“You got it,” Rei said. “So we’re good to go?”
Virga nodded cheerlessly. She walked over to the doorway and pressed the stud to open the door. The two of them exited the residence together. The two women guards remained off to the side as Rei and Virga strode forward, past the soldiers holding the Vuduri equivalent of bazookas, their weapons lowered. When they reached the edge of the paved area, Virga guided them toward the flying cart that was parked there.
“I assume you are expecting me to return you to Deucado?” Virga inquired, her foot lightly tapping in place.
“No,” Rei said, smiling. “My ride is already here.” He raised his arm pointing to the space in front of them. The air shimmered. MINIMCOM suddenly appeared out of nowhere, his “roadgrader” cylinders fully extended.
Behind him, Rei heard the rustling of the armed Vuduri, raising their weapons.
“I would not do that,” MINIMCOM’s voice boomed from one of his EG lifters, temporarily operating as a PA speaker. “The cannons you see extended from the front of my fuselage are wide-angle, multi-phase PPT throwers. They are capable of leveling a square kilometer in less than one second.” The fanned ends of the extensions pulsed once and began to glow an angry red. A high-pitched noise emitted from the two stalks, rising in intensity.
Wow. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I thought they had everything worked out and now this? Let's see if Rei can defuse the situation.
Entry 4-336: November 27, 2016
The Not Sex Scene 9 of 9
Virga, the leader of the Vuduri on Helome, is determined to use Rei's genetic material to force an evolutionary correction in the development of her charges. Quite simply, she wanted Rei to mate with her people. However, knowing Rei, he wasn't going to go along without a fight. Virga will never see it coming. Here is the conclusion:
The fanned ends of the extensions pulsed once and began to glow an angry red. A high-pitched noise emitted from the two stalks, rising in intensity.
Virga waved her hand behind her and the soldiers lowered their weapons.
The whirring noise of the cargo ramp extending issued from the back of MINIMCOM’s airframe. The sound of light footsteps turned into Rome, coming around the side of MINIMCOM.
“Rei!” she shouted as she came at him in a full sprint. She jumped up in the air and he caught her tightly as she wrapped her legs around his waist, grabbing the sides of his head. She kissed him over and over, squeezing him. After a moment, she pulled her head back and pressed her forehead against his, not saying a word. Rei smiled at her passion. When he was finally able to lower her to the ground, she grasped his hand tightly, intending to never let it go again. The two of them turned toward Virga.
“Clearly you had this planned, yes?” Virga inquired skeptically.
“Did I assume you were intelligent and would see the wisdom of the proper way? You bet,” Rei admitted.
“I take it that you will be leaving now,” Virga said reluctantly. “You will keep your promise?”
“Absolutely,” Rei said. “I meant what I said. I just need a little time but I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers. I’ll come through for you.”
“Very well,” Virga said. She looked at Rome. “Please accept my apologies for any discomfort we put you through. While our methods were improper, our intentions were most noble.” She walked up to Rei and stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.
“You are a lucky woman,” Virga said, turning to Rome. “Your husband is very wise and very caring.”
“Yes, he is,” Rome gushed. “And you are all mine!” she pointed out to Rei using their “cell-phone” link.
“Let’s go, baby,” Rei replied mentally, gently pulling Rome along with him, “before she changes her mind.”
Well, that's a big phew. Rei really did talk Virga out of having sex with him. But now he has made a promise that he has to make good on without knowing for a fact he can come through. That ends up being one of the pleasant twists later in the book.
Entry 4-337: November 28, 2016
Tesla's Solar Shingles 1
What is your opinion of installing a solar roof on your house? I am a futurist so I am all for it but my wife is an interior designer and she said no. Her objection was not to having solar and using sustainable, free energy. Her objection was simply due to aesthetics. She hates the deep silicon blue traditional solar panels. She doesn't hate the concept but she refuses to have her roof filled with them.
Well, Elon Musk, all-around genius, has done it again. He is merging Tesla with a company called SolarCity and they are beginning production on a new roofing material called a solar shingle. Even right now, as they are starting up production, they have four styles: Tuscan (Terra Cotta), Slate (French Slate), Textured (Asphalt) and Smooth:
Aren't they incredible? Tesla has built a series of model homes with roofs made of each of the four types. You have to admit these houses are stunning and there is no way you would even know they were solar if you didn't know.
Here is the terra cotta which they call Tuscan glass:
Incredible, right? Tomorrow, how the magic happens.
Entry 4-338: November 29, 2016
Tesla's Solar Shingles 2
Yesterday, I introduced you to Elon Musk and Tesla's latest product called Solar Shingles. These little gems are a game-changer. Not only do they produce renewable, free energy from the sun but they also have amazing other advantages which I will enumerate here.
Installing a Tesla solar shingle roof will ultimately cost less than a traditional roof. The glass shingles provide better insulation than a traditional roof. And because they are glass, they will not degrade so they will last longer than a traditional roof. Plus free energy? Why wouldn't everyone switch over? I think eventually everyone will.
