Erik Wecks's Blog, page 5

A Pax Imperium Timeline (Spoilers–duh)

So the world of the Pax is getting a little complicated. There are now two novels and four short stories all of which are woven together. It’s getting a little complicated to keep things straight. To keep a semblance of continuity, I created a timeline. So if you’re my editor or one of my beta readers, or if you don’t mind spoilers its a great way to explore the Pax and see its complexity.

I can also render it as a 3D movie as well. It looks abso-freaking-lutely fantastic but it’s a bit long. I need to get some music behind it. Hmmm… maybe I can get one of my daughters to mess around with Garage Band for me.

New Release: Contract of War by Tammy Salyer!

Purchase Contract of War on Amazon!

Contract of War, the final novel in Tamy Salyer’s Spectras Arise Trilogy is out today!

If you haven’t read any Tammy Salyer, you owe it to yourself to pick up boon one and give it a rip. Tammy is a top notch military science fiction writer who likes to keep her characters flawed and realistic. (Something I like to do in my work as well.) It won’t take but a few paragraphs for those of you who love my stuff to fall right in love with Tammy’s as well.

Here’s her official announcement:

Contract of Defiance, Contract of Betrayal, and Contract of War follow heroine Aly Erikson and her crew of anti-Admin smugglers through an ever-escalating glut of life-and-death adventures and trials of a living on the side of liberty and freedom—whether they agree with the law or not—in the far future of the Algol star system. As former Corps members, most are no strangers to fighting and dissent, but more than anything, they want to spend their lives flying under the radar without control or interference from the system’s central government, The Political and Capital Administration of the Advanced Worlds. But the Admin’s greed-drenched dualism of power and corruption has other plans, and throughout the series, Aly and her crew are reminded of one lesson time and again: when all other options run out, never let go of your gun.
 
Contract of War begins in the aftermath of the system-wide war between the Admin and Corp Loyalists and the non-citizen population of the Algols, where everything once resembling order has been leveled. Scattered enclaves of survivors dot the worlds, living, however they can, in snarled lawlessness. Aly and her crew have carved out a niche of relative peace, doing their best to go on with their lives through salvaging, scavenging, and stealing. But with no force left to keep the lid on the pot, the pressures of chaos and discord soon cause conflicts to boil over. As enemies close in from all directions, even, sometimes, from within, the crew once again must fight—not just for survival, not just for their way of life, but this time for a future that can finally lay to rest the system’s bloody and savage past. 

To learn more about the ex 82nd airborne veteran and alternate reality engineer, head on over to www.tammysalyer.com

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Related articles

My review of “Contract of Defiance” by Tammy Salyer

Huge July Giveaway! 19 People Will Win!

The New Frontiers Authors group is giving away a whole ton of good stuff in July! Nineteen people will win, including books and Amazon gift cards! Click on the link below to find out all the ways you can enter. The more entries you put in, the better your odds. You can even win for giving us a shout out on Facebook or Twitter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

How to Think About a Tagline!

So a few weeks ago a friend Tammy Salyer was working on a tagline for the third book in her Spectras Arise series, Contract of War. She had a whole bunch of options listed on her website, and she invited her fans to give her feedback.

I ended up writing her an email with an opinion that she promptly disregarded and went a different direction, which kept her tagline lighter and more snarky than mine. However, she thought that what I had to say was a really great way to suss out how to write a book tagline, and she encouraged me to post it here for the benefit of other writers. Here then is my email:

Tammy,

Here are my two cents on your tagline:

The best starting phrase on your site is “When the fight is over.” It tells me so much about character, plot, and setting of the book.

 

I think the best character in all of these taglines is Tyranny.

Tyranny is an evil actor. Tyranny coming to get the good guys makes me want to read the book. Tyranny has to be stopped. All of which means we have a plot that I need to read. How do we stop tyranny?

So if you put the two together like this–When the fight is over, Tyranny…– then you have a setting, a character, and a plot. So far so good.

In the tag line Tyranny has to do something… In all your choices, I like the word “feasts” the best. It’s the most visceral and active.

So you end up with “When the fight is over, Tyranny feasts…”

So the next question is what does it feast upon, and that I can’t answer. I don’t have enough information and you seem to be struggling to identify what it feasts on in your description.

To help you answer that for yourself here is my question: Who is the crew primarily fighting to save, themselves or others? If its for themselves, then tyranny should feast on the crew. If they are fighting for other things like the peace of the system, then you should aim toward that. If it is the latter, here is a thought. What about adding another character like, “the innocent,” or “the people?”

Tyranny could feast on them and you would have a fantastic tagline.

Feel free to throw it all out. These can be really frustrating.

Erik

 

I have to say, I can’t really claim it’s all my idea. It was Jason Gurley who was encouraged me to make sure I had a narrative arc to my blurb for The Far Bank of the Rubicon, so some of the credit has to go to him. Anyway, I hope you find it helpful.

Oh, and by the way, if you haven’t read Tammy’s Spectras Arise series you owe it to yourself to read book one Contract of Defiance. Tammy has a writing style similar to my own, and her work is top notch science fiction.

Related articles

Book Review: CONTRACT OF DEFIANCE by Tammy Salyer
Importance of a tagline
10 Movie Taglines That Were Straight-Up Lies (And What They Should Have Been)

My Vineyard

A Modern Adaptation of

The Song of Songs

First Published in The United States of America

Copyright © 2014

Erik R. Wecks

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be circulated in writing of any publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

For Harry

Picture, if you will, a California farm worker in her early twenties. She’s a second generation American, born to a single mother. When she isn’t working, she attends classes at the local community college, trying to finish her GED.

Kiss me! No, really kiss me!

Make me drunk on your kisses!

Sex with you is better than wine.

I love the smell of your body.

It’s like a scent wafting on the air, driving the single girls crazy.

They all want you.

Take me by the hand, and lead me on.

Let’s run together.

My leading man has brought me to his bed.

Tonight we’ll focus on you, my lover.

We’ll make noise together.

We’re going to declare just how much our sex is better than wine.

You’re so hot!

They’re so right to want you.

Girls, you may think that I’m too brown, but I’m still gorgeous.

I’m like a little black dress on date night.

I’m like a flowing black gown standing next to a leading man on the red carpet.

Don’t talk about me behind my back.

Unlike you, I work hard. Outside.

My brothers were pissed at me, so they sent me out to guard and tend their vineyard.

I haven’t guarded or tended my own.

Tell me, my one true love, what pasture will you work tomorrow?

Where will you be in the heat of the day?

Tell me.

If I wander aimlessly, the other guys might get the wrong idea.

If you can’t find me, loveliest of women, just follow the dust of the plows.

And take your break with the farm hands.

You will be like my own mare standing among a bunch of stallions.

Ah, the curve of your cheeks and the loops in your ears,

The beads at your throat.

I’m going to have to make my own set of earrings for you,

Something in gold, inlaid with silver

My leading man lay with me, and my own scent enveloped us like a fine perfume.

My lover is like a sachet of perfume who spends the night between my breasts.

He’s as wonderful as a cluster of orange blossoms from orchards in an oasis by the sea.

You, my lover, are so beautiful.

Your eyes are like doves.

You are so handsome, my love. Truly lovely.

Wherever we lie together, a field of green grass is our bed.

The cedar branches are the beams of our home, and the rafters are sequoias.

I am a rose, a lily.

I am God’s fertility itself.

Compared to the other girls, my lover is like a rose among weeds.

