Scene from my book

[EricL]

Thought you guys might get a kick out of this little thread in the book....


CleverTigers were well named by their author.  Being quick has it’s advantages to be sure, but the equations governing mass and acceleration in the Savannah are the same for everybody: a linear increase in speed resulted in exponential increases in energy loss.   Speed alone was not sufficient.  Newbies tried it occasionally.  They didn’t last long.  
CleverTigers were fast when they needed to be, but more importantly, they were smart - smarter at least than all the other carnivores in the Savannah.  Someone had spent months of design and implementation time before releasing them a week ago, but since then they had quickly assumed the role of dominant predator.  Since their introduction, they had killed off or significantly reduced the populations of most other species, carnivore and herbivore. They could see far, they navigated well and they recognized and avoided dead ends of terrain or the edges of the world.  When they moved, they moved efficiently, always along an optimal path to minimize energy usage and avoided the obstacles that were hills or lakes or plants or more recently, as their population increased, others of their own species.  They never attacked another carnivore unless the difference in their respective energy levels made it a sure thing.  They preferred herbivores as prey but herbivores had become scarce of late.  No matter.  CleverTigers lived a long time.  Their energy curve was excellent.  With their binocular vision they could follow other carnivores, staying just beyond their range of vision, waiting for them to expend enough energy for the equations to work in their favor.
They were not programmed to attack others of their own species of course; what would be the point?  The goal after all, was to maximize a species’ numbers.  But they had no objections to scavenging, sprinting towards the dead or dying body of another organism - even one of their own before too many environment cycles passed and the energy represented by the carcass disappeared.  CleverTigers were at the top of the Savannah food chain, but individuals didn’t communicate or cooperate and that was their weakness.

