Does the eradication of genetic diversity cleanse a society of crime and political corruption? Following the devastating Race Wars, the ruling order concluded that only by eliminating differences could further bloodshed be prevented. After witnessing a brutal murder, clone Hal LK2154 joins a shadowy organization to apprehend the mutants supposedly responsible for such crimes. With increasing knowledge of the group's police-state tactics, Hal learns that the roots of human violence grow deeper than the public suspects.

Author Biography

Jon Wesick's face appears in photographs from physics labs, martial arts dojos, Zen centers, and cities all over the world. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland and has worked doing cyclotron experiments, communications, medical physics, and systems engineering. He's studied aiki jujutsu, aikido, karate, judo, and a little kendo. Martial arts and a fascination with the mind led him to meditation. He lived in Vancouver, Canada for three years during his postdoc and has traveled to five continents so far. Jon hosts Southern California's best ice cream parlor poetry reading and is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He hopes that he's passed on some of what he's learned from his pursuits in the hundreds of poems and stories he's published in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. The editors of Knot Magazine nominated his story "The Visitor" for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Meditation Instruction" won the Editor's Choice Award in the 2016 Spirit First Contest. Another poem "Bread and Circuses" won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists Contest. Jon is the author of the poetry collection Words of Power, Dances of Freedom as well as several novels.