[Corentine]

by james b willard

Overview

Though they'll try to mimic what we are, in the core of our souls, writing our very memories for us, they will never be able to replace the truth and the reality as it existed before they've tampered with it. They cannot write our histories for us, our very thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions. There will be no questions. We'll always know the difference between the real and the imagined.

Attributed to a skeptic (In reaction to the initial press release issued by Synchro Systems about their Synchronicity Drive treatment tests)



What if the greatest love of your life never existed?

What if they did, but someone was trying to erase them from your memory?


[Corentine] follows the narrator, a man who wants to forget his past, as he searches for his missing girlfriend, a woman who is unable to recall her own. All signs point to the involvement of a company named Synchro Systems, where doctors have been working with volunteers using experimental, cutting edge treatments for memory disorders.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013037779
Publisher:	Hollow Scene
Publication date:	08/23/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	927 KB

About the Author

[Corentine]'s first incarnation (as the Origami Shadows website) was designed to illustrate an idea introduced in the narrative - that the mind can process seemingly unrelated, disorganized information into a general understanding of events that occurred in the story. The passages of the narrative were broken into small pieces, scattered across several hundred web pages, and presented in various formats - some were written with invisible text, some sections were hidden in image descriptors on pages, some sections of the stories were converted to binary or hexadecimal code, and so on. The site was designed as an expanding web of unmarked links; the page names were chosen to help reinforce or introduce ideas that the narrator was experiencing. I composed and published music (as Brokenkites) to accompany the reading of the material; track names matched up with page names in the site and were intended to expand the experience of the story by incorporating multiple types of media into the whole work. Some of those page ideas have been retained in the Supplemental Materials Section of the text.

Origami Shadows was a puzzle that the reader had to reassemble in order to see the complete picture, just as the characters in the work were attempting to recompile their own disparate ideas about what they remembered as the truth. I'd been fascinated with the idea that you could take a book, tear every page out of it, read the pages in any random order, and at the end, you'd still have a good understanding of what the book was about. While you may have a slightly different perception of the story than someone who read the work in its original format, I love the idea that your own perception and the blanks that your unique imagination fills in for you are what makes the story complete. Isn't every story unique from reader to reader based on how the individual imagines it to be and how their own perspective colors the work, filling out the details with the things that they've imagined as they play out the narrative in their mind?

[Corentine] is the original story presented in a more congruous format while still retaining the elements introduced in its incarnation as a website. I hope that you, the reader, enjoy it. If you do, please tell a friend about it. Thanks for supporting independent writers, artists, and musicians.

-j