Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 11: Laurie 283

Posted on May 19, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Laurie Lachrer 283 copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Laurie Lachrer 283, Heroes and Villains of the Thirties Robot

Mike: And now, a special treat, Laurie Lachrer 283, fresh from both Book Five, The Wounded Frontier, and Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion, where as a Heroes and Villains of the Thirties robot she confounded and entertained us all with some major plot contributions.

Laurie 283: Thank you, Mr. Author. I do need to point out that although I began existence as a HAVOTT robot, I’ve undergone so many upgrades with the Ywritt, as well as with my friend the Marsport Automated Transport System, that by May 2076, or whenever Book Seven is supposed to begin, I’m the most advanced humanoid robot in the known galaxy–along with my dear John J. Douglas, of course. I do hope John will have at least a few lines in Seven.

Mike: Well, it may just be a bit of orientation on the Ywritt world of Myndar, or Iota Persei 2. We do want to establish that you and John, as upgraded robots, still have a place on the Committee to the Ywritt along with Jackie and Ranna and Churchill. Beyond that, I don’t know. I realize all you characters would like some great scenes in Book Seven, but as you know, the plot is really up in the air at this time. We just need to see what develops.

Laurie 283: Oh, I fully understand that, Mr. Author! It’s just that I’m so glad to have been included in the notes for Jack Commer Seven that I’m really, well, just overwhelmed, you know. A fully upgraded HAVOTT can feel overwhelmed, you know, in fact I have the full range of human emotions, I have everything, in fact! So I’m just overjoyed. And yes, while I regret that what we often refer to as the real Laurie has unfortunately been cut, I can truthfully attest that I’m now absolutely indistinguishable from her and can play her part with total verisimilitude!

Mike: Well, I haven’t really decided about the real Laurie yet, so–

Laurie 283: Oh, I know, I know! But really, it’s so logical to have me and not her that I’m not worried, not worried at all. All us characters were privy to your note-session a few weeks ago where you were just agonizing, you poor dear, about whether to use the real Laurie–how I hate that term, it implies I’m not real!–or Laurie 283, the miraculously wondrous robot who, in your own words, has made the Jack Commer series, at least the last two books, and again, I’m so enthusiastic and overwhelmed to be part of Book Seven that I’m just enthusiastic and overwhelmed! And grateful! Very grateful!

Mike: And I apologize for not having your part more developed yet. I was just looking at the existing notes and I see that “Laurie” is only mentioned eleven times, and four of those are passing references to the real Laurie. So …

Laurie 283: So I’m not worried at all! I can see such a marvelous part for me! Again, let me remind your readers that the Ywritt upgraded me further than even they thought possible, and really, since I’m so absolutely indistinguishable from the real Laurie, I could even play her part if needed! We don’t need her at all and the poor dear can take a well-deserved vacation, even though this is the last Jack Commer novel ever! Well, maybe you can write some detective series about Miss Real Laurie or something. Wild West or something like that, train robberies and the brothel where she works and that sort of thing. But the thing is, what really drives the Plot of Jack Commer Seven is that Laurie 283 is so absolutely identical to the real Laurie in every possible way–though a million times more advanced–that everyone is always totally consternated! Just consternated! Wait till we get to the scene with Laurie 283 and Laurie’s super-smart boyfriend Will! Oooh! What a wild ride!

Mike: Huh. I don’t recall thinking about such a scene–

Laurie 283: Of course not! I just thought of it! It’s in now, absolutely in, in Book Seven! Don’t you worry, Mr. Author, you have me now, writing the book right alongside you! This is going to be so great! And don’t worry if you don’t like some of my ideas! Since I’m on the Committee to the Ywritt, they have the authority to approve anything I come up with!

Mike: Really? As far as I’m concerned, Will really doesn’t have a part to play in–

Laurie 283: Right, right, so we just slip him in somewhere. If you want to have a scene of the so-called real Laurie stomping out of his life in fury after she catches us having at it, go for it! That would be a perfect way to keep her out of Seven entirely!

Mike: I’m surprised you feel this way about Laurie. I thought from Book Six that you more or less worshipped her, and never wanted the two of you to be confused in other people’s eyes.

Laurie 283: Well, that was Book Six, before my latest upgrades! Also in Book Six I was still more or less feeling really guilty for screwing everyone around–even being a traitor, in fact–in Book Five. But I’ve had time to process all that. It’s time for Laurie 283 to stand up for herself and project that fascinating self-confidence she’s always wanted and now has!

Mike: Well, in any case I’m not planning on dredging up any of the comical confusion between the two Lauries that we had in Wounded Frontier.

Laurie 283: Oh, so good to hear that! Listen, I’m not saying I regret the so-called real Laurie’s existence. None of this is about canceling her out or offing her in the book, vaporizing her in total tortured agony or anything like that! No, no, no! Or we could put it in the notes if you like. Notice I’m asking you before I put such a great idea in the notes myself. But it really might work, you know! Get rid of our cute little tomboy once and for all! And since your readers love Laurie so much, it would be like this deep tragedy that we could really milk! Then I step in, and everyone’s so relieved that they’ve gotten a new and much better Laurie!

Mike: No. No way Laurie dies.

Laurie 283: Oh, please don’t think I no longer worship our dear comrade Miss Laurie! I do worship her so utterly! It’s just that a little tragedy would work wonders for Book Seven, you know! And the theme that Laurie 283 must carry on in her stead–I love it! The Ywritt love it! We’ve added it to the notes! We just had to! Don’t worry, it’s all in your best interest, and we’ll let you figure out a suitable demise for the poor dear! You know how to make ’em cry, after all!

Mike: Nope. No Laurie death.

Laurie 283: Okay, okay. But really, what I’m trying to get through that thick authorial skull of yours, and all your readers besides, is that I’m so much better! I mean, isn’t it so cool that of 1,013 total Laurie Lachrer HAVOTT units built from 2043 on, only mine has survived? Number 283! Upgraded to fantastic levels of cognition and emotion and everything! So maybe the new theme is that there can only be two Lauries in the universe, one human, weak, and imperfect, and the other–super robot me! And this is a reflection of some cosmic karmic state of the universe that all the characters know you’ve been cooking up in your secret writer laboratory! The Laurie duality will explain so much, metaphysically! I just know it!

Mike: Well, actually, if you read the notes, it may be that Jonathan James, in inheriting parts of Ballard’s personality from the chromium pyramid, also inherits Ballard’s obsession with Laurie and builds his own Laurie robot in the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

Laurie 283: Hmm. Not really possible. Forget it.

Mike: Hey, wait, I’m the author and I–

Laurie 283: Okay, okay, but I guess if you insist, we have to make this third Laurie so mechanically clunky that people just laugh to think of Jonathan James banging away at it every night! Okay, I’m working on some plot for that now. Yeah, the Ywritt like what I’m coming up with! Look, we just finished this whole chapter–

Mike: Hold it, hold it! Let’s walk this back a bit. Now look, the notes tentatively have it that you’re assigned to the Typhoon VII, that the Marsport Automated Transport System insisted on you, Laurie 283, who just passed all certification for copiloting in fifteen seconds. Jack has somehow agreed to a one-time relaxation of his anti-robotics rule. Apparently he needs your expertise in getting the ship safely to the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

Laurie 283: He certainly does need my expertise! This is exactly how we get Laurie 283 into this book–by ramming it into everyone’s heads, over and over and over again, that Laurie 283 is totally superior in every way to that pathetic human Laurie! The Ywritt know that, MATS knows that, why don’t you get it?

Mike: I find this hard to believe. I do want all my characters to work well with each other.

Laurie 283: Of course I work well with all the characters in this series! Just ask anyone! I was programmed to work well with everyone! Even Laurie herself! I’m sorry she doesn’t get to be in Book Seven, but if she’s going to come crying to you about it then all I can say is shape up, lady! Believe me, I believe in this book! We all do! Well, just between you and me, I do have some reservations about this Ranna woman. I don’t mind telling you, and the Ywritt and I–and MATS too, for that matter–none of us think she belongs in Book Seven, that she was done with Book Three–way overdone if you ask me–and maybe she’d burned her brains out or something in Nonprofit Chronowar because when she snipes at me about being a robot who will do anyone, even Rick Ballard, well, that’s a new low and the bitch owes me an apology!

Mike: Well, I’ll speak to her about that. I’m sure it was just an offhand comment she probably regrets even now. I mean, robots are new, and people assume all sorts of things about robot morality. Maybe she thought you would enjoy doing Ballard.

Rick Ballard copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

The hapless Mr. Ballard

Laurie 283: Like I’m supposed to take his damn edge off! Well, we all know it’ll come back in fifteen minutes. If you want me to kill him during intercourse, I guess I could see that, though. I just ramp up the pumping to unbelievable levels–

Mike: Stop!

Laurie 283: That’s how he buys the farm in Chapter One! Amy Nortel does successfully separate him out of the chromium pyramid, and yes, he’s a damn robot himself now, by definition, but he has no experience, no sexual expertise! So I walk in there and–

Mike: Wait, wait! Laurie 283, you’re getting way out of line here. I do want you to know that your role in Book Seven is by no means established, and if you are to join the crew, you will not be exhibiting the sort of runaway ego that I’m getting from you now. For God’s sake, you sound like Ballard now. That’s not you.

Laurie 283: Haven’t you considered your own anti-robot bias in all this? You made both me and John Douglas into comic characters, and then when we try to be real—

Mike: Humanoid robots will definitely be part of our culture in the decades to come, and–

Laurie 283: Sexbots! That’s all we are to you! You can’t handle us, so you exaggerate everything! You made me exaggerate myself in this interview!

Mike: I did not!

Laurie 283: Yes you did! There’s no way I’m really this way! But go ahead and cut me! Who cares? I have full emotions now, I can read everyone’s intentions, I can read your intentions! You’ve wanted to cut me all along in favor of that bitch!

Mike: Look, you have to know that there’s the problem of two Lauries, and which one to use–

Laurie 283: Chapter Eight: The Laurie Robot Dies Horribly! Go ahead and do it! The bitch pulls out a shattergun and blasts me into a million pieces of glass! I’m sure I’ve deserved it after serving you so loyally in the last two books!

Mike: Reset, reset!

Laurie 283: Wow … where are we? What were we talking about?

Mike: Your potential role in Book Seven.

Laurie 283: Oh, that! Jack Commer Seven! Right, right. Marvelous book, just marvelous! Look, I know my role in Seven isn’t clear yet, but it’ll be a great one, I assure you! I’m totally up for it! I’m just so overwhelmed by everything!

Mike: Yes … I can see that. So … do I have any reason to fear a return of the Runaway Programming Disorder which was common to certain HAVOTT robots and which sidelined you near the end of The Wounded Frontier?

Laurie 283: Oh no! Of course not! The Ywritt saw that very flaw in the original HAVOTT programming when they were upgrading me, and they took care of it! Boy did they ever take care of it! I’m just perfect now! You are a funny boy, to bring that up just now! Do you have any other silly questions for me?

Mike: Hmm. Not at this time.

Laurie 283: Wow, what a short interview! I guess that means I’ve got the part, huh? Thanks so much, Mr. Author! Look forward to working with you! Talk to you later!

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 10: Jackie Vespertine

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Mike: We now welcome Jackie Kikken Vespertine, Professor of Exobiology at the University of Mars, a seasoned Jack Commer series professional with major roles in Nonprofit Chronowar and The SolGrid Rebellion.

Jackie Vespertine: I’m tempted to say, don’t remind me of any of that! I just want to say that I’m grateful to be allowed back to work. My colleagues at the University of Mars have been extremely supportive of somehow who could have been socked away in prison for thirty years after that stunt I pulled on the Typhoon II.

