Story Germs 11

THEMES:

So I’m seeing three themes here.

One is domination: “it isn’t okay to force someone to do things against their best interest” that’s sort of no-d’uh and it’s the weakest of the three, but it ties Slaver/Slaver, Monia/Knife, Cyborg/Hesukristians, Devas/Everyone.

More interesting is the debate around environmentalism. What is the point of it? Are we trying to return the earth to a pre-industrial (or pre-agricultural, or pre-human??) state of grace? Or are we trying to engineer our environment in a way that makes it pleasant and useful for us? Are we forest rangers or gardeners?

That connects us to the theme of sacrifice and biblical allegory. Pristine nature is the Garden of Eden. The Devas are horsemen of the apocalypse, ushering in the ecological Rapture. But should the sins of the fathers (the civilization that produced the cyborg) be visited upon these low-tech sons? Perhaps the Devas will forgive us our unsustainability if we sacrifice to them and pledge to work with them.

And why does any of this matter? Protection. THAT’s the overarching theme of the story, after all. When is protecting something or someone a virtue? When is it evil, or at least irrational? That’s a theme you can develop with the characters.

  CHARACTERS:

For Protectors, the main thing you can add is depth to the relationship between Knife and Moina. You can do this by answering the questions: A) What do they want? B) what prevents them from getting it? C) what tools do they have with which they can address (B)? D) how do they feel about each other and (E) how do all the above change as the characters progress through the story?

Huh, I’ve never said all that out before. I wonder if I know what I’m talking about.

  So considering the themes above:

Hesukristos wants to protect the vanished world he used to know (by bringing it back)

The Devas want to protect the earth by destroying the cyborg and anyone else who gets in their way

Monia and Knife want, as a couple, to protect their dual civilizations, and, individually, each other (warm fuzzies).

  Thus the good guys are different from the bad guys because the good guys want to protect people rather than ideals. A pristine earth or a high-tech utopia are evil if, to get them, you allow the people you care about to die.

 Knowing that makes it easier to think about the ending.

 POSSIBLE ENDINGS

SIMON: Another thing I’m thinking of – should the ‘first knife’ character be driven by some savvy plan to lead hesukristos away from trans-detroit, where he can be safely destroyed by the devas? Is he a victim of circumstance, just going with the revolutionary army despite his knowledge of its inevitable destruction? Or, the least likely option, would he WANT hesukristos to win, perhaps? It would require some foolin’ around with the story earlier on, maybe – an established hatred of the devas, maybe…

That’s a good idea, too. He could convince his men to head back (or stay and plunder the treasure in the crypt?) while he leads the cyborg to some sort of El Dorado paradise. “Oh yes, bwana, my people have legends of a secret valley where all is as it once was and the buildings scrape the sky. It is only a little farther into the desert.”

But to me, this feels like the ending of a short story. The MC gets kidnapped by the cyborg, he leads the cyborg into a trap, gets the cyborg killed and either goes home or nobly sacrifices himself. This solution doesn’t require him to get to know Moina (who ends up being just a deluded messiah) or to get humans onto a more equal footing with the Devas (I don’t trust ‘em!).

 That’s fine, though. It might be a good idea to have multiple endings for your story, depending on how big a project it grows into as you’re working on it. Complicated, deep, epic, and forever unfinished is worse than short, simple, and finished.

 So here’s how I think the story might end:

Hesukristos discovers there are no still-functioning cyborgs. They uncover a cache of weapons (which will allow the soldiers to hold out against the Devas), but the only cyborgs they find are long dead, enshrined and painted shells with rotted offerings scattered around them. This current cyborg is not the first Hesukristos, and his predescessors have all come to bad ends.

Desperate, H-krist does not recharge, but wants to leave the crypt and head off into the jungle to find a deeper cache. There must be some REAL people SOMEWHERE in this nightmare world! The Devas are waiting for them at the door to the cache.

Then…

 SHORT: While the soldiers hold off the Devas, Knife H-krist him there’s a better crypt further out in the desert. Using his last bit of power, Knife rocket-jumps away from the crypt, drawing the Devas after him and sparing the lives of all the soldiers and (most importantly) Moina. Knife protects her by sacrificing himself to the Devas when they catch up and autoclave everything around H-krist. Visuals could be him thinking about all of this while he flies through the air on H-Krist’s back. Then a puff of dust as H-Krist lands in the desert, stumbles, looks up at the massed lights in the sky above, and bellows “where is the second cache? WHERE IS IT?”

Then a mushroom cloud.

 MEDIUM: In the heat of battle with the Devas, H-krist runs out of power. Shedding his armor, the pitiful monster crawls toward a recharge station, where he is stopped by Knife and Moina. Working together, they overpower him and tie him to a tree, sacrificing him to the Devas. A ray of hope at the end comes when Knife smiles and Moina and says, “let’s see if we can find some more biddable weapons around here.”

 LONG: The cyborg drags himself away from the battle (perhaps shedding his armor as he does so, so he appears smaller and weaker). Moina is disgusted with him and declares that she will die protecting her people against Hudsoni and Devas and anyone else who would dominate them. Knife tries to convince her to follow H-krist, who represents their only chance for survival. He’s more interested in protecting HER, not some ineffable concept. Their argument is reinforced by the actual fighting going on around them.

 Then, riding on the back of a Deva, the Matriarch arrives and tells everyone to shut up. She gives the Hesukristians one last chance to surrender their blasphemous god or be destroyed. Which gives Knife an idea.

 “Hesukristos is not a God. He is a man. A lonely and exhausted man who wants nothing more than to protect the lives of the innocent” (allegory! And the Arian Heresy to boot!) “And if he is a God, then no less are we, for he has given us the means (i.e. the weapons in the cache) to deal with you Devas as equal. Come down to the earth you say you protect, and talk with us.”

There follows a negotiation where the Devas agree to stop viewing humans as part of the ecosystem they are protecting, but fellow protectors of it. The holy power of the Hudonite Matriarchy coupled with the bureaucracy of the Hesukristians and the know-how of Hesukristo, will found a “Nation of Protectors” who will aid the Devas in their goal of repairing the earth.

 They don’t. They pull the cyborg away and tie him to a tree, where he dies.

 Now what? The Devas are ready to kill everyone. Knife and Monia must somehow protect their people and build a stable future. Good thing they are surrounded by godlike tools. Last line: “come on, I am sure if we search these ruins, we can find something we can use to protect our people.”

 I’m sure that better ideas will occur to you (and possibly even to me) as you set about telling this story, but what we have here is certainly good enough to start with.