Deus Hex Machina

In my last post I explained briefly what my Script Frenzy project is about, but I realized that just like my actual SF writing, the post got derailed. Therefore I figured it was appropriate to give a little more time to DHM.

Deus Hex Machina is set in a future Orange County where the old bones of what we know as landmarks in the OC are still visible underneath new construction. Irvine, I imagine, will remained a planned community for centuries to come, and exploring what that sort of regimented village system will look like in 200 years is kind of fascinating.

The project started with a URL, strangely enough. My husband loves collecting website names for future use. When he stumbled upon deushexmachina.com and realized it wasn't taken, he snatched it up and put it in his virtual back pocket for later use. Around that time I was trying to find my new Makhaira, that project that would sit by itself as a pure, whole story. I wanted something equally as moving, but there's something about lightning and bottles and the fallibility of corks. So I began thinking about what this story would be like, did some searches to see if anyone had written a story using that name, and realized that the sum of its parts really told what it was about.

Deus: God -- This tells me that this is a religious story, at least in some form.
Hex: Magic -- This immediately brings up interesting ideas about magic in our real world and its consequences.
Machina: Machines -- This was the part of the name that told me I was dealing with a futuristic story, and would be heading back to my Sci-Fi roots instead of staying in my Fantasy comfort zone.

Discussing this all with my husband (AKA Mr Sounding Board), he ended up writing a phrase up in the white board in our office: "God enchants the machine." While it wasn't the ultimate direction I was going to take with the project, it did give me a focus from which to start.

The first log line went something like this: What if a girl who worships technology finds evidence of magic in a future version of Orange County? It was a great jumping off point, and as MSB had suggested that I write Sci-Fi from a religious perspective since spirituality is so important to me, I started with the idea that magic was not only foreign to the protagonist, but heretical. If magic is heretical, the religion must be based on something that represents the opposite of magic, and makes sense that would be technology.

At this point I had a basic idea of who I was dealing with and the problem she was going to have to face. Around this time I also came up with the idea that the name would also represent the literal tropes in the story as well: There would be a god, there would be a Hex and there would be a Machina. I didn't want these concepts to be completely verbatim, but I did kind of like the idea of riffing off the name in this way. So I thought, what would be so heretical about magic to a technology-based religion? What does it mean to talk about God to someone who only worships the mechanical? And how would they interact with someone from outside their religion who is actively seeking the heretical?

The core of the themes were laid out from these lines of reasoning, and the story began to take shape. Take a girl who spends her life as a sanctioned Hexer (hacker on a fully immersive version of the Internet), send her out to investigate a magical occurance, add in a Machina (mech) rider who's out to make a name for himself and wrap it in the context of religion. Simple enough.

My hexer is Isidore RAM, who has spent her life in a monastery built under Aliso Viejo worshipping The Circuit and policing The Grid and keeping it free from contamination. She's going on a journey, and she's not sure where she'll end up, but along the way she's going to find the true meaning of spirituality, what it means to be human, and how precious life can be.