Letter to a Friend About My Fantasy Novel

A friend who has read the written portion of my sci-fi thriller novel has recently started reading my fantasy novel The Shard. He knew from previous correspondence that there was a connection between the two stories, and that some characters, such as the scientist Tyoma from The Immortality Game, are shared between the books. Given how vastly different the stories are, he wrote to me and asked for an explanation as to how any of this is possible. I thought the explanation I wrote was interesting as a summary even for me, so I decided to post it here, for the record as it were. Those who have read my previous postings about these things might find this summary helps to explain some things in more detail.

Letter to my friend:

Ah, that gets complicated. In The Immortality Game you see Tyoma use the name Xax (which is short for Xaxanakis--pronounced Zax AN a kiss) for his wizard character in his fantasy game. When the scientists' clones first arrive on the new world, they don't at first know that there are any significant differences in the way their bodies react to the new world, but over time they learn that there are differences. The red moon is the cause, though the scientists don't know this. The red moon is made of a substance unknown on Earth, and this substance is the cause of what comes to be called 'magic' on the world of The Shard. The scientists don't really consider it to be magic, but they use the word due to their love of the fantasy game, along with the fact that it does seem very much like magic. One of the scientists at some point discovers that if he looks a certain way at anything, he can see some sort of energy moving through it. As he practices, he learns that he can see this energy moving through everything, even the air, with greater or lesser strength. He also learns that the other scientists can be taught to see the same thing. As hard as they try, they cannot get any native of the planet to see it, so only the arrivals from Earth have this 'power'.

They eventually learn that many things they took for granted on Earth do not work the way they expect. They don't appear to be aging at all (though after thousands of years they realize that they are aging, but very slowly, i.e. after 6000 years Tyoma appears to have aged about 25 years). If they try to create electricity, it only offers a weak current. If they mix gunpowder, it only fizzles. Somehow the energy from the moon, causes many things taken for granted on Earth to work only very weakly, and this explains why so many modern technologies cannot be recreated on this world. Lastly, the scientists learn after much time that if they concentrate, they can actually manipulate the energy in certain ways. It takes them ages to keep learning new ways of manipulating the energy, but they come to realize that their group has become in a manner of speaking ‘wizards’. While some of the group retain their original names, others like Tyoma decide that they prefer to have a proper wizard name, and of course Tyoma already knows his--the one he had in the game back home, Xax.

There is more to it. The energy connects every atom in the universe, though it is stronger when near moons such as the one near this planet, and weaker around planets like Earth where this substance doesn't exist. Since the energy flows through every atom, it 'connects' everything and serves as a form of template. In other words, the evolution of life on a planet such as Earth is partly independent (such as we always believe it to be) but also influenced by the connective energy. In other words, when one planet capable of supporting life does develop life, the life on this planet influences the development of life on other nearby habitable planets. So if one planet develops a pine tree, it becomes very likely (though not certain) that other nearby habitable planets will evolve the same or very similar type of tree. This means that life on each of these worlds comes to closely resemble each other, only differing through subtle variations (dragons versus dinosaurs) or by cataclysmic sudden changes, such as the asteroid impacting Earth and killing off many large species.

A further effect of the energy takes place within the minds of creatures of higher intelligence. You see the effect on the scientists when they are surrounded by very strong amounts of the energy. Well on Earth, the energy is far weaker. Most humans have very little connection to the energy, but some minds have a stronger empathy with it. This is the root cause for many of our legends and myths. Some people 'see' or 'dream' of things that become stories, and they believe that they invented them all by themselves, never knowing that the energy caused them to 'see' things on nearby worlds. So some of these humans 'saw' things such as dragons or trolls or elves and such, and these become legends on Earth, while they were actually real things on other planets. There are planets with similar types of life as appear in legends of other races here on Earth, such as the Japanese or any other race. Differences in legends can be explained by both actual differences in creatures or plants on other habitable planets but also by simply cultural interpretations of such life.

Tolkien was probably the human with the greatest mental connection to the energy--he dreamed vividly of life on the world the scientists found, seeing elves and dragons and such, and writing elaborately about them. Note that there are no hobbits on this world, because The Hobbit wasn't initially written to be a part of Tolkien's elf history; he only melded them together later when he found it convenient to do so. So, while Tolkien thought he was having dreams influenced by our Earthly legends, he was in fact seeing life as it existed on this other planet, and he wrote fairly accurately about that life.

