SINdrome by J.T. Nicholas Book Tour and Giveaway :)
SINdrome
The
New Lyons Sequence #3
by
J.T. Nicholas
Genre: Science Fiction, Artificial Intelligence
Pub
Date: 9/18/18
The
Sickness unto Death
The
Synth revolution has come at last. The supposedly synthetic beings
humans crafted to do their dirty work for them have fully actualized
their own humanity—and they no longer acquiesce in their
enslavement. Victory in the struggle to tear down the institutions of
oppression seems just a matter of time. But the halls of power are
not so easily shaken—and a counterstrike is inevitable.
Former
Detective Jason Campbell has pledged his life to the Synthetic cause.
So when a mysterious virus starts wiping out Synths left and
right—and shows signs of mutating to target everyone else—he must
lead a race against time to prevent the outbreak of the most horrific
plague the world has ever seen. If he succeeds, he’ll expose the
moral bankruptcy of the depraved elites who will stop at nothing to
restore the old order. If he fails, it could mean the end of life on
this planet. For both Synth and Human.
Chapter 1
You went into a knife fight knowing you
were going to get cut. It was one of the cardinal rules of
weapon defense, and the reasoning behind it was simple: you had to
prepare yourself for the inevitability so that when it happened, you
didn’t freeze up. When blades came into play, inaction was
synonymous with death. The chow line at the New Lyons City
Prison moved slowly, a long line of orange-clad men shuffling
forward, trays in hand. It reminded me, more than anything, of my
time in the Army. Sure, the uniforms were different, but the sense of
routine, the loss of any sort of control over your day-to-day life,
those were…familiar. Easier to adjust to than I’d anticipated.
Boot camp had just been a different flavor of prison. Of course, in boot, I’d only thought
the instructors were out to kill me. Here, in the loving hands of the New
Lyons Department of Corrections, things were a little different. I
had not—technically—been convicted of any crime. At least not
yet. But the charges leveled against me—which included everything
the prosecutors could think of but could be best summed up as
domestic terrorism—had equated to an automatic denial of bail and
ensured that Momma Campbell’s favorite son was headed to the big
house for holding. Normally, former cops wouldn’t be put into the
general population. But somewhere, somehow, a clerical error had been
made. The guards assured me—with the biggest shit-eating grins they
could muster—that it would all get straightened out soon and I’d
go into protective custody. In the meantime, I was sharing a cell
block with a few hundred inmates who knew that I was a cop. The
guards hadn’t even had to tell them. Denying inmates ’net access
had long ago been determined “cruel and unusual” punishment,
access to the web being deemed as vital a service as electricity or
clean water, and with hours on end of sitting in a cell with nothing
but a screen to occupy their time, damn near everyone knew who I was. They’d all seen the first ’net
hijacking that Silas and the other synthetics had engineered, showing
the world Evelyn, the synthetic impregnated by her human rapist. That
wasn’t supposed to be possible, or course, since everyone know the
synthetics were genetically sterile inhuman things and not people at
all. Right. They knew about Silas’s demands, that all synthetics be
granted full rights of citizenship and freed from their captivity.
They knew about the stick that those in the revolution—myself
included—claimed to have, the mountain of secrets that could bring
down governments. And, they’d all seen Hernandez, my former partner
and friend, escort me to the precinct and turn me over into the fat,
greasy hands of Francois Fortier. They didn’t know why or how that had
happened. They didn’t know that I’d turned myself in, after
nearly a month of avoiding the cops and feds on my tail. They didn’t
know about the documents Al’awwal, the first synthetic, had helped
us recover from his “father’s” lab. The documents that proved
not only that Walton Biogenics knew the synthetics were human,
but that they had deliberately suppressed that information along with
significant medical advancements that could have benefited all of
humankind, in the pursuit of profit. But they would. The deadline was up.
Sometime this evening, Silas, LaSorte, and the rest would flip the
switch or press the magic button or whatever the hell it was they
did, and that information would go out to the world, along with the
first round of skeletons aimed at discrediting the most vehemently
anti-synthetic politicians. And my presence here, turning myself in,
was all in an effort to get some of that information into the
official record, somewhere where an army of paid ’net trolls
couldn’t try to muddy the waters with a focused disinformation
campaign of their own. Evidence presented at trial became the subject
of deposition and investigation almost by default, and there was only
so much Walton Biogenics could do to hide the truth.
