My novel, People of the Cloud, is moving along, and is at the stage where I need beta readers. What’s a beta reader, you ask? They are someone who gives all or part of the manuscript a casual read, offering general feedback at the level of “How did it impact you? Did you like it? Was anything confusing? Was there anything problematic or offensive?” Reach out to me if you are interested in reading, and if you are local, I will buy you a coffee or more! :)
A quick overview: POTC is a visionary fiction novel that currently stands at 133,000 words, meaning it will either get longer and become two books, or be cut down to get it under 120,000 (the industry-standard max for this genre). It is a book about anti-colonial struggle set 1,000 years in the future, with protagonists from both colonizer and Indigenous societies. I try to put BIPOC, gender, and environmental justice themes in tension with a colonizer’s struggle to find her path to life and belonging beyond the identity she is given by her society.
An excerpt! Trish is the protagonist from the Apharans, the colonizer society comprised of 21st-century billionaires who have returned to recolonize the Earth in the 31st-century. Like her fellow Apharans, Trish’s consciousness is housed on a microchip implanted in the brain of a stolen Indigenous Alganian woman, so her connection to reality is always mediated. Hence the lack of the possessive case when referring to “the” body. References to the “banquet” hearken back to the place in the virtual AI controlled construct where she was trapped before being implanted in the woman’s body. In other words, it is her own personal hell. Orlin, the Apharan leader, was implanted in the body of a man who’d suffered a gunshot wound. He is obsessed with the pain, engaging in self-harm in order to feel present and alive. In this excerpt, the Apharans have arrived in the Donlandan village where she has lived for several months, and have begun the process of asserting their dominance.
Four months of immersion made Trish’s conversational Donlandan passable. She no longer needed Tayan by her side for every conversation. Her relationships with Noem and Delilah deepened. She got to know the other villagers and they shared meals and celebrations. She became a trusted caregiver for Yani, even spending nights in their home to give Delilah and Noem a rest.
“I told you you would make a good auntie,” Tayan joked as Trish chased a crawling Yani all around the yard, rescuing pebbles and weeds and bugs from her inquisitive mouth.
“What can I say? I love her,” Trish beamed as she crawled around with the infant.
“Be careful. Love is a strong word for an Apharan.”
Tayan was only half joking. Moments of intimacy and connection had triggered seizures in the past. The construct was designed by a narcissist for other narcissists. Connection, intimacy, and embodiment were not part of the program.
“I know,” Trish replied. “I’ve been practicing that technique we figured out.”
“Balance?”
“Yes. I rest and turn off my mind, let the construct take away my emotions.”
“Fewer seizures?”
“Yes. Not gone, but fewer. I can’t live the way I’m living here with you without the seizures, so I accept them. They are something I have to live with and manage as best I can.
Tayan looked at Trish sadly. “It can’t be this way forever.”
She scooped up Yani.
“Either this, or I let it take me,” she said, turning inside. Yani needed changing.
The house was bustling with meal preparations, both sets of elders chopping and mixing and boiling and baking. The house was nearly complete with solid walls and a fully functional kitchen with an indoor hearth and cast-iron cook stove salvaged from the fires of the raid. Trish waded through the controlled chaos to Noem and Delilah’s bedroom, where she changed the laughing wiggling baby and re-emerged. Delilah was waiting, staring at her, fear all over her face.
“What is it, Delilah? What’s wrong?”
“There are men outside. Donlandans, but with strange uniforms.”
“What?” Trish handed off the baby and walked outside. Two police officers awaited her, straight out of her world, complete with bulletproof vests, tasers, sidearms, and radios.
What in the actual fuck?
“Are you Trish Levin?”
“Who is asking?”
The men glared at each other and back at Trish. “The police.”
Trish stared, incredulous, then caught herself beginning to laugh. She turned around and saw the family watching from the door. She faced the men again.
“The police. Seriously?” she laughed harder. “Get the fuck out of here. You wouldn’t know a cop if he hit you over the head. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“We’ve been ordered to tell you that Shavers expects you up at his bubble immediately.”
“You mean Orlin?”
“No, Shavers.”
“Cut the bullshit. Your boss is Horatio Orlin.”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is, he’s in charge, and you’re coming with us.” The man hooked his thumbs in the corner of his vest and tried to loom.
“Fine, fuck it.” She turned to the family behind her, “save me a plate?”
Delilah smiled and nodded bravely, worry wrinkles on her forehead.
A wall of stink assaulted the nose when Trish entered Orlin’s bubble. The leg Orlin carried he had carried badly. The bandages pulled away, finger scratching, pulling. He didn’t know he was doing it, she saw. Orlin burned with fever and breathed shallow breaths as though aroused. Trish understood. She wrapped her arms around the body and squeezed gently.
