Mud News Package · Manuel A. Dominguez
I’m Manuel A. Dominguez. I write the Farbound Union: two novels set in one shared world, about work, family, music, faith, and what it costs to keep each other.
The series
Start with DISSONANCE. It is Farbound Union Book 1. The Fourth Rail is Book 2, and it opens new ground on the corridor, so it can be read after, not before. The first chapter of DISSONANCE is free to read on the author's site, so the record can be sampled before any purchase.
Farbound Union Book 1
Farbound Union Book 2
Book 1 · The Farbound Union
Neo New Orleans, Year 19. The Anvil is a household and a workplace at the corner of Palmer and Dauphine in Ward 7, keeping each other fed and keeping the record. At its center is Marcel De La Rosa, nineteen, who perceives sound as color and carries a made heart. The heart was built in Hana Cho's shop under contract for a Canopy family's newborn. Etienne stole it for Marcel.
One household keeps a record the Board cannot absorb. And one question follows them: who does a made heart belong to?
DISSONANCE is presented as a case file compilation, incident reports, subject profiles, and household testimony assembled after the fact. It is the first book of the Farbound Union.
Book 2 · The Farbound Union
On a rail platform at shift change, three authorities arrive with the same demand in different forms: the east booth prints it on blue stock, the upper office speaks it through a voice, and the passage authority sends a runner with a lacquered baton and no paper at all. They want the Car. They want the civic credential. They want the recorder.
Car 404 sits on the platform with forty-three people waiting for onward care, a disputed count, and not enough water for another day. The crew can move the Car, if compatible power remains live and an operator accepts the route. What they cannot do is satisfy all three authorities at once.
Narrated by Ayida, who was not on the platform when the demands arrived, The Fourth Rail is assembled from the released platform recorder, freight tallies, the security inventory, and testimony given years later by people whose names were cut from the first civic edition. It is a story about credentials, who holds them, who answers them, and what happens when no one does.
The second book of the Farbound Union.
The world's records
Fixed answers, drawn from the records of the Farbound Union. Every answer below is published exactly as written and cites the chapter it rests on. Nothing on this page is generated on request.
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Ward 7 is a ward of the Mud, the low bowls of a future New Orleans, and it is a fictional place. It is the Anvil's ward. Its rows include Sabine Row, with its old pump station, and Cistern Row, the neighboring row that floods.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Place
The city is a future New Orleans, a city of pumped bowls left behind when the Mississippi changed course. The Mud is those bowls: seventy-five wards, tiered A to F, below the ridge. The local calendar stands in its Year 19.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions".
Link to this record · Place
The Canopy is the old ridge estates and the decks above the Mud. It is dry, filtered, and silent by design. Its families can pay for things nobody in the Mud can afford, including a heart built to order.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 28, "Provenance".
Link to this record · Place
The Anvil is a household in Ward 7. Under one roof it is a kitchen, a clinic, a shrine, and a workshop. It is also the command post of Rose's Thorn.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People".
Link to this record · Place
Margaux Abagnale, twenty-five, keeps the record. She is a registrar in the mayoral office's correspondence registry, she builds dossiers, and she is the Mayor's daughter. When she found a row that should not exist, she copied it into her own green ledger and numbered it MG001.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 9, "Return to Desk Liaison without Action".
Link to this record · Person
Marcel De La Rosa is nineteen, the Anvil's repair hand. He is Étienne's son and Yvonne Celestin's partner's boy, raised in the Anvil household. His heart has a history of its own, and the record of it sits under RO-007.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 28, "Provenance".
Link to this record · Person
A made heart is a heart built to order by a workshop, a device rather than a birth heart, and Marcel's runs under a controller beneath his scar. Engineer Hana Cho designed it over fourteen months at a ridge fab shop, under contract to a Canopy family whose newborn had the same heart fault Marcel was born with. Marcel's father Étienne stole it, and Hana fitted it in a room she would not name, when Marcel was eleven days old. It is still running.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 28, "Provenance" (Hana Cho's disclosure H004); DISSONANCE, Ch. 24, "What He Sensed, What He Inferred"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 46, "RC250".
