Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri - Posts Tagged "ftl"

Rome's Revolution was originally created in 1973 as a short story entitled VIRUS 5. As you can imagine the underlying technology has changed significantly over the last 40 years. I have always been fascinated by the idea of what if we sent people to the stars and when they got there, there were already people there. So I had to come up with two completely different methods of interstellar travel, one slow, based upon physics that we know today, and one faster than light. My heroes, Rei and Rome, have been there since the beginning as well as OMCOM. And the major threat was always the Stareater. That's about it. Everything else about the story has changed and evolved over the years. The first book of the modern version, called VIRUS 5: Asdrale Cimatir (Stareater), was 108,000 words. It started with a beautiful short story about Silas Hiram, a farmer on New Earth (later called Helome in The Ark Lords). He was the first to discover that Alnilam disappeared. My intent for that book was to do a "you are there" type of style. So what are the odds that people 14 centuries in the future still speak English? Zero. So I had to invent a language. I actually wrote a computer program that would translate any English words or paragraphs into Vuduri and used as needed.

Well, being a beginning writer, I was open to suggestions by other, more advanced writers, and the whole story started getting chopped down. Gone was the story of Silas Hiram. Gone was the pretty exciting chapter on how the Vuduri discovered Rei's Ark. Gone was the viscerally stunning chapter on Rei's reanimation. I think the story lost something but I persevered.

I had in my mind the scene where Rei is all alone on Dara, getting ready to let the VIRUS units loose and thinking he had lost Rome forever. But then it occurred to me, when Rome figured out how to remain behind, she would just radio Rei and the scene would lose all its dramatic tension. That's how the Vuduri with their 24th chromosome and the Overmind sprang into being. They had no NEED for radios, they had their heads. So I had to go back and reengineer a whole new society. I had written a future history outline but this kind of set me back. It took a while but eventually the whole thing blossomed and became more like the story you read today.

After I completed Asdrale Cimatir, I was sitting around one day and said to myself, what happens when they get there, to Deucado. The idea of traveling all that way, only to face imminent death, seemed exciting. But I had to figure out WHY they were being attacked. Genocide seem like a powerful theme so that became the underlying background. I loved the idea of a split narrative, Rei taking a physical journal, Rome taking a mental one, before they rejoined each other. The book was relatively easy to write and I wasn't burdened with having to put in as much physics and science. It became more of a philosophical and adventure story. Its original title was VIRUS 5: Bez Onquode (An Uneasy Peace).

Book 3 wrote itself. Once I had set up all the political forces, the travails that Rei and Rome had to go through were pretty clear. I finished it in about 6 weeks. I loved the idea of a double climax. Just when Rei and Rome thought they had ended the threat forever, the Stareaters return. That was fun!

Then reality set in. Nobody was going to buy Books 1, 2 or 3 from an unknown author. So I got the idea to crush the now 330,000 words down to one book, three parts. That's the book you see today called Rome's Revolution. Since so many words had to be cut out, a lot of the long developing story lines (like Rei and Rome falling in love) had to be sped up. I had to create the Espansor bands to get Rei and Rome in fall in love super-fast. In the original book, it took them 8 chapters to even recognize they had feelings for each other. In the current book, they are sleeping together by the end of Chapter 2. Oh well. Hopefully, you won't find it too rushed and just suspend belief and go along for the ride.

After Rome's Revolution was published, I started work on a new YA sequel called The Milk Run starring Aason and Lupe, all grown up, with just a guest appearance by Rei and Rome. I got about halfway done and realized I had no idea about what their life was like once they returned to Deucado.

Unlike the previous (at the time) three books, I was determined to make this one all action and adventure. No need to add much science or physics. And I always wanted to start a story with an explosion. Well, the explosion was just a grease fire but it was the best I could come up with. I wasn't sure where the story was going to go when (I swear) I was in the shower and it hit me. The Ark Lords (Erklirte), the insane people in the gray sarcophagi and The Great Dying, they were all one and the same. I had written about them for six years and NEVER KNEW IT! So the story of how Jack Henry (Hanry Ta Jihn) became important. I wrote a little, four chapter short story and interwove it in the relevant parts of the second half of The Ark Lords.

A couple of other tidbits: Knowing that I had The Milk Run coming up, I wanted Aason to have his own "pet" starship so that's how Junior came about. The not-sex scene between Virga and Rei is still one of my favorites. I still laugh every time I read it.