Compared to other men, my man is like an apricot tree in the forest.

Often have I delighted in his fruit, lingering to enjoy its sweetness.

He brought me to his feast of wine and raised over me his banner of love.

Bury me under your apricots and raisins.

I’m so turned on, I feel faint.

His left hand rests under my head,

And his right hand envelops me.

Young women,

Swear to me by the gazelles and the does in the fields,

You will not arouse lust until the time is right.

My lover’s voice! He’s coming this way!

I would swear that where he walks he leaps over mountains and bounds over hills.

My lover is like a gazelle or a stag.

And there he is on the other side of our fence, looking through the stones.

He calls to me and says:

“Come away with me, my lovely friend.

Look around.

The winter is past, and the rains are over.

Wildflowers blossom in the fields.

The birds are singing, and the doves can be heard in our meadows.

The fig tree sweetens its fruit, and the grape vines infuse their blossoms with scents.

My dove, hiding in the rocks and the shadows.

Come out!

Let me look at your whole body.

Let me hear your voice.

For your voice is a delicacy,

And the sight of you lovely.

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that raid the vineyards when they bloom.

My lover is mine, and I am his.

He grazes among the lilies.

Before the day breathes and the shadows flee,

Run away, my love.

Be like a gazelle or a wild stag on the ragged mountains.

Night after night, I lay in my bed, longing for my lover.

I looked for him, but he did not come.

I said to myself, “I must get up now and roam the streets,

Searching in the back alleys and boulevards,

Until I find my one true love.”

I searched for him everywhere, but I could not find him.

The police stopped me as they patrolled the city,

So I asked them,

“Have you seen the one my soul loves?”

Just seconds after they let me go, I found my true love.

I held him and wouldn’t let go of him,

Until I had brought him to my mother’s house,

Into my mother’s room.

Young women,

Swear to me by the gazelles and the does in the fields,

You will not arouse love until it so desires.

Who is this who comes from the desert like a column of smoke,

More fragrant than a perfume shop?

Look, there’s Hollywood’s biggest star!

All the leading men surround him.

Each of them strong and handsome.

Each of them manly.

He got himself a custom built limousine just for the occasion.

A limo made of silver and inlaid gold, with plush seats.

Its interior is upholstered with the desire of all the young women.

Ladies, come out and look at a star on the day of his wedding.

Look at the fine clothes his mother got him on the day of his joy.

You are so beautiful, my lover, so beautiful!

Your eyes—doves looking out from behind your tresses.

Your hair falls down like chocolate from a fountain.

Your smile, more enticing than the Mona Lisa.

Your lips, blood red—how I long to hear your voice!

Your round cheeks—black cherries dipped in the chocolate of your hair.

Your neck is like a fine crystal vase surrounded by a thousand blossoms—all of them roses.

Your two breasts are fawns, twin daughters of a deer, grazing in a field of wildflowers.

Before the day breathes,

Before the shadows of night flee,

I will run down to the mountain of spices,

The perfumed hill.

You are altogether lovely, my sweet.

Please come down to me!

I beg you, come down from the north!

Look down at me from the high mountains where the goddesses dwell!

Look down at me from the wild places.

You’ve become my family!

My sister, my bride!

You’ve stolen my heart,

With just a flash of your eyes and a single pearl hung at the nape of your neck.

Oh, how wondrous your lovemaking, my sister, my bride!

Your sex is so much better than wine,

And the smell of your spices better than any perfume.

Your lips taste like honey, and sweet milk is hidden under your tongue.

Your clothes smell like a fresh wind in the forest.

My sister, my bride is my secret garden, hidden behind a wall,

My own secret spring, a hidden well.

Your limbs shelter a paradise of red cherries mixed with rare spices.

Fragrant nutmeg,

Dripping vanilla,

Exotic saffron,

Trees of spicy cinnamon,

And every other lovely scent.

You are a garden fountain,

A spring of pure, life-giving water

Flowing down from the mountains of the north.

Arise, north wind! Come, south wind!

Breathe on my garden.

Let its spices flow out!

Come into your garden, my love.

Enter and taste its luscious fruit.

I have entered into my garden,

My sister, my bride.

I gathered my vanilla and my cinnamon.

I ate my honeycomb and drank my wine and milk.

Friends, gorge yourselves.

Drink deep until you are drunk with love.

I slept, but my heart stayed awake.

Listen!

The sound of my lover knocking!

“Open to me, my sister, my lover, my dove, my pure one.

My head is dripping, soaked with dew.”

“But I’m already tucked in bed, undressed and showered!

Should I dress again and get myself sweaty?”

My lover tried to force the lock,

And my body responded with desire.

I got up to open the door for my lover,

And my hands dripped with perfume.

My fingers left spices on the handle of the bolt.

I opened for my lover, but he had disappeared.

I nearly died when he had spoken.

I searched for him, but I didn’t find him.

I called for him, but he did not answer.

The police found me as I walked the streets.

They battered me and bruised me.

They tore my dress off my shoulders.

Swear to me, young women,

If you find my lover, what will you tell him?

You will tell him nothing other than I am burning with desire!

Why is your lover better than any other man,

Loveliest of women?

What does he have that others do not?

Why should we promise you anything?

My lover is bronzed and fit,

Standing out among ten thousand other men.

His face shines like gold.

His wavy hair is as dark as a raven.

His eyes are like doves sitting beside pools of water,

Set like sparkling jewels floating in the whitest milk.

His cheeks smell of cinnamon and spices.

His lips are like flowers dripping with nectar.

His arms, strong and gentle, like velvet and steel.

His abs, as hard as diamonds.

His legs, immovable columns of marble, set on foundations of pure gold.

He’s as impressive as a redwood.

His mouth is utterly sweet.

He is altogether desirable.

Young women, this is my lover and my friend!

And where has he gone, loveliest of women?

Where has your lover fled, so that we many seek him with you?

My lover has gone down to his garden, to his beds of spices,

To nibble in the gardens and gather his lilies.

I am my lover’s, and my lover is mine.

He grazes among the lilies.

You are gorgeous, my darling,

As chic as the New York skyline,

As lovely as Paris in the spring,

As breathtaking as the Milky Way stretched across the sky from north to south.

Turn your eyes away from me!

They overpower me!

Your hair falls down like chocolate from a fountain.

Your smile, more enticing than the Mona Lisa.

Your round cheeks—black cherries dipped in the chocolate of your hair.

 In Hollywood, there might be a hundred stunning women on the A-list

And a thousand or more on the B-list.

In this world, there are beautiful young women beyond count.

Above them all stands my perfect dove, my only love,

Her mother’s favorite, the light in her mother’s eyes.

The young women see her and tell their friends about her beauty.

Even celebrities sing her praise:

“Who is this who rises like the morning star,

As fair as the full moon and bright as the sun,

As awe inspiring as the Milky Way?”

I went down to the grove of walnut trees

To look at the young green of the valley,

To see if the vines had budded,

To see if the cherries had come into blossom.

And before I knew it,

My desire overcame me.

She put me in the back seat of a car

And raised me up to the top of her celebrity list.

Princess, your sandaled feet are so beautiful.

Your thighs are golden, the work of an artist.

Your navel is round perfection, like a goblet filled with Krystal.

Your hips are soft and luscious, like strawberries dipped in cream.

Your breasts—the twin fawns of a deer.

Your neck, like a ming vase.

Your eyes inspired the fountain at the Bellagio.

Your proud nose, still perfect, just the way God made it.

