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Page Reads – REBELLION – Chapter One

REBELLION – Chapter One

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It was legalized now, at least on this planet. Though in truth, that only took away from the thrill.

For Elmyrah, being trapped for more than four-hundred years in the body of a nine-year-old girl, she’d already tried everything else at least once and found nothing could satisfy her hunger for the experience. She wanted out of this tired and aged shell; the vigor of manufactured immortality having long since drained away.

There was more excitement to be had if you could find it, or if it found you; but not for someone who appeared as a child. Any grown male who dared glance her way would come up missing shortly thereafter. Jove and his team of bodyguards would see to it. Not that she wished for perversion.

It was Ixian she desired, and he was just eighteen now. Ten years he’d been with them. Never once could she bring herself to tell her adopted brother how she truly felt. The boy she’d always wanted was now the man she couldn’t have.

Elmyrah leaned forward in the plush lounge chair of her suite in the forecastle of Abandon. No one outside could see in through the windows in the nose of the starship, not at that height anyway. That fact wasn’t enough to override her inner compulsion to hide her behavior from whatever truth could be watching.

“Viewports to black,” she said.

The ship’s nAI responded to the command with a prompt polarization of the glass.
On the tip of her index finger, the chemstone fleck glimmered like a micro-thin shaving from a diamond.
“You don’t look like much,” she said. “For the price, you’d better get me one heck of a ride.”
With her left hand, she pulled a lower eyelid down as far as she could to insert the rare flake from the Hyades Caverns of Aldebaran Four’s moon. It dropped in and immediately began to burn, just as she was told it would.

“You might even think you see a wisp of smoke,” the dealer had advised. “It’s just the drug going inside, baby. Let it do its work. Ignore the sting and soon you’ll be all set to create whatever world you could possibly desire, right there in your visual cortex.”

“And I’ll maintain complete control?” she’d asked. “Part of me will still be running things, right?”

His answer wasn’t as detailed as she’d hoped for. Besides, he had no way of knowing who she was or what she was. Down in her pelvis, the SynThinker hummed with a thousand possible scenarios of what could go wrong. Her human brain, the one that was sup- posed to feel the high, didn’t care anymore.

She could detect a slight bubbling in the flesh toward the back of the eye socket. The naturally hallucinogenic chemicals of the chem- stone struggled to find a way into the artificial orb that had replaced her gelatinous organ. It wasn’t working.

“Come on,” she said. “What is this? This is nothing!” Impatient, she pressed her finger hard against the eye. Perhaps, she thought, with enough angry pressure, the molecules that featured a natural shape that somehow fit into the humanoid retina would cooperate with the silicon matrix of the multi-fractal photoreceptors.

There was only pain, no rush, no manageable hallucination, not even a blur in vision. The tetra-phosphorous particle couldn’t locate the rods and cones present on the back of a human eye. That part of her was gone, stolen by a twist of fate so long ago.

A pale blue foam washed down her cheek as the tears worked to cleanse her body from the foreign contaminant. She could feel the daily wave of despair approach. It was just on the horizon of her mind. Like a tsunami of self-hatred it would race toward her, to pile up on the day’s plans, flooding through her hopes for normalcy.

With an angry bounce she was on her feet. She stomped into the bathroom to take yet another cold shower. The purplish image in the wall mirror drew her out of the glass walls, away from the spray that rained down from above.

If only I could wash my brains, she thought. Maybe I could cleanse away these useless centuries. So much time wasted. Day after dreary day, immortality is like that big bite of gristly steak you can’t quite bring yourself to swallow. I can fly to a hundred different worlds, and it won’t matter what star it is, the stupid thing is going to rise and go across and go down and behind, never ending. A million things to do – every day the same.

Why did he have to do this to me? I could be at peace right now, resting. Why!?

Her fist slammed down on the sink, a loud clang of the upended soap dish falling into the basin prompted a memory, déjà vu. With a twist of her forearm, the old scar along the heel of her palm came into view. “Yeah, old man,” she said. “You sure know how to piss me off.”

Staring at her reflection, she marveled at how gravity had taken its toll, despite the powerlessness of time to chip away at her youth. “I don’t even have any, and they sag anyway. How pathetic is that?”

“Are we having a pity party?”

“Good morning, Wisdom. Did you enjoy my pathetic attempt at self gratification? I’m sure you peaked.”

“I was out,” Wisdom said. “There was some unbridled sanity down the way that needed tending to.”

“Nobody I care about, I trust.”

“I don’t know, M’rah. Do you care about anybody?”
“I’ve told you not to call me that,” Elmyrah said.
“Where’s Daddy this morning?”
“Jove is on his way to Rigel Seven. He’s been summoned to appear before the Northern Judiciary, problems with the Sand. Why you bother asking anything is—”

“More deaths, I presume,” Wisdom said, “just dreadful. Of course, I don’t have to tell you.”

“So don’t. What do—you always want something. Spit it out,” she said.

“Well, I just thought that perhaps if you’re still interested, I could help with the whole issue of…you know, your being deprived.”

“Deprived? Me? Thanks to you my depravity knows no bounds.”

“Hey, it’s your dreams. I just want to help make them a reality.”

Elmyrah wrapped up in a towel and strode through her bedroom, into the closet to peruse her vast wardrobe. She tried to withdraw from the conversation, hoping that the meddlesome, para-sentient program would tire of the game and leave her alone.

“You know you’re sick of this life,” Wisdom said. “I can fix it for you.”

