Author's Q&A

Questions answered by Janet Edwards majority of the following contributed by Kha257 and posted in the Discuss channel.

November 7, 2023 at 1:26 am.[]

Dragongirl says:

Q: In adversary, Aura leaves hive Genex to avoid being executed. Are hives allowed to kill their own people for any reason or does joint hive treaty put some rules on it (not being killed for the actions of your kin, not being killed as part of eugenics, stuff like that). If there are rules what are they and how are they enforced?

Also, what do hives in the genetics group do about gay people, since if they are in a relationship they can’t really have kids with each other naturally? And what about infertile people? Or is there some clause that lets them use surrogate mothers without being in the duty child program? Hive Genex’s approach to relationships makes me wonder about cases that they can’t pair up for genetics because of these reasons.

A: Interesting questions, but I’m afraid I can’t give any details about Hive Genex because of spoilers for future books. You should learn more in Hive Mind 6.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/fun-extras/hive-future-questions)

November 8, 2023 at 1:35 am[]

MerryB says:

Q:

Given the problems individual Hives have with lack of genetic diversity, would Hive England’s geneticists take samples from agents of other hives caught being illegally in Hive England for Hive England’s duty child program? Any such agents’ genetics would presumably be different from the genetics of Hive England’s population? Not considering the ethics of such action
Miranda’s mother indicated she wanted her duty children to be with Miranda’s father. Therefore, there were only five children born to the couple, since Miranda’s father had a child in the duty child program before he married Miranda’s mother. If a participant in the duty child program dies while having less than six duty children, do their wishes about who will be the other parent still hold? Wondering if a sixth duty child for Miranda’s mother will be started after the woman’s death, with the other parent not being her husband. Not considering the ethics of such action
If a person dies after entering the duty child program but before designating a second parent for the children, does the Hive create children for the person with the Hive’s choice of second parent? Would the Hive send the children for adoption? Or would they tell the deceased person’s family and give them first choice of raising the children? Would the Hive even tell the deceased person’s family that duty children had been created? Not considering the ethics of such action
Is the author as tricksy as the author seems, after reading Amber’s conversations with people from Claire’s Unit? Betting the author is at least that tricksy.

A:

Taking genetic samples from citizens of other Hives, even if those citizens were caught illegally entering your Hive, would be a serious breach of Joint Hive Treaty. Hive England has less of a problem with genetic diversity than some other Hives, so wouldn’t risk it.
The Joint Hive Treaty rules on duty child programmes have been upgraded over the years, so by now all conceivable situations are covered in the consent stage of entering the duty child programme. If a participant in the duty child programme dies, their specified consents still hold, and some of those consents will directly relate to the situation of their death. For example, Claire opted to designate the other genetic parent of each of her children at the appropriate future point. In the event of her death though, the Hive could choose from the already designated genetic parents.
- If a participant in the duty child programme decides to move Hive, then their outstanding duty child programme commitments move with them, but some consents will be altered appropriately.
- I don’t think the specific details of Miranda’s mother’s situation are likely to be a significant spoiler for future books. When Miranda’s mother entered the duty child programme, she’d had no interest at all in the resulting children, and let the default consents apply. That meant the Hive could have chosen a genetic parent with no prior children through the duty child programme to have six duty children with Miranda’s mother.
- However, the Hive had spent years pressuring Koloman into agreeing to enter the duty child programme, only to be frustrated by him limiting his consent to one child. When Koloman married Miranda’s mother, the Hive grabbed the chance to have five particularly valuable duty children from the pair of them. Miranda’s mother’s consent had been given before her mental reset. Koloman’s recent mental reset meant his consent had to be approved by Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement. Once they confirmed he was in a genuine caring relationship with his partner though, he only needed a minimal level of informed consent to agree to be the co-genetic parent of her duty children.
Joint Hive Treaty rules only allow duty children to be adopted if no close relatives wish to raise them. Since Koloman and Miranda’s mother had been traded from another Hive, there obviously weren’t any close relatives in Hive England questioning their competence and arguing they could offer the children a better home.
The author is unsure what you mean by being tricksy, but feels it sounds spoilerish. She suggests you use the contact form to message her if you want to discuss this point further.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/fun-extras/hive-future-questions)

January 20, 2023 at 4:37 pm[]

Q: What would happen in the unlikely scenario that someone was qualified for more than one of the really important non-optimization lottery results, ex Gold commander and telepath? What would the Hive do in that situation?

