Religious Science Fiction: IKONA by M.D. Dixon + excerpt

The concept of interconnectedness surfaces in a vision that spans from contemporary cityscapes to a fractured future in IKONA by M.D. Dixon. 

This story follows four strangers who are unknowingly linked by an ancient, healing cross, examining how personal sacrifice and collective evolution are often intertwined. It is a contemplative look at how the choices made in the present ripple through the fabric of time.

As the resonance of the cross pulls them together, these four must navigate the shifting realities of their existence. The ultimate question becomes which future they will inhabit and what price they must pay to secure a path toward healing.

IKON
by M.D. Dixon
February 20, 2026
Genre: Religious Science Fiction & Fantasy, Genetic Engineering
A mysterious Russian Orthodox cross, a holy icon with inexplicable healing power, begins to surface across cities, lifetimes, and fractured timelines.

Four strangers find themselves drawn into its field—from the bustle of Sydney, Hong Kong, Atlanta and Berlin to the stark quiet of Siberia’s post-apocalyptic tundra.

In Atlanta, Kate Davies witnesses the icon’s strange effect on a sick child. In Sydney, Finley Minor is haunted by visions of possible futures and the quiet weight of consequence. Jia Li MacPherson, former thief and Shibari performer, holds secrets that powerful forces would kill to keep buried. Wallace Deng Moroz, a monk living a century ahead, clings to visions of a cure in a world where a genetic engineering catastrophe has nearly ended humanity, and the political landscape is dangerously polarised.

The convergence of these four heroes feels destined, yet it is shaped by choice – and the deeper they move into the cross’s resonance, the more the question shifts:

Which version of the future will they choose to inhabit?

And what must be surrendered to reach it?

IKONA is a visionary novel of shifting realities and inner reckonings—a meditation on time, memory, and healing.

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Excerpt
———
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:
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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 multidimesional healing and the awakening human story, launching in early 2026.