Bogus to Bubbly

by Scott Westerfeld

  Bungee jackets would probably be very hard to create with present-day technology. A magnet strong enough to catch a falling person would be too heavy to wear. And, of course, you’d have to build a grid everywhere to use them. But there’s always regular bungee jumping!

  Floating Ice Rink

  I have no idea where this idea came from, except that it allowed me to write a scene that put together my three favorite things: fireworks, falling, and miscreant behavior. Could anyone build a floating ice rink? Perhaps the real question is why would they? Still, it’s exactly the sort of pretty, useless thing that Tally’s culture loves.

  Special Hoverboard

  I liked that the escaped uglies had to follow rivers to travel by hoverboard, but I figured Specials would get bored of that. So I decided to come up with a hoverboard with lifting fans for off-grid use. Basically, it’s like standing on a miniature double-rotor helicopter. In our world, it’s likely that a Special-style hoverboard will be created before the magnetic kind. It’ll be very loud, though, and probably dangerous.

  Hoverball Rig

  After the mind-rain made everyone clever, I figured that more people would start inventing stuff. So somebody had to create a way to fly without a board, and then a sport to go with it! The hoverball rig started as just background for Hiro’s character, but I gradually realized that the Extras would use them to simulate zero-g. It’s cool how inventions that start out just for fun often wind up as part of the plot.

  Hovercam

  Here’s why I created Moggle, Aya’s hovercam: Aya spends a lot of time on her own, a scenario that tends to bog down a story. Two characters can talk and argue about what’s going on, but one lone character can only argue with herself, which gets silly after a while. So I decided that a sidekick would help Aya’s solo scenes. Even though Moggle doesn’t say anything, the hovercam gives Aya someone to talk to and worry about. In a way, Moggle also shows how lonely Aya is, because Aya cares more about fame than friends.

  Note: Hovercams first appear in Pretties. But it didn’t occur to me that a hovercam could be a character until I created the media-obsessed world of Extras.

  SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT

  “I thought that food of the gods would be . . . better, somehow.”

  “Hey, this is dehydrated food of the gods, okay?”

  —ANDREW AND TALLY

  Whenever I go into a camping store, I marvel at all the cool stuff: GPS devices, Mylar blankets, and clothing made from futuristic materials. It’s funny that some of the most advanced technology we use is for . . . getting back to nature. I wanted the Smokies to have some of that contradiction in their society. They’re products of an advanced civilization, even if they do live in the wild, so I gave them lots of cool toys. But because camping technology is so advanced, most of the stuff they use is available today!

  Self-Heating Food

  The U.S. military has been eating MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for decades. A reporter friend of mine brought one back from Iraq, and it was really weird. When she set it off, it hissed and sputtered and steamed, cooking the food inside with a chemical reaction (like a really powerful glow stick). I created a quieter, more sophisticated version for Tally to eat in the wild, but it’s basically the same trick.

  Water Purifier

  People can go without food for a long time, but not without water. A water purifier would be the one device that would make long-term camping much simpler. It looks like a normal water cup but has electronics inside that separate impurities from the water. These impurities wind up in a “muck-trap” in the bottom. We don’t have any technology like this now, but there are pills you can drop into water to purify it. (And, hey, boiling works too.)

  Position-Finder

  This is basically just a GPS device. So common, your phone may have one.

  SURGERY

  Sometimes I think I’m nothing but what other people have done to me—a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures.

  —TALLY

  Surge Tank

  It took me until the end of writing Specials to realize that Tally had to wake up in a surge tank at least once. Her character is changed so many times by operations, I needed to show the physical reality and horror of the actual process. Plus, it was dramatic to have Tally literally break out of the cycle of surgery that she was trapped in.

  Surge tanks are very common in science fiction movies, of course. There’s something about floating in water that’s like going back to the womb, making regeneration seem almost like a rebirth. Maybe that’s where I got the notion that all my characters are “reborn” after surgery.

  In the present day, doctors use “physiologic saline tanks” to preserve tissues while they’re waiting to transplant them. A future surge tank would probably be based on these.

  Flash Tattoos

  The tattoos on the cover of Specials were inspired by those worn by Maori tribesmen. (The Maori are the people who got to New Zealand about six hundred years before the Europeans did.) But moving tattoos are much more recent. The first “subcutaneous display” (an electronic flash tattoo in our world) was part of a cell phone system designed by John Mielke in 2008. The weird thing is, it’s powered by blood sugar.

  Note: For more than a century, the word “flash” has meant a badge sewn onto a uniform, and flash tattoos were sort of a uniform for the Crims. Also, the term “flash tattoo” goes back to at least 1977, when it referred to mass-produced tattoo templates, like the classic heart and snake designs. I like it when my slang terms have historical bases like these do.

  Eye Surge

  So wait. You have jewels in your eyes? And they tell time? And they go backward? Isn’t that maybe one thing too many, Shay?

  —TALLY

  If you want eye surge like Shay’s, just head over to Holland. There, the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery will happily implant jewelry in the whites of your eyes. These little silver shapes—hearts, clovers—won’t tell time, but they will freak out your friends and family.