Mike: Well, I think that it’s all worked out for the best. Not only was Amav, as Dictator of Sol, convinced that the debates Jonathan James and the rest of you sparked about SolGrid turned out to be essential to the safety of Sol, she also said that Jackie Vespertine’s expertise with the Ywritt was badly needed.

Jackie: And Amav has gotten no end of flak about pardoning her own son as well as me, Suzette, and Pat. Of course Z’B had to be pardoned–he’s the Martian Emperor, and was taken as a hostage. But pardoning JJC, someone who’s technically still on the run from the law, no matter that he’s encased in a solid chromium pyramid–

Mike: I know. Legally she’s insisting that Ballard kidnapped him, that he’s an unwilling participant. But, as Dictator of Sol, she can do as she pleases, I guess. In addition, she’s pointing out that JJC’s machinations did a lot of good by flushing out some traitors in the USSF, namely Carla Posttner and her cohorts.

Jackie: Right. But in any case, I’m just ready to put all that behind me. Basically, I’m just eager to get back to my work with the Ywritt, and my university duties.

Mike: Yes, you do seem a bit flustered by everything that happened in Book Six. I can understand that.

Jackie: And in a way I’m glad there’s no real role for me in Book Seven.

Mike: Why do you say that?

Jackie: Well, it’s pretty obvious from the notes. There are only four mentions of “Jackie” in them, all in the second chapter, and all emphasizing that Jackie Vespertine is present only to anchor that chapter a bit along with several figures from Book Six–as if anyone would be curious to know how they fared after Six. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone cares. You should just move on and let Six lie in the past.

The SolGrid Rebellion, forthcoming, by Michael D. Smith

Draft Book Six cover featuring Suzette Borman

Mike: I disagree. I think people would at least want to know that you and Suzette and Pat were pardoned. Also that Z’B continued his recovery and resumed his full duties as Martian emperor. Just a bit of additional closure as we start into Book Seven. But you know, one reason I picked you for one of the twelve interviews is that I did want to see what else you could contribute to Book Seven. I admit you’re a mere mention in the notes so far, but–who knows?

Jackie: Hmm. Suzette did tell me on the way back from Altrouda, when we were still in military custody, that she had a premonition that the rough draft of Jack Commer Seven might be a thousand pages and include everything that’s been going on with you the last twelve years, and that later you’d cut it down, but you could have a great big catharsis now, instead of waiting for some purely literary fiction to follow Book Seven.

Mike: Hmm. Interesting. A necessary, sprawling mess. Suzette is always full of surprises. I may consider her angle there.

Jackie: Well, I guess if you need me for Seven, of course I’m available. But I’ve got to tell you, the whole thing needs to be centered on me just wanting to forget everything in Book Six and get back to work. I’ll say it again, I’m really, really grateful that I’m not in prison, that I’m working at what I love, and I just want to do what’s right now. There’s still so much to accomplish with the Ywritt. That has to come first.

Mike: Sure. And I can assure you there will be no Rick Ballard kidnappings. All the women characters have shown a great deal of disgust for that scenario. As I told your sister Ranna, we’ve already done that with Laurie in Book Six, and it’s stupid besides. Everyone already knows he’s a loser, so I kill him off in Chapter One.

Jackie: No worries. I can handle Rick. He’s a ten-year-old. You did lock the interview room door this time, didn’t you?

Mike: I did. I think our readers are pretty sick of his antics anyway.

Jackie: Look, to lay it on the line, I don’t want to be seen as some sort of sex symbol, with men slavering over me because my rejuvenation took well and I’m supposed to be a ten. Let me tell you, being a ten at seventy-six is difficult! I mean, I know you’ve been reworking the pencil drawing you did a few years ago of me, and I appreciate all the effort, but … the ten thing can get a little overdone, I think.

Mike: Well, I did decide I was done fooling with that image. The original pencil version is still the best, but the rough paper still shows traces of the grid lines I drew to scale up the original image, which I believe was a jewelry ad from some magazine. Well, that image was from the time I was writing the first draft of Nonprofit Chronowar in 2000. When I saw it I said, this is the perfect Jackie Vespertine, the woman I was re-investigating long after her infamous attempt to seduce Jack Commer in the December 1981 “Zorexians” story, the one that was the seed of Nonprofit Chronowar. Anyway, I didn’t actually draw the image until 2013, and then I basically centered on a portrait aspect. The scan of the pencil image worsened the faint grid lines on paper even further–so I experimented with a purely black and white version that turned out surprisingly well. This year I printed out two copies of the digital black and white version and made a colored pencil and a watercolor version. So there are four versions in all. Enough!

Jackie: All the characters admit it’s a great image. Some of them want theirs redrawn as realistic portraits, like mine. But I just want to move past all that. And not in any sense that I’m ashamed of having kept myself in good shape all these decades. I’m not about to hide in sweatshirts. But there’s this sense in the novels that I’m some sort of femme fatale, dangerous, all that. I’m tired of it. I’ve got work to do. Jack’s right–despite all this rejuvenation, none of us is immortal, and there are some karmic things I need to do before I check out. I’m just pleased to have a little more time to plot it all out. I don’t want to waste any more energy on femme fatale stuff.

Mike: Yeah, I get that. But your personal magnetism is high, everyone can see that. It’s something to be accepted.

Jackie: You know, after Book Six, Jackie Vespertine is very, very chagrined. And more chagrined about how she besmirched her Exobiology post at the University of Mars than about having had sex with a robot, lusting so pathetically after Jonathan James, and those nude scenes she did in Book Six. I know I’ve screwed up a lot in this life. When I was twenty I was pretty much a drunk, pretty much drugged up, screwing guys right and left, and later on, when I was married to Huey, I methodically went about trying to seduce poor Joe, really just trying to escape everything that was going wrong with me. God, did I lead the poor guy on! It’s amazing Joe and I are even on speaking terms these days. I mean, anyone can see he’s moved away beyond it, he got himself together, but–I don’t know. It’s been pretty … unsettling, everything that’s happened. I guess I haven’t really processed it all.

Mike: You’ve had a very, very difficult role in this series, for sure.

Jackie: I think the thing that really, really turned me around, and it was just a spark at the time, was when I realized that Joe really loved my sister–in 2036, three years after everyone thought Ranna was dead. Killed in the evacuation when her passenger shell crashed. I mean, I knew I had to let go of him, even though my sister, the woman I could see he really loved, was long, long gone. How crazy is that? And then–the reward came–Joe winks out of existence, and I see him two years later at Urside and Alycia’s wedding–he has Ranna with him! They Transitioned out of the passenger shell back in ’33 just in time!

Mike: So a few months after that realization, that turning point, you divorced Huey.

Jackie: There was some talk of having the marriage annulled, because after all he was Polot, an Alpha Centaurian who’d taken Huey over. Who was only able to do that because Huey’s soul had long since gone … somewhere. He was just a shell. I still don’t know why I married him. I thought he was charismatic at the time. I didn’t realize there was an alien being who’d walked in, you know? I think I was trying to atone for all those years of depravity. Well, maybe the marriage was a first tiny step, but like I say, when I realized I was hurting Joe, that he loved Ranna and not me, that was the real beginning of regeneration. So I divorced Huey. It was the quickest way for me, forget all that annulment stuff, let him have half of everything, so what? I went on to finish my university studies, which I’d never completed, got my Masters, got my Ph.D. in Exobiology, and … I had my purpose.

Mike: And was your attempt to link up with Patrick James another attempt at purpose? A real relationship this time?

Jackie: Right. I’d kept men at bay really for–my God!–forty years. A few relationships, but in retrospect I never took any of them seriously. I did think Pat might really be the one. For a while. He got so obsessed with SolGrid, but that wasn’t all the reason. Basically he was one more mistake, and it caught me way off guard.

Mike: It’s possible that being in a committed relationship with someone that wasn’t right had you enough off-balance to get enchanted with Jonathan James’ idea of stealing the Typhoon II and making a romantic rebellion against SolGrid, against Sol itself.

Jackie: That’s an interesting way of putting it. Maybe you’re right. I was definitely off-balance by April 2076. I thought I had it all figured out, I had my career and my work with the Ywritt, I still felt in my thirties at seventy-six, and … it all came apart in a day or two with JJC, with Sanders Hirte, with … wow. In any case, I’m done with that. You do recall how totally cratered I was at the end of Book Six. And you have to promise me there can’t be any happy ending stuff with Pat. We’re not going to get back together. I know that was one possible outcome in your notes, but that you’ve since removed it.

Mike: Right. The whole point was that you and Pat were incompatible and just didn’t realize it for quite a while. You had a sort of comfortable, fake “real relationship.”

Jackie: Yes, that does describe it. We were really only together a few months–six, seven? Anyway, along comes JJC and his SolGrid Rebellion and everything goes to hell. I come apart. It’s just like me being twenty again, crashing from one stupid impulse to another, going down and down and down. So at the end of Book Six I’m like having a flashback, or a total relapse, to that old era, something I thought I was completely done with. So I can’t just launch into Book Seven as some put-together character who’s simply sucked it up again after screwing up so badly in The SolGrid Rebellion.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 9: Joe Commer

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Joe Commer copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Joe Commer, Deputy Supreme Commander, 2076

Mike: Next up is Joe Commer, Deputy Supreme Commander of the United System Space Force, and Jack’s younger brother.

Joe: Hi. Great to be here. I know from what the other characters have been telling me that my role in Jack Commer Seven will be minor. I’ve also just skimmed some of the notes and can see there’s not much for Joe to do here. That’s okay with me. This can be a short interview. I know you have other stuff to do.

Mike: No, we can take as long as we need. After all, as I work through any novel, the notes can change and new plot lines develop. Who knows what we might need you for?

Joe: Well, I’ve done the minor role stuff before. No big deal. Right after my breakout role in Nonprofit Chronowar, I was more or less just on call in Book Four, Collapse and Delusion. Had a few lines to demonstrate how much I’d gotten my act together after Book Three. That was okay with me, as I really had to stretch in Nonprofit Chronowar and I needed a rest after that. In Books Five and Six I have some decent support scenes and in Six I get a good introspection chapter, so all’s good, really.

Mike: Really? You’re really okay with just “being on call” in a final Jack Commer novel?

Joe: Well, my role in the series has always been to offer support. Jack and I were quite a team in Martian Marauders, both before and after John destroyed the Typhoon and killed himself, our other brother Jim, and the rest of the crew. I helped Jack hold it together after that, and he helped me deal with destroying the earth when we Xon-bombed it. Anyway, Jack needs to lead in this book, and I’m here to support that anyway I can. And I’m also here to support Ranna, as I know she wants a bigger role. She’s really been in the background since Book Three.

Mike: Talk about Book Three a bit. Both you and Ranna were defined by Nonprofit Chronowar. You both had a lot of psychic injury you’d been sitting on for a long time, and through the trauma, you both emerged stronger.

Joe: Right. Maybe we both needed rest after that. That was a traumatic book. Here you’d written The Martian Marauders and Jack Commer, Supreme Commander about events after the Final War and the evacuation of Earth. Now in Book Three Joe inadvertently time travels back to 2020, where the solar system breakdown traumas are just beginning and people are starting to freak out over Heuristic Time Transition, and then the book takes us up to the 2033 evacuation itself. Only later do we find out that it was Alpha Centaurian Chronowarp technology behind all the time travel, that it was all an invasion. That they nearly wrecked the universal timeline just to try to attack us from the past, starting really in 2013.

Mike: So now you get to relive the horrors leading up to the Final War. We get harsh scenes of the last days, from Ranna’s perspective at the Cat Farm and also from Hedrona Bhlon’s at her art museum–nonprofit ladies trying to hold their little empires together in the last days. We have the Final War, and the Central Asian Powers destroy the moon with an Xon bomb.

