Reflex (novel)
Hardcover edition
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| Author | Steven Gould |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
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Publication date
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August, 2005 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 384 pp |
| ISBN | (hardback edition) ISBN (paperback) |
| 813/.54 22 | |
| LC Class | PS3557.O8947 R45 2004 |
| Preceded by | Jumper |
| Followed by | Impulse |
Reflex is the 2004 sequel to the 1992 novel Jumper by Steven Gould.
Set ten years after the conclusion of Jumper, David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport, has married Millie and occasionally works for the National Security Agency, only accepting jobs that he finds to be morally acceptable. The novel tells the story from David's and Millie's perspectives in alternating chapters.
During a meeting with Brian Cox, his NSA handler, Brian is killed, and David is tranquilized and kidnapped by a powerful criminal organization with influence over the NSA and other government agencies. When David awakens, he is shackled to the wall of a windowless room at an undisclosed location. When he tries to "jump", the shackles pull him back violently from wherever he attempts to go.
Without David, Millie is stranded at their secret hideaway: a cliff wall cave in a remote part of Texas. She uses a rope to descend from the cave entrance, but the rope's anchor breaks and she falls; that is when she first discovers that she has gained the ability to "jump".
David's captors have implanted him with a device that can trigger his vagus nerve, causing him to become violently ill. His shackles give him the run of the room, but at random intervals he is signaled to jump to a painted box on the floor in the center of the room, or else the device is triggered. The routine continues night and day.
Millie sets out to find and rescue David with help from members of the NSA and, later, the FBI.
David becomes so conditioned to the device that the shackles are removed. He can jump away, but anywhere away from the house the device triggers immediately and he instantly finds himself within the box on the floor. His captors take him on a field trip to test very sensitive equipment that can detect his jumps within a few hundred yards because of the change in mass.
David experiments with jumping away and returning immediately to the house. Trying to do it fast enough that the device isn't triggered, he learns to jump back and forth repeatedly, in effect remaining in mid-jump, in two places at once. He uses this technique, which he calls "twinning", to communicate with Millie.
Millie tracks David to a house on the northeast coast of the United States, and by jumping, surveils the house.
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