Schroedinger's Box
Deke Palmer and his small team of lab assistants stumble upon an unexpected byproduct while exploring superconductivity: an impenetrable field they call "the Box." Palmer recognizes the world-changing potential of their astonishing discovery, but is determined to understand the Box's true nature before releasing the breakthrough to the scientific world. As they explore the boundaries of the technology, a freak lab accident uncovers a shocking secret — time stops within the Box. Nothing can escape its limits… except for Palmer's consciousness. While Palmer tries to understand the boundaries, Dr. Tilly, the autocratic head of the Physics department, has other plans. Tilly uses every underhanded trick in academia's arsenal to wrest control of the project from Palmer and claim the discovery as his own. Threats, manipulations, bureaucratic power plays, and outright sabotage threaten the integrity of the groundbreaking research, Palmer's career, his life, and even his family. Meanwhile, Palmer's consciousness, freed from his physical body, explores the world beyond the material. His nihilistic worldview is shattered. On a plane where time, space, and mortality lose meaning, Palmer encounters undeniable evidence of consciousness beyond death — but are those he meets reliable guides? With every revelation, Palmer is drawn further into a reality science had not prepared him to face, even as Tilly threatens to destroy everything he's worked for. For readers of The Shack, Dark Matter, The Prestige, and The Great Divorce.
About the Author
I spent two years as a minister in Austria, where I learned to speak German fluently and that, though rejection is unlikely to kill you, it seems to build character at an alarming rate. After studying Illustration at Utah State University, I made the perfectly logical decision to move into satellite communications and distance learning technologies. That career path eventually led to the founding of Broadband Learning Corp., a publicly traded company that grew into a multi-million-dollar enterprise and gave me the opportunity to travel to all fifty states and more than forty countries. Most of my writing happened at 35,000 feet, while folded into airline seats clearly designed for smaller species. During long flights, I wrote one-act plays and musicals for community theater, while quietly rehearsing dialogue, muttering character voices, and adjusting song lyrics under my breath. I was enormously entertained by my rehearsal, but probably made nearby passengers wonder if the flight crew should be alerted. Today, my writing blends speculative fiction and apologetics with ideas shaped by a lifetime spent in business, ministry, technology, travel, and the persistent suspicion that reality may be more than what meets the senses.
I live in Riverton, Utah with my wife and I am the proud father of one son and two daughters.