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2200 Blues: Major Update for the New Year

Hello! Here we are, five years and 104 blog posts later! Last week, I finally reached the end of the first draft of 2200 Blues. The whole draft is 161,988 words, typical for an epic length novel in the science fiction/fantasy genres. I’ve handwritten the last chapters, which are far ahead of what is published on my blog. I’ve published the first part of Chapter 58, while I ended at around Chapter 78 (I’ve lost track of the exact order since I omitted a previous Chapter 58 from publication).

This has been a major milestone and marks the first completion of a draft of 2200 Blues. This is officially the first novel I have written. I’ve had this story in my system for years (since the fall of 2019), and I’ve finally reached the end. From the age of 15 to 21, even with a nearly two-year break from this project, 2200 Blues has carried me through a formative writing journey.

I will be pausing the regular weekly publication of 2200 Blues chapters for some time, as I need to take a break from this story before typing up my final handwritten chapters.

However, I would love to thank all of you in my small but loyal audience who have braved the bogged-down, murky, and rambling canyons and far reaches of my early draft. What you’ve seen in my published chapters has been edited mainly for grammar and clarity, without any substantial streamlining. It’s been a long and significant investment for those of you who have committed to reading every single chapter I’ve published.

Firstly, I want to thank Jennifer Boorman, who has been my biggest writing mentor. She took great interest in 2200 Blues back when it had just begun and has provided immense encouragement and constructive feedback from the start. Your mentorship during COVID was an amazing source of meaningful social connection and growth. Most of what I have learned about the mechanics of writing a scene, action, and character interactions has come from our one-on-one feedback loop with each chapter I wrote. I am incredibly lucky to have had a reader and mentor like you in my life, especially at such a young age for me. Your compassion, sharp attention to detail, encouragement, and engagement in my story have been an illuminating and wonderful part of my life.

Secondly, I want to thank the WordPress blogger who goes by the name DirtySciFiBuddha. You’ve been pressing “like” on every single one of my chapter posts all the way back to COVID, when I first started the blog at the age of 16. I appreciate your investment in my story. I encourage everyone to check out his writings on his blog—he has his own novels available for purchase on Amazon. Also, Kent, I’d love it if you left a comment on this post! I’d love to finally hear from my longest and most loyal reader!

The tiny group of regular readers has expanded since I began engaging with the arts scene in Gloucester, Massachusetts, this past year. I want to thank Bing McGilvray for reading all the chapters I’ve posted since resuming publication at the start of this year and for putting me on the radar of other interested Gloucester creatives who’ve joined the readership. Your comments and feedback have been an invaluable source of motivation for me. Check out Bing’s works in the Cape Ann Cosmos, a publication he helps run. Here’s a Cosmos piece about Bing as an artist and a fascinating and witty Cosmos piece he wrote about AI. From our lengthy conversations, I can tell you he has a wonderfully creative and perceptive mind.

Fourthly, I want to send a big thank-you to ANYONE who has read my work on my blog and/or offered me feedback and encouragement. Anyone who has perused my blog has given me motivation. I want to thank Eve Kerrigan and Maryann Ullman, my first creative writing teachers in high school, who provided immense inspiration and practice that got my wheels turning fast enough to roar into the accidental beginnings of 2200 Blues with full confidence. You both gave useful feedback on my early writings and were the first test audience for the name 2200 Blues. I greatly appreciate your contributions to my process and for facilitating spaces at school for me to work on this novel, including Maryann letting me focus on 2200 Blues for an entire trimester-length class. To anyone who has chosen to participate in the readership of what is a very intimidatingly long and winding first draft, thank you.

Lastly, I want to give a big thank-you to Reverend Richard Emmanuel of the experimental church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, for his spiritual musings and the conversations we’ve shared this past year as I got to know him. Your investment in me as a fellow human being on the “walkabout of life,” as you would say, and as a creative, has been invaluable to my relationship with art and the human experience. Together, we’ve explored science fiction, the narrative act, consciousness and the human condition—an exploration that seeped into 2200 Blues as I resumed work on it this past year. I am so grateful to have known you and to call you a friend. May you rest in peace.

What an incredible journey and a final wrap to the year 2024! 2200 Blues has seen me through thick and thin—navigating life and high school during the pandemic, readjusting from post-COVID maladjustment—it has been the lifeline I clung to in order to find purpose, stay on track, or get off the wrong track and onto the right one. Being able to share my work online has been tremendously valuable to me as a writer. It’s gotten me comfortable with sharing my work and exposed me to the vulnerabilities of showcasing incomplete and flawed work. Thus, I’ve become very comfortable seeing through and finishing incomplete and flawed work—the only way to bring creativity to fruition.

Phew! That was a lot, and the list of people to thank could go on endlessly. No creation manifests from a vacuum. The truly hard work for 2200 Blues will commence when I return to the project, with many more drafts to come—surely much harder and more arduous than the first. However, a primary project of this blog was to support the completion of my first novel draft. It’s surreal and indescribably fulfilling to have accomplished that.

A second primary project has been fulfilled by all of you reading this blog post and many more: the sharing and engagement of a story. Storytelling is a cycle, moving from the outside world through the creative act, back into the outside world, and right back into the creative act. Life itself is a creative act, influenced by and influencing many more. The storytelling process and phenomenon is never truly brought to fruition until the story has been shared, only for it to begin again, in countless individuals.

During this weird science fiction story we call the 2020s, you have all helped me to tell my own.

Writing this blog post has been incredibly humbling, enabling me to reflect on just how fortunate I’ve been to engage with and receive support from so many people in so many meaningful ways. You have all made this writer.

The last chapters of 2200 Blues will eventually go up here on the blog, but until then, you can expect different works.

Here’s to 2025! Happy New Year! 🎉 🚀 ✨

Background art made using Dall-E
Early concept art for the lower level of Nickel’s American Eagle hovercraft that I doodled when I was 16

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Short Story – Woodland’s Heart

Please leave a comment for feedback! What you liked or didn’t like is greatly appreciated.

            Out of the whole campsite, it was the log cabin that I hated the most. It reminded me of the reason I was at the campsite in the first place, to do the terrible work my dad wanted me to do. He’d got me like a fish on a hook with promises of— doing just that, fishing and also hiking up the Adirondack. But the dripping carcasses of freshly killed animals inside that cabin was really why I was here. I’d rather do anything than skin those animals, but my old man always said it was what I was meant to do in life.

            I dragged my feet around the trees surrounding the campsite, procrastinating on the work I didn’t want to do. The trees were giants then, protecting me from being seen, creatures I could trust in their stillness as they stood tall and silent out of the endless carpet of dried foliage, frozen snow, twigs and sticks, creating little walls I could hide behind. I wanted to find one big enough to hide me as I ran away, only to return when the sun began to dip as my dad finished the day’s work. After some slow and quiet wandering, I found one, stopping behind a tall oak with a wide waist of bark, tracing the endless ridges in the wood with my eyes as they raced to the sky.

            “Patrick!”

            The boom of his voice made me quiver. It boomed whenever he was irritated with me. I could still hear the fireplace flames licking the air in fluttering motions. There were animals hanging over those flames, and I wasn’t ready to skin them. My chest tightened with anxiety, freezing me. Ever since my mom started chemo, the animals he skinned were his favorite pastime. He was so sure it would make the money he said it would—as long as I helped him, of course. It was his way of guilting me, of punishing me. He hadn’t mentioned it before we came, but I knew he’d bring it up by the end, to twist the knife either way. I didn’t like doing it, he knew I didn’t like doing it— he wanted me to like it, but he’d criticize me regardless.

