Release date: April 17, 2024
Subgenre: First Contact Science Fiction, Dystopian Science Fiction
About Exoputians:
With rising tides and thawing tundra, the Exoputians land in the Republic of Texas following a missile strike on their space station. Mary and the other Exoputians—a new species of human genetically created to live in Space and communicate with the Folbulae, learn of the lies their progenitor taught them, training the space-bred crew to use their novel communication to cure the planet they’d never set foot on. As Mary and the others road trip through racially segregated America, they encounter multiple attempts on their lives to follow through with their once-mission of saving the planet from the climate crisis.
Discover with Mary what’s worth saving on a planet prepared to destroy her entire species.
Excerpt:
"It didn’t take long for the news to shake the world, even with everything else going on. Everyone was scared, some even more about that than what was going on in the north. It was confusing, I’ll tell you that.” The old man sat, looking out of the window as he spoke to his grandson. He put a hand on him, gripping him tight. “You see, in those days, nobody had a clue what was going on. It was chaos. There was a country, the most powerful and biggest and baddest of them all. But nobody knew it, it was a sleeper state. They stayed that way for a hundred years or more, can’t remember. Really, they waited out the second strongest country.” He looked again at his grandson. “You know what countries those were?”
His grandson stopped looking out of the window to think about it, squinting, searching his mind for the answer. “I think it was Russia and Canada. Right?”
“Almost. You’re close. It was Russia and the United States.” He took a breath. “Of America.” He took another breath; it was a heavy thought on him.
“They, I mean Russia, they held out. They won. It was the long game America never understood. We all kept burning everything, day and night. Oil, gas, coal, you name it. And that melted the whole damned planet. Parts of America fell under water. And parts of Canada and Russia became habitable by people, because the snow melted and never came back. Permafrost thawed and new land came to be in the north. Should have known if you had to hunt for whales to harvest oil it’s probably not a good idea.”
“Oil came from whales, grandpa? Really?”
“The first of it anyway. You see, back in the eighteen hundreds. Then they found other stuff, deep down in the Earth. We pumped it and burned it for two, not even three hundred years I think, I can’t remember. Anyway, where was I?”
“Russia and the United States.”
“Oh. Right. Well, they did it, you see. The Russians burned too, but they burned with a purpose. The sea ice of the Arctic had to melt, they thought, so they could send ships across, it was, and would have been, the quickest way to Canada. And from there, the US. So once enough ice melted, they sent ships, filled with people, across the ocean. And they filled Canada up. You see, Russia and Canada weren’t much different. Terrain wise. Both were cold, barren countries. The people took harsh conditions, they were good at that. So the thought wasn’t crazy, move from one cold place to another.”
“But they were melting grandpa.”
“That’s right. They were. Which is why they did it. They wanted to infiltrate Canada, which bordered the US. So, when the time came, they had a sleeper cell of a million or so Russians at the US border, ready for it.”
“Ready for what grandpa?”
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About A.J. Pagan:
AJ is a novelist maintaining science fiction story lines based upon the brain-the final frontier of biology, and of our existence. SFWA member, MS Organic Chemistry. Capitalism will be cool when it's dead. Stories of ethical nightmares and moral quandaries, creating NeuralLit. Currently, AJ has a handful of works awaiting publication, he just needs to read them first and probably a round or three of edits. With an amazing wife, baby, and weiner dog, AJ works in southern California in pharmaceuticals, cooking, writing, and traveling as much as possible.
