Overview

The world depicted in Antiquity, Book Zero:  story of tomorrow outlines a series of events for the next approximately 150 years.  The world faces multiple issues, including the rise of random, non-political terrorism; global warming that produces a mini-Ice Age; overpopulation; and a near-catastrophic asteroid crash.  In spite of these disasters, science and technology continues to advance, sometimes relieving and sometimes causing the Earth’s negative issues.

As fossil fuels continue to be depleted, renewable carbon-based fuels take their place, but these forms of energy still damage the environment.  The damage begins to overwhelm the world.  Technology steps in to control and manipulate the climate and to repair the damage.  Finally, genetics help by offering an energy source that is powerful and safe.

Medical advances include the near eradication of infectious diseases through genetic engineering and the production of artificial organs that can replace damaged ones.  These medical accomplishments manage to extend life expectancy, a direct cause of overpopulation.  Mankind seeks to colonize other planets to relieve the population concerns on Earth, and science achieves near light speed travel.

Near light speed not only makes stellar exploration and colonization possible, but also serves intra-Earth travel in the form of near light speed trains.  This form of travel is instrumental in saving millions when an asteroid collision threatens millions.  Lessons learned in repairing the environment after the mini-Ice Age teach engineers how to prepare planets for colonization and how to repair the planet after the asteroid strike.

The timeline is not only concerned with technological theories.  Previously considered third-world nations lead in the fight against random terrorism.  These nations organize the formation of the Coalition of Allied Nations (CAN).  When terrorism comes under greater control, CAN leads in scientific research to remedy other problems of the planet and directly competes with the other international world government, the United Nations.  For many years, a conflict develops between CAN, the government of the poor, and the UN, the government of the wealthy.  The merger of the governments does not coincide with a merger of the caste system.

CAN attempts to create one of the fairest political constructs ever conceived, but also demonstrates its darker side, prejudiced against wealth, a free-market society, individual ingenuity and ambition, as well as against electronic and artificial life forms.  CAN is neither a utopian or dystopian existence, but rather an advancement of ancient ideas, just as the capitalistic system that seeks control it is ancient.

The Writing Process

The original concept of the Antiquity series of books began with a fairly simple story idea.  A teenager would be teleported to a distant time period when not only time travel had been invented, but advanced DNA replicating and neural scanning were realized.  At the period when he found himself, a group of historians had founded a colony named Antiquity where several great civilizations had been devised in miniscule.

This detail of the story is important to understand what follows.  Genetics already has shown that DNA represents all living organisms.  The DNA of an individual is unique to the species and even unique to the individual.  In a futuristic science, it might be possible to clone an individual from his or her DNA.  DNA does not store memory, but another futuristic discovery could be the ability to download an individual’s individuality—the memories and abilities.   Quantum physicists say time travel might someday be possible.  A long-standing opinion holds that changing events of the past could alter future outcomes.  My idea was this:  The futuristic society could travel into the past, could take sampled DNA and memory scans without changing the past, and replicate the individual into the future.  Stealing the DNA and scans and implanting them through replication could result in mini-civilizations.  Anyway, that was the nucleus.

Back to the birth of the idea for Antiquity, I envisioned the world where the teenager would reside.  I developed the characters and storyline.  Still, I found myself somewhat lost.  I could write an adventure for him, but to understand the story I wanted to tell, I needed a lot more information than I had.  If I had the character interact with the Roman mini-civilization, I only knew a broad stereotype of the society.  Only in a cursory way did I know about the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, the Chinese, any of the great civilizations.  If I kept the teen in the mini-US compound, I did not know enough about John Jay, or Amelia Earhart, or Jim Thorpe.  I needed to do research, and with the scope of the novel, it would be a lot.

For six months, I worked on a timeline history of mankind, from its roots to its broadcast across the continents, from the development of tools to the birth of nations and societies, from agriculture to industrialization, from turmoil in the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates river basins to turmoil in the Nileand the Tigris-Euphrates river basins.  The content of this story was fascinating to me.  I began to see the relationships, the causes and effects that made us who we became.  As I passed the fall of the empires in the beginning of the 20^th century and the Depression and World War 2, I became excited, not only with the story but that I was nearing its end.  Computers, transistors, the Walkman, all have a place in the development of us.  The deregulation of industries and banking in the late 1900s were a domino to the headlines in the Wall Street Journal.  1995, 1996, 1997 flipped like pages in the story.  Then, I had it.  At the turn of the millennium, I stopped my history book.

Slowly, I had worked on the novel through this time.  I knew the scientific constructs I wanted.  I knew the political stratum I wanted.  But, I realized my work was only half completed.  I needed the timeline to delve into the future.  So, for the next six months, I continued the story.  What would happen tomorrow, next year, 100 years from now?  I created a systematic story of events, without characters as you would expect in a piece of fiction and without a plotline other than the sequence of discoveries, inventions, political or economic movements.

All fiction needs to interest readers.  The manner the interest is drawn varies radically.  For traditional realistic fiction, two elements, plot and character, are key.  For speculative science fiction, as with fantasy, another element often overlooked in mainstream novels becomes almost as instrumental as the keys for realistic fiction—setting.  First, setting is always important in traditional works and never truly overlooked; however, if a story is set in current time period, only the details of setting unique to the story are drawn upon with common knowledge filling in the blanks.  A story told in a future time period (speculative) or a completely imagined universe (fantasy) requires the entire world or universe to be created.