“Oh, yes, of course! When I think of all the things you’ve ‘fixed’ over the years, the more I want to hunt down your primary executable and pull the plug.”

“Come with me to Sirius, Elmyrah. Meet me there. The Union will welcome you with open arms. They can give you that which you desire most.”

“After four hundred years, Wisdom, I want the same thing as Jove—for you to shut the hell up.”

A chime rang from the communications wand on the top of her dresser. She stepped across the room, with a piercing glare into the wall-hung mirror on the way past. “Yes? What is it?” she asked, the silver tip held close to her chin.

“Sorry for the interruption, ma’am,” Zhong-Un, the pilot said, “but there’s something amiss with the ship’s TransWave pods. Gemmeck and Jove are each off-planet and I can’t seem to gain access to Knowl- edgebase. I’ve never seen them deploy in landing mode before.”

“Well, we aren’t going anywhere with the main drive off-line, so don’t worry. I’ll be up shortly and we’ll run through the diagnostic together. Something caused them to initialize. Either you acciden- tally bumped the signal requestor or some aperture out there called… to the…pods…”

Wisdom, she thought. You’re just—if you were more than a mind, you’d have your fingers into everything, now wouldn’t you?

The upper bridge of Abandon afforded a panoramic view of the lush countryside on the cooler polar region of Polaris’ fourth planet, Alruccabah. It did for anyone taller than 1.3 meters. For Elmyrah, the bright ring of pink sunlight pouring in around the ship’s central control axis merely reminded her of the child’s stature.

She appreciated Zhong-Un as someone who could look beyond that, even trust her many decades of technical experience with vari- ous starships and her savvy ways with the bio-craft, even her disquieting ability to find the answers in someone else’s mind.

He’d learned long ago not to bother hiding anything from Jove’s adopted daughter. For her, every brain was just another book to be thumbed through. If you were lucky she wouldn’t dog-ear any of your pages. Today, as he had many times before, while he required her expertise with the intricacies of the interstellar vehicle, he was polite to situate a small step stool for his tutor. This time it was snapped down in front of the manugelic interface for the TransWave aperture link.

“Thank you, Zhong-Un,” she said, with a pat on his shoulder. “You’re a dear, as always.” A glance into his deep-set eyes revealed his confidence that the equipment failure was not of his own doing.

Some outside influence had caused the ship’s faster-than-light sys- tem to activate, the four pods swiveling out from their fuselage bays, a reaction to some distant signal.

With a reach up into the center of the flat, square frame, she dipped her fingers into the sensoreactive gel, with a slight pause to allow the bio-device to recalibrate itself to her manipulations.

“All right, sweetness, what’s up with you?”
Behind a faked cough to catch the pilot’s attention away from the panel, she switched off the visual display so as to hide any evi- dence of what she believed to be the cause. The feedback under the black surface of the gel provided the tickles and itches against the skin of her hand, now pushed in to the depth of her narrow, lavender wrist.

“Well, there goes the screen,” she said. “What’s next? The thing’ll spit me out I guess.”

Working her way through the menus of the diagnostic routine by touch alone, she located the activation history report. To decipher the bio-code, Elmyrah merged with the output from the ship’s Near Artificial Intelligence. As she anticipated, the typical T-Wave trans- mission had been altered. Where interstellar coordinates should be defined, human language was interspersed. “…Elmyrah…Al-Otaibi….respond…”
“This is Elmyrah Al-Otaibi,” she replied, “I have received your link.”
The action hidden, she could speak from her fingertips, listen with her palm. Zhong-Un was oblivious to the secret discussion.

“Greetings from your Brothers of the Union. We have observed your progress through time. Many have wished to meet you, to accept you as one of our own. Till now, those voices have been the minority. Our leadership has evolved. We request your presence.”

All this time and all they’ve ever deigned to send my way were gawks and gasps of horror at the sight of the little purple abomination. And now they want to be chums. Okay, how do I manugel, “Kiss my—”

“Please accept our sincere apologies. We humbly ask your forgiveness.”

Hmmm…backspace, backspace, backspace…

“Forgiveness may come,” she said. “For now, I require assurance.” “Of what can we assure you?”
“That you’re willing to tell the truth.”

From this distance, and through the TransWave link, her telepath- ic link was stunted. She couldn’t get into the head on the other side.

I need a baseline, she thought, one good truthful statement that I can use as a fulcrum, for when the politics and brinkmanship begin. “You want to know why we have contacted you,” they said. “Yes.” She knew why. She just needed to hear them say it. “Your…father…Jove, has caused a great deal of pain for so many worlds, and all for his personal gain. He must be stopped. We seek a method.”

Three truths, one opinion. Close enough, Elmyrah thought. But they wouldn’t have gone to his daughter for ‘a method’ unless they were otherwise constrained; had something I wanted more than my dear Daddy’s trust. And of course, they do.

“Capella Beta,” she said, “in four days. There’s an old Legion star base converted into a tax-free trade zone. Ask for me at the inner ring’s first brothel.”

That should be good, she thought. Let’s see, a hundred years from now, how will the joke go? “An asexual Synthetic walks into a whorehouse in Auriga…”

 

 

Note to Self

My darling daughter made a new friend yesterday while visiting the Museum of Eradication in the tower city of Nozira. He sold her something. That’s unfortunate. Perhaps now I have a use for those odd grenades I took in trade for the delivery of Sand to that haunted fellow on Wundahd. ‘Caution: dispersal of flesh-eating bioactive solvent is twelve meters.’

