Ghosts of San Francisco: Tales of Eclipse, #1

By Mord McGhee

In the year 2185, reality is a terrifyingly ugly place. The only time teenaged Rigs feels alive is when she's breaking heads as a member of Poseidon's Angels, feared San Francisco cyberpunk gang. Rigs has devoted her life to violence and getting ahead in the world within the world's societal confines—add in technological ghosts haunting the world as digital astral projections, capable of murder. But when Rigs stumbles upon a group of friends who are willing players, with their eyes on the ultimate prize, are they willing to kill innocents? Is the clandestine corporation known only as The Company the source of their perpetual danger?The race is on, and if Rigs is going to survive, she'll have to confront the hand of evil pulling the strings of life and death. Ghosts of San Francisco: Tales of Eclipse Vol.1 is the first in the Ghosts series by McGhee and the recipient of the 2014 Poynter's Silver Medal in Science Fiction. McGhee puts his readers inside a cyberpunk nightmare world of techno-ghosts beyond dark and disturbing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rezcircle Books
• Release date: Oct 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223351061

Mord McGhee

Mord McGhee is an award-winning author of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and literary fiction, based in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States of America. The novella The Stroke of Oars and chapbook Mind Poker are slated for 2023 by Nat1 Publishing and Audience Askew. Mord is also an associate executive producer for upcoming feature film The Man in the White Van starring Sean Astin and Ali Larter and My Dead Friend Zoe starring Morgan Freeman and Ed Norton. Mord is a former columnist for the Horror Within Magazine, has been an editor of various anthologies, and is a previous Honorable mention in L. Ron Hubbard's 'Writers of the Future.' On a personal note, Mord collects fossils and is passionate about charities including the issue of global human homelessness, stroke and kidney transplant awareness while most often haunting Lowcountry, Charleston, Dallas, College Station, Pittsburgh. He is a woodworker using rustic methods to make furniture and more, and also a season ticket holder and fan of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league affiliate of baseball's Chicago Cubs. It's also true Mord McGhee is a classic MMORPG gamer specifically found Landroval server in Lord of the Rings Online, server 101 of Meridian 59, and at times in Lovecraftian- The Secret World. Mord writes under his name and 2 other published pseudonyms. For all the latest see mordmcghee.com What peers are saying: Steve Alten (NYTimes Best-selling author of Meg) "Intense. Graphic. Provocative. The psychological thriller has a new voice, and it is Mord McGhee." George C. Romero (Filmmaker) "if you don't like to read, get this bad ass page-turner yesterday. If you absolutely hate to read, this book will change that!"   Brad Meltzer (star of History Decoded and more on History, best-selling author) "support this new author!" Adam Davies (renowned adventurer, star of Animal Plant and more) "... a great addition to the genre." Loren Coleman (Director of International Cryptozoology Museum and Researcher) "... a uniquely intellectual American novel." Stan Gordon (UDO researcher, Kecksburg incident) "a family in search of healing with a 'little' cryptozoology..." "It is not dystopia to think history will repeat itself." ~Mord McGhee

Book preview

Ghosts of San Francisco

Tales of Eclipse Vol.1

A novel

By Mord McGhee

©2014 Mord McGhee

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

eBook Reprint Rezcircle Books 2023

Original publisher TSP, 2014

4th Edition eBook by Rezcircle Books 2023

3rd Edition February 2016

2nd Edition November 18, 2014

1st Edition March 15, 2014

No part of this book can be reproduced or used in any manner of media without the express written consent of the author and publishing house except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book was the recipient of the 2014 Dan Poynter’s Silver Medal in Science Fiction

12 17 88 77 198 / 73901 112269

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

Other Mord McGhee books from TSPress-

Murder Red Ink

Intense, graphic, provocative. The psychological thriller has a new voice, and it is Mord McGhee.

-Steve Alten, NY Times best-selling author of Meg & The Loch

Old Flames and Heroes

A great addition to the genre.

-Adam Davies, cryptozoologist/adventurer

Uniquely intellectual American book.

-Loren Coleman, Director of the International Cryptozoology Museum

Nominated for Newbery Medal 2016

Silver Falchion Finalist Award 2016

Ghosts of the Golden Triangle: Tales of Eclipse Vol.2

The Stroke of Oars

Up From the Black

Holy Water (coming soon)

Ironblood (coming soon)

The Seven Children of God (coming soon)

Peg Legacy (coming soon)

A Christmas Carol Android

Dracula (Translated for the Modern American Reader)

The Lost World (Translated for the Modern American Reader)

The Invisible Man (Translated for the Modern American Reader)

This first novel is dedicated to my friends and family.

