Gohrlay on Earth
In my previous blog post I described my initial ideas for how to alter the beginning of The Start of Eternity. I have now completed a re-alignment of the early chapters that is organized around starting the story with an account of Gohrlay's criminal activity on Earth.
Appendices in red and green.
I previously had the idea of equipping the start of the novel with a rather concise story line that can focus the reader's attention on the protagonist, Gohrlay, and her struggle against the Huaoshy. I've been uncertain about the best way to layer in some of the background information about Gohrlay's world, but I'm now back to using the approach of making some of the "chapters" function as "appendices" that the reader need not navigate. I like the idea of giving choices to the reader.
One of the useful results of following Gohrlay to Earth is that doing so allows the reader to observe the pervasive impact of nanotechnology on the Observers. They unquestioning make use of technology that has been provided by the Huaoshy, but at the end of the first chapter, the rug is pulled out from under Gohrlay. She realizes that just as Observers use technology to position themselves with overwhelming powerful above the primitive humans on Earth, the Overseers similarly have complete technological dominance over the Observers.
I now need to do a bit of polishing on Gohrlay's Diary so as to make it clear that there had been much progress about 300 years before Gohrlay's time, back before positronic brain research was mostly abandoned. Gohrlay has time to discover the history of positronic brain research and come to believe that it might be possible for a significant portion of her mind to be instantiated inside a positronic robot. I'm thinking that the Huaoshy have carried out genetic engineering so as to make the Observers risk-averse and uncaring about humans on Earth. Anagro genetically engineered Gohrlay to be predisposed to becoming a risk-taker and sympathetic to the plight of primitive humans. The Overseers use behavioral-control nanites to reinforce these behavioral differences. Thus, the stage is set for Gohrlay to become the human test subject who has her brain structure scanned and her mind instantiated in a positronic brain. Feeling confident that he has the positronics research project under his control, Anagro is in for a surprise.
I still have not decided what to do with Gohrlay. Right now she is cooling her heels in a sub-basement of Observer Base. I've started contemplating the idea that she could be taken away from the Moon before R. Gohrlay gets her telepathic powers under control. It might be fun to have some of Gohrlay's biological descendants end up doing battle against her robotic descendants.