This real scientific breakthrough uses physical honeycomb constructs to bend light, whereas Yanni, our bright but poor physicist in the novella attempts to use Maxwell’s light knots.
It is available on Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords (if they ever get around to publishing it).
As always, this is a story about the god complex, the drive of a man to prove himself immortal. In this case by taking a place in scientific history, and why not, a Nobel prize?
And alas, there was a really cool problem to go along with it!
Crystallized light had two inherent problems, one being leaking and two, due to quantum effects, being destroyed by the very act of observation. I don’t know of course if the real problem is at all solvable, but for my novella, it is. Yanni, the physicist is working on a solution to keep the light contained on its lattice.
Years pass with no end in sight, until he is dealt an ultimatum by the review board of his funding (Deimokritos is the National Centre of Scientific Research) and he needs to figure out the solution to his proof fast. Yanni is only 30 years old, but he has convinced himself that unless he manages to make a breakthrough before his birthday, he will never do so. 30 years old might seem too young but in academic age it borders on going senile. The mind simply cannot work at the same capacity it did, especially regarding theoretical physics and advanced mathematics. It is well known that academic brilliance takes a downturn after 25. Yanni, living in this institution used to be one of the young brilliant minds to mock the elders and is frightened by seeing himself turn into one.
His idea is that it is possible to use Maxwell’s light knots to solve the leaking light problem from light crystals, enabling quantum computing with previously unimaginable computing speeds. It is all years ahead of course, but it is easy to imagine a tech company willing to kill for such a breakthrough.
Render of a possible light knot based on Maxwell’s equations.
Where does the Muse fit into all of this?
Well, the muse is an android specially created to aid the inspiration of her charge. I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll just explain this with broad strokes: She is an android, a fantasy come true, the Muse and the wife and the companion who knows what to say, when to say it, who lets you work uninterrupted, who tends to your needs and eliminates all distractions.
Her form was dictated by common sci-fi imagery of gynoids, but her pose (and this is something I am quite happy discovering) comes from the following classic painting:
Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry
It is simply amazing to realize that every concept, every combination, every single slice of life you can possibly think of has already been visualized in classic art.
It is hard to discuss about anything more without spoiling the book, so I’ll just leave it at that and hope it piques your interest. It is available on Amazon.
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Erinyes (known as Furies in Roman Latin) are three goddess avengers of the crimes of murder, unfilial conduct, impiety and perjury. They recently discovered selfies as well.
Yes, mythical creatures now have their own Twitter profiles. Feel free to follow her, if you dare.
In the story Erinyes, Mahi is a self-adoring teenager who, just like most teenagers these days, only cares about the amount of likes and retweets that she gets on her (admittedly hot) selfie pics.
Mahi notices something strange in her latest selfies.
The entity she notices on her selfies is becoming more and more solid, until it actually starts chasing her non-stop. That entity is Erinyes, and she chases her victims precisely every 109 minutes for one frantic minute of intense manhunt. Along with her friend, Deppy, a remarkably tech-savvy girl in her cutesy personality, and the enigmatic Prodromos, a conspiracy-theorist rebel hacker, Mahi has to find out the truth behind an insane corporate conspiracy while Erinyes is following her. Possibly forever.
It offers a chilling perspective that I believe was the core of my main idea for this book. Having it right at the start sets the tone for the rest of the path.
The gods are back in town. Skyscrapers pop out of nowhere all around Athens. Corporations rename themselves as Greek gods. It all started with the Greek crisis of 2009 and it will forever change the world as we know it. Some say that CEO’s have gone mad. Others, that they know damn well what they are doing. That there is something solid amongst the myth. In the day of inter-connectivity and social media admiration, can the ancient myths come back to life?
The gods are back in town and they carry a god complex.
When the score of a lifetime falls in their lap, Deimos and his team accepts to sneak in a factory and 3D print the client’s secret design. But will they succeed when a pack of well trained Amazons tries to stop them, when things don’t quite go as planned and when the secret design turns out to be something very different?
