44 - A Synopsis

44 is set largely in the City, an incredibly dense, 3-dimensional, urban space filling a potato-shaped globule of normal space accidentally sucked into the swirling energies and possible universes of the Continuum. The City has random contact with other worlds via rifts that open up, briefly linking the City to other possibilities. A highly secret, parasitic bureaucracy infects the City, as it does many other worlds. It has no official name, but is known in the City as Company 44.

44’s principle characters are:

· Idiom Zero (Id) – Migraine-racked and addicted to painkillers, Id is able to predict the course and nature of the explosive rifts that open up around the City. He has far greater gifts though, which soon bring him to the attention of Company 44.

· Torch Singer – An almost psychopathic executive within Company 44. His speech is punctuated by pauses and soft ‘ahs’ as he searches for the right word.

· Registered Chrysanthemum (Reg) – An Arrant (the remnants of an elite group of soldiers bred by one of Company 44’s ancient foes, the Stillwatch) trapped by Singer in the City and forced to train recruits to the Company. At first glance he seems as casually amoral as Singer, but he has hidden complexities.

· Councillor Abacus Briar (Abe) – A City Councillor blackmailed by Company 44 over his mysterious and very private indiscretions at his club, the Business End.

· Councillor Clover Lebanon – A City Councillor who is in fact an ancient creature that moves between bodies, living for many years in the host before moving on. She is trying to discover what Councillor Briar gets up to at the Business End in order to stop him siphoning public monies from the City.

· Anathema Glue (Ana) – A detective in the City’s Security Corps. She first meets Id and Reg over a murdered body at the Business End, and is suspicious of their glib lies from then on.

· Halogen Agaric (Hal) – An Arrant Elder who has stumbled across the location of the Stillwatch’s sealed possibilities. He has become trapped in the City and is desperate to escape before Company 44 can torture him for the information he carries.

Part I - The City. Id is forcibly recruited into Company 44 because he has a genetic abnormality that allows him to see objects, known as pivot-points or fulcrums, that allow one to flip between possible universes. Id is trained and introduced to his partner, Registered Chrysanthemum. Torch Singer assigns them to discover who, besides Company 44, is performing surveillance on Councillor Abacus Briar.
They witness a bizarre murder at the Business End. Their investigation then leads them to various locations around the City, and through a chain of suspects to Councillor Lebanon - Briar’s blackmailer. Parallel to these events they pursue the mysterious killer from the Business End, who seems sometimes connected to, sometimes separate from, their blackmail investigation. They are hampered by Ana Glue, who is suspicious of their claimed affiliation to State Security, and by Id’s mental health. Id has seizures, most likely a product, says Reg, of the Company’s training regime, their attempts to make Id more amoral, and the cortical implants they have given him to allow him to escape his rift-induced migraines.
While trying to finalise a deal with Lebanon, Id and Reg briefly meet the killer from the Business End - Reg’s fellow Arrant, Halogen Agaric - before being arrested. Released, they travel through the City to meet Lebanon once more, this time knowing that she holds the key to their escape from the City, via the mysterious Fibonacci Transit. Agaric has beaten them to Lebanon, but he and Reg collaborate, detonate an electromagnetic bomb, and escape from the surveillance net with which Company 44 has been observing them, though Id is left behind.
Torch Singer springs his trap at the Fibonacci Transit, killing Hal, and learning the location of the Stillwatch’s sealed possibilities - his goal all along. Id spoils his plans though, sacrificing himself to kill Singer and help Reg escape the City.

Part II - The Chase. Reg flees through a series of parallel worlds, including a desert that has buried an ancient city; a virtual-reality paradise; a petrified forest; and a hellish possibility where the Earth has become tidally locked to the now red-giant sized Sun, leaving a narrow hospitable band that separates giant day-side storms hot enough to rain potassium, and a cold night-side dominated by plains of frozen argon. He is pursued by a ‘revived’ Id, a cloned and ‘reminded’ Torch Singer, a Company employee, and a ‘Misanthropic Entity’ – a bastardised clone of Reg inhabited by a beast from another world whose sole purpose is to hunt Reg to the death.
At the last world on the route, on which lies the door to the Stillwatch’s sealed possibilities, Reg, Id, Torch, the Misanthropic Entity, and the Company employee, Quinine Tinsel, play a deadly game of cat and mouse among a forest of ancient standing stones. In the end, only Id remains, Reg dying in his arms. Together, they pass into the sealed possibilities to discover something inexplicable.