Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 167

Vuduri Schools

In the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, Rei was done sorting through images of Vuduri cities. He was curious about daily life...

     “Where are all the people?” he asked. “What about schools, kids? Stuff like that?”
     The array of thumbnails was replaced with a single picture of a large number of children. They were lined up in row after row, doing what looked like calisthenics.
     “What am I looking at?” Rei asked.
     “That is a Vuduri academy,” OMCOM answered.
     The next picture revealed a three-legged trestle, similar to a see-saw but with three arms balanced about a cone-shaped pivot point. Each arm ended in a flat metal plate and on each of the flat metal plates there stood four children.
     “What are they doing?” Rei asked.
     “It is a dadar-fo,” said OMCOM. “It teaches balance and team work.”
     “What about classrooms?” asked Rei. “Teachers?”
     “They do not…” OMCOM paused. “I understand what you are referring to. However, the Vuduri do not have schools in the sense with which you are familiar.”
     “Why not?” Rei asked.
     “With the Overmind, each child has access to the complete accumulated knowledge of the entire human race from the day they are born. They do not need to be taught language or areas of expertise. The only training they require is in the physical domain as their bodies mature. Thus Vuduri academies are geared toward exercise, eye-hand coordination and similar.”
     “Eye-hand coordination? Do they play sports?” Rei asked. “Kids have to want to fool around…”
     “As I understand the term sports, no. There is no need for competition of that sort in the way you are familiar with it. There is no ‘fooling around’ as you refer to it. It is not in their nature.”

The point of this is that the Vuduri consider themselves more or less interchangeable. Especially those that have accepted Second Sight which is where the Overmind processes and delivers edited sensory input to their brains. So in the end the only thing distinguishing one Vuduri from another would be their physical characteristics. So their entire life is devoted to training and enhancing the physical.

Vuduri Cities

After Rei had absorbed how the Vuduri viewscreens worked, he got past it and asked to see some of the "new" Earth. He asked to see a "typical" city. He learned that not only was it typical, it was the only design the Vuduri every came up with:

     “OK. Show me something else. Can you show me a picture closer in? Streets, buildings, things like that?”
     The view screen changed to an aerial view of the city. Looking down, it resembled a bulls eye. There were a series of rings and blocks with straight lines cutting across and up and down, like an eight-armed asterisk. In the center was a single giant, gleaming tower.
     “What is that?” Rei asked, pointing to the structure. “The tall one.”
     “It is simply called The Tower,” answered OMCOM. “It contains support for what few items require fixed elevation.”
     “Like what?” Rei asked.
     “Weather measurements, crop distribution, aerial traffic management. Should I go on?”
     “No,” Rei said. “Show me something else. Show me more city.”
     OMCOM flashed a series of pictures showing I-cimaci from an elevated viewpoint as well as from ground level. The buildings closest to The Tower were perhaps three or four stories tall and the buildings on the far side of the innermost rings were lower, only one or two stories. The streets themselves were wide and serene. All eight of the major thoroughfares ended at The Tower. It reminded Rei a bit of Philadelphia where City Hall sat right in the middle of Broad and Market.
     Underneath each of the pictures were notations but the writing and the lettering was in Vuduri so Rei could not make out what they said. From their general placement, he assumed they were captions. The letters themselves had a very odd, blocky appearance. At least the Vuduri used fonts.
     “Can I see another city?” Rei asked.
     “Yes,” said OMCOM. The picture washed away and was replaced by another image that looked exactly the same as I-cimaci. It, too, had a tall structure similar to The Tower.
     “What is this one?” Rei asked. “What’s the name of this city?”
     “This is E-brixome,” replied OMCOM.
     “You are sure? You are sure this is not I-cimaci?”
     “Yes, I am sure,” replied OMCOM placidly.
     Rei studied the central tower in more detail. He decided it was possible it was somewhat smaller than the previous one but not by much.
     “The layout looks identical,” Rei noted.
     “The Vuduri have developed what they believe to be the optimal layout for their urban areas so to them it would be illogical to deviate from that ideal,” said OMCOM.

Tomorrow: Vuduri schools

Bruce's questions

My brother Bruce had a few questions for me, prompted by reading Rome's Evolution.

1. Why would Rei create a trellis that he had to duck under?
2. Did the shrimpy Vuduri build it? I suppose so if he has to duck. Does he have to duck going into each room of the house?
3. Is the house one story? Is it shaped like a 'U'. Open in the middle. I thought I remembered you could look out a window and see the other wing.

