Storytellers Unplugged

This essay might be of special interest to writers of detective and mystery novels who would like to enrich their stories by providing their readers with a gift of extra details. It might also be of general interest to many other readers, especially those who are CSI and NCIS fans.

*****

Smithereen is a powerful word. If one reads that something has been broken, it usually conjures an image of something that can be fixed and made useful again. If one reads that something has been smashed to smithereens, however, it conjures an image of tiny fragments of what is now utterly useless. There are persons, though, who often find smithereens extremely useful. These special persons are forensic examiners. The following describes a case in point.

Within the first 38 minutes after takeoff from Heathrow Airport in London, a Boeing 747 had reached an altitude of some 31,000 feet. Clearance to begin an oceanic segment of a flight to NY had been issued. A blip representing the plane on a tracking radar screen confirmed that it was right where it should have been. All seemed to be proceeding smoothly when the single blip suddenly disintegrated into a number of blips, the movements of all indicating a new, downward course. A bomb had exploded inside a baggage compartment of the plane. It was four days before Christmas in 1988.

What must have been an unimaginable, horrific scene within the plane was shared with observers on the ground, who watched as body parts as well as aircraft parts and flaming fuel showered downwardly. Wreckage was spread over an area of 50 square miles, and debris, over an area of 845 square miles. A wing of the plane struck the ground with such force that it plowed a crater 155 feet long, displacing some 1500 tons of dirt as it did so. All 259 persons aboard the plane were killed, as were 11 persons on the ground, and 21 houses were completely demolished. Thus ended the flight of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The explosion initiated an intensive investigation whose research extended into more than 40 countries. Some 180,000 pieces of evidence were examined, and 15,000 persons were interviewed. It was determined that the bomb was made of Semtex, a malleable, general-purpose, plastic explosive used by civilians and military personnel. It was favored by terrorists because it was extremely difficult to detect (which is no longer the case). The explosive was secreted within a Toshiba radio-cassette player packed in a brown, Samsonite suitcase.

Fortunately, in a forest 80 miles from Lockerbie, a man walking his dog discovered a T-shirt having pieces of a timer suspected to have been used in the Lockerbie bomb. Examination of the T-shirt and timer pieces ultimately provided the names of two men suspected of being responsible for the explosion on the Pan Am flight. It took eleven years before the two suspects could be brought to trial in the Netherlands. In 1999, one of the two suspects was sentenced to life in prison, and the other was acquitted.

The lives of the 259 persons on the plane and the 11 on the ground need not have been lost had a device capable of detecting the explosive that brought the Pan Am plane down been used to screen items and persons being loaded aboard it. Due to terrorist activities, interest in developing such a device has been keen. A promising device has been developed that reportedly equals or betters the performance of highly trained sniffer dogs, which have long deserved a commanding reputation in the various fields of sniffing. Fittingly, the device is referred to as Fido.

It can be handheld or mounted on an apparatus such as a tracked military robot that can take it where humans dare not go. Fido can detect both explosive vapors and particulates. It’s sensitivity is such that it detects explosive materials in parts per quadrillion (ppq). Fido can detect vapors from buried land mines and has even, without the aid of preconcentration, detected a plume of explosives in sea water. Fido has seen duty in explosive ordnance disposal (OED) applications in such foreign hotspots as Iraq and Afghanistan, and it has been used in the U.S. for explosive detection operations. It’s usefulness has been recognized by having won the U.S. Army Greatest Invention Award multiple times.

A major key to the Fido operation includes amplifying fluorescent polymers (AFP).  Electrostatic and oxidation-reduction properties of AFP, contribute to a high level of selectivity, minimizing false alarms.
The inside surface of of a glass capillary tube is coated with AFP to form therewith a sensing element. The presence of explosive vapors in surrounding air can be detected by inserting the sensing element into the detector and exposing it to a light source having a specific wavelength . The light stimulates the AFP, causing it to fluoresce. While the AFP is fluorescing, surrounding air is pulled through the sensing element. Traces of explosive vapor will react with the AFP, causing the fluorescence to dim, or “quench.” The structure of a chromophore chain in the AFP amplifies the quenching effect, which provides ultra-low detection limits. A quench is detected and maximized by optical and electronic components, which also maximize the sensitivity of the detector and notifies a user of the detector of the quench. Within a few seconds, the sampling response can be reversed to prepare the detector for additional samplings.

