Daedalia is a serialized novel, with a new chapter released every Monday morning. The story is designed to unfold slowly, the days in between, a space for it to settle into your imagination. Each chapter is a 10–15 minute read/listen. Check out the Table of Contents if you want to jump to a specific chapter. Want something to binge while you wait? Three novels, complete with audio narration are ready for you to dive in.
Previously…
Kelly's journals from 2022 recount the beginning of her illness and its impact on her ability to keep up with the speed of Ona's visions. Walking Lefty's weathered concrete acre, she felt the work coming and knew it would be too big for a canvas and would somehow involve technology. She agreed to meet tech billionaire, Trevor Gaines out of curiosity about scale, and by September she was on her hands and knees on the slab, out of time and reaching for something she couldn't yet name.
The chickens’ blood spilled in crimson quarters on the gleaming white quartz of the kitchen floor.
“Rosa, come and get these!”
A sturdy woman with a severe bun emerged from the depths of a pantry, clutching the skirt of her apron bulging with root vegetables.
“Yes, Mr. Gaines.”
She moved quickly and dumped the load of produce into the industrial-sized sink before rushing over to take the birds.
“Make sure you clean this up before it stains the tile, yeah? And no bleach, no harsh chemicals. I don’t want this place to smell like a hospital cafeteria when our guests arrive.”
He had to be stern and explicit with her, otherwise she would completely ignore his instruction. But Trevor Gaines had achieved his success by knowing how to be the right manager in every situation. For some people, it was the carrot, for others, the stick, and then there were a few who required the iron fist in the velvet glove. Rosa was the latter.
“I know your chicken will be to die for.”
Her face softened and she took the three bloody, headless birds into her apron.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“No thank you. I’m fine. No problem.”
Gaines washed his hands of the blood in the smaller sink on the side counter and dusted the feathers from his workout clothes. Leaving the kitchen, he pulled the device from his pocket and took a habitual scroll through his dashboard. More north-trending green arrows than yesterday.
“Mina, read my messages, just the critical ones about the acquisition. I have three minutes.”
The delicate whispery voice, modeled from an English actress he was obsessed with, obeyed his command and delivered what was necessary in the allotted time. He brought her into the shower stall with him and perched her in the purpose-built nook, inset into the azure-tiled wall. The nook illuminated with soft golden light, warm water began to rain down in fine droplets from the grid of pinholes above, and music faded in, a flute floating atop a burbling tabla drumbeat. He shucked off his clothes, leaving them outside the stall.
“Mina, undress for me.”
A screen, large enough to cover most of the far wall at the opposite end of the shower, illuminated behind glass, and the famous actress appeared. She smiled and began to tug her t-shirt over her head. Her AI-enhanced breasts bounced free. He marveled at the precision of the new physics engine before stepping into the stall and giving her further instruction. But his mind was distracted, and soon he dismissed her for a livestream of the ocean from a webcam mounted on the beach of his island.
The guests tonight had been carefully selected. He loved good discourse and found it only happened under the right conditions—good food, plenty of time, and smart people who violently disagreed on important issues. His favorite sparring partner, Marco, would be coming with whoever his latest boyfriend was. He had also invited the fiery young senator from North Carolina who had been instrumental in the push to roll back Roe v. Wade. Certainly he would be bringing his church-mouse wife. But the real wild card was Lefty, the art guy who managed Daedalia. He was good for a laugh. They were both straight white men of a certain age and they shared a love of baseball. But he knew nothing about the wife. Because he abhorred the absence of data, Gaines had tasked one of his assistants to do a background check. He read through the report this morning.
The woman, Kelly, had never worked as far as he could tell, never held a job. Hadn’t gone to college. Wasn’t on any social media, though his company’s facial-recognition software had surfaced a handful of images taken by others. A few gallery openings on Lefty’s arm, a shot of them at their daughter’s graduation. There were a couple of articles on New Mexico regional news sites about her kitschy folk art and the community. It was yawn-worthy stuff, typical of a bored housewife. What had struck him was the story about their child being abducted by some lunatic in 2006. There was a story there he wanted to know more about.
