by Denny Taylor
SPLIT SECOND SOLUTION
BOOK ONE
A NOVEL BY
DENNY TAYLOR
GARN PRESS
NEW YORK, NY
Published by Garn Press, LLC
New York, NY
www.garnpress.com
Garn Press and the Chapwoman logo are registered trademarks of Garn Press, LLC
Split Second Solution is a work of fiction closely based on history and geography. References to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously, and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work, and all situations, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Denny Taylor
First Edition, October, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact Garn Press through www.garnpress.com.
Book and cover design by Benjamin J. Taylor/Garn Press
Cover image by Denny Taylor
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911721
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Taylor, Denny, 1947-
Title: Split second solution / Denny Taylor.
Description: New York : Garn Press, 2016
Identifiers: New York : Garn Press, 2016. | Series: Split second solution, bk. 1.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016911721 | ISBN 978-1-942146-45-2 (pbk.) | ISBN 978-1-942146-46-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-942146-44-5 (Kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Fantasy fiction, American. | Time travel--Fiction. | Dystopias--Fiction. | Voyages, imaginary--Fiction. | Extraterrestrial beings--Fiction. | New York (N.Y.) --Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy/ Dark Fantasy. | FICTION / Fantasy/ Romantic. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Time Travel. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic. | FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical. | GSAFD: Dystopias. | Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3620.A9416 S65 2016 (print) | LCC PS3620.A9416 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23.
For
C.L.
E.K.
A.S.
S.R.
H.H.
M.G.
M.M.
&
R.B.
All Young People of Infinite Possibility
Contents
Who Rules the World?
Dear Readers
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Epilogue
Dear Readers
Who Rules the World?
So imagine that you’re an extraterrestrial observer who is trying to take a neutral stance and figure out what’s happening here …
You’d see something quite remarkable …
For the first time in the history of the species, we have clearly developed the capacity to destroy ourselves …
So the danger has always been a lot worse than we thought it was …
The question is: What are people doing about it?
It’s not that there are no alternatives. The alternatives just aren’t being taken. That’s dangerous. So if you ask what the world is going to look like, it’s not a pretty picture. Unless people do something about it. We always can.
Noam Chomsky, 2016
Dear Readers
Dear Readers,
I’m writing in haste. Cat’s in a hurry and she’s said she’ll drop this book off at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City in 2016. She says 6 years should be enough for you to change the future. I can’t tell you what will happen in 2022 if you do not. Cat says you’ll figure it out when you read Split. I hope she’s right.
It’s inconceivable to most of us what the future will bring. It’s always difficult for people to think about what’s not yet happened. Life is full of surprises, some good, some bad, and some terrifying. Rushing – sorry.
I asked Et (you’ll meet her soon) if a book could be a thought experiment that can change the nature of reality? She said yes. I told her I think Split Second Solution could change the future, and she said she thought so too, but she can no longer see the future so it’s difficult for her to tell.
In Split science and myth unite to foretell what happens to our species – you and me. It’s only a novel but it’s not science fiction. This stuff’s happening. We’re all under surveillance. Honest. NSA. GCHQ. CitizenFour. Paranoia. Not. Check it out. We all live in the panopticon. Right? They’ve been watching and hunting me all my life, but in my darkest moments when all hope is gone I hold onto the thought that by reading Split, you – brave readers – will stop the cataclysm that’s about to happen.
The borders between science and myth are porous after all and it’s true that “myths nourish science, and science nourishes myth,” as Carlo Rovelli the great Italian physicist tells us. We do have the capacity to unite our external world (the universe) and our internal world (our consciousness) by reading a book. Please trust me on this, for I’m absolutely certain the split between the universe and ourselves is ultimately spurious – for as Rovelli reminds us, “we are made of the same stardust of which all things are made.”
We’ve been led to believe that this is not so – but we’ve been misled. The false dichotomy between our external and internal worlds distorts our understanding of just about everything. Especially time. Did you know that time’s flow appears nowhere in current theories of physics? And yet, humans are obsessed by time. We are mythologically time bound, with a before and after, a past, present, and future, which have no counterpart in science.
Split challenges our erroneous understandings of “the flow” of time in “this strange, multicolored, and astonishing world,” as Rovelli writes, “where space is granular, time does not exist, and things are nowhere” – that’s where Et exists.