For new houses, I think these things could be built as the original roof. For existing houses, you could put them on top of your old roof or wait until it is time to replace the roof and use these instead. Regardless, in 20 years, every roof should be built using these materials. You couple this with a Powerwall battery pack and you have free energy all the time. The battery packs take the power they stored up during the day and dispense them at night.
So how did Tesla accomplish this miracle? They used an ingenious strategy that looks like this:
The solar cells are at the bottom. If you look at them directly, they are easily seen. However, the micro-louvers refract light from the side so that you don't see them from the street level. This is why they look like "ordinary" shingles. However, this optical trick only reduces the efficiency of the solar cell by 2%. This is not much of a price to pay to gain widespread acceptance.
The French slate shingles are particularly interesting. Tesla uses a hydrographic printing technique so that every slate is different. This means that no two roofs would ever look exactly the same avoiding the cookie cutter effect. Imagine if this was your house:
Cheaper, stronger, better insulating and producing free energy? I gotta sign up! Go to Tesla Solar to learn more. Please!
Entry 4-339: November 30, 2016
My Dad
I saw my Dad last Saturday for the first time in a long time. He has severe Alzheimer's Disease and doesn't know who I am nor does he know my brothers or his grandchildren. He doesn't really speak. He mostly just lies there, occasionally opening his eyes but usually just drifts off to sleep. It's a sad sight and it hurts to see him this way. However, since this is my blog and I get to write about whatever I want to, I thought I'd share with you a few memories of my Dad when he was younger and very vital. I have lots of memories of things with my family, too many to recount but there were times when it was just me and my Dad.
One of my fondest older memories is when my Dad would take us to the Eagles games, back when they were still playing at Franklin Field. I was just a little guy and squished in between men with big coats. I had my hot chocolate and I was warm and
the games were so much fun. My Dad taught me to love sports and the Eagles especially.
I remember whenever I entered a science fair, my Dad would guide me on my experiments. He never did any actual work. He didn't believe in that. But he always forced me to give my best effort and I was very proud of my entries. My Dad taught me to love science in a way that sticks with me to this day.
I also remember my Dad was always into technology. He taught me how to build an analog computer out of meters and some potentiometers. He later got us our first microcomputer, an Altair 8800 and later the KIM-1 and AIM 65. My Dad taught me to love computers and programming and I still make my living today doing exactly that.
Finally, I remember how much my Dad loved his family and he was always there for us, even when he was off traveling the world. My Dad taught me how to be a Dad and how to love my children and wife and that is something I practice every day.
When I look back on it, all of the major influences on things I do, things I love, came from my Dad. His condition is going downhill and the person who once was my Dad will be gone soon. But our times together will always live on. Goodbye Dad. I will miss you and I will always love you.
Entry 4-340: December 1, 2016
What's in a name?
I have discussed this topic before but in The Ark Lords, it comes into play once again. Sometimes I'm not sure how far I can push this but it does amuse me so I'm going to believe I did not go too far. As you are well aware, because the Vuduri are the people of the future and we first meet them among the stars, I have given the more important ones names which are star names or constellation names.
For example, the leader of the Vuduri on Deucado was Pegus, named for the constellation Pegusus. The leader on Skyler Base was Commander Ursay, named for the Big and Little Dipper. Even the woman who wanted to mate with Rei on Helome was named Virga, named after the constellation of Virgo.
For the mandasurte, I tried to take English words and make them name-ish. For example, take Rome's parents Fridone and Binoda, I kind of patterned them after a pasta dish and a breath freshener. Trabunel, the leader of the Ibbrassati, was just a variant of tribunal, a meeting of leaders.
For the Deucadons, I just took my previous stepson Stephen and grabbed his and his friend's English names and twisted them a little bit. Like Bukky (Bucky), Steben (Stephen), Malloy (Melloy) and Triden (Trident?), well maybe that last one is a stretch.
When it comes to the Essessoni, I usually named them after people I know or variations of people I know. For example Rei Bierak was named after my father, Rei's mother's name was Ruth, the same as my mother. Rei's father's name was Edward, my grandfather. Even Rome and Rei's children, Aason and Lupe are named after my own children. Sussen was named after my cousin Susan. However, there are times when I pick the names to have a certain dramatic effect.
Take Captain Keller, the head of the Essessoni contingent on Deucado. I wanted his name to remind you of a killer. After all, the Vuduri name for us is Garacei Essessoni which means the Killer Generation. However, even better was the name of the US Space Force Colonel who was the armed forces representative within the Ark program. His full name was Colonel Harmon Slayton. Harmon = Harming. Slayton as in he kills people. I think it was my finest name that convey qualities.
If you ever pick up a copy of The Vuduri Companion, you will meet Colonel Slayton when Alexander Haynesworth first introduces the Ark program to the world. Our friendly Colonel was in on that presentation.
You'll find out what dastardly deeds Colonel Slayton promulgated tomorrow.
