Chapter 31
Mundane existence is the source of renewed suffering. The human goal is to attain release from the bondage of material existence and, achieving release, to unite with the Supreme Self.
—Education of the Psychiatrist/Chaplain Moonbase Documents
For a long, pulsing moment after Flattery spoke, they all gazed at that red button: the trigger of their destruction. They all knew this thing. Flattery’s intrusion had ignited a mutual awareness. They were supposed to accept this moment of oblivion. But something new had happened on this venture.
“A few more seconds of life aren’t important,” Bickel said. He held up a hand, hesitant. “You can … wait for just a few seconds.”
“You know I have to do this,” Flattery said.
Even as he spoke, Flattery savored the “Ahhhhh” of suspense which charged this moment with an electrical sensation. It filled the air around them like ozone.
“You have control of the situation,” Bickel said. His glance flickered toward the red switch with Flattery’s hand poised to touch it. “The least you can do is hear what I have to say.”
“We can’t turn this thing loose upon the universe,” Flattery said.
Timberlake swallowed, glanced down at Prudence. How odd, he thought, that we should die so soon after coming alive.
“How is it, Raj,” Bickel asked, “that we can explain more about the unconscious networks of the human body than we can about the conscious?”
“You’re wasting time,” Flattery said.
“But the thing’s dead,” Bickel said.
“I have to be sure,” Flattery said.
“Why can’t you be sure after hearing what John has to say?” Prudence asked.
She looked at Bickel to draw Flattery’s attention there. Two lights had begun blinking on the main computer console behind Flattery.
“It’s a paradox,” Bickel said. “We’re asked to discard logical positivism while maintaining logic. We’re asked to find a cause-and-effect system in a sea of probabilities where enormously large systems are based on even larger systems which are based on greater systems yet.”
Flattery looked at him, caught by the trailing ends of Bickel’s thoughts. “Cause and effect?” he asked.
“What happens if you push that key?” Bickel asked. He nodded to the trigger beneath Flattery’s hand.
Prudence held her breath, praying Flattery would not turn. More lights were winking on the main computer con-sole above Timberlake’s couch. She couldn’t say why the lights gave her hope, but the evidence of life in the ship …
“If I push this key,” Flattery said, “an action sequence will be alerted in the computer.” He glanced back at the winking lights. “You’ll notice that part of the computer is becoming active. These circuits—” he returned his attention to Bickel “—have extra buffering and emergency power. The master program set off by this key instructs the computer to destroy itself and the ship—opening all the locks, exploding charges in key places.”
“Cause and effect,” Bickel said. And he marveled at how automatic Flattery’s movements appeared. A zombie. “Cause and effect doesn’t square with consciousness,” he said.
A fascinating idea, Flattery thought.
“If any subsequent action proceeds with absolute and immediate causality from the sequence of past actions, then there can be no conscious influence of behavior,” Bickel said. “Think of a row of dominoes falling. The human willpower—the muscle and arm of our consciousness—couldn’t decide what behavior to use because that behavior would all have been predetermined by a long line of preceding cause and effect.”
Flattery felt the hand poised over the deadly key begin to ache. “We can’t predict what this beast would do,” he said. “I know.”
Bickel’s signing our death warrant, Prudence thought. She got to her feet. Her muscles still felt weak, but she sensed the stimulant doing its work. She gripped Timber-lake’s arm to steady herself.
Timberlake glanced at her hand, looked back at Flattery.
How calm Tim seems, she thought.
“Maybe consciousness doesn’t influence neural activity at all,” Timberlake said. “Perhaps we only imagine—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Flattery said. “That’d have no survival value and wouldn’t have arisen in nature. Conscious creatures would’ve died out long ago.”
Well, at least we’ve got him arguing, Timberlake thought. He smiled at Prudence, but she was watching Bickel. Timberlake returned his attention to Flattery. How dull … almost dead the man looks.
“Think of an electronic tube,” Bickel said. “A very tiny amount of energy applied at the critical bias junction produces a tremendous change in output. Consciousness does something on the same order, Tim. We have a neural amplifier.”
“Instant causality,” Flattery whispered.
Lord! How that hand ached—as though it had been held above the trigger key for a century.
