The Blue Plane
Book Two of the Grasshopper Man Series
by
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Prologue
Stan, Audrey, and Mary sat close together in the dark hold of the ship listening to the rhythmic pounding of the bow into the waves and a stirring of rats among the crates and bags of spices. Stan had been up on deck working for the Indonesian pirates and had been beaten, as usual. Stan’s and his wife Audrey’s thoughts drifted back to Hawaii where the swirling bittersweet adventure had begun. Mary was with them now, and the three of them had been a lot of places since the trap was sprung. They imagined it had been the same for the others who had been trapped. They knew the chase would continue as soon as they could escape from the pirates; this brutal scenario was only temporary. A beam of sunlight flashed onto the dirty boards. They were coming for them again. They sniffed the air redolent of spice and felt the boards under their hands. It all felt so real. The thing was that it wasn’t real and never had been. Nothing had been since the trap was sprung. But there had been some coruscating diamonds among the lumps of coal.
EpilogueDoug, Chris, and Jane stood hand-in-hand on The Blue Plane looking at the vignettes that appeared before them.
In one, two adolescent Chinese children that they recognized from Kuo and Wu’s school held hands as they watched the younger children play. Gao, Leung, Li, Kuo, and Wu stood nearby, observing and smiling peacefully. The watchers smiled as their eyes moved to the next vignette: a young man and woman stood on a balcony outside a handsome bedroom, looking out across a river beautiful and still in the evening mist. “Ann,” Jane whispered. The uniformed man turned to look at Ann, took her chin in his hand and kissed her gently. She laid her head on his shoulder, tears staining her cheeks.Four men in a prehistoric setting sat beside a fire. Primitive tents were behind them backed by a low rock wall, beyond that a grassy plain rolled into the dark. The fire illuminated four Indian women who were busy skinning and butchering what looked to be antelopes. They chatted and laughed and on occasion smiled back at the men and gave a group of children rolling and tossing near the fire a watchful look. Stan, Audrey, and Mary sat on a park bench, eating ice cream from pointed cones. Three little girls stood near them licking ice cream before it dripped onto the ground, getting as much on their faces as in their mouths. A rugged looking man stood in front of them, arms akimbo, laughing as one of the girls smeared bright strawberry ice cream across her face.
“They have peace and happiness,” came a slightly creaky voice from the left of the three watchers. They turned to smile at him.“At least for a while,” Chris said wistfully.
“At least for a while,” the old Chinese man agreed.The vignettes faded and the four stood looking toward the Blue Horizon.
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About the Book
The chase continues. Doug and Chris Scott fought their way through what they thought was a rogue virtual reality program, but which turned out to be something much more frightening and unfathomable—a true alternative reality. On the way back to Hong Kong where it all began, they died in a plane crash and awakened in an empty universe. Their only company is the mysterious Grasshopper Man, who serves as occasional messenger and guide.
Another young couple falls into the alternative bittersweet nightmare, computer programmer Stan Brent and his mathematician wife Audrey, in this second book of The Grasshopper Man series. Trapped in what they come to call The System with them are colleagues Mary Wells, Luke Simmons, and Jacob Ellery. The mercenary computer guru Ann Crenshaw and her two assistants, Todd Richards and Brett Thompson, follow them into the trap. They are pursued through time and place by Indonesian pirates, battle their way across wartorn France, relive harrowing episodes from their own pasts, and endure other adventures in Nepal, Irian Jaya, New Zealand, the U.S., and other times and places. Their only help comes from the enigmatic Jane, who was sent in to rescue Doug and Chris and became trapped herself. But how long will she be there to help?
On the outside, four homeless Chinese children from mainland China are trapped in their own adventures, intersecting occasionally with the others in The System.
The storylines continue to explore the nature of Reality as they continually prove that
About the Author
A research geneticist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, T. Austin Campbell, Ph.D., has traveled extensively in Asia and elsewhere. He published scores of scientific articles in the journals of his discipline. Now a full-time novelist, he continues to explore new places and weaves memories of his travels and those from his childhood into tales of high adventure, romance, and triumphs of the human spirit in a world of everchanging realities.