  Note: Most eye doctors are against this procedure. And, for the record, so am I.

  WEAPONS

  They’re just lucky we didn’t use nanos.

  —SHAY

  Needle Ring

  Poison rings are really old—the Medici family used them to kill their political opponents in Florence five hundred years ago! But the Medicis’ rings carried poison in hidden compartments, to dump into someone’s food or drink. So far I can’t find any examples in history of rings with tiny needles. But they would probably look like the illustration below:

  Little Men

  I think these little guys were the result of watching The Blair Witch Project. Crude little man-shapes made from straw or sticks are always totally scary to me. And I thought that their evil magic actually being high-tech neural jammers would be cool.

  Sneak Suit

  The Specials’ sneak suits use “active camouflage,” which means they change like a chameleon to match their background. This technology is screaming along these days, so quickly that sneak suits may exist in the near future. Scientists are already working on an “invisibility cloak” that takes the light hitting you from one side and passes it around you to the other side. The problem is, you have to stand completely still for this technology to work. (The Cutters could move and still be invisible.)

  Present-day camouflage technology uses “organic light-emitting diodes,” borrowing techniques from living cells to change color. That’s because octopuses and cuttlefish are way ahead of humans in this game. They can change their entire skin to mimic whatever surface they’re hiding against. Cuttlefish can even reproduce checkerboards on their skin. Search YouTube for “octopus camouflage” and you will be totally freaked out. (That person sitting next to you? Secretly an octopus.)

  Note: People who are color-blind are better at seeing through camouflage than the rest of us.

  Glitterbomb

  In our world glitterbombs are called “flash grenade
s,” designed for hostage situations and other times when you don’t want to kill anyone. When they explode, these grenades make a really loud noise (170 decibels to be exact; jet engines are only 140) and a really bright light. This is enough to stun you for a few minutes, and more than enough to blind a hovercam.

  Note: To read about Hungry Nanos, see “Science #3: Nanos.”

  MISCELLANEOUS

  The world needed more fireworks—especially now that there was going to be a shortage of beautiful, useless things.

  Safety Fireworks

  I’m a big sucker for fireworks, and I thought it would make sense for the pretties to have a safe, cool-burning kind to play with. The image of nightly fireworks over New Pretty Town became symbolic of pretty culture. Like pretties, fireworks are silly and a bit useless, but you can’t take your eyes off them.

  Note: In Specials, when Tally thinks, “The world needed more fireworks—especially now that there was going to be a shortage of beautiful, useless things,” it’s a reference to the John Ruskin quote from the very beginning of Pretties: “Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless.”

  Morphos

  In Uglies, Tally and Shay create pretty faces to see what they’ll look like after their operations. In the real world, plastic surgeons have software so their patients can do pretty much the same thing. (Of course, in real plastic surgery there are no guarantees you’ll wind up looking the way you want!)

  My morphos were actually inspired by the faces used in beauty studies, “averaged” human faces created by computers. Turn to “Science #1: The Science of Beauty,” or Google “virtual Miss Germany” to see a few examples.

  Note: To read about smart matter and the hole in the wall, see “Science #3: Nanos.”

  SCIENCE #2:

  MAGNETIC LEVITATION

  Of course a hoverboard. What is it about those things and miscreants?

  —DR. CABLE

  Hold two magnets close to each other and you’ll see something funny. Oriented one way, they snap together. But if you turn one of them around, the magnets push each other away. That’s because every magnet has two poles (called north and south), and no matter where you are in the universe, magnets follow these two simple laws:

  1. Opposite poles attract each other.

  2. Poles with the same charge repulse each other.

  Since humans first noticed them, magnets have been used in countless devices. Pre-Rusty explorers didn’t have location finders (no satellites!) so they relied on compasses to show them which way was north (the poles of our planet are also magnets). We Rusties invented electric motors, which use magnets to turn gears and wheels, and we use tiny magnetic switches to store computer data.

  But the coolest trick of magnetic forces is something called “magnetic levitation.” With powerful enough magnets, you can push anything you want into the air—even a whole train!

  MAG-LEV TRAINS

  But surfing’s more fun if you’re scared.

  —MIKI

  Mag-lev trains are one of the few gadgets in the series that are totally real. In fact, the first patent for a mag-lev train was granted in 1902! But that was a bit optimistic. Nobody got a mag-lev train to levitate until 1979, in Germany. Still, mag-levs are older than most Uglies fans. . . .

  But here’s something to remember: Mag-levs only hover a centimeter or two in the air. So what makes them so awesome? Well, because they aren’t actually touching their tracks, they don’t create any ground friction as they move. This makes them much, much faster than regular trains and almost silent at low speeds.

  Note: Present-day mag-levs go much faster than the ones in Aya’s city—as fast as five hundred kilometers per hour. As no one could possibly stand on top of something going that fast, I gave the Sly Girls a slower cargo train to ride. So, in case it wasn’t obvious, don’t try this at home!