Link to this record · Object
Étienne De La Rosa was a relay engineer who worked on the old iron for the Drain, Yvonne Celestin's partner, and Marcel's father. Eleven years ago he went to work one morning and did not come home, and his household searched for weeks before it learned to live around the space where he had been. The record later showed why: he is held in continuance care at Third Sump, carried on a care account that never closed his row.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 14, "The Green Ledger"; DISSONANCE, back matter, "People".
Link to this record · Person
The record carries him alive. His care row stands at Status: CURRENT, with linen twice weekly and heater oil weekly, and the last charge on it four days old when the registrar read it. His carers' notes record his heart traces and no response to voice, and the household holds the line the book gives it: a heartbeat is not a man coming home.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 54, "Nineteen Pages".
Link to this record · Person
Third Sump is the facility where Étienne is kept, in continuance care. His carers there are Esvane and Elvaren, and the care is billed through the Continuance Desk's accounts. Families are not told placement locations, and the Desk's own card says locations are not disclosed, for the comfort and continuity of residents.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 21, "One Son May Visit".
Link to this record · Place
The Continuance Desk is a Watch program that runs continuance care: placements, care accounts, and the forms families receive. Étienne's row sits on its care account CD/C-3, billed to the Watch. When the registrar asked the Desk a question, it logged her query under her own credential and withdrew her access.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 10, "A Gray Rented Collar"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 45, "Form CD-40".
Link to this record · Institution
Continuance is the program under which a person is taken into a placement and provided for, on a paper that calls it voluntary. The family keeps its entitlements adjusted downward, because the member in placement counts as fully provided for. What the family receives is forms: an acknowledgment that says a status, and a location that is not disclosed.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 5, "Prior Requests: Fourteen"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 19, "The Linen Under His Name"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 21, "One Son May Visit".
Link to this record · Institution
Vessa is of Cistern Row, Ward 7, and works the big drums at the Palmer Street laundry, where the Canopy's linen comes down to be washed. When the Board's notice counted a dead man as one fatality, she wrote his name on the steel door in chalk, in a careful schoolroom hand. She has filed a form every month for nine years, asking one question: where is her brother.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 5, "Prior Requests: Fourteen"; DISSONANCE, back matter, "People".
Link to this record · Person
Néri is Vessa's brother. He repaired radios in a stall at the Chicory Stalls. Nine years ago the Watch came for him at dawn on a continuance paper, and he went with them barefoot, in the clothes he had on, because they did not wait for him to find his shoes. Vessa still keeps the shoes under her bed, and a tin beside them holding nine years of his wage, unopened.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 5, "Prior Requests: Fourteen"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Person
The record does not hold that. What the record does hold is the form the system sent his sister: Status ACTIVE, and Location NOT DISCLOSED UNDER PROGRAM TERMS, with a printed line that no further correspondence on this matter will be entered. Where he is, and what has become of him, the record does not say.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 5, "Prior Requests: Fourteen"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 9, "Return to Desk Liaison without Action".
Link to this record · Person
The Board authorizes large programs and issues the orders that arrive as notices. It was the Board's notice, pasted on the Sabine Row relay cabinet, that announced the Cistern Row pump failure and counted the dead man as one fatality, with no name.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Institution
The Watch covers Purifiers, checkpoints, relay monitoring, and continuance. Its security arm, the Purifiers, are Consortium security in gray, with sealed boots. It is the Watch that took Néri, and the Watch that bills Étienne's care row.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 5, "Prior Requests: Fourteen"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row".