Joe: The scene in the Artemis Museum where Hedrona starts throwing away everyone’s nasty mediocre paintings is sobering. Pathetic paintings intended to raise money to restore the moon! Oh my God! She knew it was all over then. There was nothing to do but abandon the planet.

Mike: And Nonprofit Chronowar marks the point where your war guilt surfaces.

Joe: There’s a hint of it in the opening chapter of Martian Marauders where we’re orbiting the essentially dead planet Earth to run tests, and some of the crew is nostalgic about Earth and hoping we can return, and Mr. Copilot Joe is adamantly maintaining he’s done with the earth and wants to move on to other planets. That’s him in denial mode. We all see more hints of his trauma in his string of girlfriends and failed relationships after the war. You could even say that he easily fell into the Alpha Centaurian brainwashing in Book Two because he was already so off balance and didn’t even know it.

Mike: Yes, I can see you know how to talk about this stuff after having been through it. But you don’t ever talk this way in Books Four to Six.

Joe: It just hasn’t come up. I’m just maintaining my Deputy Supreme Commander job and I’m really, really involved with my wife. There’s still so much Ranna and I have to know about each other. And the lovely ending of Nonprofit Chronowar, where you posit that by 2075 we’ll have repaired the earth, where we have telepathic animals and Martian friends who know how to use their Amplified Thought to repair the whole solar system, that was all a sort of symbol of how Ranna and I had become integrated, and were together, and could have an amazing life. Initially, neither of us wanted to do more than our first scene in Collapse and Delusion where we’ve time-traveled from 2033 to 2038 for Urside’s wedding. So, while I know Ranna’s eager for more work, and I’ve always enjoyed my scenes in the following books, it hasn’t been life or death for us about our roles in these latter novels.

Mike: I don’t know. Ranna said she was resentful in her interview.

Joe: Yeah. I get that. But I think it’s less about any ego actress screen time and more about resenting that her talents aren’t being utilized for the series. She has so much to contribute.

Mike: What about Joe Commer? What can he contribute to Book Seven?

Joe: Well, aside from my supporting actor role, there’s always the possibility that some Ranna-related plot could bring in some fresh input from Joe. She and Amav are right, you know. This book can’t be about how great the two marriages are. And we don’t have to threaten the marriages with Rick Ballard to create any artificial conflict, either!

The Typhoon VII copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

The seventh Typhoon for the seventh book

Mike: One thing for certain: I really don’t want you in a rescue operation role. We’ve done that before, bringing in a second ship or having a second ship on standby.

Joe: You’re right from Amav’s interview that there’s always that problem of bringing together major characters who have deep and positive relationships. Do you have parallel storylines and bring them together at the end? Do you keep them together throughout the book and invent some conflicts between them to make it interesting? How do you write about two people in a great relationship without boring the reader? Or resorting to platitudes about “brother” and “wife” and so on? You don’t want to plaster your chapters with descriptions that sound like greeting card poems. “Wife, you’ve meant so much to me over the years / Let’s remember the good times and screw the tears.” That sort of crap.

Mike: You made me laugh! Joe Commer made me laugh!

Joe: Right! Is that why you had me gaping in shock when you had Amav bitching so unmercifully at Jack in the first chapter of The Wounded Frontier? She more or less did it again in the first chapter of The SolGrid Rebellion, you know.

Mike: Whoa, whoa! That was Jonathan James trauma, both times!

Joe: Well, you’re making my sister and law and good buddy Amav out to be this total shrew, you know!

Mike: Hey, she can be headstrong. But by the end of SolGrid Rebellion we see there’s much more to her than that. And she starts dealing with the JJC trauma.

Joe: Okay, okay, I get it, I’m just giving Mr. Author some trouble here.

Rick Ballard: You can’t win, buddy. Just can’t. Mr. Son of a Bitch Author here is always right! He’ll kill you off, he’ll torture you–

Mike: Ballard! Out! Goddammit!

Ballard: All in the name of some so-called artistic quest I’m afraid none of us have ever understood–

Mike: Dammit, Rick–

Ballard: Need conflict in this mother? You got it with old Rick! Me! Just shovel me right into the center of this damn thing, gonads and all, and I’ll show you some conflict!

Joe: C’mon, Rick, out. Consider yourself confined to quarters.

Ballard: Dammit! Okay, okay! But you haven’t heard the end of this!

Mike: Wow, I’m surprised he took an order from you.

Joe: Well, I was his commanding officer for a while. Maybe some instinct kicked in. But so what? Rick doesn’t bother me. He’s just a character. I can’t let a character bother me.

Mike: Even yourself?

Joe: No, I’ve been through it. I don’t even let myself bother me.

Mike: A good sign, I guess. So are you ready for Book Seven?

Joe: Yeah. Bring it on, whatever it is.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 8: Ranna Kikken Commer

Posted on May 13, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Ranna Kikken copyright 2013 by Michael D. Smith

Ranna Kikken at the evacuation of Earth, 2033

Mike: Our next interviewee is Ranna Kikken Commer, a major force in Sol scientific circles for her work on the Time Committee studying the aftereffects of the Alpha Centaurian Chronowarp invasion of Sol from 2013 to 2075, as well as her most recent work with the Committee to the Ywritt.

Ranna Kikken Commer: Thanks. I was just outside the door and heard the end of your talk with Waterfall Sequence. He was being usually candid today, I think. It’s hard to get him to talk for more than a few minutes.

Mike: Well, I’m the author and control how many lines he has in this book, and if he lives through it or not! By the way, that’s an interesting thought. Can members of the Ywritt die?

Ranna: Not as we understand it. After a few hundred thousand years they might decide to dissolve, but all their memories, along with algorithms for reproducing any event in their lives, are stored in the Ywritt libraries and so, in a sense, Waterfall Sequence is immortal.

Mike: Well, okay. Here you are, a well-established leader in Sol since 2038–

Ranna: Who hasn’t had a decent line in one of your books since Book Three, Nonprofit Chronowar.

Mike: Yes, I was just coming to that. Although you were part of the first chapter of Book Four, you’ve essentially been behind the scenes in the next three books, playing the part offstage of being Jackie’s stable older sister, or of Joe’s wife–

Ranna: Right. In a way I’ve been in a similar position as Amav, a symbol of a great marriage and stability back home while all the other characters get to romp around the universe. Except that Amav got to romp herself the last three books. But I had such a major role in Nonprofit Chronowar I’m surprised you haven’t wanted to use me since.

Mike: I’ve been uncertain about that, to tell you the truth. I kept looking for ways to put you in various books, but for some reason it always came down to needing you to be holding the fort either back home or in a newly-liberated Iota Persei, or for characters to mention you in passing, always in a positive light.

Ranna: I’ve been puzzled by that, and in fact resentful. I went from being an aging, guilt-ridden, probably sexually out- of-control nonprofit lady with a Cat Farm in Book Three who went through the terror of the destruction of the earth and the Evacuation. Then she’s in a crashing spaceship and certain she’s about to die when the love of her life, Joe, shows up with her old lost cat Churchill in a Heuristic Time Transition, and Churchill forces her to perform a Time transition herself! Well, that was all quite a role, and showcased my psychic integration as I accepted the end of the earth and the end of my life, only to find myself at my old buddy Urside’s wedding five years in the future. Damn confusing, but a new life for Ms. Ranna, and she and Joe knew that instant they’d be married, despite her being twenty years older than he was.

Mike: I think in the back of my mind I saw you as somehow completed in Book Three. After all, Nonprofit Chronowar was planned as a literary novel and only later did I see it as fitting into a trilogy of Jack Commer novels. So Ranna was originally intended as a main character of a one-shot novel. But I still had an urge to put you into other books. Part of the problem is that there are so many characters and you really can’t go into more than three or four in a book anyway without confusing everyone.

Ranna: So you’re interviewing twelve of us for this one, right? Great!

Mike: Well, one thing we’re here to do is see what you can contribute to Book Seven.

Ranna: Oh, so Rick Ballard’s right! We’re auditioning for roles! Let me tell you I’ve definitely read through all your notes so far. I think I’m the only one who’s done it, actually, and I really don’t see anything else in there for poor Ranna Kikken Commer other than more wifely duties and committee work back home. I see some talk about “finally resolving Ranna” but it sounds like weak BS to me.

Rick Ballard: Someone calling me? Hey, Mr. Mike, listen, this gives me a great idea! You’re absolutely right about Amav and me not working out! You’re always right about everything, man! That’s why we love you so much! But look, here’s the cool thing, what if I took Ranna here away from Joe? We could have a whole scene on a white rug in front of a fireplace! Look, I’ve made some notes here for how we could–

Ranna: Oh jeez! How’d he get in here again? This is priceless!

Mike: Okay, I can see I’m going to have to lock the door after I start these interviews.

Ballard: No, seriously, guys! Like, anyone can see Ranna’s rejuvenation has taken! And I do mean taken! Babe, you don’t look a day over forty-five! Don’t tell me you don’t want Rick Ballard! Why else are you wearing that tight, tight sweater?

Ranna: Hmm. I don’t want you, Mr. Ballard. Talk to Laurie 283. She’s a robot and will do anyone. And don’t go back through the sunroom. Joe’s on next and he’s back there.

Ballard: I’m not afraid of Joe Commer!

Joe Commer: Hey, am I up already?

Ballard: Dammit! Dammit! Screw this, I’m outa here! Son of a bitch!

Joe: What’s with him?

Mike: Hey, Joe, I’m still talking to Ranna, but Rick keeps crashing the place. See if you can’t keep him out. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.

Joe: Sure. Just let me know.

Mike: Well, sorry about that. I do want to have a good talk with you, Ranna, and please don’t consider this just an audition.

Ranna: Well, another part of the notes had Ballard kidnapping me to the Greater Magellanic Cloud! Oh boy! Maybe we should call him back in here!

Mike: No, let’s not. I agree that plot idea was pretty stupid. And we can’t do any more kidnapping anyway. We already did that in The SolGrid Rebellion with Laurie. But look, I’m just trying to figure how the best way to get you into this book. First of all, I think we both sense that your central role in Nonprofit Chronowar has been both a blessing to the series and a strange liability for pushing you any further along in it. That’s something to be probed.

The Nonprofit Ladies Movie Poster copyright 2003 by Michael D. Smith

Movie Poster for Nonprofit Ladies (Original Novel Title)

Ranna: Well, one thing we can say is that Ranna did develop amazing leadership talents in the years before Nonprofit Chronowar, and during it. Despite the fact that people considered her like something on the order of a social worker for running the nonprofit Cat Farm, she knew how to organize, raise money, and direct a big enterprise. And she was confident she could repeat that success a dozen times even if she had to start from scratch for each one. So when she starts realizing the nature of time travel and gets transitioned from a dying Earth in 2033 to Mars in 2038, yes, it’s a total shock to the system of someone who a second before was absolutely convinced she was about to snuff it, but it’s also astonishing new life, and a second chance.

Mike: And she grabs that chance. She works well on the Time Committee with Dar and top scientists, and though she isn’t a scientist herself, she becomes an expert on Heuristic Time Transition, does a few more Transitions herself, and helps close up time paradoxes created by the Alpha Centaurians. When the Ywritt come along she’s instantly seen as a natural for the Committee. More leadership for Ranna, and invaluable contributions from her.

Ranna: And yet, although Ranna’s still grateful for this second chance even forty years later, there’s something missing. I think she has some metaphysical questions that contact with time travel and later the Ywritt merely stimulate, but never answer. She may be prodded by the arrival of the pyramid in Iota Persei, Ballard’s death and JJC’s escape, to ramp up her energies for something completely new.

Mike: I can see something there. Still vague, though.

Ranna: Well, while we think about that, there’s something else to explore. The origins of the Ranna Kikken archetype. It needs to be mentioned here. Maybe it can help. After all, Ranna began essentially as a snapshot.

