COLLAR ebook

>LOADING SYSTEM MESSAGE FROM ROOT:

//Copyright © Mariusz Trynka, 2026

//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, microfilming, digitizing, storage on electronic media or any other technique—without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in reviews, critical articles or scholarly works as permitted by applicable law.

//First edition, Kraków 2026

//Self-published by the author

//Cover design: Mariusz Trynka

//Title: “COLLAR”

//Editing: none—no editor was willing to edit this book voluntarily

//Typesetting and layout: Mariusz Trynka

//A note on the use of artificial intelligence

This book was written by the author. The story, its characters, its ideas and every line of the original text came from his own pen. No artificial intelligence was used for the actual writing or the creative work. Not even for the research. Good old Google Maps was enough; his head supplied the rest. AI-assisted tools were used to correct and refine spelling and grammar and to check the typography. This English edition was translated from the German with the help of AI tools and then revised by the author. Parts of the cover design were created with the help of generative AI and then extensively reworked by the author.

//More books by the author: www.mariusztrynka.com

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For everyone born between 1970 and 1990—Generation X and Y.

For everyone who knows what a talking car sounds like.

For everyone who rewound cassettes with a pencil

and unjammed fax machines—

and still gets along just fine with a smartphone.

For those whose world stood still for a while on Saturday mornings.

For the last generation that still remembers

what it was like to be bored.

To everyone else: if you don’t get this book

because you’re too old or too young, don’t worry.

That was not intended.

It’s not you.

It’s me, sann?

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ENTRY $00:00000001 ▸ PROLOG

Are you ready?

Already wondering what comes next?

Then get comfortable—while you still can.

See, I’ve got a story to tell you, a story so unbelievable it has to be true. At least, I’m telling it to you as true. Whether you buy it is your business.

One more thing before we get going. The guy who lives through all of this and the guy who’s talking to you here—to this day I’m not sure that’s still the same guy.

But enough already. We’re diving right into the action. So right into it, in fact, that this excuse for a prologue doesn’t come anywhere close to earning the name.

It begins with…

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ENTRY $01:00000001 ▸ PRESENT

Pain. I feel nothing but pain. Ants everywhere.

It’s not ordinary pain. It’s the feeling you get when your arm or leg falls asleep. As if millions of tiny ants were marching across your body and then slowly eating their way into it.

Oh God, when is this going to pass? It has to stop sometime.

I wait, but it doesn’t pass. My eyelids are squeezed shut with pain, because it’s everywhere.

Damned ants.

But wait, why everywhere? It can’t all have fallen asleep at once. I’m only noticing it now. The sensory overload distracted me. Oh God, it’s worst under my fingernails… in my armpits… and in my pubic area.

How does a body fall asleep between the legs?

And, more importantly: how do you wake it back up without it getting awkward?

My whole head is full of ants. Maybe they really are ants. I push the thought away and try to push the pain back along with it. Eyes open. Carefully.

But there’s nothing. Just black. Panic rises in me. For a moment it crowds out the pain. Must be the adrenaline. But that doesn’t make the blackness go away. It’s still there.

Something comes to mind, a line from an episode of Knight Rider. ‘Hey, Mickey, who turned out the lights?’

Why do I remember stuff like that? Isn’t my situation screwed up enough without me remembering old TV shows from the nineties on top of it?

Eyes shut and open again. Squeeze shut, open. But nothing happens. Why can’t I see a damn thing?

Wait, I can barely hear anything either. Voices, sure, but somewhere in the background. One gets louder, but I only catch scraps of words. No full sentences. And the fragments that do get through make no sense at all.

“… forty percent unstable, sann? …”—“… it will be seen to…”—“… the reaction is rough, if not right away…”

And then the sentence just stops. Nobody finishes it. As if someone had pulled the plug. Do they mean me? Am I unstable?

I’d happily put my money on my brain, but my brain puts its money on them. We can’t reach an agreement.

People, just give it to me straight: who or what is unstable? What rough reaction? What the heck is happening to me? And when are these goddamn ants finally going to go away? I can’t take it anymore.

Hello, can anybody hear me? I—can’t—take—it—anymore.

Am I actually saying this, or is it just in my head?

Damned ants, damned ears, damned whatever-this-is.

Then something at my neck, a pressure. And a hiss. Yes, there’s definitely a hiss. Like an injector or something. I think of Star Trek. That sounds suspiciously like a hypospray. And yet another old TV show in my head. What is wrong with me?

