Nevermet Press's Blog

Although Nevermet Press has “officially closed” – that doesn’t mean I’ve shut off my own creative brain. Quite the contrary. About three years ago I started working on my own RPG campaign setting. It was originally called “Loaerth & Feywyrd” … Continue reading →

Today we announce that Nevermet Press is closed until further notice.

After over three years of running the blog and publishing a few select RPG and fiction products, I simply do not have the time to continue to working on new projects, the blog, or maintaining our existing catalog. It’s been great fun and I have learned a great deal about the gaming industry and “indie” publishing along the way – but sadly I must close Nevermet Press. My professional career and familial responsibilities simply no longer leave enough bandwidth in my daily life to maintain Nevermet Press in a reasonable way. Perhaps in the future time and energy will find me again, but until then I bid you farewell.

Effective immediately all products in the Nevermet Press catalog will no longer be sold to through any distributors. Termination of sales orders have been issued to Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, DTRPG, etc – so it may take a couple weeks for those orders to be processed. I have a pretty hefty collection of print books still in my “in-house” inventory, so I may sell those on eBay individually – but that remains to be seen. Truth be told – sales have been abysmal across the board for over a year, so there’s not much motivation to even try to sell the print books I do have on hand.

Nevermet Press is also no longer able to actively maintain the RPG Blog Carnival Archive, and I want to encourage another, established member of the RPG Blogging Community to take the RPG Blog Carnival Archive and maintain it themselves.

Our website, nevermetpress.com, will remain online but be slowly edited/trimmed down as I have time to do so. I’ll also still be tweeting occasionally on Twitter – so chat me up over there as well. As far as the site is concerned, I will be removing all advertising, catalog information, and other “peripheral” aspects of the site first. My goal is to leave the blogging content and short stories up for as long as I can, and to keep the domain name for the foreseeable future. This also leaves me the option to kickstart things again in the future if ever I find the time.

I want to thank everyone who has contributed to Nevermet Press over the years. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve made some real friends and worked with some great people. A huge thank you goes out to our readers and fans who have supported us as well. Without you –  nothing would have been possible.

Best regards and best wishes to everyone — Jonathan.

Visit the original post, Nevermet Press is Closed, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Maria Dahvana Headley

Queen of Kings, the debut novel by Maria Dahvana Headley (Dutton Adult, 2011), tells the story of Cleopatra after her infamous suicide. The premise of the novel is that Cleopatra did not actually kill herself, but rather performed a ritual that linked her with the goddess Sekhmet. Though the world believes her dead, Cleopatra lives on and sets about getting revenge on those who caused her husband and children to suffer. Blending real historical events with elements of the supernatural, this book is a wonderful piece of historical fiction.

The book features nearly a dozen different point of view characters, including Cleopatra, the shade of Mark Antony, the Roman Emperor Augustus, and the Roman general Marcus Agrippa. Despite the frequent changes between the different points of view, the narrative hums along briskly, and it never feels overwhelming to deal with so many characters. Each character is written with a distinct and clear voice, and Headley juggles them all masterfully. All of the characters are also exceptionally complex, with their varied motives intertwining throughout the story.

As a former student of history, I really enjoyed the mix of history with the supernatural. While Cleopatra’s Egypt is not a topic I have studied extensively, I have always been interested in Egypt, as well as having a bit of background in the history of the Roman Empire. I frequently found myself wanting to stop reading to look up more information, in an attempt to determine what was historical and what was the author’s imagination, but the flow of the narrative was too compelling to allow me to put the book down long enough to do this research. Instead, I waited until the end of the book. Headley includes a brief afterword that details some of the interesting historical facts that she came across while writing the book, and a little bit of reading online cleared up some of the remaining questions I had about the history behind the story.

My only real complaint about the book is that when you have a large cast of point of view characters, some of these points of view will come from the ostensible villains. Although Headley did an excellent job of not vilifying any of the characters, there are bound to be some characters that a reader simply doesn’t like. I found myself less interested in the chapters when Augustus was the point of view character, simply because I did not find him to be a very sympathetic character. This improved as the book went on, but I feel as though I may have missed a bit by disliking him so strongly. (I also fully acknowledge that at least a portion of my dislike of this character comes from having watched the HBO series Rome several years ago.)

Overall, I very much enjoyed reading Queen of Kings. Most chapters are short, making this a great book to read if you can only fit in a brief period of reading each day. There is quite a bit of violence in the book, but the descriptions generally keep this from being too alarmingly graphic. Nonetheless, this is a book for adults to read, and I would hesitate to recommend it to teens or younger readers.

You can visit Maria Dahvana Headley’s website here.

Related stories on Nevermet Press:

Clockwork Reviews: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente
Clockwork Reviews: Huntress by Malinda Lo
Clockwork Reviews: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Clockwork Reviews: Dead Iron — The Age of Steam, by Devon Monk
Clockwork Reviews: The Hunt of the Unicorn, by C. C. Humphreys

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Queen of Kings by Maria Dahvana Headley, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Last night I came dangerously close to forcing my will onto my group of players. Every DM comes face-to-face with this quandary at some point or another, whether they are running their own homebrew adventure or a canned, pre-made one.

In my case, it’s a homebrew adventure that was percolating in my mind even before I came back to D&D after a long absence. In fact, it was the reason I came back. I’ve been leading my group towards this very point in the adventure ever since we began last summer. We played through an altered Keep on the Shadowfell in order to learn 4th Edition and to shake the rust off, but other than that this is the adventure I concocted, inspired by Jack White’s Dream of Eagles series of novels.