            Before I could move, something else did, crunching the leaves next to me. Breaking through a clump of drying, dying leaves hanging from the branches of a bush near the oak tree, was a small furry paw. My head buzzed, and I leapt backwards, my feet jostling more leaves than it. As its legs reached out, and dug into the earth, he turned his head around the bush. Peering at me with small beady eyes, he almost looked cute, except for the sharp claws that tore holes in the leaves as his paws sank through the foliage.

            “Patrick!” roared my father. “Don’t make me come there and drag you! You’re old enough to know when you have to work.” The wolf slowly creeped around what was left of the bush. It opened its mouth as if to yawn but bared its sharp fangs at me— like a snake. I wanted to run and run like I was trying to impress the girl I liked in my gym class. But I couldn’t. I was frozen. As long as I stayed still, I could imagine the wolf walking about, a part of the world, like in a game of Pokémon Go, instead of my mind. I heard my dad’s footsteps behind me, a constant thunder, pounding on the earth, breaking the foliage, trampling the snow. His trampling was when I knew for sure I would get hit. Usually, it was down the staircase back in the shack we called home. There weren’t so many trees back there. Hiding in the trees here, I felt like an animal. At school and home, there were so many expectations— how to sit still, who to talk to, who not to talk to, how to play on the baseball field, how to be a good boy. With the trees— and the wolf, I felt like more than just a boy, but free— wild like an animal.

            As I waited for the lightning strike of my dad’s body, I wanted nothing more than the wolf to bite me. I see that a lot clearer now. In the moment, I just wanted to stop slaving away for my dad. I wanted the wolf to jump on me and tear through my skin with its fangs. To hurt so bad that my dad would finally see me. Care for my wounds. Care for me. That as my dad’s footsteps grew louder and his ragged breath more imminent, I’d gasp and collapse to the ground, unable to stand up, a fetal animal in the throes of death or worse, lamentation.

            “You’re still standing there!” my dad grunted. “Turn around and face me! I’ve called you six times now—” The wolf skidded its feet at the sound of my dad, turning around and looking me dead in the eye. “—but you have the nerve to stand with your back to me!” It took a long step forward. It’s happening. The outstretched claws stabbed the leaves, sinking its paw. Dad’s breath was like a snowblower, a spitting exhaust, behind me. I could hear it against the roof of his mouth and the insides of his nostrils. “What in God’s name is into you-”

            The wolf opened its mouth wider, showing me its pale pink gums, the length of its long gray teeth, and snarled a hissing snarl. I remember thinking I’d rather feel them cut into me than whatever it was my dad was going to make me feel, in my body or my mind.

            “Patrick! You lost all your chances!” my dad roared. The wolf’s paw almost disappeared in the leaves. My dad’s footsteps crushed the leaves and sticks behind me, snapping, crunching with no thought. With none of the quiet and gentle of the wolf. The wolf stepped forth with its hind leg, this time wobbling it. The wolf was stuck. It was taking too long to turn around, its hind and front legs stuck together. “Just when I thought you were good for something,” breathed my father.

            The wolf collapsed, shivering on the way down. Instead of jumping on me, it limped around the bush before it fell on a pile of snow. Blood dripped out of its stomach, a pool of red bigger than I’ve ever seen before. Its head crashed, its eyes staring into mine as life escaped them. It went completely still. Its limbs curled up, eyes still staring into mine.

            A painful blow struck the side of my head, burning across my ear and the side of my face. The sound of crashing skin came first. Then my exploding cry. Then the ringing in my ear, louder than everything. The burning grew over the side of my head. My blood rushed to the side and then it rushed up. Cold hard leaves and dirt met the other side of my face, prickling my skin, burning as hot as my dad. I grunted, tasting bits of dirt in my mouth, feeling hot tears grow in my eyes. I blinked them away in a hurry, seeing the top of the dead wolf, me curled over him.

            To this day, I wonder how different a man I’d be if the wolf had bitten me.

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What is 2200 Blues? (Original from 2020-2024)

Image made using Dall-E

In a future earth plagued by technological escapism and excess, a young man named Nickel is torn from a false digital Eden and thrust into a post-nuclear wasteland. Surviving becomes a journey into unexpected cultures, strange magic and dangerous visions.

This blog post was written before I completed the first draft of 2200 Blues. For the most recent update on 2200 Blues, click here!

As an additional note, I will be splitting my completed manuscript into three novels for future rewrites and revisions. I will soon divide the available chapters on this website by their designated book in the 2200 Blues trilogy.

2200 Blues is a science fiction novel in the works. For those jumping in for the first time, Chapter 47 is a good place to start.

I’m sharing my progress on the early drafts by posting chapters online. My chapters are basically the bare ideas and language for my novel. I expect to update and change aspects of the plot, characters and prose as I am working in the early idea incubation process.

I was deep in a world-building phase which is reflected by chapters 24-46. They are of a creation myth belonging to a fictional culture that I have created for my novel. Chapter 23 begins in the setting of my novel where the myth is narrated, before becoming the narrative of the prose itself. Then, in chapter 47, we return to the setting of the novel, where the myth’s narration is finished at the beginning. Chapters 24-46 will most certainty not be in the final version of my book. They are too much of a tangent from my main story. If I am to include the creation myth in the final draft, it will be in a much shorter abridged form.

I anticipate more worldbuilding content, for worldbuilding’s sake, which might not make it into my final draft. This all goes to show that what I am sharing on this website for 2200 Blues is a work in process. I am still discovering the story.

2200 Blues is a large scale science fiction fantasy epic and a coming of age story. Its biggest influences come from the science fiction novels Dune, Ready Player One, The Lord of the Rings, the Blade Runner films and The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. These are among many sci-fi/fantasy stories mixed into my influences.

Here’s a concept sketch of a setting in the story.

Concept sketch of Eagle’s “basement” by G.R. Nanda

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What to Expect

By G.R. Nanda

This blog is a creative outlet. Readers can expect mostly fiction on this website, along with commentaries on fiction of different mediums.

As I’m a part of the sci-fi/fantasy reading audience, that’s the audience I’m writing for. Expect a lot of talk on speculative fiction as well as my own science-fiction and fantasy. As I’ve said on my About page, I love the large scale in fiction and have a great admiration and fascination for world-builders such as Frank Herbert and J.R.R Tolkien and their works. I attribute Star Wars and Harry Potter to infatuating me with the fantastical and futuristic. In my later adolescent years, I fell in love with indie and art house science fiction films such as Blade Runner (1982) and Ex Machina (2014). One of my favorite contemporary film directors is Denis Villenueve who’s responsible for Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, two of the best science fiction films I’ve seen from this century. I think the latter was a fantastic display of creative vision and originality that lives up to the stature and beauty of the original Blade Runner. It’s a sequel that doesn’t pander to nostalgic imagery or retread a film we’ve already seen (*cough, *cough – Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

Given Villenueve’s impressive feat in creating a visually striking and expansive futuristic world in 2049, I am incredibly excited to see how he adapts one of my all time favorites, the sci-fi book Dune by Frank Herbert. My fingers are crossed for a mind-blowing theatrical experience come this December. I really hope this film is not postponed because of the coronavirus! I plan on seeing the movie on its release date if I can and will post a review here.

Expect much to arrive here.

What is 2200 Blues?

↑ Map of the Atalantia Canyons, the setting of the 2200 Blues narrative and book trilogy to come. The Atalantia Canyons are a dried-up expanse of what used to be the Atlantic Ocean.

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

In a future earth plagued by technological escapism and excess, a young man named Nickel is torn from a false digital Eden and thrust into a post-nuclear wasteland. Surviving becomes a journey into unexpected cultures, strange magic and dangerous visions.

