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Ecw Press - Randal Graham

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236 pages

English

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Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Fantasy

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	08 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781773055619
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Afterlife Crisis
Randal Graham

Contents Dedication Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Epilogue About the Author Copyright

Dedication
For S. & P.

Preface
It’s okay if you don’t believe in the afterlife. The people who live there don’t believe in you, either.
Afterlife Crisis is the second story in the Beforelife universe, a world that you might think of as the afterlife. The people who live there wouldn’t think of it as the afterlife, though, because they don’t think that anything comes before it. They call their world Detroit. Almost all the people who live in that world have forgotten their pre-mortem lives, and think that people simply pop into existence by emerging from the Styx and getting on with eternal life. Anyone who remembers having lived a mortal life is shoved into an asylum and treated for Beforelife Delusion.
This raises a question. Should you read the first story, Beforelife , before dipping into this one? A short answer is “no”. A slightly longer answer is “yes”. But another answer, and an altogether more correct one, is that it depends on what you want to get out of this book. Having read the previous paragraph you know all you need to know in order to string along with the story of Afterlife Crisis . You’ll realize that many of the characters in the book are historical figures who now live in the world of Detroit without remembering who they were in the mortal world. You’ll know why humans in Detroit are immortal — able to recover from any injury or illness — and why they cringe at the very thought of human mortality. You’ll understand that the people of Detroit fail to realize the true nature of their world, and that the people being treated for Beforelife Delusion are the only ones who get what’s going on.
There are other mysteries, though, that you’ll have a better chance of piecing together after reading both books. Who is Abe, the all powerful leader of Detroit? Why are some people in Detroit, like Abe, able to reshape the world to suit their whims? Why does Rhinnick Feynman, the narrator of Afterlife Crisis , believe he’s a character in a novel being penned by a cosmic Author? Why do some people reincarnate? Why does Rhinnick’s pal, Zeus, seem to believe that he was a Yorkshire terrier when he lived in the mortal world? And why are there so many Napoleons cluttering up the scenery? Clues about these (and other) mysteries are liberally besprinkled throughout both books. And while you’ll be able to piece many of them together by reading Afterlife Crisis on its own, those who really enjoy detective work might have a lot more fun by sifting through two volumes filled with intersecting clues.
For what it’s worth, my mother can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want The Collected Works, so she suggests that you head to the bookshop and complete the set right now.
Randal Graham

