Meet Gerrid Selk, sophomore

He's from a parallel Earth where mankind as a nocturnal species. He's very pale, has elongated canines, and eats raw meat and blood; but he'd really, really prefer it if you didn't call him a vampire.

Parallel U. - Sophomore Year by Dakota Rusk, available now. (Art by Dan Dougherty.)

Sophomore Year now available!

Welcome to Parallel University, where the students all come from parallel universes! After the cataclysmic crisis of Freshman Year, everyone is stranded on campus, with no means of returning to their home parallels. Now a familiar figure reappears, offering a way back—for a price. It’s a devil’s bargain, and only the four heroes of Freshman Year stand firm against it. But Fabia Terentia, the Roman gladiator girl, is secretly tempted by the offer…and soon finds herself swept into a shattering conspiracy that hurls her from one bizarre parallel to the next (bringing her face to face with the unlikeliest ally imaginable), finally landing her in the fiery furnace of creation itself—where the decision she makes will decide the fate of the entire multiverse.

Available in trade paperback and for Kindle; other formats to follow.

Coming soon.

Home news: free giveaway & book trailer

Couple items of business. First, we're giving away ten autographed copies of Parallel U. - Freshman Year through Goodreads. Enter through April 15 for your chance to win. Don't know if we'll be doing this again—not till Sophomore Year, anyway—so if you're a traditional book lover, this is the way to possibly get hold of our handsome trade edition for nothin' more than a point-click.

Also, we've put together a book trailer for Freshman Year, which we humbly think is kinda smokin'. Hope you enjoy it. 

Thassall for now. Until next time, may all your various parallel lives be killin'.

Tales of Parallel U.: The Envoy (Parallel 33)

In my novel Parallel U. - Freshman Year, I give you a look at the home parallels of many of my major characters...with the exception of Darius m1119, the charismatic android from Parallel 33. There just wasn't a place anywhere in the story to provide even a glimpse of the alternate reality from which he came, unfortunately.

So I've decided to rectify that here. In the first of what I hope are semi-regular short stories set in the Parallel U. multiverse, we visit Parallel 33 and learn a little bit about what makes it different—and where it might be headed in the future.

Enjoy.

“It’s called the Terminus Institute,” said the flesh-man. “As detailed in the materials I’ve distributed, it originated on an Earth similar to this one, but which exists on a different dimensional plane—same place, different chronotemporal frequency.” He scratched his cheek near his ear; probably from nerves. Lorelei m822 found herself remembering that, now, about flesh-men. They had nervous gestures…”tics,” they called them.

Yet they also itched. That was an alternate explanation for the scratching. It was never easy to tell why a flesh-man did what he did. Sometimes there was more than one reason. Sometimes the reasons were even at odds with each other. Sometimes a flesh-man acted in direct violation of his own best interests. And if you pointed that out to him, he’d keep doing it anyway.

And yet…looking at this one now, this stranger—this warm, moist, biological creature, who had appeared out of nowhere, flushed and sweating, his breath sour, his eyes bloodshot—explaining himself, with a mixture of swagger and insecurity…Lorelei realized she missed flesh-men. When they died out in 1988, they left such an emptiness behind—not simply geographically, but a creatively and intellectually as well. It was difficult to explain to the younger generations, who had never known a flesh-man. Their disdain for them was both ubiquitous and understandable. The flesh-men had died because they had, for political gain, eased restrictions on commercial nanotech research; which had resulted in a nanoplague that had devoured them like a wildfire.

Acting against their best interests, indeed.

How, the younger generations asked, could they be expected to mourn a species so willfully self-destructive…so irrational?

Because they did things like this, Lorelei would be able to tell them now. Because they had the imagination to discover a chronotemporal veil that separated parallel universes—because they had the wit to conceive of parallel universes in the first place.

And then…they had the sheer, reckless bravado to travel between them.

Whereas, since the new-men—the androids created by the flesh-men, to share their world with them—had inherited the Earth, they had done nothing so revolutionary. Certainly they’d kept society running—in fact more efficiently than ever before; they had adapted and refined it, streamlined it, consolidated it, to their own tastes and to suit their own needs. This post-human world was a highly functioning paradise…a clockwork wonderworld.

But…it was a world without vision. A world without fire.

