It pains me to think of how many stories I’ve started writing — with countless more that never made it past the brainstorming stage. I am so excited to have finally completed a chapter of a book — and one I’m willing to share with the world, which is saying something.
Bjorn’s Game is a cyberpunk sci-fi story that follows the main character, a revolutionary nano-bot programmer named Bjørn Hawkins, from ardent humanism to saving faith. It begins when he goes against cultural norms by having an “illegitimate” son (born without government approval) because of a strange telepathic relationship between himself and the unborn boy. When the government tells him the boy died of complications at birth, he knows it’s a lie. He soon discovers that his son was actually added to an oppressed underground work-force, millions strong, who are systematically brain-damaged by his own invention, nanites. After his belief in humanity’s moral goodness is destroyed, he is awakened to his own depravity as his marriage falls apart and sets out on a quest to develop a nanite antidote for his son’s brain damage and to discover the authenticity of Christianity so he will know whether to hand the antidote over to renegade fanatical believers who live as missionaries among the underground work-force.
Huge thanks to my wife, Jessica, for encouraging me in the development of the story and the writing and for listening to far too many story ideas when we should’ve been talking about other things, and to Sophie for hounding me to actually write the story I’ve always dreamed about.
Here it is: Bjørn’s Game – Chapter 1 (Note: the PDF is sideways, you’ll have to right-click and go to Rotate Clockwise to see it right-side-up)