The final book in this arc, starring Rei and Rome, will be entitled Rome's Evolution where Rome must become a true telepath to save all of their lives. I'm hoping to have it finished by the spring. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy The Ark Lords. I really enjoyed writing it.

When I was charting out my future history, I presumed that after 14 centuries, there would be very little chance people would still be speaking English. In fact, the Vuduri do not speak at all. But they do have a language.

I estimated the spread of Darwin's Virus Strain 4 and decided Portugal would have the most survivors of any uninoculated population. So I based the Vuduri language on Portuguese.

At first, I used Google translate to convert English to Portuguese then later Yahoo's Babelfish. Currently I use Microsoft's translate API.

I also felt the language would "drift" over time so I came up with a simple vowel and consonant substitution pattern. A <-> E, I <-> O, T <-> D, F <->V and B <-> P.

Here are two examples:
When Rome was cast out of the Overmind, the word becomes C E (swapped with A) S D (swapped with T) I (swapped with O) U and D again. Cesdiud.

Same for Tau Ceti. D for T, E for A, U, C, A for E, D for T and O for I. Deucado.

I wrote a computer program to do the translation for me. All I do is highlight the phrase I want to translate, hit Ctrl+C to put it in the copy and paste buffer, run my program then hit Ctrl+V and poof, the Vuduri equivalent is ready to paste.

There is no limit to how much I can translate. Rome wrote a letter to her mother which was over a page and a half. It was translated with a few keystrokes. Unfortunately, to cut down the size of the book, it had to be excised but will reappear when I release the Vuduri Companion.

So there you have it. You, too, can speak Vuduri, which, by the way, is nothing more than the word Future, in Vuduri!

My Meade telescope needs to be calibrated each time it is powered up. The red dot finder blinks and the hand keypad tells which star should be aligned. Then you go to a second star. After this is complete, the telescope is calibrated and you then say "Go to Jupiter" or "Go to the Andromeda Galaxy" and so on.

The settlers from Ark I landed on a habitable world in the Alpha Centauri system. They called their world New Earth although later the Vuduri renamed it to Helome. Silas Hiram was a farmer who brought a telescope with him. The makers of the telescope were kind enough to modify the internal database so that he could use the red dot finder from Alpha Centauri.

Since Alpha Centauri is so close to Earth, cosmically speaking, relatively few adjustments needed to be made and most of the constellations appeared more or less the same as seen from Earth. The one major difference is that the Centaur was missing one star in his foot. That star was Alpha Centauri.

Sol and Earth would appear as an extra star between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. Nothing remarkable other than the fact that it was Earth.

The constellation of Orion appeared more or less identical with the except that from the perspective of Alpha Centauri, the star Sirius would appear to be part of that constellation. Sirius was the second star that Silas had to use to align his telescope. It forced him to look for Orion and that was when he noticed that Alnilam was gone. This singular act caused a cascade of actions spanning 14 centuries, culminating with the "defeat" of the Stareaters on Tabit and the peace treaty of Earth.

The 24-chromosome Vuduri have a number of remarkable characteristics. Their optics have been heavily modified. In addition to having a tapetum and a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope built into their eyes, they also have an extra, internal iris built in. Rei refers these as to built-in sunglasses. The internal iris reacts very quickly and allow the Vuduri to go from total darkness to extreme brightness without any discomfort. They also have a second set of cones called Ucones. These cones have been modified to detect into the ultraviolet. Finally they have a second set of rods, call Irods which allow them see deep into the infrared. Basically, heat vision. They can often use the heat of their own body to "illuminate" an area sufficiently to make out some details.

When I was inventing the Vuduri race, I knew I wanted to make Rome a mosdurece (half-blood) because I wanted her mother to be Vuduri and her father mandasurte. However, how would she be able to participate in the Overmind if she did not have a complete 24th chromosome or worse, no 24th chromosome at all?

Answer: make full-blooded Vuduri diploid, meaning each had two full sets of the 24th chromosome. When Binoda mated with Fridone, their child, Rome, would have one full pair of the 24th chromosome. You only need one functioning pair to participate in the Overmind. That meant Rome could as well until she was cast out (Cesdiud) on Tabit.

Later, I decided that the 24th chromosome reproduced using mitosis rather than meiosis but that is not critical.

By the time Rome was finished being poked, prodded and injected, she had so many chromosomal pairs, she was unique in all the world. She had her original 24th (currently inactive), the new pair inserted into her on Deucado (currently active), MASAL's prosthetic 24th chromosome (never activated) and OMCOM's 25th chromosome.

