I’ve been working on this for about 20 years now. It currently stands at over 111K words and 500+ pages, but I’m stuck in the middle of the second act trying to move the plot further. Since Myseri has been asking for updates and posts, I thought I would share the opening chapter of my efforts; the book is called “The Unweaving.” I hope you’ll enjoy this and would love any feedback you’d care to leave:
Dr. Megan Bishop ran her hand through her hair as she stared at the small, nondescript box. The paper-bag-brown cube stood out in sharp contrast to the gleaming surgical steel surface of the autopsy table. Looking down at it, she was still amazed at how small it was. The old cliché’, “good things come in small packages,” leapt to mind; so do bad things, she mentally corrected, and this has got to be the worst package of all.
She still hadn’t decided what she was going to do with the box’s contents; whether she was going to tuck it away somewhere or destroy it, as she originally intended. It was still hard to believe this little box caused so many problems, so many changes, so many deaths.
If they knew she had it, they would surely come for it, and her; and they wouldn’t be subtle about it at all. Not after everything that had happened. They too had paid heavily to keep it out of his hands. She wasn’t sure how many of them had died in the fire, but part of her was glad a few of them managed to make it out alive. They aren’t all bad, she told herself, they helped Ian when he needed it most.
Ian. Just the thought of his name made her heart flutter. She ran her hands through her hair again. Another problem she wasn’t quite sure how to solve. But was he really a problem? Yet another question she’d been considering for days on end. Megan knew he wasn’t the real problem, though. Her feelings for him, whether or not they were truly hers or something artificial, something they’d made her feel in order to ensure her cooperation; now that was the real problem. Well, she thought, I’m not cooperating right now.
She stared at the box again, as if she could see through the cardboard, even though she knew what was inside, what it looked like, what it felt like. It was just a small lump of rock, and not even a particularly noteworthy lump of rock at that. It looked like basalt, something you’d find on a black beach in Hawaii. Yet it had been the root of so much grief; the true beginning of Ian’s problem; the reason for their interference – or rather their “help” – if you were to believe the propaganda they were dishing out.
But then again, had he really needed their help at all? The rock was, in fact, harmless; until someone with the right skillset decided to put it to use. Their involvement had started the whole mess; or more accurately, the plan of only one of them. But that’s all it takes, she thought, and the universe changes in the space of a single heartbeat as the result of the exercise of the single will.
She knew the universe could change again. This time though, she’d be the one responsible just by exercising her will. It all boiled down to her impending decision; to what she chose to do next.
Sighing, she stood and walked to the supply cabinet on the other side of the room. Taking the key from her pocket, she unlocked the glass doors and reached for the bottle of hydrofluoric acid in the back left corner of the middle shelf. She retrieved an empty beaker from the counter and returned to the autopsy table where the box still sat. Opening the bottle, she poured about three inches of the caustic solution into the glass beaker and sat back down.
All I have to do is drop the rock into this beaker and it’s all over, she thought. No one else will ever be hurt by it, or its misuse. At least not until someone else turns up another chunk of this stuff, and then the whole thing could start all over again. But that’s not my problem. This one piece is.
She started reaching for the lid of the box, and stopped, suddenly back in college, debating the ethics of controversial sciences. A flood of memories washed over her; splitting the atom, cloning, the map of the human genome, genetic engineering, the creation of synthetic life and artificial intelligence. All these technologies had potential for good as well as evil, just as the rock did. Did she have the right to destroy it when it could answer so many questions?
She pushed back from the table and crossed to the opposite side of the room. Leaning back into a darkened corner, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the box and beaker on the table. The single light shining down on them was the room’s only source of illumination, and it cast harsh shadows into every corner.
Megan knew that wasn’t really smart; she should have turned on every light in the place. The darkness was their ally. Without the lights on, they could be lurking anywhere. The logical part of her mind told her if they were hiding, they would have retrieved the box by now, so she relaxed into the hard cinderblock walls, as much as that was possible.
