Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 159

Aason Bierak, Part 2

Yesterday, I introduced you to Aason Bierak, the first born son of Rei and Rome and gave you a bit of his background genetically. Today, we will discuss Aason's childhood growing into an adult after the events of Rome's Revolution.

Aason spent his formative years on the world of Deucado which only has 90% of the gravity of Earth. As a result, he grew taller than his father. By age 21, Aason stands at 6 foot 6 inches tall. However, because he developed with a pair of the 25th chromosome, his muscles are more powerful than his father's despite the fact that he grew up in a lower gravity world.

At 21, Aason is a handsome young man with brown hair and dark eyes that appear to glow, even in daylight. He can communicate with any Vuduri or Overmind or cut himself off at a moment's notice. He is brilliant, insightful and sensitive. He has both a caring side and is also capable of utterly objective logic. Occasionally, he cracks a joke but it is a rare thing.

At the end of Rome's Evolution, we found out that Rome had been pardoned of her crimes which meant she was allowed to return to Earth. When Aason was 13, his parents took him and his sister Lupe to the Earth to learn about his parents' birth world. When he was 20, he led an expedition to the "other" continents on the eastern hemisphere of Deucado called Sul and Toraode. He discovered traces of a lost civilization called the Suduri. His findings there may be documented in a future story.

Aason's first girlfriend was a mandasurte girl by the name of Vendi. She eventually broke his heart, in small part because of interference by Lupe but mostly because of his heritage. As he grew up, coming from heroes' blood, he always did the right thing. You could call Aason a real-life White Knight. The only problem is, a White Knight always dies alone. Women are drawn to the White Knight but ultimately they must leave him. No woman can ever stand up to his perfection and eventually seeks out a man of lesser makeup that does not make her feel inferior. Witness what happened to King Arthur. His wife, Guinevere, was eventually driven into the arms of Sir Lancelot.

Will this be Aason's fate? I hope not. I like the kid. You will find out in the upcoming novel The Milk Run which should be out early in 2014 AD.

Aason Bierak, Part 1

Aason Bierak was first introduced in Rome's Revolution. He is the most unusual boy in the world, perhaps the universe. His mother is a mosdurece (half-blood) Vuduri woman named Rome. She has the normal 23 chromosome set as does every member of homo sapiens. However, Rome also has an additional chromosome, number 24, which she inherited from her mother.

Rome also received an artificial chromosome, number 25, when she ingested a yellow pill created by OMCOM. This chromosome crossed the placental barrier and made its way into Aason's genetic structure, matching the one Aason already had received from his father. Rome was also injected by the Vuduri on Deucado with a second version of the 24th chromosome which also migrated across the placental barrier while Aason was in utero so he has it as well.

Aason became self-aware, as do all Vuduri children, while he was just a fetus. He could not communicate with his mother and tried to "push" his way to her. This caused Rome to develop polyhydramnios and she was in severe distress toward the end of the pregnancy.

Upon his birth, his parents discovered that Aason has all the advanced characteristics of his mother including complex optics, a second internal iris and has a fully functional PPT resonance. He also inherited his father Rei's Essessoni build, Rei's sonar-vision and the EM-based "cell-phone" in the head shared by both of his parents.

Not only was he born of parents who have saved mankind four times over, Aason has personally saved mankind twice himself before the age of five. In fact, he was barely a week old when he saved the Earth from destruction. He was the only living being capable of communicating with the Stareater Hirdinharsaway and kept the titanic creature from consuming the Sun. Because he was a double mosdurece equipped with a pair of the 25th chromosome, he could speak to the Stareater without passing out. This was the climax of Rome's Revolution.



Aason also saved mankind from the MASAL's Sipre and used his four-year-old skill set to reveal the location of the secret Onsira base during the stirring climax of Rome's Evolution. He also tipped off his parents and MINIMCOM as to his location when he was kidnapped near the end of The Ark Lords. All in all, a brave and resourceful boy.

Tomorrow, the life and times of Aason Bierak.

The 24th Chromosome, Part 2

Starting tomorrow, I am going to give you some of the physical characteristics of Aason and Lupe Beirak. As mentioned in yesterday's post, the world of Rome's Revolution, the 24th chromosome plays a huge role in shaping the Vuduri, the future of mankind. This is the rest of the entry from my Wiki on the 24th chromosome.

