Working Title: Nanoswarm

Universe: Magnus Red

Current Status: First Draft

Target Release: Fall 2025

Brief Hook: Serial stories based in the future, where humans are colonizing the universe and running into troubles. Magnus Red, a tech consultant, is a free-lancing troubleshooter who is an expert generalist, with his unique set of skills he is called to investigate some rogue nanobots that threaten a budding colony.

Sample Scene:

Magnus Red leaned over the workbench, his fingers working with a precision born of years spent coaxing life into stubborn machines. The delicate gear system lay before him, a clockwork puzzle of brass and steel, each piece waiting to find its place in the intricate dance of mechanics. The faint metallic scent of the tools mingled with the sharper tang of machine oil, forming an aroma that had long since become comforting to him. He adjusted the magnifying visor perched on his nose, its lens catching the golden light streaming through the workshop’s high windows.

The room itself was a quiet symphony of order and potential. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with spools of wire, jars of screws, and a curated array of tools that gleamed like a surgeon’s instruments. A soft, rhythmic ticking came from a pendulum clock in the corner, its sound blending with the faint hum of a small generator in the corner. Magnus had built that generator himself, of course, salvaged from the remnants of an old drone. Every corner of the workshop bore his fingerprints, his ingenuity.

He reached for a pair of fine-point tweezers and carefully lifted a gear no larger than a thumbnail. Its edges caught the sunlight, glinting like a tiny star. Magnus’s hands were steady, his movements deliberate. He could feel the slight resistance of the gear as he set it into place, the faint click as it seated itself perfectly within the mechanism. The tactile feedback was satisfying, a small victory in the larger battle of engineering.

The sunlight shifted slightly, throwing warm patches of light across the bench. Magnus paused, sitting back for a moment to stretch his shoulders. The leather of his well-worn jacket creaked softly as he moved. He ran a hand through his hair, blond strands falling back into their usual tousled disarray. The motion was automatic, a habit formed in moments like these when his mind was focused elsewhere.

He glanced at the notepad beside him, its pages filled with neat sketches and scrawled calculations. The design was ambitious, even for him. A multi-functional tool, compact yet versatile, capable of adapting to a variety of colonial tasks. It was the kind of invention that could make life easier for settlers on the alien frontier worlds, where resources were scarce and ingenuity was often the only thing standing between survival and failure.

Magnus picked up a slender screwdriver, its handle warm from sitting under the sunlight. He tightened a tiny screw, feeling the subtle tension as the threads caught and held. The device was beginning to take shape now, its form emerging from the chaos of parts. There was something deeply satisfying about this process, the act of turning an abstract idea into a tangible reality.

The light shifted again, deeper now, as the sun began its descent. Shadows lengthened across the room, but Magnus barely noticed. His focus was absolute, his world narrowed to the interplay of gears and springs. He worked in silence, the only sounds the faint scrape of metal on metal and the occasional exhale as he adjusted his grip or leaned closer to inspect his progress.

Finally, he set down the screwdriver and stepped back, wiping his hands on a rag. The device gleamed in the fading sunlight, its polished surfaces catching the light in a way that made it seem almost alive. Magnus allowed himself a small smile, the kind that came not from pride, but from the quiet satisfaction of a job well done.

He reached over and flipped a small switch on the side of the device. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a faint whir, the gears turned, their motion smooth and precise. Magnus watched, his blue eyes reflecting the movement, as the mechanism came to life.

It wasn’t finished yet—there were refinements to be made, tests to be run—but in this moment, it worked. And that was enough. For now.

Behind the Scenes: As a child one of my favorite television series was MacGyver. Sitting down with my mother and watching “our show” was one of my earliest memories. It’s part of the reason I became an engineer. Solving cool problems, always know how to hack at an issue, what kid doesn’t want that? And the mullet? Ah yeah, you know Richard Dean Anderson rocked the business up front and party in the back!

Well, I missed the adventure and problem solving of those stories. So, true to form, I started writting a story that would satisfy that itch. This universe and character are inspired by those serial adventures of a intelligent and larger than life stories from the 80’s. Mixed in with horror elements, ethical dilemmas, and hopefully compelling character growth, Magnus Red’s first story Nanoswarm is my homage to one of the greatest characters to hit TV.