A: Lottery handles your unlikely scenario by hitting candidates with several key multipurpose tests on the first day. These tests gather some generally useful information, but also include sections designed to spot candidates for the overwhelmingly important non-optimization positions. Candidates will do a few generic tests between these if the necessary staff or facilities aren’t available, but they won’t start on an individualized Lottery path until they’ve done the key tests.

Most candidates won’t score significantly highly on any of the special sections of key tests. Those who do are given follow up tests designed to weed out false positives due to lucky guesses. In the unlikely event of someone scoring significantly highly on more than one of the special sections, they’d be given the followup tests for all of them. In the even more unlikely event of them being confirmed as a serious candidate for more than one non-optimization position, then Lottery would collate information on the number and age distribution of people in the Hive currently available for those positions and scream for human help.

To be more specific, Lottery would send its collated information to the appropriate member of the Council of Gaia, who would then examine the situation and confirm which position was most needed by the Hive. The candidate would then follow the Lottery path for that position. If later tests showed they weren’t suitable after all, they’d obviously swap to the Lottery path for the other position.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/fun-extras/hive-future-questions/#comment-131703)

January 17, 2023 at 1:55 am[]

Q: Why weren’t Keith’s parents sent to parenting therapy?

A: The Hive gives virtually everyone work that they love, but there are still the usual problems of messy human interactions. It’s very true that at the end of Borderline we don’t know what Keith’s childhood was really like. We see the events through Amber’s viewpoint, and she’s only heard Keith’s account. Amber can’t give away the fact she’s talked to Keith, so she can’t ask any of the old members of Claire’s unit, such as Gideon, if Keith’s account is true.

Keith and his parents would certainly have been offered therapy sessions. Those sessions may or may not have happened. Either Keith or his parents could have refused to have therapy. As a child, Keith could potentially have been forced to undergo therapy, but therapy under duress could have made his behaviour worse rather than better.

As for your question about how dare a parent not dote on their child and back their child… Amber has parents who love and support her, but there are a host of other possible family dynamics. Lucas was a gifted, well-behaved child, but his mother hadn’t wanted him, and openly told him that she hated him for destroying her life. Buzz’s parents tried to correct what they mistakenly thought were her lies, but the really damaging problem was their constant fighting with each other.

Situations involving multiple children can get especially complicated. Some parents play blatant favourites between their children, but even the most loving and impartial parent may be unable to dote on and support one of their children in certain situations. Such as if that child is deliberately abusing another.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/fun-extras/hive-future-questions/#comment-131624)

December 28, 2021 at 4:15 pm[]

Q: How does calling/messaging people on a lookup work? I’m also curious about how this works in Amber’s Hive, although that might be more spoilery. The first three questions are the same, but I also wondered about if dataviews are linked to identity numbers. That doesn’t seem too likely considering anonymous dataviews, though. What about the call logging system? From Hurricane, the Hive apparently doesn’t have one, but in Borderline people were worried about records, and it seems like it would be useful for one to have a record of who one called. Is the difference that Hive Defence has actual recordings, which is how Cador got his information? Also, are there emergency budgeting classes and help with food for people not on Teen Level?

A: How these things work in the Hive is a bit more complex/spoilerish. I’ll settle for explaining the basic reason that people were so worried about records in Borderline. Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement inspectors have specialist technology that could extract more information from call systems and the Hive central data core than the Hive could itself. Calls aren’t recorded, so Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement couldn’t access the call content, but they could certainly track the fact a call was made. They could also retrieve deleted information from the Hive central data core.

Continuing support with things including budgeting is available for people after Teen Level.

(Source: https://janetedwards.com/free-stories/#comment-121174)

Q: Are all of the apartments the same size? Are all of the apartment’s level 1, even though some of the people such as Hanna are a lower level? Are there any communal dining areas for people? I was wondering that because it doesn’t seem likely that a bunch of 18 years old would want to eat every single meal alone in their rooms, so I though some of the community rooms may be set aside for that purpose. If so, are they all level 1 luxury foods or are their different levels of dinning, too? Also, approximately how many people are in Amber’s unit?

A: While apartments of the same level tend to be a similar size and layout, they are set up to link to a neighbouring apartment to allow flexibility as people pair off and have families. Also some are different for specific reasons. For example, Adika’s apartment is larger not just because he’s a team leader, but because his apartment houses security related things.

