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Cool idea: Satan used a rather unethical geneticist to make the gene changes that were needed to give Connor supernatural powers at conception. Satan somehow (details TBD) helped the geneticist home in on the correct genes, but those had to be tested on other humans to ensure Connor would not be harmed by messing with something as complicated as the human genome, which is a mess of genes that often perform more than one function each, and which are not necessarily related. Those tests went on for decades.

In doing those tests, the geneticist discovered that you could modify the genes that cause baby ducks to follow their mothers, except in Connor's case, Satan took Campagna's place, giving Connor a powerful, unnatural instinct to follow his father, which translates to him doing what Satan tells him, at least until the end of book one, when Satan pisses Connor off by telling him that deciding the outcome of the wager with God is why Connor was born (not love, as Connor had been led to believe).

Well, it turns out that the gene for controlling the aforementioned instinct also plays a powerful role in the human lifespan. You can enable the gene for the required instinct, but if you later try to disable it again, the human carrier of that gene will experience an irreversible decline in health (exact symptoms TBD), culminating in total death in at most two years.

The geneticist documented key parts of his work in a journal because he came to suspect that Satan would eventually kill him. That journal makes its way into Bishop Romano's hands, who shows it to Connor as part of their ongoing effort to turn him away from Satan. Connor decides to have the gene disabled at the end of book two, when he's sixteen, to break free, even though he'll die as a result. Coincidentally, Connor is eighteen in book three. Isn't it cool the way the timing of that worked out?

Naturally, his long-suffering mother is devastated by all this but understands the need for it, and supports Connor's decision. Not sure yet if she falls off the wagon at that point.

So, now, Connor is in danger of being purged by Adam from the soul they share, and even if he somehow avoids that, his body will die anyway. So, he's screwed no matter what.

Gotta keep your main characters suffering. :-)

Sol, since the extra exposure for NextBigWriter members using the new Booksie feature is likely to result in more new members here (yay!), can you please fix the confusing text related to quickees (once on the Profile tab and two times on the Quickees tab)? It's a feature typically used by new members who don't yet have a lot of connections for private messaging, and many of them accidentally send themselves quickees.

The current text has wording roughly like this: "This is where you can leave a message for the writer." However, members who receive new quickees read them on their own Profile tab or their own Quickees tab, then try to reply to that quickee by typing in the quickee text field on that same tab (theirs), thinking they're responding to the quickee when, in reality, they're just sending themselves one and never hear back from the member to whom they intended to send the quickee. Many new members run into this.

A very simple fix would be to replace "the writer" with the member name of the member to whom the quickee will be sent.
If I'm on my own Profile or Quickees tab, I would then see "This is where you can leave a message for Dirk B." and I would know not to use that field from my own Profile and Quickees tabs.
And if I were on, for example, Cathy's Profile or Quickees tab, I would see: "This is where you can leave a message for C.E. Jones."

Thanks
Dirk

peterwilliam too; has a post in Premium

When you boil a frog slowly...

Connor will become increasingly erratic during book 2 for reasons he doesn't understand. At the end of the book, it's revealed to Connor that he has the soul of an ancient being, which he has been using as his own while that being slept. How's that for an initial reveal in terms of complexity? The reader and Connor will have a lot of questions, which Connor will ask. Anything that gets too deep into the weeds, I'll leave out unless it's important to the plot. Connor will also meet with Adam, where more is revealed to Connor and the reader. Again, Connor will ask whatever questions I think the reader might want asked without information overload.

The reveal will also tell him how Satan was screwed by his own terms of the bet. He asked for a soul for Connor, and he got one.

Think of it as Siamese souls. Inseparable, but two personalities, two individual experiences, and a shared brain from Connor's body. Although Connor and Adam will be able to communicate and cooperate, I decided I prefer them to remain two beings sharing one soul. Initially, Connor's body is born with Adam's soul, except Adam is asleep. Baby Connor sets up shop in the same soul, and he doesn't know about Adam. Connor lives his life "normally" (heh) aside from being the son of Satan and, therefore, the Antichrist.

