The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by DJ Edwardson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The Chronotrace Sequence

  The Complete Series

  DJ Edwardson

  Note about Terminology

  The world of the Chronotrace series is very different from ours. As such, the units of measure, time, and especially the technology used by the characters in these stories may seem unfamiliar to new readers. For this reason a glossary has been provided at the back of this book should a particular term need further explanation.

  Contents

  Into the Vast

  1. Ex Nihilo

  2. The Esolace

  3. The Handler

  4. A Dead Node

  5. Beyond the Institute

  6. The Shifter

  7. Making Char

  8. A New Kind of Longing

  9. The Viscera

  10. A Rickety Ride

  11. The Novelty of Children

  12. Hogar

  13. Weaving

  14. The Maneusis

  15. Mysterious Lights

  16. Undaunted

  17. Somatarchs

  18. Things Remembered and Forgotten

  19. Initialization

  20. Reverie

  21. The Visitor

  22. The Chronotrace

  23. The Extractor

  24. The Miasma Channel

  25. The Eyes of Dead Men

  26. A Tempest of Men

  27. Liquid Memories

  28. The Legend of the Eternal City

  29. A Silent Conversation

  30. A Gathering of Thrals

  31. Something on the Horizon

  32. Dark Lines in the Sand

  33. The Whisper Cannon

  34. Virid Ridge

  35. On the Threshold

  36. An Anomaly

  37. The Embedded Memory

  38. The Annex

  39. Asking the Right Questions

  40. Developed Minds

  41. An Exchange of Memories

  42. The Inner Circle

  43. Tempus Fugit

  44. A New Beginning

  45. A Dangerous Augmentation

  46. The Designer

  47. The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

  48. Into the Vast

  Awakening the Sentients

  1. Tabula Rasa

  2. Iterations

  3. Mining and Crafting

  4. Following a Phantom

  5. Between Two Storms

  6. Hull

  7. Friends and Enemies

  8. The Sand Duster

  9. Three Jaunts Away

  10. A New Trace

  11. A Familiar Stranger

  12. Many Kinds of Wounds

  13. Rethinking

  14. Even a Memorant Can Forget

  15. The Portal

  16. A Quick Healer

  17. Manx Core

  18. Fallout

  19. The Quarry

  20. Contingencies

  21. Dissension

  22. Hard Linking

  23. The Life of the World

  24. The Crossing

  25. Clean

  26. Shaft to Nowhere

  27. In the Flesh

  28. The Command Center

  29. Second Thoughts

  30. Lessons of a Mentor

  31. Calculated Risks

  32. Specks of Debris

  33. Awakening the Sentients

  34. Collective No More

  35. The Staging Area

  36. The Praxis

  37. Numinae Stays His Hand

  38. An Unstoppable Force

  39. Through the Viscera

  Ascent of the Nebula

  1. Quid Pro Quo

  2. The Power of a Lie

  3. Filling in the Gaps

  4. The Missing

  5. The Persepolis

  6. Counter Intuitive

  7. Good Intentions

  8. A Crack in the Hull

  9. Scrap in the Scrapyard

  10. Twists and Turns

  11. Old Grudges

  12. Caught in the Spoke

  13. The Path of the Desert

  14. The Power of Prayer

  15. From the Stars

  16. The Lost Man

  17. Prison Transfer

  18. Another Experiment

  19. Assault on Hull

  20. The Mendax Generator

  21. The Traitor's Sequence

  22. Maven Out

  23. Jettisoned

  24. Laid out on a Table

  25. Found is Lost

  26. Storms of the Mind

  27. A Forgotten Friendship

  28. Incident in the Lab

  29. A Hard Decision

  30. A New Assignment

  31. The Omniclast

  32. Ascent of the Nebula

  33. Stow Away

  34. Change in Command

  35. On All Sides and None

  36. Insubordination

  37. The Chronotrace Sequence

  38. And So the World Ends

  39. The Paroxysm

  40. The Radix

  41. Remnant

  42. All Things Are Passing

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Other Books

  Dedicated to my beloved family. Thank you for your patience, love, and support. Without you, this story would never have taken flight.

  S.D.G.

  “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.”

