God's Rough Drafts
by Robert Scott
What if nothing changes?
What if government and industry plow, unchecked, through the twenty-first century?
100 years from now, who will lead? Will someone bold and resilient spark a revolution?
Or might it be one of us, an unlikely soul who wakes one morning to discover that she has unprecedented talent and responsibility?
If nothing changes, the world will need Fallon Westerly.
Framed for a political murder, seventeen-year-old Fallon is incarcerated in rural Virginia. She meets Danny Hackett and Emma Carlisle, young people who, like Fallon, have emerged as one in twelve million empowered with supernatural gifts thanks to an improbable and random combination of medical procedures and injections. The teens are sentenced to rehabilitate under the scrutiny of a megalomaniacal headmaster, Connor Blair. Little do they realize that Blair’s interest in them goes beyond that of traditional criminals. In a world that has embraced the marketing and mass distribution of human body parts, the prisoners learn that by harnessing their abilities they may be able to resist Blair and the corporate puppet masters he represents. Coveted for their talents, Fallon, Danny, and Emma flee from an array of insidious creatures – each a twisted facsimile torn from the pages of a 19th-century horror novel.
Can our distant past be enlisted in a war with our uncertain future? Only by solving a three-hundred-year-old mystery will Fallon understand the role she was destined to play. From the wilds of the Potomac River Valley to the grim caverns of Baltimore’s post-war inner city, join Fallon Westerly in an epic adventure as she explores her talents, bringing resistance to a world governed by greed where the poor and the marginalized are harvested for parts.
God’s Rough Drafts is not a run-of-the-mill dystopian story. Rather it envisions a frightening future if nothing changes in American culture. Clear threads connect Fallon and Danny’s lives in 2128 to political, corporate, and economic realities facing Americans today. Robert Scott weaves insightful social commentary with a far-reaching tale that will appeal to fans of science fiction, horror, and mystery.
Fallon watched dumbstruck as one of them – it might have been four feet tall, on its hind legs – closed a burly hand over Emma’s face, blinding her and choking off the younger girl’s screams . . . Twelve, then fifteen more spilled, a foul-smelling, misshapen tide, into the dooryard . . . a frontal assault designed to frighten or dishearten her into giving up, surrendering, kneeling down and waiting to die. She didn’t know and didn’t care. Rather her focus narrowed to one of the creatures, a five-foot, manlike monster, lousy with powerful muscle, and patched here and there with stubby, resilient hair and islands of scarred, naked skin, all black or dark brown. Barefoot and without clothing, the thing had eyes in the front of its skull – a predator – but that’s where the creature’s resemblance to a man, a gorilla, a Halloween version of a drooling Morlock ended . . . Twin fangs protruded from overhanging jaws and dribbly canine lips. A few of the company breathed with their mouths open, tongues lolling like wolves, but with vampire fangs and luminous green faces.
Fallon had a second to think, They glow in the dark. Their faces glow. What the hell are they? When one of them, the tallest, pointed at Emma and spoke.