Behind
THE SENTIENT
Tabatha is the world's only telepath and whose abilities are little known outside of the government department that she's employed by. An error in judgment on an assignment results in her being thrust into the public eye, where she is met with great public apprehension. However, that's not the only eye she elicits. An evil entity working on a weapon of mass destruction believes Tabatha is key to completing his apocalyptic work. As he attempts to lure her into his clutches, secrets revolving around the origin of her existence begin to unfold. Finally, with the help of a few loyal special force combatants, she endeavors to stop a global threat.
Motivation for writing The Sentient
Comics were a stimulating part of my youth. Any chance to hit up the flea market down the street, which housed a large comic book store, I was there. At times, I may have spent my entire earnings from mowing lawns the previous week on them. I was particularly interested in the Marvel Comics, though I collected many others if they caught my interest. As you can imagine, not unlike millions of other comic lovers, the creation of live-action movies based on comics has been captivating.
Despite my enjoyment of watching superheroes take on global and intergalactic bad guys, my analytical side would routinely ponder the question, what compels a hero to be good, and conversely, what compels a villain to be bad? For example, if your neighbor was ill and couldn’t afford a hospital, and you had the ability to create a portal with your mind, what would prevent you from opening one into a bank vault to take money to pay for your neighbor’s medical expenses? It’s a bit of a moral dilemma, and the question itself, in reality, seems to be an open-ended one…unless there’s a moral authority over the created order. Though I take on this question in a speculative science fiction story, the debate over objective versus relative morality has been a central question in my personal life since I was a teenager when I was first posed the question, but from the opposite side.
By the time I was a senior in high school, I was an adamant atheist. It was near the end of the last semester in my economics class. The instructor, Mr. K., asked the class, “is there a God?” To which I quickly and without hesitation responded “No!” It wasn’t a surprise to the majority of the class as most knew I was quite antithetical toward religion in general and Christianity in particular. However, Mr. K. asked a follow-up question directed toward me. “Why don’t you steal or break laws for personal gain?” The question was, in effect, why do you adhere to some moral discipline, for if there is no moral authority, then there’s no reason not to take advantage of every opportunity, whether it hurts others or not, for self-preservation? My answer was that society has a system of laws predicated on moral bias. Yes, I could steal something for personal gain, but I could go to jail and/or face other consequences that would affect my personal freedom, which, well, didn’t sound all that fun. That was the end of the discussion, but a discussion I have remembered and mulled over many times since. And what better way to expound on the subject than in a fiction novel with tons of action scenes, explosions, telekinetic battles, and twisted plot scenarios? Thus, with that idea in mind (as well as a motivating push to write such a story by a co-worker at the time), I began my first writing project, The Sentient (book 1).
