UNIVERSES OF KARINA FABIAN
The Universe of the Order of Our Lady of the RescueI don’t remember exactly how Rob and I cam up with the idea of St. Gillian of L5 or of her order of spacefaring nuns, but I seem to recall that I was working on or had just finished a series on religious orders for the Wyoming Catholic Register. Rob at the time was very interested in colonization of the solar system, and from the two topics came our vision of the near future.
St. Gillian’s time lies about 150 years in our future, and we have finally conquered the solar system. There are space stations, colonies on the moon and Mars, and asteroid mining operations that have permanent and rotational crews. It wasn’t governments that were finally responsible for man’s great leap, but commercial interests. There are hotels, research stations, space freighters carrying people and goods, even plans for LunaDisney. One of the main hubs is the L5 station, situated because it rests on the Lagrange point 5. L5 Station has the honor of having the first artificial gravity generator installed by its creator, R. Charles Hawkins, and of hosting the first convent of the Order of Our Lady of the Rescue, later to be known as the Order of St. Gillian.
St. Gillian is the widow of R. Charles Hawkins. They attended Catholic School together, though she was several grades behind him. She got a double degree in nursing and occupational therapy with an emphasis on space-related injuries, which was in demand in Colorado, which had become a major center for space industry. They married after college, a difficult decision for her, since even then, she had the sense of being called to religious life. However, she also adored her vocation as wife and mother, despite the fact that R.’s work took him to space for months and occasionally years at a time. He wanted her to follow him to space, but she insisted their children have a “dirtside upbringing.” In fact, she herself never wanted to live in space, and was content to enjoy her small farm home and her horses horses. It wasn’t until an industrial accident involving his research injured R. so badly he was no longer able to bear Earth’s gravity that she went to join him on L5. She put her skills to work nursing him to health, and helping him to continue his research, at times pushing out his self pity over his injuries to use the gifts God had given him.
As her husband grew less dependent on her, she learned everything she could about space life and the people who lived it. Thus, when her husband died and she again felt the call of a Vocation, she knew what she wanted to do: start an order of spacefaring sisters. To earn their keep, they would conduct space search and rescue operations. This was a highly expensive and in-demand business and by keeping a vow of poverty and providing their service for “supplies, air, and the love of God,” they undercut the competition and forged a place for religious in space. By the time of her death, there were three “sister houses” of the “Rescue Sisters,” hosted by L5, the government of Phobos, and LunaDisney.
The Stories of St. Gillian’s Universe:
“Code Seven”: (Hereditas, Spring 2006). A Miracle of St. Gillian. When a micro-meteoroid hits a space station, the survival of the entire population lies with 13-year-old Paul. When all else failed, he must put aside his misgivings and invoke Code Seven: Trust in St. Gillian.
“These Three”: (Infinite Space, Infinite God anthology, Twilight Times Books) A Miracle of the Blessed St. Gillian. The freighter Poubelle, a neglected, barely spaceworthy piece of junk, breaks down in a spectacular way, all but destroying itself from within, killing all the crew but one, and altering its course to collide with L5 station. The Rescue Sisters are on the way, but they can’t pull Poubelle off its course unless the only survivor, Peter, activates secondary attitude control. But he has been severely injured, and is ready to simply give up and die until a strange, half hallucination/half angel appears before him and coaxes, nags, and encourages him to make the torturous journey across Poubelle to save himself and the lives of everyone on L5.
“Our Daily Bread”: (Infinite Space, Infinite God anthology, Twilight Times Books) Many faithful Catholics have asked to work on Asteroid Blair Mining Station specifically because of Deacon Ray McHenry and his weekly communion services. When a meteorite destroys the station's extra supplies, including the consecrated communion wafers (hosts), there is a lot of tension, but none so much as when the surviving hosts start miraculously multiplying. Can Deacon Ray accept the mystery of the multiplying hosts and keep religious tension from tearing the station apart?
