The Altered – Followup to Them – By MG Hardie… WOW!

Nine months ago, Devon discovered that humans were not alone in the universe and his family was killed for it. He mourned for his family alone. Devon had been altered but faced impossible odds as he was chased around the world by other world forces. Devon’s growing abilities were no match for these unseen creatures and he did the only sensible thing he could do, run. Devon ran from Them. He hid from Them, but he would never escape. 

He returned returned home. In the debris and rain soaked rubble that was once his home, he found a half burnt stuffed butterfly. It had belonged to his one year old daughter Brianna, it was all that remained. Devon attached the butterfly to his backpack.

The Altered
By MG Hardie

 

Nearly 1100 readers checked out my review of Them when it was published. Now, the second book in the series (predicted because this book was left hanging…), The Altered, presents more extraordinary and unique science fiction with a concept that, simply, blows your mind!

The System, which, generally, refers to the governments across the world, is to blame…for…Them! And everything that happened thereafter! Coming from a second, more advanced earth, Them came to attack and destroy through any, seemingly, natural catastrophe that ultimately will end this earth. Why? Because The System had already done it to most of theirs by using nuclear bombs that blasted beyond and into another dimension where the majority of people were killed instantly and the radiation slowly destroying the rest, as well as animals and vegetation.

Devon has been murdered, altered by Them and has even met with Prime the leader of Them. Devon had lost his family…Prime, more or less, responded, now you know how we feel…

 

With a mixture of vengeance, empathy and sympathy, Devon began to follow after them, wherever there was a crisis, to try to save, as well as work to rid the earth of Them. Soon he realized, though altered, he still was not enough to fight back. He went to two of his old friends, one a lover, and shared what had happened, provided the means by which they, too, would be altered, and began their training…

Joshua had been saved from Them by Devon. “Will Power” had been coming into his mind at night… motivating him with what they wanted him to do…
Devon could see…Them…and he talked to them to free his mind of what they’d planted. Joshua is an interesting character that hooked into the stories and adventure of what Devon was doing…but he wanted to use violence in the process…Devon slowly was weaning his thoughts into more productive thinking. Later, he did the same activities with Gina. 

This is a more slow-paced novel, where training and learning to deal with the future was uppermost in Devon’s mind…While, he also was moving across the world helping wherever a tornado or a hurricane had visited. Later, both of his friends did the same in local areas.

Devon had also been seeking out “rifts” that connected the two earths. He was slowly acclimating himself, and later, the others, to move from one earth to another… What he saw was devastating and yet wondrous and beautiful in so many ways.

Hardie presents many conceptual electronic and scientific issues that are amazing or beyond the norm for those who aren’t inventive… Either way, many are cool ideas and with the three together, they come up with exciting ways to keep working to fight Them… At the same time, Devon has never given up hoping to convince Prime that they are serious about working together…