Her daughter, Lupe, was born with all of these chromosomes activated making Lupe one of the most potent communicators in the galaxy. You will find out more about Lupe in the novel entitled The Milk Run.

It has been well documented that a fissure in the disks between vertebrae allows interstitial fluid to come in contact with the layer within the disk called the nucleus pulposis. In turn, this releases a substance called Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha which is highly inflammatory.

So some back pain (and even swelling) can be caused simply by having a fissured disk.

This fact is integrated into the story Rome's Revolution in several ways.

First, almost all of the frozen occupants of the Arks wake up and suffer from extreme back pain due to this condition.

Second, OMCOM creates a special pill which not only restores Rei's back to a condition appropriate for someone his age, it also gives him some abilities (sonar vision, "cell-phone" in the head, and more). OMCOM later creates a second, less powerful version of the pill which simply fixes up the back pain and this is the pill that is given to the majority of the colonists.

The pill is mentioned again in the sequel to The Ark Lords called Rome's Evolution. One unexpected benefit is that pill prevents the normal Vuduri genotype as expressing itself as the Onsira phenotype. If this pill would become available to all Vuduri, the Onsiras would eventually be eliminated forever.

The speed of sound at sea level is 340 m/s. The speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000,000 m/s. But what is the speed of gravity? How would you even measure it?

Scientists have gotten closest by measuring the speed of gravity waves. Basically, how long does the gravitational changes due to an exploding star take to affect other stars.

Some scientists believe that these gravity waves travel at the speed of light since they are limited by that of the observer and the observer only has EM transmissions to measure.

Some experimental physicists conclude that gravity travels at 2 X 10 to the tenth times c or a million, billion times the speed of light. If that is the case, that is pretty darned fast!

I chose to accept the faster figure as my working figure in Rome's Revolution. All of the interactions that occur with PPT transmissions occur virtually instantaneously. While PPT transceivers have an effective range of a light year or so, within that radius, the interaction is more or less real time.

Postulating that virtually instantaneous transmissions can occur over such large distances allowed the Overmind to form and also for MASAL to operate as he did.

If it is ever discovered that gravity only travels at the speed of light, I may have to rework some sections or invoke other dimensions (string theory anybody?) to get the velocity back up to where I need it.

When writing Rome's Revolution, it was necessary to create not one but two completely different but plausible star drives. The faster-than-light drive was actually easier because it was wilder and could not be verified or refuted. The Casimir Effect is real therefore the existence of negative energy is a real possibility. Some have speculated that space cannot exist where there is no energy so all I did was project a big blob of negative energy using "Casimir Pumps" and voila, you jumped past space yielding effectively faster-than-light travel.

The slower-than-light star drive was much more difficult since it had to be based on what we know today. Brute force chemical rockets weren't going to get it done. I decided the slow but steady method was the best bet. Solar wind is free and constant but dies off outside the Oort Cloud. So I built what I called the "Grey Drive" named after the fictitious scientist Wally Grey who invented it. It consisted of a quantum black hole and a big tank of xenon. They shot one atom of xenon at a time into the black hole to "feed" it and the atom disappeared into the black hole. Because it was so tiny, its matched white hole was only a few angstrom units away and the atom re-emerged as Hawking Radiation which pushed against a back plate and generated an infinitesimal amount of thrust. But infinitesimal times a long time results in a top speed of about 1/20th the speed of light. That was sufficient to get us to the stars.

For the first Ark, the mission to Alpha Centauri, they burned their fuel at twice the recommended rate so they were able to reach our nearest neighboring star in just over 40 years. Tau Ceti, where most of the action occurs, was just 12 light years away which means the trip there was supposed to take 240 years. Of course, the Ark II missed the mark and that formed the basis of the entire novel Rome's Revolution. Next post: cheap space ships.

I was thinking about what it would take to send people to the stars. I figured that travel over such long distance involved risk. To build a complex spaceship that could survive micrometeorites, cosmic rays, mechanical failure, etc. was unlikely. So instead of building an expensive spaceship, I had the mission planners build a cheap one, not much more than a flying tin can.

They sunk their money into building expensive, individual sarcophagi figuring any one might fail but the likelihood of all 500+ failing was very slim.

They built the Ark out of pig iron so the colonists would have some fairly refined materials to start their new life. I also made it so the nuclear power rods that reanimated the colonists could be ganged together to produce electricity for 7000 years.