Kirlia

I was brought up in an age of fringe sciences when various affluent governments were knee deep in the possibility of remote viewing and its applications in espionage. We had Bionics, although as far as I'm aware that only ever made any cash from television advertising during the Six Million Dollar Man. There was an entire academic underworld subculture based on spoon bending, telepathy, artificial intelligence, astrology, alien civilisations, lost worlds, ley lines, divination, magic, esp etc. The list goes on and on, and they were all wonderfully imaginative and eagerly explored by a plethora of pseudoscientists with flowers in their hair, assuming that the funds were available, (for the research, not the flowers).

Then there's my personal favourite - Kirlian photography. I have to admit the evidence is there. The pictures prove it. You can, given the right conditions, photograph the human aura. Wow! A bit of a breakthrough there then. Think of the medical applications. According to some, the aura changes in the presence of disease and it's better than an x-ray because it can even tell if you're having a bad day (the colours reflect your emotions). Well no. Actually all the colours are an artifact of the development process and what you're really seeing is an electrical corona effect. Even inanimate objects have auras so you can tell if a basketball or a ten cent piece from your pocket is also having a bad day (and why shouldn't they?).

Stolen from Wikipedia

Anyway, picking up on the possibilities I started to wonder. What if all that 1960's fringe exploration was still going on? In the dark and underfunded basement labs where the fuzzy haired lunatics cackle insanely over disected frogs while the overhead flourescent tubes flicker themselves to death. Where would it be now?

With this in mind I came up with Kirlia.

Outline.
This is a third person narrative following the adventures of a single character who, through a bizarre combination of fate and being a tosser, finds himself with a backstage pass to the doors of Kirlia.
Kirlia is a place. It is the landscape that you'd see if Kirlian photography were taken to the nth degree and it uncovered and made plain all those things that were normally concealed from the waking senses. Imagine a world packed full of UHF flora and fauna, flowers and butterflies, predators and prey.

This is all well and good - unless the things that live in Kirlia don't want to be seen...


Characters.
Carlos Soames. He's a bit of a miserable bastard. He's a writer, an alcoholic, and a tight ass. He's chronically sarcastic and self centred and he's in for a bitch of a ride. I have to feel a little sorry for him really, he doesn't deserve his fate the low life that he is, but what the hell.

Here's a link to the smashwords version.


Kirlia is one of Uncle John's Bedtime Tales. The full collection of ten stories is available in ebook format on smashwords.

For those who really do prefer a print version Uncle John's Bedtime Tales is available from:

Amazon.com: Click here
Amazon.co.uk: Click here
Direct from Spinetinglers publishing: Click here