The Mortal Burden
Book I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: The Third Coast
The Mortal Burden – Part XV: Infinity as My Witness
The Mortal Burden – Part XVI: The 4th Wall
The Mortal Burden – Part XVII: Eternity Is a Concept



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden – Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep
The Mortal Burden – Part XII: The Singular I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One




The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden
The Mortal Burden Part III: Blood Furnace

The Mortal Burden – Part IV: Six feet of razor-toothed bloody destruction

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
I decided to serialize my novel. Chapters are just two big for this media type.

Precognition? Age 6 or 7
This was a real dream I had
They’re dying. The entire race is dying. He cried to himself in his feverish delirium, as if something was yet to happen or a fading memory of what had happened. An event was transposed into his heightened awareness. An awareness only brought on by the sickness of fever that could weaken his mortal psychological defenses to the quantum network of eternal consciousness.
A blurry image of a planet populated by a race of beings facing utter oblivion screaming out into the void of space and time for help. For someone to hear them, or a god to save them. No one was listening. The universe didn’t care. The boy’s hands are clasped into a prayer, the sides of his forehead; sweat glistening on his face dripping from his scalp. Kneeling by his bed in anguish; a sorrow projected from within but also from an external source.
The boy had a vision in his delirium that was vivid, almost fully manifested as the race was extinguished. It was a race that was facing obliteration, some unlucky species set adrift in the tides of space-time.
I am at the point now where I am losing my sight and my vision, but I am gaining something else in its place, because you should come to understand that I was that little boy in the delirium of fever, who foresaw a demise of a species and felt their pain, their last death cry if only to be remembered once.
Is their legacy only remembered through me; did I hear their cry in the vastness of infinity, in an uncaring universe devoid of empathy?

©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.

The wildfire 🔥 smoke has reached Milwaukee. The air smells of old crusty campfire and the skies hazy, with particles. Hazardous to those with allergies, and to the people just learning they have allergies, or chronic diseases such as heart disease and asthma, all of which can cause pulmonary blockage.




Air pollution contributes to deaths at about ~7 million worldwide a year.

“Wisconsin has seen blazing heat in recent days with an extreme heat warning or heat advisory in effect across the state Wednesday. The National Weather Service offices in Duluth and Milwaukee/Sullivan said temperatures will feel close to 100 degrees or more.”
Minnesota and Canadian Wildfires Bring Hazardous Pollution to Wisconsin
A not so fun fact, but in the Bush 2 administration they made the decsion to change “Global warming” to “Climate Change” which does not sound as scary. Guess that psyop worked very well, because climate change and the science around it is much more difficult to explain and message, whereas “Global Warming” is easy and direct, you understand what’s happening with two words.
Let’s go back to calling what’s happening “Global Warming”, the science had been clear since the late 70’s regarding the loading of C02 and other heating gasses into the atmosphere and what it is doing on a global scale. In system dynamics, the heat, its adding energy, which pushes systems to be more chaotic.

I’m an Ecologist, when the threads and connections, the mechanisms among and between life forms and their environment start to break that’s when extinction happens. There’s only so much energy (heat) that biotic organsims can process to keep them in homeostasis, even non-living things such as soil, have properties change at heat (energy) is added.
….. and I’m a realist, and every day we take one step closer to self-inflicted speciecide.
©️ Jacob Pickard. 2026