Endworlds - Nicholas Read [0]
“DOWN”
Endworlds: Echoes of Worlds Past—Part 1 “Down”
Endworlds 1.1
First Edition: August 2011
Copyright © 2011 by ReadBooks Pte Ltd
All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, circulated or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Endworlds is a fact-based narrative fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are real where indicated, other than where dramatic license has been applied by the author, whereupon any resemblance to actual events, locales, technologies, corporations, brands or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Text, maps, illustrations and archival documents are reproduced from original materials under direction from The Cassandra Foundation and The Endworlds Partnership Inc.
The ReadBooks colophon is a trademark of Read Books Pte Ltd.
ISBN 978-0-9831658-1-1
Typeset in Times New Roman and Blair.
Printed in eBook format in the United States of America. For more information, address: hills@longcoats.org
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for all the Longcoats.
Past, Present and Future.
Read the complete saga of Endworlds: Echoes of Worlds Past in formats to suit every eReader.
Standard eBook:
Part 1.1 ISBN 978-0-9831658-1-1
Part 1.2 ISBN 978-0-9831658-2-8
Part 1.3 ISBN 978-0-9831658-3-5
Enhanced eBook (with embedded art & soundtrack):
Part 1.1 ISBN 978-0-9831658-4-2
Part 1.2 ISBN 978-0-9831658-5-9
Part 1.3 ISBN 978-0-9831658-0-4
Soundtrack album Endworlds: Echoes of Worlds Past (as recorded by the Filmharmonic Orchestra Prague) is available separately with exclusive material no Longcoat should be without.
W.H.
PART 1.1
“DOWN”
JOURNAL OF W. HILLS
SEPTEMBER 2010
A STORM IS COMING that affects you. All of you. The only reason you haven’t seen it coming is because nobody told you where to look.
Until now.
So now this book is in your hands, and you have no excuse to be ignorant, as we all have been. As I once was before my eyes were opened.
Maybe you live with a sense that you’re bound for greater things. Something more. Destiny, just over the horizon. And you’re right. Everyone feels it coming, but few know what it is.
But I do know that after what I’ve seen and done in the decade since that fateful day in 2001, my views are somewhat more flexible on what our world is designed for, and the laws upon which it operates.
Indeed, something is coming. And only you can decide, individually and collectively, if we will all survive it. As you read this book, you’ll learn the truth of it. It is a warning. It is also an invitation. This book is written for you. Since before you were born. And now it has found you.
You will see this is no ordinary book. Oh sure, books are safe, they’re made of paper or pixels, and when you close the cover or flick the off-switch you can go back to your own world. But sometimes a book is more, made of words written and Words spoken.
To these I add my own words, the words of an old man, a tired man, a man who has seen more than should be allowed. Mine are humble words for I am not strong in writing. My scribblings lack the power to conjure thoughts into solids, or to rip physical matter from one of the dimensions that clothe this world and yank it to another.
But I have seen such things done this past decade. So terrible to behold the man who became a boy, the boy who became a god. My friend, long a marvel, once living the dream, now fighting the nightmare.
This book goes out to all who would join him in the Hunt. I trust you will, as the fate of all rests on a razor’s edge.
For as our world hurtles through space to where our galaxy grinds its rim into the spokes of an intersecting galaxy (yes, look it up before the websites vanish altogether!), all of us—me, you and everyone you know, face a choice before we reach that junction at the 2012 winter solstice.
Either