Elmyrah brings out the best of my worst moods.

Jove

 

***Reader – When I finished writing my debut novel WISDOM, I hadn’t planned on a sequel. But so many people who finished that first book insisted that the story continue. They wanted more, so I drafted the framework of REBELLION, and had such an enjoyable time following the characters into this wild adventure through the stars.What do you think of Elmyrah using drugs?What’s the thing the Union has for her that she wants so much?I’d like to know what you think of REBELLION so far?DID YOU KNOW? The young British actress who portrays Elmyrah in the video WISDOM THE BOOK TRAILER and on the cover of WISDOM, is the step-daughter of the model who portrays Giselle Deanahan/Moira-1 on the cover of REBELLION. – Patrick

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DUNE – the Movie, the Story, the Inspiration

I’d already finished reading the armload of books my twelve-year-old self could carry the mile home from Woods Memorial Library.

And there was a few days left to our twice monthly walk to and from to gather novels. I needed a fix. Preferably something itchy, difficult, something Sci-fi.

“Dad.” I waited three long seconds. (cough) “DAD.” Louder.

“Mmm-hmm?” His baritone rattled the Arizona Daily Star’s front page.

“There’s a problem,” I said, dead serious.

“And what would that be?” His tone rose a pitch, hoping it had nothing to do with old plumbing.

“I’m out of books.”

“That is most definitely…a problem.” He folded the newspaper down to expose bushy brows and horn rim eye-glasses. “I have one ready for you. If you’re ready for it.”

“Ready?” My own not so bushy brows scrunched together. “Ready for what?”

“Dune.”

My lips pursed and my eyes went all the way right, in anticipation of another Dad Joke. “K.”

Without another word, Dad released himself from his corner of the divan and strolled to The Room Where Children Do Not Go. He returned momentarily with a dusty, worn, sandy-colored slab of pulp and fifty-million words, mostly unpronounceable, run-on sentences, gotta read that paragraph again, what the hell is this crazy monster worm on the cover book.

DUNE, my mouth said, minus the sound. I spun on a heel, failing to properly navigate to my bedroom while reading the back cover. Princess Irulan? Oh, geez. Please, not a damn oops dang princess. I glanced over my shoulder.

I heard him mumble from behind the paper, “Good luck.”

 

And the fight was ON.

In fact, not only did that very young pre-teen win the battle with Frank Herbert’s infamous trilogy, and more after, but that amazing story became the inspiration for the author hidden within me. THIS WAS SCIENCE FICTION. This is surely the standard by which all other epic stories are compared.

This past weekend, I proudly took my own teenage son to the movies. And we were not disappointed. I’ve seen the previous efforts to bring Dune to the screen. “Cringeworthy,” as my son would say. This one, though. This was done right. I will not provide a review. You can read Mister Ebert’s review here.

Dune is…remarkable. The cinematic scope is beyond the horizon, and I mean beyond the curve of the planet. Our mere two human eyes cannot take in everything there is to see on the screen. Yet, not only has the director effectively captured the immensity of Frank Herbert’s vision, the very raw emotions of the actors are right there in your face, tugging at your heart, cramping your jaw, straining at any control you might possible have over FEELING THAT.

So many previews show the scene where Paul is being tested with the Pain Box. And it’s a good scene. Even better, is the absolute gut-wrenching performance of Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, as she mourns outside the door for her son as he endures the exquisite and often fatal moments alone with the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam. You feel that. Like, in your soul, you feel that mother’s anguish.

See the movie.

See all of them as they come out.

If you have a read list, and I know you do, Frank Herbert’s DUNE Trilogy is an absolute must. You’ll have to read half the pages twice to get it, but it’s worth every minute of your life. It was for me, anyway.

It not only opened my eyes as to what could be, it turned them completely blue.

…Patrick

 

If you saw the movies or read the book Dune, I’d like to hear what you think. Reply in the Comment section.

 

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Page Reads – WISDOM – Chapter One

WISDOM

To my son Moses,
who reminds me that it’s okay to play with things that don’t exist.

 

Obedient Sand
2470 CE
Polaris Ab4 (Alruccabah)

I’ve existed for centuries, but never as a child. Yet within me is this childlike awe of things that sometimes seem so insignificant. In my travels across the Orion Arm, I’ve witnessed events to cheer or to abhor, along with the science, nature and the glory of a thousand worlds. But I stand transfixed by this delicate sensation. Here’s this one thing: to see and feel these tiny grains of Earth’s Cooperative Sand as they trickle between my toes.

Balanced back on the heels of my blue silicone feet, I lift up an- other little pile of fine, brown silica on the tops of my toes. The lens of my eyes zoom my field of view down to only a few millimeters, right where the crest of a micro-dune is supported by one or two grains at the bottom edge. If I had lungs, I’d hold my breath. The breeze cooperates so as to prevent any slight disturbance to my silly game. I watch the microscopic grains press together. They strain against each other as the weight of the ones higher up presses down. The miniature slope has settled to a state of perfect equilibrium. I feel anxious, like a real human. I wait for the moment of release when chance brings just one crystal of silica to the brink. There’s nothing but the whirring hum from my moto-vascular servos deep within my chest.

Any moment now…

“Daddy!”

Instinctively, I blink. The crest heaves as hundreds of grains top- ple over the edge. The avalanche rushes down the slope, to acceler- ate across the vertical centimeter. It jumps into space and away in freefall. The shadow of my big toe swallows the crash of the crystals within my tiny personal cataclysm.

