First Chapter/Prologue
So here's the first chapter, or maybe prologue (haven't decided yet) of my book Perfect Imperfection, title is still up for debate. I wrote this without having any idea of where I wanted to go with it and now I have 161 pages in a just over half way done novel. Please comment and critique!
Hello, my name is Whisper. That’s an unusual name you may be thinking, well I am an unusual person so it suits me. It wasn’t my first name though. I don’t know my first name, another unusual thing about me. I’m sure my parents gave me a name, probably a nice name. Maybe it was Emily, or Sara, or Isabel, I’ve always liked the name Isabel. Whatever they chose, I don’t remember it. I wish I did. I remember my mom and dad, how tall they were and how good they smelled. I have other distinct childhood memories from before I lost my first name, just not that one.
When I was four Project Shadow found me and gave me my second name, One. Yes, just like the number. I was their very first subject although I was soon joined by Two, Three, Four, and so on. They debated on possibly using colors or letters to identify us instead, but decided that numbers were less personal and therefore it was less likely that us subjects would like our names, or associate any particular pride with them. That wasn’t necessarily true, humans can personalize just about anything, but it was what they thought and so for many years I was known as One.
The Project still calls me One.
I didn’t get Whisper, my third name, until later in my life. As for where it came from, well we’ll get to that.
You may be wondering what Project Shadow is, we’ll get to that too, I promise.
Even before I got my second name I was an unusual child. I saw things, not dead people or anything like that, but I saw myself falling off of my tricycle the day before it happened. I saw mommy break her favorite vase right in front of me and screamed, that was when mommy came in from the kitchen and I realized the vase was just fine. Three days later she knocked it over while carrying a tray of soup and crackers up to my room.
I heard things too, comments and secrets that nobody else heard. At first they thought I had an imaginary friend, then I asked mommy why her friend thought about daddy naked and they realized I was hearing real things. I never saw that friend again.
After that I was always called special, I even thought that might be my first name for a while until I got older and realized what it meant. I don’t know if my parents thought I was good special or bad special but either way they told the wrong person, or someone else they told repeated it to the wrong person, and Project Shadow heard about how special I was and took me away.
I was trying to climb a tree in the corner of my daycare’s playground when a man in a suit grabbed me and carried me to a big black truck with tinted windows. I was too surprised to scream until I was inside the truck and by then it was too late. I may have been a special child but I was still four and a big strong man was more than capable of restraining me.
That man wasn’t a part of Project Shadow but someone who knew about the Project had hired him to kidnap me. After all, government Projects aren’t supposed to kidnap little girls, no matter how special they are.
So it was all unofficial and done through third parties and on paper it never happened but the end result was still the same, I ended up in a Project lab and my parents never saw me again.
I’ve always wondered how long they looked for me, if my face was on those posters in department store lobbies and on the back of milk cartons that school children drank at lunch. Or maybe Project Shadow had another third party make a little body for them to find. Morbid, I know. Sometimes I can’t help myself. Once you know more about my life maybe you’ll understand.
So to recap; I was special, I was kidnapped, and I was in a hidden government facility. Check.
It turned out the government had been aware of us special children for a while, decades in fact. Their first attempts at a Project started right after the Vietnam War.
At first they tried to artificially create this ‘specialness’ in adults. That didn’t work. In fact the whole experiment failed spectacularly and they burned or buried every trace of it they could.
Then they combed the foster system and the orphanages for any special children who had developed there. They found a few and these children became Project Dream. They gave the children the best of everything; educated them, fed them, clothed them, every need and most wants were accounted for. It made them feel better when they tested and trained and drugged them.
Something went wrong though, something always does.
The children were too independent and their abilities behaved too unpredictably. Project Dream quickly became a nightmare and when the body count started rising they closed it down. Burn and bury.
Finally, almost a decade later, they started again. At first they brought in no children, they just prepared and studied and planned. They wanted the subjects less independent so they decided to get rid of their names, their identities. The living quarters were sterile and austere, no extraneous or frivolous objects allowed. Education was still a priority but it became more structured, more carefully edited. Wants were no longer an issue and only basic needs were taken into consideration. They wanted a higher ratio of adults to children and had round the clock scientists, doctors, nurses, and guards. When they thought they were ready they went over everything again, and again.
Then, finally, they went looking.
Somebody should have told them about the best laid plans of mice and men.
