this is the 5th book in the SF quintet, 'towards the unMaking of Heaven'
Relates the corporeal states beyond biological death.
".....one of the most intricate and ambitious science fiction books that I have read in recent years, and in almost all areas it pulls off being incredibly detailed and "Sci-Fi geekish" while having a page turning quality that draws the reader in and pushes them to learn more of this new creation, this new mythos almost .... this is science fiction with a mainstream approach, satisfying Sci-Fi buffs but not alienating others." Anthony Lund
Excerpt
1) The Recent Present:
awaking
According to the absurdist laws of a ludicrous cosmology, facts persist, self-generated dreams do not. Such dreams own only a fading reality. Certainly some dreams may have a startling impact: they can, though, be all but wholly forgotten a sleep later.
I was dreaming. Was I?
Something is quickening me awake. Something new. Some thing strange. I can, though, sense nothing new, no obvious change.
Is this simply the residual disquiet of a dream buried already in the depths of sleep?
Those who depend for their continuing survival on camouflage stay still.
By any means, at whatever cost, the prime objective of any living, going-on-living entity is survival. And when one is unarmed, and lothe anyway to be as violent as one's aggressors, the first line of defence has to be camouflage, to not be seen by one's enemy. Which entire strategy depends on what one imagines one's enemy to be seeing; or smelling, or touching, or feeling, or thinking. To remain in hiding, therefore, one may have to change according to what one is imagining. The very act of changing, though, can betray one's vulnerable presence.
I was still.
Had I been asleep? Dreaming? Or had I, awake, drifted off on a fantasy float? That part puzzle started to take me back into myself.
Still my mind was urging me awake, to take notice.
But of what?
My senses tell me that I am awake. Awake to life. And life, this life, cannot be a dream, because in a dream there is no worry. In a dream there can be dread; and there can be fear, and fright enough to bring one awake. But not worry. Not this rotating about itself unfocussed anxiety — something forgotten? Something overlooked? Either of which might require action, for which being awake is required.
I am still.
My memory thoughts, inasmuch as they are conscious thinking, want to revert to meandering conjecture. To become invisible took me such a long time. I succeeded, though, and to such an extent that, emotionally, I believe that I have suffered from that very invisibility.
Of course, invisibility being my prime objective, at first my sense of humour found great delight in practical jokes — on some biological humans — as well as in the sly pleasure of eavesdropping upon my passing contemporaries. Until I grew tired of being overlooked, and became unreasonably hurt at being always ignored. And just as soon as reassured of the safety and security of my unseen presence...
Such a two-edged invisible state of existence became essential to my shutdown survival. Even when it was I, and only I, who had apparently survived.
Somnolent, introspective, I am alone. Or am I? What had caused that small rhythm-catch of arousal?
Something?
What?
Anything?
In this mutable multiverse nothing is fixed and forever. Even nothing is a variable quality and quantity depending upon perspective. (Many had looked for me, had looked at me, and had seen nothing.)
These memory thoughts, in so far as they are conscious thinking, are again edging back towards meandering conjecture. Something though, some thing won't let them...
Telling myself to come fully awake, and listening to myself give the instruction, I then ask What is here? What is new? What is different?
What was when? Elsewhere?
No elsewhere. To inhabit the same place for aeons on end is to have no easy demarcation to one's history, no change of scene with which to categories time's events.
Let me be specific. Here, now, is a land of high mountains and deep wide valleys. Streams gush white down black cliffs to form broad brown rivers, which flow into huge blue lakes, which in turn overflow into broader rives, which find their slow ways eventually to the wave-speckled oceans, which are edged, again, by high dark cliffs. Cold winds drop off the mountains and eddy around the corners of the few stone-built houses.
A young planet, one still in its first flush of greenery, its mountain peaks yet sharp and largely uneroded. The houses are all empty. In its night skies the star configurations are all as they were the last time I looked.
But something, some thing, someone, is calling me awake.
".....one of the most intricate and ambitious science fiction books that I have read in recent years, and in almost all areas it pulls off being incredibly detailed and "Sci-Fi geekish" while having a page turning quality that draws the reader in and pushes them to learn more of this new creation, this new mythos almost .... this is science fiction with a mainstream approach, satisfying Sci-Fi buffs but not alienating others." Anthony Lund
Heaven sent us an angel. She could be your neighbor. Her friends call her Megan, but when her eyes are glowing, everyone calls her Ember Reign.
Megan Martin was an average teenager. She felt cheated when her grandfather died and grandmother
