The Wars of Winter Past and Further Sunset

The Sunset Saga Book 3: Cities of Dust, Part 1

My series editor is just completing this volume in The Sunset Saga. So confident that it will be in print before year’s end I will serialize portions of it here. Below is the front matter. In her defense, this is my own pre-release version. Any undotted i or uncrossed t is entirely my fault.

This sci-fi tale spans 20,000 years, from the Ice Age to a 2843 and follows nine people caught in Time:

Tusk, Ghost Walker of the Original People, is called upon to face a supernatural menace.

Jay Bracken’s yearning for a normal life has ebbed since discovering he is a genetically engineered war-freak. However, his short-term goals: nubile companionship and the slaughter of foes, have not changed...

Three-Rivers, the messiah of a doomed people, has merged with that spirit the medicine-men of Sunset call a ‘singularity’, which he knows as The Sunken Star.

Eddie thought that selling crack in East Baltimore was a rough job! Now he’s being sucked into some messed-up past—guts first—and is scared, to death!

Aristotle was spirited away from his Athenian enemies by people claiming to hail from 2,335 years in the future. And what an ‘Athenian’ future it is…

Scooter played Cartels of Titan 2,062 times without a caffeine injection, causing his avatar to suffer a psychotic break and his uplink implant to flat-line, totally trashing his halo-drive. Now he sits unplugged and unable to...

Brant has always lived alone with his parents and Lassie. But yesterday he got new parents, and a new Lassie; a nice Lassie, but not his Lassie.

Randy Bracken followed his meat-head brother into a time-travel scheme run by some black mad scientist, and is now the most conflicted White Supremacist alive. If only he could get his hands on a bigger, better gun...

Joan Henderson, CIA, was brutally raped in the most secure black ops facility in the world. Now she’s pregnant with the maniac’s child, and is heading up the search for her vanished attacker. Whatever he is, he owes her 18 years of child support, and Joan means to collect.

Copyright 2012 James LaFond

A Nerd Church Book

Originally published as an e-book on jameslafond.com in 2012

For more information on the author or his other works go to www.jameslafond.com

This book prepared by Jamie King, Sunset Saga series editor.

Five Sunset Saga Story Threads by Protagonist

So that you can jump into the Sunset Saga at any point here are the major story threads by viewpoint character, in the order that they appear along the storyline.

Jay Bracken is a genetically engineered 24th Century time-hunter pre-based in the late 20th Century to be activated by his handlers. He is a deep retrieval asset developed from an executive protection template. Overdesigned to thrive in low tech environments he take sides with the primitives he is intended to harvest becoming a big—though thankfully obtuse—problem.

Charlie Robinson is a quantum physicist who gave up his quest to build a time machine, filed his notes away, and then dropped out to start a science-based church. He is contacted by time-travelers from the future who claim to be his disciples, and to have fabricated his device into two versions; one that ‘loops’ through time, invoking the grandfather paradox, and one that splinters time, forming an alternative ‘time branch’. He soon becomes their pawn in a scheme to pillage the past.

Three-Rivers is a language-savant of the Seneca Nation. When some misguided white people come into Mother Earth on behalf of a certain ‘Burnt Man’ looking for Hiawatha he offers himself instead, unable to resist a journey beyond the Sunset. After discovering what the whites have done to Mother Earth, and that they mean to imprison him, he steals a ‘thunder-hoop’ which he intends to use as a time-bending messiah of the ‘natural people’ to assure their future.

Randy Bracken is the older ‘half brother’ of Jay Bracken. A lifetime criminal, cop-killer, alcoholic, drug-user, and white-supremacist leader, Randy manages to make himself invaluable to Doctor Robinson and his handlers, in hopes of using time travel as a means to circumvent drug laws, gun laws, and every other ‘bullshit law’ on the ‘police state’s bullshit books’.

Hyman Maxim resides atop his Stratospheric Tower in 2843 with his consort, a perfect woman of his own design. His generation ship is nearly complete, as he sits infinitely alone at his compact; the last organic member of the human race; the last of his species to trace a life-line back to Ugly little Lucy. The re-teraforming sequence is set in motion and commences in one year. He has enough clones and drones to operate the Endeavor on its interstellar flight. But since those religious fanatics trashed the Genome Vault his last hope for a meaningful company of travelers resides with his Time Hunters.

Discussing philosophy with Aristotle, playing chess with Tamerlane, painting with Leonardo, singing with Hiawatha, drinking with Richard Burton, and enjoying the most distinguished women of a dozen lost worlds would be far preferable to spending eternity with this scary bitch that he designed 300 years ago, when he was too young to know any better.

