Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 171

Who is Binoda?

As mentioned in previous posts, I tried to think of actors to play Rome and Rei. I don't know if I was successful but those posts seemed to be popular. So here are two actresses I picked out who might be good as Binoda.

The first is Lisa Hartman. I don't know if blonde is her natural hair color. I know that at 5' 4", she is the right height. She is also a very good actress so that part helps. Here is her picture:



The second actress I looked at was Lynda Carter who you may remember played Wonder Woman on TV. She has the right color hair and a very regal presence but she may be too tall. The records show her at 5' 9" tall and Rome is supposed to be just a smidge over 5 feet so I'm assuming Binoda is not that tall. Here is Lynda's picture:



When Rei first met her in Part 3 of Rome's Revolution, she was supposed to exude a sort of superiority aura that made the regular Vuduri back away from her. Her touching reunion with Fridone still tugs at my heart and I wrote the stupid thing.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much for her to do after that. For the remainder of Rome's Revolution and through The Ark Lords and even Rome's Evolution, she spends most of her time looking after Aason. I wish I had more for her to do because she seems like a really capable woman. Sorry, Binoda.

P.S. I do have one sleeper actress who might make a great Binoda. None other than Kelly Brook who is getting to be too old to play Rome but might just be the perfect age to play Binoda by the time we get to the third movie!

Binoda and Fridone, a love story

In the beginning of The Ark Lords, Rome learns of the Slayer program although Fridone never called it that by name. He did reveal to Rome that Binoda had been sent to seduce him and mate with him for reasons that were never made clear to Binoda. The Overmind equipped her with a killer body and the Espansor Bands and sent her to Hawaii, ostensibly to study the migration patterns of the Red Opah. This was a fish that Fridone knew well.

After she arrived in Hawaii, she put on a specially fitted Vuduri jumpsuit that accentuated her curves even more. Think Jessica Rabbit. However, when she arrived at Fridone's boat and started up the gangplank, before she could even begin putting on a show, she slipped and fell and hit her head and chipped a tooth. Fridone helped a groggy Binoda on board and held her firmly until she felt strong enough to stand. The boat was unmoored and their voyage began, out into the open waters of the Pacific.

As if the chipped tooth and disheveled hair wasn't enough, Binoda quickly discovered she had no sea-legs and spent much of the early part of the voyage hanging over the railing, throwing up. She was a mess. Fridone was amused but empathetic and took her down into the cabin and showed her how to sit, knees pressed against her chest until she adjusted to the wave pattern.

Binoda was so grateful that she revealed to Fridone her true mission. She even showed him the Espansor Bands and told him the Overmind's plan. To her surprise, Fridone said he would try it with her as his curiosity was piqued.

Well, just like in Rome's Revolution, the bands malfunctioned and they joined souls and the rest is (future) history.

Binoda, Part 2

As we found out in Rome's Evolution, after the Overmind discovered the Onsira transformation, he set aside a secret cabal of scientists to determine the cause and the cure. Most Vuduri had a diploid pair of the 24th chromosome. This artificial chromosome only reproduced through mitosis, not meiosis so each Vuduri had to have two pair to guarantee their child had a dual set.

When they examined the 24th chromosome more carefully, they came up with (what was originally thought to be) a recessive element of the 24th chromosome coming forward but the frequency of the phenotype was increasing. They determined that the cure would be to try interbreeding the Vuduri with the mandasurte creating a race of half-bloods (called mosdurece in Vuduri) to prevent the Onsira phenotype from expressing itself. This was simply meant to be a delay tactic until they could come up with a longer-term cure. But in the short term, it would end the threat of the Onsiras before it started so the program was called Slayer in Vuduri.

The Overmind decided that if they were going to interbreed full-blooded Vuduri with mandasurte, they wanted the best version of this new type of Vuduri. So they created a genetic mapper, sort of a genetic time machine, that tracked genetic drift backward until they found the closest living great-great-great-grandchildren of Lacy Henry which meant they were the descendents of Jack Henry, Hanry Ta Jihn in Vuduri.

Binoda scored the highest of any Vuduri on the planet. She was therefore the best candidate to interbreed with a mandasurte. The Overmind surreptitiously researched the mandasurte and found a scientist by the name of Fridone who would give them the best offspring. Of course, this turned out to be Rome.

It came as quite a surprise to Binoda the day the Overmind informed her that her mission had changed. The Overmind gave her explicit instructions and six months to mold her body into that which the Overmind believed would be most attractive to Fridone. What the Overmind did not realize is that the attraction could work both ways.

Tomorrow, Fridone and Binoda, a love story.

