The Refracted Lens

By Nick Zentor

After Stone's grand-nephew experienced bad nightmares in an old house, Stone investigated and fell into a deep, dark, parallel shadow realm under a full moon, with a mad-man on the loose. The experience led to a closer look at the sub-parallel and a parallel history that followed a very different path, with old ghosts and deeper shadows than Stone had ever encountered before.

It all began with more bad dreams. Zek Stone was fairly busy with one of the biggest projects he had ever worked on, but after the bad dreams wouldn't stop bothering him, he investigated and found himself in another sub-parallel of Aton 5 where things were different. Upon further investigation, he found that his sub-parallel's family history had gone through some drastic changes, after his step-brother was killed in 1994, and the mystery had never been resolved.

Even after he managed to resolve the problem with the nephew, Stone found himself still under the influence of the shadows, lost in the sub-parallels of Aton 5, up against the unknown corners of the multiverse. With his knowledge of "Parallel Theory", he navigated through the sub-parallels, trying to get back to the Par Median at Aton 5.785, while dreaming about the home-parallel, and wondering about the mystery of the multiverse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Zentor
• Release date: May 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005743024

Nick Zentor

I was born in another parallel of Earth just a few years before John Kennedy was assassinated and I was transferred to this parallel after a motorcycle accident in late 1982. After 3 years of homelessness, I was inspired to become a science-fiction writer and committed myself to the task once I had managed to find a job and a place to plug in a typewriter. I worked on the job like a good robot for 10 years while writing science-fiction on my free time.After failing to get any books published due to a low demand (every publisher explained how they were selling less books every year), I decided to get into small-publishing and accessed the local copy-outlet to publish my own books. But I didn't have enough money to print more than a handful at a time, and almost no one was interested in buying any of it.It wasn't until 2004, after I managed to save enough money for a new computer, that I began to make some real progress. I was able to do a much better job with book-making and the quality of my books improved. But still they did not sell, so I simply small-published them at my own website online and offered them for free through the website. The website was up until 2008, when I lost my apartment and spent some time homeless again.Aside from writing science-fiction, I started working with 2d computer graphics and animation in late 2004, and got into 3d computer graphics and animation in 2009, after finding another apartment. I've been working with 3d computer graphics, trying to go somewhere there, but I've had problems paying for the software.I wrote "Fool's Errand: Redemption" as the last book in the Temspace-Variant Series in 2015 and turned it into an ebook in 2017. Because I am also a 3d computer graphics artist, I decided to try my hands at my first ebook cover and produced the cover for "Fool's Errand: Redemption" to go with it.

Book preview

The Refracted Lens

Nick Zentor

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Episode 20 of the Multivertical Man

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After Stone's grand-nephew experienced bad nightmares in an old house, Stone investigated

and fell into a deep, dark, parallel shadow realm under a full moon, with a mad-man on the loose. The experience led to a closer look at the sub-parallel and a parallel history that followed a very different path, with old ghosts and deeper shadows than Stone had ever encountered before.

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The Refracted Lens by Nick Zentor

Copyright: Coldpost-85, 2021

All Rights Reserved

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To everyone who has been refracted by the lies of another.

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List of Chapters

1. Introduction: A Loveless Purgatory

2. Prologue: In the Junk Boat Office Where I Died

3. Chapter One: Another Parallel Episode

4. Chapter Two: A Full Moon Nightmare

5. Chapter Three: Parallel Theory

6. Chapter Four: Full-Moon Alpha-Wave Blues

7. Chapter Five: Anxiety Management

8. Chapter Six: LFMG FX

9. Chapter Seven: The Game and the Matrix

10. Chapter Eight: Escape from Aton 5

11. Chapter Nine: The MVC GM2 Lounge

12. Chapter Ten: The Big Studio and the Refracted Lens

13. Chapter Eleven: Seven-Eight-Five on the Play-Side

14. Chapter Twelve: How the Neokon Dogs Ate the World

15. Epilog: In the Junk Boat Office Where I Died

16. Afterword: The Refracted Lens

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Introduction

A Loveless Purgatory

To understand the basic psychology of the individual case, what first must be understood is how the specific individual was alienated from human society and ultimately, abandoned by humanity within his own reality, a reality which he refers to as a loveless purgatory. How did the individual's reality become a loveless purgatory?

