Unreal Time (eBook)

Time-loop traps, mutant marsupials and cyber-teen renegades-the future will never be the same again. Things are tough for Deon since he moved from the city to Moran's Cove. He doesn't surf and he hasn't figured out how to fit in. Deon's calculated he has 517 more days until he graduates and is done with the bullies at his new high school. Or maybe he'll get lucky and be kidnapped by aliens. One afternoon while Deon's out for a run after school, something much freakier happens. He's dragged into a swirling, static vortex. The air crackles around him, he's to the ground and everything's in darkness. He's surrounded by weird androids, who are chanting his uncle's name. His world tilts again, pulling him back through the static storm and the sun's shining. Is he going nuts? Then his uncle disappears and the only clue about what might have happened is another glowing crackling vortex, this time in the backyard behind Uncle Nifty's deserted house. Deon dives through the shrinking portal. He's surrounded by the crushing static. It feels like he falls forever. When he finally hits the ground, he has been transported into a strange and ruined future. Everything is gone, his uncle's house, the town, everything around him is devastated and flooded. He hears a cry in the distance and searches frantically for is uncle. All he finds is a broken pencil, he uncle's pencil, pointing in the direction of the far off voices. Running through the swampy remains of Moran's Cove, Deon tries to make sense of what could have happened. Could he somehow be in the future? Maybe he is going nuts? He finds more markers and runs on, searching, into the dense rainforest surrounding his ruined town. Suddenly he is cornered by tree-climbing mutant marsupial creatures that growl, creeping closer, until Deon is trapped between a rock ledge and their gnashing teeth. There seems to be no escape from the frightening weirdness and then the humans drop out of the trees wearing shining exoskeletons, some fly down on massive powered wings and the weirdness ramps up. Lucky for Deon, these are the good guys and he is invited to team up with this group of environmental cyber-rebels. He fights alongside them and their mutant marsupial guard-pets to help free some of the missing team members and then, together they search to recover Deon's uncle. In this bizarre and dangerous future Deon sees the fate of Earth, the environmental destruction that changed his world forever. He meets a strange new thinking machine that is working to repair the world and he discovers shocking secrets about his own fate and what awaits him when he returns to his own time to face in his own, impossible to believe, future.