Kevin Stephanopoulos sipped coffee from a chipped mug labeled ‘World’s Best Dad’ as he watched the debug display of his private Savannah in his home on Lake Sammamish, east of Seattle.  The private ecosystem had been running a test of his latest artificial organism since last night.
The three dimensional translucent image hovering above the kitchen island showed an overhead view of a simulated landscape, randomly strewn with trees, bushes, rocks and the occasional lake or hill.  A number of improbable creatures moved through the landscape, each rendered in incredible detail.  A herd of what appeared to be furry purple brontosaurs pulled vegetation from a lake bottom.  Large yellow bats circled in the air above them or rested in groups on the backs of the enormous creatures.  Kevin adjusted the magnification and the display jumped to reveal nests with yellow eggs hidden in purple fur, the fur moving gently in the virtual breeze.
Near the bottom of the display, three creatures resembling long-legged wolves with bright red stripes were setting a trap for a CleverTiger near a dense thicket.  The wolf with the lowest energy level seemed to have a nervous tick, moving back and forth between the Tiger and the bushes while the other two stood motionless near the edges of the thicket.
“How are the bugs?” said a voice from behind him.
Dressed in her regular morning attire, a bathrobe worn over work out clothes, Linda Ann Stephanopoulos was a blur of morning activity.  She packed lunches while examining a heavily penciled calendar hanging on the back side of a kitchen cabinet door.  It contained, among other things, the times and locations for the kid’s soccer practices and which mom was driving that day.  Today was her turn.
 “Check this out,” said Kevin.  “This guy’s almost below the energy threshold.”
At age 33, the same as her husband, Linda found it difficult to fathom the attraction of what to her was simply a geek’s comp game.
“What’s he doing?” she asked, glancing momentarily towards the display.
“He’s moving back and forth, using up his energy,” replied Kevin.  “He’s bait.  He’s trying to get this guy over here to attack him.”
“Won’t he lose the fight if his energy level is too low?” she asked absently.  She had long ago learned that it was no use trying to compete directly with the attraction of Kevin’s interest in comps, games or otherwise, but that by sounding interested and asking a few questions, she could enter that world and sometimes pull him away from it.  At least his most recent addiction had a graphical representation of what was going on.
“He would if he was by himself, but you see these guys here and here?  They’re waiting for this guy to get close enough so they can trap him against the bushes.  He won’t stand a chance three on one,” her husband replied.
Suddenly, the CleverTiger started to move quickly towards the ailing wolf, which fled slowly towards the dead end cult-de-sac of brush.  The other wolves angled in from the edges of the thicket, trapping the predator.  In ten seconds, it was all over.
  “You see how these two are letting the weak one eat the most?” Kevin said, pointing at some numbers on the debug display.  “He’s rebuilding his energy level so they can do it again.  They cooperate, like real wolves.”
“How’d you get them to do that?” she asked over her shoulder, not really paying attention.  She filled two small thermoses with soup mix and placed them on the counter.  They’ll need to be charged soon she thought, checking the monitors, but they’d keep heating for the remainder of the week at least.  Why couldn’t Kevin spend his time on something that would actually be useful, like a thermos that didn’t need charging every few months?
“I didn’t,” he said.  “We bred them in the farm.  The behavior is emergent.  It’s not anything like what we expected.  The environment provides for basic communication abilities between individuals, but the seed organism didn’t utilize inter-organism communication at all.  We had no idea they would breed in that direction.  Vince and I did the work-back yesterday.  A mutation in the 470th generation started it and they never looked back.  Selection favored cooperation in every following generation.  Incredible, huh?  I think there’s a paper in there somewhere.  We thought we would end up with good navigation and predator avoidance, but I never thought we would see something like this after only 500 generations.”
“Fascinating,” Linda thought to herself dryly as she placed a real apple on the cutting board and leaned on the slicer.  The kids were happy to use the school’s autochef, and did most days, but she wasn’t about to let them eat that processed crap all the time.
Eight perfect apple slices fell neatly away leaving a cylindrical core.  She divided them into plastic bags, put one in each of the sacks on the counter along with the thermoses and other items and added a disposable mini-display to each.   Each showed a corny catch phrase: “We’re very proud of you” or “It’s not important that you win, only that you try your best”.   There was a virtual scratch-off area with a chance of winning virtual desktop display equipment for every student in the school.  One of the mother’s at the bus stop last week was selling them as a PTA fundraiser and pestered the other moms until she’d broken down and ordered a box.  Linda thought they were stupid.  The kids probably did too she thought, but she added them to their lunches anyway.  
Kevin watched the display for a few minutes longer before heading upstairs to shower and dress.   He was downstairs fifteen minutes later, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt with the words “Black Hat” embroidered on one sleeve.  Linda had already left to drive the kids to the bus stop and head to the gym.
He stared at the display again.  After a few minutes, he took a deep breath and issued the instructions that would introduce his organism into the public Savannah.
The public version of the distributed ecosystem program ran on tens of thousands of enthusiast comps world-wide, each of which simulated a tiny portion of a massive virtual world.  Each comp periodically uploaded information to a central location, where up-to-the-minute statistics on the populations, numbers of deaths, number of kills and a host of other information were maintained for each and every species in the system.   Before walking out the door, he glanced at the population numbers for the overall environment.  At the top of the list was CleverTiger with a population of 6,765,390 organisms after 13,679 generations.  At the very bottom, TimberWolf showed a population of 1 after 0 generations.

[Numsgil]

At first I was confused until I figured out that it was an ALife sim.  Second or third paragraph.  You write very well, though I think the exposition was a little heavy.  'Course, exposition is damned hard to write well.  There were usually whole paragraphs in Asimov stories I just skip over.  'Specially those three laws of robotics.  Guess it's pretty easy to throw in some gimme paragraphs when you're paid by the word   Orson Scott Card is very good at exposition.  He wrote a book on writing science fiction that I thought was very good.  Have you read it?  Figure a smooth way to sprinkle the exposition over the story in small manageable bites and you're gold.

I was a "writer" directly before I started with Darwinbots.  Never got anything published, my internal copy-editor was always stronger than my muse ("you call that a sentence?  It flows like molasses up hill!") so most story attempts were abortive.  But you might inspire me to give it another go.