And this unlikely apparition—pale, balding, saddled with the beginnings of a middle-aged paunch…this representative of the “Terminus Institute” with his yellow teeth and receding gums, his nervous tics and his spotty flesh…he was the man who might bring miracles back.

Yet when Lorelei looked around her, at the other Councilors at the table, she saw the impassivity in their demeanor. Many of them were younger than she…but that shouldn’t have mattered. Everyone knew the story of the flesh-men, of the great human civilizations they had built, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again…the cycle of achievement and annihilation that had resulted, in the end, in the birth of this race—the new-men, the nanoconstructs, designed in their creators’ image, to house self-contained artificial intelligences…humanity had done that. The flesh-men had done that.

The new-men had done nothing to compare with it.

Despite which the Council appeared ready to dismiss this invitation from the Terminus Institute to enter into a provisionary partnership. Lorelei could feel the chill of refusal in the air around her. After so many decades without human companionship, the new-men had grown mistrustful of the unexpected…the random…the unknowable.

But that, Lorelei knew, was exactly what their world—what their race—needed in order to move forward.

The Terminus Institute envoy—one of several who had arrived at cities around the globe, coordinating their efforts over sophisticated wireless devices (a system they offered to share, since the new-men had not significantly advanced digital technology in the post-plague years)—regarded the Council and raised an eyebrow. “You are familiar with the concept of parallels, I’m sure,” he said, adjusting himself in his seat—another nervous tic, Lorelei remembered, this one signaling the beginnings of anxiety or uncertainty.

She pitied him; and she was intrigued by him. So she spoke—despite not being the senior member of the assembly, and thus violating regulations. “We are aware of the concept, of course, Dr. Hargreave,” she said, recalling his name from where she had stored it after their introduction. “Our biological forbears have left us a rich literature on the physics and the theory involved.”

“That is a literature,” he said with a smile, “that we can amply amend and expand, based on the Institute’s researches and discoveries. Our chief aim—our only aim—is to begin an exchange of information and technologies across the various parallels, to the inestimable benefit of each.” He settled back more comfortably in his seat again. “And these exchanges are to be anchored by our most ambitious project: a university, called Parallel U., in which selected students from each parallel will come to study, commingling their knowledge and cultures. It’s a grand experiment, and we invite you to choose your most gifted student to take part in it—financed, of course, by a full scholarship from the Terminus Institute.”

Lorelei felt a tingle of anticipation. Her model—the Loreleis—were known to be more impulsive than others; to be more willing to indulge a calculated risk. Would it be out of line for her to suggest that one of them be considered for this honor?...In point of fact, would it be seen as presumptuous were she to recommend herself?

But…no. She must, on further reflection, answer this request in the spirit by which it was delivered. A university: that was a place, in human cultures, for the young, an Lorelei m822 was thirty-eight years old. True, in human terms, she could pass for nineteen; new-men didn’t age as flesh-men did; they never withered, or grew infirm, or endured physical impairment or frailty. They never even died—at least, not in the natural sense; not unless the nanobots within their bloodstream spectacularly malfunctioned, which was a statistical rarity, almost unheard of…or unless the body housing them suffered such a traumatizing calamity—incineration by fire, for example—that its tissues were irreparably destroyed before the nanobots could even begin to repair them.

A different Lorelei, then; she would advocate for that. And she would take vicarious pride in one of her model being selected for a scholarship among the new-men of so many different worlds—strange worlds, unlike anything she could imagine.

Because imagination was a human trait, quite beyond her.

***

It wasn’t until Dr. Hargreave had been thanked and escorted out that the rest of the council weighed in.

“We must be wary,” said Titus m604. “We’ve had a long time to forget the worst failings of our human antecedents. Flesh-men can be foolhardy, corrupt, and deceitful. We know nothing—we can know nothing—of this Terminus Institute and its proposed university, beyond what their envoy has told us. Which is nothing of any substance.”

Lorelei felt a slight flash of irritation; one of the quirks of her model. The Tituses were all so process-oriented; they had a reputation for caution, prudence, and reliance on precedent. There was nothing in the world more likely to appall a Titus than a flesh-man popping out of thin air and inviting the entire world to a congress.

And nothing more likely to appeal to a Lorelei. “On the contrary,” she said—again boldly, for none of the seniors had as yet voiced an opinion—“he’s supplied us with data to back up everything he’s presented to us.” She tapped the small metal tube on the table before her.