In addition to buried mines, bombs and such, a person’s skin, their clothing, tools, residences and means of transportation can also be sources of explosive vapors. Explosive detectors can be used to scan the sources to expose evidence that a suspect had been in contact with and possibly assembled or transported an explosive device.

As a parting thought, consider that, buried around the world, there are estimated to be millions of buried landmines and millions of acres of land containing live ordnance left from past battles. It makes one want to search catalogs for a pair of explosive-detecting shoes.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

AFP was invented by MIT Professor Timothy M. Swager.

In a short-scale country like the United States, a quadrillion is equal to 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one thousand million million or ten to the fifteenth power).

A chromophore is a portion of a molecule that provides color.

A glass capillary tube is a tube having an inner diameter of a proper size to draw in a liquid as a result of capillary action.

Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance in response to having absorbed electromagnetic radiation such as visible light.

A number of persons have taken advantage of the fear generated by widespread bombings to market fake explosive detectors. One person took advantage of countries having no technology capable of testing his phony device and made millions of dollars. Tens of millions were from Iraq, which equipped hundreds of check points with them. The worst result was the loss of lives caused by trusting the devices to discover explosives. Unbelievably, Iraq was still using the devices several years after they had been found to be fake and its seller had been sentenced to serve 10 years in prison.

In the process of writing fiction as we know it, things have always been in flux – what comes first, the plot, the idea behind the plot, the problem, the setting, the character?? Which single one of those informs all the rest to the point of being given first billing, of
being considered the most important, the most essential, tool?

One of the basic definitions of a story (and there are many) is A Character With A Problem.  And essentially this is where I pause and nod my head slowly – because for
me, that is precisely correct, exactly the order in which things tend to come to me. I am not saying that this is the only way, the One True Way, and I daresay there are thousands out there who have put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) who would disagree with me
emphatically? but for me, it starts with CHARACTER.

Readers and aspirant writers have asked me how I ‘create’ my own characters – and my less-than-satisfactory answer has always been, I don’t. I meet them fully formed, complete with the problems they carry. They tend to step out of the woodwork and essentially grab
my hand, shake it firmly, tell me their name and rank (as it were) and then march me smartly to the first writing platform available and demand I take dictation.

This is partly why I never have real problems with a character’s  individual voice, or at the very least, the only times I do so occur when I try to make the character do or say
something that that particular character does not want to do or say, or in other words try to make the character act against itself.

So long as I listen, and obey the instructions I am given, my characters tend to assume a certain three-dimensional reality, at least to me, and I very much hope to my readers also by the time they get to meet them. Wearing my reader or viewer hat, I have had occasion to meet characters like these, characters who were so vivid and so alive that it remains impossible for me to think that they have never existed, that they were always just a product of some other writer’s imagination.

As it happens, I have a couple of perfect characters in hand – NOT mine – to begin to explain this phenomenon. I’ve been re-watching Babylon 5 in its entirety (I own the whole series on DVD, one of the very few that have merited such a distinction) and no matter what ELSE the show was about, in the broader sense of the story arc, it crystallises as the story of two exceptional characters and their relationship.

Londo Mollari, and G’Kar.

Both of them began almost two-dimensional. Cartoons, almost. Mollari as the effete buffoon courtier, G’kar as the blinkered and violent thug whose first instinct was to whack something. There was an early scene between the two of them, in the cartoon days, bickering while they are waiting for an elevator, and getting so carried away at trading insults that the elevator arrives and leaves before they quite realize it and then they look at each other and blurt, in comically identical annoyance, “LOOK what you made me do!”

But they didn’t stay caricatures.

Their choices began to take them in unexpected directions.
Londo, who is essentially all heart, someone passionate about things and letting all those passions hang out, ANSWERS the question that the Shadows put to him, the inspired “What do you want” which goes on to define so many of the B5 characters.

