Commonwealth: A Novel of Utopia, part 2, chapter 1
Author’s Note: This is an excerpt from my novel Commonwealth. The rest of today’s installment is free, but only on my Patreon site. If you want to read the next part today, it’s already up on Patreon as well. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, or $2 for exclusive author’s notes and behind-the-scenes material. There’s also a table of contents for all published chapters.
Rae floated deep beneath an ocean of black water.
She was suspended, weightless. Her hair spread out in a fan around her head. Her arms drifted at her sides. She couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not, but somehow it didn’t seem important.
She was aware of immense gulfs surrounding her – unfathomable infinities of time and space through which she could sink forever. She knew herself to be microscopic and insignificant, an atom of life falling endlessly through a starless cosmos. But in a way, it was comforting. She felt embraced, as if the dark had reawakened a peaceful memory of the womb.
Dimly, like a shaft of sunlight from high above, she was aware of things happening around her. There were colors and sounds, but distant, muted. She felt strange sensations – pricking, tingling, burning, pressure – but they seemed to be coming from far away, easy to ignore.
Besides, she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Her mind was as placid as the midnight sea.
Then someone put something over her face, and even those distant sensations went away.