Novel Intro: IITAW

IITAW

IITAW (applai word meaning ‘a dream’). I started the novel October of 2003 during my stay at Baguio Colleges Foundation. It started as a parody of my experiences there gradually evolving to the quasi – fantasy novel that it is today. It is written mostly in first person viewpoint and although the main character uses my name, most of the events are products of the wayward mind.

There are seven books all in all being envisioned for IITAW. Book 1 introduces the main character and the strange world where he wakes up in. It details the conflict in his mind regarding what is real and what isn’t and his quest for being.

Book 1s setting is at the world of Bakadan, a fictional world so unlike the world of the earth. The main character is a teacher for a local college, leaving a petty boorish routinary life. By a strange twist of fate, he wakes up in the world of Bakadan, wounded and generally unaware of what happened.

He wakes up believing that he is still somewhere in earth, his mind rationalizing events and reasons to explain his situation.

However, he soon realizes that something is wrong. The world he wakes up in is terribly different. Everything he encounters is strange and way beyond his wildest imaginations.

Against these thoughts, he still sticks to his belief that he is on earth and everything he sees is a hallucination, a dream.

To keep his sanity, he believes this.

Until he realizes that he is not waking up from it.

And the new world starts to assimilate him pushing his memories further and further away.

What is sanity?

            Webster says that it is the condition of being able to make rational decisions.

            But what can be termed ‘rational’.

            What is reasonable?

            When does one become insane?

            I do not know the answers to these questions.

            Reality.

            How do you distinguish that which is imaginary from that which is real?

            What is reality?

            If you define reality as that which you can feel, see or touch then reality is just electrical impulses interpreted by your brain…

            Doubt.

            Uncertainty.

            What do you do when faced with that?

            When all else fails the usual logic you have been accustomed to?

            When reality itself is in question.

            …

            survive…

            It all boils down to man’s primary motivation.

            To be.

            To exist.