THE MORRISON PROTOCOL
He built a system to observe the past. He built it to find his wife. Now the people who took her know he's looking.
Every Hour Costs
The Morrison Protocol
Written by Michael Brashars
Written for the Screen
When The Morrison Protocol becomes a TV series, this is the song that opens every episode. Written by Michael Brashars to capture the emotional core of Nathan Morrison's world — the cost of seeing the past, and the quiet war he carries alone.
Every hour costs a piece of me
Every moment pulls me deeper in
I chase the ghosts I'm meant to see
But time won't let me win
Bridge
What is lost… is never gone
What is seen… still carries on
Observe… but never belong…
Last Witness
It begins with a single name on a classified list — and one operative who was never supposed to survive. As Nathan Morrison races to uncover the truth, he finds himself hunted by forces that will do anything to keep the past buried. The Protocol starts here.
“A relentless page-turner that blurs the line between technology and terror.”
Join the Mailing List
Last Witness
A relentless thriller about time, loss, and the cost of finally seeing the truth.
The past was real. Untouchable.
And it was killing him.
Nathan Morrison is forty-four years old, ex-Army Ranger, private investigator — and he can see the past. Not remember it. See it. Live it. Temporal observation is the Morrison legacy, passed through DNA, and every minute he spends in the past costs him one hundred minutes of his future.
The book opens at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Nathan is working an insurance fraud case — a routine observation, 1947 bleeding through 2023, Art Deco chrome and marble solidifying over modern gates. It is the kind of work that funds the Protocol. It is not the work that keeps him up at night.
When investigative journalist Mary Jane Binge arrives at his door with a missing persons case — her daughter Darlene Ferraro, a Boston University senior abducted from a parking garage — Nathan recognizes the pattern immediately. Professional operation. Military precision. Clean execution. The same tactics that took Tracy.
The Observer
Nathan Morrison — ex-Army Ranger, private investigator, forty-four years old. He can see the past. Not remember it. See it. Live it. Every minute he spends in the past costs him one hundred minutes of his future.
The Case
Investigative journalist Mary Jane Binge arrives at his door. Her daughter Darlene — a Boston University senior — was abducted from a parking garage. Professional operation. Military precision. The same tactics that took Tracy.
The Network
Victoria Cross's trafficking empire has been running for decades — taking women, holding them on a remote island four hundred miles off the coast. And Tracy Morrison has been there for twenty-two years.
The Cost
Finding Tracy means assembling a team, sailing four hundred miles into the North Atlantic, and assaulting a fortified island compound — while Nathan's body ages faster than it can recover.
Nathan Morrison stood in Detroit Metro and watched 1947 bleed through 2023.
Modern gates faded, fluorescent lights dimmed, contemporary travelers turned to ghosts. The Art Deco airport solidified with chrome, marble, and high ceilings. He was forty-four, ex-military, private investigator. And he could see the past. Not remember it. See it. Live it.
The 1947 terminal hummed with life. Men in double-breasted suits and fedoras, women in tea-length dresses with victory rolls, kids dressed in Sunday best. Seventy-six years dead, but right here in front of him.
Real people, not photographs. Real.
Want to know what it costs him?
Back the campaign and get the full book.
Read an Excerpt
The opening of Last Witness. Detroit Metropolitan Airport, June 10, 2023. Nathan Morrison watches 1947 bleed through the present — and every minute costs him one hundred minutes of his future.
The excerpt loads line by line.
Experience it the way Nathan experiences the past — one moment at a time.
“The Protocol didn't lie. The past didn't lie. The past was the only thing that never lied.”
What Readers Are Saying
From Kickstarter backers to ARC readers — the reaction to Last Witness has been unanimous.
312 ratings
Platforms
“I backed it because the premise sounded cool. I stayed because the writing is genuinely great. Nathan feels real in a way that most thriller protagonists don't — you feel the weight of what was done to him.”
Meet the Key Players
In the Morrison Protocol, every player has a role. None are entirely innocent. Tap any card to access their dossier.