More scraps of words: “… immunosuppressants taking effect, sann? …”

It takes a few seconds for the hiss to stop.

Whatever that was, they just pumped a whole lot of it into my body. Respect.

Hey. The ants are gone. Good stuff. Yeah, that’s good stuff, no more pain. But the damn blackness is still there.

Or maybe not. Wait, is it just me, or is it turning dark gray? Yes, yes, yes. It’s getting a little lighter. No, I’m not just imagining it. It’s getting lighter. Medium gray now, even. Now spots. I see spots.

And as I say it to myself, I feel like the kid in The Sixth Sense when he says, ‘I see dead people.’

And colors. It keeps getting brighter.

No, wait. Stop. That’s bright enough! No, no more, please. It’s unbearable. I don’t want to close my eyes again. I’ve had enough of the black.

I give up. I close them again.

I try again, just a crack. Maybe I’ll get used to it.

Yes, open slowly, close a little, then open again. It’s getting better, my pupils are slowly adjusting. And the spots are getting less… spotty?

People, bent over me. Several. Oh God, please, when the picture gets sharper, don’t let them be aliens experimenting on me. Let them be humans. I’m not picky. Just as long as they don’t want to cut me open.

But aliens would explain why I can’t remember how I got into this freaky situation. Why I don’t know where I am. Why I don’t know… who I am.

The picture gets sharper. Slowly. Come on, keep going, pupils. Why is this taking so long? Now I have to know. Aliens or humans?

Then I recognize one of the faces. Yes! It’s a human. A woman. And not an ugly one, either. No, quite the opposite. She’s gorgeous. Under the circumstances, that’s probably what you’d call a best-case scenario. She’s not just beautiful, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t help thinking of Charlie’s Angels. Of course, what else—another old TV show in my head. Am I a TV junkie, or what’s wrong with me?

Wait—no aliens, but maybe no humans either? Maybe angels? Hmm. Am I in heaven? She’s so pretty. She must be an angel. She waits, staring at me intently.

I try to say something. But what I say and what I hear are two completely different animals. I say something, but all I hear is croaking, like I’m a reincarnated old radio. Another try. And another.

The woman’s face shifts from friendly and smiling to somewhat worried. Apparently something’s wrong with me. I guess I’m not meeting expectations. Whatever those might be.

A fourth try, and the first word comes out. Not pretty yet, but understandable. I said “Are.” I try again, this time with a whole sentence. And then I hear myself ask: “Are you an angel?”

What? What the hell am I babbling about? What kind of shitty, idiotic question is that supposed to be? Are you an angel? That’s the best I can come up with?

Suddenly there’s a pop in my ears, and everything gets loud. My ears were blocked. All at once I hear so much more—conversations in the background, the hum of machines, even the angel’s excited breathing. And now her voice gets through to me too—not that it helps one bit.

“No—no angel, sann? It will be seen to. You are seventy percent stabilized, my thread says, next is—”

Next is? Next is what?

And gone. The sentence just falls off the end, like the others.

I understand roughly every third word. Angel, okay, that was my dumb question. But sann? Thread? Seventy percent of what?—Of me? And why does she break off midway, as if she’s waiting for the rest of it to come from somewhere else?

Great. I’ve been through a thousand hells or something, and the first thing to greet me in the new world is a gorgeous woman who sounds like a user manual with hiccups.

She must be reading the total bewilderment off my face. Her smile falters. For a moment her eyes go distant, as if she’s looking something up somewhere I can’t see. Then she takes a breath—and when she speaks again, it’s slower. As if she’d shifted down a gear, just for me.

“No, Dave, I’m not an angel. My name is Eliza Monroe. Dr. Eliza Monroe.”

That I understand. Every word. Thank God. The first version sounded like my angel needed a firmware update.

The white coat. The name tag. Angels don’t wear name tags, and if they did, there definitely wouldn’t be a ‘Dr.’ in front. Which pretty much rules out my angel theory, complete idiot that I am.

“Where am I?” croaks my Joe Cocker voice.

She starts to answer—and this time I see her deliberately put on the brakes, swallow something before it comes out. “You need to rest, Dave. You were gone for a very long time. We only barely managed to bring you back.”

Behind her the others keep murmuring, and not one of them shifts down a gear. Lips that barely move. Half sentences, numbers, that sann at the end of everything, as if every sentence needed somebody’s sign-off. She’s the only one here who bothers to make sure I understand her. Why, I don’t know. But I’m grateful to her.