Until, he is proven wrong… 

“Coated in Hypernium, I should have known,” Joshua said. He quietly hummed a few bars from ‘I Feel the Earth Move’. His eyes narrowed as the floating percentages of success decreased before him.
~~~

Hardie pulls a shocker at the ending! Wow! NOT expected and even you won’t be able to guess while you’re reading–right up to the climax! There is a moral to this story…but I’ll have to think about it–or maybe you’ll be able to discuss after your read! Hate to say it but lost of little errors…But, on the other hand, Hardie knows how to write a story and keep people trying to figure out…What Is Going On?!” 5 for story; 3 for editing…You decide… But I’m already wondering what happened to Devon…

 

 

GABixlerReviews

 

MG Hardie’s THEM Takes Humanity to That Sunken Place

THEM by MG Hardie begins with the protagonist clothes burned and singed his pursuer closing in on him. THEM takes the reader through a collapsing cave to South American sights and sounds to ocean depths to African castles to Middle Eastern villages.

“THEM starts deep and hard and continues in this vane, it’s thoughtful and fast. The insights into the human condition and the system had me asking myself questions and staying up late to finish reading. This is no normal superhero novel, Devon is more like Captain America, with a masters in law. The final scene is as in depth and thought provoking as any book I’ve ever read.”-  http://www.jeremypoole.net/blog/-book-review-them-by-mg-hardie

“The way MG Hardie achieved that balance between story moving forward and philosophy reminds me of Richard Bach and Michael Crichton books…this one had me hooked.” – Corey at Carbor Reviews

“After strange mysteries begin to alter Devon’s perceptions, the ordinariness of Heathrow’s existence gives way to a very believable tale of horror as he learns about two unseen “species” apparently at war over the fate of humankind. ‘Them’ by MG Hardie is surprisingly vivid and descriptive.”- Dr. Wesley Britton of Book Pleasures.com

“The way MG Hardie achieved that balance between story moving forward and philosophy reminds me of Richard Bach and Michael Crichton books…this one had me hooked.” – Corey at Carbor Reviews

“THEM by MG Hardie book gave me all I am asking for, when I am reading. It’s cleverly written, well thought out and has some humor in it as well.”- Angel Heart Reviews

“THEM, was a pleasant surprise for this reader. It’s unique, suspenseful and leaves you wondering.” -bookreadersheaven.blogspot.com

World travel, supernatural battles and explorations of social and political issues are commonplace. In THEM, Hardie takes unflinching looks at complex issues such as the moral ramifications of violence, along with the nature of history, with themes of redemption, and faith.

MG Hardie’s THEM poses the question: Does talent, hard work, or fate determine who gets the contract, the promotion, the gig, or the role? Or it’s THEM…

 

In Paperback and Ebook!

https://www.amazon.com/Them-Mg-Hardie/dp/0996829636/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/them-mg-hardie/1125996596?ean=9780996829632

Listen to chapter 1 of THEM for free.

http://mghardie.wixsite.com/them-are-here

THEM review video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnVx9ZzXBKY

https://www.facebook.com/mg.hardie

https://www.facebook.com/ThemAreHere/

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Sole Survivor

Lightening struck the airplane at 350 mph and 10,000 feet. After the right and left wings separated the airplane, carrying 92 passengers, quickly came apart over the Peruvian rain forest.

Chaos was all around her and she was still strapped to her seat. Within 60 horrifying seconds she fell thousands of feet. The airplane crashed in flames into a mountainous jungle terrain and Juliane Koepckeshe became the sole survivor of flight 508.

​​SMXLL

Bruised, traumatized, a broken collarbone, cold and alone in the wilderness with only a few pieces of candy as food. One day of walking and she found a small stream and was able to keep hydrated. For eight days she followed the stream battling insects and an arm infection. On the ninth day she wandered upon an encampment and a few hours later she was rescued by loggers and airlifted to a hospital.

Could this one in a billion lightening strike be more than just a random happening by nature? Was her free fall from thousands of feet to land largely unharmed in the middle of nowhere the work of an unseen hand?  Or was it something else entirely… THEM

 

Maybe you were lucky…

 

​​SLXLM

This morning a tiny village was almost wiped off the side of the mountain. The death toll climbed and when hope was exhausted a four-month-old baby boy was rescued from underneath rubble where it had been for at least 22 hours after the 7.9 earthquake struck.

“A wave of water thru me out of my house down the block into 10 ft deep water. The neighborhood was under water. I thought I wasn’t going to make it.”

A 10-month only baby girl was found alone and injured in a cornfield 10 miles from her home, where tornadoes struck 5 hours ago.

Maybe you just missed your, a flight that later went careening down the runway…

An unexpected call caused you to miss the train that derailed later that day.

Perhaps the tornado didn’t affect you at all because, for some reason, you didn’t do what you always did.

Maybe you didn’t travel the same way you always did, maybe your keys were lost and you missed the bus, maybe you were lucky, maybe it was THEM.

 

Stronger through Faith

In Georgia, a 3,000 lb Chevy Impala slipped off a jack and onto a young man. Without any assistance, his mother, Angela Cavallo, picked up the car and held it for five minutes until neighbors could pull her son to safety.

 As the helicopter came in for a soft landing, it suddenly careened out of control and slammed to the ground, this was all caught on film. One of the pilots was trapped under the helicopter in the shallow water. Warren “Tiny” Everal ran over and lifted the helicopter off the pilot. The chopper was a Hughes 500D, which weighs 1550 lb when empty, the pilot recovered.

The 4,000 lb BMW slipped off the jack and landed on the mechanics chest, crushing him. With no time to waste the mechanic’s 22-year-old daughter lifted the car and moved it off her father, the performed CPR to keep him breathing.

Science says that under acute stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for sustained, vigorous action. The adrenal gland dumps cortisol and adrenaline into the blood stream. Blood pressure surges and the heart races, delivering oxygen and energy to the muscles. It’s the biological equivalent of opening the throttle of an engine.

Does this science explanation explain how someone who isn’t Captain America can lift a helicopter? Does science explain how these people had the strength to lift a car off of someone? Maybe science has the answer, maybe just maybe there is another one… THEM.

 

Fortune smiles on Gold

Late on a dark New Orleans, a jogging Peter Gold saw a hoodie wearing man dragging a woman down the street. Gold intervened as the man tried to get the woman into a SUV near the intersection of Magazine and St. Mary streets.  The man let go of the woman, held his gun to Gold, looked him in the face and said ‘I’m going to kill you‘, then he shot Gold point blank in the stomach.

 

