My science
fiction novel Temporal Cross Currents may
be downloaded free at…
The history
of writing the book is perhaps worth retelling here. Temporal Cross Currents version 2014 has origins in a science
fiction college course that I took during summer semester 1989 at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Because I had earlier written a
short science fiction story called The
Chamber about Mars I sent out naively without copyright registration in
1988 I decided that another try at writing something for publication would be
more documented. Eventually I put together a story called Altereal Components and in 1990, I believe it was, I t registered
it with the U.S. copyright office. In that story was
formed the beginning of the present Temporal
Cross Currents.
A little
background. In 1975 I enlisted in the U.S. Army though something of a c.o. I
had just arrived in San Francisco and wanted to leave. A minister suggested I
might make a difference if I enlisted when I asked him about it. We had made a
few calls on members of the flock. I stayed in the church basement, I shook
hands with the candidate that ran against George Moscone at a church social. As
soon as I got to Ft. Wood and everyone left for Christmas holiday, I made a story
up in order to get discharged. I got an honorable discharge and left for many
years of painting and odd jobs around the U.S.A. In 1982 with the El Salvidor
civil war and the threat of communism in central America I thought my prior
service was not helpful, so I choose to lie about my prior military service and
enlist as a combat engineer trainee in the Oregon National Guard. Though
stressful going back to Ft. Wood concealing the prior time at Ft. Wood I did
very well and became a combat engineer. Returning to Portland where I had
finished a computer programming course in 81, I couldn’t find work and went
skydiving a little instead. I transferred to the Washington Guard and attended
a drill before returning to Alaska, going to serve in Hondorus or wherever
never panned out That war faded away during the Reagan administration.
In
Alaska I
joined the Guard and learned about 80 mm mortars, attended Air Assault
School
and transferred to the Army Reserve for some carpentry-masonry training
in
Fairbanks. Wintering in Fairbanks three years I wrote some science
fiction,
took college courses and fell through rotten ice head from below by
discharges
from a power plant, after walking home with my pants frozen I lay on the
floor
of my room for a couple of days in the dark feeling the cold blood move
around
to my heart. Eventually in January would hitchhike down the Alaska
highway to
Georgia where I worked briefly at a giant fish processing plant in
search of a mid-semester college to take two courses at in order to take
an A.A. at the Univ of Alaska-Juneau.
I
believe
it was after I returned to Alaska from the Georgia via Maine to Honolulu
and Anchorage with a slipped disk and body surfing on that wrong beach
at Oahu where the
waves break too steeply into the sand that the Reserve Unit sent me to
Chemical
School at Fort McClelan where I reconoittered a cemetery. Having seen
Return
of the Living Dead Part II? before enlisting I was up for that. I got a
perfect
p.t. score at Ft. McClellanfor a while running quite a bit –miles and
miles before going active around 6 minutes per mile. To make a long
story short, in 1989 I
enlisted in the regular army, attended Stinger School and hoped to be
stationed
in Europe where I had traveled twice in 1987 flying on that PanAM
Lockerbie
route to London a little before solstice time once. The day before I was
to get
a security clearance the Soviets withdrew a quarter million troops from
East
Germany and a drill Sergeant handed me a letter at Ft. Bliss from a
Russian women’s
magazine that I had sent a science fiction story to from U.A.F. in 1988
rejecting it as too violent. I had skyrockets being fired off from Coney
Island
and I didn’t think that too violent.
I realized
that with the end of the cold war the media would be the big problem levering
me while in the service so I decided to get out and revealed the facts about
the 1975 enlistment and was given an honorable discharge for erroneous
enlistment. I was happy enough with that, especially since after taking off a
cast from torn ligaments and going AWOL to visit Denver from Ft. Bliss climbing
over Mt. Franklin in the dark and turning myself in at Ft. Carson when there was
a military alert of recall for the impending Panama problem. I fly back to Ft.
Bliss and got manacles put on and missed out seeing Miss America who was also
on the flight. I had a G.T. score of 145 then and was reluctant to leave the
Army. Maybe I could have had a great career and fired a gun or something. I
will never know if I could have excelled at rocket shooting. No MIG season was
scheduled for shooting down any time in that foreseeable future. Anti-Aircraft
drones might have made human anti-aircraft shooters nearly obsolete already.