Your perfect face, as awe-inspiring as any mountain vista.

Your hair, fit for a royal.

A king could get lost there.

How beautiful you are, my lover.

You are so much better than all other desires.

That day I first saw you, you reminded me of a palm tree,

Your breasts like clusters of fruit at the top.

 I said in my heart,

Someday I’m going to climb that tree and hold its fruit.

May your breasts always be luscious like grapes hanging on a vine,

And may the scent of your mouth be like apricots,

Your kisses like fine wine…

…The taste of fine wine flowing straight to your muttering, sleepy lips.

I am my lover’s, and every ounce of his desire is for me.

Come, my lover, let us go out in the fields

And lie all night among the flowering lavender.

We can go early to the vineyards

To see if the vines have budded, if they have blossomed,

And if the cherries are in bloom—

There I will give you all my love.

The smells of earth and fertility fill the air,

And at our doorstep,

I have hidden for you fruits, both new and old.

If only you were my brother,

A man who had nursed at my mother’s breasts.

Then I could kiss you openly in the streets,

And no one would despise me.

Then I could take you to my mother’s home,

And she would teach me.

I would give you my own spiced wine to drink,

My own cherry liqueur.

His left hand rests under my head,

And his right hand envelops me.

Young women,

Swear to me by the gazelles and the does in the fields,

You will not arouse lust until the time is right.

Who is that coming in from the desert,

Leaning her head on her lover’s shoulder?

In the very place where your mother conceived you,

There beneath the apricot tree,

The place where you were born,

There I aroused you.

Bind me as a seal on your heart,

Wear me as a band upon your arm.

For love is as fierce as death.

Jealousy, as bitter as the grave.

Even its embers rage like fire,

An all consuming inferno.

Great seas cannot quench love,

And no river can overwhelm it.

If a man gave all that he owned to buy love,

He would be despised.

We have a little sister,

Whose breasts have not yet come in.

What will we do for her when suitors come to call?

If she has been a wall, we will protect her.

If she has been a door, we will brace her shut with planks of cedar.

I am a wall.

And my breasts are guarded towers.

But for my lover,

I have become for him a place of rest and peace.

In Napa, a rich man owned many vineyards so vast

He hired managers and paid them a princely sum to tend his fruit.

But my small vineyard is my own to give as I please.

Keep your money, rich man.

You can give my worthless guardians the pittance they deserve.

Flower child,

Your friends listen to your voice in the garden.

Let me hear it now.

Come away with me, my lover!

Be my gazelle, my wild stag on the spicy mountains.

Afterward

How the Song of Songs ended up in the Bible, I cannot fathom. (As a person of faith, I am inclined to see it as no minor miracle.) On its surface, the book seems to turn so much of the rest of the Bible on its head. To start, it is the only book that takes a frank and extended look at human sexuality. Other books may moralize or advise regarding sex along the path to some other higher purpose, but only Song of Songs makes sex a central matter of study.

Then there is the protagonist—a young woman, probably poor, who works in the fields by day and beds her lover by night. As far as I recall, she is the only woman in the Bible to speak to the reader in first person. She is certainly the only to do so for an extended period of time. So what does this small oasis in a desert of patriarchy have to say for herself? Does she moralize about the duties of a proper woman? Does she opine on the appropriate modesties of a young virgin?

On the contrary, in explicit detail, she extols the virtues of erotic love. She powerfully makes her case for a sexual relationship of equals—a relationship in which she chooses her own lover, no matter what it costs her. In her passionate pursuit of her true love, she breaks all the rules.

The text leaves little doubt that she and her lover have not had a wedding. Consider the following:

— She and her lover almost always make love outside in the fields. Anyone who has studied medieval or ancient history will recognize the implications of this fact. With prying eyes in the village and limited indoor space, “illicit” lovers met in the woods. Married people had sex in their home.

— Her lover leaves her before dawn.

— They do not live in the same house. The young man comes down to call out his lover from behind the wall of her mother’s home, encouraging her to run away with him to the fields.

— Twice our young protagonist searches the streets at night to find her lover. On both occasions, she is hassled by the city guards. Once she is seriously beaten by them. Clearly, wandering around at night isn’t either safe or appropriate for a young woman. It seems only a small leap to imagine that the guards see her as a prostitute.

— The last sections make clear that her brothers still think her an unmarried virgin, when the text makes explicitly clear she is anything but a virgin.

— Most importantly, in the final section, our protagonist laments that while she can kiss her brothers openly in the streets, she cannot kiss her lover without fear of criticism. It takes a large leap of the imagination to create a society which would allow public affection between brother and sister but deny it to husband and wife. It certainly doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the Bible, which makes no such prohibitions, and in fact, is full of examples to the contrary.

Taken together, the only sensible conclusion to draw is that the young lovers in the text are not married, at least in the eyes of society. They certainly haven’t had a public wedding.

When one considers the emphasis on fidelity and marriage in the rest of the Bible, it is such a shocking conclusion I have little wonder that for the last couple of thousand years the majority of religious scholars missed the plain sense of the text. Which brings us back to the question, how did Song of Songs end up in the Bible in the first place?

There are a couple of interesting contrasts which might help unlock the puzzle. First, while the lovers may not have had a wedding, they are urgent in their passion to be faithful to each other. This is no fling in the woods to be left behind with the dawn. On the contrary, both lovers continually affirm their singular devotion to the other. Such faithfulness is one of the major erotic themes of the book, and both lovers take comfort in the safety such devotion provides.

This devotion is made clear by the young man when he repeatedly calls the protagonist, “My sister, my bride.” In this one epithet, the young man declares that while society may not recognize their relationship as a legitimate marriage, they both know exactly how they view each other—in their own eyes, they are a family, and they are married.

In this way, the main antagonist of the story become the society around the young lovers which has not provided a path for their faithful passion to be legitimized. It is the gossiping young women who criticize the protagonist and lust after Solomon, it is her brothers who try to control who this young girl will marry, and it is society at large which criticizes their behavior that have become the enemies of the lovers.

In this way, Song of Songs participates in a wide variety of biblical literature which argues that individuals and society in general have corrupted that which God made. God made sex and erotic love; society has complicated it and corrupted it.

That corruption of erotic love is best highlighted by the inclusion of Solomon in the Song of Songs. In the Bible, Solomon is best known for three things. First, he is known for his wisdom. Next, he is known for his wealth, and finally, like his father, he is known for letting his lust for women cause him to be led away from God. He is said to have collected seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. With this as background, the inclusion of Solomon in the book automatically provides an instant contrast to the faithful lovers devoted wholly to each other.

That contrast seems further heightened in the last section of the book in which Solomon is said to have owned a large vineyard, which he gave over to managers for a fee. Throughout the book, the protagonist refers to her own sexuality as a vineyard. In contrast you have Solomon who has a vast vineyard, so vast he must pay managers to tend it. On the other hand, you have the protagonist’s vineyard which she calls “my own,” and which she manages herself, although management is supposed to be given to her brothers. In this way, she contrasts her own small world of passionate, erotic intimacy with a single lover to Solomon’s distant harem, so vast he needs to hire others to tend it for him. I think it might be this implicit criticism of Solomon’s sexual practices which originally put the book in the canon of scripture.