They went looking and the first child they found was me. I was One.
They knew I could see things, they knew I could hear things. They even thought I might be able to do more. Eventually I could do more but that comes later.
For hours they had me listen to every person on the base, not one person could hide their thoughts from me, although at that age I understood very little of what I was hearing. This excited them and they tested my range for days. Once they reached the limits of distance and number of minds I could listen to the scientists took all that data and plugged it into the computers. While the computers and some of the scientists worked on all of that, the rest were still working with me.
They tried to force me to see things, to predict events like some sort of living crystal ball. It didn’t work like that and they grew frustrated. That was when they found Two.
Two was another little girl about my age, maybe just a bit younger. Two had more than one ability, just like me, and they were very impressive. Two could make fire appear out of the air, fire that burned hotter and longer than regular fire, fire that didn’t need fuel. Two could also make people see things that weren’t there and it was very lucky for the Project that they found her so young. If we had been older then they never would have found her, even if she was right in front of them.
Of course they knew that and that was why they went looking when we were so young. You didn’t think that only children were special did you? After all, children grow up.
Since we’ve grown up I haven’t met any special adults who weren’t in the project but I think that’s just because they’re smart enough to never talk about how special they are. That and they’ve been lucky.
For a while most of the attention was focused on Two and apart from my daily exercises and lessons I was left to fend for myself. This meant that I was left alone in my little white room with its little white bed where I would lay and stare at the white ceiling and try to remember.
The computers finished going over my data and things changed again. Now there were medicines I had to take with my food and along with exercises I had daily visits with the doctors. Sometimes what the doctors did hurt and I wouldn’t be able to exercise. Sometimes they had me watch what Two was doing and try to see if I could do the same. I never could.
It was after Two started taking medicine and going to the doctors every day that Three arrived. Three was another little girl, about a year older than Two and I. The scientists were always thinking very loudly now, wondering why girls that were special seemed to be more common than boys and if they could find a genetic marker and what side of the family it came from and things like that.
Three wasn’t as strong as Two or I and after they started giving her medicine she got worse. One day she wasn’t there anymore and soon after we met Four, the first little boy in the Project.
It went on like that for a while, new children showing up, mostly girls but some boys. Sometimes they would stay and sometimes they would disappear and all of them were special.
In the end there were ten of us who stayed and survived, ten of us who became Shadows.
.
Hello, my name is Whisper. That’s an unusual name you may be thinking, well I am an unusual person so it suits me. It wasn’t my first name though. I don’t know my first name, another unusual thing about me. I’m sure my parents gave me a name, probably a nice name. Maybe it was Emily, or Sara, or Isabel, I’ve always liked the name Isabel. Whatever they chose, I don’t remember it. I wish I did. I remember my mom and dad, how tall they were and how good they smelled. I have other distinct childhood memories from before I lost my first name, just not that one.
When I was four Project Shadow found me and gave me my second name, One. Yes, just like the number. I was their very first subject although I was soon joined by Two, Three, Four, and so on. They debated on possibly using colors or letters to identify us instead, but decided that numbers were less personal and therefore it was less likely that us subjects would like our names, or associate any particular pride with them. That wasn’t necessarily true, humans can personalize just about anything, but it was what they thought and so for many years I was known as One.
The Project still calls me One.
I didn’t get Whisper, my third name, until later in my life. As for where it came from, well we’ll get to that.
You may be wondering what Project Shadow is, we’ll get to that too, I promise.
Even before I got my second name I was an unusual child. I saw things, not dead people or anything like that, but I saw myself falling off of my tricycle the day before it happened. I saw mommy break her favorite vase right in front of me and screamed, that was when mommy came in from the kitchen and I realized the vase was just fine. Three days later she knocked it over while carrying a tray of soup and crackers up to my room.
I heard things too, comments and secrets that nobody else heard. At first they thought I had an imaginary friend, then I asked mommy why her friend thought about daddy naked and they realized I was hearing real things. I never saw that friend again.
After that I was always called special, I even thought that might be my first name for a while until I got older and realized what it meant. I don’t know if my parents thought I was good special or bad special but either way they told the wrong person, or someone else they told repeated it to the wrong person, and Project Shadow heard about how special I was and took me away.
I was trying to climb a tree in the corner of my daycare’s playground when a man in a suit grabbed me and carried me to a big black truck with tinted windows. I was too surprised to scream until I was inside the truck and by then it was too late. I may have been a special child but I was still four and a big strong man was more than capable of restraining me.