SINdicate
The
New Lyons Sequence #2
The
Post-Modern Prometheus
Synths
were manufactured to look human and perform physical labor, but they
were still only machines. That’s what the people who used—and
abused—them believed, until the truth was revealed: Synths are
independent, sentient beings. Now, the governments of the world must
either recognize their human nature and grant them their rightful
freedom, or brace for a revolution.
Former
New Lyons Detective Jason Campbell has committed himself to the
Synths’ cause, willing to fight every army the human race marches
against them. But they have an even greater enemy in Walton
Biogenics, the syndicate behind the creation and distribution of the
“artificial” humans. The company will stop at nothing to protect
their secrets—and the near-mythological figure known to Synths as
“The First,” whose very existence threatens the balance of power
across the world . . .
There
was a body on my doorstep. I
don’t know what woke me, or what drove me to climb so early from
the narrow cot that served as my bed. Maybe it was some lingering cop
instinct from my time with the NLPD, that nagging sense that
something was wrong. It was that instinct that had me tucking the
paddle holster of my forty-five into the waistband of the ratty jeans
I had fallen asleep in. I
slid open the door of the eight-by-eight walled office cubicle that
served as my bedroom and stepped out onto the cavernous floor of what
had once been a call center. The first rays of dawn were peeking over
the eastern horizon, filtering through what remained of the call
center’s windows, casting the interior in monochromatic grays
accented with darker pools of shadow. The
broad floor was filled with sleeping people. Sleeping synthetics. The
genetically engineered clones that had served as an underclass of
slave labor for decades and, with a small amount of help from me and
a whole lot of work and planning from a synthetic named Silas, had
begun a de facto rebellion. I
padded among them on bare feet, stepping as silently as possible, and
yet, without exception, the eyes of each synthetic I passed popped
open. They stared at me, stark-white against the gray, eyes wide,
searching, and somehow fearful. Not one of them moved. They waited in
statue-like rigidity, a coiled-spring tension resonating from their
stillness. It lasted only a moment, until they realized where they
were; until they realized who I was. I couldn’t begrudge them that
moment of fear, but it still hit me like a punch to the gut. Such
was life in revolution central. Nearly a month since we had taken
over the air and net waves. Nearly a month since we had ripped off
the veil covering the ugly truth that synthetics were not unthinking,
unfeeling things, but as much people as any of the naturally born.
Nearly a month, and for synthetics, things had gotten worse. Much
worse. It
wasn’t unexpected. Silas had predicted the reaction from society at
large when we shone a spotlight on the truth that everyone suspected
but no one seemed willing to admit. It had started with protests.
Angry people marching with signs about respecting their rights and
not dictating what they could do with their bought-and-paid-for
property. The protests should have collapsed under the weight of
irony alone, but instead they had given way to violence—violence
directed almost entirely against synthetics. Viral videos of
synthetic beatings—always popular—had hit unprecedented highs, as
had videos depicting darker, more depraved “punishments” for
those who dared to think they might one day be “real” people. The
violence, in turn, had given way to death. Not on a widespread
scale—not yet. Whatever else they might be, synthetics were, after
all, expensive. Only the very wealthy could afford to dispose of them
wantonly. We’d
given the world an ultimatum: give synthetics rights, or be prepared
to have all the little secrets that they had gathered in their
decades of near-invisible servitude released to the public. Silas had
managed to bring together and weaponize secrets that could topple
governments and destroy lives. The plan was simple enough—release a
wave of compromising information on a number of politicians and
public figures. The first wave was embarrassing, but not damning, not
actively criminal. If that failed to spark action, then a second,
more catastrophic wave would be released. And so on, until the
governments either acceded to our demands or toppled from the sheer
weight of skeletons tumbling out of closets. But
as that deadline crept closer—now just over a week away—the
bodies were beginning to pile up. The richest among
society—individuals and corporations alike—could afford to throw
away a synthetic here, a synthetic there, and as the dawn of
revolution approached, they made their position clear. One
billionaire businessman had gone so far as to cobble together a
reality livestream. Every day, contestants undertook a series of
challenges, and the winner got to kill a synthetic in any way they
chose, all during a livestream that, last I checked, had viewership
measured in the
millions. And
yet, there was hope out there. That
hope was part of the reason the floor I moved across was filled with
synthetics, crowded in here and there in clusters amidst the
cavernous call center. They would trickle in by ones and twos,
somehow always finding us, despite our having changed locations four
times in the past month. Most told the same story—their nominal
owners, horrified by the revelation that they had, in essence, been
keeping slaves, but terrified of the possible reprisals from those
who thought differently, had simply set them free. Turned them out.