Protagonist / Observer
Nathan Morrison
Co-Protagonist / Strategic Operator
Jordan Morrison
Catalyst / Missing Figure
Tracy Morrison
Emerging Ally / Triple PhD
Brandyn Morrison
Creator / Legacy Figure
James Morrison
The Algorithm / Governing Intelligence
Sarah Morrison
Guidance System / Internal AI
ATLAS
Primary Antagonist
Victoria Cross
Catalyst / Investigative Reporter
Mary Jane Binge
Tactical Leader / Field Operations
Troy Archer
Field Operator
T.T. Archer
Enforcer / Tactical Support
Fred Bowman
Former DEA / Intelligence Analyst
Gil Diaz
Field Asset / War Dog
Eli
Intelligence Broker
Elena Voss
Corporate Facilitator
Victor Hale
Medical Specialist / Ethical Counterpoint
Dr. Anika Rao
High-Level Curator
Adrian Kessler
Federal Liaison
Daniel Reyes
Survivor / Witness
Lena Kovač
Systems Architect — Curator-Aligned
Dr. Elias Varn
Victim / Rescue Target
Darlene Ferraro
Field Operator / SEAL Team Six
Marcus Kane
Catalyst / Unknown Fate
The Guard
Antagonist / System-Level Threat
Eddie Kamp
5 Questions
Which character are you?
Nathan. Jordan. Victoria. Archer. Find your match.
Who Appears in Each Book
Browse characters by their first appearance. Know who you'll meet before you start — or discover who's waiting in the next book.
Read the First Chapter.
No strings attached.
The complete Chapter One of Last Witness is available as a free PDF download — no email required. Read it now, or read it online on the book page.
PDF · Free
Last Witness — Chapter One
No account needed · Opens in new tab
The Morrison Protocol Series
Click any cover to explore the book
Book One
Last Witness
Book Two
Blood Trace
Book Three
Fracture
Book Four
Open War
Book Five
Observer Pact
Reading Order Guide
Five books. One continuous story. Here's how the Morrison Protocol unfolds — and how each book connects to the next.
How the Books Connect
Berlin cliffhanger → New Orleans archive
Double-agent reveal → Selection engine
Design documents → The Leak
Voss's final move → The Observer Pact
Read in Order
The Morrison Protocol is a continuous narrative. Each book ends on a thread that the next book picks up directly. Reading out of order will spoil major reveals.
One Book at a Time
Each book is designed to be satisfying on its own — a complete arc with a beginning, middle, and end — while advancing the larger story. No cliffhangers without resolution.
Track the Locations
The series moves through Boston, Berlin, New Orleans, Prague, and Reykjavik. Each city carries thematic weight — the geography is part of the story.
A Note from the Author
Jordan Quinn Rivers
I spent two years trying to make the science feel like a cheat. Every draft, I kept asking myself: “Is this just a convenient plot device, or is there something real here?” When I finally sat down with the actual physics — Einstein's block universe, the relativity of simultaneity, what it actually means for the past to “exist” — I realized I didn't need to invent anything. The universe, as physicists describe it, already does what Nathan does. I just needed to write a character who figured out how to use it. The science isn't in the story to impress you. It's there because without it, the story doesn't work — and I needed it to work.
The Past Is Still There
Nathan Morrison can observe any moment in the past — but he cannot change it. He is invisible, undetectable, a ghost reading coordinates in frozen time. The Protocol is read-only. The past is crystallized. That is what the physics says. And the physics is real.
The Past Doesn't Disappear
Here's the unsettling part: according to one of the most respected models in theoretical physics, the moment you were born still exists. Right now. Fully intact. Occupying a fixed coordinate in spacetime — the same way a city exists even when you're not in it.
The past doesn't vanish when it ends. It crystallizes. What we call "the present" is just the edge of what we can perceive — not the edge of what exists.
Einstein Said It First
Einstein proved that two people moving at different speeds will disagree on what is happening "right now" — which means there is no universal "now." No single present moment that everyone shares. Just coordinates in a four-dimensional structure he called spacetime.
If there's no privileged "now," then the past isn't gone — it's just somewhere else in the block. Nathan doesn't travel through time. He navigates to a coordinate. That's a very different thing. And it's exactly what Einstein's math allows.
You at age 10 still exists — fully intact, at a fixed coordinate. Not as a memory. As a fact.
The moment Tracy Morrison was taken on April 12, 2001 still exists. Nathan didn't remember it. He went there. Seventeen times.
If the past is a fixed location, the question isn't whether you can reach it. It's whether anyone already has.
"Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
— Albert Einstein, on the death of his lifelong friend Michele Besso
If all moments exist simultaneously, why do we experience time as moving? That's the hard question. Leading explanations include:
Psychological Arrow
Memory only works in one direction, creating the illusion of movement.
Thermodynamic Arrow
Entropy always increases (2nd Law of Thermodynamics), giving time a direction we perceive as forward.
Consciousness
Our awareness may simply be a moving "spotlight" scanning through fixed spacetime coordinates.
