Tales of the Vuduri: Year Four, Page 4

  The question, on the surface, is completely ridiculous because the Vuduri do not treasure interpersonal relationships. And frankly, they only have sex for procreation. There are next to no pure Vuduri couples. They simply have no desire to live with or align themselves with another Vuduri. It is all for one, the one being the Overmind.

  But what about a "mixed" couple, where one partner was Vuduri and the other was mandasurte, or mind-deaf? Well, it certainly would be possible for the Vuduri to hook up with another mandasurte, assuming they could keep that portion of their mind "walled off" from the prying connection of other Vuduri. But they would never hook up with another Vuduri. There would be none that would be interested. So Fridone's momentary hint of jealousy was completely unfounded and, in fact, impossible. Here is how quickly Binoda defused the situation:

  “That would be perfect,” Rome said. “Is there someone you know?”

  “Yes,” Binoda said. “You know him too.”

  “Who is it?” Rome asked.

  “Commander Ursay,” answered Binoda.

  “Ursay?” Rome said with some surprise.

  “Yes, Ursay,” replied Binoda.

  “How do you know this?” Rome asked.

  “Because I know him.” Binoda said. “I know the real man.”

  Fridone bristled. “What do you mean, Binoda?”

  “Do not be upset,” Binoda said, stroking Fridone’s cheek. “When the Tabit crew returned to Earth, Ursay made it a point to seek me out and deliver Rome’s letter to me. As you know, he spent some time disconnected from the Overmind while escaping Asdrale Cimatir.”

  “How long?” Rome asked. “I never did find out.”

  “Long enough that he had time to think about the events that occurred on Tabit, of the blindness of the Overmind, of how Rei’s people could not have been the monsters that we always thought them to be.”

  Does that explain why Ursay defended Rome during her "trial" before Oronus? Tomorrow, I will share Binoda's insights with you.

  Entry 4-020: January 16, 2016

 

  Ursay's turnabout

  One of the main supporting characters throughout the entire Rome's Revolution trilogy and even in the "flash-sideways" of The Milk Run was Commander Ursay. He doesn't have a last name. None of the Vuduri do. As were many of the Vuduri, I named him after a constellation, in this case Ursa Major, otherwise known as the Big Dipper.

  When we first met him, he was, in Rome's words, "a martinet lackey of the Overmind." Not very flattering. However, through each of the books, Ursay continued to evolve. In The Ark Lords, he saved Rome and Rei from the would-be new Erklirte, headed by Captain Keller. In Rome's Evolution, he provided sanctuary and helped Rome and Rei track down their son. In The Milk Run, he had ascended to a position which was essentially the President of Earth.

  So when did this startling transformation begin? It started when Rome saved his life and the lives of all the Vuduri who were stationed at Skyler Base:

  “How does this prove anything?” Rome asked. “He could have been a member of the Onsiras and still told all of this to you.”

  “No, he could not,” Binoda said. “Based upon what Rei conveyed to me about Pegus and his observations, the members of the Onsiras would appear to have no real self, not like us. There seems to be nothing left in their head other than their instructions. Half is connected to our Overmind, the one we can connect to. The other half connects to this shadow Overmind, the one that controls them. The one that makes them follow this awful path. Ursay disconnected when I was with him. He and I spoke person to person, without the Overmind listening in. There is no way that he could have had the thoughts he did and the perspective that he did if he was just a robot, a tool of the Onsiras.”

  “Is that why he defended me?” Rome asked. “He was always rather harsh on Tabit.”

  “It was not he but the Overmind who was harsh and yes, that is why he defended you,” Binoda said. “That is how I knew it was the right thing to do to call him. I knew how Ursay the man actually admired you and Rei, your resourcefulness. He envied it. He told me he had thought about disconnecting permanently, Cesdiud, to become mandasurte. There is no way that he would think that if he was dedicated to their destruction.”

  “But is it not possible that he was just setting you up?” Rei asked. “Is it not possible that he did this to make you think he was one way when really he was another?”