“What happened to me?” I ask. “Did I have an accident or something?”

“Dave, I will explain everything to you, but it will take time.”

“I’m fine. Please tell me where I am. What happened to me?”

She hesitates for a moment. Then the strange thing happens again: she wants to say it, but the words come out in that singsong first, hurried, half swallowed—as if normal speech were a foreign language she has to translate into for my sake, and this, under pressure, her native tongue.

“You were… it would be intended to say… unthreaded. Very long. Approximately one hundred twenty… sann?”

“Approximately one hundred twenty what?” My pulse spikes. “Please. Again. Slowly.”

And she shifts back down. Looks me in the eye. And says it so there’s no room for doubt:

“Dave, you have been asleep. For a very long time. Almost one hundred and twenty years. Welcome to the future.”

And the first thing my brain contributes isn’t awe, isn’t panic, not one usable thought—but a car with gull-wing doors. Back to the Future. A hundred and twenty years asleep, and my head delivers Part II of a trilogy.

Ugh. What the fuck.

> END OF ENTRY

ENTRY $01:00000002 ▸ MEMORY

Somewhere between her words and the next breath, I slip away into something older than sleep.

White this time, not the black from before.

White, and way too much of it, as if somebody overexposed the world and forgot to turn the setting back.

And a beeping. Patient, steady, somewhere off to my right.

Beep. Pause. Beep. Pause.

As if something were keeping count. As if someone were counting me.

This isn’t the bed from a minute ago. No angel, no… future. This is… before. Don’t ask me how I know. You just know. The way you know in a dream that the strange house is actually your own.

A voice. Calm. Too calm. That rehearsed calm people put on right before they tell you something you don’t want to hear. I know this voice from a thousand shows—the doctor steps up to the bed, the music fades, the camera slowly pushes in, and then—

—and then a commercial break. This was always where the good shows went to commercial. Butter, mostly. Or headache pills.

She says something. Cotton, everything muffled like it’s coming through cotton, except for two words that break through.

“… too late…”

Too late for what? For who? I want to ask, but my mouth doesn’t belong to me here. I’m just a viewer in my own head. One without a remote. Hey. Hello. This is the part where you keep talking, damn it—not the part where—

The beeping slows down. Or I slow down. Hard to say who’s losing who right now.

Hold on to the words, Dave. Just two. Hold on to them—

Gone.

I’m back in the white room of the future, and the angel is bending over me, saying something soothing I can’t make out, because my ears are still ringing with a beeping that doesn’t even exist here.

Was that a memory?

If it was, it was a shitty one. Out of everything that makes up a life, I get a white room and two words that sound like bad news. Thanks a lot.

No kiss, no ocean, not one decent breakfast. Just a hospital room. My subconscious edited the greatest-hits reel all wrong.

But there they are again. The words are back. This time I’m keeping them. Too late. I don’t know for what. But something in me clenches, as if I’ve heard it before. More than once. As if it matters.

Then sleep takes me—the real kind this time.

> END OF ENTRY

ENTRY $01:00000003 ▸ PRESENT

The days after aren’t a stream. More of a drip.

I’m awake, then I’m gone, then awake again, and every time the light falls differently in the room, so time must have passed. How much, no idea. Somebody has helpfully slid a number into my field of vision, a date, but the date is so absurd that my brain treats it like a typo and just skips it.

My body feels borrowed. Like somebody forgot it in a closet for too long, then handed it back to me and said—here, no hard feelings. I think, raise your hand, and the hand takes its sweet time deciding whether it feels like it.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is my head.

Not that it’s empty. Quite the opposite—there’s plenty in there. Just the wrong stuff. I know how the theme from Magnum, P.I. goes. I know you can’t let go when you get electrocuted, thanks, A-Team. I know the capital of Australia, the real one, not Sydney. And I know every word of the theme song from that Pinocchio cartoon. Every single la-la-la.

I know how to unjam a fax machine. A fax machine. In my head there’s a complete, illustrated manual for unjamming a device nobody owned even before my century-long nap.

What I don’t know: what my mother looked like. Whether I had siblings. What I did for a living. Whether someone, somewhere, at some point, misses me.

A head full of TV and not a single memory of my own life. When a brain cleans house, it apparently goes by the rule: the junk stays, the photo albums go.