Part kindness, part assuaging of guilt…and part washing your hands
of a problem you wanted no part of.
I
didn’t know how they found us. They trusted me enough to share some
pieces of their stories. The part I played in the rescue of Evelyn,
what I had sacrificed to get the truth out, had earned me that much. That
didn’t stop a young synthetic girl, maybe seventeen, from rolling
into a half crouch as I neared. Her hands were extended in front of
her, a gesture half defense, half supplication. Her look of horror
and shame and guilt and fear reminded me so suddenly and sharply of
Annabelle that it was like a knife twisting in my intestines. Her
mouth opened and formed a single word, not spoken, but clear as a
gunshot nonetheless. “No.” What
could I do? I wasn’t the one who had hurt her, but she’d been
hurt, badly. I offered a smile and kept my distance. It took a moment
for the recognition to dawn, for the panic to quiet. Quiet, but not
fall silent. I was still an outsider. I belonged to a different
class, a class that had long subjugated and tormented them. A human.
Trust only extended so far.
But I had my suspicions as to how they found me, and my suspicions
had a name. Silas. The
albino synthetic who had started my feet on this path remained
elusive. We received messages from him on a regular basis, and he
made brief appearances a couple of times a week, mostly to check in
on Evelyn and make sure she was receiving the medical care she needed
so late in her pregnancy. But after only a short visit, he would
vanish with the ease that had made him so damn hard to track down in
the first place. He, or rather his messages, told us when to move,
and where to move. That let us know when my former brothers and
sisters in blue were getting too close.
I had no doubt that it was his network that funneled the turned-out
synthetics to our door. I
just didn’t know what in the hell he expected me to do
with
them. Whatever
Silas might hope—whatever I might hope—when February 1 rolled
around, the governments of the world would not simply roll over, pass
some new laws, sprinkle a shit-ton of fairy dust, and declare that
synthetics were now all full-fledged citizens. And by the way, sorry
about all the assaults, rapes, and murders suffered in the interim.
No. The months ahead would be steeped in blood. And
not one of the synthetics that were beginning to stir with the rising
sun would be able to spill a single drop of it. Call it conditioning. Call
it brainwashing, but synthetics were engineered to be incapable of
violence, even in self-defense. Which was going to make fighting a
war pretty fucking hard. I
had nearly reached the main door of the call center. The entire front
of the building—once a shining wall of steel and glass—had been
boarded up, long sheets of plywood secured to the frame. Thin cracks
of light filtered in where the boards fit imperfectly, and more came
from openings higher up, where other windows had been spared the
fortification. I had moved through that fractured light, my unease
growing with each step. I dropped my hand to the butt of my pistol,
thumb finding the retention lock and easing it forward. A
four-by-four rested in a pair of brackets across the door, barring it
more effectively than any lock. I had eased it off with my left hand,
straining slightly with the effort, and lowered it to the floor. I
had pulled the door open, reflexively scanning left and right,
searching for threats. Nothing. The
tension I’d felt since awakening had started to ease. Until
I had looked down. And
saw the body.
SINthetic
The
New Lyons Sequence #1
The
Artificial Evolution
They
look like us. Act like us. But they are not human. Created to
perform the menial tasks real humans detest, Synths were designed
with only a basic intelligence and minimal emotional response. It
stands to reason that they have no rights. Like any technology, they
are designed for human convenience. Disposable.
In
the city of New Lyons, Detective Jason Campbell is investigating a
vicious crime: a female body found mutilated and left in the streets.
Once the victim is identified as a Synth, the crime is designated no
more than the destruction of property, and Campbell is pulled from
the case.
But
when a mysterious stranger approaches Campbell and asks him to
continue his investigation in secret, Campbell is dragged into a dark
world of unimaginable corruption. One that leaves him questioning the
true nature of humanity.
