To my friends and family for all their love and support on all my endeavors throughout the years and this book.
CONTENTS
Table of Contents
Prologue
The Return Home
My Drone Is Better Than Your Drone
Moon Over Jupiter
Things That Go Bump In The Void
The Basher
The Promotion
Into The Darkness
Black Is The New Black
How Can This Be
The Dark Planet
No More War
Index
About The Author
Other Books By The Author
TOC
As I sat down to write this book I tried to stay true to the world of tomorrow created in the first book of this series, I have followed some of the predictions of the future and depending which ones you believe, it could be very dire, or it could be utopian. In my humble opinion it will be a little bit of both, technology promises to make many aspects of our daily lives much easier, but as illustrated in the first book it may come at a price. The time frame this book is set in, should see many of the predictions come true, and some that we have not even begun to imagine. I also assume that artificial intelligence will be available and that it will serve mankind. This is not a given, as has been played out in many different sci fi books and films. It also has been debated by some AI researchers as well. For this world the AIs are friendly and want to help mankind achieve its goals.
As with the first book I have tried to stay with the science or at least the theoretical science, it is a book of fiction however, so I ask you to suspend your disbelief and let it entertain you. The characters in this book struggle enough with the moral dilemmas and ambiguities of the future so that we don’t have to. The concept of paranormal energy first introduced in book one seems less farfetched based on some research that I have done since the first book, but again we have no knowledge of what will happen when we do start using our brain more. Plato and other ancient philosophers believed we were descended from spiritual beings and somehow evolved or devolved, depending on your point of view, into more physical ones, maybe that hidden knowledge will be released when we tap into the hidden recesses of our brain.
One theme I have tried to stay true to in this book as well as the first, is that there is no good and bad, but shades of grey, all of the characters at one point or another give in to a dark side. Most of the time it is masked in a form of retribution, let it be known that I personally believe in the sanctity of life, my characters on the other hand, have a tendency to rack up the body counts, and spend a lot of time coming up with better ways to do it. If that offends some readers, I apologize in advance, but perhaps this is not the book for you. However, if you are ok with that, I think you will enjoy this continuation of a young man’s journey of discovery, and find it quite entertaining. There are also plenty of robots and artificial intelligent beings helping the characters find new ways to use technology to perform what we would consider magic. Also new to this book is an explanation for some of the evil deeds of the villain, I hope you enjoy delving a little deeper into what motivates the shadowy figure introduced in the first book.
It is also important to note, that I do not support or defend any of the ethical choices made or implied in this book, and if you find them controversial it is by design, to paint the character or fictional organization in a certain light. I leave it to you the reader to decide how you feel about the choice or policy made.
If you like magic this book is a new twist on that, it explores some scientific possibilities that may make magic not only feasible but likely. If you enjoy exploring some of the possibilities the future might hold this book takes a look at that as well. Though it should be mentioned that as of right now, these possibilities would require nano-technology and not paranormal energy to effect change to the matter of the universe. Once we know for sure, that telekinetic energy, and telepathy do not exist, then and only then can we say that the uses of it in this book are not possible. Until then anything can happen. The future is going to be an exciting place, I hope it lives up to even half of the possibilities that we see in scientific predictions and science fiction books like this one. I also hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Those of you that have not read the first one, you may want to, though I try to reintroduce the characters and situations of the last book as much as possible.
I cannot go into as much detail, so the new reader might find it hard to follow some of the plot lines. For those of you that have read the first book you will find some old friends and meet some new ones along the way. I apologize in advance to the reader of the last book, because both this introduction and the prologue are almost exactly the same as the last book, because I use them to introduce the world this book takes place in, and therefore had to go over it for the new reader. For those that have not read the first book and would like to, you will find a link in the ”Other Books By The Author” section. For discussions about this book or some of the ideas and technologies presented in it, please visit my blog SinJin Bane’s Tech Talk at the following address: