Ammonites VS Aliens (+ audio)
Hello everyone,
If you’re new, you’ve not heard of that big weird poetic sci-fi novel I have been writing forever, so I’ll start by telling you it is called THE STEPHANIE GLITCH and it is about reincarnation. The first novella is already up on Amazon, and there are going to be at least six more.
It’s a big, weird story.
Eventually it will be a big, weird hardback.
And then a big, weird TV series.
If you’re worried you’ll be lost today, don’t be. This excerpt happens a few million years BEFORE anything else in the book.
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You voted, I listened. Today’s post is Sci-Fi
Ammonoidea 1
The ammonite shunted itself backwards through the crags in the rock, expelling seawater from its hyponome. Once past the boiling volcanic vents, the spiralling creature secreted itself deeper in the rocks, hiding. Others had tried retracting into their shells, but it was not sufficient. Whatever parasites had escaped the leviathan from the Great Unreachable had no issue scooping live ammonites from their shells.
The leviathan was a parasitised thing from which the hunters emerged. Even as its spheroid body slumped through the ocean they burst forth, launching themselves at frightening speed through the seawater from holes chewed into its giant body. The ammonite had seen its hulking form sliding darkly downward into the deep black trench below the ocean, and for reasons it could not understand nor express, felt drawn to that black pit which became the leviathan’s grave.
But the hunters had not all left the body, and now she was down here, the ammonite had no choice but to find refuge among the volcanic vents and cave networks that littered this ancient, living rock. And so she pressed onward, spurting another jet of water, her shell hitting a stone wall, her heart feeling the harsh thump as its casing slammed into the ends of the cave.
A light like a new sun erupted from one side. It was like the light from one of the vents, but stronger, whiter. It carried with it a coldness, not heat, and its movement was like that of a living being. The ammonite was afraid. The light swept over her, shining through the slim gap between the whorls of her shell, casting a spiralling shape against a far wall of the cave. She glimpsed this briefly with her right eye, noticing that this cave wall was flat, shiny, and that lines stranger than the sutures on her shell were woven here in intricate patterns upon the thing.
One of the hunters screamed in the heat of a volcanic vent, its horrid voice resonating dimly out through the water until it reached the ammonite as little more than a memory of pain. She turned to face the dim noise, seeing it as a sheet of rippling white sound, and briefly saw the cumbersome form of the hunter as its pearlescent skin peeled away in the vent. Already roving pairs of Coccosteus were satiating their curiosity by tearing up this flaking, silverish skin as it floated away. The ammonite felt a rumble somewhere deep below. She propelled herself back again, tilting her body, and slotting into a crevice where the surviving hunters could not find her. Here she waited for them to inspect their dead companion, and watched as their strange limbs struggled to propel them through the water. The hunters were long and slim compared to the ammonite, their heads protruding not from a shell but from a torso to which was attached four long limbs. From this distance, secluded in the grey rock, the hunters looked like deformed Ichthyostega, those creatures who had ventured into the Dry World beyond ammonite reach, and had returned with strange vegetation in their mouths.
But the hunters were not Ichthyostega, they were bigger, ganglier, and could create sunlight from strange lumps on their skins. Their heads, bulbous and impractical, held one solid compound eye beyond which was a strange luminescence. The ammonite kept watch with her left eye, trying to compress from these strange creatures a hint of their origin. Had the leviathan really fallen from above the Dry World, slipping into the oceans from the Great Unreachable? Or had it been something more earthly, perhaps a rock cast out from a large and undiscovered volcanic vent?
END
The first novella in this series, THE STEPHANIE GLITCH, Killing A Universe, is currently available on Amazon »Here«
The segment you just read is new, and will form the 0th chapter in the full book. I know that sounds weird, but trust me, I have plans.
Author’s note:
This twist in the story feels right to me, not least because the original cover design for TSG had a big ammonite on it, but because the theme of psychic communication across time is made more explicit here in this opener, long before we even meet Stephanie. And, having Stephanie stumble into her narrative almost as if she’s a secondary character in her own story* brings a real atmosphere and weight to her teenage angst that I don’t think could be sufficiently put across by merely telling you she feels that way.
*This is a risk publishers and agents would hate, which is another reason self pub is better for writers like myself. I’ve also bought 100 ISBN codes so I need to make use of them. That was a big purchase.
Even more
I can only afford to post little stories and excerpts for free because sometimes people will read them and then buy a bigger story, or a collection of stories. They might even buy a shirt. I have a few more of those on the way, all coming to the linktr.ee/phillipcarter linktree store.
Free Sci-Fi Friday - last chance
There are now four days left for the latest free Sci-Fi bundle I joined, after which some of the books might become a lot harder to find.
I know I’ve posted on the official FFF newsletter already, but I thought I’d give you a chance here to jump onto it, too.