Notes

I say this far too often, but this story was hard to write. Its initial seed was based on a tiny idea—more a note really—I wrote down when I was eleven years old and just had the idea for the Saga of Life. The idea was simply “imagine if elephants were firefighters in ancient Rome”.

My intent, therefore, was to make this a short, silly, fun adventure as we follow some elephant firefighters. The very first ones, in fact.

If you’ve read this story, you know it’s actually one with the most serious themes (and consequences) in the entire Saga so far. What went wrong? Well, I wrote my way to an exploration of probably my two most common themes again: freedom and meaning of life/reason to live. I also figured out how I wanted to approach the Saga slightly differently in the future (which will have a major impact) … halfway through this story.

As such, the story suddenly had to balance the build-up to a major moment (and some more backstory/characters), with a few fun little heists and the very small story of two elephant firefighters. I don’t know if I succeeded in bringing it all together. There was an attempt.

Trusks & Amor

Now that the Saga of Life has been underway for a bit, I try to dive slightly deeper into some historical aspects. For example, the “Amori Empire” has been mentioned a few times in stories, and the connection to the Roman Empire was obvious, but not much more.

This story introduces a bit more detail. How Rome was actually founded by the Etruscans, a major (and pretty odd) civilization that ruled the Italian peninsula first. Then the Romans conquered it—though they were obviously not called that before they owned Rome—and used it as the beating heart from which to start their expansion.

This story is set pretty early in its lifespan. So early, in fact, that it’s still the Amori Republic now. (Why this changed is food for the next story of this cycle …) Ruled by two consuls, instead of a single leader, who had to keep each other in check. Supported by a large senate who also had a vote on most things. Quite democratic and open (relatively speaking), learning from their Greek neighbors.

Their fight with the godchildren mimics the fight between the Romans and Greece around 300 BC. In reality, Greece didn’t bring the fight to Rome. They more or less fought amongst themselves, until Alexander the Great tried to unify them all against the Persians, and they made a half-hearted attempt at unification too when they realized the common threat of the Romans. At that point, it was already too late.

It takes a while before civilization (in this case, the Romans) invented services such as firefighters and police. There were some recorded attempts, mostly by people who had suffered from the lack of such public services, but even those are usually much later than you expect. The first serious ideas about a police force/fire brigade only started around 100 BC. But those were wildly imperfect, one might say they were crass, as will be explored in the next story.

Gravitational Forces

Every story in this specific cycle explains one of the ~8 types of energy. This story probably explores its energy type in the most subtle way. (See my explanation at the start: the story was already getting quite full and it just didn’t fit with everything.)

Aqueducts used gravity to automatically get water into Rome. Our firefighters use gravity to react quickly and get their fire truck at the location of a fire. Our Rescue Squad uses gravity to create disasters with little effort.

Most people know gravity as “the force that makes you fall back down to earth”. While true, this is just the most visible and practical consequence.

In reality, gravity is a very weak force that is present in almost all particles.

And the force has one simple rule: attract other particles.

That’s why Earth attracts us. Because it’s massive. It has so many particles that the very weak force of gravity becomes a strong, constant force pulling everything down.

It’s also why we don’t really observe gravity on other objects. Technically, yes, your body is attracted to everything with mass. If you’re reading this inside a room, then yes, everything in that room is pulling on your body all the time, and your body is pulling on those objects too.

But compared to planets, your weight is obviously negligible. The number of particles (which all have the weak gravity force) in your body means nothing compared to the number of particle in Earth as a whole.

I wish I could’ve explored this general explanation more in this story. But it just didn’t fit, especially because, in this time period, they’re not space travelers yet. People in the Roman Republic probably didn’t have such an understanding of gravity, or space, or even formulas.

(Ancient Greece had some of that, but then the Romans went and killed them! This is not a spoiler; if you read any other Saga stories, you know the godchildren are not around anymore after The First Conflict.)

The idea of “weight” also only exists because of gravity. When we say a box weighs X, it just means that Earth is pulling that box down with force X. On a different planet, things weigh less or more, because the planet has a different mass and thus a different gravitational pull.

