Author: markswritingcorner

Mark Ahern was born in 1979 and is from Ireland. He attained a Degree in Commerce from UCD in 2000 and a Masters in European Studies in 2001. He has written three novels to date encompassing science fiction and thrillers. At times Mark has used his experiences as an individual with a disability to write from a truly unique perspective. "Chronicles of Martan" which is his sole science fiction work to date, is an epic space odyssey inspired by his love of Star Wars. This was followed by "Not the Usual Suspect" and "Paradigm". His current project is called "The Irish Ripper" and should be available late 2019.

The Expanse (Part 3 A)

The team looked at each other in disbelief. A large door, here at the side of a gently sloping hill on a wandering planet in intergalactic space. This planet just kept getting more and more strange. Candace immediately took the initiative and walked up to the door. Unnervingly, it began to open and the tunnel behind it lit up with overhead neon lights. There was no stopping her now and she motioned her arm for them to follow behind her.

Dr. Lenz admired her bravery but wished that it was one of the others that was in harms way, all the time trying to convince himself that such thoughts were purely professional. The corridor went on and on before it started to slope downwards, slowly at first and then more precipitously.

All the time feeling of dread surged through Dr. Lenz’s body. None of this made any sense. Who had built this structure?

Then the tunnel ended and they entered a huge cavern. At its centre, was more Negativum than Dr. Lenz had ever imagined. There was also a large computer and screen built into one of the the walls.

“Candace, you and the rest of the team concentrate on getting that out of here. I’ll see if this computer is still operational.”

Dr Lenz knew that he could risk using the nanobots in his suit without putting himself in harms way. What they discovered, shocked and worried him.

The planet and Negativum were not there by the randomness of the Universe. No, this was a way station of sorts for a very powerful intergalactic empire. They called themselves The Denecans, they had a history of enslaving other species and the Danu would have no choice but to enter their space. The Captain would be pleased.

Wheelchair Wars (Part 5)

Timothy felt the same but everything had changed utterly. He had not been told that he had been considered cannon fodder and rank outsider to win his duel.

“What would you have done if I had lost Dad, as everybody thought?”

“My mind was made up son, if you had lost and died, then I would have died that same day. There would be little reason for me to continue.”

Now he was looked at differently, both by strangers and his father. It made a huge economic difference too. His father could now give up the job that had been poisoning his lungs. That was what made Timothy most proud.

Their living arrangements also changed. Gone was the little shack that they once called home. Now, they were given an official residence at the Omega compound. Their unit was spacious and bright, Sure, there were long cracks down the walls and some damp here and there, but it was another world in luxury to where they had been.

Many others, with various disabilities also lived at the compound. Every few hours, a voice came through the loudspeakers of every room and hallway, stating that we are now all The Omega. That our lives as individuals has come to an end. It is for the glory of the Omega that we now live.

Timothy know in his heart that this was where he belonged. But he found it hard to talk to the others. Just cause they had disabilities too, didn’t mean that he would bond with them anymore than anybody else.

“You need to make friends son. These are the people that you will need to be able to rely upon. You’re spending too much time studying the technical aspects, you also have to look after the human aspect.”

“I know, I know. I’m just not used to so many people.”

Review of “Sexyquad Chronicles” by Luke Stewart

I knew I was going to purchase this novel once I read the opening blurb –

Do you judge a book by the cover? If so, get prepared for an unreal ride that blows the roof off what a quadriplegic’s life should look like. Is it inspirational, motivational, courageous, or outrageous? You’ll be shaking your head at his decision making but that’s the beauty of life. Are you living or are you just alive? Enjoy the unbelievable true story of an over 30 year quadriplegic’s journey from his accident at age 17 that explores the fascinating insight into the psychology of a man. Be warned, this book contains graphic sex talk and delves into what a horny quadriplegic would do to find love.

It proceeds to tell us about his various relationships with married women, his students, caregivers, co-workers and others. He has life changing injuries as a 17-year-old that leaves him as an incomplete quadriplegic. The way that the injury affects him is that he has feelings throughout his body but extremely little movement below his neck. He also has to deal with spasms and a considerable amount of pain.

He is an anti-hero, and my feeling is that the book will be enjoyed more by men than by women. He can be quite manipulative, basically saying anything to get lo get laid especially when he is his early twenties. Strangle, he believes it’s his opening lines that are where he’s at fault, but I feel its his love bombing that crosses the line. He also over promises and under delivers.

He is at his most callous with his first partner. She has mental health issues and he’s not that attracted to her, but getting laid is the most important thing. When they inevitably break up, she turns off his wheelchair, leaving him stranded. He is prepared to play with fire.

