TRUE BELIEVERS: Chapter 28 — Retcons and Reboots

True Believers is a full-length novel by Thom Dunn, based on his play of the same name. It’s a satirical tale of star-crossed lovers, aspiring comic book creators, crazed fanboys, cybernetically enhanced humans, women in refrigerators, real-life superheroes, and girls who dress like Slave Leia as their lives intertwine over a whirlwind weekend at a comic book convention in the early 2010s.

The book will be serialized on Medium throughout the month of April 2020. Here is the first chapter. Check back every day for more chapters!

Ted clicks the mouse and plays back the message that Chloe left him in the game. Her chipper voice booms from the Bluetooth speakers spread across his studio apartment on the Upper West Side. He lets himself get lost in the surround sound of her voice as he picks up the empty beer cans that he’d strewn across the floor last night. His thoughts begin to wander as he crosses all ten feet to the corner kitchenette.

Ted lets out a heavy sigh as he admires the disgusting pile of dishes rising like a tower from the filthy sink basin. It’s not like him to keep this kind of mess. But Comic-Con week is always hard and — ah, who’s he kidding. He’s been here six months and still treats it like a hotel room. It looks like one, too, with the bland IKEA furniture assembled all around, and not a single…