Empire State (50 page)

  The city's population is smaller than that of Manhattan, and consists of people brought into being with the city itself, or those pulled across from the Origin. The hooded Pastor of Lost Souls seeks these people out – or those who feel there is something not quite right about their world – building his own private army of brainwashed zealots.

  The Empire State is surrounded by water, which is itself bounded by thick fog banks which never clear. Sometimes people hear things, or see lights out there, beyond the water, but you don't often see these people again. The city is a totalitarian state, with a curfew, a strict Prohibition which extends beyond alcohol to include tobacco as well, and food rationing. These measures are needed because the Empire State is at war with the Enemy.

  The Enemy lies beyond the fog, and the Empire State prides itself on taking the fight to them, sending great battleships called ironclads off into the fog twice a year, on Fleet Day. These are days of great celebration and tickertape parades, as the robotic crews of the ironclads march through the city to the docks, where they board their ships. And are never seen again.

  The technology of the Empire State is somewhat more advanced than that of the real world. In the nineteen years that have passed since the city blinked into existence, advances in robotics and cybernetic technology have allowed the City Commissioners to use their citizenry for the war effort, taking volunteers and converting them into cyborg warriors. Captain Carson, an eccentric old man who lives in a
very
large house in the Upper East Side, may have had something to do with these advances.

 

Just like in our history, the US of the 1950s is enjoying the post-war boom. The space race is about to begin, while the country is gripped by McCarthyism and the threat of the Red Menace. In New York, Captain Nimrod runs his own mysterious agency within the US Department of State, charged with investigating and protecting the Fissure, the portal connecting the Origin (New York) to the Pocket (the Empire State). A former explorer and scientific genius, his work with the Fissure has enabled travel between the two dimensions via mirrors as well as via the Fissure itself, although both are expensive and the latter a little too dangerous.

 

Beyond the fog lies an unknown land, where the city of the Enemy sits on an island, a further reflection of the Empire State. As the data flows from the Origin to the Pocket, so it degrades the further out it travels and the more it is reflected through an infinite series of portals. The land of the Enemy is therefore a dark, dangerous, primal construct where the laws of physics don't always apply. The city itself is possibly selfaware in a primitive gestalt way, populated by mindless automata. As the Enemy is a twisted reflection of the Empire State, everything that happens in the latter is duplicated, but in different ways – the Enemy prepares its own fleet of ironclads, matching one-for-one the fleets sent by the Empire State. But the Enemy ironclads sail, impossibly, through the air.

  The domain of the Enemy is not a place you'd want to visit, nor a place you would want to find yourself trapped in.

  And if the Enemy is a reflection of the Empire State, is the Enemy itself reflected again? What horrifying realm of dust and darkness exists beyond
its
borders?

 
 

 

You can create works set in and around any (or all) of the different realms. There is scope for almost any kind of fiction you can imagine – science and speculative fiction (but not space opera), fantasy and magic (but not swords and sorcery), even detective noir and pulpy crime.

  You are welcome to use any of the characters that appear in
Empire State
itself, but don't use them in anything set concurrently with the novel, or set afterwards. The former will tangle the narrative of the book, and for the latter, well, I might want to write a sequel one day and I want to avoid being influenced by any work set after the end of the story. You are free to use your own characters within the world of
Empire State
in any time period – before, during or after.

  While the WorldBuilder is open to any kind of creative endeavour, there is one important exception: you may not create any
direct narrative adaptation
of the novel, or identifiable scenes within the novel. This means that, while you are free to create film, comics, etc, these should be
your own
stories, and not – for example – a filmed version of the book, or of scenes within the book. The same goes with audio – you can write your own stories and record them, but not simply read from the book or create an audio adaptation or performance of any part of
Empire State
. While we are authorising fan-created content to be created under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License,
Empire State
the novel is copyrighted material, not public domain nor shared under any Creative Commons license or agreement.

 

For more information on how to join the WorldBuilder and start adding to the
Empire State
universe, visit

 

ANGRY ROBOT
 

A member of the Osprey Group

 

Lace Market House,
54-56 High Pavement,
Nottingham,
NG1 1HW, UK

 

www.angryrobotbooks.com
 

There's more than one of everything

 

 

Copyright © Adam Christopher 2012

 

Adam Christopher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

 

ISBN: 978-0-85766-192-0 

EBook ISBN: 978-0-85766-194-4

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

 

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.