Enemy of the State: A Dons of Time Excerpt

"Well-constructed, action-flooded sci-fi set in a realistic historical world." - Kirkus Reviews

This is an excerpt from Greg Guma's novel, Dons of Time, available from Fomite Press, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. To read the conclusion, Enemy 2

Emerging from the airport baggage claim late the following afternoon he crossed to the taxi stand for a lift into town. It would be only minutes to the Hilton and a comfortable room with a commanding view of the waterfront and Lake Champlain. But then he heard his last name being called and noticed a wiry-haired kid holding a cardboard sign with the word “Wolf” on it.

“I’m Wolfe,” he said, “Tonio, or T. You here for me?”

“I guess so,” the kid shrugged, “this way.” He grabbed Tonio’s bag without asking and led him into the parking garage, boarding the elevator for the top. When they emerged and Tonio saw the vehicle, a faded blue cargo van more than two decades old, he began to suspect he’d made a mistake. Before he could do anything, the side door slid open and three more young guys with scarves over their faces invited him inside.

“I hope you’re with Harry.”        

Rather than answer they handed him a scarf and asked him to blindfold himself. “Just for now,” one of them apologized. These definitely weren’t Shelley’s people; their greeting would not have been so civil. The government was also out. It didn’t use rusty vans or operatives who dressed like hippie Zapatistas. This had to be Harry. Still, why the drama? Despite his explanation over the phone it didn’t compute.

The ride took two hours, at first on paved streets and the Interstate, then on local roads, and several minutes at the end over rough gravel and dirt. When the van finally rolled to a stop and it was time to remove the blindfold, he could have been anywhere from the Canadian border to New Hampshire.

Harry was waiting at the cabin door. He had always enjoyed costumes and preferred facial hair. This day he looked like a cross between a pirate and a panda. “You have questions, I know,” he announced. “Thanks for coming.”

“It better be good.” Tonio shook his hand and followed.

The cabin was larger and more functional than it looked from the driveway, part tech center, part mountain retreat. Computer terminals covered one wall, screens running data, charts, and video streams. Three college-age hackers monitored them. The rest of the main room was taken up by a large oak table, several couches and thrift shop chairs, a hard-working woodstove, all facing several unmarked doorways and an archway that opened onto the communal kitchen. 

Harry flopped down in a ratty lounge chair, and said, “It was necessary, believe me. Not on my end, in this case. We have good reasons to play it safe with you, my friend. You may already be a person of interest.”

“That’s extreme,” Tonio objected, “but I do believe Shelley had a tail on me.”

“That’s not what worries me.” He pointed up with a finger, as far as Tonio knew meaning either God or spy satellites.

“What does worry you? More to the point, what’s happened to you, man? Last I knew you were a radio personality.”

“A personality, right, I remember when I had one of those,” Harry mused. “Last time I saw you we were about to take over Seattle, right? Blocking the WTO, now that was a demo. Things looked promising in ‘99, didn’t they?  Even after the coup – that’s what I call W’s first term – we totally derailed that FTAA deal in Quebec. But they were already starting the crackdown. After the attacks…well, you know that story, Patriot Act, wiretapping, secret searches, the whole deal. Plus, for the first time the CIA gets a direct role in deciding who gets rounded up or hit. It was the first stages of drone justice.”

That still didn’t explain why he was hiding in the woods, and Harry knew it.

“I was operating above ground then,” he reminisced. “But things were changing. It was an eavesdropping bonanza. The intelligence budget hit $60 billion after 9/11 and thousands of new private contractors got into the game. It was a very lucrative club in a very growing industry. And Fort Meade, that was the Gold Rush zone for masters of the data stream.

“I still had the show then. But instead of the usual stuff I started talking about the surveillance state, what the government was really up to. Big mistake as it turns out. In 2007 I tried to board a flight to DC and found out I was on a no-fly list.” After more than an hour of interrogation Harry was released. But not his laptop, cell phone, camera and USB drive. 