The unit is big, but obviously not big enough to have accommodation of every single level. There are a large number of Level 1 apartments, and also clusters of apartments of strategically chosen lower levels such as 10, 20, 30, and 40. If there isn’t an apartment of someone’s precise level, then they get the closest higher level apartment. Hannah is only Level 57 but gets a Level 40 apartment.

While there aren’t specific communal dining areas, the Strike Team’s Ready room is actually a cluster of several rooms, one of which is a social area with a kitchen unit where they can eat together if they want. The lower level unit members also have a large private community room where they can socialize in safety from the high level members of the unit if they wish. Again, that has a kitchen unit. Both the Liaison and Tactical teams can have working sessions that last for very long periods, but they prefer to have food brought into their areas to keep them going rather than have a kitchen unit installed.

How many staff members there are in Amber’s unit has been increasing over time and will increase some more in future. Generally speaking, a Telepath unit starts with minimum staff including a single Strike team, partly because no one wants to overwhelm a new telepath with the number of strange minds in their unit. So Amber originally had somewhere approaching a hundred people including a single Strike team. There was a big jump in size when the second Strike team was recruited. There may be later jumps in size for specific operational reasons which I can’t explain now because of spoilers. Obviously at some point, there’ll be the factor of staff members having children as well.

(SOURCE https://janetedwards.com/coming-next/#comment-120010)

Q: Who is meant to be depicted on this cover?[Telepath] Amber and Adika are obvious, but is the third person supposed to be Lucas or Forge? He doesn’t quite fit either of their descriptions. When Perilous was released, I decided it must be Lucas, because the Forge in that cover looked very different. But then there he was again on the cover of Hurricane, appearing to pull on what looked to me to be a Nosy costume. This makes sense if it’s supposed to be Forge, but if it’s not, what’s the symbolism of Lucas pulling on a grey hood?

A: The cover of Telepath is supposed to depict Amber with Adika and Lucas as the two team leaders protecting and guiding her on her missions. The cover of Hurricane is Lucas. He isn’t pulling on a nosy costume, just pulling up the hood of his outdoor clothing, so the symbolism is heading out to battle the twin foes of their target and the storm.

I’ve added a note to the book pages to say who it’s supposed to be on the covers.

(SOURCE: https://janetedwards.com/2021/07/30/test-release-of-telepath-case-laminate-hardcover/#comment-116938)

Q: Why does the hive need different classes? Why have such a luxury difference between level 1 and level 97? Not only in apartment size, which I can maybe understand if there are fewer high level jobs than low level, but even in access to drinks. What is the logic for setting up the hive that way?

A: The luxury differences in the Hive are partly due to the fact it wouldn’t be possible to provide some luxury goods to all one hundred million people. However, the main reason is that everyone has the right under Joint Hive Treaty to request to move to another Hive. If everyone in the Hive had exactly the same accommodation and lifestyle, then people with rare and vital skills might ask to move Hive to somewhere they’d be better rewarded.

Therefore the more useful someone is to the Hive, the higher their level, and the more luxuries they get to keep them happy. However, as Lucas says somewhere in Telepath, the luxury differentials between levels are carefully limited to avoid fuelling discontent, and even the lowest level workers are never homeless, jobless, starving, or left without medical care. So despite it’s focus on levels, the Hive is actually quite an egalitarian society in some ways.

(SOURCE: https://janetedwards.com/books/perilous)

Q: Where is the main Hive, and where is it located? How big is the Hive?

A: I have readers worldwide, and there are 107 Hive cities scattered around the world in Amber’s future, so I’m perfectly happy for a reader to picture Amber’s Hive as being wherever they like. Amber naturally always thinks of it as the Hive rather than giving it a name. You may notice there is at least one reference to England in each book. Something like a Hive entertainment channel showing a thriller about a Hive England Defence team chasing a spy from another Hive. That could be taken as a hint.

As mentioned in the books, the Hive has about 150 levels. It is a long thin oblong and located at a distance from the coast. Exactly how big an area the Hive covers depends on exactly what you class as being part of the main Hive and that could get a little spoilerish. I tend to think of it as covering the same area as the Isle of Wight, but it obviously owns a lot of surrounding territory and defends its borders fiercely.

(SOURCE: https://janetedwards.com/books/telepath/)

Q: What is the Hive's policy on pets?

A: While pets aren’t likely to become the major focus for a Hive Mind plot, minor mentions are going to pop up fairly soon, so I’ll keep this brief. Firstly, cats and dogs are generally very much part of sea farm life, though less so among the people who work on board fishing boats. Secondly, Hive policy is zero pets, but the reality (as with the issue of going Outside) is far more complex.

