This book is my first novel. It follows an 18-year-old high school graduate who experiences divorce and disillusionment and gets pulled into a mysterious anti-technology cult.
This book is not for sale on Amazon or any other platforms and is only available here.
322 pages
Cover design: Michael Kieffer and Heidi Roux
Chapter 1
“You’re bleeding. Right there.”
The young man touched his head. A piece of glass was lodged just above his eye. He pulled it out, threw it on the ground and wiped the blood away with the side of his hand. It didn’t hurt.
He was standing in a half circle with a few other guys and an older man. Earlier in the day, one of them had filled a backpack with destroying objects: two hammers, a chisel, a mini blowtorch, a lighter, and this strange steel ball one of them found at a construction site while walking home from school one day.
They had driven up to Mount Umunhum, just above Silicon Valley, and parked at the lookout point.
It was a beautiful California sunset; oranges in the clouds gave way to light pink and a deepening purple around the edges. The clouds formed a swirling pattern and came off the sun in concentric, widening circles.
When it got dark and the tourists were gone the teens walked over to an abandoned concrete radar tower. A metal fence wrapped around the tower and they jumped it. They entered the tower through big, thick double doors that were cracked open slightly. A broken lock lay on the ground.
One of the teens pulled out a flashlight but quickly saw he wouldn’t need it. Six tall candles were lit and lined the edges of the inside of the tower. A middle-aged man stood in the middle of the tower holding a small lantern. He was in a T-shirt and jeans. A backpack was next to him on the ground.
One of the guys took a step back when he saw the candles.
“It’s alright. It’s just for light,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’re not slaughtering goats or anything.”
The older man smiled.
The four young men stood in a half-circle facing him.
“Glad you came,” he said. “Wasn’t sure if you would. I was thinking about the other night and I thought maybe you would want to put them out in style. With a little ceremony, you know? Nothing fancy, just a nice way to say goodbye to this trash.”
He paused and turned the knob on his lantern for a little more light.
“I did it a few years back and it was nice, to get the closure, felt good, to not just recycle it, you know, but really do something.”
One of the guys started pulling a few things from the backpack. “Yeah, that’s why we hung onto them. We could never figure out what to do.”
He took out a hammer. The others pulled their phones from their pockets.
“That’s perfect,” the older man said.
The young man handed out tools while the older man watched. The candlelight flickered around the inside of the empty concrete tower, casting shadows into the corners of the secret room. It was quiet. Down below, over the wooded mountain and across the winding roads and interstates, the people in Silicon Valley went about their lives; working, talking, driving, writing code, working construction, making love, watching movies, building the future, buying and selling stocks and cryptocurrency, eating at restaurants, cutting their knives into steaks and talking about the weather and politics, and looking down and checking their phones, texting, calling, taking pictures, scrolling, looking up useless facts no one really cared about.
The young man who brought the tools went first. He threw his phone on the ground and it bounced a little. He flipped it screen face up and lifted the hammer high into the air.
“Wait.” The older man stopped him.
“Since this is kind of a special moment, not just for you, but for me, too. It’s not every day I run into a group like you, even though you might think you’re small, but it’s rare though.”
His tone was formal and sincere, like a wedding toast or announcement.
The young man gripped the hammer’s rubber handle tightly then loosened it impatiently.
“This might sound weird,” he said. “I don’t know if you guys are religious, and you don’t have to be, but would you care if I said a short little prayer?”
They looked around. Most of them had not been to church in years.
“Sure. I mean, I don’t care,” one of the young men said.
“Cool. Thanks.”
The older man bowed his head and folded his hands in front of him. The guys awkwardly looked down at the ground; some closed their eyes, others kept them open. A dead smartphone was in the middle of their circle staring up at them.
“God, we thank you for this time. This group of guys who are just trying to do right in a time, a time that’s pretty messed up, pretty complicated. We thank you for bringing us together, for bringing us here tonight, to take this action, to make this choice, for good, and to not go back. We thank you for friendship and fellowship, humanity, and the opportunity to still meet and find each other.”
He paused and one of the young men shuffled his feet a bit.
“Finally, we ask you to keep leading us. You would help us find the better way. Your truth. And that you would help us help others. To show them the path out of this mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. And we thank you for the freedom we’ve found. That we can use our minds again, the minds you’ve given us. And that we would be able to help others see the light, too, before the fire, and to bring about your way. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
A couple teens mumbled “Amen” and the older man said, “Ok, let’s do it.”
They all took a step back and the young man with the hammer looked down for a second at his phone. Then he swung. He hit it hard in the center of the screen, cracking it and sending pieces flying. He kept hitting till there was nothing left to hit, just tiny shards of metal and electronics everywhere.
The next teen put his phone in the center of the mess of glass. He smashed, cursed and slammed the hammer into the phone till it mixed with the small pieces of the first one.
The pile of chipped and splintered pieces was getting bigger now as the third boy picked up a chisel. He hit so hard and furiously that one of them grabbed him and pulled him up. He dropped the tool and let his friend take him backwards from the pile. His eyes were wet from crying.
The last kid picked up the chisel and swung down into the face of his smartphone. The glass snapped and shrieked in pieces that flew up and out and sideways. The black and silver and clear material flew in every direction and he kept swinging violently until the phone was scattered across the concrete floor. He bent down on one knee for a second and then got up.
“You’re bleeding,” someone said, motioning above his eyebrow.
The young man with the chisel stopped and smiled. A little bead of sweat dropped from his forehead and mixed with the blood on his brow. He pulled out a piece of glass lodged just above his eye and wiped his brow.
The other guys checked themselves for cuts, looked at each other, and laughed. They felt satisfied, like some good had been done.
“Now what?” one asked.
“That’s it. We could bury it all somewhere but I say we just leave it here. We don’t even have to come back here again.”
“Good,” the young man said.
They packed everything up and the older man blew out all but one of the candles. He picked up the final lit candle and followed the line of young men moving out of the concrete radar tower.
The night was dark when they walked out of the tower and into the fresh, dry California air and the glass from the broken smartphones crunched underneath their feet.
Chapter 2
All this happened before I killed myself, digitally that is. And before I got in with the anti-tech cult, and the canceled, and before I met Paul. The summer before my senior year. I was the proud graduate of the class of 2028, Hillbrook High in Los Gatos, California—Silicon Valley…