The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B. (Page 22 of 49)

I almost forgot the most important piece of tech in any royal toolkit: the ubiquitous datapad. We'll call them wisepads.

Here's an example scenario regarding wiseeyes and wisepads. Apollo and his chief of staff, General Acrisius, are walking to the study and an aide comes up and hands Apollo a wisepad with a text message from Mama. Apollo reads it, then hands it to Acrisius to read, too. If I try to use wiseeyes, the aide (wearing wiseeyes) would walk up, make some gesture to transfer the message to Apollo's wiseeyes, who subsequently transfers it to Acrisius. But! What does the aide do if he just woke up Apollo and he isn't wearing them? (I assume their removable so they can be easily replaced and/or confiscated for security reasons.) Should the aid carry a wisepad wherever he goes in case the emperor is not online? (I ignore the case where Apollo is always on with the palace AI (mindmeld), since advanced AIs have a habit of coming alive and causing havoc at the worst times.) But, a simple rule in Apollo's inbox to notify his wiseeyes when there's a message from Mama is all it takes to put the aide out of work. And Apollo could use his wiseeyes virtual buttons (I don't like hand gestures, too tiring) to forward the message to Acrisius. But! Watch out for door jams and droids, because you're going to bump into one if you're reading while walking. But! The wiseeyes could potentially be configured to warn him when he's about to crash into something or drop through a manhole. What about wiseears and wisemouths to carry on fully immersive conversations with anyone anywhere? And if everyone is sporting these Acme goodies, then there is no more need for 2D or 3D displays.

My head is spinning....

Pick a scene. Write it once without and then with the wise eyes. Throw them on the website for a vote. Personally, I think it is about preference. Which one is more fun for you to write?

Find another name.  Second Eyes maybe, or Glimmerers.  Or borrow  a word from computer science and call them lookasides (from Translation Lookaside Buffer.)  Or maybe the window of the soul peering out.

I think I've got it. Viruses that take control of the tech in wiseeyes and use it to mislead the wearer about what's going on around them or, better yet, even damage the eyes. Instead of displaying simple text, videos, or augmented reality in front of the iris, infected wiseeyes can blind the wearer by displaying brilliant off-the-charts light instead.

Is there a real-world reason why permanently blinding the wearer wouldn't work?

Don't forget to name a character after me. I like Memoroid. Or hemorrhoid. Your call.

It's 4017. You can't escape the technology affecting every aspect of your story. This IMO is a plus and could enhance things. A cheap way around, if you choose to get rid of these thing is banning the stuff because of a nasty side effect in the past, à la Dune. But even then this becomes another subplot and end up infecting the rest of the story. Either way you can't lose.

BTW I vote the wiseeyes, wisethings, etc.  as cool terminology.

I'm hoping the aforementioned virus that blinds wiseeyes users will be sufficient to render them unusable. I'll look for an excuse to mention it. Perhaps even an event called the Great Blinding for a massive simultaneous attack in the past.

That's the Acme-branded toilet paper. It analyzes a sample of stool and transmits the results to your wisething. Yes, I'm kidding.

And shouldn't you be editing? Bzzt!

I'm endlessly tweaking my first two chapters because the third chapter is turning into a bear and I'm too lazy to tackle it.

One noteworthy change: I'm switching emperor and empress back to imperator and imperatrix. Screw the wordiness. I prefer the historical accuracy. Apollo goes back to being heres imperiales.

I'm also considering changing Imperial to imperial to match common usage (Wikipedia and Star Wars, as well as several history books I'm using). I originally chose caps because Imperium/Imperial is a lot like Canada/Canadian. That creates problems in sentences like this: the imperator let rip with an Imperial fart. See the problem? imperator is not important enough to capitalize, yet Imperial fart is.

I suggest a virus that infects the wise-eyes, making it direct the person to walk into traffic. When they enter a smart vehicle, there is a crash as the watch links with the car's onboard computer. When the person enters a secure complex, it maps their path and sends out the blueprints for the secure building. I suggest calling it the Snowden virus. It releases information without discriminating with who has access to it.

As a result, the tech community in your world could have placed firewalls between tech so that the uber virus won't infect everything in the immediate area.

And ... it's going down to the -40°s with wind chill tonight. That's over 70°F below the freezing point of water. Worse, I have to go out in this Scheisse tomorrow.

went back and re-read the chapter. I have no complaints with her waiting... but yes I agree it is tactically unsound.

Understand that 4 fully trained men who've seen combat will very likely overwhelm one person with a gun. There are people today (eg Krav Maga martial artists) who can who can disarm you bare-handed from across a room. Imagine squaring off with four of them. Queen would have no chance. And we haven't considered one of them might be good at eyeshots with a thrown knife. Or have a razor-drone to bounce around the room at the speed of sound (killing everyone including the suicide attackers. Or have a poisonous gas sac implanted in his rectum. Or use ultrasonics to knock everyone out. Or even something as simple as a burning smoke grenade using a frozen cube of hydrochloric acid ancasing a ball of phosphorous.

Basically, "There's no way she could have taken them all down with a blaster before they charged" is the point I should debate. It should probably be "There's no way she could have taken them down once two had fully entered the room". She's unwise to allow them to enter. Given the multitude of ways the killers have at their disposal and that she can't be certain if htey plan to use them, she does indeed risk her son's life in order to enter into discussion with them.

No issue with the current structure IMO. But I can see the other side of the equation the reviewers are trying to convey.

You'll laugh at my suggested fix, but after that, perhaps give it a thought. Jospeh is of military training in this draft... how's about they take him and his mother alone* as they flee down a hall. Joseph turns around and lets them have it, disarming two (the hallway can serve to string out the attackers so they can't all fire) by breaking joints jiu jitsu style. The last two overwhelm him and your scene progresses as normal, only everyone his holding live weaspons and it boils down to two on two.

Basically, I'm suggesting remove the part where the villains are unarmed and let your MCs carry their weight (sink or swim).

*I would have them separate the king and the queen the moment an attack is ascertained with the goal of reducing characters in the scene

I disagree about Deux ex Machina. Computers can already perform facial recognition. I could easily see future guns being manufactured so they can't kill heads of state, unarmed children, police, etc. (e.g., guns would have to be updated regularly, like GPS maps, in order for them to keep working; the updates determine who can't be shot at).

Kdot, there's virtually no way she could have stopped all four from entering. It would have gone very quickly and they were all armored. She would have tried to stall them until reinforcements could get there, and would have pumped them for information in the meantime. Firing is necessary only when Cain physically attacks them.

I like disarming them remotely. It's a nice surprise for the reader and a key element to the scene and the actions that follow. I just need to reduce the risk associated with them trying to kill Joseph (e.g., What if the remote disarming failed?). She should be firing as soon as he was being targeted.