None of these are fully settled. It remains one of the deepest unsolved problems in physics and philosophy.
| Model | Time Is... |
|---|---|
Eternalism(Block Universe)USED IN SERIES | All moments exist equally, always |
Presentism | Only the present moment exists |
Growing Block | Past + present exist; future does not yet |
Many-Worlds | All quantum outcomes branch into parallel blocks |
Most physicists lean toward Eternalism because it's most consistent with relativity — though it creates deeply unsettling implications for free will.
What They Did to Nathan
The Protocol isn't a gadget. It's a process — and it starts with breaking a person down completely. Here's exactly how they built a man who can witness the past, and what it cost him.
Weaponized Transformation
Not an enhancement. A forced remaking of the human mind.
The injection is a trauma-activated neurological catalyst — but it only works on Morrison DNA carriers. In anyone else, it is a sedative. A control drug. Used to subdue. The transformation is genetically locked. The mind must also be destabilized first — fear, isolation, coercion — before the compound is administered. In a Morrison DNA carrier, the result is not enhancement. It is forced remaking.
Tracy Morrison was drugged with this compound during her kidnapping. She does not carry Morrison DNA. The injection subdued her — it did not transform her. That distinction is the biological secret at the center of the series. The network does not inject everyone. It injects Morrison bloodline carriers specifically, because only they can become what the Protocol needs them to become.
The Morrison Protocol's mechanics are built on Block Universe theory — the same theoretical framework that flows directly from Einstein's Special Relativity. The technology is fictional. The physics it exploits is not.
The Science Behind
The Protocol
No physics degree required. Here's exactly how Nathan's ability works — and why it's grounded in real science, not hand-waving.
What most people think
The past is gone. Once a moment passes, it ceases to exist. You can't go back because there's nothing to go back to.
What physics actually says
According to Einstein's relativity, past, present, and future all exist simultaneously as fixed coordinates in a 4D structure called spacetime. The past is still there — it's just a different location.
What the Protocol does
Nathan's quantum processors let him navigate to a specific spacetime coordinate — a fixed point in the past — and observe it. He doesn't travel. He tunes in.
Go to the exact location
The Protocol is location-locked. Nathan must physically stand in the precise coordinates where the event occurred — the same room, the same floor, the same spot. You can't observe a murder from across town. You have to be there.
Think of it like tuning a radio. The signal only comes in when you're on the right frequency — and the frequency is a place.
It's time travel
Nathan doesn't move through time — he observes a fixed coordinate. He's always in the present. The past comes to him.
He can change the past
Completely impossible. The Protocol is read-only. Past events are crystallized spacetime coordinates — immutable by definition.
He can see the future
No. The future hasn't happened yet — it has no fixed coordinates. Only the past is crystallized. The future remains probabilistic.
It's painless and safe
Every observation session accelerates Nathan's biological aging. He's been slowly trading his remaining lifespan for answers.
The Movie Reel
Every frame of a film already exists on the reel before you watch it. Playing the movie doesn't create the frames — they were always there. The Protocol lets Nathan play any frame of reality's reel.
The Satellite Image
Google Earth shows you what a place looked like at a specific moment in time. You're not there — you're observing a fixed snapshot. The Protocol is that, but for any moment in history, from inside the frame.
Starlight
When you look at a star 100 light-years away, you're seeing it as it was 100 years ago. That light — that moment — still exists, traveling toward you. The past isn't gone. It's just further away.
The Protocol is real enough to be terrifying
The science isn't invented — it's extrapolated. Block Universe theory is a legitimate interpretation of Einstein's relativity, supported by most physicists. The Morrison Protocol just asks: what if someone figured out how to navigate it?
Read the Opening ChapterFrequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know before backing — shipping, formats, timeline, and what happens if we don't hit the goal.
Still have questions?
We'll get back to you within 48 hours.
Key Locations
Book One spans Boston, the North Atlantic, and the past. Every location holds a piece of what was taken from Nathan — and what it costs him to get it back.
View Full Map
Boston
Nathan's Base of Operations
Nathan Morrison runs Morrison Investigations out of a Victorian house on Marlowe Street built in 1887 — inherited from his foster parents, the Hendersons. Every observation begins and ends here. The Darlene Ferraro case starts with a phone call at 4:47 in the morning.
About the Author
“Every conspiracy starts with someone who knew too much — and someone who needed them silent.”
