Followup to my Earlier Post

This past Friday I blogged about recent progress on "A Far Sun." Since then I've met with a couple of my story consultants (my wife and her oldest daughter, the scientist), and they have helped me work through some sticking points. To wit:

1. I will write in some pages (30 or 40) about the two characters who will be making their appearances in act III. The audience will be in on the surprise/secret, just not my heroes.
2. I have also figured out why the two others left the Facility (in the beginning of the story) and did not ensure they had a way to get back in. Something to do with not having any power ...
   
3. I have some pretty good inklings why Adam is so critical to the sun-skin people (this was Lina's intuition/premonition when she first finds them). Jane will figure out how to beat the disease; Adam is the key. And it's only Adam, as well.
4. Adam will get to save the world, and not just by donating some of his genetic material, either. In the end at the big climax, he will be the one who shuts down the Chamber and keeps the reactor from going into melt-down.
5. However, in the process of reactivating the Chamber the big bad guy (the Head Librarian, in case you wondered) gets his comeuppance. He gets zapped into another universe, but can you guess where?
6. Someone else will sacrifice himself/herself to save the others. No, it's not any of my three heroes or Jane's love interest, either. At least, I don't believe it will be him.
   

My biomedical researcher stepdaughter (she really is a scientist!) has been über helpful. Her PhD researcher husband also had some comments, too. Let's just say I have sources to help make all the biological stuff Jane gets to do in act III, make sense.

And perhaps most importantly I have some reasoning to explain the observed effects of the disease that's killing most of the newborn babies in this new world. When I explained how my invented disease (so far it's a virus) was affecting people, my stepdaughter immediately had some really good explanations for why it might work the way it does. Why some live and some die. Of course for Jane to figure out what it's doing will take some experimentation, and with only people being affected by the disease it will be quite difficult to test her theories. She'll just have to make a few educated guesses and hope she gets it right. Because people's lives are at stake.

Fun stuff!