Thus enter the tale of 2200 Blues…

2200 Blues is an epic science fiction trilogy of novels in the works. It was originally written as a single epic length novel in the first draft, which was serialized online at the same time that it was being written, one chapter at a time. Every single chapter is the first draft that has only been edited for grammar and clarity. They reflect the exploration of a first draft and my own writing process as a discovery writer who prefers to write first drafts without an outline, allowing me to discover the story as I write it. I had a specific destination for the ending, but I discovered what the journey to it looks like, as I wrote it. Many names and plot elements were retroactively introduced into the story as if they had been there the whole time, even though they were thought of much later in the writing process. 

2200 Blues began in the fall of 2019 when I was 15 years old (going on 16), as a short long-form science fiction serial. However, as the story progressed, it became evident that it was actually a growing novel. After taking a two-year break from 2200 Blues, starting in the fall of 2021, I resumed writing and serializing the first draft in 2024. At the end of that year, I finished the first draft, at the age of 21. By spring of 2025, I had finished serializing my entire manuscript online. 

When I later decided to split my manuscript into 3 books, I organized the original chapters into groups for Books 1, 2 and 3. These groupings of original chapters have become the source material for entire rewrites of the story into 3 self-contained, yet connected, novels. Below, you can find detailed listings of the original chapters, grouped by which Book they belong to as source material and labeled with the year(s) in which they were written. Included are also the total number of original chapters per Book, as well as a synopsis of the events that transpire in them. After that, you can find an image of the 2200 Blues map with tracings of the paths taken by the main character(s) in each of the 3 books, as well as a brief description of their respective journeys and the locations they come across along the way. 

Here, you can find links to:

Any feedback in the comments sections to any of my posts, whether they be chapters, short stories or world-building entries, is greatly appreciated. Criticism helps me grow as a writer!

Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that the following plot synopses are summaries of the plots in the original chapters, but that does not mean that they are the actual or final plots of Books 1, 2 and 3 which are still being rewritten out of this original material.

Book 1: Chapters 1-23 plus Chapter 47  – 24 Chapters –  (2019, 2020, 2021)

Chapter Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 47 (written in 2024) I have omitted chapters 26-46 from this listing as they are all part of an extended creation myth (see creation myth section below).

Initiation. A 16-year-old boy named Nickel crashes his hovercraft into the Atalantia Canyons. Without enough fuel to escape this wasteland, Nickel is forced to venture forth into it. After living in isolated digital escapism for what felt like an eternity inside of his hovercraft, survival forces him to step foot on the earth once again. He meets Steve and Farrul, two survivors who have staked out their own territory on a small piece of land. Nickel learns from them that these canyons are dried up parts of what used to be the Atlantic Ocean (see Ch. 6 for world-building context).

After a wary introduction, the three of them team up to try to escape the Canyons together, by beginning a long journey to the city Hedonim, an Augmented Reality infused city that was once a thriving resort city before a nuclear fallout. This city becomes their best way back to modern civilization. On the way, they encounter an unknown primitive culture descended from crash-land survivors just like Nickel, Steve and Farrul. This culture is called the Thraíha and unbeknownst to the rest of the world, they’ve been an active society for generations. As Nickel and Farrul become initiated as new members of the Thraíha Tribe (see Ch. 21 and 22), they become implicated in their prophecy (see Ch. 19 and Prophecy/Anti-Prophecy).

Book 2: Chapters 48-61  – 14 chapters – (2024)

Chapter Links: 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61

After living with the Thraíha for a couple of months, Nickel has become accustomed to their culture, finding more security in their midst. Nickel, Steve and Farrul’s arrival has triggered talk of a special Thraíha prophecy, of a pilgrimage to the city of Hedonim, returning the Luddite anti-technology Thraíha to the technological future they rejected for generations. And a dreaded band of barbarians known as the Death Riders (I’m changing this name for the rewrite) have been rumoured to be on the move, threatening Thraíha sovereignty.

If all of that wasn’t enough, the leftover glaciers from the Aquatic Age of the Atlantic Ocean have begun melting, promising to flood the entire Thraíha settlement. As the Thraíha are forced to migrate, they become embroiled in conflict over their migration and the future of their culture. Religious debate and theological conflict run amuck, adding confusion to the tribe and paralyzing them from decisiveness and action. Amidst all of this, Nickel is forced to pick a side, or figure out a path he is willing to take alone, to Hedonim, before tragedy or invasion strikes, making it all too late.

Book 3: Chapters 62-73 & an Epilogue – 13 Chapters – (2024)

Chapter Links: 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, Epilogue

On the move after a narrow escape from the Death Riders, Nickel is finally on the move, no longer under Thraíha protection or that of Steve or Farrul. After being rescued by the mysterious Rishi figure, Nickel finds himself traveling alone on foot, discovering what the remnants of the world have become in the wasteland of Atalantia.

As he journeys into Merrix Depot, a seedy mercantile station of underground operations, he encounters troubling signs of the very religious tyranny embraced by the Death Riders, on the rise as a fateful global election looms in the near future. As Nickel gets ever closer and closer to the city of Hedonim, previously unknown forces make themselves known, convulsing on the Eastern reaches of Atalantia for the future of Hedonim and the human species. As Nickel travels alone, he must reckon with these forces. Meanwhile the Thraíha have split apart, and Steve and Farrul travel amongst them, everyone doomed to a fateful showdown before Hedonim, the City at the End of the World.

Thraíha Creation Myth Novella: Chapters 23 – 47 & an Interlude – 26 chapters  (2020, 2021, 2024)

Chapter Links: 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, Interlude, 46 (written 2024), 47 (written 2024)

These are all of the chapters comprising the Thraíha creation myth centering their god, Father Hawk. The first chapter, Chapter 24, begins in the main story, during Nickel and Farrul’s Thraíha initiation rite, in which Father Hawk’s story is narrated by a Thraíha elder. After that, the scenes exist within the creation myth. It is only at Chapter 47 that the story returns to the main narrative, back at the Thraíha settlement where Nickel and Farrul’s initiation rite is concluded. 

As a hunting culture, the Thraíha have come to revere the hawk because it is a main staple of their diet. The hawk has taken on a holy stature to the Thraíha who view the animal as guiding their hunts as well as their lives. The Thraíha are descended from survivors of hovercraft crashes in the Atalantia Canyons. These people were few at first, struggling to survive in a hostile wasteland with limited technology. They had lived their whole lives following digital interfaces, until they were led by those technologies into a land devoid of any functioning modern tech. Finding survivor after survivor, they grew in numbers, eventually creating a new culture called the Thraíha. In order to accept their world, they rejected their past and projected future as it lay in the Past World of science and technology. A Luddite culture grew, and with it a new cosmology of the universe and of human history, in alignment with the Word of Father Hawk.

Below is a version of the Atalantia Map with color-coded arrows showing Nickel’s journey across this setting throughout the original source material for Books 1, 2 and 3 of the 2200 Blues trilogy. 

Book 1 (blue arrow) begins at “Nickel’s Hovercraft Crash Site” towards the bottom left of the map. Book 1 ends at the “Thraíha Settlement” towards the top left half of the map. 

Book 2 (yellow arrow) material largely takes place in the Thraíha settlement, until Nickel finds his way to Merrix Depot. 

Book 3 (red arrow) begins with Nickel arriving in Merrix Depot where much of the story takes place, before Nickel travels outside of the map, ending with him making his way to Hedonim through The Windings, a mysterious mountain range at the edge of the Atalantia Canyons.

