Gabriel commanded Adam to take Eve’s world, for Eve to become subservient to Adam. Man’s subjugation of woman spread like a great plague of black serpent snakes. The bloodline descendants of Eve vowed revenge, to retake Eve’s world – they evolved over eons of time to walk tall in the arid-dry grasslands to wreak vengeance against the warmongering deeds of man and his despoliation kind. Eve’s gender kin seek out men of their own blood, good men, men who take up the fight to change the violent world, to make the world a more righteous world…
Six Men. Six men mercilessly interwoven with the reborn reincarnations of Eve, of Hyvah, of Hawwāh. Men carved out by Eve’s evangelical legacy. Six men through history – from one thousand years in the future, back through time to the realm of the Greek gods. Six brave men who face overwhelming odds, who each possess unique abilities to change the way things are…
Gabriel commanded Adam to take Eve’s world, for Eve to become subservient to Adam. Man’s subjugation of woman spread like a great plague of black serpent snakes. The bloodline descendants of Eve vowed revenge, to retake Eve’s world – they evolved over eons of time to walk tall in the arid-dry grasslands to wreak vengeance against the warmongering deeds of man and his despoliation kind. Eve’s gender kin seek out men of their own blood, good men, men who take up the fight to change the violent world, to make the world a more righteous world…
Six Men. Six men mercilessly interwoven with the reborn reincarnations of Eve, of Hyvah, of Hawwāh. Men carved out by Eve’s evangelical legacy. Six men through history – from one thousand years in the future, back through time to the realm of the Greek gods. Six brave men who face overwhelming odds, who each possess unique abilities to change the way things are…
Mr Johnson’s day job did not put demands upon him in the real sense of the word. The upshot was, during his time away from the labs, Johnson’s inquisitive mind would be captivated by any meaningless subject that caught his deep-brooding imagination. Trained for investigative research, he was the sort of unsettled nobody who loved to unlock sciences’ more unimportant mysteries. Johnson would, by instinct, be drawn to minor details disregarded by his peers, unsolved bits of nonsensical evidence that could on occasions occupy his thoughts for indelible lengths of time. Sometimes for far too long, Johnson often chided himself - but this was how Johnson found his precious clues, those little bits of insanity that hid in dark wretched corners reeking with slime, the little scraps of nothingness that wriggled and squirmed in sinister hideaways where more eminent eyes than Johnson’s failed to look.
As a rudimentary, still inexperienced off-world archaeologist Johnson was without doubt not yet the best in his field or even anywhere near the top of his profession. He had received his certification just two years before, taking a job in the BioLabs to get his feet on the first rung of the ladder that he hoped would one day lead to a long adventurous career. A prosperous career. But other graduates seemed to be advancing at a much greater pace, whereas Johnson formed the distinct opinion that he was stuck in a rut, a back-end job that he should have turned down - he could have waited for something better to come along. But, after all else failed, he suffered the indignity of being allocated his role by the impatient Ministry - and that was that. He suspected his rebellious attitude labelled him as something of a troublemaker though he himself knew that frustration was his real problem. He realised he argued his point just a little too much sometimes. But then, Johnson always believed he was right, even if his learned fellows were more experienced. They just did not see the things he saw - or the way he knew things were.
To Mr Johnson it was natural. When Johnson saw something that intrigued him, he studied it over and over – and he always saw clues. Little things, pieces of information his compatriots somehow seemed to overlook. Those clues frustrated him when they lead to tantalising problems that possessed no intrinsic reason, nothing he could fathom. He could wind himself in knots when the answers did not come to him in the short time he thought they should: he would sometimes vent his temper. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt or argue with anyone, it’s just that they did not understand what he was saying. Or trying to say. He would force himself to walk away, even out of the lectures sometimes when no one understood his point. Why did they always laugh?
The usual thing that happened was he every time got the mundane work. Johnson figured that when you are bottom of the pile, this is what happened. Just the previous week he received the dubious summons from Dr Matilda, the deputy head of Material Analysis, to be given the task of analysing rock samples from the sedimentary basin of Rios, the largest of the moons orbiting Affebiar IV.
“Don’t fuck up Johnson,” Matilda forewarned him. “Keep it simple, we just want numbers.”