  “I do not think so.,” replied Binoda. “There was absolutely no reason why he would have confided in me if it was just a ploy. No one knew you were coming to Earth. No one could have foreseen these events. If he were a member of the Onsiras, he would not have bothered. No, he is the one you need.”

  Ursay arrived at his place of prominence because he truly represented "the new Vuduri" created by Rome's Revolution.

  Entry 4-021: January 17, 2016

 

  The First Livetar

  I've had lots of fun creating the characters in Rome's Revolution. Creating new people is hard. If they are human, they have to act according to how humans act. You, my reading audience, know plenty of people so if my characters act oddly, you'd know it. But the non-human characters, OMCOM, MINIMCOM, Sh'ev, I can get them to act any way I want and as long as I am consistent, it doesn't offend anybody.

  Everybody's favorite character, MINIMCOM, started out as an auto-pilot computer until he was fused into the airframe of a Vuduri space tug and became something else. He evolved so much that in The Milk Run, we discovered that computers can have souls and MINIMCOM most certainly had one.

  However, from a dramatic perspective, there isn't much a starship can do to contribute to the action other than fly fast. So I came up with the idea of livetars which would be like mobile extensions or projections of my computers. They would have the size and shape roughly of a human being and be able to physically interact with the real world. I laid out the design when OMCOM appeared to Rei and Rome as a holographic image materialized by using null-fold relays to synthesize his image. But it wasn't until this scene in Part 3 of Rome's Revolution that Rome and Rei came face to face with the first real incarnation of a livetar:

  Rei turned to Rome. He spoke in English. “Romey, we are never going to know for sure. I trust your mom. If she says that Ursay is the one, I say let’s go for it.”

  “All right,” Rome said, in Vuduri. “Ursay is the one. How do we get him here?”

  “I believe I can help,” came a muffled voice, issuing from one of Fridone’s bags.

  Fridone walked over and pulled out MINIMCOM’s projector and communication device. He set it on the table.

  “How can you help?” Rome asked the device.

  “Open the front door,” replied MINIMCOM.

  Rei stood up and walked to the door and opened it. In front of him was something like a man, well over two meters tall, dressed all in black, complete with a cape. The head was roughly bullet-shaped with slits where the eyes and mouth might be. The figure strode into the room and stood in the middle of the floor.

  “Is this a robot?” Rome asked with trepidation.

  MINIMCOM’s voice issued from the mouth hole. “This is an avatar that I have created,” said MINIMCOM. “It is not a robot. It is ambulatory but not autonomous. It is merely an extension of me. Think of it as a speaker with hands. I can physically transport it to Ursay’s home and have it address him.”

  Rei thought it was funny that the tinny voice of MINIMCOM would come from such an imposing figure but he decided to keep that thought to himself.

  “Do you not think someone will notice that it is not human?” Rome asked.

  “I will make sure that it is only Ursay that encounters it.”

  As you can see, originally, I had named these ambulatory shells avatars. That's a pretty standard word in the computer world for a symbolic representation of a person or player. But then James Cameron came out with the movie Avatar so I had to change it lest somebody think I lifted it from that movie. It didn't ta
ke me long to come up with the word livetar as the contraction of live avatar. The rest is (future) history.

  Entry 4-022: January 18, 2016

 

  Second Edition

  Rome's Revolution was my first self-published science fiction novel. The reality is, it was originally written as a trilogy called VIRUS 5 but due to a variety of events, I decided to take all three novels and boil them down to the 160,000 word single novel you see today.

  Admittedly, my first book, now Part 1, of Rome's Revolution was not my best work. I think Part 2 is better and Part 3 is pretty good. A writer friend of mine told me my writing has improved tremendously when she compared The Milk Run to that first book. I have also seen similar comments from professional reviewers, namely the first section is "rougher" than the later parts of the book.