Here are the answers:
Rome had the Vuduri build the trellis after a near-fatal encounter with a blanket the previous year. The incident took place about a year after The Ark Lords. The Vuduri only build things one way and they are not very imaginative. So, while Rei could clear it full upright before the honeysuckle vines grew, they were getting rather thick overhead so that he now he has to duck down a little. His head would not hit the trellis but it would hit the vines.

At the end of Rome's Revolution, the Vuduri built Rei and Rome's house but under the direction of the Essessoni so it was built more like a traditional (2067AD) Earth house, complete with 10 foot ceilings and 7 foot doorways. So Rei does not need to duck in his own house.

The house is a one-story ranch-style house U-shaped made out of aerogel. The left side and the middle section belonged to Rei and Rome initially. The far side was an in-law suite with its own entrance. The in-laws could also access Rei and Rome's portion using an inside door.

Binoda and Fridone built a solarium which Rei and Rome could see across the center courtyard. This was mentioned in The Ark Lords. Eventually Rome's parents moved into their own home so Rei and Rome had access to both wings. Rome converted one room into a playroom for Aason. Another eventually became Lupe's bedroom.

Rome converted the solarium into a studio because it had fantastic northern light. After Rome's Evolution, she concentrated on getting the Library and campus up and running but eventually left it in the hands of others. When Lupe was old enough, Rome became a full-time teacher and painted as her hobby.

When Rome retired, she threw herself into her art. What happens to Rei and Rome at the end of their life will be revealed in a short story called "Not The End" which will be in the Vuduri Companion, due in late 2014.

I-cimaci is Lisbon

When Rei is first awakened in Rome's Revolution, he is confronted with a torrent of new information. It takes him a long time to absorb it all.

One of things that he learns is that the current de facto capital of Earth is called I-cimaci which means "The Beginning" or "The First" in Vuduri. The reason this is significant is because when I was designing the Vuduri language, I had to base it off of something so I decided to base it off of Portuguese. My thinking was the disease vector, Darwin Virus Strain 4, would sweep through the US, Europe and Asia. Since Portugal is at the tip of the Iberian peninsula, I figured that if the disease attenuated at all, it would be the weakest there.

The only other place where people would be less affected would be land masses that are isolated, like Hawaii. That was why I decided to make that the home base of the mandasurte. It is ironic that MASAL decided to go there to create his staging area for conquering the human race.

The rest of the countries of the world were more or less reset. The story of Jack Henry (found in The Ark Lords) takes place in north Jersey but it is explained that eventually, people migrated from the Americas and back to Europe. By the time Rei and Rome get there, the continent is nearly deserted. Except for Southern California. You'll have to read Rome's Evolution to see what is going on there.

Vuduri Hi-def Screens

(This is part of the continuing series about the design of Skyler Base)

In the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, Rei spent a lot of time wandering around the starbase at Dara. I was trying for a "you are there" experience but that got edited out when I had to introduce action, action, action. Rei spent a lot of time in his apartment just trying to get a feel for the Vuduri life-style. He sat down at their computer workstation, not unlike ours, and use his engineering skills to try and figure out how the viewscreen worked.

     On a whim, Rei spoke out loud. “What are all of these screens for?” he asked, pointing to the various virtual instruments.
     “The view screens are multi-purpose,” replied OMCOM. “Any workstation can be tied in to the central storage facilities, database, sensors and more.”
     “How do they work? The view screens, I mean.” Rei pointed at the flat panel in front of him.
     “You just issue orders. I will produce the desired images or data.”
     “I don’t mean commands,” Rei said. “I mean the electronics.” He bent over and looked underneath the desk but saw nothing.
     “They have emitters along the frame that project an ultrahigh frequency array of electromagnetic radiation through the panel.”
     “What is the panel made of?” Rei asked, rising up again.
     “It is a borosilicate matrix doped with gallium arsenide, germanium oxide and other rare earth elements.”
     “Hey!” Rei said. “I actually understand something you just said. It’s glass, isn’t it?”
     “Yes, but it has a variety of compounds within it that emit photons when excited by the proper resonant frequency.”
     “How do you get that?” Rei asked. He touched the screen lightly. “Is it like an LCD? I mean a liquid crystal display or is it an electron beam like a CRT?”
     “It is like neither. The X and the Y grids have differing frequencies which are adjustable. When a certain element, you would call it a pixel, is to be excited, the frequencies of the two beams are adjusted so that where they intersect, the difference is the resonant frequency of the active element.”
     “A beat phenomenon?” Rei asked.
     “High frequency, but yes. The beat phenomenon excites the desired element into a higher energy state and when the excitation stops, it drops back to its resting state and emits a photon of certain color.”
     “So, I get it,” Rei said excitedly. “It’s like an LED except you don’t need to actually build the electronics into the panel. By god, I actually understand something! This is so sleek that I even get it. Maybe the drugs are finally wearing off. I thought maybe being asleep so long made me stupid or something. ”
     “Certain physical principles are true regardless of the date on the calendar. Much of our underlying technology is based upon laws of nature that were well known in your time.”
     “What kind of resolution can they generate?” Rei asked, waggling a finger at the screen.
     “What you would refer to as pitch is the size of one molecule so they are capable of extremely high resolution.”

