The full compilation of a cancelled novel that I repurposed into a short story for NaNoWriMo 2022.

=== Plot Summary of GCE X-Levels by Minerva Marie-Sagan ===
=== A Satire on Parental Obsessions on Examinations in Asia ===
In a bleak and dark alternate future, the Krah Canal Project turns Singapore into Asia’s Cape of Good Hope and she is forgotten in time, receding into a third-world country; back to the quiet fishing village, it was in the old 1800s, before Raffles and the British’s landfall.

Despite Singapore’s physical death, her spirit lives on in the newly-formed United States of Krah which has adopted her ruthless, but the world-class competitive education system in the form of the new GCE X-Levels or GCE-XL, a once-in-a-lifetime exam that chooses your life’s career permanently. No polytechnics or universities. Just straight to work, till you die from old age or overwork.

For Jade, a quiet and reserved pearl diver, her day to take the GCE-XL comes and she is thrown into the fray of the regime’s schemes. She and many others from Old Singapore mysteriously pass the exams and are assigned to work for the counter-terrorism unit ‘Force Z’.

And it is there where she discovers that perhaps grades never mattered in the first place.

Note: this is loosely based on “McNamara’s Morons aka Project 100,000” from the Vietnam War, and is a light satire of Singapore’s extreme focus on examinations in youths in general.

=== My writing mood playlist for this novella ===

=== TIMESTAMPS / CHAPTERS / GCE X-LEVELS ===
0:00 Fictional Disclaimer
0:06 Chapter ONE – Princess of Clams
5:57 Chapter TWO – The School Tonner
9:06 Chapter THREE – Sceptre of Hope
13:23 Chapter FOUR – Edge of Heaven
17:27 Chapter FIVE – Processed Meat
20:52 Chapter SIX – Take Flight
23:13 Chapter SEVEN – Descent
37:50 Chapter EIGHT – Madness
42:36 Chapter NINE – Dissent
55:35 Plot Summary of Project GCE-XL
57:10 Author’s Afterwords / Nanowrimo Vlog & Diary / Hunger Games & Divergent Era

=== Author’s Comments ===
▶ I read this for April Fools in a rare form of RTX VTubing aka Cosplay.
▶ I will be writing the final chapter of this novella this Nanowrimo 2022 as my goal.
▶ I wrote this during the era of Hunger Games (and apparently, Divergent),
▶ During the YA Novel Market was booming, but my sister told me it was similar to Divergent,
▶ To which, I never read, but broke my motivation, so I started anew on another project.
▶ Yes, I am aware it’s cringe. 😦

If I recall correctly, the full-novel draft of GCE X-Levels also involved plastic surgery and skin whitening to “look pretty” when Jade went into the Capital. After Jade became wounded-in-action, she went to work at a Propaganda Radio Station.

It would then come under attack by her father, whom she thought dead. Her father spared her because he had heterochromia and she did too. And like all YA Novels at that time, the main character would join the rebellion and overthrow the regime.

Now, I resume work on my upcoming original IP, The Masked Parapriestess

=== BIO 📚 ===
Minerva (She/Her) is an Aspiring Novelist, VTuber & Composer based in Singapore, hoping to hit the New York Times Bestseller list with her debut novel titled: 📖 “The Masked Parapriestess”.
Additionally, her soundtracks and lore double as a prequel to her Novel(s),

=== DISCLAIMERS ===

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

“No part of this Book & Short Story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.”