Stone and Pine

When a conspiring astronaut, a sixteen-year-old runaway, and a struggling missionary connect with a cosmic stone, they start seeing visions of two suns. Is humankind nothing but a slowly burning ant hill or are greater things yet ahead? This fast-paced adventure crosses arctic hills from Murmansk to Helsinki, stops by an American dairy farm, and zooms out to a space station and beyond.

A student postman was calling out names in a college dormitory corridor. Heads peeked out of dorm rooms. Letters and postcards flew through air to their recipients.
"Sunday, Travis Sunday," the student postman called out.
Travis grabbed himself two expected letters and a strange postcard.
The thinner letter was from his parents. They were asking Travis how he was doing. As usual, they were worried about a strange blood condition Travis had been diagnosed with at the age of five. There was a photo attached to the letter. It showed his parents' new barn full of cows. Below the photo was a little hand-drawn heart and a caption, "Remember to drink your milk, Travis."
The thicker letter was from the college health care center and contained the results from Travis' monthly checkup. His blood condition had remained stable.
Roughly thirteen years ago — when the condition had come on — Travis had gone through a series of sudden, quirky seizures. Travis' parents had been terrified when he had complained about a creepy presence taking over his veins. It had taken a few months for the symptoms to settle. Eventually, his blood count had shown only random, harmless anomalies.
Travis still experienced that strange presence moving in his blood on occasion — it felt like there were worms and snakes slithering back and forth inside his veins. The presence was never painful but Travis noticed it followed an ominous pattern as years passed. The presence seemed to make itself felt whenever he read or heard news of disasters, assassinations, religions or wars.
Travis placed the two letters on his desk and took a look at the postcard. The picture on the card showed the White House. The post stamp read Washington, D.C. The message on the postcard was written in symbols Travis had never seen in his life. He thought it had to be a delivery mistake.
The thought vanished quickly when the worms and snakes in Travis' blood awakened. He felt them slither in the arteries on his throat and below his ears. With his pumping blood they dove deeper into his cranium. The tiniest of the worms were soon squirming right behind Travis' eyes. They made him understand the encrypted symbols on the postcard.
The message on the postcard mentioned hideously private things about Travis — like the fact that he sometimes enjoyed sniffing gasoline. It was a habit Travis had taken to in his early teens. He had tried it once with friends and found out that sniffing gasoline somehow pleased the snakes and worms in his blood.
The effect from the gasoline sniffing was something Travis never even tried to explain to anyone. Other kids were amazed by how Travis could keep on sniffing without any signs of limb spasms or suffocation. Sometimes, Travis even went to sleep with a couple of drops of gasoline soaked into his pillow.
The message on the postcard also contained an assignment for Travis. He was to steal chemicals from the laboratory storage room in his college. He was to mix the chemicals with fertilizer and build a bomb.
Without finishing the encrypted message, Travis considered the postcard a sick joke and was about to tear it into pieces and forget about it. His intention made the worms and snakes in his head bare their teeth and bite into his nerves. It felt like his brain was dipped in vinegar. His legs betrayed him and he hit his teeth on his knees as he collapsed down on the floor. The pain made him scream and spasm so that his toes touched the back of his head...