Imagine an alternate timeline in which the near-future world is not a nice place -to be frank, it makes the Cold War and the brushfire conflicts of the last century look like the food fight in Animal House. In  the wake of economic disaster and a devastating pandemic, North America collapses and falls under the control of a racist and facist theocracy. The Middle East is united under a charismatic but brutal jihad movement with designs not only on the Mediterranean basin but every place their terrorist raiders can possibly reach. Both new powers have revived slavery and international piracy with a vengeance; heavily armed merchant marines, sea convoys and fighter-escorted air traffic are now grim facts of life for the travelling public. In both terror states those who wish to live free exist as small guerilla bands in the countryside and the wilderness. Europe and the Pacific Rim states find themselves under increasing duress and the stakes are raised when the Ayran Covenant prepares to unveil a terrifying new psychoenergetic weapon against which there is no known defense.

Then hope arrives in a most unusual vehicle, and "vehicle" is the operative term here...

Two score and sixteen years before this crisis, a small, secretive and ancient  society infiltrated Avro Canada and its material suppliers and funneled metals of high Kirlian energy content into the Arrow project. The intrinsic "life-force" of this metal, when combined with the psychic investment of designers and factory workers, created within each of the aircraft a "soul" that when initialized in the proper manner and in just the right geographical location, would leave it no longer an artifact but a fully sapient, autonymous and powerful entity. Of course the people behind this desperate gamble would have very powerful enemies, and once they caught on... well, why do you think that when the whole project was cancelled they tried to destroy everything so utterly?

But, through a means both wondrous and costly in lives, one Arrow is spirited away before it becomes torch fodder. After "waking", it is placed in extradimensional stasis so that it can gain strength over time while the bloodline of the pilot to which it hasbeen bonded grows two more generations. The heir to this legacy is Mariah Kopcek, a young guerrilla who has lived and fought in the subarctic forests of Canada since early childhood. When she accidentally and unknowingly breaks the seal that holds the initialized Arrow in stasis, she finds herself in a sometimes rocky symbiotic alliance with a powerful, polymorphous being that is not only the last hope of the free world but is the "twin brother" she never knew she had...

the story so far...

BOOK ONE: The Maple and the Vine

Part 1:

After the Arrow emerges from stasis and finds it - er, himself with this sixteen-year-old knife chucker with a bad attitude (think about losing your home and parents at the age of four and hiding out in the north woods with what's left of your relatives for a dog's age!), they go on to have a thoroughly horrible day, first dodging the Ayran Covenant's finest agressor squadron and then running smack into the initial tests of the Covenant's new scalar resonance generator. Don't you just hate when that happens?

Part 2:

Of course, they figure it high time to leave - a vertical climb into suborbital space is definitely doing it in style. Those force fields our favorite interceptor is now able to generate with its intrinsic field energy come in mighty handy for defraying the heat of re-entry. The long glide back to Earth takes them somewhere out over the Indian Ocean... aren't those little islands handy? Of course that newfound ability to alight with the ease of a shorebird is very useful indeed. Those drag chutes always were a hassle... No doubt such an effort would tucker out a person. Sweet dreams...(HA!)

Part 3:

No cheeseburgers, but it sure looks like a paradise...BUT, finding a pair of crustaceans going through your belongings can be a bit ennervating, to add to the shock of seeing moving three-dimensional images come out of ordinary-looking books ("Help me Obi-Wan"? not exactly...) A word of advice... if the coconuts have been up there too long, leave them alone, lest the milk has fermented into Mother Nature's own moonshine and you find yourself pouring out twelve years of family business in front of a perfectly strange airplane - and NO, that plush cat with suckers on his feet should not go into the aircraft's canopy! How undignified...
 

BOOK TWO: The Well and the Whaler's Cat

Part 1:

All seventy-odd feet and thirty tons of him were there when you went to sleep (read: passed out) but when you wake up he's considerably smaller and lighter and looks like what your fraternal twin brother would look like IF you'd had one. There are several other critters he can turn into but you have the tryingest time getting used to his present shape, thanks very much. After bumming around the Roaring Forties of the Pacific and the world's most desolate islands you find that seals, penguins and shorebirds really don't have much to say. Easter Island looks considerably good to you even if the place has been cut off from the rest of the world since triple-ought and you scare the daylights out of everyone just by showing up. But, once the shock has passed, they get used to you; after all, they've been dealing with other stuff at least as strange since "the wall" went up. Who'd have thought that the "mortal remains" of your new brother's sibling had something to do with it?

 Part 2:

Finally, you're really becoming a pilot and he's growing up a little, but the big goof's still got a lot to learn about dealing with people; turning from human to horse to chase down a ball at the shirts-and-skins game is NOT good etiquette! And just wait, once that psychic cat opens up a link to your long-lost mother you won't need you-know-who's antics to give you conniptions. It'll be up to the "ghost" of his late sis to preach and nag good manners into him. Having been carved up into scrap might have been greatly annoying to her, but it makes for hellacious guilt trips to slap on Big Bro. Oh, the agony! Give the boy some room - and some Jihad marine raiders to smack around and thus work off those enormous tensions...you want him good and mellow for the next leg of your journey...

BOOK THREE: He Crossed his Neck with Thunder (going to press soon!)

Part 1:

You two want to get into Europe legally, so what to do? Stand on a North Sea iceberg with your thumbs out? That about sums it up. Welcome to the joys of refugee centers, group homes, donated clothing, schoolyard bullies and funny-smelling smoke in the john. In a place like this, you NEED friends you can trust, and it looks like you might make one. MEANWHILE, on the other side of the globe, someone, somehow came to know of your little adventure with the modern-day Barbary pirates and is looking to track you down... Lord love a duck, why would this be business of hers? It'd be interesting to find out, wouldn't it?

 Part 2:

It took a while, but the big goof is starting to catch on, especially in delicate matters like how to manipulate authority figures and dispose of bullies without assault charges, all while continuing his education in the three R's and reading between the lines of the politically correct drivel that passes for social studies in the new millenium. But life confined to a human form is starting to drive him squirrely; fortunately the novelty of a new acquaintance and an upcoming music festival will take his mind off his corporal cabin fever...you hope. But have you ever seen Dee take off those bracelets? Strange little chick, isn't she?