Final yr, io9 featured A Fractured Infinity, the debut novel from Nathan Tavares. The sci-fi fantasy writer has a brand new launch coming later this yr, and it’s one other mind-bending story with a queer romance at its heart. Learn on for an excerpt from Welcome to Eternally, in addition to the total cowl reveal.

Right here’s a synopsis of Welcome to Eternally to get you began:

Fox is a reminiscence editor—the most effective—gifted with the ability to create actual life within the digital world. When he wakes up in Subject of Reeds Centre for Reminiscence Reconstruction with no concept how he acquired there, the therapists inform him he was a sufferer in a terrorist bombing by Khadija Banks, the pioneer of reminiscence modifying expertise turned revolutionary. A bombing which shredded the reminiscence archives of all its victims, together with his husband Gabe.

Thrust into reconstructions of his recollections exploded from the fragments that survived the blast, Fox tries to rebuild his life, his marriage and himself. However he shortly realizes his world is altering, unreliable, and echoing round itself time and again.

As he reveals countless cycles of assembly Gabe, falling in love and breaking apart, Fox digs deep into his previous, his time within the refugee nation of Aaru, and the precise nature of his relationship with Khadija. As a result of, in a world tearing itself aside to neglect all its unhappiness, saving the person he loves is perhaps the important thing to saving us all.

Right here’s the total cowl, created by Julia Lloyd:

And right here’s the excerpt!

Chapter Two – Flashes

I don’t bear in mind loving Gabe, however I bear in mind shedding him, in fact. Snippets of recollections come at me in flashes like somebody sliding shards of glass into my head. I get up in the course of the evening in sweaty, twisted sheets. Flo says it’s as a result of trauma actually digs into the memorystream and hangs on tight.

I bear in mind standing by a window of an house that should’ve been mine, searching at a metropolis. The closest buildings crowded like a row of enamel, related by metallic catwalks, with twinkling lights on hearth escapes. Slim streets that gave approach to a large open metropolis sq. of pink granite ringed by squat, glass buildings and stone towers. An extended rectangular pool in the course of the sq. mirrored the evening sky, ending at a large stairway that led to a white pyramid with a base as massive as a metropolis block. The pyramid rose a number of hundred toes greater than the encircling buildings, like a diamond in opposition to the evening, capped by a digital display. Blue lights trickled down the pyramid edges.

Some joking pros-and-cons record we made earlier than shifting into this place floated to me. Professional: three blocks from all of the motion of town sq.. Con: whenever you stroll to the kitchen in your underwear for a glass of water at midnight, your workplace is looking at you.

Flash. The whole lot white.

The pyramid exploded. Bizarre, I had time to assume, earlier than the rolling white cloud, the roundhouse from a pissed off god launched me off my toes. Earlier than I awoke on the ground, lined in damaged glass, a excessive whine blasting by way of my head.

Crimson and blue flashes within the streets. Sirens and screams.

Skittering over damaged glass. My cellphone flashing in my fingers. Calling him, many times, no reply. Simply the eeeeeeee in my ears, drowning every thing out. Blood in my eyes. Blood in my mouth.

Operating by way of the streets and the crush of our bodies, none of us figuring out the place we’re operating. To the smoking crater that was as soon as town sq., or away from it?

Grabbing the shoulders of the folks I slam into. All of us caked with grime and blood, wild-eyed. Have you ever seen him? Have you ever seen him?

Flash.

A information crawl on the display in a grey ready room. Undecided how I acquired there. The place there is. Reminiscence virus. Neuro-terrorists. One anchor talks whereas the opposite beside her cries quietly. One thing about how the weapon exploited the wi-fi reminiscence backup transmissions from buyer nodes to NIL/E servers, utilizing the corporate’s personal expertise in opposition to them. Clients’ reminiscence backups destroyed, even throughout the safe NIL/E servers, recordsdata changed with some form of scrambled code. And extra as this story develops. The anchors don’t say final-death—as a result of even within the many years since rez tech, these phrases are a sleep paralysis demon in your chest at evening, licking your worry—however what else is it in case your reminiscence backup is scorched? As an alternative, they sniffle. Hug your family members tight, and… 

Flash. I’m in a coaching room and the individual on the entrance is telling us one thing all of us already know, that our dad and mom instructed us once they had our nodes put in after we have been youngsters.

The wi-fi reminiscence transmissions are painless. Your recollections are relayed to our servers each twelve hours, the place they are going to be saved protected in case of crucial harm to your vessel and/or node.

I’m operating on the street once more, dodging rubble. Automobiles on hearth. Blurs that I can’t have a look at, as a result of I do know if I cease and look I’ll see an arm. A leg. I hear voices in my head that aren’t mine. Or perhaps it’s the leaked safety comms line the information performs over and over, later. Who is aware of. Time and recollections leak all into one another.

—halt all transmissions till we will stabilize. Are you seeing this? Isolate the memorystreams of everybody on the sq.. Put them in quarantine. Precedence one is retaining our servers protected. These fuckers. These fuckers assume they will get us. We invented this tech. That is our codedamned home—

My listening to is cranked up means too excessive on this unhappy, grey room. The overhead lights buzz like a jet engine. Somebody is screaming. Edit so as to add: I’m that somebody, screaming. A folding chair is in my fingers and I throw it at one of many unhappy grey partitions. As a result of they promised. As a result of they fucking promised that none of us would ever die. That none of us must say goodbye. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Gabe, and our separation was short-term—short-term till we may cool off—and now they’re telling me he’s gone.

I do know the lady with the drained face and the regular eyes doesn’t deserve this, however neither do I. So she will get the screams and the tears and the begging.

And the don’t you realize who the fuck I’m? I don’t know if I’m asking this or telling her.

Somebody behind me jabs one thing sharp in my neck.

Flash.

In one of many folding chairs once more within the unhappy grey room. Evening, this time. The drained lady is talking however her phrases don’t match the motion of her lips. She’s being nicer than I deserve, than she has time for, with all the others within the ready room outdoors.

We will give you an envesseled approximation of the one you love whilst you look ahead to reminiscence cleaning. Approximation. A husband skimmed out of your recollections—traits, habits, habits—cobbled collectively. Extra you than him. Non permanent. Hopefully. Although this virus is craftier than we first thought.

Or we will delete him. Your alternative.

Excerpt from Welcome to Eternally by Nathan Tavares reprinted by permission of Titan Books.

Welcome to Eternally by Nathan Tavares will likely be launched November 7; you may pre-order a duplicate right here.

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