The Aperture

A woman alone in Lisbon encounters a presence she cannot explain. A bus driver in Chile sees the landscape open in an impossible direction. Two lovers share an intimate encounter, but only one experiences an opening.

At Orison, accounts like these begin changing the meaning of the contact that made Elias Mercer famous. He remembers awareness extending beyond his body. He cannot tell other people how to get there.

The investigation draws researchers and volunteers into a widening community of experiments, friendships and sexual relationships. Their differences become evidence. Through failed repetitions and unexpected openings, they begin uncovering a biological restriction that ordinarily keeps human awareness tied to one bodily point of view.

For Eli, the work unfolds alongside the home he is making with Tomas. For Vey, life on the island is acquiring purposes of its own. Around them, people continue working, falling in love, getting things wrong and wanting more than the research can offer. As access becomes possible, its consequences enter lives that were already complicated.

Book Two of The Choir Chronicles. The story continues in The Parallax.