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George Santayana had irrational faith in reason - I have irrational faith in TV.
"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History
The Consciousness Plague "more nearly reaches the heights of Isaac Asimov's classic sf mysteries than those of most other genre hands who attempt them manage to do these days." - Booklist
"Phil! Good to see
you!"Jack Dugan, one of the brass
I usually worked with – recently promoted to the Commissioner's right-hand man down
at One Police Plaza – extended his hand.He pulled it back, to contain a wracking cough.
"You look terrible,
Jack.What are you taking for
that?"
"Nothing." He
coughed again, then extended his hand again.
I took it and made a mental
note to wash my hands as soon as I left the meeting.
"I guess I should get
some antibiotics for this," Jack continued."But I hate to use the stuff – they say
so much of it is around that bacteria are building up resistance."
I sat down in the available
chair across from his desk."Never
knew you were so public-minded about that, Jack."
He gave me a pained smile."Antibiotics upset my digestion.I'd rather have the cough."He cleared his throat like a bulldozer moving
dirt.
"Yeah, well,
antibiotics are like dumb cops, aren't they," I said."They come on the scene and club
everyone over the head – the good-guy germs in your system that help you digest
your food, as well as the bad guys that make you sick."
Jack laughed, then
coughed.His eyes teared.Finally he took a deep breath, and let it out
slowly."Let me tell you why I
asked you down here."
I nodded encouragement.
"You know, you and I
have had some differences over the years about your penchant for bizarre cases–"
Yeah, tell me about it, I
thought.He'd removed me from cases at
least half-a-dozen times.
"–and, even though I've
been a skeptic, I was talking to the Commissioner the other day, and he of
course thinks that our city has to be prepared for anything and everything
these days.There's no telling what the
next threat to public safety might be.So, he'd like you to head up a taskforce – you know, just to be there,
with some possible plans in the waiting, if something really strange crops up.That’s your specialty."He cleared his throat, then went into a
coughing spasm.He pulled a bottle of water
out of his desk and guzzled half of it down."So, what do you think?" he finally managed to say.
***
Jenna sipped a glass of plum
wine and smiled at me that evening."I know, you hate committees," she said.
I leaned back on the sofa in
our living room."I've always accomplished
more as a lone wolf," I replied."I've seen loads of these taskforces come and go.Usually all they do is
Waste time and eat up
energy."
"But you told Dugan
you'd think about it," Jenna said.
"Yeah.I suppose it could be good to finally have some
people working under me.And some
resources.That would be an improvement
on having to always go the Department
on bended knee."
"You think there's some
threat we don't know about that makes them want to do this right now?"
Jenna asked.
I scowled."They wouldn't recognize something
bizarre if it smiled in their faces – they'd say it was a hoax, and do their
best to bury the evidence."
Jenna coughed. "Well,
this damned cold or pseudo-flu or whatever it is certainly seems to be getting
out of hand.My sister told me everyone
in San Francisco has it."
"Let's hope she didn't
give it to you over the phone."
I gently rubbed her hand.
***
I called Dugan two days
later to accept the offer.
"He's home sick with
that bug," his secretary, Sheila,told
me."Both he and the Commissioner," she added. "Got them both.Looks like the Department will be run
by the secretaries for the
next few days!"She chuckled.
"No different than
usual," I responded in kind.
Now she laughed out
loud."Shhh, Dr. D'Amato.Don't you give away our secret now!"
"It's safe with me,
don't worry."
***
I was down in Chinatown a
few days later on a boring case.But it
wasn't a total loss – I used the opportunity to replenish my supply of green
tea and persimmons.
The woman at the fruit stand
– hardly more than a girl, with a very sweet face – was coughing her head off.
That reminded me to put in
another call to Dugan.
"Good timing,"
Sheila's voice crackled through my phone."He came back, fit as a fiddle, just this morning."
The sun was close to setting
on this crisp March afternoon, and I was finished with my business in
Chinatown, so I decided to hail a cab and go over to Dugan's office.It could be useful for me to see the
expression on his face when I accepted his offer – see if there was any true
pleasure there.
The traffic was worse than
usual. I counted two water mains broken
and gushing and a pothole that looked as if it might have been made by the
asteroid that took out the dinosaurs.Sheila
was gone when I finally arrived. But Jack was still in his office.
"So I see you're
feeling better," I said, and took Jack's extended hand.
