Wings of a Raven, 2028AD

By Mike Koontz

2028AD is a real life inspired sci-fi universe stretching across several books and stand alone short stories depicting life on Earth and beyond as our wasteful life take the human species and planet Earth beyond the gates of man-made Ragnarok. 

While the Universe is large and the stories go far beyond Earth and the mundane, the first book tells a small and fairly short "everyday" life story about a few individual people and their contemporary life a decade or so from now as we follow their tiny little footprints of thoughts and love, fear, despair, melancholy, laughter and needs in that whirlwind of life in the Anthropocene which we too inhabit.

"They had departed, drifting through the high seas.

Ragnarok 5 was their designation, but the wolfpack of ships was scattered and silence was all that remained from the outside world." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: a Norse View
• Release date: Aug 9, 2017
• ISBN: 9781537855714

Book preview

Mike Koontz

Wings of a Raven

a 2028AD novella

First published by a Norse View in 2017

Copyright © Mike Koontz, 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

Before the fall, 'The common cyborg'

'The common cyborg'

in a dream forgotten

The interlude, 'they are dreaming something pretty strange and weird'

branches moving, inside my mind and the bell tower

Charcoal eyes

Interlude 'words & breakfast'

Kissing crust and Obambulate

Interlude 'a boxing matter'

Tardigradous conversations

25 years ago 'The departure'

walking, Beneath Orion

Interlude 'The case of Journal 28'

the headless children, of which there are many

memories from the stream

the dream I could not dream alone

Interlude, 'the meeting'

Of that which is unknown

Interlude from the daylight crew

A few years later 'The Gateway Earth Chaebol'

a poem for the inbetween

2028AD

nothingness

'Wings of a Raven' By Mike Koontz is the first book in a shared contemporary

book universe called 2028AD. Mature and at times even naughty storytelling

and explicit events lurk behind each sweet page as we traverse both the

known familiarities of planet Earth and the uncharted vastness of the

universe.

And if at any point and turn, you feel that you need so much more from this

charming sci-fi universe, reach for the abyss of the dark world wide web and

the home of every book and short story that relates to 2028AD.

anorseview.com

I

wings of a raven

they had departed, drifting through the high seas.

Ragnarok 5 was their designation, but the wolfpack of ships was scattered and silence was all that remained from the outside world.

To the daisy that is my sun and inspiration

One

Before the fall, 'The common cyborg'

Years before the presidency of Donald Trump, and the long line of unfolding events that led us to the sad man-made global state which we now commonly think of as the fall, there was real hope in the world. A viable grain of hope had started to build towards a real change across the world that would redeem us all and cleanse the horrible consequences of past human transgressions.

The fall, or if you so wish, you can use the more doomsday sounding, official designation, Ragnarok did not end the world.

It was just as the Vikings of old Scandinavia always had thought of Ragnarok, it was not the end of the world, but it was the furious beginning of a new adventure given birth in the downfall of another. When the snake turned around the world and the ravens took to the sky with the rising wolf, the birth of a new world had to be paid with a steep price for this planet and all of humanity.

Each of these moments, be it a good one or a very bad moment give meaning and context, life and transforming movement and energy through its own ripples to everything else in our own lives and the entire Universe.

And perhaps one day you will find out that this little snippet of our contemporary history that is your own life is very much a meaningful part of the bigger story that is waiting to unravel. And perhaps this story and others like it will reappear again, with a beginning and a continuation. Like that old Norse snake that wraps around the world while the dragon gnaws at the roots of the ashen ever tree. A cycle of biological life that spans across time and ripples in space.

But even if it never resurface in a big and meaningful way, this particular moment in our stream which we call The Common Cyborg remain for some mysterious reason one of my personal favorites and I often return to it for some unknown reason.

I guess the smallness of it together with that peculiar natural human touch of empathy and hope as it blends into the technological advancements that break the perceived canvas of previous generations somehow gives me hope too as we traverse the vastness of space far away from our old home and all the people we left behind.

It is short but sweet, so since you have never heard it before, sit down, relax and please let me tell it with my own voice as we take a breather for 5 sweet minutes. This ship of ours is not going anywhere without us, and our cargo will not wake up, not yet anyway.

'The common cyborg'

She had been almost dormant, for 12 years. Locked down inside a sheltered room in New York's most respected private hospital.

But last night she finally opened her eyes again.