But, he appears to try harder to settle down as the years go by increasingly blaming the relationship failures on himself. I’m not sure. An inaccessible and hostile world had a lot to do with it too. The girlfriends’ houses being inaccessible, his care needs. It’s a death by a thousand cuts.

My favourite part of the book is the affair with the neighbour. Reading about the husband feeding him at her party was just something else. It’s a pity the book didn’t explore why he didn’t try to become more independent. He seems to be only prepared to move out with a caregiver whose a lover. This would be a heavy weight for anyone to bear. The standard advice would be to keep the roles separate as possible.

It’s his proclivity to mix these roles that lands him in difficulties when a former caregiver and lover betrays his trust and sends his college, details of his affair with a student. Personally, I think he should have reached some sort of compromise with her before this happened. She had warned him she might do this and he left her in pretty big difficulties. It has life long repercussions

By the end of the book, he sounds quite defeated. Unfortunately, living with severe physical disability rarely has a happy ending. It takes its toll and by the end I think he is too critical of his younger self.

I give this book five stars out of five.

Wheelchair Wars Part 4

The hour had finally come. It was time for Timothy’s first battle. His palms were sweaty, his heart throbbing relentlessly. He was in the pit, surrounded by darkness and just moments from its massive door being opened and entering the Colosseum. There, forty thousand spectators were waiting for more blood to flow.

He had only a brief look in the distance at his opponent. He had a very small and thin torso, but had a normal sized head and dressed immaculately. In another existence maybe they could have been friends, having probably encountered many of the same issues in life but not in the here and now. One of them would live, the other would die.

Instinctively, he could feel the power of the falcon-X super wheelchair beneath him. He had felt elated, yet queasy as the chainsaw was adjusted into position in front of him over an hour previously to ensure that he could still see in front of him. Then the door was closed and he was told to wait for his turn.

The door began to slowly open. The light shone through, squelching his eyes. He pushed the joystick forward and drove into the amphitheater. The crowd were raucous baying for blood. His opponent was coming towards him and armed with what Timothy quickly realized was the feared steel pellet gun. A direct hit would slice through Timothy’s body and he knew it. The weapon had a drawback though, it only fired every few seconds.

Timothy drove towards his opponent but in large loops out to the left and then to the right. He would simple stop if a pellet looked like it might hit and then watch it aimlessly pass by. But this got more difficult the closer and closer they became. Timothy realized that his opponent was firing as furiously as he could and that it took seven seconds to reload. The shots were getting closer to him now. One, just missed him and instead of continuing his ark, he went straight at his horrified opponent. Timing was everything.

Timothy’s chainsaw cut through his body just before he could fire again. The impact jerked Timothy forward drenching him in blood. The crowd roared its approval. For a few second, he soaked up their approval. Timothy reversed his wheelchair and was embraced from behind by his father shouting –

“You’ve done! You’ve done”

But Timothy could also hear cries of anguish and despair in the distance.

Wheelchair Wars (Part 3)

Between a further fit of coughing his father just about managed to splutter something out.

“Your next battle, it’s in two days’ time. You’ll be fighting in the falcon X Remember I showed you the video of one of them before. The one that goes really fast.

Timmy’s heart was beating faster.

“But what about..?”

“I told you before, there can be no ifs and buts. There are only those who win and those who die.. I don’t want you to be part of the latter group. Come on, let’s get you out of that bed for a while. You need to be watching videos and thinking about strategy.”

He then went through the long routine of getting him out of bed and dressed, all the time making sure not to injure Timothy’s perceived fragile body. Then he lifted him into his dilapidated wheelchair.

After a bite to eat, it was video games to aid with his strategic thinking and then highlights of a recent wheelchair duel that hes father had managed to secure.

The two fighters were briefly shown before the fight. One was a girl about Timothy’s age. She had long, auburn hair that draped her shoulders. Timothy thought she was beautiful. Her disability was difficult to gauge.

Her opponent had a large head, totally disproportionate to his twisted body.

Then it began. Both had top of the range machines. For the first few moments, it was unclear what was happening but then one wheelchair rammed the other in the side, causing it to crash to onto its side. It was over and fast.

“Now look Timothy, she does the right thing and kills him quickly. That’s an important act of mercy. Otherwise, he would have been left for the ratis to feed on.”

Ratis were Timothy’s worst nightmare. He feared them attacking him while he was stuck in his bed alone but his father always reassured him that that their quarters were probably locked. He had only seen them a handful of times feasting on dead bodies. They were rumored to have come to the planet with humanity but then evolved to become bigger and more aggressive.

