.4 Old ideas for Part Two
I originally had everything about Part Two on one document, but it was too long for one post. I will split the old and new ideas into two.
I like my old ideas for Part Two more than the old ideas for Part One and think many of them, especially the characters, can be used in the new version. The overall idea was certainly inspired by the Star Wars prequels. The Republic of Earth goes through a kind of civil war while also dealing with a mysterious terrorist threat. All this chaos is orchestrated by an aspiring tyrant and leader of the remnants of the Burzghash attempting to take control of the Republic of Earth and make himself dictator. As usual, I was uncertain of many of the details, as I will explain. When I worried that the Republic of Earth would be too utopian, I thought that maybe it would only become so after the reforms which took place as a result of the conflict of Part Two. If the Istarcanor seemed overpowered with their extraordinary abilities and equipment, I thought that would not be such a problem because they would be fighting each other.
Old Part Two begins with a kind of prologue which takes place maybe twenty years before the main part. It follows Sam, an Istarcano living with his wife and children in a port city which I eventually decided could be Norfolk Virginia. He is working undercover on a mission to uncover what the mysterious terrorists are planning, which he discovers is to use a container ship to transport some kind of weapon which will be used in an attack on Armenelos. The team he is a part of for this mission are some of the best Istarcanor and best Samatiri. They were some of the last to be mentored by Steve before he completely retired. If you did not read about my old ideas for Part One, all you need to know is that Steve was the main protagonist and is regarded as the principal founder of the Republic of Earth and the first Samatir. In the time of this prologue of Part Two, he is more than a hundred years old and is close to death in 2112 when I thought the prologue might take place.
Sam and his team stop the terrorist attack, but they discover almost nothing about who is behind it. They are unable to capture anyone alive. Most of the enemies they encounter are remotely operated humanoid robots which are essentially SSSMACCC suits with skeletons. However, one member of the team found something which indicates that someone within the Department of War is working with the terrorists and communicates this to the rest of the team right before being killed in an explosion which also destroyed the evidence. I do not remember if I decided what that evidence might be, but it may have something to do with the robots. It could have been a discovery that the robots were remotely operated using the quantum entanglement-based instant communication technology which is supposed to be secret and only available to the Department of War. There is also a matter of where the robots came from. At that time, they were only recently developed and only a few prototypes are known to have been made and they do not have armor and were not made for combat, unlike the ones faced by Sam’s team. The robots are made with the same technology as the SSSMACCC suits. Realistically, it would probably be easier to create robots than suits. There could be some connection between those who developed the SSSMACCC suits and the robots and the terrorists. Because they have almost nothing to go on and they do not know who to trust, Sam and his team do not tell their superiors of what they heard. The only other person they tell is Steve shortly before he dies. Steve
gives them a mission to secretly continue to work to uncover the conspiracy within the Department of War. The prologue ends with a funeral for both Steve and the Istarcano who was killed.
I may have thought that Sam was chosen for this mission because he just happened to live in the city where it takes place, but the fact that he is part of this team makes that quite a coincidence and it makes more sense that he moved there for the mission and his family provided additional cover for his real purpose for living there. Being partly inspired by the Jedi, it is unusual for Istarcanor to marry or have children. Part of the purpose of this prologue was to show how Sam does not let his attachments interfere with his duty.
Sam’s wife began the Istarcano training, but did not complete it, so she knew from the beginning that Sam could be expected to do something like this, but that possibility was only theoretical and, due to my inability to imagine any, there seemed to be no great dangers he would be sent into. There may have been only the vaguest clue that there was anything to investigate in Norfolk when Sam moved there and he and his team only gradually uncovered the conspiracy over the years. At the end of this prologue, Sam’s wife leaves him and he agrees that is best.
I also had the idea that the terrorists would capture Sam’s family and threaten to kill them if he does not stop what he is doing to prevent the attack, but he continues anyway. The terrorists do not kill his family, or at least, not all of them. I may have been thinking that the terrorists did not actually want their plan to succeed or perhaps they knew that he could not be coerced this way and when it became clear that he would defeat them, so they decided that getting his family to hate him would be the way to do the most damage. I was frustrated by the trope of antagonists threatening people someone cares about in order to force him to do what they want, even if it will have far worse consequences than what is being threatened. In a situation where complying would be obviously so much worse, the only reasonable thing for the protagonist to do is to accept that he failed to protect the people being threatened and do what is needed to minimize the harm the enemies can do and then later destroy them at the first opportunity. By building a reputation for never complying in such situations, they would deter enemies from doing this.
