Submissions sought. Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling.
Donald Maass,, literary agent and author of many books on writing, says, “Independent editor Ray Rhamey’s first-page checklist is an excellent yardstick for measuring what makes openings interesting.”
A First-page Checklist
- It begins to engage the reader with the character
- Something is wrong/goes wrong or challenges the character
- The character desires something.
- The character takes action. Can be internal or external action: thoughts, deeds, emotions. This does NOT include musing about whatever.
- There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
- It happens in the NOW of the story.
- Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- The one thing it must do: raise a story question.
A reminder of what you’re after here. This blog is about crafting compelling openings. Not interesting, compelling. Why does it have to meet that hurdle? First, if your work is going to an agent, you’re competing with hundreds of submissions. You have to cut through that clutter and competition with powerful storytelling and strong writing. If it’s a reader browsing in a bookstore or online, the same goes—there are scores of published books competing with yours. Yeah, you need compelling.
Robert sends the first chapter of ’Embodied. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Vasco Calderon woke suddenly from a long phase of REM sleep.
“Time?” he asked me.
“4:18am,” I whispered into the microphones hovering in his ear canals. His brain patterns were in a chaotic state between sleep and wake. “Today is Monday, June 21st, 2478. Your first day at the SETI Institute,” I added.
“Lights.”
I turned the lights in his bedroom to the usual wakeup intensity: 20% of maximum.
“Brighter, 80%,”
Vasco squinted after I complied. Then he groaned and sat up in bed.
“Your limbic system was quite active during that last phase of REM sleep,” I said. “Cortisol levels are high. Would you like to document your nightmare?”
Vasco groaned. “The last thing I want to do is relive it.” Can you make some coffee?
I turned the coffee maker on in the kitchen. “Brewing,” I replied. “While you wait, I suggest taking a few minutes to record your dream before the memories fade. To preserve the option to interpret it later.”
Vasco sighed, but then began to list some details from his dream. “Science Olympiad. Delhi. 9th grade. Coach Auliffe…” Although the process was often unpleasant, Vasco was almost(snip)
There are nice things going on in this introduction narrated by an artificial intelligence—AI. I like that the narrative eases you into understanding that aspect of the narrator character. The writing and voice are just fine (except for a misplaced quote mark that you no doubt noticed).
But what happens here? It’s another waking-up-from-a-dream opening. The voice and the AI element make it different and fresher than the cliché. But that’s all that’s happening. There’s no real issue that Vasco or the AI have to deal with. No trouble, no problem. This is all setup. The dream is revealed and analyzed later, but actually has no impact on the story—it’s a device for delivering backstory about the nature of Vasco, but doesn’t affect the story.
The voice of the AI (Isadora, we learn later) is fascinating for me, and the technical details of the way this all works is too. I encourage Robert to find a way to start the story with something more in terms of a problem for either Isadora or Vasco and weave in as much backstory as is needed while things happen. Your thoughts?
Ray
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2019 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2019 by Robert.
My books. You can read sample chapters and learn more about the books here.
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.
Continued:
. . . as committed to observing and documenting himself as I was. Even after nightmares and panics, he would complement my observations of his brain patterns and physiology with the relevant subjective data. Two and a half decades of continuous monitoring with millions of internal nanosensors allowed me to clearly identify Vasco’s basic emotional states. But I was blind to his complex thoughts and subjective experiences – unless he chose to express them.
Vasco finished documenting his dream while he showered and dressed. I set up the analysis and let the dream interpretation software crunch the data. Meanwhile, Vasco went into the kitchen, where nutty molecules from freshly brewed coffee met his smell receptors. He sat down at a small table by the window that looked out onto Inman Square, which was about to wake up for the workweek.
“Presentation,” Vasco said.
The first sip of black coffee activated a familiar neurocascade, starting in his sensory system and ending in his neocortex: smell coffee + feel heat + taste bitterness à dopamine reward à motivate cognitive focus. He began to review the materials that he would present to his new boss, SETI’s Chief Astrobiologist Olivia Orival. During interviews earlier that spring, Vasco had pitched Olivia on ways that his academic work could be adapted to help the Institute find extraterrestrial intelligence. Olivia seemed most interested in our astrobiology model: a complex and innovative simulation of possible paths of biological evolution on other planets. (Olivia called it an ‘Ecology Generator.’) For his doctoral project, Vasco compared and contrasted the handful of virtual planets that had generated eusocial species, including several similar to ants and bees. Olivia wanted Vasco to take the concept further by feeding the model SETI’s vast datasets and training it to imagine novel possibilities for alien intelligence and technology. Our progress in the months before graduation had already led to some promising ideas and puzzling questions. Vasco was ready to report in and discuss the work with Olivia.