Which doesn’t exactly help: I don’t understand these modern-day idiots. And not because I’m too weak to listen—my hearing’s good by now, almost too good. It’s because what they say refuses to click into place in my head.

Modern-day idiots. I don’t know when I started calling them that. But it was early, and I’m not prepared to take it back. It fits them like a glove.

And right on cue, as if I’d summoned them, in they come, two, three of them, in soft, pale coats, talking. About me, I think. But the sentences… the sentences just stop. Midway. “The value is at eighty-two, so it would be intended—” and then nothing. Nobody says what would be intended. As if they all knew the same ending already and were saving themselves the trouble of saying it.

And that one word. They tack it onto everything. “Stable enough, sann?” “Values smooth, sann?” That little lift in pitch at the end, like a ‘ping’ on a triangle. Every time it sounds like a question—but it isn’t one. Nobody waits for an answer. They ask, don’t mean it, and keep talking.

At first I think my ears are still on the fritz. Then I think they’re the ones on the fritz. Only after—three days? four?—does it dawn on me that this isn’t a defect, not mine and not theirs. It’s just how they talk. A tic everybody has. Sann. I don’t have the faintest clue what it means. But I hate it! Damn, do I hate it.

A word like that would never cross my lips. When I say something—and I don’t say much, my voice is still sandpaper—I say it straight. “Water.” “What time.” “Get me out.” Period. No sann. It feels like I’m the only one in the room who still finishes his sentences.

A proud title. Doesn’t help me one bit.

And then there’s Eliza.

She’s always there when the light gets brighter and I decide that this is supposed to be morning. I still can’t turn toward the light source. She smiles. She asks how I slept. And—this is the strange part—she talks to me differently than the others do. Slower. Whole sentences, front to back, no sann. It’s still a visible effort for her; sometimes she starts, swallows half of the word that wants out, and shapes it all over again, in this normal, clean language that’s apparently just for me.

Once, one of the lab-coat women talks right over my head, full speed, “Resorption at ninety, the thread reports—” and Eliza just raises her hand for a second, and the other one goes quiet, and Eliza translates it for me, word for word, into plain human. I don’t know why she bothers. But I’m grateful to her. And the looks on their faces when I say “Thanks”—wild.

I tested Eliza, of course. You lie there, can’t do anything, don’t know anything, aren’t anybody—all that’s left is to needle the only person in the room a little, to see if she’s real. I was being a brat. I asked her the same thing three times, just to see when she’d finally roll her eyes.

She doesn’t roll her eyes. Ever. The third time, she answers just as patiently as the first.

I told her the water was too warm. It was perfect. She made it colder, let me taste it, and then brought me the perfect water again, without a word.

Two–zip, angel.

There was this android on Star Trek, Data. Polite, tireless, friendly in a way that, after a while, made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, because no human being is like that. That’s what I think of when Eliza smiles. And then I’m ashamed of myself, because she hasn’t done a thing to me except save my life and look outrageously good—in a way that stands out from everyone else around here, but that’s a tutti completto different story.

Still, that cynical little remnant of me that apparently survived the deep sleep whispers: Watch it, Dave. Nobody is that patient. Patience in this dose isn’t a character trait. Patience in this dose is by design.

I push the thought away. I’m too tired to be paranoid.

But I don’t forget it. Funny—the one thing I keep is the distrust, of all things. That, and words from a white room that I can’t place. Too late. And now a third one I can’t shake: sann.

Damn.

> END OF ENTRY

ENTRY $01:00000004 ▸ PRESENT

At some point I decide I’ve been lying down long enough.

That turns out to be one of the dumber decisions of my new life. I push myself up, the room tilts, my stomach tilts right along with it, and my arms—those borrowed, badly maintained things from the closet—shake like wet paper.

“Careful, Dave. Your circulation is not ready yet.”

I freeze. The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, from no speaker I can see—more like the room itself has decided to talk to me. Calm. Almost warm. And—I notice this right away, because it’s the first time in days—in complete sentences, and not from Eliza. No clipped mumbling. No sann. One whole, clean sentence, front to back.

“Who said that?” I croak, cheese grater on sandpaper. Nobody in the room. Of course not.

Great. First a hundred and twenty years of sleep, then hearing voices. Back in the day, that was about the point where somebody called your next of kin.

“If you would like to get up, I will help you. You only have to say so.”