© G.R. Nanda and http://www.grnanda.com, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Links to this website may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to G.R. Nanda and grnanda.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. When sharing my work, please attribute it to [G.R. Nanda] and provide a link to [https://grnanda.com/].

Barter your Future – a 2200 Blues Short Story (Third Draft)

Image made using Dall-E
Image made using Dall-E

This is a non-canon 2200 Blues short story, meaning that even though it takes place in the 2200 Blues universe and involves characters from the 2200 Blues novel manuscript, this story is not part of the definite canon or timeline of events that the manuscript belongs to.

This story takes place prior to the events of the manuscript, and reflects new and evolving world-building from my current rewriting of the manuscript as a trilogy. Further revised, this story may become canon in the future.

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

I roam where the traders go, cursed to wander lands raped by the hubris of ancestors long gone. I go where the traders go, to the blasted winds of Atalantia, the land where men go to die. The long silent night of the soul, uncharted by language and science. I know there’s something waiting for me in the orange fog and the blasted canyons of orange fog and radiation. Something to scavenge, something to make my own. Something to claim amidst the rubble of a power plant and people to call my own.

Atalantia. Orange. Blight. Radiation. Cursed.

Words flit across the bright sheen of my Heads-Up Display, a screen attempting to map the unmappable. My exosuit weighs down my every move, made worse by the screaming gusts of the Blast Zone where countless individuals lost their lives and countless more fled to escape the orange blight of radiation unleashed by the power plant accidents. Only to be replaced by ghosts of humanity’s past, haunting the forbidden city of Hedonim, and more haunting the world below this cliff.

Amusement Park. Orange. Blight. Radiation. Cursed.

The same words from my data files flitted across my HUD like a never-ending news bulletin, never to solve my problems or make sense of the humanity I was struggling to find. The so called Atalantia Archive turned out to be bust. No one had gotten far enough, and the ones who did never made it out, until three months ago.

Where is everyone? I wondered. Only the screaming gusts of wind responded to me. There were people here who could barter with me, join the Free Commerce Guild, make me richer than I could imagine. The edge of the cliff neared me, a brown crust of rock jutting out into the rapids of orange air. Seeing the edge of the cliff suddenly made the whole venture more fearful than it had been since starting out. Alone from the rest of the world, I thought I’d escaped his fears of insufficiency of the disgust he felt so sure he caused in others simply by being me. Somehow, seeing the edge of the cliff and the obscured world beyond made me feel more alone. I balled his fists. Noone would cross me again. I was a Freemason and I would not be made to feel diminished for it again.

Oceanic remnants. Skeletal DNA. Toxic fauna.

The HUD never let up, playing the same garbled language that told him nothing about how to find the survivors in these canyons.

Clanging noises emanated from behind. Surely it was bits of corrugated metal that he’s seen flying around the air. The seemingly indestructible material used to build these power plants over a century ago were now caught in a whirlwind of a vortex, its remnants spinning around in a parody of indestructible industry, now caught in the vortex of the hellish climate it created.

It was only as I was coming down the very bottom of the Haravan cliff, on the very outskirts of the Blast Zone, where the winds had died down, as the sound of my breathing and the crunching of pebbles and rock on the clifface filled my ears, that I heard a high-pitched twang that sounded alarmingly like a human voice. Pulling out the gun from my belt, I jogged down so fast, adrenaline searing my mind and body, that I tripped over a rock and tumbled down the rest of the cliffside. I bounced and careened off of boulders and mounds of stiff sand embedded into the cliffside, forming the stairs that brought me cascading to the very bottom, where my head plummeted against rock, cracking the screen of my HUD, and the dark nozzle of a gun met my face.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” roared a man I couldn’t see. But the end of his gun hovered over my cracked HUD screen.

Too soon. I had betrayed myself too soon.

“Aaaaaaaghhh……,” I moaned feebly. I’d run into another human sooner than I’d thought. And he was one step ahead of me.

“YOU BETTER ANSWER ME IN TWO SECONDS OR I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF,” the old man roared. The inside of my HUD flickered.

“Aaaaaaagh, wait!” I wailed. “My face hurts!”

“Shoot him!” cried a boyish voice from afar.

“Shut up!” the old man roared, his voice sounding farther as he turned aside to scream at the boy.

“You said two seconds 10 seconds ago!” cried the boy.

“My name is Gyrill!” I exclaimed, flicking my palms up from the ground to show them holding nothing. “I come in peace!”

“Who sent you?” the old man screamed. “The Varvens? The Blood Brothers?” The nozzle of the gun shook in front of me with the violent movements of the old man.

“He’s not a customer!” said the boy.

“I am a customeraaaaiiI am!” I shouted over the noise. The two of them grew silent. The old man finally gave a big chuckle and the nozzle of the gun disappeared from my glitching HUD.

“Then why didn’t you say so, brother?” the old man said in a lower, cackling voice. Stupefied, I said nothing.

“I-uh-ah,” I stammered, “-I wanted to…..”

“Relax,” the old man said, his voice growing fainter alongside the sound of his footsteps crunching against pebbles, “Farrul get him up.” Farrul, the boy grabbed my arms and pulled me up. I got on my knees and slowly pushed up on my legs. As I stood up, Farrul helping me up by the arm, he swiftly reached into the holster at my belt. Finding nothing, he skidded away to my right, grabbing the gun that I had dropped from my hands when I had fallen down the cliffside. I finished standing up, finding the old man standing father away in front of me, still aiming his gun, an oblong mechanical looking brown laser rifle, at me. Despite his demeanor, he wore a wide smile that stretched through his flowing gray beard and the seams of his old face. The orange haze was thinner below the cliff, and I could see the old man quite clearly. He gazed at me with wild wide eyes hanging below furry eyebrows. An even furrier mane of gray hair swept down from his head, over his shoulders and his stained coat whose flaps fluttered at his legs in the wind.

“Easy there fella,” he said, “let’s talk business and get you straight, then you’ll get your gun back. The name’s Steve.” My entire HUD screen started to flash bright red.

“I need to take off my helmet,” I said, hesitating to make any sudden movements without letting him know.

“Sure thing, boss,” Steve said. I reached up for the pressure valves on my helmet, pressing them and releasing the helmet from my head, I pulled it off. The orange was much brighter and much starker with the helmet off. Behind Steve was a flagpole to the side of which were clusters of boulders, stretching on towards the horizon on both sides. Farrul, a frail adolescent boy in tan rags hung by Steve’s side, eyeing me fearfully. I could see the contours of the orange fog’s thickness, wavering above our heads.

“Where am I?” I asked. “Is that a flagpole?”

“Slow your horses, I’m still the one asking questions here,” Steve said. “What do you want to buy and how did you hear about us?” Steve wiggled his gun to the side and Farrul immediately walked back around the way he came, moving behind me.

“I want to buy hovercraft parts,” I said. Steve frowned and Farrul scoffed from behind him. Steve raised his gun slightly higher towards my chest.

“Hovercraft parts?” he said. “Where do you think this is? New Amsterdam?”

“New Amsterdam doesn’t exist anymore…..,” I said. How long had these people been stuck in these canyons, isolated from the rest of the world?

“And neither do hovercraft parts, sir,” Steve said, his voice suddenly hardening again. “You’re out beyond the Radial Drift. Only land vehicles here. You’re hundreds of miles from the Coriolis Storms that bring in the hovercrafts—speaking of, how did you get here anyways? You don’t look like you’re from the Caravan—”

“I’d prefer to keep that to myself,” I said. It was time I started conversating with him on my terms for once.

“Close to the chest,” Steve muttered, nodding his head, his gun shaking with the movement. “I respect it…but that’s also why I can’t fully trust you, you know.”