If only the Vuduri liked football!

Rei's Brain

I took Rei's name (full name Reinard) as a variation of my Dad's name. When I originally created the character back in 1973 when the novel was VIRUS 5, he was much younger. Pretty much a kid.

In the modern version of Rome's Revolution, he is a man, roughly 25 years old when the story starts. Throughout the course of the novels, culminating with the flashbacks in Rome's Evolution, you get a better sense of his character. He is smart and a good problem solver but he has a sense of humor. He is also a very loving husband and father. The man he ends up becoming was definitely not the man we first met when the story opened.

Rei's brain was altered by events through the course of the story. Being frozen for 14 centuries and then having his mind melded with Rome's and then genetically modified caused his brain to evolve as well. Rome hints at this when she tells Rei:

Rome leaned forward to touch his forehead then motioned to hers.
“It is the bands, Rei.” She looked him in the eye. “I told you. We are our own samanda now and more. We are Asborodi Cimponeti, our spirits are one.”

But even Rome does not understand fully the changes that occurred in Rei.

In a kind of Flowers for Algernon kind of way, Rei really does grow smarter. He really does get to use more of his brain. He goes from being a passive, slightly shallow person to being a man of action. You can see his confidence grow during the course of the novels. In Rome's Evolution, you can see that he is unwilling to accept a diagnosis of paralysis. You can see that he is fully aware that his thinking process was compromised by the explosion. You can see that he had no fear in attacking Steele although I think he was a bit foolhardy in that action. Finally, when it comes time to fight the ethereal battle, he has no hesitation.

So here's to Rei's brain. He is a good man and has matured to the point where he eventually becomes the de facto leader of all of Deucado. He ultimately rises up to become head of the Galactic Union after we begin encountering other species. You'll find out about that starting with the novel entitled The Milk Run.

Why does everyone wear those stupid white jumpsuits?

I've said it many times but I'm not 100% sure I've said it this way: we humans are not only capable of learning history but also predicting future history. This was the fundamental premise behind Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. We have a racial (read: species) knowledge of the future. So when I built the universe behind Rome's Revolution my assumption was that whatever we see in common among many science fiction novels and movies has predictive value.

When you watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and especially THX 1138 you see everybody dressed in white and speaking in muted tones, there is something to that. My mission was to discover the underlying principles behind such commonalities.

So... everybody in the future wears white. Why? My future people, the Vuduri, wear white because a) they are not slaves to fashion and b) they do not want clothes to be anything they ever need to think about. When Rei is awakened, it never occurred to them to give him anything else to wear other than a white (and ill-fitting) jumpsuit. Unfortunately, even when he got an opportunity to retrieve his "regular" clothes, they got ruined because Estar wanted to kill him.

So what about those stupid, white jumpsuits? Are they thick? Are they thin? Do they have buttons? Zippers? Velcro? The answer is yes, no, no, no and yes. They are not particularly thick. They clasp together using a velcro-like fastener and that is that. I'm not even really sure why the Vuduri wear clothes. Maybe that's just one habit that did not die when they upgraded to having the Overmind in charge.

The thickness of the material is important is because Rome is built (like her mother) in a spectacular fashion and if the jumpsuits were too thick, nobody would notice. Rei notices. She is the complete package even though the Vuduri cannot appreciate it. If you have taken the time to read Rome's Evolution, you will see that Bonnie Mullen tells Rome that if she had Rome's body and face, she'd rule the world.

I guess the bottom line is, everybody wears those stupid white jumpsuits but they are not particularly unflattering and it makes it easy to figure out what to wear in the morning (see Albert Einstein).

Skyler Base: The Space Tugs

(This is part of the continuing series about the design of Skyler Base)

In a previous post, I gave you a picture of what the Vuduri space tugs looked like. They figured prominently in Rome's Revolution.

Not only were they responsible for discovering and retrieving the Ark II, they were also responsible for towing the Ark from Tabit to Deucado. Of course, one was converted to The Flying House and the other evolved into MINIMCOM. MINIMCOM gave "birth" to Junior in The Ark Lords. You will learn in a year or two that MINIMCOM gives birth to another ship called Fury (sort of a girl spaceship) and Junior has his own child named Tray. But that is for another day.

