So how do you write?

Take something everyone else takes for granted and stand it on its head. Imagine their faces as what these peole expect blows up in them. Find your inner imp and follow where she leads. If she goes too far--off a cliff and into the sea, for example-- you don't have to jump after her.

I will admit, though, that sometimes following her to her watery end is quite rewarding.

Tobie's Challenge

2059: The population of the Earth is 4 Billion people worldwide.

Today (2008), the population of the earth is about 6.5 Billion. In 2020, you are the leading scientist in (whatever feild you choose) and the UN has asked you to make a plan that would make sure population growth would be stiffled and earth will only support 4 B people in the next 100 years. You have 1.5 to 2 generations to implement.

What's you plan? How will you control population growth?

Be creative! I asked people in Mangaholix but most answers were: I wouldn't live by them, the world would end by then, natural disaster that would kill everyone. We're Talecrafters. We should be creative!

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And in the tradition of people with nothing better to do than play with story cards when we sure as heck should be working for a living, (sorry, bad joke) this is my answer--


The New Deal

Well, it turns out the Evangelicals were right after all.

Millions of people disappeared just as most of the world was spiraling into what would have been--pardon the Husseinism-- "the Mother of all Wars." One minute they were there, sharing in the muted global panic or otherwise making the most of their time on the planet. The next minute, they were gone.

You don't have any concept of how much that bites when your girlfriend is raptured away from you in the middle some well-earned nookie.

I went crazy looking for her, churning up all sorts of explanations for my aborted communion and the feelings of fear and loneliness in the weeks that came after. It was a super-weapon. It was an experiment in some newfangled physics gone awry. Alien abduction.

(I did take some comfort in the knowledge that the people most vociferously advocating the Alien Abduction theory were ...dare I say it? Evangelicals Left Behind.)

The world pretty much did the same thing-- go crazy looking for absent friends, lost loved ones and significant others-- after the initial skirmishes, the petit panic that set in when armed units in the field found themselves without commanding officers or communications specialists. Thousands died in those weeks. Needlessly.

It was only after nations started sending representatives to the UN Building again to compare notes that people put together just what might have happened. Many of us didn't quite believe it, of course. And soon enough it didn't matter because many more people would die. Needlessly.

Well, it's 2099 now. Jesus hasn't come back yet. What's left of the world's population is shut up in Supercities-- New York, Vegas, Los Angeles, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Pasay, Sao Paulo. Pockets of humanity connected by tenuous threads of intermittent radio-communication (God bless the guy who invented sattelites-- we still have a couple up there faithfully facilitating communications). It's getting harder and harder to house, feed and clothe everybody in because absolutely no one can get out of the 'Cities and there're only so many ways you can sell Soylent Green to a restive population. I imagine the situation's pretty much the same in the other 'C ities.

The official story is that the Outside World's still hot--radioactive. Besides, the environment's crap anyway. Serves us right for actually using all the nukes.

My problem is that you can't keep humanity hermetically sealed in domed pockets the size of what used to be Israel. People in Pasay are dying to get out and claim some real estate-- never mind that it glows in the dark. There are rumors--Urban Legends of areas recovering from what we did to it. New places from which to start over. The Pasay Quorum of Twelve has been on my ass to send out exploratory expeditions, to establish trade routes with Mumbai.

Idiots. Children.

They don't know what I had to do to make sure we have the crappy real estate we're sitting in now. Why the populations in the 'Cities remain constant. Why I tax people so much. Why most of the budget goes to military R & D instead of making Soylent Green more palatable. Or why I'm still alive when I no longer have the right to be.

I made a deal back in 2024. After that horde of inhuman mosters rose up out of the earth and halved the world's population in a matter of weeks. Why do you think we had to use all the nukes? I spoke to a representative... an emmisary. It promised the horde would leave Pasay and the other 'Cities alone if the horde had the rest of the world to play with. Anyone who left our safe zones would be fair game, and in the early days of Pasay's development, we lost far too many people.

I've discouraged people from leaving for whatever reason over the years. But enough sneak out of Pasay to satisfy the terms of The Deal. Part of those terms involve keeping mum about The Deal to our charges-- the people who live in Pasay and complain about the quality of their food.

If the Quorum would only wait five goddamn years... at least that's what the 'tech boys and Pasay/Mumbai black ops people are telling me. We'll have a working prototype for a weapon that can really hurt these things.

Then we'll all be in a position to negotiate a New Deal.

God helps those who help themselves.