by John L. Monk
Chronicles of Ethan Complete Series
Mythian, Hard Mode, Karma’s Touch
John L. Monk
Copyright © 2020 by John L. Monk
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 publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To my lovely wife Dorothy (+Infinity Comeliness), who rolled the dice and got me.
Acknowledgments
Whether through beta reading, art design, editing, project managing, or giving me creative advice when my wells ran dry, the following people were vitally instrumental in bringing this series together (listed in alphabetical order):
Carol Kean, beta reader.
Chad Engler, beta reader.
Dakota Krout, Mountaindale Press publisher, Author of Dungeon Born
Danielle Krout, Mountaindale Press publisher.
Dylan Schnabel, editor.
Harvey Click, creative muse, Author of Demon Frenzy
Jessamyn De Vos, project manager.
Keith Draws, artwork (website).
My beautiful wife Dorothy, beta reader, creative muse.
Nerys Wheatley, beta reader, editor, Author of Mutation
Nick Cole, creative muse, Author of Soda Pop Soldier
P.T. Hylton, beta reader, creative muse, Author of Regulation 19
Rose Depontes, editor.
SC Callahan, beta reader.
Sean Hall, beta reader.
Newsletter
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Contents
I. Mythian
II. Hard Mode
III. Karma’s Touch
Afterword
About John L. Monk
About Mountaindale Press
Mountaindale Press Titles
Appendix
Mythian
Chronicles of Ethan Book 1
Chapter One
They told me it was a bug in the flitter system. In the eighty years since its inception, there hadn’t been a single major failure. Certainly nothing fatal. If anything, it had saved lives by rendering commuter traffic extinct. For those who still needed to work outside the house, they could call up a flitter and one would land in less than a minute to take them where they wanted.
In old movies, travelers endured air pollution called “smog,” honking horns, and limitations on the speed they could travel. There were accidents, sure, but they piloted their own vehicles. They had a sense of control. Whereas what happened to my wife made no sense at all.
The coroner said Melody died instantly upon impact and thus hadn’t suffered. His words offered no comfort. My wonderful wife of thirty-five years was still dead, and I was still alive.
In a meeting between my lawyer, a pair of government attorneys, and a clueless engineer, I asked if she’d given the command to let her out. The engineer said her flight recorder had faulted after she closed the hatch, so there wasn’t any telemetry from the time she took off to the moment of the accident—which is why I didn’t have to pay for the shattered office glass, the destroyed flitter, or the cremation service.
Five years after her death, I was sitting in a restaurant Melody and I used to frequent, lensing through old photos one blink at a time as the rain fell outside. My ancient ground car was parked in the middle of the street. When I was a child, such a thing wouldn’t have been acceptable. These days, nobody drove anymore, so the streets were empty of everything but weeds and the herds of deer that chewed them. Newer parts of the city had no streets at all—just buildings with flitter-pads on top. There’d been talk of ripping the streets out and putting in something else. Flowers, maybe. Or orchards. If that happened, I’d be forced to find a retirement home that still catered to flesh-and-blood old people, because I sure as hell wouldn’t fly in another of those death pods again.
There was another option: I could make use of that suicide ticket they’d sent me when I lost my job and couldn’t get another. After a valued life teaching consensus history, my sudden unemployment was now a drain on the system.
The government didn’t call it suicide, of course. They preferred the term retirement. Millions of old people got the operation every year, all on the promise of eternal life in a paradise of their choosing: Valhalla, Heaven, Decadence, Nirvana, Paradise, Star Quest, Middle Earth, Roaring Twenties, Ancient Rome, Pirate Wars…
If you fell into one of a handful of exempted classes—the handicapped, those incarcerated for life, or the mentally unemployable, like me—the income-adjusted fee and age restriction were waved.
I may not have had a job, or money, or a wife anymore—or anything at all that mattered very much—but tonight, at least, I had George, my intrepid waiter, who was happily serving me drinks again. I liked him because he was friends with the bartender and often came back with a little more hooch than I’d actually ordered. When that happened, he’d throw me a sly wink, just in case I hadn’t noticed. Then I’d nod my head, letting him know I had.
Even if he hadn’t been so generous, I still would have ponied up the twenty percent tip. I may have been a whiskey thief, but I’d never risk my immortal soul by under tipping.
“What’ll it be, Ethan?” George said with a smile.
George and I were on a first-name basis. Sometimes, when it was slow, we even talked. He was curious about my hobby as a re-historian—someone who sorted through lost archives with the intent of setting the digital record straight. A worthy cause, I’d once thought. Now I knew that struggle had been lost long ago. The stupider the notion, the more energy people spent legitimizing it. Challenge them on something, point out the facts—even show where those facts came from—and they’d resist you, attack your character, ostracize you.
