John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
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Monopol City
a novel
by John T. Cullen
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43.
Too horrified even to scream, Tedda sat with her mouth open and her hands pulling her cheeks down under dazed, grieving eyes of disbelief. With nobody's foot on the gas pedal, the car rolled slowly to a stop in the edge of the sea. There, the motor sputtered and died out.
It wasn't a sea of water, but a sea of free-floating Go-dots. The beach was the end of matter, which Tedda understood as that powerful layering of energy types which the human mind perceived as being both matter and energy. Here, that energy ran out. The car came to within inches of the churning, darting froth of decaying higher-order energy whirling on the deep pool of matterlessness where, literally, nothing mattered. For a while, Tedda sat staring out over the utter blackness in which not a star winked, a sea of nothing on which whitecaps of stray attenuating reality did their final dance, just like whitecaps offshore on an earthly sea.
Slowly, after a time, Tedda climbed over the seat into the driver's side. She was afraid to set foot outside. Whimpering with fear, she cranked the key. The starter whined and whined but wouldn't start. She smelled gasoline and realized she'd flooded the carburetor. As she waited to let the gasoline evaporate, she thought about what had happened. Lindy had evidently chosen to go. She must have known what was coming, and perhaps at some deeper level she knew the truth about herself. She'd always seemed to know more than Tedda. Wally—that was a surprise. It meant that his source had died already, and stepping through the energy barrier of this femtoworld had been his death sentence as a rule. Eduard—that was the biggest surprise of all. His passing meant that Hedrock was dead. Quite possibly that meant there was no hope to execute their scheme (whatever it was) and rescue the world from oblivion at the hands of the reckless and self-serving Moss Syndicate machine.
Carefully, she turned the key, and felt the engine slowly shudder to life. A few times before it kicked over, she thought it was going to die out again. But it started up, and she put it in reverse. Leaving tire marks in the sandy soup of outermost reality, she backed up. She got far enough from boiling, vapor-drifting edge to make a tight u-turn. Gunning the motor, she approached the barrier and sailed through.
She emerged unscathed on the long, empty blacktop heading back toward the fortress. She had never felt more lonely, and she almost looked forward to seeing the Jakko rule or anyone pretending to be a live human being, if she made it back. Tired to the edge of exhaustion, she forced herself to drive on and on. She ran out of gas within view of the city skyline. She could make out the towers of the university, and even the keep at the fortress where she and Lindy had roomed. Being out of gas, and having no money, she plodded along on foot. One step after another, one step after another, until she found herself staggering up the cobblestone street between the fortress and university walls, and in ten minutes she was passed out face down on her bed.
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
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