She did that on purpose. She’s always done things like that on purpose. It’s a human trait. I saw it on Earth many times.

“Catch me, Daddy!”
Her symphonic voice goes right through me. I can’t stay mad. She bounds up the dune with a grace and speed as only cyber-

netic legs will do.
“Hello, my darling,” I say. From four meters away she launch-

es herself into the air, straight at me. Oh, this is going to hurt. I can hear her metallic laughter even before she slams into my out- stretched arms. We fall backward together down the windward slope of the dune; tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. This is the best. I hear more laughter and realize it’s my own. Finally, we reach the bottom. Somehow I’ve managed to hold onto her, and all of our appendages are still attached as they’re meant to be. I stand up from my seated landing and hoist her higher to a more comfortable position in my arms. “Oh, my, you’re getting heavier every day! Do you ever stop growing?”

“Now, Daddy,” she scolds, “you know very well my weight hasn’t changed a single bit in ever. I’m exactly the same as when they grew me again.”

True, of course. Except for the new polygold hair, she’s still my perfect little Elmyrah, my…adopted daughter from Earth. Even af- ter five reconstructions, with much of her biological self replaced, she’s so beautiful, so exquisite. I’ll have her forever, my forever child.

“I know,” I say, “but on your planet, daddies say that to their little girls quite often.”

“Carry me back,” she says.
“That’s a long way, Em—”
“Do it,” she whispers, her warm face against my cold cheek.

“Do it or…you know.”
We begin to slog up the face of the dune, indeed remittance for the previous amusement. On the hike to the landing site, she doesn’t say a word, her face, stony. I worry sometimes how she has taken to worrying. Another example of how she’s become more like me. Or more like her, like Wisdom.

Programs aren’t supposed to act like that. They’re designed to help you. Elmyrah has gone through enough already. I see now how I should’ve kept them apart.

Perhaps it was an error in judgment on my part to involve Elmy- rah in certain distasteful errands, so long ago. And having her bodily mass reanimated, along with some much needed improvements, of course. I’m not convinced that she would’ve chosen this path for herself. She’s lost many of her friends to age and time, an unfortu- nate consequence of immortality. The guilt of this impossible situa- tion can have a terrible stranglehold upon a person, even an artificial person like me. My own guilt is burden enough, for the things I’ve done, for the things I’ve failed to do. You can make a lot of mistakes in the course of four hundred years.

I envy Elmyrah when I catch her crying. At least she can. The part of my programming that causes me to learn and discern truth from my surroundings, from the emotions and thoughts of others, also brought to my mind the realities of love and hate, joy and pain. I’d hoped that my inner turmoil would be vented in that one moment when I pressed the Fire button and sent that immeasurable nuclear wrath upon my enemy. We watched their ships melt in my conjured furnace of hell, hanging weightless in the heavens. The churning surface of their home world brought to a boil, dissolving; a cindered mist blowing away in a puff of stellar wind. If it was me that did that.

I was there. But we were all there, the three of us.

There was no satisfactory feeling to the recompense. No feeling. Just…observation. They needed to die, all of them. And now, that’s done.

Well, perhaps my darling Elmyrah can cry enough for both of us.

My weight pressing on the ship’s first step, it groans and creaks loudly, in a pouty kind of way. Elmyrah and I look at each other with matching smirks.

“Are you ever going to have that fixed?” she asks.

“That’s not a problem. That’s a feature!” I give her a gentle, tickly poke in the rib cage before we climb aboard our opulent land-able star-craft, Abandon. I admire how the knurled titanium railing transitions to interior platinum and zebra-wood. Aloe-snail upholstery flows in streams over the bama cushions and piles of pillows in several shades of purple. Not just transportation, this is living in luxury while you have to be on the way to someplace else.

When I took delivery of the new TransWave vessel from the Deneb system, the shipwright’s representative asked what name they should engrave on the cockpit placard. I looked at my First Officer, Gemmeck, who’d accompanied me.

“What do you think, Gemmie? What shall we call her?” He shrugged, to avoid my potential displeasure. “C’mon,” I pressed, “use your imagination. What’s the last word you’d ever want to see next to the word ‘ship’?” We all roared with laughter at his well- timed punch line, and it stuck. Abandon Ship, it shall be.

Elmyrah jumps out of my arms and trots down the aisle to paw through her stowage; likely to pick out a couple of Flight Buddies: cozy, stuffed characters to keep her company during the long trip to Lupus’ KeKouan. If she falls asleep, I’ll busy myself writing in my journal titled, ‘Note to Self’. An ink pen on actual paper is my expensive indulgence, much like my printed photo scrapbook.

Lift thrusters begin to raise their howl against the ground below. Elmyrah leans close to rest her head on my shoulder. I figure she’ll be asleep by the time we climb out of Alruccabah’s pink sky and into the deep blue of space. I’ll just pass the time performing a mental edit of my newest sales pitch that I’ve reserved for the Twin Princ- es of KeKouan. But who can resist? The marble-sized crystals of Obedient Sand are like magic to most, but merely a natural geologic jovian phenomenon. I mean, really, doesn’t everyone have sand that comes alive and responds to your every command? Not yet anyway.

Anomalous, it exists in one star system, Sol. And who has the monopoly on the Obedient Sand of Jupiter? Who has the exclusive rights to the Cooperative Sand of Earth? Yours truly….just forward your nics to—

“Daddy? Tell me the story again about how you saved Earth, how you were made and found me for us to be together forever. And about the Prawl-Tang monster that would’ve destroyed everyone. Tell me the story, please?”

