Tales of the Vuduri: Year One

By Michael Brachman

The Rome’s Revolution trilogy chronicles the 35th century world of the Vuduri. In this series, 21st century hero, Rei Bierak and his beautiful 35th century Vuduri wife, Rome, save mankind countless times. But there is much more to the far future beyond action and adventure; it has its own physics, culture, language and history. Tales of the Vuduri: Year One collects 366 blog posts about this amazing, brave new world into a single volume. Many times amusing but always thought-provoking, Tales of the Vuduri: Year One offers detailed insight into Rome and Rei’s universe with backstories, scientific tidbits, previously unrevealed secrets, alternate scenes and the occasional random thought. There are teasers for upcoming novels, amusing images and some apparent contradictions resolved. Travel to the 35th century and take a look behind the curtain into the fascinating world of Rome’s Revolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Brachman
• Release date: Jan 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9780989335645

Michael Brachman

Michael Brachman has a Ph.D. in Sensory Science with a minor in Computer Science. Rome's Revolution is his first science fiction series, depicting the enduring love between a man from the 21st century and a woman from the 35th century. Between the two of them, they fend off various threats to mankind. The science behind the science fiction is meticulously researched. It is so realistic, you will believe that these stories are true, they just haven't happened yet.The first book is called Rome's Revolution.The sequel is called The Ark Lords.The final book in the series is entitled Rome's Evolution.All three books are available in paperback and for all e-book readers.

Book preview

Dedication

First and foremost, I have to thank my brother Bruce. He is my go-to guy when it comes to the world of the Vuduri. Not only is he my editor and artist and the inspiration behind MINIMCOM, but he is also fiercely protective of the Vuduri culture and characters. Bruce creates the amazing covers, the astounding book trailers and makes my writing so much better. Bruce, none of this would exist without you.

I want to thank my wife, Denise, for putting up with the endless hours of hiding in the basement, cranking out these stories, articles and so on.  I could not have done it without her patience.

Finally, as always, I would like to thank my heroes, Rome and Rei. They have supplied me with endless material of a future not yet born.

Introduction

World-building is hard. My Rome’s Revolution series takes place in the 35th century and involves new physics, planets, architecture and aliens. Worse yet, the people there normally don’t even speak.  In the far future, they travel faster-than-light and deal with issues that are so far outside our realm of experience, they are difficult to fathom. But to make the science fiction seem realistic, I had to figure out not only the science, culture and politics but also everyday life. Like what do they eat? What do they wear?

I’ve spent the better part of 40 years working on the details of this future universe. To be successful, the novels Rome’s Revolution, The Ark Lords and Rome’s Evolution have to be entertaining but to be considered hard science fiction, they also have to be well-thought out. I have mountains of research and notes that either don’t belong in books or had to be cut out.

I first thought about putting all this extra material in a wiki. In fact, I built one called Rome’s Revolution: The Science Behind The Science Fiction. However, I quickly discovered this wasn’t practical. Presenting the backstories and research a little at a time was much easier using a blog format. Tales of the Vuduri is that blog. I selected Goodreads as my platform and created my first entry on December 23, 2012. I knew from experience that people only come back to blogs that are constantly updating their content so I made it my goal to post an article every day for a full year. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite hit that goal. I missed three days!

Regardless, blogs make an excellent forum for not only little-known facts, previously unrevealed secrets, backstories but also musings and even the occasional rambling. It is not necessary that you have read the Rome’s Revolution series but it probably helps. There are many, many references within the articles to events and characters that inhabit those books. But there are also some amazing scientific facts and amusing articles that transcend the trilogy. Since the series is about more than just our 21st century hero, Rei Bierak and his beautiful 35th century Vuduri wife, Rome, I decided to call this collection Tales of the Vuduri because most of the entries are relevant to the 35th century and the people known as the Vuduri.

Here is a partial list of what you’ll find in these entries:

·         Backstories

·         Tidbits

·         Scientific articles

·         Secrets

·         Alternate scenes

·         Deleted scenes

·         Teasers

·         Random thoughts

·         Ramblings

·         Humor essays

·         Amusing images!