Gaines spent the next couple of hours getting the Montana house ready for his guests. He set the table on the porch himself and started a fire in the stacked-stone hearth at one end. It was cold, so he put out some heat lamps and made sure the propane tanks were full. Doing things below his paygrade kept him grounded. He took pride in it, though he had to admit, killing the chickens was not a practice he wanted to keep up even if it was the ethical thing to do. No matter—there were countless ways he tended to his conscience, sandbags he routinely added to the moat around his privilege. Some of his peers had it worse. At least he came from nothing for the most part, and had earned his billions.
At five, he sent his driver to the small airstrip to pick up his guests, all of whom would be arriving via one of his private jets. An hour later he was out front in one of his famous black turtlenecks waiting to greet them when they arrived. Nothing was going to plan. The senator had sent word last minute that they wouldn’t be coming. Something about an ice storm in Raleigh. Marco texted to say he was coming solo, which meant there would be no one to rein in his ADD and no buffer between him and the gin. And of course he was running late. Soft snowflakes, like soap shavings, began to fall, catch in his hair, and dot his shirt. The black SUV pulled into the drive. The back door opened and the tall art dealer stepped out. He looked like an aging character actor who might have starred in westerns with his strong jaw, lanky build, and relaxed posture. He was handsome, charming, and magnetic. Gaines was anxious to see the woman who commanded the loyalty of such a man. When she rounded the back of the vehicle, Gaines’s first thought was that perhaps the wife couldn’t make it and this was an assistant.
The woman was slight, a sliver of a person, and standing next to her husband, seemed like a twelve-year-old. Her hair was dishwater gray-brown and cut in a blunt bob. She wore old, ill-fitting jeans and a black puffy winter coat that only made her look smaller as she shivered in her Vans sneakers next to her husband.
“Trevor, thanks for having us. This is my wife, Kelly.”
When Gaines took her small, sturdy hand, she looked up and met his eyes, and everything he had recorded about her physical appearance was wiped clean and reset. This was no assistant. Her large eyes were luminous and green, the green of oxidized copper. They were framed with black eyeliner and the stroke was so precise and thin, he couldn’t imagine the hand that might have drawn it. All the studied patter he peddled when meeting someone new escaped him. He cleared his throat.
“Welcome… welcome. Please come inside.”
After a glass of wine, Gaines gradually recovered his ability to engage, though he found Kelly’s quiet intensity disarming, and it put him off his game. This night wouldn’t be the swirl of socio-political, techno-optimism discourse he favored. He found himself leaning in across the table most of the evening as he tried to summon words from his mysterious guest.
“So… you’re an artist too, I hear?”
“Not really. I make little things,” Kelly said. “Mostly for my own amusement.”
“Have you met your husband’s infamous client?”
“No, I haven’t. She doesn’t see anyone except Lefty. But you must’ve known that already. I imagine you’ve done some research.”
He nodded but didn’t respond. He studied Lefty, who had been nursing the same beer for over an hour. The man behaved differently in his wife’s presence. He seemed to dial back his charm or maybe he was just being careful. Gaines had seen this before among his married friends. It’s why he had refused to enter into the contract of monogamy.
Marco finally arrived halfway through dinner, flinging the door open to the porch and shaking snow out of his dark curls.
“Bonjour, amigos! So sorry I’m late.”
He introduced himself to Lefty and Kelly, shaking their hands enthusiastically. He grabbed a bottle of Tanqueray from the sideboard and pulled out the chair at the end of the table in one fluid motion.
“I would have been on time, but there was a problem with the new release—an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
“You know you could trust one of the many talented engineering leads you spend a fortune on to manage things.”
“It’s my baby, Trev. You know this.”
“What are you releasing?” Kelly asked.
“It’s the new version of our LLM. Big release, lots of new features…”
“What’s an LLM?” Kelly asked.
“Marco, not everyone here lives in Silicon Valley. LLM stands for large language model, Kelly, which is the new frontier of AI.”
“What can you do with these LLMs?” she asked.
For the next hour, as snow piled up outside and the fire amassed a glowing bed of embers, Marco and Trevor talked excitedly about all the things they were building that would make the Industrial Revolution look like quaint little innovation. At one point, Trevor pulled out his phone and demonstrated his personal prototype. Mina entertained them by answering even the most esoteric questions, including a comprehensive summary of Daedalia lore, prompted by Gaines who beamed like a proud parent at a piano recital. After he was satisfied that his guests were duly impressed, he pocketed his phone and suggested they move to the soft seating around the hearth where he had fed enough wood to fuel a crackling blaze.
