SW10/HCC: The Day of the Rapture

[Scott Eiler]

"Andrew Perron" <pwerdna at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:<7dykggbifbln.nuvhj62yay5b.dlg at 40tude.net>...
> On Mon, 30 May 2011 21:14:59 +0000 (UTC), Scott Eiler wrote:
>
> > 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".

Err, I see your point, but that trope isn't going away any time soon, so I 
figured I'd take advantage.  Perhaps it'll help if I reassure you, the Turks 
didn't build those skyscrapers.   There's a story in how they took 
possession...  in fact, I've already written its prequel. 
http://www.eilertech.com/stories/2005/after.htm#turks

> > ... 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.

Thanks.  I'd intended it that way.  But the more I think about it, the more 
I think "ending" is the wrong word.

> > 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.

Depends whom you ask.  They would have been a lot more villainous if they'd 
arrived in Montana with enough people for two cities and enough rifles for 
an army corps like they'd planned.  Perhaps I should point that out more 
blatantly in story, but it's not the sort of thing the narrator of the 
present story would dwell on.

> > 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.

Indeed.