Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

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The future is coming… for some sooner than others Ellis Rogers is an ordinary man who is about to embark on an extraordinary journey. All his life he has played it safe and done the right thing, but faced with a terminal illness he’s willing to take an insane gamble. He’s built a time machine in his garage, and if it works, he’ll face a world that challenges his understanding of what it means to be human, what it takes to love, and the cost of paradise. Ellis could find more than a cure for his illness; he might find what everyone has been searching for since time began…but only if he can survive Hollow World.
Welcome to the future and a new science fiction thriller from the bestselling author of The Riyria Revelations.

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“Are you kidding me?” Ellis asked.

“Ah—no, master.” Rob looked puzzled. “That’s right from Master Ren’s own mouth. He wants us all to be tough as he is. Fact is, I’m trying to help Yal here. Master Ren has decided that we’ll be divided into hes , shes , and its based on how we behave. Now that we’ll be living among real humans—once the women arrive—he wants to get us ready. Yal is on the list right now as a she .”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Again that puzzled look. “Master Ren says women are inferior to men. Yal won’t want to be a woman, but will be unless I can shape his ass up.”

“Shape his ass up?”

“Yeah, Master Ren thinks Yal might be a little too light in the loafers.”

“Yal doesn’t even wear shoes.”

“It’s a figure of speech. It means—”

“I know what it means. It’s something Warren taught you, but apparently he skipped the lesson on sarcasm.”

Rob continued to stare at him, bewildered.

Ellis was angry. He was mad at Rob for blindly following orders, mad at Yal for gleefully accepting a beating with the promise that the cook could do the same to the next recruit. He was angry with Warren for creating such a vicious system. Mostly he was mad at himself. For that he had plenty of reasons.

“Where is old Master Ren, anyway?”

“In the village—Menlo Park, inside Edison’s workshop.”

“I think maybe I ought to have a talk with him.”

Ellis aimed for the door, but stopped short, reached out, and pulled the switch away from Rob. “Don’t go hitting anyone anymore.”

“But Master Ren—”

“Yeah, I know. Master Ren likes hitting a little too much, and if I’m going to live here, that’s going to have to change.”

Ellis marched the length of Firestone Lane. Thinking back, he realized he’d made a lot of excuses for Warren over the years. Warren had lost control many times, and he had pulled his friend out of more than a few bar fights, usually because of something stupid that Warren had said. Then there was the time Ellis visited the Eckard household. Warren’s second wife, Kelly, had answered the door wearing her husband’s big mirrored aviators. The sunglasses, long-sleeved shirt, and makeup couldn’t hide the split lip.

“Fell down the stairs,” she had told him with Warren looking on.

“Maybe you should consider moving to a house that doesn’t have steps,” he had replied, never knowing if she understood his meaning. Kelly wasn’t any better at catching innuendo than Rob. That was the closest he had ever come to defying Warren.

It only took two thousand years to sink in, but Ellis Rogers could be taught. Maybe it was time Warren learned about the second half of the Bible.

Hollow World - изображение 34

The Edison laboratory was on the other side of the village, closer to where Ellis had found Geo-24’s body—where he had first met Pax. He had run by it that day, taking no notice of the long peak-roofed building that looked like an old train station with its white clapboard siding, decorative porch posts that gave the impression of archways, and round attic window bisected by muntins to look like crosshairs on a rifle scope. This wasn’t the real Edison lab. By the time Ford thought to relocate the facilities in the 1920s, there was nothing left to move. The buildings had been removed or collapsed. Ford had his workers reconstruct this replica based on photographs and using scavenged materials, but Ellis imagined there wasn’t much difference between the Dearborn version and the New Jersey original.

Ellis reached the start of the Menlo Park complex, passing the green-tarnished, bronze statue of Edison, sitting grandfatherly on a rock as if about to impart some word of genius. As he walked up Port Street, he saw someone. Although too far away to read a name tag, the Amish outfit suggested that either the person was a member of the Firestone Farm family, or the Mennonites of Pennsylvania had not only survived unobserved but were taking a vacation at the Henry Ford Museum. Whoever it was, they had been leaning on the picket fence surrounding the Menlo Park complex and rushed inside the lab the moment Ellis appeared. By the time Ellis turned onto Christie Street, Warren was on the front porch of the lab waiting for him.

“Well, well, if it ain’t Mr. Rogers. The prodigal son returns.” Warren stood, his shirt buttoned to the neck, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, with what looked to be grease staining his hands. “How you feeling?”

“I thought it was Master Rogers?” Ellis said. “Isn’t that what you ordered them to call us?”

“It is indeed. Figured it was important to establish these things early.”

“What things? The pecking order?”

“Yeah.” Warren glanced behind him at the lab, and, putting an arm around Ellis’s shoulders, led him down the steps and out into the yard, where the afternoon sun was casting shadows. In a lower voice he added, “These baldies are nice enough folks, but let’s face it. They really aren’t human—not like you and me, and not like our children will be. Thing is, they aren’t going to die. We’ll be stuck with them forever. I just want to make sure they understand their place in the new world order.”

Their place? New order? Ellis wasn’t sure if he was in the Old South or Nazi Germany, but wherever it was, the year had to be around 1936. “And what place is that?”

Warren squinted at him. “What’s with you?”

“I was just at the farm, where Rob was about to beat Yal with a stick because it was Rob’s turn to be the bully. Told me it was your idea?”

“Ellis, these underworlders have no concept of authority. I’m working at establishing that. We’ll need discipline once we get going. Folks are going to have to learn to obey orders.”

“See, that’s the problem right there. Why do they have to learn that? I can see wanting to have women and children and families again, and I can understand the sense of accomplishment in providing real work with real benefits, but that doesn’t mean we have to form a fascist state. Why not be a society of equals?”

Warren looked at him as if he was having trouble hearing. He used to do that a lot at the bar, mostly when anyone complained about football or suggested his views on women were outdated.

“Because we aren’t,” Warren said. “That’s socialist talk.”

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal —second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, remember that?” Ellis said, his voice rising.

Warren frowned. “Yeah, right—all men . That’s you and me, buddy.”

“I think Jefferson meant all humans .”

“Jefferson was a pretty smart guy,” Warren said with a smug smile and a condescending wink. “I think if that’s what he meant, then that’s what he’d have written. Ole Tommy had quite a few slaves running ’round Monticello, you know. Didn’t have any problem differentiating between men and those who served them. Fact is, people aren’t the same. You’re smarter than I am. I’m stronger than you are. These are facts. People want everyone to be the same, but we just aren’t. No one is—well, except the baldies. That’s the problem, and they know it. That’s why they’re here. You and I know how to live in a real society. We understand initiative and thrive on competition. Real men don’t back down from a fight. We know how to take care of ourselves. And when the shit flies, we’ll be the ones who know how to survive. That makes us more valuable, more important. It’s not an insult to them, just a fact of nature. Sure, we’ll all be equal, just some of us will be more equal than others.”

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