Binoda, Part 1

Rome's mother, Binoda, makes her first appearance in Part 3 of Rome's Revolution. She was mentioned in passing when Rei and Rome had their first experience with the Espansor Bands. But who is she really?

I don't know that much about her background. Only that she had a fairly non-descript childhood. She was raised by her parents which in and of itself is a tell that she was a little out of the ordinary. She also had a sister, who she knew, which was also unusual.

Binoda was like many young Vuduri and hoped for a career in industrial solvents or space exploration but to her dismay, she discovered she had a natural talent for speaking. Her voice was strong and clear unlike most of her peers who could barely speak.

There is a test they give young Vuduri around 10 years old and it is, in fact, a speaking test. Most Vuduri flunk or in their opinion pass. Binoda was found to have a particularly strong voice.

There are only two career paths for Vuduri with strong voices. One is a liason with the mandasurte. The other is in wrangling animals who are typically not mind-connected. Poor Binoda was put in the second tract before she even hit puberty. She was destined to be a farmhand, raising animals. That was the path she followed for many years, until her 18th birthday.

Unbeknownst to her, the Onsira transformation was already taking place and the Overmind was hard at work trying to uncover the cause and the cure.

Tomorrow, genetics!

My first book signing

Friday, June 14, 2013 was my first book signing. It was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The people at The Doylestown Bookshop and Krisy Paredes in particular made my visit there great.

Many of my friends and family came to the event and the show of support was very gratifying. I even sold 15 books including 10 of Rome's Revolution alone! But the biggest surprise of the evening was the number of people, old and young alike, who stopped by and expressed interest in my books and their longing for more science in their science fiction.

I cannot tell you how musical that was to my ears. To have a 13-year-old beg his mother to buy my book because it had science in it gives me hope not only for my fledgling career as a science fiction writer but for the nation as a whole. I thought that with the advent of Twitter and Facebook and other social media the day of reading books was drawing to a close. If my experience at The Doylestown Bookshop taught me nothing else, it is that books and readers are still coming.

Awesome!

P.S. Thank you to my wife Denise, my daughter Paula, my incredibly talented brother Bruce, Linda Young, Sarah and Daniel Macias and my stepson Perry for standing by me. And thank you to Kenny and Penny Robinson for their surprise visit. And a great big thank you to Glenn and Risa Neiman for putting the wheels in motion leading up the book signing in the first place.

How did Rome get pregnant?

Well, duh. But why was she ovulating? She told Rei that Vuduri women controlled their ovulation and only became pregnant when the Overmind informed them it was time.

Rome was only partially right. The Overmind had a hand in when a Vuduri woman ovulates but also not having sex was a big boost towards controlling who got pregnant. The relationship between Rei and Rome in Rome's Revolution was not a part of the Overmind's plan.

It turns out that without the Overmind, a Vuduri woman has a monthly cycle and Rome got pregnant without realizing it was possible. Of course after she found out, she was rather pleased. As we found out in Rome's Evolution, since she was part of the Overmind's Slayer experiment, it had not yet given her permission to give birth and privately she suspected she never would be. The fact that she and Rei were charting new territory with the mix of Essessoni and Vuduri gave her the freedom to have a child whenever she was ready and I guess she was ready for Aason.

What about Lupe?

35th century food revisited

I discussed this in a previous post but I wanted to revisit the idea of what food will be like in the 35th century.

When Rei is first awakened, in both the original long-form version and the current version of Rome's Revolution, Rome offers him some food. They use a food synthesizer which creates any form of food you want. Rei later uses this to his advantage to create such wonders as coffee, birthday cake and so on. The fact is the Vuduri Rei first encountered on Dara were forced to use food synthesizers because they were on an airless moon with no source of supplies.

But what about food on Earth? On Deucado, we know people eat "real" food in that Rei is involved in creating vast farms, Binoda oversees the ever-growing bison herd and Fridone is managing the creation of the largest sustainable fishing (swishing) fleet in the universe.

But on Earth, what do they eat? Mostly I avoid the issue. Whenever there is action on Earth, there is no time for eating. There was a wonderful luau scene in the original long-form version of Part 3 but it was excised to shrink the size of the book.

So what do Vuduri eat? I cannot tell you for sure but I believe they use some form of food synthesizers in their home but the organic sources are grown. I don't know any other way to reconcile Binoda as an animal husbandry expert if the Vuduri have no use for food.

I remember in the movie "Masters of the Universe" when Courtney Cox introduces the people from the planet Eternia to the wonders of spare ribs. This implies they were vegetarian because some of them voiced disgust when they found out they were eating meat.