Other effects of the 24th chromosome were improved resistance to infection and rapid healing. But beyond the ability to communicate telepathically, the most striking change were to the eyes. The Vuduri developed a second, internal, iris which served almost as "built-in sunglasses" that reacted instantaneously to too much light. The retina developed iRods which could detect infrared and uCones which could see into the ultraviolet. Also, the retina became reflective, essentially a mirror. A second, tiny mirror developed right in the middle of the pupil creating, in effect, a telescope using Maksutov-Cassegrain optics. A side-effect of having a reflective retina, called a tapetum (like that of a cat) was the eyes of a Vuduri would appear to glow, even in dim lighting.

Another, rarely discussed change was that the Vuduri do not have hair below their eyeballs eliminating the need to ever shave!

Unfortunately, there was one other change, more profound, that was designed to be recessive. In other words, its effects would not be seen initially and would only occur when the proper pair of Vuduri mated. Once this genotype expressed itself as a phenotype, the eyes of the person changed. They became very dark, almost black. But the internal changes were far worse. This last change caused either half the brain or later the entire brain to develop, not as a human brain, but as a computing engine built of the biological equivalent of memrons.

These people, known as the Onsiras, were essentially human robots that reported to MASAL. It was his long-term plan to convert all of mankind into these living machines, under his control.

The change did not occur as quickly as MASAL would have liked and he became impatient. He precipitated the Robot War and decimated the population, preserving those individuals most likely to give birth to Onsiras and eliminating those least likely. The mandasurte were particularly vexing since they would never evolve into an Onsira so MASAL established the prison world of Deucado to clandestinely kidnap and imprison them and ultimately eliminate them.

The 24th Chromosome, Part 1

Over the next few days, I am going to give you some of the physical characteristics of Aason and Lupe Beirak. You must realize by now that in the world of Rome's Revolution, the 24th chromosome plays a huge role in shaping the Vuduri, the future of mankind. This is the entry from my Wiki on the 24th chromosome.

In the mid-34th century, MASAL designed and developed the 24th chromosome. Once the scientists who worked with the super-computer were satisfied that it was safe, it was introduced to the population, initially by injection. The liquid contained transcription-RNA within an artificial virus for delivery directly into the nucleus of the cells. It passes through the blood-brain barrier and delivers this therapy to the brain as well.

It was mandatory that all citizens receive the rejection but a sizable segment, later known as the mandasurte, refused. To guarantee that it was passed on to subsequent generations, the chromosome pairs were diploid, meaning two pair per person rather than one. This way, a person with the 24th chromosome could mate with a person with only 23 and the child would still have a working set, although they would be called mosdurece, meaning half-blood.

The 24th chromosome had many effects on the human body, the most obvious one was the development of organo-metallic elements integrated in their neural pathways which serve as gravitic transmitters and receivers. In other words, people with functional 24th chromosome transceivers could communicate mentally. One unexpected byproduct was the Overmind which quickly arose and became, essentially, the ruling force behind the people now known as the Vuduri.

Tomorrow: other effects of the 24th chromosome.

MINIMCOM's blood lines

MINIMCOM plays such a large role in Rome's Revolution that you might find it hard to believe that he wasn't even a planned character. Originally, I envisioned him as being a slightly fussy auto-pilot, patterned after the intelligent bomb in the movie Dark Star and no more.

However, once I started writing what was then VIRUS 5 - Book 2, which became Part 2, MINIMCOM mutated into the beginnings of the character we know and love today. He became super-intelligent because OMCOM had the Vuduri graft 32PB of additional processing and storage capacity. A little bit of OMCOM's personality seeped through as well. Then his airframe became fused with tamed VIRUS units which MINIMCOM elected to call constructors. Their memrons contributed to the whole which is MINIMCOM. As a result, his physical starship persona can be reformed at will as we see in the first part of Part 3 of Rome's Revolution as well as his transforming into, well, a Transformer-like giant robot in Rome's Evolution.



One of the shockers in The Ark Lords was that MINIMCOM had bulked up so much that when he was fitted with the first generation null fold drive, he had to shed some mass and thus MINIMCOM, Jr. was 'born'. MINIMCOM refers to Junior as his son but the reality is Junior is more like a clone.

