Auspicia

A novel in two. Two stories. Two dystopias. Night is somewhere on the edge of what used to be the boreal forest. Humanity huddles around the last remnant of habitable Earth. Post-global warming meltdown, nation states have devolved into loose confederations of cities run by dictatorial “governors” and their “factors”—gang lords who manage society with drugs, sex and bullets. Beyond city walls, global warming has created a dangerous world called “the Perimeter” where new and deadly species continue to evolve—chiefly, a parasite called “bloodworms” that has already wiped out half of the world population. Charly, a female “soldier,” works for a factor named Pontius (“Po” for short). Her latest assignment—cut off the head of the Ambassador of Switzerland. To do so, she’ll have to manoeuvre through the worst of what her city has to offer. Meet Ezra J. Cornfield, a psychopathic cowboy and his legless side-kick Kaney, the Pollywog Girl (who both protects and destroys the drug addicts she sells to) and Nafka, the Nazi hooker who Charly must save from Ezra and Kaney by showing her how to use a gun in a city where government cameras scope every back alley. In the end, Charly will have to choose between two nightmares—a world without hope, or hope without a world. Day is another place. Dystopias are smaller, and less obvious. Day is a trailer park called Sunnyvale. Charly is a boy who lives there. And he’s in love with Nafka. Children here bear little resemblance to the glamorous TV images they’re addicted to. They maintain the dream with anything they can get their hands on—cough medicine, cigarettes, warm bodies and fast cars. But Nafka’s delusion comes to an end when she becomes intimately connected to the latest in a serial killing spree. Is the killer Donner, Nafka's step-father and the man who is now sleeping with her best friend’s mother? Or is it Charly, the shy young rabbi’s son who just might wield power over life and death in the universe? Or is the murder somehow connected to those who stole Nafka's childhood and committed an atrocity against her so devastating she erased the memory from her consciousness? Two stories. Two dystopias. But in the end, there’s only one. And the truth lies in a darkness that belies our own future.