Hey Royal Road readers! Important disclaimer:
The following story is not a "web novel." Readers who are used to that format's main features--namely, lightning-quick plot motion and frequent cliffhangers--might want to browse to another title. This novel was written for eventual paperback publication, and I think the different writing philosophy is easy to notice when compared to most of the fiction here. If you could pluck a sci-fi novel off a library shelf and enjoy the read, this book may be for you... but if you prefer bite-sized chapters and light reading on the go, you're likely better off moving to something else on this site. Both writing philosophies are equally valid, but I just wanted to highlight the fact that I'm akin to a chicken vendor in a fish market; this product may be out of place on a site like this, so buyer reader beware.
With my mildly-self-sabotaging disclaimer out of the way, now comes the novel's intended foreword:
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In the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was a high-schooler with dreams of being the next Steven Spielberg. Any self-respecting writer-director extraordinaire would need some original scripts—and so, on my rinky-dink high-school laptop, I started a screenplay for a project with the working title of Artifakt. The outline was ambitious: it would combine sci-fi, some mystery, some police procedural… a dash of Stephen King crossed with a twist of the superhero and thriller genres. By around page 60, it became abundantly clear it was way out-of-league for a kid with a project budget that would've rounded to $0. The writing ground to a halt. Then, in 2012, a film came out that hit so many of the same plot beats it felt like a gut punch—more on that in the afterword. Four years later, Stranger Things brought 80's nostalgia media back into the popular spotlight, and Artifakt felt like a project that missed its moment. Its incomplete draft sat in stasis in the cloud—floating in an ancient Dropbox account—and there it would remain until 2019. That was the year I decided I'd try a career in writing instead… as Artifakt was intended to be my debut into filmmaking, it only felt appropriate that it be my first big-boy book project, too.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The result, the book you're reading, is a novel that feels like a duet between the two versions of me that wrote it. The front is written by the fifteen-year-old, while the back two-thirds were written by the 25-year-old who had let the story sit and ferment for that interim decade. I've spent effort trying to smooth out that seam, but I do think the reader can still feel the switch. Worry not, as you're not about to read a teenager's writing. I, of course, did plenty of editing and cleaning up in the beginning—younger me was way too heavy with the scene description—but overall, I tried to keep as true to the original vision as I could. The end result is a story that I know younger me would've been proud of, but older me—current me—has certain, specific reservations about. Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with this project, and I think most readers will, too. But the reader should be forewarned: the now-renamed Seventh Device contains scenes of dark (and occasionally graphic) violence among teenagers. When I wrote it, I was as old as those kids, and I saw it as only scenes of violence between people. Now that I'm an "adult," I can't help but find those scenes fairly uncomfortable. Reader discretion is therefore advised.
With what feels the responsible warning out of the way, I hope you enjoy the story.