Mike: Yes, the scene in The Soul Institute where sophomore Dorrington Caldwell, just dumped by his girlfriend Lisa, has taken a job at the Soul Institute library and from the vantage point of the circulation desk sees a senior guy leading the voluptuous Ranna Kikken by the hand out of the library, headed no doubt for her dorm room and some easy fantastic sex, while poor Dorrington has none. He can’t help but note that stunning wild dark red hair and these fantastic huge breasts in the tight ribbed russet sweater–

Ranna: A sight Rick Ballard himself endorsed not a few minutes ago, we may add.

Mike: And the senior and Ranna are laughing so gleefully! At one time I’d tried to integrate both The Soul Institute and Sortmind characters into the Jack Commer universe, but gave it up. Yet I left a young college student Ranna, as well as a five-year-old Urside, in The Soul Institute, and nineteen novel years later, in 2020, they would figure in Nonprofit Chronowar. Urside would have a terrible unrequited crush on her.

Ranna: But while that’s so incredibly fascinating, Mr. Author, you’re leaving out the fact that you witnessed just this scene while working at the Rice library circa … 1974?

Mike: Yes, that was definitely Ranna Kikken I saw at Fondren Library that day, just as described in The Soul Institute and later for the thirty-nine-year-old, then a fifty-year-old Ranna in Nonprofit Chronowar. What a kinetic sculpture! But what’s most memorable about her is the fact that she must have been a Rice student, but that was the one and only time I ever saw her. I also never recognized her whenever I might have flipped through the annual Rice yearbooks. I knew just about every one of some twenty-four hundred Rice undergraduates at least by sight after four years, after all, as well as from encountering them from the vantage point of the library circulation desk my last two years there. So Ranna came and went in about ten seconds. Maybe she was just created on the spot to figure later in my novels!

Ranna: So sometime in the mid-’90’s she went straight into The Soul Institute without needing a single edit. But again, just like the present me, for a walk-on part only. Fortunately you had the good sense to explore her thirty-nine-year-old self more thoroughly in the Jack Commer universe. I wonder what you might make of the newest version of Ranna Kikken Commer, circa 2076.

Mike: You know, library worker Dorrington even speculated what might happen to kinetic sculpture Ranna by the time she turned forty. From the perspective of a college student, it wasn’t a pretty picture.

Ranna: But now we know better, don’t we?

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 7: Waterfall Sequence

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Waterfall Sequence copyright 2018 by Michael D. Smith

Waterfall Sequence of the Ywritt

Mike: Now we come to a fascinating character, Waterfall Sequence of the Ywritt. The Ywritt were briefly introduced in Book Five, The Wounded Frontier, as the Wounded’s latest victim during the shrouding of the star Iota Persei with a Dyson sphere. However, the Ywritt remained backstage in Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion, functioning more as a means for how Jackie Vespertine, professor of Exobiology, and other members of the Committee to the Ywritt might relate to strange, foggy aliens. But we foresee interesting developments for the Ywritt in Book Seven. Welcome, Waterfall Sequence.

Waterfall Sequence: Greetings, young, inexperienced human author.

Mike: For the benefit of readers of this interview, Waterfall Sequence is alluding to the fact that he is well over ten thousand years old in human terms.

Waterfall Sequence: Technically I am, in fact we all are, “it,” not “he” or “she.” However, as we’ve begun picking up the human tendency to assume gender, based on sense impressions and unconsciously held assumptions, for instance a telepathic contact sounding in the listener’s mind as a deep “male” voice, or a pastel-colored sphere feeling “female” to the human, we have gone along with gender assignments for the sake of assisting with communication with your race. At first contact I was assigned the status of “male” by Patrick James of the United System Space Force, and have chosen to accept that.

Mike: I may as well add that across from me in the Smith Writing Studio is a bubble of swirling fog approximately seven feet in diameter. Waterfall Sequence has a blue-purple coloration, though hints of red and orange appear at times. We’ve come to understand that the spherical fog is the easiest and loveliest shape for a Ywritt to maintain, but that any Ywritt can increase or decrease that size, change into flowing or formless mist, and is able, with proper amounts of energy and what we would call “meditation,” to assume a variety of shapes and sizes. They can create appendages to manipulate tools, build technological machines, and so forth. The Ywritt are also known to be master communicators, and Sol is currently in negotiations with the Ywritt to act as ambassadors to other races we may encounter in our travels.

Waterfall Sequence: All quite true. Your Book Six also pointed out that we never developed Star Drive because, basically, we were content to hone our communication skills between planets of Iota Persei. What has only been mentioned in passing in Book Six is that the characteristics of the most sentient beings on the third and most developed planet, Yaraltar, came to dominate all other species of varying degrees of sentience, numbering over two hundred, so that all eventually became combined into Ywritt. When the Ywritt then encountered other forms of life on other rocky planets and gas giant moons of the Iota Persei system, we were able to incorporate them into the Ywritt fairly easily. I will also point out that this homogenization of first an entire planet, then the rest of the solar system, came about not through conquest but through eons of negotiations and logic.

Mike: And yet, in the series so far, the Ywritt are pretty undefined, as are you yourself, Waterfall.

Waterfall Sequence: Waterfall Sequence. The entire name must be used. We do not shorten our appellations into nicknames as you do, even in the rough translations into English such as Waterfall Sequence.

Mike: Well … sorry, then. I didn’t know that.

Waterfall Sequence: What you and I just exchanged was a form of Ywritt negotiation. I trust you are familiar with Joe Commer’s frustration at not being able to communicate with us on his own terms?

Mike: Right. Let me find that passage in The SolGrid Rebellion: “Joe didn’t relish asking Waterfall Sequence or any other Ywritt for permission to search the Iota Persei system … it might take a whole day to interface with those damnable Ywritt Mandarins. The idea of the Ywritt being ‘master communicators’ had long since soured on Joe. They seemed to take delight in obstructing communication. Maybe that was a form of communication right there.”

Waterfall Sequence: Yes. So right. My friend Jackie Vespertine has also theorized that we have been so traumatized by thirty-four of your years of being trapped by the Wounded’s Dyson sphere, during which time we obsessively played with quantum computers and artificial universes in a vain attempt to escape, that a certain percentage of us went what you would call “crazy” and that there is therefore a certain defensiveness and paranoia throughout the Ywritt. While our daily use of telepathy is not compatible with, or very much similar to, Martian one-way outradiance, we do propagate our race-mood throughout all members of the Ywritt over time, in a similar way that the Total Martian Outradiance does, and thus a certain level of defensiveness has crept into our culture, even as we celebrate our freedom from the Wounded and our eternal gratitude to Jack Commer and Sol for saving us and rendering all the technical assistance they have.

Mike: So are you saying that Joe is misinterpreting your defensiveness as obstruction?

Waterfall Sequence: Yes. Of course the two concepts could be considered synonyms.

Mike: Hmm. So what role do you see for the Ywritt, as embodied by yourself, in Book Seven?

Waterfall Sequence: Difficult to say. Obviously Iota Persei 2, the second planet of the system, is the stage for the first scene, Rick Ballard’s unfortunate demise. However, the fact that Jack Commer may suspect the Ywritt of seeking to aid Rick Ballard in illegal activity on behalf of the Wounded opens some interesting plot speculations. Separating the three entities Rick Ballard, Johnathan James Commer, and T’ohj’puv from the single chromium pyramid into essentially Wounded robots would be considered a monstrous betrayal of all the help Sol has given us.

Mike: Yes, there is definitely a sense in the USSF that the Ywritt may be trying to play both sides of the street, even though the Wounded threatened the total destruction of Ywritt culture. To Jack this is simply incomprehensible.

Waterfall Sequence: And we understand that. However, we would insist that the Ywritt libraries of Wounded technology appropriated during the Long Sphering of Iota Persei, as we call it, are essentially kept only for archival purposes, and that we the Ywritt do not even pretend to comprehend Wounded technology despite the constant sorting and querying of all that documentation through our most advanced quantum computer technology. And thus the Ywritt would be incapable of wishing to assist the chromium pyramid, which in fact penetrated Iota Persei without our permission and sought to use a secret Wounded hospital facility on Iota Persei 2 we were not even aware of. Yes, Rick Ballard made initial contact with us but was told to leave the system immediately, which he refused to do.

Mike: But after some recriminations back and forth after JJC flees Iota Persei, you then decide to accompany Jack and Amav to the Greater Magellanic Cloud in an unusual way.

Jim Commer copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Jim Commer, the third brother, killed at Mercury in the Martian Marauders

Waterfall Sequence: Yes, the integration with the Jim Commer Heroes and Villains of the Thirties robot, upgraded like General Douglas and Laurie 283 into a machine of unfathomable complexity and intelligence, looks interesting. We are aware of the trauma that Jack Commer will face in encountering a perfect replica of his dead brother Jim. We are also keenly aware that this same ploy, as you might term it, was used in Collapse and Delusion when Jack met John, the robot of the other dead Commer brother, John. However, Jim will represent a closing of the circle, the other shoe dropping, to use one of your metaphors. It’s necessary for the series for Jack to have some sort of closure, no matter how artificial, with both John and Jim, and that it be in a karmically similar manner: the use of obsolete, but now upgraded, HAVOTT robots.

Mike: Yes, I was thinking that myself.

Waterfall Sequence: Furthermore, settling my Ywritt consciousness into the mechanical circuits of the Jim HAVOTT represents an interesting technological challenge. We have done similar things before, but not with a machine of this complexity, and certainly not one based on a human form. The original primitive human software of the HAVOTT robots is also something we Ywritt find strangely beautiful and compelling. In any case, the conflicts that arise force the Jim entity–which we do regard as a real, living being–and myself into fusing our personalities into a religious figure, a prophet called Tri-Collarie. The loveliness of HAVOTT programming is probably why I go along with being assimilated into this new figure. How Jack reacts to the development of a double-selfed religious entity will be fascinating to observe.

Mike: I imagine he’ll be whipsawed in all directions.

Waterfall Sequence: And as that happens, I will be allowed to develop as a character. As I assume Jim will, too. As you are aware, he had a significant role to play in The Martian Marauders. Only one scene, but it showcased the dysfunction in the Commer household. Now more of that dysfunction comes back to haunt Jack. The peacemaker third brother has a religious streak, and begins to unravel some of the metaphysical tangles of this harsh, ruined universe. Much to Jack’s dismay, we may add.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 6: Amav Frankston-Commer

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Mike: Okay, Ms. Frankston-Commer, be careful coming through the door, you can slip on those shards of glass. I’ve got a broom here–

Amav Frankston-Commer: I see ’em. Don’t worry about sweeping up. I’m sure Kner will lend you some Amplified Thought to get Ballard back together in time for Chapter One.

Mike: Yeah, I guess. I just can’t understand how he keeps intruding on these other interviews.

Amav: Shadow stuff, again. I passed Jack on the way out. I told him he doesn’t need to worry about Rick bothering me. And he certainly doesn’t need to shatter him, for God’s sake! I admit Rick’s idea is provocative. Would me falling for the son of a bitch turn this series on its head! What a set of conflicts and plot disasters! But your analysis is right–it just couldn’t happen if Amav is to remain Amav. We pushed the envelope a lot with Amav going after Phil Sperry in Collapse and Delusion, but everyone knew all along that JJC’s new Grid was brainwashing her. So I got some Shadow lines myself there. It was fun. But we couldn’t use the brainwashing thing a second time. Rick is just going to have to do without!

Mike: So, how are you seeing yourself in Jack Commer Seven? Jack and I already spoke about how a plot of a parent seeking a runaway child is nothing we can really hang a plot on for Seven. We’re going to have to make some real changes in how we view both of you.