Vasco worked hard to be independent of everyone but me. But depending on me kept getting more expensive by the second. My needs for electricity, memory, processing power, upgrades, and expansions were ever increasing. Vasco’s organic brain was capped by the size of his cranium and his limited metabolic capacity. But his inorganic nervous system – which evolved into the ‘I’ who writes these words – extended outwards from Vasco’s body and sprawled boundlessly into the Cloud.
As a student, Vasco relied on his university’s computing resources to keep me up and running. But he still had to work part time as a coder for a tech conglomerate to support my medical and personal functions. When the SETI Institute made him a job offer, Vasco made his acceptance contingent on two requests: access to a dedicated, massive quantity of SETI’s computing resources; and a start date that coincided closely with his graduation. Olivia had initially balked at Vasco’s vast need for computing power, which she said amounted to over 5% of SETI’s budget. (“Most new hires’ work runs on just a handful of servers,” she said.). But a few days later she told Vasco that his unusual request had been approved by SETI’s director, Victor Khosla. Vasco was elated. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence had been his drive since his early teens. And the SETI Institute was Earth’s most prestigious and monied patron for this quest.
But rather than celebrating or resting on his laurels, Vasco got right to work modifying our astrobiology model. And I prepared to transfer most of myself – the professional parts, at least – to SETI’s computer system before Vasco lost his student status.
Vasco finished his second cup of coffee shortly after dawn. With a flick of his eyes, he cleared the astrobiology work from his retinas. Then he got up from his small kitchen table and left his apartment. The sun was still beneath the eastern horizon, but after only a dozen steps, the humid air precipitated moisture from Vasco’s skin. By noon, it would be unhealthy for a human to be in the direct sunlight for more than twenty minutes.
Vasco still had over two hours before his 8am meeting with Olivia. He walked in silence towards the river and climbed stairs up to the walkway on top of the twenty-meter embankment that protected East Cambridge from the sea. Vasco strolled for a while as Sol rose above the Boston skyline on the other side of the river. When the direct sun became too hot and bright, he sat down on a bench shaded by large weeping willow tree.
“Have you finished analyzing my dream?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied. “Would you like to see the interpretation now, or wait until after the meeting with Olivia?”
“Now,” Vasco nodded.
Vasco was pensive for several minutes after he read the report. “Isadora, can you bring up some records from my 9th grade Science Olympiad team?” he finally asked. “Starting with the regional finals – no, actually, start at the beginning, at tryouts the previous fall.”
It took me half a second to curate pictures and videos from the visual and audio records. Then I displayed the collection in a chronologically ordered image stack on Vasco’s retinas. With slight twitches of his eyes, he scrolled through pictures from the fall and winter months of the tryouts and practice sessions that had led up to competition season in the spring.
As Vasco looked through the images, long-dormant memory sequences fired in his hippocampus. Facial recognition circuits in his fusiform gyrus pinged linguistic nodes in his neocortex. Vasco recalled the names of classmates he had not seen in over a decade.
He lingered on a picture of Auliffe, a biochemistry teacher who had been his personal Science Olympiad coach. Moments before the image was captured, Vasco had correctly answered a complex organic chemistry question – demonstrating to Auliffe that he was finally able to visualize the three-dimensional structure of organic bonds between atoms. Auliffe’s face brightened with delight at Vasco’s hard-won progress. If a teacher’s greatest joy was to see her students grow and learn, in this picture I aimed to capture an archetypal image of that experience. Vasco’s face loosened into a smile as his brain offered him a cascade of positive memories associated with Auliffe.
Flipping forward through the image stack, Vasco arrived at records of the regional competition in Springfield. He smiled again as he viewed pictures of his teammates and coaches hoisting the 1st place trophy, which had earned them a place at the system-wide championship in Delhi. Then he came upon a video that I had compiled of the team dinner celebrating the regional championship. Vasco, his six teammates, and the team’s three coaches sat at a round table in the back room of a Somerville restaurant. Vasco’s mouth watered as he watched his younger self eat citrus-flavored salmon and vegetables stir-fried in garlic and soy sauce. Although the team had spent many hours studying and training together over the past months, this was the first time they had gathered together to celebrate, without any kind of academic agenda. For dessert they ate chocolate cake so moist that it sagged under the weight of its dripping frosting. A rare delicacy was served to wash down the cake: 10 centiliters each of natural, farmed bovine milk.
