Aason also saved mankind from the MASAL's Sipre and used his four-year-old skill set to reveal the location of the secret Onsira base during the stirring climax of Rome's Evolution. He also tipped off his parents and MINIMCOM as to his location when he was kidnapped near the end of The Ark Lords. All in all, a brave and resourceful boy.
Tomorrow, the life and times of Aason Bierak.
Entry 1-298: October 19, 2013
Aason Bierak, Part 2
Yesterday, I introduced you to Aason Bierak, the first born son of Rei and Rome and gave you a bit of his background genetically. Today, we will discuss Aason's childhood growing into an adult after the events of Rome's Revolution.
Aason spent his formative years on the world of Deucado which only has 90% of the gravity of Earth. As a result, he grew taller than his father. By age 21, Aason stands at 6 foot 6 inches tall. However, because he developed with a pair of the 25th chromosome, his muscles are more powerful than his father's despite the fact that he grew up in a lower gravity world.
At 21, Aason is a handsome young man with brown hair and dark eyes that appear to glow, even in daylight. He can communicate with any Vuduri or Overmind or cut himself off at a moment's notice. He is brilliant, insightful and sensitive. He has both a caring side and is also capable of utterly objective logic. Occasionally, he cracks a joke but it is a rare thing.
At the end of Rome's Evolution, we found out that Rome had been pardoned of her crimes which meant she was allowed to return to Earth. When Aason was 13, his parents took him and his sister Lupe to the Earth to learn about his parents' birth world. When he was 20, he led an expedition to the "other" continents on the eastern hemisphere of Deucado called Sul and Toraode. He discovered traces of a lost civilization called the Suduri. His findings there may be documented in a future story.
Aason's first girlfriend was a mandasurte girl by the name of Vendi. She eventually broke his heart, in small part because of interference by Lupe but mostly because of his heritage. As he grew up, coming from heroes' blood, he always did the right thing. You could call Aason a real-life White Knight. The only problem is, a White Knight always dies alone. Women are drawn to the White Knight but ultimately they must leave him. No woman can ever stand up to his perfection and eventually seeks out a man of lesser makeup that does not make her feel inferior. Witness what happened to King Arthur. His wife, Guinevere, was eventually driven into the arms of Sir Lancelot.
Will this be Aason's fate? I hope not. I like the kid. You will find out in the upcoming novel The Milk Run which should be out early in 2014 AD.
Entry 1-299: October 20, 2013
Lupe Bierak
Lupe Bierak, conceived during Rome's training session in the novel Rome's Evolution, is the most unusual girl in the world, perhaps the universe. Her mother is a mosdurece (half-blood) Vuduri woman named Rome. She has the normal 23 chromosome set as do all homo sapiens. However, Rome also has an additional chromosome, number 24, which she inherited from her mother. Rome also received an artificial chromosome, number 25, when she ingested a yellow pill created by OMCOM. This chromosome, too, became part of Lupe's genetic structure. Rome was also injected by the Vuduri on Deucado with a second version of the 24th chromosome. Rome was also injected with a third copy on Earth when she was kidnapped by Estar. Thus Lupe was born with three sets of the 24th chromosome.
Lupe has all the advanced characteristics of her mother including complex optics, a second internal iris and has a fully functional PPT resonance. She also inherited her father Rei's Essessoni build, Rei's sonar-vision and the EM-based "cell-phone" in the head shared by both of his parents. Her PPT resonance is so powerful she was considered mankind's best hope for first contact with aliens using any means available for communication.
However, as unusual and powerful as Lupe appears to be, she grew up in the shadow of her "perfect" brother Aason. The only way that Lupe could carve out the attention she craved was to act naughty. Her mother knew she was going to be a brat, even before she was born. But she was a brat that her parents loved and her brother adored.
Lupe never missed an opportunity to tease her brother or manipulate yet Aason never held it against her. Lupe was Lupe and that's all there is to it.
As the daughter of an Essessoni, Lupe acquired a good measure of her father Rei's height. She towered over her mother at 5 foot 6 inches by age 16. She was destined to reach 5 foot 10 inches before she was kidnapped by the Creatures of Light. Her fate is up in the air. To find out what happens to her, you will have to read the upcoming novel The Milk Run which should be out early in 2014 AD.
Entry 1-300: October 21, 2013
Positron Micrography
In the first part of Rome's Revolution, after Rome has received the go-ahead to produce star-probes and later VIRUS units, OMCOM uses positron micrography to visualize the extremely small elements being produced. Why positron micrography? Why not electron micrography? Let's go back a step. What the heck is a positron, anyway?