  LEVITATING FROGS

  “That’s to solve your floating problem.”

  “I have a floating problem?”

  —REN AND AYA

  There’s one cool kind of technology that I didn’t use in Uglies. It’s called “diamagnetic levitation,” and it uses the magnetic properties of the water in your body to push you up. It’s like hoverboarding without a board!

  Researchers have actually made this work, lifting a frog into the air with no visible means of support. The problem is, floating a frog used sixteen teslas of magnetic force. Um, teslas? Well, to give you an idea how much that is, the largest stable magnetic field ever produced was about forty-five teslas, barely enough to levitate a cat. And that was in a lab, with a giant generator pumping in the juice.

  Making even a few people float using this method would probably eat up all the electricity in a city, so using diamagnetic levitation in Uglies would’ve been pretty bogus. My characters have to stand on (or at least wear) something metal when they fly.

  Still, that’s one lucky frog.

  SUPERCONDUCTORS

  Tally laid it flat, stretched out in the sun, where its metallic surface turned jet black as it drank in solar energy. In a few hours it would be charged up and ready to ride again.

  The hoverboards that Tally and her friends use are made from superconductors, materials that are near-perfect conductors of electricity. Superconductors also make incredibly strong magnets, and they don’t suck power like normal electromagnets.

  The fastest experimental mag-lev trains already use superconductors, but there’s one problem: Current superconducting materials have to be kept really cold—like, a hundred degrees below zero. That’s tricky enough with a massive train, but if you’re designing a person-size hoverboard, it’s completely nuts. I mean, your board already has to carry the magnets, the control system, and the rider. You don’t want to add the weight of a giant refrigerator as well!

  Luckily, by the time Tally is born, someone has invented a room-temperature superconductor, one that works in an everyday climate. That’s why they can recharge their boards with a low-energy source like solar power. Actually, this is one Uglies invention that may not be far off. And when we finally have room-temperature superconductors, they’ll revolutionize (and maybe save) our planet by making energy much cheaper and cleaner.

  Note: There has to be some temperature at which the superconducting materials in Tally’s world fail and hoverboards stop working. That would have been a good plot point when Tally and David were crossing the desert, but I didn’t think of it until just now. Rats.

  For more about how hoverboards work in Tally’s world, turn to the chapter “Hoverboard Manual.”

  NAMES IN THE PRETTYTIME

  NEW PRETTY SUFFIXES

  Aya looked into Tally’s eyes, trying to read her expression. She was pretty sure that –la was a good title. Tally had called her friend Shay-la at least once.

  New pretties use the suffixes “-wa” and “-la” only to address someone they are very familiar with, sort of like tu instead of vous in French.

  New pretty suffixes follow two simple rules:

  1. If a name has an “l” in it, add “-wa”: Tally-wa, Billy-wa.

  2. If a name has no “l,” add “–la”: Shay-la, Aya-la, Zane-la.

  Note: Peris doesn’t use “-la” on Tally when she visits him in New Pretty Town, because she’s an ugly. Also, her parents don’t use it, because middle pretties never talk that way. Dr. Cable uses it once or twice, but only sarcastically, to make Tally feel like a bubblehead again.

  JAPANESE SUFFIXES

  I’m honored to meet you, Tally-sama.

  —AYA

  Part of what inspired me to use suffixes in Pretties was my study of Japanese, which uses a complicated set of “honorifics.” These suffixes are added to people’s names to show how intimate you are with someone, how respected or famous they are, and so on. It made sense that Aya’s status-obsessed culture would still use them.

  Japanese honorifics are actually quite complicated (to us outsiders, anyway) so I kept the suffixes to jus
t three: “-sama,” “-chan,” and “-sensei.” Here’s how those suffixes work in Extras, as opposed to modern-day Japanese:

  In Aya’s city, “-sensei” is used for any one of the city’s top thousand most-famous citizens. In real-world Japanese it’s used for respected professionals like teachers, doctors, and lawyers. Famous people like manga artists and novelists are called “sensei” by their fans. If you take any martial arts classes, you probably address your teacher as “sensei.”

  Aya uses “-sama” for world-famous people, like Tally and Shay, who are in all the history books at school. In real-world Japan, “-sama” is used only for very important people. The empresses and princesses of Japan are called “-sama,” and Japanese Christians refer to God as Kami-sama and Jesus as lesu-sama. But it’s not all about divinity. If you go into a store in Tokyo, you may find yourself being called “-sama,” which gives you some idea of how good customer service is in Japan.

  Finally, Aya’s city uses “-chan” for close friends and siblings (particularly if they’re younger) and cute machines like Moggle. This is pretty much the way it’s used nowadays, though there are more gender issues in present-day Japan than in Aya’s city. You probably wouldn’t call your male friends “-chan,” and even boys’ parents stop after a certain age. However, lots of well-loved celebrities are called “-chan,” even if they are men. Arnold Schwarzenegger is Shuwachan, which is just too cute for words. That’s why I decided that Nana Love would be called Nana-chan, even though she’s famous enough to be a sensei.