Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 142

Electrogravity

One of the cornerstones of Vuduri transportation are the EG lifters featured prominently in Rome's Revolution, The Ark Lords and Rome's Evolution. EG stands for electrogravity but is it real? Did I make it up?

No, I didn't make it up. However it has never been proven. There is no repeatable experimental data to support it. Some people think that the technology was lifted from the remains of the Roswell UFO. Others believe it is utilized in the B2 Stealth Bomber to explain some inconsistencies in its power to lift ratio.



Regardless of whether it's real, for my purposes, it's not that important. I needed a way to move things around that didn't require fossil fuels. So you rotate a room-temperature superconducting magnet at high-speed and voila! electrogravity. In Vuduri universe, electrogravity (EG) is only a repulsive force, not an attractive one. So it was only good for pushing against gravity. Works great at sea level. Not so good once you reach the upper atmosphere and useless outside of a gravity well.

As long as I had to build in a rotating superconducting magnet, I used it to clamp the space tugs to the body of the Ark II which was made of pig iron so it was magnetic. I also created some shields to cover the EG lifters so it "reflected" the repulsor field backwards and created artificial gravity. Rei and Rome needed this for their year-long journey to Deucado so their bodies did not atrophy.

I also had MINIMCOM use the EG lifters as a super-duper PA system upon occasion.

Very convenient for the story but unlikely to be too useful any time soon.

The gift of humor

Rome, the heroine of Rome's Revolution is an innocent soul. She is struggling to find her way in Vuduri society when a chance meeting with an Essessoni named Rei Bierak knocks her from her orbit and puts her on a trajectory for the unknown.

After her rebirth, she must come to grips with a bewildering number of topics, only the simplest being an emotional response to situations. A more sophisticated matter is humor. Rei tried to explain it to her when she was still ensconced within the Overmind but she never "got it" until she was Cesdiud (cast out). When she decided to assert herself and demand that the Vuduri give Rei the space tugs and the MINIMCOM unit to facilitate their trip to Deucado, she was granted the opportunity to take Rei up into space to train him on space tug operations.

When they were first seated in the cockpit, after Rome allowed them to remove their helmets, she was instructing Rei on how to get situated. This gave Rome her first opportunity to show him that she finally understood the concept of humor.

     “You sit in the pilot’s seat, on the left,” Rome said pointing there.
     “OK,” Rei replied and made his way forward and sat down. Rome sat down on the seat to the right.
     “Now you buckle yourself in, like so…” She reached behind her and brought one of the two straps over her shoulder. She showed him how to insert the tongue into the hasp. “When it clicks, the latch is fastened.”
     “Yeah, that’s the way our seatbelts worked too,” Rei said.
     “You must attach both straps to be safe,” she said affixing the other belt over the other shoulder.
     “What happens if I don’t,” Rei asked with a smile on his face.
     “You die,” said Rome with a straight face.
     Rei was stunned. He watched her glowing eyes then a smile crept onto that beautiful face.
     “I am teasing you,” she said. “But please do it, though. It is safer.”
     “Yes sir, captain, sir,” Rei said and he did as he was told.

While I cannot say for sure that I have mastered the concept, at least Rome, my heroine, seems to have done so. She has a very dry sense of humor but a sense of humor nonetheless.

Thank you, Rome, it makes the whole series when you can break the tension once in a while.

Dimensions

Everybody knows about the first three dimensions: length, width and height. Everybody knows about the fourth dimension: time. If you know the spatial and temporal coordinates of an object or event, you can track it precisely. Four dimensions was good enough for Einstein to develop the Special Theory of Relativity.

But are there other dimensions? Ones that we don't know about? String theory, or more specifically superstring theory postulates there are no less than 10 dimensions.

Superstring theory is a possible unified theory of all fundamental forces, but superstring theory requires a 10 dimensional spacetime, or else bad quantum states called ghosts with unphysical negative probabilities become part of the spectrum.

But what are those other dimensions? Do they have a name or even any meaning in our lives?

I read a novella once called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott. It was about a world which consisted only of two dimensions (length and width) and of course time. The residents of Flatland had no knowledge of height and navigation around their world was somewhat difficult. Very similar to a puzzle where you rearrange pieces to form a coherent view:

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Flatland consisted of women who were simple line-segments and gentlemen were polygons. Their world was visited by a sphere whose third dimension was incomprehensible by the masses until the protagonist saw "spaceland" for himself.

So too it will be in the upcoming novel The Milk Run. What if those other dimensions had simple names like Ambition or Desire or Purity? Ever since the first part of Rome's Revolution came to a close, we have been wondering what had OMCOM been up to all these years. Well, finally, we will get to find out. It may not be as nice as you would like.

To Infinity and Beyond

Everybody loves Buzz Lightyear. I mean, how could you not?

Buzz's catch phrase was "To Infinity and Beyond" which was fun and may seem vague but is actually quite deep. How could something be beyond infinity?

