Chapter Forty-Three: The Rejected One

  August 31, 1961, just one more day and it would be time for school to start.

  Catherine arrived at school ahead of time.

  She had just returned to her dormitory when she saw several roommates gathered around the table, with Jenny holding a book and calculating something.

  "Lily, you dealt 17 damage to the giant monster. The giant monster now has 33 life points left."

  They're actually playing their own war chess?

  "Look, our magical girl Catherine has arrived~"

  Lily laughed and pounced on Catherine.

  "Never mind, Lily."

  Catherine seemed utterly exhausted.

  "Kate, will you play too?" Lily invited.

  "It's okay, I don't need it."

  The war chess has not been released yet, what they are playing is a full version given by themselves - of course, this is the mass edition.

  The mass-market version has simpler rules, not as rigorous but absolutely fun. The professional version is more suitable for game enthusiasts and fans of desktop role-playing games.

  "Aida, your father... uh... how is he?"

  "It's all over now, Jenny got my dad a psychologist, much better than that quack... Oh, Jenny, thank you so much... I really don't know what to do without you..."

  Aida said, looking at Jenny with eyes full of deep feelings.

  "My mother is also a doctor, and that so-called prefrontal lobotomy surgery is actually just for the benefit of doctors. They have never thought about their problems from the patient's perspective, but only think about their own reputation or making their work more convenient. Besides, I didn't do anything anyway."

  "It doesn't matter."

  Catherine said, and threw herself onto her own bed.

  "What's wrong, Kate?"

  Lily asked with concern.

  Although her own war chess was taken seriously, Catherine couldn't help but smile.

  The reason is very simple.

  Because her manuscript was rejected!

  "My manuscript was rejected."

  "What?"

  Lily thought she wasn't very clear.

  "My manuscript was rejected!"

  Catherine rolled over on the bed, feeling depressed. She had thought she was already a "successful person", but didn't expect to encounter such a thing!

  "What's going on?"

  Catherine pulled out a bound manuscript from her backpack and handed it over to Lily.

  The name of this book is "Radiation".

  This is Catherine's "nom de plume", in other words, she wrote it under a pen name.

  Pen name is "Hei Dao Ren".

  The story takes place in 2077, when a nuclear war occurs worldwide, and before that, the war between China and the US was the cause of this event - due to the needs of the times, Catherine had already changed China to the Soviet Union. The protagonist is a resident of Vault 13 in Southern California, and in 2161, due to the failure of an important computer chip in the water purification system, the village is in danger, so the leader decides to send the protagonist out to find a new chip to save the village. At the end of the story, when the protagonist finally finds a chip from other villages to save his own vault, the residents lose trust in him and banish him from the vault forever.

  The protagonist of the story is named Bruce Edson, which is also the name of his cheap old dad.

  In the original history, "Fallout" was supposed to be a computer game, but the story is very classic.

  Catherine still remembers when she first played this game was the third installment of Radiation.

  Inside the Tenpenny Tower, there is a quest that allows her to choose whether or not to persuade the residents to agree to let a group of ghouls move in - in this game, ghouls are mutated humans who retain their intelligence and live with people but face discrimination.

  The residents mostly didn't have any particular aversion to zombies, and after Catherine got everyone's agreement, the zombies came in.

  Catherine thought this task was perfectly completed.

  When Catherine returned here again, she found that all the residents had been slaughtered by these zombies, and the corpses were placed in the basement.

  Playing this game was Catherine's first experience of good intentions leading to bad outcomes.

  Of course, because the original "Fallout" only had a game, so Catherine did a big surgery on "Fallout".

  This story has a feature that is rich in branch lines, and Catherine linked all the plots of these stories together to form a complete story.

  After all, after finishing "Harry Potter", Catherine was already familiar with it, and this was not difficult to solve.

  "Radiation", whether it's the plot or the world's framework, is slightly better than "Harry Potter". Catherine is very confident.

  But...

  But she was rejected!

  Others didn't know, but Catherine knew that next year would be the peak of the Cold War.

  Especially after the outbreak of the Cuban crisis, the confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union reached a peak.

  If my inference is correct, "Fallout", which describes the world after a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union, will definitely be well-received!

  Not only that, but Catherine even thought of the Vietnam War. Within two years, a wave of anti-war sentiment would erupt in the United States, and "Radiation" was just right for this topic.

  Of course, another reason why the "Radiation" series is successful is that its era is in the 1990s, while radiation is a style of the 1950s.

  But Catherine does just the opposite, turning what was originally a postmodern tone into a modernist one - exactly the reverse of the original.

  Nowadays, people are most enthusiastic about discussing the future, technology and so on.

  Especially after Gagarin entered outer space.

  Surveys have shown that America's technology was developing at its fastest during that period of time.

  At that time, Americans who advocated for freedom and democracy found themselves surpassed by the Soviet Union in technology, triggering a national frenzy. Ironically, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than half of Americans no longer cherished democracy and freedom.

  In any case, Catherine has high hopes for this book of hers.

  But...not everyone has Catherine's insight.

  "Your work is excellent, but unfortunately, we have to tell you that it does not align with the mission of our publishing house..."

  Your motto is profit!

  Or... don't want to step on the red line of the Cold War?

  Hey! Who is this guy!!

  Isn't it popular these days to use Cold War rhetoric? How can there still be people like this?

  Catherine felt angrier and angrier.

  "Actually I think this book is written very well, at least it looks good."

  Lily shrugged her shoulders.

  "But it's not very suitable for girls to watch."

  Jenny added a sentence.

  *sigh*

  Catherine sighed, but she didn't want to give up like this, after all, it was her heart's blood.

  And no one knows more about future things than her.

  Change publishers?

  Are other publishers publishing it?

  Do I have to release it myself?

  ……

  It seems like most people prefer flat chests...