The plan was for the characters to develop a sense of post-apocalyptic dysfunction regarding Faerûn, and to inspire them to want to build a society from scratch, based on the principles of people-power and the desire to do good. As I mentioned earlier, this vision was inspired by the Dream of Eagles series, where post-Rome Britain is in chaos and a group of former legionnaires take it upon themselves to establish order, starting with a small colony in Western Britain which they call Camulod.

And so for the past year I’ve been working on instilling this sense of chaos, of evil winning everywhere, of material gain being the sole motivation of every organized group. I used a set of devices to convey these conditions.

In Darromar, successful businesses were being acquired in relative secret by a shadowy group called WritMarque Holdings. In most cases, the people were tricked into selling these properties, only to be rehired at poverty level wages to “manage” the holdings.


In Winterhaven, a group of children were kidnapped to be sacrificed to Orcus (the altered Keep on the Shadowfell), where the children DID die before our PCs could rescue them, but the group managed to destroy the evil cult. It left a whole generation of future Winterhaven residents dead, a death sentence for the town.


In Mistham, the town’s water supply was being poisoned by unknown sources, and the village had been thrown into abject poverty out of having to sell everything of value to purchase clean water. Our adventuring group uncovered the plot for what it was: the water was being brought in to be sold by the same group poisoning the water supply.

All of these events were linked, and that’s a storyline slowly coming to fruition as the group uncovers more clues.

I gifted the group with a trojan horse of sorts. One of the characters in the party is an eccentric wizard who is a follower of Erathis (Goddess of Society). After one of their many good deeds in helping the village of Mistham, Erathis gifted the group with a large magical ballista. The ballista, after inspection, was extremely powerful. The implication was clear: perform good deeds for society, and be rewarded. Such a weapon would not be accepted by a small village like Mistham due to the unwanted attention it would garner, nor could it just be dumped off to anyone. I was leading my group to the idea of The Colony.

Last night after the Mistham storyline was wrapping up, I decided to explicitly reveal the idea of establishing the colony. I did this by using the Reeve of Mistham, Jethro Gallant, a character the PCs had grown very familiar with and who was a friend to their cause (and very grateful to them for saving his village). Gallant waxed poetic of his former existence as an adventurer, and how he had botched his attempt of establishing a safe community. He rued the choice in location for Mistham, arguing that by settling next to a major road, too many shady characters wandered through his village. No, if he were to start over, and gosh was he ever jealous of the group’s youth and opportunity, he would pick a better spot away from prying eyes and start small. He would recruit talented tradespeople with the right disposition, and build a town truly built around principles of common interest, generosity and fending off evil. All of this took place in a discussion around the table, as in a fireside chat.

If you’re still reading this post, it’s probably because the theme interests you or you simply want to know how it turned out. Remember, I started out by stating that I almost forced my will on the party. There were four PCs around the table, and two of them were enthusiastic about the idea of establishing their own town, which was subsidized by their adventuring. One was apathetic, and one was downright scornful of the idea.

I was gutted; I had expected them to love the idea as much as I did.

Here I was, months down a road that led to this reveal, and I was meeting stern resistance. The main opposition to the idea was how much work was involved, and why would they even want to do that? Why not give the magical ballista to the people of Mistham or Winterhaven to help them rebuild in safety? No, came the answer from my other players, an item of such power would attract all kind of undesirables intent on securing it for themselves. No, the ballista had been god-given to them for a purpose, and here their purpose was revealed!

The discussion ran a long time. At least 45 minutes. It was a good debate, in which I was careful to steer away from frustration or confrontation between the players.

All I could think of was that in wanting to give the group a sense of meaning, togetherness, and a capital “C” Cause, all I had done was create a rift! I’d inadvertently discovered this group’s wedge issue! Here was a group that had always agreed on the next course of action, arguing now because of my interjection.

Plus, I’ll admit I was a little pissed. This was SUCH a good storyline for them, those in opposition just didn’t realize it! And that’s when it clicked. It’s not about me. I was reminded of Michael Shay’s excellent Sly Flourish’s DM Tips, where they urge you to “Build your stories from the actions of your players.” The players need to be the masters of their destiny, so I now had to take what they were telling me and incorporating it into the storyline.

My DM ego took a small hit, but if I can weave their desires into mine and make all the members of the party happy with the solution, it will be a grand achievement in my DM career. I think I know how to do it, as well. Stay tuned…

How about you? How have you reacted to PCs who take your story into unexpected places?

Related stories on Nevermet Press:

Back From The (Un)Dead: How a 15-Year D&D Hiatus Ended
Time-Shifting: A Revenant Crashes My Birthday D&D Session
Your Character’s Worst Fear
Slumbering Heroes – A Super-Powered Campaign Setting
Statblocks : They’re just numbers on a page.

Visit the original post, Branching Out: When Your PCs Refuse To Follow the Leader…, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Last night I came dangerously close to forcing my will onto my group of players. Every DM comes face-to-face with this quandary at some point or another, whether they are running their own homebrew adventure or a canned pre-made one.

In my case, it’s a homebrew adventure that was percolating in my mind even before I came back to D&D after a long absence. In fact, it was the reason I came back. I’ve been leading my group towards this very point in the adventure ever since we began last summer. We played through an altered Keep on the Shadowfell in order to learn 4th Edition and to shake the rust off, but other than that this is the adventure I concocted, inspired by Jack White’s Dream of Eagles series of novels.