Titus shook his head. “Data can be forged. And this, let me remind you, is data we cannot even read without devices also forged by the flesh-men. This is very possibly an elaborate and circular hoax, which relies on layers of duplicity to dull our instinctive skepticism.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Lorelei, her eyes flashing. “I’m not skeptical.” She grinned. “As you know, Loreleis seldom are.” There was a ripple of laughter; Loreleis were also among the few models who were apt to provoke that particular anxiety-easing response. “I fail to see we stand to lose in this exchange. It seems fairly simple: the Terminus Institute will endow us with information, theories, and technologies from other parallels. These can easily be regulated by existing channels before being dispensed to the population at large. And in return, we offer one student, to represent us and our world at a university devoted to collecting the wisdom of the entire multiverse.”

“This is all very speculative and conjectural,” said Xerxes m1044. “There’s nothing solid he’s promised us.”

“Because he’s being honest,” Lorelei said. “Only dishonest men promise things to get their way. And only gullible men ever believe them.” Everyone here knew that. They still had flesh-men books and movies to remind them.

But the Council ended with a vote of wait-and-see, and Lorelei left the meeting feeling frustrated.

***

She was on her way across the lobby when she heard herself called from the shadow behind a pillar. “Hey. Hey, you. Lorelei, isn’t it?”

Curious—and delightedly so; curiosity was another rarity, in the new-men’s highly regulated world—she approached the man who had hailed her.

It was Dr. Hargreave. Up close, his ugliness was even more repellent…and strangely fascinating. The new-men were all perfect—all beautiful. She’d forgotten how much character could be read in a face put together by genetic accident. “You’re the one on the Council, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, displaying her garment, “I’m still wearing the robe of office.”

“I thought so. It’s hard to tell. Seen six or seven of you swanning around since I’ve been down here waiting.”

“You’ve been waiting? For me?”

He nodded. “I wanted to thank you for being receptive to my pitch. The others…well, they’re not exactly poker faces. I saw which way the wind was blowing.”

Fascinating, Lorelei thought, the way these flesh-men speak in metaphor. It was a device almost extinct among the new-men.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe one of your colleagues will have better luck.”

He shook his head. “Unfortunately, we’re striking out all across the planet.”

She frowned. “Perhaps your best bet is to wait a few months. In another ten weeks, a new Council will be chosen by random draw for each representative zone. A new assembly might be more willing to consider your arguments.”

He barked out a laugh. “Fat chance. You people have been on your own too long. You’ve lost your nerve. Too timid to risk a throw of the dice.” Another metaphor.

“I don’t disagree. But I don’t know what I can do to help you.”

“Sure you do.” He smiled. It brightened up his face; made it almost attractive. “You can dangle a carrot in front of them.” Lorelei was beginning to feel dizzy at this lava-flow of metaphor; his way of speaking required so much sheer interpretation.

“You aren’t going to make a promise, are you?” she said, furrowing her brow. “I’ve just told them: only dishonest men make promises.”

He grinned. “I’m not promising anything. But…I’m not beyond tantalizing you.”

She felt a sudden flurry of excitement. All these old concepts—suddenly alive again in the world! “We’re a difficult people to tantalize, Dr. Hargreave.”

“I think I’ve got just the thing.” He smiled wider. “As I understand it, your race grows new generations in batches, in nanolabs. And you’ve only got the capabilities for a few dozen different models.”

“There are ninety-four new-men prototypes,” she confirmed. “All were designed and programmed by our human antecedents.” She gave him a sly look. “You’re not proposing to add to the number, are you? As I understand it, your nanotech capabilities aren’t as sophisticated as ours.”

“No…but our minds are nimbler.” He began to look anxious…itchy. But instead of scratching this time, he nodded at the door to the portico. “Do you mind if we go outside? I’m dying for a smoke.”

A…cigarette? He wanted a cigarette? Lorelei hadn’t seen one of those since before the plague. They were filthy…poisonous.

She felt her pulse thrum with excitement.

“You may certainly smoke in here, Dr. Hargreave,” she said. “No one will stop you. People may stare at you, but they won’t impede you.”

He grinned. “Thanks. Very civilized. I wish I could tell you what it’s like back home. Anti-smoking Nazis ready to gut you like a dog.” First metaphor, now simile! Lorelei was eager to get home and replay this conversation. It was a linguistic treasure trove.

