Instant of Decision
The year is somewhere in humanity's contentious future, and agent Karnes has one job: find Jim Avery, the saboteur who's stolen microfilm tied to technology that could shift the global balance. The Cold War has gone planetary, the United Nations versus the Eurasian League, and every shadow hides a betrayer. Karnes tracks Avery to a deserted house, confronts him, and watches him die in the dark. But Avery leaves behind something that changes everything: a mind impressor, a device that doesn't just hold information but installs it directly into consciousness. The knowledge it imparts is staggering: Earth may not be real. Humanity may be a historical exhibition staged for beings beyond comprehension, actors in a cosmic classroom, their lives a demonstration for graduate students of existence. As nuclear missiles converge on New York, Karnes faces an impossible calculus. Does it matter if the world is a stage? If everything he saves might be a hologram? This 1950s novella threads the needle between paranoid spy thriller and existential philosophy, asking the question that would preoccupy a generation of science fiction: how do you live when you learn the universe might be a lie?