Jordan Quinn Rivers is the author of The Morrison Protocol — a gripping techno-thriller series that blends cutting-edge technology, covert intelligence, and the explosive dynamics of a family with too many secrets.
The series opens with Last Witness — a relentless thriller about time, loss, and the cost of finally seeing the truth. Four more books follow, each escalating the stakes as the Morrison family uncovers the full scope of what was taken from them.
Drawing on themes of surveillance, identity, power, and trust, Jordan's writing delivers the pulse-pounding pace of a thriller while grounding every twist in deeply human consequence.
Author's Note
The real-world obsessions, questions, and moments that built the Morrison Protocol from the ground up.
I didn't invent the Morrison Protocol. I discovered it — the same way Nathan does. One impossible question at a time.
— The Author
The Morrison Protocol started as a question I couldn't shake: if time is a block — if every moment that has ever happened or will happen already exists simultaneously — then what does it mean to be chosen?
I grew up in a family where secrets were currency. Where the things left unsaid shaped every room you walked into. Nathan Morrison is, in many ways, the version of me that finally got to ask the questions out loud — and then had to survive the answers.
How It Was Built
The Seed
A late-night conversation with a physicist friend about block universe theory. "What if someone could actually see it?" That question never left.
The Research
Three years of reading: Penrose, Hawking, Deutsch. Filling notebooks with questions about determinism, identity, and what it means to be chosen by time itself.
Nathan Appears
The character arrived fully formed during a flight delay in Chicago. Scribbled the first scene on a boarding pass. That scene is now Chapter One.
The Protocol
The device — the Morrison Protocol itself — came from a dream about a man watching his own birth. The technology became the story's spine.
A Note to Backers
Every person who backs this campaign is funding the next chapter of a story I've been building for over a decade. That means something to me that I can't fully put into words — which, for a writer, is saying a lot.
"Observation stable. Temporal lock confirmed. Subject arrival in 4 minutes, 11 seconds. Maintain position." Nathan scanned and memorized the layout: exits, cameras, blind spots. Security cameras were dark, broken, vandalized two days before Darlene disappeared. Convenient timing. Perfect place for a kidnapping.
Last Witness
Last Witness — Chapter 02: The Kidnapping
Quotes rotate daily. Save your favorites from any book page — they join the community pool.
Latest News
The Final Cover for Last Witness — Revealed
After three rounds of revisions and a lot of late nights, the final cover art for Last Witness is here. Here's the story behind the design.
Read Full PostWriting Book Two: What I've Learned from Last Witness
Blood Trace is underway. Here's what the writing process looks like, what's changed since Book One, and why Nathan Morrison is harder to write the second time around.
Read MoreMore dispatches coming soon
View Archive →Stay in the loop
Campaign milestones, book updates, and behind-the-scenes dispatches.
Stay in the Loop
Get campaign updates and Book 2 progress.
Join the Protocol Network
Be the first to know about campaign milestones, Book 2 progress, exclusive content drops, and launch news. No spam — only transmissions worth reading.
What You'll Receive
Exclusive Chapters
Get early access to deleted scenes and bonus chapters before anyone else.
Campaign Updates
Real-time Kickstarter milestones, stretch goal unlocks, and backer news.
Book 2 Progress
Behind-the-scenes writing updates, cover reveals, and release timelines.
Subscriber Rewards
Subscriber-only giveaways, signed copies, and early bird pricing.
2,400+ Subscribers
Already inside the Protocol Network
Press Kit
Everything bloggers, reviewers, and journalists need to cover The Morrison Protocol. Download assets, copy text, and publish with confidence.
Press Inquiries
For interviews, ARCs, and review copies
Book 1 Cover — Hi-Res
Full resolution front cover for print and digital use. Suitable for editorial, blog features, and review posts.
Book 1 Cover — Web Optimized
Compressed cover image for web use, social media posts, and newsletter headers.
Author Headshot — Press
Official press photo for editorial use. High resolution, cleared for publication.
Series Banner — Widescreen
Horizontal promotional banner for website headers, email campaigns, and social media covers.
Short Synopsis (150 words)
Concise book description for review posts, podcast show notes, and social media bios.
Full Synopsis + Author Bio
Extended synopsis with full author biography, series overview, and publication details.
Series Logo Pack
Morrison Protocol wordmark and icon in multiple formats — light, dark, and transparent backgrounds.
Official Press Release
Full press release for the Kickstarter campaign launch, suitable for editorial and news coverage.
Full Press Kit Bundle
All assets in one ZIP — cover art, author photo, logos, and all text files.