I should point out that I’m personally strongly in favour of both pets and going Outside. 😀

Q: How large are apartments in the Hive? To establish a couple benchmarks, approximately how large would Amber’s room on Teen Level have been? How about Amber’s parents’ apartment on Level 27?

Amber’s room on Teen Level would be about 2.5 metres by 4 metres (8 foot by 13 foot) including the floor area taken up by the miniscule bathroom unit. Her bedroom in her parents’ apartment would have been a bit over 4 metres by 4 metres (13 foot by 13 foot) with a separate bathroom. The Hive wants to keep its population up, so apartment size doesn’t just depend on someone’s level but also the number of children they have, and no you don’t have to move to a smaller apartment when the children go to live on teen level. A Level 27 couple would have an apartment consisting of three standard rooms the size of Amber’s bedroom, plus one double sized room as a living area, plus bathrooms. Since Amber’s parents raised two children, they would have an apartment with an extra three standard rooms. Although they’d probably been using one of their rooms solely for playing bookettes, they aren’t high enough level to have a room with the full features of a dedicated bookette room.

Q: Is Amber narrating to a particular audience?

A: Amber is more thinking through events to make sense of her experience.

Q: How are identity numbers assigned?

A: The first four digits of a Hive identity number reflect a person’s birth year, but using the Lottery year rather than the standard year. There should be a little more on Lottery years in the next book, but effectively it means anyone born after the Lottery of 2514 but before the Lottery of 2515 will have an identity code of 2514 and be a candidate in the 2532 Lottery. The other seven digits are a combination of a classification code system and a sequential number,

Q: We’re told that the Hive is essentially a closed loop environment. At the same time, the Hive surely generates a massive and diverse amount of waste in terms of products: old clothes, outdated dataviews, medical equipment, furniture, etc. There doesn’t seem to be different kinds of trash bins (i.e. compost / landfill / e-waste / etc) either. Is everything “recyclable”? Does everything just go through incinerators and the raw materials collected afterwards?

A: Amber’s Hive actually specializes in recycling. All its own manufactured goods are designed with recycling in mind. There is no separation of waste by people in their apartments. The Hive view is that separating waste correctly requires too much specialist knowledge and effort to be done correctly by random Hive citizens, so all waste goes through a later separation process.

Q: What profession do you think you’d be in the Hive?

A: I would like to think Lottery would assign me to writing bookettes.

Q: What kind of jobs would Level 96 citizens have? What might be classified as “lower” than Level 93 Pipe Technicians?

A: One of my planned future books for the Hive Mind series involves what happens at the lowest levels of the Hive, so I can’t answer this question without potentially giving away spoilers. It’s not nearly as predictable as you might think.

Q: What are crunch cakes like?

A: Crunch cakes are available on even the lowest levels of the Hive. In Megan’s opinion, Amber should be eating something much higher level, but the telepath gets what she wants. In fact, what the Hive calls crunch cakes exist right now, and are (where I live) one of the standard cakes for small children to make. Search for ‘cornflake cakes for kids’ if you’d like recipes.

(SOURCE: https://janetedwards.com/books/hurricane/)

Q: What is a "cor"?

A: Cor is an abbreviation for corridor and sometimes used in a similar way to when someone in the USA talks about blocks. When Amber says they walked two cors to an apartment, she means they walked along two corridors. When she locates a target and says the person is about six cors away, she’s talking about how far away the person is in a straight-line distance. Cor is a vague term rather than a precise measurement and most people in the Hive will think of it as being somewhere between 100 and 150 metres. Amber often uses it when she’s looking at the world with her telepathic view to emphasize the fact that she can only roughly estimate distances.

(SOURCE: https://janetedwards.com/coming-next/)

Q: Is day, weeks and Months the same as real world? or have there been some changes? I doubt if day length would be different, but it could since they live in an artificial bubble, but weeks and months could certainly be organized differently since that is more artificial then day and year is. Also, what are the actual dates of the 4 holidays? it seems based on references in Defender and Hurricane they are New Year, Carnival, Valentine, Halloween, are they exactly to the day, 3 months apart?

A. I usually give people the simple answer on festival dates, which is that they are equally spaced through the year on the equivalent of 1st January, 1st April, 1st July, and 1st October. That’s a bit like saying the Hive has 50 working levels at the top, with 100 accommodation levels below it, which gives a broad idea of the layout but omits a few complicating details.

