The Promissory Note is a short read. It is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. It can be purchased for .99 USD (or the equivalent in other Amazon marketplaces) and those with Kindle Unlimited accounts can read it for free:
It is set in the Ex Machina Souls universe—an imagining of what the second half of the twenty-first century might look like. The internet has evolved into a massive virtual domain. It is called the psybernet because people wirelessly access it through a neural implant called an IdChip. Everyone is equipped with the IdChip at birth. Those born before the IdChip was available have the option of acquiring it or refusing it.
The Promissory Note is told from the point of view of Nicole Parnell, an eight year old high functioning autistic. In kindergarten, she had been bullied because of her neurological disorder—because she was different. With the help of her friend, Shadya (Shade) Diaz, she learned how to stick up for herself. When a five year old prodigy, Erika Beck, is assigned to her third grade class, Nicole assumes the role of protector.
Erika suffers from genetic editing gone awry. She is a special kind of albino. She must wear layers of clothes and nearly opaque sunglasses to protect herself from the sun. In contrast to the seriousness of her condition, her appearance is comical. When a thirteen year old bully attempts to remove Erika’s sunglasses because he thought their thick deep pink frames were silly, Nicole successfully intervenes. Her two years of martial arts training pay dividends and the bullies back down.
Erika learns Nicole’s great, great, great grandmother is over one hundred years old. Granny Nikki, or Nina as Nicole calls her, was a black activist in the 1970s and, later, became a corporate executive responsible for global cultural outreach. Erika wants to meet her. Our story begins with a conversation between old Nina and young Erika.
This is a feel-good story about dreams, justice, and character. In its afterward, reproduced here, I explain how I came to write it:
About The Promissory Note:
This story was inspired by a memory. I don’t want to sell my memories. I am absorbing the publishing expenses and all my proceeds go to The Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund.
I was eleven years old, in 1963, when I heard this speech. I was living abroad. Nevertheless, its power was unmistakable. I was busy learning languages not my own. I was very sensitive to the meaning of words.
To the best of my recollection, it was on a BBC radio broadcast from Cyprus. I don’t know if it was the full speech or whether it had been abridged. It was not until years later I was able to read the full text of the speech. Yet, certain phrases imprinted themselves on my impressionable mind, and I remember them clearly to this day. One of those phrases was, “the content of their character.”
The greatest compliment I can bestow is to refer to someone as a person of character. A person who follows his, her, or their conscience. A person who endeavors to do the right thing. Sometimes the adversity is too great, and we fail. Still, it is better to try and fall short than to boast of a record unblemished by failure because we took the easy way out.
In early 1983, I started writing a science fiction novel entitled In Search of a Soul. The protagonists join the resistance to reinstate the US Constitution. How did our heroines acquire the character to put their lives on the line for the sake of an ideal?
Later that year, in August, the twentieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom highlighted the news. It was then I fleshed out Nina’s character and wrote the funeral scene. The chapter was largely complete. I tinkered with it over the decades.
When the Game Boy came out, I got the idea to not only end the chapter with a promissory note but begin with one as well. In 2014, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution protecting people with albinism and adopted 13 June as International Albinism Awareness Day. This cemented the date for the chapter’s opening.
The rest of the book took shape very gradually. I was too busy working. I would write a few pages here and there whenever I would fully visualize a scene. Usually, that meant I had to go over the rest of the book to ensure my foggy recollection had not resulted in some inconsistency.
In Search of a Soul is now finished. The bad news is, it is too long. I will have to cut. The ‘flashback’ chapters are the most vulnerable. Faced with the possibility of sacrificing my favorite chapter in the book, I decided I had more than two choices: keep or discard. I had a third choice. I could publish the story separately.
Nina is on very few of the book’s pages. The three girls she inspired are in their twenties. They are seriously bad-ass but, thanks to Nina, their hearts are solid gold. Her spirit watches over them. I hope you admire Nina as much as I do: A person of character.
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