Timothy had much to ponder, but he also wanted to savior this time with his father, he might not have much left.

Wheelchair Wars – Part 2

Timothy tried to move his body over to the other side in the bed. But it was of little use, he just couldn’t get the thrust to do it. He would just have to wait for his Dad to return. Sometimes he wished that he was born like everybody else but then he would remind himself that too would take its own toll.

His father would often remind him that he was blessed to have his disability, and that it’s severity was a good thing. The malformations and contractures were not something that could be acquired by an able bodied person like a missing arm or leg. He was beyond suspicion. That it could open a whole new existence for him and the family. That was when a family still existed. He used to have a mother and two older brothers. His first brother died at the age of seven in an industrial accident. It must have been grizzly as nobody ever told him what happened. A few years later, the other brother died. His lungs were filled with a toxic mucus.

Then, not long before the present his mother had died. The poisonous air had gotten to her too. Timothy thought his father was going to die from a broken heart but stoically he has carried on. Timothy was now just thirteen years old and had just his father. He knew that if his father didn’t come home from his shift that starvation awaited him.

The only way to get out of this hellish existence was through winning at Wheelchair Wars. It gave Timothy a sickly feeling. He did not want to have to hurt others but knew that he didn’t have much choice. This was why he was born. And most of all, he couldn’t let his Dad down. He had already been assigned a Team – The Omega.

His first trial was trial was six months previously. His mother was still alive then but she never looked at him the same way again. He had been put in a wheelchair with saws on each side. The task was simple. Kill a few prisoners. Dad said it was a test of loyalty, Mom said it was butchery. But, both agreed that needs must.

Timothy heard the familiar sound of his father’s footsteps approaching the door to the little, dark room they call home. His end had not yet come.

As the door opened, his father burst into a fit of coughing. His face was tinged red and looked frail and old, for someone barely 40.

“How are you son? I’ve got some news.”

Wheelchair Wars – Part 1 (Sci-fi)

In the far future, there is only war. A darkness has descended upon humanity throughout the galaxy. Now there is only conflict, pestilence and death. For the average human, each day has become a struggle to survive full of servitude, pain and suffering. Scientific progress has halted and much of what was previously known has been lost.

In the vastness of the corrupted, militaristic Human Empire lies a world called Uisneach. It orbits a yellow star and has been inhabited by humans for many thousands of years. It’s atmosphere is toxic. Nobody remembers if it was always that way or if it was the humans who caused it. The world contains two hive cities, each containing many billions of people. One of them is called Xenos. It is the size of a small continent and extends upwards in layers towards the sky.

Each layer is filled by a different economic class. Near the bottom layers is the janitorial sector. To go lower is to go where there is no law, no order. There is no return. To go higher is to live a few years longer and possibly not have to watch your children die. Many fall down the rungs of layers but few rise.

The janitorial layer contains many of hundreds of millions of people. It has its own culture, heritage and language. Many here, scoff at the idea that they are part of some galactic empire or even that they exist on something called a planet that orbits a star. Light from their sun hasn’t reached this deep in a very long time.

One of their favorite customs is “Wheelchair Wars”. It’s one that this layer has that makes it renowned throughout the rest of the city. Nobody is sure why or how it has started, but now events are held in large stadia and broadcast throughout the world.

There are ten tribes, each one covering a large area. They select their best players, who must have a physical disability requiring wheelchair use for competition. They are given modified wheelchairs, now more like tanks, with which to fight to the death. Very few are expected to survive. Any that do and the eventual winner can look forward to serving as dreadnought commanders in the Imperial Army.

The Expanse Part II (Sci-fi)

The entire crew was stunned. The planet was adrift, free-floating in intergalactic space. There was no star or other planet within 100 light-years. Yet, there it was full of Negativum. But, this wasn’t the shocking part. A planet like this should be frozen solid but it wasn’t. In fact, it was quite balmy and full of life, covered in dense vegetation. It defied logic.

The Captain on the deck of the Danu led with the queries.

“Dr. Lenz, how do you explain this?”

“I can’t. This is a major anomaly. To have a living, breathing planet in this location defies all understanding.”

“You must have some sort of theory! Give it a shot.”

“Well, every planet with Negativum in this sector to date has been on a planet with abundant life. The odds of this being a random occurrence are vanishingly small.”

“So, what are you are say Doctor?”

“I just don’t know yet. There is definitely something very odd.”