  —The Gospel According to John

  One

  Ex Nihilo

  Oblivious to the chill of the alloyed room, three scientists advanced towards the body. With substantial effort they heaved the rigid figure onto the shiny chromium cart floating nearby. Their cargo in place on the naked metal, the cart hummed forward into the corridor and the storage vault door eased shut behind them.

  As the cart droned through the endless hallways and intersections of the enormous research complex, the subject’s body began to warm, absolving itself of its ice-blue tinge. The scientists shuffled along behind in expressionless silence, a silence broken only by the occasional muted hiss of metal doors opening and closing as they passed through.

  After some time they emerged into a large, domed chamber bathed in soft light. Dominating the center of the room was the articulator, a mass of polished metal instruments suspended from the ceiling by a thick braid of tessellated cables. Another group of scientists had assembled there, awaiting the arrival of the body. All wore long, plastic coats, wrapping them in an argent shimmer. They were close in height and appeared to be of roughly the same, indeterminate age. They watched wordlessly as the cart glided to a stop in the center of the room.

  The three figures paused as the column of instruments descended upon the subject. The articulator in position, each extracted a slender cable from the medusa-like apparatus. Several of the machine’s appendages sprang to life, descending upon the inert form. The movements of the machine were graceful and delicate, but the instruments themselves looked like a violent arsenal of death.

  They created incision after bloodless incision into the patient. The procedure was like a ballet; quiet, subtle, and contemplative, where difficult movements were made to appear effortless. The metal blossom seemed to dote upon the body, but if there were any
sentiment evoked by these attentions it would have been one of insect-like efficiency, which treats both offspring and prey with the same level of exacting care.

  The other scientists present had taken their places along the edge of the room, sitting on a thin, plastic bench extruding from the wall. Their eyes followed the procedure with unwavering interest, yet their faces remained impassive.

  The dull hum of machines finally whirred to a single note of low, white noise and the bouquet of instruments slowly retracted upwards. The body on the table showed no sign of the extensive incursions into its innermost sanctums. The scientists had performed the remapping procedure so many times it had become a trivial affair.

  The real challenge lay in the patient’s recovery. They had never performed this operation on someone like this before, someone whose generational map had previously been altered. It would take quite some time for the full battery of tests to confirm the ultimate success of their endeavor, but they had every confidence the operation would produce the desired result.

  Everyone filed out of the room in orderly fashion, dispersing to various and sundry parts of the facility where other projects awaited. Two of them, however, had been assigned to post-op processing. They accompanied the cart as it slid through a pair of double doors into an antechamber containing a photo-filtration unit—an elliptical metal bed with a rounded lid which floated in the air about waist high. The patient, still unconscious, was placed within the coffin-like apparatus. Once the lid sealed, a dazzling riot of vibrant imagery inundated the subject, exploding across the surface of the container, each element passing away almost as soon as it appeared.

  The fact that, individually, none of the images were recognizable, or the reality that the patient could not actually see any of what he was being shown, did not matter. In fact, normal eyesight actually presented a hindrance to what they wished to accomplish. The treatment bypassed the imprecise and error-ridden ocular capabilities of the subject, penetrating directly into the mind, though only surface thoughts were manipulated.

  Without this intermediate step, the remapping procedure had met with disastrous results in the past. Patients had to have some level of information in order to function, to give them some context from which to operate, otherwise the mind would not hold together. But only those details which were deemed safe were filtered back in.

  The two scientists departed to let the machine run its course. When they returned, they accompanied the patient into a long-term recovery room in another part of the facility. They dressed him in gray, nondescript clothing made of seamless fabric. The only feature of note in the otherwise homogeneous attire was a black, plastic name tag with luminous white lettering. It read: ‘ADAN’.

  When Adan awoke, the first thing he noticed was a shimmering gray plane above him. It undulated slowly, captivating him with its movements. Unintelligible sounds resonated around him, droning on and on until they were little more than a constant hum.

  A hazy figure broke from the grayness, a halo of light surrounded it. The light grew until it spiked into a pulse of brightness, overwhelming Adan’s senses and subduing the noises into silence.

