Infania: Let's Go Treasure Hunting!

By Jack Turner

Infania: Let's Go Treasure Hunting is the first in a series of novels all following the same band of oddball criminals that never manage to get anything done without a few bumps and scrapes along the way. Things only get odder when they come across a new cabin boy. What follows is a story filled with action, adventure, and everything in between, except for a well thought out plan. No one really seems to know what's going on, which happens to be part of the fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098342050

Book preview

Chapter 1- Nowhere to go but down

Today, I decided it was about time to kill myself.

I stood atop the 32nd floor of my shitty apartment building. I nearly fell over before I even got up to the edge. Seriously, calling the brickwork of this place bad is an understatement, horrible feels like a compliment. In the end, the poor structure of the building I stood on was to my benefit since I planned to jump off of it, because of that, complaining felt pretty counterproductive. Rather than complain, I decided to reflect on how I got to this point; and I supposed I would need to start with when I woke up.

A strange occurrence in life is that many stories start with someone waking up. The start of a day is relative to the start of a story, I can only assume it to be a coincidence that mine also starts this way. I too, woke up in a cold sweat. Me sweating in my sleep, however, wasn’t strange.

Due to my slightly below average physical condition, it’s not impossible for sleeping to exhaust me, but I also get the occasional nightmare. My nightmares are what one of my therapists have called The cherry on top of my exuberantly large cake of mental distraught. This was his interesting way of telling me that I needed pills. If the goal of those pills was to dull my outward emotions into an indefinable and monotone pile, they worked swimmingly. I’m losing track, that’ll happen a couple of times, I apologize

The date was April 23rd, I don’t remember the year, just that it was a regular day with way too much sunlight shining through the cracks of my boring, little life. Clouds decided not to block the bright light of the big star waiting to kill us all, as they usually tended to do. Clouds are one of the better parts of nature in my personal opinion. When I opened up the curtains of my box container normally referred to as a shitty apartment, my eyes forcibly closed as they met with the morning lights and I stared into the bricks of the building next to mine.

My phone erupted in an annoying rumble against my nightstand, drawing closer to the edge. As I picked it up, I questioned why I ever chose such an obnoxious chime, it wasn’t until I saw who was calling, that I was instantly reminded, he was once my alarm clock. Robert Fields is a man I knew my whole life, not for the lack of trying mind you. When I broke away from the societal crypt of Rockwood Pennsylvania, Robbie refused to let me go without at least five ways of contacting him. He made himself my safety net, my personal rebound from when I jumped from heights too high for me to handle, like a building or maybe just a job interview. Robert made himself out to be someone to talk to, and when I answered the phone, we did just that.

Hey man, how’s the writer life? Robert chuckled at his own joke over the phone, knowing full well that I had given up the writing around two years prior due to a novel that had become infamous in the literary world.

Same as usual, what’ve you been up to lately? Could I have waved my red flag any higher? I thought as we continued.

Same thing as usual I guess. Hey, we should hang out today, since I’m in town. I’ll send you the location of where I’m working. Robert’s work took him everywhere, but rarely somewhere so heavily populated by people, he’s more accustomed to things that have started going to waste, like me. This coincidence makes his career a good explanation for our friendship.

The walk would be brisk in comparison to how much time I spent wailing in a low, exasperated grumble, I tend to refer to this as the Call to life. This Call to life, more simply referred to as a teary and extensive yawn that always gave me plenty of time to prepare for the day. I would put on a white dress shirt with my nicest pair of black pants, with more elasticity in the waistband than a majority of sweatpants; frankly, I wouldn’t be able to survive the outdoors without them. After fastening an old pair of running shoes to my feet, I took myself over to the location Robert had sent me.

We met in the middle of an empty park, trash was scattered everywhere the wind could blow it, people in bright neon vests were spending their afternoon doing community service, luckily it was no one I recognized. The fact that I still knew who Robert was had been strange enough considering how quickly I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth after promptly becoming the laughingstock of literature. I hadn’t expected to meet with Robert Fields on this sunny afternoon, so when I saw him, I felt ready to hit snooze, so I might wake up from this odd dream.

Robert sat on the edge of a water fountain, he held something, cautiously gripping it in his hands. With the sun’s bright gleam off of his neon vest, I couldn’t tell what he was holding. As I approached him, slightly shielding my eyes, Robert held out his hand, still gripping the mystery with caution in the other.

Hold on, don’t startle him… He had stopped me from walking closer. Moments later, a pigeon flew out of his hands and onto his shoulder.

I wasn’t surprised, I’d seen things similar to this happen to Robert before, so I responded simply, You’ve still got quite the way with animals. His charisma always attracted animals his way. He’d always have a flock of birds or a group of rodents surrounding him when we were young.

Yeah, I’m in the city to help these rare pigeons come back from endangerment. I want to help them thrive again… I always envied Robert’s dedication to things so simple.

