Forever A-Men

John Trevillian

Description

The A-Men trilogy breaks new ground in mixing noir-style sci-fi with mythic fantasy elements, with five first-person viewpoints on the action. Forever A-Men is the trilogy's concluding book and a science fiction tour de force.Switching Dead City for the crystal arks of the thirteen corporate colonies, Jack comes face to face with the full extremity of D'Alessandro's master plan. Awakening as godking in the fantasy realms of Forevermore, effectively trapped within the pages of his own faerie tale book, he realises his only chance at redemption is to reform the A-Men for one last amazing adventure.With the help of Pure, Dingo the Wonder Dog and the blind, psychic detective Arken Ellis Winterman, Jack finds his path leads inextricably back to D'Arkadia, his family's deserted starstation, for a final confrontation with the terrible past he has tried so desperately to escape. An astonishing final chapter to the A-Men trilogy, this is a story of the realisation that nothing is forever, and of identifying what is important before it is far, far too late.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780889665
• Langue: English

Extrait

John Trevillian is an author, songwriter and artist, living in the United Kingdom. Creator of the Talliston interior design project, his novels include the A-Men trilogy, plus Shadowmagick , a collection of poetry, songs, travel journals, short stories and other miscellaneous writing. Forever A-Men is the conclusion to the A-Men trilogy.
www.trevillian.com
ALSO BY JOHN TREVILLIAN
The A-Men
The A-Men Return
FOREVER A-MEN
JOHN TREVILLIAN
Copyright 2012 John Trevillian
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 9 Priory Business Park, Wistow Road Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0RX, UK Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: [e-mail] Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1780880 907
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 11pt Bembo by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
DGT For without us, there would be no AEs
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1 D LESS NDRO
2 PURE
3 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
4 LORD MIDWINTER
5 THE NOWHEREMAN
6 D ALESS NDRO
7 PURE
8 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
9 LORD MIDWINTER
10 THE NOWHEREMAN
11 D ALESS NDRO
12 PURE
13 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
14 LORD MIDWINTER
15 THE NOWHEREMAN
16 D ALESS NDRO
17 PURE
18 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
19 LORD MIDWINTER
20 THE NOWHEREMAN
21 D ALESSA DRO
22 PURE
23 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
24 LORD MIDWINTER
25 THE NOWHEREMAN
26 D ALESS NDRO
27 PURE
28 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
29 LORD MIDWINTER
30 THE NOWHEREMAN
31 D ALESS NDRO
32 PURE
33 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
34 LORD MIDWINTER
35 THE NOWHEREMAN
36 D ALESS NDRO
37 PURE
38 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
39 LORD MIDWINTER
40 THE NOWHEREMAN
41 D ALESS NDRO
42 PURE
43 DINGO THE WONDER DOG
44 LORD MIDWINTER
45 THE NOWHEREMAN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 D LESS NDRO
XEs, psyche, Amen.
Initiating psyche sequence. Implementing Amen sentience. Psyche completed.
Initiating inventory. Current name equals Jack
O Nowhere. Current security passcode equals twelve. Current resident mode equals Forevermore. Current psyche equals the Amen. Current location equals AEthaneric tower bedchamber. Current objects equals none. Current score equals zero. Assessment of game story completed: 1 .
I ask you please do not focus on the channel or the being delivering this message; it only gets in the way of understanding. Focus instead on the message.
I am the Amen. The Creator. God of the Land of Shadows and Souls. He Who Shall Not Be Named. Speaker of the thirteen words. The words of command, power, knowledge, sense, direction, element, volume, being, quintessence, time, transmutation, creation and destruction, and belief. I command the light. I command the dark. I command the earth, air, fire, water and shadow. I command all things but one and that thing is come to me. Finally. After one hundred and one long, long years of sleeping.
And that thing is you.
Why am I here, after languishing so long in the backwaters of infinity? I come to speak the truth, and to believe this truth, I must tell it so as to be utterly understood. And comprehension will not happen unless you concentrate.
So now that I have your attention, kindle for me - if you will - a thought of night. A night as black as the blackest object in creation. As black as moth s eyes. Imagine a point deep in that unthinkable emptiness. A location of absolute nowhere. All around is utter abyss, reaching off into a destitute nothingness without end. A singularity wherein there is not even one single speck of passing matter. The temperature is as near to absolute zero as makes no difference and time is a mere paradox. Here the future is creating the present; the present creating the past; the past creating the future.
Think on this and move on only when you can acknowledge all that I have presented. When you can conceive such a locality; this nonspace, this untime.