As Harry outlined the rest of his path from radio host to underground man Tonio heard more than he wanted about Crystal City and the Wiretappers’s Ball, a secret annual gathering where experts shared their latest toys and competed to create the ultimate bugging device. Harry had managed to infiltrate it and bring out pictures. He also talked on the air about Verint Systems and Narus, major private eavesdropping operations that reached most of the planet. They made it easier to block websites considered politically or culturally threatening to those in power.

The next flashpoint for Harry came after the Democrats capitulated on amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He explained that the changes gave the telecoms legal immunity while providing a go-ahead for the NSA to target almost anyone classified as a terrorist. Obama, who was running for President at the time, opted to support the amendments. Once he was in office, the move toward mass surveillance launched almost a decade earlier continued to escalate. Obama’s Justice Department invoked “state secrets” to stop citizens from suing the government for spying on them. In fact, it argued that the feds had immunity from litigation for any surveillance that violated the law.

“You thought I was being ridiculous about emails, right?” Harry reminded him. “There’s a reason, Sherlock, the CIA. They’ve invested heavily in Visible Technologies, which analyzes social media. It can look into half a million websites a day. But the biggest reason we’re here, instead of enjoying room service on your tab, is because in 2010 they demanded all the visitor information from Truthsquad. I mean everything, and we weren’t supposed to tell anyone about it under penalty of prosecution for impeding a federal investigation.

“The IFC – that’s the Internet Freedom Center – challenged the subpoena.” He was winding down. “But it was obvious where this was heading. They’d already jailed Bradley Manning for the Wikileaks cables and Julian was under house arrest. The handwriting was on the wall. It was only a matter of time ‘til that knock on the door and I’m a suspected cyber-terrorist. That was two years ago, shortly before we set up here. Just in time it turns out, since now I’m on the terrorist screening database. Drone bait -- if they ever find me outside the country.”

“But we’re safe and secure?”

“Like a frog’s ass, baby. Acoustic dampening, the latest in encryption. We just added self-destructing e-mails and encrypted cell phone calls, anything you send digitally. By next year there will be a commercial self-destruct app on the market, but ours is better. My rule of thumb is either that the message is destroyed after it’s read, or else no more than an hour or two after sending it goes poof, like Mission Impossible. But your current security, not so great.”

Considering what he had just heard Tonio wasn’t surprised Harry felt that way.

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DONS OF TIME: Make the Jump, Buy the Book

"A fast-paced sci-fi thriller featuring 

time travel to Victorian England."

Sept. 27, 2013

Greg Guma’s latest novel stars Tonio Wolfe, who discovers that his company, TELPORT, can use “Remote Viewing” to open wormholes to the past. After his co-workers Danny and Angel let him use the technology to search for Jack the Ripper, Tonio travels to Victorian England and tracks the killer while falling in love with radical leader Annie Besant. Meanwhile, Tonio tries to keep the knowledge of Remote Viewing from his father, ruthless Serbian mob boss Shelley, who owns and wants to exploit TELPORT for commercial use. 

The novel tracks the growth of Tonio’s political consciousness, from apathetic Mafia scion to committed opponent of institutional injustice, thanks to the influence of Annie and Tonio’s college friend Harry, a member of Occupy Wall Street. The scenes in Victorian England have an impressive amount of historical detail and include conversations among historical figures such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw and populist leader Ignatius Donnelly. Many of the novel’s subplots knit together, with Tonio’s quest to discover the true identity of Jack the Ripper mirroring his relationship with his father and his discovery of repressed memories from childhood. 

While the novel raises questions about government surveillance, it disappointingly doesn’t follow up on the implications, with the government acting as a sort of deus ex machina to help Tonio. Still, fans of historical fiction and sci-fi should enjoy this novel. It’s not deep, but it’s well-researched and entertaining, and even readers familiar with the Victorian era will learn about some interesting characters along the way.

Well-constructed, action-flooded sci-fi set in a realistic historical world.

NOW AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM

& Fomite Press * www.FomitePress.com

From the mouths of Dons

Peter Lynch, DoD/DARCAP –  "Everything we know is open to revision."