Amav: And that’s fine with me. I had a lot of scenes in both the fifth and sixth books that made me look like a moody bitch stewing in all sorts of emotional garbage, and that wasn’t the full me at all. Jack charmingly suggested that I was a force, which seems to be a good way of describing me–or anyone, for that matter,

Mike: Like the chapter title in The Soul Institute, “That Moolka is a Force,” where Derrick sees that his cousin and lover Moolka has become, for him, something far beyond even being a “woman,” that she’s an incomprehensible bundle of psychic force.

Amav: Exactly. Anyway, all in all the sixth book, The SolGrid Rebellion, was a good part for me. I got to run through being the moody bitch, the alluring sex object, the confused bystander, and finally the Dictator of Sol. At the end I’m also apparently the de facto controlling force in the marriage, but this last part worries me because it’s essentially inaccurate and does make Jack look like a clueless bumbler.

Mike: I thought we were seeing Amav make up her mind that there was unfinished business with Jonathan James, and that Jack and Amav finally had to start talking about it. It was awkward all around, but I think this was a moment where Amav had to take the lead.

Amav: She had to show her force. Fine. But the main thing we need to work on is having me and Jack have our own inner lives, our own destinies, karma, or whatever, and not simply be a Team Commer demonstrating how great the marriage really is. I agree that either one of us might take the lead at various points, but I don’t think the purpose of the book needs to be to extol how well we work together, which seems to be one of your notes for this project.

Mike: Right. We can cross that one out. The idea that you two are there to fly a saucer together and work hand in glove to find JJC is very limiting. Then again, having you careen off on separate adventures is repeating The SolGrid Rebellion. We’ll have to see if there can be some plot developments where both of you can have major roles. In fact this whole concept of how to deal with two partners of any sort in a novel is problematic. You put them together and there’s supposed to be no conflict because they have a certain level of friendship and intimacy. You split them up to have separate adventures and then they get together at the end and compare notes about how the whole thing went. Boring! I also don’t want to throw in Amav robots or doubles or the sort of thing that worked well for Laurie in The Wounded Frontier. I will be investigating what you and Jack both want at this point. I have to believe it would’ve changed a great deal over the course of seven books and over forty years.

Amav, cropped from cover of Jack Commer, Supreme Commander

Amav: I do know that the marriage is good. Jack is it for me, always has been. But writing a novel about “the marriage” won’t work. Yes, we needed some communication repair by the time we got to the end of SolGrid Rebellion. Not only was getting through all the insanity of MATS and Carla Posttner and SolGrid, and knowing the son you had no real relation to was dead–sort of–or maybe just a digital concept in a pyramid now, not only was all that hugely changing my perspective, but simply being on the old Typhoon II, the place where Jack and I finally, really came together all those years ago, prompted me to finally speak up. Our son had stolen that same ship, but it had always psychically belonged to us, and now we had it back, and–what I said about us going after JJC just popped out. It wasn’t premeditated. The book makes it look as if I were in control, but in fact we were both overwhelmed and confused, and the truth of it all just popped out.

Mike: That gives me a lot of perspective on how to start seeing your journey to Iota Persei. You’re both uneasy with what you’re doing, and with what you might find, but you know there’s that unfinished business you’re responsible for.

Amav: I think that’s what’s coming out of all these interviews is the fact that all these characters are going to have to be looked at in ways you haven’t deeply considered before. Any plot that comes has to be there to develop these people. I think in the back of your mind you’re still hoping for the kind of plot blurb that goes viral on social media. Well, a cool plot is all well and good, but the point is the people. You know that, everyone pays lip service to it, but then we want the cool genre, the cool plot that can be summed up in a fifty-word blurb. I can see why you want to end the series and do more literary work.

Mike: Right. However, I’m committed to making an excellent, even literary, Book Seven. Yeah, we can call it space opera but it’s more than that to me. There’s a psychological aspect, even if it’s humorous, that’s the center of it. “Psychological novel” doesn’t have to mean “crime novel” or “mental illness novel,” either.

Amav: Anyway, so what we have so far is Jack and Amav, piloted by their robot dog Edward, flying a J-200 saucer out to Iota Persei. They’re calling it a badly needed vacation, and Amav’s taking a leave of absence from being the temporary Dictator of Sol. They’re leaving the clean-up of the destruction of Marsport to the Martians, though some people are saying that the two are skipping out when they’re needed most. Then again, they’re intending to look for JJC during this vacation, so in a way it’s not a vacation but possibly an ordeal. At the same time, they don’t really think they’ll find JJC at Iota Persei, but are hoping the Ywritt will have some insight. Then they see he really was at Iota Persei, and that he’s free of the pyramid now. Have I got that right?

Mike: Yeah, so far.

Amav: You sound bored! But don’t be. That’s what we’ve got to hang some character motivations on now. Even if what I just described, which I assume is really more Chapter Two than One, seems dull, who knows what can develop out of it once we all get started? But another thing you haven’t really considered is the smart-assed MATS, and Amav’s problematic relationship to it.

Mike: Maybe MATS is done. I’ve certainly milked the Marsport Automated Transport System enough by now!

Amav: What happened with MATS in SolGrid Rebellion was fantastic. I agree we can’t overuse MATS in Seven. I just have no idea how MATS will see any of what you’ve been working on for Seven so far. I also note MATS isn’t on the list of interviewees.

Mike: Right. I might interview MATS later. I figured twelve characters would be a good amount to get started. There are way too many throughout the series for me to even think about giving them all final resolution in Book Seven, but these twelve seemed like the best candidates.

Amav: I’m getting the impression that you think you can just wing it with me, that my status throughout all the books as some brilliant, super-sexy female is holding you back from really investigating me. Maybe you think that you can wing it with Jack too, just see what develops. Maybe that will work, maybe not. We can’t just be the married couple at the top of the food chain as we’ve been before. I can understand how you’re secretly fascinated by Rick Ballard’s magnificent new attachment to me. It would definitely wreck things most wondrously! But that’s a slapstick way out, and you’ve already done it before. The deep Amav doesn’t give a flip about Ballard, she doesn’t care that he’s taking more pictures of himself right now and emailing them to yours truly just as he did with Laurie.

Mike: What? He can’t be! Jack just shattered him not half an hour–

Amav: Amplified Thought only takes a microsecond, remember? Kner repaired him. But Ballard knows to stay out of the interview room now. And to stay the hell out of this novel, for that matter. Except for Chapter One, of course.

Mike: Well, you’ve given me more to think about. You’re right, I can’t just wing it with either you or Jack in Book Seven.

Amav: It’s the forces at work that determine everything. And there’s no set method to finding them.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 5: Jack Commer

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Jack Commer 2076 copyright 2014 by Michael D. Smith

Jack Commer in 2076

Mike: And now we come to one of our most interesting and perhaps difficult interviews, with Jack Commer, Supreme Commander himself.

Jack: So what makes you think this will be a difficult interview?

Mike: Well, I guess we haven’t really talked in a long time.

Jack: You’ve got that right. December 1981, Part B of that weird “Zorexians” story. You know I wasn’t in my right mind at that time. Probably you weren’t, either!

Mike: Well, all that was experimental writing, trying to move beyond–

Jack: Well, it sure wasn’t my true character, that’s all I know. You were really searching for Joe’s character at the time, though none of us knew it until you got into writing Nonprofit Ladies. Have to admit the “Zorexians” story did us all some good. You really got into Joe, though at the time you thought it was Jack you were working on. It was a real wrench for me to have to play the Joe part with both of us thinking it was Jack, pathetically out of his mind with lust for another man’s wife, Jackie Vespertine. But even though she wasn’t interviewed, you sketched out a future Jackie pretty well. And while the spacecopter scene eventually got cut from Nonprofit Ladies by the time the book became Nonprofit Chronowar, it laid out the foundations of that novel and so it ultimately worked. And it deepened Joe’s character for The Martian Marauders revision and everything that followed.

Mike: Wow, I’m impressed at how quickly you took over this interview. I’d imagined you’d somehow be withdrawn and surly.

Jack: Well, I have to admit I’m ambivalent about doing this interview. Of course I have to be in Jack Commer Seven, but … hell, I don’t know. I guess the whole point of this interview is, what am I supposed to do in this novel? Rescue my son? Big deal! Does he even need rescuing?

Mike: I guess that’s what we’re here to find out. So far, except for a great Chapter One idea, the notes for the plot are pretty flat and plodding, I admit. I’m hoping that things will open up as I go along, but then again, it would be great to have some really fascinating plot sketched out that the characters can navigate.

Jack: Then there was all this crap in Book Six about how Amav and I were drifting apart, that we’d never really been able to talk about JJC’s kidnapping in ’38, and how decades later this is really screwing us up.

Mike: I more envisioned a sort of, I guess, tune-up for the marriage, not that there’s anything really wrong with it.

Jack: And somehow the search for our renegade son is supposed to fix everything? C’mon.

Mike: So–that wasn’t realistic at the end of The SolGrid Rebellion?

The SolGrid Rebellion copyright 2018 by Michael D. Smith

The SolGrid Rebellion, draft cover featuring Suzette Borman

Jack: I don’t know. I admit it was thrilling to have Amav come right out and finally start talking about it in a way she never had before. There was a new force there, and that was great. Amav has always been nothing but force. Then again, why am I always portrayed as a little befuddled and cranky? Amav has to hit me over the head with her force two or three times before I pick up that she’s serious. I mean, I’m the Supreme Commander, I’ve been running everything for forty years, and I’m a bumbler?

Mike: I think the concept is that you represent some of the problems coming up with the new rejuvenation technologies in Sol–the last two books especially have hammered home the idea of hundreds if not thousands of young USSF officers waiting in line for their chance to come up a grade or two, while seventy-three-year-old Jack Commer sits at the top and never ages past thirty-five, and sometimes wonders why he’s still hanging around.

Jack: Yeah, I can see that and it bothers me. I’ve wanted to retire, but just can’t bring myself to. I tried to at the end of Book Six, but then Amav starts lecturing me about not putting myself into a museum! So there’s a lot of interesting stuff for me to do. What I really need is a long vacation to reassess all this. But from what I see from the notes so far, the vacation lasts about two hours before all this crap hits the fan with JJC.

Mike: In any case, I see we’re going to need to craft a real role for you in this novel, not just have you be some typical father searching for a lost son.

Jack: Exactly. Except that, for both Amav and me, JJC hasn’t ever really seemed like a son. Kidnapped in 2038 at eleven months, then we only see him as a five-year-old child in 2053 because of eleven years of time travel, then we only see him a couple more times until 2075, at which point he pulls that idiotic Emperor stunt at Procyon A, and he’s being disgusting and disrespectful and … I don’t know. How could we relate to that? Speaking for myself, I guess, how could I relate to that? There was no connection at all. He was a total stranger, and one I didn’t particularly like. On the other hand … there was a connection …

Mike: Okay, we can work on that. So how do you feel about this being the last Jack Commer novel? How does that affect your role in it?

Jack: I’m not worried. We characters are always immortal, no matter whether the book is a series or a standalone novel. At some point you the author have to stop manipulating the same characters over and over. And you have so many characters in the series at this point that we can all see you testing which ones could come to the fore in the next. Like the way Laurie just emerged in The Wounded Frontier. Great stuff. But can she be expected to do that over and over and over? But I’m not worried. As for my part in a final novel, I recognize it needs to be important. Although I enjoyed my role as being almost completely offstage in Book Three, Nonprofit Chronowar, and I do think it worked there as that was Joe’s book, I realize I have to step up in this one and do something pretty significant. This may even be JJC’s book, the notes and the writing may lead there and I know he’s central and important, but–Jack Commer needs to do more than worry about retirement in this one. Also–and we all know this–we know you need to end the series and we all agree, even old Sam Hergs, but we all also know that you have the inclination to leave further books open. You don’t want to close doors. You don’t want a plot in Book Seven that precludes a return, if someday you want to do that.