“Well maybe if you tell me what flag flies— or used to fly on that flagpole, we’ll both know if we can trust each other,” I said. Steve only chuckled, his gun shaking even more with the movement. His chuckle was a dry peal of laughter, a hollow cold cackle that trailed into a bitter grunt.

“Flags don’t mean much to me these days,” Steve croaked, his expression hardening with his voice, “….it’s only the Ether Realms that decide who’s who.”

“The Ether Realms?   That’s a myth-“

“You think so?” Steve asked, his frown deepening and his hold on his gun becoming firmer. “For as long as I can remember the tech lords draw the lines that really matter.”

“Nation States like the U.R. control the Intersphere, not the other way around,” I said. Now was a good time to cut to the chase, assert my jurisdiction over him. “I work for the FCG. Our jurisdiction is more legitimate than whatever tribal boundries people make in the digital world. If you’re from the U.R., I can get you a FCG contract and get you out of here-“

“Ahhhh, so that’s why you’re here?”

I pursed my lips, struggling to find a proper response. These weren’t the desperate survivors I was promised. It seemed the only thing that could buy their favor was a hovercraft, which was not in my possession.

“You want to put a U.R. flag up there and buy me out, huh?” Steve muttered.

“I can get you out of here,” I said.

“There’s no getting out of here,” Steve said.

“I came aboard an aircraft,” I responded flatly.

“And the storm’s eaten it up already if you came from over Haravan Cliff,” Steve said.

“What, how would you—” I started, before putting my helmet on to see for myself. The screen buffered and glitched, even more unresponsive and malfunctioning than before. I whispered voice commands under my breath, trying to make contact with my air carrier. Nothing. I felt like ice plunged through my chest and stomach. Until—or if I made it back, I was just as stranded in the Atalantia Canyons as Steve and Farrul.

“This flagpole used to belong to you,” Steve rumbled in a low voice, dropping his arms below his neck so his gun wouldn’t conceal his face. “Used to fly United Republic. Flag’s been up there since before you were born. You wanna know why I tore it down? It’s cuz the U.R. forgot about me back when it just the Divided States of America.”

“I belong to the United Republic, and so does that flag,” Steve continued, “but the United Republic forgot about us.”

Steve was the only solid object against the flickering glitches in my HUD, now so volatile and incoherent that I only saw words and symbols flashing into incoherent blurs of light, against which was the dull image of a hurt and angry old man. I had nothing else to say. I had gotten nowhere with him. If this was all that was left of this survivor, then I might as well try to head back to home base or try to find a survivor who was siloed into a digital realm that actually supported the United Republic.

“Come back if you want some land parts or motorwares, I got em,” Steve said as I walked back to the base of the cliffside. “But don’t come back looking to sell me out for a country that only exists in the digital Intersphere.”

The Slime – a 2200 Blues Short Story (Third Draft)

Image made using Dall-E
Image made using Dall-E

This is a non-canon 2200 Blues short story, meaning that even though it takes place in the 2200 Blues universe, this story is not part of the definite canon or timeline of events that the manuscript belongs to.

This story takes place outside of the scope of the 2200 Blues manuscript, featuring characters and a setting that aren’t shown in the original novel chapters. This story reflects new and evolving world-building from my current rewriting of the manuscript as a trilogy. Once further revised, this story may become canon in the future.

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

God save me from this world. Broken. Corrugated. Everything feels like a slime that never lets up. Unrelenting. A slime of feelings, memories I can’t shake off. Of the screens of the virtual work I hate. Coating the world outside, keeping me afraid of it, keeping others away from me and me away from others. There’s silence when I walk outside, a silence that eats at my soul, a slime that keeps reminding me that the world will never go back to normal, that people will never understand how I feel. The slime of the same four walls that make up my life and the entirety of my world. A slime of my mother that I’m stuck with, who will never understand me.

The slime is everywhere. It’s in the people keeping me cooped up. The people who have been telling me what to do before I even existed. I can’t trust this slime. It’s everywhere.

They’re taking the truth from us. They’re stealing it. I’m the only one I know who’s looked for it, who’s seen what there is to be seen. Who’s grabbed onto the truth and kept searching.

I’m not prepared for the outside world. I can’t survive it. Not alone. These articles I read, podcasts I listen to, the very truth itself that I’ve uncovered. It’s my only armor of defense in this godforsaken world that I’ve found myself in. It’s my only armor against the slime.

“We have an hour to go until the blood transfusion.”

The fluorescent lights glare into my eyes. It’s like being at the dentist’s office, only it’s really nothing like the dentist’s office. The cold metal of the handholds holding me down to the hard rubber of the patient table is like metal bands wrapped tightly around my biceps, my wrists, and my ankles. I feel the desire to writhe in the deep discomfort that I feel, to scream at the surgeons and the stand-by robot to rip off the manacles from my body. But I keep thinking of the slime, of the childless cat ladies who told me I was bad for being a man, of the liberal deep state that kept me locked up, and most of all, of my mom for letting all of them get to me, brainwash me, psychologically abuse me for all these years. I think of the slime and of the union I will find with the truth I have uncovered in the Intersphere after this procedure is over. After I have reclaimed my freedom. In the Intersphere. In my brain. Forever.

“When you wake up, you’ll feel a heat in the back of your head.”

The lead surgeon leaned over the table to stare straight into my eyes, blotting out the fluorescent lights like a cloud passing over the sun before it burned me alive. He wore neurolaced lenses embedded into his face, already a man elevated by machines. The lenses were strapped into his face on a band that stretched around his head, the small green visors just barely protruding from his eyes. His pale skin was stretched out like seams from his eyes, drooping over his face.

“That’s the transmission adapter,” the doctor said, tapping the back of the metal cranium plate fitted to my scalp. “It’s fused the micro battery and the wireless adapter together so that it’ll be self-charging throughout the day.” He used a fine-tooth scalpel to sift through the micro-wires hooked up to the back of the head plate. I felt it as an array of gentle prickling vibrations rippling over the back of my head. “That’s why it’ll be so hot.” The vibrations tickled me, sending shivers down my spine. “Once we’ve configured the wireless transmission, the adapter will be powered by your brain activity as well as the wireless Intersphere data wafer.”

I squirmed in my seat, wanting to release the shuddering shivers and crimping feelings lacing my whole body, only finding myself writhing gently against the ironclad hold of the manacles. “Your brain activity and the Intersphere Realm activity will keep this powered.” He tapped at the back of the cranium with his tool, causing my head to crimp under the clanging weight that echoed around my skull.

“Your very thought and the thoughts of your comrades will power this device, will power the enlightenment you, me, and all of your brothers want to see in the world,” the doctor said, leaning over the side of my head and whispering in my ear. Outside of my peripheral vision, he twisted knobs that were connected to my cranium cap, and I felt a pressure cinch my head that was both numbing and painful in its compression. The sensations drifted around my skullcap. Shivers continued to lace throughout my body, and my writhing became more spasmodic.

My hips lurched upward on the table, slamming my shins against the restraints holding my legs down. But the feelings grew remote. A soft lulling bobbed up against my awareness, even as the pain shooting through my body weighed me down. But it was worth it. I was willing to put myself through this pain if it meant that the slime could never touch me again.

………….

“Test subject has awakened.” The world was a blur. I couldn’t tell if I was awake or still drugged. I kept blacking out and reawakening in between bouts of blurry lights, the hazy auras of objects wavering before my eyes and disappearing as soon as they appeared. “Test subject has awakened.” My mouth opened, stretching its dried seams and insides. I felt like I hadn’t drank any liquids in a long time.