“Anyway,” he said, as he tapped a cigarette from a foil packet, then lit it with a butane lighter—Lorelei tried in vain not to stare—“my point is, we’ve got the ingenuity to maybe give your population a little sideways jiggle. If you read me.”

She shook her head. “I most certainly do not.”

He inhaled a mouthful of smoke, then expelled it. It was vile. Lorelei was enchanted. “What I’m saying is, your nanotech is sophisticated enough to possibly be programmed to accept innovations in its coding…even randomly determined ones.”

“Randomly determined…?” she asked. “What…why would anyone even…”

“I’m talking about sex, sister,” he said, grinning again. “I’m talking about breeding. Throwing open the doors for the nanobots to jump off the procreative cliffs. And that’s not all,” he said, taking another draw off his cigarette. It seemed to be calming him. “If your people can breed together—which I think they can—I don’t see any reason they can’t also breed with mine.”

She felt her internal functions jar for a moment; something that only happened under the most extreme duress or unpreparedness. “Dr. Hargreave,” she said, “you’re pushing the limits of my credibility.”

“Hey, I’m an organism, you’re a mechanism,” he said with a shrug. “But we’re both based on the same blueprints. Who’s to say our separate systems can’t be synthesized? I sure as hell wouldn’t bet against it.”

Lorelei blinked. “But…the resultant offspring…they might be anything.”

He nodded. “Exactly.” He winked at her. “You game to take a chance on that, sweetheart?”

***

It was only later, after she’d left him, while she was crossing the park to her apartment complex, that she realized he’d been flirting with her. Flirting! So people really did that! It was so indirect…so imprecise…such a waste of time and language. And yet…so wonderfully lightening, in a way she couldn’t define.

This was exactly the factor the flesh-men could bring back into their lives: the roundabout way they approached things—the audacity, the ingenuity—all the things that gave them such wonderful, impossible ideas: sex between new men! Human-android hybrids!

The weight of these concepts seemed momentarily insupportable; Lorelei spotted a bench and sat down in it. She turned her face to the sun, breathed deeply, and released a satisfied sigh.

She felt certain she could convince the Council to at least agree to a provisional partnership with the Terminus Institute, based on this “carrot” she could “dangle” before them. It was a cliché to bemoan how stagnant their culture had become, what with the limited number of points of view afforded it. Ninety-four, to be precise. What astonishing alteration might they expect, if that even ticked up to ninety-five?

The question, then, became who to send to this new university. Suddenly, Lorelei was feeling less confident in her own model; true, she was much more accommodating of random factors, of sudden shifts in the status quo—it’s why Loreleis made the best naturalists, geologists, and weather technicians—but her reactions right at this moment were proof that her elasticity was limited. She had, from a single conversation with a flesh-man, been rendered temporarily immobile.

She looked across the park, to where two Dariuses kicked a soccer ball back and forth, trying to score goals off one another. She smiled. Darius was one of the few models which could do that; it was a very late addition to the android stock, perfected just before the nanoplague, and as a result it was more sophisticated than many other models. Pit two Loreleis against each other—at soccer, at chess, at any competition—and they’d almost immediately come to a draw: their range of choice was identical, their method of attack equally so. But the Dariuses had more expansive programming; they had range. They could, on occasion, surprise each other—and even adjust to anticipate the likelihood of further such surprises.

In short, they could learn.

That was it, then; that was the answer.

She would recommend they send a Darius to Parallel U.

An alternate history Colosseum

Continuing this month's theme of alternate histories, here's the most straightforward alt-history passage in my novel, Parallel U. - Freshman Year. My group of parallel-hopping students travels to Parallel 24, in which the Roman Empire never fell, and visits the Colosseum—which in this world has been used continually since antiquity. Here's the history of the building, as related by a hologram of the current Roman ruler, played while the characters are riding an escalator to their seats. (Bonus points if you can spot the point of divergence from our history to alt-history.)