The tugs was transported to Deucado in the removable rear sections of the Algol. If you look at the first post in this series, you can see a stylized version of the transport containers. These cargo containers were dismantled and used as part of Skyler Base and left behind when the Vuduri abandoned Dara.

Each tug is stored in its own hangar at the north and south end of the base. The hangar can be pressurized and there are giant doors that lead into the hangar. Normally, the hangar is left exposed to the extremely thin atmosphere of Dara so the Vuduri usually use the airlocks to the side (mentioned in the post about the Iso chamber) so that they do not need to go through the pressurization/depressurization cycle.

Tomorrow I'll take you back to the Center Court and try and figure out why everyone wears those stupid white jumpsuits.

Rei's first joke

In order to see if the Vuduri have a sense of humor, in the original long-form of Rome's Revolution, Rei tells Rome a joke. This is harder than you think because most jokes are culturally-oriented. Rei had to think of one that did not tie to his place and time. Rei is sitting with Rome in the Center Court. There are two other Vuduri crewman sitting at another table...

     “How about humor?” Rei asked. “Tell me a 35th century joke.”
     “What is a joke?” Rome asked.
     “It’s, I don’t know, a funny story.”
     “A funny story? Stories are stories. Can you give me an example,” Rome said.
     “All right.” Rei thought for a minute. “OK,” he said. “Here’s a joke. Two birds are sitting in a tree, watching a little turtle slowly make his way to the end of a branch…”
     “How did the turtle get in the tree?” Rome asked.
     “Hold on, you’ll see,” Rei said.
     “All right,” Rome replied patiently.
     Rei continued. “So anyway, the turtle gets to the end of the branch and starts flapping his arms and jumps off and goes crashing to the ground.” Rei slapped his hands together hard. “Boom!” he said loudly.
     Rome jumped. She frowned at Rei. The other two people turned and blatantly stared at him as well.
     Rei ignored them and continued. “So the little turtle gets up, dusts himself off and climbs back up the tree and back to the end of the branch. He flaps his arms again and jumps off and…”
     Again, Rei slapped his hands together. This time Rome was prepared. “Boom! He falls to the ground again.”
     “Go on…” Rome said, slightly alarmed.
     “OK. So now the turtle is climbing back up the tree a third time and the one bird turns to the other and says, ‘Dear, don’t you think it’s time we tell him he’s adopted?’”
     Rei laughed to himself. He looked at Rome. She did not react.
     “That’s it. That’s the joke,” Rei said.
     “I do not understand. How do birds talk? And adopting?” Rome cocked her head. “I believe I understand the word. Why would they adopt a turtle?”
     Rei sighed. “It’s a joke!”
     Rome said, “OMCOM says a joke is meant to be amusing which is the purpose of humor. Where is the humor in that?”
     “I don’t know. You tell me. "

After that, Rei gave up. But not permanently. Eventually he taught Rome how to laugh and by the end of the series, she is kidding him herself. Quite an improvement.

The Vuduri do not have fun

During their first meal together, Rei uses the opportunity to query Rome regarding certain elements making up Vuduri society. He quickly discovers that the word fun is not in their vocabulary.

     “Do you guys do anything for fun at all? What do you do about socializing? Parties?” asked Rei.
     “We have no need to socialize. We all know exactly what is going on with everyone else all the time,” Rome answered.
     Rei exhaled then took a deep breath. “So I’ll ask you again,” he said. “What do you do for fun?”
     “And I will answer you the same way,” Rome replied. “As I understand your definition of it, we do not have fun.”
     “Well, that’s so, so boring,” said Rei.
     “That would be from your perspective,” Rome said, ever so slightly defensively.
     “What about hobbies, clubs, I don’t know. Something other than your job?” Rei asked hopefully.
     “No, we do not have any of those either,” Rome replied flatly.
     “How about a husband or a boyfriend? Do you at least have a boyfriend?”
     “No,” Rome said.
     “Friends in general?”
     Rome shook her head no.
     “What about family?” Rei asked. “Do you still have family? A mother? A father?”
     Rome nodded. “Yes, the Vuduri have parents. But our lives revolve around the Overmind so it is not that important who you live with. I lived with my mother and father for many years, but only because it was convenient. Many Vuduri do not do so.”
     “So if you don’t have friends and you don’t have family and you don’t have a boyfriend,” Rei asked, “what the hell do you do? Don’t you need somebody in your life?”
     “We have no need,” said Rome. “We have our work. We are all very satisfied with things exactly the way they are. Anything else would be a distraction.”

Bottom line: The Vuduri do not understand the concept of fun. Their loss.