"Leap of Faith": (Leaps of Faith) When faced with a rescue situation in which only she can help, a young sister of the Order of Our Lady of the Rescue must overcome her fear of Extravehicular Activity and make a leap of faith.
Faerie/Mundane Universe of Dragon Eye, PI:
As Told by Vern the Dragon
So you want to know about the Faerie/Mundane Universe? Don’t know where you’ve been but as long as you’re buying lunch… How much can you afford, anyway? Just kidding. I may be a dragon, a North African Faerie Wyvern to be exact, but at my present size, I only need to eat as much as a human.
Faerie is pretty much the stuff your legends are made of. There are elves and dwarves, fairies and even unicorns. Yeah, some of them are virgin-lovers but most are smart enough not to approach a strange maiden tied to a tree. There’s magic, too. It’s a natural force, like electricity, but you can’t control it with the flip of a switch or the flick of a wand. You need Talent, and lots of study, and even then, it isn’t easy to work with. I know some of you Mundanes think there might be a way around that; some are stupid enough to think Dark Magic is easier. Forget it. It’s like harnessing lightning with your teeth to light the light bulb in your hand. Even with training and Holy Magic, it feels like that sometimes. Ask my partner, Sister Grace, about that.
There are some objects that are intrinsically magic or can be magicked to a specific purpose, but the average Mundane can’t handle them safely. My first case involved a low-level love charm and a stolen magical fruit that should have made crops grow. Bad news. That’s another story--and another meal. Let’s just say the governments have been pretty smart about limiting the amount of technical/magical interchange across the Gap. Magic, however benign when correctly used, is deadly when misunderstood.
The Gap? Not much to say--unless you want a doctoral thesis in magic and sub-quantum physics. A combination magical mishap and nuclear accident caused a portal to open permanently between our worlds. Yeah, I know. How cliché. Think the advertising guys for that clothing store were crying with joy when some scientist named the thing? I do know it’s been good for Los Lagos. I was here just a couple of months after the Gap opened. Lot of poverty, though compared to the average serf, you people are spoiled merchant class. But that’s relative, I suppose, and I still can’t get over people not having enough to eat, yet somehow managing to own a TV. Not that I’m hocking mine when times are rough. I can always eat the local vermin to keep my belly full. Hey, I’m a dragon.
I don’t think I need to tell you about your Mundane world. Yeah, I know. I didn’t come up with that term, but if you think it’s insulting, just try calling a barbarian swordsman from my world Faerie. I will say that it’s been very interesting living here. You Mundanes have incredible imaginations. You dream up more fantasitc beings and events for television than I’ve seen in my entire life, and since I was created by God at the dawn of the Earth, that’s saying a lot. No, I don’t remember everything that’s happened in my life--do you?--and especially in my diminished state… But my point was that despite your capacity to imagine the fantastic, you can have such a difficult time accepting it in reality. On the one hand, I’ve made a lot of terrific friends here; on the other, I still get people who have the nerve to wonder why I’m not leashed and who ask if I’m housebroken. And of course, your government, while very accepting of Elves and Dwarves, refuses to grant me any status because they can’t agree on whether I am a "person." I’m talking, I’m eating your food, I go to Mass, and they still think I’m an animal! Sorry, sore subject. Anyway, that’s why I became a professional problem solver. Dragon Eye, PI. That’s me.
What else about me? Too much to tell, but the main story is straightforward enough. Faerie dragons are few, androgynous and immortal. I’ve been hacked to pieces and still a part of me grew back into myself--butchering pronouns there, but you get the idea. Up until 800 years ago, I had a pretty good gig going ‘round Faerie Ethiopia. The people there knew how to treat dragons. Once a week I’d perch outside the city and they’d toss me some livestock--better than take out Chinese. And I was fair: I rotated among the cities and if they sent out the occasional maiden, it wasn’t my idea. Nice little abandoned temple for my lair. Good times.
