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    Ever After: The Prometheus Saga
    Ever After: The Prometheus Saga
    Ever After: The Prometheus Saga
    Ebook32 pages22 minutes

    Ever After: The Prometheus Saga

    By M.J. Carlson

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    About this ebook

    The Prometheus Saga Introduction

    What’s past is prologue . . . —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

    The individual keeps watch on other individuals. Societies keep watch on other societies. Civilizations keep watch on other civilizations. It has always been so. Keeping watch is sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent. It is most certainly prudent.

    It is not a trait exclusive to the human species.

    Out of such prudence an advanced intelligence, far across the vastness of space, delivered a probe to Earth 40,000 years ago, to observe and report the progress of the human species. This probe was “born” here fully formed, a human being, engineered from the DNA of Homo sapiens. It possessed our skin, our organs, our skeleton, our muscles.

    And it still lives among us.

    The probe keeps watch.

    The probe is one of us. Almost. It possesses a nuclear quantum computer brain, emitting a low- level electromagnetic field. It manipulates DNA and stem cells, healing itself as needed. It dies, but remains immortal. It enters human societies, adopting any guise, any race, any gender, any age it wishes, following a three-month metamorphosis. It witnesses the events, great and small, good and bad, that shape our destiny.

    The probe keeps watch.

    Everything it sees, hears, feels, experiences, and thinks, it flashes instantaneously across a thousand light-years, in real-time quantum-entangled communication with the intelligence that sent it here.

    The probe keeps watch. And sometimes it acts.

    In Ever After, two mysterious women convey the same Cinderella story to Giambattista Basile in 1594 and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1811. How cultures change and retell this story over time reveals humanity’s soul to those who listen.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherM.J. Carlson
    Release dateMay 4, 2016
    ISBN9781536537567
    Ever After: The Prometheus Saga
    Author

    M.J. Carlson

    Like the caterpillar’s question to Alice, I’ve always found “Who are you?” to be the most difficult one to answer. More so because it has always struck me as less about personal trivia than the more esoteric aspects of personality, like “what are your beliefs,” and “what is your philosophy,” or “what color are the glasses through which you peer at life?” — not to be confused with the question I’m more commonly asked — “what color is the sky on your planet?” My home is Florida. It’s who I am. But my Florida isn’t tied tightly together by six-lane ribbons of asphalt, or littered with strutting, pastel, multi-million-dollar beach sandcastles. It’s a Florida of scrub palms and sand spurs; of cool December beach breezes, forty-minute four o’clock August thunderstorms, and sultry, honeysuckle-scented summer nights. And when I say Florida, I mean all of it. I’ve lived in every corner of my prickly paradise, from the rusty buckle of the bible belt up in the northeast corner, to a stone’s throw from Ft. Lauderdale’s Slip F-18; from Gainesville’s pines dripping with Spanish moss, to walking distance from where the road ended for Jack Kerouac. I’ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and drop into the Gulf on the same day; walked the backroads; raced motorcycles across the Everglades under a full April moon; and awoke, bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed, on Key West’s Duval Street more than once. I wouldn’t trade those memories for a mountain of gold.

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      Book preview

      Ever After - M.J. Carlson

      Acknowledgments

      The author would like to thank those individuals who helped by reading and commenting on this story in its early stages. A special thanks to: Dave Brunetti, Natalie Palmadesso, and Cheryl Bartoszek; to the editors: Elle Andrews Patt, and Bria Burton. Also, thank you to my family, Pamela, Dustin, and Candice for their emotional support.

      As always, no matter how exhaustive the editing, errors are still possible. Any errors are mine and mine alone, and my standard offer applies: the individual who finds the greatest number of errors or typos in this manuscript has the option of having a victim of the same name in the next book if they will send an email with the errors, their receipt, and the name they wish used, to me through michael@mjcarlson.com

      —MJC

      The Prometheus Saga Introduction

      What’s past is prologue . . .

      —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

      The individual keeps watch on other individuals. Societies keep watch on other societies. Civilizations keep watch on other civilizations. It has always been so. Keeping watch is sometimes benevolent, sometimes malevolent. It is most certainly prudent.

      It is not a trait exclusive to the human species.

      Out of such prudence an advanced intelligence, far across the vastness of space, delivered a probe to Earth 40,000 years ago, to observe and report the progress of the human species. This probe was born here fully formed, a human being, engineered from the DNA of Homo sapiens. It possessed our skin, our organs, our skeleton, our muscles.

      And it still lives among us.

      The probe keeps watch.

      The probe is one of us. Almost. It possesses a nuclear quantum computer brain, emitting a low-level electromagnetic field. It manipulates DNA and stem cells, healing itself as needed. It dies, but remains immortal. It enters human societies, adopting any guise, any race, any gender, any age it wishes, following a three-month metamorphosis. It witnesses the

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