When the scientists first arrive on the world, elves have been there for many tens of thousands of years. They are slightly different than Tolkien writes about them; for instance, they don't have pointed ears, and they don't marry. The humanic creatures that the scientists encounter are primitive, much as our caveman ancestors were. The first such 'men' they encounter are terrified and react with violence, but they eventually find a peaceable tribe and begin to help them--to learn English, to become more civilized than other tribes, and to evolve much more quickly due to the scientists' influence. This is what leads to the development of the Greatlander people. They build a great city, but eventually they are cast out by a gathering of other tribes, who fear them, and they are brought to their current place, called The Known Lands, by their first king. Note that the Greatlanders develop a cultural personality of strong pragmatism but not so strong creativity. This is caused by not having to invent many things on their own, because the scientists slowly introduce things such as the wheel or book or stirrup to them without them having to discover these things on their own.

Other races have evolved from the various types of mannish tribes that originally came out of the south to pester the elves. There was much fighting between the differing types of man tribes, so some were wiped out. Others became humans, while still others evolved into dwarves, trolls, orcs, goblins, and so forth. The scientists had great trouble believing how closely all of this resembled their old stories and games from Earth. At first they could only imagine that God must be real (a hard thing to do considering they were all atheists), as they could not imagine any other way that life could have evolved in such a manner on another world. Later, once they became more familiar with the energy, they began to grasp the concepts of how the energy must manipulate things between the various habitable worlds.

One last note--I've had many readers tell me the characters speak in too modern a fashion. I understand that they are used to seeing medieval-type settings use archaic English, but this world developed from modern scientists speaking modern English, so it would actually be odd if the speech were too archaic.


Okay, I'll stop there for now!

Aquincum

Before Budapest became Budapest, it was an important strategic city/fort for the Roman Empire. It's name was Aquincum, and it was the capital of the border province of Pannonia Inferior, protecting Rome from the barbarian tribes across the Danube. Empreror Marcus Auralius may have written some of his famous Meditations here. By the end of the 2nd century AD the town had between thirty to forty thousand residents.

aerial view of part of the civil city of Aquincum

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the old Roman city was eventually buried and only discovered again in the 18th century. There is a large military fort a few miles away from the town, and near the town is also an amphitheater larger in land size than the coliseum in Rome (though in FAR worse condition).

My family spent an enjoyable afternoon walking around the ruins of the civil town. In the photo above you can see the hot water plumbing under the floor of one of the buildings. There were baths all over the place, both public and private ones, showing just how much bathing meant to the Romans.

And here is a shot of me taken by my eldest son Anton. Rome is my favorite period from history, though I tend to prefer the Republic to the Empire. I hope my sons will come to love this history as much as I do. My younger son tried to read the brilliant Rome series by Colleen McCullough, but he was just too young for it for now. If you haven't read these books, I can't recommend them enough to anyone who loves history or historical fiction.

Unable to Predict Coming Trends?

Agents and publishers like to say that no one can predict coming trends. I've always thought that wasn't quite true. I knew with no shred of doubt several years ago that epic fantasy would start to become popular again right about now. I said as much in the query letters I sent out to agents at that time, and of course they ignored me.

I told them that the Game of Thrones HBO series and the Hobbit movies would produce a new wave of interest in epic fantasy, and since most of these people would have already purchased Tolkien's books after the LOTR movies came out, they would be looking for something new. I even posted about this at Absolute Write, and several people commented there that there was no way to know whether what I said was going to be true. Hogwash! I knew it absolutely. I knew Peter Jackson wouldn't suddenly lose his deft touch at producing Tolkien properly. I knew that George R.R. Martin loved his story too much to allow it to go forward in a shoddy manner.

So it is very frustrating to see posts by respected agents now, acting surprised that this trend has suddenly arrived. Why does no one ever listen to me!

/end rant

Sketcher Girl Studios

For whatever readers I have who don't already know Vic Caswell, I'm happy to help promote her grand opening today. Vic has been one of the most encouraging bloggers for me these past couple of years. She's one of the few who has helped me to keep going when I sometimes feel like it's not worth it anymore. She's not just a writer but a talented artist, and she just might be the perfect person to do your cover art!

GRAND OPENING!!!!

Today is the day that Sketcher Girl Studios, LLC officially opens for business!

In celebration of this momentous event, Vic Caswell (owner/operator) is hosting a give-a-way.
Using the "Contact Us" form on the site, send her the secret word from the end of this post and you'll be entered to win.

