Liminal Wake Chapter 1: Loop
A dystopian science fiction thriller
Over the next five days, I’m posting the first five chapters of my debut novel Liminal Wake here on Substack. If you’d like to read the rest, it is currently available on Kindle, Audible, paperback, and hardback.
Liminal Wake is the first book of a dystopian sci-fi duology. My intention was to fit myth and metaphor between the lines while tension, mystery and character turn the pages. The concluding book, Oblivion’s Reach, is coming next month.
1. LOOP
Bennett Stillman knew exactly how he got here—the surprisingly short chain of events that landed him in the back seat of a car full of zealots, with an empty seat next to him for someone who was not going to come willingly.
“Make them believe you’re converting to the cause,” his liaison had advised him a month ago. Bennett had been slow to adopt that advice, and he wondered if he’d pay for it today.
Maybe helping them commit a crime would make up for his lack of ideological fervor. He pressed backward into the cracked leather seat as the aircar began its unnervingly quick descent. Bennett was confident three of his fellow passengers liked him well enough. But if any of them found out why he was really here... the quiet fourth companion in the passenger seat might be just the kind of man to retaliate.
“You’re going too fast,” said Bennett as his ribcage pressed into his harness. He gritted his teeth. “Outdated landing method.” None of his companions responded.
He was overreacting. To be anti-Loop and be a murderer would be hypocrisy, Bennett told himself. But rebels were often hypocrites. He closed his eyes as the car lurched downward and tried not to think of all the people in history who committed atrocities in the name of ending atrocities. This wasn’t that. They weren’t those people.
“All right,” Iza finally said, her plum-red hair falling forward to partially hide her face as she let the vehicle descend at a steep angle toward the narrow landing strip. “Bennett, all I need you to do is get him onto the rooftop.”
The VIP landing pad that crowned the grey parking structure rose into view as they sank toward the ground. Iza Lin jabbed a finger at the glass-covered skybridge leading from the venue to the landing pad, one hand gripping the wheel. “That. Use that,” she said. “Shouldn’t be hard.”
Bennett felt mulish and didn’t bother to hide it. They knew him well enough to take it in stride.
“It’s five stories from Viewing Room Two to the roof. ‘Shouldn’t be hard?’”
Iza smiled in the rearview mirror as Eli Agani—or Muscles, as Bennett referred to him in his notes—punched him collegially on the shoulder.
“We got you, Bennett. Also, there’s an elevator. You’ll be fine.”
The old Saturn CloudShear creaked as it decelerated along the short, seldom-used landing strip, finally lurching to a stop on the eastern edge of the neatly landscaped skirt of parking lots and sidewalks. Decades ago, builders had marked the strip with twin fabrications of the needle-like spire that had crowned the site’s previous icon. It was the architectural equivalent of severed heads on pikes. Down with the old marvels, the old way of life, and up with the new.
Eli answered. “It’s more discrete, obviously.”
Bennett soured at him.
“Look, you’re not going to knock him out and drag him. We just want to talk.”
Bennett studied Eli’s broad, good-natured face. The man either believed wholly in what he just said, or he was a very good liar. He glanced at the back of the passenger seat, saw the bulk of a holster beneath Trig’s untucked shirt.
He felt the pressure of Eli’s elbow in the side of his arm.
“If it helps,” Eli said under his breath, “I made him promise to stay in the car.”
The passenger, Trig, spoke at last. “We’ll touch down on the VIP pad at fourteen thirty-two. You have enough time.”
His head slowly turned to catch Eli looking pointedly at Trig’s sidearm.
“I told you, Eli. I’m always ready. It has nothing to do with the target.”
“And I told you I believe you,” said Eli flatly.
Bennett didn’t say anything. He was a journalist; he knew how to get people talking, and Dr. Colbeck was known to be a talker. Drinks at a social event would lower his guard. The anti-Loopers couldn’t have hoped for a better time, or a better asset for this kind of occasion.
“It’ll take you a few minutes to get inside and buy a ticket,” said Iza, checking the time on her smartwatch. “You’d better hustle.” She twisted around to survey his navy-blue sport coat and ironed slacks, then looked him in his good eye.
“You look good, by the way.”
Bennett muttered a dry “Thanks,” but Iza went on, “Except for your hat. Don’t you know it’s outdated?”
Beside him, Eli nodded with mock sobriety. “It’s terrible. Here, let me—” He reached out to snatch the hat off his head.
Bennett clamped down the brown moleskin trilby before he could pull it off. He scowled at Eli, tugging pointedly on the brim. He found it hard to be truly mad at the big man, though, just like the leader of the little trio of activists to which Muscles belonged.
