As I mentioned on my blog, this isn't a novel yet, but an outline for a sequel to Paradigm Found (see below).
Salem, Massachusetts. 1631.
A conservative young physician and a convicted witch are thrown together on a mythical adventure through the wilderness of the New World in a time before the animals stopped speaking, and before the Nunne'hi retreated to the underworld.
On a summer afternoon on the outskirts of Winslow, Arizona, seven men and women clothed in white appear on the horizon. They claim to be visitors from the future.
They ask the small town of Sun Dagger Springs to keep them a secret, while they build something in the desert. But can they really be trusted?
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Read the Prologue:
It was a broiling summer afternoon in Sun Dagger Springs, a tiny subdivision fifteen miles west of Winslow, Arizona. The wind is always blowing in that part of the world; the blood-red earth is always crying for rain.
I'd just moved in that Monday. The Chandlers were throwing a welcoming party for me in their backyard, and the whole neighborhood was there – all twelve of us. I knew something was wrong when Chuck Chandler dropped a hot dog into the grill. His eyes were fixed on the desert beyond his sun-bleached fence.
Seven figures were dressed in blinding white, walking abreast of one another over a hill in the desert. All of them bald, tall, and copper-skinned.
Mrs. Hernandez grabbed her children and ran into the house. Chuck reached for the buck knife he kept on his belt. Mae Chandler sat her crossword down and stood up for a better look.
They stopped at fifty yards, except for the figure in the center, a man taller than the rest, who came closer and held his palms open at his sides.
Mae looked to Chuck, "Looks like he wants to talk to someone, hon."
But Chuck, Sun Dagger Springs’ resident middle-aged patriarch, didn't budge. I looked over to the other side of the yard, where the cute blonde I’d been eyeing all afternoon was looking at me expectantly. I was inarguably the youngest, strongest male present, so I suppose that made me candidate number one to approach the white-clad strangers. At least, that's how I justified it to myself at the time. In hindsight I was just trying to impress the girl.
I went out through the fence gate. The center figure was almost seven feet tall, and the creases in his face made him look 45 - maybe even 50 – but in the best of health with brilliant blue eyes, like some wealthy Mediterranean recluse who drank his red wine and did his yoga everyday. Like the men behind him, his gesture promised me that he was unarmed.
I stopped five paces away from him. He was smiling.
"My name is Abiathar Ostermann," he said, with the hint of an unplaceable accent. "I am from the future."
I almost laughed, until I realized that he was no longer smiling.
What follows is my account of the twenty-one days I spent with Ostermann. My hope is that it will explain why I was ultimately forced to kill him.
Amesh lives on an island.
He has never known fear.
But his entire world changes one night when a giant stone falls from the sky containing a golden disc inscribed with a strange markings.
Amesh's quest for knowledge leads him on a journey where mysterious figures and frightening creatures help him discover the truth.
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Read Chapter 1:
Twilight was his favorite time of day.
When the day-circle rolled into the sea and the whole world was a deep violet. When the tide whispered quiet words that no man understood, and the wind tickled thousands of feathery palm leaves. When it was neither day nor night but the short time in between when all shadows were soft.
Amesh sometimes came to this beach just before nightfall. A cool breeze caressed his bare copper skin. He loved to lay in the white sand and wait. He opened his dark eyes slowly to gaze at the night-circles just beginning to rise above the trees to the North. The sky would soon turn an inky black. It was time to go back.
He sat up slowly, taking the time to stretch his long bones and breathe in a deep gulp of salty air. He let his eyes roam lazily across the horizon until he saw something in the water. At first he thought it was a silvery fish coming towards the shore whose body shone so bright it sparkled on the surface. But as it came closer, he saw that it was not a fish, but a reflection.
His eyes flew upwards and were met with a sight they could not understand. Moving across the sky, and growing brighter every moment, a ghostly light approached him. He stared in awe and wonder. He was not afraid. He had never been afraid.
He got to his feet.
The white light was blinding now, and with it came a low rumbling sound. Suddenly it soared over his head with incredible speed and a loud whistling howl until it disappeared over the tree-line behind him. A moment later a green flash erupted from the forest and the sand shook slightly beneath his feet.
Amesh was curious. He wanted to go back, to tell the others, but they would not believe him. He wasn’t even supposed to be here. The air was silent now and eerily still. The sky was empty where he had seen the green flash.
He stepped into the trees.
Twilight was disappearing, and the dense wood was lit only faintly by the rising night-circles, filling the jungle with strange shapes and shadows. He could only walk in the direction where he thought the flash had been.
The wind was growing stronger, and the jungle came alive with dancing limbs and crying leaves. He felt his heart beating faster than ever before, and the hair on the back of his neck growing rigid. He didn’t understand the changes his body was going through, or the unpleasant feelings swimming in his mind. They were brand new.
Up ahead he could barely make out a soft green glow through the web of leaves. He could hear a soft hissing sound. As he approached the glow, he noticed there were no trees around it, only a large circle of blackened earth. Amesh was puzzled. What had happened to the trees?
He stepped into the clearing. The hissing was louder now, and he could see that the thing was taller than him and wider than his outstretched arms. White smoke was floating upwards from it in a thin column. Would the others see the white smoke? He looked to where his home was in the east, and was grateful to see the Black Hills, tall enough to block their view of this part of the island.
Amesh stepped even closer to the glow, and he began to see that it was not pure light, but something hard, not unlike a large rock. And not only that – it was hot. So hot that he could feel its warmth from where he stood. The surface of the rock was covered in a thick layer of something clear like water, but it didn’t move like the water he knew. This water was still, and looked as if it was as hard as the rock itself.
He was so startled by the sudden sound that he spun on his heels as if someone had spoken into his ear. It was the distant sound of the white sea-stone, the Pancha, coming from his village to signal the Fourth Council, to mark the day’s end.
And so he took one last look at the rock, and then turned and made his way back through the jungle and onto the beach, where he followed the shore home. He did not go back because he had to. There were no rules to force his return at the sound of the Pancha. He returned without thinking, as a man does when he blinks to moisten his eyes, or breathes to freshen his lungs. He returned out of habit, because the sea-stone’s call had always told his body that it was time to retire, to succumb to the lure of a blissful, dreamless sleep. Blissful, for Amesh’s life was one without worry. Dreamless, for Amesh had never dreamed.
It's supposed to be a corporate publicity stunt, but things start to go very wrong when Caleb discovers an unexplainable blue light near the top of a mountain at the lunar south pole, a discovery that will change his life, and history.
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Read the Prologue:
The Latter Half of the Twenty-First Century:
Caleb Clarke had climbed mountains before, just never on the moon.
He fired another bolt into the rock face. If he lost his grip, they might save him from falling. He was almost there. The blue light above was blinding.
He looked down. They were far below him now, three black silhouettes barely visible in the lunar night, necks craned to watch Caleb ascend Mount Horeb, all of them jealous that he would be the first to see. Brick was belaying him, a job made much easier by the moon’s gravity.
Caleb took in a deep breath of stale, manufactured oxygen and pushed up with his legs until he could reach the ledge above.
Got it. He held tight while his feet searched for a higher toehold. One more push upwards and he’d be able to see over the ledge. To look into the light.
Anxious, he pushed.
Looking at it for the first time, he knew he would never understand.
Chapter 1
BABEL
“Who can scale the heavens?”
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Five Days Earlier
Caleb kicked at the sheets on his bed, annoyed at how tightly they were tucked under the mattress. He glanced at the bedside clock – 4:30 A.M. Trying to fall back asleep was useless...