Auliffe punctuated the meal with short speeches praising each individual member of the team. Vasco smiled again as he rewatched Auliffe talk about his teammate Ryebo, “who not only won Top Chemist prize at the regionals, but also devised the ‘Brain Food” meal plan to optimize our team’s cognitive development and performance as we prepared for competition over these past months.” Auliffe, noticing that Ryebo had not touched the piece of oozing chocolate cake that had been placed in front of him, continued, “And even now, after winning the regional finals for the first time in our school’s history, Ryebo won’t allow himself a piece of cake to celebrate! My doctor would appreciate it if I had that kind of discipline,” she said dryly, patting the pouch on her middle-aged belly.
Everyone at the table laughed. “The simple carbs in the cake will sap the energy that I need to study,” Ryebo replied, his face serious. “I ate plenty of fish and berries though!” The left corner of Ryebo´s mouth curled slightly upwards. Everyone laughed again. A goofy chant broke out at the table, echoing one of Ryebo´s favorite sayings: “Fish is brain food, fish is brain food.”
Ryebo´s smile widened. “I have another idea,” he said after the chant died down. “I propose that we make fish our official team food.”
His teammates and coaches cheered with approval. Ryebo sat back in his chair and took a small, satisfied sip of his milk.
Vasco paused the video. “I’m hungry,” he said to me, “can you bring up some places that are open for breakfast?”
Vasco rose from the shaded bench and began walking towards the nearest source of food, a small restaurant in Kendall Square called Biome that served modern gastronomy in a vintage 20th century diner setting. Although he had lived in this neighborhood all his life, Vasco had never eaten there before. Usually he ate on strict schedule, wasting as little time as possible on nourishment by consuming individualized nutrient bars that I custom printed each morning to optimize his cognitive performance.
The restaurant was empty at such an early hour on a Monday morning. Vasco sat at a stool and used the display at the counter to order a vegetable omelet and fruit drink. Then he pulled up his presentation to review it again before his meeting with Olivia.
Once the robotic arm served his breakfast, Vasco closed his presentation, resumed the video, and widened his eyes until it occupied most of his field of vision. Back in the Somerville restaurant, Auliffe turned towards Vasco and met his younger eyes (and my inorganic eyes: the nanocams floating in his aqueous humor). Each of Vasco’s teammates had already been the subject of Auliffe’s personalized speeches. Now it was his turn. He watched his adolescent self look down shyly at the shmears of chocolate frosting that remained on his plate. After a few expectant moments, he raised his gaze back towards Auliffe, tenderly awaiting his praise.
“Vasco,” Auliffe began, “when you tried out back in September, I had no way of knowing that you would end up being a top contributor on a Science Olympiad regional champion. In fact, now seems like the right time to be more honest with all of you about something.”
Auliffe looked around at the other two coaches, gaining their silent approval to continue. Then she sat down in her chair and took another sip of milk. When she continued speaking, it was at 60% of the previous volume. After looking around the table, her eyes settled back on Vasco. “We kind of had to break our own rules for you to be here. At the end of tryouts, your performance did not justify a place on the team. Several older students had the numbers to beat you out. In a competition held last September, that is. But your rate of improvement during the month of tryouts was off the charts. You were starting very low on the learning curve, of course, where steep improvement is expected. But then your curve had a different trajectory. It remained just as steep the higher up it you climbed. We knew it could be a fluke, that your curve would eventually flatten too. But we took a risk and decided to ride the growth as far as it would take us.”
Auliffe lowered her voice by another five decibels. “And now, six months later, here we are on our way to Delhi, still waiting for your curve to flatten out. After tryouts, we had a lot of parents of seniors come to us angry, complaining that we gave you their kids’ spot. Thank you for making us look smart, for rewarding our risk.”
Past-Vasco, the experiencer, and present-Vasco, the watcher, both smiled.
“And as we’ve gotten to know you better these last six months,” Auliffe continued, “I think we have all come to admire your completely extreme, 24/7 approach to learning. Never before had I heard of someone using an AI to neurostimulate additional REM sleep for its learning benefits.”
“Well, that was Isadora’s work,” Vasco replied, again looking down at the crumbs on his plate. I continued to compare Vasco’s emotional reaction watching the video to the record of his reaction in the moment. Parallel patterns, as to be expected. Mixed emotions, all at high valence.
