Pain Protocol

by Andy Gorman

A standalone sci-fi novella that takes place in the same post-apocalyptic universe as Life on Planet Earth.

Before his stint in mandatory stasis, Abram Shepard was the best rover pilot in the lunar colony Omega, but that job no longer exists.

When he met his wife, he thought he might get over the mistakes he made and everything he lost, but then she died on the Earth Transit Shuttle.

Now, with his future bleak and his past erased by eighty years on ice, he would rather wallow in his pain than try to fix it…

Until a stranger enters his head and tells him something impossible—that not everyone died when the shuttle crashed to Earth.

With nothing left to lose, Abram is willing to do whatever it takes to leave Omega and find his wife. 

The way down is top-secret, dangerous, and illegal, but there’s a bigger problem: Abram’s not the only person who would kill to get to Earth.

105 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 22, 2022

About the author

My name is Andy Gorman, and I am not just a human. I am also a machine that turns coffee and sunlight (and sometimes beer) into words. Okay, fine…mostly beer.

In 2018, I published The Last Safe Place, a fun-filled and fast-paced sci-fi thriller that I spent over a year writing and much longer dreaming about. I wrote most of the novel while earning a Bachelor of Arts in English at UNLV—before school, between classes, and during boring lectures (i.e., most lectures). The world I was building interested me more than reality did, which made the characters come to life. I remember crying like a newborn baby when I had to kill one. The murder was worth it, though, because The Last Safe Place became a #1 Bestseller in four sci-fi categories.

Since graduation, I’ve focused my career on the written word. I try to work on my craft every morning—before my responsibilities as a luxury real estate copywriter and social media manager consume me. I probably spend too much time reading and soaking up the Las Vegas sun, but I’d rather be a tan writer than a prolific one. Still, I somehow managed to squeeze a second novel out of my brain; Life on Planet Earth was published in 2021. My English teacher from my freshman year of high school called it “a gripping, thoroughly enjoyable, deeply satisfying adventure!”

Well, that’s me in a nutshell. If you’ve read one of my books, I’d love to meet you. You can find links to my social media at www.AuthorAndyGorman.com. Maybe if I get enough followers, I can quit my day job and become both tan and prolific. A humble beer-to-word machine can dream, right?

Reviews

[Bonnie Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Pain Protocol, Andy Gorman patches our brains back into the compelling world he masterfully created for Life on Planet Earth, a welcome treat, and enriches that world with another enticing set of well-rounded characters, realistically detailed situations, and thought-provoking philosophical suppositions. It is interesting to see the complex set of motivations each of Pain Protocol’s characters uses to make choices, and intriguing to consider the possibilities raised by the unique but relatable and believable set of circumstances they’re faced with. When reading this novella, the reader’s mind whirls with what-ifs, wonders at various character-related mysteries, clenches at intense drama, nods with understanding of common human experience, and laughs at a robotic AI character who hilariously, and ironically, plays on human cultural knowledge the reader has that the human characters don’t, mostly due to the setting’s time periods. Even in this shorter novella format, I’m fully sucked into the world, fully invested in the characters, and have sincere interest in what could happen next. Pain Protocol is an enjoyable read on its own, and also rouses even more interest in the same world. I hope Andy Gorman continues to write stories in this world, with the same two sets of characters or yet another new set!