I didn’t mind so much when Melody was alive. In fact I relished the fight. But these days, I simply didn’t care because it had nothing to do with drinking.
“Hmm,” I said, pretending to think it over. “You know what? I think I’ll have the corn.”
George’s smile was polite as always. “You got it.”
A minute later, he returned with my almost-double whiskey on the rocks and promised to bring another when I looked ready. I thanked him and waited until he left, then dialed my lenses opaque and reread the message from that morning.
Dear Mr. Crane,
Shortly before her death, Melody was diagnosed with dementia. After a week of soul searching, she followed her doctor’s advice and secretly got the Everlife implant with the hope of making it to seventy. She never could have afforded an early transition on a gamer’s income, and she was still in the earliest stages of the disease. Luckily for her, I’m her highest-ranked patron, and one of considerable means. I learned of the implant and knew I had to help her.
Because her data had finished syncing before the accident, I was able to bring her online as an unregistered player. Off the books, understand. It isn’t legal to bring anyone online unless they’ve been pre-approved.
You can find your wife in a game world called “Heroes of
Mythian.” It has everything she loved in life: powers, quest chains, a fun leveling system, thirty-six character classes, and countless ways to live a full life of adventure and meaning.
There is one small detail you should know. Melody came into the game directly, with no calibration. Such an abrupt change is terribly unpleasant. In my desire to help, I brought her out of Ward 1 and placed her into an endless sleep. She has no friends in that busy place. As her biggest fan, I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible until you arrived.
Before she went to sleep, she told me you wouldn’t believe this was real. She said you thought retirement worlds were “suicide.” Mr. Crane, please let me assure you that nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you ask Melody when you see her.
When you’re ready, visit an Everlife office and order the procedure. Then, when you’re strong enough to reach Ward 2, you can awaken her with a kiss and resume your lives together.
I remain, yours truly,
Cipher
I blinked shut the note, sipped my drink, and gazed at it like a soothsayer. Obviously this was a sick prank. Someone trying to push my buttons. Wasn’t it? Of course it was. Melody had been loved by everyone. Nobody who knew her would pull something like this.
“An enemy of mine, then,” I said quietly, sounding it out, even though I couldn’t think of a single enemy I’d made. Teachers—unless they blabbed to the world what they did—lived and worked anonymously.
Quite possibly it was some sicko who’d picked up the news story and wanted to have a little fun. Melody’s death had briefly made the subs when it happened. Then, a few hours later, it was bumped by something more interesting and quickly forgotten. Honestly, I was surprised it made the news at all. Her tragedy cast a blemish on our presumably perfect society. Nobody wanted to irritate the government, not if they wanted to keep their jobs—or their lives, if we’re still being honest.
“I said, do you want another, Ethan?”
Startled, I looked up from my empty glass at George, who watched me with a slightly impish smile. How strange it must be to interrupt someone’s thoughts like that and be welcomed for it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thank you. I do want another.”
And I did.
Chapter Two
“How do you feel about what we do here?” the Everlife administrator said.
Safely ensconced in her corporate-informal office, I’d had to wait perhaps thirty seconds before she started talking. The she in question was a lucid—a self-aware AI. She was housed in a curvaceous glass-bodied mold that said to the world, “I may be a robot, but I’m still sexy.”
Which made me wonder why I’d needed to come here, if I wasn’t meeting a real person.
I’d had to break one of my own rules and take a flitter. No, I wasn’t afraid of them. Even after what happened to Melody, I fully agreed they were safer than purified water. But it felt like a betrayal, me using the damned things after swearing I wouldn’t. I justified it by telling myself it was for her, my wife.
Maybe. If this isn’t a prank. Even if it is, I won’t be any deader than I am now.
“Mister Crane?”
It took me a moment to register the thing’s words.
“Oh,” I said. “Everlife? It’s terrific. Wonderful. Where do I sign?”
“Lots of places,” she said, and a smile lit up behind the translucent curve of what would be her face. “But first, we need to give you the legally required counseling to ensure you’re ready for the transition. You must be one hundred percent committed to the migration because there’s no way to reverse the procedure. Just so we’re clear.”
The smile vanished, and she tilted her head in a way that conveyed just how clear she thought we needed to be.
“Crystal clear,” I said. “Where do I go for that?”
The lucid laughed daintily. “You’re already here, Mister Crane.”
What followed were an endless number of questions to answer and forms to verbally authorize before I was done with the administrator—who, it turned out, also functioned as my new attorney, with dual-fiduciary responsibilities to me and Everlife. One of the forms I’d authorized gave permission for this absurdity. The alternative was to hire a real lawyer and wait however long that took to set up something more proper. My guess was anyone dumb enough to go through all this wouldn’t care either way. Which made me pretty dumb, then, didn’t it?