The plan was for the characters to develop a sense of post-apocalyptic dysfunction regarding Faerûn, and to inspire them to want to build a society from scratch, based on the principles of people-power and the desire to do good. As I mentioned earlier, this vision was inspired by the Dream of Eagles series, where post-Rome Britain is in chaos and a group of former legionnaires take it upon themselves to establish order, starting with a small colony in Western Britain which they call Camulod.

And so for the past year, I’ve been working on instilling this sense of chaos, of evil winning everywhere, of material gain being the sole motivation of every organized group. I used a set of devices to convey these conditions.

In Darromar, successful businesses were being acquired in relative secret by a shadowy group called WritMarque Holdings. In most cases, the people were tricked into selling these properties, only to be rehired at poverty level wages to “manage” the holdings.


In Winterhaven, a group of children were kidnapped to be sacrificed to Orcus (the altered Keep on the Shadowfell), where the children DID die before our PC’s could rescue them, but the group managed to destroy the evil cult. It left a whole generation of future Winterhaven residents dead, a death sentence for the town.


In Mistham, the town’s water supply was being poisoned by unknown sources, and the village had been thrown into abject poverty out of having to sell everything of value to purchase clean water. Our adventuring group uncovered the plot for what it was: the water was being brought in to be sold by the same group poisoning the water supply.

All of these events were linked, and that’s a storyline slowly coming to fruition as the group uncovers more clues.

Also, I gifted the group with a trojan horse of sorts. One of the characters in the party is an eccentric wizard who is a follower of Erathis (Goddess of Society). After one of their many good deeds in helping the village of Mistham, Erathis gifted the group with a large magical ballista. The ballista, after inspection, was extremely powerful. The implication was clear: perform good deeds for society, and be rewarded. Such a weapon would not be accepted by a small village like Mistham due to the unwanted attention it would garner, nor could it just be dumped off to anyone. I was leading my group to the idea of The Colony.

Last night after the Mistham storyline was wrapping up, I decided to explicitly reveal the idea of establishing the colony. I did this by using the Reeve of Mistham, Jethro Gallant, a character the PC’s had grown very familiar with and who was a friend to their cause (and very grateful to them for saving his village). Gallant waxed poetic of his former existence as an adventurer, and how he had botched his attempt of establishing a safe community. He rued the choice in location for Mistham, arguing that by settling next to a major road, too many shady characters wandered through his village. No, if he were to start over, and gosh was he ever jealous of the group’s youth and opportunity, he would pick a better spot away from prying eyes and start small. He would recruit talented tradespeople with the right disposition, and build a town truly built around principles of common interest, generosity and fending off evil. All of this took place in a discussion around the table, as in a fireside chat.

If you’re still reading this post, it’s probably because the theme interests you or you simply want to know how it turned out. Remember, I started out by stating that I almost forced my will on the party. There were four PC’s around the table, and two of them were enthusiastic about the idea of establishing their own town, subsidized by their adventuring. One was apathetic, and one was downright scornful of the idea.

I was gutted; I had expected them to love the idea as much as I did.

Here I was, months down a road that led to this reveal, and I was meeting stern resistance. The main opposition to the idea was how much work was involved, and why would they even want to do that? Why not give the magical ballista to the people of Mistham or Winterhaven to help them rebuild in safety? No, came the answer from my other players, an item of such power would attract all kind of undesirables intent on securing it for themselves. No, the ballista had been god-given to them for a purpose, and here their purpose was revealed!

The discussion ran a long time. At least 45 minutes. It was a good debate, which I was careful to steer away from frustration or confrontation between the players.

All I could think of was that in wanting to give the group a sense of meaning, of togetherness, a capital “C” Cause, all I had done was create a rift! I’d inadvertently discovered this group’s wedge issue! Here was a group that had always agreed on the next course of action, arguing now because of my interjection.

Plus, I’ll admit I was a little pissed. This was SUCH a good storyline for them, those in opposition just didn’t realize it! And that’s when it clicked. It’s not about me. I was reminded of Michael Shay’s excellent Sly Flourish’s DM Tips, where they urge you to “Build your stories from the actions of your players.” The players need to be the masters of their destiny, so I now had to take what they were telling me and incorporating it into the storyline.

My DM ego took a small hit, but if I can weave their desires into mine and make all the members of the party happy with the solution, it will be a grand achievement in my DM career. I think I know how to do it, as well. Stay tuned…

How about you? How have you reacted to PC’s who take your story into unexpected places?

Related stories on Nevermet Press:

Back From The (Un)Dead: How a 15-Year D&D Hiatus Ended
Time-Shifting: A Revenant Crashes My Birthday D&D Session
Your Character’s Worst Fear
Slumbering Heroes – A Super-Powered Campaign Setting
Hunting the Beast: The Real Reason I Left D&D (Only To Return)

Visit the original post, Branching Out: When Your PC’s Refuse To Follow the Leader…, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Thrusts of Justice, by Matt Youngmark

Thrusts of Justice by Matt Youngmark plugs deep into childhood nostalgia with this choose-your-own-adventure book written for adults. Set in a unique (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) superhero universe, this book gives a laid-off journalist from Cleveland the chance to step into the role of superhero just in time to save the world from certain doom. The journalist, of course, is “you.”

The book opens with you and your fellow unemployed journalists drowning your sorrows while discussing the possibility of launching your own news website. Your drunken plans to form a startup are thrown off course when a disembodied voice warns of impending doom just before an explosion draws your attention outside. There you see a smoking crater in the middle of the street where three figures are visible. The supervillain known as the Ox has just broken through the wall of a bank with unmarked bags of cash. The dark and ominous hero known as the Nightwatchman slinks off from the scene. And at the bottom of the crater is the legendary Cosmic Guardian who had disappeared in the 90s. You know any one of these three could be a great news lead, but where could it lead?