·         Detailed explanations

·         Apparent contradictions resolved

·         Reasoning behind certain scenes

·         In-depth analysis

·         Mechanics

·         Physics

·         Scientific principles

·         Sociology of the future

·         Futurology

·         Economics

·         Astronomy and astro-geophysics

You can watch my development as a blogger as the entries move along. Over the course of time, you’ll see the general introduction of hypertext links, first to the novels themselves, then later to previous posts and external articles. I also found that putting in little illustrations or images made the entries easier to follow. There are places in the text below where hypertext links were featured in the original articles. When you come across them, they may appear out of context so I have taken the liberty of adding an underline to the links so you will know that was their sole purpose. The rest of the entries are exactly as they appeared on Goodreads although I will admit I did fix typos when I found them.

As far as a general plan for the content of the blog, while I have not been dogmatic about it, I have tried to follow the general flow of information from the original long form of Rome’s Revolution and I am only up to Chapter 8! That means there will definitely be a Tales of the Vuduri: Year Two if my fingers and imagination are up to it.

In the mean time, here are the first 366 entries. I added one extra post just in case you read this during a leap year. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Entry 1-001: December 23, 2012

How to speak Vuduri

When I was charting out my future history, I presumed that after 14 centuries, there would be very little chance people would still be speaking English.  In fact, the Vuduri do not speak at all.  But they do have a language.

I estimated the spread of Darwin's Virus Strain 4 and decided Portugal would have the most survivors of any uninoculated population.  So I based the Vuduri language on Portuguese.

At first, I used Google translate to convert English to Portuguese then later Yahoo's Babelfish. Currently I use Microsoft's translate API.

I also felt the language would drift over time so I came up with a simple vowel and consonant substitution pattern.  A <-> E, I <-> O, T <-> D, F <->V and B <-> P. 

Here are two examples:

When Rome was cast out of the Overmind, the word becomes C E (swapped with A) S D (swapped with T) I (swapped with O) U and D again. Cesdiud. 

Same for Tau Ceti.  D for T, E for A, U, C, A for E, D for T and O for I. Deucado. 

I wrote a computer program to do the translation for me.  All I do is highlight the phrase I want to translate, hit Ctrl+C to put it in the copy and paste buffer, run my program then hit Ctrl+V and poof, the Vuduri equivalent is ready to paste.

There is no limit to how much I can translate.  Rome wrote a letter to her mother which was over a page and a half. It was translated with a few keystrokes.  Unfortunately, to cut down the size of the book, it had to be excised but will reappear when I release the Vuduri Companion.

So there you have it.  You, too, can speak Vuduri, which, by the way, is nothing more than the word Future, in Vuduri!

Entry 1-002: December 24, 2012

How The Ark Lords came about

After Rome's Revolution was published, I started work on a new YA sequel called The Milk Run starring Aason and Lupe, all grown up, with just a guest appearance by Rei and Rome.  I got about halfway done and realized I had no idea about what their life was like once they returned to Deucado. 

Unlike the previous (at the time) three books, I was determined to make this one all action and adventure.  No need to add much science or physics.  And I always wanted to start a story with an explosion.  Well, the explosion was just a grease fire but it was the best I could come up with. I wasn't sure where the story was going to go when (I swear) I was in the shower and it hit me.  The Ark Lords (Erklirte), the insane people in the gray sarcophagi and The Great Dying, they were all one and the same.  I had written about them for six years and NEVER KNEW IT!  So the story of how Jack Henry (Hanry Ta Jihn) became important.  I wrote a little, four chapter short story and interwove it in the relevant parts of the second half of The Ark Lords.

A couple of other tidbits: Knowing that I had The Milk Run coming up, I wanted Aason to have his own pet starship so that's how Junior came about. The not-sex scene between Virga and Rei is still one of my favorites.  I still laugh every time I read it.

The final book in this arc, starring Rei and Rome, will be entitled Rome's Evolution where Rome must become a true telepath to save all of their lives.  I'm hoping to have it finished by the spring.  In the mean time, I hope you enjoy The Ark Lords.  I really enjoyed writing it.

