The Body Electric - Special Edition (46 page)

I have been trying to write a story that took place in Malta for nearly a decade. Although a popular vacation spot for Europeans, Malta is almost completely unknown in America. I first heard of it in college, when a student leader in my education program organized a trip there. Part research, part vacation, I had very little idea of what to expect from Malta.

What I found was beauty: beautiful country, beautiful food, beautiful people, inside and out. The trip put us with locals as we learned about their educational system, and it put us in history as we explored archaeological sites, and, for me at least, it was the first moment when I realized how vast and amazing the world really is.

The best details about Malta in my book are true: the Gardjola Tower in Sanglea, Comino Island (and the lagoon—but there’s no amusement park or casino!), the catacombs, the luzzi, and, of course, the pastizzi. While Gozo and Malta do exist, there is no bridge between them, and no city floating on the water.

I continued to travel as much as I could after visiting Malta. As a teacher, I lead groups of students on summer trips in Europe, and that was how I discovered Venice (the real one, in Italy). I had known about the waterways used as streets, the glassblowing, and the beautiful architecture, but actually
being
there was awe-inspiring. And while it’s true that the city is in constant danger of collapse and likely won’t survive the upcoming centuries, I didn’t want to imagine a world where there was no echo of Venice.

Travel changes us.

But despite loving the country of Malta and the city of Venice, I wasn’t able to write either into any of my stories. I gathered tidbits of research, magpie-like, for a day in the distant future when I may be able to bring up this island nation and floating city, but it wasn’t until I was trying to come up with something to write after finishing my first science fiction trilogy,
Across the Universe
, that the idea struck me.

Across the Universe
takes place entirely on a generation spaceship, and, aside from a brief introduction, is not on Earth at all. But obviously,
something
had to have been happening on Earth. Something that would stem from the world that made the Financial Resource Exchange (FRX) and phydus.

That’s when I decided to write
The Body Electric
, to show what was happening on Earth while Amy and Elder were in space.

The book had to stand alone, though, and it had to include an entirely new plot and new characters. Ella came easily to me. Ever since seeing the movie
Total Recall
as a wee little Beth (far too young to understand the triple boobs properly), I’ve been fascinated by the idea of memory manipulation. We are, at least in part, who we remember ourselves to be. Take away our memories, and you take away our selves.

I had a lot of fun paying homage to the author of
Total Recall
in this book. Philip K. Dick is one of the most influential science fiction writers ever, and I slipped in as many Easter egg allusions to his work as I could. Ella Shepherd is named after my favorite Dick novel,
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
and her father is named for Philip himself. The sign above the Reverie Mental Spa with its neon bouncing sheep is another allusion to the title.

I tried to slip in some references to a few other books and movies I loved—far too many to count. Ella’s father is buried under a holly tree, a subtle reference to the tree used to make Harry Potter’s wand. The image of Jack holding out the piece of paper in Representative Belles’s mind was supposed to be reminiscent of Princess Leia giving her plea for help to R2-D2.

Another one of my favorite books of all time is
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
by C.S. Lewis, and I dearly adore Tilda Swinton’s performance of the White Witch. All the best bits of Ms. White are owed to Tilda’s characterization of the witch.

Jack was a far more difficult character for me to write. I knew what I wanted him to be like, I knew his past and what he hoped for, but his voice eluded me. I have
Doctor Who
to thank for Jack’s personality—specifically the “Are you my mummy?” episode called “The Empty Child.” This is the very first episode with Captain Jack Harkness—full of sass, flippantly awesome, but heroically noble in the end. Although I’d seen the episode many times before, something about watching it while I was trying to nail down my character’s voice clicked, and Ella’s love interest flowed onto the page. Jack is named in honor of the Captain, and Ella’s mother is named for the girl he dances with in the episode, Rose.

I also love history, and try to hide at least some historical allusions into my stories. The biggest one in
The Body Electric
is probably Julie, Jack’s strong-arm. Her name is Julie d’Aubigny, and, as she mentions in the novel, she’s from France, near the Seine River. I based her character on the real Julie d’Aubigny in history—a total badass lady who wielded a sword, sang opera, and had epic sex stories, including breaking into a convent to steal a lady lover from some nuns. You should totally read up on her.

Hebb’s Disease, which Ella’s mother suffers from, is not a real disease—thankfully. But it was named for a real scientist, Donald Hebb, whose research became known as Hebbian Learning. Essentially, Hebb looked at learning on a cellular level. My fictional Hebb’s Disease broke apart that learning, sending cells further and further away from the synapses and communication they needed to be efficient.

And, finally, I would be remiss without pointing out the title of this book,
The Body Electric
, is directly derived from Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Sing the Body Electric.” The poem I used as an epigraph is actually a different Whitman poem, but I wanted his words to frame this story because Ella and Jack’s tale is about life—living life on one’s own terms, free and vibrant—and so much of Whitman’s poetry reflects exactly that.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIFIED COUNTRIES

The Secessionary War—the largest, most devastating war in history—is long behind us now, ever since the Great Maltese Treaty. But how did it start? To learn the answer to that, we have to go nearly three centuries back in time, to the formation of the first foundling world governmental policy, the Financial Resource Exchange.

The Financial Resource Exchange

The FRX was developed in a time of global economic crisis. As fuel prices skyrocketed, the American and European stock markets crashed, defaulting on debt in Asia that led to a further economic spiraling. The nations of the world had no choice but to work together—not only among themselves, but also among interested businesses. By joining with the private sector, the FRX pooled together the resources of the world in a fiscal system rooted in both capitalism and socialism.

