Gateway to Gandamak

A Novel

Synopsis

BOOK I – BIRTH PANGS

PART I: TO THE GATE

A Traveller catches a train, embarking on a journey through space and time.

Meeting an intriguing fellow guest at a small hotel, Krishna the Traveller finds that he is caught up in a Cosmic Game. Pursued by Lord Shiva, the Destroyer, he and his new friend find themselves in a world that is the playground for deadly forces.

In an interlude, seeking answers, Krishna the Traveller talks to the Shaman. She provides a perspective on the framework of events, past, present and becoming.

The Game is described through human religious and philosophical visions and ideas.

Encouraged, Krishna is emboldened to move beyond the first gate.

PART II:?CONQUEST

Krishna the Traveller finds an ancestor of James Quartermaine and meets two contenders for a throne who see the “real world” situation quite differently.

The throne is empty; the old king has died. One claimant sees a sworn oath broken; the other denies an oath was taken. These perceived events, two different realities, provide the basis for an episode of the Game that Krishna joins.

This history provides a microcosm in which humans behave within the confines of a Game played by Krishna and his ilk.

The beginning of a unique lifeline is established, recurring through the Quartermaine family, that continues from Normandy and England nine hundred years ago to when a ?middle-aged man has a chat, somehow to himself, in a small guesthouse halfway across the world in Bhopal, India and beyond.

?These lives, pawns in the Game, give an insight into the world we inhabit.

?PART III: CODES AND CYPHERS

Krishna finds himself on another train journey chasing a murderous clue left by Lord Shiva.

As the Game intensifies, Krishna explores the later stages of the British Empire in India, the Raj, and meets James’ grandfather. William Mountforde is an early pioneer of information systems.

Krishna knows that the means of exchanging information, from primitive smoke signals to seemingly unbreakable codes, drive civilisation forward. Most often, progress is made during the war, so the story moves to Bletchley Park during World War Two.

The Mountforde family plays a minor but critical role in the drama of Alan Turing and his discoveries that lay the foundations of modern “thinking machines”. Artificial intelligence is a massive step in human evolution. Turing himself represents not only social changes relating to homosexuality but a profound change in the way humans relate to machines.

It is a nexus for conflict. Turing’s death and the mystery surrounding it is a pivotal move in the Game.

For a moment, Krishna the Traveller and Lord Shiva the Destroyer find themselves on the same side. It will be a short-lived alliance.

BOOK II – THROUGH THE GATE

PART I: JAMES QUARTERMAINE

A youngster enters the stage. Sloshing through the wet grass of farm fields, happily following his Grandpa, who is slaughtering diseased rabbits.

Meanwhile, in the same year as James’ birth, a mechanical, intelligent rat is “born”.

Young James escapes public school, only to enter the British Army. Finding himself down a rabbit hole, he trapped himself, rat-like, in a violent maze of deceit.

Krishna the Traveller dodges around, interferes, and plays the role of a pied piper.

Young James is led through another gateway into the vortex of Northern Ireland. Rescued by Krishna from one of Shiva’s murderous machinations, he believes he has escaped the Game.

In this Game, however, there is no returning through the gates. At least, not for the rats.

?Leaving James to think fruitlessly about escaping the maze, Krishna the Traveller takes time to talk to the Shaman about patterns and randomness, laying some foundation for a deeper understanding of what masquerades as reality.

?PART II – END GAME

As if by magic – unknown technology appears as such – James and Krishna resume their conversation in Bhopal. But the Game has moved on.

Wanting only to reach home and have a wife and family, James, our Odysseus, is swept away by forces about which he is unaware.

Another Player, Thea, engages James in reflections about games. James soon begins to draw parallels with his own life and adventures.

Concerned that humanity is playing with existential fire in its quest for thinking machines, Krishna and Thea take time to delve deeper. They share perspectives on the human world they have entered – or created.

Meanwhile, James finds some peace in Thailand but is soon back in the fray in Afghanistan. A narrow escape from another of Shiva’s attacks shocks him into researching the history of British involvement in Afghanistan.

He finds a new manuscript that provides an eye-witness account of the disastrous defeat of the British in 1842. Energised by what he learns, driven to develop a simulation of the conflict, he returns to Afghanistan, only to observe another super-power humbled.?

The book will be published on Amazon KDP in August 2022. You can find more details on my Medium page at ??https://gjquartermaine.medium.com/

To reserve a copy, please contact me at [email protected] marked "RESERVE"