Auliffe continued, “But it was your idea – the REM sleep thing – right? And you had to bear the emotional stress of the excess dreaming. Sure, your AI – Isadora – did all the grunt work, the monitoring, the analysis, the electrostimulation. But your creativity at putting powerful AI to use is unparalleled. And you seem to get compounding results over time. The educational system that you two have devised over the years is leaps ahead. By parceling some of it out to each of your classmates, we’ve more than doubled the usual teamwide improvement rate. You’ve – correction, you and Isadora have made us better learners, better teachers. We are all so glad to have you on the team.” Auliffe looked around the table, her body language inviting Vasco to do the same. The ten pairs of eyes looking back at us were filled with warmth and appreciation.
“And just as much as we admire your single-minded dedication to learning,” Auliffe continued, “and respect your need for focus and privacy, we hope you will find ways to come out of your shell a bit and let us get to know you better in the future.”
Past-Vasco’s brain enjoyed a warm bath of oxytocin. But present-Vasco experienced sharp, unmistakable pangs of shame and grief. He paused the video, put down his fork, and took a drink of water. After a few moments, the physical intensity of his painful feelings precipitated a panic. In defense, activity in his frontal cortex spiked, down-regulating his emotional response.
“Let’s have one last look at that presentation,” he said, bringing laser-focus back to more comfortable terrain while he finished his breakfast.
***
Vasco arrived in the lobby of SETI’s building a few minutes before 8am. Olivia greeted him warmly and took him to security for microchipping.
The head of security was a burly man with a close crew cut and reddened face. The white, too-tight collar of his shirt expelled a ring of skin and adipose tissue, which then folded itself back over the collar. He greeted Olivia with deference before brusquely introducing himself to Vasco.
“Phage, Security. You are Vasco Calderon, correct?”
“Yes.” Vasco cowered in Phage’s shadow, as if he had already done something wrong.
“Do you submit to facial and retinal recognition to verify your identity?”
“I do.”
“I suspect you’ve been chipped before?”
“Ummm, yes,” Vasco replied, nervously looking at Olivia, who maintained a calm, neutral smile. “I have a lot of, ummm, chip implants. I’ve had them my whole life, actually. A system of nanodevices,” Vasco stammered. “Medical devices.”
“SETI’s security chip is pretty standard; it shouldn’t interfere with your medtech,” Phage said, looking bored. “The chip will give you physical access the building and connect you to SETI’s private intranet. Do you want to check with your doctor to make sure that the chip is compatible?”
Vasco nodded.
“Scan this barcode, please,” Phage said, holding a small, vacuum-wrapped package up to Vasco’s eye level.
The barcode pointed me to documentation of the chip’s specs on the Cloud. If it did only what it claimed to do, it would be harmless medically – although it would be impossible to know exactly what it was capable of until we saw it in operation.
“The chip seems fine.” I whispered to Vasco. “Standard.”
After Vasco relayed my approval, Phage said, “Where do you want the chip? Usually we bury it in some fat near the triceps.”
Most of my brain lived in the Cloud, but over the years we had implanted some processing and memory chips into Vasco’s body as an auxiliary backup. I told Vasco to ask them to put the new chip in an area of his left calf that was free of implants.
Phage shrugged and unwrapped the chip from its protective packaging. Vasco rolled up his pant leg. After a short pop, Phage tossed the disposable remains of the implantation syringe into a med debris bin. Then he bowed to Olivia and turned to walk away.
As Olivia walked Vasco towards the elevators, I used the chip to connect to SETI’s network and start indexing its content. Vasco had been fantasizing about accessing SETI’s databases for years; he would want me to show him around as soon as he had the chance. I was already on lookout for new data sets that we could feed into our astrobiology model.
Olivia told the elevator to go down to the bottommost level, six floors beneath the street. The elevator doors opened into a rounded, tunnel-like hallway with black walls, dimly backlit by blue and green fluorescents. After pointing out the bathrooms, kitchen, and a large, bright rec room off the hallway, they emerged from the hallway’s mouth into a cavernous space with the same muted lighting.
“The architect really achieved a cave-like feel, no?” Olivia said. “Everyone calls it the Colony. Like an ant colony.”
Vasco looked around to take in the room’s striking design. Dozens of nodes of workstations reached their highest concentration near the center. A huge display screen was built into a wall at the front of the room.