Since you’re specifically asking about days, weeks, and months as well, I’ll go into some of the complicating details on dates etc. My apologies that this will be incredibly long so I may make an error or bore you to death. Complicated details can be complicated.

The Hive has a calendar year that it uses for administrative purposes and trading with other Hives. (There is also a Lottery year that pops up in citizen identity codes, and is very important to teens, but that isn’t really relevant to this explanation.) The calendar year starting point and length is like ours including having the equvalent of leap years. The days match ours. After that it gets a bit different.

If someone wants to refer to a specific date, they talk about the day number. Administration systems usually use the day number in the year, but people will also refer to the day number since the last festival, or the day number before the next festival.

When someone is being vaguer about time, they will mention weeks or months. A week would mostly refer to a seven day period. In some circumstances, people might use the term week to refer to something like the regular working cycle of something like their manufacturing facility or hydroponics bay, which could be anything between five and ten days long and would include days off. There are no named days of the weeks or fixed weekends.

Our named month system, with the weirdly varying month lengths has gone entirely. For the Hive population, a month is a term that refers to one third of the time between the start of two successive festivals. That means there are always twelve months in a year, and a month is usually (but not always) about 30 days long.

So, in a perfectly standard Hive year the festivals are about 91 days apart. The first full day of the New Year festival is day 1 of the year (though the celebrations naturally begin the evening before that). Carnival starts on day 92 of the year. Valentine on day 183, and Halloween on day 274. People go to the southbound express belts to await the coming of the New Year on the evening of day 365 (or 366 in a leap year.)

HOWEVER, there is a crucial fact that can totally mess up the Hive’s neat system. The main Hive Lottery is the week after Carnival, and timed to finish just before the regular annual period of global trading of key personnel between Hives. In virtually all cases candidates will have completed their testing by the end of day 5 of Lottery. At that point, the Lottery systems will send two lists to Hive Trade. One is of the key vacancies that are still missing a suitably highly skilled candidate, and need to be filled by incoming personnel from other Hives. The other list is a lot longer, and includes all the highly skilled Lottery candidates that the Hive is willing to consider offering in exchange for incoming people. Those potential trade candidates have to remain without imprints until the 12 to 15 day period of global trading of key personnel between Hives completes. At that point, the candidates with agreed trades go to their new Hives and the leftover trade candidates get allocated and imprinted for this Hive.

Now the crucial fact. In most years the system works perfectly, but exceptional circumstances can force Joint Hive Treaty Enforcement to delay the designated period of global trading of key personnel between Hives. (I’m afraid I can’t specify what those exceptional circumstances might be because of potential spoilers.) Delays of two or three days aren’t significant, but anything longer means every Hive globally has to either skip the global trading period or do some frantic rescheduling.

Amber’s Hive decided on its approach to these delays long ago. Skipping the global trading period would be damaging for the Hive. Having a long gap between Lottery and the global trading period would be massively stressful and damaging for the potential trade candidates stuck in limbo. Having an unexpected long gap between Carnival and Lottery would be massively unsettling for everyone in the Hive.

Amber’s Hive opted to respond to delays of the global trading period by delaying the entire Carnival/Lottery/trading sequence. This is stressful for the teens nervously awaiting Lottery, but less stressful than messing up the entire pattern of Hive life.

So, as an example, suppose the global trading period is delayed 60 days. The pre-Carnival pageant sequence is extended, and the start of Carnival itself is delayed to day 152. The start of Halloween remains on day 274. The start of Valentine is rescheduled to be midway between the two, at day 213. (Valentine is deliberately placed between Carnival and Halloween, because it’s for lovers, and relatively easy to reschedule.)

In this situation, the three months between the New Year festival and Carnival are each about 50 days long. The three months between Carnival and Valentine are each about 20 days long, and the same for the three months between Valentine and Halloween. Then the three months between Halloween and New Year return to the standard 30 days each.

Q. For our purposes was lottery delayed for Telepath?

A. Ooo, I know that’s bordering on spoilerish, but I think you’d need to get Amber to read my mind to work out why. It might well have been. Once Amber entered Lottery, she obviously had a lot of other things to think about.

Q. How many days in a week for Teen Level?

A. It would probably be seven, but a comment about for example five weeks might not be precisely thirty-five days. There’s be a bit of human approximating going on with Amber. Beckett would be more precise.