Rood Der: 17: Enter the Red Door

By Douglas Christian Larsen

Rood Der: 17: Enter the Red Door. Ronald Rand makes his choice and commits himself, internalizing the new world as he sets out to explore and discover himself a safe base of operations, in which he might realize the gift from Phoebe, the strange woman with the hypnotic green eyes.

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: May 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365929830

Book preview

Rood Der: 17: Enter the Red Door

Rood Der: 17

Enter the Red Door

The Sunday SciFi-Fantasy Serial

by Douglas Christian Larsen

ISBN: 978-1-365-92983-0

© Douglas Christian Larsen 2017

He opened his eyes and stared. Funny, he didn’t recognize where he was. The ceiling looked utterly alien. His head spun and he gulped down the biggest lungful of air he could manage, and the air was sweet—oh yes, he recognized that air. There was no mistaking that air, for it was real air, absolutely nothing like the air of his knock-off world. He glanced about him. He seemed to be lying on his back, and there, yes, there was the Red Door.

It came back to him, in a rushing whirlpool of knowledge and terror and confusion. He remembered the strange woman appearing here, right here, in this room, for there was the Red Door. Without warning she had busted them, threatened them, and then wham, she was gone. He had attempted to follow her in the wake of her departure. Used to so many different varieties of video games, he was certain it was the right move, getting pulled along wherever she went. Someone opens a portal, and you jump in. Usually, it works. And he remembered the crash of walking straight into the heavy metal door. So that had not worked, then, and what of his friends?

Where was everybody? Jethro Mouch and John Galt had been here, and he remembered the influx of knowledge pouring into their heads, the scenes, the images, as they connected together, like some kind of circuit, and they had known things that they had no way of knowing. He understood the nature of their spreadsheet world. And something about Joss Chen that was monumental, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember whatever that portentous knowledge actually was, nor how long he had been lying here on the cold tiles of the floor. And there was something else, something...huge, but right now, it was eluding him. But he knew it was something big, and it was worrying at the edges of his mind, a rat terrier in his brain, ripping and tearing.

Looking at the Red Door he observed that it was closed, but not barred or locked from the inside.

They wouldn’t have gone without him. His friends, they were his friends, and they wouldn’t just desert him here while he lay unconscious on the floor, would they? Oh, perhaps Jethro might