At the end of book one, Connor is unable to kill the pope for reasons he can't understand. That was Adam's first influence on this "dream" he's having, meaning Connor's life. During book 2, Connor will become increasingly erratic (details TBD) as Adam slowly awakens and tries to reassert control over his own soul. Connor doesn't know what's going on, although he's struggling internally not to lose control of himself because of whatever is happening. I may do something similar with Adam (i.e., he's coming out of his slumber and is trying to shake off the dream and reassert control over his conscious self, but he can't do it because Connor is fighting him).

Most likely, Adam will fully awaken before Connor learns what's happening from the Holy Spirit. I decided tonight, there should be a chapter where Connor and Adam "meet" and get to know each other, at least to some extent, and figure out how to coexist, at least until external matters are settled, at which point Adam and Connor expect to  have some sort of duel to decide who lives and who dies. I'll use that chapter to explain what's been happening to the reader. I'll probably go further and have much of what's happening surprise Adam as well. I might make Connor's whole existence within Adam's soul part of that surprise. Perhaps Adam believed he would be fully conscious of who he is right from rebirth. So Connor could be a huge surprise (not to God, but to Adam). There's other stuff I'm still working out, but Connor's courage is critical to the success of the mission, so Connor had to come into existence. How Connor came to co-exist in Adam's soul is TBD. I'd prefer a different explanation than simply saying God did it; obviously God knew it would happen, but I'd like a different root cause.

Before all of this begins (before Connor is born) Adam is unwell, psychologically, blaming himself for what happened in the past and asks God to end Adam's existence. I'll probably make it so that the rescue mission was God's idea. God knows Adam's soul is sick and needs to be healed, and the rescue mission is meant to accomplish that by allowing Adam to fix what he screwed up.

Now you see why there had to be a whole different timeline for this story. Obviously, book one tried to follow Catholicism as much as possible, although it looked for quite a while that Christ had returned as a boy. Catholics have far more flexibility than some Protestants denominations when it comes to interpreting Revelation. Most notably, events in Revelation are not meant to happen sequentially, and some events never happen at all but are symbolic of other things (e.g., the Two Witnesses from Revelation simply represent the Church's witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; traditionally, two witnesses were needed in the Old Testament for testimony to be considered reliable).

Book two will be mostly consistent with Catholicism until it's revealed near the end that there are two "beings" struggling for control of the same body and soul. At that point devout Catholics will think the whole story has gone off the rails and the book reviews will tank. At that point Catholics will begin to look more favorably on Dan Brown. :-) I do intend to make it clear in the introduction of all three books that the story is inspired by Revelation but will not necessarily follow Revelation to the same conclusion. It definitely won't.

Book three will involve many of the natural disasters from Revelation (they may actually start in book two), followed by a confrontation between Satan and Connor, not a confrontation with Christ, the latter being considered non-Catholic. You can probably guess what happens to Satan, although there'll probably be another 25% of the story to go after that, which focuses on the rescue mission, involving a huge sacrifice, the mission's outcome, and its aftermath.

And just to make it interesting, I'll say that only one of Connor or Adam will remain for the rest of eternity. :-)

George's head is probably spinning right about now.

Did I answer your question, Kdot? lol

Bill, you're in our thoughts and prayers! Please keep us informed as your surgery and recovery move forward.
Five tours in Vietnam? Wow! Now that's heroic!
Get well soon.

Having had Kdot's comment that my reactor is really just a neutrino-to-energy converter percolating at the back of my mind for a while, I finally decided there really is no good way to justify calling it a reactor (it certainly has nothing to do with fission or fusion). My original reason for choosing that term is that it suggests power generation and dangerous all in one word, and a neutrino-to-energy reactor is self-explanatory.

But, converter would be a boring term for it. Ditto for transformer, although I could live with it since it too suggests "something to do with power generation." Two other names currently percolating in my head are "juicer" and "milker". And if I really want to go nuts, I could call it a cow (something to be milked).

Neutrino juicer could work if I simply state it's fleet slang for "squeezing" energy out of neutrinos, assuming it needs to be explained (perhaps just once). And juice is, of course, a known synonym for energy.

The other options are milker and cow. Neutrino milker is very similar to juicer, though milker doesn't imply energy. Cow would be great if it's an acronym for an official name (e.g., Converter of W...? or Converter of O... W...?). "Scotty, I need you to milk the COW as hard as you can!"

