Date Published: 06-05-2025
Publisher: Talk+Tell
strike and years of self-experimentation, he’s turned his brain into a
living processor capable of absorbing massive data in minutes. But each Neural
Acceleration session chips away at his body—and his grip on reality.
When a top-secret cannabis company in Canada draws his attention, Jack
uncovers something that puts him on the radar of a ruthless criminal syndicate
known as the Organization. As his mind unravels, assassins close in, and his
unpredictable brother Luke pushes for a much-needed escape, Jack is pulled
into a deadly game he never agreed to play.
Perfect for fans of Scorpion, Utopia, and The Terminal List, Canadian Smoke is
a smart, darkly funny, high-octane techno-thriller that explores what happens
when genius meets corruption—and the cost of knowing too much.
A buried secret. A criminal empire. A genius on the edge.
Whatever Jack saw… someone will do anything to keep it hidden.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
Neural Accelerator
Las Vegas J
ack Glasser finished entering his search parameters, leaned back in his repurposed dentist chair and attached a blood pressure cuff, cardiac strap, and blood oxygen sensor to his finger, quickly checking his vitals before going under. He pulled his custom headset from its cradle, where an iconic dental light once hung, and slipped it over his ears, shoving his long mass of curly hair out of the way. The headset, complete with multi-spectrum goggles sat atop his head as he pushed the Start button on the console.
A ten-minute timer flashed on the monitors, beginning his countdown, and a slight hissing sound emanated from a split tube attached to the chair. He grabbed the tube and gently placed it under his nose and began breathing nitrous oxide and isoflurane, strong anesthesia used in surgeries, then pulled the headset over his eyes. He felt the familiar lightheadedness that accompanied each “Neural Acceleration” outing and began to drift off.
He fell into a light dream state before unconsciousness set in and began to recall, in vivid detail, the event that set his current life in motion. The childhood recollection played inside his head, in spectacular detail, every session.
He recalled running in a circle lifting his feet high to dodge the tall, twisted roots of the Banyan tree in the front yard of his South Florida home. He’d run in a clockwise circle for about five minutes, trying to stay ahead of his younger brother Luke who was furious. Jack’s lungs burned and his legs were heavy as they both paused, the tree still between them, each catching their breath.
Luke used his shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat off his forehead and blew out a deep and focused breath. “You might as well get it over with. I’m kicking your ass!” he said, a psychotic lilt in his voice caused by a lump in his throat, on the verge of tears.
“It was an accident, you idiot!” Jack remembered shouting.
The blow-up was small by their standards, but it preceded the singular event that changed their lives forever. In retrospect, the justice Luke wanted to extract from Jack, crushing his remote-controlled car with a soccer ball, was laughable, yet sweet in its innocence.
Sitting in an induced coma-like state in a beat up, old dentist chair, his anxiety was still intact and his left hand began to twitch. Like every session before, he drifted into semi-sleep and watched the singularly most important event of his life unfold and replay in his head with extreme clarity. He saw their dog Bosco, who had escaped from the back yard, join in the chase . . . a big, brown, slobbery mess of a dog, taking turns nipping at their heels, infuriating Luke even more.
Two years apart and competitive in a way only brothers are, Jack was fifteen and Luke thirteen at the time. Even those that weren’t aware they were brothers would have suspected it, though not for obvious reasons. Their eyes, nose, and lips had a very similar shape – an undeniable family resemblance – however, they couldn’t have been more different. Quiet and shy, Jack was lanky with darker thick, long, curly hair. Luke was practically blonde, built like a linebacker, and had a personality that screamed for attention.
Jack recalled Bosco barking feverishly as the chase continued.
Unfortunately neither he nor Luke noticed the sky had turned dark and ugly. Neither felt the air pressure drop, the wind abruptly stop, nor the eerie calm before the storm. No rain fell, however, from his vantage point years later, he now saw the bruise-colored clouds once in the distance, now on top of them as they continued circling the large tree.