In the time between the prologue and the main part of Part Two, Sam’s team is not able to find very much in their secret investigations. One of them, named Daniel, goes deep undercover to follow a lead. To everyone other than the members of Sam’s team he seems to have completely disappeared with no explanation. He may have done this immediately after the incident at Norfolk and is believed to have been killed in the fighting, in which case the funeral at the end of the prologue would also have been for him. He stays undercover for many years until near the end of Part two. I never decided what he accomplishes, so I will not mention him again. Sam retires from active duty and becomes a trainer and teacher of new Istarcanor and will try to find more people who can be trusted to join his mission, while also investigating whether the enemy is trying to recruit trainees and attempting to stop them. Another member of his team, named Josh, would become the main antagonist of Part Two and would have the same role as Palpatine in the Star Wars prequels. Being an “Istar”-cano, he might also have been inspired by Saruman. I did not decide if it was before or after the Norfolk incident when he secretly joined the Burzghash remnants and became their leader. He would rise to the highest levels of leadership among the Istarcanor. After making sure that other conspirators take his place, he would leave and go on to seek elected offices in the Republic, eventually becoming the chief executive and would use the increasing chaos to seize even more power.
In addition to the terrorist threat, the perception of chaos is also being driven by many countries becoming very discontent and considering leaving the Republic. It was never very important exactly which countries these were, but at the time, I had heard that New Zealand is supposedly the freest country in the world. As such, I thought maybe they would be interested in preserving their freedom and would be particularly inclined to leave the Republic if they thought it threatened their freedom. For this reason, and maybe also because I was reading the prequels to Ender’s Game and thinking of Mazer Rackham, New Zealand is where Sophia, the main protagonist of Part Two is from.
I probably drew inspiration from Alex Rider, Katniss Everdeen, and Daisy from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D as I imagined Sophia. Her father died in a way which looked natural or an accident, but, of course, it was not, when she was a young child, a few years after the prologue. Her father was planning to run for office in the Republic’s legislature and propose viable compromises between the Republic and the discontent countries, but the Burzghash does not want the tensions to be defused, so the conspirators in the Department of War targets a tire on his car with a Quildare drone’s laser and causes it to crash while appearing to be an accident. Realistically, Sophia’s father would have to be someone rather important to have a chance of winning a such an election, but I liked to imagine that average people could achieve positions of power in the Republic.
Sophia’s older brother, Jared, has suspicions about what happened to their father. He eventually finds and joins a secretive militant group preparing to fight the Republic. They show Jared evidence of what really happened to his father, as well as other crimes supposedly committed by agents of the Republic. Sophia, on the other hand, did not know very much about her father’s plans and was not very aware of the discontent in her country with the Republic while growing up, perhaps because she was so young when her father died, her mother never told her much because she never really approved of any what he was doing, and the Burzghash did what they could to make sure that her father’s plans were forgotten. She becomes an Istarcano, but, remembering it now, my idea for what lead her to do that was quite absurd. When she is maybe seventeen and walking home from school, she accidentally walks into a gun fight between an undercover Istarcano team and some enemy. I never decided exactly what they were doing there, why they started shooting, or who they were fighting. The enemies could have been the group Jared joined or Burzghash agents which the Istarcanor believe are the terrorists Sam stopped in the prologue. The Istarcanor might believe the two groups to be the same. Certainly, the Burzghash has infiltrated Jared’s group and attempts to use it to advance their ends. These Istarcano are perhaps themselves Burzghash agents or are directed by them. Because of her father and her brother, it might not be a coincidence that this fight occurred in a place where Sophia happened to be.
Caught in the crossfire, or perhaps hit by a ricochet, Sophia is shot in the head and nearly dies. Later, while she is recovering, one of the Istarcanor in the fight approaches her and encourages her to enter the Istarcanor’s training program when she is eighteen. He may have been impressed by the way she reacted to suddenly being in danger and then learned of other exceptional qualities she may have or perhaps the Department of War wanted some way to keep an eye on her because of her brother. I never thought of any good reason why she agrees to do this. Certainly, her mother would hate it, unless maybe she really believes the Republic is the greatest thing. It could also be that Istarcano training is a great educational and career opportunity even, and perhaps especially, for those who do not finish it.