“My perfect girl,” I say, “you don’t want to hear that all over again, do you?” I can feel her head nod with enthusiasm against my shoulder. When she behaves childish this way, it almost seems like acting, pretense. Though, in what do we not pretend? She is no child. I am no father. I know that deep within her lurks a reality. She hides it well.

“How many times is it that I’ve told you the story…hmmm? Ten or twenty, I bet, no?”

“Five hundred, thirty-seven,” she whispers into the furry face of Omni-Pooh, the polyester filled Flight Buddy.

Yes, I’m sure that’s correct. Of course it’s correct. With a brain like hers, mass-optimized and converted into the oxyserum chamber above her pelvis, could she ever be incorrect? I can only imagine how much more intelligent and process capable she is than I will ever be, no matter how many upgrades I get. It’s a good thing I bought all those spares. There should be enough extra me and me parts to last…a lifetime. Well, another millennia anyway, if I don’t get killed too often like in the early days. Oh, yes, speaking of…

“Okay, my daughter, I’ll tell you the story. But nobody was go- ing to destroy us, now, don’t be silly. You know better. They just wanted to harvest the Earth.”

How can I even say that without stammering?

Memories of those awful days push their way from the archive to my visual cortex, a very human thing to happen, it seems. I am the only patron of a haunted theater, watching the most gruesome, gut wrenching history projected inside my head.

Just harvest the Earth…of everyone…of everything…animal, vegetable and mineral. Doesn’t sound so bad if you’re billions of miles away and going fast in the opposite direction, Brothers! But I was there. I should have been long gone, but I stayed behind, want- ing everything to be just so. What if this happened instead? Maybe I will do this and not that. Maybe I will screw everything up.
Boy, did I screw everything up. All I was supposed to do was deliver the message. It shouldn’t have been anything fancy or un- planned. Just go there and deliver The Great Deception to the people of Earth. Heck, I could’ve told them I was Jesus or something and half of them would’ve volunteered to drop dead for Heaven. Well, the transparent skin over bluish-chrome meat was a sure giveaway.

I don’t think Jesus had transparent skin.
I hear her snort a little snore – perfect. Well, I really didn’t want to tell it again anyway. Who am I kidding? I would tell the story twice to a mirror. Here goes number five hundred, thirty-seven.

“In the beginning…wait…not my beginning, and not even the beginning. But you know, as far as the Sand is concerned…it all started one day when the sensors on a lost Prawl-Tang ship detected a high probability of a large concentration of hydrogen on a planet in a star system not too terribly far away.”

***

Note to Self

They said they were sending me off alone. Of course that wasn’t entirely true. Seemed a bit scary at first. Still, it was good to have someone to talk to. But now, between Elmyrah’s constant need for…everything…and Wisdom. What I wouldn’t give to be alone in my head, just once.

Jove

**Reader – What did you think of WISDOM Chapter One? Did anything surprise you about the chapter?

You can find the book WISDOM here on Amazon.

 

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Page Reads – FOREVER PROCULA – Chapter One

FOREVER PROCULA

Copyright © 2020 Patrick Tylee

 

To Nora Jean
Death cannot separate us forever. Looking forward to meeting you.

Say hi to Mom.

 

Chapter One

With her left hand supported in his, Reuben Shain grasped the diamond engagement ring. Kneeling beside her, he moved it along the length of her slender finger. Rehearsed words became stark reality.

“Elyn, my love, I have decided…to let you go.”

The golden circle slid off and away. Muscles of her hand flaccid, her finger came to rest without tension onto his open palm beneath. If any single shock could’ve induced her mind to break through the persistent vegetative state, this would’ve been it.

Shain fought back another wave of fear. Persperation tingled as a cold sweat broke out through his pores, soaking his undershirt. He fixed his gaze on her blank face. The coffee colors had paled during the months asleep. His teeth clenched against a rise of bile in his throat, Shain struggled to dig open the secured breast pocket of his jacket.

The pockets are locked down, he thought. The latest in military duty apparel, the bright shimmer of the material made his dark skin appear all the more black. The jacket is not at the top of your list. Deal with your woman. You have to finish this. Shain refocused. He blocked out any intrusive thoughts about his failure to link the secured breast pockets of the programmable garment to his thumbprint. I can finish this. All I have to do is say goodbye.

Visibly shaking, Shain stood. He set the ring on top of the

black glass surface of the headboard, like Plan B for where to stow any evidence of being in love. Once pledged to this girl, she could no longer be part of the ever-after equation.

“Your mom and dad were here, you know.” How stupid. If she’s in there, she knows. If she’s not…either way, it’s still stupid. “They came to see you for the last time, spoke to Doctor Willis.”

Several objects within the sterile visitor’s parlor became focal points, visual leverage to pry back the agony. A low dresser of immitation red oak perched under the window sill. Six ornate drawers encouraged thoughts of home, belonging. The accent wall’s micro-pixellated surface projected matte pink roses atop thornless stems, undulating representations of Elyn’s favorite. Embossed crown molding framed a visitor’s heavenward prayer. Lavender hues deepened the quiet of the room, amplified the pounding of his heart, his perception of being truly alone.

No one else made use of the hospice care facility’ s visitor center except for her parents, Lawrence and Taresha Klein earlier in the day.

He reached over and grabbed a chair, dragging it over to the side of her bed. It occurred to him when he’d once checked in at the nurse’s station, several video monitors presented various views of this same room. Pinhole cameras hid behind the headboard, in a lampshade, the corner of the ceiling. Shain willed himself not to look directly at any of them. Hovering in silence near the far corner behind him, was the ever-present Ai interface drone, observing, listening. Translucent glass, egg- shaped, but the size of a large watermelon. When interacting

with guests, the demure facial projection within could be viewed from any angle. Otherwise, the surface glowed a frosty white.

“So,” Shain said. The aluminum chair took on his two hundred pounds with a slight creak. “I was saying, they, the doctors—they say you’ve lost all higher brain function. And they believe keeping, you know, all this going on, isn’t much help to you.” Shain’s throat tightened around his vocal chords. “Their recommendation is…I mean, what they believe is…you’ve already moved on.”

The squeak-squeak of the nightshift orderly’s shoes in the hallway interrupted Shain’s control over words and emotions. He leaned over to watch through the open door. The bearded man stopped to make entries into a terminal in the wall across the way. The orderly’s apparent challenges with the computer system offered a tempting distraction from the cold pain.

“Larry and your mom, they sort-of agree. Of course, that’s Larry sayin’ he’s come to the same conclusion as the physician. Y our mom nods because she’ s supposed to. Because it’s what she does, right?”

Shain’s fingertip traced an in-and-out pattern between the knuckles of Elyn’s left hand, her brown skin cool to the touch, lifeless. Over their four-year relationship, whenever they sat close, he’d do the same. But she was high-strung, like him. She’d make him stop after a dozen irritating laps back and forth.

Tonight, with the breezy rhythm of the oxygen through her nasal cannula, she would voice no such complaint.

“You—it would seem you’ve done worse than fall asleep working in your lab, babe. I told you. You can’t work yourself tired like that. Remember? You remember I told you that? You gonna mess something up.” You messed something up, didn’t you? Shain squeezed Elyn’s hand hard enough to make it hurt. Hey—are you in there? “Babe, I have to know. Are you in there?”

He rolled her palm up to press his thumbnail hard into the tender flesh. There had to be a test. Something he could do— something better than the ridiculous medical exams the doctors performed, to test for signs of consciousness within some person.

This is not some person. This is my person. My wife to be. This was my person. Are you in there?

“So babe, tell me what you did? What were you doing that did this? Did you stick your hand into your time decay amplifier with the power still on? Huh? Did you do that? Some dumb-ass girl kinda thing? You always think you’re so smart.” You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known, Madelyn Damaris Klein. “You know, I was afraid something like this might happen. You up in your lab’s tower, trying to find the impossible. Like if you just found the right combination of deceleration, and weightlessness, and null-decay—you could stop time itself.” You crazy girl. You stopped time all right…for you. For us. “I haven’t been back there, to the lab. Jennifer took Darwin. Heard him meowing outside her window. He can’t catch mice, let alone eat one. Gotta have them kitty vittles. City cat—you know how it goes. Mice had him cornered.”

Shain studied Elyn’s face for many heartbeats, terrified

he might forget the shape, the color, her imperfect beauty. Their years together passed through his mind. Resolve loomed as an enemy.

In the shadows, the hospital’s Ai watched, its glow reduced to a sympathetic minimum.

“Elyn,” he said. But his voice broke before he could turn the courage into more words. “I need to say this. I have to do this today. There’s no medical reason why you aren’t here. They’re calling it unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. Your body isn’t broken. There’s nothing wrong. You’re just not here anymore.”

Shain’s lungs burned, his breath held too long, a subconscious pause of time and reality. In a spasm, air rushed through his flared nostrils.

“Your mom said you’re in a better place now. I didn’t…correct her, this time. You know I can’t believe all that…life after death, heaven. ‘Absent from the body, present with the Lord,’ she says. Yeah, that all sounds good, I guess. Then along comes empirical science and physics.”

There you go, Shain. Arrogant ass. You’ll argue with her even after… “You’re just gone.”

Fear spilled over in great sobs. He would never see this face again after tonight.

On the third floor, the only nurse on duty reached over to another of the Ai’s ovoid globes, the one assigned to that station. It floated just to the left side, a foot or so above her own workspace. She touched it with her stylus to wake the paused

interface.
“Good evening, RN Morgan Hansen,” the Ai said. A

motherly tone caressed the words. They flowed in concert with the photons under the screen’s moving mouth. “May I be of assistance?”

“Yes, Midge, would you cancel the 7:45PM visitor alert tone, please?” Nurse Hansen asked.

“Do you wish to delete the alert from the daily calendar?” “No, Midge, just for today. Retain all the rest.”
“No problem, Morgan. Is Captain Shain staying late

again?”
“Very likely, yes. I would expect so.”
“Done,” the Ai said. “I’ve set a sub-routine for any day

he’ s not already checked out, to mute the alert tones in the long- term care wing.”

“Thanks, Midge.”

“Doesn’t Captain Shain leave for Florida tomorrow morning?” The Ai pretended to not know, simulating small talk.

“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess he mentioned that. The launch or something…?”

“Correct, Morgan. A recent press release announced the pending launch of the Ad Lucem Ultra. NASA constructed the star-ship in orbit. Captain Shain is scheduled to lift off this coming Wednesday to rendezvous with it.”

“Weird name for a rocket, if you ask me.”