Londo’s passionate response is that he wants to see his people, the proud Centauri, up “where they belong”, as the Lords of the Galaxy. And he is given that, in spades. At least on the surface. But he gradually comes to know the cost of his answer, and of the thing that he was given when he asked for it. I will never forget the appalled dawning understanding of it written on his face as he stands at the window of a Centauri warship watching the destruction of the Narn homeworld – something he never wanted, that he himself would
never have condoned, but that he is nonetheless in a very real sense utterly and personally responsible for.  He then finds himself defending all of it when his people are brought up to face the consequences of it all. He cannot step up to accept his own guilt because doing so would admit guilt by the Centauri and he will not do that to his race.

We see him developing, in the aftermath, and grappling with the consequences of the choices that he has made – right until the final choice that he makes, at the end, when he willingly surrenders his body and his soul – his self – to the Drakh Keeper parasite in order
to keep his world and its people ‘safe.’ He tells G’kar, in one of his last moments of freedom, that once he had all the choices in the world and no power and now, now that he is about to become Emperor, he has all the power he could ever want and no choices at all.

Mollari is the martyr.  In a powerful moment when the parasite takes control of
him we see none of it except his hand, lax by his side, suddenly clenching into a fist – and we know that the Mollari we (or anyone in his own universe) have known is now gone and in his place is a puppet who will dance to a tune others command in order to preserve what is left of that thing he so passionately believes in, the Centauri place in the universe and their pride, and in this instance their very continued existence. He does what he must, and in this moment he earns our most profound pity as well as our deepest respect. It’s a long way from the original caricature.

G’Kar’s journey is an even greater one. If Mollari is all heart, then G’Kar is the soul, the spirit. His passions are no less deep, and certainly no less volatile, than Mollari’s – but they are the crucible in which his ultimate nobility is forged, in fire and in pain.

It seems, with G’Kar, that the more he loses… the more he gains in return, the more he grows, the more he becomes a towering figure  who is a true leader, and perhaps even a true saint. He is occasionally portrayed as brash, sometimes even buffoonish, but underneath it all is a kind of iron nobility and the closer we come to the core of him
the more we learn of what he truly is.

In a moment at which I always weep, just before Londo is about to go off and surrender himself to his fate, he goes to say farewell to his old enemy and his old friend, G’Kar. And as he is about to leave, G’Kar calls him by name and as Londo pauses by the door G’Kar says to him that too much has passed between their races -
“My people,” he says, ” can never forgive your people. But I…can forgive you.”

And Mollari’s face changes, just for a moment, as the two old foes clasp hands and exchange a last long look – because here, maybe, lies a glimmer of that salvation that Mollari has sought for so long and has almost – almost – given up on finding at this point.

When I heard that the actor who had portrayed G’Kar in the series had died, I wept – I felt as though I had lost a brother. But it was not the actor whom I was mourning, may those he loved and left behind forgive me for that – it was G’Kar. The indomitable. The irascible.
The funny, the tragic, the wounded, the triumphant, the glorious, the inspired. The character who never really existed, who could not exist, and yet who was as real to me as though I had grown up in his physical shadow. There was a video made in his memory, and I watch it and weep, even today -

Such can be the impact of character on someone who is immersed in that character’s story.

I remember my own characters who came to me and let me tell their stories.

The lost heiress of Miranei who turned into a goddess known as the Changer of Days, my Anghara Kir Hama, heroine of my “Changer of days” fantasies, who was such a pivotal character for me that I have borne some form of her name as my online identity for as long as I’ve had a presence on the Internet.

The girls who strolled onto the stage as the eight main protagonists of “Secrets of Jin Shei” – the poet, the healer, the gypsy, the warrior, the alchemist, the sage,  the rebel leader,  and the Empress who dreamed of immortality and nearly destroyed them all. Or the one who followed them, the many-times-granddaguther of my little poet from the first book, and the other characters who shared her story in “Embers of Heaven”.

My girl-mage, Thea, from the Worldweavers trilogy, and the people who helped shape her world.

The five people who make their choices on the eve of the projected end of the world in “Midnight at Spanish Gardens”.

