The Minds' Game
The Minds' Game (TMG) was written from March 17, 2009 to June 10, 2009 by SCAD graduate and game designer, Daniel Mehltretter. It was published to the Amazon Kindle store on July, 17th, 2010. It is written to appeal to a Mature video game, science fiction and fantasy audience. The book includes 301 short chapters and alternates between the minds of Jethro, an evil-minded antihero, and Gina, a kind and courteous gamer.
The Minds' Game takes place on the hollow planet with inverse gravity named Genra. On Genra, people are born with a proscience (the opposite to a conscience). The planet is wrought with chaos, not only with its hellish inhabitance, but also with its vicious creatures. It is a place where even the good are evil. Although it is discovered that there is a side that is neither good nor evil.
Plot (The Game)
Two Minds, known simply as the First Mind and the Second Mind, created a single universe. The First Mind made seven worlds with “pull” gravity like Earth. On these seven planets the (human) Beings were given a conscience to guide them toward good. The Second Mind made seven worlds with “push” gravity planets and created Beings who each had a proscience. There were also creatures on each planet whose physical structure reflected the geography of their worlds. They had instinct, but not morality, to separate them from the Beings used for The Game.
The Game was thus:
- If any of the worlds created by the First Mind (where people have a conscience) came to absolute war – then the Second Mind would win.
- If any of the worlds created by the Second Mind (where people have a proscience) came to total peace – then the First Mind would win.
On every world the Minds' selected three Beings to be Guardians. Guardians were able to hear from the Mind who created them. On Genra, the Guardians were told by the Second Mind to kill every living Being so that peace could never be achieved.
Act I (Below the Truth)
The first act of TMG recalls the many adventures that lead Jethro and Gina from the outside of Genra to the inside. Jethro is commanded by the Second Mind to kill Gina immediately, but he disobeys. He feeds himself the complicated half-truth that once he gets to Gina’s city he will burn it to the ground with her inside to please the Mind then. Because of his disobedience, Jethro often suffers from vivid nightmares and demonic visions that sometimes lead them into trouble. Gina has a symptom like Asthma called IAS (Inner Air Syndrome) which also causes problems.
Through the numerous battles across the outside of Genra, Jethro and Gina meet several important characters. Messiah, a strange man with two automatic explosive pistols he calls his children, follows them and demands Jethro to help him on his mission. Jethro declines him every time. A hooded and masked man named Theo attacks Jethro and Gina. He is shot below the hood and is swallowed up by The Bleeding River. A young boy named Aeron comes out of a demon in a swamp, is saved by Gina, and later prophecies that Jethro’s name is actually Jeremiah. In the ice city of Underridge they meet a kind old pull-mechanic by the name of Edward. Here they also meet a father named Jonathan who helps orphaned children. They give Aeron to him. In Underridge, Jethro goes berserk and destroys the ice slab that protects the city from Gravity Storms.
After more skirmishes, Jethro breaks his leg in a Gravity Storm in the Clearwood Forest to save Gina from getting sucked into space. On the elevator to the inside of the world, what was an attempt to help Gina through an IAS attack turns into a kiss. An old map-salesman named Andrew sends the city’s protectors after Jethro at Cartographer’s Anonymous in Sunderville. The escape leads Jethro and Gina to be poisoned by scuffers. In a dream, Jethro sees himself inside-out and has to speak backwards in a confrontation with the Second Mind to awaken. Gina envisions the trade where she was given to Jethro. They wake up in a hospital with no money or possessions and must participate in the car-battle game in the Battle Arena in Sunless Peak to make enough money to continue their journey. At the end of the battle, Jethro chooses not to slay the final participant, much to the dismay of the crowd. Although, since he had the most points, he won the game and the gun-covered car he had used in the match. They return to the hospital, have an encounter with a seemingly immortal contestant named Undead, and then escape with a wise old fortune-teller named Grace.
The Act ends with Jethro arriving at Gina’s hometown of Edgevale. Much to his surprise it is the same town in which he grew up. Jethro begins his plans to destroy the village… again.
Act II (Blood of the Father)
The first act had all been a set-up. Jethro’s childhood friend, named Cain, had given Gina to Jethro in order to lead him back to Edgevale to kill him. Gina was unaware that Cain had plans to kill Jethro and is shocked when he shoots him in the head. Jethro sees his life flash before his eyes and then ascends over his body as his brains hit the wall. He enters a dream-like state in which he can hear the Two Minds speaking. It is learned that there are those that are opposite to Guardians known as Cardinals and that there are four Cardinals on each world. Cardinals hear from the opposite Mind of the world in which they live. Jethro is spat from The Healing River, and takes on the new name Jeremiah. But the healing process took a year and much has changed. Cain, now known as David, devises a plan to capture the Guardians that have come into power in the last year.
Jeremiah, David, Edward, Rebecca, and Thomas go after the Guardian Derek who is ruling what was the most peaceful city in the world, known as The City of Override. Meanwhile Gina, Messiah, Moses, Sarah, and Jackal go after the Guardian Gabrielle in Sunderville.
