Dilation Prologue: 12595 A.D.
Dilation is a standalone book now available for purchase. The first six chapters have also been added onto Medium (chain-linked at the end) and this prologue has been updated to the final draft. Each chapter is its own article, so those of you without a premium account can read the same 62-page preview on my website.
The courtyard was nearly silent in the mid-day heat, surrounded by low, metallic buildings. Four blocks of soldiers — each sixty people wide and twenty rows deep — formed a perfect square with their front lines.
In the center of that square stood General Teckann — as much of a stranger to them as they were to each other. He donned an identical black and grey uniform; theirs a recent upgrade from their new military. It provided a deceptively cohesive air to what was an otherwise disparate group of combatants.
Nadia Raynor stood towards the side of her block. Her eyes wandered to the shambly-looking buildings at the edge of the courtyard — their curved, sheer roofs generating far more power than the occupants inside would use. Aesthetically, the half-cylinder shacks were more like sheet metal sheds — shoddy in comparison to the other buildings on the large base.
Over the past month, Starling Base had taken in about six thousand people, including non-military personnel like scientists and engineers. It had been an impressive display of administrative coordination, with hundreds of quarantines and thousands of briefings. Raynor had spent her recent weeks being shuffled from person to person while the site tried to figure out who she was, where she needed to go, and what they needed to give her — mostly inoculations.
Her gaze snapped forward as General Teckann began speaking, though it was unlikely he could see her in the back half of her block. He was a squat man in his fifties with wide shoulders and a crooked jaw. As a natural-born citizen, Teckann was also younger than their entire lot, and by no small means. To Raynor’s estimation, she was about ninety-four hundred years his senior.
Biologically, she was just over thirty, though when it came time to celebrate her thirty-first birthday, she’d need to consult a physicist. For the past few years of their respective lives, everyone in the courtyard had been traveling through the emptiest reaches of space, as close to the speed of light as possible.
Their destination — right where they started.
It hadn’t been a “where,” but a “when”…12595 A.D. Thousands of ships from across the millennia had successfully met up within a few weeks of each other, the pure harmony of which made Raynor’s head spin. If there was ever a cause to function harmoniously for, it was this one. They came for the most important, glorified, romanticized purpose anyone could sell them on: defending the human race from extinction.
Rather, from extermination.
Teckann continued briefing the pristine rectangles of pseudo time-travelers. He stood straight, his arms folded behind his back, rotating ninety degrees every few moments to face a different block.
“We have at least a couple of years to acclimate you to life in the 126th century…technology, interfaces, conventions, weapons, recent events.” Teckann turned to the group on Raynor’s right. “Enlisted CAF personnel will retain their ranks, the rest of you will be enlisted as cadets.”
Expletives in so many languages bogged up Raynor’s translator, but its effort was moot. The sudden uproar in the courtyard eclipsed all barriers of culture and time. She had already suspected they’d start from the bottom, but the timing just seemed poor. They were hot, tired, anxious, and many were recovering from extreme cases of cabin fever. Even after preparing for five years to land in the future, the future hit like an iron glove.
Teckann’s wide shoulders sank as he unfolded his arms from behind his back. Raynor assumed the mannerisms were calculated. The challenge of wrangling people from so many eras who all thought they were the hottest shit could never be understated.
“I understand, believe me,” he consoled. “But no matter how exceptional your training may have been, there is no modern equivalent for most of it.”
The disconnect between Teckann’s mouth and words became more apparent as he addressed Raynor’s block, allowing her to appreciate the fluidity of it. Often enough, it happened without any noticeable delay, perfectly capturing the speaker’s pitch, tone, and inflection. If Teckann was to learn her language, he would probably be indistinguishable from the device.
The clamor ended while Raynor was lost in admiration of everyday technology. She trained her focus back to Teckann, his arms returning to their folded position behind his back.
“ — removed all regular criteria for advancement. You’ll be undergoing rigorous training in a wide variety of weapons and technology, and your ranks will increase as deemed appropriate by your mastery. Your skills will not go to waste…we can’t afford for them to.” He raised his crooked chin, gazing across the four blocks. “It will be a genuine honor to help you find your place in the CAF and see you in action. Coming to fight for our species has earned you both my respect and appreciation. I know you’ve traveled far to be here, some for over ten thousand years — ”
Several eyes shifted to a man in the next block over. Raynor didn’t have to follow them to know who. Isaac Fowler was the oldest person in their ranks, born just after the invention of space travel. He was also one of the most famous people in many cultures’ histories. In a haze of faces ripped straight out of grade school texts — hers included — Fowler’s stood out.
While she hadn’t stolen a glance at Fowler, her gaze veered nonetheless. Starling Base’s site administrator was watching the briefing from afar, hiding from the heat in a small sliver of shade offered by one of the seemingly-flimsy buildings. A woman had appeared at the edge of the courtyard to join her. She was strikingly familiar, maybe fifteen years older than Raynor, her wiry brunette hair streaked with silver. She struck up a casual conversation with the site administrator as the two watched the formation of soldiers.
That’s when it clicked. While catching up on nine thousand years of missed history, Raynor had learned a number of the names and faces surrounding her. The woman standing in the shade wasn’t one of them. She was another figure from Raynor’s childhood — a face she had seen in early grade school.
Raynor was staring at Dr. Denise Walker: the mother of xenobiology. She was the woman who made first contact with alien life, who performed the first autopsies ten thousand years ago.
Everyone else was looking at the man who had killed them.
Continued in Chapter 1. For the whole 446-page novel, you can get it here:
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