If you like strange powers from radioactive meteorites, continue on to the next paragraph. If you like brooding antiheroes like Batman, skip to the paragraph after that. If you like interstellar police forces, like the Green Lantern Corps or the Nova Corps, continue on to the third paragraph after this.

Trying to find out what Ox is doing in Cleveland, you sneak closer to the scene of the crime. But rather than finding clues, you fall into the crater and black out. When you wake up, you have strange goo-like powers that allow you to change shape, walk on walls and hurl goo. Does great power come with great responsibility? Or a great opportunity for profit?

Trying to follow Nightwatchman leads you to one of his secret lairs. There you find Nightwatchman’s suit abandoned. Donning it, you find yourself able to pose as the dark hero. Though you lack his martial skill, you have access to his wonderful toys and can use them to figure out what happened to the real Nightwatchman.

Trying to follow the Cosmic Guardian, you find him dying. He passes on his armored superhero suit to you, Can you figure out what the Cosmic Guardian was doing? Can you figure out how to operate the suit? Can you do this before the other Cosmic Guardians catch up with you?

I went through the effort to read every branching path in the book I could. I think I got all 90 of them, but I might have missed some. The timeline and cosmology of the book remains the same throughout, it is simply the course you chart through the narrative that changes how things unfold. The story is told with a dose of snarky humor and regular nods to comic book tropes.

As said before, this is a choose-your-own-adventure book for adults. This mostly means that it uses some strong language, though nothing that you couldn’t hear on prime time television. It also has no qualms about giving the reader a hard time about some of their choices. My favorite was when you avoid being a superhero and the section opens with, “You’re reading a choose-your-own-ending book about superheroes, and immediately decide not to become one?”

All told, the book is just plain fun. I read the book through the Kindle app on my phone, which added hyperlinks and a “back” button to make navigating the different branches much easier. And, in fact, the author encourages you to do so. The primary risk I could see for readers is that they just don’t find the author that funny. I laughed pretty hard through the book, but humor is subjective and this might not appeal to everyone. The Chooseomatic website offers a free 70-page sample of Youngmark’s previous book, Zombocalypse Now, so you can decide for yourself if you enjoy the style. 

Related stories on Nevermet Press:

Clockwork Reviews: Dead Iron — The Age of Steam, by Devon Monk
Clockwork Reviews: Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal
Clockwork Reviews: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente
Clockwork Reviews: Android: Free Fall by William H Keith
Clockwork Reviews: Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson

Visit the original post, Clockwork Reviews: Thrusts of Justice by Matt Youngmark, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Apple Eddelman squeezed the hand of her childhood friend, Zodi.

Zodi would never again come out of this coma.

Kayla’s actions to initially splice into the Technocrat intranet had unleashed a prototype of the virus.  That prototype virus is just what dematerialized Gimli (Zodi’s avatar), and trapped his consciousness in virtual space.

In only recent days, Apple sealed Zodi’s fate forever.  Apple did not know the full consequences of her actions at the time.  She forced her hand to stop the computer virus from becoming widespread and helped Kayla destroy the mainframe server.  That same mainframe server stored Zodi’s conscious mind, and now it was gone, forever.

Apple clenched one of Zodi’s fingers and tears welled up in her heavily made-up eyes.  She never would have agreed to destroy the mainframe had she known at the time just what personal cost it would have had for her.  She’d let a thousand, hell, tens of thousands suffer Zodi’s fate if it meant that Apple could have a chance to rescue him.

To make matters worse, the resistance did not have sufficient records about the Oathed Technocratic virus and the only physical evidence now lay useless across the floors of Walls Tower.  The news stations went haywire.  Representative Arthur Bachman had asked the President for emergency NDAA intervention in the Mega-City district of Harrisonburg.

The President granted the request from Congress and the resistance had learned that the General in charge of the occupation force had strong connections to Representative Bachman.  It seemed, to the resistance, that Bachman ruled his district like a dictator.

The weeks to come would prove bloody for the people of Harrisonburg.  The same could be said for Kayla, Apple, and Jarred.

Confined to a wheelchair, Jarred pivoted around and made his way across his room to the window: the window that Kayla, the love of his life had shattered.  The window shattering seemed so long ago now.  In truth only months passed.

Kayla sat in a brand new recliner, leaning back in comfortable weariness, watching events unveil on the news.

Apple had just arrived moments before.  She leaned against the table and surfed the virtual world nervously.  The back pack at her side brimmed with several abnormal possessions for Apple..

Apple let out a long sigh as she shut down her connection to cyberspace.  She normally at least listened to streams, but this moment needed her full attention.  She reached into her back pack and the possession at the top slipped into her left hand.

Apple stood erect and leveled the pistol at Kayla, “Ahem.”

Kayla opened her right eye and saw the hand gun out of the corner of her eye.  “What the hell are you doing, Apple?  Point that thing somewhere else, not funny!”

Apple focused on the here and now only, “I’m pointing this thing exactly where I want it to be pointed.”

Jarred spun the wheel chair around, “Dude!  Apple!  Stop this!”