Annie Besant – "What we need is a movement of love and self-sacrifice, inspiring us to give rather than take."

Athena Metsova Wolfe – "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Helena Blavatrsky – "What writes history is the power of ideas. And every moment offers the potential to write something new."

Ignatius Donnelly – "There is a battle underway in the world, between intelligence and concentrated ignorance."

Danny Webster, TELPORT inventor, on obeying Time Commandments – "Things tend to get worse when you screw around with the past."

George Bernard Shaw to Tonio Wolfe – “Humanity has a dark side, a shadow self, an impulse toward destruction and evil."

Gianni Wolfe – ”God may not play dice with the universe, but if he won't roll somebody better step up.”

Truthsquad Collective – "We've done the digging; the next step is up to you. Nothing is inevitable."

Tonio Wolfe – “I don’t know all the details. I’m more like the canary in the coalmine or a chimp in some capsule shot into space.”

Find out their secrets and more....

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REMOTE VIEWING IS HERE...

"Wherever you look there you are"

New Journalism & the Alternative Press

By the mid-1960s most college towns had some nearby liberated zone where you could cruise and drink and dream, and along the way find out about what was shaking in the “outside world.” For most Orangemen, the innocently sexist nickname for Syracuse University students, the place was Marshall Street, a commercial strip a few hundred feet off campus, where you could find coffee and company and “underground,” experimental, downright radical books and periodicals of every kind.

     Building on a tradition that stretched back to nineteenth century literary social criticism, early twentieth century investigative journalism, utopian community newspapers, and early radical magazines like The Masses, the modern American alternative press had emerged in mid-50s New York with The Village Voice and Dissent. Within a few years, Paul Krassner launched the irreverent Realist, publishing “diabolical dialogues” that mixed fantasy and reality.

     But a truly counter-cultural underground press movement would not fully blossom until the middle of the 1960s on the West Coast, and then quickly spread back across the country. After the LA Free Press, which provided a passionate voice for “the other side” – specifically youth, leftists, gays, and disaffected locals – came the Berkeley Barb, San Francisco Oracle (and later Bay Guardian), and New York’s East Village Other.

     What distinguished the underground press and “new journalism” writing from their predecessors was a combination of style, focus, and values. Abandoning what looked like the pretence of “objectivity,” most alternative writers embraced advocacy or adopted a more intimate and personal prose style, concerned yet sometimes cynical, detailed and still selective. Many of the publications even looked different, merging print and avant-garde graphics in ways that the mainstream media found unprofessional and alienating to their “mass” audiences.

      Max Scherr started the Berkeley Barb in 1965 to coincide with a Vietnam Day demonstration to stop troop trains. Visually uneven, sometimes shrill but always provocative, it soon reached a circulation of 90,000. The next year saw an explosion of underground papers. The San Francisco Oracle took full advantage of offset printing, the emerging photographic plate technology, to further fuse print and graphics in presenting articles on LSD, orientalia, and peace. In New York, The East Village Other adopted a more conventional layout style, but offered everything from quasi-academic pieces on Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey to underground comics and local coverage of knife fights in the city’s crime-scarred tenements.

     With newspapers popping up across the country, notably Detroit’s Fifth Estate and Lansing’s The Paper, a clearinghouse for articles and ads called Underground Press Service was also established, starting with half a dozen members but reaching 200 papers and a potential audience of more than a million readers within a few years. That was followed by Liberation News Service, which sent out packages three times a week to about 360 counter-cultural and political outlets.

     The psychedelic and “Marxist” wings of this nascent media movement ultimately fractured. But for a glittering moment, as activists and "hippies" looked for ways to “do your own thing” and “change the world” at the same time, there was The Rag out of Austin, perhaps the first “movement” paper – anarchist-structured and strongly anti-sexist, and The Rat, a political alternative to the East Village Other, and The Bird, with its catalog approach to tracking and backing political causes, not to mention Space City, started before a Houston anti-war demo, featuring a rotating staff and strong identification with Black and Chicano militants, and The Berkeley Tribe, born out of sectarian-inspired strikes against The Barb.

