multiple perspective | Stephanie Flint

A couple weeks ago I posted “When Two Books Share the Same Scene,” and I referenced the concept of “memory seeds.”

Let’s go deeper!

In the world of Distant Horizon, telepathy is one of the strongest and most dangerous powers a person can have. While it’s generally used to read minds and emotions, telepathy can also be used to implant ideas in a person’s thoughts and, at its most powerful, possess them.

(Tim is very much not a fan of this when he starts dealing with the second Legion Spore in Spirits of a Glitch, and he first gets an idea of how the implanted memories work in Ghost of a Memory).

Lots of fun for me as the author, not so much fun for my characters.

However, a few telepaths, including Lady Winters (the insidious “Brainmaster,” but don’t let her catch you calling her that), know how to plant so-called “memory seeds.” Rather than having to be present when they attack, a telepath leaves a set of (usually) false memories inside their victim’s mind that are set to activate under certain conditions.

In Jenna’s case, Lady Winters inserts memories of Jenna being transformed into a sub-human beast, though she’s never actually been in a beastie tank.

Here’s a look at a scene in Fractured Skies where she’s attempting to confront the seed with Gwen, one of the rebel telepaths:

Are you ready?

I swallowed hard… or imagined I did… and nodded. Let’s get this over with.

She raised her hands to the black ceiling above us. The blackness grew lighter, shifting into green. Gwen faded into the darkness. Green liquid crashed over my head.

I was trapped in the glass tube of a beastie tank.

Thick bubbles shimmered around me as I flailed, screaming. The burning liquid, the deadened sensation of my hands and feet—I shook my head and begged to get out, but my words were lost in the breathing mask strapped over my mouth.

Look around you. This isn’t real. Wasn’t real? What wasn’t real? I pounded my fists against the glass. “Let me out!”

Look beyond the glass. What should you see?

I took a gasping breath. Beyond the glass I couldn’t see anything…

That was the problem. I should have been able to see something. A shadow of movement, the smooth structures of other tubes. Those images slowly formed in front of me… but not because my eyes had adjusted.

Recognizing that your surroundings aren’t what they are supposed to be allows you to take the first step in controlling your situation.

That voice… Gwen!

Over time the memories get worse, with the idea that the next time Jenna confronts her, Lady Winters could easily use the memory seeds to disable her in a fight.

This happens and, in a later confrontation, Lady Winters adds the memory of the Legion Spore’s transformation. With the latter seed, simply hearing the Legion Spore’s telepathic voices can trigger the memory, but crowded spaces (claustrophobia from being inside the transforming Legion Spore) can also cause the seeds to strike.

Ideally, another telepath would be able to remove them, which is what Gwen tries to do at first. But when you’re dealing with someone as strong as Lady Winters, removing the seeds can be a challenge, especially when traps have been laid to keep them from being removed.

Memory seeds aren’t the only trick telepaths can use to manipulate others, and once we get to Fractured Skies, Jenna learns that the seeds in her head may be a bit more complex than the average seed.

And once we get to Starless Night, well, the enemy she’s fighting might be herself…

* * *

Who can Jenna trust when she can’t trust her own mind and memories?

Book Cover for Distant Horizon, with a gold title. A young woman faces a sterile white hallway with faces in the doors. She has vines around her arms.

Book cover for Fractured Skies with gold text. A young woman in a coat faces a wintery, pink-tinted forest. She has vines around her arms.

* * *

Happy reading and writing!

Hi there! Today I’m going to be talking about tackling two points of view of the same scene in different books. But there are going to be some spoilers regarding the Distant Horizon Universe. They’ll be minor, but if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, go read the books first, then come back after!

Still here?

Cool.

There are several scenes in Fractured Skies (Distant Horizon #2) that reference events in the Glitch Saga.

While the Glitch Saga (Glitch #1-3) follows Tim’s point of view within the Camaraderie, the Distant Horizon series follows Jenna’s point of view with the Coalition rebels.

At times, these scenes directly overlap.

For example, in Ghost of a Memory (Glitch #2), there’s a scene where Tim first takes the Legion Spore to attack the OA training base in Japan:

Master Zaytsev, we are required to alert you to a small, unidentified vessel leaving the area.

“Insignificant,” I murmur. We need to fix this glitch, not apprehend ships.

Master Zaytsev… The voices are curious. She has our memories.