Take the simplest of cosmological questions. If there was a Big Bang when our universe started, what came before the Big Bang? If the universe is doomed to eventually contract back down to nothing, sometimes called the Big Crunch, what comes after? It hurts the head. What came before the beginning? What comes after the end? This means the beginning is not really the beginning, is it?

This is where science runs into religion head on. When did it all start? In my opinion, it never started. It has always been. Therefore you don't have to figure out what comes after the end because it never ends.

To me, our universe is just one tiny node of a hyper-cube network going off to infinity both in dimension and time. Kind of like Tinkertoys but infinitely extended:



And if this is true, what is between the spaces?

I don't know the answer. Nobody does. So in the upcoming novel The Milk Run, we find out one possible answer. After all, if Heaven is real, it has to be somewhere.

Living crystals

Everybody knows there are three basic divisions of matter in our world: animal, vegetable and mineral. However, will this always be true on other worlds? In other galaxies?

In the upcoming novel The Milk Run, Aason Bierak has to travel to a star system which has not one but two habitable worlds circling the primary star in the Nu2 Lupi system. So what does that mean?

One of the worlds, the one farther out, is very cold. So cold that the inhabitants called it Hades. Everybody thinks of Hell as fire and brimstone and sulfur but the Greeks imagined Hell as a cold and dark place.

But as cold as Hades is, there is a second, warmer world, much closer to their sun called Ay'den. Ay'den is very hot, humid, smelly and the primary sentient species is plant-based, not animal-based. In fact, there are no animals on that world. So if plants are the people, what are the plants?

Well, I decided to build silicon-based life-forms, living crystals, as the next level down. Everybody remembers the Horta from Star Trek, the Original Series:


        

They were shown to be incredibly long-lived, sentient, and while protective of their young, they were not inherently evil.

On Ay'den, the living crystals are more diabolical. They do not like the plant-based life-forms and have no experience with animals whatsoever. Unfortunately for Aason Bierak, they have a natural ability to conquer animals which he is going to have to overcome.

Cutting off the hand

For some reason, I seem to have a fascination with cutting off people's hands. This has happened more than once in the Rome's Revolution saga.

This exact dramatic scene made an impression on everybody in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke had his light saber fight with Darth Vader:



For my career as a writer, it all started at the end of The Ark Lords when MINIMCOM sliced off Nick Greer's hand before he could shoot Rome.

Of course, the loss of Greer's hand and MINIMCOM restoring it was an important plot point in Rome's Evolution in that it laid down the roadmap to Greer's rehabilitation. Later in that book, Dan Steele sliced his own hand off by accident when he plunged his knife into Rei's chest. Unfortunately for Steele, Rei was protected by a miniature PPT tunnel and when Rei twisted, Steele's hand was cut off by a blade sharper than any in the universe.

However, it was my point with restoring Nick Greer's hand that Steele could find salvation as well. Here is Virga's take on it:

     “How is Nick Greer doing?” Rei asked Virga as he stared out the window at the craggy mountains below.
     “He is settling in,” Virga said. “When you gave him his hand back, it is like he became a different person. He appears to have given up his resentment and violent tendencies. He had a very strong wish to work out in the fresh air. I believe your expression is, he will be OK.”
     “That’s great,” Rei said. “Maybe you could have him go visit Steele some day and explain what happened to him.”
     “Why?” Virga asked.
     “Because, well, Steele ended up losing a hand as well. Maybe it will appeal to him.”
     “How did he lose his hand, if I may ask?”
     Rei looked at Rome. “Well, after we hunted him down, he tried to kill me and, well, I accidentally cut it off.”
     Rome leaned forward. “He pretends he doesn’t care but I sense that he does. Perhaps if he sees hope of repair in exchange for his cooperation, it will turn out the same way as Greer.”
     “It is worth a try,” Virga said. “We will give him a little time to consider his circumstances and then we will broach the subject.”

Why do I bring this all up? It's because I think Aason is going to get his hand cut off in The Milk Run. No big deal in the Rome's Revolution universe but disturbing nonetheless. You'll find out why when the book is done but right now, I can't find a way around it.

Character Fusion

I am in the middle of building the plot for The Milk Run and I came to a juncture point. It is necessary for the plot to proceed that Planet OMCOM upload a much greater portion of his consciousness into Junior's memron storage to help Aason solve the mystery of where the Creatures of Light have taken his sister Lupe.

I am going back and forth. OMCOM's livetar is always pure white and represents OMCOM's imperial presence. In this story, which takes place 17 years after Rome's Evolution, Junior's livetar is now jet black. My initial thought was to have OMCOM upload his consciousness into Junior and have the two fuse into a single entity called OMCOM, Jr. This livetar would be gray and would represent the synthesis of two personalities.

Here are a few problems with that. First, I don't know this new character. I know OMCOM. I know Junior. I can write their characters and their dialog from experience. Also, with fewer people (maybe entities?) in the room, there is less diversity of opinion, fewer opportunities for banter.

