Born in Syn. Beth Kander
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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ORIGINAL SYN
“Original Syn has one of the most creative settings in modern science fiction, with roots in real theories and ideas. Kander’s novel puts a bold new twist on the classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story while also introducing a large variety of new characters and concepts that keep the book feeling fresh and new.” –Clarion-Ledger
“A gripping story whose words pop off the page… humor, love, masterful storytelling… Beth Kander paints a complex picture of the human condition. Original Syn is a transformational piece of literature.”
–Andrew Slack, Founder, The Harry Potter Alliance
“Original Syn is a heart-pounding book that will keep readers on their toes and turning the page.” –Mia Siegert, author of Jerkbait
“The novel’s disparate worlds are revealed slowly, and the story is sophisticated enough to engage both adults and teens. The book maintains a taut pace to the end, concluding with a plot twist that turns the tables and stimulates interest in a second volume, soon to come.”
–Foreword Review
“Original Syn is the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve read its final pages; an unforgettable story that pulls you in and takes you along for the ride.” –Francesca G. Varela, author of Seas of Distant Stars
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All places, characters and events are fictitious.
Any resemblance to actual places, persons or events is coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
Published in 2019 by Owl House Books
Cover Design by Daniel Dauphin
Interior Design by Leslie M. Browning
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DEDICATION
This book is the second in a trilogy. It is something in-between. But it’s in the middle moments that life tends to embed the most important stories of all. That’s why this book is dedicated to the people who have shared liminal spaces with me. It is offered in gratitude to those who helped me get from where I was to where I needed to be, allowed me the privilege of standing alongside them at their own crossroads, and make every chapter more inspiring.
These stories are for you.
Especially you, Christy.
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Preface
As Cal crawls through the window, he gives silent thanks for his abruptly miraculous circumstances. He feels as if he is in the midst of a prayer being answered. Everything about this moment feels surreal. Dreamlike. Too good to be true. Thus even in his heated exhilaration, his instincts warn him to be wary. His skin prickles slightly as a shadowy, foreboding question casts its looming pall over him:
How did I get here?
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CHAPTER 1: ERNEST
“Is today the day I get to meet him, Daddy?”
“Hope so, buddy.”
“Your eyes are saggy. Are you exhausted?”
“I’m tired, yes,” said Ernest Fell. He wasn’t in the habit of lying to his son, and the observant little boy would know if his fatherfibbed. And Ernest was, as a point of fact, exhausted.
The past week had been a blur of shuttling between home and hospital, dividing his time between the maternity ward where his wife Lila was recovering from a traumatic labor and the neonatal intensive care unit where his newborn son was breathing with assistance in a carefully monitored incubator.
Baby Nathan was born five days ago. Five weeks early.
“I want to meet my brother.”
“I know, Howie. I know.”
As he lowered himself to the floor to meet his son’s eyes, Ernest’s knees popped in a way they never had until he hit thirty. He held out his arms to his big-eyed toddler, and Howie crawled onto his father’s lap, first nuzzling into his narrow chest, then sitting up and taking Ernest’s tired and stubbly face into his chubby little hands.
“And I can see Mommy?”
“Yes, son,” Ernest nodded, smiling at the feel of Howie’s hands clasped on his cheeks, following the motion of his nod, up-down, up-down. “Yes. After we take a little nap.”
“Ugh! I abhor naps!”
Despite his fatigue, Ernest chuckled. Howie was an early talker, deploying dozens of recognizable words before his first birthday and speaking in full sentences by sixteen months. The little sponge picked up vocabulary so rapidly, his parents could barely keep up with him. Abhor wasn’t a word most two-and-a-half-year-olds used. But Howie wasn’t most two-and-a-half-year-olds.
How is this kid mine?
Ernest taught English at the local community college. He was a lifelong reader and did his best to keep up with world affairs. But he wasn’t a genius. Not like his son. Ernest frequently teased Lila about sleeping with Einstein the Milkman. But Howie looked just like Ernest; somehow he was responsible for this kid who started tossing off words like abhor before he was reliably potty-trained.
“Where’d you hear that one, Howie? ‘Abhor’?”
“The Reverend,” Howie says. “It means hate.”
“I know what it means, son,” Ernest said, his amusement immediately dampened. He knew he should be grateful that his parents had come in from Kentucky to help with Howie while he and Lila gave their attention to the new arrival. But dear God, he hoped his father wasn’t planting any overly religious (or overtly racist) ideas into Howie’s head.
“Do you abhor naps, Daddy?”
“No, I adore them.”
“Ha. That’s funny. Adore and abhor are rhyming opposites.”
“That’s right.”
“I might adore and abhor having a baby brother.”
A tired smile tugged at Ernest’s lips. “Probably, yeah.”
“Is Baby Nathan napping?”
“Well. Sort of. Baby Nathan is sleeping, and also getting medical treatment.”
Ernest thought again of how lucky they were to be living in this time and place. The first full-scale neonatal intensive care unit was established just two years earlier, in 1960, in New Haven, Connecticut. Other university hospitals took quick cues from their friends over at Yale, University of Michigan chief among them. Living in Ann Arbor, with access to the university hospital where the doctors had learned from their colleagues in Connecticut and upgraded their care of premature infants, was a blessing, and not one Ernest took