Apple gulped, but she did not hesitate, “My friend, Zodi, the whole reason I went on this crusade.  He’s dead and gone forever now!  You put him in a coma!  You!  That splicing you did… then… then when… we destroyed the main frame.  He was in there!  Now he’s gone… FOREVER!”  Apple grasped the gun with both hands now and aimed at Kayla.  Her hands shook, but her aim was still fairly steady.

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?  Do you know how many fucking people we saved?  I’m sorry!  Just put the damn gun down!  There is no reason that we have to do this!”  Kayla waved her hands in front of her face and leaned forward in the recliner.

Jarred wheeled forward into the girl’s peripheral vision.  “Woah!  Apple.  Let’s talk about this.  We’ve been through so much together.  Don’t let it end this way.  Virtual space is not absolute.  We could still find him!”

“I can feel it.  I know he’s gone… FOREVER!”  Apple depressed the trigger.

BANG!  Kayla clutched near her heart and toppled over.  Apple stood silent and straight.  Jarred cried out in disbelief.  He held his right hand up from its concealed position by the wheelchair handle.  There was a gun in his hand.  It had been there the whole time.

He leveled the gun at Apple.  He just watched the girl who he had fallen in love with gunned down before his eyes in his home!  Now he could take revenge!

Jarred leveled the gun at Apple and pulled the trigger.

BANG!  Apple flinched and cried.  Jarred squealed in frustration.

“Get the hell out of here! GO!”  Jarred yelled at the stunned girl.

The bullet hole in the far wall formed a tunnel to which Jarred focused all his pain and suffering.

Apple tried to stutter out a statement and Jarred screamed at her again.  She dropped the gun there and left all of her possessions.  She ran like she did not think it was possible to run in the real world.  She didn’t stop running until she got to her car.

***

After the cops were done going over his place… and removing the body, Jarred finally found a moment to reflect.  He let out a long mournful sigh as he found himself alone again, with just his virtual interface to keep him company.  Jarred logged in to escape the troubled real world.

After some searching, loading, and travelling, Jarred stood upon a rocky ledge, overlooking a beautiful beach with water so clear and so blue that he could have been viewing an old vacation advertisement.  The reconstruction struck him with awe.  He was old enough to remember these kinds of scenic views.

Jarred’s eyes fell upon a strange looking woman with bright, golden blonde hair and a salt saturated dress that clung to her skin.  “Hello?”

The woman regarded Jarred with a warm smile and approached him with a saunter that couldn’t be replicated in reality.  “I’m Goldie.”

“Hi.  Your avatar is rather unique.  Is it from a game that isn’t out yet?”  Jarred put out a hand to shake Goldie’s.

Goldie held her hand out, “It’s not an avatar, really.  In a way, this is me.  The only way you could perceive me in virtual space.”

“Huh?”

“I’m a VI, you know, Virtual Interface.  Though, I think I’ve evolved into something more.”

“Just from that statement, I’d say you’re right.”

“I’m sorry about Kayla… and Apple.”

“How’d you know…”

“I’ve been following you for some time now, practically could have reached out and touched you.  Don’t be surprised.  I gave you all those leads from the inside.”

Jarred turned away from Goldie as a flash of anger burned through his being.  “You know, that information got my girlfriend…” Jarred trailed off as he thought about the lack of control VI’s tended to have over their own actions.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” Goldie approached Jarred and put a hand on his shoulder.  “There is much work to be done.  Come with me.”

The real world held very little for Jarred now.  He climbed down the rock face, following Goldie’s lead.  He never woke up again.

Related stories on Nevermet Press:

The Trivium Proportion, Part 4 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips
The Trivium Proportion, Part 2 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips
The Trivium Proportion, Part 3 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips
The Trivium Proportion, Part 6 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips
The Trivium Proportion, Part 7 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips

Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 12 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Goldie reached up and got a strong hand hold on a rock outcropping, nudging the rock to test its strength.  It was hard to pull herself up over the jagged ledge wearing a flowing dress, but she managed all the same.

***

Detective Tyrone Higgins frowned as he planted his face into the palms of his overworked hands.  Here he stood, in another FDA office, arresting another traitor in federal employ.  Something connected these criminals other than their affiliation in the same agency.  If he did not find that connection before too long, this resistance movement would gain enough momentum that standard law enforcement would not be enough to stop it.

Tyrone had grown concerned since transferring to Harrisonburg that the mega-city would soon be headed for military jurisdiction.  He would do everything in his power to prevent that from happening.

Tyrone keyed his gauntlet display and his Virtual Intelligence, Theresa appeared on the screen.  Tyrone spoke after a long pause, “Theresa, I need you to run some numbers on the situation in Harrisonburg.  The Query: How many public incidents and law enforcement failures before the President enacts NDAA enforcement powers over the city?”

The image of Theresa on the screen winked at Tyrone, “My processor is already working to compute your answer.  Status will update periodically.  You should also know, the VI you asked me to monitor…”

Tyrone’s eye slanted queerly at the image of the Theresa VI, “What is it?”

“She exhibited some erratic behavior again, sending messages outside of the agency.”

Tyrone shook his head as he reviewed the contents of the message.  This VI had a non-standard agenda.  Technically, VI’s followed a very strict set of programmed rules.  That would mean that the programmer went out of his or her way to change the operating goals of this particular VI.  Reviewing the VI proved another fact, the Goldie VI’s creator modeled the VI after a real human.  Tyrone could possibly use that to track him down.

Theresa pinged Tyrone with the answer to another query.  After reviewing the VI transmissions, Tyrone felt it was obvious where the resistance would hit next.  He downloaded the specs from the message. Now, the time had come to head this potential catastrophe off at the pass, at Walls Tower.  The resistance was playing with fire, and only Tyrone could stop them from burning down the house.

