Sojourn: Gates of Ivory, Gates Of Horn

Who am I? What is my purpose? Before only available in e-manuscript to the “Geek Underground” on campus, here for the first time in print is Denn “Doc” Quinn’s disturbing vision of the world of the Pharak and Mukti, a chilling dreamscape woven and governed by the forces of Psytechsci, policed by the brutally repressive kordac-mukti, and haunted by the nightmare figures of shadow-stalkers, ghouls who devour souls; by high-tech pleasure junkies who steal identities and experiences; by pharaphrenics, sexually ambiguous beings capable of mind invasion; and by the Innominati, whose bodies emptied of essence drift like aimless wraiths through the night. This is the world to which the Pharak Andrew awakens following a mysterious surgery that has left him with partial amnesia and an identity reconstructed by government scientists. Before long Andrew discovers discrepancies between the life that science has given him and the life he seems once to have led. Confused by vague memories of his former self, troubled by bizarre dreams that will not let him alone, Andrew determines to unravel his past. Wandering in an existential labyrinth, he can cling to but one certainty: that he is a citizen of the City of Singular Longing. Beneath the utopian surface of the city, however, lurks a world oppressed by class antagonisms and rebellion and a world unfitted to furnish satisfying answers to Andrew’s most urgent questions. Only the Liminal, the trackless wilderness beyond the city, may hold the answers. The Liminal—to which all access has been sealed off by protective shield. A forbidden space. An impenetrable space except to rebels like Andrew bold enough to risk everything to get there. The Liminal—where the fugitive soul, if unprepared for the revelations that await it, may in the act of self-discovery lose itself forever in the deeper spaces of endless dream. Or nightmare.