I had a vision of something bad happening in
Fairbanks before going AWOL though-something like a disturbance in the force,
and it turned out that some girl-Kara Zastrow had been murdered and hidden in
the snow while her killers left and enlisted in the Marines. I wondered if the
Russian Kara Sea had any relationship symbolically to her death.
I thought an honorable discharge was better
than time at Ft. Levensworth so I took a discharge. Well thousands and
thousands were getting discharged soon since peace was breaking out all over
Europe. That was the dream of ending the cold war peacefully and with
prosperity that was so important to generations-my Dad was a four year Navy
veteran of W.W. II and always thought peace was better than war. He was a
little mockish of the security guard work, and sent me a replica terra cotta
warrior from the Shang dynasty of Beijing.
In 1989 I
was completing the undergraduate work that I needed for a Bachelor’s degree. I
was taking courses at the University of Alaska Fairbanks while enrolled in
Excelsior College (then Regents College) of the University of the State of New
York in order to save a year of superfluous college costs. I took a year’s
credits through the CLEP credit by examination process. That 30 credit clump
was admitted at Excelsior. I took a Bachelor’s degree in spring 1990 as well as
an Associate’s from the University of Alaska S.E. and was optimistic about
being admitted to the U.A.F. M.A. in Northern Studies Program with a 3.8
undergraduate grade point average inclusive of CLEP scores.
I wasn’t
admitted to U.A.F., and so with a history as a traveling house painter with a
two new college degrees I looked forward to traveling around the U.S.A. hunting
for a job. That plan was delayed two years as I remained in Alaska and worked
on a rural lot before setting off to search for work and a graduate school.
During this time I was developing writing method. My degree work was in
history, philosophy and English-not just English. I had work to do in
developing narrative style and writing tools-there really is quite a bit too
generating good, well structured stories. A philosopher or inventor may want to
just move forward, while a writer might want to carefully polish prose; the two
interests present a little conflict, like clashing waves at sea moving in
different directions.
In the 90s
I attended the Houston Graduate School of Theology briefly before my student
loans were stopped for some unknown reason and I left school. Even a urine
testing lab I was going to be hired at was purchased by a company that put an
immediate hiring freeze in place..no work. More than twenty years later I found another
Friends theology school and resumed taking theology coursework-that’s another
story. So I continued working on writing adding on to Alterreal Components when
I could. I added pieces on to the story while riding a bicycle around the
U.S.A. Writing in dozens of public libraries when not searching for something
to paint I had an hour here, and hour there to scrawl a few lines or delete
some carriage returns.
In 1996
while George Bush was Governor of Texas I was a graveyard security officer at
the L.B.J. State Office building. During this time period I camped out with the
fire ants and added much to Alterreal Components transforming it to Alterwall
Objectives. The story thus became a small novel and I took a new copyright on
it.
A novel
written generally while homeless in little portions here and there is put
together something like Johnny Cash’s song about building a car one piece at a
time except that one’s thought is the factory where the parts come from.
Writing the novel and continuing to try to get some quality editing time on it
was challenging. Eventually I bought a used Toshiba notebook that weighs a ton
with DOS on it and retyped the novel into that for a little editing. I got a hundreds
of carriage returns placed in it that would take another 7 years to entirely
remove. To get the dos edited story onto word an Apple computer was used to
convert the file and that resulted in a decade of small editing problems. With
all of the time consumed on working on the novel I learned that the major
problem I had I writing a novel was the actual physical opportunity to find a
quiet place to write with the right word processing equipment in place and with
electricity and the time to work. Actually I never did put all of those
elements together.
So instead
of a secure, quiet writing environment I continued reading philosophy, science,
history and religious topics and developed new ideas to throw into the novel
since I had no where else to stick ‘em. Rather than composing a smoothly
flowing novel I tossed in a myriad of separate ideas and post hoc ironed out
the intermarginal faultlines. Because I added in entire new pieces to the novel
that were short stories before I had to adapt the point of view of the author.