Cat is yowling and looking maniacal. Bad sign. Gotta go. Remember Cat’s your friend. Don’t be put off when you find out who she really is – forget all you have been told. Also be careful, the Lunatic Eight are vile and ruthless. And watch out for the Sick-Reapers. They have privileged access to all your secrets and they’re vicious. Don’t let them hack your consciousness. And, and, there are so many ands! And try not to get stuck in the split second!
Gotta go! Cat’s going ballistic. We’ll meet up at the end – hopefully not the end – of the book. In the beginning …
Good luck!
Word, The Last Truth Keeper
One
Dead to the world an Old Crone sat hunched on a wooden chair cradling a bowl of soup that was her supper. The Fire crack
led in the hearth and the flames made flickering shadows that danced about the room and disappeared into the Four Corners that were empty of light and filled with old thoughts and feelings that could both terrify and delight. They were on guard at all times ready to protect and even kill if anyone tried to hurt the Old Crone. Only Death – who the Four Corners loved – visited regularly in need of a friend to listen to her and help her overcome her neurotic tendencies about the dead and the dying piling up.
The Old Crone liked suppertime – it was her favorite fantasy. The soup bubbled in the pot that hung over the Fire and newly baked bread lay cooling on the three-legged stool that stood beside her chair. When she dipped her bread into the soup she tried not to fret about the fast approaching – fast approaching? What? Not her own death – for that she would have to be alive. No not her own demise. It was not being able to see the future that she feared. She felt she was standing on the edge of a precipice about to fall into the abyss – where there was nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all.
“Not even in air that once was breath,” the Old Crone said to herself. “When old names are gone and there will be no new names to take their place. No bodies. No souls. Just emptiness.”
The Old Crone knew that Death felt it too. She’d been more neurotic of late – her costumes more garish – including frequent appearances as an enormous bat wearing glittering red strappy high-heeled shoes.
“Make time,” Death kept telling her, “till time ends and there are no bodies or souls left.”
“Time’s up,” the Old Crone muttered to herself. “There’s no future for Eternity.” She looked around expecting to see Death nagging her to make time but she did not appear. She was alone.
The Old Crone drew comfort from her solitude. Only the Fire lit the room and soon when the Fire was just embers the flickering shadows would grow dim. Outside it was already dark and night was closing in. But she did not need light to see and she sighed worriedly as she stretched out the claw that was once her right hand and pierced some crumbs of bread with nails as hard and sharp as a hawk’s beak. The grey gnarly bones of her fingers were visible through her ancient skin as she raised them to her dried-up lips that split open to a gaping maw. Then with surprising delicacy she used her broken and cracked teeth to slide the crumbs from her claw onto her shriveled tongue that was more purple than pink.
The crumbs tasted good and she used the sharp pointed nail on her twisted right forefinger to cut through the bread. There was something incongruous about the way she slashed the loaf, and then delicately with her thumb and forefinger dipped a piece of the crust into the soup, and bending even further forward she sucked it into her mouth before it could fall apart and drop sodden, splashing her with soup.
But this once blissful moment, as ancient as the Old Crone was old, ended abruptly – as she’d foretold – when she heard the unfamiliar sound of someone or something landing with a thump on the stone step outside her great iron clad oak door.
“It’s just the wind,” she whispered, in denial that the long wait was over. Her eyes closed and disappeared in the deep wrinkles of her face. She knew the end was fast approaching and she wanted fiercely to hold on to the very last moments of her solitary existence as an Old Crone.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes now open, “the wind.”
But someone or something was scraping their fingernails on the great oak door.
“A branch of a tree must have broken off,” the Old Crone said, nodding, still in denial that the end had come. “Yes. A tree branch, that’s it.” But she knew it was not. She sat very still, holding her breath. She waited, clinging to her last moments of tranquility, refusing to accept that it was over and avoiding thinking about what she could not see.
Then came a new sound, as silent as dust falling or a last breath gently passing. The Old Crone found it difficult to concentrate on the sound. For five hundred years she had seen in her mind’s eye the end of the future when the last Truth Keeper was attacked by the Sick-Reapers and died. She could see no future for anyone after that. It terrified her. Gnawed at her. Twisted her fingers and her insides – except at suppertime when she remembered the past and the moments of blissful contentment in her once peaceful life.
She could still see the past – millions of years back – but her ability to see the future abruptly stopped in 2022, when the last Truth Keeper – escaping from the Sick-Reapers – chose to take her own life and drown in the Hudson River near the 79th Street Boat Basin in New York City. After that? The future? There wasn’t one. She saw nothing, nothing at all – just empty space, sort of grey, not light, not dark, just empty. And people? None. No place at all. She couldn’t see any.
