It is done! The sixth and final volume of my sexy sci-fi series The Inversion Chronicles is published! It took me a while (around 10 years, I reckon) and a lot of heartache/soul searching/researching, but I got there. And not only that, but I then crammed all six volumes together into one mighty (540 pages by one reckoning) tome and put it out there (after much editing/heartache/soul searching/researching) in both virtual and actual forms, i.e. as an ebook:
The Complete Inversion Chronicles on Amazon
The Complete Inversion Chronicles on Smashwords
and as a paperback:
The Complete Inversion Chronicles on Amazon
I hope you can find the time to take a look. The first 10% of it is free to download. Indeed, the first two of the six books are available free to download from my Smashwords page:
Alexandra Amalova at Smashwords
It has been an almighty journey and one I will not be repeating soon. I have beaches to walk, hills to climb, people to meet, for goodness sake! But before all of that, I need a shower, a haircut and a decent meal. Oh, here's the cover:
There now follows a brief taster (especially for those amongst you who have never had the pleasure of tasting me), from the perspective of my favourite character (am I allowed a favourite character in my own book?), Nina. I trust your palate will be suitably whetted. Take care till next time,
Alexandra xxxx
It was a perfect day for a run. The air was crisp and still; the clear lemon sky was taut and thin and stretched to the peaks of the distant hazy mountains. The peaks beyond those peaks were our target, for what was left of the beacon after re-entry had crashed amongst them. It was incredibly liberating to step beyond the cave without having to consider the beacon's position and that freedom was expressed in our movement. We strode through the towering skeletal remains of the ES Benjamin3, its twisted rusted ribs scoured by storms, battered by rockfalls, and partially buried by sand. On reaching the open space beyond, we immediately picked up speed. At a constant two hundred and seventy-three miles per hour, we zipped across the intervening dune-covered plain to reconnoiter the impact site, feet thrumming on sand with a sound akin to the soft whirr of an electric motor. If Executive soldiers came, the beacon’s crash site was surely where they would land. Advance intelligence would ensure it was also where they would make their last stand. And then we would have a ship! At last, a ship! I could barely stand the wait. Adding to our urgency, a massive storm was sweeping across our hemisphere and was expected to be upon us within a single rotation. Quite uniquely within my experience, time was an issue. I sought to fill the few fissures that flawed its smooth flow with fragments of conversation.
'Why the change of mind?'
I referred to the two year-old about-turn that had brought us to this point. As usual, Al was instantly on my wavelength.
'I told you. It was time.'
'Come on, Al. Remember who you're talking to.'
He turned his head till I filled his visor, my sandy suit blending perfectly with the surrounding terrain.
'Okay. I found something.'
'What?'
'A memory.'
'You found a memory?'
Memories were not things we normally lost.
'Yes.'
Perplexed, I continued the metaphor.
'Where did you find it?'
'It was hiding behind something Fiver said.'
'Fiver? Fiver said something useful? Are you sure?'
He laughed at my incredulity.
'Yes. Well, indirectly.'
I waited. Nothing. I prompted.
'So what was it?'
Al adopted Fiver's petulant tone.
'Paint it that colour if you like...'
'I remember that. It was shameful of him. But how...?'
'Amongst the plans for the server that stores us and the network of relays that connects us to it, there are blueprints for a craft. A two-seater.'
I was decidedly underwhelmed.
'I too have those blueprints. We all share all of those files.'
'True. But here's the thing: do you remember painting it?'
'Painting it?' I was amazed. 'No, I don't.' He left it to me to break the fragile silence. 'And you do?'
'Yes.'
'So... what? You built it?'
'I believe so.'
'So where is it?'
'Gone.'
The single syllable was disturbingly hollow. In response, I carefully filled my words with all the love I could muster.
'And is that what carried away your hope?'
He sniffed a reflective laugh at that.
'Am I so hope-less?'
I bounced his laugh right back.
'Yes.'
'Then yes.'
I was momentarily lost for words, which, considering Englese contains over three hundred thousand of them, was no mean feat. Many of the words - names of plants, creatures and physical features of a long-dead Earth - were now totally redundant. Words for that planet's unique weather were also a waste of hard-drive space, as was the vast array of colour descriptors for which this comparatively monochrome system had no equivalents. I thought too of the thousands of lost Earth languages that time, plague and war had dispatched in roughly equal measure, and of the peoples that had once felt a need to create them, and felt an unexpectedly keen loss. Thankfully, the melancholy was dispatched by a steep wall of bright russet rock that rose to our right, a block of welcome colour that warmed my cold eyes. On reaching its end, we changed bearing. My questions too changed direction.
'Did you come here on the Aria?’
'The inventory says not.'
'I know. But what do you think?'
He seemed amused.
'Think?'
'Yes, think. All we know of the universe, all we know of humanity, is from the Aria's computer now sitting in Cave 3.'
'Yes.'
'Which is patently incomplete. It's been censored. And crudely.'
