A teleportation machine that works perfectly — which is exactly the problem. A Sherlock-meets-sci-fi mystery with a terrifying twist, narrated by Ray Porter.
Mike Erikson looks like your average small-town New England high-school teacher. He's not. Mike has an eidetic memory and a mind that misses nothing — gifts he's spent years deliberately hiding so he can live a quiet, ordinary life. Then an old friend talks him into a job: travel to a remote California lab and quietly evaluate a top-secret DARPA project. A team of scientists has built the Albuquerque Door, a machine that uses a cryptic equation to fold dimensions, letting a person step across hundreds of feet in a single stride. It works flawlessly. The scientists insist it's perfectly safe. But the closer Mike looks, the more he senses something is being hidden — and what he eventually uncovers builds to a twist that recasts everything. It's a tightly plotted sci-fi mystery that becomes something far stranger and more frightening than it first appears.
The Fold is one of Ray Porter's most beloved performances outside of his big series, and an Audible Editors' Select. The book lives on its slow-building unease — the sense that something is wrong long before anyone admits it — and Porter is the ideal guide for that creeping dread. He gives Mike a dry, watchful intelligence, voices the lab's team of scientists with real distinction, and modulates the tone expertly as the story pivots from cerebral mystery into something with teeth. AudioFile praised his ability to capture a group of people caught up in a force they don't understand, and that's exactly the trick here: he keeps you comfortable just long enough to make the final act hit hard. It's a model of how a narrator can sell a twist.
Fans of high-concept sci-fi mysteries and thrillers, listeners who enjoy a patient build that pays off explosively, and anyone who likes Blake Crouch or Andy Weir. It's also the perfect standalone introduction to Peter Clines.
If you want rigorous hard science, the dimension-folding premise is more thrilling than technically grounded. And if you dislike stories that swerve hard in the final stretch, be warned — The Fold absolutely does.
Listen to it. A clever, propulsive sci-fi mystery with a finale that earns its reputation, elevated by one of Ray Porter's most quietly masterful performances. When you're done, 14 is waiting in the same universe.