Sequels
The primary books are an envisioned series of 4 volumes. These stories track the expansion of the Micro Project into a robust program that might be described as a cross between NASA and a U.S. Military Academy. Eventually, the secrecy of the project is dropped as droves of top high school and college students petition to serve as officers and scientists with the Micro Project.
Perfecting the shrinking process, scores of people undergo condention to become long-term inhabitants of Mission Stations located at various strategic locations in human bodies. Crews carry out surveillance missions, they maintain body organs and facilitate major organ functions. They fight cancerous tumors and foreign invaders while exploring the human body and its mysterious processes. Over the course of the 4 books, after numerous setbacks and hardships, the Micro Project missions lead to a fantastic lengthening of human life.
The 2nd book in the series - "The Battle of the Micro Project" - catches up with Jamie not long after she has become a teacher for children with special needs. When she receives an unusual-looking package on her desk at school, she knows immediately who sent it. Filled with consternation, she refuses to open it for 2 solid weeks, leaving the bundle untouched on her desk. Eventually, after days of curious questions from her students, she opens the package one evening before going home. As she examines the contents - she guessed right, another recruitment from the Micro Project - she senses that she is not alone in her classroom. Looking up nervously, she sees the terrible face of Lucius - Dr. Asher's disgraced assistant and one of the alchemy Guardians - looking at her from within the darkness of a half-open closet. She immediately recognizes his murderous intent, barely evading him as he attacks.
The book then follows Jamie as she attempts to outwit Lucius and his henchmen. Concurrently, the drama of a child dying of a brain stem glioma - a terrible type of brain cancer with no known cure - is occurring at Westfalen. Jamie soon learns that she is not only being called to serve as captain of the Jerusalem again, but also to round up members of the former crew in a desperate attempt to enter the little girl's body and fight off the growing cancer cells before they consume her. Tracking down the former crew members and convincing them to return to Westfalen while also running from Lucius proves to be funny, dramatic, terrifying and exciting. The culminating battle with the rapidly-expanding glioma is gut-wrenching. A must read!
In addition to the 4 main books, I have mentally written "lateral" sequels as well. By this, I mean entire novels describing the background of the 4 main crew members. Each depicts how they ended up at a place where they were recruited by the Micro Project.
Of note, the stories are largely tales of valiant attempts at survival in the face of failed lives and broken hearts:
Perfecting the shrinking process, scores of people undergo condention to become long-term inhabitants of Mission Stations located at various strategic locations in human bodies. Crews carry out surveillance missions, they maintain body organs and facilitate major organ functions. They fight cancerous tumors and foreign invaders while exploring the human body and its mysterious processes. Over the course of the 4 books, after numerous setbacks and hardships, the Micro Project missions lead to a fantastic lengthening of human life.
The 2nd book in the series - "The Battle of the Micro Project" - catches up with Jamie not long after she has become a teacher for children with special needs. When she receives an unusual-looking package on her desk at school, she knows immediately who sent it. Filled with consternation, she refuses to open it for 2 solid weeks, leaving the bundle untouched on her desk. Eventually, after days of curious questions from her students, she opens the package one evening before going home. As she examines the contents - she guessed right, another recruitment from the Micro Project - she senses that she is not alone in her classroom. Looking up nervously, she sees the terrible face of Lucius - Dr. Asher's disgraced assistant and one of the alchemy Guardians - looking at her from within the darkness of a half-open closet. She immediately recognizes his murderous intent, barely evading him as he attacks.
The book then follows Jamie as she attempts to outwit Lucius and his henchmen. Concurrently, the drama of a child dying of a brain stem glioma - a terrible type of brain cancer with no known cure - is occurring at Westfalen. Jamie soon learns that she is not only being called to serve as captain of the Jerusalem again, but also to round up members of the former crew in a desperate attempt to enter the little girl's body and fight off the growing cancer cells before they consume her. Tracking down the former crew members and convincing them to return to Westfalen while also running from Lucius proves to be funny, dramatic, terrifying and exciting. The culminating battle with the rapidly-expanding glioma is gut-wrenching. A must read!
In addition to the 4 main books, I have mentally written "lateral" sequels as well. By this, I mean entire novels describing the background of the 4 main crew members. Each depicts how they ended up at a place where they were recruited by the Micro Project.
Of note, the stories are largely tales of valiant attempts at survival in the face of failed lives and broken hearts:
- "Village of Stones and Blood" - Yusuf's story depicting a village in the throes of Palestinian militancy and depression as conflicts with Israel intensify. Focuses largely on his first 8 years where he is constantly recruited into the resistance movement by means both passive and direct. He must balance his admiration of martyers and his rage at political injustice with a deep admiration toward his father - a committed pacifist and professor of history at a local university. Both of Yusuf's parents vanished, with no explanation, just after he was sent to the States. Yusuf enters the Micro Project in a "paralysis of soul," as he longs for and wonders about his long-missing parents.
- "Sadie's Verses" - A book largely comprised of poetry. Describes her confusing childhood, including poetic image-depictions of sexual, emotional and physical abuse suffered as a detached orphan. There are moments of levity, largely centered around how she outwits her tormentors. The book is an exploration into the world of adoption and foster children, the risks to children (especially foreign ones, like Sadie), and a statement about the ravages of pedophilia.
- "Thoroughfare" - The story of a brilliant scientific mind as it degenerates into anger and social dysfunction in the face of constant ostracization. Dr. Levin had to survive in a world where molecules made sense, but humans never did. The story describes his halting attempts at friendship and love, all of which fail in ways that continually befuddle him. Through the story, there is one person, a girl from his childhood, who has always clearly loved him. But he never sees this; never understands her unconditional and seemingly-infinite affection for him. This is, in effect, a veiled love story, the conclusion of which comes through the Micro Project main story.
- "The Sky Fighter." Ace's humble beginnings in Iowa, his brilliant and improbable climb to the pinnacle of air plane piloting, including hair-raising battles in Operation Desert Storm. and his escape from militant muslim captivity after his plane goes down in South Belad province. What becomes clear is that his gregarious personality allows him to gloss over the brutal murder of his brother, and his failure - at the last second - to rescue him. He enters the Micro Project story more broken and hopeless than he, or anyone except Dr. Asher, realizes.