The Third Rule is science fiction.  It has gone through many versions, and I am currently finishing the last revision in preparation to sending it off to literary agents.

 

Here is a short synopsis: 

 

The Third Rule, a character-driven work of speculative fiction, is set in a barren gray world of the distant future, where everything from food to water to shelter must be painstakingly molded by hand from the living, clay-like ground. 

 

The Historical Anthropologists behind this empty, echoing habitat have kidnapped Elaine, a modern-day woman, and dumped her in it to see how “primitive humans” like ourselves cope under severe duress.  Alone, naked and terrified, Elaine quickly realizes it is up to her to make the many things she needs to survive.

  

What she doesn’t realize is that the Historical  Anthropologists are watching and commenting on her every move, and that, to them, she is little more than a two-legged lab rat. 

 

Elaine eventually manages to build – literally – a life for herself, and, later, for two other captives.  They forge a tiny community within their habitat, building homes and wind-up cars and rhododendron bushes; staging plays and holding classes for each other, playing Marco Polo in Elaine’s hand-excavated swimming pool – until it all comes crashing down. 

 

The world around them begins to rot, to turn slimy, to poison their food and air.  Elaine must rescue herself and her friends from this toxic, disintegrating world, and ultimately, confront the Historical Anthropologist of the future who put her there.