Goose bumps rose on Vasco’s skin. He shivered and rubbed his arms. I did not have access to an external thermometer to measure the exact room temperature, but Vasco’s physical reactions implied that it was less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I see you have the first day shivers,” Olivia said. “Sorry that I couldn’t tell you ahead of time to bring a sweater. But now you’re officially an employee, and your non-disclosure agreement is in effect. So I can let you in on one of our closely guarded secrets. The SETI Institute has a powerful quantum computer. Dirac. It sits just below our feet. Underground housing provided the initial layer of shielding against the heat and electromagnetic activity above. Then it was further wrapped in layers of metallic, composite, and magnetic shielding, and supercooled in order to prevent the wave function from collapsing.”
“How long has it maintained quantum coherence?” Vasco asked. Despite shielding and cooling efforts, quantum CPUs of this era remained vulnerable to outside leaks that could render them inoperable without any warning. Most of the longest running systems were on the Luna, where it was easier to keep them cold and isolated beneath kilometers of moonrock.
“I’ve said pretty much all I know about Dirac,” Olivia replied. “Our director Victor probably knows more, but good luck getting him to talk about it. I think he signed a strict non-disclosure agreement with the manufacturer. Quantum computing trade secrets are worth trillions. Anyway, most of our researchers work on this level. And you’ll see that most of them dress warmly. We could heat the room more to offset the chill from the cooling equipment below, but we find that 60 degrees – and well-bundled – is also a good temperature for productivity.”
“That’s OK,” Vasco said. “I like to work in the cold.”
Olivia nodded. “Most of our group meetings also happen here,” Olivia said, looking up at the large display screen.
Vasco followed her eyes, and then startled. “You mean, you want me to present here? Today? I thought I would just be presenting to you.”
“Oh no,” Olivia replied. “You can present upstairs in my office. But I wanted to show you the Colony first, so you could see where most of the real work happens. This will be your workstation,” she continued, pointing him to a row near the back of the room. “You may customize it however you like. Most of our junior scientists and engineers sit in this area.”
A few of Vasco’s new colleagues looked over and nodded or waved silent greetings to Vasco and Olivia. Some appeared to be early risers. Others – based on their body odor and bleary eyes – seemed like they had been working throughout the night.
“You’ll have time to introduce yourself to the other ants later,” Olivia said, with a small grin. “I’m eager to see your work; let’s go upstairs.”
Olivia was still and quiet as the elevator ascended to the 45th floor. But for Vasco, the silence in the confined space quickly became awkward. When it reached the 10th floor, the elevator stopped to admit another passenger. While waiting for the doors to close, Vasco took a deep breath, slouched, and began to shift back and forth on his feet. This drew an uncomfortable glance from the inbound passenger, but Vasco was already too lost inside his anxiety to register the social cue.
“While you wait,” I whispered to Vasco, “take a quick first look at SETI’s databases.”
Vasco closed his eyes to focus on the file trees that I had projected onto his retinas. His body became quiet, and the activity in his brain shifted from his limbic system to his cognitive circuits. When the elevator reached the 45th floor, Olivia gently tapped Vasco’s shoulder to bring him back into the physical world.
Olivia’s office was framed by a floor-to-ceiling window offering a wide view of Cambridge. The 42.36 latitude of North America stretched westwards. A few small pictures of Olivia with her two children and partner were projected around the edges of her desk. [TK Describe Olivia physically.] Olivia led Vasco to a small sitting area and took a seat across from him. I interfaced with the newly installed security chip to display Vasco’s presentation onto a viewscreen.
Vasco cleared his throat. His brain was alert and focused. I detected some patterns characteristic of performance and social anxiety, but nothing severe enough to cause an outright freeze or panic. He was enthusiastic about his work, overprepared, and excited to have Olivia as an audience. But before he could begin, there was a knock on the door.
Olivia’s face soured. She sighed once deeply, but when she spoke a moment later it was in a welcoming voice. “Come in.”
Vasco and I recognized Victor Khosla as soon as he walked in the door. As executive director of the SETI Institute, Victor often gave public talks about SETI in order to educate and raise money. He was a charismatic speaker, but the recordings that we had seen on the web did not prepare Vasco for his intimidating personal presence. Victor stood over two meters tall, and his broad shoulders and muscular arms were wrapped in a custom-tailored white shirt made of fine linen. His salt-and-pepper hair showed some signs of ageing, but his olive skin was remarkably clear and smooth for a person of seventy.
Olivia rose from her seat. “Good morning Victor. I’m in the middle of a meeting. Can we talk later?”