"I feel like a million
bucks now," Jack said."How
you'd know ... oh, I guess Sheila told you I was sick?"
"Right–"
"I tell ya, this was a
nasty one. I tried to fight it on my own as best I could – I hate taking
antibiotics and those new flu meds – but it got to the point where I was up all
night coughing.The Commissioner was
pretty sick too – he picked it up from me, I picked it up from him, who knows –
but his doctor told him about some new antibiotic or something 95% guaranteed
not to upset the stomach.That stuff
wreaks havoc on my digestion, you know–"
"Yeah–"
"So, anyway."Dugan gestured to the available chair."Have a seat, Phil.What brings you to this exalted office?"
"Well, I've decided to
accept your offer," I replied.
"My offer?" Dugan
looked puzzled.
"Yeah, you know, what
you told me last week, about the taskforce."
Dugan looked at me as if I
was putting him on, or confusing him with someone else. "I haven't the vaguest idea what you're
talking about."
In the year 2042, Sierra Waters, a young graduate student in Classics, is shown a new dialog of Socrates, recently discovered, in which a time traveler tries to argue that Socrates might escape death by travel to the future! Thomas, the elderly scholar who has shown her the document, disappears, and Sierra immediately begins to track down the provenance of the manuscript with the help of her classical scholar boyfriend, Max.
The trail leads her to time machines in gentlemen’s clubs in London and in New York, and into the past–and to a time traveler from the future, posing as Heron of Alexandria in 150 AD. Complications, mysteries, travels, and time loops proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to save the greatest philosopher in human history. Fascinating historical characters from Alcibiades to William Henry Appleton, the great nineteenth-century American publisher, to Hypatia and Plato and Socrates himself appear.
Praise for the novel...
"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book
Below is the beginning of this book:
[Athens, 2042 AD]
She ripped the paper in half, then ripped the halves, then ripped what was left, again, into bits and pieces of history that could have been….
Sierra Waters had read once that, years ago, it was thought that men made love for the thrill, while women made love for the sense of connection it gave them. Sierra had always done everything for the thrill. She had no sense of connection, except to her work. Which should have made her an ideal person for this job.
Still … an ideal person would have followed the plan. It was written on the only substance which could survive decades, maybe longer, without batteries, which required only the light of the sun to be read, or the moon on a good night, or a flickering flame when there was no moon. Paper. A marvelous invention. Thin and durable. And she had just torn it into pieces, opened her palm, and given it to the wind to disperse in irreparable directions.
* * *
[earlier, New York City, 2042 AD]
Sierra was a doctoral student at the Old School, in the heart of Manhattan. Her specialty was ancient Athens, or, more precisely, the adoption of the Ionic phonetic alphabet by Athens around 400 BC — the sprouting of the teeth of Cadmus, as Marshall McLuhan had put it — and its impact on the future of the world. “A nice, tidy, manageable little topic,” Thomas O’Leary, a member of her doctoral committee, had commented, testily. But he had agreed to help her, anyway. He was accustomed to unusual pursuits. He was an odd-ball, himself, an independent scholar with no university affiliation. The Old School had a tradition of allowing one such outside expert on its doctoral committees.
Sierra was making good progress on the dissertation — 72 out of a projected 250-page document, written in under half a year’s time — when Thomas called her down to his office, just off Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, on a wet November evening. He had a copy of a slim manuscript, just a few pages in a worn manila folder. He hefted it, as if to assess its intellectual weight. By the expression on his face, it looked to be quite important. He slid it across his pitted oak desk to Sierra. She had mixed feelings about this — it was no doubt an article of some sort that Thomas had come across and deemed relevant to her dissertation. Sierra hated the thought of having to rethink and rewrite any of her work at this point. On the other hand, she relished uncovering new information. It made her heart jump.
She opened the folder. She looked up at Thomas, who was carefully regarding her, his mouth slightly pursed, a long pen of some sort dangling from his fingers like a plastic cigarette. “It’s apparently been kicking around for a while, at least since the 20s,” he said. “It surfaced recently at the Millennium Club up on 49th Street — their librarian spotted it in an old bookcase, sandwiched between the usual stuff.”
“The 2020s?” Sierra asked.
Thomas smiled. “Well, could have been the 1920s, as far as the club goes — it was founded in the 1870s. But the librarian is sure it wasn’t there before 2023 — that was the last time they did a thorough inventory of their holdings — and the Preface says something about carbon-dating the original.”