Sketcher Girl Studios is a freelance illustration company with a focus on book cover design.  Vic Caswell has produced the covers of Emily White's debut novel ELEMENTAL, as well as it's sequel FAE (release date not announced yet), and Kimberly Ann Miller's debut novel TRIANGLES (releasing June 2013).

SGStudios is passionate about books and getting them out there and into the hands of the readers who will love them.  Vic will read your book.  She will work with you to ensure that the design you end up with is something you love.  She doesn't use stock photography, so you are guaranteed an image that is original and she offers full legal usage of her cover images.  So, if you want to print it on swag, and sell that, the money goes straight to you.

Her prices are competitive- affordable for small press publishers as well as self-publishers.

She also provides other services- such as: tattoo design, logo design, header design, artistic prints, children's book illustration, and pretty much anything illustration that you can think up.

Stop by and drop the secret word: Mischief, for your chance to win one of these nifty prizes...

such as:   postcard sized prints of  her work titled PERCHED CREATURE, one of two copies of ELEMENTAL by Emily White, a ten dollar Amazon gift card, an original painting, and  free labor on a book cover (costs may be incurred for props/ models/ wardrobe) and more!

Links:
Sketcher Girl Studios
SGS on Facebook

Testimonials:

Vic Caswell is brilliant! Not only is she super easy to work with, but the things she comes up with are so amazing. She was able to take the half-coherent ideas I was kind of able to articulate and come up with exactly what I was thinking of. I loved working with her on both my books' covers and I can't wait to work with her again!- Emily White (author of ELEMENTAL from Spencer Hill Press)

"I'm loving my new logo!!! Victoria Caswell did a MARVELOUS job and was such a joy to work with. She made the process effortless and I swear she could read my mind. So, if you need some work done, please send it her way! You won't be sorry!" Nancy  Fennell (owner of Scents of Adventure)

Inspiration for Stories

The stories I write tend to be pieced together over a long period of time by many small ideas. Many of the ideas come from daydreaming, but many others are inspired by details of things I experience in life. Here is one small example.

Here is one of the late Frank Frazetta's greatest paintings, in my opinion. I have a print of it hanging on my wall. As awesome as the warrior is, the bit that set me to thinking (for many years actually, since the thought hit me when I was very young and first saw this paining) was the skeleton lying at the warrior's feet. My thinking was, "What is his story?"

This poor fellow once lived and had dreams and a family just like all of us. What is the story that led him to be lying in this awful place, being trampled unnoticed by this fantastical barbarian warrior?

This led me to incorporate a scenario during a Dungeons & Dragons game that I DM'd as a teen, and the spookiness of the party traveling through a dark forest littered with mysterious skeletons always lingered in my imagination.

So while writing my first fantasy novel, I reached a place where the party finally escapes from the terrors of passing under a mountain and they come to what seems to be a pleasant forest. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to inject a supernatural element into the book.

I dreamed up a scenario in which, five thousand years earlier, a battle had taken place in the wood between an evil wizard and his minions against an outnumbered army of dwarves and elves. The wizard's army seemed to be winning, but Dwarven reinforcements issued from their mountain city and came in time to turn the battle. As he escaped, the wizard cursed the battlefield, and ever since then the remnants of the battle have refused to crumble away as they should.

There's more to it than that, but the party finds out what that is later. For now I will give you a fragment of the chapter where they encounter the ancient battlefield. Geldrath, Alekas, and Antos are teenaged budding warriors.

***********************

Geldrath felt nervous and walked slowly.  He had always enjoyed spooky stories as a boy, but he had no desire to meet any real ghosts.  He looked at the brothers and asked, “Do you believe in spirits and curses?  Are they real?”

“I don’t know,” Alekas said.

Antos said, “I know an old crone in Welby town who says she can speak to the dead.  She’s a nice lady, but I always thought she was a tad crazy.  I always said I don’t believe in spirits, but I have to admit I’m not so sure right now.”

“I’m with you,” Geldrath said.  “It doesn’t feel right.  Why is there mist in the trees?  Why is it so dark with the sun directly overhead?”

Both brothers shook their heads and everyone fell silent.  Their footfalls sounded more muffled than usual, and there were no sounds from birds or animals.  The birch trees here all had bare branches, while the ones behind had full green canopies.