“I was actually hoping to join your meeting,” Victor replied. He spoke and carried himself with the confidence and entitlement of a man who was not used to being told no. One of his biographies on the web described Victor as ‘of dual brahmin ancestry: his mother traced her roots back to gilded age Boston industrialists; his father was a wealthy and influential Indian-American venture capitalist.’ His upbringing conferred the connections and ease around wealthy donors that Victor relied upon to bankroll SETI’s mission.
Olivia regarded Victor with a playful, suspicious look.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” he said, with a sly smile.
Olivia shook her head and took another deep breath of resignation. “This is Vasco Calderon,” she said, motioning with her hand for Vasco to stand. “Our newest employee. Vasco, this is Victor Khosla, executive director of the SETI Institute.”
Vasco rose and turned to face Victor. “Nice to meet you,” he stammered, and then quickly looked down at the floor.
Victor approached and stood at an arm’s length from Vasco, quietly sizing him up. After a few moments of awkward silence, Vasco raised his eyes and extended his right hand.
“Nice to meet you also,” Victor said finally. “Sorry to be rude, but I am not in the habit of shaking hands. Bit of a germophobe. This heat and humidity are a breeding ground for treatment-resistant microbes,” he continued, waving his hand towards the window. “It’s just not worth the risk. Anyway, I’m sure I don’t need to educate you on all this, you’re a biologist.”
Vasco withdrew his hand and slunk back into his seat. Victor took a seat next to where Olivia had been sitting. Olivia took a few more moments to silently assess the situation before retaking to her seat next to Victor. Her body language and lack of enthusiasm towards her boss suggested that she resented his presence. But Victor seemed oblivious – willfully or otherwise. He crossed his legs, folded his hands on his lap, and looked up at display screen expectantly. “Creating an ET Generator,” he said, reading the title of Vasco’s presentation.
“Should I – should I begin?” Vasco asked, looking to Olivia for guidance.
“Please do,” she said. Her smile remained welcoming, but there was a tightness in her face that had not been there before.
Prior to Victor’s intrusion, Vasco’s brain had been in an ideal state for presenting his work. But now he was near frozen with panic. He stammered his way through the first few slides, summarizing how he had expanded his astrobiology model’s input range to make it ready to digest SETI’s data sets. He breathing was shallow, his tone was flat, and his voice was an octave higher than normal. He snuck glances towards Olivia for signs or interest or support, but she appeared distracted.
Ten minutes into the presentation, Victor interrupted, “Pardon me, but I’m not a coder or an astrobiologist. I’m used to reading executive summaries. Can you jump ahead to the takeaways?”
A wave of panic broke over Vasco’s nervous system. Beads of sweat began to collect on his scalp.
“Sure,” Vasco managed to say. He flicked his eyes ahead to reach the last slide. “Conclusions,” he continued, robotically. “First, fortunately, the model’s core algorithmic engine was designed from the beginning to accommodate a wide range of data types.” Vasco jumped directly ahead to the next bullet point, skipping over the contextualizing comments that he had prepared to further develop each takeaway. “Second, trial datasets were well-integrated by the model, and any related bugs were relatively easy to correct.” With each sentence, Vasco’s zest retreated further and further behind dry layers of scientific formality, “Finally, although it is too early to tell how the model will respond to an exponential increase in inputs, theoretically, there is good reason to believe that the astrobiology model we developed for my Ph.D. thesis – the Ecology Generator, to use Olivia’s term, can be transformed into an ET Generator.”
Vasco interlaced his hands, sat back in his chair, and looked down at his lap. He had given what was meant to be a one-hour presentation in less than fifteen minutes, omitting the most forceful and captivating aspects of his work.
Victor sat in silence, staring at Vasco’s final slide with a severe look on his face. Olivia wore a look of intense concentration, but it was clear that her focus remained on something other than Vasco’s presentation. The wave of relief Vasco felt at completing the presentation quickly washed away, and the heavy silence again made Vasco anxious.
“Ask them if they have any questions,” I whispered.
“Umm, do either of you have any questions?” Vasco asked.
“I have just one,” Victor said, speaking in a measured tone. “What is compelling enough about this work to justify 5% of SETI’s budget?”
Vasco’s body curled into itself like a snail retreating into its shell.
