THE LADDERS

A forgotten pair of sunglasses reveals what should be impossible: invisible ladders beside familiar roads, ready to carry anyone who can see them somewhere else in an instant.

Aobakwe tests the strange routes, maps their connections, and brings his friend Tumo along as his first test subject. The journeys work. Soon Aobakwe has founded Save Time, turning a village discovery into a transport network that transforms travel across Botswana and draws attention from far beyond its borders.

But success comes with questions the sunglasses cannot answer. Passengers vanish. Routes fail. A visitor arrives with a warning that Aobakwe is not the first to find the ladders. Then the ladders begin appearing without the glasses, and the danger spreads beyond the transport system he built. With reality itself under threat, Aobakwe must face what lies beneath his discovery—and what his shortcuts may have set in motion.

THE LADDERS is a speculative adventure about ambition, impossible journeys, and the cost of making distance disappear.