The mining survey ship Constance had in the last week docked in Central City after completing its two year exploration mission, but all the exciting stuff was gone, purloined off, allocated to more established research laboratories. Even the rest of his team at BioCity were involved in more mind-stretching sample work. But the Rios residue rocks samples needed to be categorised for mineral content as a matter of routine. This was a job for a mineralogist, not a budding life-form research archaeologist. Johnson argued. What he wanted, what he was desperate for, was to search for clues of other primitive off-world life, civilisations, alien technologies and all that kind of stuff. But Mr Johnson knew this could be frustrating beyond the extreme - because none had ever been found. Nothing. By anyone. No trace of extraterrestrial life existed. Ever.
In five hundred years of interstellar travel, after the great leaps in star propulsion technology, the exploration of near star-field territory and the closest star systems, no signatures or clues of other planetary life was ever found. Not even microscopic life in its simplest form. Every world that humankind found and explored was dead. One hundred percent dead. So, Mr Johnson’s career as a budding planetary archaeologist was not much of an easy matter for him to consider. But maybe, just maybe, the clues were there somewhere.
What the impatient dreamer within Johnson desired, beyond anything, was to be out there, out in the cosmic universe exploring. To be employed in one of the intrepid scientific teams aboard the survey ships. Or, as he often thought in his more radical moments, what would be even more exhilarating would be spending his whole life onboard one of the mining funded exploration vessels owned by the conglomerates that dominated the Mia-Earth World Foundation. To live and breathe alongside these ship’s crews, the redneck breed of stellar explorers who were known to be untameable. They always lived strange, sometimes short lives. Even the research scientists themselves were wild and unfathomable, not able to live the mundane life back on Earth or the other colonised planets. The crews who piloted these pocket-sized exploration vessels were hardcore tough, temperamental, they did not suffer fools – much like himself Johnson liked to think. And then, after the exploration ships finished, in went the big scientific survey vessels which did the bulk of the real work.
The huge surveying rigs were owned and operated by the mining corporations, to get to work onboard these deep space giants you needed to be employed by them. These commercial minded organisations were not interested in funding adventures because adventures were expensive. They were in for the profit, not wild speculation - so it was never going to be easy for Mr Johnson. His archaeological field of expertise was of little interest to them. They were looking for minerals or geological evidence of where minerals could be found, the total value yield and, of more importance, the levels of contamination. History provided numerous examples of how mineral contamination had wrecked many extraction projects, busting more than a few mining combines – even large multi-planetary ones.
The great mining cartels were obsessed with particle contamination - because they needed pure mineral ore to justify the expense. Especially the rare-earth ores such as uranium, titanium, yttrium and the jewel of all minerals… gold. Industrial mined gold from out in the cosmos, when alloyed with hydrogen and scandium in a still protected industrial process made scandium hydride, which was the core element used in the skins of every space vessel built in the last two hundred years, able to withstand violent distortions of time. Therefore, its value was beyond anything Johnson could dream up, this is what made interstellar exploration vital. Mining drove both the Earth and the off-world Mia Settler economies. It was fundamental in funding the growing human colonisation of Mars and the fourteen inhabited planets of the Mia-Earth Foundation.
Mr Johnson took delivery of the Rios lunar samples with a deep feeling of frustration. Dr Matilda gave him his analytical brief plus a much restricted budget, which meant he had five days to complete the work. It would be easy enough, Johnson’s confident prowess meant that it would be easy for him to finish the usual first level calculations for molecular structure and the standard Prouse analysis for previous contamination by water or oxygen.
“BioCity ain’t made of money Johnson,” Dr Matilda warned, “I’m gonna keep an eye on you, just you remember that.”
Johnson didn’t find anything. No one ever did. But the samples needed to be checked as part of the preamble for a fourth-level DNA search. This was always the first preliminary screening for signs of any low grade life or, indeed, any history of it. After this process the mineralogists would take over the samples. The ore extracts Mr Johnson received were standard primeval lava rock dust found in ninety-eight percent of all planetary geological samples. It was the remaining two percent that yielded the mineral evidence that sent the mining corporations wild with excitement, causing them to invest billions of yen in their next world colonisation and subsequent mine building project.
With any new mining expansion, more so if related to significant major deposits of ore, there came the usual sequential colonisation procedures. Initial ring-fence security, habitation, transportation links, life logistics then commercial exploitation. The economies of all sixteen habited planets were seventy-five percent geared towards mining, planetary colonisation and mineral exploration. It was inevitable that remaining economic spend was military in nature, it always was. Planetary weapons and their manufacture still drove major business interests; the designs of all current deep space vessels were based upon their military forerunners. None of the sixteen Foundation planets trusted each other when so much wealth was at stake. Although planetary confrontations were rare, sometimes it was inevitable when they erupted – for many hours now the news channels had been media streaming hour after hour warnings of yet more heightening tensions between Earth’s government and the Mia Planetary Foundation, relating to the damaged exploration vessel Cobra that had docked in Central City on Mars. Money, wealth and the same old religious tensions were again causing political barriers.