“That’s what we have to toss out of our thinking,” Bickel said. “Instant causality says if we have complete knowledge of a natural law and complete knowledge of the given system at a given time, then we can predict exactly what the system will do from that point on. That sure as hell isn’t true at the atomic level and it doesn’t apply to consciousness. Consciousness is like a system of lenses that select and amplify, that enlarge objects out of the surround. It can delve deep into the microcosm or into the macrocosm. It reduces the gigantic to the manageable, or enlarges the invisible to the visible.”
This doesn’t change anything, Flattery thought. Why are we talking? Is he just trying to gain a little time? The pressures of the terrible necessity which had been built into him were becoming almost unbearable.
Bickel saw the faint stirrings of life in Flattery’s eyes. “But this consciousness factor isn’t a completely random thing. In a universe packed with random possibility of des-truction, random activity equals the certainty of encoun-tering that destruction—and we’re assuming consciousness is survival-oriented.”
“Unless it’s a healing process,” Flattery said.
“But the healing process would have to completely counteract any destruction,” Bickel said. And he saw the light of vitality grow in Flattery’s eyes, his manner.
“I have to push this key, John,” Flattery said. “Do you know that?”
“In a moment,” Bickel said.
“Raj, you can’t,” Prudence said. “Think of all those lives down in the hyb tanks. Think of—”
“Think of all those helpless lives back on Earth,” Flattery said. “What would we turn loose on them? John’s black box—white box transfer put his life—his entire ancestry—into the computer. Don’t you see that? Any of you?”
Prudence put a hand to her mouth.
Bickel saw the alertness in Flattery, the vital consciousness expressed in every movement, realized that death-conditioning tensions had pushed him over the threshold into something near full potential. But the new argument Flattery had produced staggered Bickel.
If we restore it … awaken it … I’d be its unconscious, Bickel thought. I’d be its emotional monitor, its id, its ego and its ancestors. He swallowed. And Raj …
“Raj, don’t push that key,” Bickel said.
“I must,” Flattery said. And as he spoke he sensed the poignancy of their awareness—this new vitality.
“You don’t understand,” Bickel said. “That field genera-tor in your cubby—you think there was no feedback from you into the system, but there was. Your voice, your prayers—every gross or subtle reaction went back into the system through its sensors. Whatever religion is to you, that’s what it’d be to the Ox. Whatever—”
“Whatever religion was to me,” Flattery said.
And he pushed the key. It clicked, locked.
“How long do we have, Raj?” Timberlake asked.
“Perhaps a few minutes,” Flattery said.
“And perhaps more,” Bickel said.
“Don’t you think we should’ve tried to limp back to UMB?” Prudence asked. “Awake as we are now, the ship control necessities would’ve been so much simpler.”
“Some fool would be certain to play with this ship—just testing,” Flattery said. “And we …” He gestured to include all four of them. “This potential we’ve discovered without ourselves would’ve been engulfed on Earth, smothered, killed.” He shrugged. “What are a few minutes or a few years, more or less? I had a responsibility … and fulfilled it.”
“You had a death wish, too,” Bickel said.
“That, too,” Flattery agreed, recognizing how the deadly impulse had helped project him into his full awareness.
With that realization, Flattery began to glimpse the train of Bickel’s cryptic words—their other meaning.
“There were Greeks who said that even the gods must die,” Bickel said.
Flattery turned, looked at the big board. It was fully alight now, not a warning telltale showing, every gauge zeroed normal.
“It’s programmed to take us to Tau Ceti,” Bickel said.
Flattery began to laugh, almost hysterically. Presently, he stopped. “But there’s no inhabitable planet at Tau Ceti. You know what all this is, John—a set piece. We know what we are—cell-culture humans! A host gave a bit of himself containing the template of the total and the axolotl tanks took care of the rest. We were expendables!” He sighed, put down the urge to sink back into the deadly torpor. “They’re already growing our replacements, our duplicates, building another Tin Egg … back at UMB. Each failure teaches them something back at UMB. They’ve had a continuous monitor on the computer. When I depressed that key, that also launched a capsule back toward Earth—the complete report.”
“Not quite complete,” Bickel said.
“The ship is going to take us to Tau Ceti,” Timberlake said.
“But the self-destruction program,” Prudence said. And as she spoke, she saw what the others already had seen. The ship held control of its own death. It could die. And this was what had given it life. The impulse welled up into the AAT from the Ox circuits … and was repressed, the way humans repressed it. The ship had come to life the way they had—in the midst of death. Death was the background against which life could know itself. Without death—an ending—they were confronted by the infinite design problem, an impossibility.