Entry 1-003: December 25, 2012

A quick insight into how Rome's Revolution came about

Rome's Revolution was originally created in 1973 as a short story entitled VIRUS 5. As you can imagine the underlying technology has changed significantly over the last 40 years.  I have always been fascinated by the idea of what if we sent people to the stars and when they got there, there were already people there.  So I had to come up with two completely different methods of interstellar travel, one slow, based upon physics that we know today, and one faster than light.  My heroes, Rei and Rome, have been there since the beginning as well as OMCOM.  And the major threat was always the Stareater.  That's about it.  Everything else about the story has changed and evolved over the years.  The first book of the modern version, called VIRUS 5: Asdrale Cimatir (Stareater), was 108,000 words.  It started with a beautiful short story about Silas Hiram, a farmer on New Earth (later called Helome in The Ark Lords).  He was the first to discover that Alnilam disappeared. My intent for that book was to do a you are there type of style.  So what are the odds that people 14 centuries in the future still speak English?  Zero.  So I had to invent a language.  I actually wrote a computer program that would translate any English words or paragraphs into Vuduri and used as needed. 

Well, being a beginning writer, I was open to suggestions by other, more advanced writers, and the whole story started getting chopped down.  Gone was the story of Silas Hiram.  Gone was the pretty exciting chapter on how the Vuduri discovered Rei's Ark.  Gone was the viscerally stunning chapter on Rei's reanimation.  I think the story lost something but I persevered.

I had in my mind the scene where Rei is all alone on Dara, getting ready to let the VIRUS units loose and thinking he had lost Rome forever.  But then it occurred to me, when Rome figured out how to remain behind, she would just radio Rei and the scene would lose all its dramatic tension.  That's how the Vuduri with their 24th chromosome and the Overmind sprang into being.  They had no NEED for radios, they had their heads.  So I had to go back and reengineer a whole new society.  I had written a future history outline but this kind of set me back.  It took a while but eventually the whole thing blossomed and became more like the story you read today.

After I completed Asdrale Cimatir, I was sitting around one day and said to myself, what happens when they get there, to Deucado.  The idea of traveling all that way, only to face imminent death, seemed exciting.  But I had to figure out WHY they were being attacked.  Genocide seem like a powerful theme so that became the underlying background.  I loved the idea of a split narrative, Rei taking a physical journal, Rome taking a mental one, before they rejoined each other.  The book was relatively easy to write and I wasn't burdened with having to put in as much physics and science.  It became more of a philosophical and adventure story.  Its original title was VIRUS 5: Bez Onquode (An Uneasy Peace).

Book 3 wrote itself.  Once I had set up all the political forces, the travails that Rei and Rome had to go through were pretty clear.  I finished it in about 6 weeks.  I loved the idea of a double climax.  Just when Rei and Rome thought they had ended the threat forever, the Stareaters return.  That was fun!

Then reality set in.  Nobody was going to buy Books 1, 2 or 3 from an unknown author.  So I got the idea to crush the now 330,000 words down to one book, three parts.  That's the book you see today called Rome's Revolution.  Since so many words had to be cut out, a lot of the long developing story lines (like Rei and Rome falling in love) had to be sped up.  I had to create the Espansor bands to get Rei and Rome in fall in love super-fast.  In the original book, it took them 8 chapters to even recognize they had feelings for each other.  In the current book, they are sleeping together by the end of Chapter 2.  Oh well.  Hopefully, you won't find it too rushed and just suspend belief and go along for the ride.

Entry 1-004: December 26, 2012

Modifying a telescope database to work on another planet

My Meade ETX-90 telescope needs to be calibrated each time it is powered up.  The red dot finder blinks and the hand keypad tells which star should be aligned.  Then you go to a second star.  After this is complete, the telescope is calibrated and you then say Go to Jupiter or Go to the Andromeda Galaxy and so on.

The settlers from Ark I landed on a habitable world in the Alpha Centauri system.  They called their world New Earth although later the Vuduri renamed it to Helome.  Silas Hiram was a farmer who brought a telescope with him.  The makers of the telescope were kind enough to modify the internal database so that he could use the red dot finder from Alpha Centauri. 

Since Alpha Centauri is so close to Earth, cosmically speaking, relatively few adjustments needed to be made and most of the constellations appeared more or less the same as seen from Earth.  The one major difference is that the Centaur was missing one star in his foot.  That star was Alpha Centauri.

Sol and Earth would appear as an extra star between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. Nothing remarkable other than the fact that it was Earth.

The constellation of Orion appeared more or less identical with the except that from the perspective of Alpha Centauri, the star Sirius would appear to be part of that constellation.  Sirius was the second star that Silas had to use to align his telescope.  It forced him to look for Orion and that was when he noticed that Alnilam was gone.  This singular act caused a cascade of actions spanning 14 centuries, culminating with the defeat of the Stareaters on Tabit and the peace treaty of Earth.