Much of the early part of Part Two would show what this training program is from Sophia’s perspective. When Armenelos would be on an island magically raised from the bottom of the ocean, this training program would primarily take place on a base on a smaller island nearby. When the capital would be in the Aysen region in Chile, the base would be next to a small lake in the mountains to the east. It would last an average of six years (or some other arbitrary amount of time which makes sense), depending on how fast one is able to progress through it.
The beginning of the first three years might be not so different from training in a convention military. The recruits would be subjected to a highly regimented program which demands total unquestioning obedience, telling them that this is required for serving the Republic. This might continue for a few months, until it becomes the opposite and the trainees are instead forced to question everything. In order to progress, they must answer the questions of what their purpose is, what is good, if and why the Republic is good, and what is evil and would therefore be their enemy against which they may use violence and deception, while being subjected to the most rigorous Socratic questioning. This way, the Istarcanor know what their duty is with absolute certainty. They would be able to address and dismiss any challenge to their loyalty to their cause, my thought being that their cause ought to be one which cannot be logically challenged. A trainee could theoretically challenge the beliefs generally held by the Istarcanor, but this process of extremely rigorous debate of what good and evil are, which started in Part One, would result in them forming an unassailable ideology. This ideology is my theory of morality which I have explained previously. If someone were to disobey an order, he would not be immediately punished. The trainer would demand that he explain and justify his actions or inaction. If he fails to justify how what he is doing is consistent with what he has reasoned his duty to be, and he would fail because trainers who went through the same rigorous process would not give an order for which disobedience could be justified, he would be punished more severely than he would have been during the beginning of the training as someone who understands his duty so well would have no excuse.
This would be integrated with the actual training which would vary depending on what roles a trainee intends to have and is suited for, but it would consist of many unexpected challenges with counter-intuitive solutions. I had many ideas of what these might be. Many are probably ridiculous, but I will try to list the ones I remember. Trainees might be assigned a different place to sleep each night and forced to wake up at different times. They might play sports in which there are multiple identical balls, but only one can be used to score. There may be many other competitive exercises in which they are assigned to teams, but some are assigned to secretly work for opposing teams. Trainees might have to defend themselves or escape when they are randomly attacked perhaps by other trainees who have been ordered to do so. They would be trained to be ambidextrous. They would be immersively taught multiple languages.
Because this part of the story would be about the protagonist’s experience at a kind of school, it probably was inspired by Harry Potter and Ender’s Game, but I also had in mind a scene in the first Alex Rider book in which the titular character is sent to train with the SAS and goes on an airplane from which the soldiers parachute from, but he only watches them do this and does not jump. I thought it would be interesting to read a description of a character’s experience parachuting. I thought that Sophia doing this for the first time might be a significant event in this part of the story. In addition to the various skills which might be needed by soldier/spy/Jedi/S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, they would also learn various professional skills which might be useful to them. Medicine would be a common choice as they are already required to learn first aid. Perhaps the training would loosely conform to a principle that one should not be trained to inflict a wound which he cannot treat, as the trainees do not touch any weapon, in the first half of the training, other than a hunting rifle or bow which they might have to make themselves while being trained to survive in the wilderness. Other than shooting animals, the only combat they are trained in is unarmed.
When a trainee has progressed to a certain point, which I imagined would be usually be halfway, or three years, through the training, he would take part in a kind of ceremony in which he would give his oath of loyalty which would take the form of an argument in his own words which demonstrates that he understands the moral imperative of the Republic and his duty as its soldier with absolute certainty. Senior Istarcanor would then challenge his argument and would need to answer. The trainee could theoretically argue that his duty is different from what is expected and that may be accepted if his logic is correct. This is when the trainee is fully committed and is considered to be an Istarcano and would be given his unique knife. The one Sophia would receive has a tapering recurve blade. Sam’s is a simple straight single-edged knife. Josh’s is a double-edged dagger and is the one made steel salvaged from a ship sunk in Part One which I mentioned earlier. This knife would be the first real weapon the trainee would hold since he began and would symbolize him earning the right to use the powerful tools of killing which the Department of War possesses.
