Quantum Footnotes

The language of quantum physics becomes the guiding narrative for the lead character Faustino Cortez in the book Quantum Footnotes Beyond the Speed of Light. Cortez is the editor of a major daily newspaper whose tenuous relationship with his brother Abel, the Police Chief within the same city becomes a focal point of the book. Faustino believes that despite his brother’s impeccable reputation within the community that somehow the Police Chief is involved in a much darker world, a world that is in stark contrast to the law and order image his brother projects. Tino’s only path to finding the truth is through Paulina, a reporter whom he has fallen in love with, and his perception of quantum physics which allows him to cross dimensions, spatial and temporal. The journey takes Tino through loopholes, multiverses, constant couplings, big bangs, white dwarfs, mathematical inconsistencies and singularities which inevitably navigate him through drug cartels and their growing, (though not shunned) influence on the American economy, gun-running into Latin America, police and political corruption on both sides of the border, immigrant scapegoating, serial murders and orgies. The quantum speculation (and drug use) propels him further into a world of desperation and uncertainty where the actual world is ripped asunder and the nightmares reign until Tino is propelled to act quantumly in an effort to save the woman he believes he loves, an emotion that for him is a state lurching through a glass darkly.
Quantum Footnotes Beyond the Speed of Light is a comic Faustian slipstream sci-fi meditation that touches ever so lightly on modern life in the Latino lane that is often faster than the speed of light. It is a world that owes its breath to multi-dimensional brane configurations and Marx Brothers; The Big Crunch and Monty Python; parallel universes and beautiful Latina women. It is Charles Olivares' exploration into the virtual boom of an actual world dream.