  Fast forward to last summer. The idea of recording Rome's Revolution was so daunting, I wussed out and decided to record The Milk Run as my first audiobook. You can grab it on Audible.com. It took four months to produce. It was hard but I learned a lot and now I am ready to tackle Rome's Revolution. However, after learning about how Audible.com prices out audiobooks, I'm afraid the whole thing will be too expensive and way out of most people's comfort zone. Especially for a new author.

  So here's the plan. I am going to take Rome's Revolution and split it up back into its three original parts. I will rename the trilogy The Rome's Revolution Saga. Part 1 will be called Rebirth. Part 2 will be called Rebellion or Resistance (I haven't decided yet) and Part 3 will be called Redemption. Each will be about 50,000 words. Sort of a short novel.

  I will then create a web page and an Amazon page for each of the three mini-novels. My brother Bruce suggested he could create a landscape cover and each book would be one-third of the cover and if you buy all three, together they would form the full painting. A triptych if you will.

  At that point, I will be able to record each of the thirds in a more manageable form and publish them and tie them to The Rome's Revolution Saga pages. I got permission from Audible to then take each of the thirds and bind them back together and publish it as the full-blown audiobook for Rome's Revolution without having to re-record any of it.

  Phew. Ambitious, huh? You missed the point though. I mentioned it at the top. This will give me an opportunity, not to rewrite but certainly to polish that long-neglected Part 1 of Rome's Revolution and improve the writing with what I know now. I'll release it as Rome's Revolution, Second Edition and swap it out for the original. Maybe then people will stop grousing about the writing.

  What do you think?

  Entry 4-023: January 19, 2016

 

  Polar Route

  Even though it sounds counter-intuitive, or at the very least cold, it is sometimes shorter and more efficient to fly over the North Pole to get from city A to city B. I just can't wrap my head around it but that doesn't make it not true. For example, if you are flying from New York to Beijing or from San Francisco to Dubai, you cut off many thousands of miles for the trip. However, the fuselage of the airplane gets very cold and the fuel gets cold and you have to make sure that the fuel does not freeze.

  Also, what happens if there is engine trouble or a mechanical failure and you have to set down. That's the part that scares me the most. I mean who dresses for a vacation at the North Pole? Nonetheless, physics is physics and if the number of miles is lower, you need to fly it to use less fuel and get there is a shorter period of time.

  So when the time came in the middle of Part 3 of Rome's Revolution to send the starship MINIMCOM from Maui, Hawaii to Lisbon, Portugal, I pretended that a polar route was more efficient. Whether this is true or not, I did not know. I must admit I did not actually calculate whether it was shorter. Here is the actual section where MINIMCOM proclaims his intentions:

  Rome closed her eyes. When she opened them, she nodded slowly. “Very well,” she said. “MINIMCOM, I have only one concern.”

  “What is that?” MINIMCOM’s livetar asked.

  “You absolutely must not be detected prior to revealing yourself to Ursay.”

  “I will remain cloaked the entire time. I will be invisible to MIDAR as well. I will take a polar route to reduce the chance of discovery even further. I can do this if I fly low and slow.”

  “How long will it take you?” Rei asked.

  “One full day,” replied MINIMCOM’s livetar. “My velocity must remain below the speed of sound to eliminate any chance of acoustic detection.”

  So how close was I? Today, 11 years later, I finally plotted MINIMCOM's polar route. Not too bad, huh?

  Entry 4-024: January 20, 2016

 

  Blue Crystal Reader 1

  So many times, I've told you these stories are true, they just haven't happened yet. How else would you explain Rei's first encounter with MINIMCOM's long-term holographic memory storage? It was memorable. Or maybe non-memorable, since Rei was mesmerized or perhaps even hypnotized. I am reprinting it here so you can remember. Here is that original scene:

  Rei was inside of a crystalline cavern with facets and mirrors and flashes that were so mesmerizing, he could not think. He started swaying back and forth. It was only when he swayed so far that he stumbled that he was able to get his wits about him, just for a moment.