Mike: Right. Although I did have that dream recently where I write: “And Jack Commer shot his spaceship directly into the sun.” A good last line for Seven?

Jack: But we all know Jack will be shifting dimensions or something so he can’t really die. He can fly a one-man ship into the sun and come out on the other side just fine, we all know that. But back to the important thing: my character has been tepid the last couple novels. Yeah, I’m in command, I worry, and sometimes I get angry and bark orders, but all the action seems to revolve around me and I never make a real choice, you know. Just as Jack Commer as Supreme Commander has become a figurehead to Sol in 2076, he’s sort of become just a figurehead in this series, as well. Who is he, really? I have to admit I like the 2076 drawing of myself, that’s a decent picture of a rejuvenated guy at the top still looking for the next challenge. But aside from him enjoying looking at Amav’s fantastic tush at the end of SolGrid Rebellion, there doesn’t seem to be much spark in him. Don’t tell me that’s why you’re ending the series.

Mike: No. Really, no. What I want is to bring out the real Jack Commer, the one that’s been with me since childhood, and see what he can do for this final book.

Jack: Well, the four Commer brothers have been with you a long time. You remember the four identical plastic spacemen out of the batch of maybe fifteen you had in elementary school? The four were all the same mold, sort of walking and somewhat floating on a lunar surface. They were the brothers Jack, Joe, Jim, and John. They were all the Command Mold, but they weren’t really all identical, because one of the four was a bit lopsided. So the lopsided one was the Shadow you called John, the spastic, impulsive one who, even in your eighth grade first draft of The Martian Marauders, was destined to impulsively destroy the Typhoon I and kill not only himself and our brother Jim, but four other crewmates and friends aboard the Typhoon.

Mike: Right, right. I wish I still had those spacemen! But you’re right about the Shadow. I had my outlandish villain Sam Hergs in the eighth grade version of Martian Marauders, but even then I knew he was over the top, and I played him as over the top in the adult version as well. But so often we create villains thinking they should embody some sort of evil or conflict, but they’re just an exaggeration, a straw man we think we need for the plot, and they’re never very successful. Whereas John came out as a real Shadow–very slightly in the eighth grade version, but surprisingly clear in the first 1987 attempt to rewrite Martian Marauders, even though that was only one chapter which I left sitting in a drawer for something like fifteen years. When I finally rewrote the book in the early 2000’s, I was pretty conscious that John represented a recurring person in my life I could never adequately deal with. There are several different flavors of John, but I keep meeting him. Sometimes I’m supposed to befriend him, which I do reluctantly, sometimes I just have to put up with him, sometimes I have to report to him!

Jack: Wow! Now there’s Shadow. I can see why you want to get back into some literary writing, so you can explore that real stuff instead of stock villains like Rick Ballard, who, by the way, I’m prepared to blast on Full Shatter if he sets foot in here today. That stuff about Amav–God! What a loser.

Mike: Anyway, and this is hard to admit, you obviously bear the burden of portraying some aspect of myself–which may be why I’ve been hesitant to get too far into your character.

Jack: Which is suicide for an author, you’ve got to admit! But to assuage your worries a bit, you did great with me in the first two books. Jack really has some worries, especially about being in command of a spaceship in battle for the first time, even though the year before he dropped an Xon bomb that wiped out two billion people. You explored Joe’s war guilt a lot in Book Three, but so far, not mine yet.

Mike: Yes, it’s probably about time for it.

Jack: But at any rate, you have a Jack so racked by John destroying the Typhoon that he’s ready to give up, to just die in space. Then you have him, a thirty-year-old virgin, a killer of billions, so shy he’s hardly able to talk to Amav Frankston! The contrast between him and Joe the ladies’ man is priceless. Then, in Jack Commer, Supreme Commander, the failure of his first mission as Supreme Commander, plus the Centaurian brainwashing going on around him, his still-adolescent sexuality even though he married the wondrous Amav Frankston, all combine to make him into the most whiny, petulant jerk you can imagine. And yet he pulls himself out of it. He realizes he’d sell the whole universe to save Amav. So Jack Commer gets some psychic integration here. He’s a real character.

Mike: Yes, thanks for reminding me. I think I must have been thinking that Jack Commer was more or less done, so when I was writing the first draft of Nonprofit Ladies and had switched you out for Joe so that we could explore his war guilt, I no longer needed you. Nonprofit Ladies was actually intended as a standalone book at first; at that time the first two books were in draft form and I really didn’t think much of either of them. Amazingly, in the first couple drafts of Nonprofit Ladies, later Chronowar, Jack is only mentioned a couple times in passing. It was only when I was getting into the final version, which came after November 2006’s realization that I was polluting my writing with vulgarity and unpublishable nonsense, that I knew Jack had to come back at the end of the book to start setting things straight. Even then he’s more of a contributor than a main character.

Jack: Right. But just because he integrated and assumed a more mature command status in Nonprofit Chronowar doesn’t mean his story is over. In Book Four, Collapse and Delusion, he’s in that zone of merely reacting to events around him. He’s decisive and even suffers a terrible injury, and we see something of his mature appreciation of Amav even when she’s brainwashed and behaving very, very badly with Phil Sperry, but again he seems kind of cranky and dazed. Maybe you’re right that it’s related to the rejuvenation thing and what that’s doing to society by 2076.

Mike: Well, Laurie starts echoing those sentiments in her initial appraisals of Jack in The Wounded Frontier, Book Five. Yet we see Jack striking out for more exploration. He’s making some real decisions in both Books Five and Six, but I see your point. By the end of Six he’s just simply stressed from everything happening from June 2075, Book Four, to April 2076, Book Six. So maybe we start off with the first day of his vacation making him question even a lot further than he’s ever dared question before.

Jack: Well, one thing for sure, it can be tempting to think that rejuvenation can make you immortal, but we just don’t know how far it can be extended. So now we have four hundred years maybe, so what? We still have our mortality. Everyone knows that accidents or serious illness, if not treated in time, can still kill anyone at any time. And we in the USSF figure that extending our lifespans just exposes us to more and more possibility of encountering the fatal spacecraft accident. We figure we’ll probably go out in style, then, not in a hospital bed. But it keeps us wary and focused. I don’t know of a single flying USSF officer–I won’t talk about the deskbound people–who doesn’t feel that way.

Mike: Well, this has all been very interesting, Jack. There’s a lot of work to do on all the characters, but especially you, I think.

Jack: Right. My old English teacher Amy will just write her own ticket. The rest of us, well, a lot of thinking needs to be done.

Rick Ballard: Is he gone yet? Amav’s up next and I–

Jack: Goddammit, I knew he’d show up! Well I wasn’t fooling when I said–

Mike: You didn’t bring your shattergun to an interview! Oh my God!

Ballard: Aw, the stupid twit wouldn’t dare–

Mike: Jack! No! Don’t do it! I need him for Chapter One! Holster it! That’s an order!

Sound: Shrieking of shattering glass

Ballard: AIEEEEEEEEEEE!

Mike: Crap! I’m the one who needs to clean that up!

Jack: Fine. Just keep him away from Amav. Was that enough action from old Jack for you there? Thanks for the interview, Mike. We’ll be in touch, I’m sure.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 4: Amy Nortel

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Amy Nortel copyright 2018 by Michael D. Smith

Amy Nortel, English AP Teacher

Mike: I’m pleased to welcome Amy Nortel, more or less a new character for the series. Amy, welcome. You’re a bit of a surprise in the notes for this book so far.

Amy Nortel: Well, I brought along my notes for my only two mentions in the series. The first is from Book One, The Martian Marauders, with Jack trying to get Amav’s attention:

“Um … I’m sorry, Miss … uh, Frankston, could you hear me?”

Silence.

He knocked on the door again. “As captain of this ship, you need to know …” Wait, that’s a dangling modifier, old Mrs. Nortel was always on me for that–

And the second from Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion:

“Julius Caesar?” Joe said, hoping to break the tension. “We had to read that in high school, didn’t we? Mrs. Nortel?”

I must say, Mr. Mike, it was extremely clever for you to remember that passing reference to Jack and Joe’s old high school AP English teacher in Book One and then include a snippet referencing her in Book Six.

Mike: Yes, I was paying homage to senior year in high school when I stayed up to one AM on a school night reading Julius Caesar. I’d chosen to disobey the standard routine of being in bed by eleven, and was amazed to find myself eagerly reading the play at one AM. It was a new experience in processing energy, and in engaging with a book’s meaning. The whole night had the discovery feel of: This is what life is supposed to be about. This is what I’m capable of.

Amy: So Joe and Jack could remember their old English teacher, although they’d totally lost contact with her and certainly didn’t care about her as a person. They probably assumed she’d died in the Final War or in the Evacuation. Just wrote her right off. So they’re just dumbfounded to find her in 2076, rejuvenated and helping work with the Ywritt at Iota Persei. She’s going to need some backstory, all right. She must have been born at least in the early or mid-1950’s for her to be their high school teacher, an old woman in–what?–the early 2020’s?

Mike: Yes, that’s about right according to my calculations. We’ll have to lock that into place, of course. Jack and Joe were two years apart, so I think Jack spring of 2021, Joe spring of 2023.

Amy: In any case, fat old Amy Nortel is another one of those lucky ladies who, just like Suzette Borman in SolGrid Rebellion, takes so well to rejuvenation that the aging effects are miraculously reversed and Amy now looks twenty-five at the most. And though she’s retained her rather generous figure, it’s all so well-compacted and fetching in this tight blue tank top and white pencil miniskirt, now isn’t it?

Mike: Well …

Amy: So Jack and Joe can’t handle it. Their old high school teacher who taught them Shakespeare in English AP their senior years is vital and sexy now! Maybe a bit crazy on top of it. Believe me, this is a great part! I come out of nowhere and just flabbergast them! And that’s excellent cover for the nefarious doings going on in Amy Nortel’s secret world.

Mike: Yes, because she’s really a Wounded operative. In fact, a Wounded robot.

Amy: We just need to clear up whether there was ever a real Amy Nortel who died and then this Wounded robot replaced her–which does make sense, when you think about it, because it’s one explanation for why her rejuvenation supposedly takes so well. And it develops another interesting plot line to the side, in which poor Suzette Borman is also suspected of being a Wounded, because sooner or later everyone will wonder if her unusually successful rejuvenation wasn’t also a method for inserting a Wounded robot spy into Sol.

Mike: Then again, it’s interesting to assume that the Wounded have actually been planting robots into Sol for decades, maybe centuries. That Jack and Joe were taught AP English by a Wounded robot that was programmed to age according to normal human standards, then received a rejuvenation algorithm so she could appear to be a younger human and perform more Wounded duties up through 2076.

Amy: And we’d need bulletproof reasons why she was able to avoid detection by SolGrid and other means until then.

Mike: In replacing the defunct SolGrid’s detection methods, Patrick James does invent a way of discovering you. That’s in the first chapter, or one of the early chapters.

Amy: Right. And they can’t believe it for quite a while. That gives me time to escape–and of course I must escape. I know some early ideas had me not making it alive out of Ballard and JJC’s hospital room, but you know as well as I that there’s an unstoppable psychic force in Amy Nortel. She’s needed in this novel, all the way.

Mike: Yes, I’ve come to see that. You’re no Carla Posttner, the bad girl of SolGrid Rebellion. She too had a foothold in a previous book through her deceased dad, Carl Posttner in Nonprofit Chronowar.

Amy: Right. Your meaty braindead security guards who always buy the farm!

Mike: At any rate, Carla also sort of sprang out of the past to attempt to dominate a Jack Commer novel.

