What would you do if you fall in lovemaking — with a person who ’s your husband inan alternate reality ? thing only getstranger and more puzzling , not to mention more life-threatening , from there for the supporter of A Fractured Infinity , a newqueer sci - fibook from source Nathan Tavares . io9 has a sneak peep to divvy up today !
First up , here ’s a plot description for some linguistic context .
Film - maker Hayes Figueiredo is struggling to finish the infotainment of his nub when handsome physicist Yusuf Hassan shows up , take Hayes is the key to understanding the Envisioner — a mystical machine that can predict the future .
Image: Titan Books
Hayes is drive to a top - secret inquiry facility where he get a line his alternative ego from an alternative macrocosm make the Envisioner and sent it to his realism . Hayes study footage of the other him , he discovers a self he does n’t recognize , tempestuous and obsessive , and footage of Yusuf … as his husband .
As Hayes rule himself fall for Yusuf , he studies the parallel existence and ideate the perfect living they will live together . But their life are inextricably connect to the other reality , and when that twosome ’s tale ends in tragedy Hayes realizes he must do anything he can to save Yusuf ’s life sentence . Because there are infinite realism , but only one Yusuf .
With the fate of countless realities and his heart in his hands , Hayes leads Yusuf on the political campaign , latch on through a kaleidoscope of universes adjudicate to economise it all . But even take to the woods into infinity , Hayes is ladder out of space — soon he will have to make up one’s mind how much he ’s unforced to pay to carry through the love of his biography .
Image: Titan Books
Here ’s a looking at the full cover , designed by Julia Lloyd , followed by the excerpt .
And here , in the cerebral sci - fi picture — not a megahit , not my fashion — ground on the next year or so , the claim card will seethe . SOMETHING EVOCATIVE IN ALL CAPS . prompt the score , the swelling bwahhh bwahhhh chest of drawers - rattle synth undercut by tinkling malarkey chimes as the black fade . snub to HAYES FIGUEIREDO on a beach in the furthest part of the multiverse you could daydream up , staring out at a ocean strew with stars .
I ’ve find a million versions of myself , on a million unlike worlds , so who knows who ’d they ’d cast as me . Hopefully some unnamed who could say he got all Method and really mine his duskiness to harness the role of riotous filmmaker . Troubled , sure , even though the studio will thin out most of the depressive bouts of self - medicate , and the functional alcoholism , and the MDMAeuphoria bonfires with the pack of other turn a loss queers I lived with in my twenties , in that crumbling co - op we all called Saint Homo ’s Home for Wayward Boys . All to focus on the story of the man I love and the futures I ’ve see where he has to give-up the ghost , again and again , so the earth is n’t smashed to bit by an asteroid , or swallowed up by a rogue fateful hole , or nuked until it ’s a glowing pile of ash .
HAYES ( VOICE OVER ) Do you see all the stars out there ?
All the possibilities ?
SLOW PAN out , following HAYES ’S eyes out to sea , then the photographic camera angle flips upside down and burial vault into distance , where an unassuming asteroid float by the covert .
There ’s nothing quite like the daybreak on the beach in this corner of the multiverse .
The juicy lemon cycle of the sun rises over the sea and torches the view with the colours of fruit punch I used to drink in as a nestling . I rustle on the blabbermouthed air mattress , which sends a rubber balloon farting across the pink moxie , towards the copse of beach rat that thicken into what front like ferns the size of redwoods . That graceful wakeup call would ’ve gotten a smile out of Yusuf , not long ago . Before he left . He has n’t been smiling late . Just his gloomy , downturned eyes , and his short sentences .
I intend , of class I get it . It ’s tough to slant your head to the sunlight when you recognize that billions of people have to die because you ’re alive . And the man you love keep that from you .
I putter around the camp for a while , with our gang - of - rock candy fervor pit and our extemporise refrigerator that ’s a shallow fix cover with palm fronds . The dunes of pinkish backbone and the tropic timberland of ferns with their coco palm that savor like bananas and their banana that sample like Cocos nucifera . I ’m alone on this island and the whole planet , as far as I can tell .
I recognize the end was fare , so I fire up up the past few mornings before Yusuf and seek to con every detail of him . The shadows on his cheeks from his beard . The swoops of his sooty eyebrows . His halo of black curls . The groyne scatter his dead body like he ’s a constellation of some ancient hunter .
SCENE : A sad human being alone with a bunch of junk that seems washed ashore from a shipwreck .
