It would, of course, take a trio of Ivory Tower scientists to conceive of tracking down that statistical entity, the Common Man, and testing out an idea on him. And only the Ivory Tower type would predict that egregiously wrongly!
A lunar adventure awaits Zora, Sophie and the rest of the gang as they deal with a familiar adversary in a new setting. Note: You should read "Zora's Aurora 1: Glory's Shadow" before reading this one. They're part of a series and meant to be read sequentially.
Thomas Morgan, a disillusioned former U.S. Army soldier, is drifting through life as a salvager in the deserts of the Southwest. Haunted by his past and seeking purpose, he stumbles across a bizarre artifact in the ruins of a decommissioned military research facility—a sleek, palm-sized orb pulsating with energy. The orb, a self-contained AI named Solace, introduces itself as an ancient construct designed by a lost alien civilization. Solace reveals that hidden beneath the sands lies the Erebus.
Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race--or the beginning of a new one? There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces of man-like things--but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to the riddle.
Millions of years in the distant future, a posthuman scientist is attempting to build a time machine and tests it by sending two boxes with a hastily gathered batch of educational toys into the past. When the boxes fails to return, he believes the entire experiment to be a failure, he discontinues his efforts. One box arrives in the middle of the 20th century and the second in the latter part of the 19th century. Both have had their time-travel circuitry irreparably damaged by the journey.