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Extracted - By Sherry D. Ficklin & Tyler Jolley
Published by: Clean Teen Publishing
Release Date: 8/15/2016
Genres: Steampunk, Young Adult
Two opposing factions of time travelers vie for control of the future in this thrilling steampunk series opener dubbed “Interesting” and “Unexpected” by Kirkus Reviews.
Lex and Ember—two time travelers with no memories of their lives before being recruited into the time war—are torn between the factions. When Lex accepts a mission that lands him deep within the heart of the Telsa Institute, he meets Ember, and the past that was stolen from them comes flooding back. Now armed with the truth of who they were, Lex and Ember must work together to save the future before the battle for time destroys them once again.
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Ember’s Guide to Time
Travel
Foreword:
Don’t be alarmed. If you’ve picked
up this book by mistake, by all means, put it down and walk away now. While you still can.
I’m Ember and I’ll be walking
(okay, more like kidnapping you in a van and screaming at you as we speed out
of control down the street) through the ins and outs of being a time traveler.
Try not to panic. Breathe deep and accept that if you are reading this, you are
most likely one of us and thus, you are screwed. Because for all the glamour,
we are really nothing more than glorified slaves.
But more on that later.
Lesson one:
The title time traveler sounds so Jules Verne doesn’t it? And trust me on
this, that guy was seriously bent. Had the misfortune of meeting him once and
fhew! He gave new meaning to the phrase one egg short of a dozen, you know? But
I digress. We are Rifters—which is basically just a fancy term for time
travelers. There’s some shiny nugget of awesome in our DNA that lets us not
only separate ourselves from time, but Rift it like surfing a massive wave.
That, in and of itself is pretty cool. Here’s where things get dicey. There are
rules to Rifting. I know, lame, right? Most of us have to study for years
before we have all the info hammered into our fragile little brains but you—you
my lucky friend—are getting the cliff notes version. So keep up. Because there
WILL be a test later. (That part is not a joke and you DO NOT want to fail.)
Rifters are like superheroes. Or
mutants. Whatever. Pretty rare anyway. So whenever one of us pops up in the
time stream we are recruited by a faction, of which there are two.
The Tesla Institute is my home turf. Basically way back in the day
Nick Tesla (see: Mad Scientist) stumbled across the time stream during an
experiment with electricity and radio waves. I’m glossing over the boring
details here (and trust me, they are SO boring) to get to the important stuff.
He couldn’t actually cross into the stream. But one of his assistants could.
She was the first Rifter. Frustrated, he set about discovering why she had the
ability that she did. Turns out, it’s part of a genetic condition specific to a
family tree. Here’s the problem with that. If you go back far enough in any
family tree, most people share common ancestors. So it’s sort of a crap shoot
whether one person from the tree will develop abilities or not. Some of us are
stronger than others, strong enough to navigate and access the stream on our
own.
Some… not so much.
Once he realized what he stumbled
across, Tesla devoted his life to tracking down the most powerful Rifters he
could find and bring them together. At the Institute we learn not just how to
control our abilities, but lots of other super useful stuff as well. Like
combat skills, history, and physics. It’s like a school. Only the headmaster is
the disembodied head of a mad genius whose brain is jacked into a massive
computer and if you fail the final exams here, you die.
Which sucks.
So why do I stick around? Well, the
food is semi-decent and the people are pretty cool. Oh, and we have a mission. Fancy, right? See, we are the
guardians. We preserve the stream, preserve history. Sometimes, we can even
make a small change to make things better. Nothing major mind you, but we help
when we can.
The first class of Rifters Tesla
gathered had a couple kids who went all dark side and split off. We call them…
The Hollows. They pretty much the bottom feeders of the Rifting
universe. They scavenge whatever Rifters they can find no matter how weak and
use them as cannon fodder in their personal war against Tesla. Oh, and remember
those rules I mentioned before? Yeah, these guys could give a flying crap about
the rules. Actually, I kind of like that about them. Except I know what
breaking the time rules can do, and it ain’t pretty folks. Some limits, even I
don’t push. But the heathens have zero respect. Or maybe they are just idiots. (Okay,
I might be a TINY bit biased)
The Hollows are run by what’s left
of a guy named Claymore. He was one of Tesla’s first Rifters. Rumor has it he
was so badly injured during an attack on the Institute back in the day that he’s
nothing more than a brain in a dive suit. Kind of like Tesla actually. Irony,
thou art a heartless wench. Anyway, he corrals the scavengers and sends them
out into the time stream to run little missions. Mostly stealing stuff and
generally screwing around with history. No one is exactly sure what his end
game is, which makes him unpredictable and dangerous. Basically, he’s a big,
shovel sized thorn in Tesla’s side.
Lesson Two
The Rules:
I mentioned this before. Time is a
living thing, flexible in some ways, but things can get very dicey if you tick
it off. I’ll start with the hard and fast rules, the ones you NEVER challenge.
- NEVER Rift into your own path. Because people are only supposed to be able to be in one place at a time, coming into physical contact with yourself could literally destroy the stream. Best case scenario the stream splits like a fork in a river and an alternate time line is created or worst case scenario the universe implodes. No one is entirely sure which, but Tesla has run the calculations on it and he believes it would cause a paradox that would cause time to sort of rip itself part. In other words, BAD THINGS.
- NEVER change your own history. If you go back and prevent yourself from ever being born, then guess what? You were never born, but the version of yourself that went back to make the change still exists. Boom! Paradox. Yep. Why, you ask? Because once you step through the stream for the first time, you are changed. You become a creature of time, separate and apart from it. The slavery I mentioned earlier? You probably thought I meant the Factions. Nope. We may think we control time, but the truth is vastly opposite.
Happy Rifting!
~Ember
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About the Authors
Sherry D. Ficklin is a full time writer from Colorado where she lives with her husband, four kids, two dogs, and a fluctuating number of chickens and house guests. A former military brat, she loves to travel and meet new people. She can often be found browsing her local bookstore with a large white hot chocolate in one hand and a towering stack of books in the other. That is, unless she’s on deadline at which time she, like the Loch Ness monster, is only seen in blurry photographs.
Author links
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Tyler H. Jolley is a sci-fi/fantasy author and full-time orthodontist, periodontist (see: Overachiever). He divides his spare time between writing, reading, mountain biking, and camping with his family.Author links:
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