Entry 4-341: December 2, 2016
The Great Dying 2081 AD
The Great Dying was a phrase coined by people a lot smarter than me to reference an extinction level event that occurred before the age of the dinosaurs. It is actually called the Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction event and occurred about 250 million years ago. It was the Earth's most severe known extinction event, which according to Wikipedia eliminated up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. It is the only known mass extinction of insects. Again, according to Wikipedia, because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event, possibly up to 10 million years. It is after this event that the dinosaurs were able to begin to evolve.
However, the people that occupy my 35th century world of the Vuduri are not that imaginative so they didn't mind borrowing the phrase to reference the mass extinction of the human race, statistically speaking, in the year 2081 AD. Over nine billion people died in that event. The worst part of it is that we find out in The Ark Lords that it was done on purpose. Here is what Colonel Slayton said about it:
“My name is Colonel Harmon Slayton. I am the mission commander for Project Darwin. If you are watching this, I am mostly likely dead. Probably for hundreds of years. You would have no concept but the Earth is dying. It has been overrun by too many people and they are killing the planet. The eco-system is breaking down. We’ve had two Category 7 hurricanes this year already and it is only March. There is terrorism everywhere. The economy is permanently in the toilet. The United States government has decided it is time to fix things.”
“When the Reynolds Corporation first proposed the Ark program, the U.S. Military agreed to co-sponsor the initiative in exchange for the right to select twenty per cent of the passengers. You are the direct descendant of the captain or one of his trusted lieutenants. The decryption key for this slab was never to be written down. The very fact that you possess it means you are part of this noble project. We have created a series of artificial viruses, the first being a rubulavirus, that will cleanse the Earth of anyone who is not going to be a part of our future. We have already tested Strain 3 that the info-sphere called the Lupine Flu. Nearly every American was immunized well before its release. It killed almost 100 million people and demonstrated the proper release vectors in Europe, Asia and South America.”
“Strain 4 has been prepared and will be released two years after the last Ark is launched. It is a simian-based virus which merges the Hendra virus and Nipah virus. It attacks the bacteria in the gut and literally causes people to explode. This virus has tested out to be 99.999% effective. Other than those of us inoculated and the random people here and there with a natural immunity, we should have a casualty rate in excess of nine billion. This will bring the total population of the Earth back to a manageable level.”
Pretty cold-blooded, huh? Whatever measures they took to have a small group of hand-picked survivors didn't work. They all died eventually too. The only people that survived and procreated were people like Sally Reynolds who had a natural immunity to all viruses, not just the Darwin Strain 4. But there is worse coming.
Entry 4-342: December 3, 2016
Death
I am not a fan of death. I actually have very little explicit dying in any of my books. Yesterday, I told you about The Great Dying perpetrated by the Darwin Project but that is off stage. In Rome's Revolution, I avoid death as much as I can but as in real life, sometimes it is inevitable. The only person that died at Skyler Base was already dead by the time Rei got there. Rome and Rei killed the Stareater, of course, but even that ended up being a mistake.
In the middle of Rome's Revolution, I prevented a war and thus avoided mass death. I did include an explicit scene near the end where Rome accidentally killed Estar but she had it coming. She was, after all, trying to kill Rei and Rome. At the end of the book, not only Estar but all the people populating the Onsira base beneath Kilauea died. However, we never saw what became of them because Rome and Rei incinerated MASAL, the evil computer by igniting the volcano. We saw the volcano erupt and that was that.
In The Ark Lords, the entire plot was based upon the mass death of people but Rome and Rei saved the day by stopping the evil plot before it started. They didn't even kill the members of the Da
rwin Project but rather shipped them off to Helome to serve as genetic donors.
I must admit, I did "kill" MINIMCOM in The Ark Lords for a short while but that was simply for dramatic effect. In the historical section of the book, Jack Henry, the martyr, died while attacking the Erklirte. You did get to witness his actual death but from the standpoint of the 35th century, his death actually took place 800 years before the novel. Technically, it was seen only through flashback.
In Rome’s Evolution, I did have Reema, the Queen of the Onsiras, killed as well as Sussen. I guess I was feeling braver. But even they were resurrected in The Milk Run when Aason Bierak made his way to Heaven.
And finally, I could not stomach the idea of my heroes growing old and dying so I gave them virtual immortality right at the end. You'll have to read about it in The Vuduri Companion but I assure you they came out OK.
Like I said, I am not a big fan of death. But I write all of this in honor of my Dad, Ray Brachman, who passed away yesterday morning. Peacefully. His name will live on both in real life and in my books as the inspiration for Rei Bierak.
Entry 4-343: December 4, 2016
Funerals on Deucado
Yesterday, I told you I was not a big fan of death either in real life or my novels. But again, as in real life, ultimately death is inevitable. In fact, sometimes it can be used with great dramatic effect. Especially if it involves a major character. The question becomes, in the 35th century, what do they do with the dead people?