NaNoWriMo Plot Thoughts -- SPOILERS!!

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 29th, 2006, 2:12 pm

That post above is thoroughly answered in the regular NaNo thread.

What I didn't want to say there is that it has become Evident to my Twisty little mind that Top is T.M. !!

Is that your thinking, too, Alan?

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 29th, 2006, 2:39 pm

a.r.dobbs wrote:That post above is thoroughly answered in the regular NaNo thread.

What I didn't want to say there is that it has become Evident to my Twisty little mind that Top is T.M. !!

Is that your thinking, too, Alan?

if top is T.M. That explains why his mother took over from charles.
Thersia thininks T.M. Died? She's been saying T.M dies before charles.

let me think more on this but anyone who want to jump in with ideas...

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 29th, 2006, 2:42 pm

...because i've just spent the last two days summerizing and synthasizing 28 chapters for my three classes that will begin wrtiting chapter 30 thursday.

i haven't a clue what i'm going to do yet for 29. have less than piddling ideas on what to do.

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 29th, 2006, 2:44 pm

Oh yes, hoping that this doesn't mess us up, the only way this can work with my three classes is to have them posdt their versions of chapter 30 on monday and the audios on tuesday/wednesday. cannot imagine this will cause too much of a problem, as we'll have at least ONE chapter 30 on Thursday and others will probably trickle in as well.

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 29th, 2006, 2:47 pm

one final thing, at least for the moment.

how central will the penultimate chapter be. does it/should it contain the climax or apparent climax?

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 29th, 2006, 4:54 pm

Cloud Mountain wrote:one final thing, at least for the moment.

how central will the penultimate chapter be. does it/should it contain the climax or apparent climax?

I don't think it can wrap everything up, really, so at least some of the climax must carry over to 30. That'll be more fun for the students ... I'm guessing. It'll certainly lead to greater variation.

What might make sense to accomplish is to move these ideas along one step closer to conclusion...

Fulvia's chip -- perhaps have it removed or be poised to have it removed, and then the chap 30 writers decide what sort of person she is then or even whether she survives.

Dr. Prazak's insights from the manuscript. He's been flying from Berkeley to the New York compound, but since he's in a secure space (a WorldCon jet) and talking on secure lines (The Order's phone system), he could start discussing these insights while flying. I had thought that he has a lead on the location of the archive and the hub of the database. I was thinking of having Prazak call Trevor and Tracey during his flight, in chap 27, and can if you like.

I mentioned Malta in chap 27 -- it fits so perfectly with the story, I think we've gotta have Top and the archive in the crypts underlying Valletta. Or not.

These are real places, really related to The Order (the real Order), and there's online stuff to inspire folks.

The imminent destruction of the bad old database (or not)
Trevor now believes there is an archive that needs to be destroyed as well as the database -- I mean to spell his beliefs out a little more clearly in 27 before recording it.

When Trevor discovered via his decoy hacker that the GLOBAL network employed a two-man rule* then Trevor also came to believe that GLOBAL would certainly also create a twin archive**. So to really take down the GDB (GLOBAL database), Trevor needs to figure out the two-man access codes and sequence to destroy the online GDB, and he must locate the archives to physically destroy them so that the GDB isn't reconstructed from them.

* two-man rule: it takes two to launch a nuclear attack; it takes two to reach the innermost levels of admin access, (in its online advice for IT security, the real Interpol advises implementing the two-man rule)
** archives are not back up. Back up happens regularly, and is constantly being overwritten -- since the GDB is so huge, I'm postulating that it backs up in sections, with storage hardware scattered around the globe. In fact, the whole database is modular and stored worldwide. However, the archive is (in my little mind's picture of it) mega-huge storage space that houses the whole database and is rarely overwritten. If the GDB weren't so colossal, a new archive would be made every year, and each would be kept, never overwritten; each would be a true archive. But since the GDB is unfathomably vast, the archive storage is updated through very careful steps that are never online, never hackable. (famous last words?) Presumably, backups are ongoing and vulnerable to Trevor's hacking. I postulate that two archives are required, alternating turns. As this year's archive is being made, carefully, with many checks along the way, last year's is kept, so if some problem is discovered, and this archive is busted, the last one is safe; you still have an archive. I'm probably not making sense.

It's possible that the archives could be destroyed shortly after the book's time frame, that we know a team is moving in but we don't have to watch them do it.

However, it'd also be nice maybe to have a confrontation between Top and Trevor and Tracey. Or not.

Anyway, it might be good for chapter 29 to establish that Top and the archive(s) are in Malta, in Valetta, underground, and where. It might even be good to get some people over there.

That's what I'm thinking. |:

msirois · Post by **msirois** » November 30th, 2006, 6:10 am

Okay--

After reading Chapter 29, here's what I'm not sure of. If Fulvia is Theresia's grand-daughter, then is Fulvia Trevor and Tracey's mother? That doesn't make any sense unless Fulvia is an extremely young looking eighty-year-old. This is also disturbingly Oedipal, considering Trevor's (however momentary) lust for her back in Malta.