[googlyeyesultra]

It seems the combination of programmer-author is not as rare as I thought it was. At the moment, I'm an amateur at both. Eventually I'll get this little piece of junk written ('tis only about 20 pages). . .

Erm, back on topic. I like it. A lot. One question: When I first read it, the 1 Timberwolf, 0 generations thing seemed as though Timberwolf had gotten owned within 5 minutes. The next time I read it, I wondered how many got introduced. Does Timberwolf .sexrepro, or will it work alone? Hmm...

[EricL]

At first I was confused until I figured out that it was an ALife sim.  Second or third paragraph.

This is kind of intentional.  This scene comes at the beginnign of a chapter where I totally switch gears to introduce some new characters.  In context, spending a few paragraphs with the reader confused works here I think though I only do that a few times in the entire book...

You write very well, though I think the exposition was a little heavy.  'Course, exposition is damned hard to write well.  There were usually whole paragraphs in Asimov stories I just skip over.  'Specially those three laws of robotics.  Guess it's pretty easy to throw in some gimme paragraphs when you're paid by the word   Orson Scott Card is very good at exposition.  He wrote a book on writing science fiction that I thought was very good.  Have you read it?  Figure a smooth way to sprinkle the exposition over the story in small manageable bites and you're gold.

Besides character development, this is the largest issue for me.  Most of my writing has been technical were exactness and not being misunderstood are more important than brevity.  I struggle with it constantly.  The good news is that I have found that I am capable of editing for flow and the exposition improves with multipel editing passes.  Reading something through with new eyes is different from being inside when you're writing.  This scene is one I have not editied much.

I was a "writer" directly before I started with Darwinbots.  Never got anything published, my internal copy-editor was always stronger than my muse ("you call that a sentence?  It flows like molasses up hill!") so most story attempts were abortive.  But you might inspire me to give it another go.

Writing fiction is one of the f***ing hardest things I've ever done.  I have exactly the same problem you mention.  I have to explicitly decide which hat I'm going to wear - editor or muse - before I sit down and start typing, otherwise I end up with shit.  It's totally manic-depressive.  Some days I love what I produce.  The next day, the same stuff is crap.   I think I'm getting better at it after 100k words, but that's untested opinion at this starge.

[EricL]

It seems the combination of programmer-author is not as rare as I thought it was. At the moment, I'm an amateur at both. Eventually I'll get this little piece of junk written ('tis only about 20 pages). . .

Indeed, the more I write, the more I find the two are related.  One thing I don't think many people realize is that writing (for me at least) like programming is iteritive.  You don't just start at the bebinning and type to the end.   You sketch a general plot, write scenes, debug them, re-arange them, change threads and characters that flow through multiple scenes, re-write the beginning for the 9th time, change assumptions, re-write everything to work with the new assumptions, debug all that, etc.  Its a lot like (sloppy) software development.

Erm, back on topic. I like it. A lot. One question: When I first read it, the 1 Timberwolf, 0 generations thing seemed as though Timberwolf had gotten owned within 5 minutes. The next time I read it, I wondered how many got introduced. Does Timberwolf .sexrepro, or will it work alone? Hmm...

Thank you.  I thought about introducing 10 or something, but then I would have to explain that...  Something to work on....

[Numsgil]

Its a lot like (sloppy) software development.

Heh, that makes me wonder if you could write a book using extreme programming practices.  Unit test all your paragraphs, maybe team write with some other guy, only write chapters as your publisher says you need them

[Numsgil]

A trick I used a while ago is to write a "preface", just dump all the technical details that you think you'll ever need in the story in an intro chapter.  Then write the rest of the story.  When you're done, toss out the preface and add details back in where they're needed based on details from test readers.  Generally speaking, you'll find that you'll unconsciously provide most of the details about what's going on into the story naturally just as a consequence of characters discussing what's going on.  The preface is mostly just for you the author to get straight the way things are and how they work.  And most maddening, you'll find that the story makes sense without some key bit of information that you thought the whole story pivoted around.

It's sort of an in media res for technical details.

[Jez]

I liked that Eric, thanks for posting it for us to read!