Soon Geldrath saw the first of the corpses.  Half of a ribcage rose from a tangle of grass, mushrooms growing where a heart had once lodged.  Rusty ring mail armor lay about the torso in tatters.  He looked closer at the skull and saw needle-sharp teeth on an elongated jaw.  A goblin, he thought.  He shuddered and stepped past the remains only to nearly cut his foot on a rusty, curved sword blade hidden in a tussock.

“Watch where you walk,” he called out.  “I just stepped on a sword.”

Now the bodies were all around.  He saw skeletons of dwarves and goblins everywhere he looked.  Here and there he saw the remains of a horse.  He saw taller corpses, but without stopping he wasn’t sure if they were orcs or elves.  All of the remains looked ancient, but when he thought about how long ago the war was--more than five thousand years--he knew there should be no sign of the battle.

Alvanaria knelt down near one tall skeleton and traced a finger over the skull’s cranium while murmuring softly to herself.

Alekas and Antos stopped abruptly and Geldrath went to see what they were looking at.  It was the skeleton of an enormous troll.  This one was much larger than the ones they had seen in Kaldorn.  The ribs jutted up nearly to shoulder height.  The rusty iron head of a huge mace lay in the grass nearby.  Geldrath stared into the empty eye sockets of the skull and shivered.

“Let’s move faster,” he said.  “I want to get out of this place as soon as possible.”

Alvanaria rose and joined the boys.  Geldrath saw wet streaks on her cheeks.  She said, “I’m afraid this was a large battlefield.  Even moving quickly we will not pass it by this day.”

“You knew some of these people, didn’t you?” whispered Geldrath.

“Many were my friends.”

Walking became ever more difficult as individual remains gave way to piles of bones and weapons.  Some of the weapons--the ones made by dwarf or elven craftsmen--were in perfect condition except for a coat of grime.  Once Ismar tripped on something and landed in a pile of mixed dwarf and orc bones.  He shoved himself out of the pile, shrieking in horror, not even concerned about the deep scratches he sustained from the fall.

The afternoon was the longest one that any of them could remember.  It became a numbness of one unsettling scene after another; a banquet of death such as none of the companions--save Alvanaria and Xax--had ever imagined.  The sun dropping behind the mountain was a blessing, as a deeper darkness settled over the forest and the band could no longer see clearly.  All wished to go on and put this place far behind them, but it was impossible to continue without the risk of injury.

Midas called a halt when he came upon a small clearing.  The company worked by torchlight for more than an hour to move all of the bones, armor and weapons from the clearing so they could set up camp.

Geldrath rolled out his blanket next to Alekas’s.  When he sat down, something sharp bit into the heel of his right foot.  He lifted the blanket, felt around the spot where his foot had been, and uncovered an arrowhead buried in the dirt.  He thought for a moment of pocketing the arrowhead, but thought better of it and tossed it away into the trees.  This place is cursed indeed!  I want nothing to do with it.

Let There Be Rock

A couple of years ago my family had a blast. We flew to London and first saw Green Day in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium, then saw Pearl Jam in Hyde Park, and finished it up with Paul McCartney. It can't get much better than that!

Now that my two sons have gotten deeper into more great music, they are even more interested in seeing some great concerts. They hadn't really been into Pearl Jam when they saw them last, though after the concert they began listening to them more, and now they love them.

I started looking at concerts in Europe to see if there was something affordable. There were a number of good choices, but all pretty expensive--Soundgarden, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, Green Day...all are having concerts this summer over here, but in places that are a little costly to get to. Okay, The Boss is coming to Prague, so that isn't too bad, but frankly, my sons aren't really into him yet.

So, the one I found that is affordable and I know the boys will love them is Pearl Jam again...in Prague. Yep, we just visited Prague two months ago, but hey, it's the most beautiful city in the world, so why not?

Europeans do their dates backward from how we do them, so this means it is on July 2. The boys have seen concerts in a stadium and in a park, but this will be their first one in an arena. I hope Pearl Jam are in great form that night!

Excerpt from The Immortality Game

One of the trickiest aspects of writing is to get across important details without lecturing the reader. Amateur writers tend to put far too much exposition into their stories. I did it myself when I first began, but I learned quickly from the blogosphere and changed my ways. I cut out all of my exposition and found more subtle ways to seed in bits and pieces here and there where it made logical sense.

I try not to do any overt exposition within the first few chapters. It's still not good to do it much later on, but at least when you have already captured the reader's attention you have earned the right to get away with a little bit of it.