  In the quiet, things came into focus. He could see the figure drawing away from him and splitting apart to either side. Now there was not one figure, but three. Each one looked like a silvery manifestation, pulled out of the background. Soon he could see that the shapes were in fact people and the particulars of their faces slowly emerged. The most distinctive thing about them was their eyes. They were dark and stood out against their pale faces. Their gaze never left him, and yet he could not tell if they were looking at him or through him.

  New sounds rumbled nearby. Somehow he understood what they meant this time.

  “Can you hear me?” The sounds registered as words.

  Adan blinked, but was not sure what else he could do to let them know he understood.

  “Excellent. We would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the Institute.” The tone of the words changed; they sounded a touch higher.

  “We need to ensure that your linguistic capacity has been restored,” another voice added, only distinguishable from the first in that it came from a different location.

  Adan glanced from face to face, trying to distinguish between them. Occasionally, one would come into sharper focus, but the next moment fade back into a quivering cloud of distortion.

  When the voices ceased, Adan sensed he was meant to respond, but found it impossible to articulate his thoughts into actual words. He knew what he was thinking, but the idea of communicating those thoughts with someone seemed utterly impossible. He could not even fathom how he had been able to understand what he had heard so far.

  Their words played over and over inside his head. The more he heard them, the more sense they made. It was as if they filled holes inside his mind which allowed the puzzle of his thoughts to form into words of his own. Between labored breaths, one solitary word rose up inside his throat and released itself into the air.

  “Time,” he muttered, barely above a whisper. He breathed in sharply as the word escaped; astounded it had actually come from him. And then, almost like a reflex, he repeated the word, louder this time, with a different intonation.

  “Time?”

  He marveled at how the word had been transformed by the unexpected inflection in his voice.

  One of the three figures rustled in place. “I think he wants to know what time it is,” came the voice, and then added, “It’s morning.”

  Though Adan had said only one word, this brief exchange meant everything. He now knew that he could speak and make himself understood. Some of the tension inside released as more words and ideas rushed into his mind. Who were these figures? Where had they come from? And what did they want? But then, another, more pressing question occurred to him, overshadowing all the rest. Who was he, after all? He had absolutely no idea what the answer to that question might be.

  “Who am I?” he asked, his head pounding with excitement at his ability not only to speak, but to string words together into a meaningful sentence.

  “You are a patient here,” one of them said. “Your name is Adan. You have just undergone a special procedure called generational remapping. It is a unique opportunity which you have been given—a second chance at life.”

  Individually, Adan thought he understood the words, but together they made no sense. As he struggled to unravel their mystery, a painful pulsing surged through his temples. His breathing became labored. He broke out in a fit of coughing.

  The figures shifted position and moved out of his field of vision altogether. Adan strained to hear what they might be saying, but nothing rose above the dreadful thumping inside his own head. His eyes roved about, trying to get a glimpse of them. Panic set in. He was overcome by the fear that they had left, that without them he would slip back into unconsciousness and never awake again.

  His voice quaked. “Why can’t I…remember…anything?”

  One of the voices responded from somewhere far away. “You’ll be fine. It is impossible to perform this type of procedure without significant memory restructuring. All knowledge of the past is lost in the process.”

  These were words which he unfortunately did grasp and they sent him reeling, his mind riven with the realization that he had no memories, no identity, no past. He was no one, just a consciousness, an awareness adrift in some meaningless stream of experience.

  The silvery backdrop began to seethe and smear. Clamoring jumbles of sound erupted from everywhere and an inky blackness seeped across his vision pulling down everything inside of it. He wondered if he had been awake at all or if it had all been a dream. Then, even his doubts fled away and the only things left were waves of pain and the cacophony raging inside his head. But still, he fought to stay awake, unwilling to surrender to the encroaching darkness.

  Layers of roiling shadows smothered his mind. Crippling pains ripped through his body. He felt he must be dying. That was the only word
which captured the sensations he felt. He tried to open his eyes and let the reality of the room jar him back awake, to keep death at bay. But there was nothing left to see, only shuddering impressions in shades of black. Nothing was distinct, nothing fixed. Whether he opened his eyes or closed them it made no difference. In the end, unable to resist any longer, he abandoned the struggle and let the torrents of agony batter him into unconsciousness.