Heart Full of Sky (unproduced novel)

Heart Full of Sky was a Faction Paradox novel pitched by Jim Mortimore to Random Static Ltd in 2008. However, he bowed out of the project when "editorial re-versioning and continuity changes to the proposal alone ran to nearly 10,000 words". Five versions of the pitch were printed in The Age of Broken Miracles, Mortimore's 2013 compilation of his unproduced pitches.

Mortimore later agreed to write an unrelated Faction Paradox novella, Opus Majus, for Obverse Books for release in 2012, but it was also never released.

Plot

Ariel is an entity born in the deep past, possibly at the same time as the universe itself. Its mission is to travel through time in one direction to protect a mysterious artefact – a living human head – throughout the lifetime of the universe. Ariel accomplishes this by temporarily inhabiting host bodies. However, while it is in a woman named Sky Mellor, through some accident Ariel and Sky are inseparably fused, and many of Ariel's powers and memories are lost.

Sky's newlywed husband, variably named Pathin or Francis Larroquet, realises that something is possessing his pregnant wife for its own ends. In the first and final drafts of the proposal, Sky and Pathin hail from late 20th century Iraq; in intermediary drafts, they are aliens from a culture with no concept of evil. In both cases, Pathin is determined to win back the woman he loves, and Ariel – amnesiac and requiring help to understand ephemeral organic life – takes him along when she leaves Earth, even though her unidirectional form of time travel means he can never return.

Together they embark on an odyssey through time and uncountable alien cultures.

"A hundred years, a billion. Deep Time. More. […] Galaxies like grains of sand on a beach, ground to dust by time and washed away to darkness."

At the Uptime Gate of the City of the Saved in the year 12,000,000 AD, while Ariel is elsewhere on a mission, Pathin meets a human who treats him strangely. She is Sky, accompanied by their as-yet-unborn son. However, Pathin does not recognise her.

Shortly afterwards, the son, variably named Tenan or Eloye, is born. In early drafts, Eloye realises that Sky (inside Ariel) and Pathin are losing their essential humanity through their voyages. There is only a narrow window of opportunity for them to die and be reborn together in the City of the Saved. When Eloye explains this to his father, Pathin realises that for the longest time he has been in love with Ariel itself.

"A heart full of sky is an empty heart. But Pathin's heart has always been full. Now he will share Ariel's life – forever."

Pathin rejects Eloye and Sky, choosing Ariel instead. Eloye attempts to kill Ariel and get Sky back, which Pathin partially averts by killing Eloye, but Ariel is mortally wounded and still dies.

In the final draft, Pathin similarly realises his love for Ariel, but Eloye's goal instead is to find a way to travel backwards in time to 20th century Earth. This trip succeeds, but it attracts the attention of Faction Paradox, who then find the relic and want to take it for study. This leads Ariel to inhabit Sky's body, causing the accident which originally fused them.

Whether killed by Eloye or in the process of defending the relic, Ariel dies and Pathin continues her mission. He ultimately dies in the Big Crunch, "the transformative fire of a new universe"; maybe there's enough humanity left in him to be reborn in the City, but maybe not.

Behind the scenes

• Ariel was named after the character from William Shakespeare's The Tempest.