And
what he discovers is only the beginning . . .
Chapter 1
The neon signs glowed sullenly,
sending sickly tendrils of light slithering down the rain-soaked
streets like so many diseased serpents. Once bright and inviting, the
reds and blues and greens had dimmed and paled, sloughed off the
flush of health, and left behind a spreading stain of false
illumination that heralded nothing but sickness and decay. The signs
themselves, flickering and buzzing, wheezing like something that
wanted to die, something that should have died long ago,
offered up a thousand different sins, unflinching in the frank
descriptions of the acts taking place within the walls that they
adorned. I stared at those signs, indistinct
and hazy beneath the mantle of falling rain. The mist softened their
lurid offers, restoring, however imperfectly, an innocence the city
lost long ago. As the gentle caress of a silken veil added mystery to
the sweeping curves of the female form, hinting at secrets far more
tantalizing than the revealed flesh beneath, the cloak of rainfall
shrouded the city’s darker side, softening its edges and lending it
an air that approached civility. Approached civility, but did
not—could not—achieve it. With a sigh, I turned my eyes away
from the cityscape, and dropped them to the pavement beneath my feet.
To the body that rested there, or what was left of it.
After nearly ten years on the job, I
still had to fight down the bile threatening to crawl its way up my
esophagus and force its insistent path between my teeth. The body—so
much easier to think of it as “the body” and not “the
woman”—lay flat on its back, arms stretched out above its head
and crossed at the wrists, legs spread akimbo. No clothing. Nor could
I see any discarded garments in the immediate area. The pose,
purposeful and meticulous in its own horrifying way, was a parody of
passion. It was a pose that was likely even now being played out in
many, perhaps most, of the establishments adorned with the gasping
neon signs. With one very notable difference. Vestiges of beauty clung to the
woman, holding desperately to a youthful vivacity that was losing an
inexorable battle to the unnatural slackness of death. Makeup adorned
that face, hiding the pallor beneath blush and eyeliner, lipstick and
shadow, only now beginning to fade and run beneath the unrelenting
assault of a thousand raindrops. Her features were symmetrical,
regular, past the awkwardness of youth, but not yet touched by the
wrinkles or worry lines that would fell all of us in time. I forced myself to look past her
face, past the strong lines of her outstretched arms, sweeping past
her bared breasts and to the … emptiness … that extended beneath her
sternum. From her lowest ribs to the tops of
her thighs, the woman had been … I realized I didn’t have a word for
what had been done to her. The words that stormed through my
mind—savaged, brutalized, tortured—leaving a teeth-gnashing anger
in their wake and making my stomach twist itself into a Stygian knot,
were almost certainly true, but they did not describe what lay before
me. Hollowed. The word floated up from somewhere in
my subconscious, bringing with it memories of carving into pumpkins
and scooping out the seeds and ropey innards with big plastic spoons
made slick and awkward from the pulpy mess. I clamped my teeth so hard that a
lance of pain shot along my sinus cavities, but it kept me—if only
just—from vomiting. Hollowed.
The skin and muscle had been removed
from the woman’s stomach and groin. The organs that should have
been present—stomach, intestines, kidneys, everything south of the
lungs—were gone. The tissue beneath them, the muscles along the
spine, back, and buttocks remained, exposed to the air and rain. I
could just make out pinkish gray tissue poking from beneath the ribs,
so I guessed the lungs, and probably the heart, were intact and in
place. There was no blood. The steady rain had formed a small
pool in the resulting cavity, taking on a cast more black than red in
the dimness of the night. No more blood on the body. No more blood at
the scene. “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” The heartfelt exhalation came from
behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder, tearing my eyes from the
horror before me. The uniforms had finished cordoning off the area,
spreading the yellow tape in a rough perimeter maybe twenty yards in
diameter. Even on a night like this, in a neighborhood like this, a
crowd had gathered, a few dozen people pressed up against the tape as
if it were the glass wall at an aquarium, desperate to peer into the
darkness and see the wonders and horrors within. All of them pointed
screens in my direction or stared with the strange motionless
intensity of someone wearing a recording lens. I prayed that the
darkness, rain, and distance would cloud their electronic eyes, and
grant the woman what little privacy and modesty were left to her. Halfway between me and the tape stood
a small, trim man in his late forties. A fuzz of iron-gray hair
sprouted from his head like a fungus, and a pencil-thin beard traced
the line of his jaw. He wore blue coveralls, stenciled with the words
“Medical Examiner” in gold thread. Dr. Clarence Fitzpatrick had
been medical examiner in New Lyons for longer than I’d been a cop.
