Book Excerpt and Giveaway The Great Connection: Worlds in Waiting ~ Bookish Madness

Book Excerpt

‘You’re letting us go on holiday together? Me and Terry?’

Brandon laughed hard. The others exchanged glances. Mary wondered if her husband had finally pushed himself over whatever edge it was he’d been tiptoeing around for the last seventeen years.

‘Not as such,’ said Brandon, drying his eyes. ‘You see, you’re not having a summer outside of this house, so you two will just have to think of something to be getting on with. In fact...’

Brandon stood up and walked over to the nearest cupboard. He tapped the wood twice in quick succession, prompting the room’s screen emitter to project a floating digital panel in the same location. Within a few swipes of his fingers Brandon was viewing the Kakadu stores. His debit balance, set against tax thresholds and spend targets, ran as a meter down one side. The central panels flashed up with a multitude of product suggestions.

‘I nearly sacked the contractor who suggested this after seeing the footage of your stunt, but actually he had a point, albeit presumptuous.’

He tapped into the search box and a rounded beep signalled that the room microphone was listening.

‘The Great Connection,’ said Brandon. The product boxes zoomed out and then back into view now filled with items related to his search query. He began to flick and filter through them.

‘What better way to spend my unexpected overtime credit than on a foray into research science?’ he said as he continued to search. ‘Here we go.’ He nodded over his shoulder back to Raif and Terrence who were now standing close by, trying to get a peek at the images.

‘The home pack. Two dedicated projected reality base units with headsets, for use exclusively with The Great Connection research programme. Normally they’d be more expensive, it says here on the reviews, but because you can’t even use them to play games or watch SVs, it’s a steal at one hundred petros!’

Brandon floated his thumb into the green box below the rotating image of the unit. Small flashes of red light caught the dust between the emitter and his thumb as it scanned the veins and matched the blood signature. It beeped obligingly as it recognised the account holder and made the purchase.

‘Don’t say I never give you anything,’ said Brandon, smiling to himself as he walked out of the room, knowing full well that a summer spent confined to the house and connected to a projected reality machine exploring barren rocks, was the last thing either his wayward son or his bookish Hilfsvater wanted to do in their last six weeks together.

About the Book

Title: The Great Connection: Worlds in Waiting

Author: Garry Abbott

Genre: Science Fiction

Following an unfortunate incident involving a delivery drone, a fishing net, and a very tall tree; Raif Masters finds himself forced by his overprotective alpha parents to spend his last school holiday exploring extraterrestrial worlds in ‘The Great Connection’: a real-time simulation of the observable universe, rendered into virtual reality home entertainment.

But Raif, a “child of three”, is not alone. Terry, bound to the service of the Masters family, is looking forward to a very early retirement after one last summer looking after his young charge.

Together they meet Cinder, a fellow simunaught who is seeking a crew to share a secret discovery from the other side of the galaxy that could change the life of the Masters, and the future of the Earth, forever.

But are some discoveries best left unconnected?

Author Bio

Garry Abbott is a science fiction author from Staffordshire in the UK where he lives with his wife and two cats.

Garry has published the short story collection ‘The Dimension Scales and Other Stories’, and his first full length space opera novel: ‘The Great Connection: Worlds in Waiting’. He is currently working on his third title, a sci-fi comedy, working title: ‘Transported’.

As well as writing science fiction, Garry has regularly contributed topical comedy sketches for the BBC and produced scripts for community arts productions and performances.

Garry’s influences include Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Philip Pullman, George R. R. Martin and Dennis Potter.