About Necrogarden:
Death has seeped into The Garden, black and oily.
A sickness is spreading through The Garden threatening to destroy everything that neuro-cognitive genius Brenna Patrick has built at NeuralTech. World domination will have to wait, at least for now.
Adversaries will become allies. New enemies will upset the balance of power. People will die.
In an epic struggle for control of a system that can topple governments, turn peasants into rulers, and make even the darkest, most sadistic miscreant into a god, only the resilient will survive.
NECROGARDEN is a roller-coaster ride of a thriller, one that will have readers pondering the nature of memory, and of reality, long after they've read the last page.
NECROGARDEN is the sequel to NEUROGARDEN.
Excerpt:
--Black.
Images streamed past in the usual flurry, a rush of color and form. Takahiro sat in a stark white office at an empty desk, a dim lamp highlighting his face in a sickly green hue as he cataloged the information, preparing it for insertion. Data. Glorious, wonderful data. If he could whistle while he worked, converting the flood from unrecognizable patterns to tangible, actionable insights, surely he would.
--Black and red.
What was that? Pain? It had been so long since Takahiro had felt anything. This was definitely something. Something new, something familiar yet distant. A memory of a memory. A dull ache wrapped in a gauzy fog of anesthesia.
--RED.
Definitely pain. Excruciating. Agonizing. A bolt of fire ripped through his being, blazing a path through his nervous system, searing every nerve ending, exploding like firecrackers breaking through his skin into the abyss of The Garden. Yes, this was Takahiro’s old friend. He had felt, and delivered, enough anguish in his days before ending up in this place to recognize its allure.
The stream washed past him, the same images as earlier, but everything coated in a crimson slick. It was impossible to focus on the task of recognition; the pain pulled him away from his work, submerging him in that long forgotten bliss of agony and ecstasy. Arms outstretched, Takahiro welcomed the sensation, a surge of energy coursing through him, following the burn to his fingertips. The flow, red and dripping, wrapped around his fingers, tugging him from this place, pulling him beyond the confines of this drab office into the heart of the stream.
--Black.
The pain left slowly, slinking away like a lover in the night. Takahiro fought to keep the memory as it faded away, replaced with his previous insensate existence. Floating in the stream, he could make out the shapes of others toiling away like he was. A woman in a padded cell staring at a photo, a man working over a wooden bench, a singer performing for an audience of none.
As the stream carried him past the others, he sensed the difference in these faces. They were somehow closer, not merely fragments of an image, bits in the flow of data that pressed into his cortex. So many faces unrecognized, never seen in his time in The Garden. Could these be fellow processors?
He reached his hand out, dragging it through the flow, swirling the slew of data and memory like a kid playing with the air outside a car window. Spirals of data curled in his hand’s wake, spinning and circling back on itself, returning to the consistency of the flow as he passed. Hand tingling, crawling with the energy of a flood of information, electrified and cold, he closed his fist tightly. As if grasping a signpost from a passing car, his body jerked to a stop and wrapped around the moment, dropping him into a barely furnished room. A red glow from a neon sign outside the window cast a pall over a bed that had seen its best days many years earlier.
“This looks like my kind of place.”
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About Bryon Vaughn:
Ever since reading Douglas Adams back in my formative years, I have had an interesting relationship with humor, science fiction, and technology. My first computer was a TI-99/4A, so yeah, I’m old, but only until scientists have cracked the code on transplanting our brains into shiny new vessels.
My body may be showing signs of wear, but I’m keeping my brain tight.
When I am not dreaming of far off worlds and writing, I am living a semi-normal life working in New York City, and watching movies with my wife and her spastic cat, Moss.
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