I'm back, apparently. I am attempting to write another novel. This will be something of a stylistic cross between the dystopian Patterns of Paralysis and a romance sci-fi novel I posted on another site. I don't have a plan, for once. I have an archetype, a civilization, and a few excel docs. We'll see how this goes. (Hint: It will go better with encouragement.)

Random notes:

1. If you read Patterns of Paralysis, you may have noticed that I removed it from Fictionpress. If you missed part of it, PM me, and I can direct you to another version of it on my school's lit mag website.

2. If you read the first chapter / prologue or whatever it was of Made of India Rubber, I am officially announcing that that project is on hold. Indefinitely. My inspiration flagged. I may finish it eventually, but at the moment, I'm working on other things.

3. I need a beta reader for the following reasons.

A. I can't catch my mistakes anymore.

B. I haven't written anything longer than a crappy short story in a few months and need to bounce ideas off someone.

(So if you have time or ideas, contact me. PM, email, etc.)

4. I don't care so much about this part, but once we get to real chapters, please please please review. Reviews make me happy. Happy Catherine updates more quickly.

Prologue

Daphne Wilson was born with a hole in her heart. The doctors detected it right away. Upon receiving consent from her parents, the hospital sent the infant off to the laser scalpel. It was a simple enough procedure, they said. Mr. Wilson was not concerned, not even when a ferret-eyed intern stammered to inform him that the procedure had gone wrong. Mrs. Wilson, however, who was not only still recovering from labor but also possessed a weak constitution, experienced a socially inexplicable increase in heart rate. She, too, had a weak heart, and as the intern scurried back down the hall, Mrs. Wilson fell prey to an unstoppable heart attack. Mr. Wilson did not blink. A white-faced doctor came out to inform him that his daughter was alive, though they had inadvertently widened the hole and dared not attempt the procedure again. Mr. Wilson did not smile, did not whoop, did not express any emotion whatsoever.

There was a hole in Daphne Wilson's heart, and she was her father's daughter. The hole in his heart was not literal, no, he was simply a man of his civilization. He was a prominent member of the Logosian government. He was an upstanding, productive member of society. He adhered to the expectations of others. "Deviance" was not a part of his extensive vocabulary.

He raised his two daughters to trust the Logosian government as he did. He taught them patriotism in carefully-measured doses. He schooled them in the rites and rituals of their society.

They listened.

But Daphne did not learn. She questioned when she would not accept the answers. She doubted when she would not accept the proof. She debated when she would not accept the truth. She made her own truth; she lived in a world that was wholly her own.

Logos taught--had always taught--that the first tenant of existence was the belief in the supremacy of reality. Whatever else there may or may not be--it came second to the mortal coil. Belief in the immaterial, while not exactly discouraged, was encouraged to be suppressed. It was something dirty and private, if necessary, like masturbating. The imagination could exist, in chains. Prayer could be conducted, behind closed doors. The heart could be let to beat, in an iron box. So it was, and so it had been since the Deduction, 858 years prior to Daphne's birth. So it was, so it had been, and yet no one remembered why.

That was all Daphne had ever wanted to know--why. She was willing and prepared to accept any truth, no matter how absurd, provided she understood why. If she could grasp the reason, then she could be certain. She wanted truth, above all else, and truth required, above all else, certainty.

So in search of truth, Daphne fought for certainty. She questioned. She doubted. She debated. She existed on a plane held foreign by her society. She believed in the power of her mind, in the beauty of thought, in the ultimate elegance of ideas. She rejected the concrete in favor of the abstract. She was a cerebral creature in a zoo of physicality. She tempted the limits of existence, hoping that, by so doing, she would discover humanity's true bounds. She created worlds with words, scouring them for some meaning, for some certainty, for some small glimmer of truth.

She searched to fill the hole in her heart, but she could not fill it alone.