The sedimentary rock samples provided to Mr Johnson were, he knew, over four billion earth years old and, except for the first few million years were inert, the samples were dead, they always had been dead, they always would be. They bore no mineral value as far as he could ascertain but that wasn’t his job anyhow. Tomorrow he would run his standard DNA test then send the samples back to Central City for cataloguing and archiving. It could be a long time before the mineral boys got to them, if ever. The one positive outcome to the Rios samples would be his chance to once more try to solicit the attentions of Ms Talors, the junior archivist over in BioCity Control.
It would not be easy. Despite his apparent fair to middling looks, his social skills were not considered good; his temperamental, argumentative attitude was these days well-known. While he pondered his vague chances with Ms Talors, he noticed the dust samples in his possession were owned by the Cova Exploration & Mining Corporation. This was nothing new. They were by far the largest, most powerful of the mining conglomerates. Cova dominated the larger planetary projects.
But tonight, none of this mattered. For Mr Johnson, it was fun time…
Zipping back to his apartment high on the fortieth floor of Theodore Block Seven took him around twenty-five minutes in the evening rush. He had done it in less, but he liked to see who else was around - if there was anyone new to the building. Mr Johnson possessed an acute attention to detail, he noticed any form of change, even something quite small or insignificant, it was the minor things that bothered him. If anything was for some reason different, he possessed a desperate need to know why. It’s not that change itself bothered him: well, he just needed to know, then he was just fine.
In the sky elevator it was the same usual faces. It always was unless new people came to live in or visit the Theodore Building. Tonight, Mr Johnson saw that Ms Vera, whom he never spoke to, was wearing her hair brushed to the other side with a new wash colour he had not seen before. She also wore a different hair clip to the one she was wearing yesterday - and for the last four days. He often thought of talking to her but never showed the courage - because she never gave any sign that she noticed he was there. Glancing opposite, he could see that Mr Gerald, who Johnson thought was in mining finance, boasted new teeth implants, but he knew superstar celebrity bankers were all too frequent in changing their appearance; although Johnson wasn’t quite sure why these people all the time needed to re-invent themselves. ‘No doubt easy access to wealth funds’, Johnson surmised.
Mr Johnson could see there was nothing new to bother him right now. When the sky elevator exit door closed behind him, he hurried to his washdown cubicle to clean away the Lab smells from his contamination overalls covering his body. The chemical steam wash was hot, refreshing - just like real water. Johnson then checked his vis-screen for messages, at the same time deciding he would eat down in the street malls tonight. And Johnson had something important he needed to collect. But first, as he did every evening when returning from the labs, he would send a visual media feed to see if anyone close by was looking for a casual sex vis-link. He touched to Send but, as usual, nothing came back. Johnson, for some reason, on each occasion seemed to be ignored.
Mr Johnson was still dressing when his vis-screen on the entrance wall clicked…
“Johnson. Is that you? Are you there?” he didn’t answer. He knew who it was.
“Johnson, I know you’re there. Your entry-vis told me you’re home.” He thought for a few moments, then decided to ignore his vis-screen stream. It was Gloria Henderson; he did not want to speak to her right now. His wall screen clicked off.
Johnson waited, thinking of the consequences. He had the feeling inside that he was making a big mistake. At once he changed his mind. Mrs Henderson was an important network contact who, for some reason, had decided to cultivate him over a year before although, since then, he felt things had become much too complicated - deep down he knew he could not do what he wanted to do. Johnson turned to instruct his vis-screen.
“Call back Mrs Henderson.” Johnson pulled on his shirt, he did not want to appear naked.
“I’m pleased you’ve had a rethink Mr Johnson,” the vis-screen itself replied in the condescending manner that irritated Johnson more and more. The maintenance engineer had still not fixed this. “Of course, I will send a media call to Mrs Henderson right away,” said the on-screen voice, “Mrs Henderson knows you are home.”
Gloria Henderson’s face clicked into view on his screen. “Johnson, you make me cross sometimes.” Her facial expression was angry. “I knew you were home; you’ve ignored my last three media calls.” She paused; Johnson had time to think for a moment.
“Mrs Henderson, I’m sorry. I was just taking a shower.” He knew this was true, he also knew that Gloria would check it out. Gloria’s screen vision faded for an intermittent few seconds as she consulted her own vis-info feed.
