Presents of Mind

Presents of Mind: The Book is, at its core, a great romance destined for either obliteration by outside forces of great malice and overarching evil or an otherworldly miraculous tale of potential success in the face of unimaginable odds.

But let's start at the beginning of this great adventure.

Four billion light-years from Earth in an uncharted area of the universe is the planet Cryptx, which is mercilessly ruled by a draconian alien race that has enslaved the Cryptxian inhabitants of the planet. Scientists have been compelled to create a super chip that could bestow on the vile ruling power great, overarching powers. In a deadly, daring long-shot clandestine attack on the secret research facility, scientists steal the forbidden research they have been forced to create and escape the planet in pursuit of freedom. But have they truly escaped the planet and the Black Galactic Guard that cruelly polices Cryptx and protects the ruling party?

On Earth, Ralph Wenger, a young man who was seriously injured as a child in an accident where he lost his family, has been left mentally challenged and under the cruel care of a doctor/guardian in Atlanta, Georgia. In a backwoods area of Georgia, Ralph and the alien scientists inadvertently cross paths; and the stolen chip is temporarily implanted in the young man's brain solely to communicate with Ralph, setting in motion a momentous fight of good against evil and a love story for the ages between Ralph and a very skeptical beauty, Annie Pickering, a Georgia Tech student, heading back from Savannah to Atlanta to start her last semester.

The story careens and intertwines with a race against time by Ralph and Annie attempting to stay ahead of the profoundly evil, more powerful forces hell-bent on killing Ralph and all others in their way to retrieve the chip from Ralph's brain and to gain the wondrous powers the chip provides to the ultimate possessor.

Take the ride of a lifetime with Ralph and Annie as they come to grips with the otherworldly powers of the chip and the mind-numbing terror of impeded death at the hands of more powerful pursuers, requiring ingenuity and stealth to survive.

Ultimately, the question devolves to what the present from Cryptx means for Ralph's and Annie's future together--if, against all odds, they can live to enjoy it.

-- Leonard M. Roth