A Virtual Book Reading of “In the Minuses”

Excerpts from a sci-fi spiritual verse novel

Book readings are fantastic to go to, an opportunity to meet an author and hear a novel read in the author’s own voice. For legal reasons, this post is a virtual book reading of our novel based upon an appearance in a small town in New England.

The novel is spiritual, but in a compassionate rather than dogmatic way. It is a fight for survival, but rather than glorifying violence, we portray it as a last resort, instead embracing the protagonist’s path as a healer and mystic.

A Virtual Book Reading of “In the Minuses”

[Transcript]

[Jon] Welcome everybody to the Darien Public Library. I am your host for today, Jon Tonelli.

We are honored today to bring to you a couple of local authors, a writing duo, to do a short reading of excerpts from their novel, In the Minuses. I have to say that I have read this book… twice… honestly not thinking I’d want to read it at all at first. Seemed kind of far out from my usual type of reading… a science fiction, dystopian, spiritual verse novel. A verse novel… Poetry!!

OMG, I was sure it would be a difficult and obtuse kind of thing… but I was pleasantly surprised. It was so beautifully done… gripping, heart-breaking, and inspiring, and with beautiful illustrations.

Let me quote some of the reviews on Amazon…

“This is such a unique story and is a book that pulls you in and doesn’t let go.”

“The novel is an extended prose poem… a text that is at once gritty, melodic, and Homeric. I’ve never seen this done before, and it’s refreshing. The illustrations are beautiful: dreamlike, monochromatic, and photorealistic.”

“To me, the way the writing is approached really brought both the stealthy and action scenes to life as it propels the reader to read on, absorbing every little detail as they go. “

“Do not rush through this — read slowly and savor the pathos, richness, and beauty of this book. Linger over the deeply moving, philosophical thoughts of the protagonist.”

So, some high praise from Amazon. So without further ado, I would like to introduce JD Pernoste and Anneliese Dahl.

[Applause]

[Pernoste] Thank you, thank you!

[Dahl] Yes, thank you so much for having us here!

[Pernoste] OK, so I will start with a little bit of an introduction, and Annie will read some selections from our verse novel. We’ll try not to give too much of the plot away and may delete a couple of lines here and there.

[Jon] (interrupting) Oh, yes, and …. Sorry… there are some hard cover and paperback copies available for purchase at the desk, if anyone is interested. Sorry. Back to Pernoste.

[Pernoste] Thanks, Jon. Those of you standing in back…. There are a couple open seats up here, if you like.

So… I am JD Pernoste, and this is my co-author Anneliese Dahl.

(faint wolf whistle, and audience laughs)

[Dahl] (laughing) Haha, stop it, Jeremy.

[Pernoste] Anyway, we’ve been writing together for almost 4 years now, poetry, short stories, novels. You can find some of our poetry narrated with music on YouTube and Instagram, and most everything else (other than our novel) is on Medium. You can find our novel, In the Minuses, on Amazon.

Annie and I decided to write In the Minuses as an allegory for the world today, because we believe humanity is at the cusp of an awakening. So we present a possible future, a terrible one, seen through the eyes of our protagonist, Angie Salo. The earth is dead, covered by a desert, and humanity has retreated to a great domed city in which there is no freedom, few joys, and very little hope under a tyrannical government. The main character, Angie, is a young woman who has led a difficult life yet strives to always find the beauty and joy in this world of ghosts, cruel robot police, and terrible secrets. Can she surpass the tragedy and despair in her life to awaken and be the catalyst to open the hearts and minds and souls of her oppressed people?

It may seem a little strange to write such a story in poetic free verse, but we feel that the heart and passion and hope of this novel was captured more effectively in verse than it would be in typical prose.

In this first excerpt that Anneliese will read, we introduce Angie and the world of the domed City (roughly 500 years in our future) as she roams the streets at night with her lover, scavenging for things to sell or barter for money and food. This section also provides an example of the inserted small poems by Angie that you’ll see throughout each chapter of the novel.

[Dahl]

Chapter 1: My Mother’s Bones

(an excerpt)

It is late night in the shadowed streets, and City never quiets, even now, with its low cacophony of dronings, echoing chaotically off the buildings. We run through the worn, abused areas that I have never sought to know well, and I am alert, seeing, hearing, smelling. Even my skin tells me if we are watched.

Our feet quietly scuff the pavement, running the deep shadows to hide as we avoid the known vid-eyes. At times we scale walls, race the ledges, high above the dangerous streets. We intend no nefarious behavior, but to be seen, stirring interest, is danger. Tonight, we seek only lost things.