Entry 1-005: December 27, 2012

Irods and Ucones

The 24-chromosome Vuduri have a number of remarkable characteristics. Their optics have been heavily modified.  In addition to having a tapetum and a Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope built into their eyes, they also have an extra, internal iris built in.  Rei refers these as to built-in sunglasses.  The internal iris reacts very quickly and allow the Vuduri to go from total darkness to extreme brightness without any discomfort. They also have a second set of cones called Ucones.  These cones have been modified to detect into the ultraviolet. Finally they have a second set of rods, call Irods which allow them see deep into the infrared.  Basically, heat vision.  They can often use the heat of their own body to illuminate an area sufficiently to make out some details.

Entry 1-006: December 28, 2012

Haploid/Diploid chromosomes

When I was inventing the Vuduri race, I knew I wanted to make Rome a mosdurece (half-blood) because I wanted her mother to be Vuduri and her father mandasurte.  However, how would she be able to participate in the Overmind if she did not have a complete 24th chromosome or worse, no 24th chromosome at all?

Answer: make full-blooded Vuduri diploid, meaning each had two full sets of the 24th chromosome.  When Binoda mated with Fridone, their child, Rome, would have one full pair of the 24th chromosome. You only need one functioning pair to participate in the Overmind.  The meant Rome could as well until she was cast out (Cesdiud) on Tabit.

Later, I decided that the 24th chromosome reproduced using mitosis rather than meiosis but that is not critical.

By the time Rome was finished being poked, prodded and injected, she had so many chromosomal pairs, she was unique in all the world.  She had her original 24th (currently inactive), the new pair inserted into her on Deucado (currently active), MASAL's prosthetic 24th chromosome (never activated) and OMCOM's 25th chromosome.

Her daughter, Lupe, was born with all of these chromosomes activated making Lupe one of the most potent communicators in the galaxy.  You will find out more about Lupe in the novel entitled The Milk Run.

Entry 1-007: December 29, 2012

Back pain due to fissured disks

It has been well documented that a fissure in the disks between vertebrae allows interstitial fluid to come in contact with the layer within the disk called the nucleus pulposis. In turn, this releases a substance called Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha which is highly inflammatory.

So some back pain (and even swelling) can be caused simply by having a fissured disk.

This fact is integrated into the story Rome's Revolution in several ways.

First, almost all of the frozen occupants of the Arks wake up and suffer from extreme back pain due to this condition.

Second, OMCOM creates a special pill which not only restores Rei's back to a condition appropriate for someone his age, it also gives him some abilities (sonar vision, cell-phone in the head, and more).  OMCOM later creates a second, less powerful version of the pill which simply fixes up the back pain and this is the pill that is given to the majority of the colonists.

The pill is mentioned again in the sequel to The Ark Lords called Rome's Evolution.  One unexpected benefit is that pill prevents the normal Vuduri genotype as expressing itself as the Onsira phenotype. If this pill would become available to all Vuduri, the Onsiras would eventually be eliminated forever.

Entry 1-008: December 30, 2012

The speed of gravity

The speed of sound at sea level is 340 m/s.  The speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000,000 m/s.  But what is the speed of gravity? How would you even measure it?

Scientists have gotten closest by measuring the speed of gravity waves.  Basically, how long does the gravitational changes due to an exploding star take to affect other stars.

Some scientists believe that these gravity waves travel at the speed of light since they are limited by that of the observer and the observer only has EM transmissions to measure.

Some experimental physicists conclude that gravity travels at 2 X 10 to the tenth times c or a million, billion times the speed of light.  If that is the case, that is pretty darned fast!

I chose to accept the faster figure as my working figure in Rome's Revolution.  All of the interactions that occur with PPT transmissions occur virtually instantaneously.  While PPT transceivers have an effective range of a light year or so, within that radius, the interaction is more or less real time.

Postulating that virtually instantaneous transmissions can occur over such large distances allowed the Overmind to form and also for MASAL to operate as he did.

If it is ever discovered that gravity only travels at the speed of light, I may have to rework some sections or invoke other dimensions (string theory anybody?) to get the velocity back up to where I need it.

