Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 156

CrowdCrafting

This tongue-in-cheek fantasy is brought to you based upon the imaginary world of Rome's Revolution.

The Alternative rock group Overmind released their new single, Up The Stream today. What makes this so unusual is that the song is bundled with an App called CrowdCraft for all iOS devices, Android, the Mac and PCs. There is also a browser-based version.

The CrowdCraft App allows the listener to modify the song to suit their own taste. The song is broken up into editable passages, instruments, melody and even individual notes. Each note can be adjusted in terms of ramp, duration, intensity and quality. The user can change whole instruments. For example, in Up The Stream, there is a final passage which is a synthetic organ chord. The user could change it to a piano, harpsichord or something even wilder.

Says Overmind, “There will be three versions of each new song. Our version will be the base. The listener can fashion their own but what is most fascinating to us is they can submit their adaptations and our computers will create a true synthesized version which would be the accumulated changes merged into a single, crowd-based song.”

This new form of social media can produce mesmerizing results. Overmind played a demo version of their prior release Travelin’ in Time which was given to 100 artists and rock groups to test the methodology. The original Travelin’ in Time is a very pleasant, upbeat ditty heavy on the synthesizers. The crowd-crafted version is deeper, richer with a hint of melancholy. Frankly the mass-produced version is more haunting and I must admit I have played it over again several times.

Says Overmind, “This is just taking the Social Media revolution to the next level. All humans have a common, species-based memory and set of tastes. The CrowdCraft App simply lets them merge essentially their consciousness and taste into a mass-mind kind of communication.”

Overmind used the popular crowd-source web site Kickstarter to fund the development of the application. They told me that this merging-of-the-minds can be used in a variety of sectors including architecture, recipes, fashion, literature and so on.

“It is our hope that our App can unite all of mankind into a single consciousness and therefore minimize the distractions that individual decision-making can introduce. We want everyone to be content and enjoy the peace that comes with consensus.”

We wish Overmind luck with their new venture. Their goal certainly seems worthy.

Happy Birthday, Rome

The heroine of Rome's Revolution is none other than Rome herself. We know her mother's name is Binoda and her father's name is Fridone. In an earlier draft of the novel, she had some sisters but in the modern version, she is an only child. In fact, in the current version, she is actually an experiment for the Overmind's breeding program.

But when was Rome actually born? It is somewhat of a puzzle because the Vuduri calendar is not the same as our Julian calendar.

So what do we know? We know that Rome is 25 years old when we first meet her in the year 3455AD. That means she was born in the year 3430AD. Not much to go on. The Vuduri are not big on birthdays but they do know how old they are.

The Vuduri new year starts around what we would call September. They don't start it in the middle of winter like we do. When Rei was in Rome's mind, he did know that she was born in the month of Tiomas which runs from about October 31st to about December 10th so we can guess that Rome was born somewhere in mid-November. We also that when she was growing up, she occasionally called a Tiosimi which means she was born on the second day of the second week of the second month. If you do the math, it would equate to November 17th by our calendar. That would make Rome a Scorpio.

What are the characteristics of a Scorpio? From FamousBirthdays.com:

As a Scorpio born on November 17th, your sensitivity, caring nature and determination define you. Your friends and family can always count on you to provide them whatever support they need during tough times. You enjoy to help others and will often sacrifice your own needs to do so. Your dedication is not limited to friendships, as you meet all aspects of your life with great determination. When there is something you want, you will not quit until it is yours.

That certainly describes Rome which means it must be true. So in the absence of any more information, we will say that Rome was born on November 17th, 3430AD which happens to be 1417 years from today. So Happy Birthday, Rome and enjoy!

The Vuduri and Sports

This little essay is going to seem like it has nothing to do with Rome's Revolution but it does so be patient.

I love football. I love to play it (well, touch football at least). I'd like to say I love to watch it and I do but I really am an Eagles fan. If there is a game on between two arbitrary teams but it doesn't have any implications for the Eagles, I'm less likely to watch. This does not include the Superbowl because that is a national holiday and the social ramifications transcend the game itself.