So, do you just travel all around the world nowadays, saving animals?

Yep. He had no hesitation in his voice, he never needed to hesitate. How about you? Any new happenings?

I had another dream recently… Every time I had a nightmare, Robert would be patiently waiting to hear it, no matter how far away he was, and no matter how many times he heard these nightmares, he would always be on the edge of his seat, eager to hear what happened next in my strange mind, they used to be very prevalent, in my earlier years I’d get strange dreams almost every night. As I grew up, I would only ever get them once a week, and it had been a long time since Robert had heard one of my dreams in person. Whenever I have these nightmares, they’re always inexplicably odd, but so are most dreams.

I was standing at the edge of a cliff for a little while, it was peaceful before the ground disappeared beneath me, and I fell Robert followed my brief recounting with full focus, in these times he treated me like the great storyteller I always thought I’d be. After I fell, I kept falling for a while… When I stopped, it was quiet. There was nothing else there, so I think I died again…

Wow… I don’t know how you can do that! Robert would always say something to that effect after I shared my dreams with him. He never ceased to be intrigued by the vague stories my head made up while I slept, even after all these years.

You should start writing these down! I’d really like to read what happens next.

Yeah, writing my dreams down would be great. ‘Dear diary, I had a dream, I died in it.’ The End

There’s no way all of your dreams end there, you’re a writer, I bet you can find a connection! He glanced between me and the bird on his shoulder. The pigeon flew off and landed over by a patch of grass. "How many of your dreams do end like that?" Robert looked at me, I couldn’t bring myself to look back.

I stared down and sighed through my hands. More than I can keep track of.

Well, at least they never come true, that’s good right?

Maybe they were meant to come true… I gleaned off toward the patch of grass where the pigeon had started pecking for seeds in the ground.

I glanced up at Robert for a moment to see an upset expression, which he quickly changed. Well then, you must be pretty lucky! Not everyone can fight against fate… It was then that a cloud passed overhead. For those next few moments we sat, cloaked from the sun’s rays, no words were shared then. As if on cue, Robert stood in tandem with the sunshine revealing itself again and he spoke to me once more. "I get it if these dreams make you scared, I totally get it… But, next time… when you leave, could you look for me when you need someone to talk to?" I wish I had given him a response, yet when I could have, I didn’t.

Normally, when I talked to Robert, things seemed a little better.

It rarely passed my mind how bitter Robert was that I left home without even telling him. I bet if I were a little less of an ass, I would have stayed, or at least told him where I was going, or why. Thanks to all my efforts, our distance kept growing further and further, even while I sat right next to him, it felt like we were a thousand miles apart. I sat alone on that fountain until noon, I would’ve stayed longer had I not gotten hungry. I made a bowl of cereal when I got back to my pitch black apartment, staring into my silhouette in the mirror, I looked into my own dimly light eyes, partly hidden by my clean cut, yet unkempt hair, wondering where I could go to run away from all these problems that I’d given myself. Asking this gave me the response that I’d have to leave the planet to get another chance, as I realized the truth of the response in my head, I had my first decent idea in about four or five years.

I stood at the edge of my apartment building, below a bright sky and looked down, I heard if you were to look down too far, you’d get vertigo or gain a fear of heights, but I still don’t think I’m any more afraid of falling to my death as I was before I looked down at that quiet street. I guess I was too focused on other things to be bothered by staring down at an empty path of concrete. After a few moments, I solemnly walked off the edge of the building. Despite this being my demise, my head was held up high. I had plenty to regret but it didn’t change anything for me, since I thought I was gonna splatter on the pavement.

I was going to die, I didn’t think about anything in my last moments, just that it was blissful, in a certain sense, this would be the last time anyone would see Thomas J Lancent.

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Chapter 2- The Ankh in the sky

Who is Thomas J Lancent? Well, back when I had pride and a scholarship, I wasted most of my time writing pages upon pages of stories in a novel, it was a vastly interconnected world of one dimensional characters and intertwined stories that would ultimately never matter to the overall plotline. My novel didn’t matter, it wasn’t good enough to be published, but the people I went to didn’t look at quality when putting something under their names. As long as the words on the paper stayed within its lines, they’d sign it off and ship it around the world.

A week after my failure of a story had spread like wildfire, the critics took notice of it and slandered my name as a lackluster author with about as much talent as the infinite number of monkeys that couldn’t manage to write Shakespeare. There were small studies conducted about why I was brought up to where I was just for me to fail so exuberantly.

Thinking about this allowed me to feel like everything was quiet for a few moments before I could feel all the weight of my decisions overtake me, though, in retrospect, it may have just been the gravity. I was currently plummeting 32 stories down towards my demise. I couldn’t work up enough strength to move against the road I was hurtling towards, and I was about 20 stories from the ground when I heard a loud cracking noise, something had broken. My fall was broken yes, but I would later find out that the cracking noise was the sound of several bones turning into dust.

