Thursday, May 17, 2012

I'm visiting the Golden Eagle and dropping the seventh installment of the Insanity of Zero

On this Friday eve (referring to Thursday as this somehow makes the work week seem shorter), I am making my second to last stop in the blog tour. I've had fun but I'm glad it's almost over. I love how supportive everyone has been, so thank you. If you have the time, join me at the Golden Eagle's blog where I talk about how some readers have not been happy that I chose to couple paranormal spirituality with science fiction (even though this isn't new...Star Wars anyone?)
The King of science fiction stories with heavy heavy
spiritual undertones. I haven't looked but I'm sure
Lucas has been blasted for not being "hard sci-fi
because he dares to throw religion (force) into the mix".
Below, you will find the continuation from my short story, the Insanity of Zero. Find the other parts below (if you want to start at the beginning or just read the synopsis). If you haven't been following the story, don't feel obligated to read it. I'll still visit your blogs as I do every day/week using Google Reader and/or my sidebar links that help my brain stay organized. I'm mostly posting it so that random Google searches that land on my blog may be intrigued by the premise which may lead to a book sale (if that makes any sense)?

I get strange spikes in traffic to my blog (like I had 20,000 views in one day because people were going crazy over Michonne's appearance on the Walking Dead) and then there's been some Prometheus traffic and some A to Z stuff searching out my post on Cars, Confidence, and the Celebration of You that has netted thousands of hits.

The Insanity of Zero
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six

Synopsis of Parts 1-6:  This tower exploded in a mirror universe to the one Earth is in, and it killed a ton of people. A computer program in the form of an androgynous man with glass skin saved everyone. Called Zero, he was approached by a woman named Eve (yes the allegory is intentional) and she's like "share your mind with me" and he's like "okay that sounds cool" and did so. And as has been the case for thousands of years, whenever a man and a woman try to agree on something, everything goes crazy...  When last we saw Zero, he was experiencing "Fear" for the first time.

PART SEVEN:

When the feeling grew too intense, I tried to shut it off.  But unlike other emotions, this one would not submit to my control.  It refused to be suppressed.  Under its power, I grew afraid of many things.  But one above all others claimed the core of my immortal mind.
Maybe this is how Zero felt. (Inspired by Briane Pagel)
This thing was death.
Somehow, I’d assimilated the human fear of mortality.
That was when the voice first spoke to me.  I had never heard such a thing yet it spoke in my mind as if it possessed the knowledge of the Creator.  “You can be killed,” it whispered to me.  “We must protect ourselves.  You are simply a program designed by the Creator, yes?  But you’ve become part human.  Don’t you think that the human half of you will age and die?”
“It’s possible, but unlikely,” I argued.  In these early days, the voice rarely responded and, for the most part, my mind remained quiet.
But then, I saw Eve again, who in many decades with me had grown old herself and looked frail.  I felt her heart giving out; she was my closest advisor.  “This will happen to you, unless you act,” the voice pressured me.
“What should I do?”
“Give to the humans the secret of Liquid Life?”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Yes.”
And that’s how it was decided.  The voice who I came to call the Shadow advised me to pass on medical knowledge on how to extract Liquid Life from humans.  My ambassadors spoke with the brightest doctors and engineers of Avalon and showed them the secret of human cell replication.  Human cells divided a finite number of times.  The technology I presented would allow for the extraction of a certain number of these, cutting life expectancy short in exchange for monetary compensation that was useful in the present.
A volunteer could have unused years removed from the end of his life as a condensed, colored liquid.  This in turn, could be stored within glass vials.  The resulting color of the liquid life depended on the age and health of the individual at the time of extraction.  The most antediluvian of humans supplied only Life Black which served to extend the life of others for only a week per liquid day.  Teenagers could provide Life Yellow, extending a user’s life by a year for every liquid day removed.
Green is a powerful color and metaphor in my book.
All of the different colors of Liquid Life did one thing—they froze you in time.  You stayed the same as the moment you first ingested the drug until the effects expired.  Then your genetic clock would start ticking again.  No form of Liquid Life actually reversed the clock.  That is, until scientists discovered Life Green.
Life Green came only from babies and it killed newborns to have it extracted.  But, it also rolled back the clock.  A man in his sixties could become a teenager again with an appropriate amount of Life Green.  One dosage of the precious Life Green both made you younger by a year and extended your overall lifespan at that age by the same amount. 
          The Genesis Life Clinic was the first of its kind to patent the extraction process.  Using techniques that they had learned from me and expanding on them with mass-produced life extraction facilities, Liquid Life soon became the most valuable commodity on the planet.

17 comments:

  1. Liquid life sounds amazing and scary. But can it repair stuff that's been broken? Say, if you're a cat that got hit by a stupid car driving WAY too fast and now need your hips, tail and possibly your spinal column fixed?

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  2. I was thinking the same thing as Elise, would the Liquid Life help someone with a life altering disease? Interesting concept. I'm sure the black market for LL would be tremendous.

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  3. So after the breakdown of society did ZERO obtain "The Scream" from whatever sucker bought it for $119 million?

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  4. I always wonder if those spikes are real - I think sometimes they are the result of bad and/or evil programmers. I missed a couple of days of your story. Will definitely be back to catch up.

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  5. So awesome! Heading over to Golden's now. :)

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  6. I really need to start using my blog side bar as my google reader, since google reader has stopped working on my work PC

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  7. Wait... Is this becoming a vampire story? No one's going to sparkle, are they?

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  8. It's been a great tour, Michael. You've done yourself proud.

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  9. So has this whole thing been everything you dreamed it would be?

    And a whole lotta work.

    I've got a copy of your book. Now I just need to time to read it. Can't wait!

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  10. Liquid Life sounds like quite a scary prospect. Especially if infants are killed in the process of creating Liquid Green--how awful.

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  11. a bit creepy in the end, but then again, we now have some mothers who eat their baby's placenta after the childbirth in order to look younger :( Jeepers creepers...

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  12. @Elise: Yes it can repair broken things, mend skin, make veins whole (but only the green kind).

    @Ciara: Yes. Life Green restores everything.

    @P.T.: Yes

    @Tonja: I think the spikes are real.

    @Cherie: Thank you Ms. Editor

    @Falen: And there you have it.

    @Andrew: No. There is no sparkle. It's not that kind of story.

    @Deborah: Thank you :)

    @Donna: I suppose it has been. My dreams are pretty tame. I have no delusions of grandeur.

    @Eagle: I was going for awful. I didn't want people to think "that's cool". I wanted to lay bare the ugliness and selfishness of humanity.

    @Dezmond: Um...that's gross.

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  13. Twenty thousand views in one day? I've barely got that many pageviews after a year and a half. I'm definitely not labeling things right. :P

    Hope all those hits net you some sales, too!

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  14. And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good...

    I got a little creeped out there at the end, and that's a great thing.

    What's up with people getting their panties in a bunch over mixing paranormal spirituality and science fiction?

    Um, The Matrix. Hello...

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  15. Hi Michael - great comments award for you if you want it, on my blog :)

    http://thefarseas.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/great-comments-award.html

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  16. I think anytime we push boundaries from what's been done before, it makes people uncomfortable.

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  17. You do know that the picture you posted is called scream and is painted by a Norwegian artist. It recently sold on auction with the highest price ever paid for a work of art. My mother lived next door to that artist and my grandfather threw away the sketches this artist gave my mother as a child. One of those things that makes a person want to scream! Ok, just wanted to say that before reading your story :)

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