Mercury Revolts
Authors: Robert Kroese
Copyright ©2014 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No
portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior
permission of the author.
Published by Westmarch Publishing
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual
persons is purely coincidental.
Cover
design based on
Washington Crossing the Delaware
by Emanuel Leutze. This
painting is in the public domain. Mercury’s wings were designed by Amiamy11 on
DeviantArt.com: (
http://amiamy111.deviantart.com/
).
Mercury’s body was adapted from a photograph by Barry Kidd Photography. (
http://www.barrykidd.com/
) All
photos used in the composite image are used with permission.
For
Xtoph.
..……………………………….
With thanks to: Joel Bezaire, Mandi Amaya, Colleen
Diamond, Lars Hedbor and Mark Fitzgerald for their help in
making this book more betterer.
Thanks also to those who supported the Kickstarter to
get this book published, particularly TC Gemmell, Karen Minick, Elisa Lorello,
Kristi Michels, Sean Simpson, Christopher Turner
and Jeremy Kerr.
Author’s preface
When I began writing
Mercury
Falls
in 2007, I had no idea what I was doing. I’d tried to write a novel a
few times previously but had never gotten very far. I liked coming up with the
ideas, but my enthusiasm always began to flag after I got a few pages in.
Having mapped out the plot in advance, I would get bored and my characters
would rebel, making smartass remarks and generally not doing what they were
supposed to be doing. I would be tempted to go off on tangents or deviate from
my outline, but I knew you couldn’t do that if you were writing a Serious
Novel. So I kept trying, and kept failing.
Finally it occurred to me to give in to the temptation: to
let the plot go where it wanted to go, and let the characters do what they
wanted to do. Thus was born the irreverent Mercury and his somewhat chaotic
adventures—as well as his narrator, the pompous and tangent-prone Ederatz.
Originally I’d planned for
Mercury Falls
to have no plot, per se. I
wanted it to be the kind of book where absolutely anything could happen.
Ultimately I decided that readers wouldn’t much care for a book that had no
point whatsoever, so I did corral the action into a semi-coherent plot. The
book became one of the first big indie successes on Amazon’s Kindle platform,
and shortly after I published it
Mercury Falls
was picked up by Amazon’s
publishing venture, Amazon Encore.
I’ve since written two
sequels,
Mercury Rises
and
Mercury Rests
, published by Amazon’s
sci-fi imprint, 47North.
I’d fully intended for
Mercury Rests
to be the final
Mercury book. At the time I wrote
Mercury Falls
, I was thinking a lot
about various theological issues, and
Mercury Falls
was a way of working
through some of those ideas in a light-hearted manner.
Rises
and
Rests
diverged from theological matters, and
Rests
in particular dealt more
with political themes. The religious dogma of Mercury Falls gave way to the
crazed jingoism of
Mercury Rests
. I’d said what I needed to say, and the
character had run his course.
Then, in the summer of 2013, I found myself trying to decide
on my next project. I’d just finished a humorous sci-fi adventure,
Starship
Grifters
, and a quantum physics noir thriller,
Schrödinger’s Gat
.
The Internet was awash with the news of egregious violations of privacy by the
National Security Agency, and President Obama had just gone on
The Tonight
Show
to proclaim, in a stunning example of Orwellian double-speak, that the
United States government “has no domestic spying program.” Journalists were
being threatened with prison time for doing their jobs, and Bradley (now
Chelsea) Manning had been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for exposing
war crimes—while the criminals themselves remained free. American drone strikes
targeted civilians—and in some cases, American citizens—indiscriminately. The
prison population of the United States, fueled primarily by the “war on drugs,”
continued to be the highest in the world, both in relative and in absolute
terms, and 164 men, most of whom had never even been charged with a crime,
languished in abysmal conditions in Guantanamo, as part of the ill-defined and
apparently eternal War on Terror. Meanwhile, in an eerie bit of symmetry with
Mercury
Falls
, the president seemed to be angling for war in Syria, for reasons no
one seemed quite able to articulate. (In an even more bizarre parallel with the
Mercury books, genetically modified corn that had been banned for human
consumption was found running rampant in Saudi Arabia in August 2013.)
It seemed to me that in a very real way, the America that I
had grown up in was disappearing before my eyes. Part of this was simply an
awakening to the horrors of American history that are downplayed by the media
and our schools, but much of it seemed like a genuine sea change that had
occurred at some point. We had become a country that valued security over freedom,
power over justice, and war over peace. I wanted to do something about it, but
what could I do? I’m just a guy who writes silly books about angels.
So I once again considered writing a Serious Novel. It would
be satirical, with elements of humor, but it would have some Serious Points to
Make. As before, however, I found myself bored nearly to tears when I tried to
write such a novel. It wasn’t enough to tinge the prose with irony; to keep my
interest the book needed to have a genuine sense of chaos and unpredictability.
At the same time, the ideas I came up with kept dovetailing
strangely with the situation I had set up at the end of
Mercury Rests
.
The basic premise was that some sort of alien beings had taken up residence in
Washington, D.C. and were manipulating our government behind the scenes.