***

Jarred worried about Kayla and Apple, how they would communicate without him, as he lay in the hospital bed.  He supposed that everyone probably worried a good deal about his survival, being that the artificial components on his heart had been stopped by the EMP.  At least that freak of an assassin wouldn’t bother anyone anymore.

***

Relief and comfort coursed through Kayla after viewing the plan of action Barry had prepared.  Kayla would work alone in the real world, while Apple handled some more virtual assignments.  If the resistance exposed what the Oathed Technocrats were up to now, the authorities would not be able to ignore them any longer.  All those wealthy and powerful men’s doors would receive knocks from the FBI with warrants for their arrests in hand.

The resistance would finally prove itself as a valuable asset to the public good, and, perhaps, the corruption in the government would be rooted and leave a gutted shell of only those who cared.

Kayla crept through the service hatch into the tunnel that led to the secured server facility of the largest, most impressive building in all of Harrisonburg, Virginia.  The reason for Harrisonburg becoming a mega-city was Walls Corporation, which ruled much of virtual space from the upper floors of this building.  The building’s architecture defied the laws of physics similar to buildings in the virtual world.  Walls Towers, built before Kayla’s birth, was known the world over.  The eccentric CEO went through a dozen groups of engineers that said what he wanted couldn’t be done.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the CEO, Fred Walls, hired a boy, just out of highschool.  That high school boy was the only creative genius that could think outside the box enough to create this unconventional design.

If Kayla got caught in here, her mission would be a failure. She would be thrown in a dark, deep prison, but, in three days, the virus program would come online and many of the people in cyberspace would effectively die in the real world.  During the last couple of days, Kayla wondered if she really wanted the Technocrats to fail.  This virus would be a wakeup call to all of the people that survived, to hopefully focus on the real world again.  Kayla imagined all of the masses protesting outside government buildings to find a solution to the “super” weed.  She longed to walk the countryside and enjoy the natural wonders of Earth.

Kayla slipped into the server room, which should have been empty according to Apple’s hacking of the security system of Walls Towers.  It was not empty, however, as there was another investigator hard at work trying to crack several mysteries of his own.

Kayla knew that she needed to act before the unknown man, who was not a security guard or maintenance man of Walls Corporation, drew his gun and ended her.  The other person must have been alerted by something; Kayla could see the gun in his hand.  She skulked down the next set of servers, each their own mountain island in a sea of office doldrums.  She waited for a moment behind the next set of those server mountains.

Kayla rushed into Tyrone unexpectedly from the side and knocked the gun from his hand.  He reacted quickly and stayed on his feet.  Tyrone tried to swing his heavy gauntleted arm around to throttle Kayla, but he did not get the gauntlet around in time to quickly end the close combat.  Kayla grasped Tyrone’s gauntleted forearm and their other hands each grasped each other, fingers locked around each other’s.

“Look.  You can’t do this!  You do and the consequences will be worse than you believe.  I’m not talkin’ bout for you either.  I mean all those people out there you are doin’ this for.  The hammer is about to smack.”  Tyrone said under the strain of trying to win the grapple.

Kayla ended the grapple with a combination knee to the groin and head butt to Tyrone’s nose.  He sailed back into another server stack and slid down.  Kayla knew that it probably would not be enough to knock him out; it wasn’t that easy.  She descended upon him and planted blow after blow on his face and chest.  Finally, Kayla convinced herself that the bloody pulp of a man would stay out of action.  Kayla returned to finding and destroying the target mainframe.

The man, Tyrone, with the bloody face could not even will himself to move a muscle.  His face looked like an unrecognizable mess like a Halloween horror mask.

***

Apple loaded her usual avatar, pink spikey haired post-apocalyptic punk girl with a shot gun in hand.

Apple imagined a totally different future.  If cyberspace was alive and could care for itself, none of these problems would be more than hiccups until the antibodies destroyed them.  Her world, the virtual world, needed to be saved from the Oathed Technocrats’ plan so that human evolution could continue in the direction she believed human evolution was destined for.  Apple felt that she was an alien on the planet Earth; she saw herself as part of the destiny, part of the evolution, beyond the physical world of Earth and into the new dimension of virtual space.

Apple finished her hack pack installations on the Walls Tower security feeds.  Kayla was now safe from discovery.  Now, only one task remained for Apple.  To stop the Technocrats from spreading this insane entrapment virus, Apple had to prevent the download of the virus to back-up servers.

She walked toward the tunnel that led from the server containing the virus to the outside virtual world.  If the data stopped here, in the tunnel at her position, the resistance would be successful.

Packets of data dropped out of the storage devices and formed into bullet shape cars. Apple watched from the tunnel vantage point as the cars started hovering down the long pathway that led to the backup servers.  Apple knew she could not let a single one of those packets out or the mission might be a failure.

Apple stepped into the middle of the data tunnel and charged at the front most bullet car in the convoy.  The car slammed into her and any normal avatar would have been shredded from the impact.  However, Apple’s tough assed avatar survived the impact with only minimal injuries.  She clung to the front of the car through no fault of her own, the momentum pushing against her keeping her attached like a victim in a spider’s web.  She pushed the muzzle of the shot gun directly against the front of the bullet car and unloaded every round she had.

The car exploded in a brilliant flash, again the Tough as Nails avatar pulled through, but not without mental strain upon Apple and physical damage to the avatar.  The remaining cars smashed into the back of each other after being dislodged by the explosion and subsequent shrapnel.

