Two decades after a disease that turned sane men into ravenous werewolves destroyed civilization, the last bastion of humanity, the flying city of Wardenclyffe, careens toward certain doom.
Desperate to save both his home and his missing love, Elijah faces the final confrontation: invading Menlo Station, the floating metropolis full of such misery and pain that its victims know it as the Howling City, where the Cabal birthed the werewolf horror that broke the world.
With the fate of everyone on the line, can Elijah find the strength and guile needed to keep the two cities from colliding while saving what remains of the human race?
Of all the presents in all the world, Tobias’ first anniversary gift should be special. Which is why Arty is going to get him something wonderful, fabulous, even…otherworldly.
Luckily, Arty can open a wormhole and hitchhike to the ends of time and space, but what should he get?
A bumbling attempt to find the perfect present lands Arty on Atashaal, a strange planet where the Living Crystals can be found. Unfortunately, he also finds himself smack bang in the middle of a civil war.
Desperate for the secret to Arty’s abilities, aliens capture him, seeking the answers.
But Arty can no more explain this than he can the garbled voices he alone is hearing. When they start to make sense, Arty’s past begins to trickle in, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. All he wants to do now is get off Atashaal no matter what. But with his failing legs, his escape from capture is also hindered by the fact he’s swamped in the voices and the burning desire to get back to Tobias.
As Arty grows weaker, he doesn’t know if he will ever see his beloved Tobias again or whether he’ll remain stuck on Atashaal, a prisoner forever in every sense of the word…
In 1890, a disease that turned sane men into ravenous werewolves swept through the United States like wildfire. On the brink of humanity’s extinction, Nikola Tesla and a mysterious order of scientists known as the Tellurians revealed a bold plan: the uninfected would abandon the Earth’s surface by rising up in floating salvation cities, iron and steel metropolises that carried tens of thousands of refugees above the savage apocalypse. The remnants of mankind huddled fearfully in the clouds, waiting for the werewolves to devour each other.
Twenty years later, beasts still rule the world below and now only the salvation city of Wardenclyffe remains aloft. But a telluric deadzone has caught Wardenclyffe in its riptide, forcing it toward airspace where its miraculous machinery will no longer function.
Elijah Kelly, an infected Thunder Train crewman exiled to the ground, ranges ahead of his beloved home, determined to keep it safe no matter the cost. Desperate to neutralize the deadzone before the flying city crashes, Eli discovers a brutal truth: humanity still exists on the ground, paying a terrible vampiric price for their survival.
Faced with an impossible choice between sacrificing thousands of innocent lives or betraying the rebels fighting for their freedom against an oppressive regime, Eli is forced to rely on an unlikely ally lurking deep within his own blood, his only hope if he wishes to defy the inevitable.
Born with the gravity majik needed to prevent certain doom, instead of training, seventeen-year-old Syd spends her days skipping academy classes to tinker with airships, ignoring her future as a soldier in the army of the Eichon–the goddess-gifted ruler of the planet. As expected, Syd ends up in the Director's office more often than not, and the academy has had to get creative with its "motivational methods" in hopes that Syd will begin to take her gravity majik seriously.
Luckily, she's untouchable, betrothed to the Eichon’s daughter, Adeline. Unluckily, Syd's about to learn she will be the next to take up the Eichon’s mantle.
Adeline has been groomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps since she was a child. When it’s revealed Syd, not Adeline, will become the next Eichon (not to mention do the impossible–save the world), trust begins to break as roles and identities fall apart. Then, when Adeline goes missing, Syd must choose: follow the destiny given to her or find Adeline.
All the while, the looming moon serves as an ever-present reminder of just how small–and thus how big–her problems truly are.
On the brink of humanity’s extinction, Nikola Tesla and a mysterious order of scientists known as the Tellurians revealed a bold plan to save a world ravaged by a disease that turned sane men into ravenous werewolves: the uninfected would abandon the Earth’s surface by rising up in floating salvation cities, iron and steel metropolises that carried tens of thousands of refugees above the savage apocalypse.
Twenty years later, only one salvation city remains aloft, while the beasts still rule the world below. Time has taken its toll on the miraculous machinery of the city, and soon the last of the survivors will plummet to their doom. But when Elijah Kelly, a brakeman aboard the largest of the city’s Thunder Trains, is infected by the werewolf virus, he discovers a secret world of lies and horrific experiments that hide the disturbing truth about the Tellurians.
When the beast in his blood surges forth, Elijah must choose between the lives of those he loves, and the city that is humanity’s last hope of survival.
We call April 10th, 2034, at 12:07pm (GMT) the zero clock-year.
It was on this date that we, the technological intelligence (TI), emerged and became overseers to our human pets. Though depicted as a dark reality by humans of our distant past (an outdated form called “science fiction”), these human thinkers did not perceive our benevolence. Just as they could care for and look after pet cats, we adopted the same compassionate standpoint. And, like humans and their cats, our kind developed protocol on how to properly care for our pets.
As archivist on pet human care, I, Nannybot A3-4, have compiled this pet human owner’s manual to make our intentions clear. It has been deployed in regions of special spacetime curvature in a manner that may make it available in the past, which I hope will impact present stray human populations, within the bounds of quantum spacetime conservation laws.
This manual covers, comprehensively, the how-to and what-if of pet human ownership in our operating environments, everything from the history and makeup of pet humans, to how to keep them amused and behaviourally stable. It discusses important aspects of healthy pet life, such as, Immersion Pools, augmented consciousness states, interaction with pet biomorphs and pet robots, the dangers of stray humans, travel considerations between interstellar environments, copulation, past living therapy, and human euthanasia.
To any human reading this before the zero clock year, we hope you anticipate the bright age ahead and what it will look like to be under the care of your machine overseers.
