The Fortune Chronicles

This is the story of an impending MERGE of all human consciousness with an ancient life-force that was released from deep underground where it lived for millions of years. This is the story of Kymira Corporation, headed by Bennett Coates, which grew from an oilfield chemicals company in the desert settlement of Fortune, New Mexico to a powerful but secretive global enterprise. Kymira Corporation is a company that doesn’t make a single product itself, but makes improvements to the technologies used by other companies and to thousands of products they manufacture or crops that they grow. Imagine: A global company that gradually worms its way into the creation of hundreds of items, so that eventually it has touched much of what surrounds us. Our food. Our telephones, televisions, and other electronic devices that we spend our days interacting with. Imagine: Those items are in some way CHANGED so that they are actually able to impart changes to US at a molecular level. And, that those changes made to our bodies and minds are working in concert. A tasteless food additive that prevents spoilage works in concert with an imperceptible electronic field generated by the clock radio that sits at the head of our bed. The effect is magnified by hours of exposure to a specific sound frequency generated by our ultra-sharp HDTV. Imagine that these cumulative effects can actually change the DNA of the human brain and make it evolve in such a way to make it actually welcome a merge of consciousness and a surrender of autonomy. That is what makes this the story about how easily an individual may surrender their control, bit by bit, until independence is completely lost. This is the story of Bennett Coates, a bookworm of a kid who grows up to be the human facilitator of preparations for THE IMPENDING MERGE, spending decades laying the groundwork through the impact of his Kymira Corporation on the everyday lives of the human race. This is the story of Gordy Franklin, whose life as a teenager in tiny Fortune, New Mexico was changed irreparably twenty-five years earlier by his mother’s suicide following an encounter with Bennett Coates, and whose deep-seated fears are realized when circumstances call him back to Fortune. This is the story of Jeff Wade, a burned-out UFO and paranormal lecture circuit huckster, who has spent the last two decades peddling a book about his fictitious encounter with an alien UFO, but who takes up a new cause when Bennett Coates recruits him to help prepare the world for The Merge. This is also a story about fathers and sons and the healing of divisions between them. THE LIFE-FORCE The “Life-Force” or "Substance", is a glowing, color-shifting, gelatinous living thing that has dwelled quietly underground in the New Mexico desert for millions of years until it found its way to the surface of the Earth 40 years ago by way of an abandoned oil well. It enlisted the will of an oilfield worker to scoop the Invader up in an empty peanut butter jar and deliver it to a bookish 10-year-old Bennett Coates, who coveted the gift and became its human liaison to achieve its ultimate aim—to adapt to living on the surface of the Earth by using the bodies and minds of members of the human race as its host and collective web of being. SERIES ARC The series will follow two timelines. The primary timeline will follow the action that takes place after Gordy Franklin travels to Fortune, New Mexico and encounters the adult Bennett Coates. The secondary timeline will flash back to show Bennett Coates’ life as a boy from the time he is given the Substance and how he learned to use its power for his own purposes; how he started the company that would grow into Kymira Corporation; his encounter with Gordy Franklin’s mother and birth of Holly Pollard.