Not the way you and I open our eyes to the world each morning, not with pupils dilating as they let the streams of light inside our synapses and wondrous neurons.

Light from artificial screens and windows bursting with luminescence from the sun outside did not touch her mind and eyes in that way.

No, her eyes did not even open, not just yet.

Not the way you imagine them to open.

Her body would keep adapting for years to the shock of being jolted back to a conscious awaken state from its long dormant veggie like dwelling.

But she did see the world now, her mind was clear and wide awake, oh the sounds she could hear for the first time in so many years. They pounced against the finer strands of hair on her body, head, and ears.

And the things her mind was flooded with, the visuals of an entire world came rushing against her like a torrent of white waters hurling down the greatest fall.

Sensors from the drones and the phone that was now all hers, and all the smart wifi-enabled gadgets in her vicinity already communicated directly with her brain. The damage done by the combination of her accident and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was now gone.

And so, she was seeing the entire room, and all the people inside of it, she could see and feel, hear and touch the entire room, like a stone in a swelling river.

Goodnight my love

[ "do not let

the bedbugs

bite

Sep 5, 2028AD" ]

The Neural Engineering System Design they had engineered for her particular

biological system kept feeding her synaptic nerves with strikingly vivid visuals and her entire surroundings lit up like a Christmas tree inside her neurological pathways.

And on the down low, behind it all, words kept whispering to her, words and videos, a stream of media from the hospital network kept being processed by her own digital AI assistant, laid out like a perfect dish in the sparse and rustic kitchen only she could see inside her own mind.

She was making tea with her assistant now, splendid, gorgeous tea. And the scent of it wet and teased her taste buds, and she knew without a doubt that it would taste utterly divine once it was done.

But inside her deluge the world was musically silent, so she tried to get her assistant to turn on her favorite Spotify playlist, but to no avail.

The people in her room kept pointing to the digitized floor to ceiling wall where the OLED tapestry slowly displayed a walk through a lush, arctic landscape. A woman to her right touched the wall and said, 'can you hear us'?.

'If you can, can you say hello. Or do something? Please?.'

Minutes passed as the assistant kept talking to her.

Informing her of her own medical situation, the rejuvenating work the 're-youth' blood plasma breakthrough had started doing on her liver, mind and lean muscle mass, and how the neurons that had failed her 18 years ago would continue adapting and integrating her entire body with her new and connected life.

It talked to her about the weather, her extended family, the hospital and DARPA, the neural cyber network implant inside her mind which translated the visuals and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and every connected technological device in her own vicinity.

It talked to her about the hospital she was staying at, the team of doctors that had worked on her. She got to know them all, even neuroscientist Andrew Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh who had pioneered some of the breakthroughs that had led to this day.

The AI gave a brief description of how Trump had derailed the world's climate change work with global catastrophic results as the outcome, and it talked to her about the bio-organic WiFi and nanobots inside of her.

And beneath the woman's fingers, the Arctic walk came to a halt in front of a majestic emperor penguin.

Characters slowly typed started to appear on the wall, right to her finger.

I.., was followed by a several minute's long pause as they watched the penguin walk across the frozen white world until in a fluid sudden stream the font changed in both size and type and place as it simultaneously spat out.

.... Spotify, they, you, god damn, unblock the firewall, I want my music back, the world needs music!.

The entire room started laughing, 'welcome, welcome' ' oh my god, she is awake', laughter and a bubbly emotional wave raptured inside the room, someone cried, others laughed, someone almost collapsed into a chair from the immense relief.

They had made it.

- And this is how I came to know this piece of modern day history.

Did you like it? It´s a real life story, and it is what enabled our cargo and the entire Ragnarok project to depart. And best of all, she is one of the sleepers.

No way?

- Yes, way, cross my heart, the original cyborg is one of the sleepers.

Two

in a dream forgotten

In a dream forgotten, I found myself climbing the inside of a bell tower, proud and old the blackness of its interior above me beckoned me to follow higher, and higher up its dark towering tunnel.

Or was it, simply.

A memory lost and not at all a wayward dream.

A vivid moment surreal and clear at the same time, as real as if all this really was happening right now in the flesh, part of me surely was convinced that this was, in fact, real. Real and happening to me in this very moment, although another part of me still did not know, if this strange moment came from a life already lived.

Or, a life, yet to be seen and felt.

High up above me, a raven's black feathered wings could be seen.