Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 183

MINIMCOM and Gunpowder

MINIMCOM has a device called a molecular sequencer. It can be used to make virtually anything since it assembles the target one molecule at a time. However, it cannot create life and there are other times when it fails, not because of the chemical composition but because of mechanical reasons.

For example, there came a time when MINIMCOM needed to make ammunition to restock Hanry Ta Jihn's M9 Beretta. MINIMCOM assumed that he could make gunpowder by simply mixing the chemicals, potassium nitrate, sulfur and carbon in the proper proportions.

However, he was wrong. Traditional black powder, gunpowder, does not just depend upon the chemicals but how they are mixed. You have to use charcoal, not carbon powder. This is because charcoal has pores and the potassium nitrate and sulfur have to fill those pores.

So the charcoal is not just an element of the chemical reaction but also the physical substrate which permits the reaction to occur in the first place. After a frustrating amount of trial and error, MINIMCOM finally synthesized a ball mill (the mixing chamber) and roasted some wood to make living charcoal.

After churning the substances together, in the right ratios, for the proper amount of time, MINIMCOM was successful and the Baretta was reloaded. It is used in Rome's Evolution but you will have to wait to see when and how.

Rome's Rape

It isn't as bad as it sounds.

Rei once asked Rome, innocently, about her virginity. Based upon the physical evidence, it appeared she was not a virgin when they first had sex yet everything Rei knew about the Vuduri and Rome in particular told him she had to be.

Shockingly, she told him he was not her first sexual partner. For a good Vuduri, this would be unthinkable. The story goes something like this:

When Rome was 18, she and Signola (who we met in Part 1 of Rome's Revolution) were working in a solvent factory several stories underground. A railing gave way and Rome fell into a vat of pure ethanol. Signola knew if he did not rescue her, she would die so he dove in and dragged her to the edge of the vat and threw her over the edge.

He climbed out as well. He knew that Rome had swallowed quite a bit of the alcohol and 100% alcohol is absorbed by the skin. So he stripped off her clothes, wiped her down, stripped off his own clothes and then passed out as had Rome.

Later, when they were found by other Vuduri, there was evidence that they had had sex. Neither Rome nor Signola nor the Overmind had any memory of such an encounter. There was video surveillance that did confirm the act.

Rome's explanation to Rei was as follows: "The nearest thing that we could figure out was that Signola absorbed just enough alcohol to deaden his reasoning centers, his connection to the Overmind and the only thing remaining was, let us call it his animal self and a naked female was lying next to him and that is what animals do."

Rome never held it against Signola and it did not really affect her psyche. She claimed that the whole incident was more like a story than a memory. She never brought it up again until the day Rei questioned her.

The Vuduri and Sex

Ain't got none. Most Vuduri have relinquished most, if not all, of their sense of self. Many use what is called Second Sight where they do not even perceive the world directly through their own senses but rather allow the Overmind to provide them.

Rome was one of those rare individuals who (although tightly suppressed) maintained her own sense of self and used her own senses which is what made her such an excellent data archivist.

What has this got to do with sex? Most "good" Vuduri have no interests, do not engage in anything resembling fun and would never consider having sex for anything other than procreation.

The Overmind controls which Vuduri women ovulate and when and then commands the Vuduri men to mate with them at the proper time. Conception is almost guaranteed and after the baby is born, many times they are removed almost immediately to be raised in a crèche, a "raising baby factory."

Most good Vuduri children never even know their parents nor do they care. They have de-emphasized human relationships to the point of irrelevancy.

Among so many things, this is what made Rome so unusual: her attachment to her parents, though initially suppressed, was always there under the surface. Her sense of self was exploited by the Overmind (as we saw in Rome's Revolution) during the mission to Tabit. And the Overmind did not control her ovulation which is how she became pregnant during the year-long voyage to Deucado.

Tomorrow: Rome's rape - although it isn't as bad as it sounds.

Selected Vuduri phrases

Initially, when Rei first met Rome, she did not speak English and he did not speak Vuduri. So there were some communication issues. I did not want to burden the reader with having to wade through tons of Vuduri gibberish but it was unrealistic to assume everyone spoke English 14 centuries from now.

To solve this, I had Rome learn English very quickly and spread it to the rest of the Vuduri world via the Overmind. During their year-long trip to Deucado, Rome taught Rei Vuduri so when they got there, I was able to co-mingle conversations in Vuduri or English without the reader having to worry about which language was being spoken.