Gold lay on the sidewalk and pleaded for his life. The hoodied man put the gun to Gold’s head, pulled back the slide on the black semi-automatic gun and pulled the trigger. “I saw the man squeezing the trigger repeatedly. He said the gun was jamming.” Gold recalled. When the gun didn’t fire the man took the woman’s purse and drove away.

Gold recovered from his injuries in what everyone has called an “incredible miracle.” Gold graduated from Tulane medical school and continues with a residency in orthopedic surgery at a hospital in New York City.  “I’m just very lucky and fortunate to be able to come out of that alive,” Gold said. “I think about that day every single day of my life.”

Every single day Gold thinks about how he almost died, “I wonder what happened in somebody’s life that they were able to create such violence with such ease without even thinking about it.” Gold has a started a nonprofit foundation called MyStrongCity to provide education, mentoring and to raise money for community-based organizations that empower undeserved youth.

The gunman, who was captured later, attacked three other people immediately after leaving Gold.

Gold says that he was “lucky”, but could the gun jamming be attributed to something other than luck? Would he have started this foundation that has helped thousands of people, if this horrible incident had not occurred? Could this happening be something other than fortune smiling on him?

Could this have been  THEM?

 

Point Click Share (Part 3)

(From part 2)

Photonic circuts, integrated projection, light interfaces, morph technology, but  weren’t we were promised better education, a better society and better communities? I know you’re sitting there smugly thinking ‘but we are smarter’ and that thought only serves to further prove the point. We were seduced with the possibility of more access and information. The children and the generations aren’t better, we were sold a bill of goods that didn’t deliver, well they have delivered a new addiction. Our thoughts center on the techno because we need the instant access, we need to know now. Smartphones that create hotspots and have enough power to turn into laptops and dock with your HD television and car. Soon they will be able to dock with you, you’d probably like that.  We  will continue to wait on the next ring, vibration, update or the the next big thing in technology, but haven’t we have forgotten the place of these devices?They have turned single tasking into “multi-tasking”, I mean task-switching because we really don’t multi-task. Yeah, I know you can multi-task with the best of them. We all think that we can, but multi-tasking slows you down by causing errors, sloppiness, shoddy work, and if you stop lying to yourself none of this will be in dispute. Humans are nothing without our ability to focus, that’s how we created them. And for a bonus all this technology comes with intentional blindness and the delusion that you are aware when you aren’t. Even in the movies where they show a distant future, with beyond the wildest of imaginations of technological advancement and there are still a myraid of problems not solved. I’ve seen “Blade Runner”, “Star Wars”, “iRobot”, “Minority Report” and “Demolition Man” the computerized future is not better. FANBOYS stop rubbing the device already, yeah I know you could if you wanted to.

The information revolution brought Real time, Down time, Pods, Tweets, Tabs, and Posts, but it is the adults who are the most responsible for exposing the most vulnerable and susceptible of our citizens, the children. Adults have allowed this technology in and around our babies, their schools and classrooms. Colleges require that you not only purchase a computer, but also spend hundreds of dollars on software, or fail the course. Tax payers and parents have spent hundreds of millions of dollar on the technological school, and test scores have gone down. Couldn’t we have better served the children, the community and ourselves by not being slaves to the industry. Children are growing up online, technology has shortened attentions spans and contributes to ADD. Children are now more connected to the technology than to people who provide it, this is where they gain their social experiences. The social networks can connect you with protests occurring around the world, but they can’t make you care. And with the touch of a screen they spy on their roommates sexual preferences, and then broadcast them to the world.

The greatest lie of the digital age is that you control the message. You do not control the message when your child’s second life is virtual. Children have a lack of clarity, some of them can’t play outside and become bored easily. It is true that every generation will be critizied for something, being too liberal, too obsessed with technology, too dumb. This generation is hardly the dumbest generation, however a sharp decrease in intellect is apparent, noted by declines in text scores and literacy rates.

“As the digital age has transformed the world and workforce, U.S. K–12 education has fallen woefully behind in preparing students with the fundamental computer science knowledge and skills they need for fully behind in preparing students with the fundamental future success.”- Computer World Magazine

The bottom line is that tutitions have skyrocketed, but 50% of college students have not improved. Books still cost an arm and a leg and many of them are digital. Let’s face it students aren’t getting ahead and the technology cost money, perhaps too much. New hardware is often over priced and buggy. It usually takes three or four generations for a company to get a device right, so generations 1-3 are merely for fund raising, which reduces early adopters to nothing more than self indulgent guinea pigs. If a politician promised all these things, but never delivered would we reelect them… On second thought that’s a bad analogy. However, every quarter we reelect a new cell phone, and every year a new computing device, we have been programmed to sustain a another failed industry. We have more information but racism, classism and sexism are all on the rise.  Millions of people are unemployed. The government still has secrets, Cable cost more, Violence is still senseless, Movie are still expensive to nothing of the quality, Celebrities still use drugs and wear no underwear, DNA evidence is still wrong, Music hasn’t gotten better, The elderly are still  mistreated, We still get lost in our cars and we miss our buses, but hey I can touch a screen and change a page. Different does not mean better, we have lost sight of that. All the while these companies that make and sell these products have become worldwide billion dollar conglomerates. Maybe things would be different if you didn’t have to pay for it…and worse of all poetry doesn’t read the same. We have programmed these devices to calculate everything except our fear, fear of being left behind.

The End
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