Approximate Truth: What We Shared

The machine does not reveal truth. It produces confidence.

When pre-marital brain syncing becomes a symbol of commitment, refusal is seen as deception. Isabel and Jian are the perfect couple. To prove it to their families, their employers, and the state, they agree to a limited sync meant to align emotional expectations before marriage.

The clinic reports a flawless 96 percent coherence score--a number that guarantees stability, secures their mortgage, and validates their love.

But the sync ends cleanly. The consequences do not.

As the sync concludes, the boundaries of their identities fail to reset. Isabel begins to inherit Jian's structural sadness--a visceral grief for a childhood she never lived. Jian absorbs her high-resolution anxiety, finding himself stabilized by a calm he did not earn. What the doctors call signal ringing, Isabel experiences as a haunting.

When the relationship fractures under the weight of this borrowed noise, the data becomes a weapon. In the cold theater of a Relational Dissolution hearing, Isabel discovers that their perfect score was a lie--a clinical fraud manufactured to meet a quota.

Now, she must decide if she will release her raw neural telemetry to win her freedom, or if she will choose the dignity of the unknown. In a world that demands total transparency, her final act of love will be the restoration of the private mind.

What We Shared is the first novel in the Approximate Truth series--a 10-book near-future hard science fiction series exploring what happens when unreliable brain-sync technology becomes socially mandatory. Each novel stands alone, focusing on one institutional domain while cumulatively tracing how society normalizes cognitive intrusion.

The technology never improves. What changes is what people are willing to accept.