Nonetheless, certain words in Vuduri continue to appear because that is the way they speak regardless of which language. Here are selected words and phrases:

Mau emir - my love
Mea - mother
Grandmea - grandmother
Beo - father
Grandbeo - grandfather
Erklirte - The Ark Lords
Mandasurte - mind-deaf
Ibbrassati - the "Oppressed"
Onsiras - living machines
Sipre - shadow
Asdrale Cimatir - Stareater
Essessoni - people from our generation
Hanry Ta Jihn - Jack Henry
Reonhe - Onsira queens
Zengei - Onsira drones
Ombare - Onsira "empress"
Mosdurece - Half-blood
Onclare - Uncle
I Cimaci - Earth's capital, near the former site of Lisbon, Portugal
Havei - Hawaii
Mowei - Maui
Socal - Southern California
Chee Ka Go - Chicago
Cesdiud - Cast out (expelled from the Overmind)
Tamas - the last month of the Vuduri year
Deucat - Vuduri equivalent of a silver dollar

Getting the word out

Today's post is not about the books themselves but rather promoting the books. This is no joke. I have used the following avenues (and more!) to get the word out about Rome's Revolution:

· Two Web Sites
· The Wiki - The Science Behind the Science Fiction
· Posting the books on Goodreads
· This Goodreads blog
· Posting the book on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo and Smashwords
· An Etsy store
· Posting the book on Ebay
· Creating a YouTube trailer
· Posting that trailer on Vimeo
· Two Facebook pages
· Listing the books and advertising them on FurnitureFindex
· Listing them on CraigsList
· Posting links on my own web site and my company's web site
· Writing to TV, radio stations and online magazines
· Getting a review in Risingshadow.net
· Donating the books to the Cherry Hill Library and the Rachel Kohl Library in Glen Mills
· Posting them in Google Books
· Getting them listed in Ten Pitches
· Posting every day on Twitter
· "Paying" a guy to post about the book on Twitter by buying his book (sucky) and reading it and writing a review on Amazon, aka quid pro quo
· Email blasts (limited)

I have seen other, suckier books, listed on Wikipedia and it took two months but after three editorial reviews, Rome's Revolution got its own Wikipedia page.

My colleague, Carol, wrote a Wikipedia article about me and my scientific accomplishments and after two months and two more editorial reviews, that got published on Wikipedia as well.

Well, today I woke up and found EVERYTHING had been deleted. One editor decided nothing I ever had done in my life and none of my books, journal articles, discoveries or doctoral dissertation were sufficiently noteworthy to take up the precious space in Wikipedia. I am appealing it but I don't have much hope.

Bottom line: if you read this whole article, please take the time to tell somebody about my books. Nothing else seems to work.

Thank you.

The Vuduri and Money

Ain't got none. The Vuduri have access to infinite free energy. It would never occur to them to come up with a medium of exchange when anyone can have anything they want.

This has shaped their culture halfway. Nobody wants for anything so they do not have the drive to excel. And the Overmind does the thinking for them so they lost the other half, curiosity.

When Rei and Rome first returned to the Earth, they attended a luau on Maui (a scene since deleted from Rome's Revolution). During the luau they had a discussion about money which got a little heated and it was the closest thing they ever got to an argument. Rome thought the whole concept of money was stupid and still does in the upcoming Rome's Evolution. However, they need to get their hands on some to manage in the marketplace that has sprung up in the resort city of Ur, built beneath The Hand.

The currency they acquire are called Deucats, named after Deucado. A Deucat is about the size and weight as a silver dollar. It comes into play later in the story because they need to go to the casino that was built on top of The Hand. Go figure.

The Hand of Deucado

When the comet came down and smashed the crater that became Lake Eprehem, at its heart was a small iron core that blasted down through the surface until it hit a pocket of magma. The magma rose, melting a cylindrical tunnel straight up. A tube of lava flowed up forming a tower.

Magma continued to bubble up and the whole structure, now nearly a mile tall began bending over, cooling as it went. By the time it was done, the very top lay one half mile above the surface of what would eventually be Lake Eprehem. From a distance, it looks like a hand waving to the far shore and that became its name: The Hand.

It is quite awe-inspiring close up as it is so large and looming. After the lake filled up, the hand stretched over third of a mile over the lake created a platform providing a spectacular view.

500 years later, after things had settled and the lake had filled to the brim, nice, white sand formed a beach along the shore and a resort town, called Ur, sprang up.

While Deucado itself is rather plain, The Hand is anything but and much of the action in Rome's Evolution takes place within the town center and the casino that was built on the top of The Hand.