“OK Johnson, I believe you. This time.” Gloria smirked, then her manner was full of smiles. “I’m free tonight Johnson. Mr Henderson will not be home until the weekend. He’s been summoned to Central City.” Her pearl-grey eyes sparkled.
“Oh? Why?” Johnson asked, this was a change variance his nimble mind straightaway picked up. Gloria’s over excited manner was somehow more different than normal.
“Just more high end stuff. Nothing important. Something about one of the exploration ships being damaged, he needs to call in his top engineers. No media-vis news allowed, total news blackout,” she said. Johnson detected a change in her normal expression, a slight pause. “Anyway, that’s not important,” she continued, “I’m free, if you want some decent food for a change, some fun time and a sleepover then I’m up for it?” Mrs Henderson looked extraordinarily pretty for her claimed ninety-odd years in age, but she looked a little impatient waiting for Johnson’s reply. “OK. What do you think?” she demanded, staring at him through her screen. “You’re not God’s gift to women you know, no one else is gonna call you.”
“Can I call you back in ten?” Johnson replied, hiding his irreverent feelings. He wanted to think. He was not comfortable about this situation at all - Mr Henderson was not the sort of guy to get the wrong side of. Neither was Mrs Henderson for that matter - Johnson was becoming more and more worried about how this friendship with Gloria was turning out. He was not in control, Gloria Henderson bullied him. He stared at her face on the vis-screen, trying to pin down what it was about her appearance that bothered him. She was anxious about something, Johnson sensed this for sure.
“You’d better call me back Johnson,” Gloria looked harassed, “I know you’re free tonight. You put out a media-feed earlier this evening looking for a sex link.” She was serious. “Call me in five.”
Johnson was unsure what to do, he sat down to think. He had planned to go downtown to the food mall for a few hours. There he could get fresh food mix from the Chinese, try to get some basic vitamins into his body rather than the supplements he relied upon. Once he made plans Johnson didn’t like them to be disrupted. A simple, straightforward casual sex link was all he wanted, something that lasted no longer than fifteen minutes without any commitments. But Gloria Henderson was another matter, she was an allnighter, she would work him hard - she had likely been injecting supplements into her body all day. He wasn’t up for that. Not tonight. Johnson was sixtyfive years younger than Gloria Henderson, she fortified herself with stuff he could not even get hold of. God knows how Mr Henderson coped.
Johnson decided he would try to get out of seeing her but all along knew he would not be able. He called her back on his vis. His vis warned him beforehand, “Mrs Henderson has been waiting online for your call back. She has prioritised it Mr Johnson.” His vis-screen giggled with irritating posterity.
“Shit,” Johnson thought to himself in anger, the attitude of his vis was winding him up even more. He again made a mental note to call maintenance in the morning…
“Nice to see you’ve kept your promise Johnson,” Gloria’s face was there waiting for him on his vis. She smiled; he was taken aback by her youthful looking beauty. She’d painted her eyes with blue sparkly which, he knew, was designed to make it hard for him to turn down her offer. “I’ve got new eye colour tonight…” Gloria stared, teasing her eyes… that was it - now Johnson knew why Gloria looked different. This wasn’t his curious nature kicking in, he just wasn’t good at trivial social skills that demanded he noticed when a woman made herself look different in a dressing up sense. Just for him, she said. But Johnson once more sensed something was not quite right, a vague intuition that Gloria Henderson herself was agitated. Could there be a problem with something? Was it him? Had he done something wrong?
“Mrs Henderson, I’ll be there in thirty minutes. I can’t stay over though,” Johnson hoped she would be sympathetic and give him some space for the evening. “I have some urgent mineral sampling to get out in the morning, I have to be in the lab early,” he winced, “I’m not making this up.”
“I know that, Johnson. You’ve got the Rios rocks.” Gloria saw Johnson blink in surprise, she really did know everything - she laughed. “There’s nothing gets by me, you know that. Anyway, that Rios stuff is nothing important, It’s just routine dust.” Gloria switched off her vis, Johnson suspected he was in for a long night.
