Joseph Rhea's Journal

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #6 - Alek's original encounter with Stacy Background The middle scene in Chapter One of Cyberdrome involves Alek sitting in a coffee shop and having a brief encounter with a woman named Stacy, who was pretending to be a waitress to get close to Alek. The original version of this scene was quite long and involved Stacy playing a much more challenging roll. Deleted Scene When his vision cleared, Alek saw a blonde woman standing right in front of his table. Although she was beautiful, she looked like she tried to hide that fact by wearing the funky purple glasses and putting her hair up in a ponytail. Then he saw that she was wearing a metallic blue miniskirt and a thin, almost transparent tank top with nothing on underneath, and realized that she was hiding nothing. "Can I help you?" he asked, somewhat befuddled. "I'm sorry," she said, looking suddenly embarrassed. "It's just crowded in here and I thought ma...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #5 - Maya returning to the real world  Background In the original version of Cyberdrome, following Maya's conversation with Dr. Grey on board the Snohomish, she returns to the real world. Below is how she did it. Deleted Scene Maya was tempted to run after him and demand to know what he was planning, but didn't. That would be ridiculous. Mathew was her boss and owed her no explanations. Whatever he was up to, at least it did not involve additional interfacing, and that should be all that mattered. She stepped through the doorway, took a deep breath, and headed down the hall back towards the main elevator. As usual, within five minutes, she was lost.  She passed a group of people in one hall and considered stopping to ask directions, but didn't. The Survey Vessel was filled with more than 500 people, but the fact that none of them were real made her feel alone most of the time. She wondered around on her own for a while and eventually f...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #4 - Maya returning to the Snohomish  Background The first scene in Chapter One of Cyberdrome ends with Maya on her way back up to the Survey Vessel "Snohomish" after having a conversation with Dr. Mathew Grey on the Planet. Originally this was a lengthy chapter and followed Maya up to the Snohomish where her conversation with Dr. Grey took place in her office. To get the readers into the heart of the story more quickly, a great deal was cut from this chapter. Below is part of what was removed. Deleted Scene As the aircraft quickly gained altitude, leaving both the child and the planet behind, Maya leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and whispered under her breath, “Neither are you, pal. Neither are you.”  The Dragon continued to rise until they were several thousand meters in the air. Then it began moving forward as the thrust from the twin engines transferred from the lifting vents to the rear exhaust ports. Soon, they were scr...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #3 - Final Prologue from 2006 Background Since the previous two Prologues made many test readers think that the story was about fighting the plague in Utah (which it isn't), I decided to write a new version. I had an idea that Alek suffered from seizures caused by a previous deep-interface accident, and decided to make that my new Prologue. In the final version of Cyberdrome, published in 2008, I decided to give up on Prologues altogether and just jump right into the action of the story. If you have already read the book, I hope you will agree with my decision. Here now is my final attempt at a Prologue for Cyberdrome. Deleted Prologue "Is this where I belong?" Alek Grey asked the empty room as he stared at the white padded walls surrounding him. The sleeves of the matching white straightjacket hung carelessly down to his sides. "You tell me," the psychiatrist's disembodied voice said. Her tone was at once soft and caring,...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #2 - Modified Prologue from 2005 Background In my mind's eye, Cyberdrome was (and still is) a movie. The following Prologue is a more "theatrical" version of the original Prologue I came up with in 2005. Ca you see the opening credits being displayed while the aircraft flies over the snow-capped mountains of Utah? Maybe if a Cyberdrome film is actually made some day, they will want to use this. I can dream, can't I? ;) Deleted Prologue The snow-capped mountains of Northern Utah passed beneath the sleek, unmanned aircraft as it flew just beneath the heavy cloud cover towards its destination; the dead city once known as Salt Lake. As it crossed over a final ridge, the darkened area of the city came into view. When the onboard computer confirmed its location and trajectory with the satellite navigation system, it released its cargo---a small pyramid-shaped container---then banked right and climbed quickly back into the cloud deck.  The...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #1 - Original Prologue from 2004 Background This is my original Prologue for the Cyberdrome Novel, and it was titled "Dead City" for reasons you will soon discover. The scene was fully illustrated by David because we were hoping to make a digitally-illustrated ebook. Deleted Prologue Acid rain fell from a starless night sky, pooling in shallow ditches and covering the barren asphalt streets. It melted the plastic signs that once welcomed visitors to city center, and turned long-abandoned plastic-skinned commuter-cars into forgotten skeletons. It also dissolved the outer casing of the city's underground wiring, shorting out all electrical systems, and leaving the city in total darkness.  The man-made rain was the Government's latest attempt to stop the spread of a man-made plague; a bio-engineered version of the influenza-A virus. With surface proteins changing spontaneously every 42 hours, the human immune system was unable to build...

I consider Cyberdrome "hard" science fiction in that every bit of technology is based on current cutting-edge research (I'm a scientist in real life and I had access to a lot of stuff while researching the book). However, in an attempt to make the book as widely acceptable as possible (especially as a debut novel from an unknown author), I made a decision to write Cyberdrome as a classic "Mythological Hero's Journey" (See Joseph Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"). As Carl Jung said, "The repeating characters of the hero myth, such as the young hero, the wise old man, the shape-shifting woman, and the shadowy nemesis, are identical with the archetypes of the human mind, as shown in dreams. That's why myths, and stories constructed on the mythological model, are always psychologically true." If you are familiar with this concept, you will probably recognize each of these archetypes throughout my book.  Of course, it doesn...