Perhaps the Song of Songs is better understood as something akin to the books of the prophets, rather than the books of wisdom where it is traditionally placed. In this way, the protagonist’s passionate pursuit of her lover with all her heart, all her soul, and all her strength, despite violating the rules of propriety, sounds very like a God who rails against his own sacrificial system, saying that he wishes his people would quit making sacrifices and instead “learn justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the orphan, and plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

Song of Songs has a way of getting to the heart of the matter when it comes to erotic love. It provides an uncommon picture of what it is like to find a place in which equality, sexuality, intimacy, fidelity, and safety all flow together in a relationship between two people. In that way, the  lovers exemplify the ideals expressed in the biblical concept of fidelity and passionate love better than the those who follow the traditional rules of society which surrounds them.

Notes on the Adaptation

Originally, I set out to create a paraphrase of Song of Songs. I ended up creating an adaptation.

First, I am in no means a translator of ancient Hebrew. I worked using the English Standard Version and the New International Version. The New Living Translation was most helpful (and explicit), and I received benefit from the Orthodox Jewish Bible. I also depended heavily upon Ariel and Chana Bloch’s translation and commentary, The Song of Songs, A New Translation, (University of California Press, 1995). I also found the online Hebrew interlinear bible at scripture4all useful. (http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm)

From the moment I started, it became clear that the plain sexuality of Song of Songs would be, I think, somewhat lost on the modern reader because we cannot relate to comparing a lover’s neck to a tower or his or her teeth to sheep. It just seemed necessary to give the reader a better opportunity to hear the passion with which these young lovers appraise and praise their partner’s bodies and declare their fidelity to each other. That required lifting the book from its time and place and putting it in the now.

A paraphrase would no longer suffice. So while I tried to follow the form of the text, I have changed many metaphors. I tried to add as little as possible. In on instance, it seemed important to emphasize why the young man called his lover his sister. I will say that in places where the text isn’t as clear, I felt freer to add my own interpretation.

Placing the text in the now demanded that I replace Solomon, who no longer would make sense in a narrative set in modern times. In two instances, Hollywood sufficed, because it is Solomon’s status as the “leading man” of ancient Israel which leads to his inclusion in the text. In the final case, a wealthy vineyard owner stands in his place because the text is contrasting Solomon’s vast sexual access to women (he owned large vineyards) and the lovers’ intimate access to each other.

The Kickstarter is live!

The Kickstarter for the Far Bank of the Rubicon is live. Pledge Today!

Sparking Kids Interest in the Cosmos!

Here’s a worthy Kickstarter project to create educational materials for teaching astronomy in the classroom. I love this. You can find out more here.

JRR TOKIEN READING HIS OWN WORK!!!!!

Discovered in the basement of a Rotterdam Shop is a recording from a Hobbit Party put on by the Dutch publisher of The Lord of the Rings. (Take a deep breath. Sit down.) On it, Tolkien reads a lost poem of his and tells us the true meaning of The Lord of the Rings. The remastered recording comes out in the fall. You can read more details over at HuffPo.

I will no doubt be hosting my very own Hobbit Party to listen to this for the very first time. If you want to join me drop me a note in the comments.

Featured photo credit: Mags_cat via photopin cc
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Preview the Kickstarter Page for The Far Bank of the Rubicon!

The Kickstarter preview is open for business. Check out my page and tell me what rewards I am missing and what could make it better!

Preview The Far Bank of the Rubicon

(Read the first few paragraphs on my Kickstarter Preview Page.)

….In his heads-up, Summers noticed the heat signature of a car descending onto the well lit, snow-covered street. He knew the vehicle. The Browns were home early. Summers cursed under his breath. Any sane person would have just descended directly into their driveway, but the Browns insisted on pulling up to the gate and having him open.

Summers threw a higher level set of code crackers at the AI in the limousine, put the pistol back in his pocket, and stepped into the guard house. The Browns drifted up to the gate. He punched the button in the booth, and the gate squealed as it started to open. Summers stepped to the door. The Mrs. liked to talk.

“Anything of interest happen on our street tonight?”

Through the crack in the tinted glass, Summers could just make out the face of the eighty-year-old, middle-aged woman. She wore a large set of pearls around her neck and a fur stole on her shoulders.

Summers smiled.

While he was technically able to inhabit both worlds, it worked much better when the two parts, meatspace and intraspace, worked in concert. It took all his will and focus to keep an eye on his attack and still appear passive in the physical world. “No, Ma’am. Nothing at all. It’s been quiet.”

“Good. It’s cold, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did Mr. Kepler walk his dog?”

“No, ma’am. He didn’t.” The gate continued to open at a glacial pace.

Mrs. Brown laughed. “Well, that’s a first. I don’t think in the thirty-five years I’ve lived here, Mr. Kepler has ever missed walking his dog. That tells you how cold it is tonight.”

“Yes. Ma’am.” Summers felt a bead of sweat appear on his brow. He was struggling to keep his Avatar from suddenly moving. He thought about recalling it. He could always send it back across the street later.

“Keep up the great work.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

The window on the vehicle closed as the car started to pull through the gate. Summers allowed his focus to snap back across the street. He was grateful the garage for the home behind him lay at a right angle to his position. Within about four seconds of entering the gate, the vehicle would be out of sight, and he could move forward.

Soon after the car disappeared, his AI codebreakers signaled their success. The electronic protections on the driver’s-side door went down. Summers looked down at his index finger, sorting through various fingerprints to make sure he had the correct one activated. Then he reached through the door of the vehicle and used the print to open the window.

A network of defense satellites now took over some of his motor functions in the physical world, using their precision to improve his accuracy beyond what had been thought possible for human beings. With one fluid motion, he removed the weapon from his pocket, aimed, and fired a single, high-tech flechette round. The thin, needle-shaped round, constructed from millions of nanities, flew in near silence before hitting the driver in the side of the temple, just as he was beginning to turn to see what had happened with the window. The round maneuvered toward the brain circuitry that controlled consciousness, causing as little damage as possible to the other functions of the mind. The driver effectively passed out. However, because the wound did little damage to the other systems of his body, it would take some time before his biosensors recognized what had taken place.

From his position, Summers looked across the street at the two remaining guards. Neither yet seemed alerted to any problem. Both idly looked at the house. Keeping his eye trained on the guards, Summers left the safety of the shadows and sprinted into the light. As he did so, one of the guards turned toward the street. Summers aimed a second shot. The guard crumpled to the ground.

“Shit!” he heard the third guard exclaim.

By this time, Summers was already across the street, having signaled the gate to open. Hearing the creak of the gate, the final guard turned, trying to take cover behind the vehicle. As the guard moved, Summers’ avatar forced open the passenger’s side window. His shot passed through and out the widening crack in the passenger’s side. It hit its target just below the chin, turned upwards through the roof of the target’s mouth, and knocked him out.

Summers checked the time. One minute and thirty seconds before his boss arrived. He was thirty seconds behind schedule, but that could be accounted for by his clients arriving home early.

A quick check with his heads-up told him that things were reaching their finale upstairs. The target would be down in about six minutes. Summers turned on the safety and holstered his weapon underneath his overcoat and suit jacket.

When the black, executive-class, utility vehicle drifted to a stop at the end of the drive, Summers already had two bodies in the trunk of the limousine. He finished putting the driver in with his companions and turned to greet his boss.

Serene as always, Timothy Randall walked quietly up the drive, keeping his hands in the pockets of his black overcoat and wrapping it around himself to keep warm. Six foot two, with a handsome jawline that exuded strength and prowess, Randall appeared to be the textbook definition of a politician. His salt and pepper hair lay coiffed to one side. Summers could just see the tip of his red, white, and blue tie poking out from the top of his overcoat. If not for the two uber-serious bodyguards on either side of him, he looked like he could be a middle manager returning home from a late evening at the office. His looks and manner endeared him to many.

He wore the perpetual smile of someone who had never really lost anything. In so many politicians, the corners of the mouth and the eyes gave away their insecurities and fears. Randall’s contained no fear. People were attracted to that. His piercing blues radiated confidence. Summers couldn’t remember a time when he had seen him ruffled—although there were tails of one bloody tirade just after the Aetna disaster.

Randall smiled genially as he approached. He seemed to appreciate Summers’ efficiency. It was Randall who had first given him the nickname “Katana.” Speaking quietly, he asked, “K, I trust there wasn’t any trouble?”

“No, sir.”

“Excellent. And our target?”

“Just saying his ‘good nights’ now, sir. He should be coming down in about four minutes.”

“Well, then, there’s nothing for it but to get ready, is there?”

“No, sir.” Summers’ avatar opened the back door to the limousine on the near side.

Timothy Randall climbed in.

In meatspace, Summers gently closed the door.

He used the heads-up device to silently communicate with the other two agents who had arrived with Randall. Gentlemen, the grenade has been unpinned. Suit up.

Summers pulled a pocket knife out of his jacket and opened one of the small blades. He then twisted it to the left. The knife melted into a lump of gel in his hand. As Summers rubbed the gel over his face, he felt the familiar tugging sensation of his face changing shape. At the same moment, his shoes raised him up about an inch and a half. Ten seconds later, his face had morphed into a surprisingly accurate double of guard number two. The other two agents morphed into the driver and guard number three, respectively.

Two minutes later, the CEO of the Unity Corporation exited the house of his lover. Summers kept his eyes on guard number four as he opened the door to the vehicle. As expected, the CEO balked once he saw who was inside. With one fluid motion, Summers shoved the portly man in while his fellow agent took care of the guard with a shot to the temple. Summers quickly closed the door and helped his fellow agent get the fourth body in the trunk.

As Summers opened the door to get in, he took the gun from his holster and aimed it at Cowhill’s head. Cowhill, who had just seated himself in the center of the back bench, whispered, “Son of a bitch,” under his breath, as the color drained from his face. He shook his head. “Son of a bitch,” he said again.

Summers kept the weapon trained on Cowhill as he sent a signal to the driver using the heads-up. The vehicle started its ascent.

For a few seconds, Cowhill and Randall sat placidly looking at one another.

Finally, the CEO spoke. “Why?”

Randall answered, “You’re a dinosaur, Gerald. You have no will, no courage.”

“This war you want is folly.”

“Oh, I think not, Gerald. It’s what the Unity was designed to do.”

The tone of the CEO’s voice changed slightly as he let some of his frustration show. “It’s too expensive, in both lives and money. We can barely feed our population as it is.”

For the barest of seconds, Summers felt the heat of anger rise up in Randall. “It’s what we were meant to do, Gerald. It is the essence of our greatness as a corporation and as an empire. We are meant to expand our boundaries, to grow, and compete with others. For three hundred years, we have been forced to bow the knee to the weak and toothless Pax Imperium—forced to join an empire we never wanted—and so the Unity has fallen into petty squabbles with itself—brother killing brother. Nine Unity factions all vying for the same CEO’s chair but never once accomplishing anything more than an internal game of king of the hill. It’s untenable. If Aetna taught me anything, it’s that our people need a vision outside themselves. They need something to unite them, to inspire them. They need a mission. They need a destiny.”

Cowhill couldn’t hide his scorn. “And you’re the one to lead us there, to this destiny?”

“I am.”

The CEO shook his head, his voice a barely audible whisper. “Timothy, you’ll be the ruin of us all.”

Randall held out his hand. Summers hesitated for half a beat before he put his gun in the hand of his boss. He wasn’t used to being without a weapon.

“No, Gerald. I will take us to places you can’t go. I will make us great again.”

 

Chapter 1: A Walk With His Father

“Jonas?”

Squatting in the warm afternoon light, sixteen-year-old Jonas recognized the warmth in his father’s voice. His father used neither a concerned nor a corrective tenor, so Jonas continued to squat without acknowledging him. Instead, he adjusted the dial on his monocle style microscope and observed the whooping ant in front of him as it held in its fingertips a fragment of the sandwich Jonas had been eating for lunch. The two-centimeter-long “ant” pulled the offered food toward its front mouth with its forward facing hands. Since he had started his studies of ecology with his tutor at the age of five, the whooping ant had always fascinated Jonas. The individual ant in question seemed particularly adept with its use of the thumb. It was able to grasp the edge of the offered ham and cheese sandwich, and with a twisting motion, pull the food toward its mouth. The ant had the smallest opposable thumb in the known galaxy.

Jonas’ father squatted down beside him. “What have you found?”

“A whooping ant.” If he could have acknowledged it to himself, Jonas would have admitted that his heart beat a little faster having his father this close to him. He could feel the warmth radiating from the man’s tall muscular frame and smell the scent of the palace laundry on his clothing.

Jonas’ father fished in several pockets on his hiking shirt before he found an identical microscope and put it in his eye. “What’s its technical name?”

“The microscope said either Athenian extra-small scavenger Thirty-two K point forty-five or forty-six, but that depended upon whether or not it consumed animal protein. Apparently, it’s forty-six because it’s eating the ham.”

Jonas couldn’t remember a moment in which he had possessed as much of his father’s attention as he did at this precious instant in time. The trip itself was unique. He and his father had traveled by themselves—without attendants or advisers—along with sixty normal families and the court bishop to a remote part of their homeworld, Athena.  Only the bare minimum of security had come with them, but if Jonas were honest, he wanted even fewer people. He wished they were alone.

If he had spoken his wish aloud, he knew that his father would have said that being alone would have wrecked the point. His father would have said the Pilgrimage of the Sun had always been done as a group on Athena on Midsummer’s day. Jonas knew this because they had discussed the matter several times prior to the pilgrimage, and his father had said those words or something similar each time, but it didn’t mean Jonas wanted time alone with his father any less.

“Hmmm.” Jonas’ father put the microscope in his eye, and they both silently watched the whooping ant.

At the palace, whole days would pass in which each step, every bow, and all the words of both the King and his second son had to be negotiated in advance. A misstep here or an indiscreet word there and an interstellar incident might result. Most people had no idea that the news clips broadcast on the nets were so highly scripted.

Wanting this moment to go on forever, Jonas asked a question. “Dmitri is always going on and on about the fact that on the ancient world, ant didn’t mean the same thing as it does on Athena today. It never made sense to me. What was he talking about?”

“Well, it’s been a long time since I studied historical ecology, but I remember learning something about that,” the king said. Much to Jonas’ chagrin, his father stood up. He stretched out his back and rubbed his fingers on the side of his temple before looking back down at Jonas and saying, “If memory serves me, ants on the ancient world were a group of small scavengers. They lived in a hive and had a queen much like the whooping ant. When Ephraim Papadros and the other colonists arrived on Athena, they used the word ‘ant’ to describe this creature because it seemed so familiar, at least until the colony gave out that collective ‘whoop’ sound like they do when they feel threatened. The two together got them the name ‘whooping ant.’”