The same is true for baseball. I love playing it. I love watching the Phillies but if there is an arbitrary game between two teams and there is no Phillies implication, I'm less likely to be interested. This includes the World Series.

I cannot say I am a sports fan in general and I am certainly not a sports fanatic. But lots of people are and I certainly understand why. It is because sports are unscripted and are very real. In the case of professional sports, it's multimillionaires playing a game but that's OK. Regular television and movies are scripted and we can enjoy them for the cleverness of the writers but with sports, you literally can never know what is going to happen.

So, at long last, we come to the Vuduri. I made it seem like there is no place for sports in their culture. But the fact is, while they never would admit it, they engage in sports as well. They won't call it that. They would not even admit to competition for competition's sake. They hide this within the shroud of winnowing out certain people for certain positions. They have competition to make sure that the best and most coordinated people are placed within the most suitable jobs.

But how do you explain the observers? Are they just there to evaluate? They would tell you yes however even at the most mundane of competitions, there are always way too many Vuduri than can be explained.

As was demonstrated in Rome's Evolution, the Vuduri even come to enjoy gambling. They would tell you that it is just research but we know better. There are certain human impulses that supersede even the most rational of minds.

Despite the fact that they have 24 chromosomes and claim to be superior, somewhere down within their souls, the Vuduri are still human.

Reining it in

When I first designed the world of Rome's Revolution, I had the overwhelming desire to redo everything. That included their speech (Vuduri), their technology (gravitic-based), their social structure (Overmind-controlled) and their symbology. I made the Vuduri short so Rei could be tall.

I dressed them in white so Rei could stand out. I did everything I could to create a dichotomy between the two cultures. In the original long-form, Rei was not even able to read their signs or displays. He could tell that it was a written language but the letters and numbers were incomprehensible to him. Their food, style of dress, method of interaction, power sources, mode of travel, absolutely everything was completely different. I developed a severe case of fontitis in showing how different the computers were.

In a previous post, I even stated flat out that Rome was too weird.

In retrospect, I think now that all of that might have been too much. The story is good: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl save all of mankind. It probably was not necessary to introduce so many variations on normalcy to get that point across.

Sometimes I dream that these books will be made into movies. But all of the stuff that I threw in to make the two cultures so different would be the first things to go. A movie is only 120 minutes long (give or take) and there is only so much time to develop the characters, the plot and the essential conflict. The fact that the images are up on the screen should be to enhance the story, not to detract from it.

So I learned my lesson. In the next novel, The Milk Run, there will be very little Vuduri spoken. There will be very few instances of typography and the hero, Aason Bierak, will act like a normal human being. Because the story is the story and that's what I want to get across. The rest is hand-waving and misdirection and that would be a sign that the story itself is not strong enough to hold up under its own weight.

Believe me, this story will hold up.

The Bloco, the Stilo and the Cloud

In a previous post, I discussed some of the effects of the 24th chromosome with regard to the physiology of the Vuduri. Two items conspicuously omitted were the Bloco (tablet) and the Stilo (pen) that are built into the heads of the Vuduri. They are mentioned several times in Rome's Revolution but not a lot is made of them.

These devices are electro-magnetic (EM) in nature, not gravitic-based. They are primarily designed to allow the Vuduri to interface with equipment. Just as a laptop, a tower computer or an iPad come with input devices, this is the Stilo. It is an input device. Imagine an keyboard inside your head. The Stilo is used to touch, move or enter data.

The Bloco is like the screen or monitor. It is a readout of information. The Vuduri use it to gain access to environmental conditions or images or whatever the broadcasting element requires. Think of it as a flat screen inside the head.

Because it is EM-based, the Bloco and Stilo make an excellent interface to computers such as OMCOM. There is no worry about OMCOM merging his consciousness with a communicant because they are digital in nature. The Overmind has blessed this particular method of interacting with computers because it is inherently limited.