“So it’s not an obvious forgery. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing it to me, right?”
"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- The New York Times Book Review
Part I: The Mendelian Lamp
Chapter One
Most people think of California, or the midwest, when they think of farm country. I'll take Pennsylvania, and the deep greens on its red earth, any time. Small patches of tomatoes and corn, clothes snapping brightly on a line, and a farmhouse always attached to some corner. The scale is human...
Jenna was in England for a conference, my weekend calendar was clear, so I took Mo up on a visit to Lancaster. Over the GW Bridge, coughing down the Turnpike, over another bridge, down yet another highway stained and pitted then off on a side road where I can roll down my windows and breathe.
Mo and his wife and two girls were good people. He was a rarity for a forensic scientist. Maybe it was the pace of criminal science in this part of the country -- lots of the people around here were Amish, and Amish are non-violent -- or maybe it was his steady diet of those deep greens that quieted his soul. But Mo had none of the grit, none of the cynicism, that comes to most of us who traverse the territory of the dead and the maimed. No, Mo had an innocence, a delight, in the lights of science and people and their possibilities.
"Phil." He clapped me on the back with one hand and took my bag with another. "Phil, how are you?" his wife Corinne yoo-hooed from inside. "Hi Phil!" his elder daughter Laurie, probably 16 already, chimed in from the window, a quick splash of strawberry blond in a crystal frame.
"Hi--" I started to say, but Mo put my bag on the porch and ushered me towards his car.
"You got here early, good," he said, in that schoolboy conspiratorial whisper I'd heard him go into every time he came across some inviting new avenue of science. ESP, UFOs, Mayan ruins in unexpected places -- these were all catnip to Mo. But the power of quiet nature, the hidden wisdom of the farmer, this was his special domain. "A little present I want to pick up for Laurie," he whispered even more, though she was well out of earshot. "And something I want to show you. You too tired for a quick drive?"
"Ah, no, I'm ok--"
"Great, let's go then," he said. "I came across some Amish techniques -- well, you'll see for yourself, you're gonna love it."
* * *
Strasburg is 15 minutes down Rt. 30 from Lancaster. All Dairy Queens and 7-Elevens till you get there, but when you turn off and travel a half a mile in any direction you're back a hundred years or more in time. The air itself says it all. High mixture of pollen and horse manure that smells so surprisingly good, so real, it makes your eyes tear with pleasure. You don't even mind the few flies flitting around.
We turned down Northstar Road. "Joseph Stoltzfus's farm is down there on the right," Mo said.
I nodded. "Beautiful." The sun looked about five minutes to setting. The sky was the color of a robin's belly against the browns and greens of the farm. "He won't mind that we're coming here by, uh--"
"By car? Nah, of course not," Mo said. "The Amish have no problem with non-Amish driving. And Joseph, as you'll see, is more open-minded than most."
I thought I could see him now, off to the right at the end of the road that had turned to dirt, grey-white head of hair and beard bending over the gnarled bark of a fruit tree. He wore plain black overalls and a deep purple shirt.
"That Joseph?" I asked.
"I think so," Mo replied. "I'm not sure."
We pulled the car over near the tree, and got out. A soft autumn rain suddenly started falling.
"You have business here?" The man by the tree turned to address us. His tone was far from friendly.
"Uh yes," Mo said, clearly taken aback. "I'm sorry to intrude. Joseph -- Joseph Stoltzfus -- said it would be ok if we came by--"
"You had business with Joseph?" the man demanded again. His eyes looked red and watery -- though that could have been from the rain.
"Well, yes," Mo said. "But if this isn't a good time--"
"My brother is dead," the man said. "My name is Isaac. This is a bad time for our family."
"Dead?" Mo nearly shouted. "I mean ... what happened? I just saw your brother yesterday."
"We're not sure," Isaac said. "Heart attack, maybe. I think you should leave now. Family are coming soon."
"Yes, yes, of course," Mo said. He looked beyond Isaac at a barn that I noticed for the first time. Its doors were slightly open, and weak light flickered inside.
Mo took a step in the direction of the barn. Isaac put up a restraining arm. "Please," he said. "It's better if you go."
"Yes, of course," Mo said again, and I led him to the car.
"You all right?" I asked when we were both in the car, and Mo had started the engine.
