EMPTY SPACE is a space adventure. We begin with the following dream:
An alien research tool the size of a brown dwarf star hangs in the
middle of nowhere, as a result of an attempt to place it equidistant
from everything else in every possible universe. Somewhere in the
fractal labyrinth beneath its surface, a woman lies on an allotropic
carbon deck, a white paste of nanomachines oozing from the corner of her
mouth. She is neither conscious nor unconscious, dead nor alive. There
is something wrong with her cheekbones. At first you think she is
changing from one thing into another - perhaps it's a cat, perhaps it's
something that only looks like one - then you see that she is actually
trying to be both things at once. She is waiting for you, she has been
waiting for you for perhaps 10,000 years. She comes from the past, she
comes from the future. She is about to speak...
EMPTY SPACE is a sequel to LIGHT and NOVA SWING, three strands presented
in alternating chapters which will work their way separately back to
this image of frozen transformation.