Thresholds

By Johnson, Kevin, Wade

Book Id: WPLBN0100749996
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
File Size: 2.22 MB.
Reproduction Date: 11/5/2023

Title:	Thresholds
Author:	Johnson, Kevin, Wade
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature
Collections:	Authors Community, Science Fiction
Historic Publication Date:	2023
Publisher:	Self-published

Member Page:	Kevin Johnson
Citation APA MLA Chicago Johnson, K. W. (2023). Thresholds. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
A world of heat and heavy storms. A depopulated North America, with no working government, and almost no employment. Too much technology long lost and unattainable. How can Dante and the few people he's acquainted with have a future? Where can they go? What can they do? And can they do so in a hot, hot-tempered world, in the wake of the mysterious apparitions that have begun to appear? A surprisingly heartwarming tale of surviving and surmounting difficulties in a frightening world.

Summary
A young man in an overheated, over-humid future is living a life leading nowhere. What choices can he make to give himself a better life? And can he include a couple of acquaintances, and his grandfather as well?

Excerpt
When I woke up in the late afternoon, sweating and sweltering despite the coolbunk, I knew I was going to have to go on a grocery run. I was almost out of perishables. And more. *You can't get delivery anymore.* I put on mesh outerwear, donned my backpack, checked my helmet was charged and put it on. Buckled on the most deadly self-defense armament I dared carry: a cane. A walking stick. Not much if three or four went after me, but all I could carry without triggering a monitoring AI and getting a fine or even imprisonment. The thought alone was enough to make me sweat. *Well, what of it?* My head was already damp under the helmet. Living in an oven was like that. No one was going to shed any tears over it. *Probably too dehydrated anyway.* I unlocked the reinforced exterior door, opened it, stepped through, closed it, heard it re-lock behind me. *Safe enough up here. It's down below that's dangerous. Mostly.* I took a deep breath, then headed for the stairs. *It's not like there's organized crime targeting crappy places to live like this. It's the violent rando's. And they don't want to come up forty-eight flights of stairs any more than I do.* * * * No one wanted all those steps, so my rent was a pittance. *Pity so's my pay.* But the elevators had shut down when the bottom two floors first flooded…and shut down for good when it started flooding all the time. The only benefit was that it kept me in shape. Couldn't stay in all the time. *I'd starve and go stir-crazy.* Concrete walls, concrete steps. All steel-reinforced, or the building couldn't rise this high. *And if the steel rusts in there? Maintenance, such as it is, certainly isn't checking.* I put it out of my mind—forced it out—as usual. *Don't think about what you can't control.* Then I snorted. *That's what my job is.* I got to the ground floor after the usual number of stops to rest and stop panting. I was pouring sweat, the usual amount, and drank some of the water I carried. *Thank goodness I don't have to carry that up too.* Reached the front doors, ones that had been added after the flooding became normal. *Once I would never have been able to live here. Waterfront property was* desirable. I snorted, and went out into the world outside.

Table of Contents
Slang Terms Map 1 "We Stand upon the Threshold 2 Of World Catastrophe" 3 But What Has Been So Foretold 4 Is Less than What Will Be 5 So Much Exists Beyond Our Ken 6 So Much We Cannot See 7 And Yet It Bides—The Way Opens— 8 And Comes, Despite Our Plea 9 Unseen, Yes, and Unforeseen 10 And Yet Their Presence Felt 11 While Lurking in a Space Between 12 Where They Have Always Dwelt 13 They Come upon Us Now, in Fact, 14 They Make Our World Their Own 15 And We Find Out What Does Attract 16 Them To Our Flesh And Bone 17 Upon the Last Day 18 When the Opening Yawns 19 Then Can We Say 20 What Lies Beyond Epilogue Afterword Thinking Through the Premise About the Author