Olivia snapped back into the present. She flashed a disapproving look at Victor, but he ignored her and spun his body to face Vasco.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Victor continued, “I do see some minor potential in this work. It is novel and ambitious contribution to the astrobiology field, but also quite academic and theoretical. I have seen a lot of elegant computer models, but the only ones worthwhile are ones that can be trained and fine-tuned on real world data. And when it comes to astrobiology, we still only have one data set – our own solar system.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia interrupted. “For centuries now, astronomers have amassed spectrographic and gravitational observations from most of the systems in the Orion arm – almost eight-hundred million stars, with ten times that many planets. The SETI Institute has most of that data, and what we don’t have we can borrow or rent. You are always saying how our data sets are one of SETI’s key assets; that if we collect enough data, someday we’ll stumble upon intelligent life. Vasco came up with a way to crunch the data in a new way. At the very least, this approach is a though experiment, something to stimulate and expand our imaginations. Give it a chance.”
Victor turned to Olivia and tipped forward into an aggressive posture, suggesting that he relished the chance to debate a worthy adversary. Olivia sat up in her seat and straightened her spine.
“And you’re always telling me how complex evolutionary biology is,” Victor said to her. “How one meteorite impact or a single mutation in a virus can drastically alter the fate of a living planet. I know that astronomers have come a long way since Galileo and his optical lenses, to detect the compositions and atmospheres of planets in star systems light years away. But here in our own solar system, we weren’t able to piece together the histories of other planets and moons until we were able to send probes to collect rock samples, perform radioactive dating, measure magnetic fields, gather seismic data, etc. Vasco is proposing to feed an algorithm designed to model an evolutionary process with static data – amounting to not much more than a few hints and clues about distant exoplanets with liquid water or oxygen atmospheres.”
Vasco and I had been aware of Victor’s critique from the earliest stages of our work. In fact, one of the slides that Vasco had skipped over described ways we had attempted to compensate for this problem.
“I’ll leave it to Vasco to defend the technical aspects of his work,” Olivia said, giving Vasco a long look inviting him to do just that. “But Victor, would you even give him the chance?” she continued. “Just ten minutes into his presentation – actually, make that just ten minutes after meeting him – you rushed him forward to his conclusions, and then proceeded to figuratively defecate on his entire research program. And it’s not even fair, because he geared his presentation for a technical audience – me. And then you swoop in unannounced and ask him to give an executive summary, unprepared. It’s an impossible bind.”
“If Vasco can’t explain his work to me in a compelling way,” Victor replied, “how can I explain it to our donors? Olivia, you know that I am open to new ideas, to trying new things. But my role at SETI boils down to raising and allocating capital. For something amounting to 5% of our budget, I have to cast a critical eye. It has to be compelling. And I’m sorry,” he continued, turning back to Vasco, “I don’t mean to be callous, but I do not find your work compelling enough to justify its high cost.”
Vasco avoided Victor’s gaze and looked down again at his lap. Olivia gave him a few moments to defend himself, but once it became clear that he was unwilling or unable, she sighed again and sat back in her chair with an exasperated look.
“Well, I’m confused then Victor. Why did you approve Vasco’s extraordinary request for computing resources if you weren’t intrigued by his work? It seems cruel – even for a self-declared ‘callous allocator of capital’ – to offer the guy a job only to shut him down on his first day.”
Victor smiled devilishly. “Maybe there are other ways that Vasco can help us.”
Vasco and Olivia both stared at Victor, expecting to hear more.
“What do you mean?” Vasco finally asked, in a low, sheepish voice.
“Well, you’ve heard my concerns with the methodology behind your so-called ‘ET Generator.’ But I do agree that the objective of your work is a worthy one. I just have a different way of getting there.”
Olivia and Vasco exchanged a glance, each searching the other’s face for signs of understanding.
“C’mon Victor, you know I dislike your guessing games,” Olivia said. “Would you like to elaborate? You have a different way of generating potential forms of alien intelligence?”
“Yes,” Victor replied. “But not the far-fetched, theoretical examples generated by an academic computer model.” Victor turned again to face Vasco before continuing. “A real, flesh and blood specimen of advanced intelligence. Well, not just flesh and blood, but also nanoware and memory banks. Bits and qubits.”
“Now I’m really confused Victor. Surely you are not trying to convince me that Vasco is an extraterrestrial?”