Link to this record · Institution
The Counter handles tokens, distribution, tithe lines, and tiers. Its distribution ledger for Ward 7 is the book in which the registrar found Étienne's row. Its common vault buries the dead whose families can pay the fee at collection, twelve tokens in Wendell Ancelet's case.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Institution
The Drain is responsible for levees, pumps, gates, and treatment. Étienne worked on its old iron as a relay engineer. When the Cistern Row pump failed, it was Drain ground that flooded.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 8, "The Care Row"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Institution
Yvonne Celestin is sixty-five, a manbo, and keeper of the Anvil's clinic and shrine. She is Étienne's partner, and she has kept the household through eleven years of his absence. She also kept the secret of Marcel's heart for nineteen years, because it was not hers to tell.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 28, "Provenance".
Link to this record · Person
Solène Lafitte is twenty-eight and commander of Rose's Thorn. Her partner is Lena, called the General, who leads the ring walkers on the Cistern Row wall. It was Solène who ordered the whole account of Marcel's heart written down, all of it, names included.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 28, "Provenance".
Link to this record · Person
Rose's Thorn is Ward-rooted protection and logistics, run from the Anvil. Solène commands it. Where the city's offices answer with forms, the Thorn is the household's own arm.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, back matter, "People".
Link to this record · Institution
Nox is thirty-five, once Union enforcement, with his pockets sewn shut. He came to the Anvil at fourteen and is registered as Étienne's son. The record gives the registration plainly, and the household treats him as family.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People".
Link to this record · Person
Georges Abagnale is the Mayor, sixty-one years old, and Margaux's father. His office issues the morning bulletin, the smooth voice that called a dead man on Cistern Row a residence that experienced water ingress. His daughter keeps a truer record in the margin.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "People"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Person
Kanal is the common speech of the Mud, a language of that fictional world. The book says it grew over many generations out of Louisiana Creole, Haitian Kreyòl, Louisiana French, the English of New Orleans, Spanish, Vietnamese, and later Korean. A runner's report in Kanal closes with viza, seen, or yodi, they say: heard, not seen.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Reading the Languages"; DISSONANCE, "A Note on the Languages".
Link to this record · Object
Each ward's stroke music keeps the rate of its pump. In the burial procession in Chapter 1, the beat went out from under the band's feet on the Mid Strata paving, and Big Theo stamped it back with his right foot, forty to the minute. The ward keeps its time by hand when the ground stops providing it.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "Places and Institutions"; DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Event
Wendell Ancelet was eighty-eight, of Cistern Row. The Board's notice counted him only as one fatality after the pump failure, and the Counter's clerk racked his interment card spelled wrong, ANCELOT, where the correction required a form and the registry card the flood had taken. Vessa wrote his true name on the cabinet door in chalk: Wendell Ancelet. 88. Cistern Row. He said the pump was running.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Person
The Fourth Rail takes place on the corridor, the strip between the old northeastern cities, where three Strongholds grew up and are at war. Gotham was once New York, Garden was once New Jersey, and Liberty was once Boston. It is a different ground from DISSONANCE's New Orleans, in the same Farbound Union world.
Source: The Fourth Rail, back matter, "Places And Institutions"; The Fourth Rail, title page ("The Farbound Union").
Link to this record · Place
Ayida is the teller of the account in The Fourth Rail, who gathers what people say beside water. She speaks after the Aftertone, the tone that continues in some rooms after the machinery stops, which has never been explained. She tells you what she knows, and says so when she does not.
Source: The Fourth Rail, back matter, "People"; The Fourth Rail, Ch. 1, "Nine Hundred Liters"; The Fourth Rail, back matter, "Places And Institutions".
Link to this record · Person
CAR 404 is a civic recovery car that nobody can own. It runs only while every crew agrees. With the part that goes in its empty bay, people at the junction say it could run on all three rails: on Gotham's current, Garden's, or Liberty's, on anybody's signals.
Source: The Fourth Rail, back matter, "People"; The Fourth Rail, Ch. 19, "He Paints the Rust"; The Fourth Rail, Ch. 21, "On Restoration of Lift Service".
Link to this record · Object
The record does not hold a plain definition. What the record does hold: the corridor's cars run on three rails, one for each Stronghold's current and signals, and Ayida names "the fourth rail" once, in a list of the corridor's working things, beside Span, Latch, Switch, and the three checks. What it is beyond that, the record does not say, and this office will not guess.