     Devouring any new publication that came along, I was increasingly excited by the transformation underway in journalistic and fiction writing. Both were providing increased space for imagination, advocacy and speculation. Just as fiction drifted away from social realism, “new journalists” were breaking with the reporting of isolated events, and starting to consider context and broader social impacts. Adopting some techniques of realism, they were developing devices that gave their writings an immediacy and emotional power missing in both objective reporting and surrealist fiction.

     Subjectivity, which had been common and acceptable during the nineteenth century era of “partisan” press and the turn-of-the-century “yellow journalism” period, returned under the banners of “advocacy” and the “non-fiction novel.” According to Tom Wolfe, a move from news reporting to this field led naturally to the discovery "that the basic reporting unit is no longer the datum, the piece of information, but the scene, since most of the sophisticated strategies of prose depend upon scenes." The old rules no longer apply when a journalist takes this leap, said Wolfe, "it is completely a test of his personality."

    Reporters were turning from the exclusively "objective" concerns for verification, specificity and readability that dominated conventional journalism to the uniqueness of each experience and the writer's impressions and intentions in becoming a witness. The presentation ranged from the polemic to the dramatic, as pioneers pondered their subjects in various aspects and relations.

    Certainly, this social revolution didn't significantly alter the way the "mainstream" press dealt with events. It did, however, expand the range of permissible expression for reporters, paralleling trends in documentary film making, where the subjective point of view has since become a powerful audio-visual tool, as well as in non-fiction writing.

     In the '60s, only a few authors dared to bring their personal experiences into consideration when writing about politics, sociology, and psychology. By the '80s such "testimonial" touches were commonplace; in certain fields, notable pop psychology, they virtually became a requirement.

     At the same moment, speculative fiction – an outgrowth of science fiction and fantasy – moved from the margins to the mainstream. The merging of surrealism and sci fi had begun with writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula LeGuin, Samuel Delany, Harlan Ellison, Romain Gary and others who explored current and potential realities. Since then, this has attained the status of a highly popular genre, often affirming the view that the arithmetically predictable model of the world and universe is only one of many possibilities.

Part Six of “In the 60s: Education of an Outsider.” Originally published April 9, 2008. Next: Birth of the Counterculture

Enemy of the State 2: Dons of Time Preview

This is part two of an excerpt from Greg Guma's new novel, Dons of Time, available from Fomite Press, Amazon and B&N. "Wherever you look there you are."

After a break for dinner the other members of Harry's collective left the room and the conversation resumed around the woodstove. Now it was Tonio’s turn to explain. He started simply, talking about his early thirties and what he’d learned since meeting Danny Webster, his reasons for accepting Shelley’s offer to chair TELPORT, and, with as much technical language as he could muster, the company’s goals and on-the books plans. His intention was to work up to the secret they had kept for two years. In the process he described Angel, holding back about their relationship, and casually mentioned, without much detail, some of his recovered memories and suspicions about his uncle’s death.

When he finally reached the pay off – the discovery of remote time viewing and his personal pursuit of Jack the Ripper – Harry was less shocked than worried and amused.

“It’s true,” Tonio insisted, uncomfortable being the one who sounded crazy.

“I believe you. The question is, does the Don know?”

Tonio assured him that wasn’t possible.

“Are you sure?”

Choosing frankness over defensiveness, he admitted that he wasn’t absolutely certain, in fact that it was part of his reason for being in Vermont, and that even his oldest friend Paulie might be watching him on Shelley’s orders.

“As long as it’s Paulie I think we’re safe,” Harry said, who’d met him during a ski trip. “But Wolfe Enterprises isn’t what it used to be. That’s why I ask.” Tonio’s frown said: tell me more!

“Daddy has satellites now, three so far. It’s still a young industry, and about five years ago Wolfe Enterprises bought E-Global, which builds and launches satellites and sells images to a wide variety of businesses – agro-cartels, oil companies who need to check on rigs, fishing fleets that want info on the best feeding areas, normal corporate shit. Live stream or images, whatever you want from their cameras in the sky. You just need the bucks.”