  “This is…the most beautiful…thing I…have ever seen,” Rei said in a dreamy voice. “What…is it?”

  “These are holographic storage crystals,” OMCOM said. “The illumination you see is strictly for your benefit. The read/write process is controlled by coherent ultraviolet lasers.”

  “Lasers,” Rei repeated in a monotone. “Yes.”

  “Rei?” OMCOM asked.

  “Why does it have to be so pretty…” Rei droned on.

  “Rei!” OMCOM said, more insistently.

  “So pretty…so…so…pretty…” Rei drifted off. He could hear OMCOM speaking but the words had no meaning.

  Rei lost all concept of time. OMCOM’s voice was just a soothing part of the background. Rei was adrift somewhere but he did not know where nor did he care. His whole world became the lights and the droning of OMCOM’s voice. Nothing could shake him. Nothing, that is, until the ground shook from a small tremor. The tremblor caused Rei to be awakened from his trance.

  “Rei?” OMCOM asked, “Are you awake now?” The lights went out and the room was plunged into complete darkness. OMCOM then slid open the door and allowed some of the red ambient light to seep in.

  Rei shook his head.

  “Why’d you stop it?” he asked plaintively. “I, I, what happened?” Rei asked, his voice returning to normal.

  “Your speech patterns indicated you had entered an altered mental state. I tried several times to awaken you but you resisted my suggestions. Where did you go?”

  Rei took a deep breath. “I don’t know. It was just so beautiful. That’s, that’s amazing, OMCOM.”

  “Do you recall hearing anything that I said to you?” OMCOM asked.

  “I heard your voice,” Rei said, “that’s about it.”

  “Perhaps someday it will come back to you. In the mean time, you should probably not remain here any longer,” OMCOM said. He turned the red light up outside the doorway even brighter. “I think you should join Rome now.”

  I wrote that section four years before I finished the final part of Rome's Revolution. What did OMCOM do during that period? We get a hint when Rome and Rei were banished to Hawaii. How it ties in? Tomorrow.

  Entry 4-025: January 21, 2016

 

  Blue Crystal Reader 2

  Yesterday, I reviewed a section of the original first novel VIRUS 5 before it was repackaged as Part 1 of Rome's Revolution. It was Rei's first encounter with MINIMCOM's long-term holographic memory. Clearly OMCOM has hypnotized Rei and implanted some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion. But what? I must tell you that when I first wrote it, I had absolutely no idea. But these characters always come through for me. Here is our first hint that something happened
:

  “It is decided, then. MINIMCOM, we entrust our fate to you,” Rome said.

  “Thank you for vote of confidence,” replied the avatar and it bowed. It took two steps toward Rome and then said in a low voice, “Rome, before I depart, I must have a word with you in private.”

  Rome looked at Rei who had completely given up trying to understand all the machinations going on within the machines. The avatar walked to the corner and Rome followed him. The avatar bent over and whispered in her ear, “I have a message for you.”

  “From who?” Rome asked.

  “From OMCOM,” replied the avatar.

  “From OMCOM,” Rome whispered back. “Where is he?”

  “He is not here. This message was delivered via Lawlidon.”

  “I do not understand,” Rome said.

  “There will be time enough to explain later. For now, please memorize these three words.”

  “What words?” Rome asked.

  “Blue crystal reader,” said the avatar in English.

  “That makes no sense,” replied Rome.

  “They do not need to. They are for Rei.”

  “For Rei?” Rome said. “Why did you not just speak them into our minds?”

  “No,” hissed the avatar. “He cannot hear them yet. I could not take the chance that Rei was listening in. You must only speak those words to him if he is in trouble. OMCOM said to use these words if you need to save his mind. Not before.”

  “Save his mind?” Rome said. “That is a peculiar thing to say.”

  “Context,” replied the avatar. “OMCOM said it will make sense to you in context.”

  So odd. But we'll see where it comes in later.