There was an awkward pause.

Then the Captain gave his order.

“Well, we need that Negativum. However, it got there. You and you’re new away team should go get prepared.”

*********************************************************

Dr. Lenz had never seen anything like it before. For a brief moment he had turned off his search light and through his visor and a small break in the canopy of this alien world, he could see the Milky Way in the night sky – what had been home and now vanquished into nothingness.

“Get off me!”

It was Candace who had taken a dislike to the local fauna, which up to this point had consisted of eyeless bugs that stuck to anything they touched. There were larger creatures but they had kept their distance at least for now.

Dr. Lenz and Candace had been assigned a new team, and Dr. Lenz was secretly wondering how close to them he should get considering what had happened last time. It consisted of himself, Candace and five other males.

“I hate this place Dr. Lenz.”

“I know Candace. Hopefully we won’t be here for long.”

They were now just a few metres from the reading of where the largest reservoir of Negativum was.

But as they fought their way through the vegetation they were astonished to be met by a door.

The Expanse Part 1 (Sci-fi)

The Captain had summoned Dr. Lenz right at the start of his cycle. No time to look out at the great expanse of space or even have breakfast for that matter. He had never thought that this would be his future. But, he also knew that he had been very fortunate to be gifted this opportunity to save humanity.

The Captain was in his room waiting for him and he knew what he wanted to discuss. Where next for Negativum? It was a major concern since the Danu entered intergalactic space. The distance between star systems had now increased exponentially and the Captain was growing increasingly nervous. Dr. Lenz was too, but he dare not show it. The prevailing theory had always been that Negativum had been created during the Big Bang, at the moment of the creation of the Universe and therefore should be evenly distributed in it. But what if that was incorrect and they had already passed the last collection point?

Dr. Lenz had to put his faith in all the great minds that had once existed.

“A location has not been yet been determined. It is more difficult in intergalactic space.”

“I have total faith in you Dr. Lenz but the crew is getting nervous. I’ve been informed that our supply is running low.”

“Yes, I am very aware of that and what is at stake. I’ve been working on this problem non stop.”

“Is there any way anybody else could be of assistance? Maybe Candace, she’s a fine officer and very intelligent. You seem to have a good working relationship.”

“She is a fine officer but..”

“Let me be clear. This is an order. You must share your expertise with others for both the short and long term future of humanity. She will be the first and will be at your workspace within the hour.”

********************************************************

Candace was looking at the array somewhat bewildered. Dr. Lenz was trying to hide his frustration. He just didn’t have the time for this.

“Once again Candace, this is a three dimensional Michovic diagram of space of about three thousand light years across. We are searching for mass – volume anomalies that might indicate the presence of Negativum.

“I just don’t understand.”

“What exactly?”

“You said the anomalies should be near stars. But what about this?”

She point to empty space.

Dr. Lenz looked and was dumbfounded. He had never thought to check such areas. It must be a free floating planet. For the briefest of moments he was overcome with joy and hugged her. It felt good and she didn’t push back. Then he took a step back.

“We have to inform the Captain!”

Why most articles you read about population dynamics are wrong.

So I guess many of you are probably aware that most countries now have sub-replacement fertility. That is, without immigration, their population will decline. This is already happening in Japans, which allows little immigration. Countries such as the United States and the UK will continue to grow in population only if immigration continues.

2.1

That is the average number of children each woman has to have for each generation to replace the last. The extra .1 is to make up for early death. This is really well known and widely reported. But it is wrong! So where does it come from? Well, you see there is a tendency for more boys to be born than girls. Usually, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. So, that means that 100 women will have to have 210 babies to ensure that there will be the same 100 women in the next generation.

So what about early deaths? Well, this can vary from country to country. In the US roughly 3% of female births don’t make it to 40. If we assume for simplicity that this 3% doesn’t have offspring, then each woman would 210 / 97 = 2.165.

A significant difference.

But, it becomes truly significant when you look at China. In China, the fertility is about 1.3 children per woman. You’ll read once again incorrectly in newspapers that this is far below the replacement level of 2.1. In China, there has been a practice to abort/kill baby girls. So, instead of 210 boys for every 100 girls, it’s more like 230.

Now I’d imagine life is far harder in China. I could easily see a death rate of 5%

This would give replacement fertility of 230/95 = 2.42.

China has a deficit of 1.12 children per woman.

The world fertility was given as 2.3 a few years ago. The population bomb is now a dud, I reckon if only proper calculations were carried out.

Please let me know what you think of this post and don’t forget to join my mailing list if you have not already done so.