SW10/HCC: The Day of the Rapture

[Andrew Perron]

On Mon, 30 May 2011 21:14:59 +0000 (UTC), Scott Eiler wrote:

> You know I'm the super-powered ex-basketball player usually called the 
> "Super-Savior".

...my but this starts out silly.  Excellent.

> "We're as sure as we can be without actually putting 144,000 people and all 
> their personal belongings through an inter-dimensional portal."
> 
> "Why just that many?"
> 
> "We have our limits.  And there's Biblical significance to that number.  In 
> the Book of Revelations, it's the number of saints that God has saved."

Hmmmmm.  Yeah, that makes sense - if you have to set an arbitrary limit,
why not one that has significance?

> "There's some sort of interference.  If you think of all the possible Earths 
> like they're balls in a pool, we're in a pipe with one Earth on either side. 
> On one side, there's a very strong barrier.  We have to go the other way."

Makes sense.

> But somehow I got stuck!  It was like being in some tight tube, with lights 
> passing and bouncing back!

This description... could use some polish.

> I looked up.  We'd planned to arrive out West, so we could get organized. 
> But instead we were looking at Manhattan!  It still had Twin Tower 
> skyscrapers - but these were crowned with prayer towers with balconies! 
> Minarets!  How powerful *was* Turkey here?

Eesh.  That's a trope I've always disliked - "alternate universe where
things are visually the same except for cosmetic changes reflecting
whatever the thing is that makes this world different from our own".

> This *didn't* kill me, because I have the super gift of the *real* 
> Super-Savior, whatever that may be.

That's oddly ambivalent.

> ... So here we are, in our new world.  But I don't think we'll like it very 
> much.

Eesh.  Dark ending, but fairly achieved.

> I would have loved to have this faction led by an unrepentant villain.  But 
> no.  Scott Stiles, the "Super-Savior", is a pre-existing character already 
> leading the Church of the Super-Savior!

Honestly, this doesn't seem like an especially villainous act, considering.

> I think we can rule out militant Christians in the Superhuman World 2011 
> from now on.  Over one hundred thousand of them have signed up for the 
> Rapture!  They and all their resources are gone now.  Superhuman World 2011 
> now has fewer villains.  But there's now a place in the multiverse which has 
> *more* villains...

Or, looked at from the other direction, more rebels willing to rise up and
destroy the system they're caught in.

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, good times.