“Test subject has awakened.” The voice was exactly the same. It wasn’t the doctor. It was the robotic surgeon tool. But it only spoke every now and then, to announce a new phase of the operation. It wasn’t supposed to speak; it was a tool used by the surgeon. “Test subject has awakened.” As the brightness of the world and its colors and shapes expanded, I gritted my teeth, frowning and bulging my eyeballs outward in a push to widen my eyes and keep them open. A glaring white screen caught my eyes, but a deafening roar from the inside of my temples clogged my ears, and the screen’s light split in two. A splitting headache cracked through my skull, splitting apart my world. Everything buzzed and the world turned red. Even the voice of the robotic surgeon assistant faded against the voices in my mind, the voice—of my mind. Everything I had been told to resist, to banish from the public sphere of thought and speech, everything I was taught I couldn’t say to people—do to people. It was all real. The manifestos of my Ether Realm soared through my mind, its ideas—calls to action like adrenaline searing through my body and exhilarating my mind.

Finally. I lifted my limbs from the table and clambered off its surface. I flexed my arms to the side and roared at the ceiling of fluorescent lights in exaltation.

Anti-Prophecy & Prophecy – 2200 Blues Universe

Image made using Dall-E
Image made using Dall-E

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

Anti-prophecy

In the future, the apparatus of the collective digital world will become a singular centralized apparatus. Through the use of mobile technological mediation, human beings and the technology they use will become nodes in an evolved version of the internet called the Intersphere where the lines between user and human animal are blurred. The Intersphere will become a new savannah or origin point for human evolution and the collective body of ruling Technocrats, the new God-Kings of the world. The Intersphere will come to transcend previous nations, states and political boundaries, creating new cultures out of algorithmically curated feedback loops. Digital echo chambers gradually erode and transcend the identities and borders of physical societies, in a grand plan to replace them with entirely digital societies called Ether Realms, the next evolution of the Intersphere. From the two-dimensional internet, to the three-dimensional Intersphere to the ontologically real four-dimensional Ether Realms, the digital world will become the real world and remake the Technocrats from mere men to the Gods who designed an eternal millennium of human evolution.

            Prophecy (translated from internally contested Thraíha records)

            In the ruins of the Past World, corrupted by the sins of human hubris, the Thraíha shall heal the world in the image of Great Father Hawk who undertook a cosmic journey to save Mother Hawk and her unborn child— humankind, and in doing so repent for his sins of folly and hubris. Just as Father Hawk, the Thraíha strive to heal their earth from the wounds of Past World hubris and folly, inflicted by human ancestors. 

            When the Thraíha have done their work of healing, a human shall emerge from the Past World to visit upon the Thraíha and be redeemed from Past World sin. His presence will carry the signs of a pilgrimage to the place called Hedonim, beckoning Thraíha pilgrims to journey with him to reunite Thraíha and the Past World, completing the healing of humankind.

Thraíha Language + Writing Artifact

Thraíha document retrieved from Atalantian cavern excavation.

TRANSCRIPTION: Thraíha kff Vramung háh

TRANSLATION: Thraíha have Cast-Out-Spirit exiled.

This document, retrieved from a Novum Core excavation in an Atalantian cavern, contains writing in the Thraíha language. The Thraíha writer has labeled an unwanted outsider as “Vramung,” which translates to “The-Cast-Out-Spirit.” After interviewing Thraíha tribespeople, Novum’s reconnaissance team has reason to believe that the “cast out spirit” is actually a human outsider to the Thraíha Tribe whom the Thraíha have stigmatized as having a corrupting soul, or spirit. Contact with such a “cast out spirit” is a strong taboo among many Thraíha.

Thraíha

PRONUNCIATION:

Thraa-iíi-haaah

THRAÍHA ALPHABET

CONSONANTS

VOWELS

Click here to see additional information about the Thraíha language and learn more about its origins!

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

2200 Blues Chapter One – Excerpt

Image made using Dall-E
Image made using Dall-E

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

The following is the most polished version of the first chapter in 2200 Blues, revised after the completion of my full manuscript:

A blanket of orange emerged from the atmosphere. The purple sky, its red clouds, and setting evening sun began to disappear from Nickel’s view. Orange gas flowed over the window through which he was looking, in floating particles and coalescing clumps. Where the sun was, a ball of red could be seen against the screen of gas, still burning into sight. But slowly, the frenzied gas took over, thickening around Nickel’s descending American Eagle hovercraft, and the fiery halo of light dimmed, decreased, and eventually went out. 

All was orange. Nickel could still see clumps and particles floating around like snowflakes. The white outline of the spatial calibration map glowed from the navigational monitor situated on the dashboard in front of Nickel. On the right side, two vertical lines illustrated the scaled depths of the atmosphere. In between them a triangular pin prick was lowering, its tip pointing downwards. Once it reached the base it stopped. But Nickel knew that the Eagle was still descending. He could hear the engine rumbling under his feet, and the triangle was still pointing downwards from its tip. Nickel realized that the map had reached its limit. Wherever the ship was going, it was a place outside of the map’s knowledge. 

He frantically swiveled around in his chair, surveying the circular control room of the Eagle. The monitor in front of his chair stretched around the walls of the hovercraft. He could see that screens were flickering. The lights embedded in the domed ceiling turned on and off. There were leisure-decks in the middle of the room. Chairs behind them shuddered. The monitors hanging from the wall shook.

The force of the descent pounded against the walls, and roared. All the screens and lights turned off. Nickel turned around, grabbed the nylon seat belt from under his seat and strapped it across his lap. The orange light of the gas outside cast itself into the room in a murky swath. 

Nickel waited. He sat solemnly and tense, waiting for the verdict. For his fate. For the longest time in forever, he’d felt in control of his life; the Eagle was his life. As long as he could pilot and maneuver the Eagle; as long as it was functioning, Nickel was on top of the world because he and his hovercraft actually were on top of the world. 

Nickel squeezed his eyes shut. A buzz of panic swarmed his head. The insides of his eyelids changed colors, responding to the shifting brightness of the gasses outside. A feeling of utter despair sank into his chest. He felt water collect at his eyes. He couldn’t cry. He was an adult; a 16 year old man; a whole grown man. A drop of tear escaped his eyelids and streamed down his cheek. It was joined by another from the next eye. He opened his eyes, letting the water flow. The dam of artificial security had fallen apart, letting a river of pampered adolescent anguish flow. Born into the Third Ether Realm, Nickel had been plugged into its virtual infographics of the world since the age of twelve. Disconnected from the Ether Realms, Nickel could only imagine what ghoulish technologies and unknowns awaited him outside. A screen to Nickel’s far left suddenly glowed and displayed a blinking warning sign. But in seconds it went black. Nickel pulled his head with his arms and stayed as still as he could. His eyelids were now dark. 

The bottom of the ship grated against a surface. The floor rumbled. From below came a long piercing sound that hurt his eardrums. Nickel remained crouched. The grating ceased, but it reverberated in his mind. The Eagle gave a few more sporadic clanks as it settled itself on a seemingly precipitous terrain, moving around and thudding. Nickel opened his eyes and looked up at the world beyond his glass window. Still nothing but orange gas. A groaning came out of the back of the ship. Nickel shut his eyes, pressed his body against his chair and clenched its handles, bracing for the next series of impacts. There was no series of impacts. The groaning died, and all Nickel could hear was the eerie howling of the windy, gaseous atmosphere. He was breathing heavily. He opened his eyes again seeing nothing but a mellow orange outside; an atmosphere moving past the Eagle faster than Nickel was used to. Usually, it was him zooming past the world in his shell of a hovercraft. Not the other way around. The screens and monitors flickered to life, casting the green aura that signified no contact with the Ether Realms. The green shorted out to primary navigational systems. The technical functions were back, but the hovercraft was no longer online. Nickel felt too numb and helpless to take any course of action. He inhaled deeply. Do something. You can’t be still. Use the Eagle! You have a glibbing hovercraft! You stupid glibb! Just use it! With a tap and a flick of his hand, he summoned up a live fuel analysis on the piloting screen in front of him. The ship had so far used up over half of its ionized fuel resisting the forceful descent through this atmosphere. Nickel closed his eyes in frustration. Jesus glibbing CHRIST! Keep MOVING! Nickel opened his eyes and chose a power savings option. The entire ship was now expending 15% less fuel and electricity than usual. 

