Wonder: Noun

1. A cause of astonishment or admiration

2. the quality of exciting amazed admiration

3. a rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience

1. A feeling of doubt or uncertainty

To this day, there have been 7 documented and confirmed wonders. Only seven. There are countless fakes: the circus performers of the world, showing off their strange, yet fundamentally mundane abilities they’ve crafted and grown. They peddle their bodies like honeysuckle traps overloading a fly with sweet nectar until they acquire their coin and infamy. True wonders follow three rules without exception.

1. Their ‘ability’ for lack of a better term, has been present since birth.

2. They have no control over this ‘ability’

3. When the conditions for this ‘ability’ are met, there are no exceptions.

Specific scientific circles argue that there is a fourth condition that must be met for these individuals to truly be wonders: Their stories must be tragic. 

Three wonders were discovered in the 20th century. Only one of them is alive today. He currently lives in a private mental healthcare facility. His ability: No matter the circumstances, no one can lie to this man. 

This is not for lack of trying. This ability may seem wondrous to many. Who wouldn’t want to be able to detect lies? But that is not his ability. His ability is that no one can lie to him regardless of circumstances. Try telling a small child learning to sing that he sounds like a screaming cat that just got run over by a bike rider and got stuck in the wheel spokes and it’s understandable how he ended up mentally unstable. It’s not simply that lies could not be spoken to the man. That level of interruption in cognitive function is not indicative of a wonder. No, it’s that the truth would simply be said regardless of the speaker’s intent. The speaker would speak as if it was the white lie one would normally tell, but instead, the devastating manifestation of one’s innermost absolute truth regarding this wonder would become known to the world. 

There is common pleasantry in the human ability to fudge the truth. For this wonder, no mercy is afforded.

That is the curse of the wonders and why so few are recorded. Their abilities perfectly mask their effects in the world as naturally occurring despite being all but. 

What happens with the Wonders, however, is not my concern. Their peculiarity and rarity is worth understanding. Are they another stage in human development, or are they some god’s cruel trick. None can answer that question. But, my dear readers, the question we can pursue: is there an 8th wonder? And if so, how do we determine they are a wonder at all?

Hello 8th Wonder readers. Thanks for reading this original story. It's one of the most important stories to me. It is also my next big project to rewrite the story.

The biggest criticizm I've had regarding this story is 'I wished there was more." Aside from criticisms, there are parts of the story that I wish I could have done differently. So, here's some things I'll be doing

1. A commissioned cover + thumbnail!

2. Complete redesign of what a 'wonder' is

3. More characterization of the primary characters

4. Expanded and/or modified editions to existing chapters

5. Brand new chapters/sections that flesh out the characters.

6. More angst

I will also be recording audio at the same time as I write out the chapters, so there will be an audio version (still thinking about where to put those). 

Overall, the story will have more. It will be more have a more cohesive lore and characters and I hope it will be an improvement over the original story. 

I will be making a whole new story for it which I will link here once I've started publishing. As a note, this story was not originally for serial web publishing and the rewrite will also not be made for serial web publishing, so some 'chapter breaks' won't fit Tapas very well, but we do what we gotta do. 

I would love to focus up and start publishing at the start of the year, but that is realistically not going to happen. I'm only going to start publishing once I have at least half the story written and a finalized art piece for the cover. For context, I'm just about done with the 1st chapter, though that was completely rewritten from scratch. Some of the principle chapters will be nearly exactly the same and thus less work. 

Keep your subscription on and you'll get notice when the rewrite goes up.

 - Sebbie