Flightsuit - kindle ebook by Tom Deaderick


Growing up poor in a virtual era isolated 14 year-old Leo.  The others were immersed in their digital world and Leo knew almost nothing about it.  He lived an upside-down life, left-behind and trapped in the physical world as the rest moved on. 

Alone, he explores miles of wilderness bounded by the Nolichucky River and encircling Appalachian mountain ridges of Bumpas Cove, Tennessee.  Beyond the last broken and tilted pieces of a crumbling asphalt road, he discovers the abandoned village where Iron Mountain's mine workers once lived.  He walks inside empty houses and mine works searching for toys and relics of the families that lived there decades before.  In this place, being alone didn't make him feel bad.  It felt natural being alone here, as if the entire valley was for him.

He returns daily, walking the mountains and hills looking for forgotten things.  Crawling through a streambed with a tunnel of long blackberry briars arching overhead, he finds something that isn't covered with rust.  It shines white in the scattered shadows.  Freed of muck and mire, the glass-metal sleeve is as light as plastic.  Leo has never seen anything like it.  He slides his arm into the sleeve, but before his fingers can reach down into the two long flat fingers, a sharp hook locks into his arm.

Leo is forced to find other scattered pieces, assembling a full flightsuit.  Once restored, it prepares for a thousand light-year return trip with Leo trapped inside, as it waits for its alien pilot to be restored into Leo's mind.

But the suit has drawn others, like Leo, set apart and isolated.  Their fate and Leo's will be determined by their own unique experiences as they face an alien entity that has no regard for their lives.