SW10/WWW: Powernaut 1969 #14: Let Me Tell You About Power!

[Scott Eiler]

As things escalate to near maximum, another hero has what may be his 
finest moment...  Powernaut 1969 continues.

http://www.eilertech.com/stories/powernaut/1969b.htm#14

  have a concept of Conservation of Characters. This expresses itself 
here as, Son of Stonewater Smith = the Devil in White = Ron Cannon = 
Kwame Cannon. (The Devil in White was a background character for 
Ellipsis. Ron came in from a convention game, when I needed characters 
for the  Aleutian Crisis of 2004 - 
http://www.eilertech.com/stories/2004/aleut.htm .  Kwame changed his 
name from Ron, and once appeared in a Powernaut text short-short story 
which got rejected for Jolt City.) Now that I am exploring the origin of 
Ellipsis, I have an even more explosive equivalency, which I mentioned 
in last week's commentary. I literally came up with that idea while 
writing that commentary. Oh, shit...

On that note, here's some more commentary, and another opinion about 
that Finest Moment stuff.

...


Bonus Section:  2005 Reprint Commentary from Steven Oliver Samuels 
(S.O.S.)!   He Told Hyper-Children About Power


At a critical point in our 1969 expedition, the self-proclaimed 
Powernaut turned aside two Hyper-Children by giving them a vision of the 
evils of power. I have to admit, that saved us. I can now comment on how 
those children grew up, and whether they were affected by his teachings.

• Wyatt Ferguson was old enough to understand the full message. Recently 
in 2003, he published his diary under the title, With Great Power Comes 
Great Irrelevance. I have to conclude, he remains warped by the 1969 
incident.

• Stephen Wolcott (Ellipsis), on the other hand, was roughly five 
minutes old at the time. His mind had artificially advanced to its 
eventual super-genius status, but he was still an infant. In later life, 
he ceaselessly sought increasing power, no matter the consequences. (I 
helped the U.S. Government ward him off in 1992.) I conclude, he forgot 
the teachings and recovered from the incident.

I'm uncertain how I feel about this. On the one hand, society has dealt 
with the power of Ellipsis despite his having been *unsuccessfully* 
brainwashed to renounce power - and in some respects, he's used his 
power for the good of society. On the other hand, the 1969 brainwashing 
seems to have held for Wyatt Ferguson. His reaction to great power has 
uniformly been to renounce it. Given the amount of power he's renounced 
over his career, that may be safest for the world. But how can that be 
*proper*?



-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

When you *are* the leader... whatever goes wrong... whether you did it
or not... *you* are held responsible. - Barack Obama

I know. - Archie Andrews

- from Archie #617, March 2011, scripted by Alex Simmons.