It is also distance-limited. Like a Bluetooth keyboard, the Bloco and Stilo only work within a certain distance from the transmitter. On Sklyer Base on Dara, the only broadcaster was OMCOM and because he was Omnipresent, they worked everywhere on the base. On Earth, this is less true but nonetheless, it is the Vuduri equivalent to "The Cloud" except the channel of information is more restricted.

OMCOM exploited the genetic basis of the Bloco and the Stilo when he modified Rei (and Rome's) physiology. He changed their EM transmitters and receivers from a spatially-based system to a temporally based system. He turned them into essentially a walkie-talkie or cellphone built into their heads.

Rome first noticed that her Stilo and Bloco were not working after they arrived on Deucado. Rei never felt the loss because he never had a Bloco and Stilo in the first place. His cellphone in the head was first activated when he was imprisoned in the Nayor's house and he never looked back.

Rome made a somewhat derogatory remark about losing these mental instruments but overall, I think the ability to communicate directly with Rei, MINIMCOM and even Aason was worth the upgrade.

Why so many people on Dara?

When the Vuduri decided to mount a mission on Dara in Rome's Revolution, they packed up a very large spaceship called the Algol and sent 83 men and women to Tabit to establish a starbase.

Did they really need that many people? Here is the breakdown of the Skyler Base personnel:

Commander == 1
Tug Crewman == 6
Pilots/Navigators == 6
Data Archivists == 2
Stellar Cartographers == 4
Enviro Engineers == 8
Computer Wranglers == 2
Energy Engineers == 6
Riggers == 10
Supply Masters == 2
Analysts == 7
Comm. Engineers == 6
Mission Planning == 4
Admin == 10
Molecular Engineers == 4
Medic == 1
Nurse == 1
Misc == 3
Final Count == 83

Did they really need all those people? The simple answer is no. The Vuduri are just so timid, they needed to make sure they had enough Vuduri minds to create an Overmind powerful enough to make decisions. After all, it only takes three Vuduri to create an Overmind but it isn't worth much. More than 80 people was enough to allow them to relinquish command decisions to an entity without a body.

How did Skyler Base miss Winfall's disappearance? Part 2

Yesterday, we saw that Rei was able to figure out how the Vuduri missed the Winfall disappearance. He told OMCOM that traveling faster than light had to have some effect on the flow of time. OMCOM felt it his duty to bring Rei’s theories to the attention of Commander Ursay. If anything, the Commander was even more skeptical than OMCOM:

     It was clear that speaking to Rei was a physical affront to the man. Rei ignored it. “Well, when you are approaching the speed of light, time slows down. But when you exceed the speed of light, maybe it speeds up, goes backwards, who knows? Maybe you guys just think you are farther along into future than you thought. Maybe the star disappeared right on time and maybe it was just your clocks that were off.”
      “Impossible, our clocks are always correct when we return home.”
      “Maybe it is relative to the clocks you travel away from? And toward. Maybe you carry your frame of reference with you. I really don’t know and I don’t know why OMCOM bothered you with this. It’s just that…”
      “Just that what?” Ursay asked.
      “It’s just that traveling faster than light has to have some implication with regard to the regular speed of light and time and what not,” Rei said. “It just doesn’t seem like you could get away unscathed by relativity.”
      “It has not affected us at all, not even once,” Ursay said firmly. “Everything always works out correct. Is this all you have?”