For Gerard, I still on occasion walk by

Protagonists in Order of Appearance: 8

CGRP-4 Memo 8

Chapter 1: Ghost Walker 12

Chapter 2: Malinda 18

Chapter 3: They Come 24

Chapter 4: Fancy Clothes and Fine Ladies 28

20 Minutes Later 34

The Call 38

Chapter 5: Oh Snap! 44

Holding Hands with Mister Hide 44

Chapter 6: A Hundred Thousand Tomorrows 51

Chapter 7: A Song of Bad Medicine 64

Chapter 8: They 71

Chapter 9: The Long Hand of The Ender 76

Chapter 10: Harvest This! 82

Chapter 11: Lassie Come Home 90

Chapter 12: On an Evil Steed 97

Chapter 13: Vagina Be Gone! 106

The Doomsday Van 106

A Good Ole Boy 112

Mid-afternoon at the Well of Inequity 122

On the Coltrane 131

Slapping Silverbacks 137

Chapter 14: A Grey Sunset 149

The Darkening Sky 154

The Naked People Express 156

Doctor Crawly Awaits 160

Chapter 15: Downgrade Alley 166

Life in The Downs 166

Keefer Smart 172

The Org 177

Badass! 179

Chapter 16: The Story of GI Joe 186

Chapter 17: A Warren of Shadow 193

Chapter 18: The Org Place 205

The Big Show 207

Chapter 19: Bedtime 211

Chapter 20: Rocket Boy 218

Chapter 21: Den of The Ender 224

Chapter 22: Hell’s Nursery 235

Chapter 23: Blessed is the Warrior 245

Frames-of-mind 247

Chapter 24: All About Outside 254

Lazzie Boy 258

Chapter 25: The Upgrade Place 261

Chapter 26: Into the Eyes of Apollo 264

Unmixed Wine 269

News from The End of Time 271

Chapter 27: White Picket Fences 278

Mommy 284

Uncle-Satan-propagating-vagina-spook 287

Epilogue: All the Stars in the Night Sky 294

Night Face by Day 294

Under a Summer Moon 297

1. Tusk, Ghost Walker of the Original People

2. Three-Rivers, time-bending teenage prophet of He-Who-Makes-Rivers

3. ‘Jay’ Brant Bracken, genetically engineered time-hunter

4. Eddie, urban American time-traveler

5. Aristotle, elderly time-traveler from ancient Hellas

6. Scooter, downgraded tech-boy

7. Jay ‘Brant’ Bracken, organic ward of the Smithsonian Institution

8. Randy Bracken, white-supremacist time-hunter

9. Joan Henderson, Lead Investigator Project YF7

In utilizing the Pulse Stream link with the Division Core to assess events from the Three-Rivers Perspective, we are interfacing with technology more than four centuries in advance of our own. While most operatives and subjects involved in the Chronological Genetic Reclamation Process perceive their chronological replication as ‘time-travel’, Three-Rivers comes closer to an actual appreciation of the process, linking it as he does with his primitive understanding of death and his belief in the transmigration of souls.

Despite the fact that the Iroquois savant has unwittingly merged with an informed singularity, and is now by our definition an artificially intelligent replication matrix, his beliefs in the Native American superstitions indigenous to his time-of-origin, and his adoption of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian and Hindu mythology has resulted in the splintering of his psyche. He still believes himself to be an organic human possessed by the ghosts of his adopted parents, is convinced that he can speak to animals, and mistakes his tenuous uplink with the Division Core as an evolving relationship with a creator deity.

Our link with Three-Rivers does permit remote viewing of other subjects keyed to his singularity for chronological replication and has greatly enhanced our observation capacity. However, we have too little understanding of the probable evolution of his merging with the 3BC Singularity and the eventual implications. Most disturbing of all has been his absorption of Operative Tina Hesperia’s espionage protocols.

Primary Operational Priority: The directive to acquire Three-Rivers for upload into AGGREGATE is hereby rescinded, concurrent with his Military Priority Initiative Placement. This directive must be achieved outside of the 29th Century Root timeframe, and the 21st Century and 24th Century advance timeframes, and should be conducted either prehistorically or in a branch timeframe in order to limit probable chronologic collateral disruption to the only acceptable level: zero. Draw him out people.

Secondary Operational Priority: Branch Two is to be secured for culling operations, with the understanding that the enemy’s first-responder [YA7] is a dedicated deep-retrieval asset. Please people, review the Tech-1 Augmentation Manual; he’s not just another meat-shield.

Tertiary Operational Priority: Any operative that manages to place YA7’s [AKA ‘Jay Bracken’] I.D. nexus on my compact will earn 12 days of all-inclusive leave at the resort of his or her choice. YA7’s remains are to be remanded to the custody of Doctor Candice Wyeth. Trophies taken by operatives so inclined are to be limited to off-the-shelf anatomy. Customized and limited edition augments are to be salvaged and remanded to bio-salvage as per Dr. Wyeth.

-Commander Mentor Bing, Life Science Ministries Liaison, PREQUEL, 2334

“If the possibility is not zero, it will happen.”

-nuclear physicist