You can read the rest of the original Chapter One by clicking here!

Paperback Sci-Fi

A sweat-stained coolness clings to the velvety paperback expanse,

covered by a somber, questing night-sky,

years of perspiring excitement smudged over a humid cover,

peeling with curled-over edges,

whipped by riptides of passion,

the lone figure

depicted amidst waves of dunes

harkening back

to the clacking keys of a typewriter

stained by perspiration

in the raging summer of the 60s’,

unraveling in a boy

sunk deep into a beanbag,

keeping warm in the wintry chill of 2019,

as a promise teased over the cover—

“soon to be a major motion picture”

—unleashes a fire that keeps him warm

in the darkest depths of a pandemic winter

and the harshest storms of adolescence,

a mythology unleashed

amidst flickers of the news,

wars,

and environmental collapse

crystallized in the pages of a genius futurist,

the self and body transcended through space and time

by a young man stranded, both on the page and in front of it,

the sunset of the future made clear

through the thickets of time and space,

transmuting across years,

to artificial humans

in existential terror

aglow on the silver screen

lit by the flames of a beacon

burning divination

in a boy,

swimming in the currents of genre,

illuminated by those before him,

he finds a new footing,

with pen and paper,

creating his own world,

scribbling away

the heart of a sixteen-year-old,

found in the cracked spine,

worn with creased lines,

and split down the middle

by adolescent thrill.

to Frank Herbert who lit the embers

and Denis Villeneuve who lit the beacon,

Thank You Very Much,

I offer my gratitude, forever,

G.R. Nanda

2200 Blues Epilogue

TWO MONTHS LATER

______________________________

____________________

_______

“This cave dwelling will protect us from the phantoms for some time,” Venkar intoned.

A lone candle separated the two of them, illuminating the dark interior of the cave. A slow dripping echoed from the far recesses, but all was so silent that Nickel felt he could hear the very flickering of the thin candle. Or perhaps it was just his mind supplanting noise onto the silence.

Nickel scoffed in exasperation. “I’m too distracted!” he complained.

“You attach yourself to your thoughts,” Venkar said.

“What do you mean?” Nickel shouted in frustration. “I want to focus, but I—”

“That’s where you must stop,” Venkar interrupted.

“Stop focusing?”

“Stop wanting to focus,” Venkar said. “Just let it be.”

Nickel opened his eyes and sighed. “When I was in my hovercraft, I felt my focus was being pulled every which way by all the screens I was surrounded with.”

“Then how will you be ready for Hedonim?” Venkar asked.

Nickel started to respond but closed his mouth, sighing. He wanted to ask, How will I be?

“Your spiritual training begins with your attention. The Thraíha have given you a strong foundation in will. Now you must recognize that it is not the screens identifying with your mind, but your mind identifying with them.”

“But the Ether is designed to—”

“Of course it is,” Venkar said. “But all phenomena begin as subtle vibrations that manifest as gross thoughts of the mind. Let go of the desire. Become the background space against which all things flow, mere waves in the ocean of consciousness.”

“Focus on the breath and let all pass as ephemeral,” Venkar continued. “Go outside.”

“What?”

“Go outside the cave,” he said. “Go to the other end.”

“Why?”

“Practice,” Venkar said.

“Venkar,” Nickel said, “I can only spend so much time practicing. We have to get to Hedonim!”

“If only we observe the present, appreciate all that is there, we see we have all the tools within us. I may tell you of them, but you must recognize them in yourself.”

Nickel stared at him.

“Go,” Venkar said.

Nickel suppressed a sigh. “Okay,” he said, standing up and walking past Venkar.

He made his way through the narrow passages of jagged rock, struggling to fit between them. The deeper he went, cramping his shoulders and bowing his head to pass, the brighter the cavern became. Inlets of blue light flickered through the cavern walls, illuminating droplets of water beading and falling from the ceiling.

A strange clacking noise echoed, growing louder, merging with a distant roaring sound—like a waterfall, but something else entirely.

What did Venkar want me to see? Nickel winced as he hit his head against a protruding boulder wedged into the roof. A phantom? Nickel staggered to a halt. The moment he froze, vertigo swept through him, pulling him forward through the cavern. His vision blurred, and he stumbled through the rest of the passage.

The blue light outside grew brighter, coating the rock walls in a glowing luminescence, seeping into their crevices like liquid. The roaring sound became deafening.

Nickel smacked into the cave wall, his entire body jolting from the impact. The vertigo was unstoppable, yanking every fiber of his being toward the cave’s exit. His feet scrambled beneath him, unable to resist the force, until he stumbled out of the cave entrance, crashing to his knees before the gargantuan, glowing skyscrapers of Hedonim.

Nickel wailed in horror, his hands trembling, wanting to cover his eyes but finding himself unable to. He was back in the hovercraft, but worse. Instead of falling out of the Ether into the canyons, he felt like he was falling out of the canyons into the Ether—like never before.

Nickel gasped, his body frozen in place. The city rose before him, a glowing dam of artifice, a wall of towering constructions shaped in oblong, curving, spiraling, and rectangular forms. They emerged from massive block-like structures where ghostly phantoms of human beings—avatars of the unseen, undying emblems of digital entertainment, of hedonism—frolicked endlessly, uniform and spawning without end, like a hive of ants creeping from the ground.

Holograms and holograms galore. The physical merged with the digital. The digital became physical. All in one. An endless digital sphere, threatening to subsume and consume reality—to become reality. Nickel whimpered, unable to take control of his body. He felt eternally cursed to a life where the digital Ether was so alluring it would always subsume his existence, becoming the only reality—while reality itself, with its myriad burdens, traumas, and misgivings, lurked to haunt him. How could he withhold the Ether from that?

A giant holographic statue was projected atop a skyscraper rooftop, held in place by a field of lasers encircling the base. It was of a nude woman, with dark, empty eyes, languishing over a city Nickel feared and desired all at once.

The sight began to pulse, sending rays of light into the sky. The city was an entity giving birth to pleasure and allure over and over again. It could swallow him whole at any moment. The images of the buildings and lights began to flicker and pulsate, growing larger in size and hazier—just as they had in Nickel’s visions of the singing sorceress. But was this a vision? Or was it the light effects of the city itself making the buildings flicker and pulsate?

Nickel moaned but bit down on his lip. He closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply. Cool air tickled the insides of his nostrils. Warm air blew out. Icicles grew, freezing along the caverns of his nose. A rising sun melted them in a hot bath.

Hedonim. City. My life. Mom. Dad. Bullies. Regret. Mistakes. Kythria.

Breathe in.

Steve’s gone.

Breathe out.

I might never see Farrul again.

Breathe in.

Did I screw up our friendship?

Breathe out.

Will I make it through Hedonim?

Breathe in.

I feel better.

Breathe out.

I’m okay.

Breathe in.