Below is the chapter of my WIP that gives the most exposition, but it isn't too early in the book and I try to make it flow. Most of the book is a fast-paced thriller, so this chapter represents a break for the reader, a chance to catch his or her breath. I hope you will let me know where I go wrong!

Tyoma is a Russian scientist, part of a team that has been working on a top secret government military project for several decades. The military is more than a little unhappy that their massive amount of funding is not providing quicker solutions.

****************************************

“Over here, Gosha.  Come on!”  Tyoma beckoned to the steel-plated chimp that hung by one hand from the jungle gym in the corner of the lounge.  “Come meet the general.”

Gosha tilted his head to one side and stared back and forth between Tyoma and General Andreykin.

“He won’t come,” Tyoma said.  “He only does for Volodya.  Shows how bad his taste is.”

“Do you always criticize your colleagues behind their backs?” said the general, a tall man completely devoid of hair but for bushy gray eyebrows and long lashes.

“Only Volodya,” Tyoma said, “and I criticize him plenty to his face, I’ll have you know.”

The general didn’t look amused.  “It’s no wonder this project never makes progress if your team can’t get along.”

Tyoma grinned.  “We’ve made plenty of progress,  General, even with Volodya in the group.  I like to think it shows how--”

“I don’t like you, Dr. Komarov.  This is a serious project, and you are never serious.  Why did Dr. Aseev leave you here to meet me?”

Tyoma put an injured expression on his face.  “Ah, but you are my very favorite general.  I am distressed that you...”  The stony look on Andreykin’s face told Tyoma he was pushing his luck.  He waved his hand toward the chimp.  “Look, General, one of our recent successes.”

“A monkey.”

“A chimpanzee.”

“We’re not spending billions of rubles to create toy robots, Doctor.”

“Oh, but it’s no robot.  Watch the way it behaves.  It’s too realistic.  Have you ever seen a robot that didn’t behave like a robot?”  Tyoma jumped from his chair and reached out to scratch Gosha behind his ears.  The chimp’s lips pursed and tried to kiss Tyoma’s wrist.  “Gosha here was our first full success of capturing the data from a chimp’s mind and layering it onto a digital interface that allows it to mimic a real brain.”

General Andreykin squinted his eyes at Tyoma.  “Don’t blather at me.  How does this relate to my needs?”

“You want super-soldiers.  We can capture the minds of your very best men and reuse them in robot bodies...or eventually in clones of human bodies.”

“Clones.  Human bodies.  That’s what I need.  When can you show me that?”

“General,” Tyoma said.  “Can you imagine how difficult it is to conduct tests on human subjects?  We can’t reconstitute an adult mind within an adolescent body, so we are forced to wait until a clone body reaches full maturity before we can even conduct a test.  And there are the questions, of course, of what to do with partial successes.  Would you have us dispose of a nearly complete human?  When does it become murder?  Forget that--what about a full success?  Any problem with having a duplicate of a living person running about?  How will that work?”

The general waved a hand dismissively.  “It’s only soldiers I need.  They’ll belong to the army.”

“You going to supply us with test subjects?”

“What are all those crèches for that we funded?  Haven’t you been aging clones already?”

“Absolutely, General.  We’ve been working on perfecting the cloning process.  It’s a different matter altogether to actually give the clones a mind.  We need DNA and mind dumps from some of your men.”

Andreykin rose from his seat and towered over Tyoma.  “That’s not a problem.  What is a problem is that General Potkin lost his job due to lack of progress here.  I don’t intend to lose mine.  I want to see real progress, Doctor.”

“You know, General,” Tyoma said, “there are cures for baldness now.”

“You are not funny, little man.”

“General, let’s go down and visit the crèches.  I’ll explain our progress on that part of the project.  Then I have something else that is fully ready.  I think you’ll like it very much.”

Tyoma led the grim-faced general to the grav tube, which whisked them down to the third basement level.  The lights flicked on to show an enormous room, antiseptically clean, about half the size of a football pitch.  Rows of crèches lined the floor like huge silver and glass coffins.  The room smelled strongly of glass cleaner.

Neither man spoke as they approached the nearest crèche.  Tyoma could never help but marvel at the features of each clone, no matter how many times he visited.  The first crèche contained what looked like a naked teenage version of his friend Kostya, though hairless and with much smoother skin.

“Ah,” said General Andreykin, with the first smile Tyoma had ever seen on the man’s face. “It’s Dr. Sakaev, yes?”