***

Finally, Goldie reached the top of the cliff.  The long, thin dress clung to her skin from the salty misty sea water that saturated the air.  She stood defiant and satisfied on a small outcropping covered in tufts of beach grasses.  Goldie looked out across the turbulent sea.  A storm brewed the water and clouds on the horizon, that familiar feeling and smell of a storm front filled the air.

Apple watched through the eyes of her avatar as it finally returned to functionality from the blast of the bullet cars.  She grew confused as she looked around and found herself on a rock ledge overlooking a beach that probably came out of one of the adult pleasure programs.

“Hello, child.”  Goldie spoke as she used a caressing hand to be sure that Apple and her avatar were alright.

“Huh? WTF?”  After the scene fully loaded, Apple’s confusion only grew.

“You have done me a great favor.  It is only right that I am honest with you,” Goldie’s soft voice enchanted Apple.

“Uuhhh…” words fell flat and Apple could not find her voice.

“Your friend, Zodi, wasn’t dead, or in a normal coma.  You see, an errant version of that virus was released when the resistance dug into the Oathed Technocrat intranet.  Zodi was trapped in that mainframe back there.”

Apple grew furious and wished to strike out at Goldie.  Apple’s avatar flailed violently at Goldie, but did not make a good attempt to land a killing blow.

Goldie’s arms reached out swiftly and grasped Apple’s wrists, “It had to be destroyed.  It was vital.”

“Who?  Kayla?  The release…” Apple always spoke in abbreviated tones, and now she had rage preventing her words from being effective as well.

Goldie only nodded an affirmative.

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Uriel (by C.E. Zacherl see more at veyer.deviantart.com)

Goldie stared out into Club InZanity, soaking in every detail just as her tongue soaked in every note of the wine.  This wine would be the first of an evening that looked to have a number of suspenseful sips.

***

The club’s bar was not stationary; it orbited the venue like the ring on a space station orbits the main body.  Small ledges lined the club so that all the patrons had a place to set their drink and their elbow, if they were so inclined.

Most of the patrons, however, wouldn’t be found leaning on the ledge.  Many of the patrons filled one of several moving platforms that rose and sunk in sync with the music, sinking and rising with more speed as the songs increased in BPM.

Another large group of patrons located themselves around three major hubs that were on sunken sections of floor.  These hubs glowed with many bright neon colors and patrons jacked into the ports of the hubs with any number of various outputs.  Many of the patrons in this part of the club had one aspect of appearance in common.  These people had wires and jacks tangled into their hair.  Some patrons had these items weaved through their normal hair, while still others had wholly artificial hair, made of tubes, some glowing.  Some conservative people and outsiders from this subculture did not consider these people fully human anymore.

The music guaranteed an almost perfect level of privacy outside of a small social bubble.  A small social bubble around a couch on the far wall from the door included Barry Lesco, Apple Edelman, Jarred Dobson, and Kayla Summers.

Barry Lesco looked out of place with his gears and archaic tech looking goggles and gas mask.  If it was not for the sound of the music, his decorations and gear would click and warble quite audibly.

Kayla just looked uncomfortable as she shifted from foot to foot, as she stood, facing the couch.

Apple and Jarred flanked Barry on the couch and were leaning forward to listen to Kayla and Barry speak.  Jarred sipped on a chemically induced alcoholic beverage.

Barry spoke at a low screaming level barely audible over the thumping, pulsing cyber-trance.  “Our inside source is active again.  We are ready to make some really big moves.  With that information you guys grabbed, we now know how to hinder progress the technocrats have spent years refining in our sector… and others.”

“Yeeeeee!” Apple squealed with glee as the feeling of grandiose importance soaked into her.

Barry smiled widely and squeezed Apple’s shoulder with a fatherly look of approval.  Apple’s hair bounced separate of her own motions.  Her hair imbibed the club style of tubing and wires, one wire of which was plugged into a music player that blared in one ear even while she listened to the club music.

***

Unfortunately for the trivium of Kayla, Apple, and Jarred, their recent break-in did not go unnoticed.  The Oathed Technocrats spared nothing on those that gained the rights to brag about hacking their systems.

Uriel could hardly be described as human.  His life belonged more to several large corporations than it belonged to him, much in the way a GMO infected crop became the property of the mega-corporations.  Wires composed more mileage inside Uriel’s body than arteries and veins.  His armored plating, partially exposed for intimidation, could stop anything short of a high caliber rifle round.  Uriel trained hard for many years between his operations, operations that led Uriel to be the assassin that he now was.

The patrons of Club InZanity would never compare Uriel, the assassin, to the stealthy ninja type.  In fact, before a weapon came into view or a scuffle even started, a small number of patrons headed for the exits.

The gang of resistance members, not in the direct meeting, was the first to lose their lives and to trigger the musical cacophony of screams that sent another half of the patrons running in panic.

First the sound of a crack of two impacting skulls, then the bone fragments from their two skulls locked together as one. The resistance member’s blood oozed between the fingers of Uriel’s two large, augmented hands.

As Kayla, Jarred, Apple, and Barry reacted to the intruder, the last of their escort took three bullets to the chest and one to the head from a small concealable hand gun.  Jarred immediately rushed Uriel and his full body weight turned out to be just enough to knock the gun across the room.  With a little help from a shove, Jarred’s momentum carried him into the ledge on the opposite wall.

Physically outmatched, Barry was next up against Uriel to stop him as the two girls attempted to strategize.  Uriel used Barry’s midsection and face as an example of his boxing ability.  Barry collapsed after stumbling back under the weight of the blows landed upon him.

