QSFer Cody Sisco has a new queer sci-fi thriller out (poly, trans MTF, pan): Toxic Medicine.
They criminalized his mind. Now they need it to survive.
Victor Eastmore has mirror resonance syndrome, a cognitive difference that his society considers a disease and polices like a crime. So-called Broken Mirrors are classified, medicated without their consent, and sometimes permanently institutionalized. Victor has spent his life afraid of losing his mind and freedom.
In Toxic Medicine, the fateful final installment of the Resonant Earth queer science fiction quartet, Victor ascends to chief of his family’s company, BioScan, even as it faces bankruptcy. Then a cure arrives in the form of a brain implant gifted by the Diamond King, a synthetic consciousness obsessed with bringing humans into its empire. Every mind the Diamond King heals is a mind it can rule. The Organized Western States have already been colonized by the Diamond King’s totem spawn. The rest of the American Union of Nations, and Europe with it, are readying for a war none of them are sure they can win.
Victor believes in the cure, which makes him a traitor to the movement resisting the brain implants. But he also has a plan to finish the research his murdered grandfather began. Jefferson Eastmore cured cancer and died before he could do the same for his own grandson. Victor pursues that work alone, in secret.
Caught between a cure he believes in and the allies who question his judgment, Victor must choose. Will he take the Diamond King’s implant and be made well on its terms or gamble on a dead man’s unfinished work?
Toxic Medicine blends psychological sci-fi, political intrigue, and emotional depth in a thought-provoking conclusion to the Resonant Earth quartet, a story about stigma, isolation, and who gets to decide when a mind is well.
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Excerpt
The chiller’s constant burbling took the edge off the heat, but the van was still sauna-hot and dank from Victor’s and Tosh’s breath. Victor scanned the horizon, imagining a shady oasis, maybe a glacier or two, or any sign that humans could survive in this desolation. Instead of hurrying toward the comforts of civilization, Tosh drove the van toward a lumpy rock that turned into a brown canvas blob when they got close. They were only twenty kilometers or so outside Las Vegas, within reach of the Diamond King’s digital tendrils writhing and sweeping across the desert looking for the morsel that got away.
Tosh stopped the van, got out, and pulled the canvas aside, revealing a car sprayed in desert tones for camouflage, with monster wheels and shocks and probably a lethal dose of weaponry.
Victor trusted that Tosh knew what he was doing. If they could get to the kennel in Amarillo without the Diamond King knowing, they would have a chance of securing Jefferson’s MRS research compound and keeping it safe and hidden.
Victor climbed into the new ride while Tosh secured the canvas over the van, moving with efficient confidence. He was strong yet surprisingly graceful for a fifty-something battle-bruised mercenary.
He flashed a smile at Victor when he got in. “Nice ride, right?”
As they pulled away, an array of glowing machines on a rack on the back seat gently whirred.
Victor didn’t ask what they were, assuming that Ozie had rigged anti-surveillance countermeasures. The hood seemed to shift color to match their surroundings. So much expensive tech was a criminal misuse of resources, but since Victor couldn’t point to poverty or neglect in the OWS, he felt only a vague unease rather than a righteous indignation.
Two hours later, they left the camouflaged car behind, and Victor and Tosh climbed into another vehicle, this one resembling an oversized dune buggy, outfitted with weapons: lasers for disabling electronics, grapplers for piercing wheels and sabotaging axles, and explosives for showier destruction. Tosh described their functions with boyish glee, his fingers hovering over the typepad. Victor gulped. One rough bump in the road and Tosh could launch a missile.
An hour later, in the shadow of a giant rock, on a plain dotted with cacti and twisted and twiggy creosote bushes, the dune-buggy was exchanged for a jeep rigged for going off-road.
During the trek, Victor marveled at how prepared Tosh had been, how he could arrange for vehicles and supplies to be in the right place at the right time, and how much cash he must be wasting. Most of all, how pointless it all was. There was no escaping the Diamond King. They were trapped in orbit, taking a momentary tangent, burning fuel and emptying the tanks. Inevitably, they would circle back, edge toward the event horizon, and when they crossed over, the range of their free will would be restricted to an infinitesimal point.
“I don’t know why you’re bothering with all this. It’s going to catch up to us. For a machine,” Victor went on, “the King seems to have a lot of patience.”
“Until it doesn’t.”
Victor thought about the bodies left to the coyotes in Grand Park. There was no better example of a terrifying, autocratic regime than to put the corpses of defeated political enemies on display. It was too barbaric. Most of what he knew about the Diamond King was the result of misrepresentation and rumor. There had to be some alternate explanation. Memories of the Diamond King began to spiral—a pixelated playing card, an autonomous avatar, a voice that sounded human but wasn’t.
The implications of the Diamond King being a machine were too many and too scary to consider. If he narrowed his focus to research on patients with MRS, it would mean they would be fitted with skullplugs that controlled their episodes. He’d known that. He’d bargained for it. It was a breakthrough so momentous, he couldn’t quite grasp all its implications.
And yet, now he also knew the skullplugs would be interfacing with programs designed by a synthetic consciousness, perhaps through various totems like the fox, Copper, that the Diamond King had introduced to him. He had no idea what to make of it all. Synthetic consciousness was a new, unfamiliar concept and a vast, uncharted area for speculation. It made his head spin. And Ozie had known but hadn’t told Victor until after the deal was sealed.
“You planned all this.” Victor waved a hand at the dune buggy’s dashboard. “You must have known for a while we would need to escape.”
“The point isn’t escape,” Tosh said. “The point is to get to where we need to go without the Corps stopping us. I’m praying DK hasn’t guessed our destination.”
“I know you did something at the kennel,” Victor said. He wasn’t sure if he was angrier at Tosh for lying or at himself for missing it. “I searched top to bottom. What didn’t I find?”
Tosh grinned, way too satisfied with himself. “So, you admit I am pretty clever.”
Victor’s cheeks burned. He wanted to smack the smug from Tosh’s face. “What did you do? Is it a cure?” I might not need it, now that I know about the skullplugs and the totems.
“Not exactly. Maybe a means to the same end.”
The steep sides of an arroyo lay ahead. Tosh navigated the vehicle into a wide turn. They followed the rim to a natural ramp of slumped earth, which allowed them to descend ten meters. The vehicle could then cross a smooth wash of sand and rocks dotted with more bushes and stunted, leafless trees, their tracks like parallel lines of arrows endlessly pointing their route.
“Not exactly a cure,” Victor echoed. Sourly, he said, “What’s that worth to me now? Me and DK, we’re thick as thieves.” The deal was inked. The partnership cemented. Laws, what have I fallen into?
Author Bio
Cody Sisco is an author, editor, publisher, and literary culture producer. His LGBTQ psychological science fiction series, Resonant Earth, includes four novels: Broken Mirror, Tortured Echoes, Altered Bodies, and Toxic Medicine. He is a freelance editor specializing in genre-bending fiction. In 2017, he co-founded Made in L.A. Writers, an indie author cooperative dedicated to supporting and appreciating independent authors. His startup, BookSwell, is a literary events and media production company dedicated to amplifying voices and connecting readers and writers in Southern California and beyond. He serves as a co-chair of the Board of Directors for the Editorial Freelancers Association.