more writing
One problem I was pondering was, when Joe goes into the crystal, how does his body survive? I've since realized it should work like any out of body experience; even in the real world (assuming you believe it can happen in the first place) the body continued to do its thing. In this case, the problem lies in the fact that Joe is not out in the aether, he's gone into the crystal, which is designed to contain far more energy than his soul currently consists of. He can provide enough energy to sustain the crystal's structure,but doing so spreads his soul so thin that it loses cohesion, and therefore his sense of self is lost as well. I cannot yet think of any reason why this wouldn't work...
And of course, this begs the question of whether or not he'll even be able to literally pull himself together again. Will he survive? And what changes could this wreak on a person, to literally almost dissipate into the cosmos? When your souls is young and not very coherent in the first place, what if you don't get it all back?
The other thing I realized is, the powers of the other children involved its actually nearly irrelevant - I really don't use them for anything in this particular story, at least not in a way that can't be re-imagined. The only problematic element is the lizards, I.e., the futuristic element, or perhaps more accurately the unearthly element. I don't yet know what I'm going to do about any of those details-this still implies that I'm actually going to write a coherent version in the first place.
And of course, this begs the question of whether or not he'll even be able to literally pull himself together again. Will he survive? And what changes could this wreak on a person, to literally almost dissipate into the cosmos? When your souls is young and not very coherent in the first place, what if you don't get it all back?
The other thing I realized is, the powers of the other children involved its actually nearly irrelevant - I really don't use them for anything in this particular story, at least not in a way that can't be re-imagined. The only problematic element is the lizards, I.e., the futuristic element, or perhaps more accurately the unearthly element. I don't yet know what I'm going to do about any of those details-this still implies that I'm actually going to write a coherent version in the first place.