Escape from Prison Island [Dual Guides]

[The story grew too sprawling, and I've run into some writing problems, so I'm starting over and reorganizing it from scratch. I will definitely finish it. I have a rough outline, and am currently working out the details and transitions.]

[Revising in progress]

[I'll rewrite it. The rewrite is on the author's profile under the title Escape from Prison Island.]

After leaving the tribunal, Xu Chenyin was dressed in prisoner's clothes and sent to "Silent Island."

Xu Chenyin was a senior researcher for the Interstellar Alliance, specializing in artificial guide pheromones.

She took on the project with her mentor at the age of twenty-two, and had been working on it for seven years.

A year ago, the planet KE-46, which funded their research, underwent a political upheaval. Their supporters were ousted, and Xu Chenyin became a prisoner as a result.

There was a saying at the research institute: "Anyone involved in research on artificial guide pheromones or artificial reverse guide pheromones will suffer misfortune for half their life."

But Xu Chenyin knew there was nothing supernatural about her imprisonment. She was simply a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb.

The greatest challenges facing research into artificial guide pheromones and artificial reverse guide pheromones weren't technical difficulties, but ethical concerns and the difficulty of gaining public support.

From the moment Xu Chenyin joined the research, she had to bear the insults of every guide and sentinel.

[Warning: The following section explains some of the story's setting.]

For an explanation of the sentinel-guide setting, search Jinjiang directly for "Sentinel and Guide: A Compilation of Related Setting Information."

[New settings in this story]

[Saint's Child Syndrome (Starflight Syndrome)] Guides can suffer from a condition similar to sentinel dissociation (concentrating all their attention on one of their five senses and losing awareness of everything else in the real world, becoming completely immersed in their mental landscape).

But guides don't lose themselves. Instead, they fall into an extreme state of mental clarity. They become immune to all feelings and positive or negative emotions, and fall into a profound mental emptiness. Severe cases can even become vegetative or choose to destroy their own minds.

This condition has a very beautiful name: "Saint's Child Syndrome." Guides who develop it all meet tragic ends. They are confined and treated as "machines" for producing guide pheromones.

Long ago, there was no way to cure this condition. But roughly twenty years ago, some people began researching reverse guide pheromones.

[Guide pheromones]: A substance guides can release to soothe sentinels whose mental powers are out of control. They also function like fingerprints, making it possible to track guides. (Original setting.)

[Artificial guide pheromones]: Synthetically produced guide pheromones. They aren't as effective as natural ones, but can provide basic soothing. The first scientist to research artificial guide pheromones did so to save patients with Saint's Child Syndrome who were being treated like machines. But after years of debate, that original motivation was forgotten. Now the only question people ask about the research is whether it violates human rights.

[Reverse guide pheromones]: The idea was first proposed by a sentinel scientist with a terminal illness. His guide wife had early-stage Saint's Child Syndrome, and he hoped to complete the research before he died, but it was not to be. After his death, artificial reverse guide pheromones became no more than a passing topic occasionally mentioned in textbooks. No one spoke of them otherwise.

[Guide pheromone glands]: On both sides beneath the tongue.

This is actually a very conventional story about fighting against fate. It's a strong leads story, but the protagonists are isolated and helpless, so it may not be particularly cathartic.

The story is about the male and female leads working together to expose the glamorous facade of the villains, then continuing and passing on the "guide self-rescue research" that had been forcibly halted.

[Content warnings]

1. Lots of worldbuilding.

2. The plot is outlined, but the writing is stream of consciousness.

3. Mutual salvation between obsessive characters.

4. The characters are very capable, but the author is terrible, so things might get a little stupid.

5. A second warning: this is a story about elites written by a struggling student. Read at your own risk.

6. Both the female lead and the male lead (Li Xin) have exes, and both exes are villains. (The male lead is a virgin and has little emotional history with his ex-girlfriend. She used to be his sentinel-guide partner. She is a villain, but her conflict with the female lead isn't about fighting over a man. The ex and the female lead are on opposing sides and are at odds with each other.)

7. Open ending. The female lead and male lead (Li Xin) will not have a traditional happy ending.

8. The male lead (Li Xin) refers mainly to the man who has a relatively larger role in the plot. He does have a bit of a romantic storyline with the female lead, but not much.

I wrote this to indulge my desire to read about same-sex couples from the secondary genders in a heterosexual-dominated setting. I call it fifth love. I hope stories with similar setups will take off one day: double alphas, double omegas, double betas, double guides, and double sentinels. [September 30, 2023: I no longer have this desire. Whether these stories take off or not doesn't matter anymore.]

Theme: The free will never submits.