I rarely think of the vastness of City, its towers reaching a mile into scorched skies under a diamond-hard protective dome. It is not that world I see or experience. The place I know well is here, deep below, the larger part, the deeply hidden part three miles of depth into tortured earth. And I live one and a half miles down, in a single slice of those three miles, with artificial sky and manufactured air. It is the home that I know. It is the home that I understand.

Though I disregard the immensity of City, somehow, tonight, I feel its weight above, as I brave these unfamiliar streets, treading where I usually fear to go. Being here now, I cannot help but think there was once a kind of beauty, but I know so little of beauty, and sweet memories are hard to recall.

An ever-present dissonant thrum, covers sounds of our unnoticed footsteps and disrupts our music inside, our poetry. Weight and sound remind me now that there are things, always, to fear.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

I watch Daniel, dark, confident, strong, eyes intent but mind inward-focused. I love him as I have never loved. I live, expecting to die with him, willing to pay, for him, any price.

He and I move swiftly in the endless maze, dark shadowed under false moonlight, nimbly scaling walls and barriers, using concealed spikes, hidden footholds.

We circle stealthily north-east in Minus 111 to avoid the crowds on main walks, their gazes and governmental vid-eyes. And we avoid death games in the square, contestants gambling lives against riches. It is where the darkness thickens unnoticed among those who enjoy seeing death.

We are invisible to the City gangs, “bangers” they call themselves. We know to move in shadows, or run crouched atop the high walls, unlike the usual unsuspecting prey. Bangers wear Broken Eyes, pentagrams, symbols of hatred, promises to darkness. They are drawn to darker fringes of Minus, and its tumbled graves of misplaced hopes. This is the only world they know.

“Come on, Angie,” Daniel calls, his half smile hard to see in the dark. He walks the deep shadows to the stairs and up to the elevated skate walks.

“I’m coming, love.” I smile and rise from tightening loose shoe buckles.

The ghosts, ever present, share the night. Several walk the stairs before us. Only I see them, as white mists, occasionally taking more solidity, looking at me with hollow eyes.

I tell Daniel nothing of such things. I am strange enough to him already. What these ghosts seek, I know not, but the dark ones, I know, intend murder when they walk invisible among us, dangerous to the weak-willed.

In droning quiet, we skim the skate-walks, crouched in the easy stride of bangers. There are few other skimmers about, so we fly quietly darkened back ways dressed in most formidable black.

With terrifying speed, breathing hard, we reach the north of Eastern Station and race up slippery night-darkened stairs. Laughing we sit, panting heavily like we outran the Devil tonight, and we wait for a humming robotic train to disrupt the dull drone of night.

I look up to see three bright moons, painted on the sky, left, right, and fore from our nexus above the streets. They create more shadows than light.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

The trains go far, go everywhere, 100 square miles, times 200 Minus levels, bellies mostly empty, electric minds vacant, hungry worms in the dark depths of City.

City’s people, our hundreds of millions, do not travel far in City most days, certainly not as deep as Algae Production, the oxygen factory, or Geothermal plants, not beyond food distribution centers, and rarely past theaters, bars, brothels.

Who searches for anything anymore? Maybe just us, I think.

Daniel and I sit close on the platform, low and hidden in the shadows. My thoughts wander parts of my mind I do not like to explore much. Maybe I am feeling melancholy, as I have no fond memories of the trains.

“You know I don’t want to go,” my Papa explained. “It’s so perfect, here, right here, being with you.” He said this the last time he left, by train, and never came back.

Too often I am lost in missing them, my Mama and Papa, gone for so long.

We hear the human sounds, distant, the yelling, laughing, and cheering. The bar district is allowed the crowds, and many brave the violence, the crime, maybe just to feel a little bit alive. And they seek easy oblivion there.

Others are drawn mostly to the Squares for the dark circuses, sex and death games. The people need their mindless diversions. For other activities … there are too many eyes, and people have a way of disappearing, many tens of thousands every year. It is the Committee Enforcers, CEs, I think, for the gangs are not so strong to do this.

Daniel sees the worry in my eyes, and I react to the distant crowd noises. “People are not so bad,” Daniel says. “Most people just keep mouths shut, live their lives and don’t … participate… in … um … those terrible things.”

“I like people,” I say to him quietly. I think it is true, or I want it to be true.

“I think I’m the only person you know.” Daniel laughs and leans close to kiss me.

“Well,” I sigh, “I like you then.” I kiss him back, but I still think of all the bad people who have hurt me.

My fingers itch, wanting my notebook. I have too many thoughts now that I need to ponder, to write, sad songs and dark poetry. It feels like my heart is breaking.

I resist it, clasping my trembling hands. I need Daniel more than writing now, and I prefer to write happier things.

