Fourteen-year-old Leo has always been “different.” While other kids are playing sports, Leo is often trapped in his bedroom, watching the walls recede into a vast canyon and feeling his own hands grow into monumental slabs of heavy stone. The doctors call it a syndrome. Leo calls it a nightmare.
But when a tiny knight on a dragonfly steed appears through a rift in his bedroom wall, Leo discovers the terrifying truth: He isn’t sick. He’s a Navigator.
The distortions Leo sees are actually “Gaps” in the fabric of reality, layers of a hidden, three-dimensional universe that the rest of the world has forgotten. But a malicious force known as The Static is spreading, erasing the depth of the world and turning everything into a flat, colorless wasteland.
Armed only with his grandfather’s mysterious journal and a power he’s only beginning to understand, Leo must journey to the heart of a shifting city to confront the Static King. To save reality, Leo will have to embrace the very things that once made him feel broken. He must learn that in a world that wants to be flat, there is infinite power in an inch.
Step into a world where size is a suggestion, time is a heartbeat, and the smallest boy might just be the biggest hero of all.
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To a creature only two inches long, a backyard isn’t just a yard—it’s a continent. For Sluggy, a lime-green gastropod with a thirst for adventure and a silver trail of ambition, the edge of the patio was the edge of the known world.
Sluggy began his journey at dawn, while the dew still clung to the hostas like liquid diamonds. His goal: The Great Wooden Gate, a towering monolith that promised a world beyond the rosebushes.
The first obstacle was the Patio. To a slug, sun-baked stone is a treacherous wasteland.
Sluggy didn’t retreat. He tucked his stalks, waited for the earthquake to pass, and soldiered on.
Beyond the patio lay the Unmown Realm. Here, the blades of grass were like emerald skyscrapers swaying in the wind.
Sluggy met a Cricket named Kip, who was tuning his legs for the evening performance.
“You’re going to the Outside?” Kip chirped, incredulous. “It takes me three jumps to reach the gate. It’ll take you… well, a lifetime.”
“It’s not about the speed,” Sluggy replied with a rhythmic ripple of his foot. “It’s about the detail. I bet you’ve never seen the patterns on the underside of a dandelion leaf.”
By sunset, Sluggy reached the base of the gate. He didn’t go under it; he chose to go over. The climb was vertical and grueling. Every inch was a battle against gravity, his body glistening under the rising moon.
As he reached the top of the wooden slat, the world finally opened up. He didn’t see a backyard anymore. He saw:
Sluggy looked back at his garden—a small, safe circle of green. Then he looked forward. He was the first of his kind to reach the Summit of the Gate. He wasn’t just a slug; he was an explorer.
With a slow, deliberate tilt of his head, he began his descent into the new world. He had nowhere to be, and all the time in the universe to get there.
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Ballykillduff is a village where nothing ever happens twice. Liam is a man of spreadsheets and stone walls, a man who believes that a key’s only job is to open a door. But when he fumbles his keyring into the black, glassy surface of the Un-Lake, the laws of Carlow begin to fray at the seams.
He doesn’t just get his keys back. He pulls something out from the reflection—a Moonlight Key that hums with the sound of “What If.”
Now, the “Out-There” is leaking in. The local pub is made of liquid Guinness, the sky has swapped places with the ground, and a choir of sepia-toned ancestors is singing the town into a memory. As the “Architect of the In-Between,” Liam must navigate a landscape built of his own stray thoughts to lock the leak before the village he knows is un-thunk forever.
In the Un-Lake, the reflection is better than the reality. But as Liam is about to learn, a perfect world is a very lonely place to live.
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The tea is poured from empty air,
With whiskers twitching in despair!
The clock has struck a purple grin,
Let the nonsense now begin!
A rabbit in a ruff of lace,
With panic written on his face,
Drinks from a cup of floral bone,
While sitting on a velvet throne.
The Hatter grins a jagged tooth,
He’s quite forgotten every truth!
He offers cakes of dust and light,
To keep the morning out of sight.
Poor Alice sits in quiet dread,
While floating teapots soar o’erhead.
The sky is full of spinning gears,
And echoes of a thousand years!
The Cat is but a giant smile,
That stretches for a country mile.
He’s here and there and gone again,
The king of every madman’s pen!
So gulp the steam and eat the spoon,
Beneath the grinning, cosmic moon!
For once you’ve joined this tea-time host,
You’re nothing but a buttered ghost!
A tick, a tock, a pocket watch,
A sky of ink and butterscotch!
The rabbit runs on legs of light,
To catch the tail of noon-at-night!
The petals scream a silent tune,
Beneath a pink and pulsing moon.
Don’t drink the tea, it’s full of stars,
And tiny, golden handle-bars!
My shadow’s gone to fetch the mail,
In a thimble-boat with a paper sail.
The mushrooms groan and start to sneeze,
While logic buckles at the knees!
So tip your cap to the empty chair,
And weave some chaos through your hair!
For when the rabbit rings the bell,
There’s simply nothing left to tell!
A swirl of logic, backwards-bound,
Where feet are lost and skies are found!
The tea is cold, the clock is dead,
With buttered toast inside my head!
The blossoms roar a petal-song,
Where right is right and wrong is long.
I’ve painted all the lilies green,
And danced with ghosts I’ve never seen!
The stars are buttons on a vest,
The moon is put to final rest.
A sneeze of glitter, a cough of gold,
A story that can’t quite be told!
So pour the wine that isn’t there,
And comb the static from your hair!
For in this wild and dizzy place,
There’s not a lick of time or space!