The concept of “mass”, though, is not the same as weight. It’s an objective number, independent of location, always the same. It represents the amount of “matter” that makes up an object. There’s a different particle inside almost everything that gives it mass.

(Light particles or photons are a common example of particles that have no mass. And thus no weight.)

To calculate how much Earth pulls on you, for example, you need to calculate its mass (m1) and your own mass (m2) first.

• You also need to divide by the distance from your body to the center of the Earth—in other words, Earth’s radius (r). And when you divide by something, it means that your number gets smaller when that other thing gets bigger. In other words, the further two things are apart, the less gravity affects them.
• And you need to multiply by the gravitational constant (G). We don’t know why this number is what it is, but it’s true universally. And we got it by just letting stuff fall and calculating which number was needed to have the formulas make sense.

Bringing it together, we get a simple formula for calculating the gravitational force between two objects.

F = G x (m1 x m2) / r^2

Gravitational Energy

Okay, so this creates forces. (And a force is simply a movement in a certain direction with a certain speed. In our case, the gravitational force moves things closer together.)

How does that make it energy?

Well, now you know that this force depends on position. The further you are away from something, the lower its pull. (The items in your room have a negligible pull on your body. Those in a room far, far away even less. And that’s a good thing, of course. It would be madness if we were attracted to heavy objects in other countries all day.)

This means … that moving something (with mass) into a different position, will change that force. If you lift a box off the ground, you have now changed its position and changed the gravitational force acting on it!

You also remember, hopefully, that energy cannot be gained or lost. The amount of total energy must always stay the same.

It takes energy to lift that heavy box. Where does that energy go? We imagine it goes into the box, simply by being at a higher position. The difference in gravitational force between those two positions determines the amount of energy. This is called “potential energy”.

Once you let go, that energy is now released to make the box fall. Returning it to its original position, say, on the floor. Returning to the same gravitational force as before. And as such, no energy was ever added or lost.

Gravitational … Field?

It’s a very special type of energy, though, this “potential energy”.

In truth, gravity is often called a “fictional force”.

Yes, yes, I know, try telling that to someone falling off a building and about to smash into the ground. It simply means that it’s probably not actually a force, but we simply understand it more easily that way.

In reality, gravity is a field. A bunch of rivers flowing in different directions at different strengths.

It is everywhere. All objects with mass are always forced to follow the imaginary rivers. Reality is gravity! And things that have mass simply distort that field, changing how the rivers flow around them.

Like … diverting an aqueduct, and now everything thrown into it moves in a different way. If you want, imagine Earth has billions of aqueducts starting in space and ending on the surface. Everything that falls down is simply caught by such an aqueduct and happily follows the stream to land back on Earth!

But all of that is certainly a topic for another story.

No wonder Alix the Alchemist, around 300 BC, had serious trouble figuring out gravity ;)

The War Continues

From the very first story of the Saga (written when I was just a boy), the fact that our gods represented Ancient Greece and would not survive the First Conflict was already decided.

Back then, however, I saw this as your typical Narnia/Lord of the Rings/Star Wars conflict. The only way to write fantasy stories, obviously. Good versus evil. Good amasses a powerful army and magic. Evil does the same. Bang, boom, clash, winner.

Now I see that this is both unrealistic and leads to repetitive, predictable, cliché stories. In reality, every war contained thousands of people making their own unique, interesting, or emotional decisions. In reality, we should stop revering big conquerors and start focusing on the death toll and the small-scale tragedy.

(Imagine that Adolf Hitler had won World War II, or at least come out of it alive and with significant territorial gain. Then, a hundred or thousand years from now, his name would be taught in schools as a “big leader” and “great conqueror” and “see how much he achieved and how he unified Europe”. That’s the treatment we’re giving to violent power-hungry soldiers from the past, and I don’t want to encourage it.)

That’s how I made the decision to basically have the gods back off. They see the death toll, they see the pain, and they refuse to fight an all-out war—despite being far more powerful, as they are, you know, the gods who created life on Somnia. They switch to guerilla tactics. Hide, flee, defend, use sneaky tricks, but save every life we can.

I think this is far more interesting. It allowed me to plan more interesting stories and events in the future of The First Conflict. Because an entire time period devoted to stories with mindless action sequences and battles was not a great idea.