Not liking lulu much tonight folks. They (not we) screwed up the proof copies of The Forsaken and Children of the Gods so we’re having to get another round of proof copies assuming they can correct the problem.

Other than the first four pages missing on both books (you know, titles and copyright notices, nobody reads those anyway, so why worry?), the books look fine so we’re SO close to releasing both of these but we didn’t want to inconvenience anybody so through an abundance of caution, we’re letting lulu.com give it another go.

Could somebody please start up sulu.com instead so I can just say: Warp Factor 4?

No, don’t bother searching, it’s an unused domain.

So here’s a freebie to tide you over — some of you may have seen this before (or an earlier draft).

My prediction? Debate number one is over the use of the word…Dave.

The silence had presence in the room, one more player in a difficult scene. The chatter of electronic equipment measuring signs of life was absent, with nothing to report. Two sources of breathing were audible but a kinder universe would have offered three. There was no discounting the primary emotion in the room. For all of the de-tached, clinical approach to their labors, they worked under a pall of grief, a subtle tension in their voices and mannerisms quietly expressing to the other that this was painful work, work best left to strangers, but unfortunately, no strangers were available.
Helena Russell allowed her gaze to wander to Mathias a mo-ment and seeing that he was preoccupied, she allowed a gloved finger to curl under her own eye and wipe away a tear, one she was fully ready to blame on fatigue if asked. Sometimes, loss could step around the mask. It was human, it was normal, but it was not part of what she could share.
“Heart is normal, too,” Mathias said. “Like everything else. No damage to any tissues. Just the brain.”
“Yes,” she said, with nothing to add to his observation.
The data recorder playback had been viewed repeatedly, re-vealing no explanation for what had happened. One moment, he had been fine, alert, intent on his task. The next, his body had spasmed as if live electrical current were running through him, seizures of such apparent ferocity that his body had grown rigid, and then finally, spent. All movement, all life, had left him. No ex-ternal force had been involved, at least none that could be per-ceived on the playback. It was like watching a murder performed by spirits.
Mathias looked into her eyes. “You know more about that interface of his than I do. And I’m not a computer expert. He’d never experienced any physiological effects before. Why was this time different?”
“Some latent abnormality?” she said. “The trauma in his brain tissue is profound. There are cells in there that just plain ruptured. Almost liquefied.”
“No evidence of drugs,” Mathias said. “No foreign substances at all. Data on a wire doesn’t do things like this.”
“It’s still electronic pulses,” she said. “If there’s enough of it, it can cause damage.”
“But there’s no reason it should have,” Mathias said. “It’s wrong,” he said. “Dave was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die like this.”
“He was doing what he loved.”
“He didn’t love this. He was afraid of it,” Mathias said.
She looked at him. “Then that made it almost heroic. Facing down what he feared.”
“At the cost of his life?” Mathias said, stripping off his gloves. “He essentially died of an electrical overload. From an electrical source that’s generally so low it can barely light a bulb.”
“How he died doesn’t diminish how he lived.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Mathias said. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything else here. Some…freak electrical surge.”
She nodded. “It seems so wrong. Dying alone. Like this. With no apparent cause.”
He reached over and squeezed Kano’s cold hand. “We’ll miss you, Dave.”
Beside them, the computer only whirred.

That’s the first page or two. Hopefully in the next week or two, you’ll get to read page 3.

Cheers.

BL