The Palimpsest

 

A Clementine Novella

by John T. Biggs

Inside the Jack Fork Installation is a high tech civilization maintained by a pair of mad scientist clones. Outside, humanity has degenerated to a stone age culture. The world is wild and dangerous. A thousand years has passed since the apocalypse. It may be another thousand years before humanity recovers. Perhaps they never will.

Clementine is the most important clone of all. Her central nervous system is the only one that can be programmed again and again. She can learn all the skills necessary to take high tech civilization across the galaxy to a new planet the scientists have chosen. But the cost is slavery for her and for everyone who follows the New World Plan.

How will Clem choose to use her special brain? Will she start over with the savage human race outside the installation? Or will she help the scientists build a brave new world that includes every comfort but freedom—even an immortality of sorts?

Her only advisers are the ghosts of a few old friends who speak only inside her mind. And she suspects they might be her imagination. (63 pages)

Published:
Publisher: Dragonbrae
Genres:
Science Fiction

Tags:
post-apocalypse

About the Author

John T. Biggs

Everything John T. Biggs writes is so full of Oklahoma that once you read it, you'll never get the red dirt stains washed out of your mind. The tribes play a significant role. No authentic discussion of the state is possible without them. Traditional Native American legends are reworked and set in the modern era, the way oral historians always intended. One of John's stories, "Boy Witch" took grand prize in the 80th annual Writer's Digest Competition in 2011. Another won third prize in the 2011 Lorian Hemingway short story contest. Eighty of his short stories have been published in one form or another, along with several of his novels.

Other Books By John T. Biggs

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