Choose The Sun

A Stanford academic, Lawrence Williams, is summoned to the residence of his friend, physician and Nobel Laureate Edgar A. Marten, by the housekeeper after she discovers Marten is injured and unconscious on the kitchen floor. Days later when Marten regains consciousness in the hospital, he tells Williams there was an accident with the Emitter, a high-tech version of an ancient Egyptian religious artifact that he acquired earlier that year. The next day, local news reports that an increasing number of young adults who have recently turned 21 are coming down with the symptoms that mimic severe food poisoning. Authorities are mystified because the disease is spreading quickly by an unknown contagion, and the transmission pattern doesn't match the usual causes due to viruses, bacteria, and parasites because the victims have not eaten the same food nor have they been in proximity to each other and are unrelated in every way except their age.

Marten believes his accident is the cause of the disease but the Emitter was destroyed in the accident which prevents him from discovering how to stop the pandemic from spreading. By the eighth day of the illness, victims fall into a coma. Their body produces a substance that engulfs each victim for several weeks. Those who are not killed by the process emerge with perfect health. Their personality and sense of self is unaffected. However, their physical bodies have completely transformed. Marten and Williams construct a team to manage the crisis which is doing more that killing the victims. As the survivors struggle to rebuild their world, they must decide between transforming their lives or ending their misery with suicide.
About the Author: Kent Safford was born in Northwest Indiana and received a BS from the Speech and Communications Department in Radio, Television, and Film Studies from Indiana State University where he won first prize in the student film festival in his senior year. After beginning a career in newspapers, he enrolled in the design and photography programs at the University of Michigan School of Art before moving to Northern California to pursue opportunities as a convention and trade show professional in the corporate, association, and academic arenas. At Stanford University he spent over two decades split between the Schools of Medicine and Education, and finally with the Stanford Humanities Center where he was able to connect with scholars and experts in a broad array of academic fields. An avid photographer, he also enjoys composing and playing music on both the classical and steel string guitars. Nature has been a passion and he enjoys hiking and birding and has volunteered in numerous capacities in animal shelters. Manifesting creativity in everything from art to music and cooking to photography offers him an unlimited outlet for his curiosity. Along with a lifetime of investigating the paranormal and exploring the nature of consciousness, he chose science fiction as a vehicle to launch Choose The Sun as a story of non-ordinary circumstances that change an otherwise ordinary world.