(NOTE:  Release date: Summer 2015 / Novel completed and being edited)

TURANDOPOLIX

Turandopolix is just one of the world’s vast corporate city-states. While functioning as a corporate entity these insular societies, known as a Wombs, control global politics and its economy. Turandopolix, constructed just off the coast of what was once California, houses tens of millions of share holders in relative security beyond the chaos of  ‘The Outside’ .  A citizen, or Shareholder’s fate is tied to the corporate profitability of the Womb, where all decisions are made by the Board of Directors and to lose sufficient Shareholding means banishment to the Outside.

Turandopolix’s aging Chairman is frustrated by his daughter’s refusal to take a spouse so that an heir apparent would be born and fulfill a vital requirement of Turandopolix’s corporate By-Laws of succession. Her lesbian inclinations are only a minor inconvenience compared with her rebellion and ambition to control the Womb without following the proscribed By-Laws, for having a verifiable heir that is conceived naturally is an inflexible tenant of the Womb. What baffles the Chairman is that with his unchallenged power he could easily facilitate his daughter’s impregnation without her ever having to touch a man. Yet still she refuses to designate a spouse. As the Chairman’s health fails pressure increases for his daughter to fulfill the by-laws so that an orderly transfer of the Chairman’s Shareholdings can be made.

The Benn is a competing Womb, which secretly holds a vast Shareholding of Turandopolix stock. Though the Benn Womb is located off what was once Vancouver, its corporate lineage is traced to China. It is this apparent threat which heightens the need for a clear line of succession within Turandopolix, one that would ensure the all important stable share price.

The story centers around the Security Service that protects Turandopolix from both internal and external threats. The SS is composed of former mercenaries seasoned in the endless wars of Asia and the Middle East. The SS’s job becomes difficult when one of Turandopolix’s Directors appears to have ambitions on the future chairmanship of Turandopolix. A directive from the aging Chairman to monitor this renegade Director becomes a lethal assignment when the Security Service is forced to follow the Director into the dangerous world of  Outside, a realm of near anarchy beyond the civilized and prosperous Womb. Accessible only through TubeWay, the middle ground between the Womb and Outside, TubeWay is a city unto itself. Loosely controlled by Turandopolix and policed by the Security Service, it is a realm where the Security Service turns a blind eye and the only law is money. To take their mission beyond TubeWay, Turandopolix’s ranking SS officer hires freelance operatives from a failed South American Womb who have been banished and now reside in TubeWay

Intrigue intensifies when the Chairman’s daughter agrees to designate her partner through a public competition. Anyone can compete, but to do so a Shareholder must risk their entire Shareholding to enter the contest, a test based upon the solution to Three Riddles. The first to solve the Three Riddles will father of the future Chairman of Turandopolix, while those unable to solve the riddles will forfeit their stock to the Chairman’s daughter and be immediately banished to ‘the Outside’.

The threat becomes evident when the renegade Director transfers most of his Shareholdings and enters the competition to sire the future heir of Turandopolix. When it is discovered that the renegade Director is actually a proxy for the Benn Womb, his ambitions on the Chairmanship draw the Security Service and the freelancers into a tangled web of Womb politics where they are mere pawns being moved by ruthless corporate players.