Fear Infinity

Fear Infinity opens with a historical prologue set in 16th century Switzerland. There, the precedence and the problem are introduced as the reader is witness to the execution drowning of an Anabaptist martyr, Felix Manz.

The year is 2055. The Scientific Coalition, a democratic fringe group leading technological progress, is attempting to travel to other star systems before the powerful Society for Ecumenical Nations (SEN) back on Earth has complete control of society and our imagination. In 2022, a Coalition ship, the Mariner, was lost to deep space. Several months later an unexplained message: "We Exist", saturated Earth media. Driven by his curiousity and suspicion of the Coalition’s real goals on Pluto after a clue from his father that "we may be different out there", Jeric Schmidt applies for a position on the second interstellar Ark to Proxima Centauri.

En route to the clandestine Coalition base on Pluto, Wrath, neurophysicist Jeric Schmidt meets and falls in love with Anna Miranda, a flight surgeon also slated to join the crew of the second interstellar Ark.

Controlled nuclear fusion is the hammer that has forged humanity’s tenuous reach to the stars. The Pluto base, Wrath, consists of tremendous caverns excavated using thermonuclear detonations.

The first chapters also introduce the reader to important characters on Earth, including Jeric’s old father, a popular and grandmotherly religious leader, a genetically enhanced pharmaceutical executive, and his dissident employee, a reluctant drug designer. In the nation-state Texas, Annaís ex-lover Toni, an orphan, struggles with need and her addiction to a spiritual enhancement drug called Rapture.

Shortly after the first Arkmysteriously stops at the edge of the solar system, strange figures descend into one of Wrathís giant pods during an unforeseen earthquake. Something very unusual is about to change everything: the Exken. They begin massacring the colonists, seemingly with their bare hands.

The survivors try to understand the identity and motivation of the intruders, as the attacks become less numerous but more selective.

The Exken seem capable of fantastic physics. Appearing human, nude and sometimes intangible to touch, as if they were smoke, they interview their victims regarding their belief structure before either disappearing or killing them.

No one has any idea who is behind the attacks. Jeric is assigned to investigate the brain’s fear circuit, to determine if certain behavioral responses trigger the killings.

Anna, who believes that science will not prevent the attacks, begins to suspect that the Exken are human. The preparation for launching Ark II proceeds slowly.

More attacks occur, first on a Lunar transport, and eventually on Earth. Influential leaders receive visits by the Exken. The drug executive survives, but the interview shifts his motivations. After a lengthy defense of her belief in God, the religious leader is killed. However, the intruder records the discussion on video, and a frightened world sees the result. The process is nick-named The Tuning.

Toni, who has become a Coalition operative under Jeric’s father’s tutelage, learns after the murder that the religious leader was her mother, and in a Rapture rage, unexpectedly summons Hæus to confront him in her mother’s old apartment. She kicks him and connects. She will survive.

Hæus, one of severalExken from the first Ark, is gradually revealed in more detail. He ispart of an inevitable feedback which puts infinity in the face of our precocious civilization. His onus: to expose our biased arrogance, to reveal our place--vanishingly small--to eliminate duplicity and idleness.