In an instant, an unnatural cool enveloped the yard and traces of lightning hopped from cloud to cloud without a hint of thunder. Immersed in the moment, it became inevitable. The rest was history. The last thing he and Luke remembered was a searing white light accompanied by a superheated cannon blast, then slipping into the grip of a warm, black numbness.
As always, the recurring sedative-induced memory stopped in tandem with the ten-minute timer on his chair. His Acceleration session started, blasting multiple compressed and intermingled video streams at his retinas, with what sounded like streams of binary code ripping through his headset.
Through the strong concoction of anesthesia, multiple streams of audio and visual data pummeled him, hurling information into every crevice of his brain with extraordinary velocity. He fought back reflexively as he’d done every time but soon gave in to extreme mental and emotional exhaustion, surrendering to the pressure-wash of information, unconsciously writhing in the chair.
Thirty minutes later the barrage of information stopped and soothing music began to play inside his headset. He sat still for a moment reorienting himself, the twilight concoction of anesthesia perfectly timed so he’d only stay “under” for a short period of time.
He removed his headset and rubbed his two-day beard. He felt his left hand tremble a bit and reflexively pulled it into his body, massaging it with his right hand. He lifted his head slightly and sat up in his chair. The vinyl was peeling off the arms, but it served its purpose, keeping his body still while he assaulted his mind with information.
He stared at his office, a hidden twenty-by-twenty room, complete with a built-in wall unit desk, with several flatscreen monitors hanging above it. A small desk lamp struggled to light up the space. In the center of the room was his chair . . . the bane of his existence, and a connection to his dark past and the reason for his success of late. He pushed aside the silver tray that now held his keyboard and anesthesia controls, got up and staggered to his desk.
He placed the small TV remote control that opened the hidden door to his office in his pocket and stared at his Acceleration feed on the monitors and the information he’d just hammered into his head.
The feed looked like mathematical gibberish, along with a multitude of keywords including Greenleaf Pharmaceutical, medical cannabis, records of Greenleaf’s landholdings, investors, board members, suppliers, production output, cannabis strains, and their affiliates.
The monitors displayed forty-eight different subcategories that included companies, business executives, industry press, including and research papers. This evening he’d loaded the entire forty-eight streams. Normally his ‘acceleration’ sessions would be abbreviated, but he had a personal interest this time instead of his usual investment targets.
Upon entering his acceleration feed, his web-scraping tool scoured the internet and dark web searching millions of pages, following every hidden link to give him a highly detailed picture of whatever he was researching. Greenleaf Pharmaceutical, a medical cannabis company, was the subject this evening.
Truth be told, his setup was nothing more than a fire hose of information and Jack could not only retain it, he could subconsciously make sense of it. He didn’t need a next-generation big data platform . . . he was one, capable of ingesting massive amounts of information and processing it faster than a supercomputer. But he was different in that he had no moving parts, no need to validate data, and no software other than what was contained in his head. His Neural Acceleration Platform was nothing more than an information delivery system – a tortuous one – but a system that worked . . . at least for him.
He was capable of understanding deep relational connections faster than any man-made device, but his abilities couldn’t be attributed to superior genetics or even his chair. Instead, he owed his mental processing power to a massive jolt of Mother Nature’s purest energy source.
His left hand trembled again slightly as he turned out the light to leave his office. He performed a moment of mental gymnastics, telling himself that the tremor was temporary, but he knew his acceleration sessions were taking a toll on him. How exactly? He had no clue and didn’t want to. Denial was his friend at the moment. He pushed the thought out of his mind and stumbled upstairs to sleep.
About the Author
P.D. Hillman writes darkly funny thrillers about genius minds, broken systems,
and the occasional psychic meltdown. With a background in economics, cannabis
tech, and startup absurdity, he’s witnessed more backroom deals,
biometric scams, and VC ring-kissing than he can legally confirm. He once
tried to sell machine-learning sensors to weed farmers—who stored them
in paint buckets. When he’s not writing, he’s mentoring his grown
sons, recording blues in his garage, or sitting on a beach with a sand-filled
truck and a strong opinion about data, death, and denim.
