Prologue I

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Rumor has it among the housewives who form neighborhood bookclubs in Baltimore that his spark of genius found him through the pages of a beautifully crafted romance novel. Where else could someone learn to stitch together the perfect words to describe the most pressing issues and propose a glorious fix?

Rumor has it among the Communists who congregate every Saturday in Cincinnati that the spirit of Karl Marx had come to him in a dream and introduced the enlightening philosophy. Who else would be able to predict the rise of the proletariat in such a poetic way?

Rumor has it among the men who golf at the country clubs in Las Vegas that the thought hit him while he was swinging a golf club. What other sport clears the mind in such a way that it brings forth that type of dazzling clarity that led to such an eye opening feat?

Rumor has it among the stoners who lay on the endless miles of grass in the Bay Area that the inspiration found him in the overwhelming power of THC. How else could the thoughts of a single man be malleable enough to come to such a startling revelation?

Truth has it that no one knows the where or the how of the actual idea. The man who has been credited with the idea, Axel DeWitt, has chosen to remain silent on the origin of the idea. But truly, who's even interested? No one ever wants to start from the beginning anyway. DeWitt decided that it was irrelevant, as origin stories tend to be just that: Irrelevant. Boring. Slow. They are never as exciting or significant as many try to make them appear. So, why waste time with the origin in the first place? All that mattered, he decided, was the end. The result. The conclusion. He could - and would - spend time mulling over the origin with his colleagues after victory could be declared. But until then, he decided that all focus should remain strictly on paving the way to success.

As a matter of fact, because the origin story is held with such low regard, it will be skipped and the conclusion will be revealed. This idea - wherever it came from and whatever it may be - is used as a blueprint to construct a society in a state recently acquired from under the national sovereignty of the United States. It was once called Maine. It is now called Pangaea.

Pangaeans live there.

This is not a story about whether or not the idea came to fruition.

It did.

This story intends to answer a different set of questions that are unrelated to the success of this society. Feel free to refer to the following questions when this tale begins to seem meaningless:

What is a Pangaean?

Where did this idea come from?

What exactly is the idea?

Finally, now that the conclusion has been revealed and the motivation has been set, one can spend time mulling over the details of the origin.

Chase Hatter's Origin of PangaeaWhere stories live. Discover now