All Flattery had done was to provide the AAT—the seat of consciousness—with a superenergizer.
“Nothing at Tau Ceti, you’re sure?” Bickel asked.
“Planets, but not inhabitable,” Flattery said.
A green action light began to glow on the main console.
“No sense going into hyb,” Bickel said.
“We are happy,” Prudence said. She stared at the green light. “It isn’t fully conscious yet—the ship.”
“Of course not,” Timberlake said, and he thought how deftly she had phrased their emotional state. I would’ve said we are filled with joy. But joy has somewhat religious overtones. Prue’s way is better.
Prudence grew aware that Flattery was looking at her. “Why not?” he said.
Yes, why not? she agreed.
But no woman had ever presided at a stranger birth.
She crossed to the main console, switched the computer’s audio pickup into the main input channel.
“You,” she said.
She kept her hand on the switch, the new sensitivity of her skin reporting the molecular shift of metal in direct contact.
They waited, knowing the outline of what was happening inside their robotic construction. That one word, internally powered by programmed curiosity and self-preservation directives, was winding its way through the as-yet semi-conscious creation. Preservation—but there were many kinds of preservation, many things to preserve.
But there was only one receptor upon which “You” could impress itself.
Programs were firing, new cross-links being created, comparisons and balances being made.
Abruptly, the board in front of Prudence went dead. Every light extinguished, every gauge at dead rest. She waggled the computer switch, got no response. The entire ship began to tremble.
“Is that the self-destruction program?” Bickel asked.
A single word, metallic and harsh, boomed from the vocorder above them: “Negative.”
The ship vibration eased, resumed, cut off sharply.
There came a weighted sense of drifting, a profound silence which they felt extended throughout the ship.
Again, the vocoder came to life, but softer: “Now, you will see on your screens a lateral view.”
The overhead screen and the fore bulkhead screen came alight with the identical scene: a view of a solar system, planets picked out by the telltale red arrows of computer reference.
“Six planets,” Flattery whispered. “Notice the pattern—and the sky beyond.”
“You recognize it?” Timberlake asked.
“It’s the view the probes brought back,” Flattery said. “The Tau Ceti system.”
“Why would it reproduce the probe view?” Prudence asked.
“Prudence,” said the vocoder, “this is not a probe view. These radiations are what I … see now around me.”
“We’re already at Tau Ceti?” Prudence asked. “How can that be? We can’t be there!”
“The symbol there is an inaccuracy,” said the vocoder. “There and here shift according to a polarity dependent upon dimension.”
“But we’re there!” Prudence said.
“A statement of the obvious may be used to reinforce your awareness,” the vocoder said. “You were to be conveyed safely to Tau Ceti. You have arrived at Tau Ceti.”
“Safely,” Flattery said. “There’s no place for us to land.”
“An inconvenience, no more,” said the vocoder.
Every arrow but one on the screen winked out.
“This planet has been prepared for you,” said the vocoder.
Bickel glanced sideways at Flattery, saw the psychiatrist-chaplain mopping perspiration from his brow.
“Something’s wrong,” the vocoder said. “You have but to look around you. You are safe. Observe.”
The scene on the screens shifted.
“The fourth planet,” said the vocoder. “That which is prepared can be preserved.”
Flattery gripped Bickel’s arm. “Can’t you hear it?”
But Bickel was staring at the view on the fore screen—a planet growing larger, filling the screen: a green planet with atmosphere and clouds.
“How did we get here?” Bickel asked. “Is it possible for me to understand?”
“Your understanding is limited,” said the vocoder. “The symbols that you have given me possess strange variance with nonsymbolized reality.”
“But you understand it,” Bickel said.
The vocoder seemed to take on a chiding tone: “My understanding transcends all possibilities of this universe. I do not need to know this universe because I possess this uni-verse as a direct experience.”
“Can’t you hear it?” Flattery demanded, his grip on Bickel’s arm tightening.
Bickel ignored the distraction, remembered that moment in the force of the field generator when he had faltered and fallen back from a transcendental awareness. He had not possessed the capacity. It was a built-in lack, functional.
He could only accept the accomplished fact because the evidence was visible on the viewscreen. They were coming down through clouds—a meadow with trees beyond it and a snowcapped mountain lifted in the background. He could feel the G-pull increasing, steadying as the ship came to rest.
