Decode the Tablet

Crack the script. Keep the story.

Three new short stories, free, and every one of them is locked. Ancient astronauts, lost cities, buried machines. Twenty to twenty-eight pages each.

Each story sits under a stone tablet with one word carved into it. Match the shapes to the key, work out the word, tap it in, and the tablet cracks open. Most people get the first one in about five minutes. Nothing here spoils a book.

Every tablet hides two books, not one. Crack it and you get the short story. Under that story sits a full novella, and the only way to open it is to tell a friend about this page. So: three tablets, three short stories, and a bonus novella under each one.

Look at the tablet. One word is carved into the stone, one shape per letter, left to right. The line under it tells you what kind of word, like "the pilot's last name, eight letters."

Use the key. It sits right under the tablet and pairs every shape with its letter. Fair warning: I throw in extra shapes, so a few of them are there to fool you.

Tap or type the word, then hit Decode. Wrong, and it tells you how many letters are in the right spot. Right, and the tablet cracks open. You give me an email, I send you the story. Free.

Short story one of three

Deadrise

Short story. About 8,800 words, 30 pages.

Everybody laughed at the stone discs. Then four men put a rifle in his back and made him prove they were real. Colton Riley threw away a university career over twelve-thousand-year-old stone plates nobody believed in, and now his old unit believes him. That's the problem. They have his father in a chair with a gun on him, and they want Colton to walk them in. That door opens for one voice. His.

The tablet

The name of the people who fell from the wheel of stars. Five letters.

The key

Tap a shape to add its letter. Or type the word yourself.

Short story two of three

Duke Dixon & the Sky Full of Ships

Short story. About 9,300 words, 32 pages.

Duke Dixon was ten when they took him out of the Georgia pines. He's forty-five now, and all he wants to do is fish. The ones who took him have other plans. His DNA carries something old, older than any civilization on record, and the ancient sites scattered across the Earth were built to answer to it. Giza. Stonehenge. Machu Picchu. All connected. All dormant. All waiting for someone with his blood to wake them up. Now he's leading a fleet back to the planet he hasn't seen in thirty-five years, carrying a stone that hums against his palm, and heading straight into a fight with the forces that have kept humanity in the dark since before recorded history. No pressure.

The tablet

The star people who took him. Nine letters.

The key

Tap a shape to add its letter. Or type the word yourself.

Short story three of three

Starship Nightstorm

Short story. About 4,800 words, 20 pages.

The war is lost and Nova Fleet is burning. Ensign Dallas has one mission left: get his wife and kids onto an evacuation pod before the Imperium tears Nightstorm apart. Then his commanding officer starts filling escape capsules with cargo instead of civilians, and Dallas finds a secret that runs deeper than the battle outside. The admiral activates the fleet's AI, and the ship stops taking orders from anyone human. Now he is locked in a cargo bay, out of time, and a thousand light years from the people he loves.

The tablet

The ensign's surname. Eight letters.

The key

Tap a shape to add its letter. Or type the word yourself.