Rood Der: 09: Café Really?

By Douglas Christian Larsen

Rood Der: Episode 09: Café Really? On a strange cafe patio the group faces a dire choice, and Frances experiences her first sighting of the Sister moons of High Vale.

How deep are we, immersed in this world we call reality? How many turtles down do we go, in this discombobulated, mixed-metaphor, rabbit-hole world?

Their world might be based on Ayn Rand, her writings, philosophies, and her U.S. Presidency, but how dense are their numbers compressed, and for how long will their simulation even run? This little group has been provided an exit, but would anyone be rude enough to dare and leave their very own reality?

Take the Rude Dare, and Cross over, where data is data, through the Red Door. From the author of Vestigial Surreality comes the new serial novel, Rood Der.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365802294

Book preview

Rood Der: 09: Café Really?

Rood Der: 09

Café Really?

The Sunday SciFi-Fantasy Serial

by Douglas Christian Larsen

978-1-365-80229-4

© Douglas Christian Larsen 2017

They were chattering and had been keeping everything somewhat cool for about half an hour, even making jokes, with a few of them discussing Phoebe’s body, and were just thinking about concluding their dinner meeting, with nothing really solved. They would have to leave it all at this, just more mysteries bobbing about in their confusion collective, like icebergs, with only the tips showing. They still could not agree on anything. But the vast and looming threats lurked there, ever there in all their minds, just beneath the surface. Like this Phoebe, their waitress, she was obviously from them, or the System, although no one had felt courage enough to say...the Abyss. Because when you thought about it, that’s how this all got started—meeting together and talking about their darling conspiracy. To think, that this all used to be kind of fun, just a chance to get together with like idiots and drink beer and coffee, and smoke cigars and pipes. A few of them used to actually refer to themselves, on the down-low of course, as The Inklings, inspired by Tolkien and Lewis and Barfield and all the other guys. When two or more were gathered in its name, the Abyss seemed to be there, among them.

Outside of their gathering, it all seemed much more random. Just their everyday signs and wonders, the coincidences and the déjà vu and all the strange, surreal feelings, and nothing they could really pin any solid evidence on, nothing, no how.

Come on, come on, we still don’t know anything, Rodney was saying, sipping at a glass of red house wine. Yeah, yeah, some bimbo appears amidst us, and says a whole lot of nothing, and what? We are supposed to freak out, and just, like, you know, what? Leave our world? We still don’t know anything, that’s all I’m saying.

"What Joss showed us, what he caught on video—that seems like...magic, I don’t know,"