For today’s post I’ve asked a dear friend of mine to write a post about where she got the inspiration for a recent novel. I tend to get a lot of inspiration for my games from novels so I thought it would be interesting to ask an author where she got her inspiration from.
MaryMary Schlegel is a museum tour guide and science writer by day, and a writer of fiction by night, with a passionate love for reading, hiking, baking, and drinking inordinate amounts of tea. She and her author husband Aaron live in the heart of the Ozark Mountains with their many story characters, in an apartment stuffed to overflowing with books.
“First of all a big “thank you!” to Ashley for the opportunity to be a guest on her blog…as ironic as that is.
Why ironic? Well, because I am probably the least tech-savvy person I know, and yet here I am, a guest on a technology blog. Life is funny, isn’t it? But, while I may not be a tech-savvy person in my daily life, it just so happens that I’m an author (primarily of fantasy) who’s written a science fiction novel revolving around futuristic technology. (Or maybe not so futuristic!)
The PRISM Conspiracy is about a gullible architectural artist named Abigail, who lands her dream job with one of the most prestigious architectural firms in the world. The company uses personality profiling technology to pair employees with work partners who balance out their strengths and weaknesses, to create a more efficient and productive team. Abigail scores exceptionally high on the scale of creativity and originality…so high, in fact, that the only employee with a logic and mathematics score high enough to balance her out is a machine—an experimental, completely human-looking android named Rory.
Except…it doesn’t take long for Abigail to discover that Rory isn’t an android at all. He’s actually a human victim of a medical experiment’s unintended side effects—side effects that have made him forget that he’s even human.
To start it all off, this whole concept actually came from a weird dream I had years ago, about a man who everyone thought was an android. (Perhaps influenced by my love for the character Data from Star Trek TNG? Who knows.) When I decided to turn the dream into a novel, the first thing I had to do was figure out how to facilitate that premise. How do you make everyone believe that a human is just a machine—including that human himself?
I started doing research on the human sense of self awareness (since it seemed reasonable that Rory’s would have to be suppressed to believe himself a robot without being completely psychotic) and discovered that even with all of our modern technology and knowledge, scientists and doctors still have no idea where our consciousness and self-awareness come from within the brain. Perfect for my story!
Obviously losing self awareness would take something major happening in a person’s brain, but it also needed to be something not completely understood by science yet, so that I still had room to work and speculate and ask “what if?” as a novelist. I decided to look into epilepsy as a candidate for my story needs, and as soon as I started researching it, I knew it was perfect. Not only because it fit the parameters I needed for my story, but because it’s so much more prevalent than I ever imagined! Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders in the world, and yet it’s still very poorly understood compared to others. I realized that a lot more people than I thought are dealing with this condition, and yet I didn’t know of any novels featuring characters who have it, and I wanted to change that.
The Epilepsy Foundation was an amazing source of information—most of what I now know about epilepsy I learned from their incredibly informative website, epilepsy.com. In the course of my research I learned that there are already some electronic options for seizure reduction, in the form of devices designed to react to unusual brain activity and use stimulation to try to divert the seizure. These devices have shown amazing success rates.
That inspired me to wonder, “What if that technology had been taken in a different direction from the outset?” What if, instead of a device that tried to divert the seizure activity before it started, someone created a device that simply tried to contain the seizure—like putting a bomb-proof box around a grenade (That line actually made it into the story!)? What if they created something like a digital network of doors or gates, dividing the brain into sections that they could then isolate in the event of a seizure? This of course began bringing in the cyborg, science fiction elements that I wanted into the story—the concept of humans being augmented with computer technology.
Then followed a chain of what-ifs: What if certain human brain signals had a previously undiscovered electrical signature that wouldn’t allow them to get through this digital network? What if those signals were different from person to person, making the side effects unpredictable? What if, in Rory’s case, some of the signals that couldn’t get through were the ones that made him self-aware? But what if, since the scientists and doctors working with him had no idea where self-awareness comes from in the first place, they couldn’t do anything to undo it? So what if, instead of trying to fix it, they simply added in computer programs and algorithms to artificially replace the language and interaction skills he had lost, making him seem very stiff and robotic in his behavior? And what if, since Rory was already a brilliant engineer and physicist before developing epilepsy, the programming had somehow “decluttered” his brain and allowed him to far exceed his previous abilities in those areas, essentially turning him into a super computer?
And that was how I created a human robot (as well as the conflict of the story—because there are plenty of people out there eager to exploit Rory’s enhanced abilities).
Of course, in order to make the concept of a totally human-looking android believable to the characters, I had to move the story forward into the future a bit, meaning I got to play around with ideas of what everyday technology might look like thirty years from now as well. Since medical devices were the only technology really crucial to the plot, I tried to keep everything else pretty simple so as not to be distracting, basically just advancements in currently existing technology. For instance, I decided to give in-vehicle GPS systems hologram projection abilities—because why not? I liked the idea of your GPS using a hologram projected onto your windshield to show you exactly where to turn, and it did come in handy when Abigail and Rory find themselves on the run in a less-than desirable part of town where streets aren’t clearly marked. There is a brief reference to eyeglasses being outdated and obsolete, widespread use of microchips as employee IDs, things like that.
Even over the period of time I’ve spent working on this story (a little over two years at this point) I’ve already seen some of the technology that I laughingly included as science “fiction” become or come close to being science fact, so who knows? The PRISM Conspiracy may not be as futuristic as I imagined while I was writing it. Either way, I hope it remains a fun story with an important truth at its core: namely, that human life is still valuable, no matter where technology takes it in the future.
So, that’s the story of how a fantasy writer made an excursion into the realm of science fiction, and a technological ignoramus took a brief foray into the world of futuristic technology. It’s been fun! (But now if you’ll excuse me, I have a castle to storm.)”
Excerpt from The PRISM Conspiracy:
“Rory…” Abigail stared at the paper towels she held against the back of his hand, watching them turn dark red as his blood soaked into them.
His blood.
“Rory,” she said again, “what’s going on?”
He was still holding his hand out in front of him, but his eyes were darting everywhere, faster than Abigail had ever seen them move before. A furrow appeared and deepened on his forehead, and his breathing began to quicken. His injured hand was shaking—no, Abigail realized, his entire body was shaking.
She sat back on her feet as her mind screamed alarms at her and her thoughts spun out of control like a crashing helicopter.
Maybe this wasn’t blood. Maybe it was…hydraulic fluid. Or coolant. Or something. It had to be!
Some of it had gotten on her fingertips, and she held it close to stare at it. It certainly looked like real blood.
There was a way to know for sure, she realized. At first, the thought turned her stomach—but she had to be sure, and she had to be sure right now.
Cringing, she stuck out her tongue and tentatively touched it with her finger. She tasted salt and iron.
“Oh my gosh…” Gagging, retching, she ran to the sink, scrubbed her hands, and rinsed out her mouth.
For a moment after she shut the water off she stood over the sink, panting, water dripping from her lips, as realizations and memories began clicking together like puzzle pieces.
Rory’s breathing. His eating. His eyes adjusting to light and dark. He looked so real. He adapted to her emotions.
“I am the biggest, most gullible idiot on the entire planet.”
For more inspiration you can find Mary at:
https://www.facebook.com/authormaryschlegel/
https://www.instagram.com/maryschlegelauthor/
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