“We awakened eleven Apharans today,” he began with no introduction, no pleasantries. “They are recovering, and will move into their houses in a week if all goes well.”
Trish dropped the arms. The heart beat faster and the throat tightened as the reality rushed in on her. It was happening. It was really happening. Four months in the Donlandans’ world made it seem like her world would never arrive. It had arrived, cops and all.
“You will help with the awakenings,” he continued. “Tayan is untrustworthy, and our AI sets aren’t practical at the scale we need. We need a new interpreter and you have been learning the language.”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
“No. I won’t help you steal more people.”
“They have already awakened. These are our people in these habitations and they need your help. What’s done is done.”
“It isn’t done. You stole the villagers’ fields and built a prison on them. You are filling it with people who aren’t dead yet. I won’t help you kill them.”
Orlin’s face grew redder than it already was.
“Don’t forget you are an 18-year-old child. I am an adult. Your parents are still in the construct. I can leave them there forever if I want.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Trish said calmly. She turned to walk out of the bubble but stopped, turned back to face Orlin. “I’m not a child. Not anymore. Especially not here.” Trish resumed her exit.
“You’re fucking acting like one!” Orlin called after her. She ignored him.
Trish walked straight back down the hill to the house where Delilah stood in the door gazing up at the bubbles. Trish wondered whether Delilah had moved from the spot since the cops had led her away. She sat down at the long table where she always sat with them and shared their meals after days of digging and building and, now, planting. The eyes gazed at the grain of the table’s wood, each line a year of growth of what had once been a tree that provided its wood for this place of nourishment.
Her people had arrived. The day of the Apharans had arrived. She looked around at her beloveds and the storm rose in her belly and burst into her chest and she sobbed and was back at the banquet, the bland food and fake people clawing at the brain, trying to pull her back in.
When she awoke Yanet was holding her hand and she was on the cot in the bedroom, head spinning splitting with pain. The body writhed with the pain and she was back at the banquet again. When she woke the night was outside and Yanet and Milles sat beside her and Yani whimpered and Noem and Delilah whispered together out of her sight. She could not understand their words and she drifted away.
“She is fine. Vitals are good. She just needs rest.”
Trish opened the eyes from the banquet. A medic.
“Get away from me,” she breathed.
“I’m sorry?” the medic said.
“You are helping them. Get away,” Trish repeated. She drifted back to the banquet.
Delilah was with her when she opened the eyes again and there was daylight. She was still in pain, weak, tired. Trish turned the face and looked through bleary, pain-wracked eyes.
“This can’t happen,” she whispered. “Don’t let my people come. They will destroy…”
Trish awoke from the banquet and it was still Delilah, shushing her.
“Rest. Let us worry. You are no good to us dead. You are too important to me.”
“No. I am not real.”
“You are so real. Now shut up and rest.”
Trish closed the eyes and released her thoughts but they swirled around behind the eyelids like frantic goldfish. She felt the pressure in the head coming for her. She opened the eyes and tried again. The ceiling blurred as she defocused and let the breath fall out of the lungs. She felt the force of gravity on the body, pulling her into the cot, its pressure on the skin as she lay still, listless. She let the construct drag all of her happy sad love hate anger fear feelings into the placid smooth abyss, leaving her with nothing. She lay in the flat nothingness, staring into the blurry middle distance. The headache subsided. The muscles relaxed.
She stayed in the house for a week, resting, healing. Her confrontation with Orlin had triggered the most powerful storm of seizures she had ever experienced, and she and her beloveds were terrified of what awaited her up in the bubbles. They were blind. Tayan no longer had access to information. They learned the hard way when they tried to visit the hospital and was sent packing by a police officer: no Donlandans on the hill unless they are colony employees with a pass.
Trish decided to see for herself after the police came knocking, looking for her. She was resting on the cot when they knocked on the door. Noem answered. Trish strained to hear but could not, and did not know who the visitors were until he and Delilah came back to her room.
“Those two cops again,” Delilah said.
“Shit,” Trish said, rolling the head away. “What did they want?”
“Something called a welfare check?”
Trish cracked up laughing. “These cops are too much! What did they do, memorize an academy manual?”
“Obviously I didn’t let them in,” Noem said, grinning.
“Thank you.” Trish slowly sat up, threw the blanket off her and put the feet on the floor.
“Careful…feeling okay?” Delilah asked.
“Yes. I better check in at home. I won’t be responsible for bringing cops into the village.”
“It’s okay Trish,” Noem said.
“It was okay this time. But I’ve seen things,” Trish said with dead seriousness. “It starts with a welfare check, but it never ends there.”
She rose and walked out the door. “I’ll check in and be back as soon as I can get away with it.”
“Good,” Delilah said. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
When she returned to the bubbles they were full of stolen bodies with her people in them. Two strangers had appeared in her bubble.
“Where have you been?” the man asked.
“Who are you?” Trish replied.
