THE WALL: CHRONICLE OF A SCUBA TRIAL

INTRODUCTION

The Wall is an on-line work of fiction, first posted in 1998. The title refers to one of the cliff walls off Grand Cayman Island that is very popular with scuba divers. The trial is a result of what happened during a dive on that wall.

I originally intended to use a pseudonym, so I could put myself in as a trial witness and quote from Scuba Diving Explained. But after some reflection I decided to use my real name, as have other authors before. (For example, Isaac Asimov put himself in one of his novels.) Every other character in the book is entirely made up.

Don't think that the side I testify for has a slam dunk in this case. It's not that simple, as you'll see if you read to the end. There are one or two twists, so I strongly recommend you read the book in sequence, and not jump ahead to see what happens. One other caveat. This is a book-length chronicle, not a short story; being book length (about 100 pages if published in print format), you will want to break up the reading if you view it only on the screen, or print out sections to read at your leisure.

Though published on the internet, The Wall is a professionally-edited book, and should contain no typos, misspellings or major grammatical mistakes. So if you find any mistakes please let me know and I'll correct them. Of course, any other comments will also be appreciated, approving or otherwise.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS