The Insanity of Zero part 1

During the month of May (and as part of my book tour/promotion), I'm going to serialize some sections of my short story, The Insanity of Zero, for you. I wrote this after I wrote my book that just got published. I hope you like it. It has a lot to do with the same world that SLIPSTREAM takes place in.


Here's part one.

 

The Insanity of Zero

The world died on July 16^th, 1945 in a flash of light at a location about 35-miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico known as the White Sands Proving Ground.  The device responsible for this destruction was called Trinity, and it was an assessment of an implosion-design plutonium weapon. Ground zero was consumed in an atomic fireball and in a mirror universe a deadly burst of electromagnetic radiation erupted into the White Tower. 

The humans of Avalon had lived in a world ruled by technology. However, the White Tower was a thing that defied scientific understanding.  It was a piece of the old mysteries, an artifact that some say was left behind by the ancient ones who had taught the Egyptians how to build the pyramids. Others believed it was the house of god himself. But whatever the White Tower might be, one thing about it remained irrefutable. It rose from the sunbaked deserts of New Mexico higher than Mount Everest. Human memory could not recall a time without it. No one knew what lay inside it; only that any who attempted to enter had never been heard from again. 

Ten miles wide at the base, the structure sundered a land where nothing grew. Rain never fell there, and birds did not circle in the sky. The bitter clay that comprised the desert floor remained shattered and cracked for as far as the eye could see.

It was a place of death.


Part Two can be found by clicking HERE.

I'll post the next paragraph Thursday, so that I don't miss the Insecure Writer's Support Group. :)


Have a great day.