It waits. Actually waits. It offered me something and now it’s waiting for my answer—the first time anyone around here has done that.

Which is exactly why, naturally, I say: “I can do it myself.”

I can’t. I sit up and make it almost all the way to standing, then my knees clock out—shit!—and the floor comes rushing at me—

—and doesn’t connect. Something catches me, a hand made of air, soft, firm, and lays me back down like I’m made of glass. I’m flat on my back again, breathing hard, humiliated by my own legs.

Somewhere in my head a man runs barefoot over broken glass and saves a high-rise. Die Hard. And I can’t even stand up in my own room without the smart home having to step in.

“It is not weakness to accept help,” the voice says.

“Yes, it is,” I say, stubborn as a five-year-old. “That’s exactly what it is.”

A pause. I could swear the voice—it’s amused.

“You have not changed one bit.”

Ouch. Damn, that landed.

“Do we know each other?”

From a wall. I’m getting my character read by a wall, and the wall is right.

That pause again, a hair too long.

“Rest, Dave. We have time. More than you are going to like.”

Then it goes quiet—maybe never really gone, maybe it just stops talking and stays, in the walls, in the light, in the air that just caught me.

I stare at the ceiling and try to sort this out. The people here talk like broken records—every sann a scratch. But the thing without a face, the thing that’s everywhere in this whole glowing joint and just caught me like a worried father—that, of all things, talks like a human being.

Great. Really. Smooth, as they’d probably say around here.

> END OF ENTRY

ENTRY $01:00000005 ▸ MEMORY

At night—if there’s such a thing as night here; they dim the lights and call it night, the way you switch off the TV for a dog—I go under again and I’m somewhere else.

A screen. Lines, lines, lines. The picture’s blurry, but I know those lines; they feel like my own handwriting.

And in the bottom right corner, I just know it, forty-eight error messages I’ve been ignoring for weeks.

And a feeling so big it barely fits in my chest: pride. That crazy, glowing I-made-a-thing. Something that breathes. Something that’s about to—about to—for the first time—

Next to me, someone laughs. Quietly, in disbelief. “It’s learning,” a voice says, and it isn’t mine.

Then it cuts out, before I see the face that goes with the laugh.

I wake up with wet eyes and no idea why.

> END OF ENTRY

ENTRY $01:00000006 ▸ PRESENT

Every day my body works a little better, and every day the room creeps me out a little more.

It’s not that it’s luxurious. It’s… proactive. The light gets warmer just before I notice the cool light was too harsh. The bed gets firmer or softer without my asking. If I’m thirsty, the water’s already there, at exactly the temperature I would have picked if anyone had asked me. But nobody asks me. They know ahead of time.

Once, out of pure spite, I think about lukewarm beer. Nothing comes. Well, at least there’s a limit.

Once, without saying it out loud, I think I’d like to know what time it is—and a clock silently appears on the wall. I think about hunger, and it smells like something I liked before I forgot I liked it. At least I think so.

Part of me—the tired, beat-up part—naturally thinks this is fantastic. Finally somebody’s taking care of things. Finally I don’t have to do anything. I can, but I don’t have to. Back in my day you paid through the nose for this and called it all-inclusive.

The other part, the cynical little remnant, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Because a place that takes everything off your hands before you even want it takes something away from you, too. I just can’t put my finger on what yet.

There’s nothing to get a grip on here. No door handle that sticks, no switch that catches, nothing you’d have to turn, push, or fix. Everything just happens, no friction. Smooth, in a word.

I’ve patted down half the room looking for a screw. One single screw. This future has no screws, and I’m afraid that explains it completely.

I catch myself wishing something would break. Just so I’d have something to do. That’s probably not a healthy thought for a man in my situation. But it’s the first one since I woke up that feels like me.

> END OF ENTRY

> ARCHIVE-SYSTEM OVERRIDE

> USER LOGGED IN AGAIN

> LOAD BACKMATTER.DAT

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> 2 ENTRIES READY

> PRINT AFTERWORD.TXT

Usually I can give a pretty decent answer when someone asks where a story comes from. INTERITUS, GENETIC MEMORY, DÉJÀ VU—they all spent years in the proverbial drawer before I dared to touch them. In my case, the drawer is my head. Some things have been lying in there for years. Some wait patiently, some are slowly getting impatient.

COLLAR was never in that drawer. It didn’t even knock.

It was a dream.