We had worked some gruesome homicides, scenes far messier, at least
in terms of scattered gore, than what lay before us. But nothing
quite so damn eerie. “Yeah,” I muttered. “What can
you tell me?” He made his way to the body and knelt
by it, blue-gloved hands extended over it as if trying to divine
information from the ether. “Liver temp is out of the question,”
he said. There was no humor in his voice, no attempt to make light of
the nature of the remains; he was simply stating the facts of the
case before him, retreating behind cold professionalism. It was
something you learned quick on the job. Those who could not put a
wall between the atrocities and their own souls never lasted long. He touched the flesh of the woman’s
arm, pressing against it, feeling the elasticity. “No rigor mortis,
which means that death was either very recent or she’s been gone
awhile.” He panned a flashlight across the
body, the pale flesh luminescing under the harsh white light. “No
discoloration of the remaining tissue. The damage sustained to the
torso is sufficient to cause death, but there is no way to tell in
situ if that occurred before or after she expired. Though if it had
been done here, we would certainly be seeing a lot more blood, even
with the rain.” He spoke in short, clipped bursts, keeping the
medical jargon to a minimum, for my benefit no doubt. His hands moved to the woman’s
head, peeling back the eyelids. “Cloudy. Most likely, she was
killed more than twelve, but less than forty-eight hours ago. Apart
from the obvious evisceration, there is no readily identifiable cause
of death.” He cupped the woman’s face in his hands, twisting it
gently to the side, continuing his field examination. He brushed back
the dark locks of her hair, revealing the back of her neck. A deep
sigh, a sound of relief, not regret, escaped him. “Thank God,” he
said. I stared down at the woman, not
really seeing what the doctor saw, but I knew what would be there.
Only one thing could have drawn that reaction from Fitzpatrick. A
raised pattern of flesh, roughly the size of an old postage stamp,
darker than the surrounding skin and looking for all the world like
an antiquated bar code. The tissue would be reminiscent of
ritualistic scarring, but, unlike the woman herself, would not have
known the touch of violence. It could be called a birthmark, but
“birth” was not a word applied to the lab-grown people that were,
collectively, known as synthetics. They bore other names, of course,
dozens of them, all derogatory, all aimed at dehumanizing them
further, at driving home the point that, though they might look and
act and feel like us, they were not humans. Dr. Fitzpatrick was not immune to
that dehumanization. “Thank God,” he said again. “She’s a
mule.”
J.T. Nicholas was born in Lexington, Virginia, though within six months he moved (or was moved, rather) to Stuttgart, Germany. Thus began the long journey of the military brat, hopping from state to state and country to country until, at present, he has accumulated nearly thirty relocations. This experience taught him that, regardless of where one found oneself, people were largely the same. When not writing, Nick spends his time practicing a variety of martial arts, playing games (video, tabletop, and otherwise), and reading everything he can get his hands on. Nick currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, a pair of indifferent cats, a neurotic Papillion, and an Australian Shepherd who (rightly) believes he is in charge of the day-to-day affairs.
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The Writing Process and How to
Finish a Book
I’ve been asked a time or two what my
writing process is like or, more often, how in the world do you
finish writing a book?
If you’ve ever thought about writing
a novel-length work, odds are you’ve started and stopped more times
than you care to think about. The good news is, you’re in good
company. So has every author, writer, and aspiring writer I’ve
ever spoken to. It’s normal. Expected. Part of the long and
painful (but rewarding – mustn’t forget rewarding) process of
writing a novel. That doesn’t answer the question, of
course, but I wanted to remind everyone that we’ve all got
unfinished manuscripts out there, hiding in dark corners, whispering
at us to come back and take another look at them. Don’t let the
fact that you’ve started a work in the past that stalled stop you
from forging forward. So, what’s my writing process like? Well, I think of it as 3 parts. Part 1
is the idea. Part 2 is the actual writing. And Part 3 is fixing
what’s broken.