TRANSCRIPTS MAY NOT BE RELIABLE::stop::

RECORDINGS MAY CONTAIN GRAMMATICAL ANOMOLIES::stop::

ADDED RECORDING MATERIAL RECOVERED::stop::

IMAGES PROVIDED BY THE COMPANY::stop::

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

W hy do all crazy ones write manifestos?

-Graezer, head of Thirty Thieves Thunder Chief Gang

Extracted Prisoner Statement Active JgvX-corp79:

A muffled voice.

Trixy Rose-petal Stardust.

Alias? Yeah. They call me Rigs.

Door opening and closing. The shuffle of feet.

You’re asking me for the truth? How about this... the world is just as shitty as the brown slime that comes into the world with us when we’re born. Once they smack you around and make you cry it all goes downhill. That’s how we should celebrate birthdays: An ass-kicking. I don’t care though. Once I figured out there was no hope, I grew up quick enough. People like you don’t let people like me forget our stations, even as babies.

A pause. Another muffled voice. Chairs moving.

If I am being straight, it is more accurate that life moved me. I just happened to wake up in the middle of a roller coaster expletive removed from public record storm. Oh, I remember exactly when I found the truth! My first exposure to it was being slugged half a dozen times in the mouth. I was just a little girl.

Silence.

Got caught not watching over my shoulder. I didn’t expect to have a stranger pummel the back of my head to the pavement. Then I certainly wasn’t ready to have him rip my clothes off. In flashes: He was snarling. Wake up, bitch, he drooled and beat me some more. I was screaming when he rolled me onto my back. I recall how heavily he was wheezing. It was as if this was the most exercise he’d gotten in his life. He told me things, as he pulled his buckle that are engraved into my nightmares. It’s best I do not tell anyone these thoughts. They can die with me. No one needs to hear that.

Silence.

Sorry. I’ll continue. Unless it affects your completionism. Get over it. So, he had me where he wanted me. He hissed and spat in my face. His growling grew fevered. I wanted to hurl because he smelled like a bottle of whiskey spilled into a clogged toilet. He was junky garbage. Today, I would swat him like a fly.

Today, a crank head like him would shit his pants if he ran into me in a dark alley, instead of the other way around. But back then I was just a frightened teenaged girl. I was lanky, awkward, and ugly. So that was the day I nearly fell prey to your truth.

I had a secret though. I always have a secret. His last earthly action was when he climbed on top of me thinking of nothing but filth. I can still see the lights go out of his eyes like water draining down the sink. I didn’t have much to call my own, but I did have a way to skin and gut rats... so I could eat. The blade pierced his gut deep, and I hit a lucky spot. The last thought in that pig rapist’s head was worthless, like him. Some men can think of nothing but smut.

A chuckle.

Oh yeah. That’s real funny shit. You people are sick.

Murmurs, then silence.

What... should I go on, or not?

A single voice, muffled.

I rolled him off and watched him for a second as he twitched and gasped. There was more blood than I expected. It soaked his shirt. Death never looked that way in the movies. At least not in the ones I used to see when I was little. They ran them on the greenhouse wall on Sunday mornings. I was barely knee high. Once the piece of human garbage stopped wriggling, I ran.

I ran fast and I ran far. It was my thing back then, running away. I’d been doing it since I was eleven years old. It wasn’t because I was a spoiled brat, if that’s what you’re thinking. The first time I hit the streets was because my parents were commune hippies stuck in a fantasy world where the Head Farmer was the law. Sometimes, like the law I knew, the Head Farmer also pays way too much attention to eight-year-old girls when no one else is around.

Just so it’s clear: What I went through in those days is why I am who I am today. It led me down this road. I used to ask why me. A little girl should have been playing with dolls and pretending to marry Doctor Dreamy. Not me; screw that. I’ll quote the hippie preacher, We, as a race, have sunk so low that all of man reeks of the devil’s asshole. Yeah, he really used to say that.

Of course, the dirt-bag was commenting on social sins, not runaways. The devil’s stink has nothing to do with me. I don’t know... I’m rambling. It’s the shit you injected in my neck, I guess.

Anyway, now I ask myself why not me. As I make this statement, I am a lifetime past being an eight-year-old victim. I also haven’t been a homeless teenager eating rat-meat in a very long time. You people have accused me of murder on so many counts I got tired of listening to your corporate lawyers read the list of charges.

Muffled voices.

No. I took a nap. I don’t care, they’re probably true. But expletive removed from public record you! Who gave you the right to arrest me anyway? In the old days, corporate police did their jobs right... they didn’t just kidnap and torture. You say murder, I say job... and one I do extremely well. I know all the tricks. Work efficiently and precisely. And from the very beginning I was a natural.

