And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth
The Dream Diary of Nicola Tesla Buchenlieber
A novel in progress.
At the beginning of this story, Nicola Tesla Buchenlieber's biggest concern is whether he actually proposed to his girlfriend Caitlin Bryce or not, and whether she accepted; he overdid it trying to shore up his courage with a bit of wine. But within a matter of days, their simple life is disrupted by an unexpected intrusion from their past, by Nic's realization that he knows virtually nothing about his (probable) fiancée's personal history, and by the sudden onset of a previously dormant tropical disease that destroys Nic's sleep patterns and renders him incapable of distinguishing reality from dreams. As the week progresses, he starts to prefer the dreams.
This is the diary from the most hellish week of Nic's life. We watch him slowly fall apart, as the Sudden Onset Narcolepsy he had hidden from Tlin takes over more and more of his life. In his dreams, he tries to understand the enigmatic woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, aided by a personification of Tlin's pseudonym, Amy G. Dala. In both reality and dream he discovers that everything he thought about her was wrong.
A glimpse at the main characters of the novel can be seen through The Montrose Rashomon, which relates the same events through the eyes of Nic, Tlin, and their friend Eliot Paulsen, as they were when they were students together at Montrose College. It contains spoilers.
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