According to the facts, the individual was first sent away in the summer of 1975, on a fool's errand, by his own mother's mistake, which was caused by his step-brother's misinformation, which was intended to get him away from the girl he was seeing at the time. The individual lost the girl and was heart-broken, confused, and mad. He did all he could to hide it because it did no good to try and accuse the step-brother, without substantial facts. The step-brother was a pathological liar who was always backed up by the step-father, his senior name-sake.

The step-brother got away with the evil act because the mother trusted the source of the misinformation and didn't figure out she had made the mistake until 7 years later. Before that, another incident had occurred between the step-brother and the individual in the summer of 1978, which led to his ultimate alienation from human society.

In the summer of 1978, the step-brother tried to get him to go naked with him and his friends, and he declined the invitation because he knew step-brother had hurt him in 1975, just couldn't prove it, and didn't trust him.

What the objective observer should understand about this specific case is that at that time in the 1970s, after the Vietnam war, the antiwar pacifists, which included a majority of working-class Protestants and Catholics, were all very much in agreement about certain things, and one of those things, apparently, was going naked on a summer vacation. Apparently, the individual reacted badly on that day because he didn't trust his step-brother enough to go naked with him at that time, and was preoccupied with a more serious business.

Nobody understood why he reacted the way he did on that day because nobody knew what the step-brother had done to him in the summer of 1975. The step-brother had managed to keep that secret buried at the time, and feigned innocence like an expert.

The step-brother had a special power over his younger brother which let him get away with abusing him and violating his rights; the power to lie about the younger brother and get the step-father, his senior name-sake, to support him on it.

Which is exactly what he did, and he got away with it. Everyone was fooled by his deception, including the mother and the family and friends.

The younger brother was rejected by them all for his bad attitude on that day, after the step-brother seized the opportunity to make a mountain out of a mole-hill about the whole incident, and the majority took sides with the step-brother against the younger brother. Before 1978, he was just his stupid little brother, but after 1978 he became branded a big stupid jerk, just because he failed to get naked on that day in the summer of 1978, and everyone hated him for it.

Word got around after that and he lost all of his friends, one after the other, and everyone rejected him. He never got invited to any parties again, got turned away at the doors of people he once knew as friends, and was left completely alone. Eventually, he even lost his job and couldn't find another, and was having a very hard time making ends meet by 1982.

He had been rejected from human society for failing to get naked in the summer of 1978, lost all of his friends, and nobody wanted him around unless it was to clean their toilets or do some dirty work for small change that nobody else wanted to do. He managed to hold onto a job until 1980, but after losing the one he had at that time, he couldn't find another anywhere, and his situation became much worse.

He was homeless for a while, and then he lived with his oldest brother, his wife and kid for about a year. He enlisted in the Air force but failed to make it through basic training in early 1982, and was forced to return home in humiliation, to live with his oldest brother again. He had a fight with the oldest brother, got kicked out onto the street, and was homeless during the summer of 82.

Late in 1982, he experienced a motorcycle accident, after which time, he claims he experienced an indisolar transference otherwise known as death, from his home-parallel to a shadow parallel referred to as Aton 5. There, for over 35 years now, the individual has spent all of his time recovering the memory he lost, from before the accident, while working himself to death in a loveless purgatory.

He has admitted to the deduction which led to making the case for his defense against the step-brother who passed on the misinformation to the mother in 1975. The facts cannot be ignored, of course, and apparently, all of the most substantial facts within the defense report are solid enough to support the case.

Nonetheless, however, despite all of his efforts to stand up for his rights, make the case, and find a way out of the loveless purgatory, by the autumn of 2020, he had still failed to make the escape.

Please be patient and try to tolerate the poor disposition which the victim of lies, Zek Stone, has to suffer while he works his way out of the loveless purgatory he has fallen into.

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Prologue

In the Junk Boat Office Where I Died

After the first decade of robotic work, I felt like a man dying of thirst in the desert, deprived of a human need and obsessed by the idea of it. I couldn't stop thinking about it as I worked my way through the days and nights and chased an imaginary oasis whenever one was within site. It was a loveless purgatory I had fallen into and there was no oasis for me, only a perpetual working disposition, with very little reward for all the good, hard peace-work I have kept.