Entry 1-009: December 31, 2012

The Grey Drive: quantum black holes, white holes and Hawking Radiation

When writing Rome's Revolution, it was necessary to create not one but two completely different but plausible star drives.  The faster-than-light drive was actually easier because it was wilder and could not be verified or refuted. The Casimir Effect is real therefore the existence of negative energy is a real possibility.  Some have speculated that space cannot exist where there is no energy so all I did was project a big blob of negative energy using Casimir Pumps and voila, you jumped past space yielding effectively faster-than-light travel.

The slower-than-light star drive was much more difficult since it had to be based on what we know today. Brute force chemical rockets weren't going to get it done.  I decided the slow but steady method was the best bet.  Solar wind is free and constant but dies off outside the Oort Cloud.  So I built what I called the Grey Drive named after the fictitious scientist Wally Grey who invented it.  It consisted of a quantum black hole and a big tank of xenon.  They shot one atom of xenon at a time into the black hole to feed it and the atom disappeared into the black hole.  Because it was so tiny, its matched white hole was only a few angstrom units away and the atom re-emerged as Hawking Radiation which pushed against a back plate and generated an infinitesimal amount of thrust.  But infinitesimal times a long time results in a top speed of about 1/20th the speed of light.  That was sufficient to get us to the stars.

For the first Ark, the mission to Alpha Centauri, they burned their fuel at twice the recommended rate so they were able to reach our nearest neighboring star in just over 40 years.  Tau Ceti, where most of the action occurs, was just 12 light years away which means the trip there was supposed to take 240 years.  Of course, the Ark II missed the mark and that formed the basis of the entire novel Rome's Revolution.  Next post: cheap spaceships.

Entry 1-010: January 1, 2013

Cheap spaceships, expensive sarcophagi

I was thinking about what it would take to send people to the stars.  I figured that travel over such long distance involved risk. To build a complex spaceship that could survive micrometeorites, cosmic rays, mechanical failure, etc. was unlikely.  So instead of building an expensive spaceship, I had the mission planners build a cheap one, not much more than a flying tin can.

They sunk their money into building expensive, individual sarcophagi figuring any one might fail but the likelihood of all 500+ failing was very slim.

They built the Ark out of pig iron so the colonists would have some fairly refined materials to start their new life. I also made it so the nuclear power rods that reanimated the colonists could be ganged together to produce electricity for 7000 years.

Entry 1-011: January 2, 2013

Creating elementary particles with energy

The one thing the Vuduri have, that we do not, is infinite free energy.  They use Casimir Pumps to split zero energy in neutral space into positive and negative energy.  They use the negative energy to create PPT tunnels which effectively bypass normal space thus allowing them to (mathematically at least) travel faster than the speed of light.

But a by-product of the Casimir Pumps is positive energy.  The Vuduri do many things with it including creating electricity.  This is very handy when they are in normal space, since they need a way to drive their ships forward.  So they take the excess positive energy and reverse the equation e = mc ² and use e divided by c² to get m.  In other words, they use energy to create mass. Usually these are very elementary particles, rarely organizing more than just a ball of plasma.  They then force that plasma out of jets built into their ships to get forward thrust. 

They aren't much for brakes.  They usually just rotate their ships around and use the plasma thrusters in retro mode to slow themselves down.

Pretty cool, huh?

Entry 1-???: January 3, 2013

No entry this day

I have no idea how I missed this day. This was a Thursday. This was before I started writing seven entries each Sunday. I must have forgotten or gotten too busy to post.

Entry 1-012: January 4, 2013

Dyson Spheres and Stareaters

The Dyson Sphere concept was invented by physicist Freeman Dyson in the late 1950s. The idea was that intelligent species could build a partial or complete sphere around a star.  This would allow them to capture all of the energy emitting from the star and simultaneously create a semi-infinite amount of living space on the interior.  Larry Niven took a slice of a Dyson Sphere and used it as the basis for his Ringworld series.

While the concept is fascinating, why bother?  Who needs infinite energy or infinite living space?

Regardless of the reason, I was still enthralled with the idea of a gigantic sphere encapsulating a star so even with the first draft of Rome's Revolution (called VIRUS 5 back then), the villain was the Stareater, called Asdrale Cimatir in Vuduri.  The people observing this would be in awe and terror. If it happened to your star (the Sun!!!) all life outside of the Dyson Sphere would cease.