He shook his head. "Couldn't be a heart attack. Not at a time like this."
"Heart attacks don't usually ask for appointments," I said.
Mo was still shaking his head, turning back on to Northstar Road. "I think someone killed him."
* * *
Now forensic scientists are prone to see murder in a ninety-year old woman dying peacefully in her sleep, but this was unusual from Mo.
"Tell me about it," I said, reluctantly. Just what I needed -- death turning my visit into a busman's holiday.
"Never mind," he muttered. "I babbled too much already."
"Babbled? You haven't told me a thing."
Mo drove on in brooding silence. He looked like a different person, wearing a mask that used to be his face.
"You're trying to protect me from something, is that it?" I ventured. "You know better than that."
Mo said nothing.
"What's the point?" I prodded. "We'll be back with Corinne and the girls in five minutes. They'll take one look at you, and know something happened. What are you going to tell them?"
Mo swerved suddenly onto a side road, bringing my kidney into sticking contact with the inside door handle. "Well, I guess you're right about that," he said. He punched in a code in his car phone -- I hadn't noticed it before.
"Hello?" Corinne answered.
"Bad news, honey," Mo said matter-of-factly, though it sounded put on to me. No doubt his wife would see through it too. "Something came up in the project, and we're going to have to go to Philadelphia tonight."
"You and Phil? Everything ok?"
"Yeah, the two of us," Mo said. "Not to worry. I'll call you again when we get there."
"I love you," Corinne said.
"Me too," Mo said. "Kiss the girls good night for me."
He hung up and turned to me.
"Philadelphia?" I asked.
"Better that I don't give them too many details," he said. "I never do in my cases. Only would worry them."
"She's worried anyway," I said. "Sure sign she's worried when she didn't even scream at you for missing dinner. Now that you bring it up, I'm a little worried now too. What's going on?"
Mo said nothing. Then he turned the car again -- mercifully more gently this time -- onto a road with a sign that advised that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was up ahead.
* * *
I rolled up the window as our speed increased. The night had suddenly gone damp and cold.
"You going to give me a clue as to where we're going, or just kidnap me to Philadelphia?" I asked.
"I'll let you off at the 30th Street Station," Mo said. "You can get a bite to eat on the train and be back in New York in an hour."
"You left my bag on your porch, remember?" I said. "Not to mention my car."
"All right, I'll drive you back to my place -- we can turn around at the next exit."
"I'd just as soon come along for the ride, and then we can both go back to your place. Would that be ok?"
Mo just scowled and drove on.
"I wonder if Amos knows?" he said more to himself than me a few moments later.
"Amos is a friend of Joseph's?" I asked.
"His son," Mo said.
"We'll I guess you can't very well call him on your car phone," I said.
Mo shook his head, frowned. "Most people misunderstand the Amish -- think they're some sort of Luddites, against all technology. But that's not really it at all. They struggle with technology, agonize over whether to reject or accept it, and if they accept it, in what ways, so as not to compromise their independence and self-sufficiency. They're not completely against phones -- just against phones in their homes -- because the phone intrudes on everything you're doing."
I snorted. "Yeah, many's the time a call from the Captain pulled me out of the sack. Telephonus interruptus."
Mo flashed his smile, for the first time since we'd left Joseph Stoltzfus's farm. It was good to see.
"So where do Amish keep their phones?" I might as well press my advantage, and the chance it would get Mo to talk.
"Well, that's another misconception," Mo said. "There's not one monolithic Amish viewpoint. There are many Amish groups. They have different ways of dealing with technology. Some allow phone shacks on the edges of their property, so they can make calls when they want to, but not be disturbed in the sanctity of their homes."
"Does Amos have a phone shack?" I asked.
"Dunno," Mo said, like he was beginning to think about something else.
"But you said his family was more open than most," I persisted.
Mo swiveled his head to stare at me for a second, then turned his eyes back on the road. "Open-minded, yes. But not really about communications."
"About what, then?"
"Medicine," Mo said.
"Medicine?" I asked.
"What do you know about allergies?"
My nose itched -- maybe it was the remnants of the sweet pollen near Strasburg.
"I have hay fever," I said. "Cantaloupe sometimes makes my mouth burn. I've seen a few strange deaths in my time due to allergic reactions. You think Joseph Stoltzfus died from something like that?"
"No," Mo said. "I think he was killed because he was trying to prevent people from dying from things like that."
