Orangeberry Book of the Day - Be Careful What You Wish For (Saga of the New Gods) by David Black (Excerpt)

Prologue

The world was void, and darkness was upon the deep…

All reality, all that would be called reality had there been anyone to give the darkness name, was darkness…

From one moment to the next, darkness became light. And a being that could be called a god… or pantheon… their/his race called themselves/himself Djinn… if he/they called himself/themselves anything at all…

The being/entity/pantheon faced itself and was two, neither diminished, neither less powerful in the slightest than they had been when one.

“Must this be?” one asked/thought in a multitude of voices that spread ripples of creation through the universe that was given birth to in this utterance.

“It must,” the other responded, his voice’s reverberations colliding with the first, causing planets and stars to appear where the lines of force encountered one another.

The battle lasted eons, the battle was completed in moments, the battle was of words, the battle was a titanic struggle where galaxies died and a universe was created.

Finally one stood victorious, as they knew at the beginning he would.

No words were spoken now, the victor, still identical in form and nature to the vanquished, stood over him and brought his hands together. The vanquished shrank away into the distance, and remained where he was; debris gradually collected around him where he lay, and a planet was born from his defeat, collecting around him in his prison like a pearl formed within the mouth of the universe itself.

As the being’s hand was covered by the forming planet, though, one last wish, one small gesture, and a ring flashed, and was gone…

Book 1

Saga of the New Gods

Be Careful What You Wish For

By Daniel Black

Chapter 1

Brandon Jones

OCC Math Science Lab, Athens, Ohio

2:13 p.m. June 5^th, 2021

“So as you can see, the entire project’s findings were rendered completely worthless because they failed to observe Schrödinger’s principle,” the professor droned, gesturing toward the screen in his own class in Berkley, California.

Brandon had seen this demonstration before, and was hard-pressed to show any interest at all. He looked around the small classroom—twelve desks, and only one student—his college was unable to even provide him with a flesh and blood teacher, though they were able to provide him this video-teleconference.

Sighing in regret, he decided beggars could not be choosers. At least they were required to provide him with this much by the terms of his scholarship, which by going to a community college he was able to stretch to cover food and lodging as well as a triple course load.

“Which I will lose if I do not ace this guy’s class,” he muttered, and turned back to the screen.

The class, his most difficult and probably least practical class, was theoretical quantum physics. Of course he also had several other classes, from quantum mechanics all the way down to Latin, but this was his major: what he intended to base his future on. His goal was to reach a doctorate in the field within four years, and he felt that he was well on his way to doing so in this, his second year of college.

The professor continued to drone on, and yes, by god he was actually wearing tweed… what a presumptuous, pompous twit.

Brandon tried to pay attention, but the way the guy on the screen was droning was putting him rapidly to sleep.

Deciding that the only thing to do was to think of something interesting to keep his mind going—as a nap would probably be taken amiss by the gimlet eye of the camera watching him while he watched the professor—he decided to think about the game coming up later.

Brandon had been an avid gamer since the age of six: tabletop role-playing games, computer games, console games, if it had a strategy that concentrated more on the mental than the physical, he was on it. His current game of choice was the old standby, Dungeons and Dragons, in particular a mix of systems run by his friend Adam.

As he considered the upcoming game, his mind began, of its own accord, to turn—as he had a great deal of difficulty keeping his eyes from turning during the games—to Chelsea. His gaming group consisted of six people: Adam, the game master, kinda twitchy, but generally a good guy in a game; Michelle, Adam’s girlfriend, and permanent addition to the game that was very bearable—she mostly looked like a guy, and played like one as well, generally as a rogue of one type or another; Tim, his best friend since childhood, jolly as hell, and difficult to make take anything seriously; Blake, the new guy, young and into sports to a degree that Brandon was not comfortable with, playing a fighter currently, which was just his speed, all brawn and no brains, his first character in the game. Finally his thoughts arrived at Chelsea, and his lips twisted into a slightly vacuous smile as he gazed unseeingly at the screen. Chelsea was his only real regret in the gaming group. Among gamers, the ratio of males to females was about eighty/twenty, and she was gorgeous—something even less common among gamers, but not unheard-of. She had a perfect ass, and filled out her shirt nicely as well.

Feeling his face beginning to flush, he forced his mind to swerve on a tangent back to its second course.

Two months ago, before Blake the bastard joined their game, Chelsea had at last been single. Brandon had finally decided, after she had been single for two weeks, to ask her out. He had shown up early to the game, dressed in his usual black slacks and white shirt, and there she’d been, sitting there on the couch, more beautiful than ever, a radiant grin on her face… next to Blake.

Brandon had missed his opportunity, and now he was just waiting for the two of them to break up.

It would probably be going too far to say that she was his first love, but he had definitely fallen into serious lust with her on sight.

A buzzer went off, snapping him away from his ruminations on the elusive Chelsea, and he realized that the lecture was done. Brandon scanned rapidly through his memory of the preceding hour, but no, there was nothing new.

Sighing at the wasted time, he stood and clicked off the monitor, then walked to the door, clicking the lights off as he stepped through it, heading to his game.