Excerpt from Seb Doubinsky's upcoming novel Missing Signal
Seb Doubinsky has a new novel coming up titled Missing Signal. I've read it and my review is already locked and loaded for next Friday, but it's not exactly enough to convey the experience. It would be an understatement to say Missing Signal is atypical and fragmented. It's a weird, fragmented piece of kaleidoscopic fiction about conspiracy and aliens. Exciting, isn't it?
Here's the synopsis:
Missing Signal―a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a government conspiracy? Agent Terrence Kovacs has worked for the New Petersburg Counter-Intel Department propagating fake UFO stories for so long that even he has a hard time separating fact from fiction. Especially when he’s approached by a beautiful woman named Vita, who claims she’s been sent from another planet to liberate Earth.
Thanks to Prof. Doubinsky and the good people at Meerkat Press, you can read six "chapters" from it right here today. The book is coming out on August 28, but you can already preorder it. Comment if you guys enjoy this sort of stuff, there might be more in the future.
Enjoy!
9
When not in the field, Terrence spent most of his days on the computer. He surfed old sites, checked out new sites, answered emails, wrote emails, deleted emails, chatted under various aliases, accepted appointments, canceled appointments, ordered food, watched movies. He actually had a list of his aliases and access codes, because he had so many of them. Fifty-seven, to be precise. He had counted. Sometimes it was hard for him to recall his real name. Terrence Kovacs. It sounded weird to his own ears when he said it out loud. Alien. Yeah, alien. The word made him smile.
10
He checked the inner pocket of his jacket before locking the door of his office. The plane ticket was there. New Belleville, flight AP 202, 10:45 a.m. He was going to attend the International Unidentified Flying Phenomenons Specialists’ conference, which opened this weekend. He would appear as the world-famous John Tammen, founder of the world-respected International UFO Reference Site. Another long makeup session—he actually had to dye his hair a strange silvery white, like the Moon King. He would look spectacular.
11
As usual, he walked to the subway station, which wasn’t very far. No car for him. It was too easy to trace and he didn’t like to drive. Like many people, he was scared of dying in a freak accident. His absent-mindedness could be dangerous. The late spring evening was warm, and the sky had this blue melancholic hue that reminded him that he had a heart. Somewhere in there.
12
The apartment was empty as usual, and filled with golden light. Perfect balance. He realized he was hungry. As usual, balance never lasted long.
Later, when he went to bed, he wondered where light went when darkness came. Was it absorbed by darkness? Did it become a part of darkness, or did it hide somewhere invisible until it could come out again? Of course, the rotation of Earth around the sun explained most of it, that day was simply pushed away by the night. But it didn’t cover all of it. Nothing was ever fully explained, like you can know how a lightning is created, but you can’t explain why poor Michael was hit by it, and not one of the other forty-five kids running in the field, himself included. That would never be explained. Never. And yet it had its importance. Why Michael? Why him?
13
Fate and chances had always fascinated Terrence since he was a child. Maybe fate and chances were the same thing, under a different name. Or God, even. If He or She or It existed, which Terrence doubted. His radical skepticism had been one of the major reasons why he had joined the C.I.D. and he had scored a hundred percent on hoaxes and Urban Legends. The other reason was that he was colorblind and he couldn’t become a pilot in the Air Force.
14
That night Terrence dreamt he was making love to a beautiful girl from the 1960s. It was his room, but they definitely were in the ’60s. The girl kept smiling while they did their thing. She also smiled afterwards, and even laughed. Terrence felt terrific.