“No, but he might be the closest thing we have to one. Vasco is an Earthling, no doubt about it. But far from a typical Earthling. His enormous request for computing power was a clue pointing to a proverbial iceberg beneath the surface. In other words, by making said request, Vasco revealed that his mind relies on an extreme degree of collaboration with artificial intelligence. So, I had some private investigators sleuth into his background. And they discovered that Vasco has been hybridized with cutting-edge nanotech and AI since he was a fetus. What’s more, he was also genetically engineered for hyperintelligence and compatibility with an AI. Olivia, the SETI Institute has been looking for alien intelligence for over half a millennium now, still with nothing to show for it. But meanwhile, right here on Earth, humanity has been working on transcending its organic limitations, evolving itself into a form of life that is actually capable of projecting itself into the galaxy. Vasco here represents the leading edge of this evolutionary process. So instead of using his model to dream up outlandish aliens based off scanty data, wouldn’t it be better to just study him?”
“You had private investigators dig up personal information about Vasco’s background?” Olivia asked. Her voice dripped with disapprobation.
“You want to study – me?” Vasco asked, his voice cracking. “What do you mean?”
Victor ignored Olivia’s question and kept his gaze locked on Vasco. “Well,” he said, “we can start by transferring all of your data – the professional and the personal – over to SETI’s database. And then we would have a complete representation of an advanced, hybridized intelligence. An actual prototype that our psychologists and biologists could study, in order to learn what makes you tick. That might give us a much better idea of what kind of aliens we should be looking for.”
“This isn’t right, Victor.” Olivia said. “You should see yourself right now – you are staring at Vasco like he is a juicy piece of meat. He’s a human being, not your research subject.”
“Is he really a human being, though? I mean, technically, is he really a homo sapiens? Shouldn’t we consider someone so genetically engineered, so embedded with nanotech, so integrated with AI, as a different species? Homo cyborgus, or something like that? Homo digitalis? The anatomical differences are as clear as day,” Victor continued. “Look at him – the volume of his cranium must be 20% larger than average. I bet it was genetically engineered that way to accommodate a larger brain size. Not to mention his embedded nanotech, which is essentially augmented anatomy, a twin sensory system, with a sixth ‘medical’ sense.”
“I’m not talking about speciation, you ruthless reptile,” Olivia snapped. “I am saying that you need to start treating him like a sentient being. With a modicum of empathy and respect. Stop dehumanizing him by trying to obliterate his right to privacy, so you can dissect him like a lab rat.”
“One can be a human being and a willing research subject,” Victor replied, unfazed. “If I were Vasco, I’d see it as a pretty attractive deal. We foot the entire bill for his AI – including allocations for future expansion. In exchange, Vasco lets us study him. The value he’s getting in computer resources alone is many times the entire annual salary of most junior scientists. There might also be intangible benefits. Vasco, I bet you’ve felt different all of your life. Isolated. But you should embrace it. Let the *normal* people feel good by fitting in. You would get to feel far better by contributing to SETI research in a way that only you – as far as I know – can. And don’t you want to increase your self-knowledge? Exploration – of both inner and outer worlds – are a high form of spirituality, right up there with environmentalism. Don’t you think?”
Olivia was speechless. Victor looked back and forth between her and Vasco with a wide grin, appearing very satisfied with his case.
“So,” Victor said to Vasco, “do we have a deal?”
Vasco’s bowels began to move his breakfast towards the terminal end of his digestive tract. He clenched his sphincter and pelvic muscles and stood up from his seat, holding his knees together. “I need a – I need a bathroom,” he said.
Olivia sprung from her seat, took Vasco’s arm, and quickly walked him out of her office to a bathroom down the hall. “I’ll be back in my office when you’re finished – when you’re ready,” she said.
Vasco made it to the stall just in time to avoid an accident.
“Isadora, what is happening? Were my eggs laced with a hallucinogen? Can you confirm that I am hearing all this correctly? SETI wants to study me? They want access to all my data – even the personal stuff? There’s no way…I would never…”
“Confirmed,” I replied.
“Every email, every conversation, every dream…” Vasco said.
“Every emotion, every thought-out-loud, every response to my every query, every autoerotic experience, and your entire medical record – down to the last DNA base pair,” I said. [TK Add other details.]
Vasco sat on the toilet with his head in his hands. “I’m trying to imagine Victor and his psychologists dissecting my life, psychoanalyzing me.” He shuddered. “All of our devotion to self-monitoring…my life is so boring that I never thought anyone would care to study us. I never thought it would make me this…this…”.
“Vulnerable,” I said.
Vasco finished with the toilet and washed his hands. His nervous system buzzed with adrenaline. He usually avoided looking in mirrors, especially in public places. But that day he caught a glimpse of the abject terror in his own reflection. He froze in front of the mirror for over a minute, unable to break contact with his own widening eyes. After the freeze came the flight. To the elevators, through the lobby, and outside into the glare of bright morning sunlight.