Alien Invasion 04 Annihilation (45 page)

“Has Clara told you where we’re going?”
 

“She’s out. Conked. Like a kid, actually. Has Cameron told you?”
 

Piper shook her head. The air was quiet, America’s passage silent below.
 

“He’s out, too. Coffey punched him flat, coming out of the city. Did you know that?”
 

Lila laughed. The small sound comforted Piper in a way that would have been hard to explain.
 

“Cameron said Heather also gave him a kiss to give to Meyer, but that he’s not planning to deliver it.”
 

Lila looked like she wanted to follow her laugh with a smile, but Piper instantly knew that she shouldn’t have said it. Lila sniffed, trying to keep a brave face. But her eyes watered, and she wiped them as if trying to deny her feelings.

After a moment, Lila said, “Piper?”
 

“Yes?”
 

“What were you arguing with Jeanine about earlier? At the door? It sounded like you wanted to let something in with us, but she didn’t.”
 

“You couldn’t see it?”
 

Lila shook her head against Piper’s chest.
 

“It’s like a shadow. It takes an eye trick to see it.” She sighed. “I only know that we need it, that it needs us, and that it’s been a friend. I don’t know what it is. But Meyer does. He calls it a Pall, and it seems to be part of him. Something he brought to the collective that they either didn’t expect or didn’t know how to deal with. Something, maybe, that they forced out like pus from a wound. At least that’s the feeling I get from Meyer.”
 

“Which
Meyer?”
 

Piper chuckled.
“Meyer
Meyer. Charlie just calls the other one Anomaly.”
 

“Catchy name.”
 

“Mmm.”
 

“Clara says he wants his own name. Because he’s not really my dad, even though he has all his memories. He’s … something else.”
 

“What name?”
 

“Clara says she likes Kindred.”
 

“Hmm, sounds like Clara. But I’m not sure if I can get used to calling him that. But I guess it’s better than having two Meyers. Or two husbands.”
 

Piper considered things through a moment of quiet. Even setting aside her past with Cameron, did she now have two husbands? Would she make love to the man Meyer had always been to welcome him tearfully home, or hold allegiance to the copy who didn’t seem to realize until recently that he even
was
a copy? The knots felt tangled, apt to snag.

The quiet beat continued. Although Piper was beginning to realize that there was a sound after all. A faint hum, like unearthly engines.

“So we just go? Wherever Cameron says?”
 

Piper looked down. Brushed a sheaf of dark hair away from her forehead.
 

“And where Clara says. I think they share something, Cameron and Clara. Cameron thinks she’s the reason we went to Heaven’s Veil, even though we thought it was for something else. He thinks we were supposed to get Clara. She was calling him, maybe.”
 

“Why?”
 

“So she could help him find what he needed inside his own head. She helped him figure out where this ‘Thor’s Hammer’ weapon was, anyway.”

“It’s not a weapon.”
 

Piper and Lila both looked up. Charlie was standing in the doorway, still dressed as if for a day at the unfashionable office.
 

Piper felt her brow wrinkle. “What?”
 

“I talked to Meyer. Both of them. I’m not eager to believe anything they say, but what they told me fits Benjamin’s data. Things that have been bothering me as I’ve been trying to puzzle out what he left in Moab. He was definitely onto something, and it’s corroborated by a lot of ancient aliens theory. It all fits, now that I’ve heard what they have to say. And I believe it. Enough to bank on.”
 

Piper looked at Lila. They both looked at Charlie.

“So what is Thor’s Hammer if it isn’t a weapon?” Piper asked.
 

“I believe it’s the Ark of the Covenant, and I think it contains an archive, designed for our judgment.”
 

THE END
 

SHIT FROM BRAINS

This is the first time I (Johnny) have written anything resembling an author’s note for a book in the
Invasion
series
 
at the time the book was completed. I did write one for
Invasion
(Book 1), but only after publication. Like a month or more later. And I only did that under duress because it turns out people weren’t understanding the book’s point, especially where that final scene was concerned. So it was a reactive author’s note, not a proactive one.
 

Trying to change that now. I’m doing it by writing shit like this, that’s not called an Author’s Note because I’d usually rather gargle glass than get fancy enough to write a Note From The Esteemed Author. You call your end notes Shit From Brains, and the expectations lower a lot. You can do things like dash one off before running to the gym because, holy crap, are you exhausted.
 

So here’s this book’s story. Funny how things never turn out right.
 

Before writing the book you’ve just read, Sean and I wrote a book called
Dead City.
It may be my favorite of all the books Realm & Sands has written, with the possible exception of
Axis of Aaron
.
Dead City
comes out mid-2016 in ebook and print and in audio format before that. (If that confuses you, you’re not alone. It’s a weird thing we’re doing, but the short answer is that you should be on our mailing list, where all questions are eventually answered. You can join at the link below.)

http://realmandsands.com/joinus/

Anyway,
Dead City
— a zombie book with a twist and an
All the President’s Men
vibe — was hard as hell to write. It took us longer than we’d anticipated; it required a bunch of extra story meetings to figure out; I had to have conversations with my professional scientist friend to iron out its quirks. We knew we were planning to end the year with 2015’s nonfiction book
(Iterate & Optimize)
and another mindbender like
Axis (The Devil May Care)
. Those two were a heavy pair, and we needed to write
Annihilation
before either of them because people were clamoring for the preorder date and bitching that it wasn’t sooner.
 

