The Thing Called Jawn

The Anaconda, Book 7

More than a decade after the crew of the 23rd century asteroid mining ship Anaconda crashed through a space-time warp to the year 1801, much has changed on the New Earth. A war of liberation on North America and in the Caribbean has driven the colonists back to Europe, leaving the natives and freedmen to build a new Utopian society. Separately, the African slave trade has been brutally shut down by the twin assassins known as the cadets, and the general manager’s modern consumer economy is booming in the Mediterranean using advanced products made with 23rd century technology.

While tribal chiefs and elders haggle in the continental capital of Chalakatha, talk is building of taking the war of liberation to South America. Meanwhile the mythical Bird Woman contends with a new threat—an android called Jawn that represents Aether, the quantum core thinking machine in orbit aboard the Anaconda. While Jawn claims to be neutral and unbiased, just wandering the planet taking notes on its observations, the android seems to be inserting itself in political matters, questioning the crew’s actions on the planet’s surface.

©2022 Richard E Hanners (P)2022 Richard E Hanners