I don't think the Vuduri care. I think they have better, or at least different, things to worry about as to whether the food is vegetable or animal in origin. It is all protein to them. Luckily for us, Deucado will eclipse Earth someday as the crown jewel in the empire of Man and there they like real food!

Star drives revisited

In a previous post, I discussed the various star drives used in the Rome's Revolution universe. Today's post concerns whether they are factual or not. Remember, because it is hard science fiction, my rule is that everything that could be fact-checked would, in fact, check out.

The Grey Drive is based upon the concept that there is a lot of energy in matter (E=mc2 anybody) so if you figured out an efficient way to convert matter to energy, you'd be on to something. This is a fact. But the creation of a quantum black hole, feeding it xenon atoms and harnessing the Hawking Radiation to drive an Ark forward was made up. Well, not testable at least.

The PPT drive and later the continuous PPT drive was based upon the Casimir Effect which is real and has been measured. I took some liberties in inventing the Casimir Pump but nobody can prove this is not true.

Negative energy seems like an exotic concept but nonetheless, if the Casimir Effect is real, then negative energy is real. And from everything I've ready, where there is negative energy, there is no space. So to the extent that it can be fact-checked, the PPT tunnel method of flying faster than the speed of light cannot be proven wrong.

Now for the Null Fold drive. This is completely made up. Everybody knows in algebra we learned about "i" which is the square root of -1. So the Null Fold drive is completely speculative and based upon the fact that you can split negative energy into a real and imaginary component (like in algebra) and somehow that allows you to bypass the absence of space created by negative energy. Hurts the head, huh?

Well, in the next novel, The Milk Run, you will be introduced to the Null Fold Drive, Generation 2. I have no clue what is the guiding principle behind it. I am just postulating that the Null Fold Drive, Gen 2 takes you out of our universe and reenters somewhere else which means you are traveling effectively faster. Where you are when you are not here is problematic but forms the basis of the machinations behind the plot of The Milk Run. Stay tuned.

The Espansor Bands

The Espansor Bands were the device that jump-started the romance between Rome and Rei in Rome's Revolution. The bands have been an integral part of the story going way back to the first draft of VIRUS 5 in 1973. I know where Rome got the bands. She got them from her mother, Binoda, as a keepsake to remind Rome about her father. But where did Binoda get them?

It turns out the Overmind of Earth had created a eugenics program to see if he could stem the genetic tide changing the Vuduri into Onsiras. The code name for the program was Slayer (in Vuduri) because it was meant the slay the Onsira phenotype. At the time, nobody, including the Overmind, knew MASAL was behind the transformation. The Overmind of Earth prattled on about this program in the novel Rome's Evolution much to Rome's dismay. Even more so when she found out she was just a lab experiment. However, as it turns out, the program's name was literal because Rome actually was the slayer of MASAL.

Binoda was originally selected to work in animal husbandry because she had a strong voice. This was required when working with animals. However, the Overmind had his scientists perform a genetic analysis of all Vuduri and came to the conclusion that Binoda was one of the closest living relatives to Hanry Ta Jihn. Her mission was changed. She was selected to mate with Fridone because the Overmind felt she would be the most attractive to the mandasurte scientist.

She was given the bands by the Overmind so that she could look into Fridone's mind and figure out what it would take to produce an offspring. However, the bands malfunctioned (or maybe they didn't) and Binoda and Fridone bonded in a way that had never been experienced before.

The result of that bonding was Rome and we are the better for it. In Rome's Revolution, Rei and Rome experienced the same phenomenon. They were, in fact, soulmates. In Vuduri, Rome called it Asborodi Cimponeti which means companion spirits.

How are the Vuduri assigned jobs?

In fact, why do they even work at all?

Simplistically, since all robots are banned from Vuduri society, you still need things done. It is true that there are machines and vehicles but ultimately you need people.

Since all Vuduri are connected to the Overmind (at least they were until Rome's Revolution), why would one person know more or have better skills than anybody else?

The answer lies in people's physical capabilities, eye-hand coordination, strength of voice, etc. Most Vuduri schooling concentrates on refining (and testing) these capabilities so that by the time a Vuduri person reaches adulthood, they are assigned a job that their physical capabilities are best suited.

Some examples: Canus was assigned the role of medic because he had fine motor control in his hands. Binoda was assigned the task of wrangling animals because she had a good and strong voice. Rome was selected to be the data archivist on Dara because she had excellent eye-hand coordination. The list goes on.

In the end, the Vuduri society flows very smoothly because each Vuduri is plugged into the Overmind and performs a task to which they are best suited. However, if you learned nothing else, the Vuduri, as a people, are rather boring.