On Oct. 20, Christopher Paolini published an interactive story titled “Unity.” This story is set after the events of his most recent novel, “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars,” and follows a specialist – you – as they solve a crime aboard Unity, a space station constructed and grown by Kira Navarez.

Kira Navarez, merged with an alien suit known as the Soft Blade, has left her creation to destroy the last parts of the Nightmares, an unholy union between humans, Wranaui (a jellyfish-like alien) and the Soft Blade. She leaves behind Unity, a place for peace between humans and Wranaui after both had been engaged in a war. You are called in as an investigator, because before too long, a human is found dead, with evidence pointing to the Wranaui.

As you make decisions that lead you closer to a solution and closer to danger, you get the aid of a Wranaui. Eventually, you and the alien stumble upon a group of people who want to destroy Unity and the Wranaui, and this group brought weapons onto the station – breaking the number-one rule on board.

When you first arrive on Unity, you have some reservations about both the station and the aliens you’ll have to coexist with, but after working with one of them made you realize that, maybe, they aren’t so bad.

As a continuation of “To Sleep,” “Unity” continues Paolini’s exploration of the sci-fi genre. It does provide a change from the book that made Paolini a bestseller, “Eragon.” That book, on the other hand, was written as epic fantasy, but Paolini had stated he needed a break from the world of Eragon, so he decided to try sci-fi. With the success of “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars,” Paolini wrote the interactive short story to continue the storyline.

Unity Short Story: https://fractalverse.net/cya1/