Blurb:
Wynne Imaguman doesn’t
dislike Hector Primuman the Fourth, heir to the governor of the Arzon space
colony. She’s just terrified of what she’s managed to learn about the colony
and wants to flee as soon as she can. She’s been groomed to be Hector’s
Partner, though, and he’s all but admitted he loves her. She doesn’t want to be
cruel, but if she doesn’t make everyone think she’s falling in love with him,
they’ll change her so she does.
Hector Primuman the
Fourth has known the truth of the colony for as long as he can remem-ber, and
he’s also known that Wynne would be terrified once she figured it out. He
doesn’t blame her—he doesn’t care for it, either—but there’s nothing he can do
about it, other than let Wynne, the only person he’d consider a friend, break
his heart.
And that’s if they can
get her out before either of them ends up dead or psychologically altered.
Author:
Cara Lee is the name
used for the dystopian works of Misti Wolanski (who otherwise writes out-right
fantasy). Technology, biology, propaganda, and the moral implications of all
three have fascinated the author since she first noticed how people with power
tend to abuse it. She now writes stories that explore control and the
boundaries where helpful becomes hurtful, and vice versa. At least, that’s what
she does when her cat isn’t trying to sneak sips of her coffee.
Excerpt:
Once
In the living area
she'd spent her life sharing with her mother, her aunt, and her cousin,
sixteen-year-old Wynne Layuman tapped her tablet on the table and wondered what
her new room assignment would look like. She'd grown up a Layuman, like her
mother, and therefore she'd had access to all the blueprints for the colony,
since her materline was responsible for constructing the buildings and keeping
the colony dome intact. She'd long ago memorized the blueprints, so she knew
the possible layouts, but that was architecture. Would her new place already be
decorated, or would she have to use her resource credits to figure that out,
herself?
Two days ago, she and
all the other colonists of her year had hit Dyad — age sixteen — and had taken
a series of examinations that tested their aptitudes for all the various jobs.
Each job was run by a family line, and a Dyad could pick the family-job she
wanted of all the ones she tested into.
Theoretically.
Practically, Wynne had
no choice, because one of the emotion-manipulators would force her to pick
Imaguman — inventor — if she tried to become something else.
As an Imaguman, she
would go up a tier in family status, which would get her a private suite. Her
rooms would be larger, along with her resource allotment, and she'd probably
even get a Servuman assigned to her. The Servuman would be duty-bound to report
any suspicious comments or behavior, so Wynne's living quarters still wouldn't
be safe for making plans to flee the colony. She shuddered.
To prevent her
emotions being manipulated to make her fall in love with Hector Primuman the
Fourth, Wynne had to convince her mother that she was picking Imaguman out of
fondness for Hector. She could not be thought terrified of everyone over age
thirty-two. That age, Tetrad, was when adults of the Arzon colony were given
whatever activated the psychic abilities that at least some members of the
colony were genengineered to have.
From what Wynne had
managed to break free enough to notice, most didn't survive activation, and
some genders were more likely to survive than others, running down family
lines. Her line was predisposed to the females surviving — like her mother, who
could make a person feel what she wanted them to.
Hector had his
abilities already, but Wynne was afraid to ask if he'd been born with them
activated or if he'd just been given the activator early. She knew he'd already
had to kill at least one person, and he didn't like talking about it.
Wynne stared at her
tablet. Two days ago, she and the other Dyads had taken the requisite
examinations that would determine what families they qualified to belong to.
Yesterday, they'd celebrated their debuts into the adult world…and Wynne had
realized she'd been groomed from conception to be Hector's Partner.
That realization
wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back — she'd already wanted to flee the
colony as soon as she could — but it left her with bone-deep terror that she
was doomed to fail.
She also was afraid to
know what psychic abilities had been wired into someone meant to be Partner of
a man who could kill with his mind and whose body would start collapsing around
him before he hit Triad.
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