CORA

  I really hope Sam doesn’t want to go back to Earth.

  It’s not that I don’t like my home sphere. Earth’s pretty great, and I’m not trying to run away from it. But, for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m running towards something that makes sense.

  Being out here with Sam is new experience after new experience, and I think I could keep exploring forever and not get tired of it. Sam asked me if I really wanted to leave the stage behind, and now that I’ve been away from it for a few weeks, I say, “Yeah. I’m cool with that.”

  Because I performed for a reason: to connect to a woman I dreamed about for years. Now I’ve found her, and I just wanna be. I can do that on Shurwinn. I can do it on a starliner.

  As long as I’m with Sam, I don’t really care about the window dressing.

  Except what I’m learning in these books has me intrigued. There are more people like me. More dreamers. Psychics. People who wrote prophecy in song lyrics—like a fantasy show.

  None of this seems real, but I believe every word of it because it’s so much like my own life. And now I’ve read something so astounding I’m tempted to discount it as only a story, but the rest of the books are written as though they're fact, so I’ve gotta believe this too. These books were written for a reason, and I think I’m figuring out what it was.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  We aren’t living in the world we thought we knew.

  We’re living in a mockery of it.

  War was outlawed centuries ago, and now we have corporate prosperity in its place. Most people are getting by without starving, and that's an achievement to be sure.

  It seems like we live in a perfect society. The pinnacle of human achievement.

  But what about dreamers like me? And telepaths like Bitsy and Pitch? Why are we hiding what we can do?

  Why aren’t we the norm?

  Because, at best, no one will believe us or take us seriously if we talk about it. At worst, someone could grab us off the street, force us to work for a megacorporation trying to predict the future, or make the telepaths spy on competitors. We know the powerful are corrupt, and we feel powerless to change it.

  And what if that is exactly what they want?

  We happily give them money for video games and spend endless hours in VR not thinking about what else could be out there beyond the Known Cosmos. Then we login to Discord where we hang out with what we think are people blasting through our time chitchatting and laughing.

  All the while, we’re doing a whole lot of nothing, thinking our lives are pretty good.

  Meanwhile, there are dreamers and telepaths and cybernetically augmented who are living in a totally different reality, experiencing the fantastic all the time and pretending to be normal to everyone they meet.

  Are any of us happy? Do we really feel satisfied with the lives we're living?

  Or are we too afraid to hope that things could be different?

  What I’ve just read at the end of Known Cosmos Book 2 should not be possible, but I should not be possible, so I’m going to choose belief.

  Ryst Nova and Nayth Carmidee vanished into thin air, leaving behind this world for the Unknown Cosmos.

  And it didn’t end there. The two of them kept communicating, albeit vaguely, with the people they loved here in the 9 Galaxies. I’ve read between the lines, understanding the clues. My decision is made.

  There are two worlds.

  And I want Sam to help me find the other one.