Nickel opened his eyes, feeling that the churning of his mind was quieter than before. His thoughts were mere flashes against the sun of his mind. And Hedonim was no longer ebbing as it had been before, made stiller by his meditation. He closed his eyes again.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

THE END OF

2200 BLUES

to be continued in Book Two

2200 Blues Chapter 73

Image made using Dall-E
Image made using Dall-E

2200 Blues © 2026 by G.R. Nanda. All rights reserved.

Steve’s funeral was a long affair. When Nickel met the Thraíha again by the rock island where the row men had sailed him, they had prepared a long tribunal and death ceremony for him. His body had been recovered and brought inside their wooden tribunal. The Thraíha hadn’t been on this island in over a century, but it had remained their ancestral burial ground.

“Raised from the Past World,” intoned Akela, standing at the berth of the funeral circle surrounding Steve’s casket, “and passed through the Huntsman’s eternal journey, the man known as Steve has returned to the stars, having lived a journey jeweled by the touch of the constellations of life whence he came.”

Nickel stood in tribal Thraíha attire, adorned with ceremonial hawk feathers encircling his neck as a necklace, marking his torso. He stood, somber and reflective, listening attentively, alongside everyone else standing in the circle surrounding the funeral pyre space.

Having finished his speech, Akela stepped into the circle, ushering women in ceremonial tan gowns, their heads covered by hoods. They moved toward Steve’s casket, carrying it in a slow procession to lay it afloat on the currents of the Rinkwik River.

_______________________________________

__________________________

___________

A day later, the Thraíha resumed their long march away from the landmass of their ancestral settlement, continuing their journey away from the oncoming glacial melt. It marked the resumption of the Thraíha pilgrimage to Hedonim, which had been ruled to take place only after the tribe found a new home to settle.

Farrul had decided to leave for Hedonim with a small band of hardware technicians who were working the few docks stationed around the island. They were there to take full advantage of the mass population movement—the largest presence of Thraíha seen in generations. Usually, only rogue game hunters or lone pilgrims seeking Hedonim were seen.

Nickel felt his relationship with Farrul fraying more than ever before. While they held a bond, a special connection forged through their loyalty to one another and their mutual survival, it was, in the end, just that—a product of their shared circumstances.

Farrul wanted nothing to do with the woes of Thraíha culture. He was still preoccupied with his own internal demons, seeking a different way out.

“So long, Nickel,” he said, clasping Nickel’s hand as he prepared to leave with his band of bandits and technicians. “I hope we meet again,” he muttered. “And I hope that both of us make it through Hedonim. Maybe we’ll see each other on the other side.”

Nickel murmured agreement, wishing Farrul farewell. As his hand slipped from Nickel’s grip, he felt as though he were losing a piece of his world—the world he had known for nearly a year. Farrul turned away, walking down the hill where trees with craggy leaves stood. He was heading back into the world of orange fog. Nickel wasn’t so sure he wanted to return to it himself. A deep sadness and pang of loss swept through his chest, weighing on his stomach as Farrul disappeared into the forest.

A conch blew in the distance, marking the start of the Thraíha’s long march. Nickel’s eyes widened, and he bolted in the opposite direction, rushing through the trees. Breaking through leaves and foliage, he stumbled into the clearing where he had last stood with the Thraíha.

A group of young women were about to board a long grizard-drawn circular carriage made of wood. Nickel had waited for the last conch to blow because he knew it would announce the departure of the last batch of Thraíha—including Kythria.

She looked bleary-eyed, throwing Nickel off as he stumbled into the clearing. Tear marks glistened on her face as she hugged the remaining Thraíha before stepping up onto the tree-stump leading into the wagon. Her friends were already seated inside, waiting for her to join them.

Talk to her! Nickel’s mind screamed. But she looked ready to leave. The conch blew again, this time in successive bursts, over and over, announcing the final departure. The grizard leashed to the carriage stomped its large, scaly legs and swerved its giant anvil-shaped head, its beady black almond eyes darting every which way.

Talk! Say goodbye!

Nickel was frozen in place, watching as Kythria stepped into the carriage. As she turned to sit down, her eyes met his. Frozen, unsure whether to speak or move toward her, he quickly looked away—and she did too, settling into the carriage, leaning against her friend’s shoulder, wiping tears from her face.

The conch blew continuously, an unceasing call, as the grizards were whipped into motion. They howled before breaking into a steady trot, carrying the Thraíha away and leaving a trailing wave of dust and dirt afloat in the air.

Nickel sighed, closing his eyes and lowering his head.

“Why don’t you go with them?” came a cool, austere voice.

Nickel looked up, frowning. He stared through the haze of floating dust without turning toward the direction the voice had come from.

“You won’t go with your friend Farrul into the depths of a computer hacking world because you don’t want to get lost in Hedonim, but you won’t go with the Thraíha,” the man said. “Even though they hold the lore and sites of a reality beyond what they call the Past World.”

Nickel’s eyes widened, and his frown deepened, but he still didn’t turn around, feeling a prickling sense of alarm and confusion. This man wasn’t a Thraíha. Then who was he, and how did he know so much about Nickel?

“Will you look at me,” the man said, taking a few steps closer, the crunch of leaves underfoot carrying through the air, “if I told you I am a disciple of the man you know as—Rishi?”

Nickel gasped, finally turning to face the stranger standing calmly behind him, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Prove it,” Nickel muttered, turning his whole body to face him fully.

The man was broad-built, dressed in robes like Rishi’s, but equipped with a utility belt and a strap of survival tools. His hands were gloved. His long black hair was tucked into a bun, and a long black beard flowed freely before him.

He watched Nickel, moving his fingers under the folds of his robes, pulling out an orb with a sigil, all the while keeping his eyes trained on Nickel.

Nickel stepped closer, his frown deepening. The man waved the orb in the air, revealing a circular sigil with a jagged line crossing it.

Nickel inhaled sharply. “He said to look for those with the sigil of his monastery.”

The man chuckled, returning the orb to the folds of his robe.

“Nickel, you’ve shown tremendous strength, bravery, and resilience. You’ve escaped the clutches of the Ether, first by accident, then by your own volition. That is a destiny not oft attained by men of your generation.”

“My name is Venkar, and I was the disciple of Rishi’s held hostage by the Thraíha. The Death Riders intercepted Rishi’s message and played the bluff with the computers in the Thraíha temple. It was meant for me, but you stumbled upon it instead. They captured you when they meant to capture me.”

“There are not many who know the ways of a Rishi, who wander the lands to watch nature and guard the sacred arts of human consciousness—not of a spirit world like the Thraíha, but of all the worlds that were and can be.”

“Then why won’t he teach me these ways?” Nickel asked. “I can’t live with the Ether! But I can’t leave my old life completely behind! I feel like I’m trapped between two completely different worlds!”

“Which is why I can show you another,” Venkar said, stepping closer. “One that people like me, an underground operation, are working to build. We are armed with a consciousness few hold, and we have been running covert missions in Hedonim. We are the only people outside of the Technocracy who can pass between Realms. And for that reason, we are hunted.”

“But you know the ways of the Rishi,” Nickel said.

“Our group’s founders, and myself included, were taught by Rishis. But our work is more political. We’re trying to subvert the hold of the Ether Realms on the world.”

“Then count me in,” Nickel said, holding out his hand to shake Venkar’s.

“I’m warning you,” Venkar said, eyeing Nickel. “You will be hunted.”

“I don’t think I have any other real choice,” Nickel said, keeping his palm out.

Venkar watched him silently, unmoving, his cold and calculating expression unwavering.

Nickel kept his hand out, waiting for Venkar’s response.

Finally, Venkar reached out, clasping Nickel’s hand tightly and shaking it firmly.