I didn’t create any of those people. They had stories they wanted told. They came, they introduced themselves to me, and they began to talk. It was all I could do to keep writing fast enough to keep up, sometimes.

For me, for this one single writer, that is what it comes down to. It’s a question of character, in a HUGE and important way, and it’s the character who drives the story arc forward. The arc that Londo Mollari took to its extreme – the arc of going from the beginning, where you have all the choices in the world, to the end, where all the choices you have made have herded you into a place where there is only one way forward, only one thing left to do, and there are no choices left other than that one. For better or for worse.

A story is simply and solely an account of the winnowing of those choices – and the writer can only hope that the character who is making them will be strong enough to pull in the reader right along, strong enough to trigger strong emotions, because those emotions will serve to make that reader remember that character – remember some of that character’s lines of dialogue, even, verbatim sometimes – long after they have closed the book of that character’s story.

Because they live on, in our memories. All the characters who once walked down the roads in that strange country in our mind’s eye, and let us follow them on their journeys. It is the privilege of the writer to create characters like that, the ones who live long after a
particular snatch of their story which the reader might be privileged to directly know is done and dusted. It is the privilege of the reader to find such characters, and to treasure them, to keep them alive, to keep them immortal, to shield them from the fading and the oblivion which comes with the passing of the years.

I hope that some of my own characters will live on, in YOU, the readers. It is only then that my work here will be done.

In the last month, we lost Rick Hautala.   Some wonderful people, authors, artists and editors, are trying to help his family with the sudden fiscal hardship that has accompanied his death.  Richard Chizmar, Glenn Chadbourne, Brian Freeman and Ray Garton all stepped up immediately with a book whose proceeds will benefit his wife.   Others have tried to pitch in where they can, including direct donations at holly_newstein@hotmail.com.  Sadly, Rick’s death isn’t the only devastating news this year.

Bob Booth, founder of Necon, has stage four cancer.  I’ve never been to Necon, but I have long since lost track of how many people have insisted I go.  It’s less a convention than a weekend celebration of horror fiction for the pros and associated folk of the horror field.  No awards, no panels, just a chance to get together and enjoy the company of others who won’t look at you oddly when you bring up Harry O. Morris, Frank Belknap Long or Wrath James White.  If you want to tell him thanks, or just offer him support, use saracalia08@gmail.com online, and physical cards and letters can be sent directly to: Bob Booth, 67 Birchland Ave., Pawtucket, RI 02860.

Of course, it’s not only horror that’s had it’s share of trouble.  Over on the SF/Fantasy front, Jay Lake is fighting cancer, and despite a lot of money being raised for the bills associated with some longshot (but possible) medical procedures and the best efforts of some of the most beloved sf/fantasy writers to raise awareness, he’s still facing very bad odds in beating the disease.  Here’s his latest on it.  http://www.jlake.com/2013/04/11/21916/  You can find places all over the web to donate to help, if you’re willing and able.

And in the past few days, Dave Wolverton’s sixteen-year-old son has suffered a near-fatal accident that has left the author with almost a million dollars in medical bills.  There are a handful of authors who can cover a million dollars of bills even after selling off everything they own.  Dave Wolverton is not among that handful.  If you want to investigate and perhaps help, here’s a link: http://www.helpwolverton.com/.

All of this tragedy will undoubtedly be compounded as the year progresses.  Just as we have things in life that bring us cheer, there are things that depress us or even leave us despondent.   There are two important takeaways, as far as I can tell:

1) Life happens.  Try to prepare.  It’s absolutely impossible to predict when a terrible event will come out of left field.  You can take actions to minimize your risks, but things still happen.  People who eat healthy and never smoke still get hit by cars.  An apparently safe investment might wind up being run by someone with the morals of Gary Coleman’s dad.  You never know.  But insurance helps.  Socking away some of the money you get on a breakout novel in something revenue-generating helps.  Live for today, yes, but consider the future.  Your future self might appreciate it greatly.

2) No matter what else may occur in your life, never underestimate the value of friends and family, well-wishers, co-workers and fans.  Just as there are a lot of scumbags (sometimes, sadly, among the groups I just mentioned) there are also a lot of wonderful people out there who are eager and able to help.