We watch the programmed moons moving across our artificial sky. Daniel’s arm around me cannot protect from the rigid curfew of the Rippies. “Rippies” is what we call them, for RPEs, Robot Police Enforcers. Mostly, the nightly sweep of City by fearsome CE robots we must avoid, or it could easily be the end of us.

We have no papers, no permission. Even staying in shadows does not help, when Rippies and CEs have infrared eyes, and we must hide when a Rippie comes on a routine check of the platform.

It is terrifying, as we hide, holding our breath. But I feel invincible in Daniel’s embrace. When the Rippie leaves, Daniel whispers, “The train will be here very soon.”

“I just want to see the tree,” I whisper back.

“I don’t think it’s there, Angie” says Daniel, “but there’s a library, long abandoned. Books will bring money for us.”

I remember my Mama reading to me forbidden stories of hidden pirate treasures, so I have images of a library in my mind, of darkened halls and secret doors, books with cracking bioplastic covers, the texts mostly in mysterious languages. On dusty floors would be the bones from those brave protecting souls, as if on the bed of a forgotten sea.

The thoughts bring tears to my eyes. Where are my dear Mother’s bones, who for so long protected me?

[Applause]

[Dahl] This next passage introduces some important characters in the story.

First is Mrs. Salo, a robot made in the image of Angie Salo’s ancestor Elke Salo… a brilliant engineer who designed and built the giant domed City. Mrs. Salo is connected to City’s electronic mind and video surveillance systems.

Second, the Versennes, a spiritual healing group that is working to bring positivity and light to the City.

Chapter 11: Oxygen

(an excerpt)

We walk under ceaseless fleeting skies, and oppressive fever broods in the streets. We suffer increased anti-Gaia propaganda, the twisting of our words and actions, manipulating fears of our differences.

As much as we bring love, kindness, and awaken many to their spirit, others react only in fear and hatred, revealing negativity at the highest levels. The deep sea of City’s consciousness churns with forces that oppose kindness. It is a burden to our opened hearts.

Mrs. Salo walks with me quickly now, on a quest to understand Daniel’s secrets. We know now what Daniel knew, and if what we understand is true, then maybe, maybe there is a way to change the fate of our world.

I am grateful to have Mrs. Salo. She is kind, caring. So hard to believe, and there is a surprising beauty to her, now complete in her robotic body. She moves with lithe athletic grace, and her synthetic face is exquisite, soft, porcelain beauty, bright blue eyes, framed by a lustrous black wig. It is a face singularly arresting, intelligent, though she says she looks much like me.

“Look to me, Angie,” whispers Mrs. Salo. “Now down and pull your hood forward.” She helps me avoid ubiquitous vid-eyes.

“But they always turn away,” I protest.

“They turn from all Salos, but I prevent it. They seek you through vid-eye abnormalities. I need a new strategy to obscure you.”

Both of us keep cowls forward, concealing, she, in grey, and I, in soft white abaya. We will go to the lower Oxygen factory, seeking answers to what we found in a blood-stained book I gave Daniel.

Most times I fight to live, to cope, but one day, if I stand on the verge of desolation and desperate challenge I cannot know what I might want to do. I only know it would be selfish to die.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

As we enter discreetly the crowded square a message from beloved Leader Raivo comes, compelling on the Square’s massive vid-screen. His fatherly, wrinkled and craggy face contrasts with the unwavering cold black eyes. The people watch, silent, slack-jawed, focused with inhuman concentration.

The words of the Great Leader ring in the air. “Let them find no peace or safe haven. Let not the demons fool you with meekness, for given the chance they will destroy you as today they take the very air from us!”

His eyes pierce me like driven nails, until the screen reveals the lies enacted. I briefly see myself, and the Versennes . . . but Mrs. Salo takes my arm firmly in hand.

“Run,” she whispers, pulling me forcefully while taking the lash from my belt.

Even the Rippies are the enemy now, as they may be deceived by this vid-record. As we race across the south of the square I begin to feel changes in the people, a new and intense and insatiable hunger of an unhappy populace pained by life … food shortages from the Farm riots, lockdowns, curfews, Danielite violence.

Where is the compassion we had fostered? It seems fear can easily kill kindness, fear, plus pain and endless manipulation.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

Then we see behind us, two blocks away, thousands come up the Eastern Stairs. They gasp and pant from the thin air below, and they cry for their lost loved ones that they carry on their aching shoulders. The grief and suffering are on their faces for many tens of thousands dead below with no more oxygen to breathe. Furious eyes look for vengeance. I hear them cry, “Burn the witches.”

