Tin Universe Monthly #4
Copyright 2015 Brian Williams
TIN UNIVERSE
The sale of this book without its cover….well, is, sort of, impossible since it really does not have a cover but let us go through the legal spray out anyways. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Hands up to you who have books like this in your collection? Now that I have put my hand down we can continue with the credits and copyright and legal and stuff that people just do not ever pay attention to unless it is pumping their own horn.
An Original Publication of System* Publishing, an Tin Universe book published by System*Publishing, a division of System*Productions, Melbourne, Florida. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead or living dead, is entirely and very much so in the coincidental.
Written/Edited by Brian C. Williams
Cover Artwork Pencils by Neil Jorge
Cover Digital Work by 74 Images
Author Photo by Nancy Collins
Tin Universe Logo by Vinny Bove
Any other logos by 74 Images
Tin Universe Monthly #4
The Dream Trail…. wait, maybe I shouldn’t start the story this way because any perception of time within The Dream Trail is…ok, that’s just a total bust. I’ll put a period there and just say that this happens within the place of dreams.
Everyone dreams and you will be told this again in the future as in Tin Universe #5; which is probably enough breaking of the third wall for a book and way more than enough for a story that’s not long enough to be a short story and barely the length for a vignette.
Some people dream of flying with Griffon Vultures; while others dream of walking within the Sagrada Famililia in Barcelona. The Sagrada Famililia is actually nothing like people think it is but the facts involve lots of math, a treaty with some parasites, and some really weird paintings.
Some of you also have dreams of falling and smoking cigarettes.
Those are fairly basic but still very powerful dream thoughts.
I won’t get into great detail about the really unusual things people dream about but just throw out some things you might want to or might not want to do a Google search on. Such as Narratophilia, Maieusophoria (I know someone once who was into that), Shokushu Goukan, Formicophilia, and I think that’s enough.
Me, I never think about The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife or the joy of a large bug touch. My dreams are formatted like TV soap episodes and badly written ones at that but with a splash of comic book flare.
If you know me, what else would you expect from me?
What we do with our dreams is way more important than what we do within our dreams. Dreams can be useful tools of stress relief, tools of refocus, or sources of untold inspiration and strength, but they can also haunt you like a corpse under the floorboards in the den.
By the way we don’t have floorboards or a den so no checking. Living on the third floor of an apartment building hinders your choices when it comes to body location hiding.
In The Dream Trail everyone can get their own piece of victory. It is the places of all dreams and all of it exists here all at once. It’s an opportunity for victory. Like most great things in life if you wish to find a goal completed here you have to work for it. The good news is the work you have to do sometimes will come very easy to certain individuals.
This interruption is not chronological.
Then again chronological is never categorical, even if they sound alike.
Well, they do to me?
Ok, get the fuck over yourself and keep reading. Tell me a dream that wasn’t really confusing so why shouldn’t writing about dreams be just as confusing.
Throughout history warmongers, rapists, and rulers use the words of peace like throwaway children. Every King or General who has come with a sword has also come with whispers and shouts of peace.
This subjugated city is called Dhaka, which is an old city name given to this city by its Queen after she came to power. Pushing away and destroying all sense of history these lands had before her seat of law this Queen has set out to not only rule the times of her reign but history and all the memories that lay within and have lived before her time and after.
The Queen has placed technology underground within the world, only used by her arms and legs to be the inner skin of the kingdoms body.
The outer skin is how she has dealt with the inspiration for human beings, the arts. Her law dictates that only the art in her gaze and fashioned to her approval shall exist.
This city of a dream which was once one of the largest cities in the world is now the only city still standing anywhere. Civilization and the buildings of humanity have all but tumbled into ash.
The Queen once said, “I will put an end to all the things that stand against my vision of peace.” And that she did. She manipulated and controlled first individuals, then regions, and moved on to countries, and dropped death and confusion into a world ready to be exploited to the fullest strength of their personal stupidity.
The city’s bordered in areas are 55,598 square miles, 144,000 if you think in kilometers. I never think in kilometers, I’m American and don’t have to.
The people of Dhaka live to work, to sustain the movement and strength of the city as a whole, all around the image of The Queen’s will. Besides work they only have one other task in life and that is of tribute, tribute within their every thought and action.
Reminds me of a lot of religions.
Or oppression of any sort for that matter.
The crowds outside The Cathedral of the Queen know their place and how to survive in it and thus they were happy as to the circumstances of their lives under her rule. Happy as far as being alive under her thumb is better than being dead under her heel.
I once dated someone like that.
He didn’t wear heels though.
Within the cathedral, on the throne carved for her by a group of those who once stood against her, the Westminster bunch, their rebellion though was squashed when they got too creative with their endeavors and now many of their bones are her greatest sign of power. The rest are ready to take a sword in the chest for her, ready to wipe the sweat from her breasts is asked.
She sits upon her throne and looks out to those who follow her every word like lepers to an itch. There remain now only levels of slavery for those who are under the stance of her power.
She is guarded at all times by her eight legged elite soldiers. She knows she is safe from challenges to her rule of any kind not by the force she controls but by the despair she has created.
So true power is in her hands.
Music plays and each representative from each level of rule come forward to her to ask for assistance with their problems. She turns them away one by one and drinks the milk from her riches in a cup made from the skull of an alien who tried to stand against her once.
Hanging upside down over her throne chair directly above the head of the Queen is the betrayer who she always knew would try to rise up against her someday but she always kept her close to cut off her goals when she would need to.
And after they dream, everyone wakes up.
This one has awakened to wet sheets from the joy of control, the bliss of supremacy.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dhaka was a Cut Chapter from The Past Forward (Tin Universe Monthly #6). It along with School For The Blind (Tin Universe Monthly #7) was originally part of the book but I cut them because I thought they stalled the beginning of the book. I liked them though and decided to u
se them to promote two of the main catalysts for the book as the release date of the book approached.
Both of these as I said were released before the book came out. At that time I was publishing through LuLu and their cover issues came to give me a headache every time I published something so I didn’t use the covers I had commissioned. Now for the first time you get to see the covers I originally meant for both of these stories.
Dhaka gives so many hints at the overall structure and future of the Tin Universe but mainly it’s meant for you to get inside the head of the main antagonist of The Past Forward.
Thanks for reading,
Brian C. Williams
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