Unified Terran Community

The second draft of the short story ‘Penny Dreadful’ is done and is now available to newsletter subscribers.  For everyone else it’ll be up around 7pm (UK time) on the 10th of December.  This revision includes the prelude as well as parts 1 and 2.  So it’s just shy of 6,500 words which leads me to suggest that you use the ‘convert to pdf’ button found at the bottom of the story page to make it into a more eyeball friendly format.  Oh and feel free to use the ‘tell a friend’ button as well 

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I have added the first draft of the story “Sinainn” to the site. You can find it in the stories section on the right of the homepage or you can click on the story name in this post. Enjoy and feel free to add comments!

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Despite the outward harmony, there are two significant threats to the survival of the Community.  These threats are respectively referred to as Outsiders and aberrant personalities.  The latter are more understood by the Community.  Aberrant personalities are those human souls who would have been considered psychopaths.  they are individuals who, at a fundamental level, think differently to other people.  They have no grasp off, or interest in, the social conventions of the Community and they have no conscience.  The aberrant personalities are aggressive, domineering and are prone to violent yet calculated actions.  They are dangerous simply because there is nothing they will not do to achieve their aims.  The aberrant personalities are usually very clever, but a limited ability to learn from their mistakes prevents them from hiding too long in the Community.  Numerous therapies have been tried to try and integrate the personalities into the greater Community.  These have not only been unsuccessful, but also equipped the aberrant personalities with the tools they needed to better hide in the Community, they now knew how the Psychonauts were identifying them.  The Community’s current policy towards the aberrant personalities, is to detain them when they are revealed and then subject them to an intense program of ‘re-education’.  After this process is complete, the Life Engineers who oversee the procedure, release the reformed people into experimental sub communities.  Thus far, the Life Engineers have enjoyed an impressive success rate with their rehabilitation techniques, unmanageable individuals are prevented from reincarnating until such time as they are willing to try the program.

The Outsiders are a completely different matter.  Their origins are unclear, even to the most experienced of Psychonauts.  The one thing that is clear, is that the Outsiders are souls or spirits who have never been human.  Outsiders are not born on earth in any of the conventional fashions.  They strike from the spirit realm, shredding the soul of a living human and seizing their now soulless body for their own.  The Outsiders also manifest a range of supernatural abilities, making them more than a match for most members of the Community.  To give a sense of perspective, the Outsiders were considered demons and dark gods in bygone ages.  The response of the Community to an intrusion from an Outsider is markedly different to their approach to the aberrant personalities.  Once captured by Life Engineer operatives, the host body is destroyed and the Outsider cast back to the spirit realm.

Over the last twenty years, the Life Engineers have become aware of an unwelcome development from the aberrant personalities.  While the Outsiders had always stolen bodies, the aberrant personalities had to be reborn in one of the conventional methods.  This allowed the Life Engineers to proscribe certain individuals temporarily.  In the last twenty years, the aberrant personalities have developed the ability to possess bodies in a manner similar to that of the Outsiders.  How they developed this alarming ability is, as yet, unknown.

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Hi Folks!  The first draft of “Penny Dreadful” is now available for viewing.  It has been uploaded in two parts due to size.  You can find both parts in the ‘Stories’ section to the right of this post or you can follow these links for  Part 1 and   Part 2 .  Enjoy and feel free to leave comments or get in touch.  There is an email address in the ‘About’ page that can be used to contact me.

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