Biorhythm

The cover for Biorhythm, as illustrated by Polyrhythm, my wife, for NaNoWriMo 2010

"I'm going to search for my other selves - my family. If the world gets in my way, then let it get in my way. I'll climb every barrier, I'll traverse every tundra, I'll even go through Darkness and back. Nothing will stop me from saving the lives of Rizumu, Blake and Aliza... me. Our lives. Somehow, just somehow, we will reunite as one and live a full life in bodily harmony; a biological rhythm, a biorhythm. And then, and only then, will we be allowed to die."

Torn asunder from her alters, Aliza Legion escapes from the only world she has ever known: the Asylum. Incarcerated by her Dissociative Identity Disorder, she steps into a brand new world in pursuit of those separated by her mind. But can she survive Earth in the year 2400, where technology has regressed and anthropomorphic animals live among humans, in order to bring unity to herself?

Biorhythm is an adventure story where Aliza discovers this strange new world as we do. I originally wrote it for National Novel Writing Month in 2010 and decided that being set in the future, language will have evolved a little from what we know it as now. As such, there's a lot of phrases that I don't think work well in hindsight. In fact, I think it takes away from the story. To help, I've broken down some of the language rules below. Luckily, Aliza uses our current day English, which is useful given the book is in first person.

To experiment what the story would be like without the newer language, I adapted the story for a world in my 2D game, Hudokai, where Aliza joins Nova and his rag-tag crew as one of the six main characters. In that game, she uses a crossbow as a weapon, fronting to Blake or Rizumu to gain different abilities at different times.

Enjoy this sci-fi planet-bound novella, broken down into chapters, below!