Tierno Times #11: A Really Paranoid Tale

By now many of you know that I write some pretty big fantasy books? but I’ve also done some science fiction, or in the case of my Cyberdawn series, a blend of SF and other elements.? One of those elements happens to be a lesson in how to craft a really paranoid story.

In short, Cyberdawn is a sort of cyberpunk story mixed with some dark fantasy and lots of conspiracies.? Essentially I took every conspiracy theory I could think of at the time then mixed in some fantasy and supernatural elements.? Note that I finished writing the series back in 2006 and, well minus the supernatural parts, compared to nowadays I nailed things pretty accurately.? Anyway, moving on…

The fantasy part is the fact that while there is magic, it is nearly all in the hands of the bad guys, who also have a talent for blending it with their own technology.? For our end, the world is coming into an era of peace, armies about to be disbanded, all weapons outlawed, a computer in every home–? basically a perfect setup for creatures wanting to take over the world without effective resistance to contend with.? The cyberpunk aspect comes when some few realize that there IS something out there that normal weapons can’t cope with and that something better needs to be developed… once they do figure out how deep the plot goes.

So how paranoid can things get? (cracks knuckles)? Imagine starting with a spy network of, say, traffic-cams.? They’re hooked up to the spy-guys, but they also have chips in them that have magic spells programmed into them.? Spells that can not only search for whoever they want to find ijn an instant, keep track of anyone they desire, but cast another spell to cloud people’s minds from seeing things like werewolves, winged demon-cats, ghouls, and elementals.? The public is actively kept ignorant.? But of course there’s more than just the traffic-cams, there’s the strange yellow chips found in everything with a microcircuit in it; everything from cars to microwave ovens.? There is nowhere anyone can go to escape their observation and control.? They also have agents in every level of government, agents that are not human, know magic, have special powers, control the Media, and the list goes on.

Of course there is a reason behind it all that involves re-opening an ancient portal to bring in their Old One masters to feed upon the world.? Once that happens, it’s all over five minutes later.

So, we not only have the paranoia ramped up, but the clock is ticking as well.? We have a few people that need to wake the rest of the world up, discover how far this network of conspiracies goes, who they can trust (if anybody), and develop the means to fight them before it’s too late to matter.

Then to make things worse, this is a conspiracy that literally goes back to Biblical times, as one ill-fated character discovers when performing his own translation of ancient biblical texts.? How’s that for a conspiracy?

Basically, imagine if the world of 1984 had alien wizards and werewolves to make things ever more dire.? It is a world where it can be said, “What if every conspiracy theory you’d ever heard of was true… and it still wasn’t enough?”

https://www.maldene.com/cyberdawn