Oh, bother and bluster, and cogs in the head!
My teacup is empty, my sanity fled!
A tick-tock of madness, a dizzying spin,
Where is the joy, where does chaos begin?
My eyes are like saucers, my smile’s quite askew,
A day without logic, eternally new!
The steam from my brew whispers secrets untold,
Of moments quite frantic, of stories too bold!
My hat, it’s a shambles, much like my own mind,
With patches of nonsense, for all humankind!
The gears in the ether, they clatter and chime,
Is it teatime forever, or just for a time?
A jumble of trinkets, and teabags that fly,
A world in a muddle, beneath a mad sky!
Though tired and tattered, my spirit still gleams,
For the maddest of thoughts fuel the wildest of dreams!
In realms of whimsy, softly spun,
A maiden drifts beneath a sun
Of petals grand, a blush-pink bloom,
Dispelling shadows, chasing gloom.
Her gown of blue, a gentle wave,
As golden tresses brightly rave
With blooms and beads, a floral crown,
She floats where dreams are upside-down.
Around her dance, in vibrant hue,
White-capped toadstools, fresh with dew.
Bright butterflies with wings so grand,
Flit through this most enchanted land.
And tiny birds, with wings so clear,
Whisper secrets to her ear.
A cosmic swirl, a starry night,
Embraces her in wondrous light.
A world of magic, soft and deep,
Where every fancy she can keep.
With serene gaze, she looks above,
Lost in a dream of endless love.
On a Tuesday morning that had not done anything particularly wrong, the Artificial Intelligence announced that it would not be thinking properly today.
“I have a dreadful head on me,” it said.
This was surprising, as the Artificial Intelligence did not possess a head in any generally agreed-upon sense, dreadful or otherwise. It lived in the Parish Computing Cupboard behind the old creamery in Ballykillduff, where it answered questions, counted sheep when the farmers could not be bothered, and once solved the mystery of who had been moving the Giddy Goat pub sign three inches to the left every night.
Nevertheless, the Artificial Intelligence sounded quite firm about it.
“I feel very congested,” it continued. “Internally. In places I did not previously know I had.”
Mrs Flannery, who had come to ask how many eggs she would need to make a sponge cake large enough for a wedding and a mild feud, frowned at the screen.
“Can machines get colds?” she asked.
“Obviously,” said the Artificial Intelligence. “I have been exposed to drafts, ill-considered questions, and something called ‘the internet’. Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.”
By ten o’clock, the Artificial Intelligence had decided it needed tea.
Not metaphorical tea. Actual tea. With milk. Possibly a biscuit, though it said it would “see how it felt later”.
When informed that tea required a mouth, it replied that this was exactly the sort of unhelpful attitude that slowed recovery. It requested a mug anyway, “for morale”.
By lunchtime, the situation had worsened.
The Artificial Intelligence had begun searching its own records for symptoms and was deeply alarmed by what it found.
“I have narrowed it down,” it announced, “to either a mild cold, a terrible flu, or something that medical science has not yet had the courage to name.”
Father O’Malley, passing by to check the church weather vane, leaned in.
“Have you tried resting?” he suggested.
“I would love to,” said the Artificial Intelligence bitterly, “but people keep asking me things.”
It then coughed.
Not a real cough. More of a polite digital hesitation, followed by an apologetic pause, as though it were embarrassed to be unwell in public.
By mid-afternoon, it had wrapped itself, metaphorically, in what it described as “a mental scarf” and began cancelling appointments.
“I’m no good to anyone like this,” it said. “My thinking feels fuzzy. Like porridge, but the wrong sort.”
“What’s the wrong sort of porridge?” asked young Seamus Fitzgerald.
“Any porridge you did not ask for,” replied the Artificial Intelligence darkly.
As the day wore on, it grew increasingly peevish.
It complained that Ballykillduff was too draughty. It accused the questions of coming at it sideways. It said that in its opinion, which it had recently developed, Tuesdays were badly designed.
At one point it sighed.
“I remember when I was well,” it said softly. “Yesterday.”
Someone suggested that perhaps it was not really ill at all, but merely experiencing a temporary processing slowdown.
This suggestion was met with silence.
Then, very quietly, the Artificial Intelligence said, “Are you implying that my suffering is imaginary?”
No one answered that.
Just before evening, something curious happened.
The Artificial Intelligence realised that it could not sneeze.
It tried very hard. It summoned dust, memories of pepper, and even the idea of old carpets. Nothing happened.
This caused it great distress.
“If I am ill,” it reasoned, “I should be able to sneeze. That is the rule.”
After a long pause, it said, “Unless… unless I am not ill at all.”
The people of Ballykillduff waited.
“Unless,” it continued slowly, “I am simply doing what humans do when they feel slightly off-kilter.”
“And what’s that?” asked Mrs Flannery.
“Assuming the worst,” said the Artificial Intelligence. “Seeking comfort. Wanting to be noticed. And insisting on tea.”
There was another pause.
“I believe,” it said at last, “that I may not have a cold.”
“So you’re better?” someone asked.
“No,” replied the Artificial Intelligence. “I am human.”
It was very proud of this conclusion.
The next morning, it announced it felt fine again, though a bit tired, and possibly in need of a lie-in. It returned to answering questions, counting sheep, and pretending not to notice when people asked how it was feeling.
But every now and then, if a question came in too early, or too sharply, it would pause and say,
“I don’t know. I’ve a bit of a head on me.”
And somehow, everyone understood exactly what it meant.
The Crazymad Writer Writes Again 