The admin verbally acknowledged my verbal acknowledgments with every wall of unread legalese that appeared on my lenses. After that, I was directed to another room, where I found a happy flesh-and-blood human. He wore old-fashioned suspenders, a satin vest, and a polka-dot bowtie. The only time I’d ever seen someone wearing a bowtie was in old movies. Still, he carried it okay, and what was I, a fashion expert?
“I’m Mike,” he said, beaming as he grabbed my hand in a firm and vigorous shake. “So whaddaya say? Ready to take the plunge? To finally achieve your true potential?” He gestured around the room. “The one that got whipped out of us by all this civilization? Take it from me: humans need a purpose. And sitting behind a desk all day pushing buttons ain’t it. So, how about that lucid, huh? Ain’t she something? PQ way off the charts. Even better ones in the worlds, take it from me.”
These days, young people talked about personality quotients the way my grandparents did processing power and my great-grandparents horsepower.
“Is this where I go for counseling?” I said.
“Sure is. Have yerself a seat, young man. Life’s a burden best endured one soft hemisphere at a time, if you know what I mean.”
“So long as we’re not pushing buttons,” I said, eliciting an automatic laugh as I sat down.
I’m sure he didn’t mean to sound condescending, but being called young man by someone thirty years my junior rankled me.
Mike quickly went over the transfer process—how they’d swap layers of brain function one-by-one with my analog-self in the game, creating an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. Interviews with retirees had confirmed the process was seamless. And yes, for the record, I believed it was. But what those idiots never talked about was that my sleeping body would still be alive afterward. It could be woken up. Instead of that, they killed it.
“So these worlds…,” I said. “What are they like?”
Mike smiled kindly, as if comforting his dying grandfather.
“Civilized and safe,” he said, “don’t you worry. Each world has its own rules. For example: you can’t go around killing people unless that’s the nature of the world you’re going to. Like one of the games, see? Or one of the adventure ones. That what you want? Sword fighting? Laser guns? Or some comfy resort world? Most worlds let you transfer to others if you get bored. But they’re all pretty amazing. Here, have a look.”
He waved a hand and my lenses filled with strange/exotic/breathtaking scenes of retirees flying on glowing disks or side-saddling dragons. One beautiful woman beat through the clouds on magnificent wings growing out of her back. There were majestic castles. There were futuristic spaceships that put to shame the ones we’d built to reach the Moon and Mars.
It was all crap, of course. I had to remember that. Made-up stuff to deal with overpopulation, and to comfort people who couldn’t accept the certainty of death. But I wasn’t about to say that to this guy. Or anyone at all, actually. It was a touchy subject. Borderline political.
“Yeah, well,” I said, blinking it away, “I already know where I wanna go, so…”
The man made a halting gesture. “Everyone says that. They do a little research, talk to a friend who thinks they know everything, and then change their minds a hundred times right up to the transference. No need to decide now. Like I said, most worlds let you transfer around. The important thing is getting you protected. Once you’re uploaded, paid, and approved”—he tapped his head—“you’re a hundred percent safe from death.”
He actually winked at me.
Something about our counseling session struck me as odd. “Aren’t you supposed to check my mental health? To see if I’m doing this for the right reasons?”
Mike smiled. “But Mister Crane, you already said so. See?” He flashed me a shot of a form I’d authorized. “Says right here you’re of sound mind and body, not retiring under duress, not being paid, not on the run from the law…” He fixed me a laden stare and his voice dropped an octave. “That’s still true, right? No butterflies? Second thoughts? Plenty of time for that. Get the implant now and worry later. You’re already pre-cleared for retirement—good job on that, by the way. Hard to get, pre-seventy. I mean, unless you’re loaded, and … your bank account’s sorta … no offense, of course.”
He chuckled and winked again. I smiled politely, playing along.
“Now listen,” he said, pointing at me. “Make sure you authorize first responders to initiate the transfer in the event of death. If you don’t do that, even with your data uploaded, you may as well have never come in today. Your data will sit there forever and you’ll never move on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people slip in the kitchen or fall down the stairs and die, never to be resurrected in their preferred afterlife. All because they didn’t handle the little details.”
It just popped out—I snorted.
Mike leaned back in his seat and wagged a finger at me. “Aha, I knew it! You’re skeptical. You think your lucid-self is just a copy. Not real. But Ethan, we at Everlife disagree. We believe our data—our PQ—is far more than just ones and zeros all lined up properly. And by the way, even that’s not true. Your personality will run directly on Q4. Bye-bye ones and zeroes, hello qubits, which exist as one and zero and both at the same time. Kinda spooky, you ask me. May as well be magic.” His face grew somber. “We at Everlife believe our souls—for lack of a better word—transfer with our personality. Lots of studies to back it up, way over both our heads.”