Everybody knows the nucleus of an atom is composed of neutrons, protons and electrons. However, that is ordinary matter. There is another substance, very exotic, called anti-matter. So an anti-electron is called a positron. Whenever matter comes in contact with anti-matter, both particles are annihilated with a tremendous release of energy.
It is this very property that gives positron microscopes their tremendous focusing power. By aiming positrons at molecules, they come in contact with electrons and obliterate them and give you a detailed image of the molecular structure of an object utilizing the energy release.
Why are these devices higher resolution than electron microscopes? For the very reason stated above. Atoms contain electrons and if you beam electrons at something, they bounce off or dislodge other electrons and the resulting image, while very high resolution, has an inherent probabilistic diffusion. There is no such confusion with positrons as they do not exist in nature. At least in our universe.
These devices really exist. The first working prototype was developed at the University of Michigan (my alma mater) in 1988. Since then other research centers have developed them and possession of such devices no longer raise eyebrows. Positron microscopes are especially useful in the examination of living, biological samples. Cell walls are particularly resistant to other imaging techniques because of the presence of lipids and other complex molecules. Positrons don't care. They get to where they are going, annihilate their sister electrons and signal their place with a burst of energy.
Since memrons straddle the line between living organisms and inert materials, the positron microscope seemed to be an ideal fit as an imaging device. Not to mention it is way cooler sounding than other devices.
Entry 1-301: October 22, 2013
Genuine Time Travel
Will time travel ever be invented? I say no. Think about it. If it were invented in 10 years or 50 years or a thousand years, wouldn't there be time travelers wandering about in our time? Could they possibly be so good that none of them have been discovered? I know that absence of proof is not the same of proof of absence but in this case, wouldn't it apply?
For the past year, I have been referring to Legal Time Travel as an important element of the Rome's Revolution universe. It is my belief that you cannot travel into the past and change the timeline. It is the old grandfather paradox. You go into the past and kill your grandfather before your father was conceived. Therefore your father was never born and you were never born so you don't exist, so you cannot travel into the past and kill your grandfather.
Some people have worked their way around this by postulating a "self-correcting" timeline. I think Doctor Who uses this approach. Others say you could just spawn a new timeline. Your old one would cease to exist but you w
ould now be in a new timeline. This is the multi-verse theory.
But say that somebody does invent a time machine. You step into it just like Rod Taylor or Guy Pearce did in the movies. Say that it is October 22, 2073 at 11:45:00 AM. You go into the future, tool around for a while and then come back. As long as you don't come back past October 22, 2073 at 11:45:00 AM you should be OK because you haven't altered the past from your perspective. What about the future? Who cares? That was just one possible timeline. Nothing says you couldn't go forward again and find a completely different timeline. Gather up the stock tips, though, just in case.
So if you can't tell, I am now reversing my position. I am now saying time travel is possible. I will stick to my axiom, though, that you cannot go into the past beyond the "present" whatever that means from your perspective. So that explains why we haven't seen any time travelers from the future running around our time nor will we ever. If they exist, they can never go farther back from when they left.
People in the future must live a precarious existence. Imagine if a person from the past comes forward in time and gathers knowledge then returns to "their" present. By definition, you have changed the timeline and your existence must cease. There may be another copy of you, maybe not, but regardless, you disappear. So Bruce and I decided that people of the future must kill a person from the past instantly so they cannot return to their own time. The rule of the future: All Pastees must die!
Entry 1-302: October 23, 2013
300 and still going strong!
Yesterday's post was my 300th in this series. Wow. The amazing thing is that I feel I have just scratched the surface of the underlying physics and sociology of the Rome's Revolution universe.
Worldbuilding is tough stuff. You have to think everything through. Two simple examples are a) what would it be like to have other people looking inside your head all the time and b) what would the implications be of having free and unlimited power?
You kind of have to put your mind into those spaces and just think about everyday life. Then the revelations start to trickle in and eventually becomes a torrent. Little things like Jack Henry's men not having razors means all the males would have beards. The length of their beard would give you some indication of how old they were. In The Ark Lords, I had to add things about one guy with a peach fuzz beard and another whose beard was so long, he had to wrap it in a ponytail. The fact that he was mostly bald made his head look upside down.
There is so much more to tell. I am trying to follow the pages of the original long-form of Rome's Revolution and sharing with you my thought processes of why things went into certain scenes. Kind of like a director's narrative on a DVD. But as happens all too often, I go off on a tangent and then it ends up being an extra post or an extra week's worth of posts.
Anyway, I hope you are enjoying this series. I don't have any plans to ease up. At this point, having a full year's worth of blog entries is within reach so I certainly won't put my foot on the brakes until then.