Jonas took the monocle out of his eye and stood up beside his father. People often told him that he looked like his dad. He had the same tall muscular build, chocolate colored skin with mixed brown and blond hair. The only difference was his father’s blonde goatee. Jonas put his hands on his hips and surveyed the scene before him. He could see the royal shuttle and its companion shuttle parked nearby. Their crews leaned against the common shuttle in a relaxed fashion, talking with each other.

In front of the ships stood thirty pairs of fathers and sons mixed in various sized groups. Jonas watched a group of boys huddled together in serious contemplation of a tablet. They laughed, and Jonas experienced a recurring longing to be with them, even though the thought terrified him. As a prince, he had little experience with other children and no friends other than his older brother. He inhabited a world of adults and, if honest with himself, he was much more comfortable around them. Jonas instinctively took a step closer to his father.

Even from this distance, he could tell from their body language that lunch was over. The group politely waited for the King and his son to return. Since birth, a merciless sense of duty had dictated the course of Jonas’ life. At sixteen, it owned him wholly. “We better get going, Dad. The bishop is starting to sigh.”

The King looked down at his son and chuckled. “Bishop Dominic is an impatient man. Occasionally, it is good for his character to make him wait.” As he said this, he lifted his nose and adopted a distinctly nasal and fatherly tone, imitating the highly affected form of speech familiar to the clerical class. Removing his hands from his hips, he started walking and said, “However, it is time that we get back. After all, we want to finish our hike just at sunset. That’s the whole point, and it wouldn’t do any good for the second prince and his father to wreck it for the others.”

Jonas laughed, fell in behind the King, and looked down at the sixty or so people standing below them. Nearly all of them looked back at him or his dad. Most took quick glances and looked away when they realized the prince was watching them. Used to this response, Jonas stared back brazenly and wished again that he could have done this without them.

The religious rite of the Pilgrimage of the Sun had been practiced on planets and moons across the galaxy by sixteen-year-old boys and their father’s for hundreds of years. The rite intended to teach each boy humility by showing him how small he was compared to the vastness of space. It also represented a kind of passage into adulthood. However, as with most religion, it had become something different for the majority of Athenians—in this case, a simple excuse for male play.

The rite consisted of a pilgrimage hike laid out in advance by the local priest or bishop in each parish. Over the course of several hours, the pilgrims traced out a scale model of the local star system. The hike was meant to take some time and end at sunset. Traditionally on Athena, a large bonfire was lit at the end. The fire became a thing of play for boys, and most often sons and dads consumed some small quantity of alcohol, just enough to make the sons feel like men but not enough to cause trouble. Then the fathers and sons slept out under the stars.

However, for Bishop Dominic, religion remained serious business. The bishop for the royal parish was from a sect of the new ascetics, a group which took its religion seriously enough to once again renew the practice of celibacy among its priests. Skin and bones, he reminded Jonas of a pith spider. The bishop was a weak counselor at court, but a man who had the ear of the King in matters of faith.

He had hand picked the parishioners who would be privileged to accompany the king as he hiked the pilgrimage with his second and last son. Most of them were important contributors to the sect. A few were charitable cases. On the whole, they were an austere group, and Jonas found himself both attracted to the boys and simultaneously repelled by their coldness.

As Jonas and his father joined the back of the group, a nod from the King sent the thin man into full priestly mode. Using a deep reedy voice which Jonas knew he reserved only for the pulpit, the man lifted up his arms and intoned from memory, “In his deepest mind the fool says there is not God….”

Jonas’ thoughts wandered.  When he again picked up the thread of the priest’s speech, he was holding up what looked like a large ball on a stick. The ball was approximately a meter in diameter.  “All right, boys,” he said in his normal, high, effeminate voice. “This will be our sun….”

Jonas looked at the orange colored ball on the stick and wrinkled up his face in a puzzled expression. Interstellar ships sometimes passed near the mainline star which lay at the center of the Athenian system on their way to the Hadris gates. Twice in his sixteen years, Jonas stood on the command deck of his father’s ship while the vast bulk of the star Metis grew until it filled all vision.

Jonas leaned over to his father and, looking up, whispered, “I thought this hike was supposed to take all afternoon?” His father looked down and nodded. “But with the sun so small we are going to be done in no time. I mean, it only takes at most six days to reach one of the Hadris gates.”

His father smiled and with a hand on his son’s back, leaned down and whispered, “You have no idea how fast we were traveling. Mass bending technology does incredible things for our acceleration curves.” The priest gently shook the ball loose from the top of the pole and watched as it rose approximately twenty feet in the air and began to hover. Soon after, the hike began.

Jonas was to remember that afternoon often in the years to come. All of the boys, and many of the fathers, found themselves in a perpetual state of awe as they walked. Balls no larger than a fist stood in for gas giants and nearly disappeared as they floated up into the air. The three inhabited planets of the Athenian system fit together in the palm of the priest’s hand. But it was the vast distances between the sixteen planets which left an impression on Jonas. Hundreds of paces divided the inner planets, and whole kilometers passed by between the outer ones. By the time they reached the realm of the dwarf planets of the outer rim, they were walking for what seemed like hours between them.

The hike, which Jonas had thought would be over quickly, went on for nearly eight hours, and Jonas was forever grateful for the time. Years later, he found out that, through the priest, the King had given the other participants strict instructions to leave them alone. That day would become one of the rare instances in Jonas’ life where he had his father to himself. For a few hours, he was simply a boy who finally had the full attention of a busy dad.

By the time Jonas and his father finished, the hike had covered nearly thirty kilometers, and the deep, violet blue sky of Athena moved on to hues of fluorescent green, orange, and purple. For the last couple of kilometers, the hike had been tough, even for the adults. It ended with a 500 meter climb up a steep trail to a bluff which had a commanding view of the surrounding country. Here the priest placed the last marker in the sky. The Hadris space gates were represented by a tiny prick of light. It was as if the priest had let go of a faerie or a firefly. As the point of light sparked above his head, the priest explained to the boys what they already knew. This gate and its twin represented Athena’s only connections with other star systems and the Empire. Located near the edge of the heliosphere, it also marked the end of the Athenian system and the beginning of interstellar space.

The sweaty, hot boys and their fathers took some time to enjoy the view. Placed in between rolling hills and occasional fields, small lakes dominated the surrounding countryside below them. Herds of slowly moving multicolored trees gathered in the remaining patches of sunlight in order to photosynthesize the last possible drops of energy before night set in. Jonas watched as they turned their many, long limbs to the sunset. Soon the quiet of the hilltop was broken by the cries of boys at play. Jonas and his father sat apart from them, hardly noticing the noise.

Not to be outdone by noisy boys, the priest raised his voice above the crowd and called attention to the point of land below them where the hike had begun. There, a prick of light begin to glow in the falling darkness. The orb that been placed in the sky as the sun lit itself from within, showing how far they had come that day.

At this distance, its light looked no greater than that of a bright star. Soon after, a flash lit up the sky from the first planet followed by flashes in order from each of the fifteen others. Although the priest said that they were all glowing like their scale model star, only a few of them were visible to the naked eye unless they flashed, which they all continued to do at regular intervals.

Using his priestly voice, the cleric sang, “All the stars and galaxies tell of God’s beauty and power. Skies declare his artistry…..”

Tired of the priest’s interruptions, Jonas didn’t bother to listen. Instead, he looked down on the tiny points of light which represented Athena’s planets and tried to pick out Athena Six where he stood right now. Then he looked above him at the tiny prick of light that stood in for the Hadris gates. Suddenly, he felt the weight of the vast emptiness which surrounded him. A soul-ripping loneliness overwhelmed him. There was so much space between each point of light. Worse yet, he was just a single person on a very large planet with 5 major continents and two billion people. Jonas felt like the hill was beginning to pitch forward and tip him into the abyss in front of him. He reached back to steady himself.

