Dead Womb of Capitalism

This excerpt, from the chapter in “Stefan’s Owl from Oblivion” entitled “The Dead Womb of Capitalism,”  is a dream that seven-year-old Stefan is projecting into the minds of sixteen-year-old Elof, fifteen-year-old Tova, twelve-year-old Tyco, eight-year-old Ty, and Professor Kettil, professor of evolutionary neurosciences at Cambridge University. Stefan is projecting a dream that relates Elof’s childhood, with this scene in the dream being about Elof when he was seven years old. Stefan has ripped the information for the dream from Elof’s mind and is showing it to everyone there, including the unseen Syon who helps Stefan with dream projection. The black text on blue shading are the spectators of the dream discussion among themselves what they are seeing.
 
This was a tough piece to write. For one thing, Elof was severely abused as a child. It is tough to make a reader sympathize with a genius child living in fabulous wealth. The presumption would be that a child in such wealth could not have it that bad. Part of this is to lay the groundwork and backstory for understanding Elof’s deep cynicism in the book and how badly Stefan is hurting Elof by trying to steal Tova away from him. Tova is more than Elof’s girlfriend. She is his chief officer of a tenuous sanity.
 
The other aspect is that Elof is Tibetan-American, and his father evidently has a deep, racial hatred for Asian-Americans. This sets up a very intricate emotional dynamic, with the father hating his own son but because of his extreme transactional nature, valuing his genius. At points along the way, you can almost see him slipping, subconsciously providing things for Elof that could almost be interpreted as love.
 
This deeply complex, emotional interaction is the bread and butter for Literary Fiction.