A new blockbuster science fiction adventure from world-wide phenomenon and #1 New York Times bestseller Christopher Paolini, set in the world of New York Times and USA Today bestseller To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.
July 25th, 2234: The crew of the Adamura discovers the Anomaly.
On the seemingly uninhabited planet Talos VII:a circular pit, 50 kilometers wide.
Its curve not of nature, but design.
Now, a small team must land and journey on foot across the surface to learn who built the hole and why.
But they all carry the burdens of lives carved out on disparate colonies in the cruel cold of space.
For some the mission is the dream of the lifetime, for others a risk not worth taking, and for one it is a desperate attempt to find meaning in an uncaring universe.
Each step they take toward the mysterious abyss is more punishing than the last.
And the ghosts of their past follow.
Please enjoy this free excerpt of Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini, on sale 5/16/23.
1
For the duration of the 1.25 g burn to Talos VI, they studied the anomaly (and the system as a whole) with every tool at their disposal. Alex did what was expected of him, even though the additional force of the burn made every movement harder, slower, and more dangerous, and he felt increasingly exhausted. Nevertheless, he tried. For Layla, if nothing else.
From a spectral analysis of Talos, he was able to determine that whatever life existed on the planet, it was definitely carbon based. No surprise there. Most of the life found in the Milky Way was carbon based. Just not sentient.
On the second day of the burn, surface imaging actually allowed him to identify two xenoforms. The first was a bloom of yellow-and-blue organisms in one of the salty lakes along the equator, close to an erupting volcano. The organisms were small, microscopic even, although it was hard to be sure of their exact size from so far away. They were motile to a certain degree—they rose and sank in response to sunlight—but nothing about them indicated they were more than simple plants or animals.
The second was a number of low, brown-colored objects that moved about the plains surrounding the hole. Mainly on the eastern side, for some reason. The objects—turtles as he thought of them—were between one and three meters wide. Their motion seemed entirely random: corkscrews and slanting lines and strange wiggles that Alex couldn’t make sense of. Whatever they were, they displayed no obvious signs of intelligence. Nor did they seem to interact with the hole.
Of course, appearances could be deceiving.
Aside from that, Alex found nothing of interest. The rest of the crew met with even less success. Except for the hole, there appeared to be no other artificial structures on Talos or in the system. Nor were Talia and Sharah able to tease any more meaning out of the bursts of fractal noise emanating from the hole.
Analyzing the incoming data kept Alex busy enough that he rarely thought of Layla, even though she was the reason he worked. He didn’t dwell on the fact. The more he did, the more he knew he was likely to slip back into despair and apathy. For him, forgetfulness was a gift more valuable than any memory.
Every night, he fell asleep within minutes of collapsing into his bunk, and only once did he end up curled around his pillow, crying for things lost and broken.
Mostly he thought about the void that sat waiting for them on Talos. He thought of it, and he dreamed of it too—a great black circle that dominated his nightly visions. Sometimes he imagined he was flying down into the hole, flying toward the mysterious bottom, and then he would wake with a strange feeling in his chest, as if his heart had skipped a beat.
Copyright © 2023 from Christopher Paolini
Pre-order Fractal Noise Here:
CHANGE THE COVER! AI art should be illegal.