LateNightHacking Louis My Writing Nas Kan Fan Fiction

Auth

2008-01-13

In this story, I don't know what Lan's actual age is, but I tried to make Lan Louis about high school age. Old enough to drive, old enough to have some responsibility, old enough to do some jobs (I remember students in my high school having "on-the-job training" classes where they left school grounds and worked for some business), but not truly independent yet. This trip is supposed to be a stretch for him, but Brian is probably watching Lan closer than Lan realizes.

This story introduces the following plot threads: Sten's disappearance, the unknown rescuer, and Lan's job hunting in Dalsport. I don't know who the unknown helper is yet. It could be another Velan, a Derali (sp?), or someone from another planet (like in On The Wings Of Dreams).

I am guessing that since Velar is in a female dominated society, some of the gender roles are reversed when comparing Velans to humans. Obviously courting is different. I've tried to show that the females are dominant and more aggressive than males. They are the head of the family and usually are the decision makers. The males defer to the females. The males have the larger half of child raising responsibilities. If females are more aggressive, then males must be less aggressive, so I've tried to make Lan slightly effeminate (from a human point of view). I allowed him to get emotional easily, etc. I'm not sure how well this fits in with what Brian has written, and I don't want him to be too feminine in any case, so I don't know how well I succeeded in walking the line.

Velan units of measurement have been translated into English units for the convenience of the reader. :)

The Fica Strait is about 60 miles wide. It joins two much large bodies of water, one of which is Vinibesta Sea. (Dalsport proper is on the Vinibesta side of the promintory that forms the narrowest part of the strait.) The tunnel joins two large land masses. With the tunnel collapsed, getting from one side of the strait to the other will require a huge detour, similar to having to go around Hudson Bay or the Mediteranean Sea, etc.

The tunnel under the strait is an engineering marvel, but the Velans have a long history and most people don't even think about it. The shuttles run on a mag-lev system (at least through the strait). The piston problem is solved by a series of vent/bypass tunnel segments that open in the ceiling of the main tunnel. Lan just didn't notice them. :)

The Strait is about 1000 ft deep at the deepest point. Its depth profile makes a lopsided V, with the deepest point much closer to the Dalsport side of the strait. There is a strike-slip fault running through the strait at the point of the V which has been dormant for a long time (at least a few hundred years).

It's about 10 miles from Dalsport to the low point of the tunnel, then 50 miles to the other side. The long side of the tunnel descends at about 1ft/100yards. The short side descends at about 1ft/176yards.

The call boxes are 400 yards (440?) apart. The yellow arrows are every 25 yards (27.5?) apart and point to the nearest call box. The tunnel descends steadily, levels out for about 100 yards at the bottom, then rises again. (Lan travels 100yd through the water the first time he encounters it, so the water is about 1ft deep when he reaches the level part of the tunnel.)

The emergency lights are placed about 3 lights per 400 yards - one at each call box and two in between call boxes. (The light over call box 201 was broken.) There are about 4 call boxes per mile, so 240 call boxes in total. The are numbered starting from the non-Dalsport side. The first collapse is at just before box 198. Lan's shuttle is just in front of box 199. The fault runs across the tunnel just past box 200, and the next shuttle is about 50 yards past box 201.

The distance from Lan's shuttle to the next is about 1/2 miles. The distance to the next shuttle is about 3 miles, and the exit is 7 miles past that.

The tractor travels at about 20 mph, so it would have taken about 21 minutes to reach the next shuttle from the Dalsport entrance. The tractor would have reached the survivors' shuttle in 72 min (1h 12m), plus turn around times. Brian is able to get the shuttle up to 15 mph (four minute mile, a fast human running speed), bringing the survivors' shuttle to the exit in 40 minutes.

Days I worked on this story: 2007-04-26, 2007-05-05, 2007-05-10, 2007-05-11, 2007-05-23, 2007-05-24, 2007-06-12, 2007-06-14, 2007-06-15, 2007-06-16, 2007-08-09, 2007-08-10, 2007-09-26, 2007-09-27, 2007-09-30, 2007-11-30, 2007-12-23, 2007-12-24, 2007-12-25, 2008-01-01, 2008-01-08, 2008-01-10, 2008-01-12, 2008-01-13, 2008-01-16

The first draft of the story was written out by hand, mostly on the airplane. I then typed my handwritten notes into the computer and edited them. The first draft was completed in a marathon session on 2007-11-30. I spent ten months working on this story. It is about 12,000 words. I have no idea how I would ever complete 50K words in a month for NaNoWriMo.

Canon issues:

• Name approvals:
  • Places: Dalsport, Vinibesta Sea, South Urdu, Fica Strait, Nopal
  • Names: Toctiran, Valgenis, Tes, nas Par, Dinmasen, Dorisal, Ruffal’en, nas Lon, Casela, Rusulder
  • Occupation suffixes: -genis (professor), -masen (mechanic / mechanical engineer), -ela (architect), -ulder (accountant)
• What would Lan call his mom? Decided to go with Na for now.