Product Description
In this, the second book in 'The Chance of a Realtime' series, 1990 computer consultant Jerry Staute is reliving experiences that supposedly happened to him almost 20 years before. Experiences which were somehow purged from his memory afterwards-- until a bizarre incident in Boston Massachusetts seemed to bring them flooding back.
The new recollections seem preposterous and absurd on their face; but may also offer him his only clues as to how a handful of odd strangers put them into his head, and why.
Staute began his examination of the suspect memories with a decidedly skeptical attitude. However, the related reverie proves seductive in the extreme, apparently becoming ever more seemingly plausible and intriguing, the deeper into it he goes. Soon, Staute finds himself switching from trying to pick apart the scenario, to hoping that it's true.
But given his own history of past mental problems, he also knows he could be descending into a final madness, rather than grappling with a real world remembrance; and so he likely shouldn't be indulging in such bizarre retrospection, but rather trying to forget it altogether. However, the fantastic scenario that unfolds before him proves to be irresistible; and so he cannot help himself. If this be madness, he decides, then let it come.
According to what he now recalls, he was shanghaied during his 1972 college days by a crew of accidental time-travelers from 2483 AD, who (his younger self believed) seized him in a whopping case of mistaken identity; as he bears the same name as the man they believe originally conceived the technology which trapped them in 1972 in the first place.
In the dubious recollections, Staute's younger self was put through a crash course in future technologies, and how to use the amenities on board a fabulously advanced exploration vessel, built centuries after his own time. After that, he was pressured for ideas to get the crew back on track for home; and informed that if he failed, he'd never see home again himself.
In 'Meeting of the Minds', a new and wholly unexpected element comes into play, as it turns out Staute's time traveling captors themselves have been manipulated in ways similar to what they did to Staute: their present predicament being no accident, but rather arranged by a yet still more mysterious entity. An entity which must flee into the mind of Staute himself, when the ship's controlling artificial intelligence finally manages to free itself of the entity's surreptitious control.
On the heels of this, one of Staute's brainstorms succeeds in getting the ship to a place and time relevant to the crew's goals: the year 2,823 AD, and the immediate vicinity of some of humanity's strangest far flung future children.
As a result, the young Staute found himself not only embroiled in a deep space war of the distant future, but a war within his own mind, as well. And yet somehow, amidst all the angst and pain, Staute also finds bona fide wonders. And enough joy to sate even the most forlorn and desolate denizens of the 20th century. But it's such a state of bliss that it also threatens to leave him suicidal for the remainder of his days, once it is gone.
The new recollections seem preposterous and absurd on their face; but may also offer him his only clues as to how a handful of odd strangers put them into his head, and why.
Staute began his examination of the suspect memories with a decidedly skeptical attitude. However, the related reverie proves seductive in the extreme, apparently becoming ever more seemingly plausible and intriguing, the deeper into it he goes. Soon, Staute finds himself switching from trying to pick apart the scenario, to hoping that it's true.
But given his own history of past mental problems, he also knows he could be descending into a final madness, rather than grappling with a real world remembrance; and so he likely shouldn't be indulging in such bizarre retrospection, but rather trying to forget it altogether. However, the fantastic scenario that unfolds before him proves to be irresistible; and so he cannot help himself. If this be madness, he decides, then let it come.
According to what he now recalls, he was shanghaied during his 1972 college days by a crew of accidental time-travelers from 2483 AD, who (his younger self believed) seized him in a whopping case of mistaken identity; as he bears the same name as the man they believe originally conceived the technology which trapped them in 1972 in the first place.
In the dubious recollections, Staute's younger self was put through a crash course in future technologies, and how to use the amenities on board a fabulously advanced exploration vessel, built centuries after his own time. After that, he was pressured for ideas to get the crew back on track for home; and informed that if he failed, he'd never see home again himself.
In 'Meeting of the Minds', a new and wholly unexpected element comes into play, as it turns out Staute's time traveling captors themselves have been manipulated in ways similar to what they did to Staute: their present predicament being no accident, but rather arranged by a yet still more mysterious entity. An entity which must flee into the mind of Staute himself, when the ship's controlling artificial intelligence finally manages to free itself of the entity's surreptitious control.
On the heels of this, one of Staute's brainstorms succeeds in getting the ship to a place and time relevant to the crew's goals: the year 2,823 AD, and the immediate vicinity of some of humanity's strangest far flung future children.
As a result, the young Staute found himself not only embroiled in a deep space war of the distant future, but a war within his own mind, as well. And yet somehow, amidst all the angst and pain, Staute also finds bona fide wonders. And enough joy to sate even the most forlorn and desolate denizens of the 20th century. But it's such a state of bliss that it also threatens to leave him suicidal for the remainder of his days, once it is gone.