Johnson felt his anger getting the best of him, he released a burst of amphetamine into his blood stream through his wrist-vis. In less than a second, he felt more relaxed. He dressed in no time then left his apartment through his personal sky-lift door, vowing he would end his relationship link to Gloria Henderson as soon as he was able. But she was married to Mr Henderson, Darius Henderson was the supreme head of technical and scientific recruitment of Cova Exploration & Mining Corporation. Johnson needed contacts…
The evening was a strange one as soon as it began. For starters, on the way down the tube to ground level he noticed the young woman he had not seen before. She was pretty in a strange sort of way he could not figure out. She even stared at him, then smiled, her cute dark-walnut hair that tumbled over her grey eyes, the way she tossed it aside with a casual flick of her hand. Johnson stared back for some intrinsic reason he couldn’t fathom, startled at the way she did this routine irrelevant mannerism which, in some way, wasn’t routine at all. The woman sat at the far end of the elevator; it was as if she intended to seek him out with her gaze. The tube slid open at floor nineteen, she’d gotten out but, by accident, bumped into him as she left her seat to walk by. Johnson thought this strange at first but then dismissed it as clumsiness. Still, it was nice to be noticed. Something about the way she looked at him agitated him… her eyes... the insignificant way she tossed her hair - but he could not figure out why. It did not bother him in any great sense because in an instant he forgot about it, there were other things on his mind. It was that way she tossed her hair.
Mrs Henderson was, for some reason, in a good mood when Johnson at last arrived. She had ordered Cynthia, her android maid, to fix them both evening dinner with fresh rare-earth food, using soil grown ingredients that included potatoes with genuine powdered eggs. How the rich lived, Johnson pondered with envious eyes when he saw the table laid for two. His fork and knife were laid the right way around, but he saw that Gloria’s was not. He noticed, for the first time since he had known her, when they began to eat, that she was this time left handed. Every time before she was right handed. Strange. Johnson also saw that Mrs Henderson herself was indelible in the way she was made up, she looked no more than twenty years in age he thought to himself.
“Well?” Gloria asked, staring at him across the table, “What do you think to my new eyes?” She waited for him to respond in her horrible commanding way, at the same time emphasising her new eye implants. Johnson did not fail to see the trap.
“Nice, you look so young,” he lied, knowing full well he had avoided her wrath by a narrow margin for the second time in the evening. He had noticed her rather over the top eyes but decided to ignore them. Why was Gloria Henderson all of a sudden left handed? Then, to Johnson’s consternation, Mrs Henderson stood up, dropped her robe then stood naked. He just managed to down the last of the potatoes with creamed eggs, a mouth watering meal that Cynthia had, with loving intent, rustled up in her android sort of way. Not bad for a machine, thought Johnson.
Much to Johnson’s relief, Gloria Henderson was happy for him to leave after a couple of hours. He once more sensed that something was not right, his instincts telling him it was all to do with Mr Henderson. Even more disconcerting, while Mrs Henderson busied herself with him in her bed, Cynthia, the android maid, sat in the corner of the room watching everything, commenting with favourable comments upon the way her mistress made love to the young archaeologist - for some reason Johnson got the impression he wasn’t going to be the only visitor during the night. At last, he prepared himself to leave, dressing quick - the still ravenous beautiful ninety-year old woman lying naked under the sheets…
Don’t mess with me Johnson,” Gloria warned. “You’re gonna need my help…”
Mr. Johnson is a passionate, yet under-appreciated life-form archaeologist for BioLabs - an organisation involved in scientific research and analysis related to DNA from other worlds. After finding a strange stone object in the pocket of his suit jacket, with a handwritten instruction simply saying “Call me using this vis-number Mr Johnson. I am the girl in the elevator”, Mr. Johnson is catapulted into discovering the true history of the world, where dangerous individuals are on a mission to keep these secrets safe.
As a reader, it is rare to have a book throw you into its world so early in its pages - yet Magdalena’s Bones did this seamlessly. The set-up is engaging and well-structured, yet done so in a way that character and conflict are described just enough to give you a sense of whats taking place without revealing too much. This balancing act is also present in the authors writing style. The language required for magic realist/science fiction texts is particular to these genres, which at times can be confusing and overwhelming to readers not fluent with these types of novels. However, the authors ability to clearly articulate other worldly concepts is clear enough for new readers to engage, yet complex enough for veterans of these genres to be intrigued.
There is a great deal weaved into this story that simply boiling it down to good vs. evil and fact vs. fiction is an insult to the sheer complexity of creative storytelling the author has achieved in doing. Discussions around creation and origin stories and religious and mythological figures is a massive undertaking that has been done with both innovation and clarity, while also staying true to the stories underlying tone of mystery and secrecy.
This is a book for those willing to be immersed into a story where big questions of the world are asked, but the answers are only revealed once both the protagonist and reader have earned it. For both the protagonist and reader, this is in the form of shedding yourself of what you believe is true, and being open to other possibilities to discover the truth.