He paused briefly before continuing. “The trouble is, they also work with the feds. It’s synergy, a public-private partnership. The government’s satellite operator has a program, NextView, which shares the costs of satellite development with the private sector. From what we know it covered about half the cost of E-Global’s most recent model, GlobeWatch-3. And among its tasks is to provide surveillance for the Department of Defense.”

Harry speculated that Shelley’s takeover of TELPORT might in some way be related to other moves he was making in tech and aerospace. “Fuck man,” he added to hammer his point home. “He could be watching us now, the building at least.”

“But he’s not, right?” This was as good a time as any to make his pitch. “That’s why I need you. Look man, we know remote viewing could be exploited, any technology can be. The Pentagon invented the Internet, right? You told me that. But Danny isn’t doing this for the military or the Agency. He’s just a nerd inventor creating his dream and offering it to the public.”

“With a weakness that’s already been exploited,” Harry reminded him.

“Yes, but I run the company, the RTV end is totally insulated from the other units and anyway, no one knows what happens in Nutley except the three of us – now you. Danny runs the lab, Angel handles operations. What we need is help with strategy and tactics, plus your cyber skills. From what you said I can see that security and prevention need to be a higher priority.”

“I could do that. What’s your job?”

“Staff guinea pig.”

Harry laughed. “Right man for the right task.”

“Seriously, we need you. I need you. I need someone who has my back. Also someone I can level with, and work with to figure out what went down with Gianni. I’m almost positive it was a hit.”

“And the candidates?”

“At the moment? The CIA and Shelley.”

“Hard to say which would be worse.” Harry leaned back in his chair and took a series of deep breaths, considering the weight and shape of the information. “And what can you do for us,” he asked, “for the movement?”

“Underwrite it?” The lack of response told Tonio that wouldn’t be enough. “All right, how about this? Either we go public with RTV or no one gets it.”

“Good start.”

“And if we use it ourselves,” he added, struggling to reflect what Harry might want to hear, “if we do, we use it to get some real truth out there, no matter whose ox is gored.”

“Right on,” replied Harry, pumping a clenched fist in mock salute. “So, where do we start?”

On the trip Tonio had come up with a list that covered the gamut. But now that he was in the cabin, near a warm wood fire, safe and relatively comfortable with a trusted old friend, he didn’t feel like discussing security firewalls at midnight. But he did want to know what Harry thought about his uncle’s death. After briefly explaining the evolution of his suspicions he asked for ideas on what to do next.

To Harry the answer seemed obvious, “Find out what the man was doing that could get him killed.” It sounded like the right place to start. Unfortunately, sleeping with his mother was the first clue that came to mind.

"Well-constructed, action-flooded sci-fi 

set in a realistic historical world." -- Kirkus Reviews

Order Here

Dons of Time: The Adventure Begins in October

"Wherever you look

         …there you are."

The next media breakthrough has just happened. They call it Remote Viewing and Tonio Wolfe is at the center of the storm.

But the research underway at TELPORT's off-the-books lab is even more radical -- opening a window not only to remote places but completely different times. Now unsolved mysteries are colliding with cutting edge science and altered states of consciousness in a world of corporate gangsters, infamous crimes and top-secret surveillance experiments. 

Based on eyewitness accounts, suppressed documents and the lives of world-changers like Nikola Tesla, Annie Besant and Jack the Ripper, Dons of Time is a speculative adventure, a glimpse of an alternative future and a quantum leap to Gilded Age London at the tipping point of invention, revolution and murder.

"a who’s who of 19th-century figures... part Sopranos and part X-files" - Publisher's Weekly

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From Greg Guma, author of The People’s Republic, 
Spirits of Desire, Uneasy Empire, and Inquisitions

Release Date	October 21, 2013
Publisher	Fomite Press
ISBN	978-1-937677-51-0 (paper) 978-1-937677-57-2 (epub)
Library of Congress Number	2013941205
Retail Price	$18.95
	430 pages
Distributed By	Ingram; Amazon.com; BarnesandNoble.com