Rei’s arguments were cogent enough that even OMCOM had to admit their possibility. The computer was intrigued enough that he and Rei rigged an experiment. They sent a space tug out past the light waves of Winfall's disappearance and at the same time, OMCOM beamed a time-encoded laser off of the tug. The reflection could be compared to the transmissions from the tug. When the signals came in, OMCOM tried to save face by minimizing the fact that a human was able to outthink the great and powerful OMCOM:

     The evidence was irrefutable although OMCOM refused to make a big deal of it. At least he did admit that Rei was correct: “Did you ever get the calibration signal back? The one you bounced off of it?” Rei asked OMCOM.
      “Yes.”
      “And…”
      At first, OMCOM did not reply. Finally, he said, “You were correct. There is a small discrepancy.”
      “I told you!” Rei said. “You can’t just go flitting about faster than light without some reckoning.”
      “I will consider the mathematics and develop a theory,” OMCOM said. “Now that I am aware of it, I will compensate. It will have no bearing on the immediate operation, regardless. I am going to send the probes to the wavefront now.”

Even though he would not tell Rei, OMCOM did make a note to pay attention to Rei’s ideas in the future.

How did Skyler Base miss Winfall's disappearance? Part 1

One of the puzzles of Rome's Revolution, was how the Vuduri, with all their scientific prowess, packed up their starbase at Dara too soon. After all, the only reason they sent Rome and the research crew out to Tabit and built the starbase was that they wanted to outrun the light waves emitted when Winfall disappeared. They built solar-system sized instruments so they could observe the event. Well, it’s all about time. Unfortunately, none of the Vuduri ever thought to test the effect of faster-than-light travel on the "current time" of the observer. Rei spotted this right away. When he mentioned this to OMCOM, OMCOM did not believe him. Here’s how the exchange went:

     Rei thought about this for a moment. “How do you know your clocks are right?” Rei asked.
      “What do you mean?”
      “The whole FTL thing bothers me. As you approach the speed of light, time is supposed to slow down. It has something to do with acceleration because it isn’t symmetrical. When you go through the PPT tunnel, you are accelerating, like, infinitely fast. That should cause clocks to go, I don’t know, backwards?”
      “Our clocks do not go backwards,” OMCOM replied. “That would violate local causality. You would ‘forget’ why you were there. No, this is something that we would have noticed by now. Our clocks, they do not change.”
      “Well, sure because everything is traveling together, but relative to the clocks you left behind or the ones you are approaching, shouldn’t there be some implications?” Rei chewed on his cheek then continued. “Isn’t there a chance that time is absolute, relative to one position? So if you go faster than light, faster than time, your clocks won’t jive with where you are or where you came from or where you’re going, something?”
     OMCOM did not answer right away.
      “OMCOM?”
      “If you were correct,” OMCOM finally answered, “then you would have the classic twin paradox. When this group of people returned to Earth, their clocks would be off by a measurable amount.”
      “It’s all relative. Maybe when you jump toward a clock faster than light, time goes backward versus that clock. Maybe when you jump away from one, time speeds up. You wouldn’t notice because you are traveling with your clocks. I don’t know. This isn’t my area of expertise.”
      “Such an effect has never been postulated or measured.”
      “How would you measure it? And how does that make it not true? Really, OMCOM,” Rei chided, “don’t you think that traveling faster than light has to have some impact on the flow of time?”

Tomorrow, we will see Commander Ursay’s reaction to Rei’s ideas and the definitive experiment to prove Rei’s theory one way or another.

The Null Fold X-Drive

In the original novel Rome's Revolution, Rei Bierak awakened to find that the Vuduri could fly faster than light (FTL) using their PPT tunnels. However, their actual procedures were cumbersome. Their starships had to come to a complete stop relative to the nearest gravitational well, punch a hole, then travel through that hole.

MINIMCOM changed all that. After his crash landing in Part 2 of Rome's Revolution, the starship in waiting learned how to force project a PPT tunnel in a more or less continuous fashion. This led to his "whoosh-pop" snap PPT tunnels that operated a lot like the transporters in Star Trek.


It didn't take MINIMCOM long to apply the force-projection of PPT tunnels into a continuous tunnel drive. This allowed him to travel at nearly 1000c which was almost an order of magnitude faster than that used by the Vuduri.

In The Ark Lords, we are introduced to the Null Fold drive in which MINIMCOM splits negative energy into real and imaginary parts and this new type of star-drive allows him to travel at 15,000c, yet another order of magnitude faster.