I discussed this with Denise and she felt there was no question. OMCOM and Junior should remain separate characters with their own livetars, personalities and approach toward life. I guess I have to yield to this viewpoint because my gut tells me that is right, too.

So goodbye, OMCOM, Jr. Never born, never built, never to be realized but still fascinating nonetheless.

How big is space?

The entire culture, physics and politics of Rome's Revolution depends upon the characters being able to travel between the stars. But really, is that practical?

I had postulated that the Grey Drive could accelerate a ship up to 5% of the speed of light. Even at that speed, it was estimated that it would take 250 years, a quarter of a millennium, to get to Tau Ceti. What about real life?

The fastest object to ever leave our Solar System, to date, is Voyager 1, currently clocked as traveling at 17 km/sec. Compare that to the speed of light which is 299,792 km/sec. The Voyager 1 space probe is traveling at .005% of the speed of light. At that rate, it will reach the edge of the Oort Cloud, generally considered to be the edge of the Solar System, in 40,000 years. Even if it were pointed directly at Proxima Centauri, the closest known star, it would still take yet another 40,000 to reach that star system.

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There ain't nobody who is going to hang around for 80,000 years to see if Voyager reached the next star system over. If you thought that Voyager 2 would go farther and faster than Voyager 1, forget it. Voyager 2 is only traveling at 16 km/sec. There was a time when Voyager 2 was farther away since it was launched August 20, 1977. Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks later on September 5, 1977. It has a higher net speed so once Voyager 1 pulled ahead, it pulled ahead for good.

Here's the bottom line: if we are going to travel to the stars, we are going to have find a better, faster way. The PPT star drive which goes around space, rather than through it, seems like the only reasonable way to proceed. Well, until we get the Null Fold X-drive which has no upper speed limit!

Who did this before?

In the middle of Part 1 of Rome's Revolution, as Rei and Rome were about to take off on their training mission, they had this exchange. Rome said something odd which I have highlighted in bold:

     Rome led Rei up the tug’s ramp into the cargo compartment. Rei put his hand on her shoulder and drew her close. He pressed his helmet to hers and said, “I don’t get how this is going to work. We’re going to be stuck in this thing for over a year. Where are we going to sleep? Where are we going to eat, you know, stuff like that?
     Rome smiled at him and pointed to her right. “This ship will be outfitted in a fashion similar to our living quarters. It will have all the requisite equipment, galley, molecular sequencers, food synthesizers. There will be a refresher, what you call a bathroom and there will be…” She squeezed his hand through their gloves, “sleeping quarters.”
     She pointed to the far corner. “They will provide us with exercise equipment. It will be very comfortable. You will see.”
     “What about air, food, water, stuff like that?” Rei asked.
     “They will install a recycler that will provide all of that. Please do not worry about this. They have done this before.”
     “OK,” Rei said, a bit skeptically. “If you say so.”

What does that mean? Who has done this before? Does this mean this particular group of Vuduri have outfitted a space tug as a Flying House or that another group of Vuduri had to live within a space tug for a long time?

I don't know the answer. I do know that there is a whole universe out there. There are events and characters that have never been mentioned and even though it seems that way, the entire Vuduri civilization does not revolve around Rome and Rei.

I thought maybe Rome was referring to the Suduri when they left Earth for parts unknown. It may refer to when the Vuduri first settled Helome or even Deucado. Maybe it refers to the basic design of the Algol itself.

It is my hope that some day Rome shares with me her thinking on this matter.

No radio helmets

In order to set up the great climax in the first part of Rome's Revolution, it was necessary for me to eliminate having radios in the helmets. This, of course, led to the design of the entire mind-connected Vuduri culture and the existence of the Overmind, rather than the other way around.

As Rome and Rei were leaving Tabit, their "cell-phones" in the head had not developed yet so when they were sealed up in their pressure suits, how were they to communicate? I thought about hand signals but there was just too large of a culture gap for hand signals to be effective. Luckily, I remembered seeing a video or reading an article about NASA and what astronauts do when their radios break down. I looked it up and sure enough, the standard operating procedure is just for them to touch their helmets together. Enough vibrations from the astronaut speaking travel from one helmet to another so the other astronaut can hear them faintly, even in the vacuum of space.

Rome settled the issue quickly with this exchange:

     “I know,” she said. “We can just press our helmets together. The vibration of your voice will carry through the helmet-to-helmet contact. We should be able to hear each other.”
     “OK…” Rei said. He lifted the helmet, fit it into the grooves and pressed down and rotated it to the right. He heard a click as it locked into place in the forward facing position. He watched as Rome did the same. As the helmet engaged, a very dim light appeared on the interior, illuminating her face. Rei assumed he had one too. After Rome was satisfied with the fit, she leaned it forward and pressed her faceplate up against his.
     “Can you hear me?” she asked.
     “A bit muffled, but yes,” Rei replied. Her voice was soft but surprisingly clear.
     “What happens if we need to talk to OMCOM?” Rei said.
     Rome tapped her helmet with a finger. “I still have my bloco and stilo.”

Well, this worked out quite well as we know.