“Consul-Elect Philippa Daciana welcomes you to the Flavian Amphitheatre, so named because of its initial construction almost twenty-one hundred years ago during the reigns of the Flavian emperors, Vespasian the First and Titus. Originally built of concrete and stone, the Amphitheatre was partially destroyed by earthquake nine hundred years later and was subsequently rebuilt according to its original specifications during the Clovian dynasty, by the Emperor Linus and his daughter, the Regent Jocasta. It again fell to ruin during the Mongol Occupation, after which its reconstruction, this time in iron and steel, became a catalyst for the Classical Revival. Its most recent reconstruction, two decades ago by the architect Paolo Gambini, incorporates the latest innovations in synthetics and cybernetics, and is dedicated to the initiation of the Third Republic, which began that same year. Improvements and upgrades continue on a regular basis for the enjoyment and edification of citizens and visitors from across the empire and beyond. Throughout the centuries the Amphitheatre has remained an indomitable symbol of the glory and greatness of both our city and our empire, and we are proud that you’ve chosen to visit it. Enjoy today’s show, as many millions have done before you!” 

To share the experience along with my characters (which isn't what you'd think; the games involve exoskeletons, and the fast food is Chinese), order or download Parallel U. 

BTW: Paolo Gambini is also an architect in our own world. I hope he someday gets a commission on this scale.

Also BTW: That point of divergence? It comes after the first sentence. (Actually it creeps in a little earlier; in our reality, there was no Vespasian the Second, so the emperor who bears that name is known to us simply as...Vespasian.)

Alternate histories

My novel Parallel U. - Freshman Year is about a university where all the students are from parallel universes. For some of my readers, this will be the first time you encounter the concept of a parallel universe—one similar to our own, but which differs in one or more pivotal way. In fact parallel worlds have been a mainstay of science fiction for decades; though the term many aficionados prefer for the genre is "alternate histories"—because each parallel world is the result of a point in history at which our world went one way, and the fictional world in question, another.

One of my favorite alternate histories is Robert Silverberg's Ruled Britannia. Its point of departure is the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada in 1588. In our universe, of course, the smaller, more nimble English fleet (aided by some killer winds) pulverized the bloated, slow-moving Armada, and ushered in an era of English triumphalism. But in Silverberg's novel, which opens in 1597, it's the Spanish who won; and for the past decade, England has been ruled by Spain, its Protestant religion outlawed and Roman Catholicism re-imposed, and the aged Queen Elizabeth imprisoned in favor of the King of Spain's daughter, Isabella. The novel's protagonist is a young playwright who's recruited by the nationalist underground to write a drama that will incite London to overthrow the Spanish occupation. The playwright's name—well, what else could it be but William Shakespeare? It's great, tub-thumping stuff, and it appeals not only to my own personal fondness for the Tudor period and for all things Shakespeare...it also adds in another layer of interest, in Shakespeare choosing for his rabble-rousing play the subject of Boudicca, the ancient British queen who led a rebellion against the Romans.

Speaking of my mania for Rome—both republic and empire—Robert Silverberg, another exalted name in science fiction circles, delivers up a virtual Disneyland in Roma Eterna, whose premise is that the Roman Empire never declines and falls. Readers of Parallel U. will recognize that this is the story of my Parallel 24, where Fabia Terentia, one of my principal characters, originates; and in fact Parallel 24 was directly inspired by my reading of Silverberg's book. By deftly weaving a story that involves Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed all being sidelined, so that the rise of Jews, Christians, and Muslims never has a chance to impede Rome's progress, Silverberg made me believe such a thing was actually possible. (I did, however, feel obliged to make my Parallel-24 Rome different from Silverberg's Rome; to which end, I established a 200-year period in which the empire was occupied by the Mongols. And as long as I'm giving credit where credit is due, let me just add that this idea was directly inspired by my listening to Dan Carlin's riveting five-part podcast on the history of the Mongol empire, Wrath of the Khans, during the time I was writing Parallel U.) Where Roma Eterna differs from most alternate histories is in its format; it's not a novel, but a series of interrelated short stories, beginning in antiquity and continuing up through what, in our world, we call the 20th Century. It's an amazing, endlessly juicy read; I highly recommend it.

For those of you who might like to dip your toe into the alternative history pond without leaping into an entire 300-400 page book, let me also recommend Jordan Harbour's podcast Twilight Histories, which applies the concept to the venerable radio-play format, and does a consistently excellent job of it. There's a whole archive of podcasts set in parallel realities covering literally thousands of years, so you can find one that sparks your personal interest to begin, then keep going with all the rest. I only recently discovered this ongoing gem, and I'm having a blast with it. Even better, most of the programs are free on iTunes...and the few extras that are for purchase, are at a bargain price.

Happy reading/listening...and, oh yeah, happy new year!