A muffled voice.

Hell no! No regret... and I don’t need your mercy. That, you can stick up your ass. I will, however, promise revenge. I’ll remember those of you dumb enough to show me your faces. I’ll also remember your voices, even if it’s encrypted on this statement. Muffled voices won’t save you.

Silence.

I don’t know who you are for sure. I think you work for the old man. If you do, you’re already worm shit. Oh, wait! I do have one regret. It’s that I allowed myself to be tricked by you morons. For that, you will die. Either I will kill you... or my friends will.

A muffled voice.

That’s a expletive removed from public record lie! You could tell me Washington dug up Madonna, brought her back from the dead, and then made her the Queen of England, and I would believe it more than what you just told me. There is no conceivable way Slicer is dead... none of them can ever die! Eclipse always finds a way.

We always have and we always will.

We’re survivors and we never forget to pay a debt.

Will you take an I.O.U.?

-Trixy Rigs Stardust, 2185

Chapter 1

I f your place is haunted by things that go bump in the night, call me! Let me delete your fear.

-Spydr, professional ghost buster.

Ghosts are real.

It is a scientific reality.

They are there, surrounding us all, all the time. Visible to the naked eye like bizarre, free-floating, semi-translucent jellyfish in an endless, global tank. Always busy, always active, but traffic gets so much heavier when night falls. Especially on the west coast, where Tom Zeus Enterprise consoles, the most common of projection generators, are plentiful. It is when digital projections rise from their consoles and head off for mischief in the real world. These are not your clanking chain, sheet over the head ghosts that your grandmother warned you about. These are the future. When something moves in the corner of your eye and is gone when you turn to look... when you feel like you’re being followed. When the knife is in a different place on the kitchen counter than where you just set it moments ago.

You are not imagining things.

Ghosts are real.

DEAD OF NIGHT ARRIVED, and she brought a belt filled with live bullets. She was leaving a breadcrumb trail through a dirty jungle of broken-down palaces... in her wake, red and purple human gore. She was setting up the buffet of blood for another evening of entertainment. But she is not alone. Ghosts flutter in all directions... translucent clouds of color and light.

They were everywhere the eye could see.

To dead of night, they were mosquitoes buzzing around the single light in the dark. They meant nothing. These were her hunting grounds... this her world. But to the ghosts, dead of night is a prime-time superstar. In her they jack in and get off.

To jack in is how they project themselves outside their bodies.

To get off is the only way to describe the high.

That’s why dead of night was a rock star.

Also, a ghost in sunlight is barely seen but in pitch black, ghosts are terror. And the whole ghost experience comes from one clever invention that took the next step over the electroencephalograph headsets used in the early 2000s. The invention: Personal Projection Interface.

It’s more commonly called Peep pin because of the acronym used in mass marketing; P-Pin. The most affordable brand, sold by Dealey Square Implants, is called Pins and Needles. It’s also the name most people use.

The cable is shaped like a lamprey eel; black and scaly length topped by pins and needle mouth. There are other names around the world like Dragon Tongue, French Tickler, and The Whip, too. Designer companies put them out as fast as they can. The name of the game is a ton of cash.

Smart cash-heavy companies buy land in Space.

It was the artificial intelligence robotic labor force developed in the late 2070s which made the technology of the P-Pin possible. Then the ore mining of the Moon and Mars in 2169 made the implanted human upgrade as common as chairs and tables by 2177. It didn’t matter if you were a doctor needing more precise hand control, a soldier sharpening lethality, or a car salesman competing with instantaneous prices... if your health care covered the implant, you took it.

Whatever name one knows it by, the P-Pin program Astral Projection brought ghost stories to life. It didn’t take long for ghosts to find their way into mischief... and then into the dark corners of secrecy, long kept from the general public.

Everything that had been secure was now open for any ghost who could operate Astral Projection semi-competently. Secrets were revealed en masse.

The world found out who really killed J.F.K.

Whether or not NASA really landed on the moon in 1969.

Where Jimmy Hoffa was buried.

Who really shot the Emir Al-Akban in 2112.

Why the power was truly dark in New York City for a month in 2166.

What was in the earth beneath Oak Island.

Every secret came to light.

Banks, governments, creditors, medical operations, insurance companies were stripped bare before the hacking world. They suffered at the hands of the first skilled ghosts. There was nowhere to hide. There was nowhere safe any longer.

The ghost problem was a ticking time bomb from the first moment the development team used it to sneak a peek inside the fourth floor Ladies Room. None of them realized when they heard the girl from the snack shop take a dump that the world would be thrown into utter chaos. It was inevitable... the wrong people would gain access.

The cycle of escalation rapidly brought to head grim