Retroactively I changed what began as an omniscient narrative to a first person
narrative. I learned only later that William Falkner’s book ‘As I Lay Dying’ that he wrote while working a job as a security
guard at a power plant, tells a story from the first person narrative point of
view of several characters in the book alternating from one chapter to the
next; a brilliant construction method I don’t use here but that I appreciate
since it’s a good way to write if one doesn’t have a smoothly supported writing
environment. Faulker had to go to work, make rounds and maybe write and perhaps
write a self-standing chapter and was able to resume writing another day
without needing to smoothly get back into the writing persona of his character
narrating the story the day before. Going to work would have interrupted that
thought line.
I learned
much while working on this book. One thing I learned was to never start writing
a novel if you won’t have the opportunity to finish it in one or maybe two
places-that is a direct, continuous well-enough supported writing situation. I
have since written two small novels in an unelectrified yet moderately secured environment
though U had to finish them elsewhere. St.
Novilistricka Factors’ first draft was written in about five weeks though
it took more than two years to get enough time to complete it-and the
completion was done in a fairly adverse environment with one winter spent
camping on the ground in Anchorage where I broke the computer screen rolling
over on it in my sleeping bag with a hip trying to keep the battery from
freezing. A Universal Widget was written in a similar, unsupported environment.
Maybe in retirement I will get an opportunity to write with an electrical
outlet at home.
An excerpt
from Temporal Cross Currents…
"Don't
every write a popular song starting with the words Well I ". The
cadres howled and cheered so wildly that the Praetorian Guard dispersed
tranquil mist onto the ultra-marine trainees who hushed a bit.
A
new rhythmic drumbeat like syncopated chant of "Big Dog, Big Dog wang
dang bop du rop rup" rose from the thousands of ultra-Warsops. Prissy
gazed benevolently down upon them, giving them a full turning profile and
raised hand wave of acknowledgment.
Prissy
continued his speech, lasting several minutes until fog was allowed to approach
through the field molecule screen to enshroud the trainees as shades in an
orphic underworld of sunless mist. They were marched by D.I.'s of the Jaws of
Death with staccato cadences extolling salad nearly off the bay cover and back
to gel boot camps All-pine and Borscht.
Brigadier
Thortez and Colonel Bold talked head to head behind the sound and projectile
screen that Prissy disdained during his discourses to the masses. Prissy
approached, his baldhead shining in orange winter sunlight on the hammerhead
balcony above the fog and said;
"Hyrim
develop it quicker. I'm ready to knock out Corporate know. My bones ache to
leap into control of the Solar System. We're losing too many warriors to
Corporate mining camps and my sedition can't happen if they're all out in the
asteroids, the Jovan System, Nep-tunes or beyond when the rotting door of
Corporate Monopoly is ripe to be kicked in. We'll obliterate Bigg Comm
simultaneously for unchallengeable control.
We'll lose
the element of surprise if we withhold fulfilling orders for miners. I suspect
the great basins and backbones store of recruits isn't unlimited so we can't
just get more either. Higher numbers of Asian Big-Comm allegiants brainwashed
to loyalty to Imperial Anarchy would lead to an unreliable cadre. I want the
reserve shelves of ultra-Warsops filled and complete with loyal, malleable,
gullible captives programmed to serve me before it too is drained off to the
outback of the system" the Emperor slammed down a fist on a molecular
projection field battle plan for his general staff to regard.
Brigadier
Hyrim Thortez said, "Emperor Warp, the decoy planets can only be
pre-fabricated as fast as we can pre-judge them. If the Jaws of Death go too
far in the sculpt works at Almedia Springs there could be pre-designed
disasters equivalent to crashing Phoebus into Mars. Instant planet
reconfigurations, shells, Dyson Spheres, and illusory field decoys even with
ultrue-computers require a lot of testing."
Colonel
Bold contributed "Tawooth will rule the Solar System myne Emperor Warp. It
is the inertial will of the Pluralverse! Maoist, nihilist oligarchs of Corporate
Interplanetary tyranny can't be allowed to succeed in depopulating Earth,
turning it into an arboreal vacation area and deprive us of the ultra-Warsops
we must have to save the twelve planets!
"Thank
you Sancho, you're perceptive as usual" Prissy replied enjoying the
Colonel's eager and whole-hearted support of his ideas. "We will succeed
in terra-forming the twelve planets and all Corporate outposts eventually be
assured.
