I see light at the end of the tunnel. I am working on the last couple of chapters. It is always strange towards the end of finishing a book project to contemplate that soon I will no longer be thinking about it. It has been such a part of my mind over the last few years.
I have been working on the climactic battle with the chief villain in his lair, in this case, his corporate headquarters. I had to come up with two technologies. Nothing complicated. Just invisibility and a way to remotely deliver knockout gas to a room you can’t even get close to.
Readers of this blog know that I take the science very seriously. I am not, however, a scientist. I am a science enthusiast generalist. That means that I don’t know nearly as much about any particular area of science as I like to think. I do try, though.
So, invisibility. Actually, amazing progress has been made on being able to render things invisible, including electromagnetic cloaking, dynamic camouflage, spectral cloaking, carpet cloaking, and of course, as seen on Youtube, the amazing Chinese quantum invisibility cloak straight out of Harry Potter. That last one uses bluescreen technology, so it is only useful if you are making a fake video claiming to demonstrate invisibility. None are practical in the real world. Some require electricity.
My version requires no electricity, is easily portable, and is based on a very old technology. It uses lenticular patterns, the kind you see in Halloween portraits that change from one face to another as you pass by them. Quantum Stealth is the patented version of lenticular based invisibility. It is made by Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corporation. Mine is based on that but also adds an additional element. The surface is way too reflective. My version uses a printed nano scale pattern on the front surface that reduces the amount of light reflected off of the material to a mere .06 percent. This approach to reducing reflection and glare is fairly new but seemingly very effective.
My characters are on the 10th floor and they need to render the guard in an office on the 11th floor unconscious without raising any alarms. My solution was developed by Stanford in 2017. It is a soft robot, a type known as a vine robot. It can “grow” many times its length like a vine but is hollow inside, making it perfect for pumping through knockout gas. There are videos on Youtube if you want to see it in action. While the mechanics are quite simple, it is steerable and can have a camera and light mounted on the front so that you can see where you are going. You can navigate it through almost anything as it fits itself into almost any shape.
What’s Up with Us?
Things have changed since we lost our beloved cat, Leeloo, to cancer. We did get another cat, Lily. She was in poor health when we got her from the pound, but after multiple trips to the vet she is now doing very well. She is fully integrated into the household now. She may be the most social and affectionate cat we have ever had. While our older cat, Bastet, never got along well with Leeloo, at 16 she seems to be mellowing. Bastet and Lily are even hanging out a bit, although she is too old to be much of a playmate.
Lily managed to find her own playmate, though. A three month old kitten, along with what we assume were mom and dad, started hanging out in our backyard. They loved the Tiki lounge and could often be seen lounging on the furniture under the shade of the tent, usually sans cocktail. Lily and the kitten began playing with each other through the sliding glass door. It became a daily thing.
We had to go away for a few days, and when we got back, they were still hanging out with each other. With temperatures climbing into the 100s and a week long heat emergency declared, we finally decided it was time to trap the kitten and add her to the household. Kittens only have a 75 percent chance of making it into adulthood, and like Lily, this adorable gray kitten needed us.
We started feeding her and giving her water. Eventually, we moved the food into a cat carrier. She got comfortable enough to go into the cat carrier to eat while Belle sat a ways away. One day the kitten did not realize that the cage door was connected to a long string, which when pulled, closed the door. Her life was about to change dramatically.
She was terrified at first. As a feral cat she had never had physical interaction with humans. We read everything we could about how to socialize her. At first, all she wanted to do was find the tiniest space to hide in.
She was scheduled for a vet appointment and we had her in the toilet room that had a door into the bathroom, that had another door into the bedroom, and the bedroom door was closed as well. We went in to get her, and much to our astonishment, she was gone. It was a tiny room with just a toilet and nowhere to hide. We searched the bathroom and emptied out the hamper. We then searched the bedroom. Nothing. She would have had to get through three closed doors to get to the rest of the house. We had to give up and cancel the appointment.
I had run out of ideas. Then I noticed a stack of pillows in a corner. I had looked behind them earlier, but when I reached underneath them, they felt warm. She had been there moments before. She was moving between different spots so that when you looked she was not there. Very magician-like of her. Once I realized what she was doing, I figured out where she would move to next and there she was.
We tried moving her to Belle’s office where I thought we knew all the hidey holes, since that is where we kept Lily when we first got her. She disappeared again. This time she had crawled through a tiny cable hole in Belle’s rolltop desk. There was a back panel that looked like the back of the cabinet, but at the top was an opening she could get to to crawl behind. It was totally inaccessible. We thought about disassembling the entire desk to get to her. Belle got some tools and the sound of them scared the kitten and she ran out.
The main way we were able to find her during her many disappearances was the kitten cam. It was a 360 degree motion tracking camera that we set on the floor. We could see the last time she passed by it and where she was going. This made it a lot easier to find her when she needed to be fed or given medicine. Her inclination was just to stay hidden, and she was very good at it.
Her various disappearances made it clear she needed to have a magic related name. We chose Bess, after Bess Houdini, performing partner of Harry Houdini. Bess was a talented performer in her own right. She was doing a song and dance act when she started dating Houdini’s brother, who billed himself as Hardeen and did shows similar to Houdini’s. It was Houdini who won her heart, thou.
We finally got her to the vet, she was fixed, and she checked out as very healthy. After a few days we were able to handle her without her panicking. We just took everything very slowly.
It has been four weeks since we brought her into the inside world. Last week we just spent a lot of time holding her, getting her more used to human contact. We also had a friend over so she could meet her while she was safely in her carrier. We want Bess to be well socialized, especially since Lily is the most social cat we have ever had.
We made an initial mistake in keeping Bess in Belle’s office and feeding her there, which had been where we had kept Lily initially since Belle is there all day. Previously, Lily hung out with Belle all day while she worked. There was a little territorial dustup between Bess and Lily, so we set Bess up in my office and let Lily come visit her there. That went much better, and they played together enthusiastically.
Next we expanded Bess’s territory so she could access the two offices, the studio and a bathroom. The two can finally play together without a glass window between them. They began joyfully running around chasing and playing. Lily is thrilled, as she really wanted someone to play with and Bastet is too old. She is equivalent to being in her 80’s, and just does not have the patience for all that kitten energy. She is getting along with the other cats, and she and Lily even began sleeping on the bed together, although so far always on opposite sides.
We began moving Bess and Lily into the bedroom when we went to bed. The deal was that Bess could have full access to the house when she was brave enough to sleep an entire night with us on the bed without having to hide. Last night Lily was asleep on the bed and Bess jumped up and began biting my toes through the covers. She eventually tired of this and fell asleep between my legs.
Now they cavort all over the house together. It has been a long time since we had kitten energy in the house.