FOOLISH CONSISTENCY: HOBGOBLIN OF GOOD NOVELS?

My memory struggles as I write my best selling, futuristic PI novel that Hollywood and I make a big pile of money from when it becomes a movie. Cross fingers, spin twice in a circle and lay on the charm to potential agents.

Yesterday, I caught a memory slip while I was rewriting a passage, but it led to a happy outcome. Chapters apart, two people come to Manning's apartment on Everett Street in Portland. The first has to stand downstairs and ring up to Manning's apartment on the 5th floor so that Manning can release the downstairs door. The next visitor magically appears at Charley's door on the 5th floor and rings his doorbell there. INCONSISTENT! Then, I decided the live in landlady sees the second visitor and lets him in because she knows that the visitor and Manning are friends. It would be a nice touch of apartment dwelling interplay.

While concocting that little piece of business, I suddenly recalled that Manning is set 250 years in the future. Already autos are being started with equipment that reads thumb prints so, certainly, most locks 250 years hence will be opened by thumbprint or whole body scanners. Something! I put a note in my rewrite file to make this consistent when the final rewrite begins sometime within the next hundred years or so. Cross fingers.

The great fact about the tale above is that, after all, I did remember the two different visitors when I needed to recall them. My memory actually worked.