What do you think?
Rate this book
Exodus Sequence #8
Experienced
An alternate cover edition can be found here and here .
An exhausted immortal uses the dreamscape drug to open a door into Other.
Omen – the bad omen they told you not to follow – is addicted to Doors. Using an unwilling victim to open a door via their own dreams, he pulls apart dimensions of time and space to access a plane of existence called Other, where all forgotten memories can be inspected. Omen plays at politics while hiding on a moon called Tranquillity. He has to keep his identity hidden to survive – until his cover is blown. During a fight to the death, he accesses Other to open the last door and find the secret that has eluded him for millions of years.
Extract: The fountains soared up into the night, the sound of the water on the white hexagons like shattering glass. I was utterly exposed, I knew it. Paranoia presented me with a variety of scenarios and I ignored them all. It was never going to be clever. No plot against me could ever outwit me. After torturing me for so long, they should have known. They thought I was addled with Doors, that I was weak, that my Self was disappearing. They had never worked it out. They did not know who I was.
The Exodus Sequence: Each novelette in the Exodus Sequence is a standalone story. They don’t have to be read in order. They are not in any way connected like chapters in a book. They vary in style and character, time and place. However, the mystery unfolds as the sequence progresses, hence the numbering. To follow this unfolding, the sequence is best read in order.
A novelette is, by definition, longer than a short story but not as long as a novella.
An exhausted immortal uses the dreamscape drug to open a door into Other.
Omen – the bad omen they told you not to follow – is addicted to Doors. Using an unwilling victim to open a door via their own dreams, he pulls apart dimensions of time and space to access a plane of existence called Other, where all forgotten memories can be inspected. Omen plays at politics while hiding on a moon called Tranquillity. He has to keep his identity hidden to survive – until his cover is blown. During a fight to the death, he accesses Other to open the last door and find the secret that has eluded him for millions of years.
Extract: The fountains soared up into the night, the sound of the water on the white hexagons like shattering glass. I was utterly exposed, I knew it. Paranoia presented me with a variety of scenarios and I ignored them all. It was never going to be clever. No plot against me could ever outwit me. After torturing me for so long, they should have known. They thought I was addled with Doors, that I was weak, that my Self was disappearing. They had never worked it out. They did not know who I was.
The Exodus Sequence: Each novelette in the Exodus Sequence is a standalone story. They don’t have to be read in order. They are not in any way connected like chapters in a book. They vary in style and character, time and place. However, the mystery unfolds as the sequence progresses, hence the numbering. To follow this unfolding, the sequence is best read in order.
A novelette is, by definition, longer than a short story but not as long as a novella.
60 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 1, 2020
About the author
Susannah J. Bell
34 books29 followersSusannah J. Bell is a writer of science fiction and other strange and surreal works. She was born in London but grew up in South Africa, escaping when she was twenty to be a writer. Not able to find much success in London, she dreamed of living in other parts of the world: the Scottish Highlands, New York, Mars, but never got much further than travel guides. Nowadays, she would like to live in a tower in a forest and dreams of travelling to the fantastical worlds of her imagination. Her writing has taken her from the familiar landscapes of Mars and Io and Titan, to worlds far beyond ours, even to the edge of the galaxy. She has explored other dimensions, realms, and space beyond. Within her writing, she explores different styles, voices and concepts, always returning to the theme that fascinates her the most: immortality. She has published several series such as The Fleet Quintet and The Exodus Sequence, and is working on a new series of novels, as well as a large literary work, more Exodus Sequence stories, and biographical short stories. She hopes one day to complete the fifth Fleet novel. She loves the sound of falling water, is passionate about trees, and is happiest when writing. She still lives in London.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 22, 2016
Inventing a mind expanding drug for immortals was one of my more creative challenges. I had to go deep into the world of weird and deeper still into the world of white. The result was a highly surreal piece of work that was very, very difficult to write. I first had a problem with tenses, then viewpoint, then telepathic-conceptual style communication. The opening page describes a trip which isn’t clarified until later. It makes getting into EXPERIENCED quite hard. It’s a tough story, I know, with very dense writing, a main character that doesn’t speak and references that will make you wonder whether you’ve missed something. That it isn’t obvious what is going on is the whole point: once you do get it, the story explodes and you know exactly where you are.
I had this exact experience while listening to very loud metal (though without the addition of anything chemical). I can’t say I was asleep because I could still hear the music but neither was I imagining the events because I wasn’t lucid. Extracting a story out of it was the first challenge. I knew it was always this character that had to open a door (literally, chemically and supernaturally) but getting to that final door was an intense and exhausting experience. I took a week’s leave to concentrate on writing and when people asked me if I’d gone anywhere, I told them, jokingly, that I’d gone to Io. It wasn’t until much later that someone mentioned to me that not many people actually know where or what Io is. Oh. Really? I had no idea.