“Yes.  This row here contains six of his clones, each a year apart in age.  This one will be ready to test in around four more years.”

“How can they look so healthy?  I would think lying in these boxes for years would produce little more than pasty corpses.”

Tyoma slid a finger along one of the tubes that ran through the glass and into the clone’s right arm.  “The miracles of modern medicine, General.  Each of us has billions of nanobots doing anything from preventing colds and other diseases to scar repair to...”  He raised his eyes to the general’s bald dome.  “...preventing baldness.”

“I like being bald, Dr. Komarov.”

“I’m sure.  Anyhow, we have our own special nanobots here.  We’ve spent decades coming up with new ones for all the problems we’ve encountered.  We need them for muscle development, bones, lungs, basically anything that would typically atrophy if unexercised.  The brain was the toughest.  It gets almost no stimulation, yet it’s critical that it develop properly.  We’ve perfected it with chimp clones, and we think we are ready with humans now.”

General Andreykin walked to a new row of crèches.  “Who is this?  I can’t place him.”

“That was Dr. Anatoly Vorobyev.  He was our psychology expert, but he died three years ago.”

“Why do you keep his clones then?  I want to get started on my soldiers.  We don’t need to waste space on him.”

“It’s not a waste, General.  If anything, he’ll be the most important test...at least from a moral perspective.  We intend to try him first.  We have some successful mind scans for him.  If we do manage to successfully reconstitute him, we won’t face the issue of having two of him in existence.”

“Why no women?  Surely there are female scientists every bit as brilliant as any of you?”

“Naturally.  We had two women on the project initially, and another we added later.  They all dropped out due to disagreements over the morality of what we were trying to accomplish.  Not to say that only women have moral qualms about this stuff.  We lost a splendid male neurologist also.”

“Why clones of your own people?  It should be my soldiers in here.”

“The project cannot succeed without many tests.”

“I’m not stupid, Doctor.  But, why not use my soldiers for your tests?”

“We can start soon, General.  I asked you already for some DNA and mind scans from your chosen soldiers.”

“I’ll send some men over.  Scan them and use them in these bodies.  I need--”

“General, we can’t use them with these.  The rejection rate is very high unless we layer the mind into a body made from the same DNA.  It’s too costly to have so many failures during the testing phase.”

The general threw up a hand.  “This is too slow.  These take what?  Eighteen, twenty years to grow?  I need my soldiers now!”

“This is but one of the projects we are doing for you, General,” Tyoma said, holding his palms up.  “We’re working on speeding up the aging process for the clones to make this one workable, but we have other projects that will bring more immediate results.  Remember, I said we have one ready now?  How about I show you?”

“Here?” the general said.  “Where is it?”

Tyoma fished a data card from his pocket and held it up.  “Right here.”

The general reached to take the card, but Tyoma withdrew it and snapped it into his own slot.  “General, you will receive a connection request to your wireless.  It’s the only way to see how this works.”

General Andreykin frowned.  “What do you mean?  No one uses wireless with strangers.  It’s too dangerous.”

Tyoma gave what he hoped was a calming smile.  “We’ve all heard that, General, but have you ever actually known anyone to have their wireless compromised?  This program runs off of our protected wireless here at this facility only, and its range is purposely limited.  You are perfectly safe.”

The general stared, scowling, at Tyoma for a full minute before thrusting a finger in Tyoma’s face.  “My people know I am here.  Nothing better happen to me.”

“You’ll be fine,” Tyoma said, and sent the handshake request to the general’s slot.

The general jerked in surprise as he saw what Tyoma was already looking at.  A soldier in full combat uniform stood at parade rest only a meter away.

“Oh,” the general said.  “It’s like those porn programs so many are using these days.  How does a fake soldier help me?”

The soldier came to attention and saluted.  “Permission to speak, General?”

“Sure.”

“Sir, I am a virtual squad leader.  My mind was scanned from one of the very best combat NCOs from the Moldovan front.  I get visual cues from each member of my squad, so I am able to assess any situation and use my experience to pass orders to my men.”

“General,” Tyoma said.  “Headquarters would never admit it publicly, but you and I both know the primary cause of problems at the front is bad leadership at the squad level.  We don’t have nearly enough good NCOs.  This program ensures you have the very best squad leaders at all times for all troops.”

General Andreykin nodded slowly.  “I can see some use for this.  But, what if the soldier carrying the card is killed?  It’ll throw the squad into disarray.”

