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Back Reunion Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. Full Page Image
  3. Introduction
  4. Advance Praise for Reunion
  5. Dedication
  6. Map
  7. Quote
  8. Prologue
  9. All About Eric Weiss
  10. The Young Magician
  11. From the Wikipedia entry for Middleton:
  12. Where They Used to Live
  13. All About Carrie Keene
  14. The Girl Detective
  15. All About Alana Bright
  16. The Warrior Princess
  17. All About Daniel Sharp IV
  18. The Boy Genius
  19. I’ve Done My Part
  20. The Only Warrior Left
  21. The World Beneath the World
  22. Even Less Fun Now
  23. The Flawless Performance of Innumerable Lines of Code
  24. Like Time-Lapse Photography
  25. You Don’t Have to Go Home but You Can’t Stay Here
  26. This is Where She Gets It
  27. I Never Believed in Prophecies
  28. Normal People Stumble Along
  29. INTERLUDE: The Case of the Candy Cult
  30. That’s How Her Story Ought to Go
  31. Normal Is Whatever You Grow Up With
  32. Even Good Kids Have Their Limits
  33. INTERLUDE: The Menace of the Middleton Monster
  34. Alanis Morissette Irony or the Other Kind
  35. What You Want Is Not the Most Important Thing
  36. INTERLUDE: Trapped in the Goblin’s Lair
  37. The Slowest Person in the Room
  38. INTERLUDE: The Final Secret of Dr. Sax
  39. All Part of King Jeremy’s Land
  40. INTERLUDE: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
  41. You Breathed It In, All the Time
  42. INTERLUDE: What Happened
  43. Danny Sharp Doesn’t Believe in Ghosts
  44. Ice and Bottles of Zima
  45. You Were Right All Along
  46. A Lot of Sacrificing to Do Tonight
  47. You Walked Right into It
  48. How Magic Works
  49. Was This Your Master Plan
  50. This Time, I Swear, We Can Do It Right
  51. You’d Think He Would Know Better
  52. Fresh Blood on Its Hands
  53. Any One of a Thousand Different Men
  54. The End of the World over There
  55. These Are Not Ideal Conditions
  56. Lightning and Thunder, Demons and Angels
  57. Into the Jaws of the Dragon
  58. Unafraid at Sunset
  59. Epilogue
  60. Acknowledgments
  61. About the Author
  62. Other Works by Christopher Farnsworth

She reaches up and takes down the box and opens it. She withdraws a short sword from its scabbard. A historian might say it’s similar to the xiphos carried by the hoplites, or the medieval seax of Northern Europe, but it’s far older than either of those weapons.

Once free, the sword burns with a brilliant white light, a glare like the sun on a cloudless day.

Alana closes her eyes briefly. Terrific.

She sheathes the sword and places it back in the box. The glow dies down.

Her phone rings. She checks the number. Eric. As if she didn’t already know.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she answers, before he can say anything. “I got the message.”

She listens.

“What do you think?” she says. “We have to go back.”

She listens again. She rolls her eyes — her daughter gets it from her. “I don’t know, Eric,” she says. “Maybe it’s harder to kill an immortal necromancer than we thought.”

All About Daniel Sharp IV

NAME: Daniel Sharp IV

ALL ABOUT ME!

Answer the questions and tell us about yourself. Please write clearly.

1. Who is in your family?

My family consists of me, Daniel Sharp IV, and my father, Daniel Sharp III.

2. Do you have any pets? What are their names?

I do not have any pets. I am building a robot instead. Its name is RANN-D.

3. What does your father do?

He is chairman and CEO of Sharp Industries.

4. What does your mother do?

My mother is dead.

5. Who is your hero?

My hero is my father, Daniel Sharp III.

6. What do you want to do when you grow up?

A billionaire.

5

The Boy Genius

Danny Sharp — who really prefers to be called Dan these days — looks at the papers one last time, then signs his name everywhere there’s a Post-it tab. The lawyers from Facebook, a man and a woman, sit on the other side of the conference table. They smile at him in a way that reminds him of the robots he used to build in his workshop. He’s already forgotten their names.

Danny speed-reads the agreement, making sure they haven’t changed anything. He also answers the man’s questions about one of his bots’ base algorithm and its related patent, describes his last snowboarding trip to Whistler (cold, uneventful, injury-free), compares the user-retention numbers on Instagram and TikTok among key demographics, makes one joke about Bay Area real-estate prices (polite laughter) and another about their boss’ blink rate during his latest Congressional appearance (stony silence), confirms his bank account numbers from memory, and comments on the weather.

He’s been doing this — as well as using everyday phrases and pretending to pause as if he has to organize his thoughts like a normal person — for so long now that it is pure reflex, his Human Emulation Program running on autopilot.