MONOPOLE

From the novel Monopole.

The magnificent glow of the M Corp lab casts an eerie blue light in through the window of the nuke as they approach the grandiose but irregular edifice. Its radiant walls carve curvilinear shapes in the dark night surrounding it, multitudinous outer structures rolling into sinewy waves crawling along the building’s exterior, almost as though it’s pulsating with some sort of alien or demonic life force. It is like nothing Teddy has ever seen. He’s certain he would remember the lab looking like this when he snuck in several days before in order to steal what he needed to make his new machine. Some great variance of space and time must have miraculously altered the facility. Teddy is both awestruck and mortified at the thought, which he reluctantly allows himself to comprehend.

From the novel Monopole.

Teddy’s unconscious thoughts then wander, finding their way back to Sylvie, as his memory continues playing like an ongoing film from deep within his subconscious, distorted by his recollection and perspective.

            “So what’s the plan?” she asks him.

            “Well,” Teddy replies, “we’ll only need to motor out of the marina and then we should be able to catch the wind the rest of the way. The guy I talked to told me there’s a little beach island that nobody knows about. It’s in this little cove on the far side of Eschati—I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It’s the smallest island in line with Askania and, oh—I can’t remember the name of the biggest one for some reason. It’s starts with a C, I think. Oh, whatever. So the guy said all the islands are really rocky—they’re all part of an old volcano, I guess—and the one we’re going to has a couple rock formations that poke up out of the sea like a pair of...

From the novel Monopole

            Before Teddy has a chance to react, a metal door slides closed high up in the distance, sounding like it is connected to the network of walkways levitating above.

            “Oh good, you’re here,” a familiar voice calls faintly. “We’ve been expecting you.” The sound of a man’s dress shoes on the monomagnetic walkway above grows louder with each step. “We’re so glad you’ve made it this far.” A small figure dressed in dark, shiny clothes, a suit perhaps, traverses the distant walkway above. “Everyone will be so glad when they find out you’re here,” the man says. “I see you’ve already met Dr. Yann.”

            Teddy turns to look at the man in the lab coat, who has finally reached a close enough proximity for Teddy to make out the specifics of his face and form. He is a slender man with a narrow face. His thin-rimmed eyeglasses seem to both float magical...

From the novel Monopole. 

[a defining sentence]

After a moment, Teddy sets down the wrench, commands the machine to generate him a sturdy, reusable filter mask and ten packs of filters (which he shoves into the various pockets he finds hidden throughout his proofwear coat), and walks back to the door leading from the service station, part of him wanting to experiment more with the object generator, but most of him yearning to find Sylvie—or to at least find out how he got here and what the hell is going on.

From the novel Monopole.

Time passes. Gertrude comes to retrieve Teddy, pushing in an old-fashioned wheelchair. She is hurried, almost stressed in her manner, but she continues to exude an air of general agreeability and somewhat welcomed servitude. She folds up Teddy in the wheelchair as one might put away an old, delicate blanket. Her skin is soft against Teddy’s. She has sweet, blue eyes and a milky complexion with a few speckled blemishes. Her sandy hair isn’t quite well made up, its mild waviness subdued by the way she has it tied up.

          “Okay, then?” she says once having secured Teddy in the wheelchair. She nibbles her fingernails from either habit or anxiety, probably both. “We have to get you ready for an outing, okay?” Not waiting for a response—which would be difficult for Teddy to conjure anyway—she pulls a toxin mask down over his nose and mouth and protective eyewear over his eyes. “The doctors say they can’t find anything wrong with you,” she continues, “so I though...

From the novel Monopole. 

Once the stranger goes on his way, Teddy steps from the flow of the crowd rushing in and out of the station, and stands looking up at the behemoth glass structure. He sees the blue-green sky through the upper portion of the glass rising above him. His sight drops slowly down the transparent form, which becomes foggier as his gaze falls to the pedestrians rushing to and from the curvilinear metallic train cars that come and go every few seconds. The train cars arrive and depart silently but cause great commotion. Each receding train car disappears into the blue-green fog, like a big metallic dream evaporating in the first few moments after waking. Teddy’s view beyond the glass shallows, finding his own faint image staring back.

From the novel Monopole. 

When she left, I knew it was for good. I didn’t have any illusions about her coming back after everything I’d put her through—all the years of keeping busy as I sought the higher purposes required of me, her always seated second fiddle, so rarely at the forefront of my attention, especially once the technology began developing as quickly as it did in those later years just before everything erupted—nor could I seem to help myself from having any predilections about her leaving. I knew some old part of me would long for her deeply, but I’d moved beyond the inadequacies of my body and the emotional unrest resulting from the aversion to stagnation that only strange genius infects.

          I felt with the soul of a robot—benign, unfettered, relentless—as she walked down the stairs from our house and drove away in the shadow of the moving truck. I knew the diseases of sadness and regret stewed within me somewhere, and while my brain delivered the synapses command...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

The tone coming from the device on the floor beside Teddy’s head stops and the electric-lady voice tells him that, if he’d like to make a connection, he’ll have to please terminate the communication signal and try again. The electric lady repeats herself, then again…and again. It’s maddening with the device still levitating above the floor beside Teddy’s head, still so close to his ear––the sheer repetition is insanity itself. Teddy groans once, then flops like a fish. The electric lady won’t shut up.