Links to The Story of Us and the first chapters of the novel are scribd documents:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46786753/Time-Lines

http://www.scribd.com/doc/47232568/Antiquity-story-of-the-black-egg

Link to Antiquity, Book Zero:  the story of tomorrow, a Kindle book for 99 cents:

http://www.amazon.com/Antiquity-Book-Zero-tomorrow-ebook/dp/B005SMZLGS

Rules–a slippery rock

Not too long ago, a former boss held a staff meeting where he made a couple of comments that hang with me.  First, he said that he didn’t want to give us a lot of “silly rules.”  Second, he said he trusted our judgment.  Immediately, two red flags rose as I translated his words from Boss-ism to Employe-ese.  He didn’t want to go to the trouble of setting rules…he was lazy…he was later fired.  He had encapsulated his philosophy in vagueness with the subjective adjective “lazy,” a description he could later define as he pleased.  Also, he set himself up, in my mind, to be shifty.  Never trust anyone who says, “Trust me,” and trusting our judgment implied us trusting his.

Personally, I like rules.  Saying this doesn’t mean I always follow them, but I like them being there.  Of course, they keep us from being an absolutely chaotic breed.  They provide security.  They reduce the mind-less tasks we all perform into procedures and routines that we can do without thinking, saving that mind function for greater thoughts like what to eat for supper.  Rules give a base we can build upon, improving the rule and sometimes overhauling it.  Unfortunately, when we choose the wrong people to set the rules, we all suffer their stupidity.  Rules are a slippery rock, and we should never be unwilling to object to them.  Later in my tale, the above mentioned boss was fired.  The new supervisor became frustrated with me.  I openly disagreed with a stupid rule set by that job’s grand boss.  My new boss said, “Sometimes, you just have to do it and not argue.”  I said, “Never.”  Rules are good things when they work.

With these thoughts in mind, here are a few rules that I hold dear, beliefs that I try to follow (the list is alphabetized, a good rule that shows less partiality):

Eating everything our plate is a good thing.  My parents were produced by the Depression.  As many children, I was told to finish everything on my plate.  “Children are starving inChina.”  Of course, the logic was badly skewed.  Now, I watch my grandson leaving this thing or that untouched at dinner.  After all, his mom and dad scrape remains from their plates.  Later, my grandson asks for a treat, a fruit roll-up.  I’m afraid the Department of Human Services will camp on our doorstep if I deny him.  In my mind, he hasn’t earned the treat.  I have seen my step son and daughter-in-law scraping off the excess mashed potatoes and peas and take a piece of cake, which they also fail to finish.  The ten bites they are refusing to take represents a major flaw of our society.  We are taught it is ok to do things half-way.

Marriage is a good thing.  When I was growing up, marriage was important for all the wrong reasons.  Then, it made us moral and righteous.  There is nothing immoral about two people setting up a relationship without the artifice of marriage.  There is nothing righteous about having ourselves, our spouses and our families enduring a failed marriage.  Marriages do fail.  I like, however, how marriage involves a formal commitment and keeps us from throwing away something that we could fix (a theme seen elsewhere).  I feel divorce is way too easy, letting us pretend to be married when in fact we are just playing game.

Thriftiness is a good thing.  We all know that we live in a throw-away society.  That society was built by people who want to sell us things, over and over.  They got rich, and we became suffocated by an enormity of waste.  A few years ago, my printer needed a new ink cartridge.  The black ink cost $35; the color cartridge cost $40.  I went to WalMart, and a new printer cost $50, so I bought it—problem solved.  When its cartridges ran low, I found they cost $25 and $30, respectively, but a new printer cost $35.  Soon, our closet was full of printers.  Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Lexmark had found a resourceful sales and production practice, and they are not alone.  We live in a war zone between sales and common sense.  Many of us no longer strive for thriftiness.

Work ethic is a good thing.  We all need to avoid work sometimes, leave flat a part of our jobs.  By doing so, we make a statement within our minds that we have some control over our lives.  We should never leave work flat that will unfairly force work on our co-workers.  My lesser job, the one I work 20 hours-a-week at, is largely production work where we process mail for a corporation.  I work nights.  The day-shift is comprised of slugs.  They work on the easy mail, while spending their thought processes on  finding complaints about the night crew.  The classic complaint came when we got in trouble for doing too much of the work, not leaving them anything to do.  I work very hard and do far more than my share.  A year ago, management devised a system where the leading producers earned $5 Subway meal cards, based on monthly production.  For the four months of the system, I earned $10 a month by winning two of the six categories.  The night shift earned $25 a month.  Management ended the system when complaints rose that the same people keep winning, which cost morale for the losers.  By having a good work ethic, we instill self-pride and have an established work level that we can use to leave that flatness needed for personal statements.  I now remove rubber-bands from my desktop, forcing the next worker to retrieve them.  I dare not do more, else I might get fired.

Carrottop

Since I purchased my new car, a 1995 Lumina with 140,000 miles and a rusty top that inspired its name, about the same time that I began this blog, they share a brotherhood.  So, I am initiating a section about the car.

When my wife and I married thirteen years ago, we bought a mostly new, less than 10,000 miles,Malibu.  We drove it to death and it was a good car.  When it was nearing 200,000 mile last year, it went to car heaven.  Repairs exceeded the value of the vehicle.  We miss Betsy.

Not in position to buy a new or ”pre-driven” car, we bought a 1994 Grand Prix with 160,000 miles, from a family member for $350.  Blue, which we called her, leaked things like radiator fluid and other vehicular mucus that we could not quite identify.  The passenger power window control died.  The driver’s door latch broke.  It made it through the fall and winter and kept us mobile.  Believe it or not, it decided not to start.  Blue was not a good car.

We bought Carrot Top from a friend of a family member for $500 and I cannot yet say if it is a good or bad car.  A noise or two bothers me.  We hope it will last until we can correct some credit issues and trade it in.  We’ll see.