So I said, “Okay, dude.
Annihilation
has to be simple. Not boring and not uninteresting by any stretch, but
simple.”
Simple like
Invasion
: The people in it have one task, and they go about doing it. Of course that can be a real fucker of a job, and they can run into all sorts of trouble along the way (and because we respect and love our readers, we’d be sure to add
all sorts
of exciting trouble), but it should be a singular quest. Something that can be detailed and thrilling in execution but straightforward in concept.

So Sean gives me Concept #1. And I’m like, “How is
this
simple?” (I won’t spoil it. You’ll see much of what began life as Concept #1 in the next book in this series.) So he set it aside and tried again.

Concept #2, which he knew better than to outline before asking me, was equally complicated. So back he went.
 

And by Concept #3, Sean comes to me all excited, like he’s sure this is the one. And he goes, “I’ve got it! They just need to blow up Heaven’s Veil!”
 

At this point, I put my palms over my face.
 

Because yeah, that sounds simple. But shit, it’s just
not
. Because there’s nothing established there. Why would anyone blow up Heaven’s Veil? You can’t just announce it. You have to build a case. You have to explain why that might happen, and you have to figure out
how
it could happen. Because remember: This crew had been trying to attack Heaven’s Veil for two years, according to the story in
Colonization
. They hadn’t made a dent. So how were they going to suddenly just nuke the place?

And so we thought about the Apex. About how they could blow
that
up.
 

You know. The alien pyramid that’s made of something other than glass. Another thing they couldn’t destroy.
 

At some point, while mulling over our desire for simplicity and our readers’ craving for the fast-paces stories that come with straightforward narratives, I had an idea. I got to thinking of the Pixar movie
The Incredibles
. You know how Mr. Incredible realizes that the only thing strong enough to damage the Omnidroid is the Omnidroid itself. And then he makes it yank out its own brain? Well, only Astral technology could blow up Astral stuff.
 

Which meant our story had become about
the Astrals
blowing shit up. Or humans finding a way to make Astral technology work for them.
 

You know — because it makes sense that they’d be able to do that.
 

Ultimately (and this always happens with our stories;
ALWAYS)
, the problems at hand found a way to harmonize with the questions we’d wanted to answer anyway. So: the fact that Meyer was a copy? We had that to work with. We’d always figured the real Meyer would return and that the
unspooling
that happened in the first fake Meyer would recur in the second fake Meyer, creating allies. We’d sort of thought the Astrals’ inability to understand the dissociation of modern humans would confuse them enough to come into play, and we knew emotions — things like Meyer’s quiet love for Heather and his loyalty to his family, not to mention the death of a son — would cause glitches even in the copies of Meyer that the Astrals hadn’t anticipated.
 

And hey, Sean had come up with this cool idea of a shadow creature: a “Pall,” as it turned out. We had no idea
what
it was. But lo and behold, it became part of the unspooling/emotions/doppelgängers story as well.
 

So, yeah, it came together nicely. I love how
Annihilation
worked out, and the story we told. I love the way it sets us up for the next book and how it got us right back to a few of the revelations we’d wanted all along: that Thor’s Hammer was an archive and not a weapon and that the game was actually more about judgment than annihilation. (And then annihilation. But hey, there’s a stop along the way.)

So the book turned out great.

BUT THIS SHIT WASN’T
SIMPLE
AT ALL!
 

So here I am, happy but exhausted, sure I’m making all sorts of dumb mistakes in this author’s note but not caring too much. I miss the days when we could write things that were easier, but I suppose it’s not meant to be. The Realm & Sands tagline (Sean’s and my main imprint) is “Inquisitive Fiction.” And hey, when you ask questions with your stories, stuff gets messy. And rarely simple.
 

Sigh.
 

Anyway, we’ve got three more books planned in this series. The fifth book,
Judgment
, comes out on June 7, 2016. You can preorder
Judgment
here:

http://sterlingandstone.net/books/judgment

After that, you won’t have to wait nearly as long for subsequent installments. There are only six weeks between Books 5 and 6, then another six weeks between 6 and the final, Book, 7. So by the end of summer 2016, you’ll know what happened with the Dempseys and Earth. And I’m sure it’ll be complex as all hell.
 

Again:
Sigh
. Good thing we love our jobs.
 

If you’ve made it to Book 4 in this series, you’re deep enough in with us that you really SHOULD be on our list. Stuff changes all the time, and we’d love to keep you apprised. The list is cool, and you get a free book just for signing up.
 

Join our mailing list and get your free book here:
 

http://realmandsands.com/joinus/

Okay. That’s it. My job is done, and now it’s up to Sean to take this manuscript (and this so-called author’s note) and make it shine. So mistakes from this point on are his fault. Blame him.
 

Thanks for reading!

Johnny and Sean

September 2015

DID YOU LIKE THIS BOOK?
 

WE NEED YOU …

Without reviews, indie books like this one are almost impossible to market.
 

Leaving a review will only take a minute — it doesn’t have to be long or involved, just a sentence or two that tells people what you liked about the book, to help other readers know why they might like it, too, and to help us write more of what you love.
 

The truth is, VERY few readers leave reviews. Please help us by being the exception.
 

Thank you in advance!
 

Johnny and Sean
 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Johnny B. Truant
is an author, blogger, and podcaster who, like the Ramones, was long denied induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite having a large cult following. He makes his online home at
SterlingAndStone.Net
and is the author of the
Fat Vampire
series, the
Unicorn Western
series, the political sci-fi thriller
The Beam
, and many more.