Bennett hiked up the thick sock over the cables and curves of metal and silicone that made up his lower right leg. The fabric was too thick for late May in the mild Pacific Northwest, but it softened the contours of the bionic prosthetic. It annoyed him that his sock always slipped off the slick surfaces, though more than half the people he met daily had some similar insecurity and probably didn’t notice his own.
Through the dirty passenger window, he eyed the great twisted arch over the megalithic stadium, caught the glint of water flowing beneath the twist in that iconic, gravity-defying way. The flags of the Pacific Independent Territory flanking the grand entrance fluttered weakly in the breeze, betraying only a hint of the round, serpentine emblem most residents, including himself, found less than inspiring. He drew a deep breath, steeling himself.
The clamor of opening ceremonial drumbeats from within the towering outer shell of the stadium—deep and staccato—plucked at his inner tension. From the corner of his good eye, he saw the others stiffen, too. The music was almost as infamous as the massive stadium that birthed it, but he had to side with the anti-Loopers in that the violent rhythm had the ancient stench of death.
He long-pressed the lock button and pulled the latch, stepping out onto the warm tarmac. Without looking back, he took off at a jog, bionic leg whirring, toward the Loop.
— · —
Calvin Colbeck, PhD., enjoyed parties. Parties were occasions to drink more, eat more, and, if he was being honest, bask in the flattery of his admirers. What today’s party lacked in admirers, it made up for in guests with deep pockets, whose sympathy for poor invalids bordered on a desire to do penance.
In the quiet of a curved hallway beneath the Loop, Colbeck straightened his lavender tie. He took a deep breath, shaking off the handful of rejections and outright scorn he’d already faced in the Viewing Room. They helped him remember that today’s event was not a truly joyful occasion, despite the tasteful music and the effervescent conversation that echoed down the long hallway, enticing him to join. Honor, respect, commemoration—these were more appropriate sentiments. But most Pugeters didn’t see it his way, and he had to meet them where they were: booze, laughter, and all.
Calvin would only stay for the reception, to show respect for the beloved icon that would be leaving today. He wouldn’t stay for the actual thing. That would be unconscionable.
He felt a hand clap onto his shoulder, and a voice whispered, “What you were asking before—business is fine. Booming, in fact. No thanks to your little non-profit.”
Calvin shrugged out from under the hand, turning to face the silicone businessman he’d chatted with earlier. He must have just come out of the restroom up the hall.
“I’m in the business of trying to heal our bodies, not slap expensive bandages over their deficiencies just to watch them decline, anyway,” Calvin replied, trying to keep his tone light. “New Dimension Resources is hardly providing the same service.”
The man chuckled in subtle derision as he began walking down the sloping curved hallway ahead of Calvin. His full-length spinal overlay showed as a long, pronged ridge beneath his shirt.
“Just wait until you need a bionic,” he called. “It won’t be long before you’re in the waiting room of a Dime clinic. Won’t be long after that before you belong here.” He jabbed his finger toward the translucent floor, lit with a gently pulsing array of warm lights.
Calvin held his tongue. He wasn’t here to spar with fanatical loyalists to the mega-corporation. He’d already sidestepped plenty of them this afternoon, since New Dimension—or NDR—owned not just the floor he walked on, but the whole grand process that drew crowds to rival the most profitable sports stadiums.
The businessman opened the oversized door at the end of the hall and stepped aside to let Calvin descend the steps before him into Viewing Room Two. In the corner of his eye, Calvin thought he saw him gloat.
Several dozen people mingled with drinks in hand, their conversation fusing into a low bubbling hum. The massive wall of water beside them cast an otherworldly greenish hue—almost glowing—yet its luminescence was held at bay by the room’s bright, warm lights. This reception was situated at the far end of the Loop’s great pool, away from the noise of the spectators’ stands that flanked the narrower and shallower end of the megastructure.
Re-entering the room for the second time today, Calvin shirked the chattering guests and moved toward the glow of the water, marveling again at its depth, its power. At the pool’s deepest point, more than a dozen yards down, six massive propellors waited to churn the water into a deadly spiral.
Calvin shifted uneasily before the giant slab of plexiglass as he remembered he was more than halfway below the water’s glistening surface—halfway down what the engineers had dubbed the Body.
The Loop was much more beautiful from above, much easier to whitewash. Its ethereal design and cunning engineering made Seattle’s most iconic skyline feature both brutally effective and fiercely adored throughout the Puget Independent Territory. The famous Space Needle of the twentieth century had been replaced with the graceful arc of a pale, mammoth spoon—its handle twisted and bent back to the tip to form a loop. A hundred-yard stream flowed through a lavish stand of evergreens and wildflowers, sloping gently until it became a short waterfall that fed into the Body.
