A TRIMENTED REALITY Thriller
“He felt like he was in a movie, a vivid dream. Was this a near-death experience? Was he dying right now? It was back, the terrible and familiar fear.”
Rico Darburg is a star of the Berlin media scene and has it all: creativity, innovative ideas, money, and success. With his company Tribitium Designs, he floats on a cloud of recognition. But at night, between consciousness and dreaming, they come out: doubts, fears, and repressed guilt—shadows of his past. More than twenty years earlier, he and his school friend Melanie had developed one of the most successful computer games of the nineties, but they had a falling out over the marketing. On the way to negotiations in London, Melanie disappeared without a trace.
In the present, the launch of Rico’s new chip technology is attracting worldwide attention. For the first time ever, thoughts and emotions can be made visible in augmented reality experiences:
TRIMENTED REALITY is born.
Investors are lining up and civil rights activists are demonstrating against the combination of biological and technical components when one of Rico’s students decodes the game’s old program code and suddenly discovers what Melanie left behind.
“The story of Rico and his obsession with his current design work reminds me of how anyone with a purpose never looks back. This forward thinking, however, is what caused Rico to return to his past and to resolve his burning question. The story is filled with nerdy sci-fi with some retro tidbits, industrial espionage and matrixed relationships that any reader would appreciate. Long Forgotten reminds us how some things in our past cannot simply be brushed aside and must be dealt with if there is ever to be true closure. And how technology is used accidentally as the catalyst to find the truth. Stefan Boucher has created a character in Rico Darburg that can span multiple storylines over time.”
Ed Smith, Video Game Pioneer. Author of “Imagine That!”
Not even two hundred years after its founding the earthly colony on Tranthal is only a shadow of its former self. Instead of bringing democracy and prosperity to the peoples of the planet, it sinks into agony and political intrigue. Governor Seth Adam is spreading false hopes, even though the contact with the Earth has been broken for forty years. As before, raw materials are produced and hoarded at the spaceport that the population lacks. More and more people are wondering why nothing is done against the perceptible decline. Taking advantage of a moment of weakness, Dar’y’s neighboring tribes are venturing a massive assault on the colonial territory as the recruit of the new military year celebrates its completion in Hallwa, its capital.
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Two years after the war against the Dar’y, Brit and Len live a life between adaptation and self-realization. The colony was able to stabilize once more. But drug trafficking, energy theft, and radical clerics of the Aristo cult of the Dar’y cause ever new problems in their capital and provinces, which Brit Darburg, who is now working for the Propaganda Unit of the Ministry of Interior, and the young militia officer Len Kakaia are trying to get under control.
View BookSteel Dunes, an international large-scale prison on the south coast, serves as a joint project for the colony and the Dar’y and Isaris peoples to stop the burgeoning crime. However, Vas Kandiris, commander of the powerful government guards, is increasingly abusing it to arrest political opponents of the governor there after the terrible failure of the newly launched space program. Kat-Ya Kon Wardi, daughter of the late High Priest of the Aristo cult of the Dar’y, is also forced to act against increasingly radical forces within the clans. Sard Mamarter and Dars Poole, a former friend of Brit Darburg and Len Kakaia, are among the prominent inmates who are gradually taking control of the “steel dunes”.