“You will find the gravity just a fraction less than that of Earth,” said the vocoder. “I am now awakening colonists in hybernation. Remain where you are until all are awake. You must be together when you make your decision.”
His voice rasping in a suddenly dry throat, Bickel glanced up at the vocoder, said: “Decision? What decision?”
“Flattery knows,” said the vocoder. “You must decide how you will WorShip Me.”
The End
Frank Herbert, the visionary author of Dune, wrote more than twenty other novels, including Hellstrom’s Hive, The White Plague, The Green Brain, and The Dosadi Experi-ment. During his life, he received great acclaim for his sweeping vision and the deep philosophical underpinnings in his writings. His life is detailed in the Hugo-nominated bio-graphy Dreamer of Dune, by Brian Herbert.
Other Frank Herbert novels available from WordFire Press include Destination: Void, The Heaven Makers, Direct Descent, The Jesus Incident (with Bill Ransom), and his last published novel, Man of Two Worlds, coauthored with his son Brian Herbert.
Look for These & Other Digital Works from WordFire Press
by Frank Herbert
Direct Descent
Earth has become a library planet for thousands of years, a bastion of both useful and useless knowledge—esoterica of all types, history, science, politics—gathered by teams of “pack rats” who scour the galaxy for any scrap of information. Knowledge is power, knowledge is wealth, and knowledge can be a weapon. As powerful dictators come and go over the course of history, the cadre of dedicated librarians is sworn to obey the lawful government . . . and use their wits to protect the treasure trove of knowledge they have collected over the millennia.
Destination Void
The starship Earthling, filled with thousands of hybernating colonists en route to a new world at Tau Ceti, is stranded beyond the solar system when the ship’s three Organic Mental Cores—disembodied human brains that control the vessel’s functions—go insane. An emergency skeleton crew sees only one chance for survival: to create an artificial consciousness in the Earthling’s primary computer, which could guide them to their destination . . . or could destroy the human race.
Frank Herbert’s classic novel that begins the epic Pandora Sequence (written with Bill Ransom), which also includes The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor.
by Bill Ransom
Jaguar
In waking life, he is a combat vet with a mysterious sleep disorder, confined to a VA hospital bed. When he sleeps, he roams the plains of another world, invading the minds of the people as they dream and forcing them to do his will. They call him . . . Jaguar.
In both worlds, there are those who know the Jaguar’s secret. They are learning to link their minds across the void between worlds, following the dreampaths the Jaguar created—all the way back to where his body lies helpless . . . an easy target for their justice.
by Kevin J. Anderson
Mythical Creatures
An original, standalone story in the TERRA INCOGNITA universe: A prester in search of penance accepts an assignment to the rugged Soeland Islands, but he must confront his faith after he is cast overboard and then rescued by a mythical creature that the Scriptures tell him cannot exist. BONUS: Also contains the complete story and lyrics (written by Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta) for the two TERRA INCOGNITA crossover rock CDs performed by Roswell Six.
Kevin J. Anderson’s Alien Landscapes 1
Collection of four science fiction tales from the mind of Kevin J. Anderson, each with a short introduction by the author. Includes: “Landscapes,” “Fondest of Memories,” “Controlled Experiments,” and “Human, Martian—One, Two, Three.”
Kevin J. Anderson’s Dark Labyrinth 1
Collection of four horror tales from the mind of Kevin J. Anderson, each with a short introduction by the author. Includes: “Final Performance,” “Special Makeup,” “Much at Stake,” and “The Sum of His Parts.”
Kevin J. Anderson’s Fantastic Realms 1
Collection of four fantasy tales from the mind of Kevin J. Anderson, each with a short introduction by the author. Includes: “Loincloth,” “Frog Kiss,” “Short Straws,” and “Technomagic.”
RESURRECTION, INC.
In the future, the dead walk the streets—Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it. A microprocessor brain, synthetic heart, artificial blood, and a fresh corpse can return as a Servant for anyone with the price. Trained to obey any command, Servants have no minds of their own, no memories of their past lives.
Supposedly.
Then came Danal. He was murdered, a sacrifice from the ever-growing cult of neo-Satanists who sought heaven in the depths of hell. But as a Servant, Danal began to remember. He learned who had killed him, who he was, and what Resurrection, Inc. had in mind for the human race.
CLIMBING OLYMPUS
They were prisoners, exiles, pawns of a corrupt government. Now they are Dr. Rachel Dycek’s adin, surgically transformed beings who can survive new lives on the surface of Mars. But they are still exiles, unable ever again to breathe Earth’s air. And they are still pawns.