“Was it a trick?” the Old Crone asked, devastated by her inability to see the future. “Had the Sick-Reapers – officially the Super-Recognizers – charged by the Lunatic Eight with finding and killing the last Truth Keeper also been ordered to find and kill her?”
“Not possible,” she reasoned. “Paranoia.” She’d lived alone too long with Death her only companion. Even the last Truth Keeper did not know of her existence. Her house sat high in some meadows, hidden by trees and surrounded by mountains. There was only one dirt road with deep ruts that circled the mountains that surrounded her house. The dirt road was snow blocked in winter and flooded in spring. And the paths over the mountains that led from the dirt road through the woods to her house were overgrown with brambles that had razor sharp thorns. It had been many years since anyone had found the Old Crone’s house and those who once knew where the house was located were long since dead.
She had lived alone for almost five hundred years and even though her nightmares consumed her she had enjoyed the fantasy of a simple existence, eating her supper every night without interruption – except when Death visited – until this moment when, after centuries of silence, someone or something was lying outside on the stone step.
There it was again, another sound, fingernails scratching and then – making her jump – a knock, hard and sharp, upon her great oak door. She felt it – as if she had been hit. She knew the effort it must have taken to make such a loud and decisive noise. She could feel the urgency and the desperation in the sound that circled around her room making the Fire crackle and sparks fly as the Four Corners moved closer in trepidation of the moment when the Old Crone opened the door.
Still she hesitated. Was it a trap? The Old Crone shook her head, angry with herself for being so fearful. Unable to move she closed her eyes tight again and then slowly opened them as the Walls buckled and the Four Corners moved closer so the room was no bigger than a coffin.
Could it be a Sick-Reaper? No, no, not yet. She stretched out her fingers on her right hand and looked at them for reassurance as they became young and slender. “No, not yet,” she said, as her fingers became bent and twisted again and her hand a claw once more.
She hoped that whoever or whatever had fallen outside her door would quickly crawl away. But the knocking came again, softer and more muffled, more troubled, more urgent and insistent than before, and she knew the noise she heard was not knuckles on wood, sharp and quick, but the beating of a dying heart sounding its own death knell.
“Are you deaf?” Death asked arriving abruptly with screams and cries and a fetid smell of rotting matter filling the room.
“Why are you here?” the Old Crone asked, knowing the answer before she asked the question. “Go away.”
“When someone knocks you’re supposed to open the door!” Death said, coughing as though she had swallowed a lot of water.
“What are you doing here?” the Old Crone asked again “and why are you amorphous? Show yourself! I don’t like it when you look like nothing at all.”
“Open the door!” Death rasped, appearing as a drowned cat coughing up minnows and river detritus. “Our future depends upon it!”
“Our future?” the Old Crone said, not at all impressed by Death’s theatric performance.
“Yes. Our future!” Death s
aid. “You know that!” And then in a whisper, “There is no death without life, and all life will end if this one dies.”
“You’re the bane of my existence,” the Old Crone said shaking her head. “It’s dangerous. Think of the consequences – they could be cataclysmic.”
“Think?” Death said, her fur drying. “You’ve been thinking for five hundred years and I’m the one who jumped in the Hudson River and saved her.”
“What do you mean you saved her?” the Old Crone asked standing up, speaking quickly, fearing the worst. “She didn’t drown in the river? She’s still alive? And you brought her here? She’s outside?” The Old Crone sat down on her chair. “I should have known,” she said, with a small shake of her head. “How I hate not seeing the future!”
“She had one second left,” Death said. “So I split it.” She looked defiantly at the Old Crone. “She’s still in it – the split second,” Death said. “Whadyathink? Can you save her?”
Two
The Old Crone stared at the lifeless body on the stone step. Small, shapeless, covered in mud and blood, it could be a child, but the Old Crone knew that it was not.
“Well? Can you save her?” Death asked, re-appearing this time with psychedelic make-up and theatrical garb looking very much like a rock star – of similar ilk to David Bowie, Lady Gaga, or one of the rock band Kiss. She looked pixelated but she was not a digital image.
“No,” the Old Crone said, ignoring Death’s theatrics, “but she can save herself.” The Old Crone looked at Death whose mascara was running in multi-colored rivers with purple, red, and yellow tributaries down her face. “Why are you dressed like that?”
“This is the sixth age of extinction,” Death said. “Whole species are dying out! In the day, in the night, in I glide, but I’m never welcome! No one knows how much I suffer. I’m delicate!”
