Two main characters return from Viet Nam with burning desires to make the world “better”. Both men hope, using biotechnology, to solve large problems and institute planetary ecological sustainability.
Idealistic Lester Frye is VARIOLA’S (VR) REVENGE’s amiable and conservative protagonist. He realizes his great bridges dream but never enjoys it. Developing a genetically engineered building material, he furthers objectives with a novel architectural design. The hapless man’s uncontrolled compassion and sense of duty inundate him. He loses his wife, their three children, and his…mind. Lester almost dies, prior to Mr. Aloirav assisting him regain his lucidity.
Rav Aloirav, renegade molecular biologist, misanthropic serial killer & pseudo-cannibal, is VARIOLA’SREVENGE’s antagonist. The Semitic Walloon octoroon is a paradigm for world domination via biological weapons. Biosustainability pulls and megalomania impels him. With beautiful Gloria Gold, and their New Society cohorts, he plunders selected homicides in global freebooting. Bioweapon assaults destroy the US government, grabbing world hegemony. They depopulate Liberia, Tokyo, Buenos Aires & South Africa. At VR’s denouement, the evil band goes to jail, having gained the planet only to realize tragic failure.
Prior to New Society’s collapse, the two scientists invest the planet with Pontibus sky communities. Neither agonist prevails without the other’s help. Each man’s ambition feeds his nemesis. Through the financial resources of his erstwhile friend, Lester conquers failure. VR ends as he steps out of his sky lab and addresses the new upper troposphere world.
Normal life spans do not accomplish such feats. Lester Frye’s obsession leads him to the Amazon and the Hesperide’s apples. They keep him and his associates forceful and alive for over 100 years. Superior will & energy conquer inertia to create the longest, largest, and highest growing structure in history. The new habitats save our species, but loneliness enervates Lester, and he is a lesser man in LUZ.
Despite his achievement, Mr. Frye is insufficiently criminal to confront all the Pontibus Company’s enemies. The utopia, once again, needs Aloirav’s wildness to save it. As LUZ begins, Lester engineers Rav’s freedom. Having met crashing defeat at his own hand in VR, Rav Aloirav now rises from his ignominy’s ashes. Two new antagonists, Ms. Mab Roth & Mr. Otorp, appear and attempt to ostracize the mega-murderer from sky government. Aloirav ruthlessness & biotechnological virtuosity circumvent hostile machinations.
He protects the Pontibus dream from avaricious marauders (OG & MMIM) and unsustainable morality. Conspiratorial aggression & political corruption from the First-Surface, allied with treacherous Company directors, threaten. Eugenic and anthropophagic issues rise and find full exposure. Biological war ensues, killing billions & reducing the First-Surface to vassalage. The book ends with the World as an Aloirav fiefdom, investing a dynasty with unique genetic material. Enemies destroy Gloria & Rav in the end, but not before he insures their co-eternity with Lester Frye.
The PONTIBUS JOURNAL is potentially the most dangerous manuscript to come out of the 21st century. The saga is metaphoric for anticipated simian plagues and despotism if Homo does not soon achieve biosustainability. The new creed launched here may yet preserve human evolution. The scenario will not prevail without a pirouette through inevitable unmitigated horror, as LUZ portrays. Read, enjoy, but be forever changed.
Variola's Revenge, Luz, and Elbohruh Lebensrau are all published on the Hotel Aloirav website.