"I have come to realize that my indisolar disposition appears to be lingering between a somewhat mysterious spiritual realm very similar to a multivertical conjunction and a more localized default test-program compartment at the edge of the Aton 5 game matrix. At the multivertical conjunction, my spiritual indisol hangs about dreaming on its free-time, when it has nothing better to do, but when my mind is hard at work at the test-program default setting, I have complex problems to solve which keep me working for days on end.

"When I first discovered the multivertical conjunction, late in August of 2016, it was after experiencing a nervous breakdown and collapsing from exhaustion. I nearly had a heart-attack, but something else happened instead. Somehow, my spirit rose above it as I realized that I was probably just disturbing the neighbors and could be evicted from the complex for such noise.

"As I realized these logical facts and simmered down, I recalled a dream I had once and then a memory came to me, and I closed my eyes and imagined myself sitting on a bench in the memory. It was a pleasant memory, one of the rare pleasant memories that I had, about a time when I was homeless in Southern California, sitting on a bench at the edge of the highway intersection over-looking Malibu beach and the long, sandy coast-line of beaches as it curved away into the distant horizon.

It was a beautiful sight, and suddenly, as I closed my eyes and imagined, I was there. It was amazing! With my eyes closed, I could actually see the grayscale negative" after image of the memory in my mind. As I sat there with my eyes closed and took it in, it was almost as if the colors were lingering on the edge. I relaxed and tried to see more of the colors and details, but the more I pushed, the more the image faded away. So I stopped pushing and just enjoyed what I could see, which was pleasant enough.

"Then one night in 2017 I had a mysterious dream about sitting alone in the corner of a cavern, at the edge of the world, over-looking a similar coast-line, in a mysterious realm.

"When I awoke I was still in the Junk Boat Office, and I had more work to do because of a set-back that occurred in 2016, the one which led to the nervous break-down.

I knew something strange had happened. It was something that definitely qualified as being within the Outer Limits of the Twilight Zone". It was like I was getting another chance, but the work I had to do was very complex and I was under tremendous pressure to get it done. The forces at work against me were killing me as I struggled to survive and continue. My Junk Boat Office was barely managing to stay afloat at the edge of the world, threatening to sink any time, or go over the edge of the world.

"I must have died about 3 or 4 times in 3 or 4 different sub-parallels before I managed to get the Junk Boat Office a new computer for the 3d work required by my post. After experiencing an identity crisis in 2018 and getting my Defense Report published in 2019, I have finally figured out where I am in the multivertical Aton 5 reality. I appear to be in some kind of default setting compartment at the edge of the game-matrix, where new programs get tested.

Of course, on the surface, it just looks like a common Junk Boat Office. But I was able to see beyond the limited cloak of secular-temporal culture to 3 or 4 more levels, one which intersected with a large temple-like cavernous structure with a spiritual multivertical conjunction", another which intersected with a sierra setting, another which intersected with a suburban paradise setting (every man's dream-house), and yet another which took me to that comfortable bench over-looking the coast-line, straight out of my memory.

"While all the time I dream about escaping the Junk Boat Office to one of the other realms I have discovered, over and over again, for how many times I have lost count now, my indisol has kept returning to the Junk Boat Office time and again, with nothing but more complex problems to solve. In a loveless purgatory, there is nothing but more work to do and very little reward for doing any of it.

Episode 19 and 20 overlap at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, due to a parallel family emergency, involving parallel counterparts" of a sister, her daughter, and the daughter's son ( a grand-nephew). Episode 20 picks up right around the time the Eskapes Emporeum is being completed, just before it is ready to open.

The work within Aton 5 never seems to end. After over 35 years of being a good robot" for the Aton 5 economy, and a good peace-worker favoring the pen over the sword, in an effort to recover the details of my memory and exonerate myself, I don't know how much more I can handle.

It hasn't been a life, it's been a loveless sentence in purgatory. I need more than just another tea-break. I need a real vacation in suburban paradise.

Zek Stone, 20/10/30

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Chapter One: Another Parallel Episode

2020-08-27:

Zek Stone had another bad dream about the old house and awoke in a sweat. He checked the time and turned on the lamp beside the couch he was sleeping on. It was early, around 6 am, just around sunrise. He took his time, tried to relax and get some more sleep, but he couldn't shake the dream and decided to put the coffee on. He went to the small kitchenette in the other corner of the one-room apartment, made some coffee, and returned to the couch in the corner.

