Traejan blinked hard, then called up the system records. He couldn’t have just imagined it all. The records didn’t disappoint. The mirror port had been activated. It had been running at maximum power for over ten minutes. Traejan had been up for twenty hours, mastering the mersion game, but he was more awake than he had been in weeks.
Having a second viewpoint character now, I realized as I was writing, offered me a number of opportunities to add to the story I was writing. Contrasts and parallels in the narrative structure could be developed. Now, I’m sure you’ve read stories with far more POVs. To each his or her own.
Why have more than one?
Often there are only so many interesting things happening to a primary character at a time in a given story. And honestly, as I was writing chapters, drafting and redrafting, it was helpful to move from Althea to Traejan to keep the story in motion. In another story, I might have put in even more POVs, but here, I decided two was exactly what I wanted.
Kyso fussed over the controls, peering at the data with suspicion, mumbling incoherent tech babble all the way. After a long silence, he nodded, turned back to Traejan.
“You’re right,” he said, a rare sober smile on his lips. The old man turned back to the display, poked the cracked screen. “That is a definite power surge. I remember those spikes.”
He backed a couple steps away from the screen, rubbed his moustache and beard with a thick-fingered hand.
“But what could cause that now?” he wondered.
Traejan does as well have companion character to work with, a little more human, clearly, than Dorian. But the situation does have parallels, Kyso provides ways to shed light on Traejan, his personality and history in a way that is, while not an absolute mirror of Althea and Dorian, it is reflective of their relationship.
Now, let’s get back to the big picture for a moment.
With regards to genre, I generally describe The Promethead (and therefore this novel is, as a chapter of it) as a Post-Apocalyptic Space Opera (although, Space Opera more in ‘scope’ than the superficial trappings of spaceships, blasters and death stars). It’s not an absolute representative of the sub-genres, but is as close as I can get applying a label to the series. With Traejan and Kyso, you get the introduction to the post-apocalyptic component. McCarthy’s The Road, perhaps it isn’t, (which I’m not all that unhappy about) but I at least try to make their part of things make sense, the hope, the doubt, the resignation. Besides, being on Oprah’s book club isn’t really something I’ve been considering. Nah, no Space Oprah here.
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