The same kinds of things as in the first three years would continue, but they would also be trained in the use of weapons and other advanced equipment such as the SSSMACCC suit. This is when the trainees would begin to be trusted with the Department of War’s secrets, such as the existence of instant communication technology and the Quildare drones. They would be sent to places beyond those in or near Armenelos and might sometimes take part in real missions. An Istarcano would complete his training by planning his own mission by himself or with other trainees. He could propose anything which might serve the purpose of the Republic and would be approved by a senior Istarcano with the authority to authorize whatever is proposed. It could be identifying a target and destroying it or it could be something a civilian could do such as starting a business. The project can last any amount of time, perhaps as long as the former trainee lives or longer. A trainee does not need to think of something original. The majority would probably choose one of several common options.
One of the trainers Sophia meets is Sam. The role he plays in this part of the story was probably inspired by Colonel Graff in Ender’s Game. All of the trainers are very demanding and strict, but Sophia dislikes Sam particularly. He is one of the senior Istarcanor who administer the ceremony when she gives her oath and receives her knife. Afterwards, when she begins the advanced stage of the training which involve smaller numbers of people as many others have dropped out, she works with him more closely and understood that he has only been challenging the trainees to be their best. Sophia begins to see Sam as a kind of father figure and she reminds him of his own children with whom he has had little contact. At one point Sam brings her, either alone or with a very small number of other trainees, to a place where there can be no surveillance, perhaps in the mountains of the Aysen region and perhaps a cave so that they cannot be observed by drones. It it is only when they arrive that Sam reveals the real purpose for bringing them there by telling them that they have been trusted to know the secret of Sanwe-latya. He tells them how Steve gained such an ability and taught it to others, what the dangers and limitations are, why it is kept a secret, how poorly it is understood, and that they may choose whether or not to proceed with learning to master this ability. He is able to immediately begin teaching them to recognize intentional mental contact and defend against invasive uses. He could explain that being able to recognize contact is how he knows for certain that they are not being observed. However, teaching them to recognize the unconscious mental contact all people make with every person they interact with, as well as consciously initiating contact, might require bringing the trainees to a place where they can be subjected to extreme sensory deprivation, as I explained elsewhere. They might later be sent to a space station operated by the Department of War, with the stated purpose of training in zero gravity, which they would also do.
Learning Sanwe-latya is what helps Sophia overcome or compensate for any residual effects from being shot in the head. I thought it might be interesting if Sophia would struggle with minor disabilities resulting from her injury. I did not know what those effects might realistically be. I only remember being surprised that it is possible to survive that at all. I thought her senses or coordination might be slightly impaired and this would make her experience more difficult. I liked to imagine that anyone could potentially begin Istarcano training, no matter what disabilities they may have. As long as they worked to be their best, the Department of War would find some role for them. The Samatiri might also want to teach Sanwe-latya to disabled people both to help them by giving them a way to compensate for their disabilities and to study the phenomenon further, as they are likely to become exceptionally skilled in using it because they are forced to rely on it more.
After those trainees have reached sufficient skill in Sanwe-latya. Sam reveals an even greater secret by telling them of his mission to uncover the conspiracy within the Department of War and that he intends for them to join him in his efforts. The conspirators have been able to hide from Samatiri, so that means they must be Samatiri themselves and have infiltrated the highest levels of the Department of War and anyone trying to act against them without them knowing must also have mastered the ability to hide their thoughts from hostile Samatiri. At this point, Sam might know that the enemies are the remnants of the Burzghash. He might suspect Josh and have an idea of what his plan is. This is when Sophia would find out what happened to her father and what was really happening when she was shot if she did not before.