Twenty years I’ve been considering the end of my life and now that I’ve finally tried it, I’ve been stopped in my tracks. I felt almost angry, I felt like I normally do when it dawns upon me that I can’t do anything right.

Before my tears were able to drip onto the ground below, I was flipped over by the invisible field that caught me. Maybe it was a sign that I wasn’t meant to die yet, had this floating apparatus saved me? I could see that above me was a silhouette in the shape of an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of life… Ironic, it felt as though it was on purpose that I found such irony in it. As it started to pull me closer, I started trying to panic.

Oh… It wasn’t long before I found myself paralyzed from the neck down and started my ascent inside of this floating metaphor.

If I were to guess at what made me so calm in this altercation, it would be the sheer oddity of it. So, as this spaceship pulled me into its clutches, I was not expecting help to arrive since I was tens of stories from a few slabs of concrete, so of course, the empty street paid little notice to me. With that, my abduction went relatively smoothly. It was at this point, my adrenaline faded and I blacked out from the pain.

When I started to regain feeling, there was nothing and yet I could sense a painful wrapping sensation around me, stopping my breath. There was a large snake wrapped around my neck, but when I tried to pull it away, I found that the snake was not there. I struggled against nothing for a few minutes, my senses turned dimmer in this cold abyss.

My serpentine wrestling match was then suddenly cut off.

I was awoken by the sound of snapping fingers, I couldn’t see anyone in front of me, I just heard their voice, echoing through the void. A quiet voice that stormed through my mind, twisting and turning.

Good morning Thomas J Lancent. A calm voice echoed through the dark space enveloping my mind, with a tone like they were talking to a lesser being, like a dog.

Is this another fucked up dream? I shouted, hearing a dim echo return. Seeing as how confusingly realistic my dreams are, this was the most logical explanation. Too bad I would soon need to learn how to throw logic out of the window.

Excuse me Douchebag, but you are going to have to wake up sooner or later…. their voice became much louder as it began to reverberate so strongly I could feel everything crumble, and I felt the pressure of the ephemeral snake unravel as I awoke.

Above my head were several bright lights, I half expected doctors to come into my periphery, but none came.

I felt my body lightly stretch under my clothes, I hardly remembered having broken so many bones just a short while ago, and I could process nothing other than how cold my back felt against a metal table.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but you must leave. The voice had no figure to come from, as my eyes darted around, I saw no source for the sounds; were they hidden, behind me maybe? I didn’t know, as the table suddenly rose my body upright, it startled me out of my slumber and into the groggy state of motion that I was more than accustomed to.

Alright, I’m up…. As I lifted my head before the seat could catch up, I was met with a window to my left. It must’ve been nighttime seeing as there was an abundance of stars outside of this hospital… At least, I thought it was a hospital, but looking around, it seemed a tad too… empty.

You will have to excuse me yet again Thomas J Lancent, it seems I do not have the greatest memory of your plain, hmmm…That sign over there says ‘milky Way’ perhaps that is a good place to drop you off., With an inquisitive echo, the voice I heard in my head sent my direction towards a sign in the window. It certainly was titled ‘Milky way’.

It wasn’t until I was unconsciously walking towards the exit of this ankh that my situation slowly dawned on me. As I and the satchel I had for some reason been carrying with me were shuffling away, like missing a step on a staircase, I fell 3 feet, the ankh had yet to meet solid ground, though I suppose we were much further from any actual ground than a couple of feet.

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Chapter 3- Anything Can Happen on the Milky Way

I fell on my face. The ground felt like a layer of metal beneath me because that’s exactly what it was. I was in a huge landscape of metal with a large, wide structure surrounding me, like an outlet mall of titanium.

Flashing lights came from every angle, strange humanoid creatures of unnatural colors were casually walking around. I heard a faint whirring, this engine sound woke me up the rest of the way.

The ankh! I shouted out, it was still above me. I had been dropped down in the middle of God knows where, with nothing but a glimpse of the thing that brought me here, before it disappeared. It wasn’t until after the ankh left that I started to absorb everything, it wasn’t nighttime, the sky was simply not blue, nor was it entirely dark, I could see stars all above me, it was stunning at first, before it became terrifying.

There I was in the middle of a place I didn’t recognize, surrounded by people I barely understood, all under a sky that I was unfamiliar with.

All I had were the clothes on my back and my aforementioned satchel, there wasn’t much in it aside from bus fare and a folder of outdated resumes from my job hunting days. As I had taken all of this information in, I was calm, I then proceeded into a state of what I would call, a rational amount of panic.

Endless thoughts poured into my head, where am I? Who brought me here? Is this even real? I kept asking myself many questions like these as I began to wander aimlessly before I felt the familiar