Step inside Excursion Through Time, from a bar in Praia in 1979 to the Harmonic Period and the road to Venus.
“What is the human future? Are we destined to become dust, forgotten by time as a new species evolves and takes over?”
1979
Cabo Verde, Praia, 1979
A young man sits alone at the back of Fen’s Bar, a silent observer in a carnival of people wearing masks, his journal beside a neat glass of rum. Then a stranger named Dembe sits down opposite.
This is where the novel begins.
168 H.P.
The Harmonic Period, 168 H.P.
Excerpt from Judge Ivan’s private log
Year 168 H.P.
As I peer through the glass of my secluded estate, the vista before me offers no solace, only the sterile ache of a future I was complicit in forging. There is no triumph, no joy, only a bitter stillness that clings to the air like dust in an abandoned nursery home. I loathe my colleagues. The sanctimonious bastards who sentenced me to this gilded exile under the guise of necessity. A gnawing hunger stirs within me, not for vengeance, but for release. My thoughts, burdened by the weight of unchecked dominion, pulse with the unbearable longing to surrender it all, to be free of the power that chains me.
450 H.P.
The Harmonic Period, 450 H.P.
Scott is torn from his own era and wakes in the year 450 H.P. The Delegation rules. Perfection is law, thought is policed and punishment comes before the crime.
He is drawn into an uneasy alliance with Gatimu, a brilliant, volatile scientist with a messiah complex and a mind steeped in temporal physics.
Venus
The seat of power, Venus
The Delegation’s true seat of power lies on Venus. The only way there is a wormhole generator, and Scott and Gatimu mean to hijack it.
What begins as sabotage becomes a harder question: what if the greatest threat to a perfect society is choice itself?
Some characters speak Trinbagonian Creole. The book footnotes these words and gathers them in a glossary at the back. Choose one.
Ent
“Isn’t that so?” or “right?”, used at the end of a sentence for emphasis, much like the Spanish “¿no?”.
Trinbagonian Creole, from the novel’s glossary
The first chapter, Project Aegis, is free to read now. The novel is coming in 2027.
Soundtrack: “Fatal Echoes” by Foe Pound, via Bensound.com, licence code JOYUPOTW0GX7S3ND.