If Calvin strained his hearing, he could just make out that higher pitch of the babbling stream against the deep rush of water being sucked up the reverse-waterfalls on the opposite, eastern side. The stream’s source gushed from beneath the western end of the twisted arch, the underside of which was webbed in vibrant vines all along its massive span, some of them flowering now in mid-spring. Together, the reverse falls and the stream made an endless cycle of water flowing in and out of the Body, feeding it, cleansing it—a monumental symbol of the circle of life and death in the PIT.
Calvin’s thoughts turned to the slopes above the Body as he caught a view of them on a small screen in an upper corner of the room, which cast a rotation of drone footage from across the superstadium. He wasn’t surprised to see that the northern flank was teeming with visitors soaking in the spring sunshine. People meandered along the lush garden’s walking paths, passing through more than twelve hundred varieties of plants—many of them edible. The drone video steadied on a small child bending down to pick a ripe strawberry and cram it into his mouth with a grin.
A child at the Loop. Calvin’s nose wrinkled with disgust. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. Did he even know what was going to happen?
The drone’s view moved on, panning across the vinca vines, irises, tulips, and coleus that graced the edges of artificial ponds filled with multicolored lilies. Another shot spliced into the video stream: someone pulling down a laden branch of a cherry tree to examine its set of tiny, immature fruits. They’d been in full, breathtaking bloom just weeks ago.
The microclimate maintained in these gardens had employed some of the best engineers and horticulturists—many of whom sacrificed their American citizenship to work on the project. Even without the rotating trellises that graced the entrance of the forest-scape, it would rank as one of the world’s top botanical gardens. That is, if politics hadn’t gotten in the way. That was decades ago. The geopolitical divide remained, but the Loop had only become more integral to their way of life.
Above Calvin’s head was the southern flank of the oval, saucer-shaped stadium. He could faintly hear their raucous tones—the sounds of hundreds of footsteps blending into a patter like rain. This flank held most of the spectator seating, gracefully interlaced with narrow beds of landscaping. By contrast, the eastern seats were tightly packed in the moving shadow of the reverse falls, jutting out slightly over the bowl-like contour of the Body.
A thin young man was chatting animatedly to Calvin’s left, trying to liven up a shy date, by the looks of it. He smiled at the biologist, evidently not knowing who he was.
“You like this view?” he asked Calvin cheerfully, scrunching his eyebrows at the water.
Calvin grunted ambivalently.
“Yeah,” the young man continued, “I prefer the open-air view from the south side, personally. It’s the best view of the reverse falls. Did you know it took a team of twelve engineers over seven years to make that happen? Amazing.”
Calvin nodded stiffly. “I’ve heard that, yes,” he replied.
He knew this, just as he knew that ten million gallons of water cycled at eleven hundred gallons per second through the reverse waterfalls, and that the conjoined flows shot up as one column a full seventy feet before hitting the central twist of the arch. There was no obvious reason to make water run uphill, or to pay people to make it happen, save sheer arrogance. It was one of the only technological achievements the PIT boasted, lagging behind the United States for decades in virtually every other technological category.
That kind of talent could have been put to better use than augmenting this beautiful horror, but still, he admired the audacity.
“I prefer the restaurants at the base, myself,” said Calvin, referring to the ground level beneath the ceremonial preparation area and the stream.
It was true in a way. The afternoon’s refreshments would be catered by one of those very establishments. He considered it one of the perks of “working” this kind of event. Before he’d descended the staircase to the Viewing Room, he’d been tempted to stop in the vaulted hall inside the grand archway and order a cocktail to sip while settled into one of the hall’s several stretch couches. He liked the swanky, hotel-inspired architecture—the light fixtures looming like whorled stalactites, the infinity-shaped mirror pool, and the soaring columns, gracefully spiraled with low-light vines.
Calvin had resisted, though, as he’d done every time he had to visit the Loop. He’d simply paid the extra fee for access to the Viewing Room. He grabbed a glass of champagne off a waitstaff’s tray as she passed by.
“Enjoy the food, and the company,” Calvin said, lifting his flute to the young couple. They smiled in acknowledgment and moved off.
Calvin stared into the hazy deep, its upper layer shimmering in the penetrating rays of sunshine. But from the deepest, most coveted viewing room at the Loop, the Body filled him with dread. The rising thrum of the opening ceremonial beats only accentuated the feeling.
It gave him the sense of being in one of those ocean cages, waiting for a carnivorous beast. Blue-gray haze as far as the eye can see…until the heart-stopping threat rushes in.
Of course, nothing here wanted to eat the guests. Not the spectators, anyway. But the entire structure still felt like the gaping maw of some primeval beast, one that stripped supposedly lesser beings first of power, then of life, before swallowing its human subjects whole.
It was indeed a monster, Calvin decided, as the music finally ended. And he was working from within its belly.
………
Read Chapter 2 here.
Thanks for reading! The full novel is available on Amazon here in all formats, and Book Two, Oblivion’s Reach will be available in August.