DREAMWORMS BOOK 1The Advent of Dreamtech
Isaac Petrov
Future Notion Press
Copyright © 2021 by Isaac Petrov
Published by Future Notion Press — press@isaacpetrov.com
Primary Print ISBN: 978-90-831552-0-3
Cover art by Cherie Chapman.
Cover images © Shutterstock.com.
Episode art by Maxim Mitenkov.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
One
A Seminar in the Dreamnet
Ximena watches with morbid fascination as Atahualpa—in a gesture of foolish arrogance that would turn history on its head—leaves his eighty-thousand strong army on a plateau nearby, and enters his city. His Empire. His demise.
The Inca’s retinue marches slowly and full of confidence through the narrow streets. The city has been emptied by the war, but the Inca’s escort—a few thousand of his most loyal courtiers, all dressed in the finest garments—walk along with the sure arrogance of power. Some carry fine discs of pure gold on their heads. Others, adorned in cloths of patterned colors, sing songs of praise. And in the middle of it all: the Sapa Inca himself, Atahualpa, godly power incarnate, surrounded by silver and fine feathers, and carried in a ceremonial litter by eighty of his most loyal servants.
But, crucially, nobody carries weapons. Why? Ximena asks herself. What were you thinking, Atahualpa? You knew there were less than two hundred of those exotic bearded foreigners you’ve heard were roaming your lands, didn’t you? And they sent word they were keen to join your glory, didn’t they? Were you that curious? Were you really that sure that they would cower to your godly splendor?
The retinue arrives at the open city square and stops. Nobody moves, the singing fades.
A lone Christian friar exits a nearby stone building and approaches the litter, carrying a cross and a thick book, his breath visible in the fresh winter afternoon. Ximena squints, trying to remember his denomination. A Dominican?
The man reaches the litter and begins a heated exchange with Atahualpa, hard to hear from a distance, and impossible to follow even by those nearby because of the lack of interpreters. The friar is shouting the language of the conquistadors at Atahualpa, which Ximena’s ancestors would understand but, sadly, she doesn’t.
The book finally reaches the emperor’s hands, who stares at it like it were a fistful of live worms, and drops it dismissively.
There is a long silence, like destiny holding her breath. Ximena’s eyes widen with anticipation.
The friar gives out a sudden shout of outrage and the ambushing warriors begin to pour into the open square from within the surrounding buildings and alleys. Impregnable in armor and helmets of dirty steel, lean swords in their hands, and soulless greed in their eyes, it is a terrifying view. Some ride imposing warhorses—creatures of hell from the look of their petrified victims. They charge, outnumbered one to forty.
And the slaughter begins.
Horror and yells of desperation echo against the small buildings as the lives of myriads of unarmed nobles and slaves are slashed with industrial efficiency, a machine mowing the elite of an empire. And it takes time to kill, Ximena thinks, as she watches the dread of sure death reflected in thousands of eyes around her.
Cannons are hastily pulled out of the stone building, together with a detachment of gunpowder-spitting arquebuses and join the killing frenzy with explosive devotion. Ximena almost looks away. Almost. But her professional pride keeps her mind focused and her eyes disciplined. The smell of blood, gunpowder and feces fills the air. She wonders how the doomed victims are experiencing the sudden shattering of everything they knew sure in their primitive world: the unfathomable chaos, the mythic beasts, the deadly shooting, the smoke, the violence against their god-emperor. Some are surely going mad. A mercy, perhaps.
As the armored warriors reach the fringes of the Inca’s litter, his eighty chosen carriers, all dressed in the same fine gowns of the deepest blue, hold their stance with stoic fatalism—faith and loyalty written across their faces. They will carry their god all the way to the underworld, Ximena thinks. The foreign swords hack arms and hands with relentless zeal, eager to make the litter stumble and fall. They want the Inca. They need him alive to conquer everything they wished for. The power. The oh so sweet gold. Ximena stares in wonder as the last surviving maimed carriers, eyes beaming with fanatical determination, use their last breaths on earth to sustain the litter upright. With their severed limbs and stumps! The Inca staggers on the tilting platform, his face contracted in disbelief and terror.
“Ah, here you are.” The sudden voice of Ximena’s grandfather makes her jump. “What are you watching?”
Ximena makes a quick gesture with a finger and the gory scene around her comes to a sudden, digital halt. Even the stench vanishes. A date and time briefly blink at the lower right corner: 20th December 2515 16:55. She removes her visor-glasses.
“Abuelo.” She smiles at him. “You scared me.”
Ximena’s grandfather is quite unlike her. Where she is short, he is tall. Where she has the classic complexion of her Mapuche heritage—dark skin, black hair, broad face—his skin is lighter, his nose larger, hinting at Hansasian ancestry. Her hair runs down in two long braids each side of her face. His is nonexistent. She is pretty.