Down the road, MINIMCOM gives "birth" to yet another starship by the name of Fury (a "girl" starship??) who becomes Lupe's faithful sidekick.

Eventually, Junior gives "birth" to a son of his own named MINIMCOM III but everyone calls the starship Tray as in the third. Tray and Aason's son, Rory, become life-long friends and their adventures will be documented down the road.

MINIMCOM doesn't age in the traditional sense and still helps Rei and Rome well into their 80s, 90s and beyond. How they got live so long is a story for another day.

Weapons of the future

In the world of Rome's Revolution, there are many weapons based upon the technology of the 35th century and others that are based upon technology which we know about today. Yesterday's post described one such weapon, the laser pulse rifle. However there are many more weapons described in the books. Here is a brief summary:

Vuduri:
-Plasma Pistol - small PPT Generator-driven hand weapon - shoots controllable (adjustable) beam of plasma. Since it uses Casimir Pumps at its core, it essentially never runs out of fuel
-PPT Thrower/Rifle - PPT Throwers can be adapted into deadly weapons
-Electrostatic Charge Disrupters - basically they throw lightning bolts at objects
-Magnetic Pulse Cannons - EMP shaped pulse cannons. Reduces anything electronic to smoking ruins

Erklirte/Essessoni:
-Particle Beam Cannon - Drilling rigs convert to particle beam cannons. They vaporize large swatchs of ground.
- Laser Pulse Rifle - Powerful laser rifles. They do not emit a continuous beam, rather short bursts of far more powerful laser light.
-Flamethrowers - These were selected because the fuel for them could be frozen for many centuries and when thawed, still be volatile and effective.
-Mini-nukes - Small atom bombs. Tactical in nature. Yield is just three tenths of a kiloton of explosive power.

Hanry Ta Jihn (From The Ark Lords)
-Vorasdock - actually just M4 Carbine rifles stored in perfect conditions for 600 years

MINIMCOM:
-PPT Thrower/Cannon - In The Ark Lords, MINIMCOM adapted his "roadgrader" PPT Throwers to become cannons. They could level a square kilometer in under one second.
-"Weaponized" VIRUS Units - special version of VIRUS units that can communicate with Rome and Rei. They use a hierarchical management structure with the supervisory units referred to as "queens." These units can operate within an oxygen atmosphere.

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You might think that from these descriptions that I am a violent person. I assure you I am not. However, weapons are a fact of life (2001: A Space Odyssey featured a bone as shown above) so I just figured that as technology advanced, so would weapon design.

Laser Pulse Rifles

While laser pulse rifles are mentioned in Rome's Revolution, they really don't achieve any prominence until the Jack Henry saga in The Ark Lords and an attempt by the Darwin group to use them to intimidate Rome and Rei.

I thought I would give you a little more information on how they work:

While laser pulse rifles can be operated in continuous mode, their normal mode of operation is pulsed, hence the name. The weapons designers discovered that pulsing the laser could be as effective as a continuous beam in killing people. When operated in this manner, they use a fraction of the energy and therefore their power source lasted longer.

The way they work is a quick pulse of laser energy vaporizes the first solid substance it hits. The next pulse drives the "puff" of material forward and simultaneously vaporizes a new section. So instead of the hole being created like you see in the movies, it is more like the original design of the Project Orion nuclear spaceship.

After reading The Ark Lords, you may be wondering why the laser pulse rifles did not cauterize the human tissue they drilled through. Conceptually, it is the difference between a dashed line and a solid line. While maybe half of the tissue is cauterized, the rest is blown away by organic material. This is why the people who are hit by laser pulses bleed out so quickly. If the Ark Lords used a continuous laser beam, all it would do would be to punch a tiny hole in the target and therefore not necessarily inflict much damage. Laser pulse rifles are specifically designed to cause massive bleeding.

There is one scene where a soldier does turn his rifle on continuous and swings it around, like a very thin light saber. But mostly they use it to cause massive bleeding and a quick death with very little energy.

Sadly, even today, people are actually making these weapons but let's hope they don't get too popular any time soon!