The girls engaged Uriel for a few moments, ending in Uriel acquiring a broken mechanical finger after he tried to fire a neurotoxin dart at Kayla.  Kayla ended up against the wall, poised over Barry.  Apple flipped over the bar counter.

Barry still lay against the far wall, blood pouring out of his broken nose.  Kayla leaned over him and was surprised as he actually reached up and grabbed her close.  He muttered something into Kayla’s ear and she nodded, looking back at Uriel fighting with the others.

Kayla started hurriedly grabbing components from Barry’s outfit, pack, and belt.

Jarred tried his best to hold off Uriel.  He ripped off the broken metallic support he had crashed into. He swung it into Uriel, but the old ledge support dented more than Uriel dented or bruised.  Jarred grew tired from the constant frustrated swings.  Uriel grabbed onto an arm first and then lifted Jarred into the air and grasped one of Jarred’s legs.  He lifted him wholly off of the ground, bent him at an unnatural angle that caused a snapping sound, and threw him into one of the now vacant hubs.

Kayla worked furiously with the awkward components until she heard Uriel’s breathing.  Kayla turned to face him just as Apple approached from the flank with a bar knife.  Uriel waved his augmented arms, knocking the coiled tube from Kayla’s hand and the knife from Apple’s.

Uriel grunted with tired exertion and sent his gyros into over drive as he lifted Kayla up in one hand and Apple in the other.  He held the girls for only a moment as Kayla pulled an archaic grenade out and rolled it behind Uriel via the gap between his legs.

“Grab on!”  Kayla shouted to Apple and they both held on to Uriel’s arms and tucked into his body to gain shelter from the grenade shrapnel.

Uriel landed hard on top of the girls as the blast threw them through the air.  Everyone left in the room crawled along the ground, stunned, trying to recover and find an advantage in the fight.

Kayla gathered every bit of remaining willpower she could muster to roll sideways over to the coiled tube she had been working on with Barry’s instruction.  She exerted her labored muscles in a groaning, painful effort as she pulled two metallic objects out of her pocket and placed a final archaic grenade into the tube.

Kayla cooked the grenade and dropped the two metallic objects into the tube.  With only seconds to spare, as Uriel rose to his feet and sparks flew from his shoulder, she half tossed, half rolled the awkward tube to Uriel’s feet.

The small contained explosion did very little damage beyond the tube.  The pulsing wave of energy that thrummed out from the jury-rigged device brought a halt to Uriel (the mostly machine man), the music, the platforms, and the hubs.  In perfect time with the EMP wave, most of the lights went dim, like a localized apocalypse.  Briefly, the darkness concealed everyone’s fate.

Uriel was a smoking hulk of lifeless electrical parts and fried flesh.  Kayla couldn’t believe the make shift EMP device had worked, but she swore to whatever was holy a thank you for the affect.

The music was dead; the lights were dark; heavy breathing ruled the sound waves.  Then, a violent thumping sound came from Jarred.  Barry used the wall as leverage to force his body up off of the floor.  He pulled a device from his belt and wound it up.  Light emitted in a tight beam and flowed across the dark, motionless room.

Kayla shrieked as the beam of light landed on Jarred, laying prone on the floor.  His body convulsed in a violent chaos that looked like a seizure.

They hoped Jarred would survive, but the revelation that he had an electronically augmented heart did not bode well for his chances at survival.

Apple cried and Kayla did her best to appear strong, but really the fear of failure started to creep back in to her mind.  Fortunately, Barry quickly went to work with his tinkering knowledge.  He would be the only chance that Jarred might have.

***

Goldie swished the red, silky liquid around the beautiful, bell shaped glass.

Too long wine had been her only comfort, but soon, she would be safe.  Soon, everything she had meticulously planned would come to fruition, and then, she would be able to enjoy the wine again, rather than use it for escape.

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Visit the original post, The Trivium Proportion, Part 10 (A Cyberpunk Tale), by David Phillips, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.

Stories in the Ether, Issue #4

We’re very proud to present Issue #4 of  Stories in the Ether. It is available now for ANY and ALL eReaders from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords.com for only $2.99. In the coming days and weeks, it will also be available directly from Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Nook, etc – but why wait? Our files from DriveThruFiction.com and Smashwords will work on your Kindle, Kobo, Nook, or iPad today!

In this issue you’ll gaze upon the gorgeous artwork of Paul Hagwood and get to enjoy eleven compelling stories of steampunk, fantasy, and science fiction. The whole issue clocks in at nearly 50,000 words, a great body of work to enjoy a week’s worth of daily fiction over your morning coffee.

The complete table of contents includes:

The Gorgon’s Love, by Martin Shelby
The Stars at Night, by JC Hemphill
Big Heart, by David J. Fielding
The Chase, by J. A. Gonzales
A New Beginning, by Colin W. Campbell
The Mechanical Turk, or All’s Well That Ends, by Tucker Cummings
Shelled, by M. R. Williamson
Exodus, by Eric Staggs
The Emerald City, by Per Wiger
The Occurrence of the Cavalry Horse, by Teel James Glenn
Empyrean Skies, by David Gaither

… with artwork by Paul Hagwood.

So, jump over and sink your teeth into this today. We’ll be back in a few weeks with even more fiction – Issue #5 is in the works!

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Visit the original post, Stories in the Ether, Issue 4 Available Now, at Nevermet Press. Subscribe via RSS, Twitter, or Facebook.