Categories > Original > Historical > The Sky Has No East

Prologue: The Eleventh was Me

by SongLin 0 reviews

In which we are introduced.

Category: Historical - Rating: PG-13 - Genres: Fantasy - Published: 2010-01-02 - Updated: 2010-01-03 - 335 words

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Several years ago, an astounding study was published by an institute on metaphysical studies. The abstract of the study claimed that the institute in question had conclusively shown that faith was a viable source of energy. An experiment had been conducted in which fifty volunteer subjects were presented with fifty computers in a Denver library and told to turn the computer on, log onto the internet and read through a given website on Mohandas Gandhi. The catch was that, unbeknownst to the individuals participating in the experiment, forty of the fifty computers were unplugged. The study went on to declare that all but one of the subjects had successfully turned the computer on and accessed the internet, which decisively proved that their belief the computer would work had actually powered their machine.

The results were, of course, a lie. Only eleven subjects had completed the exercise. Ten were members of the control group with operational computers. The eleventh was me.

Please don't get any ideas about magic or the power of mind over matter or other such nonsense. I don't hold with it and neither should you. Most certainly don't try looking for me. I'd have to be an awful lummox to tell the world I could believe things into existence and then let you all know my real name. In any case, I'll be dead before you can ever find me.

But this is not a book of my memoirs. I am not the subject. This book is about a much, much greater and more important woman than I. This woman is not a myth or a fairy tale, and would have been grossly offended at being referred to as either. She would have wanted you to know her as a woman alone, as a wife, mother, daughter, sister. But we would have you know her as extraordinary, not because she was born exceptional, but because she made herself so.

Her name was Josephine Caroline Groad, and she was born on New Year's Eve, 1772.
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