Vuduri Starship Controls, Part 3

As mentioned in yesterday's post, in the world of Rome's Revolution, the starship controls in space act differently than when operating in atmospheric mode. Today's post will cover how to use the controls to jump through a PPT tunnel:

FTL Travel using PPT Tunnels:
For the PPT stardrive to operate, you must be at a complete standstill relative to the nearest gravitational point of reference. Most Vuduri just rotate their craft and use the plasma thrusters to bring them to a halt. They rotate the ship around, alter the width of the tunnel using the yellow ring if necessary (most ships have a tiny triangular indicator for the proper size for that ship) then punch the center button to project negative energy in front of the ship. The more negative energy, the deeper the tunnel and the faster the effective velocity. Once the tunnel is the proper size and depth, the ship (typically using the plasma thrusters) moves forward and through the tunnel.

To travel continuously at FTL speeds, you have to stop, create a tunnel, go through, turn around, stop, turn around, make another tunnel and so on. During their long journey between Tabit and Deucado, Rei finds this method of travel very tedious. Eventually, MINIMCOM figured out how to force project a continuous series of tunnels so there was no more stop, go, stop go. In The Ark Lords, OMCOM figures out how to apply the Casimir Effect to negative energy and invents the null-fold drive which is much, much faster.

Hopefully this will be enough to get you going should you come across an abandoned Vuduri starship and want to take it out for a spin.

Vuduri Starship Controls, Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, in the world of Rome's Revolution, all Vuduri starships are designed the same way. They have two main modes of operation: atmospheric and space.

The elements of control are:
- A small rocker switch to toggle between modes.
- Dual joysticks, each 12 cm tall - their operation depends upon which mode: atmospheric or space.
- PPT controls - an outer wheel which controls the size of the tunnel and a pushbutton which controls the amount of negative energy. Today we cover Space mode:

Space:
Flipping the small rocker switches the controls to space mode. The right stick becomes the primary mechanism for small changes in attitude or speed. Pushing it forward causes the rear trimjets to fire so the ship accelerates. Pulling it back causes the front trimjets to fire slowing you down. The left joystick controls the plasma thrusters. You press on the top button to activate them, it is a safety switch. As they are firing, pushing the left joystick forward causes you to move forward. You can use the throttle lock on the right to then release the left joystick. Pulling back on the left joystick simply throttles down the plasma thruster. There is no braking action. In space, to brake quickly, you must rotate the craft 180 degrees and fire the plasma thrusters in retro-mode. Otherwise you will have to rely upon the trimjets to slow you down.

Tomorrow, for the final piece, we will cover the actual jump through a PPT tunnel.

Vuduri Starship Controls, Part 1

In the 35th century world of the Vuduri and Rome's Revolution, all Vuduri starships are designed the same way. They have two main modes of operation: atmospheric and space.

The elements of control are:
- A small rocker switch to toggle between modes.
- Dual joysticks, each 12 cm tall - their operation depends upon which mode: atmospheric or space.
- PPT controls - an outer wheel which controls the size of the tunnel and a pushbutton which controls the amount of negative energy.

Atmospheric Mode:
Any Vuduri craft which is capable of flight has a small set of wings. These are not for lift. That is provided by the Electro-Gravity pods. The wings are for control. They use flaps to roll the ship left or right, the same as an airplane. The joystick on the left is the throttle. With the right stick pulled back, pulling back on the left stick causes the ship to move forward faster. Pushing it forward halts the thrust. Pushing it all the way forward causes a braking action. Rotating clockwise or counterclockwise causes the ship to rotate about its center axis using trimjets regardless of its orientation, very handy for getting a ship upright. Rotation of right stick controls rolls the ship banks the ship and is more normal for flight control when oriented properly.

There is a button on top of the left joystick which can be used to fire the plasma thrusters, even within an atmosphere. It operates essentially as afterburners to explosively accelerate the ship. The button on the right stick is a throttle lock. Setting it would allow you to release the button on the left and continue at the desired acceleration or velocity.

The controls can also be used to hover the craft. You must leave the right stick upright. As mentioned before, rotating the left stick causes the trimjets to fire rotating the craft about its midpoint. When hovering, pulling back on the throttle causes the ship to rise up in the air. Pressing it forward causes it to descend. It sounds more complicated than it is. Rei found it very natural to control the ship within the atmosphere.

Tomorrow, we go into space.