This early part of Part Two would follow characters and show events other than Sophia and her experience during Istarcano training. During this time, the hostility between the separatist countries led by New Zealand and the Republic increases and becomes more overt. Everyone in a position of importance is forced to take a side. There are Istarcanor who believe the separatist’s grievances are legitimate and the Republic is acting contrary to its purposes. I wanted to imagine a large number of major and minor characters with at least a few in each of the various factions in the story. Some of them would be descendants of characters in Part One. I began to make a Venn diagram to organize them all. The major categories which would encompass all others are those who are on the side of New Zealand and the other countries, those who will fight for the dominance of the Republic, and those who will be unaligned in the coming conflict. The other fields in the diagram are for elected office-holders in the Republic government, Istarcanor, those primarily located in Armenelos, and those primarily located in New Zealand. Fields which are not mutually exclusive would overlap. There would be Burzghash agents in each category. I also had a list of names, all of them ridiculous, and used them to filled up the fields, but I never really had ideas for characters to go with most of those names. The only significant character I have not yet mentioned is Robert, who is another one of the trainees and Sophia meets him early on. He is another one of those whom Sam trains in Sanwe-latya. He becomes Sophia’s love interest. They both know that their duty as Istarcanor makes any serious relationship difficult. They might have some idea of what happened with Sam’s family because he would have told them about his mission in Norfolk and because they may have seen his memories of things, which he would not have wanted to tell them, when he trained them in Sanwe-latya. Training in this discipline would be just as brutal as any other the Istarcanor go through. The trainees would need to defend against the trainer attempting to see every one of their thoughts and memories while they do the same to him. As it becomes increasingly clear that a crisis is coming, Sophia and Robert agree that they should not pursue any romance until things are resolved. I did not want such matters to be a large part of the story. I always thought they should be addressed in an epilogue.
I never had very clear ideas of what happens after Sophia finishes Istarcano training. She would perform various missions while also secretly working to uncover and stop Josh’s plan. She would find her loyalty divided between the Republic and New Zealand, especially after finding out what her brother has been doing, but it would become clear to her that the entire conflict has been manufactured for the purpose of destroying the Republic by turning it to the same tyrannical regime which was defeated in Part One. At some point, Josh and his co-conspirators take full control of the Department of War and declare that any who do not support them are traitors. Sophia, Robert, and a few others escape and are then on their own with almost no one to trust and limited equipment. The climax of Part two would occur when Josh leads a force consisting of the Istarcanor loyal to him and conventional forces drawn from the member states of the Republic to invade New Zealand. The battle between them and the separatists is the largest to occur on Earth in more than a hundred years. Sophia and the others successfully carry out the plan they had made to stop Josh. Afterwards, the Republic is restored with reforms which would prevent this kind of thing from happening again. I do not know how much what really happened the public would be aware of. My plan to deal with issues such as this was to say that, after the Burzghash were defeated this time, the Ayanamuz intervened far more strongly than they usually do by controlling people and manipulating their memories in order to restore normality and put their plans back on track.
I had an additional idea for the conclusion of Part two which you should ignore if you have not read my old ideas for Part One because it is probably not relevant to the new ideas, which you should skip ahead to. Sophia would be killed almost immediately after doing what she did to ensure Josh is defeated. I was not sure whether it should be revealed at the end of Part Two or the beginning of Part Three that her consciousness was captured and preserved by Alan and he brings her to in an illusory place he created. Alan explains the truth about the Ayanamuz and the Burzghash, how nearly all humans, including her until recently, are being manipulated and what a massive risk he took in bringing her there. Sophia was as important to Ayanamuz’s plan as one human can be and they intended to add her consciousness to their collection. During the battle with the Burzghash, the Ayanamuz became distracted and Alan saw an opportunity to free her by making them and everyone else believe she is dead in the same way he did for himself in Part One. He hopes that she will join him in his plans to free humanity from both the Burzghash and Ayanamuz. If she refuses, Alan cannot let her return to Earth as that would allow the Ayanamuz to discover his existence. As a Samatir, Sophia is able to understand what Alan shows her when he uses his much greater power to undeniably prove everything he says is true. She is angry at Allen for taking her kidnapping her and permanently separating her from everyone and everything she knew, but she was trained to put aside her feelings and objectively consider the bigger picture and the greater good. To Alan, she was an enemy combatant whom he neutralized by bringing her there. She realizes that the Ayanamuz and Burzghash are the real enemies and that if she can help Alan fight them, she should do so. Here the contradiction can be seen in which I wanted the Republic and Istarcanor to be everything I believed to be good, but they were established by people being manipulated by an evil force.