The Emperor Warp of Tawooth has made
preparations for an Armada of Stealth Space Ultra-Marine transports to be
launched from magnetic rail guns in the backbone. They will rendezvous
clandestinely at a blackbody sphere beyond Venus and attack en masse the
totality of Corporate H.Q.'s and militfacts from one edge of the gravity sink
to the other."
"Glorious
Leader, we must have patience and wait for the perfection of the inflatable
decoy Earths before the assault on Corporate H.Q.s and militfacts proceeds or
Corporate forces will have us dead to rights sitting as ducks in the Nation Of
Tawooth on Earth should elements of the Corporate live-fire fleet survive to
counter-attack" General Thortez exhorted.
"Of
course Brigadier, of course; I always trust my special councilors. Yet we shall
take the live fire fleet en passant mon amis" Prissy Bar-Warp dismissed
munificently.
"Our
timing will be flawless, and as simple as was Alexander's unraveling of the
Gordian knot which was said to be the key to conquering Asia. So shall I wait
and begin no victory before its time?"
Did the
Pluralverse recur eternally? That is does a metaphysical time-space field
bigger than the one of this Universe exist that contains our Universe to replay
it again forever like a recorded hologram opera from end to end? Is the
Pluralverse alternately like a self-winding yo-yo that explodes from a
singularity of gravitationally compacted space time with anti-gravity expanding
it the other direction in turn compacting gravity bordering the space-time
pluralverse until compacting to an opposite-space-time singularity to explode
with gravitational expansion unit anti-gravity is again compacted with all
mass-time to a singularity and so on ad nauseum?
Does it
unwind through dozens of billions or trillions of years on each circuit side
and restart? Did life, perception, sense data and what is knowable as
experience recur as a pre-determined fact with just the self-deluding
seemingness of real, free intelligence? If it does recur forever is it all
determined by some original, undetermined first cause that set and resets the seemingly
infinite loop of the pluralverse in substance and motion to recur infinitely?
Would
movements, transports, perception and data be determined in advance as is the
redetermination that the evolutionary Universe would recur eternally? How was
that determined and so on in the infinite regress of nonsapient determinations?
Is it just that the appearance of choices or the need for the determinations is
illusory if the pluralverse does recur forever as it were in a possible dumb
design?
The
Tawoothian brethren estimated the chances to find wiggle room in the
redeterminism of the Pluralverse though they were aware of the possibility that
the perception of time and being is infinite in all directions, and the
apparent infinite deja vous recurrence syndrome such as Frederick Nietzche had
kicking a boulder on an evening walk at Lake Lucerne was a compound of the
infinite nature of time examined as an instant clump singly by a perceiver
trying to be, and naturally somewhat different than the infinite motion of mass
in an infinite combination of potential perceivable or describable relativistic
abstract relations as a reflective intellect is able to be cognizant of
things-for-themselves per se.
The mind of
the perceiver in other words may have a recursive psychological imaging of the
complete complex of compresent percepts and mistake that seemingness for an
insight into the fundamental nature of the physical pluralverse.
It was at
least clear to the Brethren that the probability of the recurrence of an experience
is the content and basis for scientific judgment. And that which can be applied
from the lessons of humanity's history is predicated on recurrence in abstract
situational form.
The masses
of free anarchists undragooned into the service of Emperor Warp but living in
the Reamerigo Nation of Tawooth lived the Neitchzian error as a patriotic call
to survival of the most fit usually unaware of the finer points of the
consideration of the deployment of the matter of space-time in their brutish,
desperate and short post-Chaos existence. The Ministers of Terror taught that
eternal recurrence called for domination of the law abiding by anarchist
supermen. The ignorant savages were easily converted to anarchy and terror if
they were not naturally indoctrinated.
Yet the
Order did what it could to provide ultra-marine trainees with unreflective
inhumanism and greed in the cult of Prissy. Warp's espousa - an Empress named
Liprule, coached the cadres to focus on business, war and herself instead of
the distracting doctrine of Terror.
Emperor
Prissy would strive to lead Tawooth in a reconquista of the twelve-planet
system until one commensurate with his grandeur could be found.
