Touched

by Walter Mosley

Genres: Dystopian

Synopsis

Intergalactic visions, deadly threats, and explosive standoffs between mostly good and completely evil converge in a dystopian fantasy that could only be conceived by the inimitable Walter Mosley, one of the country's most beloved and acclaimed writers



Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And he is the Cure.



Martin begins slipping into an alternate consciousness, with new physical strengths, to violently defend his family—the only Black family in their neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles—against pure evil. Think Octavia Butler meets Jeff VanderMeer meets Jordan Peele.



Expansive and innovative, sexy and satirical, Touched brilliantly imagines the ways in which human life and technological innovation threaten existence itself.

Release date: October 10, 2023

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Print pages: 105

Sample

I awoke on a Saturday morning with the Plan fully formed, but fading, in my mind. Nothing else had changed. It was as if I had gone to sleep years before, contemplating a tricky conundrum, and remained in that doze until the knotty question had been completely disentangled—at least mentally so, at least for a while.

But when I awoke it was merely the next morning, as if time had folded back on itself, depositing me where I was before.

Tessa was in bed next to me, sound asleep. Her hair was wrapped in violet nylon netting. She’d sleep for two more hours. Brown would certainly be asleep in his room and Celestine, whom everyone called Seal, was probably sitting in her bed reading a library book.

I sat up and took a deep breath that felt like my first inhalation in a very long time.

Cells began to fire in my body. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was as if my physiology had also undergone some kind of transformation. I could feel my organs and glands pumping out chemicals, altering tissue and even bone.

There had been an azure plane where beings, not human, had poked and butted me, fondled and fucked me in ways that made no sense in the earthly realm. I was there and others were too, other people, human beings, being prepared for something, for some things. It occurred to me that we were not all in accordance. Our Plans were different and sometimes even at odds. There were 107 assigned to the Great Change, but our tasks often seemed to contradict one another.

One hundred and seven human beings conditioned and trained to prepare for the Transition. But there were other creatures too; other earthly life-forms that were there to complete us—or maybe we were there to complete them or, even more accurately, to complete a circuit, a turning, a revolution.

It was only on that Saturday morning, with Tessa sleeping next to me and the sun slanting in through the seam of our heavy curtains, that I understood the Plan in its totality. And even then, while I was rousing from my centuries-long sleep, the lessons I had learned were receding into the shelves and cubby­holes of my unconscious mind.

I can remember only some of it now, after the first skirmish in an intergalactic invasion. There was a place that gave the impression of many shades of blue, but I can’t say if my eyes were working there. I was aware of different beings from a vast range of planes and realities. They spoke to me but in ways that transformed rather than informed me. They were like a congress that met only once, decided on the fates of worlds, and then disbanded when their words, their annunciations, had been received and digested.

My world, they said, was wrong. It, the planet itself, had spawned a disease of which I was a part. This contagion had begun to multiply and it had to be rendered impotent—by any means necessary.

I was to be an antibody in the eradication of this rampant syndrome. I was the cure or, more precisely, a cure.

And there were others who were being modified, as I was, to rid Earth of the danger of the genetic disorder of humankind—107 men and women refashioned to save the universe from the biology and resultant technology of evil.

There were 107 different plans, some radically diverse.

As I climbed out of bed the memories began to retreat. I knew that everything was different but I could no longer name the various other treatments (106 human beings), our agreements, and our therapeutic conflicts.

Throwing open the drapes, I forgot these serious issues and grinned broadly at the flood of sunlight.

I slid open the glass door to our second-floor deck and walked outside feeling that I was entering the world, committing to a battle like any foot soldier given his orders, obeying because that was my conditioning and my duty.

Mr. Snyder’s oak tree swayed in the morning breeze. There was the smell of fuel in the air and of food cooking.

“Mama, look!” a child shouted, but for me, at that moment, it was just one of the myriad sensations of this old/new world.

I had been a petty human when I had fallen asleep a thousand years ago but now I was something else.

One hundred and seven ways to change the world and no two of them in exact accordance. How could this end well? Beyond the chill on my skin and the chemicals in the air, I could feel the vibration of souls all around. Errant and leaky, confused and ­starving—the souls of insects and trees, humans and other mammals all drawn to the impossible hope of unity.

This notion of harmony arrested my worries. I had been in a place where there had been agreement among differences, something beyond love and understanding. I closed my eyes and imagined this pristine moment as if maybe it was a gaudy, ...