For the adin exist to terraform Mars for human colonists, not for themselves. Creating a new Earth, they will destroy their world, killed by their own success. Desperate, adin leader Boris Tiban launches a suicide campaign to sabotage the Mars Project, knowing his people will perish in a glorious, doomed campaign of mayhem—unless embattled, bitter Rachel Dycek can find a miracle to save both the Mars Project and the race she created.
“Drumbeats”
A chilling story co-written with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. A rock drummer bicycling through the African wilderness encounters a village that makes very special drums. This one will make your heart skip a beat. Includes essays by Neil Peart and by Kevin J. Anderson.
BLINDFOLD
Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty. Truthsayers are Justice—infallible, beyond appeal.
But sometimes they are wrong.
Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana . . . until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous reading, Kalliana doesn’t realize her power is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers’ Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. Justice isn’t blind—it’s been blinded.
From an immortal’s orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall. . . .
Gamearth Trilogy 1: GAMEARTH
It was supposed to be just another Sunday night fantasy role-playing game for David, Tyrone, Scott, and Melanie. But after years of playing, the game had become so real that all their creations—humans, sorcerers, dragons, ogres, panther-folk, cyclops—now had existences of their own. And when the four outside players decide to end their game, the characters inside the world of Gamearth—warriors, scholars, and the few remaining wielders of magic—band together to keep their land from vanishing. Now they must embark on a desperate quest for their own magic—magic that can twist the Rules enough to save them all from the evil that the players created to destroy their entire world.
Gamearth Trilogy 2: GAMEPLAY
The Gamearth Trilogy continues. It was written in the Rules—Save the World! Over the past two years, a group of four players had given so much to their role-playing world that it had developed a magic of its own. The creatures, warriors, sorcerers, thieves—all had come alive. And now there is an odd connection between the gamers and their characters, splitting into factions to determine the fate of the Game itself and both the inside and the outside worlds.
Gamearth Trilogy 3: GAME’S END
The finale to the Gamearth Trilogy. It’s all-out war between the players and characters in a role-playing game that has taken on a life of its own. The fighter Delrael, the sorcerer Bryl, as well as famed scientists Verne and Frankenstein, use every trick in the Book of Rules to keep the world of Gamearth intact while the outside group of players does everything possible to destroy it.
by Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason
ASSEMBLERS OF INFINITY
Nebula Award Nominee. The crew of Moonbase Columbus make an amazing discovery on the far side of the Moon—a massive alien structure is erecting itself, built up atom by atom by living machines, microscopically small, intelligent, and unstoppable, consuming everything they touch. The mysterious structure begins to expand and take shape, and its creators begin to multiply.
Is this the first strike in an alien invasion from the stars? Or has human nanotechnology experimentation gone awry, triggering an unexpected infestation? As riots rage across a panicked Earth, scientists scramble to learn the truth before humanity’s home is engulfed by the voracious machines.
ILL WIND
A supertanker crashes into the Golden Gate Bridge, spilling oil. Desperate to avert environmental & PR disaster, the oil company uses an oil-eating microbe to break up the spill. But the microbe, becomes airborne . . . and mutates to consume petrocarbons: oil, gas, synthetic fabrics, plastics. When all plastic begins to dissolve, it’s too late. . . .
IGNITION
NASA—you have a problem. In this high-tech action adventure from Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason, terrorists seize control of the Kennedy Space Center and hold the shuttle Atlantis and its crew hostage on the launchpad. But astronaut “Iceberg” Friese, grounded from the mission because of a broken foot, is determined to slip through the swamps and rocket facilities around Cape Canaveral and pull the plug on the terrorists. With their years of experience in the field, Anderson and Beason have packed Ignition with insider information to create an extremely plausible, action-packed thriller.
THE TRINITY PARADOX
Activist Elizabeth Devane wished for an end to nuclear weapons. Surely, she thought, if they’d known what they were unleashing, the scientists of the Manhattan Project would never have created such a terrible instrument of destruction. But during a protest action, the unthinkable happened: a flash of light, a silent confusion, and Elizabeth awakes to find herself alone in a desolate desert arroyo . . . and almost fifty years in the past. June 1944. Los Alamos, New Mexico. While the Allies battle in the Pacific and begin the Normandy invasion in Europe, Nazi Germany deviates from the timeline Elizabeth knows and uses its newfound nuclear arsenal against America. Somehow, someway, Elizabeth has been given the chance to put the genie back in the bottle . . . yet could she—should she—attempt the greatest sabotage in history?