Io is a large moon that orbits Jupiter and has over 400 volcanoes.
Just as with all Exodus stories, the title has more than one meaning. Omen has been met several times before, but not in this incarnation. There are many connections and the story also reflects others, hence the title of the second story. The act of “reflection” is described exactly towards the end. And it’s an ending that’s worth getting to because it takes you to a pivotal point in the Exodus Sequence. I can’t wait to get there myself.
Merged review:
Inventing a mind expanding drug for immortals was one of my more creative challenges. I had to go deep into the world of weird and deeper still into the world of white. The result was a highly surreal piece of work that was very, very difficult to write. I first had a problem with tenses, then viewpoint, then telepathic-conceptual style communication. The opening page describes a trip which isn’t clarified until later. It makes getting into EXPERIENCED quite hard. It’s a tough story, I know, with very dense writing, a main character that doesn’t speak and references that will make you wonder whether you’ve missed something. That it isn’t obvious what is going on is the whole point: once you do get it, the story explodes and you know exactly where you are.
I had this exact experience while listening to very loud metal (though without the addition of anything chemical). I can’t say I was asleep because I could still hear the music but neither was I imagining the events because I wasn’t lucid. Extracting a story out of it was the first challenge. I knew it was always this character that had to open a door (literally, chemically and supernaturally) but getting to that final door was an intense and exhausting experience. I took a week’s leave to concentrate on writing and when people asked me if I’d gone anywhere, I told them, jokingly, that I’d gone to Io. It wasn’t until much later that someone mentioned to me that not many people actually know where or what Io is. Oh. Really? I had no idea.
Io is a large moon that orbits Jupiter and has over 400 volcanoes.
Just as with all Exodus stories, the title has more than one meaning. Omen has been met several times before, but not in this incarnation. There are many connections and the story also reflects others, hence the title of the second story. The act of “reflection” is described exactly towards the end. And it’s an ending that’s worth getting to because it takes you to a pivotal point in the Exodus Sequence. I can’t wait to get there myself.
I had this exact experience while listening to very loud metal (though without the addition of anything chemical). I can’t say I was asleep because I could still hear the music but neither was I imagining the events because I wasn’t lucid. Extracting a story out of it was the first challenge. I knew it was always this character that had to open a door (literally, chemically and supernaturally) but getting to that final door was an intense and exhausting experience. I took a week’s leave to concentrate on writing and when people asked me if I’d gone anywhere, I told them, jokingly, that I’d gone to Io. It wasn’t until much later that someone mentioned to me that not many people actually know where or what Io is. Oh. Really? I had no idea.
Io is a large moon that orbits Jupiter and has over 400 volcanoes.
Just as with all Exodus stories, the title has more than one meaning. Omen has been met several times before, but not in this incarnation. There are many connections and the story also reflects others, hence the title of the second story. The act of “reflection” is described exactly towards the end. And it’s an ending that’s worth getting to because it takes you to a pivotal point in the Exodus Sequence. I can’t wait to get there myself.
Merged review:
Inventing a mind expanding drug for immortals was one of my more creative challenges. I had to go deep into the world of weird and deeper still into the world of white. The result was a highly surreal piece of work that was very, very difficult to write. I first had a problem with tenses, then viewpoint, then telepathic-conceptual style communication. The opening page describes a trip which isn’t clarified until later. It makes getting into EXPERIENCED quite hard. It’s a tough story, I know, with very dense writing, a main character that doesn’t speak and references that will make you wonder whether you’ve missed something. That it isn’t obvious what is going on is the whole point: once you do get it, the story explodes and you know exactly where you are.
I had this exact experience while listening to very loud metal (though without the addition of anything chemical). I can’t say I was asleep because I could still hear the music but neither was I imagining the events because I wasn’t lucid. Extracting a story out of it was the first challenge. I knew it was always this character that had to open a door (literally, chemically and supernaturally) but getting to that final door was an intense and exhausting experience. I took a week’s leave to concentrate on writing and when people asked me if I’d gone anywhere, I told them, jokingly, that I’d gone to Io. It wasn’t until much later that someone mentioned to me that not many people actually know where or what Io is. Oh. Really? I had no idea.
Io is a large moon that orbits Jupiter and has over 400 volcanoes.
Just as with all Exodus stories, the title has more than one meaning. Omen has been met several times before, but not in this incarnation. There are many connections and the story also reflects others, hence the title of the second story. The act of “reflection” is described exactly towards the end. And it’s an ending that’s worth getting to because it takes you to a pivotal point in the Exodus Sequence. I can’t wait to get there myself.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review