Click here to see my teaser/trailer illustrating a Stareater swallowing a star.

My hero, Rei Bierak, was able to figure out how to defeat the Stareater by using VIRUS units.  A neat invention back in 1973 when I first came up with it but now nanotechnology is sort of old hat.

As I pushed on with Part 3 of Rome's Revolution, I wanted a double climax and the return of the Stareaters, especially to eat the Sun, seemed very exciting.  You'll see how Rei and Rome defeat it in the book but suffice to say, you will be shocked as to the how and the why. 

Pretty neat stuff.

Entry 1-013: January 5, 2013

Ion-powered star drives and the Tevatron

The problem with getting to the stars is that it takes a lot of energy. At least until we invent an FTL drive.  Traditional chemical rockets burn up their fuel rather fast.  In the late 50s, scientists came up with the original Orion concept of a nuclear powered ship which literally had a series of atomic explosions pushing the ship forward. This has fallen out of favor but may be resurrected some day by using fusion instead of fission.

So how to send people to the stars? Ion engines produce very little thrust but are extremely efficient. I came up with the idea of feeding xenon atoms to a Quantum Black Hole (QBH) and using the resulting Hawking Radiation to provide a tiny amount of thrust. Once you hit interstellar space, they would collect external space dust, hydrogen molecules, etc. to burn up similar to a Bussard Ramjet but no fusion involved.

As I said, ion drives produce very little thrust so it takes a long time to build up speed. Since my people are frozen, so what if the trip takes 200 years? That wasn't the issue.  The problem is the QBH.  They don't exist.  For the story to succeed, at least my version of it, I assumed that someday someone will figure out how to do this.  I don't think the Hawking Radiation idea will work but it sounds cool.

What made it even more fun was proposing that the US Government resurrected the Tevatron to produce the QBHs.  The Tevatron then plays a starring role in The Ark Lords.

It is pretty neat how it all ties together.  Check it out.

Rome's Revolution and The Ark Lords.

Entry 1-014: January 6, 2013

Ceramics versus metal

Rei Bierak and the colonists from Earth traveled to the stars in very cheap spaceships which were little more than very large tin cans.  The mission planners sunk all their money into building the most sophisticated and secure ceramic sarcophagi to transport the frozen people. I have been asked why I built the sarcophagi out of ceramics rather than metal.

Several reasons:

1.  Ceramics are extremely strong.  I thought they might resist punctures by micrometeorites better than metal.

2. Lower weight.

3. Extremely resistant to tensile changes due to temperature fluctuations.

4. Thermal inertia.  Once they hit interstellar space, temperatures could drop as low as 3 degrees Kelvin.  As they went into orbit around their target star, some parts could get very hot.  Ceramics would resist this temperature change.

5. Seemed cooler and more futuristic than metal.

6. I needed a few colonists to die due to cracked cases and ceramics will fracture better than metal.

You can read about it in both Rome's Revolution and The Ark Lords.  Check it out.

Entry 1-015: January 7, 2013

Nuclear rods and the new colony

When sending people to the stars you must account for what they do when they get there.

I sent along seeds and animal embryos and mining equipment.  I also built the Ark out of scavengable materials. But the very first thing I had to do was thaw out the colonists. What do you use for electricity? 

I tweaked an isotope of thorium, compressed the isotope into nuclear rods and encased those nuclear rods inside a lead glass tube with a slit. Under normal conditions, you would rotate the thorium rods until a portion of their surface was exposed through the slit, heat would be generated which was converted by thermocouples into electricity which powered the thaw cycle. If the Ark crashed, the glass would shatter and you will still get the thermocouples geared up.

Later, these rods could be removed and used as sort of super-batteries to power their vehicles and equipment. This took place in Part 2 of Rome's Revolution.  I also made it so they could be ganged together in serial or parallel fashion to create a power plant.

Finally, this made-up variant of thorium had a half-life of 7000 years and could be used to create the mini-nukes which figure prominently in The Ark Lords.

Entry 1-016: January 8, 2013

Wikipedia dis-approves

(Note: when this article was first posted, Rome’s Revolution was approved and had an actual page in Wikipedia.  Six weeks later it was taken down. This is the only post I ever had to go back and revise.)

Rome's Revolution no longer has an official Wikipedia page!