What am I missing?

Michael

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 30th, 2006, 6:29 am

msirois wrote:Okay--

After reading Chapter 29, here's what I'm not sure of. If Fulvia is Theresia's grand-daughter, then is Fulvia Trevor and Tracey's mother? That doesn't make any sense unless Fulvia is an extremely young looking eighty-year-old. This is also disturbingly Oedipal, considering Trevor's (however momentary) lust for her back in Malta.

What am I missing?

Michael

Nothing missed. But I'm guessing Sorry I didn't make that clear, at least here in the forums. (It wouldn't have worked dramitcally.) Fulvia is T. M.'s illegitimate, hitherto for unknown daughter. Abandoned and left out-in-the-cold. The same age as, BUT aunt to T & T.

It's also possibler that their presumed "intimacy" was more for her "emotional awakening" than anything "physical." Sharing a room is not sharing a bed.

msirois · Post by **msirois** » November 30th, 2006, 6:35 am

Aha! That old dog, T.M.

Well, I guess we're all off to Malta!

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 30th, 2006, 6:39 am

I also think Fulvia needs to be Trevor's age or younger, not 60+. Maybe you meant another name there? I definitely hope so.

I don't have any idea what flesh in a cuniform cylinder is referring to.

So how do they know they're going to Malta? or the Malta area? How did they figure that out?

Was the chip removed from Fulvia? A sentence or two about that would be good.

So Prazak has no clues for them?
One consistency error -- Gerhardt is in the compound again, but he'd been flying with Prazak at the close of chap 27.

Plenty to do in 30.
But again, please, it is too weird to have Fulvia be in the family. There's no setup for that, and lots of setup for other developments instead.

msirois · Post by **msirois** » November 30th, 2006, 6:39 am

Cloud Mountain wrote: It's also possible that their [Trevor and Fulvia's] presumed "intimacy" was more for her "emotional awakening" than anything "physical." Sharing a room is not sharing a bed.

Oh, absolutely. I was just referring to the fact that he thought she was hot!

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 30th, 2006, 6:42 am

Nothing missed. But I'm guessing Sorry I didn't make that clear, at least here in the forums. (It wouldn't have worked dramitcally.) Fulvia is T. M.'s illegitimate, hitherto for unknown daughter. Abandoned and left out-in-the-cold. The same age as, BUT aunt to T & T.

So Fulvia has known all along that she's Top's daughter? And he fathered her before he went into the machine existence... let's see, how old was he?

I have to run to work now and don't have time to proofread. Someone else?

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 30th, 2006, 6:48 am

As for not working dramatically -- if the reader does as we did, Fulvia suddenly turns 60 in the imagination, and that's not a pleasant bit of drama considering our previous beliefs. Something has to be spelled out on the spot. In my stubborn opinion.

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » November 30th, 2006, 7:06 am

Were you taking requests for chap 29?

If so, I request that somebody explain how flesh comes to be in a cuneform cylindar.
And how somebody knows that it's in Malta.

And could you suggest how Fulvia has recovered from the chip that had her writhing?
(And really, Tracey is holding her hand?)

Just a consistency note: the manuscript to Prazak was conceived to be pages 10-30 or so of a much larger manuscript. It is now conceived to be ... a single sheet of papyrus?

I still haven't recorded 27. If you want something communicated from Prazak or mentioned about Top's connection to Fulvia... it could be squeezed in. But we should reveal now to chap 30 authors what those facts would be. Otherwise ...

... we'll be inconsistent.

MUST run for now.

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » November 30th, 2006, 7:07 am

a.r.dobbs wrote:As for not working dramatically -- if the reader does as we did, Fulvia suddenly turns 60 in the imagination, and that's not a pleasant bit of drama considering our previous beliefs. Something has to be spelled out on the spot. In my stubborn opinion.

No where does it say Top is a machine. Its an assumption some have been working on. If his mother is fine at her age, so can be he.

== Chapter 29 ==
This is a simple, short chapter. There is a meeting at Elder's compound between Elder, Tracy, Trevor, Gerhardt, and surprisingly, Fulvia. They create a plan to meet with the leaders of Global. During the meeting they talk on the phone with Professor Prazak, who has discovered that the papyrus was admitting that it did not contail the "secret" but instead the original cuneiform tablets did. NOT the WRITINGS, but the tablet or tablets themselves, the clay rolls that were the stamps from which the writings were printed. "We contain the 'truth' or the 'secret'" meant the tablets themselves, NOT the writing. Inside several of these cuneiform tabletms were the remains of an ancestor in the line of the two orders. This contain "non-contaminated DNA."

Revealed in chapter 29 (by Theresia): T.M. is still alive. He is Top. He is Fulvia's father (who fathered her later in life.)

It is also subtly revealed that the Missou family line is African in orgin.