Null Paradox | Julia and Grace

Julia has been a part of Seth’s party scene since high school, having first been introduced to the infamous old warehouse by her friend Grace.

Then one night, she had had a little too much of everything and decided that Seth would be hers. Or that’s what was running through Grace‘s mind right before she threw her first punch at Julia. Not surprisingly, that incident changed everything for both Julia and Grace.

To be fair, Grace had a life-altering experience earlier in the day courtesy of her Uncle Benjamin‘s tale, which is part of the book Gertrude & Grace, Chapter 4, Black & White.

But that hardly mattered to Julia. She was left dripping in her own blood on the crowded warehouse floor while her friends gawked at her.

 

Julia’s first inclination was to run home to the comfort of her parents. But something clicked in her mind. She became determined to change her social status from being one of the many party people to a force of nature.

She completely disconnected from Seth’s crowd and instead sought the help of an unassuming family friend, Edward.

 

Null Paradox | Julia and Edward

Town rumor had it that Edward was a good poker player. This turned out to be an accurate assessment. Julia spent a year studying with him every day after school. But it wasn’t until the second year of her internship, when Edward invited her to play in the Charm Ministry’s underground poker league, that she realized he was much more.

Poker was merely relaxation for Edward during his downtime as one of the strategists for The Cranks in their long war against The Ministry.

 

Null Paradox | Julia and Annabelle

After a long year of fighting The Ministry, Julia returned to Seth’s warehouse as a formidable card player and someone who could hold her own against any aspiring “Graces” who might show up. 

Several months of playing in the weekly games led her to the realization that there was more than met the eye about Annabelle, the card dealer.  She had talked with Edward, and they both agreed that Annabelle likely knew a lot about Seth. Particularly: whose side he was on in the war with The Ministry.

Julia and Edward also became aware that as they watched Annabelle, she was watching them. When Annabelle proposed an after-game meeting with her, they both were intrigued. She accepted the invitation and then spent the next hung-over day putting a plan together with Edward to keep her safe in case more people arrived at the meeting than were expected.

But even their planning and a year of Julia’s fighting experience didn’t prepare them for the trouble that Julia found herself in.

More about this soon.

 

Julia |  Zero

Like most Null Paradox characters, Julia lives in the same multiverse.

Physicists describe the multiverse as an object that contains all possible universes. At its core, the Null Paradox multiverse is the same, but how we navigate the infinite permutations of each universe within the multiverse is different.

In Null Paradox, we perceive life as a series of tiny hops from one universe to another stitched together to create the life they experience. This is facilitated by a machine briefly described in the first book (Gertrude & Grace), which plays a more significant role in the upcoming second book (Victoria & Seth).

 

Here’s the tricky part | Zero, One, and Two

The Julia, Gertrude, Grace, Victoria, and Seth that you read about are technically the primary ones. “Zero” is appended to their names to reduce confusion, as in Julia Zero. The adjacent universe has a Julia One. And so on.