Al nodded.
'It has.'
'So how come we believe it. Why do we blindly follow it?'
'Because it's all we have.'
The sand was thinning, sporadically exposing the underlying bedrock; both physically and sociologically, we were on new ground.
'The culture that created it is flawed, its history fractured by war. Why don't we simply start again? We could transcend it. Write our own history.'
'No, Nina. That is not our path.'
'Then what is?'
'We nine will put an end to this war.'
'And then what? What of the flawed culture for which we have fought?'
'Peace will fix it. Peace will fix everything.'
On that day, I did not share his optimism, had no evidence to suggest such an outcome.
Soft, shifting sand again cushioned our feet. I realised we were climbing steadily. The air was thinning, the temperature dropping.
'Tell me again your earliest memory.'
Wearily, Al shook his head, though I knew deep down he enjoyed recounting it.
'The same as yours, Nina. Waking up. Being here. Receiving my instructions. Following my plan. Building myself.'
The same old questions, but made worthwhile because his answers occasionally offered new insights. I was again in the cave of my birth.
'You helped me begin. I remember it as though it were happening now.'
Behind his visor, I knew he was smiling, as he too was undoubtedly back there.
'So do I, Nina. I will never erase it.'
'I could not have done it on my own, Al.'
He laughed.
'No one could.'
Eyes narrowed as I prepared my favourite question.
'So who helped you?'
Another weary sigh.
'The same two beings as always helped me.'
Whenever we got to this part, I conjured images of two tall ethereal creatures that I felt certain were snapshots of an actual event, the echoes of which were somehow imprinted on the system files we now all shared.
'What were they like?'
'They were... like us.'
He'd never said that before.
'Like us?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'In that they were almost human.'
'Almost human? What were they?'
'I've told you! I know not. I called them Overseers. They started me and then I finished myself.'
The verbs he used were lifted straight from shared memories. Inspired by Al's ship-painting revelation, I peered behind them.
'They started the process, but you do not believe they created the process.'
'That is true.' He pre-empted my next question. 'They seemed at the limits of their understanding, were perplexed by many of my intricacies.'
I asked the biggest question.
'Where are they now, Al?'
The length of his silence matched exactly that of an unenlightened shrug.
'One moment they were there and the next not.'
I begat and christened a new emotion - disbelanger - and filled my words with it.
'I cannot understand why they made you then left you all alone here.'
'Me neither. But they will come again if we need them. Of that I am somehow certain.'
What faith he had! My own silent shrug was respectfully skeptical.
'If we need them, or if they need us?'
We skirted a rocky pool, our slipstreams dispersing the mist of aliphatic hydrocarbons that wafted from its shimmering surface. Their fleeting presence seemed to inspire his words.
'As gas and solid come together in liquid, so those seemingly opposite states of need will one day converge. And on that day they will come.'
He loved a simile and that was a good one. In my subtle hands, it became a metaphor.
'You think the day was liquid when you were almost destroyed? When alone you faced an Executive command ship and killed so many?'
'Of course.'
At the top of a towering dune, we paused for a millisecond before heading down the steeper lee side.
'So what was your need that day? What had you to gain?'
His response was immediate.
'You, Nina...' Unconsciously, the tight slit between my pumping thighs prepared itself, warming, swelling and self-lubricating. 'And your brothers. The Overseers did not leave me alone at all. I have all of you.'
My aching cunt stood down, though its frustration remained in the dryness of my words.
'How do you know all this, Al?'
'The Overseers witnessed it, from beginning to end. They said I killed the last of the soldiers with my own severed arm.'
How I loved that image and how I longed to do something so heroically epic and yet - as I always felt necessary - I retained my respectful skepticism.
'And you believed them too?'
Without breaking gait, he massaged his right forearm while squeezing and opening his fist.
'Yes. The memory still lives in here.'
'But you can recall nothing more of it?'
'No. I was so badly damaged, it was almost the end of me.'
'Almost.'
'Yes.'
I smiled in awe at the margins; from such tiny differentials, entire futures are rewritten.
'But not quite.'
'No.'
Ten, twenty, thirty miles of rising and falling, of nothing but gravity, atmospheric resistance and hissing sand. I sped ahead, held out my arms like wings and, by tilting my palms to affect the surrounding air pressure, drew contrails of minute methane crystals with my fingertips. And suddenly we were racing. Al forged ahead then dropped behind, weaving his signature trails around mine, crossing and recrossing my vector. He lifted his visor and cried out, the sound whipping away almost before it formed. I too made sound, the sound of spinning turbines and burning, expanding gasses. He laughed then copied me and we raced on, our vocal engines at full throttle, till his toe clipped my heel and we tumbled, cartwheeling, bouncing, rolling, and finally slithering to a standstill. He whooped and punched the ground with both fists then sat on his backside throwing clouds of sand into the still air. I had never seen him so happy. I had never seen him happy at all.
*****