Craig Kreident 1: VIRTUAL DESTRUCTION
At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California—one of the nation’s premier nuclear-weapons design facilities—high-level physicists operate within heavy security to model and test new warhead designs. But politics can be just as dangerous as the weapons they design, and with gigantic budgets on the line, scientific egos, and personality clashes, research can turn deadly.
When a prominent and abrasive nuclear-weapons researcher is murdered inside a Top Security zone, FBI investigator Craig Kreident is brought in on the case—but his FBI security clearance isn’t the same as a Department of Energy or Department of Defense clearance, and many of the clues are “sanitized” before he arrives. Kreident finds that dealing with red tape and political in-fighting might be more difficult than solving a murder.
Written by two insiders who have worked at Lawrence Livermore, Virtual Destruction is not only a gripping thriller and complex mystery, but a vivid portrayal of an actual US nuclear-design facility.
Craig Kreident 2: FALLOUT
They call themselves Eagle’s Claw, one of the most extreme militia groups in the United States. They have infiltrated the Device Assembly Facility at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, and the most frightening display of nuclear terrorism is about to unfold.
Only the Nebula-nominated collaboration of Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason could masterfully blend hard-as-nails high-technology with hard-driving intrigue to deliver such an explosive thriller. FBI Special Agent Craig Kreident—the unforgettable hero from Virtual Destruction—returns in this breathtaking tour de force of terrorism, cutting-edge technology, and raw emotional power.
Written by two insiders who have worked at the nation’s nuclear design laboratories and high-security research facilities, including the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, Fallout is a pulse-pounding thriller of an extremist group and stolen nuclear weapons, as well as a detailed portrait of what happens behind the fences of government facilities.
Craig Kreident 3: LETHAL EXPOSURE
At Fermilab near Chicago, researchers use the world’s largest particle accelerator to unlock the secrets of the subatomic universe. While working late one night, Dr. Georg Dumenico—candidate for the Nobel Prize in physics—is bombarded with a lethal exposure of radiation. He will die horribly within days.
FBI Special Agent Craig Kreident knows it was no accident—but he has to prove it, and the clock is ticking. The nation’s most valued research is at stake, and only Dumenico himself knows enough to track down his own murderer . . . if he survives long enough to do it.
by Brian Herbert
The Timeweb Chronicles 1: Timeweb
Brian Herbert creates a universe of wondrous possibilities that is populated by sentient spaceships, shapeshifters, intriguing robots, and miniature aliens with mysterious powers. Humanity has become a mercantile society that has spread throughout the galaxy, ruled by wealthy merchant princes who live in decadent splendor—entirely unaware of another realm just beneath the fabric of the universe.
When galactic ecologist Noah Watanabe discovers the cause of a strange, cosmic disintegration, he embarks on an epic journey to restore the ancient balance to the crumbling galaxy. Noah must work with warring, alien races to unlock the secrets to a vast celestial puzzle.
The Timeweb Chronicles 2: The Web and the Stars
In Timeweb, Brian Herbert introduced readers to the fantastically beautiful galactic web of space and time that interconnects the cosmos, which can be used as a transportation infrastructure for sentient starships. But the web is unraveling, threatening to plunge the universe into oblivion.
Galactic ecologist Noah Watanabe is struggling to hold the cosmic filigree together, while the evil shapeshifter race of Mutatis threatens to use a doomsday weapon against humanity. Noah has his own paranormal ability to journey into the depths of the universe, but he has made enemies of his own, including a third powerful force determined to destroy humans and Mutatis alike.
The Timeweb Chronicles 3: Webdancers
The conclusion to Brian Herbert’s epic Timeweb trilogy. As the human race and the sinister shape-shifting Mutatis continue their epic war, the connecting filigree of Timeweb strands that hold the universe together, begins to unravel. Sentient podships travel the strands of the web, but the cosmos itself is disintegrating.
Galactic ecologist Noah Watanabe, possessed of special powers, is the one person who has a chance of saving all races. He is immortal, and faced with the crisis to the universe, he is also evolving, changing both mentally and physically . . . but into what? Noah is swept on a tidal wave of destiny and knows there is no turning back.
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