I wish , sometimes , that I never crossed way of life with that fucking machine . But then I never would ’ve met Yusuf . The Envisioner — the huge , drear grayish box with all its facets and lank alloy spider peg — sits about a quartern international nautical mile down the beach . You roll in the hay how spider can feel anything that brush against their webs because all the string section give off a different vibration ? I can feel the other universes like burn duds when I weight-lift my hands against the car .
I do n’t do it how the matter works exactly . Every sci - fi moving-picture show I ’ve ever loved has had some mitt - brandish here and there . Let ’s just take this premiss and go with it , deal ? I mean , I do n’t know how plane exactly work either , but they do .
Anyway , the thing is a prognosticative gadget . It ’s a gateway , sorta . It ’s also a plague . A meter - dud fucking with world on a multi - universal level . Yusuf talks a tidy sum about knots in the fabric of multidimensional blank space - time , with each Envisioner a point unite unlike way . When he talks like this , words get all crammed together and I ca n’t make much sense of him or anything else .
The matter mash a crowd of numbers and spits out predictions . There you go . You ’re all catch up .
Yusuf tutored me in physics when I first arrived at the Compound , and I was still interested in not feeling like an idiot around the global brain - trust of the inquiry stave . I use tutored loosely since the academic session were him doodle on his bedroom window with a mark and me wondering at what point in his public lecture about quark cheese I could slide his underclothes back down and get him to swear in Arabic under his breath again .
“ In nature , quarks exist in deuce and threes , ” he said one school term . “ You ca n’t ever regain a solo one flying around . ”
“ Why ? ”
“ Because the force that stick to them in reality increase the farther you endeavor to pull them asunder . ” He squiggled a crinkly line between two circles on his windowpane .
“ How in the hell does that even make sensory faculty ? ”
“ It ’s like an invisible umbilical corduroy connects them . quark cheese ca n’t subsist on their own . ”
When he told me he was leaving , I wanted to say something about how we ’re bound together , too . Except it would ’ve been shitty of me to harbor him emotionally surety .
I screw it ’s diminished - icon thinking to focus on Yusuf give up with me with all we ’ve done — surf across universes and messing up timelines . And I do it it does n’t sound ego - determination - y to say , but he is what make me experience the most myself . He hit me know that this me is not a random jumble of molecules or outcome or whatever . mayhap my life is less my own and more an saying of how I love him . That ’s why I ’m supposed to be here .
He bickers with me a lot on the meants and the shoulds and the supposed tos — anything that sounds remotely like a barbate , white director set this whole universe up for us and we are just bit players hitting beats in the script . He ’s all , in a multiverse where literally every possible variation of every possible outcome exists simultaneously , nothing is meant to happen , and nothing is important , and … Which is usually when I have to anchor him with a towboat on his hand and a joke . Like , jesus , lighten up . I just asked if we should get dinner .
I ’m hurt , like the thread between us is tied to one of my ribs . And this screw thread pulls mingy with every hint , now that we ’re wander farther apart .
This instant - forward teaser is running a slight foresighted , but give me a rift because with all my universe road - tripping and Envisioner scrying , my sense of time is know . perchance I ’m also stall because I ’m not really looking forward to getting into how all of this was my fault .
I pull out Junior , my hand - make camera , from the supplying hoard by the aura mattress and plod over to the tincture of the fern forest . I take a breather Junior on a stone , indicate her lens at me , and flick her little video screen around so that I can see my face during my seaside confessional . I exploit the red “ record ” clit and settle on another careen across from the tv camera .
I look too thin . sunburn , with gullible phantasm under my eye . My therapist ex , Narek , assure me once that my docs and photographic film are all vanity because everything I make is about me . But he ’s incorrect — also an dickhead — because I already exhaust myself with my constant sentiment so I do n’t involve to make whole film devoted to myself . My filmmaking is more about phonograph recording - keeping and storytelling , as test copy that these people existed or these things matter . A in-between fingerbreadth to entropy .
This is n’t about me , I judge is what I ’m trying to say . It ’s a word of advice . Or something .
“ Welcome to Hayes ’s Disaster Drive - In theatre , ” I say to the camera . “ You already missed the coming attractions , but that ’s o.k. . Sit back and I hope you enjoy the show . ”
I suck in a deep breath , close my eyes , and hunt the thread back to the starting line .
Excerpt from A Fractured Infinity by Nathan Tavares reprinted by permit of the source and Titan Books .
A Fractured Infinity by Nathan Tavares will be out November 22 ; you may pre - order a copyhere .
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