This Refracted Parallel

After working hard for 8 months on 3 different projects, Zek Stone needed to take some time off, but a local stickler for robotic details got in the way and made things unnecessarily complicated. Before he could settle the date in court, something extraordinary occurred in late May which involved a discovery made while working on a project in 2015 and it led him to recall the shadow wars of 2017.

After 40 years of exile from his home-parallel, lost within the sub-parallels of the shadow earth Aton 5, he was growing tired of working himself to death, but there were still problems that had to be resolved, and no way to avoid it. Despite the fact that he had delivered a "Defense Report", it became obvious, after another 8 months of fending off domestic spies and defending his rights to a healthy, well-balanced life, that he was still stuck within the shadow earth of Aton 5.

He realized the problem was quite complex, and was about to go back to work on it, when something extraordinary occurred and suddenly, he was out under the full moon in the early summer, late at night, chasing a wild-man into another shadow realm.

His physician had suggested that he needed a nice vacation, with fresh air, sunlight, and exercise. Well, he got it alright, chasing a genuine mystery, only the moon-light would have to suffice, until he could see the forest for the trees in the light of another day.