“Father?”

“Yes?”

Jonas almost whispered, not wanting his question to be heard by anyone else. “Do you believe we were made by God?” Having asked the question, he regretted it almost instantly. His doubt felt too personal, almost sacred, and he wasn’t sure how his father would respond. Afraid he had wrecked the moment, Jonas winced internally as he waited.

Sitting next to him with his arms wrapped around his knees, the King’s lips hinted at a smile. Looking at his son, he answered with equal discretion. “Yes, I do. What makes you ask, Jonas?”

Seeing that his father didn’t seem disturbed, Jonas decided to unburden something which had bothered him for some time. “I don’t know. It just seems so impossible to believe in God when there is so much space out there. I mean, we only walked out the Athena system today. Our Kingdom has nearly 70 stars, 48 inhabited planets, and over 400 planets in all, and we only walked out one star system, and we are only one kingdom in the Empire. The Pax Imperium has over 300 members, and they all have star systems with planets and vast distances between them.”

Now that he had started, Jonas found himself unable to stop. “That doesn’t consider the fact that there are uncountable kilometers between each and every star. I mean, even the light from Metis takes four and a half years to reach Padran, our closest neighbor star. The light we see from Apollos is nearly 300 years old when it gets here.”

Jonas picked up a small rock and absentmindedly threw it off the precipice where they sat. “I guess, it just seems impossible to think that in all of this vast space a God could even exist. It seems even more ridiculous to pray to such a God, or think that he… or she, or it, had anything to do with my creation. It’s like a whooping ant praying to me or worshiping me. If God exists, he has no idea I exist and has little or nothing to do with my life.”

Jonas looked again at the void in front of him, now almost completely black, and paused for a few seconds before he went on. “I mean, it just seems so impossible with all of that space. We are so small and insignificant. Think of the history, Dad. Think about it. We have been exploring other star systems for over a thousand years. Dad, there have been almost a trillion human beings who have lived in this universe. How could God care about any of us or even know us? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Jonas’ father laughed quietly as the bishop continued to sing. “And that, Jonas, is why we do this. The bishop would be proud.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a small crystal flask. “Here, Jonas,” he said. “Have a swallow. It will relax your mind.”

 

Chapter 2: Olive Green

Anna Prindle blinked. Tears clouded her vision. She felt her cheeks burn.

He tried. Jack tried so very hard. After a show in one of the royal boxes at the Caripathium and a dinner at an exclusive club in the imperial capital, this man was down on one knee holding open a small box with a blue emerald and diamond bracelet asking for her hand in marriage.

How could she explain her feelings to the man dressed in a brocaded gray tuxedo with the gray streaks in his thinning hair? How could she articulate the complexities when she didn’t fully understand them herself?

Jack shifted uncomfortably. Never one to miss a beat when it came to people, he hurriedly got up off the floor, quietly closed the box, and returned to his place across the white linen and dinnerware which divided them. It might as well have been a whole ocean. Anna couldn’t hope that those at the tables next to them hadn’t noticed the scene. The security personnel standing nearby would be discreet as ever, but Anna wondered what they must have thought of her at that moment.

Jack’s voice caught a little as he said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

A tear dripped from the corner of Anna’s eye. She reached out for his hand and took it in hers. “I wish you wouldn’t say that to me any more. It doesn’t help.”

Jack had probably apologized to Anna a thousand times in the last two years. He was often quite sincere. Apologies never seemed to cover the wound. Because the wound of the moment isn’t the real wound, Anna thought.

She had arrived home from work earlier that evening to find their fourteen-year-old foster son Theodore hard at work tutoring his younger sister Josephine. This wasn’t so unusual. Teddy wasn’t really a child any longer. She knew he didn’t fit in at school. It wasn’t just that he was a refugee. There were plenty of other refugee children there, as well. It was the particular circumstances which wouldn’t allow Teddy to stay a child. He was as much Josephine’s surrogate father as Anna’s lover Jack. Teddy and Little Jo had lost both their parents and their twin brothers when the Unity brutally crushed a workers revolt on one of its own little moons, Aetna. Teddy was all the family eight-year-old Josephine had left, and he wore the weight of his burden in the hunch of his shoulders and the perfection he demanded from his studies and behavior.

Even before the door had slid closed behind her, Anna had known something was up when Little Jo bounded from the table, knocking her tablet on the floor, and while jumping up and down, proclaimed, “Jack bought you something. It’s upstairs on your bed.”

Anna’s lover, Jack—the gorgeous man sitting across from her now, stalwart and crushed—worked surreptitiously for the Ministry of Information. Officially, there were no refugees from the Unity in the Imperial Capital. The Empress of the Pax Imperium, Her Greatness Christiana IV, was not supposed to take sides against any state under her protection—even if they were a despotic corporation—and until a couple of months ago, it appeared her government was following the spirit of that tradition, if not the letter. Jack had been merely a low-level functionary at the Ministry, shunted into a dead end position and ignored, but then the old minister of information got sacked. The new minister had taken seriously Jack’s insistent warnings that a war with the Unity was a growing possibility.

Now instead of their old, modest apartment in a refugee building on the opposite side of town, they lived in an exclusive diplomatic building near the Imperial capital. Their neighbor was the Chargé d’affaires for Umberland, a small principality in the Pleiades. Jack went to work every morning with a driver and a security detail. They had more money than the Apollonarian Pope and people who did their shopping for them.

And for the two months since their move, Anna had been miserable. For Anna, their new living arrangements felt more like a gilded cage than a palace, but it wasn’t the ridiculously large apartment and the stupidly ostentatious neighbors which bothered Anna most. What she missed most was her community, particularly Dierdre. Another refugee from the Unity, Dierdre Beacock had taken Anna under her wing in the dark days after their arrival. She had offered more acceptance and loved her with more grace than Anna had ever known.

In the Unity, the people steeped like tea leaves in the brutality of the regime. No one took the effort to care for their neighbors for fear that an act of compassion might bring trouble upon their own head, but here in the ex-pat community, Unity citizens watched out for each other. It was as if, free of the toxic bath of government meddling, the best of her people came out. All the warmth, acceptance, and love which could never be expressed at home bubbled to the surface and overflowed. All of it done even though they hardly ever acknowledged their shared heritage, for fear of spies and reprisals. Now, after two years adjusting to her new life in that community, Anna felt isolated once again.

Earlier that evening, hen she had stepped into their the bedroom, Jack’s latest apology had waited on the bed. Olive green velvet with a blue embroidered pattern, the dress must have cost a fortune. The label—L’Atmosphere d’Excès—declared its desirability in high society. Anna knew there was no way Jack had picked it out himself. He had given someone at the office the appropriate number of credits, and she had done the shopping. Anna had just finished getting dressed when Jack had arrived home in a new tuxedo and announced that their car was waiting downstairs.

She couldn’t remember the last time they had gone out together. Jack’s work at the ministry demanded everything from him. There had been little left for her in the last couple of months.

Now Jack stared down at his empty dessert plate, wise enough to know to let the silence between them linger.

Anna wanted to speak, but she didn’t know what to say.

