So, I’m still relatively new at this writing-for-other-people lark, and in particular, on that part of it that goes “Show, don’t tell” – because since my original works have always begun with the worldbuilding aspects of things, I start out with something of a predisposition to tell, belike. Granted, it can be tricky to get this right in a medium as short as my favored nanofic.
Anyway, I’d like to take a moment to ask my readers (rather than I or my lovely wife and beta reader, who have the disadvantage of already knowing the plot) who have a moment to think back to Steganography, parts One and Two, and take a quick poll on whether I have done so little telling as to leave the reader with no clue what was actually going on:
[polldaddy poll=5905355]
(If you’re absolutely swimming in time, you could take a moment to tell me which bits were particularly revealing or unrevealing or what you think you made of it in a comment, and I’d surely be appreciative of that. Thanks muchly.)
I did say “completely,” but there are two things I am not 100% certain on: 1. I _think_ that in the first part she is reconstituting her body the same way the reconstituted her dress, and 2. I am not quite certain _what_ the “immortagen” is, and therefore I am not fully sure what the industrial espionage the lovely young lady was carrying out during the party is about.
Other than that, I think given a moderate-to-high level of SF reading experience, this is pretty clear.
Thanks; that helped a lot!
Just to clear up those two things and hopefully not contradict any current understandings:
1. Yep. “Mindcasting” is a pretty standard way of travel in these parts, given how much faster information can travel than mass, and that includes body reconstruction if you don’t feel like wearing a generic at the other end. (Not quite the same way, as you have to send the body data along earlier because you can’t just nanoprint meat the way you can inanimate matter – half a body can’t live – but since that was just glossed over in the forematter as not being relevant to the story, not intended to be there to be found by the reader, right?)
2. Yeah, the problem with having so much background is that I forget which bits I’ve not mentioned elsewhere. Immortagens are – well, just what I thought they sounded like, but maybe the name’s not as obvious as I think it is? – nanoviruses that cure death in at least the Lesser Immortality sense of stopping/reversing aging and retrofitting a fast-healing factor.
The Eldinimieuthunimis (basically, the Sinister Eldrae Mafia, Inc.) do a roaring trade in smuggling immortagens (often in, as in this case, one-third XORs steganographically concealed in augmented-reality jewelry) into all the benighted chunks of the Galaxy that don’t like the notion of people living forever, because the demand is always high and public opinion in their home jurisdiction would rather throw immortagen smugglers a ticker-tape parade than convict them of anything…