Voyage: Embarkation #3 Just a Game

by Zachary Bonelli, Aubry Kae Andersen (Illustrator)

Kal is ready to leave his strange home and is about to embark on a journey to even stranger worlds.

After four years of exile, he can finally escape into the metaxia, the unspace between universes, and explore alternate Earths.

Supremely advanced cultures and natural wonders of immeasurable beauty await him. However, there exist also worlds mired in social decay, and those filled with dangerous, exotic forms of life.

Armed only with defensive nanotech and a computer pad, Kal travels from one alternate Earth to another. Navigating the infinity of possibilities, he embarks on a new kind of voyage, a voyage along the catastrophe of notions.

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Kal’s search for advanced genetic technology takes him to the world of Lehr, where he discovers cyberorganic cord organisms covering a deserted, alternate Chicago that looks remarkably like his own. While the cords appear oblivious to his presence, it turns out there are other, not so docile, creatures on Lehr.

Embarkation Episode #4 "Tria" is about 4,800 words long.

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Embarkation

Episode #1 "Setting Sail" - February 11, 2013
Episode #2 "Longing" - February 14, 2013
Episode #3 "Just a Game" - February 18, 2013
Episode #4 "Tria" - February 21, 2013
Episode #5 "Corporeal" - February 25, 2013
Episode #6 "Norselands" - March 14, 2013

22 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 18, 2013

About the author

I grew up in a small town in northern Illinois, west of Chicago. After graduating high school, I dual majored in English Literature and German Language at a small, Midwestern liberal arts college. After undergrad, I turned my eyes towards exploration, and spent many years in Japan, Thailand and Hawaii.

Nowadays, I live with my partner near Seattle, Washington, where I work in the gaming industry.

I love stories. I’ve long been fascinated by video games as a storytelling medium, and I love exploring different cultures, discovering the different underlying stories that different groups of people tell themselves, the stories that define who they are and how they perceive the world.

Reviews

[Lyndon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third episode by Zachary Bonelli takes on the familiar Hunger Games motif and adds a psychological twist to the ethics and morality of killing for sport. Pretty good installment for those who've read #1 & #2 (otherwise, the context and mission of Kal, the protagonist, would be a bit hard to follow). So this story works as part of the whole, but not quite as a stand alone, imo.

That being said, Voyage is shaping up to be a nice little series of stories - a bit light on plotting and characterization, but if fans of this particular style of SF/fantasy stick with Kal on his metaxic journeys (yeah, I never quite figured out the multi-universe/inter-dimensional language either, but I just go with it :) they'll be rewarded with a developing opus that feels like weekly episodes of Saturday morning programming. Fun and engaging with serious themes interwoven fairly competently. I'll be dropping in every now and then to catch up on the author's work.

[Matt Sayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Full disclosure: I was provided with a free copy of Voyage: Embarkation)

Continuing his search for a cure to his literal homesickness, Kal journeys to what should be a world of promising technological advancement. But when he finds himself in the middle of a dense, sprawling jungle, devoid of civilisation but plentiful in hostility, he must rely on more than his precious nanites to make it through unscathed...

More fast-paced than previous stories, Just a Game is a short but sweet adventure that manages to pack in a refreshingly distinct twist to its Battle Royale styled tale. Another fun jaunt through the metaxia.

[Madison Keller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the first two episodes. The majority of the episode is spend making rather obvious references to the Hunger Game books.
Zachary's writing and descriptions are excellent, as always, and the action was fast paced and easy to follow.
This episode does have an interesting twist, that shows some of the weaknesses of Kal's rather god-like powers of the nanites he possesses.

The episode brings up some interesting moral questions and their ramifications, and gives us a deeper view of Kal's own moral stance and character.

However, the simplistic wrap up at the end felt like a bit of a cop-out. It made the whole thing feel like a throw-away episode.

[W.J. Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some obvious similarities to The Hunger Games, but the author does this on purpose, I think, in a way to point out specific moral and ethical issues he had with that series. And I absolutely didn't see the twist coming. Zachary did a great job exploring some pretty complex social issues with "Just a Game".