Follow the Second Line!
DISSONANCE is a speculative fiction dossier novel set in Neo-New Orleans, Year 6, 3004 CE. Compiled from 47 classified case files marked MUD EYES ONLY, the archive follows a household of frequency carriers, threshold guardians, and revolutionary engineers fighting the Board's 528 Hz pacification infrastructure from the flooded Mud beneath the Canopy.
Part found-document thriller, part Afrofuturist frequency architecture, DISSONANCE unfolds through field observations, calibration logs, and source-bound analysis recorded by a reporting officer who measured the city in hertz and hunger. Yvonne tends the shrine where water rises against gravity. Solène commands Rose's Thorn from a ledger that never balances. Marcel sees color in frequencies the Board trained the city to ignore. Nox guards every threshold he cannot cross. And Margaux burns her father's network from inside the Canopy after discovering the extraction that made them all calibration targets.
The dossier is unrestricted. The frequency is holding. Follow the second line.
Available now as an ebook.
Editorials
Hear the Frequency!
Updated when rations permit.
“We are what remains. We are what stays after the silence tries to take everything.”
— Yvonne Celestin, manbo The Anvil, Ward 7 / Council Archive 3004 Year 6, Day 38
About Manuel A. Dominguez
Manuel A. Dominguez is the reporting officer for the Mud News Package, Ward 7. He wrote DISSONANCE to prove that in a city built to extract what its people feel, the most radical act is to bear witness—and to teach readers that survival is never individual heroism, but collective infrastructure.
His work argues that diaspora cultures are not background texture but engineering: Louisiana Creole shrine practice, Haitian Vodou frequency work, Korean notation, and Cajun acoustic tradition are all technical systems capable of resisting a pacification mask. DISSONANCE asks readers to trust the witness of the Mud over the authority of the Canopy, to read like investigators, and to recognize that the city is still learning to sing.
The dossier remains open. The frequency is still holding.