A narrative that spans from contemporary urban centers to a stark, post-apocalyptic future unfolds in IKONA by M.D. Dixon. The story is anchored by a mysterious healing icon that influences the lives of four strangers, leading them toward a shared destination across fractured timelines. It examines the profound impact of individual decisions on the unfolding of a multidimensional history.

A holy icon, a Russian Orthodox cross with inexplicable healing power, begins to appear across cities, lifetimes, and fractured timelines. Four strangers are drawn into its resonance—moving from the bustling environments of Sydney, Hong Kong, Atlanta, and Berlin to the silent, stark landscape of a future Siberia. Kate Davies witnesses the icon’s effect on a child in Atlanta, while Finley Minor in Sydney is haunted by visions of what the future may hold. Jia Li MacPherson, a former thief, possesses secrets that powerful forces want to keep hidden. A century later, Wallace Deng Moroz, a monk in a world devastated by a genetic engineering disaster, looks for a cure amidst a polarized political climate.

Their eventual meeting seems fated, but it is their choices that will define their path. They must decide which version of the future they will live in and what must be surrendered to find it.

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Excerpt

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FINLEY & THE SEA

MAY 2019

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Finley Minor was by his own accounts an empty man, a listless man, spiritually and emotionally sparse. Blink a thousand times and his course in life would not have shifted an inch. He was motionless like a chameleon in the presence of a threat. But this was not fact, only fear, and that of a man who knew that he’d not lived at full throttle and had succumbed to the fate of it —a slow and shallow life. He ruminated on it. He judged himself for it. He laughed at his own expense, without thinking he might ever change a thing.

In the way one always has a beginning, a great excuse, this was Finley’s: at the age of seven, in his native England, he sat on the beach as his stick wove tessellations in the sand (almost of its own accord, it seemed in retrospect), and he looked to the horizon towards France with the open, impressionable curiosity of his young age. He wondered at the sea’s depth, its great distance, how one might (as many had) swim across the channel, what creatures might lurk there, what they might feel like against bare skin. He imagined something slimy and cold, fanged, and slithering. The waves seemed to roar at him, even though they descended in the rockpools with the gentleness of pooling cream.

He stood, determined to satisfy his curiosity. He took halting steps over the rocks and shells, straight ahead, then bearing left around a rock face that jutted into the sea. He sat on a big, flat rock and stared into the gray water. He heard his father calling out his name, but ignored him. The water rushed in again and again, and each time reached further and further, first sucking at his toes, then his heels, then his knees. His curiosity fled; he became afraid, and all sound was magnified, the dull ocean roar, the seagull squawking a few feet away, his heartbeat. He knew he had to go back to shore. He waved to his father, stood, and took a faltering step. There was a low murmur; the water fizzled once more in retreat from the rocky sand like the gasping breath of a dying man. He felt dizzy and fell to his knees. He crouched on all fours and steadied himself as the water swirled and grasped at him, and the sky looped and the clouds fell from the corner of his eyes. He felt his head winched back towards the horizon, and the sea reached for his throat. Blackness.

When he came to, dragged back to shore by his father, he announced that his aunt would never return from her Côte D’Azur holiday. He wagged his finger towards the surf and pulled a face, “Over there, there is smooching.”

The official prognosis was that he’d had an epileptic fit, though none of the tests proved it. He must have passed out, in that case, the doctor pronounced, low blood sugar, a low-level virus, dehydration.

But Finley knew, only he knew.

The ocean had rent a hole in his soul, and let in the future.

About the Author

M.D. Dixon is a novelist, somatic therapist, and explorer of the intersections between the psyche and the sacred, science and mysticism, trauma and transformation. Holding a Ph.D. in the social sciences with a focus on Russia and Ukraine, Dixon has spent nearly fifteen years in therapeutic practice in Sydney, Australia. Dixon’s debut novel, IKONA, weaves visionary fiction, myth, and metaphysics to illuminate the evolution of consciousness. Dixon also hosts The Shattering Place, a podcast on multidimensional healing and the awakening human story, launching in early 2026.

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