a primer

What has it been, 18 months?  Yet still there has not been much actual text laid down.  Recently I've been working on it every day, if only in my mind, still waiting for the story to settle down, to congeal, before I dive in.

I've been sharing some details and running changes with a friend, and the process of writing about what I'm writing (or at least figuring out how to write) seems to help -- so here, I'll deliver a primer to a general audience, as much for my own process as for your consideration.

SPOILER ALERT...?

What I'm about to put on this page will reveal much of the novel's core.  If you read it now, you'll be less surprised by certain events within the story.  If this kind of thing tends to spoil your reading experience, you may want to navigate away from this page.  However it will be several months (at least) before Virtual Dreamer is completed, time enough for you to forget (then dimly recall while reading) the content of this primer.

BACKSTORY

Max McKraken had a career as a mechanic, made his way up to head mechanic at a dealership before striking out on his own and starting a shop called Harmonic Conversions -- yes, converting internal combustion vehicles run on either natural gas or propane, or (mainly) into electric vehicles.  He survived that critical first year of any new business and was doing quite well enough, thank you, before hitting the lottery -- and hitting it big.  Always a very practical man, but not without his dreams, Max bought some land in the country (a former mountaintop removal site that he found next to his ancestral home, which he went looking to 'retrieve').  He also started a second business called Parkersburg Robot, not really caring if it made money -- but what started as brick-and-mortar for an online retail outlet (a one-stop shopping experience for those looking to purchase several different kinds of robots, something Max had found a niche for) did much better than expected.  Before long, in response to many requests for products not offered on the site and unable to be located, Parkersburg Robot became a manufacturer as well.

Max was an accomplished delegator, and knew how to hire the right people.  Instead of blowing his fortune, he doubled it.

...Now here is something I've been working out just since writing the above:

When Max went back to the old family farm to see if he might be able to buy it from its current owners, what he found was that they had been severely affected by the mountaintop removal coal mine nearby.  Property values had dropped overnight, making the farm nearly worthless as equity -- so they couldn't move even if they wanted to, without taking a huge loss.  Max could see that the place meant nearly as much to them as it had to his grandparents, and upon seeing what the coal company had done to the surrounding land decided to fix it.  So, instead of buying back the family farm he found himself acquiring a much larger area of adjacent land.

Area residents had already renamed the place (smaller than a town, but big enough at one time to have had its own post office) Mars, but Max decided his new 'digs' looked like a slice of Mars transported to Earth -- and so he named it the Wedge (of Mars).  Work was quickly underway -- not to bring the land back, because it just couldn't be -- to 'terraform' the Wedge.  Max found himself having to find lodgings for some of the people who worked for him there, to the point where he was setting up tents, and as he thought about how best the land could be used he realized it would become a community -- a semi-intentional community, if you will...

...and now back to what I've already established in my mind:

Max and some of his employees had been working on a line of vehicles for a new company, Tellurian Motors.  Each vehicle is equipped with an ACE device, 'ACE' for 'Aetheric (energy) Conversion to Electric'.  Having secured a spot at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment and Marketing Association) show in Las Vegas for Harmonic Conversions, they had planned to bring a couple of Tellurian prototypes and showcase the ACE along with them...  I hope you haven't gotten too attached to Max, because he's cut down -- and the trip to Vegas is cancelled.

This is where Kegan, Max's only son, is orphaned (in his 20s) and inherits everything -- and where the novel begins.

Kegan and a trio of his friends and contemporaries who are employed by Parkersburg Robot have been entrusted with a secret side-project, working on thought-command technology.  During experimentation, thoughts are not only received electronically but broadcast, and several states of altered consciousness are discovered as byproducts of the broadcast equipment.  They work out how to reliably induce a waking dream state and include electronic information exchange within the 'virtual dreaming', at first thinking it would take video games to the next level.  Before long they realize that with networking it could take the internet to the next level...

A related development is something they call 'simulated telepathic dialogue', which happens in a more wakeful state.  Between the two of these electronically-enhanced states and the possibility of networking with them, it becomes clear that their technology will change the way the world communicates...

...as well as other aspects of daily life.

Kegan is the designer for Tellurian Motors, and has used CAD for those Tellurians built as well as those still in the concept stage.  He has the idea to develop 'VD/CAD', where design can happen within a virtual dream.

The story opens up, and there are a few possibilities of where it may go.  I haven't decided yet -- but I'm probably clear enough at this point on what happens in the first half, to get back to 'actual text' very soon.  Meanwhile I'll continue to write about the story as i've done here, in private text files but as if I were writing for an audience.

This is as good a place to stop as any, and I have to go play chauffeur...

       - fil