He set the coffee down beside the computer flat-screen, sat on the couch, and turned the computer on. As he logged in and waited for the quad-core to power up, he thought about the dream. It was just another in a series of repeating bad dreams about the old house where he had grown up, but this one was different. It involved a sister and young nephew. His mother was also in it. They appeared to have a problem but he wasn't sure what it was.

He checked into the recent company projects and his journal, to recall where he was. It was late August of 2020 and the Eskapes Emporeum was due to be open in a few weeks. When it finally did, he would be one of 3 different managers, working an 8-hour shift, 4 days a week, in and out of the back offices.

That would be his regular job now; working as one of the 3 managers of the Eskapes Emporeum, 32 hours a week.

Lucky for him, it was one of his days off; he needed the rest. But the bad dream didn't help. He looked into the right corner of the office, at the end of the couch, and checked on his medicine.

As he feared, he was all out of medicine. He would have to get some more soon to treat the PTSD, otherwise the bad dreams could get much worse.

He recalled the bad dream which preceded the recent episodic series of dreams involving younger versions of his step-brother and his sister. The one that set it all off involved a younger version of his step-brother spying on him while he was engaged with a DVD (Digital Video Date) fantasy on a weekend.

The arrogant little fascist brat acted as if he could just violate Stone's privacy whenever he wanted and exposed him to the sister during the DVD fantasy, as if to make him look guilty of some kind of evil act simply for having a sex fantasy on a Saturday night.

Apparently, within the dream-reality during the experience, such sex fantasies were considered wrong in some way, probably because the landlords were religious-right fascists who rejected Martin Luther and the Protestants.

Stone reacted violently to the disturbance and projected a hateful defense against the younger version of his step-brother. In the heat of his self-defense against the invasion of his privacy, he swore he was going to kill him for such violations upon his rights and for spreading lies about him.

As the dream ended, Stone was cursing at the younger version of his step-brother and threatening to kill him if he ever violated his rights or told another lie about him again.

That wasn't the end of it. It was just the beginning of a series of bad dreams involving a younger version of his step-brother and his sister. He had determined that the dreams were focused within a very close sub-parallel of the Aton 5 parallel, somewhere to the right of the Par Median.

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Stone was lost in the sub-pars of the Aton 5 parallel and it was not easy reconfiguring his position and the position of the close sub-parallels his indisol visited within the subcon or the hyperkon. Stone worked within the Aton 5.785 sub-parallel, right around the Par Median, the median between the extreme opposite parallels, Aton 5 and Svenate 5.

But the sub-parallel that he visited during his subconscious dreams now and then, where he had a close family tie with his sister and her son (his nephew), appeared to be leaning to the religious-right side of that Par Median.

It wasn't until the most recent dream, when Stone's counterpart visited the old house and saw the sister with the nephew, that he began to see through the confusion. Upon review, he realized that it was not a younger version of his step-brother who had spied on him and reported to his sister, it was the nephew, who looked a lot like the step-brother did in his youth.

Furthermore, he also deduced that the sister was actually a niece who simply resembled her mother (his sister).

So, it was the young nephew who spied on his counterpart, within that sub-par, and told the niece about the digital video date his counterpart had, on the previous Saturday night (that was when the dream occurred).

Apparently, such digital video dates were considered immoral by the religious-right within that sub-parallel, and Stone's counterpart was made to feel guilty about it. Suddenly, Stone and his counterpart both felt inclined to stand up for their rights against the little spying bastard. At the time, the nephew resembled nothing less than a younger version of Jarges, and Stone's counterpart acted out on the defense against him.

Stone's counterpart reflected the same way Stone felt about having such a dream-fantasy ruined by the interference of the nosey young nephew. They both hated the young nephew for it, more so because the young nephew reminded them of the evil step-brother, who was a spoiled-brat about the same age who did similar things to get him in trouble during the 1970s, over 40 years ago.

In fact, at the time, Stone was so mad about what Jarges had done to him in the 1970s that he actually confused the two for a period of time before working the problem out with his sister and her son, who was his nephew.

Before he managed to discern the