“Power sharing” or “quantum harmonizing” or “Voltroning” or whatever you’d like to call it has been lurking around in the underplot for awhile. The idea and a rough concept of how it would work out in the story dates back to at least 2007, and is one of the hazier late-stage additions to the story that crept in as a form of narrative streamlining For Plot Reasons™. The concept was planned for a much more dramatic showing than it ultimately got in Water, though that scene was cut down for reasons of pacing and production complexity – a dramatic demonstration as initially envisioned would have required the Daedalus bathroom and would have been the only scene set in that compartment. I opted for a sequence that could be produced in a reasonable amount of time, and as a result that change and another plot optimization wound up providing the raw checkbox material for this scene.

A scene that eschews “bullshit” or “crap” in favor of “hooey.”

I’ve read that Sense8 features something similar to what James describes in panel one, albeit with a lot more sex and JMS. Chalk it up to convergent evolution, or the two of us snorkeling the same eddy of the noosphere. “Power sharing” is hinted at early in The Dualist and a little more obviously a couple of chapters back. It may have been a thing in Dead City Radio, though Emily “tuning” Thad isn’t the same thing at all even if another “chosen” is standing a few feet away when it happens. Jason’s conversations with Michael Yang could qualify though they are technically a parallel concept – Yang is artificially boosted, and while the foundation of that technology remains undisclosed it almost certainly has a genetic component. The fact that “modern” ATC depends heavily on cast actions taken in previous “incarnations” should be a thing that those of you reading from the beginning have picked up on by now, making this page as much a recap as it is a clarification of the context of the next few pages.

I’ll watch Sense8 at some point – I wanted to get this page up first. I’m hoping any similarities end at the rough conceptual level. I have some specific ideas about ability synergy that will work out over the course of the series if it proceeds beyond this book and I wanted to at least get James’ take on the concept articulated and a use case produced before I load potentially parallel work into my mind.

This page was set up on April 26th, lettered on May 7th, rendered in early June, drawn in mid July, shaded on July 26th, and sat waiting for effects work on the final panel until September 4th. I didn’t start on the effects until the other pages using the same visual processing were rendered and drawn and shaded, and how those panels were processed ultimately informed the finishing work on this page. The sick bay is completely rendered and drawn, the remote viewing scene has been rendered and processed. The four pages that follow this one are done. Things feel like they might be threatening to get back on track for the first time in quite awhile.