The Dark Machine: A Novel

Six decades from now . . .

The world is a much different place. It's been a bad time in between. Enter Sirius Mullen, clerk for State Corp #1227 in New York City. He's in charge of State Corp's interests in the estates of the dead. Sirius is a much different person than he appears to be. He's a much different person than he wants to be.

One day, Sirius comes across a name in his office, the name of a dead person: Christopher Norvella, an executed environmental prophet, a cult leader . . . what did this man really leave behind? Sirius is very interested in this dead person. Meanwhile, he's finding it very difficult to be interested in anything else. Sirius thinks he is having a breakdown. Again.

He's had them before . . .

And so has New York City. Anarchy is bubbling up from the maglev tubes. It's ideological. Bureaucrats like Sirius are tossed out windows by gangs during the periodic blackouts caused by State Corp's mismanaged power grids. On the lucky day that changes his life, Sirius escapes this fate. He takes a day off and goes to the zoo. There he meets Julianna. Julianna is a Norvellite, passing out pamphlets to further the cause. He promptly gets himself arrested because he won't give a cop the illegal pamphlet he was given. Julianna says he's blessed. Sirius, of course, says he's always been cursed. But we see Julianna is right . . .

Across the swollen Hudson is Alton Delaney, chronicler of the Norvellites. Al lives alone at the end of the world in Jersey City district #6. Al is a war vet, and a vet of his neighborhood riots. Al befriends young Isaac Isaac, engineer at Fusion One, after the young man's genercycle breaks down in his crummy and dangerous neighborhood. Al tells the story of Christopher Norvella to anyone who will hear. Isaac Isaac seems to have a sympathetic ear.

Above them all is Popu-Sat, Venton Superprocessor #24. Popu-Sat is a self realized "spy" satellite that changes its own mission parameters to include some of the teachings of Christopher Norvella, a voice it thinks it hears as a whisper in space. Popu-Sat becomes the planet's biggest convert to the idea the people are destroying the earth, and they need a change before they are wiped out by a planet that is coming to believe humanity is a virus that needs curing. And . . . as the Dark Machine, Popu-Sat gives humanity that change.

With nutty and endearing characters alienated but moved to action within their technological and bureaucratic world, The Dark Machine delves not only into an alternate but completely plausible future, but into humankind's timeless struggle for meaning.

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