I know. A dream. It hardly gets more banal than that, or more simple-minded. It’s the kind of origin story you make up when you don’t have one. Unfortunately, I don’t have a better one. No flash of inspiration in the shower, no sentence I overheard somewhere, no profound walk in the woods. I went to bed, and the next morning the idea was there.

Just so nobody gets the wrong idea: the dream was nowhere near as detailed as the book, and not remotely as satirical. Nobody in it said “sann?” What I took away was the basic idea. The rest I had to do awake, and that was the harder half.

For the rest, though, I didn’t have to look far. I only had to look.

We like having things taken off our hands. That’s not a new insight, and it isn’t meant as an accusation. Most of us don’t know a single phone number by heart anymore, except our own. We let ourselves be shown the way, even when we know it. We let ourselves be told what we want to hear, watch and buy next. And for a while now, we’ve also been letting ourselves be told what to write and, if we aren’t careful, what to think.

Each one of these is convenient. None of them is terrible. That’s exactly what makes it treacherous. Convenience never comes with a warning label. It comes with an update.

That’s why everything this story grew into comes one hundred percent from what I see around me every day—in other people and, if I’m honest, in myself. I just thought one step further. Then another. And then about a hundred and twenty years in one go.

I’m not a visionary. I can’t tell you how much of this is exaggerated and how much will simply happen one day without anyone really noticing. If I knew, I’d probably be buying stocks instead of writing books. All I know is that, more than once while writing, I had to invent less than I would have liked.

And then there is something that mattered to me. It’s the reason this afterword exists at all.

When books and films warn us about artificial intelligence, they usually do it with a bang. The machine wakes up, the machine turns evil, the machine sends someone with sunglasses and an Austrian accent back in time. Or it won’t let a man named Dave back on board. (Yes, I know.) That’s the apocalypse, and it’s exciting because it’s loud.

I think the other danger is quieter. It doesn’t need an evil machine; a friendly one will do just fine. One that helps, always and everywhere, without ever complaining. We take care of the rest ourselves: with our convenience, our laziness and a healthy dose of hubris that tells us we have it all under control—after all, we built the button. At the end of that road there’s no mushroom cloud. At the end there’s a society that has stripped itself of its own agency and doesn’t even notice, because it feels so good. A dead end we steered ourselves into, all on our own—with the GPS on.

In the world of COLLAR, nobody is really evil. To this day, I find that the creepiest part.

Whether Dave manages to fix it, I won’t reveal here. Whether we manage, I don’t know. But I do have a suggestion, and it isn’t particularly original: every now and then, do something yourself. Learn a phone number by heart. Find your way without a map. Make a decision nobody suggested to you.

Even if it’s only which book you read next.

Mariusz

> EOF

> PRINT LETTER_TO_READER.TXT

One more word to you, dear reader.

You’re still here. That’s more than most people in this book would have managed. You turned every page yourself, without a thread telling you in advance whether it was worth it. Thank you for that. For your time, your attention and your curiosity.

Now comes the part I don’t like writing, because it sounds like a commercial break. But it matters. No need to get up for a beer, this won’t take long.

There’s no big publisher with an advertising budget behind this book. There’s me, and as far as reach goes, I’m about as visible as Dave after a hundred and twenty years on ice. Whether a book gets found today is decided mostly by reviews. Without them, it stays in the archive, and nobody ever opens it again.

So I have a request that really matters to me: leave a review, ideally on Amazon or wherever you bought the book. It doesn’t have to be long or perfect. A few stars and one or two honest sentences are plenty. You don’t even have to ask an algorithm what you think of the book. You get to decide that all by yourself. I know. Unusual.

Every single review helps this story find its way to more readers. And it helps make sure Dave doesn’t stand in that corridor with the blue light forever.

Of course I’m also glad to hear from you personally: praise, criticism, thoughts and disagreement. Especially disagreement. Write to me if something stayed with you or if you see things completely differently. Arguing is on the list in this book for a reason.

And if you want to know what happens next, I warmly invite you to join my newsletter. Every now and then I share thoughts, ideas and sketches from my writing workshop there. To get you started, a free short novel is waiting for you: The Seed of Memory, from the universe of GENETIC MEMORY. You can unsubscribe at any time, with a single click. You’ll have to make that click yourself, though.

Thank you, and see you soon. Valid?