“To the Light Beyond,” the Ai said. “It’s Latin, the English translation for the name of the pod Captain Shain will pilot once the rocket boosters—”

“Midge, you’ve already lost me.” Nurse Hansen rolled her eyes.

“Have a pleasant evening, Miss Hansen,” the Ai said. A learning machine, the Medical Intelligence and Diagnostics Graphical Extant revised its algorithm to detect when Nurse Hansen required no further input or prompts. It’s attention turned inward, a newly installed security upgrade pinged the Operating System. Typically, any patch would run in the background. This one requested immediate activation. After a brief verification of the credentials, Midge released the file code into the mainframe.

Bent over the foot of the bed, Shain opened his eyes. It surprised him to see a large wet spot on the blanket. He’d never allowed himself to mourn with tears before.

When his father passed away days before Shain graduated from the Air Force Academy, he rebuffed any recommendation to take time off to be with family. “I’ll take the hurt out on the clouds,” he’d told them. And he did, roaring into the sky as a newly pinned Lieutenant, setting the all-time speed record for a manned aircraft. In the same week, he’d shatter the record for the shortest time from ground to space to ground in the X-92 Ionic Dart. The effort took less than five minutes. Shain pushed the futuristic engine to one hundred and nine percent of maximum sustainable thrust. It nearly killed him, and caused irreparable damage to the expensive craft. A vertical, black streak hung in the scorched sky for half a day, as

evidence of his inner pain.
Shain turned himself from Elyn to look out at the night,

but the window only reflected the awful truth of the experience back upon him.

“Your parents—they wont—they aren’t coming back unless they have to. It’s on me, babe. I’m supposed to tell the nurse tonight, before I leave. Larry said because we’re engaged, I’m the one to decide when. As close to a husband as you’d ever have. He said if I didn’t tell the doctors to—to stop all this, he would in thirty days. Your dad’s given me thirty days to say goodbye to you, Elyn. But, you know me. You know me. I just need this one last day. It’s just a matter of saying whatever’s left to say, babe.”

Shain walked to the bed, stood directly over the woman he’d promised to always cherish. He waited for a tear at her eye, a smile, a wince, any sign she’d heard him. The answer he’d expected, nothing. He’d told himself this would be the last chance. With an iron will, he refrained from another touch.

“Just so we’re clear, Elyn, you left me.” His back turned to her bed, his feet found the doorway. In a mental fog, he stumbled across the hall and through the elevator doors. The floor of the car pressed against the soles of Shain’s boots, forcing him up to where Nurse Morgan watched and waited.

 

**Reader – what are your thoughts about FOREVER PROCULA Chapter One?**

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New Stuff! Two Books and New Covers and Page Reads!

As for many of you, the past two years have been weird. But that’s in the past.

Until last month, I hadn’t been able to attend a Con or live event since Phoenix Fan Fusion in 2019. And the live events are my absolute favorite thing to do. Meeting fans. Hanging with author pals, like Jenn Windrow, Kris Tualla, Duane Black, Gini Koch. Making new friends. Eating snack-bar food. (actually, I keep a little cooler with waters and protein snacks under the table) Eating a little wrong food.

But I’ve been busy writing two new books, and making a new cover for early children’s book.

Merging some Fantasy elements into the usual Adult Sci-Fi Adventure, there’s FOREVER PROCULA. Are there dragons, werewolves and vampires in space? Is Captain Reuben Shain actually in space, or orbiting Earth at light-speed? Read some pages…

What do you think of blending Sci-Fi and Fantasy?

Do you have a favorite book or author that combines the two Speculative Fiction styles well?

Or then for the younger crowd, like 4th to 8th grade, there’s A FOSTER KID ON MARS. Follow Michael Richardson on a wild ride to Mars, where he’s rescued from interplanetary war by a family of friendly monsters. Read some pages…

A new color cover for Mrs. Tricker is Not Herself. Read some pages…

Oh, and did I mention that you can read some pages in the new Page Reads Posts? (COMING SOON!)

Watch for several Patrick Tylee novels as they become available to read in chapters in upcoming posts. Read some pages…but you’ll want to get the entire book to know the ending.

 

Do you prefer to read a few chapters of a new book before making a purchase?

Do you use the ‘Look Inside’ function on the Amazon Book site?

Let me know what you think.

– Patrick

 

 

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Farewell Honora Jeffreys

Tonight, I must say farewell to someone special to me – Honora Jeffreys.


Honey was a friend, a fan, and a faithful believer. Well into her eighties, this darling lived a quiet life, retired from a career in civil service. An avid reader, the humble home in San Diego must not have held nearly enough bookshelves. I’d only visited her there a handful of times. But I remember it nestled under the shade trees, a sporty green Volkswagen Scirocco hidden alongside.














She didn’t post, tweet, or upload to Instagram.


She wrote.


Real letters.


Beautiful flowing cursive, with heartfelt narratives of her experiences, her family, and her faith. Ornate words carried her voice. The raw ink, her inflections.


I couldn’t help but write back, reverting to cowardly Times New Roman.


 


She put me up one night, while as a clueless teenage boy, I found myself wandering in SoCal. In the morning, I asked to use her ironing board.


“For your shirt?” she asked.


“No, for my Levi’s,” I replied.


She stifled a laugh, polite as she was.


“You’ll be the only person in California with a crease in their jeans.”


She took a long drag on her cigarette, and stared me down. I couldn’t tell if it was a grin or a grimace, but I figured she might know something I didn’t.


 


I’ve ironed my jeans flat ever since.


 


Thanks, Honey.