One of the first places the FRX looked to expand resources was to the heavens. The Moon had already been used for vacationers as a playground for the rich, but now it expanded into more focused scientific laboratories, eventually developing into the Lunar Colonies at Serenitatis and Tranquilitatis.

Most well known of the FRX’s developments is the launch of the first inter-planetary spaceship, the
Godspeed
. This ship’s tragic history is still unknown—just a few short years before it was due to arrive, the
Godspeed
quit communicating with Earth and disappeared from our tracking systems. The entire ship, as well as the crew and cryogenically frozen members of society, is lost to the stars.

But in the wake of this mysterious tragedy, there was a bright spot for the FRX and the nations that had invested so much time, money, and hope into it. Before disappearing, Godspeed’s probe provided us with information on the natural resources on the planet Centauri-Earth. Using that information, the FRX was able to send faster ships to the planet, and return soil samples back to the flourishing labs in the Lunar Colonies. This joint effort, between the brave explorers on the new planet and the steadfast scientists on the Moon, provided Earth with one of its greatest discoveries: solar glass.

Solar Glass

We’re still experimenting with solar glass, but this resource has proven to be remarkable. Early studies suggest a near-limitless source of clean, efficient fuel for all our needs.

Sadly, however, much like the twentieth-century discoveries of nuclear energy, the development of solar glass into a fuel source has not occurred without mishap. Because the raw materials for the glass must be made on Centauri-Earth, it is very scarce and in high demand, a cause of conflict.

To see solar glass in action, though, one has only to go to the beautiful city of New Venice, the capital of the world!

The Development of the Unified Countries

After the discovery of solar glass, the FRX reconvened in Berlin, Germany, for a three-month summit during which time the nations were supposed to be devising a plan on how best to distribute the solar glass among the countries allied in the FRX and countries not a part of the original governing agreement.

The result was not a restructuring of the FRX or any mere alliance, but instead, the formation of a functioning global government. The Unified Countries became the first major global governing body. All countries originally in the FRX joined the UC, and several countries originally not a part of the FRX joined as well, although they had to contribute financially to earn access to solar glass.

The UC operates as a republic. Each nation holds an election for a Representative Administrator, one person to represent the entire country to the UC. From among all the Representative Administrators, one Prime Administrator is elected as a leader who can direct orders of business, veto unfair laws, and act as a moral beacon to the Treatise of Unity developed during the Berlin Summit.

The early days of the UC were not without conflict. Following the assassination of the first Prime Administrator, the second Prime Administrator took a hard stance on policies. The nations which joined the UC but were not originally part of the FRX, known as Secondary States, protested their unequal treatment, citing that they were given less access to scientific developments, solar glass, and financial recourse than the Primary States.

The World Divided

These Secondary States, angry at what they felt was unfair treatment at the hands of the second Prime Administrator, devolved from protests to open warfare. The Secondary States quickly joined with nations who could not previously afford to join the UC—or which did not want to join the UC—to become collectively known as the Secessionary States.

The battle lines were quickly developed. On the one side, the Unified Countries, led by the Representative Administrators and the Prime Administrator. On the other side, the Secessionary States, who remained divided among leadership and acted as individual nations allied under one common goal: to dismantle the world government.

The Secessionary War became known as “the war to end all wars,” a tongue-in-cheek throwback to the previous war labeled such, World War I. This violent, bloody, ruthless war saw more deaths of civilians than deaths of the entire casualties of WWI and WWII combined. This came about in no small part due to the increasing efficiency of weapons of mass destruction, and the ruthless nature of both sides of the battle.

The Secessionary States favored cybo-robotics in an attempt to make the “perfect soldier,” equipping their armies with impenetrable suits of armor that provided the soldiers with super strength and durability. The UC favored nano-technology warfare, using nanobots to spy on and, in some cases, attack the enemy.

In the end, though, neither of these advancements in warfare ended the Secessionary War. It was the development of a solar glass bomb, dropped on the neutral nation of Malta during a rally led by key UC players, that turned the tide of war. The UC nations, outraged by the hundreds of thousands of deaths resulting from the bomb, eviscerated the remaining Secessionary States, which apparently had no other such solar glass weapons after the first. The Secessionary War ended soon after the Battle of the Seine, where the UC held the occupied nation of France in siege, infecting the waters of the river Seine with nanorobotics that led to riots and violence, ending only after the Secessionary States withdrew and admitted defeat.

A Tentative Peace

The war ended in the Great Treaty of Malta, but the resulting government was on shaky ground. Soon after the treaty, the Prime Administrator was voted out of office, replaced by Prime Administrator Hwa Young, currently on her second ten-year term in office. A popular choice for PA, the UC has flourished under PA Young’s leadership.

One of the first things PA Young did was increase the defensive strategies of the UC. “There will never be a war to end all wars,” she said during her famous State of the World address the year she took office. “We must always be prepared for the next one.”

Not only did PA Young fund further development of scientific advances in the Lunar Colonies, she also developed Malta as the new seat of the UC. Under her supervision, the great city of New Venice was built, a bridge city between two of the largest islands of the nation of Malta. Malta is now the seat of the world’s government, and New Venice is the capital where all the Representative Administrators meet with PA Young.

A Flourishing Renaissance

Since the Secessionary War, Malta and the city of New Venice has flourished, becoming the seat of a new Renaissance of art, literature, science, and government. With Triumph Towers as a beacon of hope for all citizens, the city is now the most visited location in the world, a Mecca for anyone who wants to discover the riches of the UC after the war.