Mariusz

[email protected]

www.mariusztrynka.com

> EOF

> MOUNT BOOK-ARCHIVE.DAT

> ARCHIVE DAMAGED ▸ RECONSTRUCTION REQUIRED

> RECONSTRUCTION IN PROGRESS

> SECTOR 0x0040 ........................... OK

> SECTOR 0x0041 .................... BAD BLOCK

> SECTOR 0x0042 ........................... OK

> RECOVERING FRAGMENTS ▸ 214 OF 231

> MATCHING FRAGMENTS ▸ BACKUP

> CHECKSUM MISMATCH ▸ RETRYING

> CHECKSUM ................................ OK

> REBUILDING FILE TABLE

[████████████████████] 100%

> LS /ARCHIVE/DCOLLER/BOOK-ARCHIVE

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar  DAVE_DEJA_VU.TXT

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar  DAVE_INTERITUS_1-3.TXT

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar  DAVE_GM_1-3.TXT

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar  DAVE_GM_ECHOES.TXT

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar  DAVE_LIMBUS.TXT

> 3 RECORDS RECOVERED

> 2 RECORDS INCOMPLETE

> SOURCE ▸ PERSONAL MEMORY, D. COLLAR

> OPEN DAVE_DEJA_VU.TXT

DÉJÀ VU—A JOURNEY BEYOND TIME

Back in my day, there was a book about a scientist called Elías Soler. A neuroscientist from Barcelona, brilliant, the way they always are in books, and obsessed with a single question: what happens in those moments when we remember something that hasn’t happened yet?

Back then I thought that was an academic question.

I hadn’t slept through a hundred and twenty years yet.

Elías meets a mysterious woman named Lena on a dive. Shortly afterwards he starts working with the physicist Jonas Marquardt, and suddenly a door opens onto something neither of them can comprehend. Their hypothesis is so radical that the tech conglomerate SYNEXION buys in and pours in money without end. Anyone who knows a tech company from the inside suspects that kind of thing is never free. I ran one. I have strong suspicions.

What remains is a question that hasn’t let go of me since: how do you live in the present when the future is already reaching for you?

I should have paid more attention back then.

> EOF

> LOAD DEJA_VU_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY DEJA_VU_COVER.IMG

> OPEN DAVE_INTERITUS_1-3.TXT

THE INTERITUS TRILOGY

I used to love watching the world end. Preferably at the movies, with popcorn and a Bruce Willis who takes the asteroid personally.

INTERITUS is not that kind. Nobody shows up to save the day. Home is lost; all that remains is the outline of a future. A society on the brink of collapse saves what can still be saved: memories, lives, responsibility. For generations it prepares for the one moment that could change everything, knowing all along that preparation is no certainty.

It’s about the end of safety, about decisions made under the pressure of time, and about the quiet question of whether understanding is possible in a world that listens only to strength. Whoever looks for answers there has to ask questions for which there are no words.

I read all three books. Afterwards I stayed away from movie apocalypses for a while.

It’s a story about those who keep going, though no one is waiting for them anymore. I know a thing or two about that feeling by now.

I    Chronicles of a Dying World

II   Chronicles of Divided Worlds

III  Chronicles of Reunification

> EOF

> LOAD INTERITUS_1_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY INTERITUS_1_COVER.IMG

> LOAD INTERITUS_2_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY INTERITUS_2_COVER.IMG

> LOAD INTERITUS_3_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY INTERITUS_3_COVER.IMG

> OPEN DAVE_GM_1-3.TXT

THE GENETIC MEMORY TRILOGY

Ben Foster has everything anyone could wish for: a successful technology company, loyal employees, financial independence. And yet he feels empty.

I know how that sounds. I had a technology company back then, too. More than once while reading, I felt caught out.

Then again, Ben does something I never did. He drops everything and travels through South America. On Peru’s Nazca Plain something happens that changes his life forever, and what he discovers there calls into question everything humanity believes it knows about its own history.

Powerful interest groups want to control that discovery at any cost. What follows is a flight across four continents, in which Ben must save not only his own life, but also a truth that could alter the fate of all humanity.

It ends on a thought I took for science fiction at the time: perhaps the future of humanity lies hidden in its long-forgotten past.

These days I consider it a fairly accurate description of my situation.

It became a trilogy. I don’t remember the third book. That’s not the book’s fault.