She had never intended to become a refugee from her home. As oppressive as the Unity had been, she had never seriously thought of leaving. It was her relationship with Jack which had led her into the constricting noose in which she now lived. Anna had met Jack on the orbital above the dirty snowball moon Aetna where he served as manager. She had arrived as a wholesale food buyer interested in a contract with the local fishing guild. Naive and willfully stupid, she had let herself get drugged by a punk on a mission. Jack had chivalrously intervened.

What had started as a “thank you” turned into a decidedly asymmetrical relationship, with Anna arriving on the station every few weeks to spend a couple of days in Jack’s bed, then leaving, knowing full well that Jack didn’t share her sense of commitment and loyalty.

Three years into this unhealthy pattern, Jack had seemed to make a change, saying he was sorry—there was that word again—promising fidelity in the future, and planning to run away with Anna the next day. Only it didn’t turn out that way.

While Anna had been away, Jack had gotten himself into a bit of trouble with the authorities. He was caught in the cross hairs of a ruthless political climber, Timothy Randall. They didn’t know it at the time, but apparently Randall had his eyes on the Unity CEO’s chair—a seat he had gained in the last few months, after the mysterious death of the former CEO, Cowhill.

As luck would have it, the morning of their planned escape something went wrong with Randall’s machinations, and Jack was expected to take the fall. When the gendarme arrived to take Jack into custody, they found Anna instead.

The next three days had been the darkest Anna had ever known. The Unity had no qualms about method or dignity when it needed something from its citizens. Anna had been repeatedly mind-jacked, with implanted memories laid on top of the truth. There was really no way for her to distinguish what horrible things had been done in her mind and what were real.

It was Jack who had orchestrated her escape and then brought her here to the galactic capital. It was Jack who had rescued her, and Anna was grateful, but she still had panic attacks. Sometimes they made sense, like when Jo suddenly turned off the light and left her in the dark. Other times, they didn’t, like the time a woman in a gray suit walked passed her on her way to work. Although they had diminished in frequency and intensity, they still could be debilitating. The drugs and an implant helped, but to Anna, it still felt as if a monster lived underneath their warm comfort, waiting for its chance to escape.

As she glanced across the table at Jack, Anna realized all the dresses in the world wouldn’t help her shake the sense she was trapped, forced to be a surrogate mother to two children not her own, forced to flee her home, and now alone in a strange world, left entangled with a man who had not loved her until the last second. A man who understood charm but still struggled to grasp relationship.

And yet he tried.

Jack spoke with care, avoiding all emotion in his voice. “Let’s go home.”

Anna nodded and gathered her wrap from the back of her chair.

On the way out the door, Anna contemplated whether she could explain to him that saying “yes” would make her feel as if he was trying to justify all of her pain. “Yes” felt like admitting that something good could come out of her suffering, and Anna could never—would never—say that. The suffering she had endured had no meaning. It wasn’t purposeful, and it hadn’t provided her with any kind of poignant beauty. It had no redeeming qualities. She had been brutalized and remained scared by the experience. She couldn’t say “yes” to Jack because he was in some way partly responsible for those scars.

Yet, she couldn’t leave him, either. She didn’t want to. She was content in the nether region of lover and confidant, and she did care for Jack. He meant the world to her. For whatever silly and backward reasons, he always had. Maybe it was the kindness he showed her when they first met. Maybe it was that he seemed to listen to her in a way that he listened to no one else, and maybe it was that she had watched him grow, sometimes in fits and starts, but always grow. Maybe it was all of these reasons, but she loved Jack. She just couldn’t be his wife. This was a term which closed the door to the cage and sealed her in it forever. That she could not do.

The ride home quickly filled itself with whole mountain ranges of silence. Jack and Anna sat on opposite sides of the car, holding hands but not speaking. In the front two seats, the security personnel tried to look impassive and busy, but they really had nothing to do. A web of satellites and AI guided every bit of their journey as they glided in and out of the traffic several hundred meters off the ground. Anna reached forward and closed the privacy screen between the two compartments.

Her voice felt thick and sore when she spoke. “Jack, I wish I could.”

“Wish you could what?” Jack’s voice felt like the verbal equivalent of dumping a glass of wine down the front of her dress. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her.

“Marry you, Jack. I wish I could.”

“And why can’t you?”

Anna felt her pulse starting to race. “Jack, they did things to me. They hurt me…”

Jack interrupted and spoke with a deadly calm that Anna hated. It meant he had lost patience with her. “I’m not them, Anna. I’m not the ones who hurt you. I can’t make that better, and they can’t make that better. You have to make that better.”

Anna’s voice pitched upward and became more animated, even as Jack’s became infuriatingly calm. “I can’t just make it better, Jack!”

“You can try.” This he spoke barely above a whisper as he looked away from Anna and stared out the window. He let go of her hand.

Anna started to speak again but stopped. The seat behind her morphed, sucking her body downward into its growing cocoon. She wanted to ask Jack what was happening, but she didn’t have time.

In less than a second, the car lurched sideways and sped up to the point that the traffic outside blurred. Forced to look forward by the cocoon of foam which had now enveloped her chest, torso and legs, Anna could see little else than the privacy screen and the seat in front of her.  In the front cabin, the security personnel were just flipping down their heads-up displays when Anna saw the thin threads of light coming directly toward them. Before she could blink, they became ribbons of flame, and then the privacy shield went dark and the cabin in which she rode seemed to erupt with some kind foam.

Anna opened her mouth to scream but couldn’t as it was suddenly filled with the vile stuff. She couldn’t breath. The explosion deafened her, and the concussion felt liked it might have killed her.  Gravity seemed to move around her body at random as she felt herself begin to tumble. The world was silent now, even as her body demanded oxygen which she couldn’t provide. She wanted to flail her arms in some way to control her spin, but there was no way for her to move. The remnants of the car rolled and twisted in free-fall long enough that Anna had time to anticipate the inevitable end.

Her mind reached out for, Jack. Not like this, she thought. Not like this! Please don’t let me die without telling him I love him.

The crunch and boom as the remnants of the car hit the ground dwarfed the concussion of the attack which preceded them. The pain was excruciating. She wanted to scream but the vile foam still filled her mouth. Anna felt herself propelled back up into the air again and again before she came down for a final time. As soon as she stopped moving, the foam which encompassed her melted, instantly becoming gel and then liquid, laying her on the concrete of the pedestrian mall with the gentleness of a mother tucking a child in bed. Anna opened her eyes and stared up into the traffic lanes above where they had traveled only seconds before. She inhaled life giving oxygen and then remembered Jack. She tried to stand, but something wasn’t working with her left leg. Instead, she rolled over to her right side and saw Jack, or what was left of him, lying not far from her. His body was burned, and in places, opened where it should not be. Both legs lay at odd angles to his torso. Anna wailed and crawled toward him on her working leg, dragging the other behind.

It took time. Already, she could hear the sounds of approaching sirens when she got to him.

When she arrived, Jack’s eyes were still open, though much of one side of his face appeared to be torn away.

“Jack! I’m here, Jack.”

Anna watched as one of his eyes turned toward her and focused.

She tried to find one of Jack’s hands, fumbling with the shreds of his torn jacket.

“I love you, Jack Halloway. I love you. Don’t you forget that.”

Jack squeezed her hand feebly, and Anna thought that she saw his bloodied lips move, but no sound came from them.

Vehicle lights suddenly dazzled Anna’s vision. She looked up, and then, feeling overwhelmingly exhausted, lay her head down on the grass underneath her, shut her eyes, and drifted out of this world’s reckoning.