Lake Eprehem

Much of the action in Rome's Revolution and almost all the action in The Ark Lords centers around the large fresh water lake called Lake Eprehem. Eprehem is Abraham in Vuduri.

Lake Eprehem is the largest fresh water lake on Deucado containing nearly 25% of all fresh water on the planet.

The lake was formed when a gigantic comet came down and smashed a deep hole in the western continent. Because it was a comet, not a asteroid as is popularly believed, Lake Eprehem was already partially filled with water even as it was cooling. The ash, ejecta and sulfur compounds thrown up into the sky lasted many years, blocking out Tau Ceti and causing Deucado to get very cold. It rained or snowed almost continually and Lake Eprehem filled up very quickly.

Within a few years, the sun began to peek out and the world started the long process of healing. Many swishies found their way into the lake, adapting to the fresh water, even thriving. Within 100 years, the world was back to "normal" whatever that means and it now had a huge fresh water lake to shape the environment.

There was one other side effect: The Hand. More on that tomorrow.

Death from above

Deucado is a small world, smaller than the Earth, yet it has received more than its fair share of asteroid, comet and meteor strikes. This is due to the fact that the Kuiper Belt surrounding Tau Ceti is far more dense than that surrounding Sol.

The impact (pardon the pun) of all of this is that death from above has shaped Deucado's development as a home for life, since the beginning.

If a comet strikes the planet, it brings with it a huge amount of ice which is why Deucado has many deep seas. When asteroids hit, the resulting nuclear winter causes the temperature to plummet and all but the most hardy of species die out.

The current crop of animals and plants have adapted to this rain of death. The animals and fish (called swishies) are invertebrates with tough skins and are completely flexible. The trees have evolved to require very little light for long periods of time. Their trunks contain enzymes and cellular structures which allow them to perform "plant transmutation" (discussed in an earlier post). This allows them to make elements and molecules which are required for survival but not available due to environmental conditions.

In the upcoming novel, Rome's Evolution, you will get a glimpse of a time when there was a pause in the pummeling from asteroids and the like. There is even a chapter with the non-published title of "The Blanket's Tale" in which you will learn how the animals deal with the uncertainty that tomorrow brings.

And speaking of tomorrow, you will learn the origin, effect and meaning of Lake Eprehem, the fresh water body that forms the focal point for most of the civilization on Deucado.

Why did the Vuduri erase our cities?

When Rei first arrived at Skyler Base, he was sorting through the image archives and noticed there was no evidence that our culture ever existed. Not New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, London - all were gone. During their first trip back to Earth in Part 3 of Rome's Revolution, Rei asked, “Is there anything left of our cities, you know, from my time?” “No,” replied Rome. “I am not sure of the proper word. They were…erased.”

Later, in The Ark Lords Rome did choose to expound upon this a bit further. Rome said, “You will recall you once asked me what happened to all your cities and I told you they were erased. So, too, it was with the Erklirte’s settlement. What I did not tell you was that this was Hanry Ta Jihn’s dying wish. He was a martyr but he was so revered that every person on Earth tried to honor that wish. It took centuries. It wasn’t until the Vuduri came into being that they finally accomplished his goal. Every trace of the Essessoni civilization was razed, burned or buried. In the end, it was to be as if your people never existed.”

Finally, in The Ark Lords we were provided with a little glimpse into the past. We saw the death of Jack Henry (Hanry Ta Jihn in Vuduri) and in this little vignette, the Battle of Chicago is now over and Jack Henry lie dying on ground. Red June, Jack's most trusted lieutenant, had Jack's head resting on his thigh:

    “Did we get ‘em?” Jack whispered.
    “Yeah, Jack,” Red replied. “They’re all dead.”
    Jack grunted. “You have to…” His voice was so quiet, Red couldn’t hear him. He bent over so his ear was next to Jack’s mouth.
    “What is it, Jack?” Jack Henry spoke but his breath barely stirred the air. Red had to strain to hear his words.
    “Use their cannon and level this place. Then go back home and get the rest of them. No matter how many men it takes. Bury them and their vehicles and their spaceship and their weapons. Bury every place they’ve ever been on the Earth. They may have other disease weapons stashed somewhere else.”
    Jack coughed and blood spurted out of his mouth but he went on. “Someday, there may be others, more spacemen. Make it so they can’t find a trace, not a hint, that their race was ever here. Swear to me.”
    “I vow it, Jack,” Red said. A tear formed in the corner of his eye. “Even if it takes us a thousand years, we’ll erase everything. It’ll be like they never existed.”

Jack Henry was satisfied and then he died. And that is why all our cities were erased.