I’ve known something, too.


Since my first breath, you truly cared about me.


 


– P

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Launch Day for UNIMAGINARY

Sitting at my computer, the first few pages drafted, I clicked SaveAs = UNIMAGINARY.

I had reviewed a demographics report from Google+ the week before.

The data showed that the Young Adult Female audience was hungry for fresh sci-fi. Shortly after this lightbulb moment, I considered why I should write this book. Not the what of it…but the why. Of course it will have a plot, and a story to be told. But there should be true meaning to me…an answer to an important question.

So, what is the question?

“Is there life out there?”

We certainly like to imagine that there is life, extra-terrestrial life. What if we discovered it? Could we connect with it? Should we attempt to communicate with them? Maybe they want to be left alone. Maybe they eat soft-bodied bipeds for lunch. Perhaps our finding the others out there wouldn’t be such a great idea.

Then it occurred to me, that there are others out there in space, and they are wondering the exact same things. They fly past the little blue water planet and listen to all the static and noise and business going on.

“Should we go down to the blue planet and connect with them? Maybe they eat hard-shelled quadruped reptiles like us for dinner.”

Here’s the recipe.

I made the decision to write this novel from the perspective (for one character anyway) that the aliens in the far reaches of space do wonder about us, or perhaps already know about us and our carnivorous and warlike tendencies. They are smart enough to leave us alone. But, like many here on Earth who daydream of first contact, there would be one of those beings in a faraway place who might dare to come close. She would carry the curiosity, and bare the weight of courage to prove the existence of intelligent life under the warm glow of Sol. She would come down with outstretched arms and an open heart.

But it would be a dangerous thing, meeting humans.

Especially if your kind don’t know about love, passion, jealousy, hatred, and vengeance.

Things might get out of hand.

Or…claw…or whatever it is at the end of your arm.

Would it be worth the risk? When all is said and done, should you have ever gone down to the new world to meet them? I guess there’s only one way to find out. Take the chance. Say hello. Trust that…even if everything isn’t perfect…you can still put things back together.

Don’t leave this moment to your imagination.

 

 

UNIMAGINARY is Available now on Amazon

for your Kindle download, for only

99 cents

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You Get a Free Copy of UNIMAGINARY When…

You get a Free Copy of UNIMAGINARY

when you Nominate my latest SF&F for Young Adult, and it’s published by Kindle Press!

You Get a Free Copy When You Nominate and Kindle Press Publishes!

CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE!

Getting an author’s book to market can go several different ways in today’s market.

One of the newly popular methods is through what’s known as Reader Powered Publishing.

Amazon’s Kindle Press opens up their Kindle Scout Program for authors to submit their title, manuscript, bio, and a few facts about the book. Only unpublished titles are allowed.

I submitted UNIMAGINARY just last week, and in only three hours, Kindle Press wrote back to say that they were accepting the title into the program, and that the campaign would run from today May 6th, through June 5th.

Needless to say, my Saturday morning is exciting, and a bit hectic, as I manage the launch of the campaign on several social media platforms. One of main goals is to drive traffic to the campaign page, for readers to check out the book cover, the description, and to read the first two chapters of the book. Of course, then they need to click Nominate Me on the big blue button! After that, Kindle Press asks the reader to rate the various elements of the campaign profile page (title, one-liner, back cover text, editing, etc.) by giving them up to Five Stars.

Which, of course, I know you will want to do!

Cover Reveal of UNIMAGINARY

 

As she walked out into the gritty wasteland, Ahnim’s manifestation dissolved into the wind.

She awoke as her ship-self in orbit above the blue planet. Immediately, she detected the presence of others in space, surrounding her.

Four Immini, all Defenders, floated in formation behind her.

“Have you come to take me back?” she asked.

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you’ll choose to participate in Reader Powered Publishing and Nominate UNIMAGINARY today!

The post You Get a Free Copy of UNIMAGINARY When… appeared first on Patrick Tylee.

Dog with Good Taste in Books

A fan tells me,”My dog ate WISDOM! I need another!”

I’m picking up my son at school to take him to drum lessons. A guy strolls up and says exactly that. He had been reading WISDOM yesterday morning before work, and left the print copy on the floor. When he arrived home from work, he found that his pooch had destroyed the book. One entire chapter was ‘missing’.

(Oh, he’ll find that in a day or so…)

Fan’s dog eats WISDOM

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Review of WISDOM for CITY Sun Times

A big THANK YOU to Melanie Tighe of Dog-Eared Pages Bookstore for the terrific review of WISDOM in the CITY Sun Times!

“Tylee takes sci-fi to another realm…”

 

Dog-Eared Review: WISDOM

Dog-Eared Review: WISDOM
March 29, 2017 by CITYSunTimes Leave a Comment

By Melanie Tighe –

Arizona’s own Patrick Tyleetakes sci-fi to another realm in this first book of his Wisdom series. His choice of the first person point of view from a clone is perfect for what has to be one of the most unique science fiction stories ever written. Filled with characters as alien as they come, and others as familiar as family, Wisdom captures the true battle between good and evil in an unexpected way, that leaves the reader wanting more.

Wisdom and more of Tylee’s books are available online or pick up a signed copy at Dog-Eared Pages bookstore.

Melanie Tighe, with Dog-Eared Pages bookstore in North Phoenix, enjoys reviewing books by local authors. This book and many more by talented Arizona authors are available at Dog-Eared Pages (just south of Bell Road on 32nd Street.) 

 

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