Part 1: The Big Idea
Ah, the idea phase. This is, in some
ways, my favorite part of the writing process. This is when you sit
around and think about the story you want to tell. What cool twists
and turns you might interject. The amazing action and jaw-dropping
drama you hope to infuse into your story. The emotional impact that
you want your words to have. I’ve got files full of ideas, but at
some point, you have to take things a little further. In general, you can do this 1 of 2
ways: outline or seat of the pants. Some people like to outline all
the major elements of their story, so that every plot point and the
path to it is known before the writing takes place. I admire the
hell out of those people. I’m not one of them, though. Don’t
get me wrong… I spend a lot of time thinking about those
things, but I’ve never been one for putting them down on paper.
Even in school, when an outline was required for papers, I’d write
the paper first and then go back and do the outline. So, my process
here is seat-of-the-pants, or, if you’d prefer something a little
less pejorative, organic. Also, gluten-free. When I sit down to
start a new novel, I know what the story is, how it’s going to
start, and how it’s going to end. But I like to let the characters
take their own path as to how they get there. That sounds cheesy, I
know, but it’s the only way I can explain it. For me, the idea
phase is lots of thinking and very little doing. That all
comes in the next step …
Part 2: The Actual Writing
For me, the key to putting ink to paper
(or bits to file as the case may be) can be summed up in one word:
consistency. Look,
everyone does things differently. The first thing you have to
realize is that what works for one person when it comes to a creative
pursuit may not work for another. We all have different demands on
our time, different pressures stemming from everyday life, and
different things pulling us in a hundred different directions. But,
one thing I learned early on, if you want to finish a book, you must
keep writing. Like Dory, in Finding
Nemo. Just keep
writing, writing, writing. What do we do? We write! That
mantra pretty much sums up the doing
part of my writing process. Every day I sit down at the computer and
I write. I keep going (to the best of my ability to avoid the gaping
vortex of productivity suck that is the internet) until I’ve
written a thousand words. Then I stop and do whatever I want. Some
days, I can pound out that thousand words in an hour or two. Other
days, it takes all day. Every now and then, I’m still trying to
finish as one day gives way to the next. Now,
I’m in the fortunate position of not having a day job to worry
about – I can focus on writing. That’s not the normal state of
existence for most authors out there. And it’s definitely not the
normal state of things for aspiring
authors. So, the key to my process isn’t really 1,000 words a day.
It’s having a goal. And sticking to it. That 1,000 words is so
that I can finish a novel in (roughly) 4 to 5 months. I needed to do
that to meet the deadlines I had for The New Lyons Sequence, and it’s
a habit that stuck. But if you can’t do 1,000 words a day, then
set a different goal. Maybe for you, 500 words a day is better. Or
maybe you’re lucky to get 1,000 words a week. Whatever the case,
find a goal that works for you, then stick to it. The
only way to finish a novel, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, is to begin
at the beginning, go on until the end, and then stop. The beginning
part is easy. And stopping when you’re done? Piece of cake. It’s
that “go on” bit in the middle that gets sticky. For me, having
a measurable goal is the key to getting past that sticking point.
Sometimes those thousand words are, frankly, crap. But that’s what
the re-writing process is for. Set a goal, stick to it, and you’ll
be amazed at the stately march of progress towards the end of your
story.
Part
3: Re-Writing
It’s
a truism in writing that you can fix a bad page, but you can’t fix
a blank one. No writing process is complete without rewriting. For
me, this is a three-step process that starts with going back over the
whole manuscript and trying to catch all the little things that I
can’t believe I missed the first time around. Inevitably, I won’t
catch them all, which is why round 2 of rewriting goes to my wife.
She does a pass for things that I missed, but also for story and
character. And the last part is the back and forth with the great
people at Kensington and Rebel Base (shout out to my editor Elizabeth
May for being awesome). At each of these, the story is changing,
evolving, and (hopefully) getting better. And
that’s pretty much it. No big secrets. No mysterious late night
sessions with a typewriter and bottle of whiskey. Just the steady,
stately march of progress one keystroke at a time. Just
keep writing, writing, writing. What
do we do? We
write.
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