Tyoma waved a hand as if shooing away a fly.  “I used this just to demonstrate the program.  In the field each squad would carry a bomb-proof transmitter.  It has an effective range of up to a hundred meters.  More than enough for anything the squad leader needs to do.”

The general sighed.  “Look, this isn’t bad, but it’s small.  I need more, and I can’t wait twenty more years for it.”

Tyoma nodded.  “General, we have some other projects nearing completion that will amaze you.  I promise.  We also have an idea that we think President Shirov would like.”

“That sounds to me like you want to wheedle more money out of us.”

“It’s totally up to you, General.  We think the president will love the idea.”

The general twirled a finger to tell him to get on with it.

“We can win the space race.”

“Space race.  We have no space race.”

“China and the Western U.S. are racing to be the first to reach New Eden, as the Americans call it.  Their ships are ponderous and will take centuries to arrive.  We can build small and fast and beat them both.  New Eden can be ours.”

“What do we care?” General Andreykin said.  “Let the fools fight over a planet centuries away.  We’ll fight for this one.”

“Perhaps, perhaps.  But perhaps the president would feel differently?”

“If small and fast would work, why are the others only building huge ships?”

“Because they must send thousands of people.  They don’t have what we have, General.  We can send a ship with no living beings on it.  A far faster ship.  Once it arrives and scans the planet to ensure it truly is habitable, well then the auto crèches can kick off the cloning process.  When they are fully baked, we can inject the clones with copies of their own minds.  Instant colonists, General.”

“Sounds like a fantasy to me.”

“You saw Gosha the chimp.  We can already do it with robot bodies.  All we need is a few more years and we will be able to do it with human clones.”

“What good does it do us to win this race?  So we put a few Russian colonists on this far distant world.  Who cares?”

“We could arrive centuries before the others can get there, barring some amazing advance in propulsion technology.  If we carry enough different sets of DNA and mind chips, then we will have time to establish a sizeable colony there.  It would be no small accomplishment for Russia to be the first to claim a habitable world.”

The general looked skeptical.  “I’ll bring up the space idea with Minister Grischuk next time I see him.  If that’s all you have to show me for now, tell me what my guard stole from you.  I’m told it was two data cards.”

Tyoma paused to consider how to proceed.  “General, while the robbery itself was truly regrettable, what was taken will not harm us.  One card was a simple mind scan...of myself actually.  No one can use that, at least not without doing serious damage to themselves.  The other was one of our combat chips.  Like I said earlier, we are still working on perfecting those.”

“What does it do?”

Tyoma blew out his breath.  “Ah, it does so many things, General.  The idea is to transform any raw recruit into a fully ready soldier.  It provides all the data any soldier should know, identification and functionality of all weaponry, training sims on all martial arts, and so forth.  The user will see colored auras around anyone in a combat zone for instant differentiation of friends, foes, and unknowns.  The most useful bit, in our opinion, is what we call combat reflexes.  During high adrenaline situations the code all but takes over the soldier’s mind, feeding it data at such a high rate that time appears to slow down.  The soldier will literally experience combat as if everything is moving at about four-fifths time.  The program will project likely lines of fire, anticipate the movements of enemies...there’s so much involved I can only touch on all that it does.  It’s very exciting...but not fully ready for use.”

“One of these chips is out there?  If it falls into the hands of our--”

“No, General,” Tyoma said.  “The code is highly encrypted and protected.  No one could copy it, even if it were fully ready.  We’ll keep searching for the missing chips, but you shouldn’t worry too much about them.”

General Andreykin stared into Tyoma’s eyes for a long moment.  “At least you’ve stopped joking with me, Doctor.  I hope you are telling me everything.”

After the general took his leave, Tyoma put a group call through to Big Dima, Volodya, and Kostya on the wall screen.

“So?” said Volodya.  “Did it work?”

“I believe so,” Tyoma said.  “He allowed the wireless connection.  I can test my code to see if I can hack his firewall.  I’ll be shocked if I can’t.  Wireless simply can’t be protected the way Sentry code does with direct Web connections.”

“Good,” Volodya said.  “And the rest?”

“He didn’t seem much interested in the space idea, but he said he’d pass it along.”

“We need that extra funding,” said Big Dima.

“We’ll see,” Tyoma said.  “Let me go test my hack.  I’ll let you know if it works.”

“Then we’ll have him,” Kostya said.  “Even if he does learn the truth about the lost combat chip, we can protect ourselves.”