Jeremiah and David fight their way to the tallest palace in The City of Override and end up being the only two of their initial group to survive. However they meet an underground weapons dealer named Harrison who helps them out later. Harrison also gives David an arm-mounted weapon known as the Hand of God, which gives him an edge in battle through the palace. When they make it to Derek, he is killed during their conversation by Theo – Gina’s brother, who had tried to kill Jethro at the beginning of the book. Theo escapes, David stays in the palace to rule, and Harrison goes with Jeremiah to rescue the presumed fourth Cardinal that is being held prisoner in a swamp near Edgevale.
At the same time… Andrew makes a reappearance in Sunderville and helps Gina find where Gabrielle is hiding. She finds her about to sacrifice the boy Aeron in a city in the ground underneath Sunderville. Moses sacrifices himself to save the boy and then an automated vehicle blasts Gabrielle’s head off before Messiah can kill her. Gina is upset that Gabrielle dies, because she knows that a new Guardian will just take her place. She and Messiah return to Edgevale to meet up with Jeremiah and Harrison to rescue the fourth Cardinal, Hezekiah.
Hezekiah turns out to be a Guardian that went insane and when they find him he has one of Theo’s glowing daggers already in his back. Shortly thereafter, Jeremiah is separated from Gina and taken to the top of the castle by The Bleeding River where he battles Theo. Jeremiah’s face is burned by the same flamethrower he had used to burn Theo’s face as a child and then Jeremiah is tossed from the castle into the swamp and swallowed by the same demon that Aeron had come from in Act I.
Act III (Reconciliation of Retribution)
Six years pass since the end of Act II and Jeremiah is still missing. Gina, David, Harrison, Sarah, Jackal, and Messiah stand in David’s Palace in The City of Override and prepare for war against the combined forces of all three Guardians. Theo had gotten his ultimate wish, to become an actual Guardian, (he had done this by [...] Gabrielle and Derek in Act II), and was now the supreme leader of all of the enemy forces. His plan was to shoot a massive missile into the sun that is in the center of the planet and thereby destroy the entire world. But to do this he needed to keep the city of peaceful citizens out of his way.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah spends the six years between acts fighting for a group of children and their queen against an army that wear mechanized suits called Stompers. All of this goes on inside of the demon of Genra, known as Nevaeh. A genderless child named Eir is introduced and says that he is neither Guardian nor Cardinal. The children, their queen and the Stompers are from a conscience planet.
Messiah finds Jeremiah washed up on shore and returns him to The City of Override. There Jeremiah learns that Sarah and Jackal are his children and that Rebecca was their mother. The group joins Gina and Harrison on the wall to fight in the war against Theo and his armies. In the battle, Gina is captured by Theo and accidentally gets Jonathan, who had been tricked into joining Theo, killed. The same kind of mask that had been used to make Jonathan follow Theo is used on Gina, but it has the opposite effect. The mask causes people’s conscience or proscience to go to the extreme, so for Gina, who has a conscience, it causes her to stop Jeremiah from fighting on the wall. In a tough struggle, Jeremiah gets the mask off of her and survives. Later David is also captured and masked. In a gunfight, Jeremiah kills David.
Messiah gives his mission to Jeremiah, Gina, Harrison, Sarah and Jackal. He wants them to use the MOS (Moon Orbit Stations) on high power to cause them to pull the moons of the world into Genra and destroy the cities of people that are not peaceful. Jeremiah and Gina go to the tower of the Abiding Duel to set its tower’s power to seven, thereby causing the purple moon to come closer to the planet. Harrison, Sarah and Jackal are to go to the tower near Underridge and do the same. Theirs will be the point just before the moon will collide with the planet.
Jeremiah leaves Gina to fight against the sixty-six soldiers on the stairway to the tower on the outside of the world. In the battle, Gina takes two half-spears infused with the water of The Bleeding River and goes into a blood rage. Theo is waiting for Jeremiah in the tower. In their battle on top the tower’s pull is set to maximum. Theo loses his arms to Gina’s spears that were changed to holding the essence of The Healing River (which cannot cause death) and is held from flying into the pull-device by her. The blood of their wounds gives Gina a vision which explains why Theo went mad. Jeremiah’s mind travels to the tower where Harrison’s group is and he watches them escape. Gina lets her non-biological brother go. Another moon destroys the tower with Gina and Jeremiah and they jump into opposite rivers to escape. Gina escapes in The Bleeding River and Jeremiah escapes in The Healing River.
The last chapter is in Messiah's mind. We learn that Messiah was Edward's son and that the day he died each Guardian and Cardinal became immortal for seven years. On this day, the seven years had come to an end. Messiah speaks with Eir directly using telepathy while standing in The City of Override with Aeron. Eir does something (presumably [...] all of the children inside of Nevaeh that are with him) and then says that it is finished.
Messiah takes The Key to Survival, a detonator switch, and destroys the ends of The City of Override, thereby disconnecting it from the planet. The entire world is ripped apart by the two moons. Aeron, a Guardian and final peaceful being of a conscience world, is shot by both of Messiah’s children (his pistols). At the same time the world of Genra is brought to total peace, another world is brought to total war. The Game ties and existence can continue to exist. Messiah, now known as a Prolonger, has completed his mission. "The Minds’ Game can continue".