"Ok," I said. "Last time you said that and I asked you to explain you said never mind. Should I ask again or let it slide?"
Mo sighed. "You know, genetic engineering goes back well before the double helix."
"Come again?"
"Breeding plants to make new combinations probably dates almost to the origins of our species," Mo said. "Darwin understood that -- he called it `artificial selection'. Mendel doped out the first laws of genetics breeding peas. Luther Burbank developed way many more new varieties of fruit and vegetables than have yet to come out of our gene-splicing labs."
"And the connection to the Amish is what -- they breed new vegetables now too?" I asked.
"More than that," Mo said. "They have whole insides of houses lit by special kinds of fireflies, altruistic manure permeated by slugs that seek out the roots of plants to die there and give them nourishment -- all deliberately bred to be that way, and the public knows nothing about it. It's biotechnology of the highest order, without the technology."
"And your friend Joseph was working on this?"
Mo nodded. "Techno-allergists -- our conventional researchers -- have recently been investigating how some foods act as catalysts to other allergies. Cantaloupe tingles in your mouth in hay fever season, right? -- because it's really exacerbating the hay fever allergy. Watermelon does the same, and so does the pollen of mums. Joseph and his people have known this for at least 50 years -- and they've gone much further. They're trying to breed a new kind of food, some kind of tomato thing, which would act as an anti-catalyst for allergies -- would reduce their histamine effect to nothing."
"Like an organic Claritin?" I asked.
"Better than that," Mo said. "This would trump any pharmaceutical."
"You ok?" I noticed Mo's face was bearing big beads of sweat.
"Sure," he said, and cleared his throat. He pulled out a hanky and mopped his brow. "I don't know. Joseph--" he started coughing in hacking waves.
I reached over to steady him, and straighten the steering wheel. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he was breathing in angry rasps.
"Mo, hold on," I said, keeping one hand on Mo and the wheel, fumbling with the other in my inside coat pocket. I finally got my fingers on the epinephrine pen I always kept there, and angled it out. Mo was limp and wet and barely conscious over the wheel. I pushed him over as gently as I could and went with my foot for the brake. Cars were speeding by us, screaming at me in the mirror with their lights. Thankfully Mo had been driving on the right, so I only had one stream of lights to blind me. My sole finally made contact with the brake, and I pressed down as gradually as possible. Miraculously, the car came to a reasonably slow halt on the shoulder of the road. We both seemed in one piece.
I looked at Mo. I yanked up his shirt, and plunged the pen into his arm. I wasn't sure how long he'd not been breathing, but it wasn't good.
I dialed 911 on the car phone. "Get someone over here fast," I yelled. "I'm on the Turnpike, eastbound, just before the Philadelphia turnoff. I'm Dr. Phil D'Amato, NYPD Forensics. This is a medical emergency."
I wasn't positive that anaphylactic shock was what was wrong with him, but the adrenaline couldn't do much harm. I leaned over his chest and felt no heartbeat. Jeez, please.
I gave Mo mouth-to-mouth, pounded his chest, pleading for life. "Hang on, damn you!" But I knew already. I could tell. After a while you get this sort of sickening sixth sense about these things. Some kind of allergic reaction from hell had just killed my friend. Right in my arms. Just like that.
EMS got to us eight minutes later. Better than some of the New York City times I'd been seeing lately. But it didn't matter. Mo was gone.
I looked at the car phone as they worked on him, cursing and trying to jolt him back into life. I'd have to call Corinne and tell her this now. But all I could see in the plastic phone display was Laurie's strawberry blonde hair.
I thought I'd create this page, to give you an updated list of freebies of my writing and music that are out there on the web for your reading, listening, and viewing pleasure:
science fiction:the complete radio play of my novelette, "The Chronology Protection Case," performed at the Museum of Television and Radio ... you also might enjoy Jay Kensinger's 2002 short film of The Chronology Protection Case, available for free
science fiction:Shaun Farrell's free, complete, 2007 podiobook of my Locus-Award-winning first novel, The Silk Code(1999)
You can also see free clips from many of my lectures on YouTube - about the First Amendment, mass media and politics, etc.
not free, but not too expensive
The Phil D'Amato series: The Silk Code, winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel of 1999 ... The Consciousness Plague ... The Pixel Eye
Sierra Waters trilogy The Plot to Save Socrates ... Unburning Alexandria ... Chronica
