the Dent in the Universe

It turns out “Move fast and break things” is terrible advice when developing a time machine.

To resuscitate his fading celebrity, tech CEO Stephen Lucas would sell his soul for one more hit. When the subspace network for his holographic gaming empire crashes, his hardware guru makes a discovery proving that Einstein was right once again— information can be sent backward in time.

Lucas sees a dream product for procrastinators. Want a pizza now? Send your order back in time 30 minutes. Forgot to make reservations at that chichi french restaurant two weeks ago? No worries. Buy that PowerBall ticket. Invest in that stock. Make a FaceTime call to a loved one that passed away a month ago.

It’s the time machine for the rest of us.

In a culture built on instant gratification, Lucas knows he has a hit that will seem like a dream come true on Wall Street. But when he rushes into beta testing before fully understanding the power he’s unleashing, he learns that the stuff dreams are made of can quickly become the stuff of nightmares.

The road to Hell is paved with cool inventions.

---

the Aurora’s Pale Light

Time is a motherf@#er.

The rules that govern time machines are strict. Penalties for violations are severe and unpredictable. Ask decorated war hero John Banks how he knows.

History will record that the end of human civilization occurs six years from now, that a demonic virus will claim six billion lives, and that one John Arthur Banks died two weeks ago in a California wildfire. Forensics confirmed it. The Governor of California and the Joint Chiefs of Staff attended his funeral. It made all the news streams.

And yet…

John Banks is alive. Thanks to a little sleight of hand and a time machine, John’s cheated death. That’s the upside. The downside? It falls to him to prepare the world for the coming demon apocalypse. He can’t change history. Time won’t permit it, but he can prepare for the aftermath. Six years till doomsday and John’s determined to cheat death one more time, on a global scale. Failing that, he’ll have to lead the survivors out of Hell. There’s only one problem with that option.

The Highway out of Hell is not on GPS.

---

The Kingdom of Nod

Since her father’s stroke, Seph Singleton’s kinda-famous machine-learning developer career has taken a backseat to her role as his primary-caregiver. Now, she’s putting any future career, her relationship, and possibly her father’s life on the line when she recklessly infuses him with Nanozoa, a swarm of self-replicating robotic drones smaller than a blood cell, hoping to repair his damaged brain.

But when it works, none of that matters.

When Dad recovers, he starts hacking the swarm’s operating system, leveraging the Nanozoa to develop a revolutionary device-less computer platform inside his skull. Unfortunately, while he’s super-charged his mind, his aging body’s still dying. When he dies, his upgrades to the NanozoaOS become the object of a tech-bro bidding war.

The winner, a VR gaming billionaire, tasks Seph to build on her dad’s code to create the ultimate virtual adventures through shared dreaming. It works like a charm, except Seph is seeing her father in her dreams. Is he alive?

She doesn’t have time to solve that puzzle because, unexpectedly, shared dreaming taps into humanity’s collective unconscious, unleashing a darkness that grows more ominous as more people share their dream adventures.

When her husband, her friends, and the leader of the free world become trapped within their darkest nightmares, it’s up to Seph, with a possible assist from beyond the grave, to confront their fears and return them to the waking world.