          I can’t take it, Teddy thinks. Then, in an instant, without really considering the action, he throws himself over with a hard kick to roll his body. His right hand lands on the device beside him. In another instant, Teddy sits up just enough to throw the device against the glass window-wall of his accommodation, which looks out over the gray city as the rising sun begins penetrating the thick pollut...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

To be anything again would be a dream. I yearn to take risks, but can hardly keep from even defecating myself. Oh, what a curse it is to contemplate and long! I’d be much better off as a flower or a tree. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to perceive it, at least the tree itself is a life force and is there to feel its own self fall. There’s very little I feel these days—as if I am something greater than or equal to a tree. Can we both not feel the breeze? Do we both not need similar things? Does a tree need love? Do I photosynthesize? It occurs to me now that, on a biochemical level, love is actually a lot like photosynthesis.

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

Felix enters the coordinates, engages the automated clutch, and sits silently as the vehicle operates itself through the somewhat desolate streets of Old Town. A green glow hangs between the fading sky and the silhouette horizon. The cragged skyline of the city rises and falls. For the first time in as long as he can remember, Teddy doesn’t quell his thoughts. They flow like molecules of hydrogen and oxygen over the edge of a waterfall. They are too many and varied for him to comprehend any single concept or conclusion. Teddy feels as alone as he ever has, but for the first time in as long as he can remember, he feels alive.

            The vehicle merges onto the expressway. As it does, a sense of doom overcomes Teddy, who witnesses thirty-six lanes of traffic for the first time. The NPV brings itself up to speed and falls in with the crowded ranks of vehicles in motion. Each one follows a few mere feet behind the vehicle in...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

The elevator door slides closed. Teddy looks down to admire his new tuxedo as the elevator begins its ascent. He turns to look out its enormous floor-to-ceiling window. He watches the dark, crowded city disappear beneath him and the cityscape horizon emerge, its tall buildings, endless roadways, and circulatory system of M Trans rails illuminated beneath the night sky. The city’s foggy haze dims the lights in the distance as the elevator skyrockets upward. Teddy puts a hand on the giant window to keep his legs steady beneath him. The elevator soon reaches the Penthouse Suite on the two hundred and twenty-second floor. It arrives suddenly and with a pleasant tone.
        “Welcome back, Mr. Doe,” the elevator says as its door glides open.
        Teddy enters the suite and begins searching for a telephone. He scours every surface, most of which levitate, but he still finds nothing even remotely resemb...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

“Goodbye, John,” says the voice of an electric lady, which seems to come from everywhere. Teddy looks about his accommodation for the source of the sound. His visual search reveals a small space, walled on three sides by bare metallic panels; walled on the fourth by a floor-to-ceiling window that looks out dimly onto a gray city, a skyline of both tall and squat buildings, complicated networks of crowded roadways and busy tracks running through the city like a circulatory system. His gaze across the small room continues. A small kitchen nook shares the wall adjacent the window with the door leading to the bathroom, kiddy-corner from where Teddy stands in the doorway leading out of the accommodation, which has just somehow spoken to him with the voice of an electric lady. His bed levitates in the corner to his right, opposite the window-wall, as do a few table surfaces around the room. The cracked ALLpod hovers against its in...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

The rumble slows and then recedes, seemingly back into the belly of the earth. The people around Teddy pick themselves up and continue on their way, as though the sudden tectonic-plate shift had been an everyday occurrence. A few people remain lying in the walkway, either tending to their injuries or otherwise incapacitated by the pain. No one around the fallen pays them any mind.

            Teddy crawls back to his feet against the side of a building’s external wall. Sweat pours from his face. He breaths are painful and panicked as he searches the crowd for evidence that the earthquake, or whatever it was, mattered to anyone. No one seems to care. His lungs burn as they breathe in the toxic air. Teddy then realizes that he’s leaning against the exterior wall of his accommodation building.

            He slithers along the wall to the building’s entrance. He leans against the...

From the novel Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

“Another remarkable characteristic of the material,” the ALLpod says, “is that its mono-magnetic force is strong enough to sustain gravities much greater than its own and still retain levitation. Theodore Irving Monroe famously held an event on the runway of a large international airport, to which he rode in on a circus elephant named Chloe and walked her onto a sample of the mono-magnetic material large enough to hold an elephant.”

            The ALLpod shows the corresponding video footage. A short ramp leads Chloe up to the giant metal disk, which doesn’t budge under her enormous gravity. The ramp is removed, Teddy disembarks, and then gives the crowd a big ta-da from where he stands on the edge of the floating, mono-magnetic platform. He wears a less-ragged pair of jeans and an untucked polo shirt, his hair full and wild, as he jumps to the tarmac.

            “But that’s...

A sneak peak at the next draft of Monopole [formerly Theodorus in Excelsis]

The mid-morning city passes by. Teddy stares out the van’s small, chalky window at the thin shadow trees—the alternating light-then-dark sidewalk beside the road—and the countless electric-combustion cars and the greenish air they create that obstruct his view. Through the sea of cars and the dirty city, Teddy watches the mono-magnetic M Trans glide through traffic. It is like a metallic dream.