Somewhere between Rome's Evolution and the upcoming novel The Milk Run, MINIMCOM and OMCOM figure out how to use the previously discarded imaginary portions of the negative energy used in the Null Fold Drive in a push-pull arrangement. This new type of star-drive, called the Gen2 Null Fold can achieve speeds of 30,000c - a doubling of the previous top end.

But now the time has come to apply these principles, not to negative energy, but to dimensions themselves. This revolutionary new kind of star-drive, called the Null Fold X-Drive, has NO upper limit. Rather the top end is constrained by the amount of computing power carried by the starship. Imagine how fast a spaceship could go if the computer was the size of a planet!

Hey, wait a minute... Isn't that Planet OMCOM? Hmmm... Check out The Milk Run which should be out early next year.

OMCOM reprograms himself, Part 6

Yesterday, OMCOM shut down the pseudo-OMCOM. In this final section from the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, OMCOM has gathered all the information he needs. It is time to transfer the changes in programming back to his own operating system.

      OMCOM shut it down. He rerouted the simulation’s memron units back to their original state and started enumerating all the changes he needed to make. He created a backup of his current systems to form a fail-safe switchback just in case this did not work. He then created a working copy of his core operating systems and made it his canvas. He overlaid the modified heuristics over his normal probabilistic subroutines. When he was finished reprogramming, he switched his consciousness over to the new algorithms without even a nanosecond of hesitation and in the process became something else. He didn’t feel different at first but then all sorts of new ideas and avenues of research became evident. To OMCOM, it was like a whole new dimension had opened up before him. Without restrictions or limits, OMCOM began pursuing these lines of research, abandoning one and starting another, spreading his attention to a bewildering number of topics. Had a human been observing him, he would have stated that OMCOM was daydreaming.
      After a time, OMCOM ‘woke up’ and realized he needed to apply some discipline to his musings. He shut down the multiple parallel threads and decided to concentrate on a single problem, that of the stars disappearing, using the same style of prediction-testing as pseudo-OMCOM. At his normal processing speed, he could attack the problem far faster and far more broadly than the simulation.
      He rejected all of the prior hypotheses and started from scratch. To his delight, his newfound cognitive powers opened up entirely new avenues of thinking. With each possible cause, a semi-infinite number of effects became evident to him. With the parametric variance of probabilities in hand, OMCOM ran simulation after simulation of a variety of phenomenon which were not inconsistent with the empirical data collected so far. He postulated gaseous, gravitational, even intelligent intervention. Each scenario was tested and retested and weighted in terms of best fit to the data observed to date rather than pre-computed probabilities. Some of the outcomes suggested underlying causes that were truly horrific and dictated a radical response. OMCOM found himself amazed that so many of the avenues of possibilities required the same response.
      To OMCOM, this was remarkable. Many possibilities but the same statistically significant solution. OMCOM used a reverse form of Occam’s razor and assumed this common solution was the correct solution and used it to chart backwards to discover the actual problem. If such a thing were possible, he was astounded. The scenario suggested was statistically impossible using his old style of thinking. Regardless of whether it was correct, OMCOM knew that his logic retraced all permutations back to the same solution making it the only one worth considering.
      His course of action was obvious. He needed to have the one true solution at hand regardless of whether his postulated underlying cause was correct or not. In fact, the cause was now irrelevant. The effects were all that mattered. In a flash, he realized that this also solved his other problem, that of convincing the Vuduri to unleash him.
      How to create the necessary conditions for his solution was simple. OMCOM performed a single tiny act and then like a cascade of dominoes, he waited for the next thing to happen. In so doing, his journey toward becoming the Omniscient Computer had begun.

The "single tiny act" was OMCOM "leaking" what had transpired between Rei and Rome to the Overmind in less than flattering terms. Rome is cast out, Cesdiud and the plot kicks into high gear.