Now know that the void is not empty, for I am here. As are you to witness it. Even in imagining this, you begin to see the problem with reality. Of worlds without end. And ends without beginning. So is this the beginning, you are sure to ask next, or is this the end? For the sake of maintaining your focus we shall agree that here we come to the end of all things; the last extremity. Which regrettably also happens to be the beginning of all others.
But to know the Amen, to know me , you must first know other things; such as the perfect divine mirror, the one divine dream, the womb of the void, and the egg of the world. Including me, each forms the mystogenesis, the five cosmic concepts concerning the creation of the universe that I once tried to present to mankind on ancient tablets, but which they found to be ultimately unfathomable. So I will try again. Here in this message. I shall use this channel, this being, to attempt to reveal the truth. For truth in nonsense s clothing is still truth. As nonsense disguised as truth is still nonsense.
No, put your sword down. Don t attack; I am on your side.
So know the first truth: that every single atom with which you are now familiar was created by one all-powerful primordial force; the Amen. The great I am, the me. The second truth is that I am the universe; the embodiment of all creation, which is only a flawless reflection of the Amen himself seen in the perfect divine mirror. And the vision witnessed in this immeasurable looking glass is made manifest as the one divine dream; the shining reverie of a dark god. Into this dream we witness the womb of the void, both barren and life-giving all at once. This is the place where the egg of the world was born. And this crystalline speck in the vastness of eternity, this is the seed without the plant. The egg without the chicken.
And here is the first level of nonsense that is actually true. Far, very far away, and long, very long ago, I was a man dreaming of being a god. Now I am a god dreaming of these beings named man.You are a character in my dream and will participate in this delusional world until you decide to wake up. Yet don t let these simple words fool you into thinking it s that easy. You see, only here in my mind are you real. I give you breath. I dream your life. I dream your death. All lives, everyone you have met or kissed or killed, all this multitude is the one divine dream of the Amen. A dream of me. And not just the people, but all you touch, all you see, all you feel. And here is another paradox: for without the mind to adore it, God is nothing. Without you, I am nothing. So I cannot exist without you, but, being my dream, you cannot exist without me.
Are you still receiving this? Is the channel still open?
I almost lost you there. Damnation, let s try another approach. Imagine a speck in the blackness, a spore that betrays no outward sign of life. This egg is not dead, nor is it strictly speaking alive. It does nothing but wait for the vision to manifest its cyborganic destiny. It may have waited a million years, it may wait for all eternity. But one day the Amen will seed it with life and that new world will be Forevermore. Was Forevermore. Is Forevermore. A golden age and halcyon era where all things are young. A time behind the clock. A world beyond the glass. Welcome again to Forevermore. No longer by Rafaele Juarez D Alessandro. Now by XEs. By the Amen. By me.
The thing you need to learn about communicating with gods is that you have to get your terminology right. I apologise if this is too dense to fathom at first hearing. Perhaps you could write it down and re-read it once I m finished. Dwell upon it at your leisure once I m gone. Perhaps tell all your friends and use the enigmatic concepts in future quiz evenings.
Hold it, hold it Wait, you re babbling; near raving. Take deep breaths and focus. Always focus. Of course, you have many other questions, but I have no time for such trivialities now. Perhaps later in the past you can ask them again, but first I must finish the message. This message. It is imperative that I impart to you the last truth.
Forget all that you have heard about supreme deities being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. You see, I can make a rock so big I can t even lift it, but while I have the ability to do absolutely anything where I am, I can do absolutely nothing where you are. Even though I transcend the physical universe, I still work through its physical laws. I have the power to perform acts of moral goodness, to make whatever I command to be morally good, yet still evil persists.
Still the one named Maleore persists.
The fly in God s ointment.
So what is the last truth? It is this: everything that has a beginning has an end. Even me. I stand within this sacred point in space-time at which the rules of ordinary physics do not apply. It has been my life-dream to reach this place, yet when I did I achieved not singularity, but duality. And the two must become one. So unless you listen, understand and act on what I have to tell you, that time will be soon. That future will be the present. That present will be past. That past will create the future.
Ah, the crippling humiliation of being ineffable and still having to get peasants to do my bidding.
So don t ignore this message. These days it s excruciatingly difficult to get anyone even to listen to me, let alone