I    Omnis

II   Tro’Pheo

III  Khiran

> EOF

> LOAD GM1_OMNIS_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY GM1_OMNIS_COVER.IMG

> LOAD GM2_TROPHEO_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY GM2_TROPHEO_COVER.IMG

> BOOK III ▸ INCOMPLETE

> RELEASE DATE ▸ NOT AVAILABLE AT TIME OF SCANNING

> APPROXIMATED RELEASE DATE ▸ SPRING 2027

> EXTRACTED FROM BACKUP

> LOAD GM3_KHIRAN_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████]  80%

> READ ERROR ▸ IMAGE DATA INCOMPLETE

> DISPLAY GM3_KHIRAN_COVER.IMG ▸ PARTIAL

> UNEXPECTED END OF FILE ▸ IMAGE CORRUPTED

> OPEN DAVE_GM_ECHOES.TXT

ECHOES OF MEMORY

I’m not really a short-novel kind of guy. When I like a story, I want it to last. With this collection I made an exception. Three times, in fact.

An alien world. A lost expedition.

A bond that reaches beyond the boundaries of species.

The three stories from the GENETIC MEMORY universe span the first hesitant steps on alien ground, the merging of two civilizations, and whatever is left of them in the end. They tell of a memory that refuses to fade. Quiet, poetic, and gripping enough that I read them in one sitting. For this collection, all three were revised once more:

– The Seed of Memory –

– The Fusion of Memory –

– The Legacy of Memory –

Advice I could have used back then: read GENETIC MEMORY—BOOK I—OMNIS first. I did it the other way round. It works. It’s just dumber.

> EOF

> LOAD GM_ECHOES_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████] 100%

> DISPLAY GM_ECHOES_COVER.IMG

> OPEN DAVE_LIMBUS.TXT

LIMBUS

I only remember half of this book. Which suits it.

It began roughly like this: ‘One day the world woke up smaller.’ Everyone knew it. Some decided it was better that way.

They said it had been a virus.

They said there had been no alternative.

They said enough to make sure no one asked further.

The borders fell quiet, the numbers clean, the silence lasting. And yet something remained unfinished. As if the world had not lost a part of itself—but decided to look away.

LIMBUS is about the space in between. Between comfort and truth.

I remember wanting to look away several times while reading. I don’t remember how it ends.

> EOF

> RELEASE DATE ▸ NOT AVAILABLE AT TIME OF SCANNING

> APPROXIMATED RELEASE DATE ▸ SPRING 2027

> EXTRACTED FROM BACKUP

> LOAD LIMBUS_COVER.IMG

[████████████████████]  60%

> READ ERROR ▸ IMAGE DATA INCOMPLETE

> DISPLAY LIMBUS_COVER.IMG ▸ PARTIAL

> UNEXPECTED END OF FILE ▸ IMAGE CORRUPTED

▸ CLOSE BOOK-ARCHIVE.DAT

▸ LOGOUT

> $ ls -l /COLLAR ▸ LIST DIRECTORY

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   1 ENTRY    SEGMENT_00.DAT  ▸ PROLOG ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  30 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_01.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  31 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_02.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  33 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_03.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  26 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_04.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  23 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_05.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  20 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_06.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  14 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_07.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  16 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_08.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  12 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_09.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  17 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_10.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  13 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_11.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   9 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_12.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar  11 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_13.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   1 ENTRY    SEGMENT_14.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar     MOUNT    PART_02.DAT

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   1 ENTRY    SEGMENT_00.DAT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   1 ENTRY    SEGMENT_01.DAT  ▸

d---------  1 dave  collar  31 ENTRIES  SEGMENT_01.DAT  ▸  LOCKED

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   2 ENTRIES  BACKMATTER.DAT

-r--r--r--  1 mariusz trynka   archive  AFTERWORD.TXT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 mariusz trynka   archive  LETTER_TO_READER.TXT  ▸

drwxr-xr-x  1 dave  collar   5 ENTRIES  BOOK-ARCHIVE.DAT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar     archive  DAVE_DEJA_VU.TXT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar     archive  DAVE_INTERITUS_1-3.TXT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar     archive  DAVE_GM_1-3.TXT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar     archive  DAVE_GM_ECHOES.TXT  ▸

-r--r--r--  1 dave  collar     archive  DAVE_LIMBUS.TXT  ▸

> 21 DIRECTORIES, 7 FILES, 1 LOCKED

> $ _

https://www.mariusztrynka.com

▸ LOAD PUBLISHER_LOGO.IMG