallic buggy. Its odd, wing-like doors close with a hushed solidity and the conveyance moves away under its own queer, whirring power. The dogs complete a couple exuberant revolutions around ...
Read
Pojade
The images displayed are as sharp and clear as the best law enforcement recorders can generate under the circumstances and the burly brown bear peering over the shoulder of a somber technician is experiencing an unaccustomed level of anxiety. ...
Read
Ruby In Jeopardy
The road into Jeopardy begins with a sharp jog off an older, unconverted highway. Unmarked and unimproved, partially obscured by vegetation, you could easily miss the turnoff. The first couple hundred yards around the first bend might seem a ...
Read
Pojade’s Gambit, Declined
The last thing Henry Pojade wants to do right now is right in front of him to be done right now. Jacob Hergenrather’s second ‘announce & validate’ tone sounding inside his head seems somehow, impossibly, more strident than the ...
Read
LocUS
Remert’s Perspective
The door to Remert’s private office snaps back into the pocket behind the armoire and the Director’s hurried exit is blocked. The Deputy Director is an unwelcome obstacle to egress. “I have business elsewhere,” Remert says. ...
Read
Adventures in the Non-local Quantum Hologram
Komila Chandra
The Bean Counter’s atmosphere is bright without glare and just crowded enough at any time to suggest the site’s quiet popularity. Komila is seated, as is her custom most days, alone at a small high-top near a street-side window, cup in one hand, foldie in the other, scanning headlines without much interest. ...
Read
Taquo
Taquo — Terraquasphere one The ocean, temperamental, pacific in name only, reaches to meet a hazy, gray horizon. Wind has churned the surface into white-capped folds marching without cadence across an open expanse. Braced against a force that cannot touch him, Denny stands within the encircling transparency of the greatroom watching breakers ...
Read
The Veep
Located on the White House premises, just across West Executive Avenue from the West Wing, is an imposing structure, a grandiose architectural monstrosity Mark Twain once referred to as “the ugliest building in America”. Situated within the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, among a host of other executive branch agencies and staff, is ...
Read
Dashel’s Interview
Rain pelts against the clearwall with muted fury as Denny reenters what many still refer to as “the Real world”. Euphemisms abound. “Eric, the interview with Benn and young Mr. Crippen,” Denny says. “Are they ready to initiate?” “Benn is staging the applicant now. Another couple minutes.” “I’ll wait for them inside.” ...
Read
PART TWO
Day One
LocUS
Pruitt’s Enlightenment
The limousine whispers in low and slow over the terrace garden treetops and hovers in defiance of its streamlined mass. Landing pins extrude and, with a lazy pirouette, it settles onto the pad without recoil. ...
Read
Margret’s Last Day At Work
Margaret’s uniform is in an odd state of disarray, as though she’s attempted to contort herself out of its utilitarian confines without success. Slumped back against the toilet tank, her heels are tapping out an ...
Read
The D’nal’s Tour
The simple familiarity of the passageway’s shape pleases the D’nal as he treads the length of it with the long-absent missionary at his elbow. Towering almost fifty centimeters above Remert, the D’nal has no need ...
Read
The D’nal’s Briefing
Pruitt and H’seven stand together in silence at the wide transparency of the outer wall. The Miles reach out from their viewpoint, just beneath the mesa rim, to a distant, uniform haze. Pruitt’s features exhibit ...
Read
Interstice
Dashel’s First Day – pt 1
Barney called it his apartment, an old, single-wide mobile home, no longer mobile, blocked up in back of Mrs. Palmer’s house. Still in decent shape inside and out, it had ...
Read More →
Dashel’s First Day – pt 2
Barney’s runabout was a sleek, kit-built, three-wheel two-seater. It rolled out the gravel drive and onto the surface road with a throaty purr most uncommon in an electric. He let ...
Read More →
Dashel’s First Day – pt 3
When the entire Pacific Northwest convulsed eleven years ago, I was there. I remember my guts knotting as the ground beneath me heaved and flung itself in every direction until ...
Read More →
That Was Now; This Is Then
Prologue — That Was Now
Seems people still enjoy an engaging story, don’t they? As if the story they’re constantly making up in their own heads isn’t enough. Maybe it’s too much. Maybe reality is ...
Read More →
This Is Then
This is me fifteen years ago, designing my empire. I am laying the foundation, even as it becomes apparent I will have accomplices. The important thing is, I am changing ...
Read More →
The Bus Leaves At Noon
A squeak, a complaint of old wood and tired metal forced together by the weight of a footstep on the seventh tread of the outer stair, alerts me to an ...
Read More →
Dry Leaves In A Culvert
“Weekend before last,” Denny says, “I’d driven home. Didn’t tell anyone I was going. Planned to meet Mom and Kath at the mall by the river. “I got to the ...
Read More →
What It Is
It only takes a patch swap to splash the STM’s interface across both workstation monitors and we begin to examine the reason for Denny’s insomnia. A couple remote adjustments and ...
Read More →
The Midget In the Room
Denny opens the not-a-flip-phone on its long axis. It separates and he draws the halves apart. A translucent film spreads between them, becomes opaque, and a man’s face resolves on ...
Read More →