Psychonaut

By K.Z. Freeman

Two short stories preceding the upcoming novel Psychonaut: The Nexus.

Reality Within:
After weeks of terrorizing, the mysterious man in black finally pays a formal visit to the ageing Master Eemos. What he reveals to the ingenious master is no less than the edge of reality.

The Infinite Mind:
It just... appeared – floating in the middle of Washington Square Park. According to its logs, the probe had found a world. An alien world. A world with intelligent life.

Whoever the bastards who sent back the probe were, however, sure know how to travel. Not just how to jump over distances, but instantly appear.
Initially we had no idea if that’s how the probe ended up back on our planet, but it sure looked that way. It was simply there. Instantly.
I was the first man sent near it. Of course, humans beings humans, most of us thought it was a bomb. A nuke. An extinction-event propellant that will extinguish all our lives in a matter of seconds. But what the probe carried was quite something else than a bomb...

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.Z. Freeman
• Release date: Dec 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301992003

K.Z. Freeman

I love writing fiction. My books are about people - how they can change, and in turn change the world around them.

Book preview

Psychonaut

Published by K.Z. Freeman at Smashwords

Psychonaut

Book 1 of The Nexus series

Copyright © 2012 K.Z. Freeman, Cover by Justin Mezzell

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-3019-92000-3

http://www.kzfreeman.blogspot.com

Reality Within

Master Eemos had always been a calm man. A stoic man. He had taken all the challenges and grief life had given him and accepted it with a mixture of detachment and strength. There weren’t many things that could unnerve a man living on his own anti-gravity plate the size of a small apartment block, high above the surface of Dubai. His inventions had made him rich enough to buy the world. But Master Eemos didn’t want the world. For despite the fact that he had two servants who catered to his every whim, a mistress whose beauty could melt most men on the spot, Master Eemos wasn’t happy. There was something vexing his waking moments and absorbing his thoughts of late to the point of madness.

He paced around his workshop on the second floor of his villa. Gold shined through a wide spaced window, inviting him to take a look outside. But outside was the last place Master Eemos wished to look, dared to look. He knew he was out there. The man in black. The man no one else could see but him.

He searched his mind to find something with which to occupy his thoughts, but found only his shaking knees at the thought of looking at the shape again.

This day, sleep had eluded him. He had spent the night wandering his house, lost in contemplation. When dawn came, he had been awarded some clarity, his mind enjoying a bit of sought-after focus. But as soon as the elusive thing had come, Master Eemos became weak again, disoriented.

His age was great. He had lived nearly two lifetimes and would live another should time be good to him.

He stood looking at the window. For a moment his room felt alien to him, each of his works in progress in his shop alien to him, unfamiliar and distant in his vision. They were all a blur, like a city on a distant shore.

I truly am losing my mind, he sighed. Even his own words sounded strange to him. He walked towards the widow, slowly, cautiously. The hum of machinery was drowned by his own footsteps. He looked at the curtain draping his view, its waving shape saturated with light. By all rights, he should have felt lifted. Elevated by the sight of the sun. Relaxed. But all he felt was fear, cloying and biting at his senses. A cold sweat drizzled down his