ABANDON

Chapter 1 -- Jane Hallowell and Jane Hallowell

    Jane Hallowell knew she wasn't born, she was derived.  No matter what her parents told her.  This realization had not come at first.  It had come slowly, carefully.  It had come because of someone named Jane Hallowell, whom Jane referred to as the other Jane.

    The other Jane: whose picture hung above the fireplace in a giant frame, whose name had to be given proper respect, who Jane quickly learned was important not just in her home but in the world. 

    Her parents were very attentive in pointing out every single way, no matter how small, that the other Jane had influenced their daily lives.  They would be on the way to Jane's fifteen minutes of park time when her mother would suddenly stop and explain how criminal readjustment had a one hundred percent success rate because of the other Jane.  They would be eating dinner when her father would stop questioning and explain how travel to distant worlds was possible because of the other Jane.  As a child, Jane believed that life itself was possible because of the other Jane.

    To emulate the other Jane, Jane quickly learned, meant instant acceptance, instant praise, and instant happiness.  She enjoyed impressing her parents with her ability to match the things the other Jane did.  Jane seemed to share everything with the other Jane, even in personality: a love of learning, a talent for unusual thinking, steadfastness, stubbornness--even some of her less desired qualities.  But her parents quickly put a stop to those.  Her parent's way of parenting was a healthy dose of unrealistic expectations with a lot of conditional love thrown in.

    After ten years of advanced private learning, Jane realized something was wrong.  She hid this realization well, ignoring it, calling it a vague notion, something hardly worth mentioning.  Yet it was there, pulling her in a direction she was not allowed to go in.

    It took five more years for her to realize she was fighting something.  What it was she couldn't say, she had been fighting it for so long it almost felt like she was fighting herself, but was that possible?  She pushed herself hard, increasingly needing more and more to fuel her heavy life, but always taking less and less. And before Jane even realized what she was doing, she had caught herself in a trap of her own making.  All she wanted was for those around her to be happy, and she was afraid of failure.  

    Inside of her something was there, something she hated, something that was so intolerant to her she pushed herself even harder in an effort to get away from it. 

    When she was in the lab she loved what she did.  She loved separating and combining and changing.  Finding out the genetic component that gave a tendency to be solitary, or the need for ten hours of sleep, or the aptitude for self destructive behaviour.  These puzzles were easy to solve.  Jane knew how to pay attention to everything, no matter how small.  What she couldn't understand was the hate she felt for what she had been forced into and her love of the exact same thing. 

    And she really loved it, there were times when it would produce a kind of euphoria in her.  Her productivity would increase, and her excitement for what she could create caused immense energy and a need for very little sleep.  Interruptions sparked anger and inevitably life would catch up, followed by a deluge of regret and pining for something she didn't have and couldn't figure out.

    Driving was the one thing that didn't come from the other Jane. It was forbidden by her parents, which made it ten times more exciting.  Jane would sneak away, enabled by her only sibling Michael, who was ten years older.  He was the anchor in the turbulence of her perfectly structured world.

    Jane loved being with Michael.  Maybe it was how similar they looked, people were always commenting on how they had the same blondish hair, the same blue eyes, the same pale skin, anyone could tell they were siblings.  Or maybe it was because Michael had a presence, the years spent at the Koffman military space station had made him strong.  He was not the type to flounder, he knew what he wanted, and he took it.  No questions asked.  Michael was the only one who understood Jane—for the first ten years of his life he had been under the weight of his parents.