Then came Saint George. God bless him, overpowered pain in the tail. George was as cunning as he was holy, let me tell you. He knew he couldn’t kill me, so he trapped me in a holy spell and did the next best thing--took away everything that made me dragon. My size, my flight, my knowledge, my fire--oh, that one hurt!--all of it gone. Then he gave a choice: spend eternity as a Gila Monster or work to earn back my glory through service to God and Man through the Holy Catholic Church. So that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Started out as the Pope’s pet, worked my way to bodyguard, did some time as a scribe… Worked with the Inquisition awhile. Don’t raise your eyebrows like that. The Faerie Inquisition is very different from the infamous Mundane Spanish Inquisition. Evil in the Faerie world is just as insidious as it is here, but it’s less subtle. We didn’t waste time with penny-ante disagreements. Witch hunts were far more real and far more dangerous.
So why am I here? Been asking myself that same question. All I know is when the Gap opened, I felt a Calling to come. Then events have forced me to stay--but again, that’s another story.
Vern has his own website! Cartoons, character sketches, stories and even Vern's Blog are at Dragon Eye, PI.
From the case files of “Dragon Eye, P.I.”:
“Dragon Eye, P.I.” (Firestorm of Dragons, coming 2008 from Dragon Moon Press) When a Faerie princess hires Vern to find a missing necklace, Vern figures he’s finally on the road to easy living. But the necklace’s amber beads contain sacred relics of the major religions of the Faerie and Mundane worlds, including one that may be worth the return of some of Vern’s lost dragon abilities. Can Vern retrieve the necklace before the Unseliegh sorcerer uses it to destroy the gap between the Faerie and Mundane worlds--and can Vern resist the temptation of taking the necklace for himself?
“Magic, Mensa and Mayehm.” (series in The Prairie Dawg) Vern and his partner, the Church Mage Sister Grace, may be private investigators, but they are still obedient to the Faerie Catholic Church, so when their bishop asks them to babysit a bunch of Faerie scholars at the Mundane Mensa World Gathering--in Disneyworld, no less--they’ve no choice but to take the job. Ancient feuds, inter-species misunderstandings, and the search for the bull that isn’t make their visit to the Magic Kingdom less than the idyllic experience promised in the brochure. Vern may have the wisdom of ages, but it may take the combined power of Mensa to figure this one out!
“Amaterus.” A hapless woman hired Vern to deliver a message for her to fulfill a geas. The payment--a dragon stone, a thing of magic and beauty forged at the beginning of time. What seems a simple job for tempting pay quickly becomes another STW (Save the World) as the message was a declaration of war between Pixie clans fighting for territory in Mundane Los Lagos. Vern thinks he can handle it, yet when his “client” turns out to be the Egyptian Goddess of War, it will take more than careful scheming to work things out. Can he and Grace prevail? And how does all of this tie into the biblical Plague of Locuts? When it comes to the power of God, all the rest is the work of amateurs. (submitted to Ten Plagues anthology)
“Greater Treasures” (in progress) When Sister Grace is critically wounded by poison dart while trailing a man who would lead her to a client’s brother, Vern searches for the antidote. His search will lead him through the tangled lies of his and Grace’s client, the scheming of the Neo-Nazis, and the legend of the Lance of Longinus, which pierced the side of Jesus and is said to have supernatural powers. Can he solve the mystery of the Lance--and will he sacrifice Grace’s life to do it?
Migrants, Magic, and Murder (in progress; looking for a print home): When the Gap opens between the Faerie world and the Mundane, Vern finds himself called to emigrate and do God’s will there. Nonetheless, despite the American president’s great talk of welcoming diversity, it seems dragons were not what he had in mind. As Vern struggles to find acceptance--and the magical Green card that will let him find employment and a legitimate place in Mundane society--he also becomes involved in a bigger struggle of magic vs. technology and greed vs. responsibility that begins with a mysterious murder of an unpopular migrant worker and ends with plague, failing crops, and a magically possessed field bent on revenge.