The replacement of humans has begun. It starts with the voices ...

It is war-ravaged China in the 1930’s. John Powers and his fellow group of pilgrims are trying to evade Nationalist forces, communist rebels and the invading Japanese army, all while carrying a strange golden statue and searching for a mysterious woman known as Her. At the same time, John begins hearing voices insisting that he conceive a son with another of the travelers.

Who is Her? Why do the voices want John to have a son? Are the voices evidence that John has schizophrenia, as he fears? Or are they something else altogether?

The Stillness Series is a thought-provoking saga that contemplates the end of the human race as we know it. It begins with a small group of humans seeking a mysterious woman known as Her and culminates many generations later in the rise of a new, more powerful, and empathetic species, the Superior Ones.

Do you think humans—in their current form—will still be around in a hundred years? Five hundred? A thousand? A million?
I’ve asked hundreds, if not thousands, of people across all age groups this question, and without fail, they have answered “no” at some point along the way. In recent decades, the trend has been that the “no” comes earlier and earlier. I find myself in agreement with them.
The Stillness Series, thirty years in the making, tells the story of the gradual replacement of humankind by a superior, more empathetic species. A dystopian world for humans, a healing world for the planet.
Three encounters led me to write the Stillness Series. The first occurred during the Vietnam War in the middle of a monsoon. My platoon passed a woman giving birth in the mud under an upside-down cardboard box. Two small children with swollen bellies stood outside in the rain waiting. When we returned hours later, the woman and the two children were gone, but the baby lay dead in the mud, staring up blankly in the downpour.
The second also occurred during the war when, during an ambush, I killed a North Vietnamese soldier. Going through his rucksack after the battle, I found pictures of his family and, to my amazement, a copy of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confession. I realized he and I could have been friends, two men growing old and reminiscing about life, family, books. He and countless others never had that chance.
The third encounter took place while I was working on my master’s degree in Asian Studies. My coursework included several psychology classes and during one research project, I spoke with a schizophrenic patient who told me, “All humans are schizophrenic. All humans hear voices. I just hear more.”
What did these encounters teach me?
The woman taught me we humans inflict unspeakable suffering on members of our own species. The dead soldier taught me we humans commit incalculable atrocities every day against our fellow inhabitants of the planet, both human and non-human. And the schizophrenic patient taught me we humans all hear voices.
I wondered what would happen if the voices were replaced by voices from a gentler, more empathetic species, a species that would not inflict suffering or commit atrocities against the planet. What would those first superior, empathetic individuals experience? Being cognitively superior, they would hear more voices than we do and have powers more formidable than ours. But those same first few would also be confused, disoriented and misunderstood by a human race that considered them mentally ill, schizophrenic and a threat. Would they be able to survive long enough to ensure their descendants would eventually dominate the planet?
Stirring the Stillness Part 1, Voices of Quest is the beginning of their story.