What to do, what to do... Slowly she slid down the wall along her back, until she came to rest on the floor, her knees against her chest, her palms on the cold ceramic tile floor. She stared up at the gleaming table, and tried to replay the last few months in her mind. For her, the beginning had been on that very table; someone else’s end, and her beginning, that is.
* * *
The first death went pretty much unnoticed.
The usual reports followed the incident:
Cathy MacCarty, wife, mother of three — Brian, age 12; Sean, age 10; and Kirrin, age 5 — simply stopped being alive. She was in the mall, leaving Sears with an armload of packages — clothes for the children’s return to school less than a week away — when she froze mid-step and then collapsed to the ground like a dirty shirt missing the laundry basket. Her packages scattered around her lifeless body, some standing upright as if they had been set down with deliberation, casting pallid shadows across her face and legs.
Three people witnessed Cathy’s death; two were sitting at a nearby coffee shop under the mall’s main atrium.
The first to her side was Phil Gordon, a university student. At 20, Phil was sprightly enough to sprint the 30 feet to Cathy’s side in a matter of seconds. Once there, he fell back on his Eagle Scout First Aid training and started CPR.
The second person to witness the unceremonious end of Cathy MacCarty was Cristobol Percheyevich, a mall security guard, who was also doing back-to-school shopping for his nine-year-old daughter, Anastasia, on his lunch break.
He reached for the radio hanging above his right hip and strode over to the woman’s side, calling for assistance as he went. “She just collapsed,” he spoke into the radio. “Get an ambulance. Quickly.” Cristobol tried to push the gathering crowd back, to give the young man who was tending to her more room.
“Are you a doctor?” he asked the young boy.
“No, but I had First Aid training years ago.”
“Help is on the way,” he said. “The ambulance should be here soon.”
“Good,” Phil said between breaths. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up.” He bent back over Cathy and resumed the chest compressions.
Another guard, a very tall man with blonde hair, began muscling his way through the spectators. Within 15 seconds he was at Cristobol’s side, asking questions. The guard was followed closely by a silver-haired man in a blue mall-security blazer. The three men stood close to Cathy’s head, looking down on the attempt at saving her life while Cristobol explained what happened.
When he heard the sirens approaching, Christobol turned back to Phil. “The ambulance is coming. Can you hear it? Hang on, they’ll be here soon...”
Sweat ran down Phil’s brow, occasionally falling to Cathy’s shirt. He nodded and bent back over to breathe into her again. “I’m okay,” he said, rasping. “I’m okay.”
The second guard saw the doors open at the courtyard entrance to the mall. “Okay people, the show’s over. Let’s back up and give the emergency personnel some room to get in here.” He nodded at Cristobol, encouraging his co-worker to start opening up the circle of onlookers.
Four paramedics moved in quickly, pushing a gurney between them. Two of the men took over for Phil; the third began removing the equipment from the gurney, while the last, a full-figured brunette woman, sat Phil down on a bench and began checking him over.
Within 10 minutes of the paramedics’ arrival, it was over.
Cathy’s body was lifted gently onto the cart; a sheet draped over her still form, before being ceremoniously rolled out of the mall. Cristobol gathered up her packages, stacking them neatly on the other end of the bench Phil rested on, while the blue-jacketed security man started tagging the bags. A waitress from the coffee shop quietly brought Phil a bottle of Gatorade, along with his jacket and packages which were left behind in haste. He pulled a $5 dollar bill from his pocket, but the waitress closed her hand over his, refusing the money quietly. A uniformed policeman and two detectives began the process of interviewing all the witnesses, then packed all of Cathy’s things with them when they left the mall.
At another of the Bean Counter’s ‘sidewalk’ tables the third witness, a black-clad figure rose unnoticed from his seat, leaving the cup of latté untouched, a subtle grin of satisfaction dancing across his face before his expression became unreadable again.
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