That man wasn’t a part of Project Shadow but someone who knew about the Project had hired him to kidnap me. After all, government Projects aren’t supposed to kidnap little girls, no matter how special they are.
So it was all unofficial and done through third parties and on paper it never happened but the end result was still the same, I ended up in a Project lab and my parents never saw me again.
I’ve always wondered how long they looked for me, if my face was on those posters in department store lobbies and on the back of milk cartons that school children drank at lunch. Or maybe Project Shadow had another third party make a little body for them to find. Morbid, I know. Sometimes I can’t help myself. Once you know more about my life maybe you’ll understand.
So to recap; I was special, I was kidnapped, and I was in a hidden government facility. Check.
It turned out the government had been aware of us special children for a while, decades in fact. Their first attempts at a Project started right after the Vietnam War.
At first they tried to artificially create this ‘specialness’ in adults. That didn’t work. In fact the whole experiment failed spectacularly and they burned or buried every trace of it they could.
Then they combed the foster system and the orphanages for any special children who had developed there. They found a few and these children became Project Dream. They gave the children the best of everything; educated them, fed them, clothed them, every need and most wants were accounted for. It made them feel better when they tested and trained and drugged them.
Something went wrong though, something always does.
The children were too independent and their abilities behaved too unpredictably. Project Dream quickly became a nightmare and when the body count started rising they closed it down. Burn and bury.
Finally, almost a decade later, they started again. At first they brought in no children, they just prepared and studied and planned. They wanted the subjects less independent so they decided to get rid of their names, their identities. The living quarters were sterile and austere, no extraneous or frivolous objects allowed. Education was still a priority but it became more structured, more carefully edited. Wants were no longer an issue and only basic needs were taken into consideration. They wanted a higher ratio of adults to children and had round the clock scientists, doctors, nurses, and guards. When they thought they were ready they went over everything again, and again.
Then, finally, they went looking.
Somebody should have told them about the best laid plans of mice and men.
They went looking and the first child they found was me. I was One.
They knew I could see things, they knew I could hear things. They even thought I might be able to do more. Eventually I could do more but that comes later.
For hours they had me listen to every person on the base, not one person could hide their thoughts from me, although at that age I understood very little of what I was hearing. This excited them and they tested my range for days. Once they reached the limits of distance and number of minds I could listen to the scientists took all that data and plugged it into the computers. While the computers and some of the scientists worked on all of that, the rest were still working with me.
They tried to force me to see things, to predict events like some sort of living crystal ball. It didn’t work like that and they grew frustrated. That was when they found Two.
Two was another little girl about my age, maybe just a bit younger. Two had more than one ability, just like me, and they were very impressive. Two could make fire appear out of the air, fire that burned hotter and longer than regular fire, fire that didn’t need fuel. Two could also make people see things that weren’t there and it was very lucky for the Project that they found her so young. If we had been older then they never would have found her, even if she was right in front of them.
Of course they knew that and that was why they went looking when we were so young. You didn’t think that only children were special did you? After all, children grow up.
Since we’ve grown up I haven’t met any special adults who weren’t in the project but I think that’s just because they’re smart enough to never talk about how special they are. That and they’ve been lucky.
For a while most of the attention was focused on Two and apart from my daily exercises and lessons I was left to fend for myself. This meant that I was left alone in my little white room with its little white bed where I would lay and stare at the white ceiling and try to remember.
The computers finished going over my data and things changed again. Now there were medicines I had to take with my food and along with exercises I had daily visits with the doctors. Sometimes what the doctors did hurt and I wouldn’t be able to exercise. Sometimes they had me watch what Two was doing and try to see if I could do the same. I never could.
It was after Two started taking medicine and going to the doctors every day that Three arrived. Three was another little girl, about a year older than Two and I. The scientists were always thinking very loudly now, wondering why girls that were special seemed to be more common than boys and if they could find a genetic marker and what side of the family it came from and things like that.
Three wasn’t as strong as Two or I and after they started giving her medicine she got worse. One day she wasn’t there anymore and soon after we met Four, the first little boy in the Project.
It went on like that for a while, new children showing up, mostly girls but some boys. Sometimes they would stay and sometimes they would disappear and all of them were special.
In the end there were ten of us who stayed and survived, ten of us who became Shadows.
.