Voyage: Embarkation #12 Liberty

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 investigates Gelkur, a hyper-capitalist dictatorship whose corporate leadership use nanotechnology to subjugate the 89% of the population they do not employ. Kal becomes stranded when ValYou Corporation programs overrun his pad.

Voyage: Embarkation Episode #12 "Liberty" is about 14,500 words long.

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Voyage: 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
Episode #7 "Duality" - April 11, 2013
Episode #8 "Benevolence" - May 9, 2013
Episode #9 "Nanogen" - June 6, 2013
Episode #10 "Unpossible" - June 27, 2013
Episode #11 "Requiescence" - July 25, 2013
Episode #12 "Liberty" - August 22, 2013
Episode #13 "Taboo" - September 19, 2013

58 pages, ebook

First published August 22, 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

[Madison Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

While looking for Earth nanites hidden on other worlds, Kal and Tria visit Gelkur. However, ValYou nanites immediately take over Kal's pad, trapping Kal on Gelkur. Tria disappears, leaving Kal on his own.

Luckily, a resident of Gelkur takes pity on Kal, setting him up with a job and an apartment, so Kal can survive Gelkur while trying to clear the virus off his pad.

To make matters worse, the manager at his new job is domineering and seemingly insane. Without Tria there, Kal has to deal with this insanity alone, trapped in a strange world.

I loved the story. Several of the parts made me laugh out loud. The ending is a bit abrupt, cutting off at the point in while Kal restores his pad's metaxic travel capabilities, but not answering the question of what will happen with Jeikl, his new friend on Gelkur.

[Matt Sayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

Nanogenic radiation. Kal's kryptonite. The one thing preventing him from returning to Earth, and now the reason he must play the game of office politics under a corrupt corporate bureaucracy. If he wants to live, Kal's going to have to learn the meaning of 'crunch time'...

An ineffably adroit commentary on the pressures of the IT industry wrapped in a dystopian adventure, Liberty is witty, tense, and satirically perceptive. Embarkation just keeps getting better and better!