Chapter 1
“Zeus,” I said, once the dust had settled, the chickens had hatched, and the chips had fallen where they may. “I don’t mind telling you that, while we were still in the thick of it, and before the happy endings were strewn about with a lavish hand, there were moments when I felt things mightn’t end so frightfully well. One might even say that Rhinnick Feynman, though no weakling, came within a whisker of despair.”
“No kidding,” said the honest fellow.
“I mean, one couldn’t say that peril didn’t loom. It loomed like the dickens. The tortured Napoleons, the corrupted ancients, the bone-chilling brushes with matrimony, not to mention the even graver threat of—”
But wait. I’ve gone off the rails. Eager to bring my public up to speed on current events, I’ve shot off the mark like a scalded cat and left the readership befogged. It’s a snag I often come up against when starting a story, viz, the dashed difficult business of where to begin. No doubt you’ve found yourself in the same sand trap. I mean, if you bung in too much explanatory chit-chat at the starting gate, establishing what is known as “atmosphere,” or sorting out who begat whom all the way back to the primordial soup, you fail to grip. You see your readers, if any, stifling yawns and reshelving the book before you can say “what ho?” Yet if you spring off the bat at a couple of hundred mph, without supplying the merest whiff of expositional whatnots, you leave your public at a loss and yelling for footnotes. And it now occurs to me that, in opening the tale of present interest with the above slice of dialogue, I have made the second of these two floaters, failing altogether to set the stage for the super-sticky affair involving Zeus, Isaac Newton, Nappy, Vera Lantz, Dr. Everard M. Peericks, and the Napoleon who had lately taken to calling himself “Jack” — a tale which my biographers will probably call “Rhinnick and the Newtonian Horror,” or possibly “Feynman Conquers Science.” But by whatever name the affair is called, after taking all in all and weighing this against that, I suppose that it’s best to begin this story at the inception of my quest, if inceptions are the things I’m thinking of, and describe events in a roughly chronological order, allowing readers to string along and draw such character-strengthening lessons as they might from their perusal of my adventures. And so we begin, as it were, at the beginning. Let me marshal my facts, weigh anchor, and shove off.
The thing got started at the Detroit Riviera, one of the juiciest slabs of geography to feature in any travel brochure for the well-heeled jet-setter. I had repaired to this locale, staying at the appropriately opulent Hôtel de la Lune, in order to push along my top-secret quest — the one entrusted to me by Abe, Mayor of Detroit, first-born of the Styx, and ultra-powerful ruler of all he surveys. Stated briefly, the quest required yours truly to scour the landscape for a particular chump named Isaac, a government toady who was now, according to Abe, “the most dangerous man in the world.” For some unspecified reason, this Abe, despite his highly touted omnipotence, needed the undersigned to act as his agent or right-hand man in tracking down this Isaac and laying his plans a-stymie. Why Abe couldn’t do it himself, who can say? Perhaps mayoring kept him busy, perhaps he was occupied with matters of cosmic import, or perhaps he recalled that my last adventure had been settled by a dose of Abe ex machina and he feared displeasing the Author by dishing up something unduly similar in the sequel. But whatever the reason was, the quest had been thrust at Rhinnick Feynman, and Rhinnick Feynman had acquiesced. Once I’d assented to the gig, Abe had legged it into the sunset, disappearing to parts unknown with a view to hobnobbing with Ian, Penelope, and the City Solicitor — bit players in my prior ventures whom we can leave aside for now.
As for why the Riviera was my point de départ , as the Napoleons might describe it, well, it isn’t any of the reasons you might expect. It wasn’t the white sands, the smiling sun, the tropical breezes, or the frolicsome co-eds engaging in what is known as “beach volleyball.” Far from it: we Rhinnicks do not idly wallow in creature comforts when entrusted with matters of globe-wobbling import. No, my choice of the Riviera as the Feynman HQ was one of those master strokes of generalship for which I am so widely known. Allow me to lay out the gist.
The nub of my quest, as already stated, was that I should sniff out this Isaac, discover how and why he was making himself a menace to pedestrians and traffic, and promptly ensure that he cease and desist. And if you’ve dipped into my memoirs to any extent, you’ll know that I rarely saddle up for any enterprise of this nature without Zeus at my side — Zeus being my colossal gendarme and loyal retainer. But this Zeus, as you’ll recollect, had recently had his memory wiped and marbles scrambled by a previous “world’s-most-dangerous” chump and had himself toddled off to parts unknown. Well, it’s widely known that every heroic quest requires a solid B story, and in this instance my B story was the reunion of self and Zeus with a view to rejoining forces and pushing along with story A, viz, quelling whatever storms were forming on the Isaac Newton front. So both the A and B stories hinged on hunts for missing persons — I had to find Isaac; I had to find Zeus. All pretty clear so far, what?
You may have already spotted the choice that faced me. When searching for multiple quarries, one can either charge about the landscape moving from Spot A to Spot B, and from Spot B to Spot C, and from Spot C to Spot D, if you follow me, shouting names, digging for clues, and crossing your fingers in the hope that your prey hasn’t shimmied back to an earlier bit of the alphabet by the time you’ve hit Spot E; or one can find a likely roost, settle down for the long haul, and keep an eye skinned with a view to seeing one’s quarry wander by. Perceiving that this second approach could save a good deal of trouble and expense, it was this course I adopted.
But where to roost? That is the question, and also the point where the patented Feynman genius came in. I joggled the memory and recalled hearing assorted specimens of the cognoscenti say that anyone who is anyone takes their winters at the Detroit Riviera. Reread that sentence if you must. Anyone (mark