Source: The Fourth Rail, Ch. 21, "On Restoration of Lift Service"; The Fourth Rail, Ch. 91, "Eighty-One Days"; The Fourth Rail, Part Four (titled "The Fourth Rail").
Link to this record · Object
Start with DISSONANCE. It is Farbound Union Book 1. The Fourth Rail is Book 2, and it opens new ground on the corridor, so it can be read after, not before. The first chapter of DISSONANCE is free to read on the author's site, so the record can be sampled before any purchase.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (book order and identifiers); DISSONANCE, back matter, "Also by Manuel A. Dominguez".
Link to this record · The Books
Yes, in part, and the plain facts are these. The first chapter of DISSONANCE is free to read at any time on the author's site, https://mudnewspackage.com. DISSONANCE was free on Kindle from October 13 to October 17, 2026, and its regular Kindle price is $2.99. The game, Farbound: Ward 7, is free to play in a browser.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (promotion window October 13 to 17, 2026; regular Kindle price $2.99; the game free).
Link to this record · The Books
The record does not hold a public price for The Fourth Rail, and this office will not invent one. The current price stands on the book's own page: https://mybook.to/yG1WVg. DISSONANCE's page is https://mybook.to/rm4UFf.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (The Fourth Rail Kindle price: not found in any public source searched, October 16, 2026; universal links as recorded there).
Link to this record · The Books
Yes. Farbound: Ward 7 is a free browser game set in the books' Ward 7, published October 14, 2026 and still in development. Play it in a browser at https://mudnewspackage.com/games/farbound/play, or find it on itch.io at https://mudnewspackage.itch.io/farbound-ward-7. Its page carries its own AI disclosure: AI assisted, code, graphics, and text, with original music.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (the game: page, status, price free, AI disclosure field).
Link to this record · The Books
Manuel A. Dominguez is the author of DISSONANCE and The Fourth Rail, novels of the Farbound Union. The books explore how people make a life together when shelter, work, and care come with conflicting obligations. On the AI question, plainly: this book series was developed with generative AI tools under the author's direction, and that is disclosed on the books' copyright pages and everywhere the author speaks for them.
Source: DISSONANCE, back matter, "About the Author"; verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (authorship and AI disclosure).
Link to this record · The Books
The record does not hold that. The record holds two books, DISSONANCE and The Fourth Rail. Any further book will be entered in the record when the author announces it, and not before.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (the catalogue holds exactly the two books; no third book appears in any record searched).
Link to this record · The Books
The record holds English editions of the two books, in print and on Kindle, and no audiobook at this time. Translations are live: chapter 1 of each book reads free on this site in Spanish and Vietnamese, and the first arc of each, through the end of Part One, is a free download in both languages. The translations were made with generative AI tools under the author’s direction.
Source: Verified facts file, "Facts: Books and Editions" (the English print and Kindle editions); mudnewspackage.com/es/read and /vi/read (translations live 2026-10-17).
Link to this record · The Books
The record does not hold that. What the record does hold is Ozanne Dufresne's own account: something went through the pipe that night, around eleven, and her hand had been on it, and she would not say what, and did not know what. The office keeps her wording, and adds nothing to it.
Source: DISSONANCE, Ch. 1, "Records One Fatality".
Link to this record · Event
Play
Three free browser games from the Farbound Union books. No account or plot knowledge needed.
Game · Playtest
A noir investigation in DISSONANCE’s flooded Ward 7, playable here in your browser.
Game · From DISSONANCE
Read the ward’s records, manage a shared supply chest and decide which household jobs can wait.
Game · From The Fourth Rail
Join a maintenance crew for three paid turns. Repair, carry and leave work the next person can trust.
Author
I write about how people make a life together when shelter, work, and care come with conflicting obligations, and what happens when the people they love want something else. DISSONANCE and The Fourth Rail are the two books so far.
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