“When good people find it hard to breathe, innocents, and followers of Light, will suffer.” The dire message from Elke Salo, 2 months ago.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

We run the remaining ten blocks south, expecting devastation of the Versennes, but it is surprisingly calm there. I think the adversary gives us time to run. We are more useful as a live enemy. We enter, and I fly to embrace Melody as Mrs. Salo closes and barricades the doors. Georgia hurries to bring the others.

Melody quiets my soul, a gentle touch, and in the quiet I hear a voice.

“It is the time for some to decide it all, to run, or to teach in suffering.”

When all the others come to us, dozens of the Versenne leaders and terrified families with children, Mrs. Salo shows them the terrible lies. One eye rotates to project images on the abruptly darkened wall. Vids show dozens of Versenne witches in the Oxygen factories, murdering, destroying the lower Minus delivery of oxygen from algae bioreactors, the water electrolysis systems, and ultraviolet CO2 converters.

When the “heroic” Committee Enforcers, the fearsome governmental robot army, arrive to drive away the witches, I see my own face, Jon’s, Martine’s, everybody, everybody. How can it be? We were not there committing this evil. What have we done to be hated so?

“One is here for the one-eyed man who watches. Two others for the Red.” Mrs. Salo says. “Infiltrating spies harvested your images to make false videos. You must all flee.”

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

The families, more than half the Versennes, quickly move the library to the tunnels, to our obscured and protected chambers, and they continue to the back escapes. They tell me to go to my children, that they will stand against the mob. I beg Georgia to go to my children. I beg Martine or Mrs. Salo to go to them. No, no, and no. I weep and plead.

I beg them all to leave with me. “I cannot go. I will not lose you.”

“We must always go on,” says Jon, embracing me gently, kissing my hair. “And we must stand for peace, always. If none stand, then we are forever guilty.”

“But they may be looking for me,” I sob. “I have to be here.” I stand defiant.

Mrs. Salo changes golden eyes to grey, slightly changes the shape of her face. It is uncanny the resemblance I see. “You forget you’re a mother now, Angie. I can stand for you. Now, go quickly.”

Weeping, I kiss and hug them, and I run, taking Bellaymma Paxrosa with me, as the mob begins beating on the door. I leave two dozen of my friends behind. I cannot see well through my tears, as I may never see them alive again. But I fear danger may find my children, so I move quickly through the tunnels and through one of the back escapes.

— — — — — -∰ — — — — — -

Once outside, I circle around to the north to watch from a safe distance and pray. I should not, but I must see, must know.

Jon, Martine, Georgia, Melody, Ruth, Monro, and twenty other Versennes, step outside, seized by the rancorous mob’s rough hands.

Jon tries to speak, asks to be heard, to explain, and he is struck to the ground. The screaming fanatics bring rope and fire. There are no Rippies to stop the mob, though there seem to be some people that try to stop the vicious attack.

My friends kneel to pray as we always do, the way we choose to suffer for peace, the way we show we are harmless. But the world has changed again. They are seen by inhuman, hardened hearts, and men and women paid by the Committee. The violence may end with everyone dead.

Mrs. Salo emerges in cold dark fury, as the Black-haired Witch, all in black, my lash in right hand, hard staff in left. “They came out in peace, yet you offer death. Leave now or suffer for your dark masters!”

Mrs. Salo darkens the morning sky to night, and she brings lightening to the dark.

The battle is brief, fierce, and horrifying. Mrs. Salo moves like a deadly storm, striking left and right through the mob, her lash ever circling, cutting, staff merciless. She sees through thousands of vid-eyes and her robotic brain choreographs a deadly and destructive dance.

She shows little pity for violent ones, bearing the tattoo of the bloody broken eye, injuring, killing them or breaking bones. She merely pushes away those who fear and intervenes to help any protectors.

The mob attacks with lash and brick but strikes only where she is no longer.

[Applause]

[Dahl] OK, I will stop there. Don’t want to give it all away.

[Applause]

[Dahl] Thank you so much.

[Pernoste] Wow. Amazing as always, Annie. There’s a lot more to the book, with evil robots and tyrants, underground resistance, war, Angels and miracles. We didn’t want to give too much away. We really appreciate you coming and spending a little of your afternoon with us. We’ll stick around for a little while if anybody has any questions for us.

[Jon] Lets have another round of applause for JD and Anneliese and their wonderful novel

[Applause]

[Jon] Thank you all for coming, and don’t forget to pick up a copy of In The Minuses at the front desk, if you’re interested.

Thank you for reading and listening to our virtual book reading event.

Here are some of our other poems posted here on Medium, and you can find our verse novel, In the Minuses, on Amazon as an ebook, in paperback or hardback book.