Juicer is an informal name for the converter, just like boiler is informal for reactor. FYI, the reason fleet personnel call it a boiler is that it can pretty much cook almost anything in the universe if ruptured. That explanation was intended to further suggest that this thing is very dangerous.

Thoughts?

Thanks.
Dirk

Oops. That should've been obvious. Thanks.

What's your opinion as to whether a huge amount of light energy directed through a typical shield size (say 10 feet x 10 feet) against a target ship's hull might be destructive to that skip's hull, assuming no windows to blind the crew within.

Thanks
Dirk

That's a long list of non-classical states, including glass, which is kind of cool.

I tried coming up with a scene involving all the fired energy somehow quantum tunneling through the shield and quickly realized I don't know enough of the science to know if I'm writing crap or not. Can't have a dialogue (various questions and answers the reader might expect) without more knowledge.

My search today for forms of energy did give me an idea, though, which a lot of soft sci-fi folks ought to be able to understand. I can add an additional form of energy to the story (call it hokey energy for now), which is what the dreadnought fires through the superweapon, but it's very energy-intensive to convert energy output from the dreadnought's reactor into hokey form, which is why the superweapon drains the Hercules so severely of power.

Hokey energy can pass right through an EM energy barrier (shield) unhindered, but the shield causes hokey energy to transform into other forms of energy, 35% of which (an EM frequency?) continues on to strike/damage the ship behind the shield with an incredibly powerful punch, able to smash all the way through a destroyer's 10 or so decks. The remaining 65% would, ideally, transform into another form of energy (visible light?) that I can bleed off harmlessly into space. Assume the shields are projected about one foot out from the hull.

Anyone know if a massive release of visible light against the target hull from a one foot distance could ever cause any kind of damage to the hull, or is it just one big-ass flashlight?

Also, anyone care to suggest a part of the EM spectrum that I can hit the ship with using the remaining 35% of the converted energy. I couldn't find anything online about what part of the spectrum is fired by star destroyers.

Thanks

Quantum tunneling through the shield is perfect. Thanks for that.

Data_Babble=ON

Now what would cause the blast from the shield defier (the superweapon) to tunnel en masse through a defensive shield, rather than simply slamming into the shield like ordinary weapons fire would? For story purposes, the defier itself requires a huge quantity of energy to fire (e.g., perhaps 100 times as much as a heavy supernova cannon). That quantity of energy makes it dangerous for the firing ship to shoot since it takes every spare bit of energy a dreadnought dare redirect into the weapon, including most of the energy from the ship's neutrino reactor running at 15-20% beyond its safety limit.

However, hitting St. James's destroyers with that much tunneling energy passing unimpeded through their shields would most likely destroy the ships in one shot each. The other battles in the story require many supernova weapon strikes against a single location on the target to knock out that location's shield and breach the outer, gorillium-plated hull (say, 10 hits from a supernova). The superweapon I'm trying to replace (the mattergy cannons) can punch all the way through the hull of an unshielded ship and out the other side, but it requires 2-3 mattery shots to destroy a ship.

So, 10 supernova strikes to breach the the hull, maybe 15 strikes to punch through the inside of the fairly thin "blade-like" main hull, and at most 10 more to punch through the far side of the outer hull. So, for the mattergy cannons to do the same thing requires that weapon to fire the equivalent of 35 supernovas at one point on the hull, whereas the shield defier requires about 3 times that to fire. The question then is, what do I do with the rest of the energy that goes into firing the defier, where only 1/3 reaches the target (equivalent of 100 supernovas to fire the defier - 35 supernovas to punch completely through a ship's hull, which is the story requirement = 65 supernovas worth of energy that needs to go somewhere else.)

I could see the excess, focused energy causing the tunneling effect needed to pass through St. James's shields, but 65 supernovas worth? Seems like a lot, but I'll roll with it. After all, the defier is somehow causing the fabric of spacetime to change such that mass quantum tunneling of energy through energy occurs at that location. Convenient side effect of firing such a powerful weapon, huh? :-)

Data_Babble=OFF

So, does it pass the smell test? Or am I serving up garum sociorum, a Roman-era delicacy made from rotting fish?