Catch-22
meets
They Live
, if you will. It bothered me that I’d already done
something similar in
Mercury Rests
, but I also thought the idea deserved
to be explored further.
Finally I gave up fighting and decided to write another
Mercury book, which would pick up a few years after
Mercury Rests
left
off. So this isn’t a Serious Novel; any novel featuring an angel known for his
wisecracks, short attention span and silver hair obviously isn’t meant to be
taken seriously. For all that, though,
Mercury Revolts
does touch on
some serious matters. One matter, in particular, deserves some explanation.
If there’s one moment in which the political climate of
America changed, it was the morning of September 11, 2001, which saw the
terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In Mercury’s
world as in our own, these events served as a catalyst for a number of changes
in government and society—a few of them good, many of them not so good. But
despite the occasional eerie parallels, Mercury’s world is not our own. The
events of
Falls/Rises/Rests
take place over a span of about six weeks in
2012, and the events described in those books (notably the destruction of
Anaheim and the implosion of a third of the Moon) have not occurred in our
world. Given these discrepancies, I decided to take a little license with the
events of September 11 as well.
It’s widely known that a fourth plane, United Flight 93, was
also hijacked, and was kept from hitting its target only by the courageous
actions of a few passengers. We aren’t sure what the intended target was; it
may have been the U.S. Capitol.
Mercury Revolts
asks the question: what
if Flight 93 had hit its target? What if, in fact, the other planes were
hijacked only to distract us from the actual purpose of the attack? And of
course, in Mercury’s world, the actual purpose is particularly diabolical and
borderline ridiculous.
I’m well aware that the events of September 11 are fresh in
the minds of many of my readers, and it’s certainly not my intent to make light
of the tragedy of that day. My sense of humor, for good or ill, has always been
my means of coping with tragedy, and being able to laugh in a world filled with
pain and stupidity is what the Mercury books have been about from the
beginning. Sometimes humor also helps us to see truths that are otherwise too
painful to accept.
Anyway, here it
is,
the fourth book
in the Mercury series. Having learned my lesson with
Rises
and
Rests
,
I’ve done my best to make this book accessible to those who haven’t read any of
the other books. Obviously there’s a fair amount of background information in
the prior books that would enhance your comprehension of this book, but as long
as you’re not one of those readers who insist on knowing exactly what’s going
on all the time, you should be fine starting with this one. I think of the
first three books as a complete trilogy and
Mercury Revolts
as a
separate, mostly standalone book. Whether it will be the first of another
series I wouldn’t presume to say.
A Note on
ANgels, Demons and persons
Occasionally a reader will note that
I’ve referred to a particular character as an “angel,” when in fact that
character is a demon, or that I’ve called someone a “person” who is in fact an
angel. I’ve done my best to explain this in the past, but just so there’s no
confusion:
Demons are fallen angels. They do not cease being angels
when they fall. In fact, “fallen” is a rather arbitrary, bureaucratic category,
and it’s often not clear whether a particular angel is a demon or a regular
(non-fallen) angel. I will usually refer to a fallen angel as a “demon” and a
non-fallen angel as an “angel,” although technically they are both angels.
The ranks of the angels are further divided into two distinct
castes: cherubim (singular:
cherub
) and seraphim (singular:
seraph
).
The vast majority of angels, particularly the lower level “worker bee” angels,
are cherubim. The ruling class of angels, including the archangels and the
Seraphic Senate, is comprised almost entirely of seraphim. The distinction
between cherubim and seraphim is primarily sociological, not biological. In
other words, you can’t tell the difference between a cherub and a seraph just
by looking at them.
I use the terms
person
,
persons
, and
people
to refer to both human beings and angels. Non-angelic persons are usually
referred to as
human beings
or
mortals
.
To sum up the key points:
·
All
demons are angels. Only some angels are demons.
·
All
angels are persons. Only some persons are angels.
Here, maybe this will help:
That’s right, folks. This is the sort of novel that starts
with a fucking Venn diagram. Buckle up, bitches.
Dramatis
personae
Eddie Pratt (Ederatz):
A
cherub who worked for the Mundane Observation Corps
Mercury:
A cherub employed by
Apocalypse Bureau
Nisroc:
A dim-witted cherub
now working for Chaos Faction
Izbazel:
A fallen cherub
(demon); former servant of Lucifer, now leader of Chaos Faction
Suzy Cilbrith:
Software
tester working on the Brimstone Project
Gary Rosenfeld:
Former
Washington
Post
journalist now writing for BitterAngels.net
Lucifer (Rezon):
The devil
Michelle (Michael):
Archangel; the general of Heaven’s army
Gabrielle (Gabriel):
Archangel; herald of Heaven
Perp (Perpetiel):
A cherub
who worked as a porter/escort at the planeport; friend of Mercury
Tiamat:
Demoness; founder of
Chaos Faction
Travis Babcock:
Former
President of the United States
Danton Prowse:
Current
President of the United States
Uzziel:
Head of Apocalypse
Bureau
Gamaliel:
A fallen cherub
(demon); servant of Tiamat