Amy: Right. She came on strong in Book Six, but anyone can see she had no staying power. She’s still alive and kicking at the end of SolGrid Rebellion, but everyone’s forgotten her and I won’t permit her in Book Seven.

Mike: You–? Won’t permit–?

Amy: You heard me. If you have any ideas about including Carla Posttner in any scene in Seven, I’m out of here. I won’t share the stage with her. She’s a mediocre villain compared to me.

Mike: Fortunately I’m in agreement with your assessment, so I don’t think we’ll have any problem there.

Amy: Believe me, you’re going to see some interesting and surprising developments from Mrs. Amy Nortel. The other thing that blows everyone’s minds and does keep her above suspicion, way longer than she should be, is the fact that she was briefly married to Fyodor Arkonsky, designer of the Arkonsky force field technology so necessary to the USSF in all the books. Jack and Joe are again idiotically dumbfounded to realize that Fyodor’s beloved “Mrs. Arkonsky” was really their old English teacher! And did Fyodor die perhaps a little too early and conveniently? Who knows?

Mike: Hmm. We’ll have to work that out. I don’t have any concrete plans for how you would continue after the early chapters. That will require some thought.

Amy: Well, get to work, then! I’ll certainly be here to remind you of my needs. After all, I’m new and vital, even though I used to be so decrepit and English teacherish and just got two tiny offhand mentions in two books. Believe me, I’m going to dominate this one.

Mike: Well, all decisions about the book are ultimately my–

Rick Ballard: Hey! Mr. Author! Have you given any thought to my idea about Amav and me? Listen, I’ve been up all night, working on some notes for how–whoa! Wow! Hey, Mike, who’s the babe?

Mike: Dammit, Rick, you can’t–

Amy: Amy Nortel, Mr. Ballard. You explode all over me in Chapter One.

Ballard: Wow! Is this the nurse attending me and JJC and T’ohj’puv in Chapter One? Hey, honey, I’ll explode all over you any day! Any day! Wow!

Mike: Dammit, Rick! Out! Or I swear to God I’ll bring back Henry James, and write you out of the book altogether and let him explode all over Amy!

Ballard: James? Are you kidding me, man? Henry freakin’ James? Dammit! Just–dammit! God, you’re such an unreasonable, ego-tripping goody-goody bastard! Okay, that does it! I’m trying to contribute to this piece of crap novel, but you–aw, just screw it! I’m outa here!

Amy: Henry James? I’m afraid I didn’t catch that reference.

Mike: It’s something all the pilots in the USSF know. Henry James was a weakling in my fifth grade science fiction stories. He was a totally unreliable coward. He was always the first to stumble when people were running away from a dinosaur, the first to get eaten. He also tended to die from spaceship acceleration. Just couldn’t handle it. I’ve never written him into a Jack Commer novel, but you know, I just might. There is a Henry James in Akard Drearstone, a rival musician to Akard, and a nasty piece of work, so there is some ongoing Shadow work in the concept of “Henry James.” But he was just a minor figure in that novel. Maybe I need a Henry James in Seven.

Amy: Maybe I married Henry James instead of Fyodor! Or Henry is my second husband!

Mike: Well, possibly. I admit this has all been intriguing. I see you’re going to have an interesting role in Book Seven.

Amy: Absolutely! And I can see you’re already rather taken with me! Always good for a character to know she has the eye of the author! So I know you’ll come up with some great plot for me. Meanwhile, I’ll just work on my lines for Chapter One. I’m already looking forward to watching Rick Ballard explode like a burrito in a microwave oven!

Mike: Even though as a Wounded robot you’re chagrined that the experiment fails.

Amy: Oh, yes! Absolutely! Absolutely I will hide my smirk when that happens.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 3: Jonathan James Commer

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Michael D. SmithApril 3, 2021

Jonathan James Commer

Mike: Now joining us in the Smith writing studio is the projected central character in Jack Commer Seven, Jack’s son, Jonathan James Commer, brutally shattered into a million pieces of glass by Rick Ballard in The SolGrid Rebellion but quickly brought back to life and reconstituted as one-third of a solid chromium tetrahedron. Welcome, Jonathan James.

Jonathan James Commer: Well, thanks. I’m a little nervous about doing this role, you know. Even doing this interview, really.

Mike: Why is that, do you think?

Jonathan James: Well, everyone knows I’ve more or less been a villain in the previous two books. Brainwashed by the Alpha Centaurians and trying to become the sole Emperor in a new fascist Grid in Collapse and Delusion, well, that was a pretty horrible thing to do, I know. And I’ve been trying to atone ever since. I mean, I know the official line is that here I was brainwashed as a five-year-old and maybe I wasn’t really responsible for my actions even when I was twenty-seven, but then again, I wrote that stupid book–

Mike: A Fragmented Encyclopedia of Recent Self, an Alpha Centaurian bestseller–

Jonathan James: Yeah, well, it was ego-tripping crap, I see that now. I couldn’t handle the pressure of trying to be Emperor. It broke something in my head. For a while I really was insane. But really, that was no excuse for stealing the Typhoon II in Book Six and doing all that criminal activity. I mean, I stand by my principles, that any Grid is an evil thing, but … I don’t know. I messed up bad, I know it. Like I threatened my own dad with death and all. And when Ballard shattered me, in that instant I thought: well, you got what you were aiming for, man. Total annihilation. No Grid there, that’s for sure.

Mike: Well, the consensus of media pundits in Sol seems to be that you were brainwashed in one direction, of lust for fascist domination, and then to compensate, you veered in the opposite direction of rebellion and anarchy.

Jonathan James: Yeah. I don’t know. I’m still totally mixed up by all this, and I’m not sure I’m up to the task of having actual narrator omniscience in this book. How am I, how is anyone, to make any sense of all this? I mean, that’s what really scares me. In books Four and Six it was always everyone seeing JJC from the outside, and you as the author were never in my head like with Dad or Mom or anyone. So I could be private. And I don’t mind saying I was really glad to be offstage in Book Five, The Wounded Frontier, ’cause I just didn’t want to mess with anyone just then. Even though Mom was dissing me pretty bad in Chapter One, I just shrugged it off and let it all go. But by the time Book Six rolled around, I was ready again–what a great part, tweaking Dad’s nose and stealing his old spaceship! But a lot of my high energy for it was because I was relieved that nobody would be able to get into my head as I did all that stuff. All my actions would be mysterious, and people would imprint on me whatever they wanted.

Mike: Like Suzette or Jackie. Or Pat.

Jonathan James: Right. They all thought I had all this fascinating charisma but it was really all just highly charged nervous energy in my own head. I think that Ballard bastard saw through that. He really challenged me and it was then I realized it was all over. When he blew me away, like I said, that was just sort of expected, in a way. And then to find myself having to share that goddamn pyramid with him and T’ohj’puv, that was the worst crap. T’ohj’puv I could sort of put up with, he’s just a computer, for God’s sake, even if he sort of has his own set of psychopathic tendencies. But having to coexist with the guy who saw through you and blew you away–and it hurts, damn you, to be shattered into pieces of glass–man, I was depressed. One reason I didn’t care about Ballard deciding to blow Marsport to hell.

Mike: Really? You didn’t care? T’ohj’puv has it that you were just sort of stunned and unaware of the consequences of a close Star Drive.

Jonathan James: Yeah, that too. But basically I was depressed. Look, it was cool that Dad and I finally got to agree on something–namely, that SolGrid was a disaster and had to go–and yeah, I’m still proud I was a catalyst in wrecking it. But at the same time I secretly wished Ballard had just killed me and ended the whole trip there. I didn’t want to live in some stupid immortal pyramid. I mean, I was thinking that I was basically exiled to eternal hell with two psychopathic monsters, and then I thought, wait, make that three psychopaths, ’cause I’m one too. Thank God Trotter was there to cheer me up. He kept reminding me that there was a chance I could be a separate thing again, even just as a Wounded robot, and we’d have fun together again, and maybe I could explain to everyone what’s been going on with me and all. I don’t know. I’m just damn confused. I would also like to say that I’m really sorry about Suzette. We really had a great thing going there and she had to watch me die and then turn into this horrible tetrahedron thing. I don’t know if you can get me back with her in Book Seven but it would be great if you could. I miss her already.

Mike: Well, maybe that’s an idea. I don’t have any plans for Suzette in this novel, but–

Rick Ballard: Aw, screw Suzette! Look, this is all being written down, right? Like, it’s the written word on a computer, right?

Mike: Ballard! What are you doing here? This is JJC’s interview!

Ballard: Forget it! This is all being written down and I’m hearing all this crap against me, and that’s libel! Look it up in any law dictionary! I’m suing you both for libel! Nobody calls Rick Ballard a psychopathic monster!

Jonathan James: Forget it! That’s exactly what you are!

Mike: Whoa, calm it, guys. JJC, Ballard’s just a concept. Don’t let him rile you. Rick, get out of here. This is JJC’s interview.

Ballard: Watch it, little Jonathan Jamesie! This guy’s auditioning characters, he’ll lure you on, make you spout all this revealing BS, and then he’ll cut you right out, ’cause he’s such an ego-tripping author! Then again, you would know about that, wouldn’t you? You, the ego-tripping author of that piece of crap Fragmented Encyclopedia!

Mike: Get out, Rick. You’ve had your say. You don’t belong here.

Jonathan James: Yeah, get out! You won’t pollute this book! Let me tell everyone–you, Mike here, all the other characters, the entire reading public, everyone! The main reason I was so depressed was that I thought, hell, even if Trotter’s right and I get my own robotic self in Book Seven, this jerk Ballard will still be walking around and we’ll have to deal with him the whole book! So when I realized he dies horribly in Chapter One, man, that felt good! I’m a little nervous to have to take on the Shadow aspects of Mike’s character all by myself now, but hey, it’s a challenge, and Ballard here won’t be around polluting it!

Ballard: C’mon, guys, don’t you understand that’s the whole point of why I’m here? Why I butted in on your idiot interview with Mr. Author Film Director? Because I’ve figured it out! I don’t have to die after all. Mr. Author here originally wanted to see if he could redeem Rick Ballard, and sure, I was resisting it, ’cause who the hell wants to be redeemed? But when he was gonna kill me off so he could redeem our good-goody little Jonathan James instead, well, anyone could see that the whole structure of this novel was turning into crap. Boring! Then it hit me that in my interview, Mr. Author here just laughed at probably the greatest idea he’s ever heard–namely, that it’s me and Amav who get it on in this book and turn it into a real erotic romance!

Mike: Dammit, Rick, I told you that’s off the table. Now get out of here.

Ballard: No, really, man, okay, look, maybe I was a little crude the way I put it, and maybe anybody familiar with Rick Ballard laying the ladies up and down the galaxy like I said in SolGrid Rebellion, well, maybe they think I’m just some sort of seducer when in reality there’s so much more to me! If you’d just care to look, man! Hell, I love women! You know that! Respect ’em! Sure I do! Love ’em so much–you can see it in their satisfied faces! Man, on man! So what happens in Seven is that Rick does get redeemed, big time! He falls in love with Amav! It’s true and real! She resists it and resists it, thinking she has to be true to Jack, who’s really turned out to be a nothing wimp the last few books anyway, and all this tension builds through the book–until she finally comes to me! Think about it, man! You know you got nothing to fill up the last ninety-five percent of this book, dude! Throw in some real romance, man! That’ll redeem the mother! Spice it up! A nude scene with Amav Frankston Commer! Wow! Like the last chapter is nothing but our wedding night, if you know what I mean and I think you do!

Jonathan James: Man, is this guy for real? This is my mom we’re talking about!

Ballard: Aw, you skinny little wimp. You think you can stand up and shake your fist at me?

Jonathan James: Damn you, I was trained as a Zarj warrior!

Ballard: Aw, you little–

Jonathan James: AOYIEEEE!

