Gray Matters

A Novel

Unrest simmers in a dystopian future where disembodied brains are kept alive in tanks, waiting to earn a new body

At twelve years old, Skeets Kalbfleischer is returning from a ski vacation when a lightning strike knocks his plane out of the sky, killing everyone else on board. Although his body is destroyed, a radical procedure preserves Skeets’s brain, which spends twenty-five years in a fish tank before mankind realizes the implications of his second life. A key to immortality has been found.

Four centuries later, it has become commonplace for the minds of the dead to be preserved. While warehoused in a massive storage facility tended by robots, the brains pass time watching old film clips, learning about bees, and meditating their way to a higher state of being. But for the facility’s overseers, Skeets presents a problem. A twelve-year-old for all eternity, their most famous resident still wants to be a cowboy. To remedy this embarrassment, his handlers concoct a solution that will push humanity even farther past nature’s wildest dreams.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Hjortsberg including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.