“Trish, it’s me, your father.” He looked her up and down, at the body’s curves, eyes, hair.
Trish stepped backwards, recoiling from this body that was little more than 20 but had said it was her father but looked at her as a woman. He stepped towards her. She stepped back.
“Stay away from me,” she seethed, holding him at arm’s length. “You did this to me. You did this to this body.” She hugged the body that trembled with rage.
The man was placid, detached. “This is Samantha, your mother.” Samantha’s body was little more than Trish’s age – her actual age, 18-years-old. The face that Samantha wore looked like it was in a trance.
Trish fled the bubble. She ran around the back, doubled over, and vomited. The feelings left and she was calm again.
“You done?” the man asked from behind her.
“Never,” Trish replied, not turning, gazing down at the village.
“Why do you spend so much time down there?” he asked.
“Because I depend on them. So I give to them. It’s called community.”
“Spending your days slumming doesn’t change who you are,” the man insisted. “You are my daughter, my legacy. You are here to build something, not join them.”
“I am not separate from them. I won’t let the construct take me back. I won’t let you, either.” Trish turned and looked at him.
“You sleep here tonight, with your real family. And tomorrow you will be our interpreter since you’ve put in so much time trying to go native. Make yourself useful.”
Trish let all the body’s feelings go away as she went back in the bubble with the other two bodies who said they were her parents but whose bodies were as young as her and younger than the body she carried. She chewed mechanically as Nathan and Samantha passed judgment on the Donlandan food she kept in her fridge. They liked it. Samantha said it was simple and peasant-like but there were some exotic things about it, too, that they would surely open a restaurant one day when they had restaurants again. There might be good money in restaurants, and they could find an authentic Donlandan chef.
But Nathan kept staring at Trish, at the body’s breasts and thighs, and he reminded her of the coal baron from her nightmare banquet so she excused herself and left. She felt Nathan’s eyes on the ass as she walked away. She breathed and let the chip take the creepy feelings away so she could stay calm. He will want, no, need to feel something. He will be like Orlin and the leg. I will be the leg. He will come for me, if not tonight, tomorrow.
So Trish fled. She would not wait to see what would happen. She wondered if they would try to take her by force back to the bubble, to force her to work for them. She slept on her cot in Noem and Delilah’s house again that night, and the night after that.
On the third day the autonomous machines built a high fence at the top of the rise, topped with razor wire, and by noon the village was cut off from the Apharan settlement that overlooked it. As they put the finishing touches on their work, Nathan and almost a dozen cops came down to the village. Trish was watching Yani inside while Noem and Delilah worked on the house. Trish heard a commotion and looked out the window. Several of the cops were fanning out, and fear broke free in her when she saw they were pushing people back, boxing in the house, blocking the paths of the village.
“Trish!” Nathan shouted as approached the house. “Get out here! We know you’re in there!”
Trish stepped outside, heart pounding but striking a defiant pose, Yani on the hip.
“Whose baby is this?!” Nathan yelled, incredulous. “Did you get pregnant? How long have you been awakened?”
“She’s her niece,” Trish said icily, nodding to Delilah, holding the baby tightly against the body. “Her name is Yani.”
“Give the baby back to the native and come with us. You have work to do.”
“No. I said the same thing to Orlin. No.”
“This is not a request. You are one of us. You have a role to play. You will do your duty.”
Trish looked Nathan in the eyes and saw coldness and determination and she knew he was dangerous.
“Delilah,” her voice trembled, “take Yani inside.”
Delilah quickly and quietly took her niece inside, then reemerged with Noem. They stood on either side of Trish, staring down the six cops who ringed their yard.
“I’m giving you one last warning, Trish.”
“Or what?”
Nathan sighed in exasperation. He turned to the cop next to him and nodded. The officer drew his firearm and pointed it at Delilah’s head. The other six did the same, their guns aimed at Delilah, Noem, through the windows of the house. Trish panned the village and more cops pulled batons and tasers and menaced the villagers who were gathering to see what the commotion was.
“Nathan…dad, please don’t do this,” Trish begged.
“What happens now is up to you. Come with us, take your place in our settlement, or you watch these natives get hurt. Which is it? Which side of the fence are you on?”
Trish’s heart broke as she looked at Delilah and Noem and saw their anger and fear. Delilah looked back at her, her eyes begging, questioning, please no! Why?
Trish shook her head, holding back tears. “I’m sorry, Delilah. I can’t let this happen.” She turned to Nathan. “I have one condition.”
Nathan scoffed. “You are hardly in a position to bargain.”
“Then remember I am your daughter.”
Nathan relented. “Fine. What?”
“You give me my own bubble.”
Nathan glared, breathed, gave in. “Very well. Let’s go.”
“Trish! No!” Delilah cried.
“It all starts with a welfare check,” she called back to her…