I frown and bring the revolving set of images onto the main screen. Mechs. Helicopters… There’s a small firefight in the distant region, but most of the people on the ground now are Special Forces.

We are legion, it calls mentally, and I almost swear it’s happy. Then I see the fast fleeing vessel.

“Zoom in.” Nothing happens. I bite my cheek. “Legion Spore?”

No response.

I type the command, and one of the Legion Spore’s eyes shift and focus until they reveal a small, black car flying into the distance. My chest tightens as I manually scan the ground for signs of the rebels. I don’t see anyone, so maybe they escaped. “What were the memories?”

Not her own. Disappointment. Stolen memories, used to cause pain. Are we a device for pain, Master Zaytsev?

Long story short, there’s some behind-the-scenes information that Tim doesn’t have in regards to those memories the Legion Spore saw. During an earlier mission, Jenna fell victim to a telepathic attack that left “memory seeds” in her head, seeds which attempt to weaken the victim’s mind.

Jenna is all too familiar with the problem these seeds can cause, and the memories—painful images of being transformed into a beast and the Legion Spore—tend to attack at the worst times. Such as right in the middle of a mission.

In Fractured Skies, she’s at the same base when Tim brings the Legion Spore there to attack, and her view of what’s happening is a little bit different:

We are legion. Telepathic voices, overlapping but discordant, boomed in my head, overshadowing every other thought. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to plug out the sound, but that didn’t stop the wave of pain rolling through my skull. So many voices, so much pain…

I gasped, my eyes watering. Pain. I knew exactly what this was. The numerous voices and the sense of being one unit… “The Legion Spore,” I whispered. Chills ran down my spine. My body shook, all of my muscles feeling loose and scattered, as if there was nothing else around me but so many creatures, beastie and human, their bones knitting with metal. Their skin stretching to form a hull. A loss of sight, our vision was black, and all there could be was a terrible, hot, burning pain. We gritted our teeth, strained against our binds. The noise… that beating, beating pulse of hearts merging with clicking gears and digital clocks. Winding, binding, whimpering, crying…

“Jenna!”

We struggled against the metal grid. It held us tight. The bindings, the wires were part of our bone, part of our new skeleton, and radiation… terrible radiation unified us, our new sight—our powers, together, a legion of souls—

“Jenna! Listen to me!”

Listening. Commands… commands… Her senses, same as us. Her memories are ours… She is part of us. Meant to be part of us. She could complete us. Join us; we are legion…

“Jenna! Damn it, I need her to see me!” A firm hand gripped my chin and forced me to look into brown eyes—

Brown eyes… Lance’s eyes were green. Whose were these?

“She’s responding,” the face said. Slowly it came into focus, and I finally saw Quin, not the horrible visions. Cold sweat covered my aching body.

“Can we go invisible yet? I think we’re out of range, but still—” A fuzzy-looking Inese turned in the driver’s seat, looking back.

“Not yet. Let’s be sure we have her.” Quin held my chin tight so I couldn’t look away. “Can you hear me?”

I swallowed hard. My throat burned as if it was raw. “Yeah,” I whispered.

“Do you remember anything?”

“Yes.” I stared at his face. I should have been able to escape the memories. But how could I use Gwen’s teachings if I didn’t know it was a memory? It felt real, like only part of it was a memory, but part of it was new.

“What happened?” Quin released my chin and I looked around me. The base was out of sight and, thank the Community, so was the horrible vessel.

“A memory seed,” I said. “The creation of the Legion Spore. One of Lady Winters’ attacks.”

Quin frowned, his eyebrows quirked with worry. “You were saying ‘We are legion.’ ”

So there you have it!

A look at what was going on in Jenna’s mind when the Legion Spore spots the fleeing rebels.

This scene was fairly easy to match up, because we really don’t see a whole lot of overlap.

I think this might be the easiest way to work with multiple perspectives, because, while the larger event is the same, there’s not a whole lot of interaction.

In one of my other projects, I’m working on an alternate perspective for The Wind Mage and the Wolf, and there’s an entire scene of dialogue and action that overlap.

That one has been proving trickier, since I need to make sure that everything still happens the same, in the same order, and makes logical sense without contradicting the other.

For that one, I wrote the majority of the story, and left the overlapping scene for last. My current method for trying to bring them together is to strip out the fluff from the original scene, making note of what the POV character in the new story would see, and then rewriting the rest of the details from his point of view.

It’s tricky, but neat to play with different perspectives.

* * *

Two sides of the same war…