This link no longer works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome%27s_Revolution  Wikipedia article about Rome's Revolution.

Rome's Revolution Paperbook Cover

The article was posted for a month and a half then an editor came along and decided to take it down. You can appeal this but it doesn't seem worth it.  I will just have to go ahead and win the Pulitzer Prize, a Hugo or Saturn award or something to justify taking up their precious digital space. :(

Entry 1-017: January 9, 2013

Why did they build the Arks out of pig iron?

The Arks were flattened cylinders.  The top two-thirds were made of pig iron.  The lower third was made of martensite which is a kind of stainless steel.

Why?  Why not titanium or magnalium or something even more exotic?

The first reason was seemingly trivial but actually quite important.  In order to bring the Ark down safely, it had to be separated into sections.  This required a space-walk.  And the kind of space-walk required meant the first crew awakened would use magnetic boots. Pig iron is about the cheapest magnetic material there is.

The aft-most section was the propulsion module.  Once they reached their target planet, that had to be jettisoned. The next section was the cargo section and that was to come down after the people.  The front section contained the frozen people in their sarcophagi.

Why magnetic?  Why not just use thrusters to separate the ship? The mission planners did not know exactly how long it was going to take to get to where they were going so to facilitate the space-walks, they knew that while propellants may evaporate, magnetism would last much longer.  So they built the ship out of magnetic materials to guarantee that their magnetic boots would clamp down.

Once they landed on the planet, the mission planners wanted to give the colonists every chance to succeed so they build the Ark out of a material that could be easily melted down (the pig iron) or easily fashioned into building materials (the martensite).  Titanium or magnalium or even aluminum would be too hard to work.

If things went well (and we know they rarely did), the colonists would cannibalize the entire ship to start building their new home world.

Entry 1-???: January 10, 2013

No entry this day

Once again, I have no idea how I missed this day. Again this was a Thursday and still before I started writing seven entries each Sunday. Once again I must have forgotten or gotten too busy to post. I only missed one more day over the next year. Sorry.

Entry 1-018: January 11, 2013

Plant transmutation

When I was building the soup that fueled the creation of Rome's Revolution, I put a lot of thought into alternative technologies to make the Vuduri our equals or superior, technologically yet different.

One of the things I researched is called Plant Transmutation. It has been proposed that certain plants can manufacture elements they need by way of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions which is similar to cold fusion. Some people have claimed that plants could form proteins which would bring certain molecules within sufficient proximity that they would spontaneously fuse to form higher order elements.

To my knowledge, no one has produced a widely accepted experiment documenting such abilities. Even the anecdotal evidence seemed so weak, I decided to abandon it.  Instead, I just gave the Vuduri a thing called the molecular sequencer which could build anything essentially one atom at a time. I didn't bother worrying about whether they had the correct elements in the first place.  It was whiz-bang enough to just let it go.

I imbued MINIMCOM the ability to phase-delay transport of atoms and transmute them and that is probably enough. He's already way too proud of himself.

Entry 1-019: January 12, 2013

The Yatori and Vuduri nudity

The Vuduri have very little sense of self.  As such, while they do not flaunt it, nudity neither shocks nor arouses them.

To strengthen their divestiture of self, most Vuduri adorn their body with a trinket or piece of jewelry call a Yatori. Rome had a small ankle bracelet. Pegus has a red thread tied around his wrist.

These items were not worn in an attempt to make themselves prettier.  It was not vanity.  Instead, they were a self-test.  A true Vuduri would know they had broken through and completely divested themselves of sense of self when they could not longer see their Yatori. It proved that the Overmind controlled their perception of the world.

To most Vuduri, this was a desirable outcome.  They called it Second Sight. It was using the Overmind to see the world instead of their own eyes.

As we know from Rome's Revolution, Rome struggled with this her whole life.  She always wanted to be a good little Vuduri but there was a part of herself that always yearned to be free.

When she was first cast out, Cesdiud, she was horrified and scared but eventually came to embrace her new-found autonomy.  Through the course of Rome's Revolution and later, The Ark Lords we literally see Rome growing up emotionally. From her metaphorical birth when she was in the fetal position through becoming a loving mother and wife, her journey toward self-reliance is ongoing. She eventually embraces the fact that she can see the Yatori as a symbol of her independence.

Entry 1-020: January 13, 2013

Is the core of the