A question that has come up in discussions is about how I developed the personalities of the characters, a follow-up to the other question about Alice and Terence.

Mostly, I had these two characters planned out ahead of time. I'd been planning to write this novel for about 25 years. I also used Doc Brown in Back to the Future for some of Terence's behaviour.

Alice and Terence's characters, and their steel mill, were early additions to the novel. Terence's ability to develop electric generators powered by gravity is pivotal to the storyline of Peter's efforts to 'restart' civilization.

While Doc Brown was a bachelor, I felt it would be much better to have Terence married, and his wife be a steadying influence. It was good for Alice to handle financial matters as well, an area I thought would be unlikely for Terence to have much concern for. Likewise, advertising. Here's another piece, demonstrating their complementary personalities, and also an example of POV. The context is Peter has just brought his first stack of car wrecks for recycling.

This time, Alice and Terence had no thunderclap to announce Peter's arrival, but it was distinctive nonetheless: a shadow suddenly fell on the road in front. Seconds later, Peter walked through the door, but they were already headed for the door themselves, so he ended up holding the door open for them to go outside. He almost walked into them as they had stopped on the landing. They were staring up at the bottoms of cars, looking like a papered pattern on the ceiling of the sky. Slowly they turned, still looking up, back over the roof of the building. They could see the other edge of the stack, but it was well beyond the back of the building. The stack was larger than their whole building! They couldn't see how tall it was from here but assumed it must be many layers.

Finally, their eyes turned toward Peter. Terence said, “We're going to need a bigger yard!”

There was a long pause while Alice and Terence gathered their wits. Alice turned and started down the stairs, Terence and Peter following. “Let's go introduce you to the day guards!”

Peter smiled to himself as they walked along the road, the 'car cloud' keeping pace behind. It wasn't light glowing around him in the dark, but he expected this would still make for a very memorable first impression.

While they were walking, Terence asked, “Now, about your using gravity to run generators. How big can you go?”

Peter, thinking of the shadow following them, said, “Really big. I don't know if there's a limit to how big.”

Terence stumbled a little as he looked at Peter rather than where he was putting his feet. “But how many megawatts can you generate?”

“Well... Those headlights are about 50 watts, and they need pretty tiny gravity fields.” Pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the cars above with a small smile, he added, “How big the generator is doesn't seem to be an issue. When I was making my lights, I also changed the intensity of the gravity field to make the alternator spin fast enough. I don't know if there's a limit that way either.” Thinking of his bubbles, he said, “I know I can make it far greater than the earth's gravity, so I suspect there isn't one.” Displaying his knowledge of the terms, he concluded, “Megawatts for sure, if not gigawatts. Even terawatts!”

“Fascinating!” Terence continued walking, lost in thought, still applying about the same amount of attention to where he walked, that is, almost none.

Peter was amused to note Alice seemed used to this, as she took his hand in hers and deftly steered him along.