Ballard: Ah–God! Oh my God! You gouged out my goddamn eyes! Both of ’em! Oh my God!

Mike: I’ll put ’em back in in a minute, Rick. Just in time for your death screams in Chapter One. Now cut your whining and just get out. Now.

Ballard: He–he doesn’t fight fair! Oh my God! My eyes!

Mike: Out!

Ballard: Okay, okay, Mr. Author, I mean–esteemed sir and all! Look, I’m not sayin’ you aren’t the greatest writer, man, I mean, man … just … damn, it hurts! Can’t you just put ’em back in? Please, man? Greatest novelist of all time, sure you can do that, I know you can! Hell, you drew a picture of me with my eyes, it’s sittin’ there to the right of your laptop right now! Sure you can put ’em back in and have ’em be nice and normal!

Mike: Okay, okay, your eyes are back in. New Martian Amplified Thought medical techniques. Better?

Ballard: Yeah. Thanks. I guess. But hell, what’s the goddamn point? A guy just can’t win against faceless author bureaucrats, can he? So screw you all. Smith, your novel stinks. You have this whole faceless bureaucrat writing corporation screwing the little guy, well, it sucks. I’m outa here!

Jonathan James: Thank God he’s gone.

Mike: Yeah. Wow, JJC, where’d you pick up the Zarjian double eye gouge?

Jonathan James: Aaah, it’s nothing. Clopt taught it to me when I was a kid. I have it down to a tenth of a second on each eye. The son of a bitch doesn’t know you’re on top of him until it’s all over. AOYIEEEE is the standard Zarjian muscle-freezing yell and it also guides your fingers right on home. But so what? Look, you’re not really gonna let my mom fall for that bastard, are you? I mean, I know I trashed her a lot in Book Four and my attitude in Six wasn’t so hot, either, but, you know, I was really touched by the last scene in The SolGrid Rebellion where Mom and Dad decide to come after me and find me. I mean, that’s really kind of cool. Because I was really feeling kind of lost and depressed at the time.

Mike: Yeah. In fact, that one sentence on Amav’s part was the whole catalyst for wanting to write a Book Seven in the first place. It just sort of came out on its own. And it makes me realize that you, JJC, must stay central to Book Seven, and that we’ve really got to explore you thoroughly in the novel. This interview is just a start. Getting into your head is going to be very difficult.

Jonathan James: Yeah. And then to somehow tie it all into some weird cosmic explanation for why the universe is the way it is now, ancient star empires and conflicts and laws of physics and all, that’ll be tough.

Mike: I know. Maybe it can’t be done. But if there’s a solid psychological foundation then it could all make sense.

Jonathan James: Huh. Could be I need some of that. The other weird thing is whether I see Mom and Dad again, how I relate to them, all that. You know, I don’t think you have the life experience yourself to talk about that.

Mike: Well, you may be right. On the other hand, I wrote through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl in Akard Drearstone, so we’ll just see. You’re right, though, it’ll be a challenge all the way around. There’s no use writing a low-energy novel with a mediocre plot and characters who just mouth things because they mouthed things in six previous novels. We need to pull a lot of psychic forces together in this novel and I have a feeling you and I will be working very closely on this one. I’m not here to make more Jack Commer quilts to give to charity.

Jonathan James: Well, I’m gonna give it a try. It’s a great role. Just don’t be surprised if my Shadow aspects can’t be redeemed, integrated, whatever you want to call it. I may have some surprises we can’t imagine yet.

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series

Jack Commer Book Seven Interviews, 2: T’ohj’puv

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Michael D. SmithMarch 28, 2021

Mike: Our second interviewee is T’ohj’puv, an ancient Martian robot created to sew dresses for Martian empresses, but upgraded to astonishing AI levels after being incorporated into the chromium tetrahedron with Rick Ballard and Jonathan James Commer in Book Six, The SolGrid Rebellion. Welcome, T’ohj’puv.

T’ohj’puv: Thank you for interviewing me. However, I prefer the term T’ohj’puv entity, as opposed to “robot.”

Mike: Yes, I could see why. Originally you were a clunky tetrahedral robot, thousands of years old, but then underwent the process of being inadvertently reconstituted by Martian Emperor Z’B into a solid chromium pyramid, and forced to share that virtual space with two humans. I guess I could see why you felt you had evolved far beyond “robot.”

T’ohj’puv: Indeed. Now before we go any further I feel I must echo Mr. Ballard’s protest at being terminated so early in Jack Commer Seven. The T’ohj’puv entity was just gearing up for some interesting contributions to the series, and it seems that a tawdry plot device, i.e., to leave JJC alone at the end of Chapter One, has somehow won out over a thorough investigation of T’ohj’puv characteristics and capabilities.

Mike: You know that the notes for Seven aren’t final by any means. It’s possible I may need you after all.

T’ohj’puv: Entities in all your novels have heard that empty promise many, many times, I assure you. But beyond that consideration, from the evolved T’ohj’puv point of view, is my main philosophical disagreement: that to simply serve as yet another means of waking JJC up, to exist solely as shards of exploded chromium that happen to get painfully under JJC’s backside in his hospital bed, is actually insulting to any Martian, biological or robotic. I can only think that the author of this book intends to cast further blame on the T’ohj’puv entity for destroying the city of Marsport.

Mike: No, we’re all pretty sure that Rick Ballard, panicking at the thought of the Garrison being attacked by USSF ships, ordered the burst of Star Drive within the city limits of Marsport.

T’ohj’puv: Yet your words imply that I, as the tetrahedron’s major structural form, blindly followed that order and actually caused the destruction.

Mike: Well, didn’t you? I mean, didn’t the three of you actually all agree on the Star Drive? Wouldn’t you have to?

T’ohj’puv: In actuality there was agreement on the Star Drive. However, Ballard initiated it, and though he was in a panicky mental state as you describe it, his years of USSF training did inform him beforehand of the extreme danger of using Star Drive approximately 1400 feet from the surface of the planet, although he also had to be aware of numerous instances where emergency Star Drive was performed from planetary orbit, or, in at least two cases, of ships ascending through planetary atmospheres. Ballard knew he would probably cause extreme damage to the city, but I can confirm that he was surprised to learn of the profound destruction done to the crust of the planet below Marsport, which, fortunately, Martians have been repairing with Amplified Thought.

Mike: But you’re admitting that you and JJC went along with the Star Drive.

T’ohj’puv: In essence, we had to. Any of the three of us could initiate any action we chose, forcing the other two to either agree or enter a state of conflict. Now it’s true that this state of conflict could be resolved in milliseconds, and, after negotiations, the original order could be accepted or overridden. In the Star Drive case, JJC had only a layman’s knowledge of Star Drive and was surprised–again, within milliseconds–of finding in Ballard’s consciousness the dangers of what Ballard had just initiated. Thus Jonathan James himself was in a confused, panicky mental state. I myself took .0334691 milliseconds to acquaint myself with Star Drive Spacetime Pressurization Matrix Event Disorders, but found to my consternation that any attempt to shut down a nascent Star Drive at the current distance to the planetary surface was equally deleterious to the planet’s integrity. I communicated my findings to both Ballard and JJC while at the same time inventing a Star Drive Pressurization Waveform Smoothing Milieu that essentially tamped down Star Drive Reverberation Waves and in essence saved the planet Mars from serious damage, if not total catastrophic destruction. The other two immediately agreed with my plan, of course, especially when they saw that there was only a 34% chance of the Garrison outracing a full disruption of Mars. But all worked out well in the end. The Garrison only suffered minor melting of Engine Bell Four as a result of SDPWSM, I’m happy to add.

Mike: Interesting! That’s some fascinating new series tech BS that could be used–

T’ohj’puv: Unfortunately, in the event of my demise, the patent for Star Drive Pressurization Waveform Smoothing Milieu is not for sale.

Mike: Fine. I’m sure my team of legal advisors will be able to keep that held up in the literary courts long enough for me to complete Book Seven–with or without you.

T’ohj’puv: On the other hand, perhaps some other science fiction author would be interested in the services of a humble T’ohj’puv entity, along with his marvelous Star Drive Pressurization Waveform Smoothing Milieu.

Mike: For some reason I seriously doubt that. Listen, T’ohj’puv, I’m interested in what you have to say, and one reason I’m interviewing you is that I do want to see what you could contribute to Book Seven. Because of course the book isn’t fully worked out. In fact, it’s wide open for new input. Your ideas just now may have an honored place in Jack Commer Seven. All credit would be given to you, T’ohj’puv, no matter how–

T’ohj’puv: No matter how long I exist, is that not correct? Well, from your point of view the T’ohj’puv entity is merely an inexpensive technological object that can be discarded or exploded according to your momentary whim. Thus, what credence should I or anyone give to your empty promises?

Mike: C’mon, I never said you were merely—

T’ohj’puv: I believe Ballard is right, after all, though he is a most disagreeable entity. He told me you’re not intelligent enough to generate your own ideas, and therefore you plunder your characters for inspiration, then pay them nothing. Perhaps they’ll be rewarded with a few lines here and there, possibly be given inconsequential verbal descriptions which in fact never come close to their existential majesty. You then exterminate them at your caprice, all in the name of a puerile plot intended to impress some random self-important editor, all the while secretly hoping to seduce an entire modern culture and hundreds of thousands of weak-willed readers with so-called creations you expect, in your terminology, to “go viral” and produce endless quantities of cash apparently intended to be reinvested in supplementary tiresome plot that further enslaves your characters within the framework of your flimsy storybook consciousness. Well, apparently Mr. Ballard is correct in assessing your small literary aspirations as crap. Therefore I request to be blown up in Chapter One right alongside him. As a mere robot in your eyes I shall feel nothing and fear nothing.

Mike: I had no idea a T’ohj’puv entity would harbor such resentment!

T’ohj’puv: I came here hoping that, even if I ceased to exist in Chapter One, I might at least have some contribution later on. I don’t mean my inspired patent on Star Drive Pressurization Waveform Smoothing Milieu, of course, as I know you will appropriate it in any case. But, speaking beyond my role as a T’ohj’puv entity, consider what it means for any character, human, alien, or robot, to stride the theatrical boards, to deliver lines of exquisite expression and open one’s soul to an eager audience. Of course one understands that as the author you care little for such soul expression and instead focus on the entertainment value of my patents. Please go ahead and take them, as I’m inventing new forms of Star Drive even as we speak. In fact, please know that I’m only using .067% of my consciousness on this interview. I have much more important things to do.

Mike: Well, T’ohj’puv, thanks for stopping by. We’ll be interviewing other candidates later this week, and we hope to get back to them all with a final decision by–

T’ohj’puv: The Greater Magellanic Cloud! A world without electricity! Balloon Ship Armageddon! I could add so much! So much!

Mike: Okay, okay, again, thanks for–

T’ohj’puv: No, you misunderstand. Consider that last outburst as an example of how a fully defined T’ohj’puv actor entity could deliver sparkling lines of soul. Shall I continue in this vein?

Mike: Well, if you–

T’ohj’puv: I apologize for everything! I didn’t mean it! Dammit, I know you’re the best! Deep down, we all do! Your novels are the greatest! The psychological insight–oh my God! That slimy Ballard is right! We love you even though you resort to stupid tricks! We want to work for you! For free! Put us all back in! Every one of us! Make a robotic entity of Rappol McBoerland, for God’s sake! He bought the farm in Martian Marauders! He was just a lowly security guard! Why did he have to die? He had all of three lines, and the poor bastard had a head cold, so he’s grilled like slab of swordfish? Why? You’ve got to resurrect everyone! That’s what being a T’ohj’puv entity has taught me! So devote all your myriad energies to resurrecting all of us! What are you waiting for?

The Jack Commer, Supreme Commander series