“We’ve nerded out enough. Lefty, Kelly, you must rescue us from ourselves. You know Marco and I are both huge fans of Daedalia. Marco’s just beginning to invest in art.”
“It’s true, but I’m just learning what I like,” Marco said. “Much of it doesn’t make sense to me and my engineering brain, but Daedalia, her work I get. It’s just impossible to find. If only we had a guy…”
“Sure, let me just call her up,” Lefty said. “See if I can get her to crank something out next week for you.”
“Tell me,” Kelly said. “What is it you like about her work?”
Marco stared at her for a beat, furrowed his brow, then turned to Lefty.
“So, you could do that, just call her?”
“No,” Kelly said, “he can’t just do that. She’s not a trained seal. Besides, she doesn’t have a phone.”
Marco looked chastened. He opened his mouth to respond but instead, settled back into his chair and took a sip of gin. Kelly wasn’t ready to let it go.
“Have you actually seen her work in person or just photos online?”
“He’s seen my collection,” Gaines said. “The 9/11 panels. I’m not sure if you knew I had them. It’s not public knowledge, but I assume your husband told you.”
“He did. But how can you be sure they’re real? It’s estimated that 1.5 million tons of rubble fell that day and…”
Lefty squeezed his wife’s thigh where his hand had been resting. “I told you he’s had them verified by several experts.”
“Of course,” Kelly said, “it just seems fantastical that all twelve panels could have survived.”
“But isn’t everything about Daedalia fantastical?” Gaines was sitting in the chair closest to Kelly and he leaned in. “You must be more of an expert on this than just about anyone. What does her work mean to you?”
“I don’t pretend to understand her or her work. Daedalia is Lefty’s domain. Always has been.”
“Why do I find that hard to believe?” Gaines said. “I mean, the two of you have been together as long as he’s represented Daedalia, no? Surely you’ve got an opinion on someone’s work who has basically been your golden goose.”
“I only like her old stuff,” Kelly said. She tossed back the remaining half a glass of wine she had been sipping. “Can you point me to the restroom?”
“Come on, I’ll show you,” Gaines said, standing up. “I need to grab another bottle of wine anyway.”
When she exited the bathroom just off the kitchen, he was waiting for her with two bottles of wine. “I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer.”
“Oh, I’m not an expert on wine. Either is fine with me.”
“I sense there’s a lot more to you than you’re letting on, folk artist. Why are you so determined to go unnoticed?”
“Does everyone have to be noticed? Is it so important?”
Gaines shrugged. “You don’t like me very much, do you?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I don’t really know you. This commission Lefty is brokering for you, what are you hoping it will be? What more could a man like you want that he doesn’t already have?”
“You don’t fuck around, do you? Just straight to the point. I like that.”
He set one of the bottles down on the counter and was beginning to turn to walk back to the others, but she caught his arm. “If you like it, why don’t you answer the question?”
“Love, happiness, salvation, eternal life—same as everyone else.”
“You think everyone wants to live forever?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. Besides, I know for a fact I won’t. So, you think whatever she manages to create will get you closer to any of those things?”
“I’m not sure, but nothing else has worked. I never even considered the idea that there was anything more, anything beyond what I could see, taste, touch, smell, or fuck.”
He leaned in very close, whispering the last word in her ear. Kelly took a step back and scowled, ever so slightly. “And… seeing her work up close changed something. So what, you believe in God now? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, God is for fools. But I did feel changed the first time I saw the panels, and I’ve never been able to shake that feeling. It’s unsettling, like being given a glimpse, seeing through a split in the curtain, knowing something’s back there moving, pulling all the levers, but I can’t know what it is.”
“What if you spend all this money and there’s nothing more than what you’ve already been given?”
“I’ve made worse investments. Besides, I have a good feeling about this one. Especially after meeting you.”
“Lefty and I should think about getting back home.”
“You won’t get out in this weather. I’ve had Rosa make up the guest bedrooms.”
Kelly stiffened. He smiled the same smile she’d seen on the cover of Time magazine two years prior.
“Come on, someone has to help me drink this three-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I can see you’re interested in the AI stuff. Wait till Marco’s fully lubricated. He’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
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Soooo good. The opening scene is fantastic. And then the way we’re learning more about Gaines. Not to mention the intriguing ending. Snowed in!!?!
Love your reading voice